Fire

by Cheryl Twaddle

  "Just tell me for Christ's sake!" I said, having no patience for riddles.

  "Okay, I'll tell you. The portals don't lead to different worlds," he explained. "There are no worlds that exist separately from the one you're from."

  "Of course there are," I said. "I come from one, Marshal comes from another, these Returners are from one, the Corrupters from another. Then, there's the world I fell into..."

  "That's different," he said. "Those are not worlds."

  "Yes, they are," I said. "What are they then?"

  "It's simple," said Gregorius. "The Returners and Corrupters come from somewhere that doesn't exist in a physical sense. It's more like a spiritual realm that exists in every part of the universe; representing light and dark, good and evil. The Nowhere Lands was a mistake, a fold in time that shouldn't be there. It creates cracks in time that you and your friends have fallen through."

  "What about Algar?" I asked. "And what about where I came from?"

  "They're the same," he said and I didn't understand.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Nicky, you didn't step into a different world when you came through the portal in Algar," Gregorius explained. "You stepped into a different time; the future. The year 2923 to be exact. This is what your world looks like right now."

  "What do you mean, right now?" I felt panic filling my body. "I'm in the future? This is my world? But what about Algar? I don't recognize it. There're no cities called Algar!"

  "Yes, there is," he said. "Algar was once called Calgary. When the people came out from under the ground, they found a sign that was missing the C and Y so, they called it Algar and it's been called that ever since."

  "But this world had something bad happen to it-the Collapse. Did that happen to my world?" I asked.

  "In the year 2021, one of the world's leaders decided he wanted to rule the world," he explained. "He threatened and sent his armies but no one would bow to him so, he decided to send a nuclear missile to the most powerful country at the time. It was a mistake. Missiles were sent in retaliation. Other countries took sides and a war of nuclear warfare began. It was called the Collapse and it almost wiped out mankind. It's a miracle anything survived."

  "But what about the Fire People?" I asked. "They didn't come here until after the Collapse and I know for a fact that there are redheads in my world. There's been redheads for a couple of thousand years!"

  "That's because Faelen took them through the portals and hid them throughout your history," he explained. "They've become a normal part of your lives, of your timelines."

  "Then I can go back!" I said, thinking that all I had to do to go back home, was to just go through the right portal. "I can go back to my house, my mom and dad. I can go back home!"

  "No, you can't," said Gregorius. "The portals only work one way for people. You can only go forwards in time; you can never go backwards. Faelen can go backwards and forwards because he's a Returner. The Fire People are aliens to this planet with physiology beyond ours. They were able to adapt their bodies to go through to different times when Faelen took them."

  "What?" I asked. "That's stupid! If I can't go back, then where else can I go? I'm already in the future and, according to you, the end of this planet unless we can fix it? That's just not fair! How come I got picked to be taken from my life and family to fix this problem? I probably couldn't have given a rat's ass about the year 2523 if someone would have asked me back home! I was in high school, ready to graduate, ready to start my life...Screw the assholes that did this to me!!" I sat back and banged my head against the cabin wall.

  "I hate to interrupt the pity party," said Poppy who must have been listening to our conversation. "But we're here. We've reached Hell Crossing. Get ready to land."

  "Lovely," I said. "Now, I get to hike into some nightmare prison and rescue a guy I've never met before."

  "Not before we get Max," said Gregorius, hoping this would cheer me up.

  "Right," I said. It did make me feel good that I would see Max again. Right now, I could use his strength to get me through this if he had any strength left in him. "And Faelen, he'll be there, too?"

  "He will," said Gregorius. Good, I thought. I had a few words to say to him. If he didn't picked me for his stupid group, maybe I'd still be home, in Calgary, waiting to graduate high school. I felt the Sky Crawler rumble as it started falling fast out of the sky. We had landed in Hell Crossing.

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