A Light in the Dark

by A. K. DuBoff

  “What was it you wanted to talk about?” I asked, taking a step back.

  He cleared his throat. “Just, about what happened earlier. I—”

  “Kaiden, Elle!” Maris shouted from the corridor. She burst into the pod room. “Do you remember?”

  “Remember what?” I asked.

  “The invasion.”

  Kaiden frowned. “Does this have something to do with our visions in the Archive?”

  “Yes, and so much more.” She sighed. “This wasn’t supposed to be our reset point. You missed your trigger.”

  My brow knit. “What in the stars are you talking about?”

  “We’ve been through this before—at least two times, maybe more,” she said. “We tried to make ourselves remember. I don’t think I would have had Colren not been experiencing a similar feeling of familiarity.”

  “And what does that have to do with our ‘trigger’?” Kaiden asked.

  “Your touchstone,” she replied, though that didn’t clarify anything for me. She looked between us. “You really don’t remember yet?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I confessed.

  She groaned. “Recreate that moment when we first came back from sealing the Archive—that’s when we were supposed to reset to. Come find us in the conference room when you remember.”

  “What happened to having the night off?” questioned Kaiden.

  “Now we know about the invasion. We don’t have a lot of time.” Maris waved her hands. “Do your thing. Hurry!” She left the room, the door sliding shut behind her.

  “What just…” I sucked in a slow breath.

  “Either she’s totally lost it, or there’s our explanation for the weird feelings,” Kaiden said.

  I nodded cautiously. “What was that about recreating the moment we came back?”

  “Last time in here, we kissed.”

  “How’d she even know about that?”

  “We didn’t exactly hide it,” he pointed out.

  “True. But what does it have to do with anything?”

  “We can find out.”

  I eyed him. “You don’t really think…?”

  “After the week we’ve had, I’m willing to believe just about anything.”

  “All right. No harm, I guess.” The aversion I’d felt was still at the forefront of my mind, but it competed with the attraction I’d felt for him since we first met. Only a few minutes earlier, we’d shared a first kiss that had been the culmination of those feelings. I didn’t understand why I was apprehensive now.

  Kaiden approached me. “I think we were standing just about like this.” He gently placed his hands on me and leaned in.

  Our lips met, sparking a flurry of images in my mind. A fleet of black alien ships, the spreading Darkness, twisted creatures, a bright anomaly standing out against the void surrounded by an unfamiliar starscape. The fleet was coming. They would destroy us.

  Kaiden and I parted.

  “Did you…?” I asked.

  He looked shaken. “Yeah. I think those were memories. But how could we have memories for something that hasn’t happened yet?”

  “Not in this timeline maybe,” I realized. “But if we reset…”

  Kaiden opened his mouth like he was about to protest, but instead he nodded. “That’s the sensation I couldn’t place. We have done this before.”

  The images began to sort in my mind, a narrative forming. “We made ourselves remember. That space battle is the ‘make or break’ moment for us. We need to find a different strategy.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time. They can get their fleet there faster than we can.”

  “Where is ‘there’?” I rubbed my temples. There was still more I couldn’t remember. The memories were so tantalizingly close to my grasp.

  “Let’s go talk to the others,” Kaiden suggested.

  I wished I had been able to remember on my own, but I could tell something was off. I needed the rest of my team.

  We returned to Central Command. Maris, Toran, and Colren were already back in the conference room. The bridge’s crew members no longer had the happy expressions they had displayed minutes earlier, having witnessed the shift in Colren’s demeanor.

  Kaiden closed the conference room door behind us after we entered. Our three associates were already seated in their customary places around the table.

  Colren folded his hands on the tabletop. “Do you remember?”

  I glanced at Kaiden then nodded. “Enough.”

  Toran shook his head. “How can the four of you have these memories when I don’t?”

  “That’s hardly the primary concern at present,” the commander cut in. “If my visions are to be believed, we have just been through a universal reset. An alien offensive is preparing to slaughter the Hegemony fleet. If we don’t take immediate action, we will be doomed to repeat that fate.”

  As he spoke, the hazy memories continued to sort in my mind. The aliens had been waiting for us. We hadn’t stood a chance. “How can we fight back if they know we’re coming?”

  “They’ll be expecting a fleet,” Colren replied. “It’s our turn to catch them by surprise.”

  “We should disrupt the anomaly to keep any ships from emerging,” Toran stated.

  The commander nodded. “Yes, but that alone is a short-term solution; they could always emerge elsewhere. What we really need is a way to fight back.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Kaiden asked.

  “A stealth mission,” the commander began. “As soon as the alien ships are fully formed, their weapons can take us out before we even have a chance to fire. But, if we want to learn how to counteract those weapons, we need to gather more information about them. That gives us a very narrow window between when the ship starts to form in the anomaly and before it’s operational.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked where this plan was going. From what I could recall, the alien ships appeared to have similar properties to the planets that had been consumed by the Darkness. There were only four people known to have a measure of immunity against the Darkness, and I was one of them. “Let me guess: you want us to go investigate?”

  Colren nodded. “We need to know the face of our enemy—what’s going on beneath the surface.”

  “It’s too risky to allow the anomaly to remain,” Kaiden insisted. “There won’t be time to destroy it if something goes wrong—we don’t even know that we can destroy it.”

  “I have no intention of allowing the ship to emerge completely,” the commander continued. “Board, extract information, then destroy the ship and hopefully the anomaly along with it.”

  Maris raised an eyebrow. “Like, plant a bomb?”

  “Not just any bomb, a spatial disrupter,” Colren clarified.

  Toran breathed out between his teeth. “That could destabilize the whole area.”

  Colren nodded solemnly. “It’s the only thing guaranteed to interact with the anomaly. And we can’t deploy it remotely.”

  “Not even a remote-piloted shuttle?” Toran asked.

  “Too many variables for getting it close enough,” Colren said. “Placing it by hand on the alien craft is the only way to be sure.”

  My brow drew together. “Sorry, but what’s a spatial disrupter?”

  “A weapon I thought was only conceptual,” Toran explained. “Theoretically, it can rip the fabric of space through multiple planes, not just affect the matter in this plane we know as ‘reality’.”

  “It’s extreme, but since we only have one shot at this and don’t know the details about this anomaly, we need to throw everything we have while there’s a chance to strike,” Colren said.

  I frowned. “I’m a little unclear on the part of this plan where all of us don’t die.”

  “Yeah, I have to second that sentiment,” Kaiden agreed.

  “It’s simple,” Colren said. “You’ll board, use your knowledge of the Darkness’
signal to tap into the ship’s systems, extract any data you can, plant the spatial disrupter, and return to the Evangiel for a jump before the disrupter activates.”

  “Yeah, see, that’s still sounds like the kind of insane plan where everyone dies,” I said. “There’s a slim chance we’d be able to interface with the alien ship’s systems, let alone on a time crunch.”

  “Not to mention, how do we get on the ship? There’s no way the environmental controls are the same,” Kaiden added.

  Maris nodded. “Assuming we can even get close enough to board.”

  “Insta-death all around,” I concluded.

  “I’m aware of those factors,” Colren insisted. “First, the ship won’t be able to attack you if you’re already on top of it when it begins to emerge from the anomaly. Furthermore, the ship’s environmental controls are irrelevant if you’re in an EVA suit. As for timing, yes, interfacing with the ship’s systems might be overly aspirational, but you don’t know until you try. If nothing else, this mission would enable you to see firsthand what’s inside the hull while also planting the spatial disruptor.”

  “That last part alone makes the risk worthwhile,” Kaiden said.

  I hated that he was right. We needed to destroy the anomaly, and I had to defer to others who knew far more about these matters than I did about the best way to do it. If they said this was the only way, then we needed to make it happen. “All right. How exactly are we going to do this?”

  Maris’ eyes widened, and she leaned forward on the table to look over at me. “You aren’t actually considering this plan, are you?”

  I stared back, resolute. “I’m sick of getting pushed around by these guys. Let’s show them what we’ve got.”

  23

  Even though I was psyched up to storm the alien ship, there were a lot of preparations to make. For starters, we didn’t know where the anomaly was, only some vague recollection that we needed to go to Crystallis to get a clue. Even without the reset, it still felt like we were running in circles.

  We adjourned from the meeting and prepared to return to the planet’s surface. Since we hadn’t had any decompression time since our battle in the Master Archive, we agreed to take fifteen minutes to freshen up in our cabins.

  I felt much better after a quick shower, and when I stepped into our lounge to reunite with my companions, I was ready to take on any challenge. No sooner had I entered the room than Toran burst in after me.

  “I remember!” he declared. “I sat down on my bunk and…” He shook his head. “We’re kind of screwed, aren’t we?”

  “Can’t think about it that way,” I said. “There’s at least a little chance we can pull this off, right?”

  Toran pressed the heel of his hand to his temple. “I remember how to find the spatial coordinates we need, but there’s no telling if those signals have any bearing on the system interface for the ship.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that part. Planting that bomb is the important thing.”

  The large man fixed me in a level gaze. “Since when are we a covert ops team, Elle? Breaching an enemy ship to plant a space-ripping weapon—it’s crazy!”

  His sudden, raw emotion caught me by surprise. “I know, Toran. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “This plan does not put us on the path of success.”

  “Then what do you propose we do?” I crossed my arms. “We’re the only ones who can get near the Darkness without getting turned to soot, and we have maybe five minutes to act between when the alien ship first appears and when its weapons will be operational. What’s a better way to use our time?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied after a pause.

  “I don’t like this either, but we entered Crazy Town a week ago. Maybe getting up close and personal with the bad guys is exactly the kind of action we need at this stage.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually excited about this plan?” Kaiden asked from the doorway.

  I smiled at him as he stepped into the room. “Only excited that this might be over soon.”

  “This one engagement won’t change the larger circumstances,” Toran said solemnly.

  “But it’s a start,” I said. “Right now, we need a win.”

  Colren had tried to make sealing the Archive sound like a big victory, but I continued to think of it as ‘maintaining’—it was a fallback, not a step forward. Taking out an alien ship, though… That was the first step toward reclaiming what had been taken from us. The fact that we might finally be able to put a face to the murderous monsters who’d destroyed our homes was a welcome bonus.

  Maris joined us moments later, and we headed to the hangar to board a shuttle back to Crystallis. Tami seemed a little confused about why we were heading back so soon, but the reset loops were far too large of a subject to broach in passing.

  We boarded the shuttle and took our typical landing approach through the mountain pass. As we neared the crystal canyon, I was overcome by another intense wave of déjà vu.

  “How many loops have we been through?” I asked.

  “I seem to have snippets from two floating around,” Kaiden said while he looped the shuttle around toward a landing site. “Not to say there weren’t more.”

  “And the enemy remembers,” Toran emphasized. “That means they might be preparing to deploy their fleet through the anomaly. We need to beat them there.”

  “How long will it take to decode the coordinates?” Maris asked.

  Toran’s flight restraints jangled as he shrugged in the seat behind me. “Hours? Hopefully I remember some shortcuts once I get into it.”

  Kaiden set down the shuttle on the opposite side of the canyon from the Archive entrance, and Toran immediately got to work.

  While Toran connected to the crystals, I wandered through a collection of crystal formations nearby. After a few minutes, I came across a boulder. The rock stood out in my mind, stopping me in my tracks. It’d seen it before, but I also sensed that I’d done something to it.

  “What’s wrong?” Kaiden asked from a few meters behind me.

  I jumped, not realizing he’d followed me away from the landing site. “Nothing.”

  “You’ve been acting strange since we’ve started to remember.”

  “Isn’t it stranger that you haven’t? This entire thing is nuts,” I replied.

  He came to stand next to me. “It’s affected me plenty. I’m just trying to stay focused.”

  I shook my head and scoffed. “I don’t rightly know what happened when anymore.”

  “With reality resetting, does it even matter?” he asked. “It’s like it didn’t happen.”

  “Except, it did. And we can’t pretend like it didn’t, because our enemy remembers and they’re going to use that information against us.”

  “Then we have to use those memories, too, so we can end this.” Kaiden took my left hand. Now, away from the pod room, the touch was reassuring, grounding me.

  “What have we been through?” I murmured. “It’s all there, right beneath the surface, but none of it’s clear.”

  “Soon we’ll know where we have to go, and we’ll figure out what we have to do. The rest… maybe it’s best we don’t know all the details about what happened. After all, it didn’t end well.”

  “What about learning from mistakes?”

  He shrugged. “The critical information will come to us as we need it. For now, there are only two things on my mind. First, we need to find that anomaly and stop the bad guys. Beyond that, I know I care about you.”

  “We barely—”

  “Maybe this time around, but there’s something between us, Elle. For me, that makes putting up with all the other crap in between worthwhile.”

  I softened. “Yeah, it does.”

  He smiled. “As much as I wish we could get to that ‘afterward’ part, we should probably take a step back for the time being.”

  I nodded, though I wished cir
cumstances were different.

  “Now,” he continued, “why were you staring at that rock like you had a vendetta?”

  “I think I destroyed it,” I replied.

  “With your… sword?” Kaiden raised an eyebrow.

  His skepticism was well-founded. I couldn’t imagine how I’d be able to level a boulder that size with my skills. Even Toran would be hard pressed to smash something on that scale. To further complicate matters, I had a vague recollection of doing something to the rock other than smashing it with physical force.

  Kaiden eyed me. “Is this about that other thing you don’t want to talk about?” He glanced over his shoulder. “You know, the magic,” he whispered.

  I checked around us and took a step closer to him. “Whatever you think you saw in the Archive, this isn’t something I can control. It may have just been some magical version of ‘hysterical strength’.”

  “You don’t know if you can control it until you try,” he urged.

  The boulder may as well have had a target painted on it, I had to admit. “Fine,” I yielded. “Stand back.”

  As if on instinct, I raised my hand and a white orb formed in my palm. It launched and enveloped the boulder, breaking it into bits. To my amazement, those rock fragments began to levitate, slowly drifting away from the impact site as if in slow motion. Before I could fully grasp the wonder of it, another orb formed, this one dark. Curious, I released it and a black cloud washed over the remaining boulder and the tiny rock fragments floating above it. The material began to condense, shrinking to a single, black sphere the size of my first.

  A sensation of power washed through me. I knew that feeling—it transcended the resets and any time that had passed since those abilities had first become a part of me, even if I didn’t know it. “Stars… I know magic!”

  Kaiden grinned. “Told ya.”

  I experimented with the telekinesis for a few more minutes, but Toran soon called us back to the landing site to share the results of the analysis. Reluctantly, I lowered my hands.

  “Keep this between us?” I requested.

  Kaiden frowned. “Why don’t you want to tell anyone about this magic, Elle?”