by Peter Telep
To the right stand palm trees that remind me of Florida, even though they’re jet black with silver tips sprouting from their branches.
Out ahead, mist rises from the undergrowth, and beyond, across the bluish gray sky, hang at least three small, white moons. Two resemble a pair of mismatched eyes, while the third sits much closer to the horizon. Yes, I’ve seen these before, just from another angle. From space. There are three more moons out of sight, below the horizon, but I know they are there.
Because I know where I am now.
My heart begins to race.
Okay, I’m still jumping and this is one of those visions or dreams just like I thought. It’ll pass soon. Right?
I don’t think so. This feels very real.
I glance down. I’m still in my persona, still wearing the cargo pants and Vader shirt that I changed into—
And still separated from my body and going to die.
What happened? Did Rific screw up with the computer? Was it damaged? And if so, what’re the chances of being sent here by accident? Like a trillion to one?
If there was a problem, I’d be floating in space right now, not conveniently dropped off on another seed world.
On Halsparr.
Then who did this? Mrs. Bossley and the rest of the First Ones? But why? I thought she’d help us get into the labs at Larkspur and Faldareach, not send me here.
I bolt to my feet, turn around, and shout, “Meeka? Steff? Tommy?”
No one answers.
About fifty yards away, beyond rows of dark blue shrubs, comes a scratching sound, along with a deeper gurgling.
I call for everyone again.
Just more weird noises.
I look up. Oh, no…
Hanging in the sky like a billboard of really bad news is that giant face: what’s left of the Galleons’ ship.
And inside that face are thousands of personas connected together in a wreath they call the armadis.
A wreath we need to destroy.
Did those maniacs intercept my jump? Did they capture me and leave me here down here?
“Keane? Hedera? Anyone?”
No answer.
I sense something else, and the hairs begin to rise on the back of my neck. I wrench around and lift a palm to block the glare.
Four Masks of Galleon streak down across the sky in their glittering white armor.
One after another they explode into those mannequin-like faces that seemingly absorb the clouds around them.
They float into a jagged line and tip down to face me, their eyes flashing with blue energy.
My chest begins to tingle. They’re trying to connect with me because I’m no longer connected to Keane and the girls.
No longer safe.
Their mouths open. I think they’ve locked on—
So I turn and sprint for the jungle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I like those recaps they do at the beginning of my favorite TV shows, especially the ones that have those long, arcing storylines.
Even if you’re a dedicated fan, you can’t always remember everything from three or four episodes ago. Maybe you were checking Instagram during that one important scene where they dropped a clue, so the recap helps a lot.
Me (voice over): “Previously on the Pathetic Adventures of Docherty Harrison.”
Cut to me rejecting Julie’s kiss, and then Meeka arguing that I could die.
Cue ominous music.
Various scenes showing me trapped in a conversation with Mrs. Bossley, breaking into my house, and then crashing my dad’s car through the garage door and escaping.
Montage of driving scenes with me racing around town, discovering the engine is gone from the house in Chuluota, and then, big moment, getting into a major car accident.
Dissolve to me confronting a cigarette-smoking Solomon, rejecting the deal to join the armadis, and then waking up in the hospital.
Oh, no. They might have seen my wreath.
Cue even more ominous music.
And then what? Mrs. Bossley shows up? We jump out of there. I’m back at the safe house. Whoa, she’s a First One, gives me some mirage, but she’s only bought me some time.
Cut to my plan to save myself, showing the engine and everyone jumping through—
And finally smash cut to me waking up on Halsparr and totally screwed. The Masks of Galleon come for me, and I haul ass for the jungle.
With all this jumping around and being outside of my body, it does feel like I’m binge watching myself on Netflix.
I’ll say this: multitasking was cool at first, but now it’s like hunger pains that won’t go away. Maybe they’re a side effect of the mirage, I’m not sure, but my wreath keeps tugging on my persona, and my persona won’t budge. If I don’t get it back soon, my ribs will cave in and crush me.
Now, as I duck beneath some low-hanging branches a trillion miles away, my body’s back at the safe house in Florida, waiting for Meeka and the others to jump into the living room.
And boom here they come, one after another, their bodies covered in webs of flashing light before being sketched back into existence.
I breath a massive sigh of relief.
They look at me. And then Meeka glances around for my persona.
“We’re not connected,” she says.
“I know.”
“Did you already pull it back?”
I can barely answer. “You’re not going to believe this.”
* * *
Charging straight into an alien jungle that’s probably filled with nasty creatures, insects, and a thousand other things that want to kill me wasn’t the best plan—
But apparently neither was jumping my persona through the portal.
Now my imagination runs wild with visions of beasts that have broadswords and lightsabers for teeth.
And if the teeth don’t get me, maybe their machineguns for eyes will or the seven tongues covered in poison-soaked razor blades riveted together.
I shiver off that image as a gust of warm air strikes from behind. Now thunder booms and rumbles, dying off into a higher-pitched buzzing like electricity.
Light flickers off the wet leaves. Lightning?
I chance a look back. No, the masks are firing at me, and their jagged bolts cut down into the trees, splitting them into flaming limbs and branches that boomerang over my head.
Just then I sense someone or something trying to block them. Maybe it’s Mrs. Bossley or Julie. I’ll take all the help I can get.
My legs burn as the branches and leaves come at me even faster, forcing me to lead with my arms to rip them out of my face. And yes, while the gravity’s lighter, it’s still heavier than Earth’s, and I’m already gasping.
I veer to the left. A mistake. The undergrowth thickens. Skinny branches covered in long white hairs scrape across my shins.
With a curse I turn sideways to squeeze between two furry brown trees that coo like pigeons as I make contact.
I consider jumping out of here, but who knows where I’d end up. My wreath has never been to Halsparr, so my internal GPS has nothing to reference.
I duck and slide between another pair of trees with golden leaves shaped like perfect hexagons. The trees almost look fake, and they barely give way.
Biting my lip, I keep going until…
I spot a clearing just ahead.
I dash toward it as an ear-piercing crack comes from just behind me.
The trees at my shoulders explode into huge columns of smoke and fire.
Holding my breath, I extend my fists and knife blindly through the leaves and across the clearing.
Just as I look up, I trip into something that rattles and bends and catapults me backward, flat onto my butt. I blink hard and shake my head.
For a few seconds, I can’t see a thing. Another rush of air sends a shudder through me. More thunder rumbles.
And finally my vision clears.
Beneath layers of vines appears a small, bare section of heavily r
usted chain-link fence.
I glance to my right and left, and yes, this is a fence that collapsed years ago and is buried under heaps of vines and shrubs and weeds rising only a few feet.
There’s something else. I clear away more leaves to expose a rusted and faded piece of metal, like a sign. I climb over the fence to see if there’s any writing on the other side.
The alien characters remind me of Chinese, and it takes a moment for my wreath to translate them:
GRRETHOS NATURE PRESERVE
A Six Realms Authorized Territory
From behind comes a whirring sound, faint at first, but getting louder. The noise seems friendlier than the thunder and explosions and spitting flames coming from the jungle.
With nothing to lose, I hustle away from the sign and follow the sound, weaving between more trees until I stumble across a dark blue material that looks artificial.
I bend over. It feels furry like wool or felt. As I straighten, I realize this is no clearing but a two-lane road walled in on both sides by more jungle. While much of the road is overgrown with weeds, it’s still passable and races straight off into the distance.
To my right, about a fifty feet away, a big wheeled chopper that reminds me of the batcycle does a hard U-turn and comes back for me.
The driver wears a tight jumpsuit with a vague cheetah pattern, like camouflage. Her light green hair is streaked white and pulled back in a ponytail that flutters high in the air but must reach all the way down to her waist. I’m not sure how tall she is, but her legs look pretty long. If this were Earth, I’d guess she’s a runner or triathlete.
She arrives, and the bike stops instantly, no burning rubber, no sliding out. No noise at all because there’s no gas tank, engine, or exhaust pipes, just a narrow, chopper-style frame made from gray metal and a dull green material with grains like wood.
Oversized tires glow like my own persona and fit tightly to solid black wheels with rings of hexagons at their center.
As I stare at the tires, the front one winks at me.
Meanwhile, the rear tire separates slightly from the wheel, licks its lips, and then yawns and tightens back into shape.
Stunned, my gaze returns to the driver. She’s about twenty and mostly human, with fair skin and freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and forehead. It’s weird but her green-and-white hair could be her natural colors. She has a thin nose and lips to match—
But most striking are her eyes.
The right one’s human enough, a deep brown shaded by long eyelashes. Very pretty.
However, her left eye is bright gold and has a vertical-slit pupil just like a cat’s.
But that’s not the strangest part.
The eyelid seems permanently locked open to allow a small, golden ring to rotate slowly over her eye. The ring rolls at sharp angles along its edges the way a coin does just before falling flat. It could be a piece of jewelry or something to help her see, and it’s hard not to stare.
I’m about to ask her about it when a flash of blue energy spreads through the forest, as though the masks have just targeted the fence.
“Hello, Doe-kur-tee Hairy-soon,” the woman says in a deep, smoky voice.
I literally shake my head, as if to clear my ears—
Because there’s no way I heard that correctly.
Or maybe I did. “Are you trying to say my name? Did you know me?”
She draws back her head and snorts. “I know you.”
“I’m asking you!” I glance at the jungle, then up at the sky, as the masks descend toward us.
I face her again and tip my head toward the masks, as if to say, please, can we get the hell out of here?
She’s still frowning, like she’s trying to catch up on the translation.
But then, suddenly, she says, “I know you!”
“Awesome.”
“Yes! Get on!”
So this alien woman with bling in her eye wants me to go for a ride. Who am I to argue?
I climb on the chopper, wrap my arms around her waist—
And we blast off down the felt road.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“So we’ll just build another engine and jump your body over to Halsparr,” Meeka says as we all stand there in the safe house’s living room.
Keane projects my grandmother’s immortal and asks, “Brandalynn, would you be able to program the computer for a jump to Halsparr?”
“No.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“Because that information is unavailable to me right now.”
“So now what?” Keane asks. “Is there any way to get there?”
“You’ll need to jump back to Flora,” my grandmother says. “From there, I can plot a jump to Halsparr. That information I do have in my immortal.”
“So you’ve been there before?” I ask.
She just looks at me.
“Do you understand the question?”
“I do,” she says. “I don’t have any information about that.”
“Why not?”
“I think there were some things I needed to keep private.”
“Grandma, my persona’s on Halsparr. I’ll die if we don’t get it back. You need to tell us everything you know. Is there anything in the First Ones’ records?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you’ve been to Halsparr before?”
She stares into the distance.
“Come on,” I urge her. “Can you remember anything?”
She shrugs.
Hedera projects her persona and lifts her voice. “I just want to get back home. Doc said the despers were attacking. I need to know if my people are okay. We can talk about this while we’re building the engine.”
“She’s right,” Meeka says.
Tommy holds up a set of keys. “Hey, we’ve got Alina’s car in the garage. Who wants to come for a ride? We’ll swing by my house for the rest of the engine parts we need, and then we’ll hit Walmart because the refrigerator’s empty, and if you’re like me, you’re starving.”
“I’ll go,” Hedera says.
Keane grabs her arm. “No, please, I don’t want your first experience on Earth to be Walmart.”
* * *
Me and my extraterrestrial driver continue speeding along the felt highway. The pink sun rises behind us, and the jungle on both sides thins into rolling hills covered in blades of long, dark grass tinged purple like eggplants. This part of Halsparr, a place that might be called “Grrethos,” is colorful, if nothing else.
I continue glancing over my shoulder, searching for the masks. I’m not sure if they’re still being blocked or just lying in wait, planning their next ambush.
My driver’s unconcerned. She focuses on the road and seems to control the chopper’s speed and braking by tilting her head to the left or right. I hate when she does that, though, because then her ponytail blows in my face.
We streak around a sharp bend, and then she wrenches the handlebars so hard that we nearly scrape our knees like superbike racers. My yelp sounds pathetic and embarrassing. She straightens the wheel and widens the turn—
But just as suddenly we’re off the road, following a narrow dirt path. I say dirt but the stuff looks more like red-and-white salt that crunches beneath our tires.
We glide across the foothills, and when we near the crest of a particularly tall one, the greenish blue hills scroll into view and roll out forever, except there’s an odd angle here and there, something too straight to be natural but hard to see any clearer.
And now we’re descending fast toward a stone pipe jutting from the nearest hillside. The pipe’s edges are worn, cracked, and even chipped off in some sections. Like the chain-link fence and the felt road, it suggests there was once a more modern civilization, at least in this part of the planet.
A well-worn path leads up to the pipe, and we follow it, bouncing a few seconds before blasting onto smoother stone and leaving daylight behind.
The chopper has no headligh
ts, so there’s just the faint glow of tires and my own persona. Apparently my driver can see in the dark, or maybe it’s the tires taking over now.
After passing two intersecting pipes, we turn left at a another one and climb at a thirty-degree angle.
When we reach the top, we arrive in a warehouse-sized room with a vaulted ceiling. Deep, flickering shadows rise across the nearest walls as we glide toward a structure at the far end—the source of all that fluctuating light.
As the chopper slows, the structure comes into view. It’s surprisingly familiar, like a ticket booth for a movie theater, with dust-caked windows draped in vines and lit by candles.
We glide past it, around the back, where much brighter candlelight glows across a living area. There’s a hexagon-shaped bed stacked high with pillows, an office section with a desk like something out of old England, and what I believe is a kitchen counter, with bowls, utensils, and more hexagon-shaped crates stacked as high as the tabletops.
We come to a stop, and the chopper settles down with a slight thump onto its wheels.
The personas serving as our tires and apparent power source leap into the air. They glide back toward their bodies and dissolve soundlessly into them.
My mouth falls open.
Those personas belong to a pair of young grren who’ve been standing in the kitchen, waiting for the woman.
Grren? Changing shape? The ones on Flora don’t do that. Did she train them or something?
The woman climbs off her bike and then hurries toward one of the boxes. The grren shake their heads, sneeze, and wag their floppy ears. They get even more excited as she reaches into one of the boxes and produces two heavy hunks of gray meat—or at least what looks like meat.
The grren hiss, clack their teeth, and then chomp down on their meal, their heads lowered to reveal those tribal-like markings so familiar on Grandpa, Brave, Mama Grren, and all the other big cats.
“So you have grren?” I ask. “They come from Flora?”
“Rude questions, Doe-kur-tee Hairy-soon.”
“It’s Doc. Just Doc. That’s gonna be easier for you.”
“Doke,” she says.