by Peter Telep
“I guess that’s why you’re here.” I look at my father, who’s barely facing me and talking to himself. “Dad?”
He doesn’t react. I call again.
“Oh, yes, sorry, Docherty. How are you, son?”
I ignore the lame question and ask, “You know anything about a letter you wrote to me? You told me to find someone named Dr. Arabelle.”
“That’s not part of my immortal.”
I face Hollis, whose pony-tail is pulled tightly behind his head and whose glasses are beginning to slide off his nose. He adjusts them and grins at me. “Always great to see you, Doc.”
“You, too,” I answer, smiling over his accent.
“So when you were working with my father did he ever mention the labs in Faldareach and Larkspur? He ever say he got inside?”
Hollis squints in thought. “We found the labs but never got in. That’s all I was told.”
“He ever talk about Halsparr?”
“I’m only an immortal, but I find it exceedingly rude that you’re discussing me while I’m right here,” my father snaps.
“Well, if you TOLD ME THE TRUTH, I wouldn’t have to be RUDE about it, Dad.”
“Doc, my son kept secrets from us all,” my grandmother says. “It was to protect us… from ourselves.”
“Can we be more vague? Please?” I ask sarcastically.
“I might have something,” Hollis says. “On the day of the withering, your father saved us all, but do you know how?”
“You told me you used the engine. You jumped to Earth.”
“Think about it, Doc. Solomon sold our technology to the despers without knowing it. Neither he nor your father could ever know the exact day and time that the bombs would go off. I told you your father got us out on the same day the explosions were happening. His timing was very suspicious, almost too good—”
“Unless he knew it was going to happen…” I finish. “And if he did, why didn’t he try to stop it?”
“Hollis is right. I think he knew,” Alina says. “That morning, he told me to bring Julie to work, which I thought was very odd. But he insisted. He said it was an emergency.”
Hollis nods in agreement.
“He did know,” Brandalynn confirms. “He jumped to the lab and said good-bye to me. He said he’d try to get back.”
“Why don’t you just tell them,” Lori says to my father.
“Tell them what?” he asks, removing his glasses.
I step up to my father. “Who are you? What did you do? Did you set off the bombs?”
A rapid beeping rips me out of the observatory—
And into the hoverjet’s cockpit where I’d fallen asleep.
I blink and look around. Meeka’s staring at me, terrified, and pointing to a flashing red display.
“Proximity alert,” I say, reading the status message.
“What does it mean?”
“How long was I out?”
“A long time,” she answers. “We didn’t want to bother you. You looked so tired.”
I nod and point at the console. “Look. We’re coming up on Verbena.”
“Nice,” she says. “Can you turn off that alarm?”
As I reach for the touch panel, something hammers into the hoverjet with an echoing boom.
The cockpit panels flicker and spit sparks as blue veins of energy rip through them.
Multiple alarms add their beeps to the first, and I react on instinct, calling for Keane to get me Sangie. Right now.
I grab the stick and tap a panel, taking the hoverjet off autopilot—
And then I leap into my persona to see what’s happening outside.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
No, we didn’t hit a bird or pass through a patch of rough air. And we didn’t suffer some malfunction in the electrical system that caused the batteries to blow up.
Someone decided it was time for us to land, and if I had to bet, I’d say it was a greasy sales guy with an unlit cigarette shoved between his lips.
Yep, three masks have launched an attack as we descend toward the ruins below.
A second flurry of bolts lashes out from their eyes and draws webs across the hoverjet’s wings.
One mask turns toward me, its eyes darkening, just as I pull back my persona—
And find the cockpit and crew compartment filling with smoke.
Meeka rushes back there and bangs her fist on the bay door’s emergency release pad. A warning tone blares as the door slowly slides open. Fresh air roars into the cabin.
“You fly!” Cypress hollers. “I fight!” She turns back from the cockpit, and her green-and-white ponytail dances like a snake in the wind as she starts for the door.
I connect with Keane, who connects me with Sangie.
She studies the panels through my eyes and mutters three, maybe four curses before firing off instructions that come so fast that I can barely keep up.
Meeka’s shouting as well, and Steffanie’s hollering about needing something to tie down Tommy’s stretcher since he’s being sucked outside.
I clutch the stick with both hands as the jet vibrates even more and sounds like it’ll tear apart.
Meanwhile, Hedera latches on to Cypress’s jacket with one hand while tightening the other around a wrung built into the bulkhead.
Cypress leans out the open bay, into midair, and raises her palms. Her eyelo flashes.
Nice! It’s about time we return fire.
I jump back outside just as Cypress’s shields explode into those ninja dart hexagons.
The masks react, trying to evade for a moment, but they’re too slow, and the hexagons track them perfectly like clouds of magnetic bees.
Two masks shred into vapor trails…
But a third does manage to jump away and vanish.
Cypress falls back into the crew compartment. Steffanie and Meeka help drag her back, away from the open door.
I return to my body and focus on Sangie’s instructions. Braking thrusters are only at half power and won’t come up. Stability controls are shot to hell. We can’t even hover, and the damned machine’s called a hoverjet.
“Doc, you’ll need to bring her down like a conventional plane,” Sangie says.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means we need a runway.”
“But all the streets are blocked.”
“Yeah, I know,” she says.
The clouds begin to part. Down below, through the haze of twilight, I spot the collapsed dome of the Monkshood temple in Verbena. The image distorts as rain begins to slide across the canopy.
“Hey, Doc? How we doing?” Solomon asks, glowing at my shoulder.
Meeka screams my name.
I curse at Solomon and say, “We’re doing great!”
He chuckles. “You don’t sound very hopeful! Oh, I forgot. I burned all that hope to the ground!”
“Just shut up!”
“Come on, young man, it’s time to make a deal, otherwise, you’re the only one who survives.”
With that, his eyes roll back and bolts lash out and spread like tiny fingers across the controls panels.
The stick goes loose in my hands. No control.
A second later, the hoverjet drops hard, and my stomach slams into my ribs. I groan. The others scream in terror.
“I thought I’d kill them one at a time, but you made it easy,” Solomon says. “Oh, I see you’ve lost control. Don’t you hate when that happens?”
“Why don’t you just get it over with?” I ask.
“Because I want to enjoy it first, Doc. As you kids might say, I’ve leveled my ass up to this moment, and I’m going to savor it.”
“You would…”
“I will. This is the big boss fight without the fight because you’re all out of energy crystals.”
“Doke!” Cypress screams.
I glance back and see that she’s on one knee, ready to launch her shields at Solomon—
But he jumps away even before her eye
lo ignites.
“Hold your fire!” I yell.
Her head jerks back just in time.
With a curse, I ask for Sangie to have one final look at the controls, and she sounds as nervous as I am.
She tells me to put the hoverjet back on autopilot, which might still function. Whatever’s left of the thrusters might slow us down and level us off.
“And then what?” I ask.
“You bail out!” she screams.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The hoverjet pitches more steeply, roaring toward the surface. Meeka and I claw our way back toward the crew compartment, straining to see through all the wind.
We can barely hear ourselves over the roaring engines, and I wave my finger for all of us to connect. I tell them in my thoughts that we need to bail out at the very last second…
But Steffanie looks over at Tommy and shakes her head.
Aw, no. She’s right. We can’t leave him here.
“I’ll stay!” Hedera says.
“No, I have an idea.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Meeka says. “Forget it!”
“You have to trust me,” I holler. “It’s the only way to get him out.”
“Doke, here we go!” Cypress yells.
And there’s no more time for discussion.
The hoverjet rattles and wails toward the muddy streets of Verbena and the foothills of rubble.
As we level off and come within ten… and then just five feet… Hedera comes up with the pot of scholars tucked in one arm.
“Forget the flowers!” I cry.
She shakes her head and just jumps, followed by Steffanie, Meeka, and then Cypress. They splash into the mud and go tumbling.
I pull up the rear, leaping into my persona at the same time. Now I’m linked to Meeka and Steffanie, and we form the bubble around Tommy’s stretcher and literally lift him into the air.
This is my first time playing Personify, and Tommy’s life depends on it.
I’m literally shaking, and the girls order me to calm down.
We glide through the open bay door—
Just a second before… boom-boom!
The hoverjet plows into the hills of wreckage, adding itself to the debris.
With no warning, the world flashes into darkness for just a few seconds...
I wake up on the ground, spitting mud and coughing over the black smoke drifting into my face. I roll over and sit up.
There, just across from me, lies Tommy on the stretcher, with Meeka and Steffanie’s personas carefully lowering him to the ground.
I sigh and cough again.
We’ve crashed beside some demolished buildings crawling with weeds. The Monkshood temple lies a few blocks behind us. I crane my head to find Hedera sitting up and rubbing her elbow.
The pot of scholars sits next to her.
And the pot is perfectly—and impossibly—upright.
Just up the road, Cypress struggles to her feet and glances around in a daze. Mud stains her left cheek.
Steffanie and Meeka stagger toward me, wiping dirt from their eyes.
We’re all numb and just breathing. Looking at each other. At the burning wreckage.
“You okay?” I ask Hedera.
She nods and glances strangely at the flowers, as if to ask, how did you not fall over?
“You call that a landing?” Solomon asks, now standing over me and smoking a cigarette. “Apparently you fly even worse than you drive.”
“I don’t get it,” I say.
“You don’t get what?”
“Why they haven’t turned you into a toilet seat already—because you’ll never recruit us.”
I reach out to Keane and tell him we’re in trouble and that we need Julie’s help.
But he’s not answering.
Cypress eases over toward Hedera, and from the corner of his eyes, Solomon watches her.
My gaze drifts from him over to Meeka and Steffanie. They’re both a heartbeat away from attacking Solomon.
“Now everyone, relax,” Solomon says, raising his hands. “This doesn’t have to be painful.” He steps over to me and reaches down, offering me his gloved hand.
I smirk and stand without his help.
“Whoa, look at the fire in the boy’s eyes,” Solomon says, grinning at the others. “Now, Doc, I’ve had a few ideas of how I’d handle this, but I’m a busy man with, you know, another planet to take over, so can you do me a favor?”
“A favor? I don’t think so.”
“Look, I’m sorry, I’ve gone back and discussed this with the lords and ladies, and now the whole deal’s fallen apart. You’re just too big of a liability, and the lawyers are freaking out. They’re worried about tarnishing our brand, go figure. So yeah, I just need you to tell me one thing… which one of your friends dies first?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“Okay, kill Meeka first,” I say, glancing at her.
She jerks her head around, frowning, and her voice grows shaky. “Doc, what the hell?”
“Yeah, Doc, what the hell?” Solomon echoes, doing a creepy Meeka impression.
What neither of them realize… but what I can clearly see over Solomon’s shoulder is…
Something happening.
Something I don’t want him to see:
Cypress has taken Hedera’s hands in her own, and I watch as Mum’s immortal literally passes from Cypress’s body and into Hedera’s.
With shockingly wide eyes, Hedera releases Cypress’s hands and falls back, holding her chest and breathing hard.
She smiles.
And then Cypress looks at me—
Like she means business.
Oh, damn.
Cypress nods.
I step away from Meeka and glare at Solomon. “What’re you waiting for, bitch? Kill her!”
Solomon’s head starts to shake like his brain can’t process this surprise—
But for just a second, I think he doubts me.
And then he changes his mind again. “Uh, okay, then! She dies first!”
He takes a deep breath.
His eyes roll back.
Meanwhile, Cypress takes a deep breath of her own and projects her persona.
This is the first time any of us has ever seen her jump.
And I’ve been wondering what her persona looks like and if it’s just like ours despite her being woven.
Well, the wait is over—
And I can’t believe what I see:
A gigantic face like one of the masks hovers over the street, casting us in its broad shadow.
The face is blank.
But we know it’s Cypress because there’s an eyelo rotating over one of its eyes.
Oh my God! Is Cypress really a Mask of Galleon? How?
Solomon must sense what’s happening, because he snaps out of his attack trance and looks at me the way bad guys do when they know they’re screwed…
He whirls, just as Cypress launches her shields—
And her persona above us fires blue energy bolts from one eye while spinning hexagons stream from her eyelo.
In the middle of all this, Cypress sends me an invitation to connect.
I accept it, and in that second, she asks me to reach out and sense my trrune because she wants to borrow it, this way when Solomon jumps to evade her attacks, she’ll know where he’s going because I can sense his jumps.
As expected, he projects himself twenty feet back, thinking he’ll dodge the first wave, but Cypress has already adjusted her aim.
Realizing he’s about to take fire, he morphs into a mask and sets free a tangle of bolts that clashes with Cypress’s hexagons and forces them back.
But then Cypress increases her fire, with thousands more hexagons hurtling toward Solomon even faster, while her bolts of energy splinter into dozens of others.
As usual, the air reeks of burning wires and circuits, and thunder rumbles each time a bolt leaves one of their eyes.
The nightmare battle c
ontinues as I scream for the others to grab Tommy’s stretcher. We rush behind a row of mangled girders—
Just as both masks swell even larger and glow from within like sheets pulled over light bulbs.
Solomon begins to falter—
But Cypress weakens, too. I scream in my thoughts for her to hang on…
Just as a high-pitched ringing stings our ears.
Solomon’s mask grows blurry like heat waves.
Now I’m thinking both masks will explode and take out the rest of the city.
Light flickers over the entire street, and a rumble comes from beneath the fallen buildings.
Then, without any warning, Solomon winks out, leaving behind a crack of thunder echoing off the piles of stone.
I close my eyes and sigh. “Did you kill him?” I ask Cypress in my mind.
“No,” she says. “He got away.”
Cypress’s mask shrinks and returns to her body. She looks dizzy, loses her balance, and then begins to fall as Hedera catches her and struggles to lower her to the ground.
I charge over to them. “Are you okay?”
Cypress breathes hard and can barely open her eyes. “No, Doke, I’m dying because of your rude question.”
“Damn, I always forget.”
Her expression softens. “I’m okay.”
“Really? I mean, you are okay.”
“Shut up, Doke.”
Meeka and Steffanie arrive and stare at Cypress in awe… and fear.
I swallow. “Cypress. You’re a Mask of Galleon.”
“No, Doke,” she answers sharply. “Not like them.”
“But your persona… it’s… it’s definitely a mask. And you have the same power.”
“I’m not them. No one controls me. My persona can be me or that.” She lifts her chin—
And standing there, glowing behind us, is a mirror-like persona of Cypress. She’s even covered in mud.
“So you can change your persona, just like the grren on Halsparr.”
“Yes.”
“We do that when we play our game,” Stephanie says. “But it’s different and only happens when we connect with our friends, so I can’t turn my persona into a bubble right now.”
“She’s right, but we can do little things,” Meeka says. “Like change clothes or hair or just make ourselves look worse or better. The power is limited by our wreath or something. No one’s ever explained it to me.”