by Matt Blake
But it was the eyes that scared me more than anything.
There was nothing grandiose about these eyes. There was nothing menacing about them, to the average person. It was their familiarity that got to me more than anything. I’d looked into these eyes before, a number of times. I’d stared into them, and they’d stared back at me.
And now they were the eyes that were looking at me as I struggled for my final breaths.
“It’s over,” the deep, gruff voice said. “Don’t fight it. This is the only way it happens. This is the way it’s always happened. Just… release.”
I didn’t want to stop fighting, as much as giving up any resistance would be the easy option here. So I gritted my teeth and kept my focus on those eyes, like I had so many times already. “N… never.”
The hand around my neck loosened just enough for me to catch some breath. I coughed, then I felt vomit trickling up and out of my mouth, stilling my quest for a good lungful of air.
When I’d spewed up, the grip tightened once again, and I was pinned back hard against a solid wall.
As I was held there, I wondered what I had done to deserve this life. I was Kyle Peters. I wasn’t even in my twenties, and yet somehow, I was the strongest ULTRA in existence—at least people thought, and at least people expected. I didn’t ask to be Glacies. Glacies just became me.
I’d been dealt these cards and now I was being forced to live with them. Now, I was being forced to accept who I was. But also something else.
I was being forced to accept that I wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped—or as the world hoped—all along.
“All these years of resisting instead of living,” the voice said. “Now, it’s time to stop. It’s time to hand yourself over. So stop resisting, Kyle. End the pain. For yourself. For your family.”
The mention of my family made me feel a warmth deep inside. But it was a warmth tinged with sadness. After all, my family had been torn apart, all because of me. It had been decimated, all because of me.
I felt a tear roll down my cheek when I thought of Ellicia, Dad, Damon, Avi, Cassie, Daniel, Orion, and all my old friends from the Resistance. “I can’t stop fighting. For… for their sakes. I can’t give up.”
The figure chuckled, then. As he did, the room lit up, and I saw my surroundings for the first time in God-knows-how-long. I was in some kind of dark cavern. It was massive. It stretched as tall as I could see, and the walls were further away than I could perceive. The sheer size of this place was enough to make the hairs on my arms stand on end, purely because something this big wasn’t human. It wasn’t man-made. It was alien. Totally alien.
The scariest thing about it, though?
That bright light, shining right in the middle of this cavernous void.
And yet…
“I can’t give up,” I said. “And I won’t give up.”
I held my breath and thought of all the pain in my life. As I thought of the pain—and there was a lot of it, not least the pain I’d felt these last few days, some of the purest pain of all—I felt my powers getting stronger once again. I could feel them charging up. I could feel the ice creeping down my spine, stretching down my arms, scaling my fingers, tickling my fingertips.
I went to lift my arms and fire at the one holding me.
Their grip around my neck loosened completely. I felt my stomach turn as I dropped down below. Immediately, I triggered my flight powers, needing to regain some sense of composure.
But nothing happened.
I was still falling.
I felt my stomach drop as I hurtled toward the ground. I shouted out and lifted my hands in the air, trying to fire some kind of ice to the roof of this cavern.
But the cavern walls and ceilings were just too high.
The ice didn’t grip with the walls.
I kept on falling.
As I fell, fear filling my body, scrambling from side to side, for a moment, I felt a sense of calm. It was weird, and totally unexpected, but it was there.
Calm, because soon, there’d be nothing left of me.
Calm, because I wouldn’t have to fight any longer.
And, ultimately, the position of not having to fight any longer was what I’d been striving toward all this time, right?
The cavern floor grew rapidly closer as I hurtled through the air toward it.
Sadness filled my body. I felt more tears roll down my cheeks, my throat wobbling. “I love you…” I started, intending to say “Mom” or “Dad” or “Ellicia” or anyone after it.
But in the end, there were so many people I loved that I couldn’t say a thing.
I looked up. Above, I saw that total pitch black darkness again.
I felt the fear creeping up into my chest.
I held my breath.
Then, I fired one last shot of ice right up toward the ceiling.
I stopped.
Confusion filled my body. I spun left and right, still gasping in the darkness as I hovered there, totally static. Did I do it? Did the ice stick?
Then the face appeared in front of me all over again.
They were smiling, now.
Their smile made my body shake. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. It was like they had me wrapped up in some hypnotic trance.
They grabbed my neck again. I battled for that final breath. I didn’t get a lungful.
“You should’ve given up when I gave you the opportunity,” the voice said. “You were a fool for fighting. Now, we do things the hard way.”
The figure stretched out their hand and pressed it against my chest.
Immediately, I felt a searing pain stretch through my body, and I lurched from side to side. “You won’t win!” I shouted. “You’ll never win!”
The figure smiled again, their hand still pressed against my chest. “That’s where you’re wrong, Kyle Peters. And this is where it ends for you, I’m afraid. It’s been nice knowing you. But really, it’s time.”
The burning sensation in my chest spread right across my body. I tried to spark my powers, but the burning just seemed to melt my ice right away. I tried to teleport, but I couldn’t. I was just too weak.
“You won’t win,” I shouted. “You won’t…”
There was nothing else to say. I didn’t even have the strength to speak now.
The figure pushed their hand further into my chest.
More pain.
More fear.
More weakness.
I saw a light blue glow illuminate in front of me, then. I felt sick right away. I knew what this was.
“You’ve already lost,” the figure said, dragging the blue light from my body like they were taking away my innards. “Goodbye, Kyle Peters. Goodnight. This is where your story ends.”
The last of the blue light was dragged from my body.
This is where your story ends…
I was starting to believe it, as my body gave up fighting, and darkness closed in.
I opened my eyes, then, and I realized.
I was floating in the ocean. My skin was burning, sizzling. The rest of the Resistance were floating on beside me. It looked like I’d somehow managed to escape that tentacle that’d wrapped around me and pulled me from the sky. The big lumps of ice I could see around us must’ve been the acid. I must’ve frozen it at the very last.
But there was something I could remember, now.
Something I knew I’d been trying so hard to resist.
When I’d first defeated Catalyst, I’d blacked out. I’d stood beside Orion, Saint, and Daniel, and I’d watched the mothership get closer to me.
Only I’d seen who had been leading it.
I’d seen who the man was.
I’d seen the look in his eyes, and I knew who he was.
Hielo lowered his mask and looked into his reflection.
He looked at the scars on his face. The thinning of his hair. He looked at the protrusion of his ribs and the paling of his skin, all from his many years of fighting.
But more than a
nything, he looked at the ice on his palms. The first power he’d channeled. The power that, many eons ago, used to define who he was. The hero he was.
He looked at the ice and he remembered who he used to be.
“He’s me,” I muttered, drifting across the water, unable to believe what I was remembering.
Unable to believe what I’d seen when I’d looked into the mothership leader’s eyes.
“The man. The man leading the mothership. He’s… he’s me.”
26
I opened my eyes and right away, I understood the reality of my situation now.
I was back on the shore of one of the Galapagos islands we were using as our base. The sun was bright, but there was a cold chill in the air. I could taste sea salt on my dry lips, and my stomach churned for food.
But there were more important things than eating right now.
“Nice of you to wake up.”
I turned onto my front and saw Vortex standing over me.
Behind her, I could see the rest of the Resistance. They looked battered and bruised, like this time they’d all been in serious conflict instead of just me. Which, as selfish as it sounded, kind of made things better, because at least I didn’t look like a total idiot.
I struggled to my feet, my head spinning with the knowledge of what I’d just seen and discovered. “Let me guess. I started seizing again?”
“Not exactly,” Vortex said. “This time, luckily for you, we all got thumped out of the sky by that tentacle. But yeah. You seemed to take it particularly badly. Mumbling things in your sleep. Good job Stone’s around. He dragged you out of the water.”
I looked over at Stone and gave him a thumbs up.
He gave me the middle finger.
I walked over to the rest of the Resistance, Vortex by my side. I knew I couldn’t keep what I’d seen in my mind from them. Sure, it might just be in my mind as far as they were concerned. But I knew there was something more to what I’d seen. Something totally real.
Orion put a hand on my shoulder when I reached him, patting it. “Good to see you awake again.”
“And you. Everyone okay?”
“A few cuts and bruises, here and there. But mostly positive.”
I looked around at the circle of Resistance standing in front of me. I felt the nerves kicking in, my heart racing. But I had to be open. I had to be honest.
“I know something about the mothership. The leader of the mothership.”
Everyone stopped their chatting to one another and looked right at me.
“This isn’t gonna be another one of your weird dreams is it, bro?” Daniel asked.
I knew then that this wasn’t going to be easy. “I might’ve seen it. But I know for a fact it’s real, now.”
“What’s real?” Cassie asked.
I looked at her, and then I looked at Saint, and the rest of the group. I had to be honest. I had to be frank. “The leader of the mothership. The one who spoke to us and told us he was hunting the ULTRAs down. It’s… it’s me.”
I saw the frowns. I heard the baffled gasps.
“What?” Daniel asked.
“I know it sounds mad.”
“Yeah,” Stone said. “It sounds like the ramblings of a lunatic.”
“But you have to believe me. I mean, me even being here right now is not right. There’s so much weirdness and so much wrong. This would just be the next in a long line.”
Roadrunner shook her head. She was nursing a wound on her ankle. “But I don’t actually understand. What do you mean it’s you?”
I pictured myself staring back at me, those unmistakable eyes. “I don’t know how, but there’s some kind of… of alternate, parallel reality, or something. A reality where I want to take out the ULTRAs on this planet—including myself—for whatever reason.”
Stone opened his mouth and laughed. For the first time in a long time, he sounded genuinely amused. “No. Look. What you’re saying, kid. It’s insane. Completely crazy.”
“I know it sounds it. But it’s the truth. And it leaves me with a choice.”
“And that choice is?”
I scratched the back of my neck. I hadn’t even faced up to the choice myself yet, or the ramifications of what it meant. But I could see the decision clearly ahead of me.
Make headway and act on my knowledge, as much as I didn’t believe I was strong enough?
Or to keep on running away and fighting the inevitable?
“It’s too late for me to keep on running. That isn’t going to get me or any of us anywhere anymore.”
“So what do you suggest?” Stone asked. “Saying we do decide to believe you. What’s the plan?”
I looked at Stone, Vortex, and Roadrunner and I saw doubt.
But the others. All the others. Damon. Saint. Orion. Cassie. Daniel. In their eyes, I saw belief.
I took a deep breath, and for the first time, I faced up to what was inevitable.
“I’ll only be able to defeat myself if I discover my own weaknesses,” I said. “And if I believe I’m strong enough to win.”
“And do you?” Stone asked.
I didn’t answer that.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure I did. Not yet.
But I was about to find out whether I was strong enough after all.
27
I held my breath and braced myself for a challenge I wasn’t sure I was ready to take on.
I was in the middle of the Colombian rainforest, right in the Darién Gap. The Darién Gap is generally renowned as one of the most dangerous places on Earth. It’s the one area where, if you’re traveling down from the top of North America right through to South America, the road totally stops, and gives way to jungle. Inside that jungle? Mercenaries. Dangerous wildlife. And since the proliferation of the ULTRAs, lots of ULTRA-rebels, too, misusing their powers and abilities.
But I wasn’t worried about wildlife or mercenaries right now.
I looked at the trees surrounding me. They were tall and suffocating, their greenness so bright that they burned my eyes.
Everywhere around me, I could hear the noise from a different creature. Insects. Frogs. Birds. A cocktail of life, which would typically be so beautiful. But it was so loud that it was actually disorienting.
I had to keep my focus. I had to make sure I was totally committed to fighting, or I wouldn’t discover what my true weaknesses were.
Because I could be sure as hell that Alternate Kyle—as I was now dubbing him—wasn’t going to be slacking when it came to the final showdown.
I walked slowly through the leaves, which crunched underfoot. The insects flew into me, which I swatted away. I wasn’t wearing my Glacies gear, which made me feel even more exposed. It was a suggestion of Vortex’s. The Glacies gear was something of a shield to me. Even if it was mostly psychological, I still felt much stronger when I was wearing it.
But right now, I just had to be myself. As strong as I could possibly be without any costumes for mental resolve.
I needed to find out whether I was capable of defeating myself.
I saw rustling in the leaves up ahead.
My heart picked up. I tensed my fists and walked toward it.
The closer I got, I saw that rustling again. There was a definite movement there. Perhaps an animal. A wild pig, or something like that.
Or perhaps…
When I got within inches of the movement, I heard something directly above.
I looked up.
Stone was clinging to a tree right above me.
“Boo,” he said.
Then he came flying down at me, rocky fist extended.
For a split second, I felt a twinge of fear, like I had to hold back because this was just Stone, and it was all just a test of my strengths.
But then I knew I wouldn’t be giving a real account of myself if I didn’t fight back as hard as I could.
Stone got closer to me. His fist pulled back.
I lifted my hands and fired a blast of ice at him. I did
n’t hold back.
The ice smacked into him, pushing him upwards and giving me time to maneuver.
I swung to my right, readied myself to send Stone into a wormhole in the ground, which would teleport him to somewhere like New Zealand.
And then I felt a smack across my face and I went flying onto my ass.
My cheek ached like mad. I lay there for a few seconds, dazed, not really sure of what’d happened.
Then I saw the blurring hovering around above me.
“Roadrunner,” I muttered.
She flew into me a few more times, smacking me in the head, chest, and stomach. Part of me was surprised at how much she was throwing at me. But then, that’s what I’d asked for. I couldn’t truly be tested if everyone was going easy on me.
I raised my hands instinctively, trying to wade off Roadrunner’s attacks.
That did no good. She just knocked my hands down, battering and bruising me.
In the corner of my eye, I could see Stone standing. He was getting closer to me.
Come on, Kyle. You’re stronger than these two. You’re the strongest ULTRA ever to have lived.
I lifted a hand and pushed a ball of energy in Roadrunner’s direction.
The attacks stopped.
Time went still, just for a second.
The sky above went completely dark.
Then I opened up a spiraling wormhole, which dragged Stone and Roadrunner toward it.
“Sorry,” I said, half-smiling at Stone as he disappeared into the abyss.
He shook his head. “Oh, you will be.”
Then the wormhole slammed shut, and the pair of them were gone.
I put my hands on my knees and took a few gasps for air. Two down. Just… shit. Six to go.
Six left, and I hadn’t even had to take on Orion or Saint yet.
I lifted myself upright and I saw Damon standing opposite me.
He had his fists raised. Purple electricity flickered across them.
“Come on then,” he said. “Bring it on.”
I smirked. Laughed a little.
Then I clicked my fingers and sent Damon flying up into the sky, screaming.
It was when Damon disappeared that I felt a presence behind me.