by Matt Blake
My face was on fire, not with the burning I’d felt anymore, but with rage at Damon for interrupting my flow. I spun around and squared up to him. “What the hell don’t you understand about ‘shut up,’ man?”
Damon blinked, his wide eyes jolting from my face to behind me. He looked sheepish about something.
“Hey,” I said. “I asked you a question.”
“Kyle,” Cassie said.
“No. No, you don’t have to get involved here. Damon, I’m—”
“Kyle!”
When Cassie shouted, I saw that she was looking right behind me, then.
As was everyone else.
I didn’t understand. “What…”
When I turned, I saw exactly what they were looking at.
The mothership was just inches away.
The opening that the crafts flew out of was right in front of us.
Their exit.
Our entrance.
“I did it,” I mumbled.
Daniel patted me on the back. “Looks like whatever you did, you did something right.”
He flew past me, left me there, jaw agape. “I did it…”
I felt confident, all of a sudden. Like I’d been granted a new lease of life. After all, I’d managed to tap into those mysterious, strong energies I didn’t understand. I’d focused and I’d used them for my own gain. Previously, they’d been reactionary. But not anymore. I’d channeled those energies. If I could do that continually, then surely the channeling would get easier.
And if it got easier…
What exactly would I not be capable of?
The image of my impending strength both excited and terrified me.
But I wasn’t left to mull over the future for much longer.
Out of the mothership, crafts started spilling out, one by one until there were more than the mind could perceive.
We backed up.
A whole wall of them blocked the entrance to the mothership, all of them focused on us.
“What now?” Damon asked.
I held my breath.
Tensed my fists.
“We fight.”
34
Avi heard the noise outside his room and he knew right away that something was wrong.
It was night. Late at night. Usually, he was used to hearing a few whispers and a few snivels at night. After all, he was staying in a camp that had been designed to temporarily house those in vulnerable regions while the mothership commenced its attack on the ULTRAs. Of course people weren’t just going to be quiet all the time. Sometimes, they were going to be goddamned noisy. That was just something you learned to live with.
Living in noisy conditions wasn’t exactly new to Avi, either. He’d grown up in some pretty rough conditions. His mom—birth mom—had been an alcoholic. Sometimes they slept on the streets. Others, inside buildings that weren’t much better.
Avi had grown used to falling asleep to the sound of traffic and people, right from an early age.
But this noise was different.
He stood up and walked over to the door to his room.
He looked outside at all the other doors. Really, it made his skin crawl, because they were just like prison cells. That said, elements of it were much more relaxed. There was an advisory curfew in place after eleven p.m., but that didn’t mean you couldn’t leave your room. You just had to be as quiet as possible if you were heading to the bathroom or whatever.
So it wasn’t quite a prison. The government, who were running this place, wanted it to be as homely and hospitable as possible. Mostly because nobody really knew how long they were going to be here. Months. Years. Who knows?
Anything was possible.
Avi heard the clicking noise outside the door. He felt his body shaking as he stepped over to the door to take a look. The clicking wasn’t like footsteps or anything like that. It was unusual. Something he wasn’t used to.
Animal, almost.
He looked around outside. He could smell a whiff of the breakfasts, which were already beginning their cooking. His stomach churned. He hoped it’d be pizza today. Please, God, give me pizza.
He couldn’t see anything, so he stepped back.
And then he saw the darkness.
He couldn’t explain it any other way. Just a dark shadow, right outside his room.
He narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on it. But the more he tried to focus, the more this shadow’s form changed to something less than solid.
He could hear the clicking noise very loudly now. He knew for a fact it was coming from that shadow.
He took a step back. He had an alarm by the side of his bed, as did everyone.
One click of it, and the security teams would be alerted right away.
He took another step back.
The shadow stayed completely still.
He looked away from it, just for a second, to get an idea where the security button was.
When he looked back, the shadow was right in front of him.
He scrambled for the security button.
He was already too late.
The shadow swallowed him up.
One second, there was a minuscule scream, that only four people in this entire complex would hear, before rolling over and returning to their sleep.
The next second, Avi was…
35
I watched the mass of crafts surround me and the rest of the Resistance and I knew now was the time we stood up and fought—for the good of ourselves, and for the good of everyone.
The sky was completely black, not only because of the sheer size of the mothership, but also the wall of crafts right in front of us.
Everywhere I looked, left to right, right to left, those crafts were all there in lines, watching and waiting.
I heard the silent hum coming from them, as they waited, and we waited. I sensed what this stand-off was. One final opportunity for us to turn around and to give up.
And in a way, knowing that was on the table reassured me and motivated me going forward. Because I knew that it meant the mothership and Alternate Kyle were pulling out all the stops to make sure we didn’t get anywhere near the inside of that ship.
They’d brought out the heavy artillery to deal with us. I took that as a compliment.
“Are you sure about this?”
I looked to my right.
It was Damon. His throat was wobbling, and I could see his eyes were wide, like they always were whenever he was afraid.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” I said. “We’re tough. We’ve got this. Right, man?”
Damon looked at me then and smiled. “You’re tough. Way tougher than me. Never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.”
I felt flattered to hear Damon say those words. Growing up, he’d always been my rock. I always looked to him when things weren’t going so well. He had a way of making everything seem irrational, or irrelevant. He’d tell me to take my problem and picture the worst case scenario. The absolute worst. When I’d done that, I often realized my worries weren’t as strong, especially when I started rolling those worries back and planning for the worst.
He had a way of calming me. I was both scared and delighted to have him by my side. I wasn’t sure what I’d do without him.
“It’s not true,” I said. “We’re all here because we’re all as strong as each other. And that’s what we have to believe. Right now.”
I moved away from Damon and looked back up at the army of crafts, all standing in our way.
“Any chance you can do your party trick about now?” Roadrunner asked.
I knew what she was referring to. The feeling that I got in touch with, deep inside my body.
“I can try,” I said.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
The crafts all flew toward me and the rest of the Resistance. They flew faster than I’d ever seen them fly before. Their tentacles reached out in front of them and solidified, opening up and firing blasts of those
energy balls at us at a rapid pace.
Fear paved way for acceptance. I lifted my hands and formed a shield of ice, right above us. “Push back!” I shouted.
The energy balls smacked into the shield of ice. I could see it cracking in places, and I knew it wasn’t going to last forever.
But I couldn’t feel that tingling sensation.
I wasn’t in touch with it yet.
But hell. Did I need to be?
“It’s gonna break,” Orion shouted. “Glacies. It’s going to…”
He didn’t finish.
The shield of ice broke.
The crafts poured through.
My stomach sank. I knew then that there was no mere defending ourselves from the crafts. And I knew that the rest of the Resistance would understand that, too.
The time for defense was over.
This was our attack. Not theirs.
I turned over my arms and sent two long blades of ice stretching from my palms.
I flew into the first of the crafts
It swung its tentacles at me, trying to knock me from the sky like so many of its fellow workers already had.
I dodged out of the way of the tentacles, then swung the ice sword down against the metal.
The craft stopped, just for a few seconds, like it didn’t quite understand what had just happened.
“Yeah,” I said. “Too right.”
Then I brought both of the blades together and tore the craft in two.
That wasn’t the only one, though, of course. There were at least a thousand more of them following on.
With each of them, I followed the same calm, methodical process. Sliced the tentacle, then sliced the craft. Tentacle, craft, tentacle, craft. The more I took down, the more my confidence grew. This wasn’t going to be easy. It wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. But we were going to win. We were going to get inside the mothership, rescue Vortex, and take down Alternate Kyle in the process.
I looked around. The rest of the Resistance were fighting off crafts of their own. Roadrunner was bouncing around them and disorienting them. Damon and Cassie were frazzling their circuitry with their electricity. Stone was thumping them harder and harder, the need to locate Vortex driving his painful fight back.
Orion, Saint, and Daniel stood together, using their collective strength in different ways to take down as many as they could.
I felt proud, for a second. Proud not just of them, but of myself.
I was strong enough after all.
I was stronger than I’d ever believed.
I was—
Something wrapped around my wrists and snapped the icy swords from my palms.
I spun around.
There was a massive craft holding on to me. It was far bigger than any others I’d seen. So big that I couldn’t even see behind it.
Its tentacles started reeling me in toward its gaping metal mouth.
I struggled to break free. I tried to fire ice, but I was losing my grip. I looked back, saw Cassie looking at me, fear on her face.
Then more crafts swarmed around her, and Damon, and before we knew it, all of us were captives to these larger crafts, all being reeled in…
And then I felt the tingling sensation.
It was more instant this time. I got a grip of it quicker than I had before.
As I hurtled toward the craft, I let out a roar.
And then a burst of light shot out of my chest.
My neck jolted back so hard that I heard it crack. My arms and legs fired backward, too.
I felt the energy pouring out of my body. I couldn’t see anything, just stars in the sky. I thought they looked beautiful.
While I wasn’t totally sure of what was happening, I didn’t resist the energy leaving me. I didn’t try to control it. That was part of my problem altogether. I tried to control my thoughts and my actions too much.
Right now, I knew that thoughtlessness was surely working in my favor.
A few seconds—or maybe minutes—later, I came back to the present.
The first thing I noticed was the silence.
There was a total silence to the air. I truly believed right then the stories I’d heard that there was no sound in space, at least not by the definition we knew it. I floated around and looked at what had happened.
Clouds of dust floated before me.
The clouds of dust where the crafts had once hovered.
All of them, gone.
I looked back.
The Resistance were all still floating, too. All in awe.
Our path to the mothership was free.
This was our opportunity.
“Come on,” I said. “Now’s the time we—”
“No,” a voice said.
It was so cold, so sharp, that it made my skin crawl.
The worst part about it, though?
I recognized it.
I recognized it very well.
I looked back up at the mothership.
Alternate Kyle was hovering in front of its entrance. He was wearing all black, with a hood pulled over his head. He was looking right down at me. Me in particular.
“Now’s the time your little journey ends,” he said.
36
“What? You look surprised to see me. Like this isn’t my mothership you’re hovering in front of.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat as I stared up at Alternate Kyle. Despite the difference in his attire, I could definitely tell that he was a future version of myself. The same build. The same little dimple on the bottom of his chin, which I hadn’t up to this point even known I had. And that same twang to his voice.
And yet, as much as I knew this man was a version of myself—and as sure as I was that the rest of the Resistance would be understanding that now, too—there was nothing I had in common with this version of myself, if I could call it that.
“Anyway,” Alternate Kyle said. “I don’t know why we’re hanging around outside. The edge of the Earth’s atmosphere is a cold place. You should come inside. See my home.”
I clenched my hands together and readied myself to attack, knowing damn well that this was my chance to defeat him and get Vortex back.
But in the space of a second, I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I was inside.
“Welcome to my home. This is probably my favorite room of them all.”
I was struck right away by the sheer size of this room. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. The ceilings went higher than the eye could see, and it stretched on so far that I couldn’t even see the other end. Although Alternate Kyle had brought us in here because it was cold outside, a shiver crept up my arms, and I felt far colder in here than I had out there.
Alternate Kyle stretched out his arms. He was standing a few meters in front of me. “Well? What do you think?”
I took a deep breath and made a solid pair of icy gloves wrap around my fists. “Vortex. Where is she?”
Alternate Kyle tilted his head to the right. “I thought you’d ask that. You don’t have to worry, though. She's okay. Really.”
Stone started running toward Alternate Kyle. “You bastard. If you’ve laid a finger on her, I’ll kill you. I’ll—”
Alternate Kyle lifted a hand.
Stone flew right up into the air.
I activated my abilities some more. I heard Cassie and Damon’s electricity spark, and Roadrunner started to run in Stone’s direction. All of us were primed for attack.
“I wouldn’t,” Alternate Kyle said. “Not if you ever want to see any of your friends again.”
I kept myself positioned ready to attack. But in the end, I looked at Cassie and the others and nodded, signaling them to lower their arms.
As they did, I saw a smile creep up Alternate Kyle’s face. “Good. That’s more like it. Stone always was stubborn. I know that for a fact, just as you know it now. And you know it’s better if we deal with one another without his bravado getting in the way.”
None of us said a word.
>
“Oh come on,” he said, lowering his hands to either side. “You’re all thinking it, aren’t you? I know you are. Hell, I know each of you better than you know yourselves right now.”
Adrenaline coursed through my body. In the corners of this deathly dark room, I swore I saw eyes peering at me. “I don’t care what you have to say for yourself,” I said. “Hand over Vortex. That’s what we’re here for. That’s all we’re here for.”
“But it’s not ‘all you’re here for’ really, is it? Don’t take me for naive, Kyle. Remember, I was you once.”
“You were never me. We’re not the same.”
I saw Alternate Kyle’s smile even more, then, underneath his hood. “Oh, you’re wrong about that. You’re so, so wrong.”
He started to walk toward me. As he did, I felt the hair on my arms stand on end, like he was made up of static.
“Haven’t you ever wondered where I came from?”
I watched him walk closer and closer. Of course I’d wondered where he came from. But I couldn’t let any of those thoughts or speculations cloud my mind right now.
I had a feeling I was going to find out a lot more very soon anyway.
“I’m from the future, Kyle. Not an alternate dimension. Nothing like that. Just the future.”
I felt my throat go dry. “How?”
“The ‘how’ goes beyond what your present mind has the ability to understand. That goes for all of you. But rest assured, in the future—a long, long time into the future—I gain the abilities to travel back in time. Now, it’s not all plain sailing. I can’t pick and choose the moment I travel back to. But I found this moment. And I realize this is the perfect moment. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Alternate Kyle was right. It was hard for me to comprehend that time travel had been cracked, however far into the future he was from. But then, I’d seen glimpses of it, hadn’t I? I’d watched seconds turn back during the last few days, accompanied by that tingling sensation, as if there was something stronger inside of me that I hadn’t quite fully managed to understand or embrace yet.
“I’ve been in the future. Far, far into the future. And of course, I started off like you. Positive. Optimistic. Arrogant. Afraid. But mostly, naive.