The Strike Trilogy

by Charlie Wood

  “Here, let me show you some pictures,” Tobin said, retrieving his phone from his pocket as they sat down on a stone bench near a pond with a babbling waterfall. “It still works, amazingly, even though it got soaked.”

  Tobin’s father eyed the device. “What is this you said, an iPhone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this is from Earth or Capricious?”

  “Earth.”

  “Whoa. That’s pretty cool.”

  Tobin flipped through the pictures on his phone. He stopped on one that showed the outside of his house.

  “Here. There’s the house.”

  “Wow. Still the same place. Looks good.”

  “Yeah. The shingles were redone last summer by—” Tobin stopped himself. “One of mom’s friends.”

  Tobin flipped to another picture; this one showed Chad and Jennifer. Jennifer was holding Chad in a headlock in the cafeteria, while Chad grimaced as if he was in terrible pain. “And here are my friends. We’re just being idiots at school.” Tobin flipped to the next picture. “And here’s mom.”

  Tobin handed the phone to his dad. His father took it and studied the screen, squinting, a smile across his face. The photo showed Tobin’s mother, standing with Tobin at a family party on the 4th of July. They were holding sparklers and standing in front of a bonfire.

  “Wow,” Tobin’s father said. “She’s still so beautiful. God, she’s beautiful.”

  Tobin laughed. “Aged pretty well, I guess.”

  “You’re damn right. Geez, sometimes I forget what a lucky son of a bremshaw I am.”

  Tobin chuckled. “It’s beyond weird that where you come from, it’s fifteen years ago. And mom is fifteen years younger.”

  “Yeah, and you’re only three years old.”

  “Yeah.”

  A silence. Tobin stared at the screen of his phone. Scott didn’t know what to say.

  “What was it like?” Scott finally asked. “Growing up without me?”

  “It was...okay. We missed you, though. Especially Mom. I never really knew you, so I didn’t know the difference for a while. But...it was tough for mom sometimes. Especially when I was little.”

  Scott nodded.

  “I’ve had a wonderful life, though. Honestly. Mom did an amazing job. I never realized it before, not until recently, but she did an amazing job. She’s an amazing person.”

  Scott looked at the photo. “Wakefield told me what happened. What happened to me the night I left you and your mom. I would have never wanted that to happen, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “They told me...” Scott stopped, thinking it over. “Orion told me what I did that night, to stop Vincent. He told me that I did it because I knew there was no other way to stop him. That’s the only reason I ever would have done it. I had to do it for you guys.”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  Another silence.

  “Did Wakefield tell you why I came here to this timeline?” Scott asked. “Why I came here to the future?”

  “Kind of. But not really. I think he wanted you to tell me.”

  Scott cleared his throat. “Well, a few months ago, during your battle with Vincent, when you traveled back in time and came to me and your mom, I realized pretty quickly what was going on. And after I calmed your mom down—who was understandably freaking out that her 17-year-old son had traveled back in time and was now in her house—after I calmed her down, I knew what I had to do.”

  “You realized I was fighting Vincent in the future. And losing.”

  “Yes. I knew I had to send you back to the battle, but I knew you and Orion couldn’t win against Vincent. Not without the Staff of Titan.”

  “So you gave it to me and sent me back to the future.”

  “Yes. And it worked out pretty well, I guess.”

  Tobin chuckled. “Yeah, it did. Vincent is gone now. Thanks to you.”

  Scott nodded. “The only problem is, Vincent isn’t gone in my timeline. He’s still there—he is there, right now—and still threatening Earth. So I knew I had to come here—I had to follow you to this timeline so I could take back the Staff of Titan.”

  “How’d you do that? How’d you follow me?”

  “I went to Wakefield—the Wakefield in my timeline. After a lot of work, he was able to reopen the Chrono-Gate you traveled through in our house and I was able to follow you. He told me it would be dangerous, and that I might not even make it through alive, or I might go insane, and he was right.”

  “Which is why when Orion found you, you had no memory.”

  “Right. Traveling to this future—to this future that isn’t my own—nearly destroyed my mind. But it was worth it. Because now I have this.”

  Scott reached into the blue duffle bag on the ground. He retrieved the Staff of Titan—the pure white bo-staff Tobin had used to defeat Vincent nearly a year ago.

  “So that’s where Wakefield took it,” Tobin said, eyeing the weapon.

  Scott nodded. “He brought it to me here a few days ago. I could not return to my timeline without it. It’s the only thing that will stop Vincent.”

  Tobin thought it over. “That’s terrifying, to know that Vincent is still alive in your timeline.”

  “I know. And who knows what he has done since I left. I’ve been gone now for over three months. I have to go back now, with this, so I can face him.”

  A silence. Tobin stared at the weapon, then looked down to the ground. “I’m just...I’m just sorry.”

  “For what?” his father asked.

  “That you have to go back now. And you know—you know what is going to happen to you when you get there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know now—you know how it ends. You know that you have to go back and sacrifice yourself to stop Vincent.”

  Tobin’s father laughed. “No, I don’t.”

  Tobin looked up, his forehead furrowed. “What do you mean? You know your battle with Vincent ends with you dying.”

  Scott laughed again. “No, it doesn’t. That’s how it happened in your timeline. That’s not what’s gonna happen to me. Not if I can help it.”

  “How is that possible?” Tobin asked. “I thought it was your...destiny or something. To sacrifice yourself to stop Vincent?”

  Scott shook his head, smiling. “There’s no such thing as destiny, Tobin. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that. No one is born on this world to do anything. No one is destined for greatness, or for pain. We all make our own choices. Everyday, every second, we make our own life. Nothing is predetermined, or meant to be. The future is open. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason. We have choices—we choose what we want to be.”

  Tobin thought back to what was happening in Boston. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”

  “No, you’re right. Sometimes, we don’t have a choice—in rare times, other people’s choices affect us. But, even then, we get to choose how we react to it. We get to choose how we let it affect our lives. No one gets to choose that for us. Life is crazy, and it can be random sometimes—most of the time, it is random. But that’s the beautiful thing about life. The future is unknown. Nothing is set in stone for us.”

  Tobin thought it over, watching the pond’s babbling waterfall.

  “You know who taught me that?” his father asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your mom.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something she’d say. She’s way too neurotic for that.”

  Scott laughed. “That’s definitely true. But meeting her is what taught me that. My whole life, I always thought that I would marry a woman from Capricious—probably another superhero. But, instead, I met and fell in love with a woman from anot
her world. An alien being, basically, with no super powers to speak of. And I had a son with that woman from a different world, and started a new life. Everything that I thought would happen to me when I grew up? None of it happened. Almost literally none of it.

  “When I was a kid, Tobin, when I was your age and I was a superhero with Orion, I pictured my life going like this.”

  Scott straightened his fingers out and raised his hand diagonally upward, like it was traveling up a hill.

  “I pictured myself growing older, but keeping all the same friends I had, and my life basically staying the same. Just getting better and better as I grew up. But that’s not how life is. Life is more like this.”

  Scott stopped his hand from climbing the hill and waved it around, making it rise up and down, dance side-to-side, and flip over from left to right. Tobin laughed.

  “Life doesn’t just go in an upward motion. Things don’t stay the same, they don’t always get better, and you don’t get to keep the same friends always and always. Sometimes you do, but most of the time you don’t. Your life changes. Things happen that you don’t expect, good and bad. Things happen that you absolutely do not see coming. But that’s the greatest thing about life—a lot of those times, those things that you don’t expect are the most wonderful.

  “You can count on one thing—life will surprise you. It’s not just made up of one beginning and one ending. It’s made up of several beginnings and endings.”

  Tobin shuffled his feet in the dirt underneath the bench. “Right now...right now I’m going through one of those downward turns. I thought things were going up, but then...they went down again. Way down.”

  “Because of the Daybreaker.”

  Tobin nodded.

  “Wakefield told me you’ve been having a tough time knowing that the Daybreaker is you.”

  Tobin nodded again. He felt his throat clench. He could not look up. My god, he had just met his father, and already his father knew the terrible truth about him. Tobin had to do all he could to keep from crying.

  Scott placed a hand on Tobin’s back. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Tobin. You weren’t destined to be a superhero. You chose to be one. It was your choice. Your future was not set. When Orion met you and explained what was going on, you chose to become a hero. Nothing was set for you beforehand—you chose how you reacted. And so did the Daybreaker. He wasn’t destined to be a super-villain. But because of the things that happened to him—terrible things—he made the choice to do what he’s doing now. He made that choice. Not you.

  “No one gets to tell you who you are, Tobin. No one gets to choose that for you. You make that choice. And I can already tell you’ve made the choice to be great.”

  Tobin nodded, looking at the ground. He sniffled and wiped away a tear, turning away from his dad. He breathed in through his nose, his voice wavering as he tried not to cry.

  “Life is a series of sunrises, Tobin. It is not one long day. It is made up of several different eras of time, that each begin and end and lead into one another. My time with my friends as a teenage hero began, and then eventually it ended. It had to. We grew up, and things changed. We changed. But then, the sun rose on the next period of my life.

  “Nothing can last, Tobin. Good or bad. The sun sets on everything. Even the good times. But, the sun always rises on something new. Eventually, the sunrise always returns.”

  A silence passed. Tobin stared at the dirt.

  “How did all that come out?” his father asked. “I’ve been practicing telling you all that for, like, two weeks.”

  Tobin laughed, wiping away his tears. “It came out pretty good. I didn’t know you were so deep.”

  Scott laughed. “I’m not, believe me. If Orion heard me saying all that, he’d probably pass out. But it’s something I learned in my life, and I wanted to make sure I told you. You have no destiny. You choose what and who you are. No one gets to choose that for you.”

  “I’m just...” Tobin stopped. He thought back to seeing the Daybreaker for the first time, looking at himself eye-to-eye. “With the Daybreaker, I just—I don’t know how I’m going to face that. I already did once, and I got destroyed. For so many reasons. It wasn’t just that he was so much more powerful than me, it was that I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t do anything. I literally have no idea what I’m going to do the next time I have to face him.”

  “I understand that,” Scott said, “I totally do. But you know what? As crazy as it sounds, I grew to love times like that. I love having no idea how I’m going to succeed and keep fighting. When life kicks you in the teeth and sends you in a direction you had no idea you were going, and you have no idea how to get out? I love times like that. Because it’s times like that when you find out what human beings are really made of. You find out how strong you can be. Because you know if you don’t get strong and face it, you’ll die. Times like those? You find out you are capable of things you never could have imagined.”

  Tobin looked at the palms of his hands. He could still see the burn marks from the Daybreaker’s flames.

  “Life has thrown you a curveball, Tobin. And now you can get your butt back in the box and take another swing. ‘Cuz there’s no quitting. You have to stand in the box and swing.”

  Soon, after walking out of the garden and back into the castle, Tobin and his father were standing in the Ruffalo Rock airplane hangar. Wakefield had been using this part of the castle as his workshop, and it showed: the wide open, cement-floored hangar was now the home of over a dozen long, black tables, each of which were strewn with various tools, gears, metal springs, motors, circuit boards, and cartons of oil. There were also six large computer monitors on the left hand side of the hangar, each of them filled with lines of code.

  “Are you ready, Scott?” Wakefield asked, looking up from one of his workbenches and removing his welding goggles.

  “Yes,” Tobin’s father replied. “I’ve been gone way too long, and it’s time for me to go back. God only knows what I’m going to find when I get there.” Scott held up the Staff of Titan. “But as long as I have this, everything should be fine.”

  Wakefield stepped down from his elevated workbench, bringing Scott’s Chrono-Key with him.

  “Okay, here you go. All you need to do is take hold of this, think about being back in the past where you came from, and it’ll send you back.”

  Scott grinned. “Are you sure this is the one I came here with, and not Rigel’s Chrono-Key? I know you’re getting old, so…”

  Wakefield waved Scott off and walked back to his workbench. “Yes, I’m sure. Damn, I almost forgot what a pain in the butt you are.”

  Tobin watched as Wakefield walked away, then turned to his dad. They stood in the middle of the open hangar.

  “So,” Tobin said. “This is it.”

  Scott smiled, but tears welled up in his eyes. “There’s so much more I want to say to you, so much more I want—”

  “Don’t,” Tobin said. “It’s okay. I totally understand, believe me. You need to go back to your own timeline. I don’t even want to know what Vincent has been up to since you’ve been gone. You need to go back.”

  “I know. But that doesn’t make this any easier.” Scott reached out and placed a hand on each of Tobin’s arms. He searched for the words. “I know—I know I never got to know you in this timeline, Tobin. And I can never fix that. But I thank God I got to meet you here, like this.”

  Tobin nodded, closing his eyes, trying to swallow the lump in his throat.

  Scott smiled. “I’ve only known you for a few minutes, Tobin, and I wish I could get to know you more, but that’s the thing. It’s what I’ve been thinking about since the moment I first met you outside the castle. I get to go back now and watch you grow up. I get to watch you become the man I know you become.”

 
Tobin looked to the ground, crying.

  “You are great, Tobin. You’ve done great things. And you will continue to do great things. I know you will. I know who you’ve become, and I couldn’t be prouder of you.”

  Scott squeezed Tobin’s arms and looked him in the eye.

  “Face it. Face it all, everything that life throws at you. Even this. I won’t be here for you, but you won’t need me to be. You have all you need. All you need is right here.” He pointed his finger into Tobin’s chest. “Face it and know deep down who you are. To your core. If you know that, you know everything.”

  Scott wrapped his arms around Tobin and pulled him close. They stood that way in the airplane hangar for a long time. Tobin knew it would be the last time he’d ever hug his dad. But he knew it would be enough, if he could just hold on for a little while longer.

  Finally, they parted. Scott stepped away from Tobin and smiled.

  “So long, pal. I can’t wait to see you again.”

  Tobin nodded, quickly brushing the tears from his cheeks. As Scott clutched the Chrono-Key against his chest, he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, thinking. A blue, swirling energy soon formed around him, twisting around his body like a barber pole, and within seconds, the energy POPPED! in a bright blue flash, sending a wave of light across the floor and over Tobin’s feet. When the light faded away, Tobin looked to the middle of the hangar. His father was gone.

  “Well,” Wakefield said from his elevated workbench, “that must have been something else.”

  “Thank you, Wakefield,” Tobin said, looking where his father once stood. “Thank you for that. Without you, none of that would have happened.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t get all mushy on me. Geez, I’ve had enough of that for one day.” Wakefield pulled down his goggles and began delicately welding a piece of circuit board. “It’s a shame he couldn’t stay. Especially with what’s coming next. We really could have used him.”