by Matt Ryan
TRAVIS WALKED DOWN THE HALLS of his empty hospital and sighed, running his hand down the tiled wall. His finger squeaked over the surface and he stopped at the door.
“What are you doing here?”
He jumped and spun around. “Evelyn?” He didn’t scare easy and this intrusion seemed egregious. Looking at the young girl’s face, he knew she had something important to convey.
She took two steps forward and stopped like a soldier at attention. “I came to warn you. They’re coming.”
“Who?”
“The purge people. The magicians. Have you no knowledge of them?”
He didn’t. “Tell me of these people and maybe it will spark something I’ve forgotten. I am rather old, you know.”
Evelyn laughed and swayed, as a young girl might do, but Travis had spent some time with her, and knew she was a genius, to put it mildly—a mastermind. Any meeting with Evelyn was more difficult to navigate than any he’d had with government officials or dignitaries. And the truth was, she’d helped his world come back from the brink of death with ingenuity and brilliant strategies. She’d even coded back most of the net. Travis’s poll numbers shot to the moon once the more basic services were restored. All thanks to this little girl, that virtually no one in Vanar knew existed.
Didn’t mean she wasn’t without risk though. She had poured over all of Marcus’s research and gathered such an astute knowledge of the systems he created, it became frightening to Travis. He imagined she could take away all that she’d given in a few strokes of her hand. In fact, if it wasn’t for the glimmer of Poly that he saw in Evelyn she’d be downright terrifying.
“I don’t have much time. Can we walk, like we used to?” Evelyn said.
“It was only a few months ago.”
Evelyn smiled and extended her hand. “Feels like decades for me.”
Travis gripped her child hand in his. Something seemed off about her, and if he didn’t know her better, he’d guess she was nervous. “Have you been exploring again?”
“Maybe.” Some of the shy little girl shone through and reminded him of Compry or Gladius as a child.
“You know there are worlds not suitable for you.”
“I’m safe, no need to worry.” She pulled at him and he followed. Evelyn glanced back at the doors Travis had been standing in front of. “You haven’t gone in there, right?”
“No, ma’am, under strict orders.” He saluted her, but the young girl charm had left, and her stern face asked the question again. “You know I haven’t. Besides, you locked the doors.”
She smiled and pulled Travis along faster. “Good. Can we take the trail?” The door slid open, revealing the outside.
“Sure.” He didn’t want to. He hadn’t walked it since Poly had left. The trail was filled with bad memories, yet Evelyn skipped along the dirt path of her mom’s tormented trail, swinging his hand in hers, as if she had fond memories. The screams still haunted Travis.
Down the path and around the stone wall, they neared the tree. “Who do you think made the stones?” Evelyn asked as she let go of his hand and sat under the tree.
“I suppose a greater being,” Travis said, sitting down next to Evelyn.
“God?”
“No, a person I would suspect. Probably from a world much like ours, but highly advanced.”
“I believe I’ve found them,” Evelyn said.
“The stone makers?”
She nodded. “You are very difficult to read—so guarded.”
“I like to think I’m cautious. Now why don’t you tell me more about these stone makers?”
She ignored his question once again. “Did you know every human has a visible connection to the people their lives have touched?” She squeezed his hand. “It’s almost like an aurora borealis you’d see in the sky. Normal folk like yourself can’t see it the way I do, but I know you feel it; like when someone is watching you and you turn around. The more lives you touch, the more connections you have, and some are much stronger than others. Especially blood relatives.”
“Like a mother and daughter.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
“Precisely, which is why Marcus knew he couldn’t grow me in a lab. I had to have that connection in order to be who I am.”
“What are we doing here, Evelyn? You said you came to warn me about magicians?”
She smiled and looked down at her shoes. Taking a deep breath, she went on to tell him about an encounter she’d had with a purge queen, as she called her. With each sentence, Travis’s eyes got wider. He couldn’t believe what she’d done.
“Are they coming here?”
“Yes, but I don’t know to which planet they will arrive first. It could be both at the same time, I’m not sure of their level of resources.”
“And what do they want?”
“Us. They will take us and use us, until there is nothing left.”
“There must be something we can do to stop them.”
“Earth has a chance of delaying it, but there is something I found in her mind, something she had hidden very deep. And I think I got it without her noticing. I’m going to have the mutants get it for me, and I hope it’s something that will help us all.”
“HARRIS, WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM,” Travis said into his Panavice, having said goodbye to Evelyn.
Harris arrived at his stone room, looking around for trouble. “What’s so urgent?
“Why don’t you tell me about these purge people?”
Harris’s eyes narrowed and he walked closer. “Why exactly?”
“Because our little friend just gave them an invitation to Vanar and Earth.”
Harris normally didn’t have much expression, but he took a few steps back and looked stunned. “Evelyn should know better. We can’t defend ourselves against them, and Earth is in an even worse predicament.”
“So you do know about them?” Travis recounted his talk with Evelyn.
“We should count our blessings she got out and was able to warn us.”
“There’s searching for a positive. How do you know them?” Travis asked.
“Julie told me about a world they visited. I hunted down Hector, the man they took from that world, and had a long conversation about these purge people. This is bad, she’s probably just brought death to our planet.”
“Good thing we have a resident expert on bringing death. What should we do?” Travis hoped for a viable answer.
Harris rubbed his chin. “Evelyn knew this was coming. She wrote some code onto a very dangerous program. A program we told you we destroyed.”
Travis glared at Harris. “I hope you’re kidding. And even if you have this tech, Evelyn is scared of their leader. The way she talked about them, it was as if they were magical.”
“I don’t believe in magic. These people have tapped into some kind of tech that is beyond us, or have some genetic mutation. They will have a weakness, and what Evelyn created, may be our only chance.”
“This is dangerous, Harris; especially in your hands. Everything around you dies.”
THE LIGHTS WENT OUT, AND the carousel nearby slowed to a stop. The music that had been blaring with a mixture of rock and country folk tunes, stopped playing. People looked around, annoyed a power outage was ruining their time.
Poly had other concerns. Her daughter stood in front of her, next to a boy she could barely recognize as Julie and Lucas’s kid. Evelyn kept a steady gaze on Poly, and her intelligent eyes held a patience most adults didn’t have.
“Did you turn the power off?” Poly asked.
“No, they did. It’s what they do in preparation. First, they kill the power. Next, they’ll send in their machines, build those towers, like the one we saw in Chile with Hector. Then the cubes will emerge.”
The speaker crackled to life with a static hiss and people turned to face it. A woman’s voice came to life over the airwaves. “It is my deepest regret to inform you that although your lives seem important to each and every one of y
ou, you’re entire civilization is but a mere blip in time and space. I have a great need for you. Your lives, your essence, will push me on, and therefore, your existence will have meaning.
“Our culling will begin immediately. You may resist with all the vigor your world can muster, but none of it will matter in the end. Take solace in knowing there are many of you in existence, so no matter how far we reach, there will always be a you somewhere in the worlds. I thank you for the gift you are giving us. You matter more than you know.”
“That’s . . .” Poly said. “That’s the voice from the video Marcus showed us.”
“She’s their queen.”
The crowd rumbled with conversation and some laughter, thinking it a joke by someone who found the microphone.
“Evelyn, you’re bleeding,” Julie said.
Poly’s daughter reached for her nose and ran a finger across her upper lip, extending her hand to study the blood on the end of her finger.
“Baby, what did you do?” Poly rushed to her, kneeling and staring at her little girl. She couldn’t bear to lose another person in her life. “Evelyn, you can’t go fast like that again. Your father—”
“I’m fine. I am learning my limits. Will was harder to find than I thought.” Evelyn wiped the blood on her shirt.
“Let me help you.” Poly pulled out a tissue from her purse and wiped the blood from Evelyn’s face. She glanced back at Julie and Lucas. They both looked terrified. Even with Marcus long gone and dead, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being on the run. Tears came to her eyes.
“It’s okay, Mom. It’s going to be over soon,” Evelyn said.
“What have you done?” Julie asked, with more force than Poly liked.
Evelyn looked at the ground and checked her nose again for blood. She took a step back and held Will’s hand, pulling him closer to her. “They want to take Will away from me,” Evelyn motioned to Julie and Lucas, while keeping her gaze at the concrete floor.
“They want their child back, yes. You don’t have to hold onto him like that,” Poly said and reached for Will.
“No,” Evelyn said and looked up.
Poly stumbled back at the fierce look in her eyes. “Baby, what have you done? You can tell us. We can help.”
Evelyn looked down again. “I’m sorry. It’s hard with so many around us.”
Julie walked next to Poly with a smile and knelt down. “Evelyn, we love you. We know now you’re not going to hurt Will.” But Poly heard a hint of a question in her voice. “So, why don’t you tell me what you have to do with this attack on Earth?”
Evelyn took a deep breath and looked at Will. He tilted his head and then nodded. “They would have eventually found us, these purge people. They would have killed all of you. If I’ve learned anything, I know life is fragile, including my own. If I died before they came here, all of you would die. Marcus set in motion the plans to save this world for when they came.” She raised her hands in the air and looked at the sky. “He wanted to save us all, and when he died, it was left to me to complete what he started.”
“Evelyn, you can’t be serious?” Poly said and the tears overflowed. She wanted to hug her, to pick her up. Hell, if she could, she’d run away from it all. There had to be so many worlds out there, where they could live and be safe.
“Mom, you saw what I built. It’s done. It just needs a person to control it. Unfortunately, there have been many babies born since Marcus implanted the world with the bug and every second I wait, more are born and more will die.”
“Are you saying you’re going to save the world with some machine you and Marcus built?” Julie asked.
“Sort of, but I’ll need Will to run the machine because I found out something exists that I need to collect.”
“I’m not following you,” Julie said. “You think we’re going to let Will run some machine you and Marcus built?”
“Yes, we have to try. At the very least, it will distract them. Listen, there are going to be sacrifices on all sides. Plus, what Will does, is only the start of it all. The rest of you will need to do your own parts.”
“What do you mean?” Poly asked.
“We need to kill their queen and take back our lives. Come on, I’ll explain on the way.”
HANK TURNED THE KEY AGAIN, but the car didn’t make a sound. The lights wouldn’t turn on, and the radio didn’t work. Even his cell phone and Panavice appeared to be disabled.
Gladius paced outside of the car, messing with her Panavice and taking the occasional glance at the flaming wreckage of a plane in the nearby field. After the wreck, they’d tried to get close, but the heat wouldn’t let them. Even if they could, there was nothing left of the plane.
He turned the key again. “It’s not working.”
“I think my Panavice’s emergency protection mode is working. Otherwise, this thing would’ve exploded on us.”
“Good to know.” Hank tapped the one in his pocket. “That could’ve been bad.” He stepped out of the driver’s seat and onto the asphalt road. The smell of burning plastic and rubber wafted by.
Behind them, the road led back to Gladius’s potential factory for Snackie cakes. The other direction led to Preston. Hank didn’t forget the conversation Gladius had started right before the car broke down and the message came across the radio. She’d wanted to leave Preston and his friends behind. She said they’d never be free otherwise, as death followed them. He hated hearing those words from her.
He sighed and sat on the hood. “We should get back to Preston.”
Gladius stopped walking and looked down the road. “You’re right. We need to warn Trip and the others.”
He wondered how everyone would find each other. Poly had texted earlier, saying she and Evelyn were on a road trip. While Julie, Lucas, and their son were in hiding. He pictured Joey and thought about where he was and his heart sank. He slumped against the hood of the car.
Two friends were now gone. Maybe Gladius was right. Maybe dangerous things surrounded them, and an early death was inevitable. But the last thing he was going to do was leave his friends to take the fight on without him. “You know I’m going to have to help them,” Hank said.
“I know.”
“You with me?”
Gladius slid the Panavice in her pocket and walked to him. “Until the end.”
Hank exhaled in relief. If she had demanded a different path, he didn’t know what he’d do. “First, we go to Preston.”
“It must be another ten miles down the road,” Gladius whined. “It won’t even matter that these things are coming here to kill us all, I’m going to die from feet-in-heels disease.”
Hank pushed off the hood and jogged to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He pulled a pair of sneakers out and presented them to Gladius. His dad had made him start carrying essentials around, in case of emergency.
She looked disgusted at first, but took them and kicked off her heels. “Better not take a pic of this,” she said, looking dubiously at her feet as she slipped the sneakers on.
Hank laughed. “Can you jog?” He hated the way that sounded, but he truly didn’t know if she was capable of a long distance run. He didn’t know how capable he was.
“Oh please. You think you can keep up with me?” Gladius had her hands on her hips.
“It’s a race then?”
Gladius rolled her eyes and pulled out a small pouch of Orange and chugged it down. Hank took off at a sprint. He knew he couldn’t keep it up for long, and it was probably foolish to expend the energy when they had ten more miles to go, but sometimes a joke took sacrifices. Plus, he knew how competitive Gladius was.
He glanced back and stumbled when he saw she was right next to him, running backward. She passed him with a salute, then turned around to run ahead. Hank slowed down and watched Gladius further her lead. She didn’t even look to be breathing hard.
In all, it took over an hour to get to Trip’s front door. It was a good thing too, because Hank felt he might di
e if he had to go much further.
Hank bent over, breathing hard as Gladius knocked on the door. He would have told her she didn’t need to knock, if he could say the words between his heavy breaths. He didn’t think Gladius even broke a sweat. He on the other hand, had hip pain. He felt like an old lady, needing a replacement.
Trip opened the door, and Gretchen hovered behind him.
“Hey,” Hank took a few breaths before the next word, “Dad.”
“Gladius, Hank, what’s going on?”
“They’re coming. You guys didn’t get the message?” Gladius said.
“Who? What are you talking about?” Trip asked.
“Come in, kids,” Gretchen said and pulled the door open. “Hank, you look like you’re about to die.”
“Thanks,” Hank said and walked into his dad’s house. He nodded to Gretchen as he passed her. Gretchen and his dad had spent a lot of time together since Samantha’s death, and even though Hank was happy for them, he couldn’t shake the weird feeling he had.
Hank looked for the TV that used to be on the wall, or the radio that used to be in the corner. Both were gone. The only light came from a few candles around the house. “Where’s your stuff, Dad?”
“Got rid of it all. It was just feeding us rubbish anyways. How many times can you watch about recovery efforts, or what happened to the beloved Zach Baker? Made me want to throw up.”
“What’s with the huge antenna out in the backyard then?” Gladius said.
Trip lit up with excitement and motioned them to Hank’s old bedroom. “I installed something the government isn’t controlling. A place where us radio jocks can spread the truth.”
Trip opened the door to Hank’s bedroom. Inside, sat a metal cage covering the entire room. A desk with various radio-like components sitting on it, a couple chairs, and a couch were the only things left in his room.
“What did you do to my room?”
“You haven’t been living here for over a year, son.”
“You could have used the upstairs guest room. There’s nothing in there.”