by Matt Ryan
“We should get out of here. They’re coming,” Julie yelled and opened the car door. Lucas got into the driver’s seat.
Poly looked back to the three men dressed in black. The wind whipped out their long coats, revealing satchels at each of their hips. Their gloved hands appeared to be holding something, as they walked steadily toward them. Poly glanced at the car and then the building. They could reach both if they left quickly.
“Evelyn?” Poly asked. “Evelyn, we’ve got to go.”
“None of them are the queen,” she said, looking just above the three men. “They have the embers, but nothing like her.”
“Come on, they’re coming.” Poly took a few steps toward the car.
“I will stop them.”
“We should run,” Poly urged. If it had been her and Joey, she thought they would have a chance, but Evelyn was just a small girl, and these three were big men, who’d easily taken out Derek.
Evelyn typed a few more lines into her Panavice, then stowed it into her pocket. “We aren’t running. If you want to sit in the car with Lucas and Julie, I understand.”
Fifty feet away. Poly saw the eyes of the three men. The one in front didn’t have the blood thirst in his eyes like she’d suspected; they held a curiosity. She moved closer to her daughter and splayed out three knives. They were designed by her and Travis and were an exotic type of metal that should penetrate any shield.
The two men behind the larger one stopped and threw two small balls into the air. Poly watched them fly above, until they touched. They exploded into a blinding light. She screamed and dropped her knives. Covering her eyes, she fell to her knees and heard Evelyn mumble something.
“I can’t see,” Poly cried out.
“You will, give it a second.” Evelyn grabbed her and helped her to her feet.
The white light diminished and Poly felt for Evelyn at her side. She yanked out a few more knives and spotted the men walking toward them.
One of them yelled out, “Stop right there. Don’t move, little girl.”
Evelyn disappeared from Poly’s side. A moment later, the three men fell to the ground.
“Evelyn?” Poly yelled.
Her daughter reappeared a few feet behind the men. “I’m fine.”
“Did you kill them?” She eyed their bodies. None of them had moved yet.
“No, but they’ll be out for a while. I want to study them. I want to study their tech. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on any world. Something very strange has happened to their version of earth to allow them to make these things.”
“What things?”
Evelyn slipped on a glove she had yanked off the large man’s hand and pulled a black stone from the pouch dangling from his hip. “They’re able to create these stones.” She held the stone in the sky, squinting at it. “They have magic-like properties, and if we don’t figure out how to stop them, they’re going to plow right through this dome.”
POLY WALKED BY THE THREE men laying on the ground, seeing their chests moving with long, deep breaths. One snorted and Poly gripped her knife tighter. She didn’t care so much about their magical golf balls, but more about how her daughter took them out. “How did you do it? I mean, what did you do to them?”
“I fought them. They were too slow,” Evelyn said through a grin.
“How long are they going to be like this?”
“Not sure, they are unique.” She looked at the men, then followed something Poly couldn’t see up into the sky. “We better get them locked up. I think we could learn from them.”
“They hit me with something,” Derek said, feeling his shoulder.
“I thought they killed you back there.” Poly was unmoved either way.
“I think the shield helped me out with a lot of it. What do you want to do with them, Evelyn?”
“Put them in the holding cells. Keep them separate and take all their belongings. I’ll be there soon to inspect their contents. And Derek, wear gloves. I mean it, all of the people who handle them have to wear gloves. I don’t think we can allow those stones to touch our skin.”
“Aye.” Derek spoke into his Panavice and several more people ran from the building to help him drag the men toward the front door.
“And make sure you strip them to their underwear before putting them in there.”
“That’s who we are fighting?” Poly asked, as the plain-looking men were carried off.
“Yes,” Evelyn said. “I think they were scouts. Their queen is looking for me.” She watched another cube fly by.
Poly sighed and glanced back at Julie and Lucas, standing in front of the car with the hood open. Will was buckled up in the backseat.
“That car won’t start without me in it.” Evelyn sighed. “I’m surprised at them. I thought they would be warriors, ready to defend this planet against the invasion. I mean, if I fail, we all die, including their little boy.”
“Being a parent changes your priorities.” Poly watched Julie and Lucas mess around under the hood. They looked to be arguing. “They are the bravest and best people in the world, Evelyn. They will do what is right for them, but they need to know what’s going on.” She turned to face her daughter. “What is the plan here?”
Evelyn looked back at the globe. “Sadly, we’re carrying out Marcus’s plan. He implanted the world with those nanobots for this very moment. I’m sure it was a selfish act, and I wonder greatly about what he’d have done once the world was catatonic.” She faced Poly. “Will is going to use what I’ve built here to silence the minds of the world, so those cubes don’t have a place to go. Don’t you remember Hector trying to get us to do that in his world? He tried to teach us to clear our mind and go into a stupor. It’s a way to stop them.” She pointed to the sky and a distant black cube.
“We blew one of them up, if I remember right,” Poly said. “Won’t the armies of the world just destroy these things?”
“If they had time, maybe. But we just got sent back a couple hundred years, when they knocked out our power and electronics. We might have a few birds up there, but they will have tens of thousands of those cubes worldwide by now. We are going to be nothing but a crop for their queen to harvest, without this machine.”
A cube flew overhead, as if on cue. “Can’t you hack into them? Julie was able to shut one of them down for a bit.”
“I’ve tried, and while I can get into some of their systems, there is another part on a completely different level.”
“Above you?” Poly had thought her daughter had no limitations.
Evelyn laughed. “I wouldn’t say above . . . different, maybe. It’s like a person living in a two dimensional world for their whole life and then someone trying to explain the third dimension to them. They could never understand it.”
“These people have another dimension?”
“Sort of. They have embers floating around them. These embers help in the construction, but I can’t figure out how. It’s another form of tech, more organic.”
“We should have asked for help from Vanar. They have a magical level of tech as well.”
“They know. I told Travis all about them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were facing an invasion as well.” Evelyn looked at the ground and then back up to the globe. “They don’t have this though.”
“Hey,” Lucas called out. “Car’s busted.”
“We better get inside. No telling when another one of these things is going to drop in for a visit,” Evelyn said.
After some unheard deliberation from Julie and Lucas, they walked with Will toward the front door, keeping a leery gaze on the sky.
“They’ll come around,” Poly said, hating the idea of Julie and Lucas being scared of Evelyn. She wasn’t going to hurt them; and if she truly wanted to, how much could they do to stop her? Poly had a terrible thought of Marcus’s manipulations on Evelyn. What if he did something to her, put in a trigger of some sort that would switch and send Evelyn into a monster?
“Don’t worry,
Mom. After I save earth and get what I need from these people, everything will be as it should be. We will be able to live out a happy life.” She smiled.
“What do you mean, get what you need from them?”
“These people could be a blessing. I think they have something we need. I’m not going to discuss it because I don’t know if it’s going to be possible. If it is . . . things could be better, happier even.”
Poly didn’t know if she could be happy without Joey by her side. She took a deep breath and felt tears building in her eyes. In all the happenings of the day, she just realized she’d not cried over him once the entire day. A feeling of betrayal spread over her, as if she wasn’t honoring her late husband.
Evelyn watched her closely. She wasn’t intruding into Poly’s thoughts, but she knew Evelyn was trying to figure her out. Now faced with a damned invasion from the body snatching magicians, she’d never felt so close to Evelyn.
“We have a strong connection,” her daughter said. “You can’t see it, but can you feel it?”
“I feel it.” Poly let out a sob and reached for her little girl.
Evelyn rushed into her arms and gave her a hug. “Everything is going to be better. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Thank you, but it’s not your job to make it better.”
Evelyn let go. “We still have a world to save, maybe many. Should we get to it?”
Poly nodded and followed her daughter through the tall steel door in the side of the building. Derek stood near the entrance and greeted Evelyn. They discussed the jailing of the three men, and Evelyn said she’d be there soon to inspect them, but she wanted to get Will set up first.
“Sorry, Mom, I’d love to give you a tour, but the enemy never sleeps.” Evelyn gave Derek a few instructions, then led Poly through a series of passageways. They reached a small room with circular walls and ceiling. Julie, Lucas, and Will stood near the middle of the room.
“What is this place?” Julie asked tapping her leg. Poly saw the bulge from her broken Panavice and it probably killed her not having it at her disposal.
“This is where we see Marcus’s plan through.” Evelyn walked to the center of the room and pushed a few buttons on her Panavice. The floor shook and moved up, like a massive elevator. The metallic dome above them opened up, revealing the expanse of the structure above.
Poly gasped. It was so gargantuan, an airplane could fly inside. The platform they stood on continued to rise until it hit the halfway point and stopped. The noise echoed around the globe and she felt overwhelmed. My daughter built this? In a world where construction and technology had come to a near stop?
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Evelyn said.
“Extremely,” Poly said.
“Will,” Evelyn looked to him, “I even gave you your very own captain’s chair.” She pressed her finger down on her screen. A metal chair rose up from the middle of the platform.
Julie and Lucas held onto Will and looked at the chair. “This whole place is an amplifier,” Julie murmured to herself.
“Yes. He’ll be able to connect to every person on the planet in here. Well, every person who has the nanobot Marcus planted during the Cough . . . The rest of us don’t—”
“This is crazy. How can his brain handle that kind of input?” Julie said.
“I can handle it, Mom. Evelyn has trained me how.”
“When?” Julie turned to look at him.
“Just now.” At the sound of his parents’ gasps, he continued, “We’ve been here for a long time. Evelyn’s showed me what I can do to help save our world.”
“You can go slow-mo like her?” Lucas asked.
“No, she has to help me into it. I can’t do it on my own.” He looked at the floor. “Yet.”
Julie stepped in front of Will. “Evelyn, if you hurt my son—”
“If he isn’t able to do this task, we will all die,” Evelyn said.
Will pulled free from Julie and Lucas and walked to the chair. He took a seat and placed his arms on the steel hand rests, feet dangling in the air. To Poly, he looked like a baby; this was supposed to be the answer to the purge people’s invasion?
“If he’s going to do this—and I’m not saying he is—what are you going to do?” Julie asked.
“I believe this will summon their queen. Before that happens, I need to get a particular piece of their magic, plus another trinket of hers. Once that’s done, the queen and I will have a talk. She will see my side of the matter, or I will end her.”
Poly didn’t understand how these children were going to save everyone, no matter how capable they might be, and she saw the same look on Julie and Lucas’s faces. Will wasn’t even one year old yet.
“I see your doubt,” Evelyn said. “I could go into great detail about how I managed to build this place, laying out the plan started by Marcus. Or how I have run the business of ZRB from the outside, ensuring a growing economy and stable society. I could also go into detail about how I reestablished most of Vanar’s services and cut their recovery time by seventy percent, all while nursing my mom back to health.”
“Hero parade,” Lucas said.
“Yes, and I’d deserve one,” Evelyn said. “I know it’s hard to look at my tiny body and think of my accumulated knowledge as anything beyond pink ponies and coloring within the lines, but I assure you, this plan is our best option—our only option.”
Guilt swept over Poly. She hadn’t been there when her daughter needed her the most. Or maybe her daughter didn’t need her at all. She appeared to be ruling over the worlds, doing things Poly had no idea about. How many worlds had she jumped to? Poly never felt so alone.
“I want a Panavice, and I want to see all the specs on this . . . machine,” Julie said.
“Fine, but every second we waste could mean the death of a million souls.” Evelyn walked over and handed her own Panavice to Julie, showing her how to get into the spec pages she wrote. “When you’re ready, Will knows what to do,” she said. Walking to the edge of the platform, she grunted as she pulled open a steel lid.
“Where’re you going?” Poly said.
“I’ve got prisoners to check on. If this place falls, they could be the key to defeating these people.”
“You’re just going to leave Will to it?”
“Yeah,” Evelyn said and stepped down the ladder. “We don’t have much time for convincing. Do it or don’t,” her voice carried up through the open lid.
Poly turned to Julie. “I think she’s right. This might be our best chance.”
Julie let go of Will’s hand and walked over to her. “What if she’s wrong and this thing fries his brain? I mean, look at this place. How could she even know how to construct such a building?”
Poly fidgeted with her hands. She hated even saying his name. “Marcus designed much of it.”
Julie raised an eyebrow as if to say, exactly. “We didn’t sign up for this. We should have found another planet. Another world like this one, but without the dangers.”
“Julie, this is our planet. Are we to just let everyone die? You and Lucas have seen what these things are going to do here. Don’t you remember Hector’s planet?”
“Of course I do. But aren’t you sick of being in the middle? Don’t you, just for once, want to be on the outside, ignorant of it all? I imagine most of the world is more concerned about getting power back on, so they can get to their Facebook page, or update Twitter.”
“You want to be one of those people out there, oblivious? Don’t you want to make a difference? After Joey died,” her voice cracked, “I learned how fragile we are. It makes life that much more precious to me, and if I can save just one person, then I have to try. That person could be someone else’s Joey.”
Julie looked over her shoulder and Poly saw the tears in her eyes. “If I think for one second this thing is going to hurt Will, I’ll stop it all. I don’t care if the world burns for it.”
“It won’t.” Poly didn’t know that, but she step
ped through the hatch and climbed down the ladder. She caught up to Evelyn in the hall and suspected she’d heard the entire conversation. Poly’s gut told her Julie would make the right decision. She just hoped that didn’t mean letting the world burn.
Evelyn didn’t say much as Poly followed her through the various passageways, until they reached the cells.
Derek and five other men had guns drawn on three men in separate cells, handcuffed to the floor and sitting in their underwear.
“They say anything?” Evelyn asked.
“Not much, just said they wanted to speak with you.”
Evelyn faced the clear wall between them and the inmates. “You, what’s your name?” She pointed at the large man in the middle cell.
He pulled on the cuffs and the sound of clattering metal echoed around the room. “My name is Jeff, and I take it you are Evelyn?”
Poly looked at her daughter. How could these men possibly know her name?
“Yes, I’m Evelyn. I suppose you have a message for me?”
Jeff bent his neck and winced in pain. Poly eyed the man and she drew three of her throwing blades. He shook his head and then hopped off the floor a few inches. Each spasm made the chains clatter. After a few seconds, it got worse and he shook violently. Spit dribbled from his mouth.
“Help him,” the twins yelled from the cell next to him.
“Don’t even think about it,” Evelyn said as Derek made a move to enter the cell.
She leaned closer to the partition, eyes squinted, as if trying to hear him speak. “He’s doing something. Shoot him.”
“I can’t just shoot a man strapped to the ground. He’s no threat,” Derek said.
“He’s going to take something,” Evelyn said and grabbed at Derek’s gun. “Shoot him.”
Derek pulled his gun back from her hands and raised it at Jeff.
“I’m going to be sick,” Jeff said and heaved.
“Mom, you should leave.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Then someone kill that man right now!” she screamed.
Poly jerked from her reaction and moved closer to the metal cage.