by Matt Ryan
“I’m coming, Dad.” She rushed up the latter and Kris followed right behind her.
Char lay at the end of the hall, propped up against the wall and looking at the stone.
“You okay?” Maggie asked.
Char nodded, but then went into a coughing fit.
“We need to get him out of here,” Maggie said.
“Did you notice the door we came through?”
“What of it?”
“It’s clearly a one way door. The only way out is forward. If we can’t figure this last symbol out, we’re all going to die down here.”
Char again willed himself to his feet and stumbled toward the stone. “Listen, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the symbol. It wants a spike through the heart. It demands a life.”
“But what if it doesn’t want that?” Maggie asked.
“I’m not sure how much longer I have, my dear.” Char gripped the sides of the chest the symbols sat on.
Kris felt his heart pounding. He knew what Char was about to do. “No,” he said and used his fast arm speed to push Char aside. In the same movement, he smeared blood across his chest and hugged the lid, placing his heart right where the symbol was. The spike came up and pierced his chest bone, his blood soaking into his shirt. He ignored the screams from Maggie and held tight onto the stone lid, as her hot hands tried to pull him off.
In his final moments, he knew Char would pull through. The last thing he wanted was to see Maggie lose another parent. He didn’t have any kids of his own; probably didn’t have the right stuff to make them. Many mutants were that way, which made Char and Maggie all the more special.
He thought this would be the part where he died, but that wasn’t so. Not yet, anyway. It hurt like hell and he held back a scream of his own, as Maggie yanked on his shoulders. She couldn’t see it, but he was far too gone to stop. The damage had been done.
Next, hundreds of needles stuck into his chest cavity and the thing pulled at him. Tears fell from his eyes as the spike retreated. He slid off the chest and looked up with his last seconds of life, to see the edges of the lid crack open and emit a brilliant light. Maybe this was Heaven calling to him, but at least he knew he’d just sent his friends home. That had to count for something. Maybe some of his sins would be forgiven now.
MAGGIE PUSHED AGAINST KRIS. “WHAT did you do?”
But he didn’t answer. He wouldn’t be answering another question ever again. The man lay dead at the base of the chest.
Her heart pounded and she stepped back, as the lid on the chest lifted.
“Careful,” Char wheezed.
She slid her feet across the stone floor, daring a peek into the open chest. She cringed as she looked into it, expecting a spear to shoot out.
Nothing. No weapons or booby traps. All it contained was a simple box that lay at the bottom. She briefly panicked, thinking the box would demand another sacrifice, or even worse, it would be empty and Kris’s sacrifice would be for not.
“You think it’s in there?” Char asked.
“I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.” She reached in against Char’s protest and lifted the box out. Not much larger than the jewelry box Char had carved out of a solid block of wood for her thirteenth birthday.
Maybe this box would give them their final freedom. Evelyn had shown them this promised world. A world without prosecution or judgment, and the freedom to make it as they saw fit.
The idea seemed too big and she took a deep breath, feeling as if she was drowning. Kris would have been the spearhead of this transformation, but now he lay motionless at their feet. She felt the tears building and held them back.
She sat the box on the floor and lifted one hand to give her more light. With her other hand she opened the lid.
Char peeked over her shoulder. “What are they?”
“I don’t know, but I do know this is what Evelyn will want.”
Inside, sat four stones. Two color shifting stones on each end. Hues of white and black, mixed with deep reds and sharp yellows. The colors moved as she moved the box.
The other two stones sat in the middle of the velvet lined insides. They were purple, with identical yellow markings.
“What do they do?” Char asked and then coughed.
“I have no idea.” She looked at Kris and then to the ceiling. No exit had opened, and nothing had changed. They were still trapped.
“Look,” Char said and pointed at the lid.
Maggie tilted the lid and saw the gold engraving above each stone. Over the two color-shifting ones, sat a single letter over each, an A and an M. In the middle, it showed a hill with a door in it, and a tower with a circle around it.
“That looks like the hill we just came in,” Maggie said and studied the picture. “What do you think it means?”
“Maybe that stone takes us to these pictured places, like the Alius stones.”
“That’s crazy.”
“The person who made these stones probably made the Alius stones as well. I don’t think it’s farfetched to think they made a portable version.”
They debated for several minutes before Maggie conceded to the idea. “What do you think we should do?” she asked.
“We should touch it at the same time.”
Maggie nodded and lifted the box with one hand. She neared her pointer finger to the stone and waited for her dad.
“If this doesn’t work. . . .”
“Save it. On three. One, two, three.” She pressed her finger on the stone at the same time as her dad. The world fell from under her, and as she entertained the idea she’d died, the world firmed back into place, and they both appeared outside the enclosure.
She laughed and closed the box. “We made it!” She jumped and hugged her dad.
They stood on top of the same hill they’d entered. A few of the mutants had made a campfire below, and several structures had been built for makeshift tents and toilets.
“Hey, up there!” one of them yelled as he noticed them on the hill.
Maggie and Char waved below. Then it struck her, Kris still lay down below; dead, but without a proper burial. She wanted to rush through the maze once again to pull him out.
“He’s where he belongs,” Char said. “Don’t let his sacrifice be wasted. That box represents a new beginning for us. We are going to finally have a real home.”
She bit her lip and looked down. Somewhere, deep underground, lay Kris. She kissed her fingers, then touched the ground. “Thank you.”
“I was supposed to be the one to lie on that spike. Not sure why he did it,” Char said, before he coughed blood into his hand.
“You better not die on me now.”
“Never.” He wiped his mouth. “I hope it was worth it.” He pointed to the box.
“We need to get this to Evelyn,” Maggie said.
“You think this will truly be the end of it?”
“I have to believe it will.”
EVELYN PARKED THE CAR NEAR a tree and turned off the engine. Reaching into the backseat, she shook Travis.
He moaned and lifted his hand, but didn’t regain total consciousness. She didn’t need him to be fully functioning, but she surely couldn’t leave the man in the middle of China.
“Travis, wake up.” She shook him again with vigor, and he opened his eyes.
He sat up, rubbing his head. “What happened?”
“I just battled with that sheriff guy and some creepy twins.”
Travis nodded as if he understood, but Evelyn doubted it. The man was a grade A bullshitter. The politician in him shone through more times than not, but she’d come to admire him for it. He’d been gifted limited ability, yet still accomplished so much.
Evelyn often wondered what her history would be like once she reached Travis’s age. Dark images usually swirled around in her imagination when she did. Her young mind kept hope for the human race, but what would happen when she’d seen too much?
“Where are we?�
� he asked.
“We’re still in China.”
He looked out the windows and at the forest surrounding them.
“Don’t worry. They don’t know I’m here.”
“You get us next to a stone?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Jackie?” Travis asked.
“They said she was untouchable and let her go; whatever that means.”
“Good. We need to get back to Earth. We need to find the others and help them.”
“This is where we’re going to split up,” Evelyn said. “The next steps are things only I can do.”
“What about your family?”
“Most likely, the queen has them at this point. Worst case, she’s killed them. But I don’t think she’ll do that.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I don’t believe she would kill the only bait she could use to lure me in.”
“Some things are unpredictable. You don’t need to do this alone. You could have left me in the back of this car, rode the stone out of here and never looked back, but you woke me.”
“It was the right thing to do. Regardless, the next part of this could go bad for me—bad for all of us—and people like you are going to slow me down. There will be no time to hesitate, not when so much is on the line.”
“Going alone is a mistake, trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Evelyn said and gazed at the floor mat. “It’s just, the queen is more like me than you. She’d crush you like a tsunami moving through a wheat field. I have to do this alone.”
Travis frowned and slid to the edge of the backseat to get closer to her. “I know what it’s like to be alone in the world; to think you are the only one who can do what needs to be done. I’ve been there at one point and it nearly killed Poly and Julie. When I became president of Vanar, I knew I’d have to work with many people to get the job I needed done. People I thought might hurt me. . . .”
“Like Harris?”
He nodded. “People like Harris, and many others. I formed a team, and together, we brought back Vanar. And yes, you were a big part of that team.”
She felt more like the entire team. She’d reprogrammed their net, got Orange flowing, trucks moving, and turned back on the power plants. She’d done more for Vanar in a couple months than Travis’s team could have done in years.
“I see in your eyes I’m not getting through to you,” Travis said. “So, I must demand to go with you. They are my friends, not to mention my own daughter is involved in this. Plus, you’ll need me at some point. You’ll need to learn to rely on us. You are not alone in this fight.”
“You don’t get it.” Evelyn willed her voice to not crack. “I was right there when my dad pushed himself too far. I was too young then, too trusting. I let everyone help me, and look at what happened to my dad.”
“Marcus killed your dad and there’s nothing any of us could have done to stop it. You’re going to have to trust me on this. Bring your family in, bring the Six in . . . you are going to want them all to help you get rid of this queen.”
Evelyn sat back in the front seat and tapped the door handle. She could easily bounce into her slow-mo and leave before Travis could say anything else. Friends and family made things harder. The emotions tied to them, the feelings. . . .
She sighed. “Fine, you can come with me.”
“Good. Where are we going?” Travis asked.
She hadn’t wanted to bring him to the planet she’d found for the mutants, as they would see it as a breach of trust, but the man was persistent. Besides, maybe he was right. She might actually need them.
“We need to pick up something from the mutants; something I hope they’ve collected by now. Then, we make our move on the queen.”
Travis didn’t push her to what that might be and she was grateful for it, because she wasn’t entirely sure what it’d be at this point.
They made their way to the nearby stone and Evelyn had Travis turn his back to her as she typed in the code. In the last moment before the jump, she stilled her time, allowing her to control the jump point.
Above them, a dome of air stood, holding back the ocean that was waiting to crash down if she let time slip. She could have told Travis before they left, but she didn’t want the man freaking out on her and questioning what would happen. That would have wasted minutes. Better to just jump and apologize afterward.
She pulled Travis’s body toward the edge of the collapsing wall of water and took a deep breath. Pulling him into the warm waters, the pressure pushed on her, popping her ears. Going underwater wasn’t something she’d done much of, but she found she didn’t need to swim up for breaths of air. In her slowed time, she could stay underwater for a long time. She hoped it worked the same for Travis as well.
Once she got to shore, she struggled to get his large body out of the water and halfway onto the beach. Breathing hard, she released time.
“What the . . .?” Travis jumped up as a wave came up around his legs, and he spun around.
Evelyn patiently waited for him to come to terms with his new location. “You okay?” she asked.
“We’re in the ocean. What in the hell?” He turned in a circle once again, and stopped to look at her. “Where’s the stone?”
“It’s best if we just keep moving. This is why I wanted to go alone.”
“It’s in the ocean, isn’t it? You pulled me out.”
“Can we go now, or do you need to keep asking questions?”
Travis wiped the water from his face and adjusted the blade at his hip. “Lead on, princess.”
They walked through the thin forest of palm trees scattered among the sand and rocks. Evelyn had scouted out the place, right after she’d learned of it in the queen’s mind.
Making her way toward the hill, she saw the door had been crushed in by what looked to be a giant boulder. And this was why she’d used the mutants, not just for their talents, but for their ingenuity.
“There’s people down there,” Travis said.
Evelyn walked along the worn trail the mutants created, and smelled the campfire and cooked fish. If she’d been by herself, she’d have slowed down time and studied these people before making herself known. But Travis, with his stomping feet, had probably already alerted them.
She walked past a small hut, then another. A person walked by and dropped a load of rocks she’d been carrying, when she spotted Evelyn.
“She’s here,” the girl yelled before running away.
In a matter of seconds, Maggie came running up to her, holding a wooden box. Evelyn’s eyes widened as she gazed at the box.
“You’re here?” Maggie said. Her eyes looked puffy and red, as if she’d been crying.
“Is this . . .?”
“Yes, we were able to get it out of that cave.”
“Hand it to me.” Evelyn wasn’t sure what the treasure would be, but whatever was in the box, meant the world to the queen, and now she had it. Maggie held out the box and Evelyn took it. “Did you look inside?”
“Yes, just a few stones. But one of them teleported us right out of that cave. Well, it teleported some of us.”
Evelyn looked into the eyes of Maggie. “Who did you lose?”
“Kris. He died for us. The magic holding this box demanded a life.”
Of course it had. And Kris was probably the only person in the whole mutant village capable of keeping them all together. Without him, Evelyn figured the odds of them surviving had just decreased tenfold. Maybe another leader would emerge in his absence.
If Evelyn could, she’d spend more time helping them . . . but first things first. She needed to get to her family, defeat the queen, and tie up loose ends. “I’m so sorry. He was a good man.”
She kneeled down and opened the box. On each side, sat stones, with initials engraved above them on the lid. “Allie and Mark,” Evelyn whispered to herself. She didn’t know how it could be, but they were in those two stones. The third stone intrigued her and
she looked back up at Maggie.
“You used one of the portal stones?”
“Yes, to get out of there.”
“Then I wonder where the other one goes?”
“Look at the picture,” Travis spoke up. “I’d bet it’s to an Alius stone.”
She frowned and had to agree with him. It did appear that way, but it also could send them to the queen. The idea of her being on this planet didn’t seem plausible, but the planet was a big place, with many hiding spots. The queen could have a hundred locations around the world, and it’d take Evelyn a regular human’s lifetime to find them.
In all likelihood, this stone was probably a shortcut to something the queen had planned out. She must have assumed she’d be the person to collect these stones, making the portal stones her escape options.
“Are we free now?” Maggie asked. “Is this truly the end for us?”
Evelyn stood and looked up at the girl. She might be the one to take over the mutants. She certainly had the guts, and maybe even the intelligence for the task. “This is your planet. I’ve brushed over it and found no evidence of man. You can do with it what you want. You are free.”
Maggie’s eyes watered as she looked past Evelyn. “We can never be truly free with those stones in existence. At any point, a Marcus could emerge from the ocean and rule over us.”
“You choose who rules over you.”
“You could rule over us,” Maggie offered, sounding hopeful.
And there it was. A request for her to stay with them. Not that it wasn’t enticing, but there were more things to do other than the simple life of world building. Maybe, at some point in time, she’d check back with them and see if they were keeping together, progressing. If Evelyn learned anything from all the history she’d read, she knew they were human and prone to all of the standard weaknesses of greed, hate, jealousy, and rage.
“You don’t want me. I may be a mutant, but I don’t belong here.”
“The tribe is choosing another leader tonight.”
“Good. Move forward. Think big and act small. You will have your time.”
“Will we see you again?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know.” Such a complicated question. If Evelyn had more time, she might have talked with this young woman at length, to maybe even try and persuade the tribe to elect her as their leader.