by Mark Jeffrey
Ian nodded and chimed in. “Please Casey. Listen to him. Why is he even still talking to us if he’s the bloody Bondsman?”
A new glint came into Casey’s eye. “If I let you live, then you go on to become the Bondsman. We know that now. Maybe not right away. But eventually. And the whole world pays, Max, the whole world. If it were reversed, if it was me, I’d want you to shoot.” She swallowed. “I can’t let the Bondsman happen. Not while I can prevent it.”
Max’s eyes went wide. His pupils dilated. Casey pulled the trigger.
Several things happened at once.
The first was that, to Max’s surprise, his Battle Throne sprouted ten metal hoops. They swung out of the sides of the chair as if it were a swiss army knife.
The second was that Logan White-Cloud arrived at the room just in time to witness the shot — though given his second sight, he was probably up to speed on what had been happening in the chamber all along. Nonetheless, his mouth formed a silent, No!
Cody Chance gasped as he entered right behind Logan.
Casey’s bullet left the barrel of her ensorcelled weapon. But it slowed down visibly in the air — just a hair, but enough that you could see it stretch and alter trajectory …
It was pulled into the largest hoop on the left of the chair, as though it were a gravity well like that of a supermassive black hole.
Max didn’t have time to raise his power, just as he’d predicted. Without that hoop, he would have died instantly. But somehow the Battle Throne had protected him — or he had used the Thunderchair instinctively.
But then something else unexpected happened; Max’s own Battle Throne spat Casey’s one bullet back — multiplied a hundredfold, and heated to red-hot temperatures.
From out of the myriad hoops, a shower of crackling orange bullets rained down on Casey.
No!
And Max couldn’t stop it or recall it — it had just happened on its own. That was just what the Battle Throne did.
But somehow Ian managed to jump in between Casey and Max, swaddled in bloodmetal. He tackled Casey to the ground and shielded her from the storm of tiny meteors sizzling through the air.
Max smelled ripe ozone and burnt flesh. The air rippled with heat and concatenation.
Some of the bullets had rained down on Jane Willow, who shrugged them off with her power. But she was enraged now. She had misunderstood the exchange.
Jane Willow believed she had just been purposefully attacked by Max. Her own Battle Throne thrummed to life with the low electric bee sound Max recalled from his first experience with a Battle Throne.
She was floated now, hovering.
Max raised his own Thunderchair and prepared to suffer an attack. He knew that Jane Willow’s power would match his own; this battle could go either way. He only prayed she had as little experience with these Chairs as he did — and that one model was not inherently superior to the other in some way.
She shouted something, but he could not hear what it was though all the power and racket. The din in the room was deafening.
Casey, Ian, Cody and Logan were still here. Ulrich and now Marvin Sparkle had just arrived with even more guards.
And Max suddenly realized that they all would be killed if this battle between himself and Jane Willow took place right here, right now.
One more glance at Jane convinced Max that she was serious. She didn’t care about these people. She was going to gore him with power without any further thought for anyone else.
That did it.
Max nosed down his chair — and fled.
He skidding along the hallways, screaming for people to get out his way. They did so, with a few near misses. But he could not slow down: Jane’s chair howled after him like a banshee.
He tore towards the Sky Chamber hanger. When he arrived, he aimed right for the stone ceiling. Only this time, he was unconcerned — he knew he would smash his way through it.
As he burst into the night sky in a shower of smashed stone, Max risked a look over his shoulder. Sure enough, Jane Willow followed, murder in her eyes.
FOR A TIME, Max was able to outrun Jane while the dark forest rushed by below. Good! Max thought. The more distance he could put between their battle and Snake Island, the better.
Incongruently, the stars above tonight were a vault of dizzy, dazzling crystal; they were too rich to be real. Beneath this majesty, his Battle Throne bore him onward like an enchanted steed. The device made absolutely no sound whatsoever. It merely soared from one end of sky to the other, pushing through the night wind, a heavy silvery beast that defied gravity.
When Max felt they were far enough away, he turned his chair around with a sudden spin and engaged Jane Willow head on.
He blasted everything he had at her right away. Gouts of lava, snapping lightning plasma, and dark black balls that looked like some kind of acid sprang out of the hoops of his chair at hers.
She had been so intent on pursuit that she had been initially caught off guard by his sudden attack. She screeched with pain as his assault hit her. But then, black iron rings popped out of her chair, just as they had for Max. From that point on, everything Max threw at her was harmlessly slurped into these rings, wherein they promptly vanished.
Enraged by the failure of his attack, Max simply poured more energy into it. And still, Jane Willow’s rings simply absorbed the attack.
But then, some instinct rang out in alarm inside Max. It made him terminate this odd circuit between the two of them. He had the sudden feeling he’d just made a terrible mistake.
Still stinging with burns from Max’s initial attack, Jane Willow grinned.
For a moment, her Thunderchair quaked as though it contained a huge amount of energy straining to break free.
And then all four of her hoops lit up with everything Max had thrown at her doubled, quadrupled.
In a panic, Max swiveled his chair around. The metal of the backrest was now between himself and Jane’s attack. Just as he did this, a tidal wave of acid, lightning and lava pounded against the back of his Battle Throne.
If he had not spun in the nick of time, Max knew he would have been killed for certain.
Well, that hadn’t gone well.
But Jane was already mounting her next offensive: she dropped in altitude — and out of his line of vision. When Max turned his chair back around, she was gone.
Attacking now from below, Jane Willow blasted away at the bottom of his Battle Throne.
It slammed into his chair with the force of a truck. Max’s teeth rattled with the impact, and it sent him bouncing up and out of his chair. The instant he lost physical contact, his Throne went dead, snuffed out like the plug had been pulled.
Both Max and his chair fell from the sky.
Seeing her opponent so weakened, Jane Willow cried out with triumph and flew in for the kill. She swept up above him so that she had a clean shot — and took it.
A murderous hailstorm of sizzling lava, steaming black acid balls and shimmering white globes of numbing ice ripped towards Max.
Undefended by his Throne, Max instinctively lit up with his starpower. But he sensed that it would not defend him against something as arcane and powerful and ancient as the attack of a Thunderchair. His power and that of the chairs were too different. They existed on separate frequencies — one did not matter to the other, one could not touch the other.
He stretched as he fell, praying it would be enough …
And by the skin of his teeth, the very tips of his toes touched the back of the silver Battle Throne … and instantly, it roared to life. Quickly, he drew it close to himself. He crouched now on the seat back and surfed standing through the air, successfully dodging Jane’s attack.
She was completely surprised by her failure: she hadn’t expected it at all. As a result, she was very close when he spun around and counter-attacked.
But he didn’t use the weapons of his chair. He sensed that they were in a sort of stalemate now. Instead, he opted for a d
ifferent tactic, inspired by his recent setback.
He flew in very close to her — and grabbed onto one of the spires of her chair.
The instant he made contact, he felt his will and hers contest to control her Battle Throne. It bucked this way and that. As he had suspected, the physical contact of any Niburian with a Thunderchair was enough to establish control — and two Niburians touching it as once resulted in contradicting commands and thus chaos.
He had been careful to extend only his body and keep his feet on his own Battle Throne, effectively keeping it away from her hands and preventing her from doing the same thing to him.
They saw each other eye-to-eye now as her chair twisted and lurched with extreme turbulence. Max grinned fiercely at her — and she slugged him across the jaw.
Their fight was now physical as she tried to belt him again — and with his free hand, he blocked her blows. Then she started punching the arm that held on to the spire of her chair and almost succeeded in dislodging him.
Thinking of it at the same time, they both lit up in starfire. And thus, they were locked in a stalemate yet again.
Max shifted his position around such that he was behind her chair back, while he surfed his own chair. Now she had no way to get at him.
Checkmate, he thought.
Their battle for mental control reached a fever pitch and then Max thought of her chair pirouetting, which it did haphazardly. The spinning motion ejected Jane Willow and sent both young woman and Thunderchair streaking separately across the sky like two meteors.
Her chair went dark. It was just dead metal now. She and her Throne fell like two bricks.
Terror ripped through her.
She felt her stomach rise up like a roller coaster ride. Her chair went into a spin, barreling end-over-end through the forest canopy. Jane flapped her limbs in vain and yelped as she crashed through a gauntlet of leaves and branches.
Barely realizing what she was doing, Jane wrapped her arms and legs around the top of one young pine tree and hung on with all her might. Miraculously, she did not lose her grip. The tree bent with her, slowing her fall.
By the time she reached the ground, she had lost a good deal of momentum. Even so, it seemed the earth came up suddenly and kicked her in the chest.
The chair landed in the street of a small town just beyond the treeline. It barely missed crushing several cars as it came down. The asphalt cracked where it hit; a web of snapped black tar radiated from it as though it weighed several tons. People on the sidewalk stared in fear and amazement.
Jane lay stunned for a good several moments. Then, she pushed the ground away from her and stood tottering on her feet.
Her body ached. She was bruised and sprained and deeply rattled. A huge gash ran down her arm where he had skidded to a stop. She knew that she probably had some broken bones. She could barely stand.
Already, there a curious crowd forming around the strange black-leaf chair that had fallen from the sky. It lay on one side like wounded thing. Some people were trying to move it, to get it out of the way of traffic. Four men pushed against it, their faces bulging and red with strain. But it simply would not budge.
As Jane watched this numbly, struggling just to remain upright, Max appeared, hovering just over her head, seated on his Battle Throne.
She regarded him dully — and then laughed. She opened her arms and spread them. “You win. But of course you win! There was never a chance to begin with. Otherwise, we would never had had a Bondsman in the first place. I should have known better.”
She pulled herself to her full height, and squeezed her eyes shut and then shouted, full of pride: “Here I am, my lord and Bondsman! Do your worst!”
The crowd that had formed was watching this drama unfold slack-jawed — but kept a healthy distance.
Max considered this for a moment. He studied Jane Willow intently. And then, gently, slowly, he set down his own Battle Throne. He stood and walked over to where Jane was standing.
“No,” he said.
Her eyes flew open in shock. She wasn’t dead?
Max Quick stood beside her. His arms were at his sides. He regarded her calmly. “I’m tired of this. If you really, seriously think I’m the Bondsman, then you’d better kill me now.” He nodded towards his Thunderchair. “I won’t fight you. Go on. My chair’s right there. You can reach it before I can.”
She backed up towards it slowly, eyes filled with disbelief. Then she sprinted — and sat in the silver chair he had just occupied moments ago. Instantly, it roared to life.
Max watched — and did nothing. He stood there with his hands in his pocket like he was simply waiting for the bus.
She hovered closer.
“I could kill you,” she said menacingly. “You’re defenseless. I could kill you right now.”
“I know,” Max said. “But you won’t.”
“Why not?”
“For the same reason I won’t kill you. Because neither one of us is the Bondsman. Not if we don’t choose to be! I don’t give a damn what the Resistance says, or what the think they know. They don’t tell us who we are. We do that. And I don’t believe you’re the Bondsman. And I know it’s not me.”
She shook her head, amazed. “No. No it’s not you. It can’t be.” She lowered the chair to the ground and got out of it. “The real Bondsman would have killed me. He would not have missed the chance to eliminate an Imaginal who could challenge him.”
“I agree,” Max said. “And now I know it can’t be you either. I just gave you your shot and you didn’t take it. But one thing I still need to understand. Why did you attack me at the Shell?”
“Oh. That,” Jane said, embarrassed. “I thought you might be the Bondsman, like everyone else. But I knew if you lit up your Imaginal power and defended Maurice against that Sentinel jewel, you’d attract attention — probably even the Bondsman’s. But I didn’t realize everything would get out hand so quickly. And I really, really underestimated Casey and Sasha and those guns of theirs. So look. I’m sorry.”
“And you remember everything from all your time on earth. You’ve never had amnesia.”
Jane Willow hesitated. “Yes. Yes as a matter of fact I have had amnesia. There’s a whole period of time from 1943 on until around 1968 that I don’t remember at all.”
“Why? Did you go to Mr. E? Did he erase those years, to help you hide, like he did for me?”
She shrugged. “No. There was never any need. The Archons were never looking for me. They were looking for you.”
“But you’re an Imaginal also!”
“I know, but for some reason they need you instead of me. I don’t know what it is.”
“Hmm. Well, do you know you lost your memory?”
“I have a pretty good idea. I was captured by Jadeth, back when she ruled the planet briefly. She did something to me. The last thing I remember was Jadeth using the Singular Eye on me. She must have hit me with cryptomnesia or some mind probe she tried on me went wrong or something, maybe because I’m an Imaginal and she hadn’t factoring that in. Then, I woke up on the side of a road in 1968. Jadeth was gone — and the Bondsman ruled the world.” She looked momentarily disturbed by the memory and then she said curtly, “Look. I’m sorry about the Shell. Okay?” Max nodded. “So what now?”
“Now … now we fly these things back to Snake Island. And we tell them we trust each other. And if they’re smart, they’ll start trusting us too.”
She shook her head. “They’ll just think they have two potential Bondsman problems instead of only one.”
“Probably,” Max admitted, rolling his eyes. “But we have to give it a shot. C’mon. Let’s get your Throne out of the pavement and fly these things back before Casey tries to shoot somebody else.”
THE RESISTANCE was, predictably, not amused.
Seated in the Battle Thrones for safety the entire time, Max and Jane Willow explained what had happened during their battle — that, given the chance to kill one other and win decisi
vely, both had declined.
“Look. I don’t know why our DNA matches each other, let alone why it matches the Bondsman’s. Maybe Ulrich’s wrong. Or maybe it’s a trick. Or maybe it’s all legitimate and there’s another explanation — like maybe there was more than just twins. Maybe there’s more of us, more than just the two of us. Maybe there were triplets, or quadruplets — or even a whole cupboard full of clones the Archons managed to cook up way back when, I don’t know.
“The point is: it’s not us. We’re both convinced of the other, we both trust each other.”
“But we don’t trust you,” Ulrich said flatly. “I’d kill you if I could. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not killing you when you first showed up.”
“I understand that,” Max said. “That’s why we’re leaving.”
“We are?” Ian said.
“Yes,” Max replied. “Ulrich’s a good man, just doing the best he can with what he knows. I have no problem with that. He also knows,” Max said pointedly, “that I could drop this place on his head and kill everyone here inside of five minutes without so much as a scratch on my nose — if I wanted to. I don’t, and I won’t. But he’s won’t know that for sure until I don’t.
“So in the meantime, Logan and I have some business to attend to.” Logan raised his head. “Remember that thing your friend Armand Ptolemy told you about? We’re going to go deal with that. We can’t move forward until we do.” Logan nodded. “Ian. Casey. Cody. Marvin and Maurice. And you too, Jane Willow. I want you to go to New York and wait for us. Logan and I will catch up with you later, assuming we live through this. We’ll —” Max turned to Ulrich. “New York still exists, right? Probably re-named something ridiculous like ‘Bondsgrad’ or something, but still basically New York?” Ulrich nodded slowly. “Good. Then the Waldorf is probably still there. Get a room and stay put, stay out of sight.” He shrugged off a pang as he suddenly recalled that the Waldorf was where Madame Europa Romani had sacrificed herself for him back in 1912. “We’ll be along as soon as we can.