Intrepid

by J. D. Brewer

  “Before you get too confused, I need to promise you something. My friendship with you has been as real as anything else you’ve seen. I know a lot of things these days don’t feel all too real, but know that how I felt for you was. Regardless of everything, you are a sister to me.”

  I took a step back and felt the crunch of new leaves beneath my feet. I didn’t know how to respond or how to trust just yet.

  “I grew up in the same universe as you, and we’ve always known where you were. Why do you think that is?” Lindsay asked. She was like me. She could travel the Multiverse, and like everyone else, she knew things I did not.

  “Who is we?” I asked instead of answering.

  “We call ourselves the Balance when people feel they need a label. Humanity is simplistic like that. Nomenclature makes people feel like they understand things, even when they do not. The Calvary. The Shadow Boxers. The Gaian Order. We need definitions to put everything into their neat, little boxes, but there is nothing neat about factions that get misdirected and shrouded in the chains of rigid beliefs. Politics is just the tug-of-war between ideals, and, because of this, it ends up being true that nothing productive gets done. Maybe this is true for the Balance as well, but we feel that the others have lost the bigger picture.”

  “Which is?”

  “You, Texi.”

  My lips trembled at the idea. Whoever the Balance was had a purpose for me, but perhaps that shouldn’t have surprised me. Everyone seemed to have a plan for me whether I wanted to participate in their plans or not. I was starting to realize I needed to choose the one I wanted to follow. I couldn’t just keep letting everyone else map out my life for me.

  I could listen though. I could gather as much information as I could and do the best I could with what I was given. So it wouldn’t hurt to hear Lindsay out. It’d just be another perspective on my situation.

  “Iago’s with you, right?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but didn’t know if I should.

  “It’s okay, Tex. I won’t try to sway you one way or the other. In fact, you can go back to that silly boat anytime you wish, but I hope you stick around long enough to chat. We only have a few minutes anyways before I need to go.”

  The boat. She knew we were on Geeta? What else did she know?

  I wanted to shift back into the ease of conversation with her, but I didn’t know how to. This was not the Lindsay I knew, and I was not the Texi she knew. But she smiled the smile I’d seen a million times before and said, “I’m so glad the mutation worked. I would have been devastated to have lost you—not because of what you are, but because of who you are. I believe that no life is accidental. Even if it is made at the hands of man, the Multiverse is ultimately responsible for everything in existence.”

  I shook my head. It felt like I had water in my ears. “You only have a few minutes, and you start with that?”

  “Same ol’ Texi. Never gives anyone a break, huh? What I’m trying to say is that whether or not Gaians believe your creation was justly done, you exist despite all odds. Despite the fact that people have tried to kill you your entire life, and despite the fact that you had a seventy-five percent chance of dying from the mutation, here you are. Whether people want you to exist or not, you do. If the Multiverse had wanted you dead, you would never have beat the odds.” Lindsay began to peel off the gloves that were still on her hands. She pulled at them finger by finger until her slender hands were free.

  “And what about you? Do you believe I should exist?” There was an answer to that question that would cost me a great deal of pain, but I needed to know if she meant me harm.

  “Of course. What the others fail to consider is that perhaps you are simply the next step in human evolution. They call you a mutated hybrid, but all that means is that you are two separate things that came together to create one. If that’s the definition we go by, then we are all hybrids that have become one from two. That’s how reproduction works, after all. Traits are passed down generationally from two people to make one, and here we are from ape to man.”

  I shook my head. “Easy for you to say. You’re not a mutant freak.”

  Lindsay laughed. “You know, you really need to stop seeing yourself so negatively. Try on a different title for size.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Remember, all this got started because some of us were genetically altered. Different isn’t bad, Texi. It just forces you to be brave while others cower and fearless while others quiver. The original Explorers? Their existence caused a lot of debate in the beginning, much like yours is causing now. They were Intrepid, and in my mind, I’ve always seen you as such. Stop calling yourself a hybrid-freakazoid-mutant-weirdo, and remember that you are meant to be Intrepid.”

  “Intrepid…?” I mused. This answer was surprisingly comforting. Lindsay wasn’t afraid of me, and she was the first person who wasn’t so far. Liam and Iago? The way my hearing worked so clearly now showed me the subtle traces of fear in everything the two boys said. Plus, I’d caught little hints of terror over and over again in Iago’s eyes and Liam’s manners towards me. I was terrifying, even if they pretended I didn’t scare them at all.

  “Intrepid,” she repeated.

  “So you don’t think I’ll kill us all?” I asked.

  Lindsay picked up a leaf from the ground and twirled it in her bare fingers. “Look around. We are already dying. What harm could you do compared to what help you could give?” She put the leaf in her palm and closed her fingers around it until we heard it disintegrate from the pressure. When she opened her palm, the leaf no longer held the shape of a leaf. “Energy can neither be Created nor Destroyed, it simply Changes. What it will eventually change into will not be something we can exist in, but we are humans and want to exist forever. In order to do that, we must adapt, and in order to adapt, we created you.” She caught another leaf as it drifted near her ear. “While I can only exist within this,” she said, as she held up the whole leaf, “You can exist within both.” The carcass of the crushed leaf fell from her hand and scattered in the air around her. “And who knows. Maybe—just maybe—you can take what is ruined and return it to a form I can exist in with you?”

  “But what I can do is dangerous, right? I could destroy us all before it’s time?”

  Lindsay reached out and took my hands in hers. “Honey, you’re not listening. It’s written in The Manifesto. When it’s our time, it’s our time, and Saltadors know beyond the Knowing that we will return from whence we came.”

  The laughter that came boiled out of something deep within me. I couldn’t suppress it because suddenly all of it felt so damn ridiculous.

  “What?” Lindsay asked.

  “The way you talk! I can’t match it to all the memories I have of you in that ridiculous cheerleading outfit screaming, ‘Go, Hornets! Go!’ over and over and over again.”

  She squeezed my hands and laughed with me. “It was part of my cover. I couldn’t be too obvious, could I? If I was all doom and gloom, you may not have liked me as much.”

  “I would have liked you a lot more, actually.”

  “I doubt it. You needed someone cheerful to pull you out of that sour mood you were always in. Besides, it would have gone against my nature to be your broody friend. If I was a normal teenager on some distant universe, I’d probably have been some kind of cheerleader. It’s just who I am. Things change, and they change quickly. But me? I’ve always been good ol’ optimistic Lindsay.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Would I have appreciated Lindsay if she was too much like me? She was right. Part of the reason we got along so well was that she balanced me out, and it was comforting that her personality wasn’t an act. It made sense, after all. A lifetime of suppressing who you are could get exhausting.

  Lindsay smiled and added, “I hope you can keep a few secrets to yourself because the others can’t know about me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need my anonymity in this.
Balance gets tricky as more people get involved in determining the scales. Just know I’ll never try to talk you into one decision over another, but I’ll be here to listen. To be of the Balance, there is never a side to choose, because the only thing worth considering is the preservation of mankind until we are no longer worth preserving.” The sense of Knowing that wrapped around her brought out a glow I’d never seen before. She believed in her truths and believed in them well.

  Lindsay moved her fingers over to pinch my Planck Activation Bracelet. “I’m sorry about the bracelet you thought was your mother’s. You don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you the truth of her by the river. I hated to see you miss someone who didn’t exist. I’m sorry about all the lies. My lies and theirs.”

  I swallowed. It was the first time someone truly and sincerely apologized for all the secrets. I hadn’t even realized I was craving these apologies—a validation that even with the best of intentions, all the lying was still hurtful and should be apologized for. Lindsay gave me a gift in this, and I pulled her into a hug. When I let go of her, I felt a new sense of hope. I realized that Iago and Liam weren’t the only ones afraid of me. I’d been afraid of myself, and that was something I needed to let go of.

  I wasn’t a failed experiment.

  I was possibility.

  And Lindsay was the first person to treat me like a human being rather than a freakazoid mutant since everything changed.

  “What did you remove from the bracelet back there?” I asked.

  “Their tracking device. I just don’t think it’s fair they get to track you like a tagged animal. You have the right to go where you wish, when you wish, and don’t ever let those idiot boys tell you otherwise.”

  I laughed. This was the Lindsay I’d always known. The take-no-orders, take-no-bull-crap, take no drama Lindsay. “So you’re Geronimo. I’ve read what you wrote about me.”

  “I hope I was honest and kind.”

  “You were,” I said. Then I thought of the title I’d read over and over again with her entries. “What’s the Eightieth Generation?”

  “We’re the Eightieth Generation of Saltadors. That’s how they group us, you know, by how many generations past the original Explorers we’ve survived. How’d you stumble across my forum in the first place, and what brought you to leave that message? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been hoping you would. I just didn’t think it’d happen so quickly!”

  “I can’t explain it. I just found it, and it spoke to me, so I kept reading.”

  “That comes with the Knowing. You’re already trusting it… that’s good,” she replied. “I’ll continue to leave you messages within that forum if that works for you. I hope you don’t mind if I keep writing propaganda in your favor.”

  “I thought you were Sully,” I said just to be completely honest.

  Lindsay shook her head. “Poor Sully. I’m so sorry for you both.”

  “Why?” I asked, trying to keep my lips from trembling. But, even though it was just three letters and a question mark, the word was a traitor, and the letters clambered against each other on their way out of my mouth. Lindsay and Sully were a packaged deal inside of my heart. She had to have cared about him as much as I did, even if it wasn’t in the same way. I wondered what it was like for her to watch how I felt about Sully grow, knowing the feelings were doomed despite how they began.

  “I think the boy truly loves you, but duty has a funny way of twisting the things we love. You can’t dwell on this, because Sully’s in your past.”

  I nodded. I had to believe in this, because not believing that Sully was bad for me could mean my death.

  “Do you fully understand what you are? How dangerous you can be?” Lindsay asked.

  “They haven’t let me forget it,” I said. I took my big toe and ground it into a leaf. It was hard and brittle all at once, and it was satisfying to put my nervous Energy into something destructive. It let me realize something new. There were things I hated about fear. I hated how terrified Liam always was around me. I hated how cautious Iago was with me. I hated how they kept looking at me like I was about to explode. Perhaps I had yesterday morning. Perhaps I’d reached my breaking point, exerted too much Energy, and killed millions of innocent fish all because I was dangerous and uncontrollable. But I hated, hated, hated how they always reminded me of it in every cautious thing they did or said around me.

  “Ah, but do you understand the rest? Did you know there’s another like you?”

  The question froze my foot and stopped my chest from moving up and down.

  She smiled. “I misspoke. I should have said similar—similar to you.”

  “Iago?”

  She shook her head no. “You know this answer, but you must come to it on your own. Got to make you work for some things. That’s all the time I have, though. I have to get back before they track me here—”

  “That’s dumb. Why can’t you tell me?”

  She frowned. “Because you have to decide some of these things for yourself. What I can tell you? I can tell you that you need more than just yourself to save us. Your Papa knows how to find the other half. It might be good for you to start there.”

  “What’s the other half?” I asked.

  “I just told you, ask your grandfather.”

  “Papa? He’s addled,” I reminded her.

  “But sometimes, he isn’t.” She laughed as she pulled up her screen to enter in coordinates.

  “Linds?”

  “Texi. It’s okay. This isn’t the last time you’ll see me.” She smiled, but I didn’t find comfort in it.

  “Don’t go,” I pleaded, but she was gone. Blithering blinking eyes. I didn’t even see the moment she disappeared into the Nothing, leaving me with a stupid expression of confusion on my face and a new feeling of missing in my heart.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I stood there among the drifting leaves and watched their colors float around me. Reds and oranges and browns were bright and alive in new ways, even as the trees shook them from their branches, leaving them for dead.

  For the first time, I truly understood what everyone meant when they talked about things being bigger than themselves, because whatever was happening to me was so much bigger than myself.

  What Lindsay told me made it so. The hint she left me suddenly made me feel less alone. She said there was someone similar to me, and this person had to be Liam.

  Iago had held my hand or arm nearly every time we entered the Nothing, and compared to when Liam held me in his arms, nothing had happened. There was something special about Liam that activated something within me. We were both responsible for what happened the other morning. I couldn’t figure out the specifics yet, because Lindsay wasn’t clear on it. Similar meant close to, but not the same. If Liam was an experiment like me, I still wasn’t sure of what genre. There was still so much I didn’t know.

  What I did know? Liam and I needed to leave. Sooner rather than later.

  That answer became vividly clear as I thought of Iago’s “failsafe” syringe. That syringe couldn’t be good for either of us, and I suddenly had a feeling it wasn’t a sedative.

  Did Liam know what he was? And if he did, what if he had the same failsafe for me? What if he had the same failsafe for himself? He’d be the type to sacrifice himself up for the cause, and I didn’t know squat about how he was raised or what he believed. Maybe he’d known all along and was waiting for me to misstep. If I tried to get him to leave with me, would that be his cue that I couldn’t be trusted? Would he kill me right then and there?

  I had to try, though.

  Lindsay said something about finding the other half. I wanted her to come back so I could kick her in the shins for being so cryptic. I didn’t need to work for more answers! Hadn’t I been kept in the dark enough? How inane was that line of logic? She told me to go back to Papa because he had answers, but how did I get them when Papa was usually so delusional he had trouble tying his own shoes? “Sometimes, he isn’t,�
� I whispered to myself. “What did she mean by that?”

  I guess it’d make sense when it was meant to make sense.

  Either way, I needed to know if I could trust Liam. He wasn’t like me but similar to me, so I needed him to come back to Geronimo with me.

  I pulled up the screen and entered the coordinates back to Geeta. I landed in the hallway next to the galley, and when I stepped into the kitchen, I realized the kink in my plan. I saw Liam on the floor, and gasped. There was a swipe of gashes—four equal lines growing into pink scars. When I kneeled down to get a better look, things shifted in his face. I didn’t know what the expression meant, and I gulped back the taste of my own fear.

  “Texi?” he asked, and his voice sent calming shudders down my spine. He groaned as he propped himself up so he could sit against the cabinet door.

  “What happened?”

  I examined the pink scarred gashes on his chest. I traced them with my fingers and realized they were still folding in on top of themselves as the large expanses of mountainous skin leveled out and lightened. The smell of him invaded every movement of air around me, and the way my fingers met his skin sent fluorescent shocks through me. They were the same types of jolts I used to get when I’d run my socked feet over carpet and touch Ringo. Except this shock was continuous and shattering.

  Liam was not like me, but similar to me. What did that mean?

  He reached his hands out and tangled his fingers in my curls so my eyes couldn’t look anywhere else but into his. The turquoise was on fire with cerulean storm clouds. “I thought we lost you,” he said, gulping back a painful sob. Fearful gasps raced in and out of his mouth, and I should have been terrified of all the flurries of electricity coursing through any place our skin touched. My fingers stilled, and I placed my palm over where his heart was. I could trace the direction of every synapsis of Energy firing in his chest while his fingers tangled more and more into my curls. The fluorescent electricity devoured the rest of the world as the swirl of cerulean danced in neon movement around his pupils. I felt the same tickle of color within mine, and this Energy pulled and pulled at us until we could only move in one direction.