II Crimsonstreak

by Matt Adams

  Now hovering several stories in the air, my mother rips a steel girder from a building that’s under construction and flings it in the direction of the noise. My other mother—the Miss Lightspeed of this reality—catches it before it hits anything.

  My father starts to move toward the rampaging Miss Lightspeed, but I tell him to stay put and call to my mother to come back. Being my parents, of course, they won’t have any of it. A fire truck flies toward a group of gawking civilians, and my parents again intervene before anyone gets hurt.

  “Hey, you up there! Knock it off!” I yell.

  From high in the sky, my mother smashes into the road next to me, kicking up dust and asphalt. The disoriented, slightly wild look on her face tells me this is the Miss Lightspeed of my world.

  “What are you doing? These people are not your enemies,” I try to convince her.

  “The Kiltechs are all around us,” she insists. A police officer rises from behind his squad car. My mother rips a telephone poll from the ground and slings it at him. The man retreats under cover.

  “These aren’t the Kiltechs. You’re fighting against the San Francisco Police Department.” I point toward a crushed fire truck. “And the fire department, too. How did you get here? I thought the Kiltechs had you in custody at Legion Headquarters.”

  She gets that look I’ve seen all too often in the last three years, the one that bores straight into my chest. “Sapphire Twelve and I escaped and made it to the Kiltech flagship. By the time I got there, the Orange Bands had overwhelmed the Kiltechs. Kilgore wasn’t on the ship, Bill said. The Bands turned on the machine.” She pauses for a second to think something out. “We tracked you here… and I’ve been fighting Kiltechs ever since.”

  “No, listen to me. That’s not it. I mean… yes, we’ve been fighting aliens, but not here. This is San Francisco.”

  Her breathing grows more strained. “That can’t be. The Kiltechs wiped California off the map.” Her eyes narrow. “You’re not my son.”

  As soon as the words come out of her mouth, she shoves me with enough force to send me flying into the side of the warehouse. My parents from this parallel reality catch me before I hit.

  “They’ve replicated my entire family,” she snarls. “I want to see my real family now!”

  My alternate reality parents float in midair for a second before landing on the uneven road.

  “Please calm down,” my father says. He turns to me and whispers, “Is her name still Karen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Karen, there is an explanation somewhere in all of this. We are not your enemies,” Colonel Chaos says, his posture nonthreatening. My mother’s response: a blindingly fast punch that connects with Colonel Chaos’s jaw. Though stunned by the development, he stays on his feet. Dad could always take a punch. My mother takes a shot at her counterpart, but the alternate Miss Lightspeed dodges.

  “Stop it! Please? It’s okay. It’s me, your son. Chris.”

  “You’re the imposter, aren’t you? The one that monster cloned? The one who wants to take over the world?” she sneers.

  I think she’s referring to Imperator Chris. “We don’t have time for this,” I say, keeping my tone as urgent and respectful as I can manage. “I am not a clone. I’m your son. You said Dad sent you here?”

  Her sneer dissolves, replaced by a softer look. “He said you were in trouble. Now… I can’t control myself.”

  “You can,” I tell her. “Do you remember what happened at the cemetery in Williamsburg? Do you remember what I told you?”

  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “You quoted ‘Invictus.’ ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.’”

  I take her by the shoulders and look her in the eye. “That’s right.” The next word doesn’t come so easily, but I say it. “Mom, that’s right.”

  She turns toward the other Fairborne couple. “What…?”

  “We’re in an alternate reality where you and Dad live in a Chicago suburb. California’s still intact.”

  “Chicago? Your father hates big cities,” she whispers.

  “You said the Orange Bands activated the Kiltechs’ machine?” I ask. She nods in acknowledgement. “Then either you got here through that machine or piggybacked on my trip through the multiverse.”

  “I don’t know how I got here,” she admits. “I was just… here.”

  “It doesn’t matter—all that’s important is that you made it. You’re here now. I need your help. I need you to focus.”

  She furrows her brow. “Who attacked the police?”

  And here I was hoping my mother would have some answers.

  “You did. You thought they were the Kiltechs.”

  She wraps me in a tight hug. “I’m so, so sorry. I was confused.”

  These moments are more than awkward. I’m talking about my mother here, yet I’m not sure she’s my mother. I keep waiting for the Evil Miss Lightspeed—the one with a taste for fascism and skin-tight outfits—to show her scowling face again.

  “It’s all right,” I tell her. Her face is pale enough for a funeral parlor.

  I’ve seen that before.

  An officer approaches with my alternate-reality mom and dad. “I want you to come with me and deliver a statement,” the woman says.

  “That’s not necessary,” my father tells her. “I’m invoking a Super League emergency order.”

  “If that’s what you think is best, Colonel Chaos,” the officer says, nodding. She heads toward the other emergency responders.

  “A cleanup team will arrive soon. We’ll figure out a way to spin this,” my father insists. “The news stations are turning over video showing both Miss Lightspeeds together. The police will start confiscating smartphones as part of my directive.”

  Parallel-world Mom shakes her head in disapproval. She’s inches away from actually tsk-ing, I can tell.

  “I don’t like it either, Karen, but we need to understand what’s happening before we reveal it to the public,” Colonel Chaos says. “Unless we know the details, we’ll just add to the confusion.”

  “A different reality,” my mother says reverently. She frowns, puts a hand to her temple. “When I arrived, nothing looked familiar. A police officer asked me a simple question. He wondered if I needed help. And I... I attacked him without reason or provocation. They called for backup. Things escalated.”

  Smoke pours out of the building to my left; battered cars and fire trucks litter the street.

  “I’d say so.”

  “Chris? What’s going on? Who are these people?”

  Sometimes, talking to my mother is a lot like talking to Rose Nylund.

  I look to my right, where the idealized version of my father is gone, replaced by a bearded Colonel Chaos. The crushed vehicles dematerialize, and the police and firefighters now wear capes, masks, and bright spandex. Parallel Mom now wears a tight-fitting, glittering green outfit that leaves her midriff bare.

  One of the emergency forces barks, “You must all surrender now! The Jade Empress will show you mercy, but you must stand down!”

  My mother—the real Miss Lightspeed, so to speak—turns toward me. “Who’s the Jade Empress?”

  “Another version of you, looks like. I think we’re about to play a round of alternate-reality Boggle. No one wins at that.”

  The Jade Empress frowns. “My son, why are you wearing that ridiculous red costume? Have you allied with the Red Legion? Have they brainwashed you?”

  “First of all, it’s crimson,” I retort without thinking. “Second of all, it’s a uniform, okay? Third of all… you’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Karen? What are you wearing?” the bearded Colonel Chaos says, heavy bags under his eyes. He looks at the Jade Empress and my mother. His dark beard is flecked with white and gray, and he smells like someone spilled three cases of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey on him. “There are two of you? I’ve always wanted a little more foreplay, but this is…”

  The
Jade Empress slaps Colonel Chaos—which is a good thing, because I was about to do the same thing. No child ever needs to hear the word “foreplay” in a conversation involving his parents.

  Another shift…

  This time, Colonel Chaos sits in a silver wheelchair, his head shaved like he’s freaking Charles Xavier. Alternate-reality Miss Lightspeed now wears what I can only describe as a flowing Roman-era dress. A crown of flowers adorns her head.

  The shifts don’t appear to affect my mother, at least not physically.

  “Does anything feel different to you?” I ask her.

  “The people around us keep changing,” she says, closing her eyes wearily. The legion of super-powered men and women dissolves into a football team and a Navy SEAL unit. “I don’t think we’re different, though.”

  She’s right; it’s like we have multiverse-shifting immunity that would make the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2 jealous. We’re the only two constants. Otherwise, it’s like someone’s playing slots with reality. You just don’t know which combination fate will bring up.

  By now, the people around us are shifting and changing so much, we’ve come to ignore them. A version of my father yells something, then another appears in mid-sentence. Same thing with Miss Lightspeed, same thing with the police and firefighters on the scene.

  The smoking brick building shifts, too. One minute, it’s a baseball stadium. The next, a dog park. A factory. A bank building. The possibilities flash by at dizzying speed.

  “Did Dad say anything about what was happening?” I ask.

  My mother swallows. “He said we needed to return you to our reality. He was insistent about it, in fact. He says the Kiltechs aren’t quite what they appear. Invaders, yes. Misguided, yes.”

  “They could’ve made life a lot easier if they’d just sent us a letter about the Orange Bands,” I snap. “Instead of, you know, trying to take over our world.”

  “Extraterrestrial beings who believe they’re superior to mankind don’t usually ask for permission,” she points out. “But if I had been more focused, I could’ve reasoned with them and solved this diplomatically. I would’ve realized that the Orange Bands were not the saviors they appeared to be.”

  “On the plus side, neither of them is particularly trustworthy. I mean, the Kiltechs kidnapped people and ran experiments on them. They ran a smear campaign against our family,” I remind her. “On the other hand, the Bands’ self-righteous ‘humanity isn’t ready’ crap is bullshit.”

  “Watch your language, son.”

  I shrug. “The Bands wanted to make sure we fought against the Kiltechs so that we wouldn’t join forces against them. Almost worked, too.”

  “How can we stop them?” my mother asks.

  “I’m sure it’ll be easy,” I say sarcastically. I may not be ready to be a leader yet, but at least I know the basics. The Orange Bands have great power… and somewhere along the line, they missed the whole part about great responsibility.

  Earth’s a giant roulette wheel; round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows. As evidence, my father is currently wearing a mime outfit and pretending he’s trapped in a box. The other Miss Lightspeed sports a trench coat and fedora, apparently having arrived from the dimension where everyone dresses like they’re from The Maltese Falcon.

  “This is a mess,” I say. “Does Dad have a plan?”

  “From what I understand—”

  BOOM!

  A starburst of light opens in the sky, and Falcon Gray crashes to the ground.

  Either it’s his turn on the trans-dimensional sampler platter—or I’m cosmically attached to plucky comic relief.

  Another Miss Lightspeed appears, this one with hair, makeup, and uniform straight from a World War II movie.

  “It’s like I’m in a paper doll book,” my mother whispers.

  WWII Miss Lightspeed disappears; All-American Miss Lightspeed takes her place, complete with red, white, and blue gauntlets, silver boots, an ill-advised stars-and-stripes bustier, and a crown topped with an eagle.

  “We’re just having one of those days, you know, when someone hit ‘shuffle’ on Earth’s playlist,” I quip. “The realities are bleeding into each other. Jumbled, mixed up. I don’t think this is a good thing. Falcon Gray, how did you get here?”

  “Your father—both of them, actually—took control of the machine away from the Orange Bands. Miss Lightspeed went in first. I followed her here.”

  “Did they mention a plan? Please tell me they mentioned a plan. Do you know how we fix this?” I ask.

  Falcon Gray and Miss Lightspeed look at each other.

  “Bill said something about opening another rift in the multiverse.” She scratches Falcon Gray’s neck. “Did he tell you anything?”

  “You asking me or the bird?”

  “Either one of you,” my mother says, giggling. “I used to want a pony. I never got one, but then I could fly!”

  She rises a few feet in the air before touching down and grabbing me by my collar.

  “You insufferable buffoon!” she grunts, shaking me as she talks. “If you hadn’t convinced my no-good son to become a hero, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Falcon Gray grabs my mother’s hand, forcing her to release her grip. She takes a chunk of my uniform with it.

  Her eyes—they’re stone cold like the other Miss Lightspeed.

  She shakes her head and looks at the scrap of crimson fabric in her hand.

  “He shouldn’t have sent me here,” she whispers. “I’m too unstable.”

  For a long time, I’d thought it. I told my father, but held it back from other members of the Heroic Legion. While all the tests and charts and measurements say the woman standing in front of me is Miss Lightspeed, the true hero reborn, I never bought into it. Something always seemed off about her. Dad wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t listen. The memory loss, the erratic behavior, the Heroic Legion’s refusal to let her go on any missions of consequence—we all saw it, but no one would admit it. For all her powers and wisdom, my mother is broken, an echo of the woman she was, no more real to me than any of these ridiculous versions of her that come and go at the whim of the breaks in reality.

  The other Miss Lightspeed—perhaps, in all truth, the Miss Lightspeed who should exist—is threatening to take over entirely. We’re going to need more than a tackle from Zeus Caesar to fix this one.

  “Focus,” I prod gently. “Dad wants us to open a rift.”

  My mother regains her senses. For how long, I don’t know, but I’ll take it. “Your father says your ability is the key. You can run fast enough to unlock the gateways between the different realities.”

  Her statement sounds more like a question, but I let it slide.

  “All right, try to stay with me on this one,” I tell my mother and the birdman. “The Bands aren’t limited to Orange Bands. They’re like Skittles.” Falcon Gray squawks an interrogative and I realize comparing interstellar space cops to fruit chews with candy shells isn’t a good reference point. “Uh… the Bands come in several different colors—like a rainbow. They’re trying to unite all of their forces to take over the multiverse.”

  Though it’s completely inappropriate, I chuckle. “An alternate reality Mortimer Willoughby knows about the Bands’ master plan, and he’s set out to stop it.”

  His words come back again, and my thoughts drift away: defeat the Bluestreak. Help the Five.

  “Do not let your mind wander!” Falcon Gray cautions, noticing my distraction.

  “Sorry, KFC,” I say. “The Kiltechs came to Earth because they knew the Orange Bands would make their play here. The High Imperator even stumbled onto the Bands’ scheme—knowingly or unknowingly—and trapped their scout. He actually bought us some time.”

  “Why the show, then, Chris? Why not just pull you out of the crowd at your father’s trial? Why the invasion story?” my mother asks.

  “The Kiltechs aren’t completely benign. They’d rather control humanity and let us do
the dirty work for them. Plus, they’re tired of being stuck in our reality.”

  The ground shakes as the terrain shifts once more. It’s not a baseball stadium this time, nor a bank building, nor a factory. In this shifted reality, the smoking building becomes a gleaming silver spire, similar to the High Imperator’s old digs in the city formerly known as Chaopolis.

  Wait…

  Not a building.

  A ship.

  The design is undoubtedly Kiltech, outfitted with a garish exterior that would make the Silver Hawks insanely jealous. It seems to have just appeared out of nothingness.

  “Random alien ships. Awesome,” I say.

  “Did you not see it land, Son of Chaos?” Falcon Gray asks as I turn to my left.

  “Land? What?”

  A second later, the silvery surface disappears and, point of fact, a Kiltech ship actually does land on the ground.

  Falcon Gray stands all of two feet away from me, yet it seems there’s a rift in time between us.

  “Did you not see it land, Son of Chaos?” Falcon Gray asks.

  I turn to my left, but the birdman isn’t there. Instead, he stands on my right side with his arm-wings crossed.

  “How many of me do you see, Falcon Gray?”

  “There is but one Road Runner,” he says.

  The voice echoes to my left, “There is but one Road Runner.”

  Falcon Gray places a wing on my shoulder. “We are beginning to split. My bird-sense is screeching; my hyper-visual acuity sees cracks of light in the ground.”

  I look down, but it’s just boring dirt and grass. A second later, glowing cracks split across the ground and plots of earth begin to drift and break apart. To my left, Falcon Gray falls through…

  I race to my right and keep the birdman from falling in.

  “I owe you,” Falcon Gray says. “Where is your nest mother?”

  A crunching sound erupts below us, but my mother comes streaming down from above and hefts Falcon Gray and me away from danger with her signature speed and strength. The three of us hover over a dark abyss rimmed with yellow-orange light.

  “I do not want to go down there,” I say.