Era of the ULTRAs (The Last Hero Book 5)

by Matt Blake

But as Damon got closer, he saw they didn’t look well. Not as fresh-faced as they usually did. Not as much color in their cheeks.

  But they were alive.

  That was the main thing.

  They were alive.

  They turned around and looked right at Damon.

  “Damon?”

  Damon’s smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, pulling it right up his face. “Ellicia,” he said.

  He walked over to Ellicia’s bedside and without any regard for what kind of state Ellicia might be in, he hugged her. She hugged him back, holding him tight.

  “We thought you were gone,” he said.

  “Well, me too. But I’m still here. I’m still here.”

  Damon felt his eyes clouding over, then. He wondered if she knew. Really, he should be the one to tell her. The one to break the news.

  He pulled away from Ellicia and looked her right in her eyes, as difficult as that was. “Ellicia, there’s something I need to—”

  “I know,” she said.

  Damon frowned. “Huh?”

  Ellicia smiled. “I know. About Kyle. About what happened to him.” She pointed up at the screen at the end of her bed. Rolling news coverage about the disappearance of Glacies, about how he was believed to be dead, based on seismic activity and all that weirdness.

  But Ellicia didn’t seem particularly… bothered. If anything, she seemed kind of content.

  “How come you’re… you’re so chilled. About it all?”

  Ellicia looked around at Damon and her smile widened. “Because I don’t think he’s gone.”

  Damon swallowed a lump in his throat. “I… The news say—”

  “The news say a lot of things. But they don’t know him like we do, Damon. They don’t know how strong he is. What he’s capable of.”

  She turned back to the screen, where two panelists were discussing the “death of Glacies,” and she turned the television off.

  “He visited me,” Ellicia said.

  Damon frowned. He almost slipped again. “What… How—”

  “About a week ago. I felt him next to me. Felt his cold hand holding mine. He told me to be strong. That everything was going to be okay.” She wiped away a tear. “And it is now. Right?”

  “But you’ve been in a coma for three weeks.”

  “Maybe so. But I didn’t have any dreams in that coma. I just knew Kyle was beside me at one point. And hey. We’re still here, right? So whatever happened, whoever Kyle was fighting, he has to have won.”

  Damon knew Ellicia was right. Catalyst was gone. His body had been found in the water between Argentina and Antarctica by a touring cruise. That’s what started the search for Kyle across Antarctica.

  And they’d eventually found traces of his blood, deep under the ice.

  Then, the search had ended.

  “Just because he’s won doesn’t mean he’s still here,” Damon said.

  “Thought you were here to cheer me up?”

  “Sorry. I—”

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. I just… I don’t want to believe he’s still here. I don’t have to believe it. I just do. Don’t you?”

  Damon didn’t want to upset Ellicia by telling her what he thought.

  So instead, he just leaned over and hugged her again.

  “Wherever he is, he saved everyone,” he said. “He saved everyone all over again.”

  “Because he’s a hero,” Ellicia said. “And he stepped up. Just like he knew he had to all along.”

  Damon sighed, and nodded. He looked over at the window outside the hospital. “He is a hero. And he always will be.”

  He stared out of the window at the falling snow, as the sky darkened, and he held on to Ellicia, his friend.

  Then he closed his eyes and the pair of them cried.

  The snow continued to fall outside the window.

  Damon and Ellicia kept on hugging.

  They didn’t see the speck of frost creep up the glass, then disappear.

  Like it’d been brushed by magic.

  Or by fingertips…

  45

  I opened my eyes and gasped for air.

  I saw darkness. Darkness all around me. Darkness everywhere.

  I tried to squint but I couldn’t see a thing.

  All the while I kept on gasping.

  Kept on spluttering.

  I wasn’t sure where I was. When I was. Who I was wasn’t even particularly clear.

  All I knew was that I should be dead.

  Wherever I was, and whenever I was, I should be—

  “Kyle?”

  Kyle. Yes. That was my name. Kyle Peters. Staten Island. Went to high school at…

  “Or should we say, ‘Glacies?’”

  Another voice in the darkness. This one was different. Deeper. And yet like the other one, it was strangely familiar.

  And like the other one, it triggered a whole barrage of memories.

  I was Kyle Peters.

  I was Glacies. Hero. ULTRA.

  I’d just defeated Catalyst.

  I’d sacrificed myself to make sure the Failsafe could never hurt anyone.

  And now I was…

  Well, where was I now?

  What was I now?

  “Can he see us?”

  “He’ll see us when he’s ready.”

  I tried to open my mouth and speak but my jaw ached so much and my throat was raw. I was disoriented by the darkness. It felt like I was floating. Like there was no up, no down, no direction in any way.

  Then I saw a sudden piercing light right ahead of me.

  I covered my eyes. The light was painful. And as much as I had no idea how long I’d been out cold, I felt like it’d been a long time. A very long time. It had to have been.

  But I saw the light fading. And in that light, I could see a figure. A silhouette. Someone I recognized. Someone I’d seen before. Someone I’d…

  Then I saw another.

  Another silhouette, right by the side of that familiar figure.

  And as they got closer, I grew more and more convinced that I was dead.

  As they drifted closer, I grew more certain that they weren’t real. That this was some kind of hallucination.

  But they kept on getting closer.

  And soon enough, they were close enough for me to make out clearly.

  “Kyle,” the voice on the left said. “Good to see you again. Bro.”

  I blinked a few times, and I saw exactly who it was.

  Daniel Peters. Nycto. My brother.

  And by his side…

  Orion.

  My biological father.

  “How…” I started, unable to spit the words out. “How did—”

  “There’s a time and a place for how and why,” another voice said.

  This voice came from behind me. And when I heard it, it made my arms shiver all over.

  Because I recognized that voice.

  I recognized it clearly.

  I turned around and I saw Saint floating toward me.

  I went to activate my abilities but nothing happened. I tried to fly at Saint, but I just went wobbling past him, bouncing against the walls of darkness.

  When I looked back, reorienting myself, I saw that he was by Daniel and Orion’s side.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Saint said. “I am the least of your worries right now.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Orion said.

  Daniel shrugged. “What he said.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. What I was hearing. “This can’t be real. This can’t be real.”

  “It is real,” Saint said.

  He hovered up so he was directly opposite me.

  “You don’t have to worry about me right now because there’s a greater threat. A far, far greater threat, getting closer and closer as we speak.”

  “What threat? What—what is this?”

  “The apocalypse is coming, Kyle. And it’s approaching fast.”

  “What’s goi
ng on?”

  “Do you want to see?” Saint asked.

  I looked past Saint. Down at Daniel, at Orion. For some sort of sign that this must be a trap. That this wasn’t what it looked like.

  But in the end, I found myself looking back at Saint, intrigued by what he was asking.

  “Yes,” I said.

  A smile crept across Saint’s scarred mouth. “Good,” he said. “Then I’ll show you.”

  He hovered out of the way.

  And then something started happening.

  Together, between him, Daniel and Orion, it felt like the darkness was peeling away. Like the sky or whatever was around us was just falling apart like old wallpaper.

  And when they’d pulled all that old wallpaper away, I saw what was behind it.

  Exactly what was behind it.

  “Now, do you understand?” Saint asked.

  I hovered alongside Saint, Orion, and Daniel, and I stared up into the sky.

  I stared up at what was coming. I was speechless. All I could manage was: “What… what is…?”

  Saint put a hand on my back. And it said a lot about how stunned I was that I didn’t even flinch upon contact by my greatest foe. “That, my boy, is the apocalypse. And it’s coming right for us. For everyone.”

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any reference to real locations is only for atmospheric effect, and in no way truly represents those locations.

  Copyright © 2016 by Matt Blake

  Cover design by Damonza

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