I saw Naymeer coming down the backstage stairs. He was met by two dados, who escorted him toward the helicopter that had landed in the outfield. Whatever was about to happen, Naymeer wasn’t going to be around to see it. Or maybe he wanted to watch it from the air.
The door to the TV trailer flew open. Two more red-shirt dados blasted out. They were holding Professor Gastigian. They too must have realized how important Gastigian was to their enemies. Haig struggled against them, but it was no use. The old man couldn’t battle two dados. I wasn’t doing such a great job either. There was nothing I could to do help the professor. There was nothing I could do to help Alder. It was a complete and total loss. Haig was dragged toward the waiting helicopter. Surprisingly, I was too. Up ahead, the rotors of the big chopper started to whine and turn. Naymeer climbed aboard, followed shortly after by Haig, who was thrown aboard. I was last. The red shirts took me right to the door and pushed me in. I hit the deck and tried to bounce back to my feet, but a dado followed me in and pushed me back down onto the deck. He stood over me with his machine gun ready. I wasn’t going anywhere.
The door was slammed shut from the outside. The dado on board reached back with one hand and threw the handle to lock it tight. The rotors whined. The chopper shuddered. Moments later we were airborne.
The helicopter looked like a military troop carrier. It was pretty much a big, flying room with bench seats along either side. Haig was on the floor in a heap. I didn’t see Naymeer. I figured he must have gone to the cockpit. I rolled to my right and crawled toward the window. I needed to see what was happening below. The dado didn’t stop me. I guess he figured there was nowhere for me to go. The helicopter rose quickly and hovered between the other two choppers, giving me a blimp’s-eye view of Yankee Stadium. Looking down, I saw the area in front of the stage was burning. What seemed like a random fire from ground level looked very different from above. It wasn’t simply burning grass. There was a pattern to the fire. A very distinct pattern. Burning on the field below was the star symbol. The people in the stadium were actually drawn to it out of curiosity. With Naymeer off the stage and the helicopter gone, they must have thought the show was over. I could see them pushing closer to the field from every level, straining to get a look at the burning symbol, as if it had all been some spectacular stunt.
It was spectacular all right. But it was no stunt.
The fire seemed to have a life of its own. Instead of burning out, it flared brighter. This was no ordinary fire. It burned into the ground, sinking lower, eating into the earth. Smoke swirled, nearly obliterating the flames. As if that weren’t impossible enough, the fiery star began to spin. It was as if the symbol were a physical object. Like a demonic dygo, it burrowed into the ground, creating what at first looked like a deep pit. As it dug deeper, I could see there was more to it than that. The spinning star went straight down into the earth, leaving a wall of gray rocks in its wake. It was a sight I knew all too well.
Right there, in the center of Yankee Stadium, a monstrous flume was being born. It was larger than any flume I’d ever seen. The mouth had to be thirty yards wide.
“Quite the show,” came a voice to the rear of the helicopter. It was the red-shirt dado. My antenna went up. Until then, none of the red shirts had spoken. What was different about this one?
I should have guessed. The guard lowered his machine gun, raised his arms, and transformed. Yes, it was Saint Dane. I didn’t react. Nothing surprised me anymore. I was floating through a dream. The demon casually strolled across the cabin and sat down on the far side, making himself comfortable.
“Don’t bother staring at me, Pendragon,” he declared. “The show has only begun.”
What did that mean? I looked back down to see the spinning star was so deep within the flume, it was no more than a pin spot of light. It had burrowed into the depths of infinity. A moment later its light winked out. It was quickly replaced by another type of light. A familiar one. From deep down inside the vertical tunnel, a faint glow appeared. The new flume was coming to life.
Seeing the tunnel activate made me realize what this was all leading to. The demonstration at the conclave the night before was prelude. This was the main event. Whatever happened to Mark and Courtney and the other poor victims was about to be repeated here…times seventy thousand.
I was about to witness the Bronx Massacre.
Saint Dane didn’t even bother to watch. He sat straight, with his arms folded across his chest. “I thought it was quite accommodating of the Foundation to provide us with the opportunity to make this bold statement.”
“What statement?” I spat. “That the Ravinians are mass murderers?”
“The people of Earth made their choice, Pendragon,” Saint Dane said with finality. “They have accepted the Ravinians’ philosophy. Still, there are doubters. The events here today will prove the power of the Ravinians is absolute.”
“You mean you’ll create such fear that nobody would dare oppose them.”
“Yes,” Saint Dane declared. “We’ll then move on to other territories and repeat the process.”
The smoke surrounding the flume began to whirl, creating a tornado-like effect around the mouth of the tunnel. The light from down below grew brighter.
“Fear is such an effective tool, don’t you think?” Saint Dane remarked. “It certainly worked to fill that stadium with thousands of people for this demonstration. Though I suppose the lion’s share of credit belongs to the professor here.”
Professor Gastigian finally stirred. He had been lying on the deck of the helicopter since being thrown inside. I thought he had been too frightened to move. Not anymore. He sat up slowly, looked at me, and smiled. He actually smiled. It was a totally odd reaction. His cause was lost. His movement crushed. His glorious, peaceful demonstration had come crashing down around him. Yet he sat there looking as if it didn’t bother him at all.
I lied before. There were still some things that surprised me.
As he sat on the floor of that helicopter, Professor Haig
Gastigian began to transform. My stomach dropped. The nightmare had gotten worse. Seconds later the professor was gone.
In his place was Nevva Winter.
I fell against the side of the chopper, as if I had been pushed. I had seen many things as a Traveler. None shocked me as much as this.
“Well done, Nevva,” Saint Dane said. “You throw quite a party.”
Nevva stood up and brushed off her pants. She wore a dark suit, much like Saint Dane’s. Her dark hair was as perfect as always.
“Thank you,” she replied. “It really is gratifying when a plan is realized with such perfection.”
“I never doubted it,” Saint Dane replied.
I was spinning out of control. Any sense of reality was long gone. I needed to grab on to something solid or I’d go out of my mind.
“H-How long?” I croaked.
“How long was I Professor Gastigian?” Nevva asked. “About a year. Long enough to use his network to arrange this rally.”
“This was all a setup?” I gasped. “All the speeches against the Ravinians, all the protests, all the interviews-it was just to get these people to trust you so you could lure them here?”
Nevva smiled innocently and nodded.
Saint Dane had done many horrible things. He set tribes against one another. Races against one another. Even criminals against one another. This was the single most heinous act yet. He and Nevva Winter had arranged a coldblooded mass murder, the likes of which never had been i seen anywhere in Halla. Calling them monsters would be a compliment. Together, they were the physical embodiment of evil. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at either of them. I turned back toward the window to see the mouth of the flume was glowing. Through the light, I saw the faint hints of the sparkling tunnel walls that had turned to crystal.
It was beginning to pull.
The people felt it. This giant, impossible hole in the center of the field was drawing them
toward the edge. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was relentless. The people didn’t realize what was happening at first. They grabbed on to railings; they hugged each other; they clawed at the ground-all to keep from being pulled into the swirling smoke and light. I was grateful for the sounds of the helicopter rotors. It meant I couldn’t hear their screams.
“Nevva, my love!” Naymeer exclaimed.
The old man stepped out of the cockpit. He went right to Nevva with his arms open, as if greeting a long-lost daughter. Or long-lost nanny. Nevva had raised him on First Earth. “This could not have gone better. I trust you weren’t jostled too roughly.”
“Not a bit, Alexander. Congratulations.”
“To us all!” Naymeer declared.
My back was to the fuselage wall. I think I would have fallen over without that support. My heart raced. I was breathing so hard I was hyperventilating. Below us, thousands of people were being pulled to their deaths, and the people up here were chitchatting casually like old chums. I looked sideways out the window to see people being pulled along the grass, digging their hands in, desperately trying to stop themselves. They were going to lose. I saw people tumbling down from the upper decks, falling into the crowd below. Other people hung on to railings, dangling dangerously over the side, as the insistent force kept pulling at them.
Naymeer hurried to the window near me and looked below. He frowned. “Isn’t this over yet?” he grumbled impatiently. “I should be at the United Nations by now. Or the White House. Or anywhere with a camera where I can speak to the world. How long will this take?”
The guy was talking about the terror below as if it were nothing more than a minor annoyance.
“Soon enough, Alexander,” Nevva said with a chuckle. “You always were such an impatient boy.”
“Alexander,” Naymeer repeated thoughtfully. “Such a common name. Perhaps I should be knighted. How does Sir Alexander strike you?”
“If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll have,” Saint Dane assured him. “You deserve nothing less.”
Naymeer smiled, satisfied. He glanced down again and exclaimed, “Look! It’s like they’re being pulled down the drain of a sink. It looks quite silly actually.”
That’s when I snapped.
In that one instant, my swirl of confusion and shock and horror grew focused. It became rage. Everything that had happened in the previous few fateful minutes flashed through my head in fast forward. The sad faces of the people below, the UN announcement, Saint Dane munching popcorn, the predatory helicopters, the red shirts, the fear, the panic, the looks on the faces of so many people who’d had no idea that they were being lured into a trap, Naymeer’s ring, the new, monstrous flume, Nevva.
Nevva Winter.
Maybe above all, I remembered the violent death of my friend Alder. It all came back to me in a blistering barrage of images that ended on the smug face of Alexander Naymeer. The founder of Ravinia. The face of the horror. The mass murderer. It’s hard to describe the anger I felt, but I’ll try.
I lunged at Naymeer. It was the last thing he expected. I grabbed him by the throat with both hands. I could have squeezed the life out of him right there, but that would have been too easy.
“Pendragon!” Nevva shouted with genuine surprise.
I locked looks with Naymeer. His face was turning red. He couldn’t speak. Hands crushing your windpipe will have that effect. I saw the terror in his eyes. I liked it.
“Pendragon, no!” Nevva screamed. “There are other choices.”
I don’t know why Nevva bothered talking. After all that she had done, did she actually think I would believe anything she had to say? There was only one thing on my mind. Revenge. I wanted to kill Naymeer. A guy who had so little regard for life simply didn’t deserve to live. I pulled the horrid little man over to the door of the helicopter. With one foot I lifted the handle, released the door lock, and kicked it open. Wind filled the craft along with the thunderous noise of the rotors. Naymeer struggled futilely. He wasn’t strong enough to fight me. I was being driven by insanity. I would not be denied. I forced him to look out the door, over the edge. Below us, the people were grasping at one another in one last desperate attempt to keep from being sucked into the flume.
“Look!” I screamed at him. “Is this your glorious future? Is this what the people of the world have to look forward to? Mass execution of those who don’t fit your ideal?”
He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it. I wouldn’t accept that. He had to know.
“I said, ‘Look!’” I bellowed. “This is your paradise. This is your Utopia.”
“Bravo, Pendragon,” Saint Dane said. He walked to the center of the helicopter and stood with his hands behind his back. He didn’t make a move to stop me. “I knew there was another side to you. My only surprise is that it took so long to surface.”
“Don’t come near me,” I shouted to the demon, and pushed Naymeer farther over the edge.
“I don’t intend to,” Saint Dane said calmly. “This is your show now.”
“Bring him back in, Bobby,” Nevva said with what actually sounded like compassion. I was way beyond hearing it. I tightened my grip on Naymeer’s neck. He moved his eyes to look down. I don’t think he cared about seeing what was happening with the flume. He was afraid of falling.
“By the way, Pendragon, did you know that the Traveler from Third Earth is dead?” Saint Dane asked. “Patrick was his name, I believe. He was killed by Ravinian guardians on Third Earth. Alder from Denduron lies dead below us. Mark and Courtney are gone as well. You’ve lost so many friends in such a short time. It’s a shame, really. Now the man responsible is in your grasp. His fate is in your hands. Literally. Will he live to rule Earth? Or pay for their lives with his own? The decision is all yours.”
I heard Saint Dane but couldn’t take my eyes off Naymeer. He really was the guy responsible. He was a Traveler. He used that as a tool to gain power. It didn’t matter that he was being influenced by Saint Dane. The choices were his.
He chose to create Ravinia. He chose to condemn half the population of Earth. He chose to execute thousands. He chose to kill my friends.
“It’s not hard to kill,” Saint Dane said in a low growl. “When it’s justified.”
The helicopter was hovering directly over the flume. In a matter of seconds people would start falling in.
“Bobby, listen to me,” Nevva pleaded. “This isn’t you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
If I had been in my right mind, I might actually have thought she was being sincere. I wasn’t. Her words had no meaning. Second Earth was lost. Saint Dane’s quest to control Halla had succeeded. I had my hands around the neck of the man he chose to run it all. Through the swirl of emotion and insanity, I had a moment of total clarity. In that instant, I understood that this was inevitable. From the moment I left home with Uncle Press, all that happened had led to this. All the battles for all the territories. All the successes. The defeats. The deaths. The sacrifices. The sadness. The loneliness. I had lost everything. My life. My friends. My home. My family. Where was my family? Where was my family?
All of that had been prelude. It had come down to this.
“Don’t do it,” Nevva begged.
“She’s right,” Saint Dane added. “Don’t do it. Show the same weakness that caused you to hide on Ibara. That is why you failed, Pendragon. You don’t have the strength to lead.”
I was shaking with anger. For a brief moment I thought I heard the sounds from down below. I heard the screams. I felt their fear. It was the final horror. I couldn’t take it anymore. Somebody had to pay.
I shoved Naymeer out of the helicopter.
The man screamed. He plummeted down, headed directly for the flume. Our eyes locked as he fell. I could feel the surprise and terror that gripped him as he plunged to his death. For that brief moment, I embraced revenge. It felt good.
And then Saint Dane laughed.
“Finally!” he declared in tr
iumph.
I spun back to him, holding on to the edge of the doorway, the rush of blood and adrenaline still pounding through me.
“Pendragon, it is now truly over.”
I couldn’t find the words to ask what that meant. Saint Dane found them for me.
“It all came down to this. This was the final test, Pendragon. As I predicted, you have failed.”
Those words will haunt me forever.
I glanced down to see the final, excruciating moments of Alexander Naymeer’s life. He fell directly into the flume. Out of sight. A moment later, a ball of light and smoke leaped from the flume, shooting straight to the sky. Straight toward us. We were hit with a blinding flash of light and a rush of energy that could only have been powered by some demonic force. The helicopter buffeted wildly. It started spinning out of control. It felt as if we were caught in a tornado. I held on to the helicopter’s frame to keep from falling out. Nevva did the same across from me. Saint Dane didn’t move. He stood there calmly. Laughing. The pilot no longer controlled the helicopter. We were moving, that much I could tell. But to where? Between the smoke and the bright light outside, I lost all sense of direction. We could have been flying higher, or about to crash to the ground. Outside, there was nothing but white and light. The g-force increased, pushing me against the side wall. Then, there was a break. I saw something solid through the smoke. We had plummeted down to the same level as the top tiers of the stadium, and we were falling fast.
“And now,” Saint Dane yelled through the sounds of the whining motor and the terrified screams. “At long last, we can begin.”
A moment later we dropped into the flume.
JOURNAL #36
(CONTINUED)
SECONDEARTH
Lightblew inthroughthe windows, blindingme. The helicopter spiraled down so violently it made me dizzy. I braced myself for a crash that I felt sure would come at any second, either on the field or on the edge of the flume.
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