Because if they did, there’d be no escaping again. She’d gotten lucky last time. Through some combination of grit and fortune, she’d broken through whatever force had kept the entity separated from her.
The Vex wouldn’t make the same mistake twice though. She knew how desperate they were; everything that had happened to both her and Carson ever since they’d arrived in this cursed time-period evidenced that.
The Vex were sufficiently motivated and powerful to do what they wanted.
‘God, what do we do?’ Carson asked again, his desperation obvious.
She had no idea what they’d done to him in his simulation, other than the fact they’d made him believe she was dead.
Yet whatever it had been, Carson now seemed weak. Unsure of himself. They’d sapped his resolve.
Despite how dire the situation was, she took a moment to consider that fact.
Did she really mean that much to him? Could the prospect that she’d died unsettle him so much emotionally that it would underwrite his drive, his skills, and his fire?
She didn’t have the time to ask, and neither did she dare.
Instead, she took a breath. A short, harsh breath.
And she decided what to do.
‘We wait,’ she announced.
‘What?’
‘We wait until the entity has recharged, then I’m going to use it to open a time gate.’
‘Nida, you can’t do that. The entity . . . you can’t tire it out. You can’t use its power . . . wait, hold on,’ he trailed off as she stared at her with a mix of astonishment and worry, ‘what do you mean you’re going to use it to open a time gate? The entity only acts when it wants to.’
She took a brief moment to consider him in silence. She thought of not telling him, of keeping the fact she could access the entity to herself. Yet as soon as that thought arose in her mind, she dismissed it.
She trusted him.
Implicitly.
In fact, she trusted him more than anyone she had ever trusted.
‘There’s a lot to explain, but just trust me—I can access the entity. I can force it to open a time gate. That’s what I did in the past . . . and that’s how we got here,’ she added with a wince. ‘I can’t control where the time gate takes us, but I can use it to get away from here,’ she turned to face the opposite wall. It shook under some powerful barrage.
‘I . . . ,’ Carson began. But he did not finish his words. Instead he just stood there and considered her, then the wall behind them. ‘I trust you,’ he finally added.
She smiled at that.
In that moment, it didn’t matter that a whole hoard of angry futuristic Vex were trying to storm the room to get to them. All that mattered was his sentiment.
She wanted to reach out her hand to take his.
But she hesitated.
He didn’t.
He stepped in, right beside her, and clasped his palm close to hers. Their fingers interlacing, they shared a silence.
A long, drawn out, heavy silence punctuated only by the sounds of the Vex trying to get through.
‘How long will it take?’ he whispered eventually.
She knew exactly what he spoke of. The entity. He needed to know how long it would take until it recharged enough to open another gate.
He no longer questioned whether it would be safe; neither did he doubt she could do it.
He didn’t point out she could corrupt it.
He just trusted her.
And she trusted herself. She trusted that intuition that told her she could open another gate without corrupting the entity. She also trusted her judgement when it came to this time-period. It was of utmost importance that she get the entity out of here before the Vex could use it as a weapon.
‘Nida?’ he prompted slowly.
‘I don’t know,’ she finally realised.
It was a horrible, fraught conclusion, but she couldn’t hide from it. Though she could still feel the entity within, and she was now more attuned to it than she had ever been before, she could not tell how long it would take.
‘Nida,’ Carson began.
He didn’t get the opportunity to finish his sentence. At that exact moment, something exploded in the corridor outside. It sent the medical equipment shaking to the floor and scattering out in all directions.
But while it fell away, the door could not be opened. Because she’d warped it. She’d completely destroyed it when she’d used the entity to blast free.
Her eyes drew wide as another explosion rocked her to the core.
All she could do was stand there and stare.
And hold onto him.
‘Nida?’ he tried to grasp hold of her attention once more.
Finally, she turned to him.
‘Whatever happens,’ he began.
Again, he didn’t get the opportunity to finish his sentence.
Instead, the wall before them started to glow. At first, it was only a single point about a few centimetres across. A bright red dot glowing the colour of sparking fire.
Then it grew.
Quickly, until it covered a whole section of the wall.
‘They’re burning their way in,’ Carson acknowledged with a scream. He barrelled into her, pulling her back towards the other side of the room.
She let him pull her back. Yet it was pointless. Whether they stood against the far wall or in the centre of the room was irrelevant; as soon as the Vex made it through, Carson and Nida were done for.
. . . .
Yet she didn’t give up.
She held onto this new-found resolve. The same resolve breaking through the Vex’s illusions had given her.
She also centred her mind.
She opened up her energy. She tried to connect with the entity. Tried to convey to it how desperate this situation had become.
She could feel it leap up through her; rising from her palm into her wrist, then high into her arm and chest.
It felt like electricity climbing her flesh and bones.
She didn’t fight the sensation though.
She held onto it and followed where it would lead.
‘Nida,’ Carson called, pulling her backwards again. ‘Christ . . . I just . . . god, what do we do?’
Wait.
They had to wait.
And hope that it work out.
Hope the entity recharged in time. And beyond that, hope that she was right. Hope that by opening the time gate, she wouldn’t corrupt the entity and take the rest of reality with it.
It was a big if.
But she had faith.
Call it her connection to the entity, but she knew that she could do it.
So she just listened to his desperate shouts, and all the while held onto his hand as tightly as she could.
Then she closed her eyes and beckoned it forward.
Chapter 14
Carson Blake
He couldn’t believe it.
He just couldn’t believe it.
She was alive.
She was right by his side, her hand in his.
To confirm that fact, he redoubled his grip.
Sure enough, he could still feel her fingers; he could still enjoy the reassuring warmth of her palm.
But that didn’t change what was happening to them.
Though Carson now appreciated that the events of the past few weeks—ever since he had awoken on Remus 12 only to be told Nida was dead—weren’t real. They’d been some kind of manufactured illusion.
He didn’t understand it, not really, and though Nida appeared to know more, now wasn’t the time to question her.
Now was the time to fight, yet he had nothing to fight with.
Now was the time to defend themselves, but there’s wasn’t the time.
One look around him at the crushed and battered machines along the opposite wall told him that whatever time-period they were in contained powerful and technologically advanced Vex. Vex that could reach right into his mind and convince him Nida
was dead.
But more than that, trick him into sharing the battle capability of the United Galactic Coalition. Trick him into showing what he could do.
That fact played at the edges of his mind, and brought with it unbelievable guilt.
He couldn’t think of that now though.
He had to do something, anything.
Yet there was nothing to do.
So he just stood there holding her hand.
For her part, the worst recruit in 1000 years seemed calm. Terrified, yes, but still deceptively calm. It was as if she’d given into something, as if she’d realised some important fact that enabled her to rise above this situation.
He hissed her name again, and in response, she tightened her grip.
She’d told him to wait.
To wait for the entity to recharge, as she’d put it. Then she was going to use it to open a time gate.
. . . .
It sounded impossible. And if it wasn’t impossible, it sounded deadly.
The entity corrupted every time it used its energy, so reaching inside it and forcing it to open a gate sounded like suicide.
Yet he didn’t question her, didn’t pull her back.
Because he trusted her.
The emotion locked him to the spot. It saw him standing silently by her side.
It wasn’t to be confused with hope either; he didn’t wish that she was right.
He just knew she was.
The pressure of the situation was rapidly washing away the fog that had eaten him for the past few weeks—or at least the few weeks that had passed whilst he’d been trapped in that vision.
It all seemed insubstantial now. And impossible.
How could he have believed that Nida had died in her room? How had he let people convince him of that?
Now was not the time for self-admonishment though.
Because now it was over.
The opposite wall actually melted away.
Yet there was no heat.
Though the whole thing glowed a hellish red and orange, no heat buffeted into the room frying the both of them into crisps.
It was, yet again, a testament to how powerful these Vex were.
Incredible.
And unstoppable.
It was over.
As the wall melted away, he saw soldiers behind it readying their weapons.
Though their faces were obscured by helmets, he recognised their stances. He understood their intent.
And time just slowed down.
As the realisation that this was it—that this was the end—shot through him before the soldier’s bullets could finish the job, he turned.
He crumpled over her as she stood there resolutely, her eyes closed and her expression calm.
He brought his arm around her head and rested his cheek against her ear.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered in her ear.
Then he waited to be shot.
. . . .
No bullet lanced across the room. No weapon arced towards him.
Nothing.
Instead, in a wash of energy, he felt her skin vibrate.
And he saw it.
Through his tightly closed eyes, he saw the glow.
The blue.
The light.
It washed over her. And just as it had on the roof, it rapidly turned to white.
Bright, powerful, blinding, incandescent white.
It occupied the room like a presence.
And as it did, he felt the entity.
All around him.
Inside, outside, everything.
She lifted off her feet, her hand still in his.
He tightened his grip, terrified of letting her go.
Yet she wouldn’t let him fall; she took him along with her as she pushed into the air.
He heard surprised shouts from behind him, then finally the blast of gunfire.
Red-hot bursts of plasma flew towards them, yet before they could hit, they slowed, bent, and took up orbit around Nida, flying around in a vortex above her head.
He had just a moment to stare at them in complete surprise before he felt it.
Time slowed down.
Or if not time, then something.
Something that made the endless progression of change meaningful.
Whatever eternity sat beyond history.
It wrapped around him, and it wrapped around her.
Then the floor beneath him gave way, as did the walls and ceiling.
They did not break apart as they had in his vision.
They simply drifted away as if he were leaving them far behind.
And he was.
They fell through time.
This time together.
This time they could not be torn apart.
Chapter 15
Cadet Nida Harper
She did it.
She opened the gate.
She forced her mind into the task, and once again called on the power of the entity. As it surged within her, she used that power to divide time in half. To break through the binds that kept it riveted to the spot. Until it lapped around her, washing over her body as if she’d shattered the dam that held it at bay.
She enjoyed the sensation, yet she did not lose herself to it. And neither did she lose herself to the power of the entity.
She controlled it until the gate opened and finally closed.
Then they arrived.
In another time and another place.
She struck the ground, rolling to the side, her body suddenly filled with unbelievable fatigue.
Yet she did not black out.
She forced her eyes to remain open.
She would not be surprised again. She would not lose consciousness only for the Vex to capture her.
That would have been what had happened last time. When she’d opened the time gate on that rooftop in the past, she would have plunged through, and both her and Carson would have lost consciousness immediately, leaving them easy targets for the Vex of the future.
Well not this time.
She heard him fall behind her.
He was out cold.
Yet he was alive.
For the briefest of moments, she closed her eyes and held onto that fact.
They were both alive.
They’d made it out of there.
But to when and to where?
She forced her eyes open again.
She was in some kind of chamber. It was cold, it was dark, and there were no decorations. Just a floor, ceiling, and walls, all hewn from rough stone.
Instantly she recognised her surroundings.
The tunnels of Remus 12.
She’d been here before.
Yet before she could race up to the surface to see if the stars were falling from the sky or whether a troop of Vex were waiting for her, she stopped.
Pain blasted through her.
The entity stared to vibrate, hot and frantic.
She could feel it corrupting.
She could feel it trying to tear itself apart as it lost all control of itself.
Then the dust picked up from her feet. The rubble cascaded in chunks form the ceiling. Rocks pulled themselves from the door frame.
And all of it plummeted towards her.
As it did, her implant burned into her flesh as if it were now operating way beyond its capacity.
She had just a moment to recognise what was happening in between her crippling bouts of pain.
The entity was having another attack, and this time it could be its last.
For there was no one to protect Nida now. Carson was out cold.
The glowing red device he’d used to protect her was gone too, as was his gun and armour.
She was on her own.
The rubble rained down, striking her head, cheeks, arms, and torso.
She fell to her knees, trying to protect herself in between gasping as more pain gouged through her like swords slicing open her arms and legs.
Larger stone
s struck her back and legs, one even glancing off her ear and cutting it. Blood spattered forward, then instantly turned, trapped in the vortex. It swirled around her until it splattered across her closed eyes and mouth.
She could smell it, taste it.
And she knew more would come.
She heard more stones pulling from the ceiling this time.
She had seconds.
She used them.
Just as her desperation reached its peak, she remembered.
Her resolve. Her decision to do whatever it would take to save the entity, Carson, and the United Galactic Coalition.
She was quite possibly everyone’s last hope.
So she fought.
She stood.
She let the rocks slam into her.
And she concentrated.
She could access the entity with ease now. She knew where it resided. She knew what it felt like.
And she also knew how to lock it away.
How to block it off from her body and mind.
That is what she now did.
She wrapped herself around it protectively, sacrificing her own self to the chaos of corruption.
She could feel it break through her.
But it did not kill her. It couldn’t do to Nida what it could do to the entity. For Nida was part of this reality. She was not some cross-dimensional being.
She was human.
So she fought with what she had. She curled her mind tight around the entity and protected it.
. . . .
It worked.
She saved it, or at least she thought she did.
For she could not appreciate at the time what it would take to truly set the entity free.
The rubble fell from the air. The rocks scattered around her, and the dust dashed lightly and innocently against her shoulders and face.
She did it.
She saved herself and kept the entity safe at the same time.
Before she could truly consider what she’d just achieved, Carson stirred.
She dropped to her knees beside him.
‘Carson,’ she said in a single breath. ‘Carson,’ she repeated as she leaned down as close as she could get.
She planted a hand flat on his chest, and soon enough she felt him move against it.
His eyes blinked open and a groan escaped his lips.
‘What . . . ,’ be began. Then he tried to snap upright.
He couldn’t though. He appeared weak. Plus, Nida still kept her hand weighed down firmly on the centre of his chest.
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