by Brandt Legg
END OF BOOK TWO
Outmove
1
Time’s a funny thing, I thought, as I woke Amber and Linh. In the year-and-a-half since Rose returned with Clastier, the world had become a distorted, tortured version of the one where I’d grown up. Hiding and learning were all we ever seemed to do and I was tired of both.
We rushed into the portal. Omnia’s agents couldn’t be far, the heat warning had my body temperature soaring. Our habit of sleeping within sight of a portal, for a fast escape, had kept us alive this long, but didn’t necessarily provide protection. Omnia Agents could pursue us inside and often had.
“Aunt Rose was supposed to meet us today,” Linh said. “I guess we’ll catch up with her in Yellowstone.” We never stayed in the same place for more than a night or two.
It had been a long time since we found out that Aunt Rose’s death, betrayal, and cooperation with Lightyear had all been staged, and yet it still bothered me. Shockingly, Rose was also a mystic, a scholarly one at that. Her methods, unconventional even by the standards of the whacked-out crew of ten mystics I’d been learning from, commanded respect among the others. Yangchen and Rose had manipulated portals in a way still unclear in order to bring Clastier into our current lifetime. He and I shared a soul but we were very different. His wisdom and selflessness had become my greatest inspiration. Circumstances kept us apart most of the time, but our chance would come. They had brought him back, not to help me defeat Omnia, but to prepare me for the time after. As it turned out, that proved to be a frivolously optimistic plan.
“If we make it to Yellowstone,” I said, “this portal goes to Mt. Shasta and you know that’s a military base now.” In the twenty-one months since we discovered Kyle’s body at the Outin lodge, the Movement had grown into a worldwide revolution. And although I was the symbolic leader, it had cost more than I could tally. The mall attack, which preceded Kyle’s brutal murder, received all the attention, but it was my mom’s death that nearly ended the Movement. Inner Force, or IF, the violent faction within the Movement, was responsible for her killing, but no one could find them . . . or stop them.
“IF is just escalating things,” Amber said. “Why can’t they see that their violence is strengthening Omnia, not weakening them?”
Linh shot Amber a look I wasn’t supposed to see. For months after IF murdered my mother, I shut down and although there were others who ran the day-to-day affairs, the Movement seemed to lose its impetus because of my lack of involvement.
Mom and I had failed each other in many tragic ways. My difficulty in handling the guilt made me useless to the Movement until she twice appeared in my dreams and brought me back from a desperate place.
In both dreams I wore a silver shirt, shiny and heavy. My pants were a glowing blue liquid. Mom was in a dress woven from living flowers of every color. She handed me a plate of cake and ice cream. Each bite contained scenes from my childhood. In them I could see that she always knew of my destiny, and that of my brother, Dustin. The knowledge wasn’t conscious. It came from a soul level and she denied it for the same reason we all do – fear. But in each bite of the sweet desserts, for which she was famous, I tasted love and forgiveness.
Prior to her murder, I naively thought the Movement was on the verge of victory. Lightyear had been publicly humiliated, its evil leader, Luther Storch, silenced by an assassin. Even Linh’s parents and Amber’s sister were released, as public opinion momentarily swung away from the Department of Homeland Security when their Stalinist tactics were revealed. And most importantly, Linh and Amber remained alive.
We’d been regrouping after the raids had shut down three-quarters of the Movement’s centers, and we had discovered a new way to avoid the remote viewers. Rose gave the Movement great advantages with her knowledge of the inner workings of Lightyear. Clastier’s papers were being readied for mass distribution . . . it seemed we were so close. But that was before the sleeping tiger awoke. Lightyear had just been a tiny division in an organization old with power, deep with connections and stunning in its coldness and greed – Omnia. They had such a grip on the world that the Inner Movement’s dreams of change seemed to be a mere whisper in a hurricane.
“IF has to be stopped or the Movement will become just another casualty of this crazy war,” I said. They’d both heard it before. “Our powers have expanded, the Movement is huge, but at the same time, Omnia’s strength is out of control.”
“You need to be leading the Movement,” Amber said, as we pushed farther into the portal, unsure where it would take us. “And not just as a figurehead.”
“Spencer and Yangchen think I’m still too young and inexperienced to assume leadership,” I replied.
“They’re just waiting for you. You have to know that you’ve grown beyond those limitations,” Linh said. “Then you will lead.”
No one was actually stopping me from making decisions. They usually consulted or at least informed me. Still, that didn’t change the fact that I was king, bishop, knight and pawn in a multi-dimensional chess game that would decide the fate of humanity. The battles were played out in both the physical and non-physical planes across a grid of past, present and future.
Inside the portal, the heat warning would usually subside, but it hadn’t. We’d come to the camp a different way. Yangchen had told us on the astral that this portal led to Shasta.
“We’ve been in here a long time,” Amber said.
My temperature rose higher. “Something’s wrong!”
2
Just ahead, six Omnia agents emerged from the portal’s distant swirl. We spun around, retraced our steps and tumbled out of the portal. Linh and I grabbed Amber’s arms since she still couldn’t Skyclimb. We reached the treetops and propelled ourselves toward the portal we’d come from the day before. The laser bullets shattered branches and leaves below.
Omnia’s advanced weapons cut lines through the trees ahead and to our south. They didn’t know our exact location, but we were known to travel in the trees. Now that they were out of the portal they could obtain their location from GPS and call in the helicopters. The black gunships haunted me in real life and even more in my nightmares.
I reached Spencer on the astral to warn him that we were being pursued and our only escape was the portal that led straight to where he, Yangchen, and several others were hiding. Spencer, who had collapsed after Rose and Clastier showed up in Taos, was doing better now.
That same day, the first of a series of horrific school shootings had taken place – hundreds of kids and teachers died – and what came to be known as “the great division” had begun. After the child massacres, each increasingly worse than the one before, mall attacks happened on each coast, and the U.S. quickly became more divided than at any time since the American Civil War. The “conservatives versus liberals” drama exploded off cable news and talk radio into violent demonstrations. In the beginning the argument concerned only gun control, but soon, as the rhetoric and rage ratcheted up, abortion, immigration, racism, economic reform, housing and even food labeling became battlegrounds. Demonstrators clashed, violence increased, and martial law was declared for a six-day period. National Guard troops aided by elite Department of Homeland Security units were deployed to more than seventy cities. Troops remained permanently in Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston and San Francisco enforcing curfews, quelling demonstrations and manning military checkpoints.
“Nate!” Amber screamed above a vibrating roar, as the first two choppers came into sight. We dropped into the canopy, making us easier to spot from the ground. We were still too far from the portal.
“Nate,” Spencer said on the astral, “Yangchen is coming.”
“It’s too dangerous,” I said.
“That’s why she’s coming. We can see it. More than a hundred agents just poured out of the portal from Shasta.”
The trees behind us exploded as one of the gunships fired large caliber rounds into them.
“Drop thirty feet, there’s an opening you can Skyclimb through for almost two hundred yards. Do it now!” Spencer said, as he continued to guide us through a torrent of bullets and missiles. “There’s six more choppers, fifty more agents. They know it’s you.”
Terrifying flames engulfed a large section of forest. Missiles and lasers hit closer every second. “We’re not going to make it!” Linh yelled.
Then, suddenly it stopped. Chips of wood, flying branches, bullets and even smoke suspended as if the video we were in had just been paused. Yangchen appeared.
“Hurry!”
We followed her Skyclimbing back above the trees and saw the helicopters frozen in midair. It all started again as we slipped into the portal.
“How did you do that?” Amber asked before I could.
“There is a vortex between the two portals; it’s just a matter of aligning an energy core to connect them and it’s possible to stop time for a few moments,” she said wearily.
“But what about us? Why didn’t we stop?” Linh asked.
“That’s the tricky part, isn’t it?” Yangchen said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
A van picked us up on the other side of the portal. As we sped down the highway on the way to our next “safe” house, I reflected on the irony of what we’d just escaped. All guns had been banned in the U.S. except in certain rural areas where hunting rifles were allowed, effectively disarming the population, leaving little hope of resistance. For those who didn’t like it, it didn’t matter – free speech, free press, and the right to assemble were severely limited. Across the country, surveillance drones regularly crisscrossed the sky. Arrests occurred constantly but it was difficult to say just how many were incarcerated since reporting on them was also a crime.
Booker, the Movement’s billionaire benefactor, said, “Due process needs a new name because it is no longer either.” More shocking than all the restrictions were how rapidly they occurred and how many citizens supported them. By the time they realized the cost it was too late. We’d become a dystopian society. Booker was still wealthy and powerful but many of his U.S. assets had been seized. Fortunately, he’d been long preparing for these times and a large portion of his holdings were untraceable or held in foreign nations.
During all the time we’d been on the move, both the IM and IF factions of the Movement continued to grow. The great division had unintended consequences for Omnia. It had driven tens of thousands of diverse people into the Movement and because Omnia also led an international crackdown, resistance was building globally. The countries most accustomed to freedom, the U.S., Australia, Canada and Great Britain, had the best-organized undergrounds. But Omnia had centuries of experience using fear tactics to pit people against one another. They were expert at creating distractions and stopping unrest with economic cycles and subduing uprisings with wars. But as Spencer was so fond of saying, “This is a different kind of revolution.”
3
Our new “home” for a few days was a remote property in Colorado that Booker had recently acquired.
Amber and I woke early and went for a walk. She held my hand as we walked the high trail above the river. “You seem distant this morning.” She was twenty now, I almost nineteen.
“We let Fitts hunt me and then it was Storch . . . hell, even the Catholic Church sent a posse after me during my life as Clastier. People have been coming for the Jadeo for centuries. No more.” I turned to face her. “Starting today, I’m going on the offensive. I’m going to find the man running Omnia and end this.”
“How do you end it?”
“By winning.”
Amber let go of my hand as Linh ran toward us. “Spencer and Yangchen are waiting for us. They can’t stay much longer.” Although the girls and I, at our insistence, remained together, Booker, Rose, Clastier, the mystics and other Movement hierarchy all traveled separately. We would go weeks at a time without seeing them.
When we reached the yurts, Yangchen and Spencer looked distraught. Both mystics had become our family over the past two years. They were often opposed to each other, but their knowledge was unrivaled by all but the elusive Dark Mystic, whom I’d been trying to find since learning of his existence. Yangchen had once promised to help me, but both she and Spencer agreed that now was not the time. One day my knowledge would surpass theirs and I would seek him on my own.
“You’re worried,” I said to Spencer.
“Yes. It’s risky to go on the attack against Omnia.” Spencer almost died the day I was killed at Outin. And when depression and gloom closed in on me, he suffered too. It had taken him more than a year to recover physically from what those in the Movement called “the Outin incident.” We were the two most important people in the Movement, but the incident in which we almost died resulted in one of our greatest coups. The one hundred and four soldiers who had witnessed my resurrection became ardent supporters of IM and proved invaluable as the Movement worked to infiltrate the military industrial complex that supported Omnia.
“You know my plan? But I just decided. Of course you know,” I said.
“This day has been a long time coming. We’ve debated it many times in the parallels.” The parallels were the confusing, colliding, coexisting half-dimensions all around us.
“It’s a past future thing, too,” Yangchen added. Between Outin and various portals used during the past couple of years, occasionally things happened more than once and at times in reverse order; still others never occurred at all. It was difficult to keep it all straight, until I let go of my preconceived notions of . . . well, just about everything. Our physical world is extremely limited.
“Great. If we’ve had this conversation before, then you must know all my arguments and we don’t need to waste time discussing it.” I smiled.
“Much has changed. We’re here in the now. Tell us your thoughts, your plan,” Spencer said.
“What are we even talking about?” Linh asked.
“I want to hunt down the leader of Omnia and stop him by all reasonable peaceful means,” I said, smiling at Yangchen. Before we left Taos, well over a year ago, Yangchen had won the violence-non-violence debate. Spencer was resigned to using soul powers peacefully and letting love guide our strategy. Still, I expected him to embrace my new plan to pursue rather than run. It was closer to his nature. The U.S. was heavily involved in three wars and, covertly, in dozens of other conflicts. Blood and brutality needed no more support.
“How do you know Omnia’s leader is a man?” Linh asked.
“No woman could be that cruel. Not to sound sexist, but how many wars have been started by women, how many mass murderers were women?”
“Let’s stick to the matter at hand,” Spencer said.
“We’re already winning,” Yangchen began. “Omnia wants two things above all else. Nate dead and the Jadeo. As long as Nate lives and the Jadeo remains in his hands, Omnia cannot ultimately succeed.”
“Define succeed,” Spencer said. “How much wealth and power determines success, if –”
Yangchen cut him off. “Spencer, you know what I mean. Omnia may appear to have won, but not really, as long as the people are able to see that these material things hold no real power.”
“There’s a long way to go before people really believe that we can reach our souls through love and reclaim our power,” I said.
“Nate, once they see what you are capable of, they will believe. That’s why every generation has seven who can so easily tap their soul powers. It gives everyone a chance to remember who they really are,” Yangchen said.
“But then why do the seven always land in mental institutions, become drug addicts, alcoholics . . . or wind up getting killed?” Linh asked. “And do you know how many people don’t even believe the soul exists? We haven’t been able to figure out a way to get Baca, Kirby and Amparo released and they’re mystics.”
“Linh, I know it’s been a long difficult time in hiding,” Spencer began. “But we are making progress. The
Movement is growing in numbers and influence. We will soon –”
“We simply have to find and contain Inner Force,” Yangchen interrupted. “They threaten all that we have worked for.”
“I don’t understand how you can’t stop IF with all the powers at your disposal.” Amber eyed Spencer suspiciously.
“Amber, it’s complicated,” I said.
“Now you sound just like Spencer.” I could hear her frustration. Every time the Movement seemed to make progress, IF members would resist a raid or attempt to interfere with Omnia-sponsored CIA operations. And since IF was using soul powers to fight back, the denials from the Movement as to IM involvement were used to further discredit us.
“Our non-violence stance makes it very difficult to rescue the missing mystics,” Spencer said. “We can’t just send a band of mercenaries to break them out. And, Amber, you know we don’t even have their present location. The two times we’ve managed to find out where they were being held, our attempts were met by Omnia forces nearly capturing Nate and me.”
“They must be freed,” Yangchen said.
“Damn it, they will,” Spencer retorted.
Before I could respond, a sudden Outview pulled me in and I was gone. They’d grown in both length and frequency since the Outin days. Omnia was no longer combating us just in the present, and with the blurring of times it was hard to know if they ever had limited themselves to a modern fight.
I looked up and saw him, a familiar yet unknown adversary.
4
I was no longer the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old terrorized by Outviews. I could navigate my way inside one as if I was running around my old hometown. The couple of years since the first Outviews had brought extraordinary new abilities and given me a glimpse of powers so great that I finally understood why Omnia might fear me. There he was, the one I called Dunaway, a man, although the last two times “he” was female. He knew I recognized him and smiled at my presence as if he’d been waiting for a long time.