She also brought along poor Neal—still in his ridiculously small robot body—in case they needed some sort of analysis of the space debris performed. Flying too fast to have a conversation with him, and feeling absolutely terrible for the AI, she tucked him under her arm like a cask. We need to get him a bigger body, she thought. Maybe there's something kicking around in the warehouse of stuff that Prevention returned to the Department that we could use for an upgrade. The beleaguered artificial intelligence had been downgraded from a massive space ship for a body to little more than a trash can in the past few days. That had to sting.
Valerie found the crash site first, and when she told Jane what she saw the solar-powered girl raced through the desert sky.
"Don't tell anyone yet," Jane said. "I'll be right there."
She contacted Doc privately on her earpiece and asked him to meet her. When she told him what Val had discovered, Jane wasn't surprised that he wasted no time in getting there. Doc appeared out of thin air just as she landed. Val drifted out of the sky to stand beside Jane, leaving wet footprints in her wake.
The burned and battered wreckage of the Tower lay half-buried in the sand.
"Is it your home?" Val said. "I've only been there a few times, I couldn't tell for sure…"
Jane's face split into a huge smile. Broken, cracked and split, still it was the Tower, here on Earth.
Doc smiled and placed a hand on Jane's shoulder.
"I should've checked," he said. "There must be something about this place. This isn't far from where the Tower was found originally. Buried underground."
"So she came home to die?" Jane said.
"Elephant graveyard," Doc said. "But she might not be dead. Neal?"
The AI started scanning the wreckage, sensors spinned and whirred softly.
"This may take some time, Designation: Solar," Neal said.
"That's okay," Jane said. She winked at Doc, who nodded back to her, then sat down in the sand. Doc and Valerie joined her, forming a semi-circle around Neal as he worked. "Do what you have to do, Neal. We've got all the time in the world."
* * *
By the time Neal finished his analysis, the sun hung low in the sky, bathing the desert in red and gold. Anyone else would have been baked to a crisp by now, but Jane felt full of life, and Valerie passed the hours creating tiny clouds from nothing, and causing drizzling misty rain to fall onto the sand.
Neal spun a sensor around to look at Jane. She tapped her earpiece.
"Doc, bring them through," she said.
The air beside her shimmered and opened, like a heat mirage. Instantly, a half-circle of purplish light created an arc in the air, and within it she saw her friends waiting in a room somewhere in the City. Jane motioned for them to pass through. Emily charged out first, her replacement Doctor scarf finally complete and wrapped around her head to protect her from the sun. Billy followed, in street clothes, hands in pockets, Bedlam, a couple of steps behind, wore a long skirt and tunic-styled shirt.
"No way," Billy said, spying the wreckage.
"It can't be…" Bedlam said.
"That's our baby," Emily said, grinning like a madwoman.
Titus and Kate entered next, the werewolf used his enchanted spear like a walking stick, his strength not fully returned. He'd pulled a brand new red hooded sweatshirt up over his head to shade against the glare. Bandages covered one hand and were also visible just beneath the collar of his tee shirt, where his burns were still healing.
Kate, uncharacteristically out of uniform, in jeans and a dark cowl-necked top, walked in wearing a pair of unexpectedly stylish boots. Her eyes hid behind a pair of sunglasses, but her lips quirked into a half-smile.
Doc Silence brought up the rear, leaving the portal open with a flick of his wrist.
"This ship should be drifting off into space right now," Kate said.
"Doc has a theory," Jane said. "That it has a landing beacon or something left here. Maybe the last action the ship performed was to send itself home."
"I don't care how it happened," Billy said. "Will she ever fly again?"
Neal spun around so that the "front" end of his temporary robot body faced them.
"I am unsure, Designation: Straylight," Neal said. "Currently eighty-six percent of the ship's functions are offline."
"Only eighty-six percent? We can work with that," Titus said.
"How much of that is irreparable, Neal," Kate asked.
"It will take some time to fully assess, Designation: Dancer," Neal said. "I suspect with the right tools we could restore the Tower to a minimum of fifty percent functionality."
"Half is better than nothing?" Bedlam said, trying to be optimistic.
"Really depends on which half we get running," Titus said. "Big difference if the kitchen works and the communications suite doesn't."
"Can I recommend starting with the lavatory?" Emily said.
"You and your tiny bladder," Billy said.
"Do you want to be flying down to Apollo's Coffee every time you need to pee? I don't," Emily said.
"Still," Titus said. "Even half."
"I don't care if it just ends up an inert shell," Doc said. "This was our home. I'd rather find it here not functioning than let it disappear into space forever."
Jane smiled. Sometimes it was easy to forget how long Doc lived in the Tower. And how much of that time he'd been there alone, wishing his old allies would reappear, or waiting for the next generation to arrive.
"So what are we going to do?" Titus said. "Fix it here?"
"We should bring it somewhere secure," Billy said.
"There's dozens of unused airfields, maybe hundreds in the U.S. alone," Kate said. "One of them must be available."
"Maybe we take it to the one where Emily and I fought the first few Nemesis parasites," Jane said. "Not like there's much going on there now."
Kate nodded. "As good an idea as any," she said. "Question is how do we get it there."
Suddenly the earth rumbled, shaking beneath their feet. Billy and Jane instantly lit up with power, ready to fight. The air turned a little cooler when Valerie reacted as well. Doc's hands shot up in gestures he employed to prepare defensive spells, while Titus's eyes glowed yellow as he began to transform into his monstrous form next to Kate, who stood up on the balls of her feet.
And Emily stretched her arm toward the wreckage of the Tower, lifting the entire thing in a single, massive bubble of float.
"Emily!" Jane yelled.
Entropy Emily turned back to her friends, a wild look of giddy playfulness on her face.
"What?" she said.
Billy laughed, hard enough to start wheezing, and it infected the group, all the tension from the past few months appeared to burn away. Even Titus joined in, kneeling down to hold a hand against his ribs. Kate, silently chuckling, locked eyes with Jane and grinned.
"Never mind," Jane said. "You want to carry her home?"
"You got it, boss," Emily said. "Look at that ship. Little dusty, but she's as indestructible as we are, isn't she?"
Jane started to argue, looking at the demolished and cracked hull of their former home. But they'd all made it back. They were all standing. Maybe we are indestructible after all, she thought.
Science experiments and solar-powered girls and werewolves and aliens; wizards and weird gravitational anomalies, and a dancer whose only superpower was that she never, ever gave up. Together, it seemed, nothing could stop them.
"Yeah, Em," Jane said. As indestructible as we are."
Some Other Books by PFP / AJAR Contemporaries
a four-sided bed - Elizabeth Searle
A Russian Requiem - Roland Merullo
Ambassador of the Dead - Askold Melnyczuk
Blind Tongues - Sterling Watson
Celebrities in Disgrace(eBook version only) - Elizabeth Searle
Demons of the Blank Page - Roland Merullo
excerpt from Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature -
Ask
old Melnyczuk
Fighting Gravity - Peggy Rambach
"Gifted: An Indestructibles Christmas Story"- Matthew Phillion
Girl to Girl: The Real Deal on Being A Girl Today-Anne Driscoll
"Invitations: A Story of Thanksgiving" - Peter Sarno
"Last Call" (eBook "single") - Roland Merullo
Leaving Losapas - Roland Merullo
Lunch with Buddha - Roland Merullo
Make A Wish But Not For Money - Suzanne Strempek Shea
Music In and On the Air - Lloyd Schwartz
My Ground Trilogy - Joseph Torra
Passion for Golf: In Pursuit of the Innermost Game - Roland Merullo
Revere Beach Boulevard - Roland Merullo
Revere Beach Elegy: A Memoir of Home & Beyond - Roland Merullo
Rinpoche's Remarkable Ten-Week Weight Loss Clinic -
Roland Merullo
Taking the Kids to Italy - Roland Merullo
Talk Show - Jaime Clarke
Temporary Sojourner - Tony Eprile
the Book of Dreams - Craig Nova
The Calling - Sterling Watson
The Entropy of Everything: the Indestructibles Book 3
Matthew Phillion
The Family Business - John DiNatale
The Indestructibles - Matthew Phillion
The Indestructibles: Breakout - Matthew Phillion
The Italian Summer: Golf, Food, and Family at Lake Como
Roland Merullo
The Return - Roland Merullo
"The Soloist" - Matthew Phillion
The Ten Commandments of Golf Etiquette: How to Make the Game More Enjoyable for Yourself and for Everyone Else on the Course
Roland Merullo
The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course
of Country Music - Beth Harrington
"The Young and the Rest of Us" (eBook "single")
Elizabeth Searle
This is Paradise: An Irish Mother's Grief, an African Village's Plight and the Medical Clinic That Brought Fresh Hope to Both
Suzanne Strempek Shea
Tornado Alley - Craig Nova
"What A Father Leaves" (eBook "single" & audio book)
Roland Merullo
What Is Told - Askold Melnyczuk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by Matthew Phillion
Praise for Phillion's Work
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Prologue: Big Sky
Chapter 1: The Tower
Chapter 2: Breakfast of champions
Chapter 3: Parents and children
Chapter 4: The mission is go
Chapter 5: The Origin of Dude (or: All the flying elephants are gone)
Chapter 6: Building a better Emily
Chapter 7: Little gods
Chapter 8: Up, up, and away
Chapter 9: E.T. phone home, long distance
Chapter 10: Journalistic integrity
Chapter 11: A bit of Bedlam
Chapter 12: Division of labor
Chapter 13: Insignificant
Chapter 14: The angriest flowers in the world
Chapter 15: This is not Area 51
Chapter 16: What the Children knew
Chapter 17: Werewolves and windows
Chapter 18: Dogfight
Chapter 19: A complete and utter failure
Chapter 20: What happened to you?
Chapter 21: Where Horizon went
Chapter 22: Where monsters come from
Chapter 23: An elemental force
Chapter 24: The toy box
Chapter 25: Aerial combat
Chapter 26: I know what they smell like
Chapter 27: Not made of cheese
Chapter 28: Interlude-Swords have names
Chapter 29: Good cop, bad cop
Chapter 30: Trust/Fall
Chapter 31: Empathy Emily
Chapter 32: The god on the island
Chapter 33: Hidden treasures
Chapter 34: Welcome home, flyboy
Chapter 35: I'd like to try
Chapter 36: Where we come from
Chapter 37: A part of the machine
Chapter 38: A chamber full of the dead
Chapter 39: Books of secrets
Chapter 40: Let's not lead with that
Chapter 41: We're killing ourselves
Chapter 42: Magicians and their books
Chapter 43: The interview
Chapter 44: Awkward
Chapter 45: The tools at my disposal
Chapter 46: The stockpile
Chapter 47: Gods old and new
Chapter 48: Taking stock of the situation
Chapter 49: Some great beast
Chapter 50: All in one place
Chapter 51: The talisman
Chapter 52: Beauty in this world
Chapter 53: The strange machine
Chapter 54: Spy games
Chapter 55: As above, so below
Chapter 56: Among the stars
Chapter 57: The Battle of the City
Chapter 58: President some day
Chapter 59: To scar the armada
Chapter 60: A sky full of heroes
Chapter 61: The long story
Chapter 62: Child of the sun
Chapter 63: The Valkyrie
Chapter 64: One way trip anyway
Chapter 65: Light show
Chapter 66: Lunch in the park
Chapter 67: The barbarian and the magician
Chapter 68: Canceling the apocalypse
Chapter 69: Do androids dream of electric sheep?
Chapter 70: If it has a brain, I can kill it
Chapter 71: Like shooting stars
Chapter 72: Brothers in arms
Chapter 73: Pinocchio and the whale
Chapter 74: Improvised weapon
Chapter 75: Routed
Chapter 76: Human debris
Chapter 77: Indestructible
Chapter 78: You wouldn't believe me if I told you
Chapter 79: Day and night
Chapter 80: The story
Chapter 81: We're all still here
Chapter 82: Once, on a farm
Epilogue: Indestructible like us
Other Books by PFP / AJAR Contemporaries
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 37