The Soldiers of Halla

by D. J. MacHale

  “That thread isn’t so thin,” I lied. “Solara isn’t in as bad a shape as you think.” Another lie, but what the heck. “I’m actually feeling pretty good about things. You know why?”

  “Please,” Saint Dane said sarcastically. “Share with me.”

  I stopped at the first prisoner and looked into his eyes. I needed to know what kind of shape they were in. If they couldn’t move, or were badly injured, there was no way I’d get them out of there. The guy raised his chin and looked at me. There was fire in his eyes. I gave him a small nod. I hoped he knew what that meant. I moved on to the next guy and saw the same thing. They were just waiting for their chance. I intended to give it to them.

  I looked at the guard that was holding the second prisoner. My suspicions were correct. It was a dado. The eyes were a dead giveaway. Or should I say the dead eyes were a giveaway. Saint Dane was being protected by an army of dados.

  “We’re in a different place now,” I said cockily. “What is it you like to say? Oh yeah. The rules have changed. Since the day I found out about the whole Traveler thing, I was scared for my life. I was afraid I’d never see my family again. I was afraid of what might happen to each territory and eventually what would happen to Halla. But now? Well, now the stakes are very different.”

  “And why is that?” Saint Dane asked. He actually sounded curious.

  I looked to him, gave him a cocky smile, and answered, “Because now I have nothing to lose.”

  A second later I ate those words. I stopped at the third prisoner. It was the brave guy who helped rescue those people from the building at the zoo. His long dark hair fell in his eyes. I felt pretty sure he’d be as ready to go as the others. What I saw was something else entirely. He was ready all right. But after looking into his eyes, I wasn’t so sure that I was anymore. He lifted his chin and locked eyes with me. My throat clutched. I froze. Yet again, I was hit with the impossible.

  The guy gave me a small smile and whispered, “About time you showed up.”

  My head spun. I had to fight to keep my balance. I blinked, but what I saw didn’t change. I was staring into the eyes of my best friend. It was Mark Dimond. But it wasn’t the same guy I had grown up with. He had changed since the last time I saw him. On Second Earth he and Courtney and a group of protestors were thrown into the flume in the Conclave of Ravinia. Whatever happened to them after that, I’d yet to find out. But the change it had made in Mark was dramatic. Gone was the book-loving, carrot-eating genius who shied away from anything physical. He was still shorter than me, but his shoulders were broad and strong. He looked older, too. Was it possible that he was now older than I was? I think the biggest change was in his face. This was a guy who had been through a lot, and gained strength from it. I knew that from what I’d seen at the zoo, when he stayed until the very last second to help rescue those people from the helicopter gunship. This was a different Mark.

  Trouble was, I now had something to lose. I still wanted to rescue the three prisoners, but the stakes had suddenly become much higher.

  “You up for this?” I whispered.

  Mark winked. “Say when.”

  My confidence rose.

  “When.”

  I instantly fell on my back, rolled into a backward somersault, grabbed the silver weapon that Saint Dane had tossed onto the floor, and continued rolling until I was almost on my feet. While still moving, I flung the weapon at the nearest Ravinian guard. I had no idea how to fire one of those things, but I knew that the weapon itself was charged. If the silver end hit the dado, I hoped it would have the same effect as it had on those poor victims. The silver wand sailed toward the guard, who didn’t react in time. The business end nailed him in the gut, and with a short, sharp electric sound, the guy was fried. He fell to the ground along with his own weapon. Unlike the other victims I had seen killed, the dado didn’t vaporize. I guess robots didn’t burn.

  I dove for both weapons, hoping to get one before the others had the chance to react.

  Mark and the other prisoners came to life. I was right. They weren’t nearly as hurting as I’d first thought. They each turned on the guards who were holding them, fighting to get their electric weapons before they were vaporized.

  I slid across the tile floor and scooped up one and then the other wand that had fallen to the ground. By this time the second guard, who had been holding the guy who was killed, came after me. I jumped up, holding the two wands out for protection. He came at me with his own weapon, swinging it wildly. I knew that one touch from that thing, and I’d be back on Solara with Patrick and Uncle Press. I held each of the weapons with one hand, knocking away his blows. I tried to counter with an attack of my own, but the dado was quick. I was trained, but he knew how to use these weapons. He flashed the electric wand, easily repelling each of my attacks.

  I heard an electric charge sound coming from behind me and stole a quick glance to see that Mark had nailed one of the dados with his own weapon.

  Mark. Unbelievable. In some ways hearing the truth about my own history and the revelation of Solara was easier to accept than Mark being a badass. Yet he was. He punched out the second dado that had been holding him, sending the guard careening backward. The dado slammed into one of the marble pillars. Hard. If it hadn’t been a dado, I’d guess that it would have hurt. But dados didn’t hurt. It stood up and went right for Mark.

  I had my own problems. The dado I had been fighting was coming after me, aggressively. What drove me was knowing how important it was to get those guys out of there. To get Mark out of there. No matter what, I had to stick around, which meant not being killed. The dado lunged at me. I knocked his attack away, forcing him off balance as he followed through. It gave me a short window. It was all I needed. I hit the guy on the back of his head with the other wand. A short zap later, he was done.

  “Bobby!” I heard Mark shout.

  I turned in time to see that I was being attacked. Not by a dado. By Saint Dane. Nevva had run to the top of the platform next to the throne, safely out of harm’s way. Saint Dane, on the other hand, was coming after me with his own electric prod. I turned and threw my two weapons up to repel his attack. I didn’t have to bother. Oddly, he stopped. The others continued to battle the dados, but Saint Dane stopped. He stood there with a confused expression, as if trying to process new information—which is exactly what was happening.

  “‘Bobby’?” he repeated, as if the word were alien to him. Then a look of recognition.

  Uh-oh.

  “Mark Dimond!” he said aloud as the truth hit home. “Well, Pendragon, it looks as if you have something to lose after all.”

  Rest time was over. He came at me, swinging his weapon furiously. He was even faster than the dado. I had no chance to think about how to attack. It was all I could do to keep the wand away from my body.

  With each swing Saint Dane growled out a word. “You…will…go…back…to…Solara…and…watch…it…die.”

  I was getting tired. Saint Dane wasn’t. He knocked one of the wands out of my hand, and followed up with a backhand. His prod was about to hit me in the stomach. I reacted quickly. It had to have been out of some ingrained instinct, because I certainly wasn’t taught to do what I did. Saint Dane’s swipe came parallel to the ground. In a second it would slice right through me, sending me back to the edges of Halla. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to get Mark and the others out of there. What I did was out of desperation—not to save myself, but to save my friend.

  Saint Dane’s electric weapon swept right through me. I had willed myself to become smoke, and I did. I didn’t feel any different. In fact, the moment his attack swept through me, I was back and ready to fight. Maybe I had only changed my midsection. Whatever. It had worked. I had used the power of Solara, the same way that Saint Dane had used it for so long. I’d like to say that I was invincible, but that was wrong. I couldn’t keep on using that power. Solara couldn’t handle that.

  The effect it had on Saint Dane was instant.
He was stupefied. He stood frozen, his weapon still at the end of its arc.

  “So you do know the truth,” he said in awe.

  I answered by nailing him with both of my wands. I brought them together like cymbals, hitting both his shoulders at the same time. The reaction was instant. Saint Dane turned to ashes. Not smoke. Ashes. His remains fell to the ground just as the others had done. He had been so surprised by the demonstration of my newfound ability that he didn’t use his own power to save himself.

  The dados reacted instantly. They left their individual battles and ran to the pile of soot that was the remains of their leader. I wasn’t sure why. What did they think they were going to do? Put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I didn’t feel bad for Saint Dane. He was a spirit from Solara. I may have killed his body, but I knew it wouldn’t be for long. As soon as he hit the cosmic reset button, he’d be back. I didn’t want to be around when that happened.

  “Outta here!” I shouted to Mark and the others.

  They immediately ran for the door. Before following them, I looked up to Nevva who hadn’t moved from her spot near the throne. She didn’t do anything to try and stop me. On the other hand, she didn’t try to help Saint Dane, either. It seemed as if she was in shock.

  “Is this the way you wanted things to be?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid this is the way it must be” was her melancholy answer.

  “Don’t bet on it,” I said, then turned and ran.

  As I sprinted after the fleeing prisoners, my head was already spinning forward to our next move. We were going to get out of the Taj Mahal, but we would still be in the middle of Saint Dane’s luxury theme park. How would we get out of there? Run all the way back to the wall? That was a long way, with lots of dados between here and there. Once we got there, would there be any hope of opening those big doors? There would certainly be more Ravinian dado guards there. What chance did the four of us have against them? We needed an advantage, and not the kind that came from being a spirit from Solara. That wouldn’t help Mark and the others. Right now, it was all about those guys. I had to keep them safe, but the truth was, I didn’t know how.

  Fortunately, Mark did. He and the others hit the door before me and blasted outside. We found ourselves in the wide-open garden that Patrick and I had crossed to get to the building. Mark knew exactly where to go. He sprinted straight for the helicopters that had brought them there. It seemed like the perfect means of escape, except for one thing. Mark wouldn’t know how to fly a helicopter. He’d never even gotten his driver’s license.

  That was the old Mark. The new Mark had learned a few new tricks.

  “Keep ’em back!” he shouted to me and the others.

  “Keep who back?” I called after him.

  He didn’t have to answer. From around both corners of the Taj Mahal, Ravinian guards were headed our way. The two helicopters were parked square in the middle of one side of the building, which meant the guards from both sides had about a seventy-yard sprint to get to us. Mark jumped into the pilot’s seat of one chopper and started confidently flipping switches. With a tortured whine the overhead rotor began to turn, though painfully slowly. The other two guys stood on either side of the chopper, holding up their stolen electric prods, ready to repel an attack. I didn’t think they’d do so well against a swarm of dados, but I wasn’t going to point that out.

  I jumped into the seat across from Mark. “You can fly this thing?” I shouted above the growing whine.

  “We captured one a year go,” he answered. “We taught ourselves.”

  “A year go?” I shouted. “How long have you been here?”

  “Been here? Or since we got dumped into the flume?”

  “Since the flume.”

  “Five years. Give or take.”

  That news hit me like a punch to the head. It had been five years since Mark and Courtney were herded into the flume on Second Earth. Five years. That meant Mark was twenty-three years old. The buddy I had grown up with was five years older than I was.

  “We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” Mark said with a smile, which was pretty amazing under the circumstances.

  “We’d better get the chance,” I shot back.

  The rotor was picking up speed. So were the dados.

  “Come on…come on…,” Mark coaxed the machine.

  We didn’t have much more time.

  “Get in!” I shouted to the others.

  They didn’t listen. They were focused on the incoming dados.

  “Uh, Mark,” I said with fake calm. “It would be good to get airborne.”

  “Couple of seconds…,” he said, concentrating on the RPM reading on the controls.

  I heard a scream. We had less time than I thought. The dados from inside the Taj Mahal had regrouped and descended on the two guys outside the helicopter. Mark’s friends both jumped away from the chopper, flailing their weapons at the dados.

  “Get in!” I shouted to them.

  “They won’t,” Mark said, with a calm that I’d never heard from him. Especially given the circumstances.

  The helicopter shuddered, the rotor whined. I felt a lurch. We were starting to lift off. I turned to call the others again. It was too late. They fought valiantly, but were quickly overwhelmed. I saw one hit by a silver wand and turned to ash. The other went down seconds later. They had sacrificed themselves so Mark could get away. That is, if Mark could get away.

  The swarm of dados arrived from both sides. They jumped at the landing skids of the helicopter. A few caught on and were lifted into the sky along with us.

  “We’ve got hitchhikers,” I announced.

  “Not for long.”

  Mark lifted the chopper straight up, then quickly shifted the joystick. The helicopter made a sudden counterclockwise turn, flinging off the dangling guards. They fell to the ground, landing on their pals.

  “Outta here,” Mark said, and accelerated our ascent.

  My stomach hit the seat, not only because of the sudden acceleration, but because of something I saw. Standing on the first level of the Taj Mahal, watching us, was Nevva Winter. Standing next to her was Saint Dane. He was already back, no worse for wear. It didn’t surprise me, though it made me wonder again where he was drawing his own power from.

  What really made me sick was something else I saw on the ground.

  The rotor of the second helicopter was starting to turn. We weren’t going to be the only chopper in the sky.

  JOURNAL #37

  13

  We accelerated quickly and flew high over Saint Dane’s mini-kingdom. Seeing it from the sky gave me an even better idea of how huge the place was. It was a sprawling green oasis surrounded by that gigantic wall…in the middle of a dead, gray city.

  “They’re coming after us,” I said to Mark.

  “I hope they do. Maybe we’ll snag another one of these babies,” he answered while staying focused on flying.

  Unbelievable. It was Mark, but it wasn’t. I was thrilled to see him, though totally thrown by how much he had changed. Up until that moment, Mark and I had been aging at the same rate. It didn’t matter that we were on different territories. For whatever reason, our time lines had been the same. Not anymore. Did that mean I had spent five years on Solara? Or floating in space? Or was that the wrong way to look at it? Maybe when I left for Third Earth, the spirits of Solara put me here, five years past the time when Patrick was killed. If that was the case, did that mean that the turning point of Third Earth had shifted? I was always sent where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. Thinking this way actually gave me hope. Third Earth was definitely still in play.

  All my confused questioning ended abruptly when our helicopter was rocked by an explosion.

  “Whoa,” I exclaimed. “What was that?”

  “They’re shooting from the ground,” Mark said calmly. “It won’t last. As soon as we get past the wall, we’ll be out of range.”

  I looked down out of the window to see that we were about
to cross out of the green and into the gray. Two more explosions rocked us. The helicopter shuddered but we weren’t hit. A moment later I looked down to see the wall passing underneath us. We were back over the dead city of New York.

  Whoosh! Something flew by to my right, barely missing us. It left a smoke trail in its wake.

  “I thought you said we’d be out of range?”

  “Yeah, of their ground guns,” Mark replied. “That came from the chopper that’s chasing us.”

  Oh. Swell.

  “I saw what those rockets can do,” I said nervously. “I was at the zoo when you helped those people out.”

  Mark gave me a quick glance.

  “Where have you been for five years?” he asked.

  “That is a very long story.”

  Whoosh. Whoosh. Two more rockets passed by, one on each side.

  “I gotta concentrate,” Mark said, and pushed the joystick forward. We immediately went nose down, headed for the ground. I put my foot out to brace myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Mark’s flying, it was just that, well, okay, I didn’t trust Mark’s flying. But then again, I trusted the guys behind us even less, so whatever Mark did was okay with me.

  “We’ll lose them in the haze,” Mark announced.

  The air was once again filled with the same brown, dusty clouds that swirled through the zoo, which meant that the visibility quickly dropped back to near zero. Mark pushed the helicopter down toward the river. After a nauseating plunge, he leveled us out and sped southward. We couldn’t have been more than ten feet above the water, skimming the surface.

  “This is, uh, dangerous,” I said, trying not to show how terrified I was. At the speed we were going, we wouldn’t see anything solid in front of us until a second before the crunch.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said with no trace of fear. Or stutter. That was good. If Mark didn’t stutter, it meant he wasn’t nervous. That made one of us.