Except when he looked down he found himself still wearing the jeans, shirt, and sneakers he’d changed into back at his house.
What’s happening?
Alex had no idea, except that it felt real. Like some cosmic trick the wormhole’s destruction was playing on the whole space-time continuum. Like he was in some kind of an alternate reality, where he might be able to remain if he chose. Turn his back on all of it, make believe none of it had ever happened. His parents would be alive again and he with them. Who could blame him?
He felt an incredible surge of relief, happiness, as if he’d woken from a terrible nightmare to the realization everything was fine and good after all. How much he wanted to stay with his parents and just watch the floats passing by on the street before them.
But then the ash man slid by, riding a diesel-powered fire-breathing dragon, seeking him out amid the crowd viewing the parade and pointing a translucent finger Alex’s way.
Was this his doing, his way of trapping Alex? Or was it truly a quantum anomaly a million times more powerful than the destruction of Laboratory Z?
The answers didn’t matter, because Alex didn’t belong here. As safe and secure as he felt on that city street with his parents, his world was still a millisecond behind him, where this scene had never really happened. And if he stayed here, if he stayed, then Sam could be lost forever in some celestial ether, trapped literally between worlds, as represented by the spiral stairwell spinning so fast that the world ceased to exist beyond it.
Sam! Alex called in his mind. Sam!
She wasn’t there at all, then very far away but drawing closer, until she was back in his arms and he was hugging her tight.
* * *
The cyborgs were still converging on the elevator, just seeming to take note of Raiff’s and Donati’s presence, when something that looked like an electrical storm burst upward through the floor. The machines froze in place, locked up solid, as if frozen by a frigid blast of ice.
“Raiff!” the Guardian heard, recognizing Dancer’s voice from the area of a nearby stairwell.
Then he watched the boy lead Samantha through what looked like a tunnel carved out of the increasing shower of sparks and flames. It rocketed up and through the ceiling, churning its displaced energy toward the sky. A vast, swirling whirlpool that Raiff imagined, like a vortex, would suck everything within its reach into its field.
“Don’t look at it!” Alex cried out, clutching Sam so close to him they seemed extensions of the same person. “Follow me!”
Raiff did, dragging Donati along with him by one hand and retracting his whip in the other, weaving his way through the seized-up forms of the androids, the light gone from their eyes, starting to stink of burned metal and rubber. For a long moment he couldn’t breathe and thought he was holding his breath, until he realized there was no air to breathe, no air at all. Nothing but a vacuum they seemed to soar through, Raiff having no sense of his feet touching the floor as he moved all the way to the main entrance to the prison.
The door had already collapsed before them, the walls cracking in lines widening enough to let the blackness of the night pour through. They rushed through what had been the prison yard, surging downhill without ever looking back, Raiff nonetheless struck by the sensation that the vacuum was on their tail, trying to suck them into the vortex.
They tumbled down the slight hill as a group, fearing the world beneath them had been pulled out like a rug, until all their gazes fixed on the crumbling remnants of Alcatraz prison as it vanished in a blinding burst of white light.
105
MELTDOWN
IT FELT FOR A moment that the very night had been sucked away, trapping them in a kind of vacuum where they felt weak and weightless. Their clothes alternately billowing and then sticking to their skin, the color seeming to blanch from their faces, only to return in the next instant as the world kept jumping from color to black and white and back again.
Alex was squeezing Sam’s hand so tight it actually hurt. She thought her lungs should have been burning from lack of oxygen, but it didn’t seem like she needed to breathe, felt as if she were floating over the ground instead of standing on it.
Back beyond them, up the slight hill half a football-field length away, what was left of the prison building didn’t explode or burn so much as melt. Its shape receded in the blinding light, and when the light finally began to dim the entire structure was gone, just a sprawling expanse of scorched ground left in its place, minus any char or smoke.
Sam felt buffeted by a thick wind and just like that the air was back along with the sky, which, she realized, had seemed to vanish as well, stolen from the world in those brief moments along with everything else. She looked down, expecting to see her clothes melted or torn free, but found them still in place, soiled but not shredded and smelling of something that reminded her of the scent that lifted off a campfire to cling to fabric like glue. And the air felt … well, funny. Kind of staticky, a vague hum that reminded her of a swarm of insects buzzing about coming from inside her head.
She turned and saw Dr. Donati picking himself off the ground, too busy checking his watch to realize blood was running down his face from where he must have struck his head when he fell.
“It … stopped,” he said dazedly.
Sam rotated her gaze about, the San Francisco skyline having gone utterly dark as well. Then it sprang back to life, the entire world returning.
“Hey, it’s working again,” Dr. Donati said, still eyeing his watch.
Something told her that it had been actually working all along, that what just happened had transpired somehow between the passage of seconds. Or perhaps the destruction of the particle accelerator that would have opened the wormhole on this side had frozen time for the briefest of moments, the world, or at least this part of it, needing to catch its breath.
“My head,” Alex said suddenly.
“Is the pain bad again?” Donati asked him.
“No, it’s … gone. I mean really gone. No trace at all.”
“Meaning…,” Sam began, and they all turned back toward the empty patch of ground where Alcatraz prison had stood. She realized the humming in her ears was gone, but the air still felt strange, like poking at it might give her finger a shock.
“Do you know what that was?” Donati said, almost squealing in excitement. “Do you know what we just saw? A black hole! A black hole, I tell you! It’s the only explana—”
Donati stopped short, the brakes slammed on his sentence. Then he fell over like a severed tree, straight down to the ground.
Raiff rushed to him, hand pressed against the head wound from which the blood was spilling. “There’s a first-aid kit back in the life raft,” he called out to Alex and Sam. “Get it.”
But Alex moved toward him first. “Let me borrow your whip thing. Just in case.”
“You won’t be able to make it work.”
“I just saved this world, Raiff. I think you can trust me.”
Raiff handed his stick over reluctantly.
Sam and Alex started off, moving as fast as they dared. They took a circuitous route to keep them as far as possible from the empty, dead patch of ground that had been Alacatraz prison.
“Did that,” she murmured, clinging to him, “did we…”
Alex didn’t answer, just held her close and felt her breathing return to normal. His, too, as they neared the dock, the lights flickering over the San Francisco skyline showing him the world was, in fact, intact, and whatever hole punched deep below the island must have closed.
Then he felt Sam stiffen against him, heard her mutter, “Alex.”
And saw the gunmen holding pistols to the heads of Sam’s parents.
* * *
“You’re coming with me, boy,” said an older man standing slightly in front of them, his eyes rooted on Alex. “You’re coming with me or the girl’s parents die.”
Alex shoved Sam behind him, thinking fast. Read and react, just like on
the football field, where decisions were made in the time between seconds.
He eased Raiff’s stick from his belt and held it low by his hip. “Tell your men to lower their weapons.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear what I said.”
“I heard. But let me repeat what I just said: tell your men to lower their weapons and let the girl’s parents go.”
“And if I don’t?”
Alex snapped the stick forward and up, felt it turn into a snake in his hand, slithering out through the air, following the picture he made in his mind. It twirled through the air, finding the gunman holding Sam’s father and then the gunman holding Sam’s mother. Impacting with a snap against both their skulls, their legs left to crumple as they dropped to the ground.
He retracted the whip and walked straight toward the man who could only be Langston Marsh, as Sam rushed to her parents, the three of them clutching each other in a tight ball.
“Leave,” Alex told Marsh.
But Marsh stiffened instead of moving. “This isn’t over. Not even close. You’ll regret not killing me when you had the chance, when I exterminate the rest of your kind, Alex.”
“Call me Kit,” Alex said to him, again using the name of Anne Frank’s imaginary friend to whom her diary was written. “And you know who you remind me of?” And when Marsh remained silent, Alex snapped his free hand into the air. “Heil, Hitler!”
Marsh snarled, starting to back away now. “You, your kind, killed my father. And someday you’ll all pay, each and every one of you.”
Alex made sure Marsh could see him raise Raiff’s stick again. “Remember how you said I’d regret not killing you?”
Marsh moved faster and lumbered down a rope ladder leading into a Zodiac raft. Alex heard him fire up the engine and watched the raft speed out into the bay, where it disappeared into the darkness. Sam was back by his side by then. She pressed up against him, holding him tight.
“You can ace history now. I really mean that.”
Alex held his gaze on the bay, so she wouldn’t be able to see the sadness in his eyes. “Guess we’ll never know, Sam.”
EPILOGUE
THE ROAD AHEAD
The future is no more uncertain than the present.
—WALT WHITMAN
SAM KNEW SHE HAD to go home with her parents, just as she knew she couldn’t explain all that had happened to them. Impossible. When they pushed, she kept her answers just vague enough and never said a word about Alex’s true origins.
Alex …
She hadn’t heard from him since he’d taken the first-aid kit back to Raiff to tend to Dr. Donati. Donati had tried to reach her several times, but she kept putting off returning his calls.
When she awoke Monday morning in her own bed, her first brief thought was that maybe it had all been a dream. When that quickly passed, she moved to the window and was relieved to find no police car parked across the street or cruising slowly by. But she knew any ring of the bell could mean the drone things dressed as cops had returned to her door, and she felt anxious and uneasy over the fact that they knew where she lived, who she was.
Only then did she realize she was late for school, very late, so late that she’d missed her AP bio exam and could only imagine how Cara would react to her failing to produce the answers she and the rest of the CatPack needed. Maybe she’d just tell her the truth.
Yeah, we spent the weekend being chased by aliens. We saved the world, at least for the time being. Oh, and by the way, Alex thinks you’re a bitch too.
That had been hours ago and the rest of the day had passed in slow motion, nothing happening at all, until dusk bled the light from the sky.
Sam stared at the throwaway phone, willing it to ring, with Alex on the other end. The old-fashioned flip had been behaving very strangely ever since exposed to whatever had laid waste to every bit of Alcatraz prison itself, black hole or something else, leaving behind nothing other than an empty patch of ground with the color and life bleached out of it. She stared at it, wondering if she’d ever hear from Alex again. Had he gone off with Raiff? Was he going to disappear, living off the grid and everyone’s radar for years to come?
Too many questions. Sam spared any further ones when her phone rang.
* * *
Alex walked along the shoulder of the 101 freeway heading south, nothing but the contents of his backpack weighing him down, hoping to snare a ride before dark. It wasn’t safe for him to stay in an area where he was so recognizable, and Raiff knew as well as he did that what had happened last night changed little, if anything.
Langston Marsh was still out there, more of the drone things were still out there, and neither was about to give up the hunt for him. There was the chip in his head to consider as well, still slowly killing him even if it did somehow contain the secrets to winning this war in the long term and not just the short. Raiff was working on finding the best solution to save Alex from the leakage while coming up with a way to make sure the chip remained intact so the secrets it held could be revealed.
He missed Sam, missed his parents, did his best not to think about either since it hurt too much, leaving him near tears and unable to focus on anything else.
Like staying alive.
Raiff had given him an address in Los Angeles and nothing more, becoming very cryptic when Alex pressed him on that.
“You’ll understand when you get there,” was all he’d said.
So Alex trudged on, walking backward as he hitchhiked down the shoulder of the 101. He only wished he could do the same with his life, walk backward until his parents were alive again and he was in a position to change everything. But the ash man had said An and Li Chin weren’t dead, and what did that mean, exactly, for where the road ahead might take him?
As he began to ponder that question, an old battered white van pulled to a stop ahead of him on the shoulder. Alex jogged up to the passenger door and watched it pushed open by the driver’s hand.
“Where you headed, friend?” asked the man Alex recognized as the same guy who’d picked Sam and him up yesterday. “The Reverend William Grimes at your service. Call me Reverend Billy. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
Alex climbed in and closed the door behind him, eyeing Reverend Billy’s pinkish skin and mangy hair and let his gaze wander to THEND COMES tattooed across all ten fingers. The back of the rusted-out van was still packed with Bibles, but the stacks seemed to have come down a bit since the day before.
“What are the odds, son, the odds of me being fortunate enough to pick you up off the road two days in a row?”
“Not very good.”
“No, they are not, unless it was no accident, no coincidence at all.”
Alex’s hand strayed to the passenger door, ready to pop it open and drop back to the road.
“Bet you’re wondering whose side I’m on,” Reverend Billy continued. “Bet you’re wondering how it is I’m able to show up like this yet again. Bet you’re wondering what I know that you need to.”
Alex eased his hand away from the latch. “Wondering and listening, sir.”
Reverend Billy almost laughed. “I’m no ‘sir,’ ’less you got the worst set of eyes in God’s creation. If all this is happening, it stands to reason it’s according to His plan. I’d ask you to consider that, for starters.”
“Little difficult under the circumstances.”
“Then let me explain what I’m getting at…”
* * *
Sam saw UNKNOWN light up in the caller ID but answered the phone anyway.
“Hello,” she said, hearing the hum of a vehicle whirring on the other end of the line.
“You’re not safe.”
“Alex?”
“It’s okay. I’m headed back there now. There’s still time.”
“Time for what?”
“Same thing, Sam, to save the world,” Alex told her. “But we need to save you first.”
FROM AN ANONYMOUS JOURNAL
WHEN I LOOK BACK o
n those days, I try to remember when I actually realized my life was never, ever going back to normal. That the routine that had so long defined me and provided a respite for my dreams was finished, that those dreams were over too. A door had been opened that could never be closed.
Langston Marsh and his Fifth Column weren’t going anywhere. Alex had destroyed the ash man’s projection, but back from wherever it emanated, he and countless others like him were still there. Beyond that, Alcatraz was hardly the only place they were building their army to turn us all into slaves. We’d managed to destroy one wormhole, but others were certain to open, bringing with them the means to enact a destiny mankind had been created to fulfill. They looked at us as the only means to ensure their own survival, prisoners, in that sense, of the way they’d built their world. So they couldn’t stop, would never stop.
The means to defeat them, the mystery in all this that remains unsolved, lies in the chip inside Alex’s head. That is, if it doesn’t kill him first. We need to harvest the data contained upon it, we need to stop the leakage before it kills Alex.
But what did the ash man mean when he told Alex his parents were still alive and where would that lead? What did he mean about Alex’s true destiny and that we had far worse things to worry about than the threat from his planet?
So much we didn’t know, couldn’t see yet.…
My family went to Florida on vacation once. We rented a car and my dad was driving on one of the big interstate highways when we got caught in the smoke from one of those brushfires that had drifted over all eight lanes. The road was there and then it wasn’t. All my dad could do was throw on his flashers and cut his speed to a crawl. That’s what my life turned into. I couldn’t see anything in front of me, had no idea what lay ahead in the next day or even hour.
The life we’d led up until just a few days before was over and there was no going back. We’d won a battle, not a war. I never wanted to become a hero and don’t consider myself one now. I look back on all of this a lot, looking for something I could’ve done differently, but there’s nothing. My decisions weren’t really conscious ones; I did what I had to do in each respective moment and regret none of those decisions. So if I had it to do all over again, would I?
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