Zenith Dream

by F. T. Lukens

  Snapping his head up, Ren looked to the cameras. “What do you want?”

  “I can’t have you stopping me, Ren. I have a plan and an army and a purpose.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You’ll have to come talk to me to find out. Your friends are on level two, waiting for you. I’ll vent them if you don’t hurry.” She laughed. “You know I will.”

  Ren nodded. “I know.”

  “Here, this will be quicker than the stairwell.” A lift dinged nearby, and the door opened. “You look peaked. Come along, you two. Don’t want to keep me waiting.”

  Ren steeled himself and stepped into the lift. Despite his fears, Millicent didn’t drop the elevator out from under them. It descended at a slow pace, but Ren allowed his vision to wash blue, just in case.

  Asher’s fingers clasped tight around his. Ren wanted to reassure him, but he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t certain he could stop Millicent. He wasn’t certain he could do what the technopaths in the debris said he could. He only knew that he’d do anything to protect Asher and to save his brother and the others. Rowan had saved him when she didn’t know him, and Ollie had welcomed him when he didn’t have to. Darby stayed in spite of the danger. Penelope healed him. Lucas made him laugh.

  Asher loved him.

  Ren’s breath caught. He didn’t want to lose them. He couldn’t lose them.

  He wouldn’t lose them.

  Panic lanced through him as the lift ground to a halt. Ren stalled the doors from opening for a moment and turned to Asher. He gave him a watery smile and kissed his stubbled cheek.

  “That better not be a goodbye,” Asher said, softly.

  “No, it’s a promise.”

  Ren stepped back and let go of Asher’s hand, then he allowed the doors to open.

  Guards swarmed the area, all dressed in black with body armor and helmets. They had a group of individuals surrounded off to the side, and Ren immediately recognized Liam among them and Ollie as well. His heart sank.

  While the guards on Echo drift were inexperienced and comical, these moved in unison and with a coordination that marked them as well-trained. They encircled Ren and Asher as soon as they stepped from the lift. Hands raised, Ren felt the echoes of their weapons in his body and tamped down the urge to turn them against their owners. He wanted to burn out the power sources and send the guards to their knees in agony through the crackling of electricity. He withheld his power. They weren’t his real enemy.

  “I’m here, Millicent. Don’t hurt them.”

  She didn’t respond, but she must have sent a communication to the guards. They parted so Ren could see the group they had cornered, though they kept their weapons trained on them. Ollie, Lucas, Pen, and Liam had their hands raised. Rowan wasn’t there. Neither was Darby. Ren’s throat tightened. Had they avoided capture? Were they dead?

  Millicent’s voice crackled over the communication system and echoed in the wide space she’d chosen for their confrontation.

  “I have your brother,” she sing-songed. “The one you were looking for. I found him for you.”

  The soldiers pushed Liam forward, and he tripped his way to Ren and grabbed Ren’s arm. His lip was bloody, and he had a bruise forming around one eye and a singe in his shirt at the upper arm. Ren caught Liam and pulled him close to his side.

  “Okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow, then was knocked to the side when the guards went for Asher.

  “No! What?”

  “Our divine leader’s orders,” the leader grunted. They grabbed Asher by the arms, dragged him away, and shoved him into the small group. Ollie caught Asher in a tight hold and glared at the soldiers.

  “Let them go, Millicent.” Ren narrowed his eyes.

  There was no answer, but the lift on the opposite side of the wide space dinged.

  Millicent emerged in a swirl of light. She stepped lightly, her bare feet making no sound on the deck plating, her limbs moving like a puppet with no strings. Her white, formless dress swished about her knees. Her eyes glowed a brilliant blue, and her dark hair fell in tangles down her back to her waist. She lifted her hand, and tendrils of blue snapped from her fingers.

  “You can’t stop me,” she said.

  Ren gritted his teeth. “I can try.”

  She laughed, high and loud, bordering on hysterical. “Why? They took you from your home. They imprisoned you. They tortured you. They killed you. Why stop me from avenging you?”

  Straightening his shoulders, Ren dug his fingers into his palms. Sweat beaded along the back of his neck. Anxiety and fear pounded through his body. His breath hitched. “You’re not avenging me. You’re taking revenge.”

  “They deserve it for what they’ve done.”

  Ren frowned. “You tortured me. You’re the one who turned my dreams into weapons and turned me into a ghost. Should I take my revenge against you?”

  She laughed again; her open mouth was a red slash in her pale face and her eyes were wild. “You were weak. Easy.” She waved her hand, and the life support systems flickered in Ren’s middle. “You can try to stop me, but I am a star. You are a human. You made that choice.”

  His star was a deep well of power in his chest. He gathered it to him, allowed it to flood through his veins and arteries and mix with his blood. His power was a separate heartbeat, a rhythmic pulse of crackling energy. He channeled his anger and his grief and his happiness and his love until he was consumed. He drew on his panic and his desperation and funneled it into his will.

  “No,” Ren said. His voice was static and power. “I’m a supernova.”

  Ren released his tight hold, and his star poured outward, the world around him awash in a spectrum of color: reds and blues and purples and darkness as black as the space between the stars in the night sky. Fire and light exploded from his fingertips; electricity arced between his hands, around his torso, and down his legs to the soles of his feet. He tapped into the power of his humanity and into the power of stardust. He dove into the drift’s systems.

  Millicent blasted into the circuits to repel him and met Ren with her own surge of power. They clashed within the drift. A wall of blue smacked against Ren’s own nebula of color. Millicent pushed and pushed; her power strained against the torrent of Ren’s own. His stomach roiled, and his head pounded with pain and exertion, but it was secondary to the feeling of being overtaken by the explosion of potential. He overwhelmed the drift’s power structures, driving her out in wave after wave of pure energy. He shone as brightly as an entire galaxy of stars, expanding outward in a detonation of elements and sound and light.

  How dare you, she gasped. How dare you!

  You can’t push me out this time.

  No! she screamed at him, sending a shockwave of sickness, but Ren batted it away.

  Then she fled. She raced to life support and cut the systems and Ren repaired them in a blink. She sabotaged the grav and went for the air locks. Ren chased her from system to system, from circuit to circuit, from wire to wire. He chased her until he was stretched from the top of the drift to the bottom, from the docks to the lifts, from the locks to the comms. He swamped every available nook, welled and inundated, battered every system with power, until he controlled everything, and she curled into a small ball of dim light.

  Ren wrapped tighter around her, squeezed and squeezed, focused on overwhelming her until she was a speck. And while he choked her, caged her within his supernova, he also expanded, filtered into the ships in the docking bay, and out beyond the confines of the drift into the smattering of satellites caught in the gravitational pull, and farther, into the ships on the outskirts—Phoenix Corps—and into space debris drifting by. He bloomed outward, soundless in the void of space, a shock of reds, blues, purples, and colors undetectable by humans.


  She squirmed away, snapping his attention back to her pathetic squiggle of light, and then… she smiled.

  Look what you’ve done.

  Ren was a collapsing star. He was darkness and light, a supernova, scattering across the cluster in a tumult of creation. He was a concussive force of energy, elements, and color streaking across the night sky. He was the birth of a nebula and the terrifying swirl of a black hole.

  He was shaking apart.

  Warning alarms blared, and claxons flashed as the drift shuddered and threatened to break. Pieces of the structure snapped off. Cracks appeared in the bulkhead. Wires overloaded, burned, then blackened and twisted. The gravity threatened to fail. Life support sputtered.

  “Ren! Ren, you have to stop. You’re going to pull this place apart!”

  Disconnected from his body, Ren faintly registered Asher’s hands on his shoulders. He attempted to contain himself, but he was unable to shrink back. He was tearing himself apart, down to his constituent atoms, and he’d take the drift with him. His family would not survive.

  He opened his human eyes, his vision filled with a blurred image of Asher’s concerned face. Ren gritted his teeth. “Liam,” he rasped, voice scorched from yelling. He blindly reached out for him and grabbed his wrist where he had his fingers wrapped in Ren’s jacket. “Pull us in.”

  “What?”

  “Pull us in. Pull us in. Pull us in!”

  Liam lunged for Millicent, yanking Ren from Asher’s grasp, and locked a hand around her ankle. Liam’s eyes glowed green.

  Ren blinked and fell.

  16

  Gasping, Ren woke to blinding white. He raised a hand and shielded his eyes as he sat up. He was in a barren cube, surrounded by white walls. He wore a white shirt and white pants and Asher’s jacket. And he wasn’t alone.

  Millicent lay prone, dark hair splayed over her. Her white dress blended into the floor creating an illusion that she was only arms and legs.

  Ren shuddered and tugged on the collar of Asher’s jacket.

  “Hey,” Liam said. He leaned against the wall. “Quick thinking.”

  Ren shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the long strands away from his face. He stood, though he was wobbly, and Liam steadied him with a hand to his arm.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t really know,” Liam said, arms crossed. “Your eyes went black, and you shook like a leaf in a storm. Then all of a sudden, the drift began to…” Liam made a motion with his hand. “…break apart. Asher grabbed you and yelled a question, and you snapped out of it long enough for this to happen.” Liam swept his hand to encompass the room.

  “Not very decorative,” Ren said, conjuring a smile.

  Liam smirked. “I didn’t have much time to create anything. This was the best I could do.”

  “What do you think is going on… outside?”

  “Oh, we’re asleep, on the deck. And hopefully you’ll have stopped destroying everything.”

  Ren jutted his chin toward Millicent’s body. “She’s in here with me, which means she can’t pull me into the systems like she did on the Star Stream. I think you stopped me and her.”

  “I hope so. That was terrifying. If I hadn’t been so worried about you I would have fled with her guards when they ran.”

  “They ran?”

  “Oh yeah, as soon as she fell to the floor and curled into a ball. Then the whole place began to quake when you went…” Liam mimed an explosion. “… supernova.”

  Millicent groaned, then stretched. She pushed up on her elbows then snapped her head up, palms flat on the slick, white floor. She flailed, then brushed her wild hair back. Her eyes narrowed on Ren, and she moved to a crouch.

  “What have you done?” Finding her feet, she swayed, then thrust out her hand. “Why can’t I… where is it?” She patted her hands over her body. “Where is it? I can’t feel it.” She clenched her hands in her hair. “I can’t feel it!”

  “Your power doesn’t work here,” Liam said, lazily. “Only mine.”

  “Give it back!”

  Liam shrugged. “That’s not how it works.”

  “You,” She pointed at Ren. “You have ruined everything! Why couldn’t you stay dead? Or stayed away? I wasn’t hurting you. I didn’t want you or your Phoenix or your crew.”

  “You endangered us all,” Ren bit out. “Do you think they would leave me alone if you were running rampant, scaring people, venting them, taking over their homes?”

  “I did what you wouldn’t.” She crept forward, features twisted in disgust. “The Corps would never leave us alone anyway. And Vos wanted to make us weapons. I broke away when you couldn’t. I took control.

  “You killed people.”

  “I did what I had to. I escaped Crei. I deceived you. I overthrew Vos. I won.” She laughed. “I won!”

  Ren rubbed his brow. “At what cost? You’re alone. You have no crew. You have no family.”

  “I am free.”

  Ren shrugged. “You’re really not.”

  She sniffed. “I have an army.”

  “You have zealots who are in awe of you and who ran off the minute you were defeated.”

  She cocked her head, gaze flitting between Ren and Liam. “You’ve found your brother. You have your Phoenix. You have what you wanted. Let me go.”

  Ren shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “The Corps is evil. You know that. Let me destroy them. Let me finish what I’ve started! Get out of my way!”

  Ren sighed. He couldn’t reason with her. She was dead set in her beliefs, immovable as stone, and nothing he could show or prove or say would sway her. She was dangerous—not just in her power, but in her inability to look beyond her own desires. “No.”

  She cursed and stepped forward. Her face was a storm cloud. “Then I’ll move you!” She rushed him, hands outstretched, voice caught in a scream.

  The dream winked out.

  _

  Groaning, Ren rolled on the drift floor. His whole body ached. His throat felt like dust, and his fingers were numb. His eyelids fluttered, and he squinted in the dim drift lighting.

  “Ash?” He worked moisture into his mouth. “Liam?”

  With a tortured sigh, Ren squirmed, and found he couldn’t move his arms. Rope dug into his wrists, and his shoulders were taut from being bound behind him. Using his elbow for leverage, he got to his knees and wobbled.

  A barrage of clicks sounded.

  “Stay where you are.”

  Blinking blearily, the shapes around him sharpened into view. Millicent was to his left, similarly bound, but not moving. Liam sprawled next to him. He had electronic clamps around his wrists and his eyes were slits, but he was awake. A regiment of Phoenix Corps surrounded them. They didn’t hold tech weapons—no pulse guns or electric batons. Instead, Ren stared down the barrels of ancient projectile weapons, like the one Zag had used on Crei.

  Fear choked him. His heart beat a rabbit’s rhythm. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  Ren shook his head. “No, that’s not right. My brother and I have an agreement with General VanMeerten.” Ren couldn’t see beyond the corporal’s visor, but his hand holding the weapon shook.

  “The general ordered us to detain you and prepare you for processing. She gave the orders to use the rope and the pistols.”

  Betrayal was a knife between his ribs, a wound in his side, and, despite the outcome being something Ren expected from someone like VanMeerten, it still burned.

  “Where’s my family? What have you done with them?”

  “They were ordered back to their ship.”

  There was a commotion behind Ren, and he craned his neck. He couldn’t see beyond the circle of Corpsmen surrounding him, but he could hear voices. Asher’s and… was t
hat Darby? And Rowan? They were alive? They were safe?

  “Let him go!” Rowan commanded.

  Ren watched in dazed awe as the group parted when she approached. Her strides were long and purposeful; her blond braid was swinging behind her. Asher marched at one shoulder and Darby at the other. Ren’s gaze settled on Darby. He was startled to see the explosive device in her gloved hand. She saw him and winked.

  “Yeah, you heard her. Out of our way and let our friends go, or I might just use this contraption.” She shook it, and the group took a collective breath. She smiled, cheekily. “Oh, so you do know what this is.”

  “Release the brothers,” Rowan commanded, stance wide, hands on her hips. She had a bruise on her cheek and a smear of blood along her jawline, but otherwise she was an avenging angel as beautiful as she had been when Ren first saw her on Nineveh.

  “Our orders—”

  “Your orders are what I tell you,” Rowan snapped, pointing at the corporal. “Understand? No? Ren, show them.”

  Ren wrinkled his brow, confused, until he saw the recording device Asher held in his hand—Lucas’s recording of the conversation with VanMeerten and Councilor Morgan.

  Oh, he could kiss Lucas. He really could.

  Focusing, Ren drew out a tendril of power, directed it at the recording, and fed it into the flashing signage above them. The image of the general and the councilor appeared, and the conversation played. VanMeerten’s voice was loud and clear.

  “An honorable discharge for Asher. Credits for Rowan. And a pardon for the technopath and his brother. Warrants and files deleted.”

  Ren rewound it and set it on a loop.

  “As you can see,” Rowan said, tenting her fingers, “we had a verbal agreement. I intend to see that honored.” She gestured to Darby. “I’d prefer without bloodshed, but I could go either way at this point.”

  Darby’s smile went sharp. “I know which way I’d prefer.”

  “This is… unorthodox.” The corporal shifted.