by Glen Zipper
“The marrow of sentience and the essence of life, it is inextricable from the fabric of space and time,” I repeated, contemplating his words as I recited them out loud. “Whatever it is you found, you didn’t just put it in Nick. You also put it in the reactor.”
“Precisely,” he conceded. “Properly channeled, it can transform the reactor into a disruptor of not just space, but also time. In interfacing Nicholas with the California’s reactor, you unwittingly unlocked its temporal displacement capacity.”
For all the pernicious weapons created by the hands of men, none had ever held the potential to be as cataclysmically destructive as what Fuller had created. Bizarrely, his disaffected manner revealed no obvious concern for its terrifying implications.
“Why would you ever open the door to something so dangerous?”
Fuller looked away as if consulting the shadows for guidance.
“I knew your mother too. She was very kind. And quite beautiful.”
His non sequitur landed like a punch to the gut.
“Yes, she was,” I answered, trying not to let on he had rattled me.
“May I ask you something personal?”
A sense of dread billowed up inside me. “Go ahead.”
The doctor leaned in and locked his eyes on mine.
“Do you dream of her?”
His query felt somehow rhetorical. It was as if he was more interested in gauging my reaction than actually procuring an answer.
“Yes,” I replied, barely mustering a whisper. “Almost every night.”
“And where do you go? What is it that you see?”
“The end. The way she died. I can’t escape it.”
“It haunts you.”
“Yes.”
Fuller wearily raised himself out of his chair and looked forlornly out the observation window.
“What if you could go back and stop it?” he asked, his eyes trained on my reflection in the glass. “Would you?”
All at once, I understood. “That’s what happened to you. There wasn’t any accident. You were trying to go back.”
“I tried, yes,” he confessed, turning to face me. “I wanted to go back far enough to build a new, indefatigable fleet of warships. Raise an army of Hybrids that would be impervious to enemy corruption. All the suffering. All the lives that were lost. I could have prevented it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I couldn’t,” he corrected me. “There’s a quantum barrier protecting the timeline. It cannot be penetrated. Any attempt to do so will deflect everything inside the reactor’s temporal displacement field into the future—approximately five years into the future if we are to presume the misadventures of the California and the Tripoli represent a constant.”
I quickly calculated the math of Fuller’s time jump in my head.
“That would’ve landed you right into the heart of the Kastazi second wave.”
“Correct. I spent nearly a year hiding and scavenging before I found the Resistance, and this sanctuary is where I have remained ever since. I can’t even remember what it feels like to see the stars with my own eyes.”
As Staxx was still searching for an explanation for what had happened to the California, I knew Fuller couldn’t have confided in him what the Blink Reactor was really capable of.
“And in all your time here, why did you never tell Staxx the truth?”
“What good would it have done other than to inspire him with the same false hope I had so foolishly indulged? Fate delivered me to this base to attend to the practical, everyday needs of the Resistance’s survival, not to chase the impossible.”
“So that’s all that’s left for us to do now? Survive?”
“A week ago, I probably would’ve said yes. But then you brought me the California.”
“The California can’t save the Alliance, Doctor.”
Fuller ambled clumsily toward the examining table.
“No, she can’t. But what she was carrying just might.”
He ripped the sheet off the body.
My stomach lurched, instigating a heaving retch.
Nick lay on the table, his torso open and cross-sectioned like a dissected cadaver.
“I’m sorry,” Fuller apologized. “I should’ve warned you. But rest assured I can restore him to functionality.”
Dizzy, I braced myself against the table. Had Nick been an android, his insides a tangle of wires, hydraulics, and power relays, he would have been easier to look at. But there was nothing about him that seemed any different from me.
“Sentient or not, one Hybrid can’t save us either,” I replied, covering my mouth to suppress the indelicate culmination of yet another gag.
“A forest starts with but one seed,” Fuller replied while carefully folding a hemisected flap of skin back over Nick’s sternum. “What exists in him can be shared. Populated forward.”
“Populated forward to what?”
“The first-generation Hybrids, of course,” he answered as if it were a self-evident conclusion. “Finally woken from their sleep.”
Despite the hopeful gleam I noticed in Fuller’s eyes, rousing one of the greatest threats humanity had ever known and endowing them with the power to do as they pleased sounded like a resoundingly bad idea.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Considering our lack of viable alternatives, I don’t think it would be possible for me to be any more serious.”
“Think this through,” I urged him. “If you give them free will, what’s stopping them from siding with the Kastazi?”
“Nothing,” he replied, almost smugly.
“Then why would you ever trust them?”
“You trusted Nicholas, did you not?”
“He’s one individual,” I countered, not buying into his wild leap of extrapolation. “You can’t predict what all of them will do.”
“To the contrary. I believe I can.”
“Why?”
Fuller ran his fingers through Nick’s hair, gently straightening its tangled waves.
“Because to me they’re not Hybrids. They are my children.”
CHAPTER 46
VIV
I WASN’T SURE IF IT WAS HIS stiffness or his cold, disaffected eyes, but something about the soldier who had come calling for JD told me he was Shadow Ops. Shadow Ops were a small cadre of covert agents who reported only to the High Command. Recruited to undertake clandestine operations that could not be lawfully authorized, their ranks were populated by operatives with a predisposition for the kind of work that left a thick layer of dirt under their fingernails.
Why would someone have dispatched a Shadow Ops goon to retrieve JD?
And why was such a foreboding escort suddenly necessary when it hadn’t been before?
Those were the questions I kept asking myself as I rested with my back against Bossa’s munitions crate. The moment I sat there I realized why he had chosen its perch as his personal squat. Even from my lower vantage point I could see everyone and everything happening in the armory.
Deep in thought, I peered between the loitering bodies and focused on the tall shale wall behind the student encampment, where someone had scrawled Devastation Class in big block letters. It seemed the students had taken ownership of the nickname that had been intended to mock us, transforming it into something of an ironic but proud identity.
“Hey!” Bossa called out as he jumped down, startling me.
“Thanks for the heart attack.”
“For you,” he said, holding out a piece of paper intricately folded into the shape of a rose. “Origami. It’s a flower.”
“Yes, I can see that,” I answered, inspecting the meticulousness of its many layers. “You must really spend a lot of time alone.”
I waited for a snappy comeback, but Bossa just stood there awkwardly.
“Did you expect me to trade you my PRM ration for this thing?” I said, offering his paper flower back to him.
“No, I just . . .”
“It’s nothing.”
“Whatever’s on your mind . . .”
“It’s just a question.”
“Ask it.”
“What I told you in the brig,” he said, his fingers twitching nervously. “About the New Jersey. Why haven’t you asked me any more about it?”
“Because there’s no point. You were lying. Trying to get under my skin.”
Bossa’s dancing fingers fell still.
“It was the truth.”
“No. You couldn’t have been any older than—”
“Sixteen,” he softly uttered. “I was sixteen.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I can explain.”
“What are you trying to do, Bossa? What’s your angle?”
“I know it’s hard for you to believe anything I say, but if you just listen to—”
A sudden rumble of commotion interrupted him.
It was JD marching back into the armory, making a beeline for the student encampment. Confused, I watched as he collected Gentry, Julian, and Liko and led them toward Bossa and me. Bix, Ohno, and Anatoly noticed what was happening and rushed toward us from the opposite direction.
I sprang to my feet as our two factions converged. My attention was irresistibly drawn to Julian. It was the closest I had been to him since we had arrived at the base. He noticed my scrutiny and dropped his gaze.
“All right,” Gentry said. “We’re listening.”
“The past is written, but our future is not,” JD proclaimed, briefly hesitating when he noticed the Devastation Class graffiti on the opposite wall. “If we’re going to survive this nightmare, it’s all going to come down to one question. Are we going to keep fighting each other, or can we come together to start fighting back?”
“Fight back how?” Liko replied with more than a hint of resignation. “This isn’t a war. It’s the aftermath of one. We’ve already lost.”
“No, we haven’t. Not yet.”
“Do I sense a forthcoming rousing speech?” offered Bossa.
“If the cadet has something to say, let him say it,” Gentry surprisingly interjected.
Acknowledging Gentry with a slight, respectful bow of his head, JD proceeded to debrief us. As his narrative unfolded, each new detail was more shocking than the last. Fuller. The secret of the Blink Reactor. Nick, and the plan to revive the dormant Hybrids. Likely because conceptions of the impossible were already almost entirely eroded, no one challenged a word of it.
“We told Staxx everything, and he’s all in,” JD continued. “He’s recalling every remaining Resistance vessel to this sector. Once those ships are in position, a twenty-four-hour mission countdown will begin.”
Apparently the general’s conceptions of the impossible had been similarly eroded. Or maybe he was just so desperate, he had no choice but to believe.
“And then what happens to us?” I asked.
“We’ve been given field commissions. The general is taking the California’s captain’s chair. We won’t be on the bridge, but we’ll serve under his command however he can use us.”
If there was going to be a fight, I wanted to be part of it. A “demotion” back to the lower decks wasn’t what I had in mind, but I was relieved we weren’t being left behind.
“And we stay here?” Liko lamented. “Waiting in the dark, praying you can pull off a miracle?”
“No,” JD replied. “We all go. Live or die, we’re going to do it together.”
“Staxx authorized this?”
“To pull this mission off, he’s going to need every able body he can get.”
“Most of the students have no training,” Julian interjected. “They’re not prepared for battle.”
“They may not be cadets, but they are Explorers,” Gentry retorted. “The best and the brightest the Alliance had to offer. We can help them.”
Ohno pounded her fist into her palm, her tattoos bursting with luminescent color. “So where do we begin?”
JD opened his mouth to reply but was preempted by a blaring siren. Not five seconds later there was an explosion, and the entire armory rumbled as if it were at the epicenter of an earthquake. Through the exit I could see Resistance infantry running in every direction. Two soldiers, one human and one Aeson, broke from their ranks and hurried inside.
“Listen up!” the human soldier yelled.
Disoriented by the frenzied chaos, few students paid him any heed.
The Aeson fired a short, controlled burst from his pulse rifle into the deck. That immediately got everyone’s attention.
“We’re going to secure you inside,” the soldier resumed yelling. “Whatever you do, once we lock the doors, do not open them for any reason.”
“You can’t leave us,” one student cried out.
“What’s happening?” shouted another.
In the distance, I heard an echo.
As it drew closer, screeching like a wounded animal, it became hauntingly familiar.
In a few more seconds, it was unmistakable.
No.
Not now.
Not yet.
It was the sound of Kastazi Strikers.
JD ran out ahead of us. “Let us help you.”
The soldier defensively raised his weapon. “Back off!”
I took JD’s hand and slowly pulled him toward me, careful not to agitate the panicking soldier.
The Aeson swiftly gathered his comrade, leading him back out into the passageway. A moment later the armory’s two heavy steel doors swung closed and locked themselves in place. Outside we could hear the muffled sounds of a pitched small-arms firefight. With each passing second its calamitous din drew closer.
His fingers still entwined with mine, JD tightened his grip and looked me in the eye. “Do you understand why I would’ve Blinked without you?”
His words hung in the air alongside the sound of howling weapons fire just on the other side of the armory door. I had struggled with the very same question, but in time an answer revealed itself to me.
In taking the Delphinium I had decided to give my life for what I believed was more important than anything else—my duty to the Alliance and the souls aboard the California. But my choice was about far more than sacrifice. In a world upside down, where a meaningless fate like Safi’s could come at any moment, I had chosen a destiny few ever get to touch. One of true purpose.
JD understood this.
And he loved me too much to take it away from me.
“Yes,” I answered, squeezing his hand back twice as hard. “I do.”
CHAPTER 47
JD
I CROUCHED ON MY KNEES, WAITING FOR the inevitable. Behind me, everyone else did the same. The sound of discharging pulse rifles had stopped. All that remained were intermittent shrieks of Kastazi Eradicator fire.
“All right. Get ready,” I said. “Hands behind your heads.”
The sound of students restraining their whimpers and cries was starting to rattle me. I just needed them to keep it together a few minutes more.
It took a little longer than I expected, but the Kastazi soon turned their attention to the armory. First I heard their muffled voices filtering through the doors. Next came the faint beeping of a timer. I translated its escalating frequency into a rough countdown.
“They’ve set a charge. Five seconds.”
Trying to slow the flow of endorphins dumping into my bloodstream, I drew in short, even breaths through my nose.
“Four.”
Behind me, someone softly cried.
“Three.”
I looked over my shoulder at Viv. She was ready.
“Two.”
I clenched my stomach in anticipation of the blast.
“One.”
A small, controlled explosion flung the doors wide open, and a scout team of three Kastazi soldiers rolled in as if born from the soft white smoke that accompanied their intrusion. Each wore matte black body armor with distinct honeycomb-shaped,
blast-resistant scales. Ghoulish, sharply angled helmets obscured their faces.
As they descended upon us in a tight, triangular formation, I focused on the lead soldier. His shoulders bore jagged, bloodred stripes signifying the rank of Rapax, a Kastazi platoon leader. As was the macabre tradition of the Rapax, his helmet boasted hundreds of clumsily etched hash marks—one for each of his confirmed kills.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down my nose as he slowly turned his head from left to right.
“Ket al,” the Rapax called out to his men.
Sixty-four. His head count was correct. Not including Bossa, there were exactly sixty-four of us. My Kastazi wasn’t very good, but I knew enough to count to a hundred.
“Obas han,” one of the flanking soldiers called back to him.
Han was no. I was almost certain obas meant “prisoners.”
I cautiously separated my fingers clasped behind my head. Taking my signal, Bossa lobbed Bix and Ohno’s repaired flash grenade down from his perch behind us. It bounced once and harmlessly rolled to a stop at the Rapax’s feet.
I held my breath, waiting.
The Rapax tapped at the sorry-looking contraption with the toe of his boot. Two tense seconds passed before the grenade finally exploded, consuming the Rapax and his men inside a blast of brilliant yellow light. A concurrent sound wave pounded my eardrums with a thunderous, stabbing concussion.
“Go!” yelled Viv, rallying us to charge the disoriented soldiers before they could gain their bearings. All three went down hard and fast under the weight of our swarming bodies, but not before the Rapax squeezed his Eradicator’s trigger.
Cooper clutched a gaping wound in the meat of his thigh.
Despite the chaos, everything around me seemed to slow in anticipation of the horror I knew would come next.
Almost instantaneously, the gruesome damage to his leg festered outward in an unstoppable chain reaction of cellular necrosis, devouring every molecule of organic tissue in its path until there was nothing left to feed its progress.