by Alex Leopold
Opening her eyes a fraction it seemed like she was lying in a clearing surrounded by a forest of trees with leaves that mesmerized her with all the colors of fall: hot reds, bright oranges, dazzling golds, piercing blues and the purest whites.
Then as her vision cleared her other senses returned and she began to taste the bitter acrid taste of smoke and felt the searing heat biting at her skin. These things snapped her awake and with it she realized she was indeed in a forest, but one of fire.
“What's happening?” She asked shocked to find everything ablaze.
“Some crazy crink did their voodoo-thing and almost destroyed the place.” Ellis answered, coughing with every breath he took.
He was trying to get Cooper to sit, but she looked to be rubber in his hands and he had to shake her shoulders to get her to focus. When her eyes finally did open they went wild with fright and she practically leaped into his arms.
“There's a man in the dark, he's coming for us!” She said hysterically as she clung to him.
“Who?” Ellis stammered both confused and, at the same time, surprised by the sudden intimacy of her body pressed against his.
Still in his arms Cooper, turned to face him. They were so close their cheeks touched.
“I… Maybe I was dreaming.” She said half delirious. Then she fell to her knees and vomited.
“I usually don’t have that effect on women.” Ellis quipped trying to be funny.
“I don’t feel well.” Cooper responded after wiping the bile away from her lips with the back of her hand.
“Maybe it’s because you’re being cooked like a pig on a spit.” Ellis replied, his face running with sweat. Then a painful groan came from above their heads. The roof was buckling.
“Time to leave.” He pronounced.
He made to grab Cooper’s hand but Mayat appeared at the top of the crater. She tackled him to the ground and put a knife to his throat.
“Don’t move.” She said.
Their father followed the felisian into the crater.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” He asked.
“We’re fine … I think.” Riley stammered as she watched him inspect her for injuries.
“What happened here?” A dazed Cooper asked when he changed his focus to her. “The building’s on fire.”
"Explanations later, we need to go."
They were still too weak to stand. Every time he got them up, their legs would buckle and they’d be back on their knees.
“Well this sucks.” Cooper said after vomiting again.
“Let me help carry them.” Ellis pleaded, his eyes watching the knife Mayat had to his neck.
“Who is this boy?” Their father asked.
“He’s the one we told you about. The one you didn’t want to save, remember?” Cooper replied obnoxiously.
For a second Riley’s father didn't give the order for Mayat to remove her blade from his throat. Then a nearby explosion helped make his mind up for him.
“Help Riley.” He told Mayat as he and Ellis got Cooper up.
“Can you walk?” Mayat asked Riley as the two men helped Cooper stand. She might’ve been a good six inches shorter than her, but Mayat was strong and practically lifted Riley into her arms.
“I can bloody well walk out of here.” She said but her legs felt like rubber.
She reached out to steady herself on Mayat, but when she touched her shoulder, a wave of light rushed down her arm and punched into the felisian. It tossed her across the crater.
“How…”
As a dazed Mayat picked herself up, Riley saw spidery tendrils of blue electricity dancing along her arms.
“Did I do that?” She asked as she hid her arms behind her back.
“Switch us out of this!” Mayat ordered her father, pulling off her goggles and headscarf dislodged from when she hit the ground.
“The risk is too great. I can't see through the smoke to know where to switch to. If I teleport us blindly, I could switch right into the wall of a container.”
“We have to keep moving.” Ellis urged. “There’s barely any air left to breathe.”
“Follow me!” Their father managed between a coughing fit. “Once we’re close enough to the exit, I’ll switch us straight outside.”
Leaning heavily on Ellis, a panting Cooper staggered after him. Each step harder than the last.
“You okay?” Riley asked her.
“Oh, I’m perfect!” She nodded with sarcastic enthusiasm, then made a mock grimace face. “You on the other hand look like crap. So sorry.”
“Must be like looking in the mirror for you.” Riley responded without hesitation which made her sister chuckle. Then losing her footing Cooper went down.
Riley watched as she pulled Ellis and her father down with her. Yet, instead of hitting the ground, a blue capsule enveloped the three of them and they disappeared.
“Cooper!” Riley screamed and reached for the spot her sister had vanished from. When she did a brilliant bolt of light ejected from her hands.
“What's happening to me?” She screamed in panic as she looked down at the burn mark where the spark had struck. Then she saw a new orb of light grow in the palms.
“Riley, you need to calm down!” Mayat commanded grabbing her by the wrists.
“I can't!”
The angry light in her hand was growing brighter, more intense. At the same time the warehouse finally began collapsing.
“Help me!” She was shaking her hands trying to be rid of the blue orbs.
Mayat pointed at the wall of the warehouse that had appeared.
“Throw them!”
“How?”
Gripping the side of her arms Mayat’s voice remained calm as another section of the roof came down.
“Concentrate on the idea that you can throw what's in your hands. As if you've done it a thousand times before.”
But she hadn't, she didn't even know how or why the orbs of light were there in the first place. All she could focus on was her terror. That was until she heard another voice inside her head.
“I believe in you.” He told her.
The boy from her dreams had reappeared. In her mind's eye she was resting her head in his lap. She watched as he reached down to move a fallen lock of hair covering her eyes. As he did she leaned into the palm of his hand.
“No one else does.” She told him.
“It’s okay. I’ll be with you every step of the way. To the very end.” The tip of his thumb stroked her cheek as he spoke.
“Tell me again.” She heard herself whisper.
“I love you.”
25
Cooper exited the switch and fell onto her hands. Through the material of her gloves she felt the cool ground. The air felt good too, good against her skin and good in her lungs.
Looking around she saw they’d appeared somewhere out in the forest, just behind a fallen wall that marked where a long collapsed building had once stood. Her father must’ve been able to finally teleport them to safety, she thought.
“Do I look like a baked potato, cause I feel like one?” Ellis asked jokingly as he breathed deeply.
Cooper gave him a tired smile and was about to say something back, something equally clever, but her father spoke first.
“Cooper, what have you done?” He asked as he picked himself off the ground and ran back to the warehouse across what had once been the town’s main street – now merely an extension of the forest.
She didn’t understand the question, what had she done? Then she saw Riley and Mayat were not with them.
They’d been left behind.
When she climbed over the wall to follow her father, Cooper felt the full brunt of the warehouse’s fire thump against her body. The building was still more than twenty yards away but the fire had now engulfed it whole and was so fierce it was impossible to get any closer.
Her father had been halted by it too only a few paces ahead.
Looking frantic, he crouched down on on
e knee and pressed his fingertips to his temples. He was only there a moment before his eyes shot open and he threw himself at Cooper to pin her to the ground. A section of the warehouse came flying at them and had Cooper remained standing it would’ve taken her head clean off.
When she looked up Mayat and Riley were above them. They were coughing heavily, their faces and clothes stained with sweat and smoke.
“Next year, I think I’ll stay at home and let you go to the souk by yourself.” Riley croaked.
That was it for Cooper and she erupted.
“What the hell is going on?”
“We don't have time for this right now.” A breathless Mayat interrupted trying to hurry everyone toward where the trapper’s horses were tied. “The market is not far. They would've heard the explosion and will come to investigate.”
“I'm not going anywhere.” Cooper replied stubbornly shrugging off Mayat's hand and standing her ground.
So much had happened in the last ten minutes that her mind could barely process it all. To stop herself from being driven crazy, she needed to be told something, anything.
“You did something to us, didn't you?” She said accusingly to her father when he didn't speak. “I heard you in my head and then the next thing I know I'm seeing visions of a man in darkness, and when I wake up the whole world’s on fire.”
There were other things happening to her, things she could barely describe. She could hear better now, see better. She could sense the tension in Mayat’s muscles, feel the adrenalin pumping through her father’s blood. This wasn’t normal she knew, and that terrified her.
Yet, what was really tying her mind in knots was what her father had said when they'd exited the switch. ‘Cooper, what have you done’.
“Are we crinks?” She asked, realizing it had been her who’d teleported them.
“It sounds like you already know the answer?” He replied.
“I hear horses approaching.” A desperate Mayat said softly her neck craned in the direction of the market. “Many men are coming.”
“Are we?” Cooper pressed more firmly ignoring Mayat.
He nodded. “Yes.”
Such a little word, but it stunned her.
“How…?”
“Answers will have to come later.” Mayat cut in once again, this time more firmly.
Pointing toward a ridge in the distance, about a mile away, they saw a dozen riders appear.
“They’re not coming for our well being.” She added.
“Can you ride?” Her father asked.
She hesitated.
“I promise, I’ll tell you everything later.” His mind tapped in hers. “Just let me get you away from this.”
“I can ride.” She confirmed stumbling toward the horses.
“You can barely walk.” Ellis pointed out. It was true she was still having to lean heavily against him.
“Better you ride with me.” He suggested and directed her to a strong mount that could carry two people and still ride hard.
“Your father can take your sister, and your Sekhem can concentrate on slowing down our pursuers.”
“And how is that you managed to get mixed up in all this?” Cooper’s father inquired, looking at him suspiciously.
“He's a crink too, a memory-carrier.” She told him recalling the name by which Moloch had referred to Ellis, wondering at the same time what that meant.
Something about that caused her father’s eyes to narrow with distrust. Yet, he said nothing further.
“I was looking for the resistance.” Ellis added in an attempt to pacify him. “I guess I wasn’t watching my mouth because suddenly I'm surrounded by Moloch’s men and you know the rest.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Ellis.”
“Well, Ellis. I have an ursinian in my employ. And if anything happens to my daughter, I’ll have him tear you in two. Got it?”
“This is turning into one hell of a morning, don’t you agree?” Ellis asked Cooper as he got her up onto their horse.
“Just shut up and ride.” She told him, not sure whether she was going to throw up or pass-out. Or both.
26
Sitting on his horse as the beast whinnied and stomped its hooves into the grating with nervous excitement, Control watched through the plate of his mask as the gateway’s shell closed around him.
“One minute!” The boy with the handbell called out as the gateway operators readied the machine for an unbridged teleport.
“Without another gateway on the other side of the portal to land you, we’ll be lucky if we can portal you a hundred and twenty miles.” Sheriff Tuatura shouted through the glass.
When the senior gateway operator gave him a nervous look, the sheriff backpedaled. “Maybe less.”
“A hundred miles is sufficient.” Control replied. He’d portalled many times before with only one gateway, knew its capacity was greatly reduced. If they managed to jump even a hundred miles he would consider them lucky.
“Good hunting.” The sheriff told him but Control wasn’t listening. He was replaying the conversation he’d just had with the Archon in the broadcasting room.
“What do you have for me?” His leader had asked, his words spoken through a ten year-old girl who he was controlling from his offices in Sancisco.
“Our snoopers picked up a ripple from over two hundred miles away.” Control told him.
“Impressive.” The girl said with a thoughtful nod.
Ripples were produced when an anomaly used their abilities and disturbed the natural energy flow in the world. Greater the power, bigger the ripple, easier it was for a snooper to detect.
“Were we able to track it?” She asked, her quiet voice speaking with an authority well beyond her young years.
“We had many snoopers peering into the Borderlands when the ripple was created. They were able to calculate its source.”
“Excellent! I sensed the ripple also.” The girl told him. It did not surprise Control. His leader always had a way of knowing more than anyone else.
“It was created by two young women, sisters.”
That had caught Control by surprise, and it was everything he could do to keep his emotions in check as the face of the girl he’d thought he’d seen in the Old Yard flashed into his mind.
“I don't care what you are or what you did, I love you.” She whispered in his head.
Was she part of this?
He quickly forced the memory aside and was grateful the Archon wasn’t physically in the room. Had he been there, he undoubtedly would’ve been reading Control’s thoughts and might’ve seen what he was thinking. That wouldn’t have been good.
Thankfully the Archon’s thoughts were elsewhere and the broadcaster continued to speak.
“The Great Inventor is with them.”
That did take Control by surprise.
“Are you sure?”
“We have a connection from the past that runs deep. I can sense when he uses his abilities, but it has been some time.”
“If he is there, we should assume Nakano will be with him.”
“I agree.” Then the broadcaster fixed her eyes on him. “Quill cannot be allowed to use what’s in Nakano’s head to put the final prophecy in motion.”
“We’ll stop him before he does.” Control promised.
“Do not hesitate, Varick.” The Archon said, calling Control by his real name. “The moment you have the opportunity to eliminate Quill, take it.”
“What about the two women?” Control asked making sure to keep his voice level.
“Bring them back alive if you can. But make sure nothing stops you from capturing our runaway and retrieving the information in her head.”
Back inside the gateway, Control turned his face down so he wouldn’t be blinded by the light when it wrapped the shell. When it was gone they found themselves in an open field with the sun rising at their backs.
“We have our orders.” He tapped to his men as he kicked his
horse forward and raced further into the Borderlands.
27
“Don’t let the wagon slow down!” Acadia snapped at Riley before releasing another arrow from his longbow.
“I'm trying!” She shot-back with a grunt of frustration from the driver’s step.
“And keep it straight, will you?” Cooper added as she fired a shot from her long rifle. Exhausted, she was struggling to hold the weapon and missed widely.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Riley griped.
She’d just driven the wagon down a steep incline and it was all she could do to keep the horses from losing their footing. She needed to pull back on the reins so they wouldn’t fall over one another, but if she did that their pursuers would be upon them.
The twelve who’d followed them from the warehouse were now down to four, thanks to Mayat’s deadly aim. Unfortunately, they’d found a dozen more when they’d caught up with Acadia, and more kept appearing.
Riding close by, Riley’s father, Ellis and Mayat fought to stop anyone from catching up and disabling the wagon. However, as the trapper’s ranks swelled, it was becoming harder to hold them off.
“Hold on!” Riley shouted over her shoulder as she steered the horses down a narrow dry riverbed. The wagon swung wildly and Cooper would’ve been thrown off if Acadia hadn’t got his hand round the collar of her coat.
“Women drivers!” Cooper shouted at her sister.
Riley ignored her. She’d been told by her father to drive the wagon east. At the river, three miles away, was a lost civilization bridge. For your average basic it was no longer functional as it had partly collapsed in the center. But if you were a crink, well then you could switch the gap.
“The river will be too deep at that section for our pursuers to cross safely.” He’d told her. “Once we get on the other side we’ll be safe.”
“And if we get stopped before we get there?” She’d asked.
“Just make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The look on his face told her without question that if they failed to cross the bridge, they were dead.