by Corey Tate
“Scott,” Thaught shook his head slowly, “we do not know what that means. Is that something from Earth?”
“Yeah!” Scott explained to everyone, “it’s a movie. He’s the guy in the prophecy, and there’s this whole digital world, and he takes the blue pill and goes there and saves everyone because he’s different.”
“Yeah, except . . .” Nick chuckled, “you’re more like the help.”
They all laughed, and even Thaught couldn’t help himself. He still covered his mouth out of respect though and pretended to cough.
Scott frowned, then turned to Thaught, addressing him directly.
“Alright. So where’s this Halley’s Comet Gateway? What’s the plan? And how do we stop this guy?”
“You’re on board?!” Seth asked.
“Sorta,” Scott shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t really know. All I know is that it sounds like I still have to wait awhile to go home. And you still haven’t actually told me why you need my help.”
He’s just the help, Nick mouthed to Seth, and a brief spark went through Seth’s hair as he chuckled.
Claire frowned and pointedly ignored them. Scott followed her gaze and just waited for a response.
“Scott,” Thaught began, “as I said earlier, the Gateway to Earth will appear on our side when it is operational in five days, in a different location from the one that you came out of. We do not know where yet, and we do not know exactly when. As for the plan, we need to kill Terminus. It’s that simple. If Terminus dies, then the Conjurers are free of whatever control he has on them, and we have them on our side. That will give us the firepower that we need to go against the rest of Upgrades created by Terminus that he will use to try to kill us. We have caves like this all over Armadron, but we only have a few hundred Icranu teams to fight against these new enemies who can seemingly use their curses with no consequences.”
“Consequences? So you guys get seizures too?” Scott looked around the room.
Everyone nodded.
“Scott,” Thaught said softly, “I told you that we believe Armadronians are like antennas. If you channel too much power through yourself at one time, you’ll die. That’s why we call it a curse. Even for you.”
—How did you not figure that out already? We’ve been talking for nearly an hour.
Scott jumped up at the mental intrusion and looked over at Claire to see her looking at him.
—Stop doing that! He thought back.
Claire’s head snapped back abruptly like she’d been smacked. She toppled and fell out of her chair without crying out.
She got back up and sat down in the chair again, looking bewildered.
Everyone looked at Scott. Seth raised his eyebrows, and Sam pursed her lips.
“Um . . . what just happened?” Scott asked. “Did I do that to her?”
“Yes.” Thaught answered shortly.
Scott slowly nodded his head, staring down at his hands. They were getting slightly bigger, and his vision was pulsing again.
He took a deep breath and relaxed, willing his eyes to become blue again and his hands to return to normal.
There was still one question that had been bugging Scott.
“Why are you and Artam the only older adults that I’ve seen so far?” he inquired.
“Scott,” Thaught said, “Armadronians are always transmitting energy from our planet. In time—by the time we reach middle age—it takes a toll. A devastating, fatal toll. We have more seizures as we get older. We wear out. Only beings such as myself, Artam, Terminus, and the remaining Conjurers under Terminus’s control have the ability to endure through the ages, in myriad ways.”
“Yeah, they didn’t look so good to me,” Scott noted, remembering the cracked fingernails and dirty hands of the Conjurers.
“That,” Thaught said, shaking his head sadly, “is because of Terminus. He has them hunting around the clock for us, the Icranu. Plus, he makes them dig into people’s homes, sometimes literally, so he can snatch up young kids to experiment on. Many of the Conjurers are occasionally pushed past their physical limits, so seeing their veins pop or their bones snap is not uncommon.”
“Oh.” Scott nodded his head and swallowed back his disgust. “Terminus must have some crazy curse then. If he’s that strong, I mean.”
Scott reached into his pocket and felt for Jared’s inhaler. It was there, safe and sound. Hopefully Jared was too. And his mom.
“He was born a Carcan, Scott,” Thaught explained, interrupting Scott’s thoughts. “Roughly four percent of Armadronians are. No curses. Defenseless. He has managed to acquire unnatural abilities somehow. Be wary, though. He is the most vicious creature that you will ever meet, and he is the smartest opponent I have ever gone up against. And you are going to help us kill him.”
Come On, Hit Me!
“So what d’ya think?” Seth grinned as they walked out of the Library.
“Wow,” Scott answered.
“Well, get ready for more ‘wow,’” Seth laughed.
Nick, Scott, Claire, Sam, and Seth were walking toward a place in the Cavern known as the Training Grounds. They were all nearly shoulder to shoulder, with Scott in the middle next to Nick and Seth. Thaught had assigned Scott to their team, and Scott needed proper education and training. He had no experience in any kind of fighting, so the others had been instructed to run him through the basics. And with only five days until the Gateway opened in some random location on Armadron, there wasn’t any time to waste.
Scott turned to Nick. “Are we gonna walk this time?”
“Yes,” Nick answered quickly.
Claire glanced at Nick, and Nick met her eyes with his. Something brief passed between them, and Nick glanced away, ashamed.
“What?” she suddenly shouted and stopped walking. “You jumped him to the Library? Nick, we don’t know what his curses are yet! You could have disrupted a spatial field or done serious damage to you both! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that since time is of the essence. I needed to get him trained—fast,” he stated with authority. “We need to kill this guy.”
“What do you mean, time is of the essence?” Scott cut in.
“Just because you’re here doesn’t mean Terminus has stopped hunting for you,” Seth explained. You’re safer here than on earth, but still . . .”
“I still don’t understand why he thinks I’m so important.”
“Terminus has been waiting a long time for a Mediator from Earth to come along. He probably thinks that with your DNA he can solve his problem,” Sam interjected.
“What problem?” Scott asked.
“Terminus has created an army with a new generation of abilities—he calls them Upgrades,” Sam reminded Scott. “There’s a drawback, though. He can only put one upgraded ability in each person. These are physical abilities, and if a person receives more than one at a time, it will kill him.”
“So this army of people, with these upgraded abilities—they’re not unstoppable?” Scott asked.
“No,” Sam answered. “They’re not. But they’re incredibly powerful. They don’t have curses, like we do. They have abilities. There’s a difference.”
“But hey, as long as we can get past Terminus’s Conjurers, his castle, his right-hand man, Terminus himself, and then sever his connection with the Conjurers, ” Nick said dryly, “we’re home free.”
Sam smiled and shrugged. “Who knows, we might be able to do it. We have Scott, now.”
Claire rolled her eyes.
“What’s jumping?” Scott asked, trying to change the mood.
“Teleporting,” Seth answered. “It’s a pretty rare curse, and it’s easy to mess yourself up if you get too jumpy.”
They continued walking down the edge of the Cavern while Scott’s brain went to work. He watched the underground city go about its everyday business. There were people everywhere doing various tasks. Planting, building new buildings, getting water, you name it. Scott spotted a merchant bazaar filled with chaos
and color, and couples walking and holding hands near the edges of the Cavern. But something was still off.
“When I look at everything, sometimes things look blurry. Why is that?” Scott asked. “It’s like . . . it’s like some things have a haze covering them.”
For some reason, everyone turned and looked at Claire. She returned the stares coolly.
“You probably just need glasses,” she suggested. “Let’s keep walking.”
Scott didn’t think so. He’d never needed glasses before. Plus, his head kind of hurt if he looked at anything shimmery for too long.
Weird.
Another question popped into his head.
“I’ve seen plenty of water, but no animals. What do you guys eat on Armadron?”
Everyone gave him a funny look.
“Haven’t you guessed?” Claire questioned.
“Well, I’ve seen a lot of plants, but that’s about it. And I haven’t seen any supermarkets or food stores, so I dunno. Unless . . . that is, unless if you guys . . .” He stopped in the middle of his sentence and stood still. The rest of the group immediately stopped walking.
“Unless if we . . . eat our dead,” Sam finished with a grim smile.
He looked at each person in the group. They all wore straight faces. This was not a joke.
“Scott, listen,” Nick said, “we—”
Scott bent to the side and dry heaved. Eventually, once the disturbing images snuck in, he threw up yesterday’s lunch.
“It makes a lot of sense if you think about it,” Sam explained between Scott’s gasps.
He stood up and wiped his mouth. Seth glanced at him, and the vomit evaporated off his shirtsleeve and off the corner of his chin. The smell was still there, though.
He took a second to look at what Seth had done, then turned back to the five people standing before him.
“So everyone on this planet is a cannibal?”
“No—”
“Yes,” Nick interrupted Sam and stared at Scott. “But that’s not important. We’re here. Let’s teach you how to fight so we can kill this bastard. We’ve just got a few days, and we need to focus. I’m tired of talking.”
* * *
Nick was covered head to toe in metal and running straight at Scott. It wasn’t exactly like he had put on a metal suit—more like the metal was an extension of his determination to hurt someone. The protective armor somehow seemed as aggressive and angry as Nick himself. It didn’t follow the lines of his body, nor was it aesthetically pleasing. It clearly was designed for one purpose.
Nick’s accelerated form also made the metal look twice as threatening, because his body was bigger and longer than usual. It made the armor appear sharper, too.
“Come on, Scott,” Seth cheered, “let’s see what you got.”
Seth’s voice snapped Scott back to reality. He had to fight, and he had to figure out ways to use his curse that wouldn’t cause a seizure. That was the point of the training.
When Nick was ten feet away from him, Scott thrust out his hands. A thin wall of flame-colored rock protruded from the ground and hit Nick square in the chest.
He ran right through it, and the rock harmlessly smashed against his metal without a scratch, breaking into pebbles.
Scott jumped to the side, and Nick narrowly missed him.
Nick went thundering past, chuckling inside his armor.
“You have to feel the earth, Scott,” Sam called as Nick ran by. “Reinforce it with your energy. Don’t just stick a target out so Nick can smash through it.”
There were people watching now. Hundreds of them.
“They’re watching you, Scott,” Sam said, smiling at him. “They believe in their Mediator.”
Nick stopped and turned around about five feet from Scott. The metal bent around his mouth to form a crooked smile.
“That’s what I thought, Scott,” Nick mocked. “You don’t have the stones.”
“Doubt it,” he lashed back.
He kicked his foot straight into the ground, and Nick was shot high into the air. He went up so high that he almost touched the ceiling of the Cavern.
Four seconds later, he started falling back down to Armadron. Right before he crashed, he moved his hands, stopping the fall abruptly. Nick just hung there in open space. His body turned toward Scott until he was levitating about two feet in midair, twenty feet away from him.
“That was a neat trick,” Nick said in his metallic voice. “Got any more? You’re gonna have to do better than that to kill Terminus.”
They had already been at this for three hours, and Scott had lost all eight rounds so far, incurring the wrath of two seizures in the process. He grit his teeth together. Nick was toying with him.
—Come on, Scott, Claire projected inside his head, you have to think! This isn’t a pissing contest. How can you use your curses in the most efficient, energy-saving way?
—I’m trying! he thought back to Claire, defending himself. But he just keeps breaking everything down—wait! That’s it! Scott interrupted his own thoughts. Break it down . . .
“Hey, Scott,” Nick taunted, “Just go run back to Mommy and Daddy. You’re no good to us. I’ve had my curse for four years. You’ve had yours for four minutes. There’s no competition here. You’re a liability to this operation. Terminus is going to kill all of us, because of you.”
Scott didn’t respond. He was too busy concentrating. He narrowed his eyes, and the ground under Nick’s levitating feet began breaking apart, then turning into the consistency of pudding. Suddenly a wave of mud rose up and, before Nick could react, it swallowed him up.
Scott felt the ground transport Nick lower and lower under the surface. Scott kept concentrating and forced Nick lower still. He could feel Nick thrashing all the way down.
Above the surface, Sam, Claire, Seth, and the rest of the onlookers were silent. They each looked at Scott and waited for his next move.
“Well,” Scott said, turning toward them, “looks like round nine goes to me.”
Rrrrrrrrhhhhhhh!
Scott looked at the ground, and his sonar vision went ballistic. It was Nick. A moment later he rose up out of the ground. His hands had combined with his metal to form a large drill. He landed on his feet, and his hands separated from each other as he let all the metal fall off him onto the floor of the cave.
The metal filling in one of Scott’s molars vibrated violently and shot out of his mouth, carrying a thin trail of blood behind it. He yelped loudly and covered the left side of his jaw. Red-hot pain built up in his mouth.
“You need a wake-up call, Scott. You’re not on safe little Earth anymore. There are no rules here. Do you know why we brought you here in the first place?” Nick scowled.
“Why?” Scott groaned, backing away as Nick strode confidently toward him. “Why the hell would you do that? Are you insane?”
“Because we thought that you could save us. I guess we thought wrong. All you want to do is go home, have a happy little life, and play by the rules while innocent people die. You’re a coward, and you always will be.”
Nick spat at Scott from twenty feet away. The spittle landed in the center of Scott’s chest.
Scott yelled and kicked his foot down at the ground again. A copper-colored boulder the size of a large couch was ejected out of the ground and into the air. The boulder began to fall and, before it hit the ground, Nick struck out with his foot, nailed the center of the big rock and sent it hurtling toward Nick’s face.
Nick dove to his stomach and threw his arms out. The rock harmlessly sailed above Nick’s head as two smaller metal lumps rose up from the ground. He stood up and waved both arms, and the metallic boulders flew toward Scott.
Water shot from Scott’s hands and made two long missiles at Nick’s eyes. The water found its mark just before the metal chunks hit Scott, and Nick howled and covered his bruised retinas. Both metal pieces crashed into each other, and Scott was gone.
Into the air.
He h
ad crouched on top of a large ellipsoid-shaped rock just before the metal lumps thrown by Nick made impact. By manipulating the rock with a few instinctive hand gestures, Scott easily gained twenty feet, riding the rock.
Nick wiped his stinging red eyes and glared at Scott through slits.
Even while Scott was still in the air, Nick was on the attack. He willed a large piece of metal out of the soil and psychically crushed it until it was the size of a basketball.
Scott landed back on Armadron, letting the rock smash into pebbles beneath him. Nick fired a gigantic wall of sharp, dense shards of metal from the ball at unimaginable speeds, straight at Scott.
At the same time, Nick cried out and held his arm, fighting the seizure that was threatening to overtake him.
Scott couldn’t react fast enough. As soon as the first shard grazed his skin, he knew that he had lost.
Seeing Is Believing
“Thaught has finally instructed me to lift the protective field over your senses,” Claire was saying.
Scott was lost in thought, mulling over the events of the afternoon. He had lost to Nick, and then Claire and Sam had sparred. As the women had been training, Nick had given Scott some pointers and even a few compliments. Now they were all done, sitting on stone chairs in a circle on the edge of the training ground, and Claire had just said something to him.
“What?” Scott said abruptly, looking at her.
“I covered them up slightly,” Claire explained hastily. “I made it so that in your subconscious you didn’t really believe any of this now, so that ultimately you could accept it more easily later. Thaught wanted to take this particular COA—”
“COA?” Scott asked.
“Course of action,” Seth answered.
“He wanted to take this course of action,” Claire repeated, “because he said it would keep you from going into shock or having a panic attack or heart attack or . . . something. If you had tried to process everything all at once it would have overloaded your senses, and your mind and body would have been compromised. We need you right now. We can’t have you breaking down.”
“What are you talking about?” Scott asked, rising to his feet and eyeing Claire.