by Dima Zales
“—again,” he finishes his sentence.
Wait.
What?
He said “again.”
But that means I got it all wrong.
He’s not talking about my Sunday trip. This must be about our encounter in his apartment.
Though I should be relieved, this realization stings like a slap—and I don’t know why.
Because he’s right.
We shouldn’t do that again.
But if I really believe this, why is my chest feeling so hollow?
“Is that all?” I force myself to say, and I feel proud of how evenly I deliver the question.
Nero nods. He looks like he’s about to say something else when his gaze falls on something behind me.
I turn in time to see a woman exit the elevator.
She’s dressed in a UPS uniform that’s not unlike the one I once stole for an effect.
Not surprisingly, she’s carrying a large package. Someone clearly paid through the nose for a Saturday delivery.
She waves at us and walks forward.
“Did you order anything?” Nero asks me, his forehead creasing in concern.
“No.” I look back at him, wide eyed. “Did you?”
“Duck!” Nero shouts and launches into motion.
I don’t even get a chance to follow his command. One moment I’m standing, the next I’m sprawled on the floor under Nero’s muscular body.
Before I can inhale his scent or process how I feel about his proximity, the package explodes.
At least I assume that’s what happens when my universe breaks apart with a deafening bang, and scorching pain envelops my whole body.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Reeling from the vision, I find myself back in my office.
I sprint for the door.
“I had a vision!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “A UPS woman is about to come out of our elevator and blow us up.”
Nero jackknifes to his feet. As I’d suspected, he can easily hear me over the glass walls, and his truth-telling ability must make him realize this isn’t some perverse trick to avoid “the talk.”
“To the window,” he growls at me so viciously I can’t help but start to obey.
Before I turn, I spot him grabbing something from the corner of his office and sliding it over his shoulders, like a backpack.
I run to the window as fast as I can, and I hear the sound of glass shattering in Nero’s path.
When I’m by the window, I look back.
Nero is moving too fast to track with the naked eye, but judging by the state of all the tiny shards of glass between his office and the elevator, he didn’t bother opening any doors.
Before I can blink, he reaches his destination.
His hands turn claw-like as he half slices, half grabs the elevator doors.
Eyes widening, I watch as his fingers reach into the metal as though it were clay and turn the doors into an inoperable mess.
Okay, so the doors won’t open. Will that be enough to contain the explosion?
I’m not a demolitions expert, but I have strong doubts.
Nero then whooshes at me with that same blurry speed.
I swallow my heart into my throat as Nero grabs me in a steely hug and punches out the window behind me.
Shards of glass rain down as I get an inkling of what he’s about to do.
Confirming my worst fears, he tightens his hold on me and jumps out of the window.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We freefall for a second. Then Nero rips at the shoulder of his backpack—which opens up, turning into a black parachute.
Is he into BASE jumping, or did he decide to carry a chute around after the helicopter incident?
The wind resistance slows our descent straight away—which is when the bomb finally goes off.
The bang vibrates through my inner organs and devastates my eardrums.
Glass, metal, and concrete shards rain onto us, and I pray they don’t slice through the chute.
“The elevator absorbed some of the impact,” Nero breathes into my ear. “I got you. You’ll be okay.”
His reassuring words do little to quell my shaking.
Though it might be my imagination, I think I also hear him mutter under his breath, “When I find them, whoever’s behind this will wish to have never been born.”
We land on top of a yellow cab, in the middle of the street.
Terrified New Yorkers look at us as though we’re aliens about to seek their leaders.
A limo honks at the stupefied people, nearly running over a few before they let it through.
Nero unstraps the chute and herds me into the limo.
I let him sit me down and don’t say anything when he slides the safety belt across my chest.
“She’s in shock,” he says sternly to Thalia. “Take her home. I’ll do damage control.”
“Wait,” I say, desperately clawing for some semblance of sanity. “There’s something I wanted to tell you. Something important.”
Nero eyes me with unabashed surprise, his limbal rings out of control.
“What happened at your place can never happen again,” I say. “We have to keep things professional going forward.”
There. This is what he wanted in my vision, but it’s less devastating if I say it myself.
At least in theory.
In practice, I’m regretting the words even as they leave my mouth.
He looks like I just struck him.
No, that must be the shock from the explosion. There’s no way Nero would be hurt by my rejection—not when he’d been about to do the same thing to me.
“If that’s what you really want,” he mutters.
Thalia clears her throat.
“Go,” Nero tells her, the bossiness returning to his voice with a vengeance. “Text me as soon as she’s safely home.”
Thalia does as she’s told, and it takes me the whole ride home to even out my ragged breathing.
When I enter the apartment, Felix, Fluffster, and Maya greet me by the door with varying degrees of concern on their faces.
Wait, Maya? Oh, yeah, Felix did mention something about a lunch.
She’s here because they’re on a date.
“Tell us everything,” Fluffster says as Felix and Maya herd me to the kitchen table and put some yummy morsels on my plate.
I recount my story, which I have to expand on for Maya.
“If Nero recovers a piece of the bomb, I might be able to tell whom it belongs to with my psychometry,” Maya says when I’m done.
I give her a tired smile. “That would be great. Thank you.”
“I’m not against this trip to the Otherlands anymore,” Fluffster states in my head. “Given all this activity, you might actually be safer away from Earth.”
“I agree,” Felix says. “If we’re lucky, Nero will find and destroy whoever is trying to kill you by the time we get back.”
“I’m sorry I ruined your romantic meal.” I regretfully examine the mushroom julienne and the mashed potatoes with gravy—Felix’s valiant effort to get at Maya’s heart through her stomach. “Let me get out of your hair.”
“Oh no, please. We’re just glad you’re okay.” Maya puts a tiny hand on my forearm.
“Yeah, don’t talk nonsense,” Felix says.
“I need to get some sleep anyway,” I say and yawn pointedly. “Sleepless night, food coma, adrenaline slump, and all that.”
They lead me to my room and fuss over me until I kick everyone out—with the exception of Fluffster.
Hugging my fuzzy domovoi to my chest, I fall into the deepest and most dreamless sleep of my life.
“Sasha,” a familiar voice says in my mind. “You’ll miss Orientation.”
I open one eye, then the other.
When I check the time, I see that the voice in my head is right.
If I don’t get up now, I won’t make it to class in time.
“Felix warmed up the lefto
vers in the kitchen,” Fluffster—the owner of the voice in my head—states. “Hurry.”
I rush through my “morning” routine and gobble down the food as Felix and Maya look on with amusement.
Did she stay over? No, couldn’t have. She has parents who wouldn’t allow such a thing, and she’s not wearing the same clothes. She must be back again, and I just slept through it all.
Still, these two are spending more and more time together—which means Felix and I might need to have a talk about what I’d do to him if he manages to break her tiny heart. And maybe a vice versa talk with Maya.
Thalia is waiting downstairs. Not for the first time, I wonder if she sleeps in the car. It’s feasible. A hard, austere life is like the nun’s hobby.
The ride to Orientation is uneventful, and when Maya and I enter the classroom, the werewolf clique pretends I don’t exist—which is probably for the best.
“You will henceforth leave Maya alone,” I whisper in such a way that I hope they can hear.
Without making eye contact, they all nod.
Wow.
I could get used to this awesome power. There are so many things I could make them do, like wearing frumpy outfits or not shaving their legs for a few years.
Then again, I made a deal with Chester to leave his daughter alone, so I guess I must.
Well, actually, all I said was that I wouldn’t make her fight.
Dr. Hekima walks in, and everyone quiets down.
“Today’s lecture is a student favorite,” he announces with a smile. “I call it ‘Fantastic Beasts of the Otherlands’ because we’ll talk about the varied fauna you’ll find beyond the gates.”
“Can you say copyright violation?” I whisper to Maya.
“I know,” she whispers back.
Dr. Hekima clears his throat and gives us a stern look.
I drop my gaze to the desk, and Hekima says, “First, I want you to understand my goal for today is to stimulate your imaginations and broaden your horizons.” I look up to see him pacing the room. “It’s impossible to even fathom the numbers of creatures you’ll find in the Otherlands.” He stops and looks at us, eyes gleaming. “In fact, I could probably spend a few centuries in this room just talking about the millions of animals, bacteria, and plants you’ve never heard of that are native to this world alone. Since we don’t have that kind of time, I’ll just mention a few creatures that would seem exceptionally alien to this world, and touch on some that are interesting because they feature in human mythology—no doubt because of stories shared by the pre-Mandate Cognizant.”
He raises his hands and streams pulsing red energy at us.
The classroom goes away, and we find ourselves standing in a field of flowers as colorful as a rainbow.
In the middle of the field stands a majestic cow-like creature that, on second look, turns out to be so weird that the whole class collectively gasps.
Countless legs, a head that has no eyes or ears, a coat of shifting colors, tentacles—the creature looks like something only CGI or a bad LSD trip should produce.
“They’re called moofts and are the most intelligent herbivores our kind has ever encountered,” Hekima’s disembodied voice says. “The reason I show them to you is as a cautionary tale.” He appears near a mooft and looks at everyone with a sad expression. “These creatures were common on Gomorrah before our kind came and built the giant city there—and now, because they turned out to be intimately linked to their habitat, moofts are on the brink of extinction.”
He walks up to the creature and points at its colorful fur-covered tentacles. “This fur isn’t part of the moofts,” he explains. “It’s actually another creature called a looft.”
As I come closer to the gentle giant, I see that indeed the thing Hekima points at is a separate being that looks like a fuzzy bracelet—and there are countless similar creatures covering each of the legs and tentacles.
“The changes in color you see are due to the loofts,” Hekima explains. “They can detect the mood of their host and show it—a behavior that helps the moofts socialize. Like their hosts, these are the most intelligent symbionts I’ve ever heard of, but I point them out because their fate is the continuation of the same lesson: with mooft populations dwindling, the loofts are disappearing with them.”
I never realized Dr. Hekima was an environmentalist, but that seems to be the case. And looking at the marvelous creatures, I myself can’t help but hope they keep existing.
“I know you’ve never thought about this before,” Dr. Hekima says sternly, “but you should know that we Cognizant are no better than humans when it comes to crimes against nature.” He waves at the peaceful moofts. “Keep that in mind if you get ideas that yours is the superior people—or other eugenics nonsense.”
We’re back in the classroom, and I don’t know about the others, but I feel humbled and bummed out in equal measures.
“But do not despair,” he continues after a theatrical pause. “Some species exist in more than one world—and before you ask, no one knows why that is.”
He shoots us with his power again, and the classroom gets replaced by a forest meadow… with a twenty-foot-tall tyrannosaurus rex towering over us with hunger in its beady eyes.
Though I know this is an illusion, I want to run away screaming. I didn’t realize this about myself before, but I have a serious fear of getting eaten by a dinosaur. Good to know. If someone builds the Jurassic Park for real, I’m definitely not going there.
“There are worlds where creatures such as this roam,” Hekima says. “And worlds where these do as well.” He changes the scenery to a snowy hill with a herd of giant mammoths.
He shows us more extinct-on-Earth creatures and says that while he personally doesn’t know of any other places where moofts exist, they might be out there somewhere.
“Now let’s move on to some of the legendary creatures, as promised,” he says and shows us a familiar-to-me giant bird. “This is a roc.” He switches the scenery again to what at first looks like a herd of grazing horses—except when you look closer, you notice they each have a giant horn in the middle of their foreheads.
“Unicorns,” Hekima explains. “And you’ve already met a drekavac,” he says as he shows us the nightmarish creature.
Removing the vile thing from our view, he changes the scenery to something reminiscent of the fiery depths of hell and points at a bird that looks as if it’s made from pure fire. “Now this bird features in many human myths and goes by various names such as the phoenix, the firebird, the garuda, the simorgh, the paskunji, the anka, the Me byi karmo, the zhu que, and the hō-ō.”
We return to the classroom.
“The legend of the phoenix teaches us the necessity of the Mandate,” Hekima says somberly. “Without it, our kind clearly couldn’t help but blab about the Otherland creatures to every human they met.”
To drive in his point, he proceeds to show us more fairy tale creatures, from the giant squid-like kraken to animal hybrids like the griffin.
“That is all for today,” he says when we find ourselves back in the classroom. “Does anyone have any questions?”
I raise my hand.
“Yes, Sasha,” Hekima says and sneaks a peek at his watch.
“Do all these creatures have the same basic biochemistry as us?” I ask. “Do they carry their genetic information via DNA, for example?”
“With the creatures we’ve been able to study, we’ve found that they do,” Hekima says. “But when it comes to something like the firebird, your guess is as good as mine.”
I raise my hand again.
He looks at his watch and gives me a regretful look. “I fear that will be all for today,” he says. “Why don’t you save your question for next time?”
Without waiting for my reply, he beelines for the door.
The teenagers around me jump up and jubilantly stampede after him—all except for Maya.
“Lies,” I say to her as she grabs her bag. “Next time,
I’ll have a million more questions—and he’ll be in as much of a hurry as today.”
“You need to chill,” Maya says, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “It’s like you’re here to learn or something—you make the rest of us look bad.”
I chuckle as we head out of the building.
“We’re driving Maya home and then going to JFK airport,” I tell Thalia when we get inside the limo. The nun starts typing something on her phone, so I preemptively add, “I’m going to Gomorrah to visit Ariel.”
Though my voice sounds calm, my muscles are locked tight.
If Thalia sees through my lie, she’ll get Nero involved, and I can kiss our epic quest goodbye.
Chapter Thirty
Thalia puts her phone away and starts driving.
We drop off Maya and head for the highway.
Phew. We’re heading for the airport, not Nero’s lair.
I feast on the snacks from the limo bar and force myself to relax.
Then, for good measure, I check the future—and see myself walking toward the lab under JFK. Exiting Headspace, I blow out a relieved breath. The vision means I definitely make it there. Still, I only fully relax when I enter the lab and see Felix, Ariel, and Itzel already wearing their suits.
At least I assume that’s who these people are—with the visors down, all I can see is my own reflection in the reflective golden layer.
Judging by the height, the suit that’s been painted black must be Ariel—no doubt the color is to make it look more like something Batman would wear.
Another tall, suited person lifts the visor, revealing Felix’s face. “She can’t hear you through the visor,” he tells the black suit. “Wait until she has her helmet on.”
“I’m the only one who can speak like this,” says Itzel’s voice from the shorter-suited person. “I have speakers on the back of my suit.”
“Figures.” Felix rolls his eyes.
“Leave your gun next to your friend’s,” Itzel says and nods toward the desk. “The force field my power creates around the suit might make the gun powder ignite inside the bullets, and you wouldn’t want that.”