Meta (Book 5): New Empire

by Reynolds, Tom

  My head is on a swivel, looking at the faces of everyone we pass for any signs of suspicion.

  “Stop looking at people. Just act calm and keep walking,” Iris whispers. “Obviously, we’re not in whatever database Lelo was checking back there, and that’s a bad thing.”

  “You think?”

  Iris grimaces at me. Now’s not the time.

  “Let’s head back to the entrance. Once we’re outside the walls, we can figure out our next step. We still have”—Iris glances down at her watch—“four hours until Robin comes to pick us up. Until then, we lie as low as possible. Agreed?”

  Twenty-Nine

  “Just keep walking,” Iris says.

  I’m trying to keep up with her. She looks around to make sure no one is listening to us.

  “We’re not safe here,” she says.

  “How can you tell?” I ask.

  “They’ve been watching us since we entered that travel agency. They’re on to us.”

  “They are?” I ask as I look over my shoulder.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Connor.”

  “Sorry, bad habit. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I wasn’t sure, and you’re bad at being inconspicuous.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  A guard steps out as we approach the gate to exit the city. He’s wearing gleaming white armor, and a helmet covers his face. “Excuse me.”

  Iris and I stop, having little choice since he’s blocking our path.

  “Can I see what is in your pockets?”

  “Do we have to show you?” I ask.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Two more guards exit from the guard station, both holding baton-like weapons at their sides.

  “We have permission to be here,” Iris lies.

  “I didn’t ask if you were allowed to be here. I asked to see what’s in your pockets,” the guard retorts. He steps forward and unclips something from his belt. He points at me. “Abnormal technology readings are coming from him.”

  Crap. The magtonium. I used it inside the city limits to scan the building. They must have detected it. The information I retrieved is the entire reason we’re here. I can’t just hand it over to this guy. And if they take my magtonium, I won’t be able to survive the trip back home.

  This isn’t good.

  “I can assure you it was nothing,” I try.

  “If you had nothing to hide, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  He reaches into the holster on his belt and pulls a small handle. A long baton springs out and crackles with blue electrical energy. I’m not sure if it’s lethal or meant to stun, and I don’t intend to find out.

  “Look, I really think this is all a big mis—”

  Before I can finish my sentence, he raises the baton over his head and brings it down on me. I thrust my hand into my pocket and the magtonium reacts. The microscopic nanobots flow up my arm and toward my head to protect the part of my body in the most immediate danger. The rest of the nanosuit engages almost instantaneously. I’m fully suited up before the baton can make contact.

  I block the baton strike with my right hand, but I skid a few yards away on my back.

  “Connor!” Iris yells.

  The guards turn their attention to her, unaware she’s more dangerous than I am.

  “We need you to step back,” one of them says as he puts his hand on her bicep.

  Flames rise across her body as her eyes turn white. The expression on the guard’s face is something between horror and surprise. Iris pulls his hand off her bicep and twists, flipping the guard onto his back.

  I scurry onto my feet, dodging a second guard’s baton. Whatever they’re using to power these things, it can short-circuit my suit. It feels slow and heavy after the first hit. Iris notices my struggle and flies into the second guard, knocking him into an orange bush studded with long needle-like thorns.

  The last guard standing fumbles to activate his baton. I stride toward him, grab him by his uniform, and lift him into the air. He claws at my hand, desperately trying to pry it off him.

  “Come on, let’s go. Now!” Iris yells as she runs past me.

  I toss the guard into a less scary-looking bush and chase after Iris.

  A metal shutter descends from the top of the gate, threatening to trap me inside the city. The nanosuit still feels heavy, but I run as fast as I can toward the gate. Again, the magtonium feels like it has a mind of its own, and it’s fighting me as I struggle to slide under the gate.

  I reach the other side just as the metal shutter slams down, almost cutting me in half. Iris slips a hand under my arm and pulls me onto my feet. She lifts off the ground and attempts to pull me into the air with her, but my feet stay firmly planted.

  “Stop screwing around. She slips her other hand under my arm to give herself more leverage and grunts as she pulls again. It’s no use. She can’t get me airborne.

  “I’m not doing this,” I say.

  She’s confused. So am I.

  “I think that baton damaged my suit. You go. Get out of here. I’ll find you before the jump.”

  “Not happening.”

  Setting her feet back on the ground, Iris grabs my hand and pulls for me to follow her. Behind me, I hear the gate reopening. We run into the brightly colored forest, pushing through pink leaves that flutter like feathers and hopping over fallen trees. My feet feel like they’re covered in concrete.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I’ll figure that out later. Just keep moving.”

  Footsteps and shouts come from the city wall. Reinforcements are on our tail, and they know these woods better than we do.

  “Just go without me, Iris,” I say.

  It takes more concentration than usual, but I will the nanosuit off me and consolidate it into a disk.

  “Here, take this back with you. Midnight can get the information I scanned off it,” I say.

  Iris looks shocked and then angry. We’re still running, but neither of us is watching where we are going.

  “Are you out of your mind? Put that back on! I’m not leaving you here.”

  My foot hits something wet and loses traction. I expect to feel my butt hitting the forest floor, but instead I’m falling toward a river as black and thick as ink. Jagged red rocks dot the shore, emerging from water’s surface like shards of stained glass. I’m flailing for anything that will stop my fall.

  An arm wraps around my waist.

  “You’re not leaving me all alone here,” Iris says as we climb into the sky.

  I look back at the cliff I fell from and see two guards almost do the same. They turn around and put their hands up to stop a dozen more charging through the forest.

  I attempt to reactivate my magtonium but can’t. The disk feels like an inanimate object in my hand.

  “There.” Iris points at what looks like a cave under a canopy of orange and blue leaves. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re the one flying, so it’s your call.”

  Iris swoops down, skimming the treetops near the mouth of the cave.

  At first glance, it looks like an artificial structure. The marble-like stone is smooth and turquoise. Iris is flying fast and only slows a few feet from the entrance. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she powers down and returns to her normal appearance, albeit still wearing the same ridiculous-looking Volarian silver outfit.

  “I need to conserve energy,” Iris says. “we don’t know how safe we’ll be here.”

  We hurry and duck inside the cave. I expect it to be completely dark inside, but surprisingly, it’s not. The light source isn’t obvious, but as we venture deeper, I notice the walls are covered with a tangled network of green and blue fluorescent vines, bathing the cave in a soft neon glow.

  Iris stands at attention, facing the cave entrance. She closes her eyes and focuses on the sounds of the forest, listening for approaching footsteps or voices.
I leave her alone, knowing she’ll get mad if I distract her. Plus, it gives me a few minutes to catch my breath. I have to start exercising without the suit on once in a while, because that sucked.

  “I think we’re safe here—for now,” Iris says as she joins me deeper inside the cave, where we’re obscured from the outside.

  “You don’t think there are, like, space bears on Volaris or anything, do you?”

  “How on Earth would I know that, Connor?”

  “I think you mean, ‘How on Volaris would I know that, Connor?’”

  She doesn’t laugh, which isn’t fair. I thought that was a pretty good one.

  Thirty

  We hide out for hours, scared to make any noise that might tip off the guards searching for us. Or the space bears. I might be the only one actually concerned about space bears, but I’m concerned enough for the both of us.

  Twilight has descended, and we still haven’t heard any guards.

  “Do you need to be doing that right now?” Iris asks as I fiddle with my magtonium.

  “I’m making sure this stuff is working so my blood doesn’t boil when we go back into space.”

  Since Iris informed me that the boiling point in space is low enough for this to happen, it has become one of my biggest fears. The magtonium runs laps around my body. I will it to reform into a disk and then back into my suit. I have no idea if this is useful, but it feels like the closest thing to stretching before a big race.

  Confident that it’s back to normal-ish working order, I wonder if I can get it to do any new tricks. I set the magtonium down on the cave floor and concentrate, keeping my hand on it the entire time. Half of the nanoparticles seep into the dirt while the piece above ground reshapes into a cylinder. I carefully remove my hand from the structure, and after a brief pause, the black blob springs into the air. It hits the cave ceiling and sticks to it.

  “Ha! It worked,” I exclaim, perhaps too loudly.

  “What are you doing?” Iris asks, a little mad at my outburst.

  “I was wondering if the magtonium could respond to commands even when I’m not touching it, and it can.”

  I concentrate again, and the magtonium lets go of the ceiling and lands back in my hand.

  “Do you feel confident with that thing?” Iris asks.

  “Yeah, I think it’ll work fine when I need it again.”

  “I meant in general, not just for the pickup.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought about it much with everything else going on. Aliens invading Earth and becoming one of three humans to ever visit another planet has been a big distraction. “I guess I do.”

  “You guess?”

  “Well, I don’t have a choice. My metabands are gone. This is the only way I can access powers.”

  Iris laughs. “No, I don’t have a choice. My powers are with me all the time, whether I want them or not. But you still have a choice. You could throw that magtonium into the ocean and walk away. You’d never have to worry about being a hero again.”

  “Why would I walk away from this?”

  “You’ve almost died multiple times. The same goes for the people close to you. Not to mention it cost your parents their lives.”

  “I guess I don’t think of it that way.”

  “How do you think of it, then?”

  “I think of what my life was like before all this, back when it was just me and Derrick. We moved around all the time and barely had any friends. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. Then one night I got metabands and everything changed. The entire world was suddenly looking at me. Even after other metahumans started springing up, people still paid attention to me. It felt good.”

  “So, you’re doing it for the fame?”

  “Not at all. If I wanted fame, I wouldn’t wear a mask. It’s more about the feeling of doing something that matters. For my entire life, nothing I did felt like it ever mattered. But look at me now. I’m on an alien planet, light-years from Earth, doing reconnaissance to prevent an invasion that could threaten every single person on Earth. Why would I trade that for anything?”

  “Because it’s difficult?”

  “Yeah, it is, but at least now I feel like I have some control over it. I’d rather that, even if I’m wrong, than being on Earth, feeling helpless to do anything.”

  “I guess that’s where we differ.”

  “You’d rather be powerless on Earth?”

  “No, not in this situation. But in other situations, I don’t know. Maybe. You know what it’s like to feel normal. I don’t.”

  “That’s not true. I think you’re normal.”

  “Thanks, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I don’t look at you as different from anyone else I know, except in good ways.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re more determined than anyone I know. You always keep going. You’ve faced situations that literally no one else on Earth has and you haven’t given up. Sure, you’ve had setbacks, but everyone has. It’s your ability to bounce back from those setbacks that I admire.”

  If I didn’t know better, I could swear Iris is blushing, which makes me feel awkward since I’m not used to her feeling that way.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I know you like to have a tough ext—”

  Iris leans in and kisses me. It’s completely unexpected, and I don’t know what to do, other than go with it. The initial shock is quickly replaced by another feeling: this is nice. I forget about everything—that I’m so far from home, that home is under the biggest threat it’s ever faced in history, everything. All I can think about is this moment and how the kiss feels.

  After what feels like an eternity yet only a fraction of a second, Iris pulls away. I’m about to say something—probably something stupid and inappropriate to fill the silence—when she clamps a hand over my mouth. With her other hand, she puts a finger to her lips and then cups the same hand around her ear, telling me to listen.

  I hear the sound of a branch snapping only a few feet away. We remain perfectly motionless. A few seconds later, leaves gently rustle outside the cave entrance.

  They found us.

  Iris looks at her watch and then shows it to me. Ten minutes until our pickup. The timing couldn’t be worse. Too much time left to make a break for it, and not enough time to run and find a new place to hide. Our best bet is to hope they’re waiting for reinforcements. If we can kill just nine more minutes, we’ll be able to make a run for it.

  The magtonium in my hand reacts faster than I can perceive. A small portion of it breaks off from the rest and scurries up my arm, just in time to deflect a silent projectile aimed at my neck.

  A small, featherless dart falls to the ground. It was an attempt to sedate me before I could activate my powers.

  Iris doesn’t react as quickly as the magtonium, but once she figures out what happened, her powers activate, setting her hair aflame and turning her eyes bright white. She moves to block another projectile. It explodes in midair and unleashes a net, wrapping her up and knocking her to the ground.

  My nanosuit fully activates. I rush to Iris and pull at the netting, but it won’t give. I plant my feet wide and try again.

  “Look out!” Iris shouts, looking over my shoulder.

  Her warning comes too late. An explosion from the front of the cave sends us flying through the air. I land hard but scurry back to Iris, holding up my hand to deflect falling rubble as I work to free her from the netting. The material is completely foreign to me. Despite feeling lightweight, it’s impossible to break. It must be made from some advanced material. They definitely came prepared.

  I hear shouting and running in the distance. At the cave entrance, a helmeted soldier puts a large projectile weapon onto his shoulder and takes aim through a viewfinder. That must be what hit us. I pull at the web again, desperately trying to free Iris. I can’t break it, so I try to lift her, but this is also
impossible. There isn’t enough time before the next blast comes.

  I curl around Iris to shield her from the blast. The projectile hits, and everything goes black for a moment. My ears are ringing. I frantically reach for Iris, and a hand wraps around my finger through the netting.

  “Go! Get out of here!” she yells.

  “No, I’m not leaving you.”

  “You have to. Otherwise, they’ll catch the both of us. You have to get back with the scans. It’s our only hope.”

  “Direct hit!” a soldier shouts proudly.

  “He’s still standing. Reload!” another yells.

  I pull against the netting again, but it’s no use.

  “Connor, please. You have to get out of here. They’ll kill you before they let you escape.”

  “No!”

  “Target locked.”

  I face the soldier who has me locked in his sights. He panics as our eyes meet and moves to squeeze the trigger, but I’m faster than his finger.

  I propel myself through the cave entrance and collide into him, sending the misaimed projectile rocketing high overhead. Someone tackles me from behind, and I hit the ground face-first. A pair of fists slam into my back. Pain shoots down my spine. I turn to face my attacker. It’s another soldier, but this one is also covered from head to toe in magtonium. Apparently, Kyle wasn’t the only one who’d thought to make a suit out of the stuff.

  The soldier takes a swing at at my head, but I block them. This throws the soldier off balance, and I push him off me. The victory is temporary, though. He quickly recovers, takes a two-step running start, and kicks. His magtonium-clad foot slams into my jaw and flips me over onto the forest floor, my already injured back taking the brunt of the fall.

  A team of soldiers move in to restrain me, each grabbing a limb and holding it against the ground. I look over at Iris and see her struggling to free herself from the netting.

  “Get the cuffs!” the soldier holding my left arm yells.

  Iris goes still. There’s no way she’s given up. She’d fight to her dying breath with the stakes this high. Hell, she’d fight to her dying breath, even if they weren’t this high.