by Damien Boyes
There is no plan. We’re all going to die.
Not good enough.
The tension in my stomach eases slightly. The ringing in my ears quiets enough that I can hear Grackle saying my name. It sounds like he’s a long way away, but he’s getting closer.
Start at the beginning, break it down, step by step—
First, find Mom.
Okay, then what?
Get to the lake house upstate.
And after that?
Survive.
Good. Now get to it.
I take a deep breath and wipe my eyes with my shirt, and this time when Grackle reaches for me I let him help me up.
“Are you fit to proceed?” he asks, and I nod as we start once again for home.
I’m devastated and my whole life has just gone up in flames, but I’m not ready to give up.
Not yet.
10
Replicas
Usually it takes about a half hour to walk home from the hospital, but tonight’s anything but usual. We detoured twice to avoid the packs of roaming invaders who didn’t seem to have much of a plan other than causing as much horror as possible. And if it wasn’t for Grackle’s psychic ability to know when we were in danger, we probably wouldn’t have made it at all.
Mom’s peering out the upstairs curtains as we race up the front walk, and she has the door open before we get there.
“Jasmin!” she yells as she barrels out and wraps her arms around me, laughing and crying all at once. “I thought ...” she says, but she can’t finish, and her tears come again. I peel myself off her and push her back into the house, and once Grackle’s in, I lock the door after us.
“I’m okay,” I assure her, but she grabs me by the shoulders and holds me tight.
“I should have been there for you. I never should have left,” she says, as tears again spill down her cheeks. “I almost came back to find you when the explosions started, but with the fires and all the shooting …” She stares at me, a pained look on her face.
“You did the right thing,” I say. She’s going to beat herself up about not rushing out into a war to find her baby. “We had to come all the way around Allentown and down Niagara. We never would have found each other. We’d have got here and you’d be out there and I would have gone looking for you.”
She nods a little and sniffles, then lets me go and turns to wipe her face. “There’s nothing on the TV but the emergency broadcast, and the radio only says to get somewhere safe—do you think it’s the Russians?”
I look back at Grackle, who can walk in and out of worlds, and think about the invaders flying through the skies …
No, it isn’t Russians. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know Russia has nothing to do with it. Unless it’s Russians from the future.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I say and take four steps into the living room and drop down on the couch. Once I hit the cushions I’m immediately exhausted. I could just put my head down on Mom’s lap and sleep right here. Except I’d need some Tylenol first. My head is throbbing, the knot of pain between my eyes ready to burst.
Grackle still hasn’t said anything. He’s perched himself on the arm of the chair next to the sofa and Mom is staring at him, probably wondering who this strange man in her house is.
“This is … um … Grackle,” I say from the couch, not able to think of anything better to call him.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Parker,” Grackle says, as though fleeing through a combat zone is no big deal.
She looks back and forth between us, a mountain of questions behind her eyes. It’s the apocalypse and I’m dragging strangers into the house.
“I met him at the hospital,” I explain. “He helped me get here.”
Mom walks over, grabs Grackle’s hand, and gives it a squeeze before coming to sit beside me and grabbing mine once more. She’s not going to let me get more than an arm’s length away ever again. “Thank you for bringing Jasmin home, Mr. Grackle.”
“It was my pleasure, ma’am,” he says, and he seems almost bashful at the attention. “Your daughter is a wonderful young woman.”
I see Mom’s face scrunch up. She knows something’s off, but instead of pressing she asks, “What about your father?”
“He stayed behind,” I say, trying to sound less angry at him than I am. I know he thought he was doing the right thing but he died protecting strangers while his family was running for their lives.
Mom’s face grows still, but she only nods and squeezes my hand. “You know your father,” she says, as though we were discussing him leaving the toilet seat up and not abandoning us to fend for ourselves. “Remember, he ran into traffic that one time to help an injured dog … He can’t help himself.”
“He said he’d meet us at the lake house.”
“Upstate,” she says. “I was thinking the same thing. Let me throw some clothes in a bag and—”
“No,” I say from the couch. Though I’d like nothing more right now than to lie here while Mom putters upstairs packing for a weekend away, we need to leave. Now. “There’s no time. We need to go.”
Mom considers this for a moment and then she’s in motion. “Grab bottles of water from the fridge and whatever else you can find in there. We’ll want to eat if we get a chance.”
I follow Mom to the kitchen and she grabs the cooler bag from on top of the fridge. I dump a bunch of stuff into it, water bottles and apples and some leftover ham and a package of cheese slices. It won’t keep us going long, but at least we won’t starve in the next few hours.
The car’s parked in the lot around back, and we check outside to make sure the coast is clear, but we barely get halfway down the front walk before we see a column of invaders floating up Huron toward us with one of those disc cannons hovering behind them. They’re still more than a block away, and the soldiers aren’t firing, but the cannon is blasting its way up the street, taking indiscriminate shots at the buildings.
We run around the wall next to the driveway and take cover there. The car is in the lot behind the complex, but there’s no way we can get out of here without being seen. That cannon will fry us instantly. And we won’t make it out of the city on foot.
The ground rumbles as the parking structure up the block collapses. We can’t stay here. They get much closer and we won’t be able to hide, but we’ve got nowhere to go and I can barely see as it is. The pain in my head is insistent now, like someone’s got a sledgehammer inside my skull and trying to bash its way out.
“You have to do something,” I say to Grackle. He clenches his jaw. We’re about to die and still he’s resisting. “You said you came here to save me—so get saving.”
“I ... I can’t,” Grackle says. He’s shaking, but his hands are starting to shimmer, flickering with that green light like back in the hospital. He stares at his hands, clenching them into fists, and the light grows stronger, energy blazing from his knuckles.
The line of invaders is drifting closer, almost directly across the street from our hiding place, and the pull in my head is nearly unbearable. I don’t know what it is or what it wants, but I’m about to let it have me when Grackle sucks in a breath and steps out from hiding, putting himself in full view of the invaders.
They open fire instantly, but the red blasts ping off the radiant green shield covering Grackle’s body like an electric skin. Then he throws out his hands and two small balls of emerald energy fly out and slap two soldiers out of the sky. They hit the ground with a crunch and for a moment I’m elated, but then a blast from the tank explodes where Grackle is standing and the shockwave knocks us senseless.
Everything goes numb. The inside of my head turns to static. I try to get up but can’t tell where my legs are.
I can’t stay here, have to get up—
My hand finds the rough brick of the wall as the white fuzz in my eyes fades. I still can’t hear, but Mom is up on her hands and knees and there’s a burning crater in the front drive. Grackle is gone.
They killed him. I made him go out there and they killed him, just like he said they would.
And we’re next.
The invaders are here, they’ll be able to see us in seconds. I grab at Mom and try to get her up and running as all around us the air crackles. I figure we’re about to be fried by a shot from the cannon and then more people are on the street, people who weren’t there a second ago. They’re armed with big, tough-looking weapons and wear form-fitting green-gray outfits. They immediately start shooting, and whatever their bullets are made of, they work a lot better than the Army’s.
The invaders return fire but this time they’re not invincible and are shot out of the sky, one by one.
There’s another electric crackle behind us and I spin, expecting to see Grackle, and instead find a stranger. He’s smiling, but as he sees me his eyes go wide and his mouth splits open in a huge, perplexed grin. His sudden appearance makes me gasp, and this only makes his smile bigger.
He’s older than me, but not by much. His hair is short, dirty blond, cut military-style, and his eyes are a pale blue. He’s dressed in the same outfit as the others, olive-color and padded. I think it’s body armor.
“Jasmin?” he says, and looks me up and down, appraising me with those faded blue eyes that look like they’ve seen everything. “Goddamn, girl, I thought I’d never see you again.”
11
The Omega Guard
“How do you know my name?” I ask, and the way the words tumble out all over themselves makes me sound like an idiot. I can’t stop staring at his blue eyes, and I think I’ve left my mouth open. I snap it closed.
“Wait here,” he says with a grin, takes two running steps, and dives through nothing.
The air swallows him up and spits him back out on the road, but now there’s yellow energy rippling up and down his arms. He raises his fists at two invaders, and bright amber blasts shoot from his hands and the invaders cry out as the beams sear through their shimmering shields and into their armor and they fall from them from the sky—and then—blink-and-you’ll-miss-it—he’s gone again.
His friends are like him, hitting the invaders with colored energy blasts of their own. Twice I think the hovering tank has hit one of them with a crimson bolt, but each time they reappear somewhere else and continue fighting.
They concentrate their energy on the cannon, and finally its hull ruptures with a belch of red fire and black smoke and it plummets to the street, landing with enough force it cuts through the pavement and ruptures a water pipe that sends a spray shooting into the night sky.
Then it’s over. The invaders are all down and the strangers with their glowing fists come to stand around us.
“Look who I found,” the blue-eyed guy says, and surprise ripples through his teammates when they see me.
Mom’s standing in front of me, shielding me with her body. “Don’t you come any closer,” she says, though I don’t know how she’s going to enforce that. These people just took out a squad of invincible invading soldiers by firing energy from their bare hands. What’s she going to do to them if they don’t listen?
There are five of them, including the guy who first spoke to me—three men and two women, and everyone but one of the men looks like they’re in their early twenties.
“You don’t need to worry about us, ma’am” says Blue Eyes. He’s got a twang to his voice like he’s from maybe Texas or Southern California. “You’re safe for the moment.”
“Safe from who?” Mom says. “From what? Who are you? What the hell is going on?”
The guy smiles, and this time when he does it’s all charm and I realize how handsome he is, like he just stepped out of Tiger Beat, except he’s got a super team instead of a band.
“You really don’t know us?” he asks, his eyes searching my face.
“I’ve never seen any of you before,” I tell him. He glances over his shoulder to the rest of his team. They’re all confused too.
“That’s definitely weird, right?” he asks a woman behind him.
She’s got dark skin and an angular but pretty face that’s wrapped up in a scowl. Her hair is short and tightly curled and she carries herself like she doesn’t take crap from anyone. She’s focused on me with her intense gray eyes, and I’m not sure if I’m scared of her or want to be her best friend.
“I knew this place looked familiar.” She stares at me for a long moment then says, “But whoever she is, she’s not her.”
“How is that even possible?” the guy asks.
“Far as I know, it isn’t,” the frowning girl says.
The guy shakes his head, but then shrugs away his disbelief. “Good enough for me,” he says. “Looks as though introductions are in order. I’m Delta. Pretty cool, right?” He glances at me before he extends his hand to Mom. “But you can call me Tyler.”
“Lauren,” Mom says as she takes Delta’s hand and shakes it tentatively, but he doesn’t stop looking at me over her shoulder.
Delta cocks his head to the woman beside him. “This is Alpha,” he says. “She’s in charge.”
She’s in charge? The way Delta was acting I thought this was his team.
Alpha gives Delta a curt glance and her mouth moves like she wants to say something to me, but instead she jerks her thumb back at the rest of the team behind her: the older man with a thick brown mustache and what looks like a robot arm; an olive-skinned girl with flaming red hair and dark makeup around amused eyes; and another guy in a black turban and long black beard who, if anything, already looks a little bored.
“You can meet them later,” is all she says.
“Someone better tell me what’s going on here right this instant,” Mom says, with a voice that’s breathless and determined all at once. “Is this an invasion? Are these Russians?”
Delta laughs, confused. “No, they’re not Russians,” he says. “At least I don’t think they are.” He looks to Alpha beside him. “What’s a Russian?”
“Political rivals,” she says in a low voice. “They’re at war in this timeline.”
“So not the Russians,” Delta says with a smile. “But yes, this is an invasion.”
A million questions are on my lips all at once. “Who then?” is the one I get out.
“That,” he says, and rubs his pointed chin as if trying to decide how to answer, “is a long story best left for another time. We need to move. More soldiers will be on the way.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Mom says in her “and that’s final” tone. I’ve heard it plenty of times before but I’m not sure it’s going to work on them. “We don’t know anything about you.”
“Mom, they just wiped out a bunch of evil soldiers who were about to murder us,” I say to her, then turn to Alpha. “You’re here to stop them, right?” I say, hope flickering in my chest for the first time since the invasion began. “Grackle said he couldn’t fight them, but now that you’re here …”
Delta blows out through pursed lips. “Grackle was here?”
“He was,” I say, and glance around, but there’s no sight of him.
“Probably scurried back to his hidey-hole,” he says with a cheerful sneer.
“No,” I counter, suddenly strangely protective of Grackle. He did save our lives after all, or tried to, anyway. And if he hadn’t come to the hospital to get me who knows what might have happened. “He tried to help—”
“I bet he did—” Delta begins with a roll of his eyes, but Alpha cuts him off.
“Enough. We have a job to do. Gibzon said in and out, so let’s get out.”
I don’t like the sound of that.
“Wait,” I say, stepping up to Alpha. “What do you mean, ‘in and out’?”
Alpha doesn’t answer, just stares right back at me.
“There aren’t enough of us to fight them off,” Delta says. “What’s happening here is happening all over the planet. This world is lost.”
My head buzzes. That can’t be right. “I just watched you t
ake out a hundred soldiers, how can you say we’ve already lost?”
The older guy speaks up for the first time, and his voice is a soft Scottish brogue. “There’s only five of us,” he says, his voice flat, matter-of-fact, and raises his robot arm and sweeps it around. “Against millions. We can’t win. Not this battle. Not today.”
They’re just giving up? “But I just watched you—”
Delta shakes his head, giving Mom a funny look. “This is a dead-end timeline. It only exists because you do. We’re not about to waste resources on a no-hope world like—”
“Enough,” Alpha says, her voice suddenly dangerous. “Delta, get her ready. The rest of you, secure the area. I want to be back on the station in ten.”
“Yes, sir,” Delta says with a wink, while Alpha turns and issues orders to the rest of the team.
Delta takes me and Mom back around toward the parking lot, away from Alpha, who keeps tossing me looks. None of this makes any sense, and this perpetual state of confusion is wearing on me.
“I don’t get it. How can this world only exist because of me?” I have so many questions, but this is a good a place as any to start.
Delta takes a breath and glances at Mom. “A few hours ago this timeline appeared in the Destiny Matrix like a dinner bell. It got everyone’s attention. We haven’t had a new Boundless manifest in long time. Gibzon sent us here to get you out.”
“Get her out to where?” Mom asks.
“Eternity Station,” Delta says.
“Which is?” Mom presses.
“Where we live,” Delta answers.
Mom’s jaw flares. “But who are you?”
“Oh us?” he says, raising his chin and putting his hands on his hips. “We’re the Omega Guard.” Mom and I must have the same look on our faces because he laughs and says, “It sounds pretty corny, I know. But you’ll get used to it.”
“Get used to what?” I say. How can he be so casual about all this? He just told me the world is about to end and he’s acting like we’re at a backyard BBQ, chit-chatting while the hot dogs burn. “Start from the beginning. Explain this all to me like I’m five.”
