by Damien Boyes
Dad!
He tries to sit up but Mom is already next to him, forcing him to lie still.
“You were hurt,” Mom says. “Your leg. These people helped you.”
Dad looks up at Delta, who’s standing just off behind me. “Thank you for that,” he says. “And for keeping my family safe.” He raises his head and Mom tries again to get him to lie back but he gives her a little frown and she relents, throws her hands up and lets Dad rise to sitting. “Can someone tell me what’s going on. I thought it was Russians, but now I have to assume it’s an alien invasion.”
Leave it to Dad to jump straight to it. I’m still stuck disbelieving my eyes and he’s already accepted reality and moved on. I know he must be broken up by the tragedy at the hospital, he’s worked there for years, but he won’t let his grief show. He keeps everything bottled up like a pro.
“We’re not aliens,” Delta offers. “We’re all one hundred percent human. Just from different timelines.”
“Different versions of Earth?” Dad says, more intrigued than confused. “And the invaders?”
“Humans too. From their own timeline,” Delta says. “And not a very nice one at that.”
This doesn’t faze Dad at all. “The Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Dynamics?”
“Not quite.” Delta scratches his head. “But similar. Close enough, anyway.”
“How do you know any of this?” I ask Dad. I was quick enough to accept the superpowers—I’d read plenty of comic books in my stints in the hospital—but the rest of this all sounds like gibberish to me.
“How could I not be interested in the origin and structure of creation?” Dad says, as if this is something everyone thinks about.
“Dad, you’re such a nerd.” I mean, I’m a nerd too, but he’s off the charts.
“And you’re all here for Jasmin?” he asks. His voice doesn’t change, but I can see fear creeping behind his eyes.
“She called, so we came.”
Dad nods. What’s he nodding for? That doesn’t even mean anything. How can he accept all this so easily?
“And Eternity Station?” Dad asks.
“He said it’s outside space,” Mom offers.
“It’s safe?” Dad asks.
“Perfectly,” Delta says and holds up his arm, showing me the band on his wrist. “No one gets to Eternity Station without one of these. Gibzon has it hidden in nullspace.”
“Good enough,” Dad says, apparently satisfied with the insanity. We’ll be safe, and that’s all that matters. “When do we go?”
“As soon as the team gets back and we get a rift set up.”
“Then we should start packing,” Mom says. “If we have the time …”
“There’s time,” Delta says as he bends and helps Dad to his feet. I know he could have picked Dad right up, but no way Dad would let that happen, and Delta seems to know enough not to try.
“So you can move through space?” Dad asks Delta as we hobble across the parking lot toward the apartment. “Is this a natural ability or do you require the technology?”
“Both,” Delta says, and narrows his eyes. One second he’s holding Dad from the left, and then poof, he’s on Dad’s other side.
Mom’s beside me, and she cries out and puts her hand to her chest.
“Boo,” Delta says from his new position, then smiles at Mom. “Sorry, bad joke. We can blink around on our own, but traveling large distances, like between timelines, is easier with help.”
“Could you—what do you call it, blink me inside?” Dad asks. I think he might be enjoying all this, his intense curiosity about the world is overriding everything crashing down around his ears.
“No sir,” Delta says. “This world is too young. Isn’t coherent enough for me to be jumping people through it.”
“Ah,” Dad says with a sigh. “Too bad. And Jasmin, she has powers like you do?”
“She will,” Delta answers. “Once she’s ready for them.”
I am ready! If it’s going to happen let’s get on with it.
“Amazing,” Dad says, and looks back at me with a proud smile.
If he could just tell me how to do whatever it is I can do, I could help. I could fight back.
“Delta, how do I—” I start, but just then there’s a snap hiss from out on the street ahead of us, and Alpha and Sigma are standing there with crates at their feet. Alpha checks something on her arm and launches straight into giving orders. “Gibzon calculates twenty-seven minutes before the enemy has the entanglers ready, which gives us half the time we need to set up and calibrate the rift back to Eternity Station,” she says, and her tone makes it clear she isn’t expecting success. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Thank you,” Mom says, but Alpha doesn’t answer, she just turns and starts hauling equipment around.
“Delta,” I try again. “You keep saying I have powers, but—”
Delta’s light blue eyes bore into mine as he says, “It’s different for everyone, but they’re ready when you are,” then Delta hands Dad over to Mom and moves to help the team. “Remember your promise,” he says, then checks in with a glance at Mom to make sure she’s still backing him up. She gives him a quick nod and he turns and starts opening a crate.
“What promise?” Dad asks.
“That if they don’t get this rift set up in time,” Mom says, “Jasmin will go without us.”
“Good,” he says, as if everything has been decided, and lets Mom help him into the apartment to pack for his inter-dimensional journey.
15
Remnants
Mom and Dad go inside to get ready for the end of the world, and I figure that’s not a bad idea. I don’t need much, but if all this is about to disappear, there are a few things I’d like to take with me. I go upstairs and get my diary, and though I know it’s silly, I grab Alice from my shelf. For a long time this ratty brown-and-white stuffed dog was my only friend. I can’t leave her here.
All at once I remember Gabriel. I get all the way to the bottom of the stairs, driven by the urge to find him, before I realize that’s impossible. Who knows where he is, or if he’s even still alive. I pick up the phone to try and call him but there’s no dial tone at all. The line’s dead.
My heart drains into my guts. He’s been my best friend for so long, I don’t know how I’ll go on without him. I already know I’ll be missing him forever.
“You holding up okay, Minnow?” Dad asks, and limps over and puts his arm around my shoulder. I’m amazed he’s up and around and walking already. Whatever was in that silver foam Gamma sprayed into Dad’s wound is incredible.
“Thinking about Gabriel,” I tell him, and he gives me a squeeze.
“I have a feeling you’ll see him again,” Dad says, and he’s got a weird distant look in his eyes.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask, but before Dad can answer the ground vibrates under us. It starts slow and builds to a crescendo and then settles back down to a distant hum.
Dad and I pile outside, Mom right behind us, holding her suitcase closed with her arm. I look across the street, past the dark gas station on the corner, to the other side of downtown, where the sky is glowing, lit up by a blazing ball of pearlescent light. The light is shining from the top of a tall skinny tower that wasn’t there ten minutes ago, like a giant pearl earring stuck in the earth. The tower itself is a dull bronze and must be a hundred feet tall, and the silver ball on top is pulsing, rhythmic, throbbing up my legs and into my stomach.
I have no idea what that thing is, but it can’t be good.
“That’s an entangler,” Delta says, looking up from a long tubular piece of equipment he’s bolting into the pavement. “They’re all over the world by now. We don’t have much time left.”
Everyone keeps working. Mom and Dad go back inside to finish packing. Sigma twirls his fingers through a projection of some kind shining up from his loop while Alpha runs cables between the frame Delta is assembling and an array of interconnected boxes. Batteries maybe? I’m
not sure, but there are lots of them. My Walkman chews through batteries, and it just plays tapes. How much power must it take to rip a hole through time and space?
Tau and Gamma are further up the street, weapons ready, in case more soldiers should appear, but I haven’t heard an explosion or seen an invader in a few minutes. Maybe they’ve moved on. Fires are raging all over the city, but the eerie thing is the lack of sirens. Downtown is burning and no one’s coming to put it out.
I feel so useless right now, standing around while the world crumbles. “Can I help?” I ask Alpha as she finishes with the cables and starts poking and swiping at a series of controls flickering across a flat screen.
She stabs the glass twice then glares up at me. “You have experience calibrating a quantum relay?” she asks, the sarcasm dripping like venom. What did I ever do to her? She’s been nothing but attitude since the second she arrived.
But then I remember. Maybe it isn’t me she’s pissed with.
“What did she do to make you hate her so much?” I ask, and this only makes her more frustrated.
“That you have to ask is one of the main reasons,” she says, then takes a deep breath and lets it out through her teeth. “We’ve only just finished rebuilding the damage you did last time, and for some reason, against all probability, you’re back, and already a pain in my ass.”
“Wanting my parents to live is too much trouble for you?”
“That’s right,” she says, and rises to her full height. “You think this is all about you. These are your parents. This is your world. You can’t see past your own nose and you never have, not even when you were Alpha.”
“I just want my mom and dad not to die.”
“No matter the cost to anyone else,” Alpha says, then the fight seeps out of her. “I need to finish this if we’re all going to get out of here. Tell your parents we have ten minutes—if the entanglers don’t trigger before then.”
I turn to go back inside and then Grackle is standing next to me and I almost want to hug him I’m so glad to see him. I thought he’d been blasted by the tank.
His eyes dart around and then he grabs me by the arm.
“We need to leave,” he says. Not this again.
Alpha notices him arrive too. “Get the hell out of here,” she yells. “You’ll lead them right to us.”
Grackle and I both ignore her. “I thought you were dead,” I say. “Why didn’t you come back?”
He lowers his head. “I heard them coming,” he says, looking at Alpha. “She doesn’t like me around.”
“He’s a pain in my ass too,” Alpha says. “No wonder you liked him so much.”
I look at Grackle and he’s staring at me, fear in his eyes. “There’s no time,” he says. “He’s coming.”
“No ...” Alpha mutters, but the frustration has drained from her face. If anything, she seems scared.
“Who’s coming?” I ask, but before either of them can answer the air tears open with a sound like it’s screaming, and a man strides through reality with an electric black sizzle. His body’s a blur, like a million ghostly figures vibrating over each other. A wave of vertigo hits me but I force myself not to look away.
He’s massive, nearly seven feet tall, with pale skin, ink-black hair swept back from his forehead, an angular beard over his vibrating cheeks, and a long, pointed face. He’s wearing a slim black suit with a black shirt and a black tie. The only color is in his pupils, two bright dots of iridescent flame that remain completely still as his body flickers around him.
“The Remnants,” Grackle whispers. “Thrane.” And then he’s gone.
The Omega Guard doesn’t react as two more figures appear, a man and a woman, each splitting the air with the same terrible crackling shriek. They’re not vibrating though. The man’s skin is so black it’s like even light is scared to touch him. His lean arms are clasped behind his back, and the hood of his long sleeveless maroon robe hides his face, but two iridescent circles burn in the shadow as he scans the equipment. His bare feet dangle as he floats to a stop next to Thrane.
“Preparations for a dimensional rift,” the robed man says in a dispassionate whisper I can hear as clearly as if he were beside me.
“Rats fleeing the ship,” the woman growls. Her nose is scrunched up like she smells something rotten, and her hands are cocked at her sides as if daring someone to challenge her. It’s hard to take my eyes off her, she’s mesmerizing and terrifying all at the same time. Her skin is even paler than Thrane’s and her hair is long and silver-black and flows around her head in thick waves. Her eyes burn with the same shimmering, purple-black fire, and while she isn’t as big as the others, something about the way she’s staring at me makes me want to run away screaming and never look back.
Thrane glances around as though he’s just stepped into a store and is searching for the perfect gift. He looks at each of the Omega Guard in turn, and as his eyes land on me they flicker through something unreadable, but his lips spread in a wide, predatory grin.
“Jasmin Parker?” he says. His voice is hollow, like it’s coming from a thousand places at once, but I can’t help but be drawn to it. Luckily, hearing him say my name makes my knees go liquid and stops me from moving. “What a surprise to find you here.”
“We won’t let you take her,” Alpha says, and her hands drop to her sides.
Thrane and the other man haven’t moved since they arrived, but the woman can’t seem to stay still. She’s pacing up and down the street, running her fingers along cars, her touch dissolving trails in the metal.
“How admirable,” Thrane says. “The way you protect each other, even after her betrayal.”
Betrayal? What is he talking about?
“I’m not her!” I yell out.
His glowing eyes shift back to me, and an instant later they shimmer through a million flickers of surprise. “And so you’re not.” Thrane angles his head at the robed man beside him, but his only response is a light shrug. “How curious.”
Alpha and Delta and the rest of the team are tense, ready, waiting for an order.
“Why don’t you just piss off back where you came from,” Mom yells, and Delta sucks in a breath.
The silver-haired woman’s face lights up. “So there is some fight left in this world,” she says. “Someone give that woman a weapon so I may kill her.”
“Over my dead body,” I snark back.
Thrane holds up a ghostly finger, still smiling. “In due time,” he says, then waves one hand at the robed man. “Dhemant.” And the other at the silver haired woman. “Einarr. Do not allow her to escape, she’s still young enough to nip in the bud. We’ll absorb her unfulfilled potential with the rest of this world.”
“And the others?” Einarr asks, anticipation in her eyes.
“You can kill them,” Thrane says with a shrug.
Then the sky slices open as more invaders stream out, and the night erupts in chaos.
16
Cuts You Up
The invaders open fire and I duck, terrified I’m about to be ripped apart by bullets—but a glowing, deep blue light springs from Alpha’s arm and extends out around us. The bullets smack the shield with a noise like someone pounding their fists on a synthesizer, but don’t get through.
“Tactical retreat,” Alpha yells, and the Omegas fall into action, creating shields of their own in various colors while firing back at the soldiers. Thrane and the two other Remnants seem content to watch.
Alpha spins, keeping the shield between us and the still firing soldiers, and walks us back toward the apartment. “Get the loop,” she yells. “Put it on and do what it tells you.” The noise is intense, the crack of machine guns and spacey twang of bullets hitting the shields like a terrible electro band out of tune and all playing at eleven. I can barely hear her.
“But my parents—” I yell, but she’s already poked her gun through the blue shield and is firing. Five soldiers drop in quick succession, her bullets slipping right through thei
r shields to impact the soldiers’ armor.
I turn to run back toward the apartment but stop, frozen. Dhemant is moving now, his robes trailing behind him as he hovers past the gas station. Ribbons of scintillating black energy pour like liquid from his fingertips, forming into radiant whips that jump and sizzle when they hit the pavement.
Tau is closest and fires a stream of neon orange energy from his raised fists, but it splashes into an invisible barrier a foot from Dhemant’s hovering body and spills around him, splashing past into the gas station. The energy hits the tanks and the whole place explodes, engulfing him in a fireball.
Alpha’s shields protect us from most of the shockwave, but the blast is deafening. Flames shoot up into the sky and take out a line of nearby invaders. The whole corner is burning, but a dark figure emerges from the flames, floating unharmed, with black energy flicking around his maroon robes.
Faster than I can see, Dhemant lances out with one of the whips and it swirls around Tau’s raised artificial arm. Tau’s surrounded in the same kind of glowing energy shield as Alpha, and it blazes bright orange for a moment before it tears with the sound of rending metal, and the whip tightens and severs the artificial arm in a flash of glowing sparks. Tau yells and swings his shotgun down from his shoulder and fires it one-handed, but the bullets plink off the robed man’s shield like pebbles on glass.
Then Dhemant whips a second glowing tentacle through the air, the black energy leaving trails of flame behind it, cooling from blue to red to orange, and wraps around Tau’s waist. Tau barely has time to scream before Dhemant tugs the whip and Tau disappears in a burst of black flame and ash.
I want to scream but can’t make a sound. I turn again, stumbling, and Dhemant sets his searing eyes on me. He lifts his slender black fingers and pushes his hood back, revealing a bald head. He spreads his lips in a black-toothed smile, the single scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and glides toward me, nonchalant, like he’s got nowhere in particular to be.
