by Damien Boyes
My feet trip over themselves as I scramble away, almost fall, but catch myself and stagger back to the apartment. As I’m fleeing a blue ball of light slams into Dhemant’s shields.
“GO!” Alpha yells, then vanishes before she pops back into reality twenty feet away. She tosses two more energy balls at the robed man. He spins and shoots one of his whips at her but she’s gone by the time it arrives and while he’s distracted I turn and sprint away, back toward the rift equipment. Delta’s still there, his body surrounded by a yellow shield as he tries to get controls running while simultaneously firing at anything that moves.
“Is it ready?” I yell, but Delta barely looks at me. We both know it isn’t.
A spear of black energy flashes past us, and Delta just gets his shields around me before the batteries explode, killing any chance of us getting out of here.
No! I can’t let them go.
“Don’t think,” Delta says, his face grim. “Remember your promise. You have to get out of here.” I flinch as he squeezes off shots with his twin pistols. “Thrane’s soldiers we can handle, but we can’t beat one Remnant, let alone three.”
“I can’t leave them,” I say, the desperation nearly overwhelming.
“You can’t stay here,” he answers. “If the entanglers engage while you’re still in this timeline you’ll be absorbed right along with everything else, no second chances. Death you don’t come back from. That’s what Thrane wants.” He pokes me in the chest with the muzzle of one of his guns. “And the other you caused him enough trouble, no doubt he’ll do everything he can to make sure you don’t get the chance to exist again.” He spins me around and backs me up until we’re nearly to the apartment door, firing until his weapons click dry, but the robed man is still coming, the bullets hardly slowing him down. “The loop is inside, on the kitchen counter. It takes a few seconds to calibrate, but once it does, tap ‘Home’ and you’ll be safe in Eternity Station. Go, now!”
Alpha’s fighting in the middle of the street, trying to keep her distance from Einarr, who’s swinging two flickering blades that extend from her flattened palms. Alpha’s hurt, her shields gone. Delta yells and sprints toward them, dropping his pistols as he runs and forming a glowing yellow ball in his hand that he hurls at the woman before she can impale Alpha. It explodes on the Remnant’s back and she turns, annoyed, and fires one of her blades out at the rushing Delta, but he’s already gone. He suddenly reappears beside Alpha, and they both give me a long look before they tap their loops and a second later vanish into nothing.
My whole body tenses up.
They left me. I’m alone.
Thrane still hasn’t moved from the place he arrived. He’s been watching all this with a half-interested expression, like it’s a play he’s seen a thousand times before.
Dhemant is hovering toward me, Einarr strolling along behind, but they’re not moving quickly. It’s like chasing me down is part of the fun.
Fear like nothing I’ve ever felt rises in me, and the tugging insistence in my head screams at me to let it out. I’m scared of what will happen if I do, and more scared of what will happen if I don’t.
Instead, I run, fleeing into the apartment. With all the explosions and gunfire Mom and Dad will be terrified. I race to the back courtyard and into the apartment where they’re waiting in the living room, with their bags packed at their feet and anxious looks on their faces.
“What’s happening out there?” Dad asks, still calm amidst all this chaos, and I know I’m about to lose them. Tears spill from my eyes and I rush to hold them as an explosion tears through the apartment wall, throwing us backward in a blast of concrete debris and glass.
I can’t breathe. Can barely see. Someone’s screaming and it takes a moment to realize it’s me.
Mom landed beside me and she gathers me in her arms. This is it. We’re going to die …
And then I remember what Delta said: Thrane wants me alive when the entanglers trigger.
Through the dust I can see Dad struggling to rise, to get up and protect us, and then Dhemant appears through the smoke, grabs him by the shirt, gives him a disinterested glance, and tosses him back over his shoulder like a doll. I don’t hear him land.
The hovering figure cocks his head and looks through the dust at us, just as Mom presses something into my hand and squeezes it closed. The loop.
She gives me a last look, a look so full of love it nearly tears me apart, then she leaps up with a fierce snarl and throws herself at Dhemant. For a second I believe with everything I have that somehow the power of her love will let her win, but he catches her easily, and holds her by the neck as if unsure what to do with her. He looks from her to me, then gives a slight shrug and tosses her sideways and she crumples against the wall and falls to the floor. She doesn’t get up.
The sight of my mother lying motionless fills me with pain so intense my thoughts go white. All I want to do is fight, to grab this man who invaded our world and killed my parents and beat him until he doesn’t exist. But I can’t, I’m helpless. I might have all these powers, but what good are they if I don’t know how to use them?
I scoot back as he approaches, get around into the kitchen and yank the loop onto my arm. It squeezes tight around my wrist and the surface lights up blue-white. I don’t want to leave them, but they wouldn’t want me to die here either. Mom made that clear enough when she threw herself at Dhemant to buy me another second to escape.
I get as far into the kitchen as I can but it’s a small room, there’s nowhere else to go. Then Dhemant is in the doorway, the liquid energy whips dangling from his fists leaving burning trails behind him.
He looks down at the band on my wrist and scowls. Just then the sleeve lights up with a series of readouts and controls that I don’t understand, but one button calls out: “Home.”
Screw you! I think, but before I move to push it a whip sears out and wraps around the band. It burns through with a stench of melting plastic and cooking flesh and then my hand’s gone. The funny thing is it doesn’t even hurt.
My head is throbbing, I can barely see, and Dhemant’s only steps away. My breath grows ragged as I struggle to my feet and fumble with my remaining hand to find something to defend myself. I grab the kettle and throw it but it just bounces off his chest—and then he’s close enough to touch and the air between us grows cold, as though he’s sucking the warmth from my skin.
I fumble behind me and find the cast-iron frying pan on the stove and swing it at his head, and it hits him like a gong sounding and my arm goes numb, but it doesn’t faze him. He catches it in his hand and holds it there, staring me down with his bright eyes as the metal grows hot in my hand. I gasp and let the handle go but he keeps hold of it until the metal glows white and then melts down over his fist.
“Come with me, dear,” he says, and his voice is like a whisper through a megaphone, quiet and deafening all at once. “Let us spend your last moments probing the marvel of your existence.”
He reaches out to grab me and I reach back with my fist and hit him with everything I have, and it surprises both of us when he goes sailing backward, crashing through the kitchen wall into the living room. Before I can even understand what’s happened he’s back, his hand clasped around my throat and his eyes livid with surprise.
“That hurt,” he whispers, and tightens his grip. “It’s been so long, I’d forgotten pain’s sweet caress. Now, allow me to reciprocate.”
The throbbing in my head is intense, screaming at me, what was once an insistent tug is now a gale-force demand. The man lifts his other hand and it lights up with a jagged black rainbow blaze of energy.
“Don’t worry, this won’t kill you.”
He grins, showing me his wide set of pure black teeth, and slowly brings his hand to my face. I feel the heat instantly, brace myself for the pain, but at the last second finally give in to the demands in my head.
I feel a hole open in my mind, a sucking vortex that captures me and pulls me in, and
as I’m sucked out of my body I hear my face sizzling.
Then I’m somewhere else.
17
Dreams Never End
I wake up screaming, and cry until my throat is hoarse and my lungs are burning. Tears gush from my eyes and spill in hot wet streams down my cheeks. They’re gone. Mom and Dad are gone.
They’re dead.
I choke as my throat closes and I retch in a breath.
This is all my fault. All this, because of me. If only the truck had killed me, everyone else would be alive. Not just Mom and Dad, not just Gabriel and Martin. Everyone. The whole school. The whole world.
Dead, because of me.
I only wanted a little distance, the chance to grow up, and now I’ll never see anyone ever again.
What do I do now?
And wait a minute. Why am I not dead like everyone else?
I realize that I’m lying on my back. The sun is warm above me and the sky is orange and yellow and blue pastel and somehow the sight of it calms me down. I focus on my breath. Feel the cool air soothe my tender throat. Then the image of Mom’s crumpled body flashes before my eyes, and my stomach clenches and all I want to do is curl into a ball and never stop crying—
But I can’t. Instead, I breathe, shallowly and through my nose, like when I used to feel a seizure coming, and the wrench of loss and grief eases off. It doesn’t go anywhere, but it relaxes its grip on my heart.
I blink the tears from my eyes, sit up, and look around. I’m in a light forest, surrounded by trees—but I’ve never seen trees like these—silvery bark and golden leaves fluttering in a breeze that smells like sweetness and sunshine. I look down and realize I’m sitting on the surface of a pond, but not a pond, because the reflection shows a black sky full of stars, with the leaves and branches of the trees replaced by glowing green and purple gas, and a cold bright galaxy swirling where the sun should be.
Then I notice my arm’s back in one piece and I immediately remember the smell of my flesh searing. A wave of panic flips my stomach, and my heart races, but only for a moment. It dissipates immediately and I’m once again at peace.
I should be freaking out right now, but every time my head starts to spin out of control something slows it right down again.
Where am I?
I was about to have my face melted off and then I gave in to the tugging in my head and …?
I stand, and the starry-water holds me, but my reflection is tinged purple, as if it somehow belongs to the mirror world below. Ripples flow out from my bare feet as I walk to the shore, looking up and down between the day and night. Whatever it is I’m stepping through is cool but doesn’t feel wet, and when I get to the shore my feet are dry and the grass is soft as cotton.
After everything that’s just happened I know I should be devastated, comatose from grief, but instead I only feel peace. Whatever this place is, it seems to wipe the pain from my thoughts. I could stay here forever and never worry again, not about my parents or my home or my world or even what’s going to happen to me, not ever, even if I never moved from this spot.
Part of me wants to give in to it and sit down and see what happens. It’s so warm here, so comfortable. But I can’t. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but as much as I’d like to stay, I need to find out what’s going on.
“Hello?” I call out, and before my voice has stopped echoing through the glade, a woman is beside me.
Her hair is gray and frizzes out from her head in ringlets that hang down over her smoky eyes. She’s older but achingly beautiful, almost too pretty to look at, with a model’s cheekbones and pink lips pursed in a gentle smile like the world’s coolest grandma. She gathers the waist of her white robe in her hand and reveals her naked feet.
“Welcome, daughter,” she says, then splashes into the water and kicks up tiny waves with her toes. “Thank you for this. It’s a beautiful place.”
Why is she thanking me?
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I say. “It was here when I woke up.”
She twitches her cheeks at me. “Of course it was,” she says gently, her voice low but melodic.
“Where are we?” I ask.
She glances up and around. “This is a facet of you. It’s what you needed to see.”
I don’t understand—though I’m getting used to that.
I get the sense I’m not going to get a straight answer from her, so I try a simpler question. “Who are you?”
The woman steps out of the pond, shakes the stars from her feet, and lets the hem of her robe fall back to the ground. She puts her hand on her chest. “I am Antheia,” she says, then waves her hand and we’re falling through the surface of the glade and into the shifting swirl of the cosmos. “Welcome to the Aperion.”
My head does a somersault as the world changes around me, but the ground stays solid under my feet. A pathway that looks like the Milky Way materializes under us and she follows it, takes a few steps, then glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m keeping up, which I hurry to do.
“Am I dreaming?” I ask as we walk through the stars.
“No,” she answers. “Though some have called it that. I call it the Aperion. Others know it as Heaven. Or Valhalla. Nirvana. Ghanavyiiha. Tian.” She must see the look on my face because she says, “It’s difficult to comprehend, I understand. I’ve been here for eons and still don’t quite grasp it myself, but the longer you stay here, the less the why of it comes to matter.”
“I still don’t understand,” I say as a comet sails past, its tail sprinkling us with cool mist.
“Don’t expect to,” Antheia answers. “This is a place of being, not understanding.”
That doesn’t help. “How did I get here?”
“Ah,” she says, and raises a finger and taps me on the forehead. “I would say you brought yourself here.”
“But I didn’t do anything …”
She stops and turns to face me. “Didn’t you? Or have you been searching for this place all your life?”
And now that she says it, I almost believe it. I feel like I’ve always known about this place, like retroactive déjà-vu. “I have seizures, and sometimes, during the worst ones, I’d feel a pull and want to let go.”
Antheia nods. “That was the Aperion calling to you. Most don’t have the ears to hear its song, and even fewer the strength to respond, especially of late. But you found us, you are boundless.”
“Is that why I’m not dead?”
Antheia considers this for a moment. “You have been called forth by the chronoverse, created as its agent, to wield its power. You are neither alive nor dead—you are endless. Should your body die your essence will return here, the memory of you, and then, as now, you’ll have a choice to make.”
Her words are so soft and her voice so comforting I’m having trouble concentrating. Did she say I’m immortal?
“I don’t understand. What choice?”
“When boundless return to the Aperion they are welcome to remain. Many choose to, over time.”
I can believe it. I never want to leave. “And the others?”
She narrows her eyes at me as though she’s able to see my thoughts. “Others choose to return.”
Return? My heart leaps. Mom and Dad—maybe I can still save them. “You mean I can go back to my world?”
“If you wish,” she says, almost dismissively—as though, why would you?
“I was told my world was going to end.”
“And so it did,” Antheia says, and before I can ask her to explain herself she continues. “I am unable to see the events that transpire within the chronoverse, but I can sense the shape of things. Your timeline has been lost.”
“Then how can I go back?”
“The chronoverse is infinite. There are other worlds, many like yours.”
A spark of anger flickers in me and is immediately extinguished. “Enough with the riddles. Can I go home or not?”
She looks past me for a moment. “You
are boundless, a child of the chronoverse. All of creation is yours to explore, all of time and space. And its tools, yours to possess. But some things are beyond even your power.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I need to get back to them.”
“If that is your choice,” she says, and turns to resume walking. “You are free to make it.”
“Where are you going?” I yell after her. “Aren’t you going to help me?”
“You don’t need my help, daughter,” she says without turning. “Your decision is made. Now simply think of where you want to go, and there you’ll be.”
“Just like that?” I ask.
“Just like that,” she answers, but then looks back over her shoulder. “Though remember, child, nothing, even with the universe at your command, is ever so easy.”
I don’t care if it’s easy, I’ll do whatever it takes.
“I want to go home,” I say.
And then I am.
18
Never Go Home Again
One second I’m in a dream world and the next I’m back on the sidewalk on Niagara Street, standing in front of the Sunrise Apartment complex, the one place I know better than anywhere else in the world.
I’m guessing it’s the middle of the day. The sun’s shining and there’s no sign of the fight that was raging when I left. The street is whole again, and the gas station on the corner unexploded.
My head is swimming. I don’t exactly know what’s going on, but the confusion at the normalcy I’ve returned to is swamped by my need to find Mom and Dad.
I run across the lawn to the outer apartment door, and while it’s locked, I find I still have my keys in my jeans. Somehow I’m still wearing the same clothes I had on when Dhemant burned my face off, only now they’re clean.
I fumble open the lock on the outer door, and once I’m in the hallway I run to our apartment and unlock it. It’s quiet inside.
“Hello?” I yell, and rush into the living room and see that’s it’s still in one piece. The wall isn’t blown up. “Mom!”
