by Damien Boyes
“The Department of Temporal Research and Security ...?” I start, but I imagine that’s a whole other conversation. “Never mind,” I say. “So I have to destroy that black hole or whatever, right? Jump to Thrane’s True Line and take it out so the rest of you can follow.”
The team murmurs. “Where have I heard this before?” Alpha grumbles.
“What?” I ask, looking around. They’re all watching me.
“It was a reckless option,” Gibzon says to Alpha, but then he hesitates, studying me. “We had no means of penetrating the protective shield around Midtown to reach the singularity. Any operation was destined to fail.” If possible, his posture gets even straighter. “Now matters have changed. We have made progress on a means for piercing the shield.” He fixes me with a cold stare. “Our former Jasmin tried, and she failed. We must ensure you do not.”
30
Train in Vain
Gibzon assigns Alpha to train me on how to use my powers, but whatever scientific magic it is that keeps Eternity Station locked in nullspace also dampens our abilities, so she hands me a loop, then leads me through the station to one of the exits, punches something into the panel on the wall and opens the door onto a forest, where the trees are like nothing I’ve ever seen.
We step through and when I turn around the door is gone, and we’re surrounded by gray trunks the size of houses. They stretch way up to end in a canopy of bright red leaves that nearly block out the sky. The ground is covered in red leaves too, broken only by the pale green ground cover that manages to exist on the weak sunlight filtering through the treetops. I figure we’re still on Earth somewhere, or somewhen, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you more than that.
Before we left, Gibzon showed me to a room where I could keep my stuff, what little I have anyway, and gave me a new outfit while my clothes dried. I’m now wearing the same green-gray protective jumpsuit that everyone else has. Gibzon told me it’s bulletproof, and help recharge my energy as I use my powers—but I know firsthand it won’t be any match for the Remnants.
I’m glad for the change of clothes though, because to be honest I’m getting tired of wearing the same T-shirt all the time, and it wouldn’t have been much good in this cool air.
“What can you do?” Alpha asks after a moment of silent glowering. No small talk then, let’s get right to it.
“I can fly—” I start, and Alpha interrupts me.
“Bull,” she says. “Show me.”
I shrug and jump up toward the treetops, hoping I won’t blast through into the sky and lose her, but barely get ten feet into the air before I’m falling again. I try to control myself, to keep from dropping back toward the ground, but can’t, and land behind her.
She snickers. “You call that flying?”
I don’t get it. “I could go like a rocket in Deadworld,” I mumble.
Alpha steps up onto her toes and pushes off gently, and then she’s hovering. “Thrane’s world is awash in negative energy,” she says, floating toward me. She begins to circle, forcing me to spin my head around to keep her in sight. “A child could fly in a place like that.”
She stops in front of me, locking eyes for a moment. “Keep up, if you can,” she says, then she bursts through the treetops and I lose sight of her.
Keep up? I’ll show her.
I take two running steps and leap, trying to remember how it felt in Deadworld. I push off against the air under my feet, grab the sky with my mind, and try to pull myself up. That does a little better but I still arc and fall and when I hit the ground I keep the momentum going, run a few steps and launch myself once more, almost reach the lower branches of the trees, and on my third leap I give it everything I have and plunge through the branches into the bright blue sky. When my height starts to slip, I press against the air and keep myself buoyant, refusing to fall.
Alpha’s hovering a short distance away, studying me. It takes a few awkward seconds of unbalanced midair teetering, but I finally float myself over to her and raise myself up until we’re at eye level. Trees stretch out as far as I can see, and the sky is bruised purple where it meets the horizon, but I can’t tell if it’s mountains or low clouds. If this is Earth, it’s nowhere I’ve ever seen.
“Not bad for a beginner,” she says, though I notice she’s trying not to sound too encouraging. “Delta took weeks to get into the air.”
“I told you, I had some practice.”
“I can see that,” she says, and once again circles me. “What else do you know?”
“Those energy shield things,” I offer.
“The wards. Show me.”
I concentrate on forming the purple energy around me and feel my arms tingle, but nothing comes.
“Well …?” Alpha says.
“I’m trying,” I grunt, and focus even harder, but the more I try the fainter the tingling on my arms gets. Why can’t I do it now?
“Try harder,” Alpha says and floats back about a hundred feet and watches from a distance. No matter what I do I can’t get the shields to form.
“It’s not working,” I say, frustrated, and for a moment I forget I’m flying and drop a few feet toward the ground, before catching myself and lifting back up to Alpha’s height.
“Imagine the wards as an extension of your skin,” she yells out to me. “Take stock of your body, where you end and the air around you begins, then puff yourself up.”
“‘Puff myself up?’” I yell back, but she just stares at me, so I close my eyes and try, imagine myself filling more space than my body does. The tingling returns and intensifies, slowly peeling away from my body. I open my eyes to see what’s happening and there’s a purple film half-visible around my arm that immediately starts to fade.
“Arg,” I growl, frustration leaking out of me as noise.
“Perhaps you need some motivation,” she says, and the air around her fingers shimmers with blue light. She forms her hands into cups, and blue drops of light extrude from her fingertips and pool into bright spheres.
“Catch,” she yells, then whips back her left arm and hurls the glowing ball at me.
“Don’t—” I start, but swing myself out of the way and just manage to move far enough the sizzling ball sails past and dissipates in the air behind me.
I yell something wordless and spin to face her but there’s a ball racing at my face. I duck that one too and there’s already another on the way. I only manage to twist enough that it skims past my chest, and I can feel the heat as it just misses me.
Then she launches two at the same time and I know I can’t dodge both. I twirl sideways, presenting the smallest target I can, and hold my forearm up to protect me. One ball spins by and in a moment of panic I forget about everything except the coming pain and my forearm flares with purple light that solidifies just as the ball smashes into it. The skittering energy washes harmlessly around me.
“Good,” Alpha calls. “Again.”
“Knock it off,” I shout, but this time she throws four balls in quick succession and I get my arms up for the first three and deflect them away, and on the fourth I bring an arm back and swat the ball back at her, like a batter at the plate, but it isn’t moving fast and she dodges it easily.
“What’s your problem!” I yell at her.
“I’m trying to train you.”
“No, you’ve been pissy with me ever since we met.”
“What? You think you don’t deserve it?” she replies, and while her voice is restrained, anger burns behind her eyes. “You don’t even know who you are.”
I quiet myself down, fight ice with ice. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me who I am,” I say. My skin prickles, and energy dances across my fingertips. If she wants a fight, I can give her one.
Her brows harden. “She abandoned us,” she says. “Left without a word, and I can already tell you’re exactly the same as she was. You put on this act, like you’re the perfect girl, doing what’s expected, never complaining, but deep down you’re selfish,
same as her. You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say. Heat radiates along my extremities.
“Don’t I?” she asks with a tilt of her head. “I know before you became boundless you were about to abandon your parents, leave them behind while you ran away to see the world, no matter what it might do to them.”
My heart seizes, and rage floods my veins. “How do you know that?”
“You told me yourself,” she answers. “Like I said, I know you better than you think.”
I glance down at my clenched fists and long energy blades are forming, flowing down from my arms. Alpha notices the weapons and smirks. “That’s right, you don’t mean to hurt anyone,” she says.
“Don’t mention my parents again,” I warn her.
“Or what?”
I bring the blades up and watch the energy crackle along their length, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I could use these weapons, attack Alpha, maybe even hurt her.
But I don’t want to fight Alpha. I just want to go home.
I drop my arms and let the heat seep out of me, and the blades dissipate in wisps of purple smoke. “I don’t know why she left, but I know she didn’t mean to hurt you. If I’m anything like her, and I guess I am, then I know how much she wanted to kill Thrane. She probably got tired of waiting for you all to help and went on her own.”
“Of course she wanted to kill Thane,” Alpha responds. “We all do.”
“Not like I do,” I say. “He took my whole world.”
“He took all our worlds,” Alpha says, and the edge she’s been carrying in her voice sharpens. “That didn’t give her the right to abandon us.”
“I can only imagine she did what she thought was right.”
“She was selfish.”
“Yeah,” I snark. “So selfish she sacrificed herself trying to defeat Thrane.”
“And what good did it do her? Or us? Thrane’s about to absorb what’s left of the universe and no one’s seen her since. We needed her and she left.”
“You all act like you don’t need anyone,” I shoot back, and this seems to rile Alpha more than anything. “Like this is all a big game to you.”
“You think?” she says, but stops herself with a laugh and a shake of her head. “Gamma was a princess,” she says, “if you can believe that. Thrane wiped out her entire kingdom before he took her world. We got her out just in time. Sigma was a student, electrical engineering, a certified genius. Who knows the things he might have done, but Thrane stole that future from him. Delta was a slave, forced to fight for a country that wasn’t his. After the chronoverse chose him he could have freed everyone in his world, but Thrane stole everything instead. And Tau—well, we don’t know much about him. He doesn’t talk about himself much, but Thrane took his world too. Everything we knew. Everything we loved. Everything. We’re all each other has now. Gibzon. His timeline. The Omega Guard. We’re the only family any of us know. And Jasmin turned her back on us all.”
I got this all wrong, Alpha doesn’t hate me. Yeah, she’s mad at me, but not really at me. Maybe mad isn’t even the right word. She’s in pain, missing her friend.
“And what about you?” I ask, my voice soft now.
She looks away. It hurts. Of course it does. I know how she feels. Exactly how she feels.
“Whatever it is,” I say, “believe me, I get it.”
She shrugs like a little kid, and that makes me wonder—she looks about twenty-two or -three, but how old is she really?
“I was just a girl,” she says, her voice hollow. “Never meant to be anything. No education. No say in my life. I used to get headaches, blinding pain that kept me bedridden for days. I couldn’t open my eyes let alone help Mother cook or clean. Only fifteen and already past my prime. Tainted meat, Father called me. He married me off to a stranger, a man twice my age who already had two wives. He said I was lucky anyone would have me. It was my wedding day, and after the ceremony I was to leave, back to my new husband’s village, but I couldn’t do it. He hit me, and I hit him back, as hard as I could. I closed my eyes and lashed out with my fists and my anger. At first I didn’t hear the screaming. When I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a blackened crater. I’d incinerated him and half the guests. Most of my family. My little sisters. My mother. The villagers came for me, were about to string me up with my father leading the mob, and that’s when Thrane came. In a weird way, he saved me.” She’s facing me, not challenging, not defiant. Proud almost, in the saddest way I’ve ever seen. “But that doesn’t for one second mean I don’t want to see him suffer for all the pain he’s caused.”
I was wrong. I don’t know how she feels. Not even close.
“My mom took care of me all her life,” I say. I’m not trying to keep up with her, but I feel like I should share all the same. “She gave up her dreams so I could have mine, and I resented her for it. I ruined everyone’s life. But I went back and found them, and you know what I found? Without me around, they’re happier. My mom and dad have the careers they always wanted, and my best friend’s life is perfect—but you know the worst part?” My chest tightens and I realize I’m nearly yelling, and force myself down. “The worst part is, if I could, I’d take all that away from them to have everything back the way it was.”
So, I guess Alpha’s right. I am selfish.
I don’t want her to see me upset, so I tap the loop and vanish back to the station, leaving her to hover over the treetops alone.
31
Off Target
After that rough first time things become a little easier with Alpha, but she puts me through the ringer for what feels like days. Every session leaves me completely exhausted, like we’ve been training for hours, but when I jump back to the station only minutes have passed.
I’m learning a lot though, and for the first time in my life no one’s holding me back, afraid I might break if I push myself too hard. My body is like a battery, absorbing negative energy from the environment, and it takes a while to recharge—especially here in nullspace. So in between learning how to harness the energy around me and alter the way gravity affects my body—which Alpha explains is how we’re able to fly and lift things like we’re far stronger than we are—she passes me off to Delta, who teaches me how to shoot.
The powers have come easy, almost naturally, but guns are a complete disaster. I’ve learned about the various weapons the Omega Guard uses; how they don’t use regular bullets, instead using a magnetic charge to shoot slugs of metal at five times the speed of sound. I’ve mastered stripping and cleaning and reconfiguring the base stocks into assault rifles and shotguns and cannons—but using any of them to hit anything proves to be almost impossible. I’m okay when I’ve got it on the cannon configuration, but it’s hard to miss anything with a bullet the size of a soda can.
“Why do I need to learn how to shoot?” I ask during our third training session, when it’s become clear I can’t hit a target to save my life. “I can throw lightning from my hands, isn’t that enough?”
Delta grins at me. Like Alpha and her forest, Delta’s been jumping us to a makeshift practice range he’s set up in a ruined city somewhere. It feels vaguely European—the buildings are squat and ornate and the streets narrow, and there’s foreign writing everywhere—it looks French, though I couldn’t say for sure. All I know is the inhabitants died or left a long time ago, because nature is well on its way to retaking the place.
He seemed a little distant at first, but now that we’ve spent some time together he’s back to the easygoing guy I first met in Buffalo.
“What are you going to do when you’ve wrung every drop of energy from your body and still have an army coming at you?” He squints through the holographic sights and shoots a small stone off a brick he set up on a low wall about a hundred feet away, then turns back to me. “Yeah, you’re strong, but using your powers comes at a cost. Best to save your resources for when you need them.”
“But Thrane’s world is so full of energy, how could I possibly ever exhaust myself?”
He sighs. “I’ve never been there, so I can’t tell you, but I know that the brighter something burns, the more fuel it needs. Sure, you’re more powerful there, but you’ll chew through your reserves even faster. These weapons could mean the difference between failure and success. You can’t ignore them.”
“Fine,” I huff, a little snottier than I intended, then lift the rifle to my shoulder and try to remember the steps he laid out. The indicator shows the weapon is loaded and ready to fire, so I don’t bother checking the magazine. The readout is glowing green, showing me the safety is engaged, and I press my thumb against the release and the display glows red. It’s live.
I grab the grip and make sure the butt is firmly between my chest and my shoulder, then tilt my head until I’ve got the target brick centered in the sights. Once I’ve got it locked I lower my finger from alongside the guard, wrap it around the trigger, breathe in and out, then squeeze.
The gun sighs a metallic wheeze and pushes back against my shoulder, but a corner of the target brick puffs into dust.
“Hey,” Delta says, and claps me on the shoulder. “You hit it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “As long as whatever I’m shooting at is close and stays perfectly still, everything will be fine.”
He laughs. “It took a while to learn how to keep my nerves down at first too, especially when people are shooting back at you, but you’ll get there.”
“I’m not so sure,” I answer.
“I am,” he says. His hands drop to his sides and he fixes his pale blue eyes on me. “I’ve seen what you can do,” he says, and when he does, for just a second, he almost sounds scared. But he doesn’t mean me, he’s talking about the other Jasmin.
The more people talk about her, the less I understand her. How could someone who’s supposedly identical to me act like such a complete stranger? I thought I knew who I was, but I’m learning I don’t have a clue what’s inside me.
