by Damien Boyes
Conflicting emotions tear at me. Relief they’re not dead, confusion that I still remember it happening, and dread about it happening again. I can’t help myself and wrap my arms around him but he flinches, surprised, and then I remember: this Chen and I never had that moment in the tunnel. Come to think of it, we’ve never even met. Everything that went on between me and Chen died in the tunnel. This is someone else entirely.
Still, this Chen hugs me back, thinking I’m her. “You sure waited for the last minute to get here,” he says, but his smile is grim. “But it’s good to finally see you again.”
I don’t have time to explain it to him. “I’m here now,” I say. “Let’s get you up to the controls.”
As we run across the pavement to enter the facility an explosion rips through the air, like the fabric of the universe itself has split, and in a flash of black energy Thrane appears ahead of us, blocking our way forward.
39
Entangled
Thrane’s dressed like he just came from a funeral. He’s wearing a neat suit the color of midnight, with a matching shirt and tie just a shade darker. He doesn’t attack, simply stands there and vibrates, watching like he’s disappointed.
“Why do you insist on opposing me?” his ghostly voice says, and his tone lets me know this is my fault, that I’m the one who’s in the wrong here. For a second I almost believe it, then I notice the cold fire burning through his pupils and remember who I’m dealing with. “Why do you force me to keep killing you?” he continues. “Let it go. Save everyone the pain.”
I don’t know what to do. I’m the only thing between Thrane and the Resitance soldiers. I don’t want to get too close, because I didn’t enjoy the blade through my chest the last time, but I can’t move too far either.
“These people have lives,” I answer back, stalling. “They matter.”
He squints at me through one eye. “You and I both know that’s not true. They’re inconsequential, drops of rain who believe they can fly as they fall to the ocean. They are blind. They can’t see what we see.”
“And what’s that?” I ask. “What do you see?”
“We were chosen,” he snaps. I’m not sure why he hasn’t come closer yet. He’s posturing, trying to make me think he’s invincible, but I know he’s stalling just as much as I am. He knows if he comes after me he risks losing connection to his captured worlds.
Thrane twists his head to Chen and his men standing frozen behind me. “These creatures are byproducts of your creation. Waste products. Why would you hold onto them?”
“That’s what you think, that life is a waste product?”
“Life is infinite!” he cries, then bites down on his tone. “That is the purpose of the chronoverse, to conjure life in and out of existence, instant by instant. Eventually everything happens again. No one’s truly dead, no one’s truly alive—no one but us.”
That’s what Gibzon said, everything that happens, happens again, branching and repeating forever, but I can’t worry about that now. I can only deal with what’s right in front of me. I don’t think I can beat him, not one-on-one. Dhemant would have killed me if Grackle hadn’t sacrificed himself; no way I can win against Thrane. But I don’t need to beat him, I just need to distract him long enough to get Chen to the entangler.
“Then why bother stopping us if it doesn’t matter? Let us do what we came here for.”
Thrane sighs and cocks his head. “Walk away. I’ll give you a world. A timeline all your own to do with as you please. You can go home. Isn’t that what you want?”
My face flushes with anger, mostly at myself. It’s what I want more than anything. But I can’t have it because he took it from me, swallowed it up into this awful place. It’s gone, forever, just like Chen and the Resistance and the people in Gibzon’s timeline will be if I walk away.
Thrane’s watching me, waiting for my answer, and then I realize, for whatever reason, he’s afraid of me. Why am I standing here waiting for him to make the first move?
Except I can’t play his game. I can’t beat Thrane alone—but I’m not alone. I don’t have to do this by myself.
I focus my mind like I’m about to jump, but spread my senses sideways instead, see the endless worlds surrounding us, each nearly identical and only separated because Thrane’s messing with the fabric of the chronoverse. In all the worlds I can see, this is the only one where no one’s fighting. In all the others I didn’t clear a path to the entangler facility and Chen and his team are still shooting their way in.
The super-saturated energy here has already recharged the battery on my back, and I feel it pulse to life as I gather myself. I only have one shot at this, I don’t know if it’ll even work, but I don’t have any options left.
I feint, like I’m about to leap at Thrane, then spray him with a blast of energy from my fists instead, and when he solidifies and raises his shields to deflect the blow I extend my wards as far as I can around Chen and Zhi and as many of the other Resistance soldiers surrounding me as I can, and jump us all to an adjacent timeline, leaving Thrane behind.
We appear in the world next door and there’s already a Chen and Zhi and a bunch of other Resistance there, and I have to stop the two bands of identical soldiers from shooting each other. Then they realize they’re staring at versions of themselves and when I whistle for their attention their eyes all snap to me.
“I know this is weird, but you have to trust me,” I say and two versions of Chen look between me and each other but both nod. I activate the comm and let Gibzon in on this too. “Gibzon, you can communicate with the Resistance all at once, right?”
“We can relay messages to all of them,” Gibzon says in my ear.
“We’re going for the entangler controls. I’ll feed you directions for the Resistance in the other timelines and try to help as many get there as I can. Is there anyone who can help me?”
“Negative. Alpha is wounded and Delta is engaged with Einarr. They maintain control of their entanglers, but only just. You’re on your own and you must hurry.”
But I’m not on my own. I have Chen and the rest of the Resistance. I can do this.
The air sunders as Thrane catches up with us.
“Go now!” I yell as Thrane lances out with precise bolts of black energy and five Resistance soldiers, including one of the Chens, vaporizes in black flame. My heart clenches as I watch him die again, but the other one is still making his way across the pavement as the rest of the soldiers spill into the facility.
Thrane tries another volley of energy but I blink in its path, catch it on my wards, and protect the Resistance soldiers as they get inside the building, then I let loose with a torrent of energy back in Thrane’s direction and blink away once more, appearing inside where the Resistance has engaged Thrane’s remaining forces.
Once again I stretch out, wrap my senses around the Resistance, and jump sideways, arriving in the adjacent world just behind another group of Resistance fighters, then dash around, clearing out the Deadworld soldiers for the assorted doppelgängers I’ve collected. Two Chens, three Zhis, and a bunch more doubles all continue to fight.
The facility isn’t big, and the enemy soldiers are easy enough to deal with, but as fast as I can catch up with the Resistance and jump them across worlds, Thrane is killing them.
“Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. Thrane’s timelines are dwindling,” Gibzon calls out across the comm, and I can feel it myself. The longer Thrane stays out of superposition, the more worlds he loses. It’s only been a few minutes and already the sideways worlds are getting harder to see, but how have they fallen so fast? Thrane must have been doing everything he could just to keep them all true, and now that we’re here messing with him he can’t sustain them.
If he stays focused on stopping us he’ll lose connection to even more of his worlds, but if he goes back to superposition he can’t stop the Resistance from commandeering the entangler. Maybe we can beat him.
Gibzon is guiding us throu
gh the facility and we’re a floor down from the control room when I lose sight of Thrane. Only a few of us are left, Chen, Zhi and a couple others. Something’s wrong.
“Thrane isn’t following us anymore,” I say into the comm.
“He knows where you’re going,” Gibzon says. “He’ll be waiting for you.”
Of course he will. If I take Chen and Zhi in there he’ll vaporize them the second we walk through the door. I’ve guided them as far as I can. Thrane’s blocking our path, so I need to make him choose: stop us, or lose his last connection to his universe. Thrane doesn’t have many True Lines left—if I take the singularity down here, it could go down for good.
“I’m going to lure Thrane away,” I say to Chen. “Give me five minutes then make for the controls.”
“Good luck,” he says, the grabs me and kisses me. The first time I’ve ever been kissed by anyone for real. I’ve watched him die over and over and I don’t even think I’ve met this version of him before, but now he’s kissing me and I want it to last forever. I can’t though, and force myself to pull away.
“Later,” I say. He and I have already been through so much and he doesn’t even know about any of it.
“Later,” he repeats, and I blink out of the facility into the sweltering air above Jersey, hoping I can get Thrane to follow.
40
I Have the Touch
I leave the entangler to Chen and Zhi and shoot off back toward the Midtown bubble. It shimmers in the sunlight and fills me with frustration. Nothing Grackle and I did made any difference. Well, we took Dhemant out of the fight, I guess that’s not nothing, but Thrane’s golden tower is standing once again, and while the flow must have slowed, his inter-dimensional vortex is still sending stolen energy back to his universe.
I peer through time and glance at the timelines surrounding us. Very few are left. Of the countless number that were here only a few minutes ago, now only hundreds remain, but that shield is still up in all of them. Last time I had Gibzon’s device and hours to prepare, so how am I going to get through it now?
I can’t. I know I can’t—but maybe I don’t have to.
Stretching my senses out further, I look for the one timeline where we dropped the shield and see it, receding into the past, the Midtown there crumbled and exposed to the blasting heat for the first time in years. It’s faint, fading away as its probability diminishes, but I think I can still reach it.
“Chen is down,” Gibzon says in my ear, and my heart drops into my stomach. Again. “But Thrane is no longer in the control room. We anticipate he will be moving to intercept you.”
Good, I want him to come. All the anger I’ve built up over the past days blazes through me and fills me with one purpose: to make Thrane hurt.
I focus and jump to the fading timeline, arrive above Thrane’s teetering tower in the world where we popped the bubble, then immediately leap back to the present, moving through time but keeping my location the same, and land inside the bubble.
Yes!
I’m inside, but now that I’m back under the effects of the time dilation my power is ebbing—I need to work quick.
I’m about to fly straight through into the obelisk when Thrane arrives with a thunderclap, blocking my path.
How does he move in and out of the shield so easily?
I pull up to stay out of his reach and we hover, twenty feet apart, staring at each other.
“You have no concept of what you’ve done here today,” Thrane says, and malice seethes in his voice. “You’ve killed an entire universe.”
“You’ve stolen from this one for too long,” I spit back. “What gives you the right?”
“This,” he yells, and hurls a blast of black energy at me. It slams against my wards and the heat leaves me breathless, and still he doesn’t let up, pressing his attack, unloading his rage into me. I blink out of the line of fire but he seems to anticipate my move and follows right behind, slams me with a club of energy that hits like a ton of concrete, shatters my wards, and drives me down toward the base of the tower, senseless.
Pain hits me everywhere. I can’t think, can only spin and race toward the ground, try to get away.
“You have failed,” he snarls as he chases me down. “I walked through the few worlds I have remaining, and I killed that boy attempting to commandeer my entanglers in all of them. Your plan is over. The Resistance is dead, and this universe is finally mine.”
My stomach drops out and I can’t concentrate, then Thrane is coming at me, fists glowing with black fire. I try to get out of the way but he’s moving too fast, unstoppable. I raise a feeble ward just as his punch drives me back up into the sky. I think I black out for a second. My eyes lose focus and when I come to I’m falling and I instinctively thicken my wards just as I’m engulfed by black flame. Thrane’s power burns through my shields, a frozen fire stealing the energy from my body.
With my remaining strength, I blink away once more, this time inside the tower itself, trying to get out of his line of sight, but he’s too fast. He anticipates my move and meets me inside, hits me again, and as I’m tumbling backward he blinks and catches me around the neck in his massive fist.
Terror screams through me and I use it against him, hit him with everything I have, but he’s too strong, his fingers like ice around my throat. I pound on him, but even with my fists blazing they can’t get through his shields.
I can’t beat him.
“One of these times you’ll stay dead,” he says and tightens his grip. I dart my eyes around, desperate to find something to save me, but there’s nothing. We’re high up inside his tower, with the girders and support beams close around us and the vortex between universes churning below. The world goes dim, and all I can see are Thrane’s bearded cheekbones rise as he grins. “But if you return, I suggest you reconsider your allegiance to Gibzon. And when you’ve learned the truth, there’s a place for you at my side.”
I don’t know what that means, can barely concentrate on anything.
My vision narrows. Fading to black.
“Zhi has engaged the entangler.” Gibzon’s words are distant in my ear, but lit up with more emotion than I’ve ever heard from him. Gibzon … Thrane said something about Gibzon. “We are initiating the inversion process now.”
We did it.
I’m about to die, but that’s okay. It was worth it.
Thrane must see the expression on my face change because his grip falters, only slightly, but enough my sight returns.
“What have you done?” he says and looks through me. I don’t know how he can see what’s happening, but he does, and his eyes widen in horror.
I feel the power surge in his fingers as he prepares to blink back to the entangler and I know if I never do anything else with my life, right now I need to stop him—but what am I supposed to do? I can’t get through his shields …
His shields.
Just like mine, his wards are made of negative energy—just like the bubble.
I focus my mind down to a point, until there’s nothing inside me but a single concentrated thrust of will, imagine a needle of energy jutting from my fist, and put every ounce of strength I have behind an uppercut to Thrane’s jaw.
The slender spike of purple energy pierces his wards just under his chin, and I force it up through his mouth and into his brain. His eyes tremble as he realizes what I’ve done, and before he can react I widen the blade to a thick cone that explodes his head like a supernova, splattering dark blood and shimmering energy over the inside of his wards the second before they drop.
His fingers slacken and his body falls, plummeting down into the abyss toward the distorted rift below.
With the entanglers engaged I don’t know how much longer this world has, but should any hint of it remain in the chronoverse I don’t want that energy siphon still active. I blink down next to the conduit and repeat my trick from last time, spin myself around and around until I’m dizzy from speed and then fly into the conduit as h
ard as I can. The conduit bends over double and sends the energy ribbon shooting back down toward the tower’s base.
Thrane’s body finally reaches the flickering rift and is twisted into ribbons as it swirls into the vortex, then the energy beam short-circuits, the shield cuts out, and Midtown collapses.
I blink out and appear in the entangler control room behind Zhi, just in time to watch the rift implode through the control room window. The shock wave obliterates Thrane’s obelisk into a cloud of golden dust that sparkles in the air over the ruined city.
Chen is on the ground beside Zhi, his body half-burned away, obviously dead. Zhi turns and sees me standing there.
“We did it,” she says, but there’s no joy in her face. She looks down at Chen. “He threw himself at Thrane. He made it seem like he was the only one of us left. Thrane thought he had finished us and came to get you.” She sniffles and tears spill from her eyes. “He saved us.”
My throat closes up and my eyes go misty. How many times did Chen die today? How many times did he give his life for his world? And why couldn’t I save him, just once?
“The reversal process will begin in ten seconds,” Gibzon says in my ear. “You must evacuate before you are absorbed.”
“I’m bringing Zhi with me,” I say. I don’t know what happens if she stays, but I can’t just let her disappear when the entanglers absorb what’s left of this timeline.
“Affirmative,” Gibzon says.
I extend my ward around Zhi and prepare to jump us through the open rift to Gibzon’s world, and then I see it, in a timeline just off to the side, one still flirting with true but its probability dwindling: a branch that split off when Thrane killed Chen—one where Thrane didn’t finish the job.
One where Chen is still alive.
“Wait,” I yell, but I don’t know if Gibzon could even stop the process if he wanted to. I jump there instantly and Chen groans up at me. His arm and chest are burned almost to nothing but somehow, in this one world, he was spared the full force of Thrane’s blast.
