Motherland

by Russ Linton

  Ember screams—rage, pain, I can't tell—but the fire grows hotter. A cracked blister of heat glows through the smoke. No reference, we only have the ridiculous heat to gauge our distance from the battle we're supposed to avoid. Sweat bleeds down my brow. Mine and Mom's clasped palms grow slick. I want to hold her back because the bubble of heat we're forging into keeps expanding. It's cracked with molten streaks now, and a white-hot lance of flame burrows into the top. But she's determined to keep moving. Then I see where.

  A cyclone formed from superheated air clears the smoke. Crimson Mask crouches on the edges. At the eye is the bubble, a dome of molten rock. Glowing remains of server racks curl out of it, dripping into orange puddles. Legs of a dying, twitching spider, a body shaped from pure magma. Ember floats above, a spear of flame jetting from her palms into the top of the dome.

  Without looking, Dad shows us a closed fist. Mom stops. More hand jive and Ember cuts off the flames throwing the room into a steady gray. The magma dome pulses.

  "Report," Dad shouts.

  "Fucker's in there," yells Ember. "I might have got Time Slip before the shield went up, not sure."

  Strands of roof tar string from the gash above, piling into tented mounds on the floor. A trickle of heat shimmers around Ember making the dawn's light behind her a squirming ray of dust and smoke. Her eyes don't leave her target, imperious contempt doing as much damage as the ray of flame could. I try to swallow, and my throat feels dry, cracked.

  The ground trembles. Racks rattle. Roaring inferno gone, a chorus of chirps fills the theater as more miners surrender.

  Dad's eyes narrow behind his mask, and he extends a protective reach toward myself and Mom. Ember raises an arm and scans the ground. The fiery cracks of Vulkan's igneous shelter suddenly cool.

  "This is bad, right?" I shout.

  Dad's response is a stiff shove. Suddenly we're swept up, wind rushing past, Mom and I squeezed tight to his chest. It could be flight but feels desperate and aimless. We careen into a shelf top, and miners clatter to the floor as the foundation where we stood bursts open. Our momentum unchecked, Crimson Mask spins mid-flight, so we're facing the ceiling. Gold braid, elaborate murals streak by as something solid shatters under Dad's back. We're skipping in violent bursts, Dad grunting each jolt.

  I'm still disoriented when Dad rolls out from under us shouting, "Stay put!" He races for a ledge, disappearing as Mom screams after him.

  We've been carried upward to a broad balcony at the back of the theater. Ember's eye level to us, weaving and hurling fire in response to a steady barrage of destructive hellfire. Concrete, twisted spears of shelving, fragments scooped burning from the bowels of the Earth all maintain a steady assault on her aerobatics.

  "I came to help," Mom sputters. Determined, jaw set, she rushes to the ledge and the ruined railing Dad carried us through.

  Vulkan has burst through the foundation closer to the stage. His uniform is disheveled and blackened. A stream of Russian flows with each hurled missile. One catches Ember, and she folds, smashed against the ceiling. The heat, maybe she can withstand, but the impact has her reeling as she tries to burn free of the molten bonds.

  "Sean!" Mom breathes, a frantic whisper only I can hear. I follow her gaze and see Dad stalking toward the preoccupied Vulkan who's about to hurl a molten length of rebar into Ember.

  Dad opens fire. All those years beating enemies to a pulp and his military training doesn't appear to have dulled. Every burst finds its target. Fragments of Vulkan’s face shield and tactical goggles twirl into the smoke. Underneath, his scarred skin shifts. I catch a glimpse of cracked obsidian and an orange eye flares to life.

  Some of us walked away from Killcreek different.

  Vulkan staggers, and with the flick of his palm, a molten shield flows from the ground.

  We start to move, and that's when it happens.

  ...that's when it happens.

  A slip. Weaponized deja vu. A localized curve of space-time. Dad's on the ground, the super-heated rebar sticking from his chest.

  Mom screams.

  "SEAN!"

  The world flickers then disappears.

  THAT VEINED NIMBUS of phosphorescence, an iris reflected on the inside of your eyelids, it's a ring which appears inside a void and drops away. Rush of wind...no, water. Foamy salt licking at sand. Toes damp then sinking as the water retreats leaving a smooth, glistening spot as though your feet were never there.

  But they are. And so am I. Here. On a familiar beach. A blue wash over my vision.

  "Dad?"

  Heart pounding, I spin. The cliff side, the tangle of jungle. There's a bay not far from where the ocean cuts into this little slice of paradise.

  No.

  It can't be.

  "Dad? Mom!"

  Dark clouds dim the endless horizon. Lightning spears the water in sharp lines, crisp in the hazy atmosphere. A monstrous wave swells out at sea. This featureless expanse provides no sense of depth or distance. I backpedal further inland, not sure if the wave will roar in above my head or fall short.

  Ocean charges inland, a curl of foam and silk reaching hungrily until it gives a final tickle on my toes and retreats. When it pulls away, it withdraws deeper, and deeper, until the beach stretches far past where the sea once raged. In its wake, a dome of hardened igneous rock is revealed.

  "Mom!"

  She sits cross-legged beside the dome. Her. Not some invasion of the body snatchers version, but her. Dark, shoulder length hair finally tucked behind her ears. Jeans, green blouse, whipping in the salty breeze. It's really her.

  I race toward her. She turns her head, and mercury eyes pick up the spring green of her shirt. Almost their normal color, but only an echo. My feet slow, and she looks away.

  "Mom?"

  "Yes, honey."

  I stand behind her, staring at the dome. As much as I think it might be the right thing to do, I can't get myself to sit. It's too much like the last time we met here.

  "Why are we here? Where's...where's Dad?"

  She doesn't answer, only extends her hands and the dome cracks. Pumice screeches and steam pours from the perforated stone. Salt and brimstone mix in a stomach-churning concentration pulled quickly away by the vacuum of the retreating wave. Skeletal remains of ships and coral bones jut from the exposed landscape further out. The storm darkens.

  "Spencer, go to the Eagle's Nest."

  A glance up at the cliffside dwelling and I clear my throat. "No."

  She hasn't stopped prying open the dome. Her talon fingers are held chest-level as though they grip the entire structure. The sides peel away, dust and ash streaming from the gap. She continues her effortless work and the two halves flop to the side, wobbling on the sand, exposing their bloody pearl.

  Time Slip.

  Her modified Soviet-era uniform is tossed lewdly across her body. Open along one seam, it's been hastily draped over her breasts, and the skirt hitched up high enough to give what might have been a show—if not for the burns.

  She clasps the shirt flap with a blackened arm, creviced by raw flesh and white bone. Dustings of ash have trickled there and on her left leg, which looks much the same from her exposed thigh to a melted boot. As even the lightest particles settle, she twitches and grimaces.

  "Where are we?" she asks, her Russian accent dense and edged with pain. She has one eye squinted closed the other flicking madly.

  I never wanted to see this place again as long as I lived. A cold recreation of a childhood obsession, it was a concession to everything I'd lost as the son of an Augment. It's creator, Charlotte, had meant to shape a playground we could share, but she was only a thief, providing herself a false promise. Everything here is the antithesis of joy. A diseased place. Sickly. Waiting for me to give in to the infection. Mom gives a different interpretation.

  "This is a safe place. For some."

  Her reply is dark, edged. My eyes tell me it's definitely her. The way the wind rustles her blouse and drafts a perfume of
vanilla, pancakes, and garden soil. But that tone...even when Mom was maddest at my bullshit, she kept her cool. Always reinforced by the inescapable understanding it was hers and her job alone to be my stability, my consistency. Kind, gentle, unending patience, even with strangers. I'd be watching, she knew. She needed to provide an example. But there was always the hope Dad would come home.

  He was lying there...burned flesh on once-impregnable skin. So still.

  "Mom..." She shrugs off my touch.

  Time Slip closes her eyes, then opens them, obviously surprised by whatever it is she doesn't find. She licks dry lips. "What have you done to me?"

  "Nothing. You have done this to yourself."

  "Send me back!"

  "I can't. I won't."

  "I will do as you say, just send...me...back!"

  "No. No, you're lying." Mom says this with finality. "You will use your powers. We'll lose a fraction of a second, and in that window, Vulkan will destroy the balcony. Kill my son. You would do that, wouldn't you?"

  Realization washes over Time Slip's features and erases the pain, leaving angry creases. To her eyes, she's not seeing Connie Harrington. She must be seeing Charlotte. "Why do you help them?"

  "I can't let you harm my family." Regret seeps through Mom's anger, and I crouch beside her. "Time, space, they don't exactly exist here. You bend those things in very specific, localized ways, I see that now. My God, you're so powerful, aren't you? Why do you do the things you do?"

  "Get out of my head, bitch," Time Slip snarls. "You see nothing."

  "I see who you care for. Your Collective, they're truly all one to you."

  Beautiful face streaked in ash and soot, Time Slip's fury softens into frustration. Tears stream down her cheeks, glacial eyes melting, and she struggles to speak through a quivering mouth. "Comrades. Brothers, sisters, daughters, sons—all of them! I would die for them and they would die for me! That was Sergei's promise, to restore power to the people. The Soviet dream but incorruptible by individual greed. Bring humanity into the fold and watch the heretics cling to their crumbling ideals, their collapsing towers," she spits. "And you, Charlotte, you taught him this! Why Would you help them? Why?"

  "I'm not who you think I am."

  Time slip clears her throat, and her jaw flexes. She shimmies across the damp sand until her back rests against the shattered dome, her eyes out to sea. She grimaces through the pain as skin slides loosely on ruined flesh. "Do...what...you...must."

  "Walk with me, Spencer," Mom says.

  She brushes off her pants and starts barefooted up the beach. Time Slip sits proud, mouth in a thin line. As far as she's concerned, I don't exist here. Nothing does anymore except the darkening clouds moving closer to shore.

  "What the hell is going on?" I demand, jogging up beside Mom. "We need to get back. Help Dad."

  She keeps moving toward the cliffs. Behind us, I feel a curtain of air. I almost turn, but right then, Mom finally faces me and grabs my arms.

  "We came to help him. There were certain things we'd have to do." That invisible push causes the hairs to raise on my neck. I flinch, and her grip tightens. The careful kindness of the past she once felt obligated to isn't visible on those chrome irises. "Your father..." She can't continue.

  I swallow, the silence becoming a hiss then a roar. I don't want to watch. Any of this. A place of nightmares where everything ends up submerged and twisted. The incoming sea is deafening. A dark shadow eclipses us. Then I'm drowning again.

  Chapter 42

  HEAT. IT ISN'T A GRADUAL return. Closer to a sudden re-ignition of nerves which had been shunted and rewired in that dead paradise. Face first in an open oven, the theater crackles with fire, the floor below us nothing but a slow creep of magma which consumes the shelf supports and ignites the fallen hardware easy as newspaper tossed into a campfire.

  Dad's motionless in a ring of the burning sludge. The war between Ember and Vulkan rages on around him. Mom appears disoriented, staring into the pit, exhausted.

  "I...can't reach him." It takes me a second to understand she's talking about Vulkan. A fire-breathing meat puppet would be useful about now. He could drag Dad out of danger, then we could abandon our new friend in psychic limbo.

  It's a solid fifteen-foot drop. There's no way to safely leap over the edge, and a heroic airborne attempt at the nearest rack screaming with distressed miners would be insane. Of course, last time I climbed shelves, it was to sneak attack a battle robot with a can of paint. I'm not the brightest in these situations. And we can't leave Dad lying there.

  Mom's stumbling toward a crumbling exit at the back of the balcony. I follow. Long enough to get a good running start.

  "Spencer!"

  It crosses my mind she could stop me cold a fraction of a second before my feet leave the ground. Then, it crosses my mind this would be much cooler, much easier, if the rack wasn't hurtling toward me so fucking fast.

  Those ideas fuse together.

  I'm floating through the air. The rack hurtles closer at a manageable sort of speed. A glance back and Mom has a hand out, grasping at air as though she could snatch me up and gently place me on the ground. And she is.

  When my feet touch the floor, she peers over the ledge on her hands and knees. She's relieved, confused, sweat dripping from her brow. I'd worry more about these powers, how much she has, how much she can control, if I had the time. However much, they must be taxed. She doesn't have the juice to throw herself over the side. She disappears again, rushing for the rear exit.

  Me, I go toward the war zone.

  The Icehole feels forever ago, but the odor of melting silicone brings it all back. Two years I spent resenting Dad for this same shit I'm about to engage in. Playing hero. When I raced off into danger in the moment of sheer ecstasy as the bunker door opened, the escape pod launched, it was about finding answers deep down knowing the truth that Mom had been lost forever. Honestly, I wanted to die then.

  Ember scorches by, flying low between the shelves. Vulkan has made it to the stage, and the earth vomits a stream of lava, forcing her to change course. Running into the heat has immediately sapped the steady stream of sweat from my skin. I'm shriveling, eyes burning. With Vulkan's latest eruption, I'm forced to slow like I'm wading into a pool. Eyeballs become dried husks. Clothes go from drenched to brittle. Shoes soft. Air baking my lungs.

  Dad's limp form is still too far away.

  I don't want to die this time. And I don't want to be a hero. None of this is about what I want though. Being a hero isn't something you do. It's something that finds you. Nobody would choose this.

  Fuck, I finally understand him.

  Teeth gritted, my lips feel glued to my withered gums. If there's any pain to tell me to get the fuck out, I haven't felt it. I won't feel it. Not until it's too late.

  A few more steps.

  I'm stumbling blind, the lava show dims. My vision blurs again as Ember lights up the stage, a focused burn into a rocky shield which Vulkan barely raises in time. A ten-foot minefield of cooling, bubbled concrete is all that's left between Dad and me.

  He hasn't moved.

  I'm almost there and feel a tug on my foot. The sole of my sneaker drags behind in a stringy, gooey mess. Picking my way through this sacrificial ring, I've fucked up big time and stumbled into recently crusted magma.

  Trying to scrape the shoe off with the other foot almost has me on my face. With the struggle, the superheated air becomes a barrier. Dense, hard to swallow. One more attempt and the shoe slips.

  I'm not leaving you, Dad.

  Weaving my way through a tangle of shelving, I hop to where he lies and drop to my knees. We're ringed by a jagged pool of light from the hole in the roof. The length of rebar sticks through his sternum. I don't see any blood, but there's a smell. Burnt hair, flesh. I almost gag and choke down a cry of anguish, frustration.

  This can't happen. Not to him. All those sleepless nights waiting to hear. He always came home.

  A thundering ex
plosion tears through the theater, and I cover him. More fireworks light the stage. The earth rolls and sun pours into the theater behind a veil of smoke and a swarm of brick. Amid the incredible heat, a shiver runs down my exposed skin. Breath of angels, a tiny taste of salvation flows through what used to be the back wall.

  Ember is a white-hot smear. Vulkan, a smoking god atop a forge of earth and brick. Their rage continues in pyrotechnic bursts, sucking the heat outside. Emergency lights strobe beyond the smoke. Sirens wail. If ever Eric was going to slip up, now is the best possible time.

  I cover tighter, keeping the spear of metal out of my sight. "We're gonna make it, Dad. We're gonna make it."

  As I try to shift him to his side, my fingers find the shredded vest where he skipped across the upper balcony cradling Mom and me. If only I weren't so damn weak. He would carry me out of here. Didn't matter what happened, he would. He'd never leave me.

  That's when I feel it.

  Probably how Danger feels every waking minute. A flicker, an ominous wriggle on my periphery. The air is no longer cool. Once sedate magma sparks to life. Heat returns in a brutal assault almost too much to bear. Fresh oxygen roars in, and this place is seconds from becoming an inferno.

  One more try. I get Dad on his side. The bulk, the muscles, is it necessary? Strength exponentially beyond anything a normal body could generate, why couldn't he just be a scrawny runt? Maybe he was, once. I never asked. I'd only just asked Mom how he was before. Why couldn't I have asked him?

  Tank shells caught like a fast pitch. Plasma bursts leaving a sunburn. Bullets sent scattering like grains of sand. He's invincible. Impervious. My eyes watering despite their ruined state, I can't see into the holes in his mask. Dark, empty.