by Peter Telep
A sharp ringing fills my ears. More chills ripple across my face… and then… I pass out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“What happened?” I ask.
“We jumped back to Flora,” Tommy answers. “We’re at the shelter near the temple, good to go.”
I sit up, but I’m not at the shelter.
I’m back at Cypress’s place, lying on some blankets beside her bed.
I blink hard. Okay, yes, my body is lying in the shelter on some blankets, and Meeka, Steffanie, Keane, and Hedera are all staring at me like I’ve just come back from the dead.
Uh, yeah, maybe I did. And yes, I’m back to multitasking, but my head’s still spinning.
“Sitrep, Tommy,” I gasp, even though I can’t see him now. I watch Punk and Mr. Gurdy trot toward me, soaking wet like they’ve just been given a bath. They’ve got cuts and scratches all over their bodies.
Strange…
All right, so I’m multitasking but don’t have control of my focus. It feels like I’m in both places at one time, the images superimposed over each other.
“The temple’s secure,” he says. “I’ll give you the rest of it later. You just evac right now.”
“Roger that.”
“Doc, listen to me,” Meeka says. “We can’t give you any more mirage. Your body’s starting to reject it. That’s why you passed out. You gotta get back. Just close your eyes and focus on your persona.” She starts to cry. “Please… just get here.”
“On my way.”
“Talking to people in your mind,” Cypress says, kneeling beside me and putting a palm on my forehead. “Still so cold. Your wreath is dying.” Her hair looks wet, like she’s just showered, and there’s a long, red mark across her neck.
“You mean I’m dying.”
“Okay, you. Now, let’s get ready. And please, no time for rude questions.”
“You mean like how we made it back.”
She nods. “I can carry you to the engine.”
My eyes widen. “We’re going back to Flora.”
Her brown eye widens. “Yes.”
I harden my gaze. “Both of us.”
“And Punk and Mr. Gurdy. I won’t leave them.”
“Great. So Scully changed her mind and took us here. It must be late.”
Cypress gets to her feet. “Yes, the sun is away.”
“And Scully changed her mind.”
Cypress crosses around me. She’s about to drag me to my feet when I turn to face her. “Scully changed her mind.”
She swallows.
“Please, answer me,” I say, beginning to tremble.
“Doke, your father sends Mum and Dad here. They save me. They raise me. And then what happens…they get killed. Your grandmother comes and helps me. And then she dies.”
“You’re trying to tell me something.”
“Yes.”
I glance down at her hands, and they’re shaking.
“Cypress, what did you do? And, uh, yeah, I don’t care if that’s a question! You answer it!”
“No more talk. We go now!”
I fold my arms over my chest. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened.”
She shakes her head.
“What is that?” I ask. “Tell me!”
“Doke, I wouldn’t let you die. I couldn’t—”
“So you gave Mum to the grren. That’s how we got here.”
She nods tightly.
“I don’t believe it! Do you realize what you did? We can’t get in the labs now. We’re screwed! All of this was for nothing! Oh my God!
“Shut up!”
“We’re all going to be slaves now!”
“No!”
“Unless you figured out another way to open up those labs, we’re done. It’s over.”
She makes a fist, screams, and then projects a persona…
It’s Mum.
I shake my head and blink hard to be sure I’m not seeing things. What the hell?
Mum winces and draws back her head. “Oh, my. You’ve brought me here at a bad time.”
“Wait, so you didn’t give her away?” I ask Cypress.
“I did,” Cypress answers, and then she releases me, bursts into tears, and rushes into the kitchen area. She puts her face in her hands and sobs.
“Mum, what did she do?” I ask.
The immortal lowers her gaze.
“What? You’re not talking to me, either?”
“You don’t need to see it, Doc.”
I thrust out my hand. “Show me.”
“Doc, there is no need.”
I speak through my teeth: “Show… me…”
Mum takes my hand and transports me into a tunnel with specks of light swirling in the distance.
I realize I’m seeing this through Cypress’s eyes as Punk and Mr. Gurdy trot next to me.
We run frantically around a corner, where a huge hatch slams shut, sealing the tunnel and cutting off Scully and her pack of four grren, who were on their way out.
The grren look at me, eyes spinning and narrowing.
They know what’s coming.
I tell Scully I can’t let her leave with Mum.
She insists that I must honor the deal.
I show her how the Galleons stole the queen robe. I tell her we need Mum to help fight them. If she’ll return Mum, I’ll pay her with food or whatever else they want.
No, Mum, is too important, Scully says. Mum can fix the sickness that’s killing the Halsparrans.
No, she can’t, I say.
Scully doesn’t believe me. I must honor the deal.
I’m dying inside—
Because I know what I have to do.
I raise my palms and launch a flurry of hexagons from my eyelo. The hexagons spin and slash through the grren—
As Punk and Mr. Gurdy spring on them and begin tearing Scully’s weakened packmates to shreds.
It’s a horrific bloodbath, with me directing most of my fire at Scully, who jumps into her persona—
But I have a pistol in my left hand and begin emptying the magazine into the persona’s head—
Until one of the casings jams in the slide. I toss away the gun and leap on Scully, just as her persona fades.
Now I’m connected to her, forcing the bloody and dying grren onto her back, and digging my fingers into her throat, cutting off her air…
Choking her.
At the same time, I reach into her mind and then into her wreath and literally seize Mum’s immortal, dragging it out of her body and into the tunnel behind me.
And then I’m staring into the grren’s eyes, and she can’t believe we betrayed her. She can’t believe we’re this violent, this evil… and she keeps asking why?
My mouth’s open, and I’m shaking and crying as she falls limply in my hands. Silent. Dead.
Punk and Mr. Gurdy come up beside me, whimpering and crying… as I pull Mum’s immortal back inside.
And with a rush of cold air that leaves me gasping, I’m back inside Cypress’s room. I’m myself again, except I can’t stop trembling.
Cypress leans on one of the counters, still shaking her head and weeping softly.
I don’t move. I’m wrecked.
While I understand that Cypress does not get along with most grren, she has obviously been with Punk and Mr. Gurdy for a long time, probably raised them, and she has grren blood pumping through her veins.
So to make a decision like that to double-cross the grren and then… I can’t even imagine....
Those images will haunt me for the rest of my life, and I wasn’t even the killer.
I can barely say her name. “Cypress…”
She looks at me. Her checks cave in, and then she leans toward one of her food bowls and vomits.
Mum’s immortal fades as I go to the kitchen, slide up next to Cypress, and gently reach toward her shoulder.
She’ll either slap away my hand or accept it, but I have to try. She flinches at first but then
reaches up and covers my hand with her own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Cypress’s engine is at least a thousand years old and still has some hardware issues.
And that’s not my only concern. I ask her to project Mum, who smiles as she realizes we’re about to leave. “How can I help you, Doc?”
“It’s about the virus… I know Cypress can’t get it, but does she still carry it? And if she does, could she infect the people on Flora?”
“You should’ve asked me this sooner.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m asking now.”
She raises her palms and softens her gaze. “The good news is she’s not a carrier, and as I mentioned, you can’t contract the virus while in your persona. The grren aren’t carriers, so they’re safe as well.”
“Whew.”
“However, the bad news is, we don’t know how Cypress’s body will react once she’s on Flora. She could be fine, or she could be susceptible to something else. We’ll have to see.”
My gaze shifts to Cypress, who groans through a sigh and says, “No more talking. We go.”
I nod. She pulls back Mum’s immortal, and then I cross to the kitchen and urge her to bring her parents’ suitcase.
Admittedly, I have another reason for this request: I’m taking back all my Star Wars figures and the mugs from Tenerife. No way am I losing that stuff.
Two minutes later, I’m literally gasping with fear as she tosses the suitcase into the portal, checks the computer, and then nods to me.
“Good to go,” I tell her, and she repeats it.
Then she gestures for Punk and Mr. Gurdy to climb the staircase.
The grren look as nervous as I am. Cypress hollers, and they hurry up the stairs. Punk reaches the edge of the portal and digs claws into the metal, drawing back and yelping like a frightened kitten.
Cypress rushes up behind him and shoves him into the crisscrossing rings of energy. Mr. Gurdy roars and leaps in after his brother.
“You go now, Doke!” she orders.
She’s jumping last. The engine will automatically power down after we’re gone. And yes, I’m putting all my trust in her to make the jump—
But now she has a weird look on her face as she studies the room, as if she still hasn’t made a decision.
I widen my gaze and raise my voice. “Cypress? I can’t wait for you to meet all my friends. So let’s do this!” I lift my thumb and smile.
She frowns but raises her own thumb.
“You’re okay,” I add. “You’ll be okay.”
“Doke! Jump!”
Here goes nothing. I step off… into the abyss.
And despite passing through a portal created by a piece of aging junk, I’m thinking, hey, this isn’t so bad.
No tugging on my chest in different directions. No sense of weightlessness or nausea. Just the feeling of wind in my hair, along with brilliant and blinding flashes of light.
Now I’m on a water slide and splashing deep into a pool.
I’m submerged for a second, kick up to the surface, blink and spit mud, and then turn around.
We jumped onto the side of muddy hill in the middle of a torrential rainstorm.
I forgot it’s still the rainy season in Centennial, and worse, Verbena usually gets flooded.
A few feet away, Punk and Mr. Gurdy are doing the doggie (or is it kitty?) paddle toward a muddy bank littered with piles of concrete, bricks, and rusting girders. I’ll take all that debris as a good sign. This looks like Flora. At least we’re on the right planet.
Cypress screams as she comes sliding down the hillside and plows headfirst into the mud pool.
Meanwhile, the suitcase bobs about ten feet from me, so I kick my feet and swim over there, grab the handle, and start hauling it toward the shoreline. Eventually, my feet touch the mud below, and I haul myself out—
Into raindrops the size of grapes.
Spitting mud and muttering something under her breath, Cypress swims toward me, rises, and trudges forward.
And then it all hits her at once:
She’s on an alien planet for the first time in her life.
Yeah, that’s a pretty big deal.
She stops, with the mud still rising to her knees. She looks up into the dark, rain-filled sky and takes a deep breath. “Air smells dirty. And something else….” She puts a hand on her shoulder and begins pressing down.
“Yeah, the gravity’s a little stronger here,” I say. “You’ll get used to it. Come on, we need to figure out where—”
Great. I can’t finish my sentence…
Because I’m passing out. Again.
* * *
Meeka says I stopped breathing and had no pulse, so yes, I was pretty much dead.
But that’s not the worst part.
You know me. I’m a huge fan of those afterlife experience shows where you die and float toward the bright light.
Now I can say I’ve been there, done that.
So what happened?
Well, there were no angels or devils, no visits from gods or ancient aliens, no moments reliving the highlights of my life… just darkness.
That’s right, the eternal black.
I want to believe that I didn’t see anything cool because of the way I died, having my wreath drain my body. Maybe if you die more “naturally” you get the full ride. And that’s just my luck. I got cheated again.
Tommy did CPR on me until I bolted upright with a very sore chest. I saw my persona lying next to me.
And then, with Tommy shaking me like a rag doll to keep me awake, and everyone screaming and hollering for me to pull back my persona…
I finally did!
The sense of relief was so strong that it sent alternating waves of intense heat and bitter cold crashing over my body, and each wave caused me to jolt until—
I passed out again. I was unconscious for at least another half hour they say, and then Meeka’s voice brought me back:
“He’s breathing steady. He’s starting to wake up…”
Now I’m drained but awake and lying beneath some warm blankets in the shelter. It feels like I’m wearing a t-shirt and some boxers that are comfortable and dry.
The wind comes in a hollow roar, and the rain raps across the leaking patchwork of tarps. Even the planks tied together to form walls between the giant mounds of rubble creak and groan against the storm.
The shelter could fit inside a single car garage, and we’re all here, including Cypress, Punk, and Mr. Gurdy, who look exhausted.
“You found them,” I tell Cypress.
“No, Doke, your friend Toe-me. He saw us. My engine did pretty good. Very close jump.”
My eyes scan the group, gliding from Meeka to Steffanie and Hedera, and then wandering back toward Tommy and Keane, who’re busy fixing a loose tarp near the entrance.
“You were just down the block,” Meeka says.
“Awesome.”
“You’re getting some color in your face,” she adds.
“Your eyes are red,” I observe. “You okay?”
She glances away, a little embarrassed. “Fine.”
“Liar.” I look past her to address the group. “So you guys met Cypress and her friends.”
Everyone nods. Punk yawns loudly as if to confirm that.
Keane returns to the group and sits cross-legged beside me with a pretzel log jutting from his lips like a cigar. I guess Tommy must have made that Walmart run before they jumped back to Flora.
“I like her green hair,” Keane says, flicking his gaze back to Cypress. “But she’s not big on questions.”
“We told him that,” Steffanie says, smirking at Keane and then regarding me. “But you know he has to test everything.”
“I like how she calls you Doke,” Keane says.
“Keane, you talk like I’m not here,” Cypress says, leaning over to growl in his ear.
He freezes as though she’ll bite him. I wouldn’t put it past her. “Uh, sorry,” he replies in a shaky
voice. “My bad. Have a pretzel. The bag’s over there.”
“Just take a very small bite,” I warn Cypress. “In case your stomach doesn’t like it. That food comes from Earth.”
“Wow, Doke. Terran food. Okay.”
“Hey, Cypress, I’ll help you,” Steffanie says, getting to her feet. “I bet you’ve never had a Twinkie, either.”
“I do not know Twinkie,” she says.
As they leave, I get Keane’s attention and lower my voice, “Just be nice to her, okay?”
“That thing in her eye is a weapon, huh?” he asks.
“Don’t worry about that. Look, just… what she did to get us here… She’s been through a lot, and I’m worried.”
He lowers his voice. “You mean she’s a psycho?”
“I mean she’s dealing with stuff.”
He removes the pretzel from his mouth and gestures with it. “We’re all dealing with stuff, but roger that. I’ll try to stay out of her way—so I don’t get scratched.”
“She just needs time. And once you get to know her, she’s a total badass. You’ll be glad she’s on our side.”
He bites off a piece of pretzel. “So… glad to have you back. Did you like your little vaycay on Halsparr?”
“Vaycay? Oh, it was great. Cypress and I were hauling around on her motorcycle while these guys were throwing spears called syncarrs. They’re really animals with a hundred personas.”
His eyes widen. “Seriously?”
“Wait. It gets better.”
I try to sit up. Bad idea. Meeka scowls and helps me settle onto some blankets serving as my pillow. I shrug at Keane. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Yeah…” He gets up and drifts over to where Steffanie sits with Cypress, demonstrating how to properly eat a Twinkie.
“No getting up now,” Meeka reminds me.
“Okay, but I’m a lot better. Toward the end it was hurting so bad, and now it’s like, ahhh….”
“I know what you mean,” she says.
“Son, you gave us quite a scare,” Tommy says, settling down next to Meeka. “I’m sorry about your chest.”
I smile, but it hurts. “You almost killed me.”
He returns the grin. “I was banging away on your chest and cursing because I forgot my jumper cables. Give you a little shock, right?”
