by Matt Blake
But this time, I didn’t feel attached in any way.
This time, I didn’t let my thoughts get in my way.
I just lifted my hand and tensed my grip.
The first of the crafts crumpled up right away. The second one followed not long after, as I moved from one to the next, slowly, methodically, calmly.
Stone looked on in awe. “Is… Is he doing this?”
I kept on moving, not being distracted by the voices of my peers. I felt my strength and my abilities growing. In a way, they felt stronger than they ever had.
As long as I forgot I was just Kyle Peters underneath.
As long as I stayed under the guise of Glacies.
I saw the final craft send out a burst of green energy balls, like it knew it was on its last legs and didn’t have long to live.
I saw them blasting down toward us, fast, and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to stop them all with my mind.
So I moved in front of them, opened up a wormhole, and then another wormhole right behind the craft, like it took up no energy at all when usually it crippled me.
The green energy balls fell through the wormhole.
They appeared through the other one.
The craft tried to move out of the way, quickly becoming aware of what was happening.
But not quickly enough.
The energy balls blasted the craft again and again, sending shards of metal off it, dismembering its tentacles and rendering it a useless piece of scrap.
I lowered my arms.
“Holy shit,” Damon said, laughing and clapping. “That was amazing. That was… Kyle?”
My eyes closed.
I felt myself falling down to the sea.
But I was falling somewhere else, too.
I was falling into darkness…
Only when I landed, I wasn’t alone.
There was someone opposite me. Someone dressed all in black. They were about my height.
And even though they hadn’t spoken, I knew right away that they were the speaker from the mothership.
I was in a totally pitch black room. It was massive, making even the enormous ULTRAbot facility seem small in comparison.
The man walked in my direction, feet hitting the ground with a heaviness that suggested they were stronger than their slender frame. That they had secrets in their body.
He stopped right in front of me and looked into my eyes.
For a split second—just a split second—I saw something.
Something that filled me with fear.
Something that filled me with total dread.
I tried to shoot myself away from here.
But I couldn’t. The man had his hand raised. He was tightening his grip around my neck using telekinesis. I was trapped.
As the air drifted from my body and I struggled for breath, I saw that terrifying thing again. It was something so terrifying that whenever I saw it, I forgot what it was right away, only to be reminded again almost instantly. It was as if my brain was trying to hide the truth from me because the truth was just too terrifying to realize.
I tried to lift my arms, but they were stuck. I tried to kick out my legs, but no use. I tried to activate my powers—any of my powers—but they were being sucked out of my body faster than I could do anything about them.
So in the end, all I could do was hover there in the grip of this man and wait…
“Give up, Kyle,” he whispered. “It’s time, now. Time to give up. I’m sorry I have to…”
I heard a glimmer of sensitivity in his voice, and for a moment, I felt calm and at ease like this was how things were meant to happen all along.
And then the grip tightened around my neck again, and the blackness suffocated me.
23
I opened my eyes and gasped for breath.
Water splashed against my face. I lunged forward, wheezing, trying to get a grip on myself.
“Whoa. Watch it, Kyle. Watch it. You’re okay. We’ve got you.”
I blinked. It was really bright. I was lying back on some kind of rock. I was still outside. The sea was crashing up against the shore. The sun was bright. All around me, the rest of the Resistance stood.
Daniel was by my side.
He had a hand on my shoulder, which he pulled away the second I looked at it.
“What…” I started. “What happened?” My lips were dry, and I could taste vomit at the back of my throat.
“You were in the air and you did some amazing shit to take down all the crafts, and then just… just… you had some weird kind of seizure. Like you were short-circuiting or something.”
I still felt sick, so I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. I took a few deep breaths, as hard as they were to maintain, right in through my nose and out through my mouth. “How long was I out?”
“An hour. Two hours. We thought about taking you to some hospital or something, but we decided not to. At least you’re here now, hey?”
I looked around at the rest of the Resistance. Damon. Cassie. Roadrunner. Stone. Vortex. Orion. Saint. All of them were silent. All of them were looking at me with concern. I could sense they didn’t have the same faith in me that they used to have. I didn’t want to admit it aloud, but I felt the same way about myself as they did.
“I feel it, too,” Daniel said.
I frowned. “Feel what?”
His breathing was shallow and shaky. “There’s pressure in the air. Pressure that I’m not used to. It feels like something just isn’t… right. Like the whole world’s on the verge of splitting. And still, I can’t explain it. Like it’s—”
“Happened before,” I said.
Daniel closed his mouth and nodded. He couldn’t maintain eye contact with me for something long. “There was something else, too. When we were back at that base. Before you had your seizure. The others don’t see it, but I did. Just for a second.”
Stone groaned. “He’s not on about his double-vision again, is he?”
“What’re you talking about?” I asked.
“Nycto thinks he saw two of you. Or some crap like that.”
I looked back at Daniel. “What’s this about.”
Daniel glanced down at the ground. “When you were having your seizure. For a split second… just a split second, I swore I saw you. Like, a silhouette of yourself. Only you were fighting yourself. And then I blinked and the shadow was gone.”
I felt the nausea intensifying, and I leaned over, knowing I was going to be sick.
“Regardless,” Orion said, walking over to me and Daniel. “We’ve found a weakness in the crafts.”
“Water,” Saint said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Water? Really?”
Roadrunner nodded. “We ran into some trouble on our way out. When you were in the land of nod. Seems like water dulls their reactions, somehow. Makes them weaker, even if just for a few seconds. If water makes the crafts weaker, then we’re thinking a shitload of water might be enough to make the mothership’s defense weaker.”
A silence stretched on for a few seconds after that.
“I know it’s a long shot,” Roadrunner said. “And damn. Times like this make me wish Aqua was still with us.”
“Amen to that,” Stone said.
“But right now, all we’ve got is the ability to try. Are you ready to help us, Glacies?”
I wasn’t. I mean, was anybody?
But of course, I had to be ready.
I had to be as ready as I could be.
I stumbled to my shaky legs and I walked over to Roadrunner.
“I’m ready,” I said.
She smiled. “Good. Then let’s go get some H2O. I think I know just the place.”
24
“No chance. Absolutely out of the question.”
“Come on. You have to see—”
“I’ve seen the level of destruction you’re capable of. If you think we’re just going to hand over our water cannons, then you must be either seriously dumb or seriously
deluded.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“It doesn’t matter. The answer’s the same. I’ll not give you control of the water cannons. Not in a million years. And by God, you have a nerve just teleporting your way in here. Do you know how many White House security barriers you tripped on your way in?”
I stood opposite the President of the United States of America inside the Oval Office. Honestly, the Oval Office was just as spectacular in reality as it was when you saw it on the television and in the movies. Even more so, in fact, because all those television and movie versions were just that— versions of reality. This was the real thing, and it was staggering.
I’d come here to bargain with the president about the use of the high-intensity water cannons in the government’s arsenal. I’d been uncertain about the act, especially since the president not only thought I was dead, but mostly hated me. But really, there was more to this meeting than it seemed.
“The enemy threat,” I said. “The mothership. I don’t think you understand quite how dangerous it could be to all of us.”
“Oh, I understand alright. What I understand is that this mothership is keen to wipe ULTRAs from the planet. And from what I understand, it didn’t say a thing about its plans for humanity.”
“So you’ll just let us fall?”
He finished peeling an orange, then pulled away a segment and popped it into his mouth. “It’s evolution. Survival of the fittest. Looks like you really weren’t meant to outlive humanity after all, hmm?”
I held my tongue. The latest president—President West—had stepped in when the last president got killed in the battle with Adam. He was much more hardline toward ULTRAs. He didn’t trust them because they threatened his power, and anything that threatened his power was evil in his eyes.
“And what about the people who are falling, too? The humans that are dying in the crossfire? Are they just natural casualties, too?”
The president wiped the orange from his fingers onto his white shirt, sighing when he realized the mistake he’d made, and he stood up and walked around the table. “Look, Glacies. Kyle. Whatever. I appreciate you coming here. I appreciate you actually asking my permission. Really, that’s a neat touch. But I will not simply hand over our water cannons to someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
The president looked at me with a glance of disgust. “You know what I mean. Your kind.” He smiled, patronizingly, like that’d just make everything better all of a sudden.
I kept my nerve and took deep breaths in and out. “See, I thought you’d say that. But I wanted to ask nicely anyway. Because I really thought we could make some headway and come to an agreement.”
The president narrowed his eyes. “What are you saying?”
I lifted my finger and pointed behind him. “I’m saying to remember where the real power is, Mr. President.”
He turned around slowly, and he saw what I saw.
Stone was moving upward, floating outside the window of the White House.
Stacked atop his solid rock arms, there was a mass of water cannons.
“Holy…”
“Goodbye, Mr. President,” I said. “I’ll be sure to return the cannons in one piece.”
“Don’t you disapp—”
But I’d already teleported myself outside.
I appeared beside Stone. “You okay with that?”
“Kid, I’ve lifted a nuclear facility. I can cope with a bit of—”
Stone stumbled to one side.
One of the water cannons fell off the pile on top and came zooming down toward me.
I lifted my hands instinctively and fired a load of ice at it, tying it to the others, then I bound the rest of them with ice so they’d stay relatively together.
“Cheers, kid,” Stone said. “But I had it. Really.”
“That’s them!” a voice shouted. “Stop them!”
I looked down at the White House grounds.
There was a team of soldiers right outside. All of them were holding guns.
And then the next second, they were firing in our direction.
I saw the bullets piercing through the air, racing after us. Part of me wanted to see if I could use that weird, time-reversing ability again.
But now wasn’t the time or the place. I knew that well.
So I grabbed Stone’s arm and I teleported us away from here.
We didn’t get far.
I felt that punch-like sensation in my stomach and tasted blood from my nose on my lips. We were on the road now, just outside the White House grounds.
“Might wanna hurry, Kyle!” Stone shouted.
I gathered my composure, then went to teleport us again.
This time, a splitting headache kicked in before I could even get anywhere.
I saw the guards getting closer to us. They were firing anti-ULTRA ammo at us, which had the power to lower our abilities for a few seconds. Get hit with a few of them, and you’d be down for the count.
“What do we do, nerd?” Stone asked.
I looked up. It was the only idea I had. “We fly.”
I crouched down and then bounced up, Stone by my side.
Those anti-ULTRA bullets flew past us. Some of them singed my costume as I moved, distorting my flight for a couple of seconds.
“Okay,” Stone said. “This is good. This is progress. Now which direction?”
I was distracted, though.
I could see something coming my way.
“Is that a…” Stone started.
He’d seen it too.
It was a missile.
I lifted my hand to push it back.
The missile kept flying at us.
I pulled my attention fully away from Stone and the water cannons and focused solely on taking down that missile.
But still, I couldn’t focus enough. I wasn’t feeling enough power. That crushing sensation that’d suffocated me ever since the mothership had arrived seemed to be gaining in strength. The sensation that Daniel said he felt, too.
The missile was just feet away.
I tried to create a wormhole.
I tried everything.
But then, in the end, it was worthless.
I was powerless.
I was—
“Good job I check the news,” a voice said.
I looked over my shoulder.
Daniel was there.
He stopped the missile in its tracks.
Then, a second later, he teleported us away, back to our island base to ready ourselves for the attempt.
It took us four hours to fill the water cannons.
But when we were done, we positioned them toward the mothership, then shot up into the sky, so we were as close as we could safely get.
“We fire the water,” Orion said. “Then we launch our attack.”
“So again,” Damon said. “We’re just hoping for the best, basically?”
Saint nodded. “Basically.”
We all looked up at the smooth exterior of the mothership and wondered whether this was really it. It felt like we were just going through the motions. But we’d spotted a weakness—an aversion—to water, and now we had to exploit it.
“Ready?” Stone asked. He was standing over the biggest of the water cannons.
I held my breath, and I nodded. “Ready.”
I waited for the water to pound out of the cannons.
I waited for it to fire toward the mothership.
For a second, I wondered if something was going wrong.
Then a massive surge of water blasted out of the cannon toward the mothership.
I watched the thick stream of water fire out. Then I watched the rest of the water cannons begin to fire. I clenched my fists. I knew I had to be ready to attack the mothership. All of us did.
But still I shook.
Still, I didn’t feel like I was strong enough for this.
And then, just when the water got closer to the mothership, some
thing happened.
The water stopped.
We were silent, all of us, for a few seconds. We didn’t want to believe that it was possible that something else wasn’t working out, and was going wrong.
But it was.
“It’s stopped,” Cassie said.
I saw the color of the water changing. I saw it turning green. And I could see the steam coming off it.
Like it was hot.
Like it was…
“Acid,” I said.
Damon turned to me. “What was that?”
My body filled with dread. My heart raced. “Acid. I said. It’s acid!”
The others didn’t realize right away. But by that point, it was too late.
The water, which had turned to acid, was hurtling back in our direction.
I lifted my hands to push it back, but then something else happened.
A massive tentacle reached out from above and dragged me away.
The Resistance were on their own.
I was captured.
25
I felt the grip tightening around my neck and I knew I didn’t have long left.
All around me, there was darkness. Total darkness, so black it was suffocating. Just looking at that darkness made me feel a wave of sickness and light-headedness, in the way a young kid feared the dark at night. The same reason they begged their parents to keep a night light on for them. There were always monsters in the dark, in the mind of a kid.
Except right now, there really was a monster in this darkness.
The grip tightened even harder around my neck. I kicked back, reflexively more than anything. There was nothing else I could do, not really. I’d tried sparking my powers. I’d tried firing my way free of this mess. All of it was to no avail.
I was trapped. And the life was slipping away from me by the second.
I heard the blasts all around me, accompanied by the screams, and the feeling of sickness deep within grew even more intense. A bitter taste of blood and vomit filled my mouth, making me want to cough. I could smell something in the air. I couldn’t describe it any other way than a thickness. Like the air was filled with tar, and that thickness was getting even more slimy, making breathing gradually more difficult.
