by Matt Blake
Then something tightened around my neck.
The pain was intense. Far greater than any pain I’d felt in this showdown up to now. I knew without looking that it was one of the big three. Orion, Saint, Daniel.
And I knew from the intensity of the pain that it couldn’t be Orion. And that it probably wasn’t going to be Daniel, either.
I spun around.
Saint was standing over me.
He had a hand raised. He was slowly tightening it, suffocating me.
He lifted me into the air. All of a sudden, this didn’t feel like sparring anymore. I kicked my feet out. I was going to die here. He was going to kill me.
“You know, you look so weak, without your costume,” he said. “So… helpless.”
I clutched at the invisible hands around my throat. I could feel my skin going cold, my eyes bulging out of my skull.
“I’m starting to think I should just finish you right here so the world’s all mine. What will the world do without Glacies? What will the world do without poor Kyle Peters?”
My vision blurred. I could feel myself drifting off into oblivion. My muscles were weakening, and my ability to fight was waning.
“What will the world do without its great savior?” Saint asked. “What will Ellicia do when there’s no one home to protect her?”
“Saint!”
I heard the voice from behind Saint and saw someone running through the trees. Orion and Cassie.
But Saint didn’t stop.
“What will the world do when I kill them all?”
Cassie threw herself at Saint. “Saint, stop!”
But he didn’t.
Instead, he lifted a finger and sliced her in half.
I felt myself screaming even though my throat was being crushed.
After that, I saw Orion fall to his knees, blood spilling out of his chest.
I saw Damon breaking his bones.
Stone’s arm being chipped away.
I saw everything falling apart.
“What will you do now, Kyle?” Saint asked.
“Please!” I begged. There was nothing else I could do. “Please.”
I saw Saint smile.
Then I dropped to the ground and suddenly, everything went bright again.
I lay there for a few seconds. I felt sick. Totally sick after having just witnessed the slaughter of the Resistance. I should’ve known Saint was still evil. I’d fallen for it, and now they were gone.
“Kyle?”
I looked to my left, and my muscles loosened.
Cassie was standing there.
By her side, Damon.
And by his side…
“Vortex,” I said.
I covered my head with my hands. I understood now. The whole incident with Saint hadn’t been real. It’d been a Vortex driven illusion, after all.
“You’re shaking,” Vortex said. She smiled. “Did I scare the shit out of you?”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
“Which is a good thing,” Saint said, walking to the fore. “Because we know what your weakness is now.”
I nodded and attempted a smile, but to be honest, I felt so broken down by what I’d just witnessed. I didn’t know if I had it in me to try again.
“Your biggest weakness is your mind,” Orion said. “So now we get to work on making you mentally stronger, so you can mentally exploit your enemy. Yourself.”
My stomach sank. “And that means?”
Orion looked at Vortex, who tensed her fists and started rolling her eyes back into her skull. “We get back to work. Scaredy-cat.”
It was horrifying. It was going to be all kinds of nasty.
But at least I knew what I had to do, now.
28
Hielo watched the showdown unfolding in the jungle from afar.
He wasn’t there, exactly. But of course, he was once Kyle Peters, so he had the ability to be somewhere without exactly being there. Besides, he was much older and much more experienced than the Kyle down there right now, fighting on earth.
He watched him with curiosity, though. He tried to keep himself as detached from Kyle as possible, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was that boy down there, trying his best to hone his abilities, to fight the good fight.
And although he knew that was him exactly once upon a time, it wasn’t him. Not really. Hielo had changed a lot since that day all those years ago. He’d seen how the world had changed. He’d seen what had happened, the changes, the developments. And he knew when he saw all the changes that had unfolded, that he wasn’t the same person.
And that what he was doing right now was right. Completely right.
He heard a whirring above, which distracted him from watching Kyle and the others sparring. He looked up and saw the bright beam of energy reaching down into another batch of ULTRAs, harvesting their abilities and using them for himself.
Because the abilities they’d harvested were a part of the real plan.
And the real plan was…
He saw it, then.
He saw the pain Kyle had felt.
He saw the weakness. The images.
Saint, destroying Cassie, then Damon, then the rest of his friends.
He saw these flashes and then he knew. As if he’d never known at all, it came to him.
His weakness was his thoughts.
His mental resilience—or lack of it—was where he fell down.
Of course it was.
Kyle Peters, aged nineteen, still didn’t believe in his own strengths, his own abilities. One day, he would. He’d find the strength and the courage to be the person Hielo was right now.
But right now, he was but a fraction of what he was destined to become.
And that’s why Hielo was here.
To make sure he never, ever became as powerful as he had the potential of being.
Because he knew what came with that power.
“We’ve got eyes on Kyle,” a voice to his right said. It was B8384, another of his soldiers. “Would you like us to proceed with our attack?”
Hielo gritted his teeth, a habit he’d always had in times of stress. He held his breath and saw Kyle thinking he was getting stronger and stronger, having no idea of what was ahead of him, of what was to come.
“We wait. He’s almost ready to attack. And when he does… we hit him right where it hurts.”
“And where’s that?”
Hielo smiled.
He knew exactly how to hurt Kyle.
29
It was a few hours later that I found Ellicia and Avi again.
They had been sent to a camp just outside of Maryland state. It was pretty well-located, out of the way of most of the major towns and cities. The way these camps had been set up was well thought out, too. There weren’t too many people in any one place. That was just asking for trouble. At the camp Ellicia and Avi were in, there were just a thousand people. A fair few, but not enough to make anyone place susceptible to attack for any particular reason.
I’d come here because I needed to see my girlfriend and my friend before everything changed.
I’d come here because I was taking the fight to Alternate Kyle—as I was now calling him—and I knew it might well be my last fight.
The sun had set, but the grounds were still filled with guards. They were armed to the max, mostly in anti-ULTRA gear and guns. I knew there would be fences erected around the camp to deter ULTRAs. But fortunately for me, I wasn’t just any old ULTRA.
I slipped inside and made my way, invisibly, along the aisles. I knew Ellicia and Avi were here because I’d managed to hack into and track down the manifesto. The further I walked, the more nervous I grew that maybe I’d got this all wrong, and that maybe they weren’t here at all. Perhaps something bad had happened to them. I didn’t want to think about that, but it was an option I had to consider.
I was about to turn around and start my search again when I saw her sitting on the edge of her bed.
M
y body felt like it was melting the moment I laid eyes on her. And not just because she was there, with her long brown hair, and with those big blue eyes. But because of who else was with her.
Avi.
But also, Dad.
“Hi,” I said.
They all spun around in unison, like I’d taken them by surprise.
Then all of their faces dropped, and they ran toward me, Dad first.
“Kyle,” he said.
He grabbed hold of me and started crying. I couldn’t resist my tears either, as Ellicia and Avi joined in the hug.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m here. I’m—”
“We thought you were dead.”
I nodded, instantly feeling guilty that I hadn’t taken the time to reunite with Dad since I’d returned to… well, to life. “I know. And I’m sorry. I just…”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Dad said, squeezing me tighter. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
I bonded with Dad, Ellicia, and Avi a little more after that. We spoke about normal things like the state of the world before I’d come back to consciousness, the things I’d missed. Rubbish television, and the like.
And then we got on to the real reason I was here.
“So this spaceship,” Dad said, “or whatever it is. I’m guessing you’re onto it, in some way.”
I didn’t want to tell anyone else about who was fronting the mothership. So I just nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“And you’ll be able to stop it,” Ellicia said, tightening her grip around my hand. “You’ll be able to defeat it. Won’t you?”
I didn’t tighten my grip around her hand in turn. I just sat there, uncertain about everything.
But I had to believe.
I had to believe or there was no way I’d succeed.
“I’m going to do the best I can,” I said.
Dad smiled. “That’s my boy.”
The small talk kicked in again. But it wasn’t long before I was dragging the conversation back to the real reason I was here.
I fidgeted with my cuffs, turning invisible every time a guard walked by or someone poked their head around the door. “What I have to do. You have to understand it’s dangerous. So dangerous. And I can’t… I can’t put you in any more danger.”
Avi narrowed his eyes. “What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m not sure I’ll… I’m not sure I’ll…”
I couldn’t finish what I was trying to say: that I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see them again.
But Dad put a hand on my arm. Then Ellicia did, then Avi.
I looked into their eyes and I saw that they all understood.
“We know,” Avi said. “We get it, bro. But we got faith in you. All of us got faith in you.”
I hugged them again, and as their warmth radiated through my body, it really felt like we were holding each other for the last time.
Then I got up, walked over to the door, and looked back at them.
“I love you,” I said, my voice cracking. “All of you.”
And they all looked back at me, smiling. “We love you too,” Ellicia said. “Now go save the world.”
I wiped a tear away from my face.
Then I took a deep breath, focused all my energy on this loving, painful moment, and I teleported away.
It was time to go after Alternate Kyle before he caused any more destruction.
It was time to stop reacting.
It was time to start attacking.
30
It was time.
The sun was just about rising, but it didn’t matter up here, way in the sky. The closer we got to the outer atmosphere of the earth, the darker it got, regardless of how much closer to the sun we were. There was a difference to the sun when you were within the Earth’s atmosphere and the sun when you were just outside it. When you were on Earth, there was still something mystical about it like it really was just a flat light there to illuminate your day.
But when you were outside the confines of the atmosphere, it really took on its true, three-dimensional form.
So too did Alternate Kyle’s mothership.
I looked around at the people flying with me. It was the bedrock of the Resistance, as the Resistance stood in its current form—Orion, Daniel, Saint, Cassie, Damon, Roadrunner, Vortex, Stone. All of us were united, all of us with one common goal: to try and use what we’d learned about my own weaknesses to take down Alternate Kyle.
And it was clear where my real weaknesses were. It was clear to everybody what my real weaknesses were.
Mental weaknesses.
I didn’t believe in myself enough.
I had to use those mental images to exploit my lack of belief and defeat my alternate self.
And at the forefront of that was Vortex.
Up ahead, I saw the mothership. There was an opening right at the bottom of it, where the crafts came out of.
“Is that the way we’re heading in?” Vortex asked.
I nodded. “You sure you’re up to this?”
She smiled back at me. “Kyle, I saw you peeing your pants when I got inside your head. I’ve seen it again and again. I know exactly what’ll trigger you—if all this crap about this being an alternate version of yourself is true, anyway. Trust me. I’ve got this.”
I felt more anxious when Vortex responded with such confidence. I knew this wasn’t going to be an easy fight. There was a sense inside me that told me a lot of misery and a lot of drama was ahead.
And yet, there was nothing I could do to act on that knowledge, ’cause it was so vague and formless.
All I could do was attack.
I turned around to the rest of the Resistance. All of them stopped and looked at me, waiting for further command.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we do. We get to the exterior vent, where the crafts are ejected. I create a wormhole big enough to swallow them up. Stone, you bash any spares into space. Cassie and Damon, fry their electrics. Roadrunner, you lead them into these traps. And Orion, Saint, Daniel… you know what you do. What you do best.”
All of them nodded at that.
“And Vortex,” I said, looking to her. “You make your way inside. You find Alternate Kyle. You paralyze him with thoughts.”
“And then you finish the job,” she said.
It sounded so simple. Too simple. And I couldn’t possibly know how un-simple or how much of a struggle it was going to be just yet.
“Hold up,” Damon said. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
In the distance, from the belly of the mothership, a crowd of crafts spurted out. There were lots of them. Ten. Then twenty. Then thirty.
I lifted my hands and tensed them, ice spreading across them.
“You sure you’ve got this?” Cassie asked.
I pressed my teeth together. “I’m sure,” I said.
Then I powered in the direction of the mothership.
“Let’s go!”
The battle started right away. The crafts were on us within seconds. Three of them flew at me, swinging their tentacles in my direction, trying to slice and cut at me.
But I just fired ice back at each and every one of them that attempted to stop me, flowing between them like water. I felt much more confident about myself, now. Like I had my strength and belief back, and everything was working out just as it should.
Up at the mothership, I saw more of those crafts falling out. Tension kicked in and made my stomach tingle. I needed to get up there fast and create that wormhole. Creating wormholes took a lot of energy, so I needed time to do it. I wasn’t going to do it if I was swarmed by these crafts.
“Cassie,” I shouted.
Two of the crafts flew at her.
Stone knocked one of them away, while Cassie fried the next one with her electricity. She looked over at me like I was an unwanted distraction right now. “A little busy, brother!”
“I need you to hold them off here instead,” I said.
> She frowned, as another of the crafts made its way toward her. “What?”
I looked back up at the mothership. Crafts were still bursting out of it. “There’s not going to be enough time. I need to activate the wormhole right now.”
“But—”
“Just hold them off, okay? I won’t be long. Trust me.”
We made eye contact, just for a split second, and I could see the doubt she had.
Then she nodded and carried on with her fighting.
I looked back up at that mothership. The crafts weren’t slowing down in their ejection. I needed to create a wormhole big enough to drag them all down it. But doing so wasn’t going to be easy. I’d never built a wormhole anywhere near that big before.
Just then, I saw movement in the corner of my eye. I jolted around and saw another five crafts speeding toward me, ambushing me from the side.
I fired immediately at each of them, making every blast of ice stronger and more energized than the last.
But then I saw the crafts heading to my left, and I soon realized what was happening. The crafts weren’t flying at the rest of the Resistance anymore. They were heading to me, and only to me.
This must’ve been part of the plan all along.
Whatever plan Alternate Kyle had for me, whatever game he was playing, he was clearly targeting me right now.
I wasn’t going to stand for it.
I forged an ice shield with each of my hands, as strong as I could.
The first of the crafts slammed into it, smashing into pieces.
Then more hit it, and I felt my arms caving in, my shields weakening, as one after the other hit and hit and hit.
My arms went totally weak then, and before I knew it, my ice shields were shattered and down completely.
The crafts were speeding toward me.
They were just inches away.
They were going to take me down, all over again…
Then I thought about the painful things I’d seen when Vortex had got inside my head, and instead of letting them weaken me, I let them strengthen me.
“No,” I said.
A craft flew at my face.
I lifted my hand and stretched out my fingers.
The craft stopped.
