by Matt Blake
I saw the good times that followed your takedown of Catalyst. Then I saw the co-existence of ULTRAs and people. And for a long time, it works. It really does. But then, I’ve seen what ULTRAs do to their home. And I can’t allow that same destruction to happen. Not again.”
My head spun with all this new information. “If you care so much about our home, then why are you destroying it?”
Alternate Kyle smiled and shook his head. “I’m not talking about Earth, Kyle. I’m talking about this entire universe.”
I staggered a bit to one side when he said those words. The silence from the rest of the Resistance said it all, too. “The universe?” I said.
“I told you there were things you wouldn’t be able to understand. Not truly. But yes. The universe. Humanity and ULTRAs reach a stage where they can expand to new planets and new galaxies. And for a time, it works. But then everything goes wrong. Humanity is destroyed. The entire universe is on the verge of collapse, all because of the power of the ULTRAs. I’ve seen it, and I know it happens. So now I have to make sure the ULTRAs don’t go anywhere for the sake of the universe and every life form in it.”
“This is mad. This is… this is insane.”
“I have to alter history, Kyle. For the people I love, who are the people you love. I’ve been capturing ULTRAs so I can use their energy to create something… well, something that will do the job. After that, there will be no more pain and no more suffering. Just know that… that all our friends here and elsewhere go on to have good, happy, long lives. And you… we make the ultimate sacrifice, right here, for the preservation of life. Isn’t that a sacrifice worth making?”
I looked at Orion, Saint, Daniel. I looked at Cassie, Roadrunner, Damon. Up above, I could see a light silhouette where Stone was. I wanted to believe it was a necessary sacrifice. That Alternate Kyle was genuinely looking out for the world’s best interests.
“I can’t,” I said.
Alternate Kyle narrowed his eyes. “You what?”
“I can’t accept destruction because I don’t believe that the future you are talking about is inevitable. I can’t just let you kill my friends.”
Alternate Kyle sighed, then. He genuinely looked disappointed. “Very well. I hoped I wouldn’t have to do this. But…”
In the blink of an eye, one moment, there was nobody beside Alternate Kyle.
The next, Vortex and…
“Avi?”
Avi was battered and bruised, perched on his knees. He looked out of it.
Vortex didn’t look much better. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so worn down.
I took a step forward, but right away I felt weaker, somehow, like I was drowning in thick layer after layer of tar.
I tried to spark up my abilities, but I couldn’t.
I wasn’t strong enough.
I was just Kyle Peters again. Not Glacies, but Kyle Peters.
Alternate Kyle stretched out his hands, one to Vortex’s head, and one to Avi’s head.
“I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m sorry.”
I saw the ice brighten up in Alternate Kyle’s palms.
I saw it creep from his hands and charge up, right beside Avi and Vortex’s heads.
“No.”
I wanted to fight. I wanted to. And for a moment, I thought that voice I’d heard saying no, resisting, was my own.
And then I saw Damon lunging forward, right at Alternate Kyle.
“Damon!” I shouted.
He looked back at me as he flew toward Alternate Kyle. And just for a moment, as his arms sparked with electricity, I saw a smile on his face.
“You were right, man,” he said. “I am stronger than I thought.”
And then he flew into Alternate Kyle, and what happened next would never leave me, not for the rest of my life.
Alternate Kyle turned his hands away from Vortex and Avi.
He pointed them at Damon.
“Damon!” I screamed.
I lunged forward after them, but it felt like I was running in clay.
“Damon, no!”
Then, I heard a blast.
A blast that split through the entire mothership.
I heard shouting around me. I heard cries. I knew things were going on. Conflict. Fighting. Battle. Vaguely, somewhere beside me, I heard Daniel telling me we were getting the hell out of here.
But I couldn’t do a thing.
I couldn’t act.
All I could do was stare at Damon’s crippled body as he lay there on the metal.
All I could do was watch as my best friend—the friend I’d grown up with, the friend who’d stood by my side through high school, the friend who’d hooked me up with Ellicia in the first place—breathed his last breaths.
“We’ll… we’ll go to the next Ethan Hunt movie,” Damon muttered.
Tears rolled down my face as explosions cracked above me, flashing either side of me. “No, Damon. Please. Please.”
He grabbed my hand with his shaky grip. “It’s okay,” he said. “You are strong. You are s…”
And then, my best friend closed his eyes.
He didn’t open them again.
37
Two weeks later
I walked along Damon’s street and prepared to deliver the horrifying news that I was still struggling to accept myself.
It was morning, and a bright one at that. There was a cool breeze, which blew discarded Coca-Cola bottles and takeout packs across the street. But really, everything just looked so beautiful this morning.
It was a shame about the circumstances.
The mothership had gone. The crafts had retreated. Christmas had passed by without any real hoo-rah. It was strange, really. After all, I’d faced off with Alternate Kyle and he’d told me that his job was to make sure no UTLRAs made it with their abilities. I still had my abilities. And the other survivors of that horrible day two weeks ago—all of them, thankfully—still had their abilities. Vortex aside.
Vortex was in hospital. She had been there for a couple of weeks now. She was weak, and Stone visited her every day. She was powerless. But she was alive. That was the main thing.
There was one who hadn’t survived, though. Just thinking about him made my knees go weak and sickness creep up into my throat at the thought of never seeing him again, never laughing and joking and enjoying his company.
Damon.
Damon had made the ultimate sacrifice to save Vortex and Avi’s lives.
Damon was gone.
And now that we knew for certain, now we’d mustered up the courage, it was time to tell his family the truth.
Avi walked on my left side and Ellicia on my right. Ellicia had been released from the safe zone in Montana just three days ago. The government had decided that for whatever reason, the mothership had stopped its assault on Earth.
I knew that wasn’t true. I knew, deep down, that it’d be back. I’d seen the look in Alternate Kyle’s eyes, and I knew that look because it was my own look.
A look of focus. A look of total determination.
I still hadn’t accepted that Damon was gone. After all, it was hard to. Cassie was back. Orion and Daniel had come back. Even I had come back. Up to now, the only person I’d lost that was close to me was Mom, and sometimes I wondered if there were a chance she’d come back someday, too.
But Damon…
I’d seen what’d happened to him, what Alternate Kyle had done to him.
I knew there was no coming back from that.
At least it would’ve been quick.
We reached Damon’s house. I stood at the end of the pathway leading up to it.
Ellicia squeezed my hand. “You sure you want to do this?”
My throat wobbled. I had to fight to hold back the tears. “No,” I said. “But I have to. It has to be me.”
She half-smiled at me, then kissed me. I could taste the tears on her lips.
Then, Avi patted me on my back.
“Good luck, bruv,” he said. “You go do w
hat you have to do.”
I hugged him, tightly. I knew Avi and I were going to have to stick together, real close, after what’d happened to Damon. It felt like the life and soul of our group had been torn away, and that nothing would ever be the same between us again.
I cleared my throat, adjusted my collar.
Then I walked up the pathway toward Damon’s front door.
When I reached it, lifted my hand, I stopped for a second. Everything in my mind told me I couldn’t do this. That there had to be another way. Because saying it out loud was accepting it was the truth, and I didn’t want to believe it was the truth.
In the end, I didn’t even have to open the door.
Damon’s mom, Sally, opened it before I’d even knocked.
Sally was a short, thin woman with light gray hair. She looked older than she actually was. She frowned when she saw me, then Avi and Ellicia behind me. “Kyle?” she said. “What’re you…” she must’ve been baffled that I was still even alive. “What’s…”
Then it happened. It clicked. I saw it, the grief and the realization and everything hitting her right in that instant, tearing her life apart.
“I’m sorry, Sally. I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, tears starting to roll down her face. “No.”
“He was brave. But he’s gone.”
“No.”
“Damon’s gone.”
“No!”
I saw her cover her face with her hands. She dropped down to her knees and let out a grieving moan, which didn’t even sound human. Tears rolled down my cheeks now, too.
I moved down toward her. “I’m so sorry. I’m—”
“Get away,” she snapped.
I jolted back.
Sally looked… not just grief-stricken, but furious.
Actually furious, at me.
“Sally, I—”
“You did this!” she shouted, pointing a wobbling finger at me. “He was my boy and you—you got him involved with those ULTRAs. You did this!”
As I stood there on my best friend’s pathway watching his grieving mother blame me for his death, I felt a lot of things.
But mostly, I felt like I needed to run.
“I am sorry,” I said, turning away and rushing down the pathway. “I really, really am.”
Ellicia reached out for me when I got to the end of the pathway. “Kyle. It’ll take time. She just needs—”
But I didn’t stick around to hear what she had to say.
I pretended to teleport myself somewhere far, far away.
Instead, I just made myself invisible and ran as fast as I could up the street.
No matter how far I ran, tears blotting out my vision, I couldn’t escape Sally’s wails of grief, and I couldn’t get her words out of my head.
You did this!
38
Hielo looked down at Damon’s broken body, and he felt a tear roll down his cheek.
Although it had been many, many years since he knew Damon, and he had known many people since—fought many battles, made allies, lost them to betrayal, made new ones—nothing compared to Damon.
Damon was his friend.
And he’d killed him.
He crouched down and covered Damon’s body with a blanket. His throat wobbled as all the memories of the good times he’d had with Damon, back when he’d been just a child, filled his memories joyously. He found himself smiling as he recalled the time Damon forgot to bring his shorts for football practice and decided to play wearing his pants. He found himself grimacing at the time they’d had that nasty argument because Kyle thought Damon had stolen one of his Pokemon cards—a crime which, of course, Damon hadn’t committed.
He looked down at Damon and he felt truly, truly sorry for the way this had ended.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “But you had a good life, in my reality. You lived until you were three-hundred and forty. And you never ever fell out with me. Never again.”
He clicked his fingers, and Damon’s body disappeared.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
“Hielo?”
Hielo flinched when he heard the voice. He turned around and saw B3484 standing there, looking somewhat concerned about his attachment to the people that were supposed to be enemies. “Sorry. I just needed some time.”
B3484 shuffled over to Hielo’s side. “That’s quite alright, sir. I just wanted to let you know that we’re all charged and ready to execute the plan.”
The plan. Just the thought of it made Hielo’s skin crawl. “You’ve absorbed enough ULTRA energy to be positive you can lift every human from the face of the earth and toward the Andromeda galaxy? For their own protection? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Of course, you and I know we can’t speak in absolutes—”
“But you’re as sure as you can be?”
“I believe I am, yes.”
Hielo looked at the spot where Damon had fallen.
Then he stood up and walked over to his enormous glass window, which looked out over Earth.
“Then commence the plan,” he said. “Get every human off Earth. Then destroy Earth and every ULTRA on it.”
“Are you sure this is what you want to do, sir?”
Hielo’s heart raced. “It’s the only way we can guarantee the safety of the universe. Otherwise, history will repeat itself. We can’t allow that to happen.”
“But you do realize that once we’ve triggered the energy, there will be—”
“Zero chance of us surviving. Yes. I understand that.”
A pause from B3484. “And you’re still sure you want to proceed?”
He felt for B3484. It was like this artificial intelligence was facing up to its own mortality for the very first time. “I’m positive,” he said. “Save the humans. Destroy Earth. Begin the preparations. Now.”
He thought about Damon.
He knew he was doing the right thing.
39
I hovered over the mouth of the Hekla volcano, and it felt like I was right back at the beginning again.
The sun was setting. It was so peaceful here in Iceland, and it always would be. There wasn’t any humanity around for miles. I could keep a low profile and just hover over the mouth of this volcano for as long as I wanted.
And that suited me fine.
I just wanted to keep a low profile, now.
I just wanted to disappear into obscurity.
I listened to the breeze beneath me, so peaceful as it blew against the sides of the volcano. If I closed my burning eyes, I could see myself far away from here, on a beach, Mom and Dad by my side, Cassie splashing in the water, and Ellicia, Avi, and Damon all with me, having a laugh.
Every thought of Damon made my mind and body turn to jelly.
I wasn’t ever going to forgive myself for what had happened to him.
I opened my eyes and looked down into the lava. It spat up toward me. I sensed the anger of the world in my direction, all of it bubbling up and getting ready to explode.
But mostly, I saw myself. I saw the reason I’d failed, and what my problem had been all along.
I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t see myself as strong enough. That was the issue.
Sure, I’d hidden behind my Glacies persona. And for so many years, that persona had given me strength.
But regardless of how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, the Glacies persona wasn’t strong enough. I might have abilities. Hell, I might physically be the most powerful ULTRA to have lived.
But underneath all of that, I was still Kyle Peters.
It was Kyle Peters who was haunted by his regrets.
It was Kyle Peters who was crippled by self-doubt.
It was Kyle Peters who had failed, time after time, again and again.
I moved closer to the mouth of the volcano. I felt the heat cover me like a warm blanket rapidly turning nasty. I kept on going, though, even as I started to cough. Part of me wondered what it’d be like if I
just threw myself down there, into the flames. Who would notice? Who would care, really? Sure, my dad would be sad. Avi and Ellicia would miss me. But time would go on, and I’d soon be forgotten. Most of the world thought I was dead anyway, and they seemed to be getting on just fine without me.
After all, it was me who had come back in future form to sort the old problems that the world had.
It was my future self who blamed me and all of ULTRAkind for a future of violence and terror.
Maybe it would be better for everyone if I didn’t stick around much longer.
I pushed myself further into the heat, the skin on my face starting to fry.
Then I sighed, and I hovered back to the mouth of the volcano.
I couldn’t do a thing like that. I didn’t even have the strength or the courage to do that.
I had to be strong enough as Kyle. I had to be Kyle because Kyle was Glacies, and I had to make Kyle the strongest person he could be.
Even if I couldn’t, I had to try.
But…
What did I have to try for anymore?
Damon was gone. I was already too late.
What good was trying to be someone else now the time for action had passed?
I pulled my Glacies gear out in front of me, then. I felt my bottom lip shaking and watched a tear drop down from my eyes and onto the gear. I remembered the pride I’d felt when I’d first put this gear on. How much stronger it made me feel.
But really, it was all just an illusion.
It didn’t make me stronger at all.
It just clouded my judgment for a while.
I held out the outfit in front of me, and I saw the lava spit up once again, as the egg-smelling sulfur drowned my senses.
I had nothing left to fight for.
There was nothing left for me to do anymore, as Glacies.
I was done now.
“Goodbye,” I whispered.
Then I dropped the Glacies gear down into the volcano.
I watched as it fell into it. For a moment, I wanted to go down there and stop it falling. I felt weak—naked, even—without it.
