by Matt Blake
“Leave Kyle to me,” Hielo said. “I want to finish him myself.”
44
We soared up in the direction of the mothership for one final assault.
An assault that we knew may well be our final ever stand.
Once again, that strange sensation of the daylight vanishing the more we proceeded toward the mothership occurred, and this time it felt suffocating, enough to make even the most headstrong person feel paranoid and claustrophobic. In honesty, I felt bad. Bad that I’d not had the chance to say a proper goodbye to Ellicia, or to Avi, or to Dad. But in all truth, I knew what I was doing was way too important to delay any further.
The air got icier the closer we got to the mothership, further increasing the unease I felt—and that we all felt—about our situation. We kept the green beam of light in our eye line at all times. We wanted to follow it, directly if we had to.
It made a strange, low humming sound, and I knew what that sound was now. It’s the sound I heard whenever I was using my abilities, but hadn’t even put my finger on up to this point. It must’ve been what everyone heard when they used their abilities too—the sound of the ULTRA life-force, so much of it drained from the remaining ULTRAs on Earth already.
The rest of us lucky ULTRAs, who’d resisted and survived this far?
They were the ones who were being primed for destruction.
“Here we go,” Stone said, when we were just feet away from the mothership. “Close enough to attack?”
I tensed my fists and felt ice stretch up the length of my arms. Up ahead, the mothership, in all its glory. Only there was something different about it now. It seemed to have changed shape, where those eight beams were pummeling out of it. Like it wasn’t going to stay floating for much longer when those beams had done their job.
“Close enough to—”
“Watch out!”
I heard Daniel’s voice, but by that point, it was already too late.
Another green beam fired out of the bottom of the mothership, right above us.
My body turned cold—and not in the good, icy way that I’d used to my advantage so many times over recent years. I froze—again, not in a good way. I wasn’t Glacies. I wasn’t strong enough to stop this green beam of light. I wasn’t…
I heard the words spinning around my mind as that beam of energy fired down toward me, and I saw what my problem had been, all along.
No belief in myself.
No belief in me, Kyle Peters.
That was the problem.
That was exactly the problem.
So I did something different.
In the space of a millisecond, I created a shield around all of us.
Then I brought us all together.
But the beam was still heading down in our direction. It was getting closer.
And then, as if it was no effort at all, I jolted us away from the beam.
I didn’t know if it’d worked for a second. Then I figured the fact that I was contemplating whether it’d worked or not must mean that it had.
“How did you…” Saint started.
Then he stopped.
I wasn’t sure if it was because it hurt his pride in some way, affecting his claim to being the world’s “most powerful ULTRA,” or whether he was just genuinely starting to believe in me.
I couldn’t know.
I didn’t have time to.
Because from the green beams of electricity, small metal crafts started spewing out.
“This is it!” I shouted.
I fired a blast of ice at the first of the crafts. Then I dodged the next one, disorienting it before opening up a wormhole to send it crashing into the front of the next one.
I kept on moving, fluidly, taking down craft after craft, not thinking about what I was doing at all, just trusting my intuition.
As we fought, I saw the light of the green beam fading somewhat. And as it did, all of us went tumbling back down in the direction of Earth.
I pulled myself back straight and re-oriented the rest of the Resistance too, with a click of a finger.
“Hold strong. We’ve got this.”
“Can’t you just do your thing?” Stone shouted, as more crafts zoomed down toward our position.
“My thing?”
“You know. Your craft zapping thing… your weird thing. Your… ah shit. It’s too late.”
Stone was right.
The crafts bombed down into us.
I shot a shield over the lot of us. A strong, hard shield, more solid than I thought I was even capable of making.
I watched the crafts hurtle into it, one by one. I saw their tentacles try to crack through it, but snap upon contact. I saw their circuitry expose as they split into pieces. I saw some of them pull back, then try to slam down onto the shield even harder, eager to break through.
But there was no breaking through.
Not just because I was using my own strength.
But because I was using the strength of the rest of the Resistance, too.
I didn’t know how I was doing it; just that it was something to do with that tingling sensation in my body. I could see a blue light coming from Orion, Saint, Daniel, and the others, and morphing into my body as I pushed that shield harder and harder upwards.
“Push back!” I shouted, moving upwards toward the crafts, trying to fight back.
“I can’t—”
“You can!” I shouted. “Push back!”
For a split second, it didn’t feel like we were going anywhere.
And then we shot upwards, right through the center of the crafts and headed toward the mothership.
I felt invincible, then, as the shield morphed all around us, protecting us from the onslaught of the crafts. I could feel their desperation in the air, like this was a situation they weren’t used to or prepared for. And that made me feel somewhat triumphant.
I saw the smiles on the faces of the rest of the Resistance as we got nearer and nearer to the mothership. I saw Orion grinning, and Stone smirking, like everyone felt the same pure strength and belief as me.
I even saw Saint looking at me like he’d never looked at me before.
Like he believed.
And then something happened.
The shield split.
I saw the crafts pouring inside our shield, filling it up like water in a sinking bottle.
I tried to shoot at them, but that just weakened my side of the shield, too. We started to slow down. The power of the crafts was just too strong.
“Kyle,” a voice said.
I didn’t recognize it right away. But when I looked around, I saw it was Saint.
The crafts were crowding around the entrance nearest to him. He was managing to hold them back with his own power.
But he was looking at me with a look of remorse. Of regret. Of inevitability.
“You have to keep on going,” he said.
I shook my head. “I won’t—”
“You have to. You are the only one who can beat yourself. Now go. Go, before I change my mind.”
I felt my chest sink as I understood what Saint was saying, and it was such a strange emotion. All these years of fighting him. All these years of seeing him as the lord of all evil.
And now he was doing what he was doing.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice shaking. “Thank you.”
Saint pushed back harder against the crafts. They were so close to bursting through that the entire shield was at breaking point now. “And thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making me r—”
Saint didn’t say anything else.
The crafts split through the second layer of the shield.
He lifted his hands, opened up an enormous wormhole in front of himself, which the crafts were all dragged toward.
He cried out as a light burst from his body, and the wormhole moved in toward him.
“Go!” he screamed.
I shot up into the sky, closer to
the mothership, away from Saint and his wormhole.
The rest of the Resistance made it.
But as I looked down, I saw the wormhole right across Saint’s chest, now.
I saw the crafts flying into it, scrambling to stop themselves being dragged down into the abyss.
And then I saw the light surround Saint as the wormhole slammed shut.
Then...
The wormhole exploded.
I looked at the light from the explosion for a few seconds. All of us stared on, in awe and amazement and bewilderment of what we’d just witnessed.
A hand landed on my back. It was Orion. “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to keep moving.”
I looked at the residue from that explosion. The dust in the sky from the crafts, and the space where the wormhole had been.
And I looked at Saint’s head as it floated through space so peacefully, detached from his body, which had disappeared into oblivion along with Alternate Kyle’s crafts.
Saint was gone.
45
As we entered the mothership, I couldn’t help but keep looking back down at the spot where Saint had disappeared, sacrificing himself for me and the good of the cause.
The crafts had stopped flowing from the mothership and the green beams—for now. I could see something else charging up along the bottom of the mothership, though. Another beam. And by the looks of things, it was the final beam of all.
I didn’t want to risk that beam activating. I didn’t want to see what it might mean.
I’d seen what the beams—pure ULTRA energy—were capable of anyway. I didn’t want to risk allowing that final one to activate.
“Kyle, we have to keep moving.”
It was Daniel. I could sense a tinge of sadness and regret to Daniel’s voice too. Obviously, I had mixed feelings about Daniel’s reaction. I’d believed for so long that Saint was evil, and knowing that he felt bad about his death should’ve seemed like a betrayal.
But I knew I felt the same way. A glimmer of regret that things couldn’t have worked out differently between us.
That Saint had made the ultimate sacrifice.
There was something else that caught my eye, though. The green beams were all coming from an area right in the middle of the mothership. The more I looked, the more I realized that there were gaps in the body of the mothership, and I could see the source. It was far away, but I could get there. I knew I could make it.
“Come on,” Cassie said. “We have to keep going, while we still can.”
I took a deep breath and pointed up at that source in the middle of the mothership. “Whatever’s creating those beams of energy, I think it’s right there.”
“Which means?” Stone asked.
“Which means that’s where I have to go.”
I saw their faces turning, then. The confusion kicking in. “Where we need to go, you mean?”
I looked around at them. “You’ve seen what’s happening down there on earth. We need ULTRAs down there to defend it, just in case.”
Cassie shook her head. “I’m not leaving your side.”
“You have to. If you care about Earth at all, you have to.”
“And what’re you gonna do?” Daniel asked. Even he sounded concerned, now. “What’s your plan?”
I looked up at that energy ball right in the middle of the green beams. I could see the tenth—and presumably final—beam charging up, readying to fire.
“I’m going to go up there,” I said. “I’m going to stop that final beam from getting anywhere near Earth. And then I’m going to take down Alternate Kyle, once and for all.”
Cassie shook her head. She was crying now. “I can’t let you leave, little brother. I can’t let you just do this.”
“You have to.”
She turned around.
It was Orion who spoke.
He was looking at me like he’d looked at me when I thought he’d died that day, when Saint sent him into that wormhole. I knew our roles had been reversed, now. But that this time, what was happening had to happen. It was the only way any of us were going to survive.
No. Survival was off the plate now. I’d accepted that much.
But we were going to save Earth.
That was the important thing.
“As long as we’re by Kyle’s side, we hold him back,” Orion said. “We weigh him down with emotion and with responsibility. Sometimes, they are good things. But Kyle needs to do this alone.”
Cassie covered her face with her hands. Daniel didn’t look best pleased, either.
I floated down to Cassie’s side, and I held her.
“I’m going to save the world, sis,” I said. “Even if it is the end of me, I’m going to save it. But I need your help with that. Just in case. Okay?”
She looked at me then, from behind tear-covered hands. “You’re not coming back, are you? None of us are?”
I smiled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t say that. Just… just believe. In yourself. In all of us. Because if I hadn’t believed in myself—if I hadn’t got over my doubt—I wouldn’t be here right now. None of us would.”
She smiled back at me then, and I felt like I was young again, listening to her advice as we sat together by that swimming pool.
Then I heard a crack, and saw a flash of light.
The tenth green beam flew out from the center of the mothership and powered toward Earth.
My body tensed up. “There’s no more time for goodbyes. No more time for anything. You have… you have to get down there.”
Stone nodded. He flew up to me and patted my shoulder. “We’ll fight for you, kid. As long as you fight for us.”
“Always.”
Roadrunner followed, hugging me briefly before shooting off. And then Daniel appeared in front of me.
He stretched out a hand. “Goodbye, I guess.”
I pulled him toward me and held him tight. “Goodbye, brother. And you do something for me. You get Ellicia. You keep her safe. You promise.”
Then it was just Orion and Cassie left.
Neither of them came to me. Instead, they just stayed where they were, looking at me as the rest of the Resistance headed down to battle.
“What?” I asked. “You aren’t going to say goodbye at all?”
“I won’t say goodbye,” Cassie said. “Because I believe I’ll see you again, real soon.”
She smiled. And before I could go over and hug her, she vanished.
Then it was just Orion and me.
“Aren't you going, too?”
He hesitated. Floated toward me a little, then back.
And then finally he flew to my side.
“I’d never leave my son to fight alone.”
“But you said—”
“Don’t argue with me. Just… There’s no more time. We know what we have to do.”
I wanted to argue with Orion, to tell him to get back down to Earth.
Instead, I hugged him; then I held his hand.
Together, we faced the mothership.
Together, we faced the source of those green light beams as they wreaked havoc on the Earth below.
Together, we stared death right in its eyes.
And then we shot up inside the mothership and into the abyss.
46
Orion and I flew toward the source in the center of the mothership. But even as we progressed, relatively conflict-free up to now, there was still a feeling like this was big. Like we were a part of something momentous.
But at the same time, it also felt like we were on our final journey, and that however it ended, it wasn’t going to end well for everyone.
We flew through the cracks in the center of the mothership and headed toward the huge beam of light in the middle. Since the ten massive bolts of energy had flown down into Earth, the mothership seemed to have taken on a different form completely. It wasn’t so much a mothership anymore as a huge cannon of destructive energy.
As I flew past the energy be
am—the one dragging the humans and everything else up from Earth—I wondered whether this was Alternate Kyle’s plan all along. Teleport the people away from Earth to some other place—a place he knew about. Then, destroy what was left of the planet.
I could empathize with him that it might seem like the quickest and most convenient way to solve a supposed ULTRA threat.
But this was Earth.
This was my home. Everyone’s home.
I wasn’t just going to stand by and watch it get destroyed.
I was way, way past just standing by, even if it killed me.
Orion flew alongside me. Part of me was relieved to have him by my side. After all, it helped to have company when you were going to battle. But another part of me couldn’t help fearing for him.
I’d lost him once. Twice, if you count the time I’d been dragged away from him as a baby. I didn’t want to lose him again.
He looked at me, then, and for just a second, I saw a smile.
Then something hit him.
Dread punched me in the gut. I stopped right away, not steadily, but just getting my bearings. I looked down at the spot where he’d been.
I saw then that Orion was in some kind of solid state. His hands were either side of his head. His legs were tied together by some kind of invisible force.
But his eyes were straining toward me.
“Orion,” I said. I flew back down to him. I couldn’t just leave him here. I had to fight.
As I got closer, I saw that his eyes weren’t straining at me at all.
They were straining behind me.
My body went cold.
After a few seconds of realization and of dread, I turned around, slowly.
Alternate Kyle was hovering right in front of the huge, blinding ball of energy.
We were still for a second, both of us. It was as if we were hoping by just floating there, we could each avoid the inevitable battle that was to follow.
I waited longer, totally still. In the corner of my eye, I could see the flashes down on Earth, and I didn’t want to look at them because I didn’t want to accept.
Then I saw Alternate Kyle tense his fists, and ice stretch up his arms.
