by Matt Blake
I did the same in turn.
But it was already too late. Alternate Kyle had fired the first shot in this stand-off, sending a flurry of small, sharp ice daggers down in my direction.
A few of them hit me, slicing at my face. But once I’d steadied myself, I batted them away, sending them into the sides of the mothership before flying up toward Alternate Kyle myself.
He sent more shots of ice down at me, each of them getting thicker and sharper with every shot. One hit from one of those things and it could be enough to take me down for just as long as Alternate Kyle needed to finish me off.
“You’ll never win,” he shouted. “This is the future for you. This is inevitable. There’s no point resisting. Not anymore.”
I tensed my jaw. “Only problem is, you don’t know how this plays out, do you?”
I saw Alternate Kyle’s eyebrows narrow, like he was trying to wrap his head around another facet of time travel—and hell was time travel confusing.
In his moment of confusion, I clapped my hands and opened up a tornado of a whirlpool right beneath him.
Alternate Kyle struggled as the whirlpool of energy sucked him in. He tried to shoot his powers, but he kept on descending into it.
Adrenaline filled my body. My heart pounded. “Is that it? Is that all you’ve g…”
I stopped when I saw him click his fingers and turn the whirlpool into ice.
Then, the whirlpool smashed apart, and he came flying at me, daggers of light in his palms.
I braced myself and covered myself in a shield. I looked over my shoulder quickly, just to see if Orion was okay.
He was still beneath me. Still in that trapped state. Still—
I felt something hit my right side, and I knew already that it was Alternate Kyle.
I went flying down, back down the way I’d come from. As I hurtled down from such a dizzying height, I saw myself getting closer to Orion. I needed to stay away from him. This wasn’t his battle. This was my battle. I had to fight for him.
I stuck out my arms and, telekinetically, I grabbed at the sides of the metal mothership, trying to slow down my descent.
I heard the metal screeching as the claws of my mind held on to it. And soon, I came to a total stop.
But I heard a whooshing sound, and I knew Alternate Kyle was right over my shoulder.
I spun around and immediately blasted three bolts of energy toward him.
He dodged them, like they were nothing more than balloons.
He landed on me then and grabbed my chest. He pulled me in his direction, staring into my eyes. “That’s your problem, at this stage of your life. You still aren’t strong enough. You still don’t believe in yourself. Because you’re just puny Kyle Peters, and you never stop needing to be Glacies, or Hielo, or one of your many other identities. You try to be strong enough as Kyle Peters, but you always, always end up going back to an alternate identity. And that will be your downfall. Trust me. I know.”
He punched me then, right in the middle of my head.
And when my head rolled back, I saw Earth right beneath me.
I saw more of those humans shooting up through those green lights.
And on the surface of the Earth, I saw explosions and storms and lightning.
I saw a world dying.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I felt that tingling sensation starting to split through my body. I pulled my head forward, turned to face Alternate Kyle. I could feel the ice forming on my hands, a wormhole opening up behind him. I knew this was it. I knew he didn’t understand, somehow. I knew I was strong enough.
“Give up,” he said. But there was less certainty to his voice now. “You’ll never win.”
My entire body vibrated. I focused on those vibrations, readied to unleash the power I was bottling up within. “I’ll never give up,” I said. “And you’ll never—”
Another crack smacked into my face.
In the click of a finger, the vibrations stopped.
My energy stopped.
And I was weak once again.
I gasped, spitting blood from my lips into the floating atmosphere. I tried to trigger the vibrations again—
Another punch, right across my face.
I went dizzy. I started to spit out more blood in my mouth. I could feel something floating around between my lips, and I realized right away that it was a broken tooth.
“This is what you get when you resist the inevitable,” Alternate Kyle said.
He punched me again. Hard.
“This is what you get when you fight the truth.”
And then another punch. This one even harder. And before I knew it, I wasn’t in space at all, I was with Cassie and Ellicia and Avi and Damon and Dad and everyone, and we were all relaxed, all happy, all…
“This is what you…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what Alternate Kyle had to say.
By that point, I was gone.
47
Daniel looked at the destruction on Earth and for the first time in a long time, he actually felt afraid.
It was the middle of the afternoon, but it was impossible to tell that from the thick black clouds above. Lightning struck at a rapid pace, slamming into buildings and hitting the surface of the water. There was a constant sound of screaming in the air, which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
And worst of all?
Those green beams, which were dragging humanity up through, toward whatever the future held for them.
Daniel watched as people were dragged up through those beams. It looked like they were in some kind of trance. And he found himself thankful that they weren’t conscious to witness the destruction of Earth. Which was weird in a way, because it made him realize just how far he’d come.
He used to be so hateful of other people. He used to allow himself to be bullied and trodden on, and then when he realized the abilities he was capable of, he lashed back at humanity, hoping to put them all down and rule over the planet for himself.
But that was different, now. And that difference spawned because he’d seen the kindness other people were capable of. He’d seen the levels of forgiveness they were willing to go to.
And sure. People had given him a rough time when he’d been in school.
But they were just bullies.
Bullies were still around. Only now, he’d made it his duty to fight them, instead of lashing out at people who didn’t have those tendencies.
He looked from the rooftop of the Rockefeller. Across the city, explosion after explosion. He wanted to fight, like Kyle had told him to. But the truth was, he couldn’t. None of them could. Something happened to their abilities the second they returned to Earth’s atmosphere. And now, he couldn’t even fly. It was like he’d lost control of himself, piece by awful piece.
“Daniel?”
He turned around and saw Stone walking toward him.
He staggered back when he saw what Stone was holding at first. Or rather, who Stone was holding.
He knew Kyle would never forgive him.
Ellicia was still on Earth.
She was in Stone’s arms. Stone had been pulling her down, stopping her from disappearing into one of those green beams.
Ellicia had gone completely pale. Veiny marks stretched right across her face. She looked ill. Very ill.
“Is she still…” Daniel asked.
Stone nodded. “Just about. But her heartbeat’s low.”
Daniel’s stomach sank. “She’s still here at least.”
“Daniel, we need to seriously start thinking about—”
“No,” he said.
He saw the disapproving looks from the rest of the ULTRAs behind Stone.
Stone shook his head. He was clearly struggling to hold her down himself. Somehow, he’d managed to hold on to some of his abilities. But as for how long that would last… no-one knew.
“It’s unfair. Unfair to keep her down here if it’s doing her damage.”<
br />
“I made a promise.”
“It’s time you reconsidered that pr—”
“No,” he said.
He stepped right up to Stone, then, as explosions echoed behind him. The light from the green beam was burning, intense. “We hold onto her. We keep her here. We don’t just let her go. We don’t give up.”
Stone narrowed his eyes. He looked like he was about to make one of those sarcastic, grumpy remarks.
Instead, he just sighed and nodded. “Better hope Kyle comes through. I don’t… I don’t think I have much longer left.”
Daniel turned around and looked up at the sky, right up at that small black dot where he knew the mothership was.
“Come on, Kyle,” he muttered, as he heard Ellicia yelp with pain in her state of unconsciousness. “Come on. Please.”
48
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.
And that monster was me.
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. I knew where those blasts and screams were coming from. Earth. I could hear Earth hurting, even this far away, right from the mothership.
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.
But it was the eyes that scared me more than anything.
There was nothing grandiose about these eyes. There was nothing menacing about them, to the average person. It was their familiarity that got to me more than anything. I’d looked into these eyes before, a number of times. I’d stared into them, and they’d stared back at me.
They were my eyes.
And now they were the eyes that were looking at me as I struggled for my final breaths.
“It’s over,” Alternate Kyle’s deep, gruff voice said. “Don’t fight it. This is the only way it happens. This is the way it’s always happened. Just… release.”
I didn’t want to stop fighting, as much as giving up any resistance would be the easy option here. So I gritted my teeth and kept my focus on those eyes, like I had so many times already. “N… never.”
The hand around my neck loosened just enough for me to catch some breath. I coughed, then I felt vomit trickling up and out of my mouth, stilling my quest for a good lungful of air.
When I’d spewed up, the grip tightened once again, and I was pinned back hard against a solid wall.
As I was held there, I wondered what I had done to deserve this life. I was Kyle Peters. I wasn’t even in my twenties, and yet somehow, I was the strongest ULTRA in existence—at least people thought, and at least people expected. I didn’t ask to be Glacies. Glacies just became me.
I’d been dealt these cards, and now I was being forced to live with them. Now, I was being forced to accept who I was. But also something else.
I was being forced to accept that I wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped—or as the world hoped—all along.
“All these years of resisting instead of living,” Alternate Kyle said. “Now, it’s time to stop. It’s time to hand yourself over. So stop resisting, Kyle. End the pain. For yourself. For your family.”
The mention of my family made me feel a warmth deep inside. But it was a warmth tinged with sadness. After all, my family had been torn apart, all because of me. It had been decimated, all because of me.
I felt a tear roll down my cheek when I thought of Ellicia, Dad, Damon, Avi, Cassie, Daniel, Orion, and all my old friends from the Resistance. “I can’t stop fighting. For… for their sakes. I can’t give up.”
Alternate Kyle chuckled, then. As he did, the room lit up, and I saw my surroundings for the first time in God-knows-how-long. I was in some kind of dark cavern. It was massive. It stretched as tall as I could see, and the walls were further away than I could perceive. The sheer size of this place was enough to make the hairs on my arms stand on end, purely because something this big wasn’t human. It wasn’t manmade. It was alien. Totally alien.
The scariest thing about it, though?
That bright light, shining right in the middle of this cavernous void.
And yet…
“I can’t give up,” I said. “And I won’t give up.”
I held my breath and thought of all the pain in my life. As I thought of the pain—and there was a lot of it, not least the pain I’d felt these last few days, some of the purest pain of all—I felt my powers getting stronger once again. I could feel them charging up. I could feel the ice creeping down my spine, stretching down my arms, scaling my fingers, tickling my fingertips.
I went to lift my arms and fire at Alternate Kyle.
His grip around my neck loosened completely. I felt my stomach turn as I dropped down below. Immediately, I triggered my flight powers, needing to regain some sense of composure.
But nothing happened.
I was still falling.
I felt my stomach drop as I crashed toward the ground. I shouted out and lifted my hands in the air, trying to fire some kind of ice to the roof of this cavern.
But the cavern walls and ceilings were just too high.
The ice didn’t grip with the walls.
I kept on falling.
As I fell, fear filling my body, scrambling from side to side, for a moment, I felt a sense of calm. It was weird and totally unexpected, but it was there.
Calm, because soon, there’d be nothing left of me.
Calm, because I wouldn’t have to fight any longer.
And, ultimately, the position of not having to fight any longer was what I’d been striving toward all this time, right?
The cavern floor grew rapidly closer as I hurtled through the air toward it.
Sadness filled my body. I felt more tears roll down my cheeks, my throat wobbling. “I love you…” I started, intending to say “Mom” or “Dad” or “Ellicia” or anyone after it.
But in the end, there were so many people I loved that I couldn’t say a thing.
I looked up. Above, I saw that total pitch black darkness again.
I felt the fear creeping up into my chest.
I held my breath.
Then, I fired one last shot of ice right up toward the ceiling.
I stopped.
Confusion filled my body. I spun left and right, still gasping in the darkness as I hovered there, totally static. Did I do it? Did the ice stick?
Then the face appeared in front of me all over again.
They were smiling, now. I could tell they were smiling because they didn’t have their mask on, not anymore.
Their smile made my body shake. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. It was like they had me wrapped up in some hypnotic trance.
They grabbed my neck again. I battled for that final breath. I didn’t get a lungful.
“You should’ve given up when I gave you the opportunity,” Alternate Kyle said. “You were a fool for fighting. Now, we do things the hard way.”
Alternate Kyle stretched out his hand and pressed it against my chest.
Immediately, I felt a searing pain stretch through my body, and
I lurched from side to side. “You won’t win!” I shouted. “You’ll never win!”
Alternate Kyle smiled again, his hand still pressed against my chest. “That’s where you’re wrong, Kyle Peters. And this is where it ends for you, I’m afraid. It’s been nice knowing you. But really, it’s time.”
The burning sensation in my chest spread right across my body. I tried to spark my powers, but the burning just seemed to melt my ice right away. I tried to teleport, but I couldn’t. I was just too weak.
“You won’t win,” I shouted. “You won’t…”
There was nothing else to say. I didn’t even have the strength to speak now.
Alternate Kyle pushed his hand further into my chest.
More pain.
More fear.
More weakness.
I saw a light blue glow illuminate in front of me, then. I felt sick right away. I knew what this was.
The end.
My defeat.
My imminent destruction.
“You’ve already lost,” Alternate Kyle said, dragging the blue light from my body like he was taking away my innards. “Goodbye, Kyle Peters. Goodnight. This is where your story ends.”
The last of the blue light was dragged from my body.
This is where your story ends…
I was starting to believe it, as my body gave up fighting, and darkness closed in.
But then something happened.
I opened my eyes.
I wasn’t sure what gave me the strength to just open my eyes. It didn’t feel like any kind of grand gesture. It just felt like… well, like what I had to do.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Alternate Kyle hovering opposite me.
He was holding his fists together. I couldn’t breathe, so I figured he was suffocating me.
And yet, somehow, it just didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter because I wasn’t afraid anymore.
Somehow, I wasn’t afraid…
I lifted a hand then, my heart pounding.
I put it on my neck and gripped at the invisible, telekinetic force wrapped around it.
I dug my nails in. I dragged it away. And as I did, I saw the confusion on Alternate Kyle’s face. As far as he was concerned, this wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t how it ended.
