by Forbes West
“Go get changed,” Guy says, dishing out a ton of Dii-Yaa. “They got complimentary stuff inside for you.” He points to two nearby locker rooms with a male or female logo on each stone door.
You take the cash and remark, “I’ll pay you back. You’re being too generous.”
“I know.”
After changing, you jump into the Arc Waters wearing a black one-piece bathing suit and a smile. Holding onto the preserver, you shoot up through the waters, going quickly into the air until you hit the top end of the water arc that hangs suspended in the sky. You slip into the life preserver ring and start swimming. The giant pool, literally hanging in mid-air, gives an incredible view of the whole area. The water is cool but warm enough.
Guy pops up next to you, putting himself through his life preserver. He put his sunglasses back on after holding them in his hands. His toned body is easy and pleasant to look at. He’s attractive enough to be in Hollywood as a second string leading man—he wouldn’t be the hottest celebrity in the world but one that could carry a decent fan base.
Maybe twenty or thirty feet below you can see the pool and the courtyard. Off to the south you see the beaches of Stonetown.
You and Guy swim aimlessly across the Arc Waters as they change in color from black to purple to red, and reach the other side. There are more than a few floating islands made of barrels scattered around the waters, and lifeguard towers manned by both human and Ni-Perchta watching to see if anyone is about to drown. Some of the barrel areas are pretty large—big enough to hold a couple of picnic tables along with snack stands.
You swim to the outer edge of the pool, afraid at first that you will simply topple over the edge, but when you see a couple of swimmers holding on to an invisible wall, you go up to it. Guy keeps next to you, quite relaxed.
It is morning still, a bright sunny morning. A couple of moons hang indistinct in the southern sky. Just then you hear a murmur in the air from some of the other swimmers and then some gasps.
Coming out of the west is a herd of Baleen dragons, the multi-ton creatures that are colored a dull grey-green with oversized, toothless jaws. They have wingspans up to forty feet. Their spiked leathery wings beat against the air with a rhythmic thumping, and they call out to each other with sounds like whale song.
Flying just above the great sea, they lower their heads just under the waves, sucking in water and then letting it flow out from their mouths. The water trickles back into the sea in little streams, along with a few fish filtered out from their jaws. They ignore the small crowds on the nearby beach. These dragons are not meat eaters or vicious carnivores, so you have heard. Having never seen one before, but knowing what is described in books, you guess that the people aren’t really in danger.
A few of the dragons stop and stand in a shallow part of the sea close to the beach, dunking their heads into the water and then out again. You watch in amazement, hearing nothing but the dragons chattering to each other. The other swimmers watch, astonished.
Guy laughs. “That time of the year again. Damn, look at these guys.”
A lifeguard calls out to one of the other swimmers. “Don’t worry, they’re harmless, just like to eat shrimp.”
Guy motions to you. “You want something to eat? We can swim up to one of those little islands there.” He points to one of the floating barrel areas that has a wooden snack shack on it.
“Yes, starving.”
He starts off for one of the shacks marked Eggs up in the Air. You tread water with the life preserver around you, looking out at everything, feeling mildly content. Then you follow Guy over to the shack, pulling yourself up onto the platform, and sit down at one of the picnic tables. Guy pays for the food with money out of a clear plastic pouch tied around his wrist. You eat in near silence on that beautiful morning, enjoying the sunshine and everything around you.
You open up the conversation with a random question. “Guy, I just thought of something.”
“Noh?” he says with a mouthful of eggs. He leans back, scratching one of his nipples.
“Mathias and Petty,” is all you say. “What Jaime said.”
Guy raises an eyebrow. “I was there.” You laugh a little.
He takes off his glasses, focusing on you very intensely and setting his fork down. “What do you want to talk about, Sarah?”
“One big cash out,” you say. “You’ve seen the wanted posters—millions in Dii-Yaa. Those people want us dead. They killed Saki’s family, and we know where they are now. They won’t expect us to come swooping in.” A cool wind blows in. “We all want them dead. For poor Saki’s family, Saki herself. If she doesn’t pull out of the, you know. And for Winniefreddie. All these innocent people. But at the same time, Guy...”
Guy bites his lip, thinking, and then leans forward. “There’s still a big X factor over all of this, Sarah.”
“What?” you whisper.
He looks off to the west. “You realize how dangerous these people are, don’t you?”
You frown. “No, I really don’t,” you say sarcastically.
“The portal between Earth and The Oberon opens in June. We—me, you, Treena, Saki—could just take our money and go. Before anything else weird or bad happens. Stop being so effing greedy.”
“You walk around without a gun in hand. I don’t see you worried.”
He points to the very normal-looking digital, and presumably waterproof, watch that you now notice him wearing. “Specially made, Sarah. Get it? You won’t ever see me take off this watch, okay? It’s got a little slice of T-K orichalcum in it.”
“Alright, alright,” you say, turning to your eggs and concentrating on eating for a while.
“You ever had a near death experience, Guy? I mean, yes, you did. You remember what it’s like almost to head into…into nothing?” You shiver a little, still wet from the Arc Waters.
Guy looks a little angry. “I had an arrow shot through my face. So the answer is yes.”
“You remember why you were scared, Guy? Do you remember why?” You look across the still waters. “Because at that moment when you are about to die, you realize, all at once, that you haven’t done much with what time you’ve had. And there’ll be nothing afterwards. You will be canceled out forever. Washed away by the flood.”
Guy clears his throat. “Yeah, sure.”
“What if we get all that money from doing you-know-what to Mathias and Petty, and we take that money and figure out a way to put it to good use. Then we can make sure that the next time we see death we do have a life worth reflecting on. Besides killing them for what they did to Saki and her family. Otherwise, there’s just a ticking clock.”
Guy pushes his food away. A Ni-Perchta girl, around ten years old, picks up the plate and takes it back to the shack. The human owner barks something harsh at her and hits her lightly upside the head with the back of his meaty hand.
“Let me think about it,” Guy says, standing up and leaving a tip from his plastic pouch. His voice is cold as he says this, and he leaves you there at the picnic table. You call out in front of everyone on the barrel island, “You’re not scared, are you?” A couple of people glance in your direction.
With preserver in hand, Guy jumps off the side and into the water again with a splash, swimming away from you and all the way to the invisible wall at the far end of the Arc Waters.
You can see him thinking, looking out over the wall and then back to you. A constant frown decorates his face. You grab your life preserver and jump back into the water to swim over to him. You say a moment later, “I honestly am sorry. That was just mean.”
“Surrender, Sarah Orange! Surrender, Guy Farson!” strange, modulated voices, loud as thunder, cry out like a chorus from Hell.
Three people wrapped in black cloaks fly across the sky, arms out, legs spread apart as if standing. A device across each of their belts emits a red glow. They don’t seem to know where you two are at first, so you swim forward as casually as you can. The fliers attract the
notice of some of the Baleen dragons on the other side of the Urncalles.
“Surrender, Sarah Orange! Surrender, Guy Farson!” the voices continue to yell.
Guy curses under his breath. “Keep going to the wall. I can figure out somethin’.”
You swim towards the invisible wall, as apprehensive and frightened as Guy is.
The fliers then yell something in Perchta so loudly that you think your eardrums will burst. A great white light pours out from each flier into the waters, sending a slow shockwave that freezes people in place.
The men, women, and children who were swimming now stare emptily, frozen as if dead. Some of the swimmers are face down in the water. One of the fliers peels off to flip them over using telekinesis, so that they won’t drown. You don’t know what to make of that.
You feel for the invisible wall and pull yourself out of the water, leaving the life preserver behind just as the shockwave crashes forward. But Guy is too late and is struck by it, freezing into place. You stand seemingly on nothing at all, though it feels solid under your feet. You hold up your hands and cry out, “Alright, alright, don’t hurt anyone! We’re here!” It is at least a couple of hundred feet down to the Quadling Sea below. You already feel like you’re standing on thin air on the non-existent wall, and it makes your head swim.
The three fliers converge, and you feel yourself being picked up and lifted straight into the air. You curse yourself for being a fool. Guy is picked up by another flier, his drooping body dripping water as he is hauled up.
Then one of the Baleen dragons, perhaps attracted by the noise and the commotion, swoops in out of nowhere, its wings beating the air, and knocks two fliers out of position. The two of them spin around like propellers. The dragon isn’t aggressive, just a curious and completely oversized beast seeing what the commotion is.
You fall backwards onto the invisible wall, hitting your back and almost going off the wide edge.
The fliers motion for the dragon to go away, but it doesn’t. One of the frustrated fliers sprays fire into the dragon’s face, trying to make it move along faster, while another flier shoots bolts of white electricity at it. The creature hisses in pain as it tries to back off. All they’ve done is anger it, and it knocks into one flier with its giant head. The flier goes down into the Arc Waters with a splash. As it hits the water, the swimmers become unfrozen all at once, screaming and crying with fear. Guy wakes up and tries to re-orient himself. The other fliers decide to keep fighting the dragon that is now calling out in a singsong rumble to its kin. They fly in to protect him. One flier only just avoids being swatted with the wave of a giant dragon wing. There are now five dragons swooping around the Arc Waters, terrifying everyone who is there.
One flier manages to shoot off what looks like a small meteor from his ori-baton and hits one of the dragons in the wing, which is left partially shredded as if it’s been popped by a shotgun blast. The dragon keeps flying forward but is sinking in the air little by little. It tries to glide to the sea below by diving between the Arc Waters and the Urncalles.
You watch in fright, lying on the invisible wall. Guy grabs your hand and pulls you up with a jerk.
The fliers are driving the dragons away; soon they will re-focus on you and Guy.
An incredible kaleidoscope of light erupts around one flier, who transforms into a giant, white, hydra-like monster, ready to fight off the dragons. Each one of its spiked serpent heads covered in thousands of white scales bites one dragon on its neck with needle-like teeth.
The wounded dragon flies maybe ten feet under the Arc Waters and above the baths. In two seconds it will be directly underneath you and Guy. It is in agony and looks to be descending into the Quadling Sea below.
“Grab onto that dragon!” you say, pointing to the dragon angling between the land bridge and the Arc Waters. Roll the dice, Sarah, you think. Guy understands; he extends out a small radio antenna from his watch. You take a deep breath, say the Hail Mary, and grab his arm. You look into the sky that is such a bright blue and think to yourself, there could be worse ways to die. And on uglier, less scenic days.
You two jump off the ledge, and Guy screams. You are falling faster and faster. You feel the wind fly through your hair. You know that the most likely thing to happen to you is that you are going to die, and crazily, you think that if you survive this then your future is going to get better and better because this is the worst thing you have ever been through.
You fall end over end, a limp creature, crashing towards the water at a high speed. There is no life reflection, just the conscious thought that you are falling forever.
And then Guy’s watch pays off. With the telekinesis power of the watch, he grabs onto the dragon’s remaining wing just as it’s diving back towards the Quadling Sea. You grab onto a protruding bone, or whatever is sticking out of its side. In five seconds you’re both knocked off, but the dragon is losing so much altitude that instead of falling two hundred feet, you roll off and hit the sea from a somewhat more reasonable twenty feet.
You crash into the water as loosely as a drunk flying from his unbuckled car seat into the night air, closely followed by Guy. You go under the water, deep under, and hear nothing but the rush of water past your ears. There is no breath inside your lungs; all the air was sucked out by the impact. Panic sets in at the volume of water above you, and you almost black out as you swim upwards. As you break the surface, you suck air like a dying fish and, unable to move forward, rely on the waves to push you towards the empty beach. It is a good five minutes before you touch land again. Guy swims next to you.
The wounded dragon is in the sea, sitting low in the deep water and crying out, its dinosaur growling echoing throughout the scene.
Above you, five dragons circle the top of the Arc Waters, calling out to each other in their whale song and roaring in pain as they fight against the fliers. The white serpent creature is putting up a hell of a fight, but then it suddenly disappears. You think you see the flier it had once been get knocked backwards through the air before re-orienting himself. The three fliers then flee the scene, booming back to wherever they came from.
Your body hurts badly and you shake like a leaf, but you stand up and walk towards one of the Stonetown gates. Guy hugs you. “You, holy, holy, good god,” he keeps saying. He stares wide-eyed at the whole scene. “Still alive.” Then he throws up, right onto the sand.
Treena runs over to you. She has on way too much sunblock and wears a big floppy sun hat. “Well! I thought it had something to do with you two,” she says. Her own ori- baton is out. “Goodness. Nice look, Sarah.”
“Good to see you,” you say, before dry heaving a little. “Christ. Eggs and all that.”
Guy sits down, as white as the sand he is sitting on. “Bastards need to be shut down. I think it’s time we collect that reward money for them.”
Treena breathes heavily. “You sure it’s them?”
“What the hell do you think? They want us for some reason. First they wanted to murder us, now they want to capture and then murder us. Who else would it be, Treena?”
She blinks a few times and watches the dragons as they leave Quadling.
Chapter Eighteen:
Death by Water
You sit down with Jaime and Guy to talk over Jaime’s story one more time. “They’re working at McRoss Research Station. That’s all they said.”
Jaime asks if you are in trouble or need anything, and you tell him no as the three of you sit at a rooftop bar in Stonetown. No one else is there. The Ni-Perchta bartender left after you paid him to.
Jaime asks to come with you. “We’re old friends, aren’t we? A little more than that in some ways? If you are in trouble...”
You and Guy lay out everything that’s happened so far and let Jaime make an informed decision, which he does.
“Well, I mean they’re gonna attack ya, so you better give ‘em a quick short sharp shock, so they don’t do it again?” You look at him carefully, feeling very p
aranoid and very open to attack right at this moment. The great wide open sky is all around you, making you feel insecure.
“Back to McRoss Station, then.” Jaime takes out his sketch pad, showing off an elaborate drawing of it. “They just got back up to full operation.”
“You know the Old Man at Midnight?” you ask.
“The pirate radio guy?” Jaime asks, scratching his head. “No, why?”
“He was an…not an overseer, uh, a whatcha call it? Caretaker, during the off months,” you reply, sipping on your lemonade.
Jaime shakes his head. “I didn’t see him there. Just Boston and Love. There were three other people stopping by, uh, three Network people. They said they were going to go back around this time. They were nervous, jumpy people. I got a weird vibe off them, and I just lied and gave them a totally different name as I left. I got there on this Triumph bike I inherited, a nice little…”
Guy shushes him. “That’s good.” He looks at you. “You ever shot a gun before, Jaime?”
Jaime leans forward. “I was really hoping you would ask me that,” he whispers.
You nod and look to Guy, who immediately stands up, whips out his ori-baton and puts it right next to Jaime’s neck.
“What was the one thing you told me before you left that night at Mission Friendship?” You look around at the other rooftops to see if anyone has spotted you.
Jaime squints and thinks long and hard. “This isn’t Earth, this is a cool situation.” He seems not the least bit worried, like he is enjoying this a little bit too much. He winks at you. “Alright, Cutie McCutes.”
You exhale deeply. Guy puts his baton away. “Sorry, dude. Me and Sarah had a suspicion. You might be somebody else. I mean you show up and then they show up. Must be something else, then. Something tracking us.”
A thought dawns on you, something that has been nagging you for a little while now.
* * *
Down at the docks, you and Jaime, Treena and Guy sit in the wheelhouse of the S.B. Crue. Even though the sun is falling down in the west, the air is humid and you wipe your neck with a cool towel. An evening rain comes down, despite the almost sunny skies.
