“Yes,” Saint Dane declared. “We’ll then move on to other territories and repeat the process.”
The smoke surrounding the flume began to whirl, creating a tornado-like effect around the mouth of the tunnel. The light from down below grew brighter.
“Fear is such an effective tool, don’t you think?” Saint Dane remarked. “It certainly worked to fill that stadium with thousands of people for this demonstration. Though I suppose the lion’s share of credit belongs to the professor here.”
Professor Gastigian finally stirred. He had been lying on the deck of the helicopter since being thrown inside. I thought he had been too frightened to move. Not anymore. He sat up slowly, looked at me, and smiled. He actually smiled. It was a totally odd reaction. His cause was lost. His movement crushed. His glorious, peaceful demonstration had come crashing down around him. Yet he sat there looking as if it didn’t bother him at all.
I lied before. There were still some things that surprised me.
As he sat on the floor of that helicopter, Professor Haig Gastigian began to transform. My stomach dropped. The nightmare had gotten worse. Seconds later the professor was gone.
In his place was Nevva Winter.
I fell against the side of the chopper, as if I had been pushed. I had seen many things as a Traveler. None shocked me as much as this.
“Well done, Nevva,” Saint Dane said. “You throw quite a party.”
Nevva stood up and brushed off her pants. She wore a dark suit, much like Saint Dane’s. Her dark hair was as perfect as always.
“Thank you,” she replied. “It really is gratifying when a plan is realized with such perfection.”
“I never doubted it,” Saint Dane replied.
I was spinning out of control. Any sense of reality was long gone. I needed to grab on to something solid or I’d go out of my mind.
“H-How long?” I croaked.
“How long was I Professor Gastigian?” Nevva asked. “About a year. Long enough to use his network to arrange this rally.”
“This was all a setup?” I gasped. “All the speeches against the Ravinians, all the protests, all the interviews—it was just to get these people to trust you so you could lure them here?”
Nevva smiled innocently and nodded.
Saint Dane had done many horrible things. He set tribes against one another. Races against one another. Even criminals against one another. This was the single most heinous act yet. He and Nevva Winter had arranged a cold-blooded mass murder, the likes of which never had been seen anywhere in Halla. Calling them monsters would be a compliment. Together, they were the physical embodiment of evil. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at either of them. I turned back toward the window to see the mouth of the flume was glowing. Through the light, I saw the faint hints of the sparkling tunnel walls that had turned to crystal.
It was beginning to pull.
The people felt it. This giant, impossible hole in the center of the field was drawing them toward the edge. It wasn’t dramatic, but it was relentless. The people didn’t realize what was happening at first. They grabbed on to railings; they hugged each other; they clawed at the ground—all to keep from being pulled into the swirling smoke and light. I was grateful for the sounds of the helicopter rotors. It meant I couldn’t hear their screams.
“Nevva, my love!” Naymeer exclaimed.
The old man stepped out of the cockpit. He went right to Nevva with his arms open, as if greeting a long-lost daughter. Or long-lost nanny. Nevva had raised him on First Earth. “This could not have gone better. I trust you weren’t jostled too roughly.”
“Not a bit, Alexander. Congratulations.”
“To us all!” Naymeer declared.
My back was to the fuselage wall. I think I would have fallen over without that support. My heart raced. I was breathing so hard I was hyperventilating. Below us, thousands of people were being pulled to their deaths, and the people up here were chitchatting casually like old chums. I looked sideways out the window to see people being pulled along the grass, digging their hands in, desperately trying to stop themselves. They were going to lose. I saw people tumbling down from the upper decks, falling into the crowd below. Other people hung on to railings, dangling dangerously over the side, as the insistent force kept pulling at them.
Naymeer hurried to the window near me and looked below. He frowned. “Isn’t this over yet?” he grumbled impatiently. “I should be at the United Nations by now. Or the White House. Or anywhere with a camera where I can speak to the world. How long will this take?”
The guy was talking about the terror below as if it were nothing more than a minor annoyance.
“Soon enough, Alexander,” Nevva said with a chuckle. “You always were such an impatient boy.”
“Alexander,” Naymeer repeated thoughtfully. “Such a common name. Perhaps I should be knighted. How does Sir Alexander strike you?”
“If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll have,” Saint Dane assured him. “You deserve nothing less.”
Naymeer smiled, satisfied. He glanced down again and exclaimed, “Look! It’s like they’re being pulled down the drain of a sink. It looks quite silly actually.”
That’s when I snapped.
In that one instant, my swirl of confusion and shock and horror grew focused. It became rage. Everything that had happened in the previous few fateful minutes flashed through my head in fast forward. The sad faces of the people below, the UN announcement, Saint Dane munching popcorn, the predatory helicopters, the red shirts, the fear, the panic, the looks on the faces of so many people who’d had no idea that they were being lured into a trap, Naymeer’s ring, the new, monstrous flume, Nevva.
Nevva Winter.
Maybe above all, I remembered the violent death of my friend Alder. It all came back to me in a blistering barrage of images that ended on the smug face of Alexander Naymeer. The founder of Ravinia. The face of the horror. The mass murderer. It’s hard to describe the anger I felt, but I’ll try.
I lunged at Naymeer. It was the last thing he expected. I grabbed him by the throat with both hands. I could have squeezed the life out of him right there, but that would have been too easy.
“Pendragon!” Nevva shouted with genuine surprise.
I locked looks with Naymeer. His face was turning red. He couldn’t speak. Hands crushing your windpipe will have that effect. I saw the terror in his eyes. I liked it.
“Pendragon, no!” Nevva screamed. “There are other choices.”
I don’t know why Nevva bothered talking. After all that she had done, did she actually think I would believe anything she had to say? There was only one thing on my mind. Revenge. I wanted to kill Naymeer. A guy who had so little regard for life simply didn’t deserve to live. I pulled the horrid little man over to the door of the helicopter. With one foot I lifted the handle, released the door lock, and kicked it open. Wind filled the craft along with the thunderous noise of the rotors. Naymeer struggled futilely. He wasn’t strong enough to fight me. I was being driven by insanity. I would not be denied. I forced him to look out the door, over the edge. Below us, the people were grasping at one another in one last desperate attempt to keep from being sucked into the flume.
“Look!” I screamed at him. “Is this your glorious future? Is this what the people of the world have to look forward to? Mass execution of those who don’t fit your ideal?”
He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see it. I wouldn’t accept that. He had to know.
“I said, ‘Look!’” I bellowed. “This is your paradise. This is your Utopia.”
“Bravo, Pendragon,” Saint Dane said. He walked to the center of the helicopter and stood with his hands behind his back. He didn’t make a move to stop me. “I knew there was another side to you. My only surprise is that it took so long to surface.”
“Don’t come near me,” I shouted to the demon, and pushed Naymeer farther over the edge.
“I don’t intend to,” Saint Dane said calmly.
“This is your show now.”
“Bring him back in, Bobby,” Nevva said with what actually sounded like compassion. I was way beyond hearing it. I tightened my grip on Naymeer’s neck. He moved his eyes to look down. I don’t think he cared about seeing what was happening with the flume. He was afraid of falling.
“By the way, Pendragon, did you know that the Traveler from Third Earth is dead?” Saint Dane asked. “Patrick was his name, I believe. He was killed by Ravinian guardians on Third Earth. Alder from Denduron lies dead below us. Mark and Courtney are gone as well. You’ve lost so many friends in such a short time. It’s a shame, really. Now the man responsible is in your grasp. His fate is in your hands. Literally. Will he live to rule Earth? Or pay for their lives with his own? The decision is all yours.”
I heard Saint Dane but couldn’t take my eyes off Naymeer. He really was the guy responsible. He was a Traveler. He used that as a tool to gain power. It didn’t matter that he was being influenced by Saint Dane. The choices were his. He chose to create Ravinia. He chose to condemn half the population of Earth. He chose to execute thousands. He chose to kill my friends.
“It’s not hard to kill,” Saint Dane said in a low growl. “When it’s justified.”
The helicopter was hovering directly over the flume. In a matter of seconds people would start falling in.
“Bobby, listen to me,” Nevva pleaded. “This isn’t you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
If I had been in my right mind, I might actually have thought she was being sincere. I wasn’t. Her words had no meaning. Second Earth was lost. Saint Dane’s quest to control Halla had succeeded. I had my hands around the neck of the man he chose to run it all. Through the swirl of emotion and insanity, I had a moment of total clarity. In that instant, I understood that this was inevitable. From the moment I left home with Uncle Press, all that happened had led to this. All the battles for all the territories. All the successes. The defeats. The deaths. The sacrifices. The sadness. The loneliness. I had lost everything. My life. My friends. My home. My family. Where was my family? Where was my family?
All of that had been prelude. It had come down to this.
“Don’t do it,” Nevva begged.
“She’s right,” Saint Dane added. “Don’t do it. Show the same weakness that caused you to hide on Ibara. That is why you failed, Pendragon. You don’t have the strength to lead.”
I was shaking with anger. For a brief moment I thought I heard the sounds from down below. I heard the screams. I felt their fear. It was the final horror. I couldn’t take it anymore. Somebody had to pay.
I shoved Naymeer out of the helicopter.
The man screamed. He plummeted down, headed directly for the flume. Our eyes locked as he fell. I could feel the surprise and terror that gripped him as he plunged to his death. For that brief moment, I embraced revenge. It felt good.
And then Saint Dane laughed.
“Finally!” he declared in triumph.
I spun back to him, holding on to the edge of the doorway, the rush of blood and adrenaline still pounding through me.
“Pendragon, it is now truly over.”
I couldn’t find the words to ask what that meant. Saint Dane found them for me.
“It all came down to this. This was the final test, Pendragon. As I predicted, you have failed.”
Those words will haunt me forever.
I glanced down to see the final, excruciating moments of Alexander Naymeer’s life. He fell directly into the flume. Out of sight. A moment later, a ball of light and smoke leaped from the flume, shooting straight to the sky. Straight toward us. We were hit with a blinding flash of light and a rush of energy that could only have been powered by some demonic force. The helicopter buffeted wildly. It started spinning out of control. It felt as if we were caught in a tornado. I held on to the helicopter’s frame to keep from falling out. Nevva did the same across from me. Saint Dane didn’t move. He stood there calmly. Laughing. The pilot no longer controlled the helicopter. We were moving, that much I could tell. But to where? Between the smoke and the bright light outside, I lost all sense of direction. We could have been flying higher, or about to crash to the ground. Outside, there was nothing but white and light. The g-force increased, pushing me against the side wall. Then, there was a break. I saw something solid through the smoke. We had plummeted down to the same level as the top tiers of the stadium, and we were falling fast.
“And now,” Saint Dane yelled through the sounds of the whining motor and the terrified screams. “At long last, we can begin.”
A moment later we dropped into the flume.
JOURNAL #36
(CONTINUED)
SECOND EARTH
Light blew in through the windows, blinding me. The helicopter spiraled down so violently it made me dizzy. I braced myself for a crash that I felt sure would come at any second, either on the field or on the edge of the flume.
It didn’t. Instead of hitting something solid, the helicopter accelerated. It was as if we had been caught in the pull of the flume. The sudden movement threw me against the ceiling. Or maybe it was the floor. I had no idea. Everything was white. I grabbed on to something for support, but the helicopter lurched again, and I lost my grip. I was thrown through the air, out of control. I grabbed my head for protection, ready to be smashed against one of the helicopter’s walls. Seconds passed. I didn’t hit anything. That was impossible. The helicopter wasn’t that big. I thought maybe I had been launched through the open door. Was that a good or a bad thing? Was I free? Or about to get chopped by the spinning rotors? All I could do was hang tight and prepare for the worst.
I was surrounded by a torrent of sound. The whine of the engines, the squeal of twisting metal, the screams of the people from the stadium…and the music of the flume. I couldn’t tell whether I was falling or floating. Had I been caught in the power of the flume? There was no reference.
The sounds slowly diminished. The noise of the doomed helicopter blended into the people’s screams until it all became white noise. Moments passed. How many? No idea. The white noise slowly faded, leaving only the music of the flume. I no longer thought I would crash into something. I was definitely floating. For the longest time my eyes had been closed, with my arms wrapped around my head. But for how long? Seconds? Years? I had lost all sense of everything.
I slowly dropped my arms and cautiously opened my eyes. What I saw at first made no sense. I was free floating. Alone. The helicopter was gone. Saint Dane and Nevva were nowhere in sight. It seemed as if I were traveling through the flume, but it wasn’t the same. Surrounding me were the floating images of Halla. It was a mess of images so dense that I couldn’t see through them to the star field beyond. I saw faces I recognized from the different territories. Not individuals, but different races. Batu, Novans, Africans, gars, klees, Asians. It was a swirling sea of a billion faces, all folding in on one another. I heard their voices, too. Nothing specific though. It was more like a random chorus of words, and even song.
I was strangely calm, and more curious than frightened. What did this all mean? Unlike a normal flume trip, I didn’t get the sense that I was actually moving. It was more like floating in this sea of faces. Did they see me? Was I just another one of the billion faces? Was this my fate, banished into a limbo of souls? Is this where Naymeer had exiled his enemies?
I saw my first star. Then another. The ghostly faces were slowly disappearing, as if being blown away on a celestial breeze. The star field beyond was being revealed. Order was returning, yet something was wrong. As the faces melted, I realized I wasn’t looking out through the crystal walls of the flume. I was free floating in space. That was impossible. How could I survive that?
A new image was revealed. Many, in fact. They weren’t clear at first, because of the many faces that still surrounded me. As the faces disappeared, more detail came clear. They appeared to be long white streaks, like clouds. There were several of them, crisscrossing one another in no particular
pattern through the star field. They reminded me of the contrails left by jets as they streak through the sky. There were dozens of them, at all different angles. Some crossed in front of me. Others went past me and on to forever. I was floating through a three-dimensional maze of infinite lines.
As the last of the faces of Halla disappeared, I recognized the streaks for what they were. They weren’t clouds. They had substance. They seemed to be made of brilliant, clear crystal. Light from the stars bounced off their multifaceted surfaces, making them sparkle. I knew what I was seeing. I had seen it many times before, though from a different perspective.
I was looking at the highways through Halla. I was seeing the flumes…from the outside. All of them. It was a complex maze that seemed to have no beginning and no end. I knew that wasn’t the case, of course. The flumes connected the territories of Halla. They were the conduits that allowed us to move between time and space. It was an awesome, humbling sight.
It also raised the question of where I was. I wasn’t in a flume, that much was clear. I didn’t feel like an astronaut floating in space, either. I know this makes no sense, but it didn’t feel as if I were actually there. It was more as if I were imagining what I was seeing, as if it were a vision. There was no physical sensation of any kind. It wasn’t as if I were lying down somewhere and dreaming either. I was really there, but I wasn’t. I was part of what I was seeing, but I was a ghost. I don’t know how else to describe it. I also don’t know how long I was there. A minute? An hour? A billion years? It was a calm, almost spiritual feeling of being a part of the continuum of time and space, but not being bound by it. I’m not sure if I liked it or not. It just…was.
Then it all fell apart.
The flumes started to glow. Like neon tubes full of charged gas, the crystal flumes lit up. I heard the music return as well. Unlike every previous trip through the flume, where the music was a calming travel companion, this music sounded harsh. Angry. Chaotic. It was muffled, as if the sound were contained inside the flumes. It grew louder. More frantic. The lights grew brighter. So bright I had to squint. The music grew faster, building to something.
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