Dazzle Ships

by E. E. Isherwood

  “I don’t have to answer you,” she said to him with a pronounced sneer.

  While we stood there a pair of boxy drones floated toward us and pointed their guns in a menacing fashion. If we had thought to run they would have been formidable foes.

  “You win,” I said. “Can you please explain what this is all about? I didn’t hit you back there, so can you please explain why I’m such a bad person?”

  “You tried to hit me. I watched the whole thing. I was able to dodge that blow, lucky for us both. The computer does not look favorably upon cheaters.”

  Alex sneered. “You mean like making us run together, while you ran alone? That seems like cheating.”

  “I didn’t decide that. The computer allowed it. I had to abide by those rules, same as you.”

  Alex seemed to want to push the issue, but I held back. I’d been given inside information and help in practically every section of the game. We would have won easily had I followed that advice to the extreme. But Xandrie still didn’t seem to appreciate my internal battle, and I wasn’t going to tell her.

  The sin of omission.

  I had no idea where that thought came from. It wasn’t the outside voice, but my own.

  The drones floated closer. Alex gripped the staff, ready to fight, but it was hopeless.

  “Please, don’t. You can’t win, Alex. Not against guns.”

  “We have to try, Bells. You can’t give up on me. Not now.” His voice was a whisper.

  “The Commander is a cheater. Xandrie is a cheater. The world is full of cheaters. I’m better than that. Better than her,” I huffed with a glare at Xandrie. “I’ll take a thousand defeats before I accept one flawed victory.”

  “Fine. See ya.” Xandrie pointed to the blue light.

  I shrugged my shoulders, and this time I pulled Alex with me. He held the staff, though pretty much dragged it behind him.

  “If I go through willingly, can Alex stay?”

  Xandrie shook her head. “If I was going to leave anyone, it would be you. Not him. No way. You both have to step through. That is the rule of defeat.”

  I got right up to the blue light and admired the deep translucent blaze. It was totally silent. A blue doorway to oblivion.

  “What will happen to us?” I was asking Xandrie, but Meg addressed me.

  “Subject will enter the Quantum Engine and join the Heaven’s Vanguard on the canvas of the cosmic background you see before you.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” I said with some truth. But I turned to Xandrie. “We’ll end up on the wall of fire in your Cathedral, won’t we?”

  It was her turn to shrug her shoulders.

  I faced Alex. “Will you walk through with me?”

  He wiped a tear on my cheek. I looked in his face but imagined he was disappointed in me.

  “Hey, don’t sweat it. At least we’ll be together, right?” There was a twinkle in his eye, as if he knew something I didn’t.

  I smiled back. Content to allow that little lie.

  “Together?”

  “Together,” he answered.

  Alex didn’t move, and held me from going in with a firm grip on my hand.

  “Um, we doin’ this?”

  He chuckled. “You know, I never interfered with you and Mr. B, when he was young. You may not know it because of your memories, but I never meant for any of that to happen the way it did.”

  “I know. Or, at least I think I do. I don’t remember much of it, yet. But I know you aren’t that kind of person. You can be a jerk,” I smiled at him, “but not a lollipop man.”

  He laughed raucously.

  “Did I get that wrong?”

  His laughter took a few moments to calm so he could talk. “Oh, girlfriend, did you. I’m not a crossing guard, but your point is well taken.”

  “Sorry. You say the weirdest things. I think I remember your funny language better than my own life. I don’t know where you get them all.”

  “Brighton. I remember my home in Great Britain. You can’t understand how fun it’s been to corrupt your language. I think that, plus chasing you, is what got me through the long years of boredom.”

  “That’s kind of what she said.” I pointed back to Xandrie. “That survival down here is as much against the boredom as it is everything else. She—”

  “Enough! Just die, already.”

  “Sheesh. Someone’s in a hurry to get back to domineering over a bunch of kids.” Alex laughed to me, but I happened to be looking at Xandrie. I saw the anger.

  I glared at her, pleased he'd landed a final blow.

  I’d just turned back to him when I sensed Xandrie moving.

  She shouted. “I said die!”

  I felt Alex’s hand pull away from mine. He fell forward, into the blue light.

  I had only a flash to scream, “No!”

  Alex’s dexterity was something to watch. Even as he was shoved forward he’d spun around—almost like he was waiting for her. With both his hands he gripped her now-healed left arm as he fell back.

  Xandrie planted her feet and together they teetered on the edge. Alex was already half into the light though his head and face was not.

  I gasped.

  “Push her in!” he commanded.

  I waffled as the shock washed over me. There would be no way to pull him out. I’d seen what happens.

  “No! You can’t!” Xandrie shouted. “Not again.”

  She jumped and thrashed at his arms with her free hand, but all he did in return was smile.

  “You lose. She wins.”

  “I win! I won here. Meg! Turn it off!”

  Alex’s head was frozen in the light but his eyes turned to me. “You have to help. I can’t pull. Only hold.”

  “I don’t want this,” I replied childishly.

  “I know. But I do. You should have won. I’m making things even.”

  I got behind Xandrie. Instead of kicking and scratching Alex she tried to turn and kick me away from her. That affected her balance and Alex sank further into the light.

  “No!” I shouted, knowing what I was about to do.

  “You got this, Bells.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I only had a moment before my tears would make it impossible to see his eyes.

  “Me too, I—”

  I pushed Xandrie so she lost her balance completely. Alex made good on his effort to hold her right up until the end. Once she was in the light, she gave up and fell in behind him.

  In the next second neither was present in the room with me. My staff fell out the other side of the wall of light, as if it wasn’t wanted.

  I stood there in shock.

  “What just happened?” I asked the empty room.

  An echo came back inside my head.

  This is victory.

  7

  The computer opened doors and lit up hallways for me to get safely back to the elevator. I was in a dream-like stupor the entire way. The long elevator ride to the upper bunker was hell itself. So quiet. Meg left me alone, as if knowing there was nothing she could say to make me feel better about how it went down.

  Valerie had tried to grab Xandrie and pull her into the Icer but failed. Here, Xandrie herself was responsible for her demise. As if that was how she was destined to die, no matter how much she tried to avoid it. More disturbing to me, however, was that I’d refused to do what needed to be done. Now Alex paid for that weakness in blood.

  When the doors opened at the top, I ran for all I was worth. There was no one in the command level, which was fine by me. My staff kept me company. I swung it with cool anger, ready to strike anyone who dared try to stop me from getting where I needed to go next. If Xandrie appeared on a motorbike now, I would have thrown that bar into her wheel without thinking twice about it.

  I kept running. I needed to see the wall with the men in pain and suffering. I’d already imagined what Alex would look like on that tableau of desolation and what I would do when I saw him.

  Cry? Scream in anger? Fall
to the ground in lamentation? Kill someone? I really didn’t know, even as I got there.

  I walked into the Cathedral to find all the sisters held in rapt attention to the holographic walls above them. The braids down their backs was a testament to their sameness. The lake of fire was still on the left. The pristine monastery remained on the right.

  But something else had appeared between them.

  The imprisoned men had stopped their somber journey to look upon the new hologram. I could almost see the relief, like their hard time was over. The saintly women also looked upon the newcomer, but I didn’t sense the same comfort.

  I screamed. I admit it. A full-throated girlish wail. I cried out above all the other noise in the room, desperate to cut through all the unimportant dialogue by sisters who were anything but saintly. But as it happened I was completely unsure what emotion was coming out of me.

  This is victory, Elle Valentine.

  Then I don’t want it!

  Chapter 13

  I can’t explain what happened next.

  I lost my mind.

  After I stopped screaming I hopped up on the men’s platform, kicked on the blue energy field, then took a deep breath.

  Between the good side and the bad side was the same starfield I’d seen in the winner’s chambers far below. Those stars shone over all three scenes though they weren’t there before. The entire hologram was tied together by the sky, but also by the lake.

  The waters of both scenes joined in the middle now, though the fiery water and the blue waters swirled and were drawn into a round chasm at the water’s edge. From my perspective it appeared as if the hole went into the wall, rather than under the grass and water of the hologram.

  The symbolism was complete: both good and evil met in the middle. A crazy, swirly black hole drawing water and energy from both.

  The troubling thing, and what drove me to kick on that Icer, was seeing Alex standing over the black pit with Xandrie standing next to him. They peered over the edge, looking away from me, so I couldn’t see if they knew I was there. My schoolgirl wailing had no effect on them.

  So I was going to do the next best thing.

  “Sister, you can’t do that.” A soft-spoken youngster had pulled herself from the new scene after she saw what I was planning to do.

  “That’s my boyfriend,” I said without a shred of doubt. “He did that for me. I’m doing this for him.”

  “But no sister has ever gone over there.”

  I winked at her in my best impression of Alex. “I’m not a sister.”

  I hesitated. No shame in saying it. But then I jumped in.

  I experienced a shift, like my stomach turned over for a fraction of a second. But that was it. I went from the Cathedral to the hillside full of dead men.

  And now one dead woman.

  “Wow!” I shouted. “I did it.”

  I searched first for the Cathedral vault. I hoped I’d see the girls looking up at me from the floor so I could give them a thumbs-up that I’d done something none of them dared to do.

  I raised my thumb anyway, figuring they could still see me, even if I couldn’t see them.

  The next thing I did was walk to the scrum of bare-chested men hovering at the edge of the hill. When I caught up to them I caught sight of what they’d been looking at.

  “Hey, guys. I’m here to rescue you.”

  I hope.

  They spun around in amazement. Then anger replaced that look.

  “You! You tricked us!” They pointed at me.

  “No! I’m not one of them. I’m not a sister. I’m just me.”

  They surrounded me—dozens of them—and I began to wonder if I’d gone about it all wrong.

  “I should have gone to the woman’s side,” I said with sarcasm. I didn't care that they heard me. What could they do, throw me out?

  “You’ve seen it? The girl’s church?” one of the men asked. He was young, which was unusual for them as a group. He’d have fit right in with me and my classmates in the Complex. He pushed himself to the front of the group and did a passable effort at holding back the others while he spoke to me.

  I pointed up the hill. “The girls are taking apart this church from the other side, even as you build it. You are somehow linked to them. I could see you both in your holograms from inside the Cathedral. Though maybe this place is more real than I supposed.”

  “What year is it?” one of the other men shouted.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “How do we get back?”

  So many shouts suddenly made it difficult to hear the young man. I looked at him.

  “I want to help you. But I’m trying to reach my boyfriend. He was standing at the edge of that hole you guys were looking at.”

  “Hole?”

  I pointed to where they’d been standing.

  “Oh, that? The water began to churn and the sky cleared up so we could see stars. We’d never seen such a thing since we got here. Only fire and heat, if you know what I mean.”

  “But you’re standing here talking to me, now. Why didn’t you stop going into the water before now?”

  One of the older men spoke up. He was almost as old as Mr. Bracken after he aged. “This place is cursed, young child. Only by putting rocks up in the tower are we shown scenes from our lives. One rock. One happy memory. After an eternity you’d want to see those you’d left behind, too.”

  I didn’t doubt that. Somehow, much faster than I would have guessed, I’d jumped into a death ray just to be with someone.

  “You’ve been here for about eighty-seven years.”

  “No. We’ve been here for eons, child. Time has no meaning inside this place.”

  I looked around. Everyone shook their heads.

  “Well, I, uh. I think you need to be done. Can one of you show me where you are putting the rocks? I have an idea.”

  I could have jumped a small fence and gone down to where the hole in the ground had appeared, but I felt I had a new perspective that could help everyone.

  The young man raised his hand, then thought better of it by pulling me out of the group.

  “I’m Elle. What’s your name?”

  “Vincent. Or, I was called Vincent.”

  We walked up the hill, separating ourselves from the others.

  “What happened to you, Vincent?”

  “Vince.” He smiled. “I’ve been thinking of the answer to that question every minute I’ve been here. I had a girl named Sue-Ann. It was just after we arrived in the Columbine Peace Bunker. So much death and destruction out in the world, it was nice to get somewhere I could just be a normal kid, you know?”

  I nodded, thinking of my own bunker salvation story.

  “I found a girl at the cafeteria table and I couldn’t stop smiling. I went up to her, joking that she caused me to not be able to eat properly—a joke if ever there was one, since we were all starving on the outside. She smiled back and we hit it off. Two days later she took me to a hidden cave and claimed to want to protect me from some weird plot. She went on and on about it, but it made no sense. In the end, it didn’t matter. Some crazy women came in and caught us. They had long knives and dragged me—along with other men—to that crazy blue light. The last thing I saw was Sue-Ann crying. Then, pop. Here I was.”

  “And the rocks?”

  “A voice at the beginning told us we could summon those memories if we built that structure for it. I almost wasn’t going to do it after I got the first one in that fiery lake, but coming back down the hill I saw her … ”

  He had that faraway dreamy look I recognized.

  “So you kept getting more,” I finished for him.

  “Oh, yeah. It hurts like hell, but not as much as forgetting who I am.”

  The walk up the hill took much longer than it appeared from the Cathedral floor.

  I needed that time to think what I was getting myself into.

  2

  I led Vince into the first chamber of the castle, which was
where they’d been tossing the rocks they brought up from the lake.

  “Have you ever gone into this place?” I asked him.

  “Never seemed necessary. We just brought the rocks and got back to where we’d get our memories. I’m only talking to you now because something has changed.”

  “Well, there’s a whole bunch of reasons for that, but I’m betting you have something in common with the very women who put you here.”

  I stepped through the hole in the wall and onto the pile of rock. Vince came through with me. I took a few steps and the perspective shifted.

  “Whoa! What was that?”

  “That, I think, was us moving between the scenes.” A new hole appeared in front of us. If the situation was normal I’d have expected female arms to reach through the hole so they could pull out these same stones.

  Another hole appeared to our side. A quick look confirmed the chasm was out there, but I wanted to confirm my theory, first.

  “Follow me.” I didn’t know for sure we would be allowed to cross the scenes.

  “If you say so.”

  I crawled through the hole and put my hands on soft, green grass.

  “Bingo!”

  Vince stuck his head through the hole. “Unbelievable. We’ve been this close all this time?”

  That was impossible to answer, but I didn’t want him to feel too bad about it. “Maybe. But there is a new scene on the wall of the Cathedral. I think this gateway has been closed until just now.”

  “Sisters!” The sisters were gathered just as the men had been. A disturbance next to the hill had formed and they stood around watching it.

  I caught the attention of a couple women who trotted up to us. They smiled as they saw me, but halted with uncertain looks when they caught sight of Vince inside the wall of their castle.

  “It’s okay. I’m here to help you. He’s with me.”

  More of the women figured out there was something even more exciting happening up the hill. Soon they were gathered around the two of us. It wasn’t long after that someone recognized my friend.

  “Vincent!” A young girl in the same black clothing and white skirt as all the others came running up while screaming. She cut through the crowd and went right to him.

  “Sue-Ann? How is this miracle possible?”