Just remember, as you cease to exist, said the Allself. You have yourself to thank for what’s happened to your friends. Their deaths are on your head.
Every word was like a bullet to my heart. Every bit of me wanted to scream in pain at once.
Now close your eyes, pitiful planet, said the Allself. This could get messy.
The orb spun and crackled, building up a charge. Tongues of fire lashed and arced across his surface in rhythmic leaps, as if they were chasing each other.
Then the Allself rolled toward me, and I knew he was hell-bent on my eradication.
I just waited there, watching him advance, feeling his heat getting closer—thinking about Duke and all the others. It was just as well I died now, rather than live to go home and see what was left of them. It was better not to have to see their accusing faces glaring up at me in death.
But what if there was still a way to save them? What if I could still open the floodgates of my power, though I’d spent so much time keeping them closed?
The words of Veritas, Goddess of Truth, returned to me: All the power of all the world is at your fingertips, everywhere, always.
If she said it, it had to be true, didn’t it? It had to mean I could do much more than I thought I could.
I remembered my battered friends again, on the brink of extinction, and I thought of something else Veritas had said: Open yourself to the possibilities, and you will be unstoppable.
As I thought of all that, something started to change within me. My fear and shame and guilt scuttled away like cockroaches in the light of day. My anger expanded and unfolded, filling me from edge to edge—and then the edges fell away. Everything holding me back fell away all at once.
Suddenly, I felt power all around, gushing into me without my having to reach for it. Waterfalls of power poured in from everywhere, inundating me, filling me with more energy than I’d ever contained before, at least all at once. It was almost too much to handle, too much to withstand—so much power, it might have destroyed me had I been any weaker.
But Mother Earth could handle all that and more. Bring it on, I said, gulping it greedily, feeling it surge and boil within me.
Die! roared the Allself as he launched his latest and greatest charge at me. Let the new age begin!
But when the blast finally hit me, it splashed off harmlessly. The power I’d been soaking up dwarfed that of the Allself, deflecting his biggest strike yet without the slightest strain.
What?! The Allself sounded shocked. But that isn’t possible!
I didn’t say a word to him. I had other work to occupy my time, like preparing to give him some much-deserved payback.
You should be dead now! howled the Allself. You should have been extinguished!
Silently, I stirred the flames banking within me. All the vast cataracts of power flooding into me fueled the fire, building it into a superheated blaze like the nuclear heart of the sun.
It doesn’t matter! The Allself cooked up another blast of his own, hypercharged energy pulled from his blistering core. This time, you will die! The Earth will be my world for the rest of eternity!
No sooner had those words left him than I unleashed the massive torrent of power I’d been channeling. He screamed as it rushed over him, a firestorm of energy drawn from every corner of the planet.
His pain only made me want to keep the punishment coming. I didn’t let up the slightest bit; if anything, I opened the channel wider, letting through more power with each passing second. It came from everywhere—hurricane winds, the rays of the sun, the tides of the ocean, the grinding of the continental plates. It barreled through the ley line network, merging into a single beam of overwhelming force that punched through the Allself’s once-formidable presence as if it were tissue paper.
And even as this incredible power poured through me, I felt every mile of its journey, every moment of its existence. I sensed its role in the systems of the world, its connection to the enormous complexity of the Earth. My awareness flared far beyond the Allself’s base, sweeping out around the globe in all directions at once—restoring my grasp of the vast and elaborate planet I’d been born to represent and defend.
I’d forgotten just how massive and miraculous it was. I’d shied away from experiencing its immensity, from using its gargantuan power as I saw fit.
But not anymore.
I held nothing back as I blasted away at the Allself. Roaring with rage and horror, he blew apart under the assault, the coalesced energy of his consciousness shredding irreversibly. I didn’t stop, however, until every last shred of his mind was burned away as if it had never existed.
Then, without wasting a single second, I dove into the ley lines and rocketed toward Confluence, traveling faster than I ever had through the network that girdled my crust.
35
Breaking out of the network in Confluence, I burst back into my human body, which I quickly realized was still alive. As soon as my energy flowed back into that form, my eyes shot open. I saw the granite shield above me, the one I’d whipped up for cover before leaving.
Sitting up, I worked to get my bearings and adjust to the reconnection of spirit and flesh. I knew it hadn’t been ages since I’d been whole, but it felt like it.
I also hoped it hadn’t been as long as it seemed since the Allself had shown me my friends on the verge of annihilation. I hoped there was still a chance I could save them.
Jumping to my feet, I stepped out from behind the shield and gazed at the street, dreading what I might see. Thankfully, I’d arrived soon after the moment the Allself had shown me. Duke had just thrown a grenade at the converging Terralyzers and was about to pitch another. The first exploded as the enemy scattered, knocking down Mojave and Mississippi but not doing any damage to the rest.
While he distracted them, I crouched and touched the street, triggering a chain reaction of fast-moving fissures. They neatly avoided Duke and zipped straight for the Terralyzers on the ground, opening wide just in time to swallow up three of them, including Mojave. They screamed all the way to the bowels of the Earth.
Duke glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled, then let the second grenade fly. The Terralyzers moved away from it easily, staying out of its path—at least until I got involved.
With a wave of my arm, I summoned a shower of dirt from the ground nearby and cast it up, sending it in an arc toward the grenade. The dirt collided with the grenade, shunting it off on a new route perpendicular to its original arc.
A route that flung it at two male Terralyzers before they could get away. It exploded between them, blasting their bodies far apart onto piles of rubble, leaving them smoking, blood-soaked wrecks.
Enraged, Mount St. Helens wheeled around, hands pointing at Duke and flaring with energy ready to be released. Her expression turned into total shock, however, when she caught sight of me behind her target.
“Gaia?” Her hands flared brighter, building a charge. “But the Allself trapped you. You were doomed.”
“Wrong.” I summoned rocks the size of watermelons from inside the widest fissures and sent them hurtling at her from six different directions at once. “The Allself was doomed. And now, so are you.”
A pair of airborne drones zapped two of the big rocks with their flamethrowers, knocking them away. Mount St. Helens hurled aside another two with her lava fireballs, sending them tumbling over the battlefield.
But two of them still got through. One crashed into her back, pitching her forward, while the other drove her back with a heavy blow to the chest. Crying out, Mount St. Helens toppled to the street in a tangle of limbs and rocks, laid low.
From there, I went through the others like a scythe through wheat, cranking out one rapid-fire attack after another. No intermittent power loss lessened my might or gave the enemy a chance to gain ground. I unleashed a series of rock bombardments, earthquakes, sinkholes, and mud bursts one after another, battering and immobilizing my opponents in quick succession.
I was fig
hting like a planet ought to fight, putting all my weapons to work at once, taking no prisoners. Giving no quarter to the bastards who’d shown my own people no mercy. Coming down like a real Mother Earth, not just a private detective with some stone-throwing skills.
The Terralyzers went down hard, bashed into submission. Next, I turned my attention skyward, hoisting chunks of rock and taking aim at the two drones circling above me.
Just as I was getting ready to fire the granite at them, I heard a loud crack. I felt a hard impact in my left shoulder that spun me around and hurt like hell.
Gunshot. It didn’t take a genius to figure that out...though the source of the shot turned out to be a surprise.
Quickly looking in the direction from which the bullet had come, I saw a familiar man and woman standing behind my own granite shield—Agent Frank Wagner and Agent Judy Lewis of the F.B.I. Frank held a rifle, Judy a pistol, and both barrels were pointed dead-on at me.
“You really skunked our operation here, didn’t you?” shouted Frank. “Top to freakin’ bottom.”
“Good thing we’ve got a five-star backup plan,” hollered Judy as she cranked off one shot after another, pumping a hail of bullets in my direction.
36
Once upon a time, catching a slug in the shoulder might have slowed me down a little. The shock from such a gunshot wound might have put me off my game.
But this was by no means that kind of time. I’d just defeated an ancient and powerful threat from beyond the stars, saving the world from alien domination. I was at the peak of my powers and loaded for bear.
Getting tagged by an F.B.I. ambush in the heat of battle was one thing, but getting perforated by a follow-up shower of lead that I saw coming was quite another.
Even as Judy’s bullets raced toward me, I deflected them with a spray of gravel—each bullet winged by one perfectly propelled gravel nugget. Not a single shot made it through that field of ricochets; every bullet went zinging into smoldering debris or jagged fissures...or the ground at Frank and Judy’s feet, barely missing the tips of their shoes.
With that first volley disposed of, I made my next move. Spreading my arms wide, I summoned tons of rock and dirt from under the pavement, heaving it up into a massive, towering figure. As I wove my hands through the air, the matrix of earthen matter whirled and flowed, taking on the contours of a giant human form.
My human form.
The two drones swooped toward Giant Gaia with flamethrowers belching out tongues of fire. By then, I’d hardened the giant’s body, giving it the approximate strength of solid diamond. When Giant Gaia with her ultra-tough hide smacked one drone and then the other, they both hurtled into nearby buildings at high speed and blew apart.
More bullets raced toward me, and I flipped them away with bits of gravel. Meanwhile, Giant Gaia turned her full attention on Frank and Judy, and I saw them through her eyes as they filled up with terror.
Swinging their guns up, they fired everything they had at Giant Gaia, peppering her with bullets—but every shot bounced off her hardened shell. Nothing they had could put a dent in her.
But she had no such problem with them. Letting loose a roar of rage, she scooped up Judy and shook her until she dropped her weapon. That was when Frank stopped shooting and ran, sprinting through the body-littered battleground.
But he came up short in his flight when one of the bodies suddenly rose up to confront him. It was Ashanti, face bloodied but otherwise looking serenely transfigured, utterly wise and goddess-like.
“I got my memory back,” she said, her voice echoing. “Did you know that, Agent Wagner? When the Earth Mother reconnected with her fullest power and destroyed the Allself, a lot of things were corrected.”
Teeth clenched, Frank whipped his rifle around and cranked off shot after shot. Every shell that left his weapon melted like wax, and then the weapon melted, too. He flung it aside with a cry of pain.
“I remember you were part of the Hollowing team,” said Ashanti. “And you enjoyed your work, didn’t you? Wiping out the souls of Landkind wasn’t a guilt trip for you at all, was it?”
Frank spun and tried to run, but Ashanti flicked him off his feet with a blast of golden energy. Then she glided inexorably toward him, the pulse of her blazing aura growing stronger with each passing second.
“You should have known better, Frank,” said Ashanti. “You can’t get away with that kind of shit anymore.”
Frank was in a complete panic, scrambling in the rubble. His confidence was shattered, his self-control destroyed. He knew all too well what outcome his future likely held.
“The Earth and its wonders have been screwed over long enough,” said Ashanti. “Consider this your me too moment, you asshole.”
Then, as Frank desperately clambered to his feet, she unleashed a beam of blistering energy that engulfed him in its brilliance. Frank screamed his lungs out as the power of the Grand Canyon itself vaporized him, turning every molecule in his body into wispy steam.
“Good riddance.” Ashanti turned slowly, scanning the street with her brightly-glowing eyes. “Now who’s next?”
“Nobody.” I approached her, leaving Giant Gaia with Judy still firmly in her grip. “It’s finally over.”
Ashanti sniffed, looking more regal than ever. “I don’t see why we can’t butcher every last one of them.”
“Because they weren’t acting of their own free will,” I told her, gesturing at two of the unconscious, possessed Landkind on the pavement nearby. “And we need to see if we can change them back to the way they used to be.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Ashanti. “After all, I was able to return to my old self.”
To someone like me, who’d known her only during her time of memory loss, that wasn’t quite right. The Ashanti with amnesia was her “old self” as far as I was concerned.
But getting to know the new, true Ashanti would have to wait. Someone else’s welfare was foremost in my mind and required immediate attention.
I didn’t know if Briar was even alive.
Turning from Ashanti, I hurried up the street, looking all around as I went. Amid the smoking rubble, I saw Terralyzers sprawled alongside my people, all of them cut, bruised, bloody, and out cold.
Mahoney lay under chunks of pavement, silent and still. Further along, Luna was huddled behind the severed backend of a police cruiser, her face and arms battered and singed.
Then, I saw diamond-skinned body armor half a block away and broke into a run. The man inside it lay spread-eagled, facing away from me atop a high pile of shattered cinderblock, a mangled spear of rebar jutting from his belly.
Heart slamming in my chest, I raced to that figure, dreading what I would find. Was this the sacrifice I’d made to stop the Terralyzers? Had I given up the man I loved when I raced off through the ley line network to destroy the Allself?
Breathless, I clawed my way up the pile. Tears welled up as I reached the man in the armor and touched his hand, which was heavy and cold.
No no no no no no no
Then I heard his voice call out to me from not far away. “Gaia...help me...”
And intense relief flooded into my hammering heart.
Turning the head of the man on the pile, I saw he was Deputy Withers, not Briar.
“Gaia...please...”
Following Briar’s voice, I saw he was half-buried under a mound of debris. Hurrying to his side, I flung away the debris with a wave of my hand, freeing him.
“My leg’s broken.” He sounded weak and in pain, and he was having trouble breathing…but at least the armor had kept him alive and minimized his injuries. “I think...I busted some ribs, too.”
I heard familiar sirens in the distance. Emergency vehicles were on their way. “I’m just glad you’re alive,” I whispered in his ear. “You’re going to be okay.”
Then, gently, I leaned down and kissed his face. My soul overflowed with joy at the touch of his skin, the feel of his breath, the smell of his chee
k. In spite of everything, we had another chance at life and love, a new beginning from the ashes and blood. This, right here, was happiness.
I, for one, wasn’t going to throw it away.
Epilogue
Six weeks later...
“It’s time,” said Duke. “Go ahead and start.”
“Will do.” Luna sat at her desk with a laptop in front of her, waiting to activate the link to the online teleconference. Thanks to a new digital projector, everyone in the office could see the teleconference interface beamed onto the whiteboard on the wall.
We all watched as Luna hit the button, and the teleconference screen appeared. Small windows showing people from various locations were stacked on the right side of the screen. A large window dominated the left side, displaying the moderator of the meeting.
In this case, that was the Grand Canyon herself, Ashanti Moneta. She was broadcasting live from her home in Arizona, where she’d returned soon after the battle.
“Welcome,” she said, “to the first session of the Council of Landkind.”
Sitting on the edge of Luna’s desk, I nodded and smiled. The Council was something new and overdue, formed in the aftermath of the Terralyzer conflict. Six weeks after Landkind and I had nearly been conquered by hostile forces, we had a formal troubleshooting and decision-making body to help avert such crises in the future…and Ashanti was its President. Clearly, the old way of keeping in touch informally over the ley line network had not been enough to give us the unity and responsiveness we needed.
“Let’s begin with some moments of silence to remember those we lost in the war.” Ashanti bowed her head. “Mahoney Wells was one of the best of us. Ohiopyle and the Youghiogheny River will never be the same.”
“To Mahoney.” We all said it at once, then fell silent—including Roy Price, Mahoney’s appointed successor, whom I could see in one of the windows on the screen. As always, he was shoulder to shoulder with Rusty.
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