by Peter Telep
No more watching her smile with her eyes.
Yes, I thought I was in love with her, but when she jumped off with Solomon, deep down I began to realize that her own issues are more important than I’ll ever be. I just wouldn’t admit that. I wouldn’t listen to anyone. I kept seeing Julie the way I wanted to see her, not the way she really is. We are connected. She’ll be my friend forever.
And that’s why my heart breaks as the room dissolves around us… and we plunge into the cold stillness of space.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
The game Steffanie mentioned back at the Hall of Vines, the one called Personify, requires four players, three to form the bubble and one to become the passenger standing inside. Forming the bubble with your persona and coordinating with your teammates requires extreme concentration and focus.
The rush comes in two ways: as a passenger, your friends can jump you to the top of a mountain or even to the healing wreath in space. They can take you miles down into the ocean, and in the next blink, send you floating across the treetops of the Highlands in a ride that blows away anything we have on Earth.
And it’s different doing it in your body instead of your persona. It’s more intimate and definitely riskier, knowing that your life depends upon your friends. You trust them with everything, and the element of danger gets your adrenaline pumping.
For those creating the bubble, pulling off incredible jumps earns you fame and serious bragging rights. Plus, you develop the kind of deep relationships with your teammates that only those who’ve risked their lives together really understand.
With just a few minutes of practice, any native Floran can learn to play. However, you’d never be as good as Steffanie’s girlfriend, Pace. She and her teammates were the most famous personists in all of Centennial—
Until something went wrong.
Pace’s concentration broke.
And one of her friends flying inside the bubble plunged to her death.
Pace never got over it, and within a few weeks she overdosed on mirage and took her own life.
Meeka told me that if she hadn’t gotten Steffanie away from Pace, Steffanie might’ve been the girl inside that bubble. The two of them were totally addicted.
It’s just incredibly sad, and I feel so badly for Steffanie.
Still, she was brave enough to deal with her pain and brave enough to realize that the game could save everyone on Galleon.
With her plan and Julie’s help, we now have a chance. And it’s that hope that keeps me going—
Because I can’t stop thinking about Julie. Will I see her again? Can I still give her Alina’s immortal? What’ll happen to her now? Can she escape from the Armadis?
My heart still aches as I float down through the ship. The intersecting wreaths above and below me disintegrate and reform into thousands of personas flickering like pieces of confetti.
It’s an incredible sight, this world they built, this ship called Galleon, breaking apart and shedding personas, along with flesh-and-blood people who need our help.
So we get to work. The personas gather in groups of three, including the ones floating above me who came to save Tommy and Grace.
Tensing, I watch as the first trio joins hands and shape shifts into a light green transparent bubble that surrounds Grace. Three more form a bubble around Tommy.
The bubbles float past me, with Tommy and Grace staring wide-eyed at the planet below.
And then their bubbles jump away, back to Flora, where the personas will release them on the ground, unharmed.
I’m chilled as thousands more bubbles carrying Florans glide around me—including the nomads captured at the Palladium and those people taken at the Hall of Vines.
Perhaps it’s fate or just remarkable timing, but I catch a glimpse of that mother, the one with the two daughters who was captured at the Hall of Vines. I feel like I know her, and it’s awesome that she’s been rescued, along with her girls.
Even more awesome? It’s not just Florans we’re saving. The lords and ladies began building their ship by enslaving millions of their own people. As far as we’re concerned, they’re prisoners who need rescuing, too.
And, of course, we’re not just transporting humans. Dozens of grren float past me, and it takes six Florans to create a bubble around them. While I don’t see them, I pray that Brave and Mama Grren are among them.
As the ship continues to blossom into clouds of tiny globes, I realize how much Pace’s life really means to us now. She didn’t die in vain. Her addiction, as terrible as it was, led to all this, and I need to remind Steffanie of that.
I wish I were helping right now, but Steffanie and Meeka advised against me joining a rescue team. I can’t even multitask, so playing Personify is still out my league.
That fact becomes even more clear as bodies appear between the bubbles, tumbling end over end, their faces gripped by death. No, we couldn’t save everyone in time.
And worse, not every bubble holds out. Several near me begin to fluctuate and then vanish, leaving their occupants kicking and screaming against the stars.
There’s no such thing as a perfect rescue plan.
I look away. I have to.
“Doc, if you can hear me, get back to the lab,” Keane says in my head.
“I hear you. I guess the connection really works.”
“Just shut up and get here!”
A mask bursts to life right in front of me. Blank eyes. Perfect lips. It’s large enough to swallow me whole.
What the hell?
The mask shrinks into my father, his hair slicked back, his glasses gone, his shoulders broadening with white armor.
I choke up but stare at him in awe. He looks like a total badass…
But we’ll never be home again. Never play games or eat nachos or visit the island. I guess my best memories of him are when I was younger, and I’ll cling to those, the ones he showed me, because what I have right now… I can’t even think about it.
“Doc, I’m so proud of you,” he says.
“Don’t make it worse.”
“It’s still me.” He wipes off a tear and smiles. “Go tell your grandmother to hurry.”
“But Dad, she can’t, she—
He looks over his shoulder and jumps away.
“Dad!”
Several more masks swell into the space around me, their eyes beginning to glow, preparing to attack.
I jump to the lab—
And wake up in a chair near one of the tables.
The place smells like burning electronics…
Like masks.
And there they are, Solomon’s knights blocking the engine as it hums and vibrates behind them, running at full power.
“Terminal event phase in one minute, thirty seconds,” comes a computer voice echoing through the laboratory.
I turn to face Steffanie, Keane, and Meeka standing near me. “Are you guys back?”
“Yeah, we just got Brave and Mama Grren to the temple,” Meeka says. “They’re okay.”
“And Tommy and Grace are waiting for us there, too,” Steffanie adds. “They got shots of Wrrambien, so they’re safe for now.”
“But it ain’t over till it’s over,” Keane groans, raising his chin at the knights. “And we’re down to a minute.”
“Shut up, Keane. You’re a total fail,” Blink says.
“And you’re an idiot!” Keane fires back. “No one talks like that!”
“You’re all losers. I can see through you now.”
“This from the blind kid,” Meeka says. “That’s so clever I wanna throw up. I guess our friendship means nothing.”
Blinks flashes a nasty grin. “Bite me, Princess.”
“Dude, are you serious?” Keane asks. “After everything we’ve been through? What happened? You felt so guilty you were ready to die. You wanted us to leave you in the desert.”
“Yeah, I thought it was over, but they showed me what I could be. They made me realize I deserve this. Look at
me. I have power.”
“Power to do what? Kill your friends?”
“Blink, this isn’t you,” Steffanie says. “You’re just trying to deal with stuff, and they lied to make you feel better.”
“You still think I’m weak?” he asks. “Well, I’m not!”
“Let’s see what you really are,” I say, reaching into my pocket and tossing him my poet.
He catches the flower on instinct.
The persona it projects looks like a skeleton.
He’s shocked and enraged and hurls the flower across the room.
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell him. “Go find Julie.”
“Julie’s gonna die with all the other traitors.”
“You’ll regret this,” Meeka says.
“Hell no, I won’t.”
Meeka snorts. “I would’ve given my life for you.”
He grins menacingly. “You’ll still get that chance.”
My grandmother comes into the lab and limps straight toward the line of knights. She glances back, nodding to Keane and the girls.
Meeka looks at me like she knows something.
I look at her like, what?
And then she screams, “Run!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
It’s my grandmother versus about ten glowing knights inside the lab at Brandalynn. Of course these “knights” can turn themselves into gigantic masks and fire bolts of energy from their eyes. Not sure I’d bet on my grandmother right now. Nana’s gonna get her ass kicked.
However, Brandalynn Centennial Harrison jumps into her persona and proves me wrong.
Correction.
It’s not “exactly” her persona.
It’s huge. I mean her head nearly brushes the ceiling some fifteen feet above us.
Her long hair still flows across her back, but her clothes are concealed beneath a long robe that extends all the way to her ankles. The robe is made from thousands of quarter-sized hexagons that overlap each other like sequins or fish scales. The hexagons sparkle and seem alive themselves, changing her persona from a pale green to a brilliant gold.
Behind her, across the room, the First One’s wreath suspended in the tank pulsates like a heart and glows the same color as the robe.
Whoa, she might be connected to the First One’s persona. That’s why she’s so tall and wearing that strange robe. And that’s why in a single move so fast I can barely comprehend it, she whirls hard to her left, and the robe slips effortlessly off her body and snaps open in the air like parachute.
As I duck into the corridor, I steal one more look back—
Just as the robe bursts into thousands of gleaming hexagons.
The knights rear up into masks, and as their blank eyes flash blue, the hexagons shimmer and slice through their faces like ninja stars, sending shock waves and veins of gold lightning into the faces.
The faces begin to shred apart and float up toward the ceiling…
“Terminal event phase in thirty seconds,” the computer reminds us again.
“Damn,” Keane says, shifting back around from the doorway. “The old lady’s got game.”
I look around, realizing that everyone else is out here—Grandpa and his pack, Hedera and Rattle, and the rest of Joshua’s caravan—all waiting to head back inside.
“Did she connect with the A.I.?” I ask Steffanie, as she slips up beside me.
“That’s what she told us. They planned for this. And there’s something else. Actually, Keane should tell you.”
“What?”
“Terminal event phase in twenty seconds.”
“It can wait,” Stephanie says.
“Everyone outside, come on!” my grandmother cries.
She’s standing there in her body in front the engine.
The masks are gone.
I rush up to her. “Are you okay?”
She’s pale and exhausted but nods. “Everyone, let’s go!”
Joshua’s caravan begins mounting the engine’s small staircase and then, one after another, they leap through the portal, heading back to the Monkshood temple at Verbena. The grren line up behind them, waiting their turn, followed by Hedera and Rattle.
“So we can kill the masks?” I ask my grandmother.
“Not kill… change… into something else.” She glances up at the ceiling, where the normal-sized faces of each knight bulge from the panels like Han Solo’s from the carbonite. I spot Blink, his eyes locked open in sheer terror. If only we had more time. Maybe I could’ve talked to him. Saved him. And now I see him riding his tandem bike, his persona up front, his body in the back. His life was so harsh. It’s just tragic. And that face. It already haunts me.
“Doc, thank you,” Hedera says, grabbing my attention as the grren finish making their jump.
“I’ll keep my promise. I swear.”
She and Rattle nod and plunge through the vortex.
“Terminal event phase in ten seconds.”
My grandmother waves emphatically to Meeka, Keane, and Steffanie.
“I hate this part,” Keane says, holding his nose.
“You saved them all,” I tell Steffanie. “You and Pace.”
With her eyes turning glassy, she jumps after Keane.
Meeka grabs my hand. “Ready?”
“Just a little head’s up before you go!” comes a ghastly voice from the doorway.
Solomon stands between my father and Joshua, who look drugged, their eyes fluctuating between normal and pure white—as though there’s some inner battle happening between them and their captors.
Behind them stand six more knights with their arms folded arrogantly across their chests.
It takes a second for me to realize what this means:
We rescued the prisoners.
It was then up to my father and Joshua to destroy the Armadis forever.
They carry the entangled particles, linking them to the nuclear device down here. So when the nuke detonates here, an equal reaction happens up on the ship.
But the only way that can happen is if both my father and Joshua are present on the ship.
But now they’re not! Solomon’s brought them down here, where they’ll die for nothing!
“The Armadis never loses,” he tells me. “Even if it means sacrificing some of its own.”
“Terminal event in three, two—”
“Doc, go!” my grandmother screams, shoving Meeka and I toward the portal.
I look back at Solomon, who does the V-sign with his fingers. He points to his own eyes, and then points at me before jumping away with his crew… leaving my father and Joshua behind.
At nearly the same time, Meeka and I practically fall into the portal.
The last thing I see is the room flashing nuclear white, swallowing Joshua, my father, and my grandmother.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
I’m lying on my back, staring up through a gaping hole at the night sky. It smells like dust, and the sound of trickling water comes from somewhere below. Sand slips from my face as I turn my head.
We made it. We’re back inside the Monkshood temple. I sit up as Meeka, Steffanie, and Keane gather in front of me, along with Joshua’s caravan. Tommy and Grace stand near the engine, along with Hedera, Rattle, and the other grren, including Brave and Mama Grren.
Even though we’re pretty far from the coast, I thought we’d at least feel some kind of vibration from the bomb going off… but there’s nothing…
And even more odd… everyone’s smiling.
“What’s wrong with you people?” I ask. “And you, Meeka, you saw what happened, right?”
She continues smiling at me.
“Everyone, please listen! We failed. We didn’t blow up the ship. Solomon took my father and Joshua to Brandalynn. The bomb went off. They died there! And now the Armadis will jump to Earth. We didn’t stop them.”
“It’s not your fault,” Meeka says in a dreamy voice.
“Doc, you need to chill,” Steffanie adds, sounding drunk.<
br />
Keane steps up to me, his eyes gleaming like a serial killer’s. “We have power now. We rule.”
“What did you say?”
“They rule,” Julie says, flashing in front of me and whipping her cloak into my face. She pulls it back and strikes a model’s pose in her white suit of armor. She tosses her hair and struts off, shaking her hips across an imaginary runway.
“Julie! What the hell are you doing? What happened? Are you okay?”
She glances over her shoulder, puts a finger to her lips, and then fades into the night.
Meanwhile, everyone else smiles even harder…
Until their smiles turn evil.
They lift their arms and burst into fiery white masks that drift up and across the room. The air crackles and fills with that burning wire stench…
And then, with a chorus of roars, the grren leap into their personas and attack—
But the masks cut loose with their lightning. Bolts arc across the room and strike the cats in midair, hurling them and their personas toward the far walls, where they smash against the stone and hit the sand. The grren personas retreat back to their bodies, and they all lie there, charred to a crisp and lifeless.
“You’re dangerous,” a blank-faced mask says before morphing into Meeka’s features. “That’s why we want you. That’s why we need you.”
The mask transforms back into Meeka, only now she’s wearing a white robe that begins to slip from her shoulders. “We know what you want,” she says. “And see what we can give you?”
She raises a hand, and there I am, standing in my persona with hair slicked back and dressed like a lord. I’m gleaming with power.
Meeka prances up to my persona and wraps her arms around my neck.
Just then, a tremendous boom rings in my ears.
Chills tear through my entire body as I hit the dirt and collapse flat on my face. The ground is rumbling.
What now?
I’m panting. Can’t catch my breath.
“Doc?”
I turn my head. My face is covered in sand. Meeka’s lying next to me. It’s dark. Middle of the night, maybe.
Is this real?
