by Brandt Legg
Three fantastic butterflies flew above the lake, colors that Crayola couldn’t invent. They danced around my head for a moment before disappearing into the crystal trees. “Thanks, Kyle.”
The skywaves began to change from aquamarine to orange meaning it would be dark in less than an hour. I was almost ready to go. There had been no Windows along the way from Floral Lake, and finding Dustin seemed impossible. He had not been available on the astral since he left Cervantes. But I couldn’t leave the girls alone any longer and figured the three of us would spend the night on their island then map out the best way to proceed. We couldn’t leave Outin without Dustin, and we couldn’t leave Outin in the hands of Lightyear.
“You may not leave Outin alive,” a familiar voice startled me.
70
I turned to see Dustin emerging from the crystal trees.
“Been looking for me?” He smiled.
“For most of the last few years,” I replied.
His hug was filled with my childhood, our dad, and the straining extremes of brotherhood that only brothers understand.
“Don’t hold that stuff in, brother.” He let me go. “Suppressed feelings lead to neurosis. Next thing you know, Mom will be taking you to Mountain View.”
I choked a laugh. “You seem better than when I last saw you. Maybe better than I’ve seen you in years.”
“Yeah, well. Outin is my kind of dimension.”
“I thought you died.”
“I know you did. Sorry about that. Were you kind of relieved?” He stared at me but didn’t wait for a response. “I was in a bad place that week, or was it a year? Time’s a funny thing, you know? Especially Outin time.” He sat on one of the large black boulders bordering the lake. “But it worked out okay. I needed to be alone for a while, and you needed to go back to wherever it is you went.”
“Do you go in often?” I pointed to Clarity’s water.
“Are you kidding? It’s a drug, man. I drink the stuff.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Not really. I did try, but it tastes a little weird, like dish soap. But I do swim in it as often as possible.”
“Do you know about Rose?”
“Nothing in that water is perfect, it’s all based on your perception. But is Kyle dead and Rose alive?”
“I held Kyle’s body.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I think he landed right in the middle of them. I mean he came through a portal, and it dropped him at the lodge when some soldiers were gathered there. I’d been watching them, but there was nothing I could do. It happened so fast. Outin really freaked them out and they got spooked, just started firing like they were under attack.” He shook his head. “What I meant was, because it happened here in another dimension, is it possible he is still alive back home somewhere?”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” I answered.
“Yeah. And I don’t know for sure, but I’ve been in and out of so many Windows, been to so many parallel times, stark pasts, bloody futures, and twisted presents, that I’m fairly certain Kyle’s actual personality is over.”
“I feel it. Like Spencer says, there’s that change.”
Dustin nodded.
“But Rose is really alive. Mom has seen her.”
“Okay, I saw it in the lake too, but did you see that Rose is working with Lightyear? I have a hard time with that one.”
“Lightyear is powerful, and who knows what karma we have with Rose. How well did we know her, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Nate, but at the worst time in my life, Rose was the only one who was there.” His voice cracked. “She helped me; she kept me from going insane.”
“Maybe she did it just to get to me.”
“Why did Dad trust her then?” Dustin asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe she fooled him, too. Dad didn’t even know I was one of the seven.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he was giving the Jadeo to you,” I said.
He looked at me with narrow eyes.
“Do you know what the Jadeo is?” I asked.
“Yeah, little brother, I know what it is. I may have been a little impaired the last few years, but I’ve been catching up here at Outin University. I know I’m also one of the nine entrusted. And I know what the Jadeo is. But I didn’t know Dad wanted me to safeguard it,” his voice was shaky. “Dad wanted me to have it,” he said to himself. “And why is that so hard to believe? Just because you’re the golden boy, doesn’t mean other people can’t do anything.”
“Maybe he knew I’d be a target, so it would be safer if someone else was protecting it.”
“Well, we don’t know what he was thinking. But we know he wanted me to have it, so where is it?” Dustin asked.
“Spencer.”
“Of course. He’s not just running the Movement, he’s running your life.”
“It feels that way sometimes.” I walked around the side of the lake and peered in. Neither of us spoke for a couple of minutes. Dustin walked over and put his arm around me.
“I’m sorry, Nate. I don’t want to fight with you. Our fight is with Lightyear.”
“We can’t use violence,” I said, turning to face him.
“Oh no, Spencer got you to go all Gandhi on me. What good are all these powers if we can’t use them?”
“It’s not Spencer. He’s fine with doing whatever it takes.”
“I knew I liked something about him.”
“But this is about our souls. You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah I know, but do you? These bastards killed Dad. They killed Dad, Nate.”
“I know.”
“No you don’t. ’Cause that’s not enough. They killed Crowd and Kyle and those kids in the mall. Hundreds!”
“But where does it end?”
“You tell me. Mom’s in jail, although that’s kind of poetic justice... ” He smiled, but then his eyes saddened. “I’m sure they’ll let her out. And Bridgette’s locked up, too. Hell, they may start picking up all my ex-girlfriends. They’re pure darkness.”
“Darkness can’t drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate can’t drive out hate: only love can do that.”
“Now you’re getting all Martin Luther King, Jr.”
“I’m making a point.”
“You think we can stop Lightyear with love and flowers? They have access to the most lethal weapons in existence, and they have psychics. Without soul-powers, what do we have? A few hundred hippies and new-age housewives looking for the next workshop or retreat?”
“No one is saying we can’t use soul-powers. We just can’t use them for killing.”
“Oh. Why didn’t you say so? I’ll use Gogen to bake a nice cake, and then I’ll Vising up some pretty balloons,” he waved his hands around. “And we’ll invite those Special Forces guys to a tea party.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed, too.
“The guys running Lightyear use thugs to do their dirty work. We need to win this differently. We’re smarter than them. And don’t make fun of me, but nothing is more powerful than love.”
Dustin made kissing noises, started tickling me, and in a falsetto whine said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“Get off me, you weirdo!” I laughed.
“Okay, tell me your plan.”
“I was hoping you had one.”
He looked at me, waiting patiently.
“Okay, I have the start of a plan. I met with Storch.”
“How’d that go? Why didn’t you kill him?”
“Haven’t you been listening?”
“Brain damage.” He winked, pointing to his head.
“I want to show the meeting to the world. He doesn’t come across too favorably. Tell me how to project my meeting with Storch.”
“Oh, I see. Dusty knows a trick that baby brother can’t do. And I thought you came back to Outin ’cause you were worried about me.”
“Shut up,” I said.
It was similar to advanced Kellaring, but he didn’t know about that because Lightyear’s remote viewers couldn’t track across dimensions, and he’d been safely tucked away at Outin all this time. I explained it and he told me what we needed to do to be able to film it. Spencer had included a digital recorder in our pack so we could do it here. He must have known Dustin wasn’t interested in leaving Outin, even to strike a blow at Lightyear.
“Once you’ve been in an asylum, if you’re lucky enough to get out, you spend the rest of your life in fear of being returned to cruel confinement. Mom will feel the same way once she gets out of prison. It’s not as bad, but close enough.”
“You think you’re safer here? Who knows how many troops they’ve got at Outin.”
“They have 104 personnel in this dimension and all entered through the original veil we came through. Fourteen are psychics, and the remaining ninety are divided among three squads of highly trained ‘black ops.’ As of now, no Lightyear agents have yet gone into a Window or any of the four lakes, and they still don’t know about the fifth lake.
“Wow.”
“We can beat them, Nate. At least in the battle for Outin.”
71
We filmed the Storch meeting. It was incredible. It looked just like it had been shot on Roosevelt Island where the actual meeting had been. Because it was an uninterrupted video of the event, it would stand up to all authentication techniques. I carefully sealed the flash-drive back into the waterproof pouch it came from, and zipped it into my pants pocket. I wanted to take one more plunge into Clarity Lake, but Dustin said we better go.
Along the way, he explained that the Windows, which moved by themselves anyway, could be moved manually. Every time he saw one, he dragged it to a remote region of Outin he called “the Vines.“
“It’s a wild impenetrable area. They haven’t even been close to it yet. Outin is like forever big. But anyway, these twisty vines grow out of the starry ground. They start off black and white, but as they get taller, they turn into every imaginable psychedelic color and tangle together like the blackberry bushes back home, only these are like forty feet tall. It’s intense to look at but almost impossible to get through, and some of the blue ones have razor-sharp thorns.”
“How did you get the Windows in?”
“Skyclimbed.” He smiled.
“You can do it now?”
“Oh yeah. Just call me Rocket Man.” He did a high backflip.
“That’s great, Dustin.” I patted his shoulder when he landed. “Outin’s been good for you.”
“I never want to leave.”
“You’ll get lonely. This vast dimension and nobody living here... ”
“Outin is full of beings.”
“The birds and bugs probably aren’t the best conversationalists.”
“Not them. The trees.”
“Trees?” I gazed around at the thin white ones we were weaving through. “What do you mean? Can they talk?” It would have been a silly question anywhere other than Outin.
“Not like us with voices, but they communicate and... they move.”
“How?”
“You’ll see.”
It was dark now. Dustin’s night vision wasn’t great, but the starlight from the ground was so bright and the trees shimmered, so it wasn’t really needed. I let the girls know we were on our way.
“How is he?” Amber asked.
“Better than he’s been in years.”
“So can we leave Outin now?”
“No.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Push the fear away.”
“It’s just an expression. So you want to somehow make the soldiers leave?”
“We’ll talk about it when we’re together. Gotta keep moving.”
“Let’s go,” I said to Dustin.
“So, have you done her yet?”
“None of your business.”
“That means no.”
“That means none of your business.”
“Well, if she’s anything like her sister—”
“She’s not. Okay, can we talk about something else?”
“Sure. Have you done Linh yet?”
“Shut up, will you.” I gave him a playful shove, then Skyclimbed. He followed. We soared through the trees of multiple trunks with holly-berry-sized round leaves of Sunkist-orange color. We made good time; it wasn’t long before we reached the trees closest to the lodge and beyond that, Floral Lake.
“Check that out.” He pointed to a group of ten soldiers near the lodge. We were on the top of some high trees and would be impossible to spot. “There should be twenty more somewhere nearby,” Dustin said. “We need a diversion to get past them. What new fun do you have in your bag of tricks?”
“How about a fire?” I said.
“Will you be able to put it out?”
“I can use lake water. I’ll keep it away from the trees. Just around the lodge.”
“What if one of them gets killed? What’s that do to your nonviolence pledge?”
“I don’t know. I guess that could happen.” Though that thought made my stomach hurt.
“Yeah, it would be a real shame,” Dustin said sarcastically, before seeing my concern. “Don’t worry little brother, it has to be based on intent or something. I mean accidents happen. What if I accidently crash my car into someone? Does that mean I’m stripped of all my soul-powers. Who decided this stuff anyway?”
“There’s a collective consciousness. I don’t know exactly how it works.”
“Don’t let this nonviolence stuff get you all tied up. If you’re afraid to move because you might squash an ant or something, where does it end? But if you aren’t bold, you will catch a bullet in your head. These guys are trained to kill, and you’re their target this week. Try to do no harm, but do something.”
He was right. It was one thing to attack people, another to use force to defend myself, and something entirely different to try to avoid trouble. That’s all we were trying to do. I sent fire and ignited two different areas on the other side of the soldiers, well away from us. We Skyclimbed in bounding leaps across the dark landscape. Unfortunately these elite fighters were trained in military tactics, unlike me, and recognized a diversion when they saw one. Four of them dropped to cover the fire. The remaining six sent flares to light up the area. The other twenty joined them. They had us surrounded and hadn’t even spotted us yet. The water was still five hundred yards away. Another flare whizzed by me. I manipulated the particles and turned it into strobing stadium lights, aimed back at the troops. It gave us enough time to make it to the lake.
We undressed and waded in, holding our clothes and my pack above our heads. It was impossible to sink in Floral Lake, but by using a relaxed form of Skyclimbing, we moved through the water easily. I could have run across the lake but Dustin couldn’t, and the idea of letting him out of my sight again didn’t appeal to me. Once we were a safe distance, I sent water to quench the fires. The lights dissipated on their own. It took longer than I expected to reach the island.
“Linh, I’m sorry,” Dustin said. “He was a good guy.” She nodded but didn’t look up. “And Amber, I’m uh... last time I saw you, I wasn’t myself. What I’m trying to say is, I behaved horribly. I’m sorry.” He meant it and was ashamed of himself.
72
Amber and Linh wanted to leave Outin and return to Yangchen and Spencer. “We need help. At least when we’re with them, we have Booker and the Movement behind us,” Amber said.
“How are we supposed to get these hit men to leave Outin without killing them first?” Linh asked.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dustin said. “We’re going to have to capture them.”
“That sounds easy,” Linh said sarcastically. “How many are there?”
“A hundred an
d four.”
“So, you can count,” Linh said. “Then you’ve probably noticed there are only four of us. And we’re not allowed to use violence.”
“Ah, but we know Outin better, and we have an arsenal of the most powerful tools at our disposal.”
“Nate, let’s leave,” Amber said, “before another one of us gets killed.”
“Why does it matter what happens to Outin?” Linh asked. “Why is it our job to protect it?”
“We led them here.” I stood and paced. “This isn’t just a special place; it’s important.”
“And more than that,” Dustin interrupted, “if we’re going to defeat Lightyear, they cannot be allowed the advantages of Outin’s secrets.”
“Some day you must tell me what those secrets are and why they’re worth Kyle’s life,” Linh said, getting up and walking away. The island was about the size of a couple of soccer fields, so she wasn’t going far. I was about to follow her, but Amber said she’d go. I didn’t know if it was because she didn’t want to be left alone with Dustin or didn’t want me to be alone with Linh.
“They don’t understand Outin. And you haven’t told them what the Jadeo is, have you?” Dustin asked.
“No, I haven’t told anyone. It’s safer if they don’t know.”
“Are you sure? Maybe if they knew, they wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Outin.”
“Kyle is dead, Dustin. His body is floating out there somewhere. Give them a day to get used to that.”
“Did you mourn for me?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
“No, the question was simple and so was your answer.”
“Shut up, man. You’re my brother. I love you.”
“No need to apologize. You got me out of Mountain View, that was enough, forever. Then you saved my life when Fitts tried to kill me, that was enough for another forever.” He looked at me with his deepest, most serious expression. “There are more than one forever, you know?”
“Tell me about it.”
“I will. In the meantime, you and your girlfriends are overestimating death—it’s really a little thing. Kyle still exists.”
