by Brandt Legg
“You decided to stay here. No one forced you.”
“It was only a matter of time before you found out about Storch. You might have killed me and God knows we don’t need anymore of that kind of karma between us.”
“Well, I know who you are, and you’re still free and alive, so why do you stay?”
“Only way I’m ever leaving Outin is dead. This place was made for me . . . or vice versa.”
“But you went to Pasius,” Linh said.
“And you showed up in Russia in 1912,” I said.
“A man’s gotta travel every now and then.” He winked at me. “It’s a big world full of time and troubles.”
We sealed the entrance before heading to the lodge, then took a glorious and healing swim in the Monet-like Floral Lake. Linh looked softer and happier than she had in years. But our relaxation didn’t last. I worried that Omnia would soon figure out a way to attack from inside my head. There was too much I didn’t understand about the soul powers.
“So you said you need my help with another power,” Dustin said, as we walked along the shore.
“Yeah, seems you’re the only one who can show me how to project images onto the sky.”
He squinted his eyes. “I’m not even sure it’s possible but . . . did Spencer tell you I could show you?”
“Yeah. He calls it Air-Projection.”
Dustin smiled. “Then, I guess it must be doable. It’s just been a theory . . . I spend most of my time practicing. There may be five great powers but there must be a million different ways to use each of them.” His voice was excited. “I’ve been exploring variations and really getting into blending them, you know, seeing what’s possible, what I can do.”
“It seems Spencer is paying attention.”
“I wish I could watch everything and see all the possible futures like he does, but whenever I try anything like that, my head starts to hurt.” He slapped my back. “It’s kind of cool to know that no one else knows how to do Air-Projection and that I sort of invented it.”
“Can you show me?”
“Are you sure you trust me, little brother? What if instead of showing you this power I taught you something that could kill the people in the Movement?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think I’d do that or you don’t think you trust me?”
“Dustin, where is Trevor?”
“Ohhh, now the truth comes out. Are you here to find your old concentration camp buddy or learn the secret of Air-Projection?”
“Both.”
“And, by the way, I noticed you didn’t answer whether you trusted me or not.” He turned to Linh. “Does he talk to you in this double-sided slippery way too, Linh? I don’t know how you put up with it.”
“Dustin,” I said.
“Nate,” he moaned.
“What?”
“Straight answer time, anointed one,” Dustin grabbed my shoulder.
“I trust you, all right?”
“Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Do it or the bunny gets it!”
“You’ve lost it, man.”
“No, little brother. I’ve found it, and you know I have. There is so much you don’t know, and it freaks you out that your screwed-up older brother isn’t such a screw-up after all. Your great mentor Spencer Copeland has twice sent you to ask my advice . . . and even saving your holocaust pal depends on me.”
“Saving Trevor only depends on you because you’re the one who locked him up.”
“Ahhh, see, you’re still confused. It wasn’t me, Nate. Storch was a man, he was separate from me.”
“Your soul was aware of both incarnations. How do you explain that? Maybe you couldn’t do anything about also being the one trying to destroy me, but you could have told me. Dustin, why? Why were you silent?”
“You wouldn’t have given me a chance. In your eyes, sharing a soul with Storch has made me guilty of everything.”
“Don’t you see? It wasn’t you being Storch . . . the betrayal was in your silence,” I yelled.
“I know.” His words trembled and were hardly audible. “I was scared.”
The admission surprised me. We stared at each other for a few seconds before he turned away. “Of what?” I finally managed.
He turned back and I read his expression. Dustin was baffled by my question. “What do you mean of what? Of everything!”
“I don’t –”
“No you don’t because you think your life has been tragic and hard, but you’re like the poor little rich kid complaining about having a rough day because his Ferrari is in the shop so he had to drive a Lexus. Your ‘tortured’ Outviews are baby food, Nate. Your life is so far out of perspective. Did you ever wonder why I met Crowd first? How long did you ponder why Dad put me on the list? How many mystics have I met?”
“Dustin, I know you’re important, I know you know things –”
“Important! You say it like the only reason I’m important is because you say I am. Is it exhausting thinking you’re the king of the world?”
That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. “Let’s get back to where Trevor is.”
“No, Nate,” Linh said. “You guys need to get back to being brothers.”
“Great, the other Dustin is coming back,” I said, pointing at Dustin-two heading toward us. “Now I get to argue with two of them.”
“Don’t worry, he just looks like me; we’re surprisingly different,” Dustin said.
“What’s he pulling?” Linh asked.
“It looks like a Window,” I said.
Dustin reeled around and started running toward Dustin-two. “No,” he yelled. “Don’t bring that here. No!”
We started running, too.
31
After an aggressive brotherly scuffle, Dustin-two and I managed to subdue my-Dustin. But for an instant, when I first looked into the Window, I wished my-Dustin had succeeded in preventing me from seeing it. The world inside the Window was as close to a real life hell as I’d ever seen. The worst Outviews and my scariest nightmares didn’t equal the horrors inside that Window.
Tens of thousands of bodies lay rotting, many still breathing and moving, even screaming, while grotesque animals, large insects and oily, deformed birds ate their intestines and fed upon their open sores. A centipede-creature the size of a loaf of bread was eating a man’s eyeballs while he tried to swat it off with what was left of his arms. I looked in the other direction and a huge vulture landed to feast on his already gnawed legs.
Stumbling, zombie-like humans caught and ate the same animals, bird and bugs, which were eating the people. Less than half the inhabitants wore filthy rags that barely covered them. The rest were naked, but it was difficult to tell because they were coated in layers of grime, and, oddly, some were even painted. The only water I could see were blackened pools and streams. An old woman cupped her hands and drank from a large pond; a tar-like liquid ran from her fingers. The dark gray-brown sky was filled with green and purple noxious smoke spewed by factories that seemed to produce pollution as their main product. Crews of toothless scarecrow-looking women with hollow faces moved large carts filled with the bodies of babies. It wasn’t clear where they came from but they dumped them into waiting trucks. A pile of human limbs burned near a low building; men and women were being raped in the streets. Gangs roamed, beating and killing, but I turned away once the cannibalism became obvious.
Linh screamed and then threw up.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“It’s a parallel dimension called Carst,” Dustin-two said. “Omnia has sent millions there. All the ‘missing’ people from 92426 that everyone wonders what happened to . . .” He motioned into the Window.
My brain was slow to comprehend. “92426 is my dimension. What is this place?” I repeated, as if he’d never answered. “How . . .”
“Carst is a place so unevolved that people live worse than
animals.”
“I can see that but what does Omnia –”
“Omnia has sent close to twenty million people there from 92426 and other dimensions. Anyone they want to get rid of,” Dustin-two said.
“Why did you bring this to show me?” I asked.
My-Dustin was still held to the ground by Gogen but yelled at Dustin-two through gritted teeth, “Stop it. Just shut up.”
“He has to know,” Dustin-two said to my-Dustin.
“Know what? Why did I need to see this nightmare?”
“Because that’s where Trevor is.”
I choked and coughed, trying to find my breath. I wanted to kill my-Dustin.
“You did this,” I screamed at him.
“No,” he shouted, fighting Gogen, trying to get up.
“But you knew!”
“I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t save him.”
“You knew!”
Linh intercepted my charge. She was somehow stronger than me, stronger than my rage. Her grip felt soft like a salve, but a glance back into the Window doubled my fury.
“How could you have allowed this?” I spit my words at him while fighting Linh.
“I didn’t, Nate. It wasn’t me, it was Storch.”
“But you kneeeeeew!”
Linh’s strength was incredible, but my power and rage won. I landed on my defenseless brother and raised my fists together in the air. Then, with all the power-enhanced force I had, I brought them down toward his face. Blinding wrath and vengeance controlled me until my locked fists were less than a millimeter from his face. Suddenly, both of us were flung high into the air. We moved at such speed that it was impossible to breathe. My vision blurred but returned as we arched into the skywaves, which changed color and splashed like water as we penetrated them, yet nothing was wet. Our rapid descent slowed to a float. We drifted down into a dense forest of giant silhouettes. We passed though the large gray and black trees that appeared to be only shadows, and hit the ground hard. The stars were obscured by white ground fog and pink mist.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Beats me, I’ve never been here before,” Dustin said. “Hey, I’m not pinned to the ground anymore, still want to fight me?” he asked, shoving hard, sending me tumbling through two shadow trees.
A person ran between the trees, or rather a shadow did. Two more ran at me from the other direction, then three came out of nowhere. “Dustin!” I yelled. But it was too late. Seven or eight “shadow-people” pulled me deeper into the forest. My powers were empty against these non-people.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” I yelled, but it only came out as a whisper.
They talked among themselves, all at the same time – whispering gibberish. It didn’t feel like Outin without the star-ground; even the skywaves weren’t visible through the shadows and mist. I yelled for Dustin again but he couldn’t have heard the faint sound that escaped my lips.
With each movement, the shadow-people grew longer or shrank in angles as shadows do. I couldn’t keep track of where they were. I broke free and ran, then slammed into their solid but translucent bodies. They bent, turned and twisted so that every direction I went ended in a wall of shadow-people. I kicked and pushed but could never get through. Finally, exhausted, I sat in the mist and gave up.
“What. Do. You. Want?” My voice still hushed. I looked up, demanding an answer. They were gone. I was sitting alone in the shadow-forest. After I got up and paced around, it seemed obvious that they weren’t coming back. I wasn’t sure which direction to go and wished I could Skyclimb and tried. All my powers had returned! Skyclimbing in shadow-tress felt like learning it again. I ran across the treetops and soon found my bearings. A silhouette walking in the distance, heading toward the lakes, had to be Dustin.
“Why aren’t you Skyclimbing or taking a wormhole?” I asked, when I landed next to him.
“I just feel like walking.” His voice was low, defeated.
I nodded. We walked together in silence for a while.
“Aren’t you going to take another swing at me?” Dustin asked.
“No.”
“Where did those shadows take you?”
“I don’t know, somewhere in the trees.”
“I looked for you but that forest is the strangest I’ve seen here. The slightest breeze shifted everything, even my movements caused the trees to rearrange. I’ve never felt so lost . . . it’s a tragic place.”
“Yeah.” I stopped and stared back toward the charcoal-gray trees. “The shadow-people reminded me of something I’d forgotten.”
“What’s that?” He looked at the forest, too.
“The power is in surrender.”
Dustin kept watching the trees as if he expected to see something that would answer his questions.
“That’s what they showed me. It’s hard to remember when we’re weak with anger that there is strength in forgiveness,” I said.
“So you’ve forgiven me? I don’t feel any stronger.”
“That’s because you have to forgive yourself.”
Dustin nodded slightly and we walked on in silence. Soon after the shadow-forest faded into the distance, Linh saw us and ran to me.
“What happened?” she asked.
After I told her the story, she asked Dustin how come he’d never been to the shadow-forest before.
“I doubt it’s really there,” was all he said.
32
“If you go into the Carst Window you’ll have to stay twenty-four hours until the portal opens again. Do you want to stay there that long?” Dustin asked.
“Nate, that’s crazy,” Linh said.
“Trevor has been in there for two years.”
“And remember when you come back, your memory will be split, you’ll feel brain-damaged,” Dustin said.
“What’s he talking about?” Linh asked.
“Only half of my life memories will be here; the other half will be filled with stuff from Carst.”
“The schizophrenia will give you a glimpse into what it’s like to be me,” Dustin said.
“You can’t go,” Linh said.
“It’s not permanent.”
“How long does it last?” Linh asked.
“Just get me to Floral Lake.”
“I may not be able to stop you,” Linh said. “But Nate, I swear if you’re not back once that portal opens again, I’m coming in after you.”
“Linh, if I don’t return, then I’m dead.” I looked into her eyes. “And I get that you may want to die too; just don’t go into Carst.”
“But you are.”
“I’m going for Trevor, he’s still alive. If I die, you’ll feel the change, and if you want to join me, run into a hail of Omnia bullets, jump off a bridge, whatever . . . but. Do. Not. Go. In. There.” I pointed into the Window where we could see hundreds of young kids leaving a factory, many missing limbs. They were chained together in groups of twenty.
Once inside the Window, Carst’s horrors cut through all my senses. The suffocating stench of burning flesh, reeking piles of human waste, death, decay and chemical fumes scorched my lungs. Ditches and puddles overflowed with urine, blood and a toxic stew of poisons. The temperature must have been near a hundred, humid, stifling and absent of any air movement. The moaning sounds of death, cries and screams made it impossible to think.
I stood out like a glowing god – clean, healthy, fully alive. Only Skyclimbing and levitating kept me above the clamoring hands of beggars, hunters and thieves.
Now in the same dimension, it took only a few minutes to find Trevor. He could have been a skeleton, if not for the dried flesh draped on his body. His only clothing was what might have once been a collared dress shirt, stained bloody shades of brown. The buttons were gone, and only pieces of shoelaces knotted together held it closed. Without soul-powers, I wouldn’t have recognized him and he had no clue as to who I was. He cowered when I approached.
“Trevor, it’s Nate, I’ve come to get y
ou out of here.”
He shook his head, slowly at first but then it changed to a tremble. A tube was attached to his arm, my eyes followed it to a large container, draining his blood. I read the area and discovered they took as much blood as they could from the living. Carst’s stronger and more important inhabitants drank it or used it to cover the taste of rotting animals they found to eat. He jumped when I disconnected the tube and healed his arm. Only my use of Gogen kept him calm, but his eyes were wild. In my reading, I saw too many rapes and violations against my friend to count. He refused to look at me. I put us in a dome of healthy air and used various powers to conceal us.
As gently as I could I held his head and stared into his terrified eyes until some recognition began to register. It was a long time before he began to sob. I let him cry until he slipped into sleep. Every few minutes he woke screaming and clawing. Solteer took care of the wakings.
I moved us to a nearby rooftop as darkness set in. There was no real danger to me since I was a superhero compared to the empty shells who populated this horror-world. Still it was the most difficult night of my life.
Slaughters and hunts took place below in such numbers I couldn’t believe anyone would be left in the morning. The screams and cries amplified in the darkness, the only light came from fires and eerie green glowing sticks. How had Trevor survived all this time? How did anyone? I did what I could to save any children nearby. They darted around heaps of garbage, scavenging for food pursed by packs of sick empty “people.” What was I saving them for? I thought. “Wouldn’t they be better off dead? How could I destroy Carst for good?”
I kept Lusans on Trevor all night. At first light, he woke in tears; then, staring into my eyes, he tried to speak, “Ney,” he tried. “Na, Na . . .”
“Trevor, no, I’m taking you out of here today.”
“Nay, Naay . . . Nay . . . ta.”
“You’re safe.”
“No.” He closed his eyes tight.
I did more direct healings around his throat and head.
