by Alex Leopold
“The Directory killed my father, they killed my friends and they took my home.” He jabbed his hand at the ground to emphasize his point. “So trust me when I tell you, I might be a lot of things but I’m no Squeak.”
Then he added. “I hope at least you’ll believe me.”
In her gut she did, but she understood why he had to go – he truly could be anyone.
He might be some version of the man she’d come to feel drawn to, but – as her father would argue – he could just as easily be something far more sinister.
“Acadia and Mayat will help make sure you get on your way without trouble.” She said between clenched teeth.
He got the message, and with a nod swung himself up into his saddle.
“Till we meet again.” He said and motioned his horse to follow the Sekhem and the grizzly as they led him away.
Cooper made sure to keep her eyes on the ground till he was gone. She didn’t trust how she’d react to watching him leave.
“Now you’ll tell me what I want to know.” She said to her father when they were once again alone.
“I’ll do one better.” He agreed. “I’ll show you.”
30
He had them sit in a small circle and hold hands.
“How does this work?” An impatient Cooper asked. She was done waiting for answers and wanted her father to know it.
“I’m going to use my abilities to connect my mind with yours. When you’re inside my head, I’ll be able to show you what you want to know.”
“Fine, just so long as there are answers for me inside there.” She said grabbing his hand.
Riley did the same but more reluctantly. The events from the bridge were still fresh in her mind and she was wary of letting her father back into her head.
“Will it hurt?” She asked, struggling to speak through her tender throat.
“This is something very different.” He promised. “Now close your eyes, and relax.”
Riley was so exhausted it was a relief to let her heavy head fall to her chest, and as her mind descended into sleep she found her dreams to be wonderfully empty. There was no Man in the dark lurking in the shadows. No trappers coming to take her. No warehouse on fire. There was nothing except for a single pinprick of light far off in the distance, a lone-star in the night sky.
Then the star exploded!
The eruption spewed out waves of dazzling light that momentarily blinded her. When she was able to see again, she found she’d returned to the forest.
Except it was different.
The light from the moon was now stronger to her eyes. The air was warmer against her skin and when she looked at her hand, it radiated with life.
Something else had changed. She was on her feet. Glancing down at the forest floor, she saw an apparition, or a duplicate of herself sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed and head bowed.
“What is this place?” Riley heard her sister ask.
Like Riley, there were now two Coopers; one sitting in the circle, the other standing at her shoulder.
The Cooper on the ground still had dried blood matting her tangled hair. The Cooper by her side looked so healthy she was practically shimmering.
“This is the connection.” Her father replied, and in this place he too looked younger. “This is the world anomalies can build together.”
Fascinated, Riley squatted down to admire herself. What she saw shocked her.
She hadn’t realized how badly she’d been beaten. There were deep bruises and cuts covering much of her face, and around her neck two angry-red hand prints stretched across her skin like moth’s wings.
Looking at herself like this made Riley see herself anew. She didn’t look as strong or as old as she thought she was whenever she’d admired her reflection in a mirror. Like this, she thought herself younger, smaller, more vulnerable. Like this, she feared for herself.
Feeling unsettled, she reached for the comfort of her mother’s necklace, only remembering it was gone when her fingers found nothing more than the bare skin of her neck.
“You come into the connection to share dreams?” Cooper asked.
“Not just dreams.” Her father explained. “In here we can share emotions, memories, knowledge, even our strength.”
“How?”
“That comes later. First, I must show you a memory.”
As if on command, the night and the forest fell away and they found themselves transported to a busy street in the middle of a large city.
It was daytime, and everywhere they turned ancient towers from the lost civilization rose without end into the sky. Yet, they were no longer abandoned to the forests. On this day they were teaming with life and on nearly every floor hundreds of laborers were busy making them habitable again.
“Where are we?” Cooper asked entranced by the world around her.
“Sancisco. Where you were supposed to live.” Their father revealed. “This is what the city looked like two days before you were born.”
He began making his way down the street to where a small crowd had formed. Cooper hurried to fall in step with him.
“Why did you bring us here?”
“You said you wanted to know why I hid your abilities from you. In order for you to understand, I have to show you what it was like before the Directory. And then what happened after.”
When he reached the crowd of people he passed through them as if they were no more than smoke.
In the center, ten men and women dressed in the blue uniform of the Torchbearers’ army, stood around a heavy stone pillar.
“Okay children, looks like you’ve got an audience. Try not to embarrass yourselves.” A confident young man announced.
He had slicked back dark hair and a mustache that curled at the edges.
“Shift!” He called out after counting down from three and on his command the pillar slowly levitated off the ground.
They’re anomalies, Riley realized as the ten men and women used their kinetic ability to raise the heavy pillar onto the tenth floor of a nearby building.
“What we were starting in this city was going to bring peace to the rest of the nation.” Their father told them as they watched the pillar move into place. “You two were going to be part of that.”
When the ten Torchbearers were done they all had to sit to get their breath back.
“That was heavier than I thought.” The mustached Torchbearer panted as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“You’re just out of shape is all, Ditarburn. Too many pies.” The woman sitting next to him teased as she patted his stomach.
“I only eat them so there’s more of me for you to love.” He replied.
Their smiles came easily, Riley thought as she watched the Torchbearers joke with one another. There was something about how their expressions were filled with so much hope and excitement that made her wish she was one of them.
“These were some of the Torchbearers’ best anomalies.” Their father said.
“They’re amazing!” Cooper admired, and Riley could see how much she desired to be one of them.
“They were.” Their father said purposefully referring to them in the past tense. “Yet, as powerful as they were, I knew you two were going to eclipse them all.”
His revelation shocked both women and for a moment they could do no more than look at him in stunned silence. Before them ten anomalies had just used their abilities to lift part of a building a hundred feet up into the air. Neither girl knew how to lift a pebble an inch off the ground, and yet they were supposed to be the stronger crink of the two. His words seemed preposterous.
“How powerful are we?” Riley asked and even though she knew she was only in a some kind of a dream, she thought a hush descended over the street so everyone might better hear he father reply.
“You saw what happened in the warehouse? What you did at the bridge?” He told them. “The truth is you might be two of the most powerful anomalies that ever lived.”
; “Is that why you took them away from us?” Cooper asked accusingly.
“No.” He shook his head. “I took them away because of what happened next.”
As he spoke the world around them changed to night, and suddenly the streets were on fire and everywhere was chaos.
The same ten Torchbearers remained where they’d left them. Yet, on this night they all had weapons gripped in their fists and stood in a line facing down hundreds of soldiers dressed in grey.
“What’s going on? Who are these men?” Cooper asked.
“They’re the Directory’s army.”
“What are they doing? Why are they here?”
“They’re here to take the city.” He responded.
The ten Torchbearers seemed to be the only thing standing in the army’s way, and the enormity of their task was etched on each of their faces.
Riley saw what true terror looked like as she watched them fight with wide-eyed desperation among the torn bodies of their dead comrades, in a smoked chocked street that was slowly being baked by the fires. As the Directory soldiers fired round-after-round at them, they tried to use their abilities to protect themselves, but they were being overwhelmed.
This is not a fight, Riley realized as she watched two of them fall, this is a massacre.
Materializing out of a blue capsule of light, a young man with long-hair immediately launched himself into the center of the battle.
“Father.” Riley said aloud as she recognized who it was.
Their younger father’s appearance seemed to restore the Torchbearers’ determination, and for a moment they fought with renewed vigor. Then an explosion rocked the street.
The fireball tore through the remaining Torchbearers and when it disappeared only their father and Ditarburn remained alive.
“We have to go!” The younger Quill shouted as he struggled to pull Ditarburn out of the rubble.
“What about the others?”
“They’re dead! The city is lost.” Their younger father told him. Then, before Ditarburn could argue, he surrounded them both in a blue capsule and switched them away.
“What happened?” Cooper asked, her wide-eyes betraying her shock.
“The Directory took control of Sancisco and destroyed the Army of the Torchbearers.” Their father said. “From this night on, we live on the run.”
31
“From the moment you were born, you were fugitives.” Their father explained. “Wanted by the Directory because you were my daughters.”
He’d shifted them into another one of his memories and they found themselves barely squeezing into a cramped room that looked to be the attic of some dilapidated boarding house.
There was no bed, just an old mattress lying on a dirty floor. This is where Riley found two newborn baby girls, wrapped in blankets and sleeping soundly.
Me, she thought. It wasn’t difficult to recognize which one was her. She’d be the one that didn’t fidget constantly as she slept; a Cooper trait held onto even to this day.
Standing at one end of the room, the Torchbearer, Ditarburn, kept watch on the outside world through a small port-sized window. Against the other wall, their father and a much younger Acadia sat at a small card table, littered with weapons.
The grizzly hadn’t aged into his salt-and-pepper beard yet. Instead, he wore a goatee cropped short to his face. Something’s hadn’t changed though, he still snored like the bear he was as he slept uncomfortably in a chair two sizes too small for his massive frame.
Pale from exhaustion, their father’s younger duplicate sat next to him, a pistol in one hand, an empty bottle of something in the other. His face was a mess of puffy-pink flesh from some unshown beating.
“Getting out of Sancisco left its mark on me.” He said explaining his injuries.
“Looks like it almost killed you.” Riley replied sympathetically.
He responded with a small smile and behind it she thought she caught a look that made her wonder if he secretly wished it had.
Certainly his younger duplicate looked to be a broken man. Aside from the scars to his face, his unblinkingly eyes looked far off into nothing. It was like he wasn’t there, Riley thought, as if someone had reached into his mind and torn something important away. Like he’d been droned.
Riley didn’t have to guess why he looked so lost. Some element of it had stayed with him even to this day. It had been born when their mother died giving birth.
“Where are we?” Cooper asked him, bringing them back to the reason why they were there.
“About a thousand miles from Sancisco, it’s been a few months since the Directory took control.”
“Why are you showing us this place?” She gave a look that said, what does this have to do with your decision to take my powers?
“I want you to see what happens when you use your abilities in a world run by the Archon.”
When he finished the soft sound of a bell being run from the other side of the town broke the silence.
Before the alarm could be carried across all the houses, the two men at the table were on their feet.
“What is it, Ditarburn?” Acadia asked.
“Directory.”
“How many?”
“Too many.” He said grimly.
Riley joined Ditarburn at the window and saw maybe fifty well armed soldiers at the top of the street.
“That’s not some random search party. They know we’re here.” Acadia cursed as Directory soldiers began going house-to-house.
“That shouldn’t be possible, unless one of you idiots used your abilities.” He added.
Ditarburn met both men’s faces with a guilty look.
“I don’t believe it.” Acadia muttered incredulously. “When?”
“Two days ago. I was out hunting, came across a group of blackhats trying to rob a mother and her family on the run from the Directory.
“I barely used them.” He added cursing himself.
“Used them enough for the Directory’s snoopers to track you.” Acadia pointed out.
Ditarburn nodded, then he seemed to quickly make up his mind.
“This is my mistake.” He told them. “They only know I’m here. Let me give them what they came for.”
“No!” Their younger father refused as he came out of his dazed state. “We leave together. If that means we have to fight our way out of here, then so be it.”
From where Riley was standing, it almost looked like her younger father was glad the Directory was here. He wants this fight.
“What about the girls?” Acadia asked pointing to the bed. “We can’t exactly fight our way out with them strapped to our backs, now can we?”
“You take them.” He decided handing one of the sleeping bundles to the grizzly. “We’ll create a diversion, you escape while the Directory’s backs are turned.”
“I’m not going to let you satisfy your death wish, Quill.” Acadia replied putting the sleeping child back into her father’s arms. “The only way these girls are getting out of this town is in their father’s arms.”
Quill’s shoulders sagged and he made a pleading face to the grizzly. They’ll kill Ditarburn if I do nothing, it said.
“It’s okay.” The Torchbearer interrupted forcing a smile to his lips. “I’ve faced worse odds and lived.”
It was clearly a lie, but before anyone could argue, he had his sword drawn from its holster on his back.
“Live free, or fight on, my friends.” He winked. Then he stepped through the switch and disappeared from the room.
As Acadia and their father’s younger duplicate took the girls and fled from the attic, their older father walked the twins to the bay window. From its vantage, they saw Ditarburn exit the blue capsule into the middle of the street where he attacked the Directory.
He was laughing to begin with as he cut down almost ten soldiers, but he went very quiet when the rest finally had him surrounded.
“In those first years after the Directory took power, they u
sed their snoopers, skin-readers, spies and informers to hunt us across the nation. Nowhere was safe.” He told them as they watched Ditarburn disappear behind a line of grey uniforms.
After that he changed the scene around them and they stepped into a great hall atop a high tower hundreds of feet above a lost civilization city. Through the open windows, Riley could see men riding massive winged-colossals. The City in the Clouds she thought, home to the dragon riders.
“We sought out old allies.” Her father continued as they watched the younger version of him address the king of the Skymen, a man known as the Manhattan. At their father’s ankles, two tow-haired girls, no older than a year, sucked on thumbs while gripping the fabric of his trousers.
“None of them wanted a war with the Directory, so they turned us away.”
As the king shook his head, their father let the memory fade.
“The only option left for us was to journey far into the Borderlands. To keep going until we found a place untouched since the days of the lost civilization. A place we could keep hidden from the evils of this world.”
The twins watched as the younger Acadia brought their wagon to a halt in front of a large lost civilization house built of stone.
Even hidden beneath two hundred and fifty years of vegetation, Riley recognized her home immediately.
“At last I thought we were safe.” He said, then grimaced. “But as you girls continued to grow, so did your powers.”
As he spoke, he skipped through his memories as if he were turning the pages of a picture book. It was years later and they were in the largest room of the house. Riley saw herself as a four year old playing on the carpet with her sister. They were giggling as they moved a toy without touching it.
Then they were outside in the garden. They were a little older, maybe five, and they were fighting. When Cooper punched Riley in the arm, she unconsciously hit her with the spark. The blue lightning bolt wasn’t anymore powerful than a static electric shock, but it was unmistakable.
“I could control my abilities, but you were too young to be able to control yours.” Their father told them as he flipped through other memories of the girls using their powers. “If I was going to keep you safe, really safe, then my only choice was to take them away from you.”
