by James Riley
Not sure what else to try, Fort cast a teleportation circle, but nothing happened. Maybe one had opened wherever/whenever his body was, back in the Deployment Room in the present, but it sure wasn’t working here in the future. So what did—
The Deployment Room disappeared around him, replaced by a sandy-white beach, stretching off in both directions farther than Fort could see. The ocean he found himself facing was calm, if strangely low, based on how wet the sand was where he was standing. He glanced behind him, to see how far back the damp sand extended, and gasped.
Thousands of uniformed soldiers stood in formation just a few dozen yards away. Each one was wearing some sort of mask, like the kind you’d wear to scuba dive, connected to two tanks on their backs, but other than that, they seemed to have no weapons or other items of any kind.
Instead, their arms hung at their sides as they stared out toward the ocean.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—I don’t—” Fort stammered, having no idea what to say, but none of the soldiers seemed to even notice him. As his shock wore off, he remembered that he wasn’t substantial here in the future, so they most likely couldn’t see or hear him. Still, it felt odd to be standing in front of them, so he quickly moved off the beach, passing through the two nearest squads of soldiers until he reached the back of the company.
Now safely behind them, Fort turned back to the ocean, wondering what they were waiting for. Part of him didn’t want to know, as it definitely wasn’t going to be anything good. But Ellora had sent him here for a reason, and she might not bring him back until he’d seen whatever it was he was supposed to.
As he watched, the ocean pulled back even farther, stranding several fish and even a few jellyfish on the sand as it did. A loud roaring noise erupted from out on the water, and the sky began to darken, like a bad storm was coming.
The wind picked up out of nowhere, strong enough to make many of the soldiers almost lose their footing, bracing themselves against the force of it. Fort could only see its effects and hear its whistling as it passed, not feel it, and for that, he was actually grateful.
One of the soldiers shouted out in a language Fort didn’t recognize, and he realized for the first time he might not be in the U.S. It’d been hard to tell what nationality the soldiers were, given that they all wore masks.
Out on the ocean, the darkness drew closer, and the soldier shouted again. This time, the others all raised their arms, and their hands began to glow bright blue in the oncoming storm. Fort’s eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing: thousands of magic users, all with Healing magic.
But where had they come from? When had they learned magic? How had they gotten the book of Healing magic from the TDA? Was this China, and Colonel Charles had changed his mind? And since none of the soldiers looked like they were children, how many years in the future was this?
But then the roar from the ocean turned Fort’s attention back to the growing darkness, and he realized with horror that it wasn’t a storm coming toward them. The darkness wasn’t from clouds or night falling.
It was water.
Extending as far as Fort could see in every direction, a wave was crashing toward them, hundreds of feet high, maybe more. And in the middle of the wave, maybe every ten or twenty feet, was a pair of glowing red lights.
No, not lights. Hands, glowing with Destruction magic.
The wave was an attack.
Even as Fort stared in shock and disbelief, the soldiers in front of him began casting their spells, sending Healing magic rocketing into the wave. Each spell that hit one of the Destruction-magic users paralyzed that person, knocking them backward out of the wave with the force of the hit. The water where they’d been began to collapse out of the tsunami, but the other Destruction users spread their magic out, solidifying the wave.
How could this even be real, no matter how far in the future Fort was? It all just seemed so unreal, both because he couldn’t feel anything around him, and from how much had to have changed between the present and whenever he was now. All of these adult magic users, fighting a war of some kind? It was too much to wrap his head around!
The one soldier on the beach shouted again, and this time, hundreds of soldiers stepped forward, their bodies glowing blue. Wings sprouted from each one, and they took to the air, soaring up into the fading sunlight. Then, when they were just above the highest point of the wave, they dove straight at it, aiming for the Destruction-magic users.
Some managed to hit their enemy, but others were hit by walls of water or lightning bolts sent from the Destruction casters, dropping the Healers into the ocean below, where they were swept straight into the massive wave.
This attack created more instability in the tsunami with each Destruction user it took out, but even this wasn’t enough to stop it. The soldiers near Fort began to get nervous, muttering to each other in their own language.
The one soldier shouted again, and everyone else went quiet. Soldiers in the front began to remove their masks and step forward onto the beach, even as the wave grew dangerously close. The soldiers behind them all turned their magic on the ones who’d stepped forward, their blue Healing light almost too bright to look at.
And then, out of the light, the soldiers at the front began to grow.
Fort involuntarily took a step back in amazement, even as the soldiers cried out in pain as their bodies doubled in size, then doubled again, growing larger and larger. From the sound of their cries, the agony was incredible, and several soldiers near Fort had to look away even as they kept their magic flowing into the others.
And then, just a moment later, the light disappeared, and Fort rubbed his eyes, trying to see what had happened.
Giants now strode the beach, each one easily as tall as a skyscraper. And there were hundreds of them, each one lining up to face the oncoming wave, spreading their arms and readying themselves to deflect as much as they could.
The enormous soldiers shouted as one, the force of their cry sending their regular-sized comrades to their knees from the intensity of it, but again, Fort didn’t feel a thing, at least not physically. Mentally, he still couldn’t believe any of this was really happening.
And then the giants surged forward, crashing into the surf, and threw their bodies into the oncoming tsunami.
Red Destructive spells flew out at the giants, burning them or sending electricity zapping through their bodies, but the spells were too small to do much. The giants hit the wave, and—
And Fort was back in the Deployment Room, Ellora giving him a horribly sad look.
“I’m so, so sorry we had to show you that,” she whispered.
- NINE -
BEFORE FORT COULD RESPOND, HE saw that Jia and Rachel were there as well and looked just as shocked as he felt. Simon stood in front of them both, with a wheeled construction cart abandoned just behind them. Apparently he really had carted them here.
Just behind Simon, Fort’s portal to the Carmarthen Academy stood open, which meant Ellora must have actually reversed time on the wall.
“What was that?” Jia demanded, her voice sounding like she was on the edge of panic. “What did I just see?”
Simon cleared his throat. “Oh, uh, I actually forget which of you I sent where. Were you the attack on Chicago? That was the disease outbreaks, if I remember right. Smallpox, measles, that kind of thing?”
“No, that was me,” Rachel said quietly, her eyes wild. “I … I’ve never seen anything so horrible.”
“I saw Destruction-magic users, in Hong Kong,” Jia said. “They were floating through the streets, setting fire to everything as they went. People were screaming, running. I saw … I saw …” She went silent for a moment, holding her arms tightly around herself. “That can’t be the future. It can’t !”
Ellora and Simon looked at each other. “It will be, if we don’t stop it,” Ellora said. “That’s why we need your help.”
“How far in the future?” Fort asked, trying to get the image of the
tidal wave crashing against the soldiers out of his head. “How long do we have before all of that happens?”
Ellora looked uncomfortable. “That can wait for now—”
“No, they should know,” Simon said. “Everything you three just saw? It all takes place right around two years from now. Three, for the reprisal in Hong Kong.”
Fort fell back a step, completely in shock. Only two years? So soon? But how could that even be possible?
The soldiers on the beach had been grown men and women, and they’d been using magic. Discovery Day was only thirteen years ago, so two years from now, the oldest magic users could only be fifteen or sixteen, tops.
Jia and Rachel looked just as thrown. “How can that be?” Jia asked softly.
Ellora glared at Simon, who just shrugged. “Things are going to change dramatically in the next year,” Ellora said finally. “If what you just saw was a fire, the spark that lights it goes off by this time tomorrow.”
Fort just stared at her. That had to mean …
“London getting destroyed is the spark, yes,” Simon said, answering Fort’s thoughts. “Now you see why we’re so desperate to stop it. Other than, you know, it’s a city of almost ten million. That’s sort of important to us too. Now, are you going to come with us, or would you rather waste more time here with obvious questions?”
“But how can adults use magic?” Fort said. Simon groaned loudly, but Fort didn’t care. “It’s just not possible.”
Ellora gave him a long look before responding, making him feel oddly guilty for some reason. “Come with us back to the Carmarthen Academy. We’ll explain everything there.”
“What Ellora is avoiding saying is that your Dr. Ambrose is the one who figures out why adults can’t use magic and fixes that,” Simon said, then jumped as Ellora punched him. “Hey, ouch! What was that for?”
“Enough!” she hissed. “We’re not getting into all of that right now!”
“You don’t think they of all people should know?” Simon said, looking hurt and rubbing his shoulder.
Dr. Ambrose? She was the one who’d be responsible for giving adults magic? But how? Yes, she had access to most of the books of magic, and a whole school of magic users, the most anywhere in the world, from what Fort knew. But no adults at the school could use magic. What was going to change?
“Wait, hold on,” Rachel said, sounding like she was in a daze. “How did Dr. Ambrose figure this out? Only people born on Discovery Day or after can use magic. That’s not just something a vaccine can fix.”
“That’s what we all thought,” Simon said. “But thanks to Dr. Ambrose’s research on—”
And then he paused in mid-sentence, his entire body freezing, glowing with black light.
“I told you, enough,” Ellora said, her eyes blazing with black light as she glared at her schoolmate. Fort immediately readied a spell to use against her, not that it’d do much good, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jia and Rachel do the same thing, but Ellora held up her hands in surrender as she turned back to them. “Sorry about that. It doesn’t matter how it happens. What matters is that we stop it. And that’s why we’ve come to you.”
“You really think you can stop … everything we saw?” Rachel asked, her hands shaking so hard she crossed her arms to hide it. “It looked like a war zone.”
Ellora winced but, again, seemed to be hiding something. “We can stop it, or at least postpone it, if we save London. And to do that, we need you three. Without each of you, our plan fails, simple as that.”
Something beeped, and Ellora glanced down at her watch, then made a face. “We’ve run out of time,” she said, unfreezing Simon, who seemed unfazed by his freezing. “We’ve got about two minutes before all of your TDA soldiers show back up, so I need you to come with us now.”
Fort glanced between his two friends, who looked as shaken as he felt. Jia especially had a haunted look in her eye—he hadn’t seen her this unsettled since the Dracsi caverns. Whatever she’d seen must have really upset her.
If it’d been anything like the tsunami on the beach, he shouldn’t be surprised.
But if they went with Ellora and Simon, if he went, and Colonel Charles found out … what then? Would the colonel really go through with his threat and make Fort forget he’d ever found his father? The thought of spending the rest of his life thinking his father was lost to the D.C. attack was almost the worst thing he could think of, other than not ever having found his father to begin with.
“We could go,” Rachel whispered to Fort, apparently reading his mind. “If you stay, you’ll have followed orders, so no punishment.”
“We need all three of you,” Ellora said, shaking her head. “With just one or two, we’ll never save London. Without Forsythe, everything you saw will come to pass.”
Jia seemed to shudder at this, and Rachel gave him a sad look. “It’s your call, New Kid,” Rachel said quietly. “I don’t know that we can trust these two, but there’s no way I’m letting that future happen, no matter what Colonel Charles threatens me with. But things are different for you.” She paused. “Maybe we could all tell him we were kidnapped? I mean, considering they already froze Jia and me, they easily could have. And the colonel might believe that if we’re gone before he returns.”
“What about the security cameras?” Fort asked, remembering Colonel Charles telling him about footage of Fort letting Sierra and Damian go, back at the original school. “He’d have proof we were lying.”
“We froze those when we arrived,” Simon said, his annoyance evident in his voice. “Hurry up, please!”
“We need a decision,” Ellora said, sounding anxious as well. “They’ll return in under a minute now.” She nodded at Simon, who ran over to the portal and passed through it. Ellora quickly moved to follow, but she paused at the entrance, waiting for them.
“I have to go,” Jia said suddenly, and walked to the portal without looking at the other two. “Whether or not Fort comes, I can’t … I have to stop that future. I have to.”
Rachel stared after her in confusion for a moment, but turned back to Fort. “I’m with her, even more than usual,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
For a moment, all Fort could think about was his life before Dr. Opps had arrived: going to school every day, sometimes getting into fights, feeling nothing but numb, an emptiness inside that felt as deep and cold as the ocean. His aunt couldn’t afford to take care of him, and he’d had no idea his father was out there somewhere. All he’d had was the feeling that it was his fault his dad had been captured.
And that could be his life again, if he disobeyed Colonel Charles.
But what did that compare to the future they’d seen? If even one person got hurt or died in a battle, could he live with himself? Not to mention a whole city full of people in London was in danger.
When it came down to it, there really wasn’t any choice. He had no idea how he could be useful, with just his Teleport and Heal Minor Wounds spells, but if Ellora had seen a need for him, then he couldn’t stay behind.
“I’m in,” he said, barely recognizing his own voice. He quickly ran over to the portal, trying to ignore the consequences for now. Rachel might be right: If they could just get out before the soldiers reappeared, they could say that the Time students had taken them by force.
Maybe Colonel Charles would even believe it.
They all passed through the portal, Rachel slapping him on the back supportively as she went. As they stepped onto the dark, damp grass in front of the Carmarthen Academy, Fort turned around to close the teleportation circle behind him …
And a lightning bolt passed right over his shoulder, striking the lawn.
“Close it!” Rachel shouted, but it was already too late. As Fort shut the portal down, he saw the TDA soldiers had already started reappearing. Only it wasn’t a soldier who’d fired.
It was Colonel Charles. The colonel now stared at them through the portal, his Lightning rod still glowing
from use, looking almost dumbfounded from rage. “Fitzgerald!” he shouted. “I order you to—”
But the rest was lost as the portal closed.
- TEN -
FORT STARED THROUGH THE SPOT where the portal had been, frozen in place. In his mind, the colonel’s threat ran on a loop, and he almost couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Do you … do you think he knew we weren’t being kidnapped?” he whispered to no one in particular.
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Rachel said to him as she laid a hand on his shoulder, then gently turned him around to face her and the others. “It’s going to be okay, Fort. Really. We’ll figure this out.”
Fort shook his head, barely able to comprehend the words. After everything, losing his father to the Dracsi in D.C., finding him in an alternate dimension, and rescuing him—now, in just a matter of seconds, he’d managed to throw it all away.
Ellora moved to stand next to Rachel, her expression full of pity. “I know this seems bad—and it is. But it’s not too late to make it right.”
Make it right? It didn’t even seem possible. How could anyone change what had just happened?
And then it dawned on him, and for the first time all day, he suddenly felt hope. “You mean we can fix it with Time magic?” he said quickly. “You can go back and make sure Colonel Charles doesn’t catch us?”
“No, we can’t actually change the past,” she said, and his hope died just as quickly as it’d appeared. “But come listen to what William has to say. The way you three will help us save London will … change things a bit.”
“What do you mean by that?” Rachel asked.
“We don’t have time for all these questions,” Simon said, sounding annoyed. “If you had just come when we said to, it wouldn’t have been a problem.” He glared at Ellora. “Or if she had let me just freeze you all to begin with!”
Simon’s words took a moment to filter through Fort’s dark thoughts, but when they did, he turned to the other boy with a mixture of amazement and anger. “Wait a minute,” he said quietly. “Back up. Did you know this was going to happen? That the colonel would catch us leaving?”
