The Incursion flickered over to primaries again, and the center contracted, but her seers compensated. She knew the cage. She felt it as an extension of herself, in much the same way she felt her wiggling, rolling tentacles of seers.
She controlled, this time. She pressed and she pulled and she threaded the upward trajectory of the cage directly into the center of the Incursion.
And she did what Billy asked. She ran. Daisy also ran, Dragon behind and Ladon at their side. They ran, even though without the walls of the base fire leaked out. The power of the Burner Progenitor pulsed and not even a new-cage would keep it contained.
She ran for Billy. She ran because she understood what needed doing. She ran so that the next time they did this, they could do it correctly. Next time, the Progenitors would remember. Next time, they would stop the Incursion before a single ship dropped from the sky.
Next cycle, they saved everyone.
The wave pushed outward faster than Rysa and Daisy moved. The ground buckled. Rysa tripped but Dragon had her. He had Daisy. Fire billowed around his body but he shielded them against his chest the best he could.
Rysa hollered, then yelped at the piercing agony of the pressure bursting her eardrums. Her femur snapped. Two ribs shattered, and one pressed into her lung. The optimizers shattered and cut open her temple and forehead. Her eyes were okay, but she couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. She suffocated on dirt and fire.
Dragon’s singed hide radiated anguish. Daisy’s shattered bones screamed. But Rysa aimed Billy’s explosion past the biosphere into the stratosphere. Past the thermosphere and the exosphere and into open space.
She threaded the Burners’ explosion right down the center of the Incursion.
Fire rained from the sky. Clods of ground fell on Dragon and Daisy and Rysa. More bones snapped. More anguish flared.
Maybe Rysa died. How could she survive the explosion of the Burner Progenitor? The Incursion didn’t. The world had turned black.
No one survived. No one.
She must have died.
She…
Mmmooooommmm…?
Chapter Sixty
Mom?
Who’s speaking to me? Rysa thought.
The fire pushed all the air away and the voice rode in on the cold rushing back in.
She couldn’t move—one broken arm and a leg snapped in at least two places. Daisy, crumbled and bleeding, lay over her lap, unconscious and also barely breathing and with at least six bone fractures, one in her lower back.
One of Dragon’s huge hand-claws cupped her head and the other cupped Daisy’s. He’d drawn in his hindquarters as well, and his neck protected her back.
He wasn’t breathing.
Heal! she thought. Nothing else. No coherence. Just a directive for her body to do what it could to save Daisy and Dragon.
“Dragon?” she croaked. “Daisy?” Moving her chest burned worse than any Burner bite.
Where was Ladon? “Ladon?”
Did he die trying to save her and Daisy? “Ladon!” she wheezed.
The hot tang of her own blood plastered her tongue. No sound crossed her shattered eardrums. No pounding of hearts, hers or Daisy’s or Dragon’s. No breathing. No humming or buzzing. None of her own shouting.
“Ladon!” she screamed.
She coughed. More blood followed, and more burning, scraping pain.
Her seers picked up nothing beyond cold and ground and ash. Dirt still rained down onto Dragon’s back. They were dying. Or they had died. And they were in the damned wheat field.
Blobs of color and smudges of patterns moved on the edge of her vision. She blinked. Did someone come for them? “Help,” she wheezed.
She rubbed her face against Dragon’s hand-claw to dislodge the shattered optimizers.
Where was Ladon?
The optimizers dropped away.
A dragon snout she did not know sniffed at her face.
She screamed again, and flinched, but held her legs as best she could to protect Daisy’s back.
“Fuck you!” she coughed. “We closed… your door! Kill me… it doesn’t… matter now….” Blood welled in her mouth.
The new dragon pulled back as if slapped. Its bulk blocked all of her view, but at least it wasn’t so close it could bite her anymore.
I am here to help, the new dragon signed, then returned to touching Rysa’s Dragon.
“Leave… him… alone…” Rysa wheezed. Heal, she thought. Heal Dragon. Heal Daisy. A dragon she didn’t know touched her beast. Did they have Ladon, too? Please let Ladon be okay.
The new dragon’s hide pulsed.
“Leave… him…” Wait, she thought. “You… signed….” The dragon used American Sign Language. “How…”
A woman stepped between Rysa and the new dragon. She placed her hand on the new dragon’s neck as if they were life-long Nest mates.
The woman wore a Guard-like, black-and-purple jumpsuit zipped up tight around her neck, and short-cut, raven-black curls close to her scalp. She leaned forward and peered at Rysa with gold-flecked emerald-green eyes, from a face shaped almost exactly like Rysa’s own.
“Mom?” the woman said. Rysa couldn’t hear her, but she read her lips—and felt her present-seer.
This woman working with a dragon called her “Mom.”
“Can’t hear,” Rysa said.
You’re safe, the woman signed, then put her hand through Dragon’s and inside Rysa’s chest the way Aiden Blake had done with Gavin and Adrestia.
A bolt of healing warmed Rysa’s shattered rib.
The dragon returned to touching and sniffing at Rysa, Daisy, and Dragon. It—she—flashed a pattern at the woman, who then moved her hands through Rysa to Daisy. The dragon moved her hands into Dragon.
“Don’t hurt Dragon!” Rysa yelled. The air filling her lungs only stung, now.
Safe, the woman mouthed.
Why weren’t her ears healing? Why couldn’t she hear the woman? But things rustled. Wind howled. If she concentrated, heat and cold danced over her skin.
“Where… where…” Rysa stuttered. Her body was sure they were still in the field and these people were ghosts. “Are you… in new-space?”
Was she having a vision?
On the Intrepid, the woman signed, then sank her hands into Daisy again.
“We’re on Billy’s spaceship? How?” Rysa asked. Her broken leg continued to burn, and she groaned, but she could breathe. “Where’s Ladon? Is Dragon okay? I think Daisy’s back is broken.”
The dragon held up her six-taloned hand-claws. She flattened her digits. I am BlueLeaf, she signed. I am Nest.
“How the hell are you Nest?” How could that be?
Dragon stabilizes, she signed, then returned her hands to the beast.
Daisy groaned.
The woman’s hands reappeared. She yelled something over her shoulder, then turned back to Rysa. Do you hear Nebraska? she signed.
The wind and the air whistled and… chopped. “A helicopter is coming.”
The woman nodded. We’re sixty-seven years in your future. We’re occupying the same physical space as you did when you closed the Incursion. We’re using a bubble of new-space to protect you from the blast and to heal you as best we can.”
Billy was right. The Intrepid was the future he wanted to make. “You can do that?” And in only sixty-seven years.
Dragon’s hide pulsed.
“Is Dragon okay?” she asked. He had to be okay. “Where’s Ladon?”
BlueLeaf is a doctor. We rescued her from the General’s Nest in what used to be Tokyo, the woman signed.
Dragon’s hide pulsed again, and he took a breath.
Dad’s… unconscious, the woman signed.
Rysa’s shock surfaced but she punched it back down.
We have you. The T-B field allows us some manipulation. You’re going to be okay. If you’re not, none of us would be here, right?
The woman’s hands moved over Daisy’s back.
&
nbsp; “What’s wrong with Ladon?” All she saw was BlueLeaf’s bulk. “Tell that damned dragon to move! Where’s my husband!”
The woman didn’t move out of the way. We need you to lift your broken leg. We need you to realign Daisy’s spine. Gently.
Her leg still burned. They couldn’t fully heal it, not in the position it was in.
“Tell me where your father is!” she yelled.
He’s alive. The woman pointed at Daisy.
Just a little, Rysa’s present-seer said. Ignore the pain. Not even the combination of her own healer and her daughter’s would be enough. Not with a shattered femur.
Rysa lifted Daisy’s chest.
The pain radiated through her belly and into her chest. She shrieked.
Stop, her seer said. Hold her there. Rysa fired her own healer into Daisy.
Daisy will be okay, the woman signed. William will be okay. She glanced around Dragon’s bulk. Hold her until Grandpa comes.
“How… long…” Even if holding Daisy permanently damaged her leg, she’d do what she needed to do.
Another pulse moved through Dragon.
You told us this moment gave the world hope, the woman signed. But we know you’re going to change the future anyway. She grinned.
The chopper now drowned out all other noise.
Tell the Emperor most of the scientists are in the Tokyo Nest. Dissent was high. They will defect.
“Okay.” No pain, she told her healer. She needed to hold Daisy. “Ladon?”
Dad is twenty-one feet northwest of you. Tell them to dig right away—
“Rysa!” Her father’s hands cupped her cheeks. “You’re alive.” He touched Daisy’s head. “You’re all alive.”
“Daisy’s… spine… I’m… holding her…” Her head spun. “I…”
Midmorning sun beat down onto Rysa’s face. Cold biting wind stung her dry lips. They were back in the field. “Dad…”
“I have you.” A bolt of healing fired through her body and into Daisy’s.
Sandro Torres yelled over his shoulder for help. “Your mother says Dragon’s in a deep sleep.” He looked around. “We can’t find—”
“Twenty-one feet northwest,” she panted. “They said he needs you. Find him. Please!”
Sandro touched her mother’s arm before yelling for a shovel and pointing northwest.
Mira Torres leaned close. “Trajan sent a helicopter for us right after Billy redirected away from the base.” She looked up. “We brought Eric and three other de la Turris healers.”
A woman who Rysa had met only in passing wiggled her hands under Daisy’s torso and took all the weight off Rysa’s leg. “Fatima,” she said. “We meet again, little half-sister.” She looked up at Mira. “We need to get them out of Ladon-Dragon’s grip.”
More chopping filled the air—another copter approached.
“Connor went for Anna and Sister-Dragon. They’re here. They’ll help.”
But not Gavin. Not Andreas. Not Officer Seaver. “Mom…” Rysa groaned. Vomiting while twisted in Dragon’s grip wouldn’t help. But…
Daisy stirred.
Mira shook her head. “Later. Let’s get you all to safety first.”
Twenty-one feet northwest, her father shouted and swore in Spanish. “Get that rock off him! Damn it, Ladon. Come on, son-in-law, breathe!”
“Ladon…” The world tipped, even though it didn’t. Everything tipped. She threw up.
Fatima yelled. Another de la Turris who she barely knew appeared and they conversed in rapid-fire Spanish. The second healer nodded.
He placed his hand on her forehead. “I apologize, little half-sister.”
Rysa fell into a hazy sleep.
Across the field, Sister-Dragon pushed the pallet holding Dragon’s sleeping body up the ramp of Connor McJanison’s transport copter. Anna touched his side, then touched the face of the man in the gurney three people carried up the ramp behind the beast.
“Ladon…” Rysa whispered. She reached out.
Her copter jostled. Fatima de la Turris closed the side door, then knelt next to Rysa’s head. “His heart is beating strong. His sister donated blood,” she said. “We couldn’t fit you all on the same helicopter.” She looked back at the door. “AnnaBelinda and your father ride with him. Anna-Dragon is providing imaging support.”
Rysa nodded. “Daisy?”
Fatima pointed to the other side of the copter.
Daisy slept stretched out and flat, her back and neck braced, on her own gurney. An IV poked into her arm. Radar and Ragnar rested between them on the copter’s floor.
“You saved her back,” Fatima said.
“Not me,” she said. “The future.”
Fatima patted her arm. “Sleep,” she said.
They closed the Incursion. It chewed them up and spit them out, but they survived.
A wave of calm spread through Rysa as the copter lifted off and she looked up at her long immortal half-sister. “Thank you for helping,” she said.
Fatima touched her head. “Thank you for stopping the invasion.”
Rysa closed her eyes. They stopped it, but not soon enough. They could do better. They had to do better.
For the future and the world. For Billy.
Next time, they’d save everyone.
Chapter Sixty-One
Aurora, Colorado…
Daniel dreamed of the blast that saved the world even though he’d been nowhere near the Nebraska field. He dreamed of the Intrepid. He dreamed of medical equipment and Shifter healers in Guard uniforms leaning over a chewed-up man who should be dead. He dreamed of a dragon circling another dragon holding two women….
And a console with a screen. Numbers rolled by, and words he didn’t understand: Containment bottle. Ansible. Pitch, roll, yaw, slide, push.
Cadence. New-space had two types of time, didn’t it? The medical bay screamed with the hurricane-force gales of new-space winds, and Daniel swore progress moved differently here.
“It does,” said Timothy. He flickered at Daniel’s side. “They’re shattering the what-was-is-will-be.” His brother’s form wavered and jumped more, as if he’d been stripped of the ability to hold himself together. “The final cycle begins.”
He vanished and reappeared directly in front of Daniel. “This must be the last cycle. This time, we save everyone.”
“How?” Daniel asked.
“Help me this one final time, brother,” Timothy said, and slammed his hand into the console. “We are Legion. We need tools to protect our own.”
Dams in the many different rivers of time formed.
Dams in those rivers broke.
The world moved…
… and the SUV stopped much too suddenly.
Daniel’s head slammed against the back of Marcus’s seat, then against the headrest. His arms rose to shield his face.
The SUV tipped onto its side and slid across the icy pavement of a lonely Colorado road.
A woman poked at the SUV’s broken windshield. A beast moved behind her—a large beast, one with a flat, smallish head and vicious teeth. A beast that was not a dragon.
“Nax!” she yelled. “I need to get inside!”
The creature barked, bowed its head, and ripped the windshield out of the frame.
She immediately checked Harold and Marcus. “They’re alive.” She looked over her shoulder. “We have injured!” she yelled.
Daniel moaned.
“Hey!” The woman crawled through the windshield and into the back seat. “Hey, hey, look at me.” She slapped Daniel’s face.
She pulled back. “You’re blind. Sorry.” She glanced over her shoulder again. “You’re using a present-seer to read the environment, aren’t you? That’s what the ghost said.”
“Ghost?” How many ghosts roamed the Earth?
“Yeah,” the woman said. “Mrs. Karanova sent us to get you.” She touched his face and neck. “Actually, the ghost of Maria Romanova sent us. She ‘wants her ring.’ Said you have it.
Whatever that means.” She shrugged. “Mrs. K’s Maria’s medium. I used to think it was all stories but then that thing appeared in the sky and I found this.”
She patted a scabbard on her back.
“Mrs. K says the sword’s called Stab. Can you believe that? Who names a sword Stab?”
“A Burner,” Daniel said.
Marcus mumbled something unintelligible.
The woman checked him again. “We need to get you three out of here. It’s not safe.” She glanced out of the popped out windshield. “Too many feral hellhounds.”
Harold waved his hand. “Who…” He coughed. “Who are you?”
Witch, Daniel’s future-seer said. Who else could control a hellhound? Power swirled around the woman, and it wasn’t just from the midnight blade on her back. This is how we save everyone.
The woman backed out of the windshield. “My name’s Philadelphia Parrish,” she said as she stood and yelled for help again. She ducked her head back in. “Call me Del.”
“Hello, Del,” Daniel said. “I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Four months later…
Rysa sipped at her mug. Tea was a rare thing now, but Christie Seaver had squirreled away a special tin of Earl Grey just for Rysa’s visits.
Christie was closer to Daisy’s age, and a nurse, and worked at one of the refugee resettlement centers outside Cheyenne. She put in twelve-hour days while her son spent most of his time in accelerated education.
Trajan demanded the remaining humans become a fit, industrious, educated populace. No internal wars. No bickering. No discrediting science or lording one’s alpha-ness over one’s neighbors. Humans had work to do.
Having the Intrepid in the sky over North America helped. Every day, people looked up, and every day they were reminded of why they were still alive.
Nate, though, had too much homework. Six-year-olds should run and play, even if they did live in a math-and-engineering-heavy, post-apocalyptic world.
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