Somewhere in the vastness of space, there was a God who didn’t finish what he started. He left families to be torn apart, children to die alone, and the unluckiest of all to be given Gifts - abilities that would destroy them for the sake of something bigger than themselves. He had given them a dead Earth and a new planet that would kill them further. And he had abandoned them.
Walter Marsh saw all of this. He saw the centuries in which he had lived, and eventually saw the centuries in which Cormand had lived - his father. He saw all of this and more. He saw the wars that led up to their departure from Old Earth, and the Movers that saved them by transporting them to a new system. He saw an Empire rise. He saw memories of his mother meeting his father. He saw people with hands full of lightning, stirring minds, solving puzzles, and all of their opposites. These were the new gods.
And in that moment, Walter Marsh drew the first breath of his thirty-fourth life.
**************
Shiraz Spaulding stood in the midst of a gnarled explosion of metal. It was as though a giant had punched a hole through the enormous building, cutting his fist in the process. Shiraz guessed that this building was not meant to survive a blast of this magnitude - but it had held up remarkably well. And all she had to do was find the person who caused it.
She knew deep down that she wouldn’t be alive - it had been two weeks since the blast, and nobody had seen her. Were she down in the lower recesses of the building, she would have died of dehydration by then.
Her second-in-command, a stocky, broad-shouldered boy named Seth Walters, sniffed the air cautiously, listening. But there was nothing to hear besides Shiraz’s shallow, quick breaths and his own deeper ones. This was the thirteenth mission to the Facility for the Gifted Shiraz had made him accompany her on, and there was still no sign of what - who - they were looking for. All there was were twisted beams, the sickly yellow sky above, and the massive weight of the grief and confusion that they both carried.
Shiraz stood rooted in place, not moving, a breeze from above blowing her ponytail to one side. Ordinarily, Seth would be concerned, but this had happened so many times over the course of the last thirteen days that he knew better than to interrupt her. This was her way of grieving, Seth believed. She’d been through a lot.
Seth began to reminisce for himself. Shiraz had tried to save her, but in the end, it was too late. She’d tried to save Luna, too. She’d tried to save everyone but herself. And in the end, it had broken her. Broken the unbreakable. That’s why she kept coming back here - not to find, but to grieve.
Seth remembered the year before. Archer, whose name he could barely even think, the girl they were mourning, had come and became their captain. Universally beloved, everyone thought that she could save them. And she did - halfway. She eliminated the Empire’s Dreamwalker force with one explosion, but Cormand and his forces were still at large, and now that Cormand had the Drug that granted him Sight as well as the Gift of immortal life, Shiraz and her team, Team Styrofoam, were freedom’s last hope. And to make matters worse, no one knew where he was or what he was doing. That was a lot of weight for one girl and one team to carry. Seth had done his best to be a comfort, but she needed much more than what Seth could offer. She needed Archer.
But Archer was gone.
He, like the rest of Team Styrofoam, could absorb nearly every kind of energy, but unfortunately, grief was not on the list. So he had no choice but to sit by and watch while Shiraz stood quietly for hours.
After about hour two, however, a sound shattered the silence. Shiraz remained still. Seth, however, turned around to find none other than Luna Lee behind him, brandishing a sharp piece of shrapnel.
“You left me here!” she cried, pointing the shrapnel at his chest. “You left me here to die, didn’t you? You’re lucky you can absorb energy, you piece of sh-”
Seth said nothing. Instead, he grinned and picked her up in a bear hug so tight that Luna swore that he had broken a rib. He released her after a long while, and Luna took a deep breath.
Shiraz turned around suddenly and beheld Luna, face paling. “Luna?” she whispered hoarsely, her voice barely carrying in the cavernous building. “You’re alive? How?”
Luna shook her head, dropping her piece of shrapnel, which fell to the ground with a sharp, resounding clang. “Shiraz? Shiraz Spaulding?”
“Come here,” Shiraz said in the same whisper, some happiness creeping into her heavy voice. Luna ran to her, and Shiraz picked up Luna’s small frame in an enormous hug. “How are you alive?”
“Truth be told, I have no idea. I remember blacking out right as Cormand shouted at the Dreamwalkers, and I woke at the bottom of the Facility. I have no idea how I got there. I have always been good at surviving, though, especially since the bottom of the Facility is where they keep the food and water. And I slowly started to go insane from the loneliness of it all, and after about the first week, I began to wonder if I’d been left for dead, because no search party came looking for me. But I had the place to myself. I worked my way up floor by floor, gathering supplies and taking them with me to the bottom of the Facility where I slept. And I figured that all of it was irradiated, judging by the hole that it left nearly all the way to the bottom of the building and the gaping hole in the ceiling. But that doesn’t bother me, because I am energy.” With that, little sparks began to shoot from her arms and hands.
Shiraz shrank back. The last display like that had torn from her the person she trusted and admired most. Upon noticing Shiraz’s reaction, Luna shut off the electricity and hugged the shaking girl, who stared at the distant darkness above Seth’s head.
Luna looked at Seth anxiously, mouthing, “How long has she been like this?”
“Thirteen days.”
She tried to not look afraid, but inside, she was terrified. This was not the Shiraz she knew. Losing Archer had truly taken its toll on her. “Seth!” she hissed. “We need to get her out of here. She’s in shock.”
“She does that a lot -”
“I know, you imbecile. It’s neither safe nor healthy. Now, get her out of here before there’s a piece of shrapnel buried bone-deep in your arm.”
Seth flinched, and did what he was told.
Thirty minutes later, they were at the surface. The air outside was cold, and it was snowing lightly. Shiraz was bundled up and being carried in Seth’s strong arms. Luna followed as Seth led the way.
“Hey, Luna?” Seth asked.
“Yeah?” Luna replied.
“Why did you never come to the surface?”
“Even if I brought enough food and water to last me the roughly, let’s call it two-week hike to the nearest city, which I think is Manzikert, temperatures here drop to nearly -30 degrees nightly, and there’s only sustenance down there. I’d freeze before I’d even make it 200 paces. Not even my energy could warm me out here.”
“Oh,” Seth said. “How’d you survive out here until Archer found you in the first place?”
“I stole a coat,” Luna said with a smile and a wink. “When you’re on the run, you do what you can. When you’re trapped, you do what you must.”
Seth pressed Luna for more information on what it was like before Archer showed up. Luna paused and frowned. “Start from the beginning?”
Seth nodded.
Luna shook her head. “Okay. ‘If someone mistreats you,’ my mother once said, ‘do not seek revenge. That will only feed their pride. Instead, the best revenge is to forget about them. Forget about them entirely. Even if you feel you cannot, act like it. By doing this, you are giving them what they fear most. They will never have a future because they were never recorded in the past.’
I tried to forget.
I thought that forgetting my brother would make the lightning go away. He was gonna kill me that day, you know? His name was Cain. Cain Lee. And the name fit, because he was always jealous of me for reasons I could never quite figure out. We were seven years apart, and he was older. I was never the bright one, never the strong one, and never the pretty one, but he still thought I was not worthy of existence, and he reminded me of that often. He always teased me about my ‘ugly eyes’ and my tangled hair. He made me feel like I was a waste of space. And every time I tried to stand up to him, he would hit me, or worse. I was nothing but an obstacle to him. It got worse at night, ‘cause our parents were astrophysicists and he was the babysitter because they were gone. And to say that the power went to his head would be an understatement.
One night I had exceptionally frustrated him, and he called me a selfish monster and shoved me down the stairs. And when I hit the concrete floor below, my entire left side erupted into pain. And as I burst into tears, he came sauntering down the stairs calling me a weak little brat. It was at that moment that I decided to take a stand. To try and stop him. Because God knows what he would have done to me had he succeeded. I got angry. I knew I couldn’t punch or kick him, because he was twelve and at least two heads taller than me. So my body took over. Before I knew it, he was on the ground, cursing me and screaming in pain and I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew that it was a rush and even if I didn’t want to admit it, I...loved it. The only thought in my mind was, Make him pay. And before I knew it, he was nothing but a pile of ash. And somehow, the rush of energy had healed my injuries. I could walk again. But then the gravity of what had happened hit me. I had killed my own brother. I wanted to die. I was afraid from there on out. I left the house, taking nothing with me, I was so ashamed. That is the story of the first death. And I wasn’t able to make the lightning go away, obviously.
“Damn,” Seth said. “What happened after that?”
Luna scowled. “I ran. I ran very far away. After awhile, I learned that I must avoid crowds, otherwise I would get scared and kill everyone. And even though I isolated myself further and further, I was still unable to stop the lightning, unable to stop the killing. I begged for God to just kill me, and after days and days and weeks and months of unceasing lightning, I stopped believing in God entirely. How could a just and loving deity allow a monster like me to exist? I was everything God was not. So, I resolved to go into the woods and succumb to hypothermia or starvation, whichever took me first. That would be the price I’d pay for my crimes. I ate an apple stolen from a farm on my way to the mountain where I wished to atone, and waited days for my strength to fail me.
During this entire process, I kept a journal, a book filled with the records of my crimes. And that was how Archer found me, shall we say? I had dropped it in the snow, and by some fortune, she picked it up and read it after I had killed the three soldiers that accompanied her. I think that’s the reason that she didn’t just leave me there. She was the first person in eleven years to have sympathy for me - actual sympathy. She was the first person not to believe that I was an abomination or some kinda danger to society or a circus freak. She was the first person to believe that my crimes weren’t crimes, but accidents. She was my first friend.”
Seth listened, and when she finished, he asked, “And what was it like in the Facility? I never had to go there. I was Cormand’s project from the beginning.”
Luna thought for a second, then began. “The Facility…. It was...restrictive at best, from what I could tell. But then again, I can only judge it off of three weeks’ experience. We weren’t allowed out of this Super Soccer practice room, but that’s understandable, seeing as I was still a ‘menace to the public’ - code for ‘this girl will go out and kill everyone if she isn’t supervised’. Most of my experiences have Cormand in them. Would you like to hear those?”
Seth nodded slowly.
“My initial impression of Cormand MacDowell was that he was magnetic. Archer thought he was some kind of Dreamwalker or Caster and that he was manipulating my mind, but his true Gift came out when I accidentally killed him. It turned out that it was just his personality. He was Archer’s height, with a deep, suave voice and curly red hair. He got her to fall for him so fast. She barely put up any resistance. And I suppose that that was all the better for his plans. He was so charming. He got things out of her that I could never dream of getting. I remember that we would lay on these mattresses that he brought in from somewhere upstairs and she would just spill things about every area of her life to him. It was kind of cute in a sad way. He would read her poetry he’d translated into Standard, and she’d turn red and swoon into his arms. So it was no surprise that she put up equally little resistance when he started drugging her at the New Facility.
I saw him do it once, and he cornered me with a crazed look in his eyes after he was done and he said, ‘Tell anyone you saw this, and I will kill you myself. And I will kill you slowly. I don’t care if you shoot all of the lightning you have into me and kill me sixteen times. I will get up, you won’t, and I will personally secure your demise. Are we clear?’
I said yes, and it broke my heart into a million pieces when she came up to me a week later and said, ‘Luna, I’ve been having dreams. Weird ones. Horrifying ones. They’re in color, and I’ve never dreamed in color before. I think something’s wrong. Terribly wrong. Can you help me?’
She was colorblind, by the way.
I turned her away for a bit and came back to her later in the evening after her team’s Capture the Flag bouts were over for the night and her drugs had nearly worn off. I said to her, ‘Archer...you’re not having dreams. You’re seeing visions. Cormand is drugging you at night. Want evidence? I’ll take you to your room. There are hundreds of paintings you did while in the drug state, and Cormand’s using you to recover his lost memories. Based off the paintings, I think the drug allows you to see things as they really are.’
She shook her head as though she was waking up from a deep sleep, and looked at me with clear eyes. ‘I….I think that’s true,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Do you think I could skip my meds and see what happens?’
‘Absolutely,’ I replied on impulse. I led her back to her room, where there was a small Styrofoam glass filled with water and a purple pill beside it waiting for her. I watched as she drank the water and instructed me to dissolve the pill in Cormand’s glass, because he never drank his water. He had no need to, being immortal. I placed the pill in his glass on the other side of the bed. As I did this, I said my first prayer in eleven years. I prayed that the pill was tasteless. It dissolved instantly.
The morning came, and Archer looked better than she had in weeks. There was a slight problem, though - I noticed that she twitched every so often for no apparent reason. Cormand was nowhere to be found.
The days went on. Archer’s twitching grew to shaking, and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw her sparking occasionally the way I had in the beginning when I first discovered my Gift. After observing her further, I told her that she needed to get help, but she didn’t listen, saying that she was ‘so happy to be free’ and that she was ‘so glad I’d made her aware.’ After many attempts to persuade her further, I gave up. Archer will do what she wants, and you know that.
And there was still no sign of Cormand. Archer said that he was sleeping like he was sick and that they no longer shared a bed. He’d been moved to a different room. Maybe I’d managed to permanently kill him, I thought. Served the bastard right for drugging my best friend in the first place.
Two weeks later, he emerged from his slumber to address the inhabitants of the New Facility. He was impeccably dressed, perfectly poised, perfectly perfect except for one thing - his eyes were cloudy.
The drug had rendered Cormand MacDowell blind.
He spoke about the valor of the Gifted who lived in his Facility, especially the valor of Archer, who was then so shaky that she had to leave midway through. He spoke of his plans to return to the Old Facility and gather its residents along with ours under one Facility for the Gifted forever.
‘What about the Dreamwalkers?’ one girl asked. ‘Aren’t they still at large?’
‘They are...stabilized,’ Cormand replied. Murmurs went up through the crowd, quickly growing louder and more violent. The inhabitants wanted answers. And your Capture the Flag team, Team Styrofoam, whom I had told about Archer’s deteriorating situation at that point, wanted revenge.
And with that, Cormand left.
You might know the rest, but I want to tell it anyway.
The next three days carried an unmistakable tension until the morning of the third day. An announcement came through the halls and floors that we were to be up immediately and to prepare to be Moved to the Old Facility in one hour. Any inhabitants that did not comply would be shot on the spot. So, the now-terrified Gifted inhabitants prepared to be Moved or risk certain death.
Within the hour, we were organized into groups of twenty and Moved in these groups to the top floor of the Facility.
Seth, I was horrified at what I saw. Dreamwalkers, about 200 of them, all wearing scarlet hoods, in a massive cage. I could only guess what he was planning with them. “Luna Altair Lee!” Cormand bellowed. “Come forward.”
I hesitated, and someone slammed the butt of a gun into the small of my back. “Go,” the gun’s bearer said, and I stumbled forward. Then Archer stepped out from behind Cormand. “Take her hand,” Cormand instructed. I did so, taking Archer’s shaky hand. The sparks I had seen before were more real and more prominent now, and I could feel her energy matching, no, exceeding mine. What was Cormand thinking? Was he trying to kill us all? Was he trying to kill me, specifically?
I would never know. Cormand bellowed at the Dreamwalkers, “Give me back my memories!” and I remember terror on their faces. Then I woke at the bottom of the Facility. As much as I hate them for putting us in prison and warping our minds, I would never wish any kind of horrible death upon them. Do you know what happened, Seth? You were there, right?”
Seth nodded slowly. “Yeah, I was. After Cormand shouted, the Dreamwalkers said that there was nothing they could do, and Archer dropped to her knees and began to spark like a Generator. Except this was no ordinary spark. Her spark grew and grew and grew until she began to glow like the sun. I think Shiraz knew what was going to happen, and she tried to steady her so that she wouldn’t explode, but it was too late. The brunt of the blast was aimed at the Dreamwalkers, and they were obliterated instantly. Team Styrofoam surrounded the onlookers as best as we could in order to shield them. We locked arms as Archer Merrin blew herself off the face of the planet.
Luna’s face went pale. “So she...died?”
“Unsure,” Seth said, hanging his head. “We think she could have been Moved by someone in the area like we think you were. Our only evidence is this. She is - was - an Insulator. Shiraz touched her while she was glowing and lived. We can survive in here without getting sick, while any other Gifted group would surely die. You survive all of your blasts. Why shouldn’t she?”
Luna thought for a moment. “Where are you two staying?”
“That was random. Team Styrofoam set up a hideout. We’re intact, of course. We made a break for it after the incident with the Dreamwalkers - so fast that many were trampled. The Movers did their best to get everyone out before Cormand stopped monologuing in his way, but Team Styrofoam and Osprey, his Mover, volunteered to stay behind and….take care of Cormand. We knew that killing him would only last 0.5 seconds and he’d outlive any jailer, so we took advantage of his one weakness at the time. His blindness. We instructed Osprey to send Cormand to the far south where he didn’t know where he was and to strand him there. Hopefully that would buy us a month or so. Then we scrambled for resources and built a hideout about ten feet deep in the snow, tunneling for days afterwards, with Shiraz and I coming back every day to look for signs of Archer. A week into our search, we were confronted by this blonde guy who said that Cormand had been picked up by a sympathetic trapper and he had made the trapper his lieutenant and comm officer. I thought that that was a load of phooey, but then he took several dozen pictures out of his coat pocket. I was very impressed. Either he had the world’s biggest man-crush on Cormand, or he knew what was up, but either way, he became our radio operator -”
Luna cut him off, rolling her eyes. “Just take me to the hideout..”
“Okay.” He led them to the hideout, where Luna was shocked to find an intricate tunnel system that was surprisingly complex for only having two weeks of construction time. Seth had opened the snow-covered hatch to fifteen anxious faces. They were shocked to find Luna, but also relieved to find Seth, and then shocked again to find Shiraz in Seth’s arms.
Diana, a tall, dark-skinned girl, gasped. “What happened?”
“She’s unresponsive,” Seth said. “She just stands in the Facility for hours. Luna found me, and we left. She does this every day, so I thought she’d be okay as long as I kept her safe and watched her. Luna said otherwise, that she was in shock -”
“You idiot,” Diana hissed. “Has she said anything since you picked her up?”
“No…”
“Get her in here. Thank God you had the common sense to at least keep her warm. A few hours later and all of you would have frozen. Irene, seal the hatch. Make sure it’s as warm as possible in here, but don’t melt the snow or the tunnels will collapse. You know the drill. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Fifteen minutes later, Team Styrofoam had placed Shiraz in her cot and were watching her like hawks. Her breathing had deepened, but there was still no response from her except from the occasional blink. She stared continually up at the ceiling.
After a long, long while, she became aware again. “Luna?”
Luna nearly jumped out of her skin and turned to face Shiraz. “Yes?”
“How did I get back here?”
“Seth carried you.”
“And you’re alright?”
“Shaken and worried, but otherwise fine.”
“Please don’t worry. I’m just sad.”
“Shiraz, this isn’t sadness. You keep going catatonic.”
Seth raised his hand. “What’s catatonic? Sorry, it’s been years since I’ve read….anything.”
“It’s basically where you go unresponsive to outside stimuli and sometimes sit there for hours, doing nothing. I said that she was she was in shock at first, but after saying and doing nothing for hours, even while being carried through the snow, that’s going catatonic.”
“I see…” Shiraz said, sinking into her cot. “I just think she’s alive somewhere. I don’t know where, though. Maybe I need to stop going back to the Facility.”
“Likely a good idea,” Luna said.
***********************************
As they were talking in the hideout, someone was stirring in his own hideout halfway across the continent.
The boy called himself Pitt. He kept to himself most of the time, only going down to the city of Adrianople to trade his inventions for food and more supplies in the market. He’d lived alone in the home he’d made in the desert for ten years, six weeks, and two days, which was almost as long as he could remember. He’d always had a knack for precision and for solving things, and that went for everything from traps and inventions to the human body.
And a body had appeared two days before.
Pitt heard the pop that morning, and he opened his door to find a beautiful woman laying a short distance away. She showed no outward signs of injury, but was unresponsive when he checked her vitals using information from a medical book he’d memorized two years ago. He checked her pulse and she had a very weak and fast one. At that point, he was grateful for any pulse at all. So he built a carrying apparatus as quickly as he could and brought her inside.
The first thing that he did was put her in one of his inventions that would diagnose what was wrong with her - hopefully. The only testing that it had ever undergone was when he went inside and it told him that he had a bad cold. It had never had to diagnose anything this severe before.
Her heart rate was much faster than he had thought at about 270 beats per minute. It wasn’t even beating efficiently, just fluttering. He flipped through a second memorized medical book in his mind and the machine beat him to a diagnosis by half a second.
Advanced heart failure, the machine said. Likelihood of survival: 10%.
Pitt gritted his teeth. I can get better odds than that, he thought. He brought the carrying apparatus inside and carried the woman down into the warren of tunnels that lay beneath the main portion of his hideout. He pulled out a table, sanitized it, and got his supplies ready. He had bought a surgical kit in Adrianople on a whim a few weeks ago, and he was glad he had. Then he washed his hands and tools, gently set the woman on the table, gave her anesthesia to ensure that she wouldn’t wake mid-surgery, and got to work.
Six hours later, the woman was stable. Finally. Pitt was terrified the whole time, because he’d never actually performed surgery before, much less heart surgery. By his calculations, the anesthesia should be wearing off…
A terrible, gut-wrenching scream split the room.
...soon.
Archer Merrin drew her first breath and screamed.
Pitt came up to her and tried to steady her.
“Get….get away from me!” she shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Pitt said as soothingly as he could. “Sorry.”
“Where am I?”
“About two hours’ travel from Adrianople.”
“Where?”
“Adrianople, in the west of the Empire.”
She sank back and sighed. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Pitt. And yours?”
“Archer.”
Pitt’s jaw dropped in surprise. “What’s your last name?”
“Merrin….why?”
“Aren’t you the girl who destroyed that mountain near Manzikert?”
“What?”
“You’re gonna have to fill me in. Because last I checked, I did no such thing. And how in the name of Old Earth did I end up way out here?”
“I have no clue about that last part, but I do know that you caused some form of explosion over on a mountain and now everyone’s talking like they’ve never talked before. Normally people keep to themselves, but now they’re congregating and talking revolution and learning for themselves. If you go into town, you’ll be proclaimed a hero -”
Archer glared at the boy. “I am not going into town. I still don’t know what happened, but I do know that Cormand and his forces are probably still at large. We are not going anywhere until I can get a hold of my best friend.”
“And who is that?”
“Her name’s Luna Lee.” She tried to stand up, but fell back on the table. “Agh,” she cried. “What did you do to me?”
“I saved your life,” Pitt said quietly. “Your heart was failing. A few more hours and you would have died.”
“How old are you, kid?” she asked, searching him.
Pitt turned bright red and went silent for a long time.
“Well?” Archer pressed.
“Um, I’m eighteen. So a little younger than you.”
Archer glared at him. “You may be very tall -” she glanced at his tall, slender frame “-but you can bet my ass that you aren’t more than seventeen and a quarter.”
Pitt gulped. “I’m actually...sixteen, if my calculations are correct. I may be a month or so off.”
Archer looked under her shirt to find several carefully done sutures. “And you’re telling me that you’re doing advanced heart surgery at the age of sixteen?”
“Well, I memorized the book..”
Archer frowned for a brief moment, and then burst out laughing, which soon began to hurt, so she stopped. “Calvin, my dear friend Calvin, wherever he is, would get a kick out of you. His specialty is in languages, codes, and solving the unsolvable. You appear to be Gifted in the same way he is, only you use your Gift for very different things. But you two do functionally the same things - you can solve any puzzle. We call you two ‘Ciphers’. There are many like you. You aren’t alone.”
“Damn,” Pitt said. “I wanted to be unique.”
Archer rolled her eyes. “Don’t we all?”
“You got me there. Now, who is your best friend and how do we contact her?”
“You got me there, kid.”
“I think I have an idea, actually..”
*********
Team Styrofoam’s radio operator really didn’t know how to operate a radio. Sol Oscarson was far better at making puns than operating technology. But he was the best they had. Sol had tried to get out of the job, but he was the only one who had had any experience with radio operations in his past. His father had been a long-distance radio operator, and had tried to train Sol in his ways, but he couldn’t tell a receiver from an antenna, which was shocking because they were quite different. Yet he still claimed that he was their “Sol reason” they could monitor the outside world. He nearly got punched for that one.
He was monitoring the frequencies when he picked something up. Normally the airwaves were dead and normally he was half asleep, but this time was different. He picked up some rhythmic tapping patterns and he beckoned Irene over to listen.
Irene had no idea what was going on, so she summoned Seth. Seth was able to figure out what was going on, and he shouted for joy. “Luna! You’re gonna wanna hear this!”
Luna ran over. “What is it?”
“Morse code. I think it’s Calvin.”
Luna burst into a grin for the first time in a month. “Lemme hear. And don’t hog the headphones!”
Sam held up one side of the enormous headset and Luna listened, trying to control her emotions. “He’s-he’s alive, and he’s….outside the hatch!”
They ran to the entrance and opened the hatch. Outside stood Calvin Thompson, a tall, rail-thin man dressed in a thick coat. Luna let out a sob, fell into his arms, and they embraced for a long time. Calvin kissed Luna on the forehead. Seth stood there awkwardly for a few moments and then said, “I’m getting cold. Come inside, lovebirds.”
They obliged, and came further inside. Seth shut the hatch, and Luna and Calvin finally separated, holding one another’s hands. “I missed you so much,” Luna said, voice wavering. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I missed you, too, love,” Calvin replied. “You haven’t lost me. I’ll be here for as long as you need me.”
“Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” Luna said. “You could have said something, it’s been a month -”
Calvin leaned in and kissed her deeply. Luna threw her arms around him and they remained there for a long time. When they finally separated, Seth said, “Get a room!” just as Calvin said, “Believe me now?”
Luna nodded, and Calvin took her hand as they walked deeper into the snow tunnels. Seth followed behind, slightly disgusted. He passed Sol, whom he clapped on the shoulder. Sol turned around in his chair. “Glad I found him,” he said.
“I’m not,” Seth replied. “Gonna have to deal with the bomb of happy couple rainbows and dreams that those two have dropped on the place. Hell, I didn’t even know they were a thing. But I can put up with it so long as it makes Luna happy. If he so much as lays a finger on her with bad intentions, I’ll kick his ass to the moon.”
At that moment, there was a boom and the sound of the hatch being blown off its hinges and thrown across the entryway. “Outta my way, fuckers,” an all-too-familiar female voice shouted.
Two minutes later, Team Styrofoam’s once-rival team had poured into the snow tunnels. The telekinetic Spartans had nearly collapsed the entire tunnel system with their blast, and Irene groaned because she was going to have to find a way to seal the hatch before they all froze or were discovered. But she was a few seconds too late - the team leader, one Gretta Marsh, sealed it faster than Irene could blink. And then Gretta stormed into the snow tunnels without saying a word.
“YOU MAY BE A MASTER HACKER, THOMPSON,” Gretta bellowed at Calvin, “BUT YOU’RE ‘BOUT AS SUBTLE AS A GUN!”
Calvin paled, and turned to find an irate blue-haired girl staring at him with her hands on her hips.
“Nice to see you, too, Gretta,” he said. “I trust you brought your entire team with you, judging by the sound of things. Did you bring Cormand’s men with you, as well?”
Gretta scowled. “Absolutely not. We woulda kicked ‘em offa the mountain.”
“You sure about that?” Shiraz asked from behind them. She was standing without the aid of anyone or anything, a stern look on her face.
Gretta stared her old rival down and swallowed her pride. “Yes’m.”
“If you’re certain about that, your team can take first watch.”
Gretta nodded curtly. “Damn Insulators,” she muttered as she turned on her heel and walked toward the entrance.
“I heard that,” Shiraz called after her. Gretta huffed and went to summon her team for a meeting.
Now that Shiraz was out of bed, she gathered her three closest confidants for a private planning session. Seth, Luna, and Calvin came to the makeshift boardroom that Team Styrofoam had set up. They sat around the small table, breath turning into clouds of mist, waiting for someone to break the silence. Seth spoke first. “Guess the old gang’s back together, huh?”
“Mostly,” Shiraz said tiredly. “We’re missing Zoe, but she does her own thing. And Archer, of course. I want to find her still.”
“With all due respect, Lieutenant,” Seth cut in, “we can’t stay in the ice tunnels forever. Cormand’s bound to come looking for us once he finds out we survived. We’re gonna have to fight him at one point or another, Archer or no Archer. We have to progress. Move on. We’re the only ones who can stop him.”
Shiraz swallowed hard and slowly nodded. “What do you propose, Seth?”
“We have to figure out what Cormand is actually doing, probably by espionage. And then we have to use the information to stop him. We can’t just stumble around blindly, if you know what I mean.”
Everyone glared at him. “Sorry, I’ve been hanging around Sol too much. As I was saying, we have to make a plan. Our fine friend Calvin did the calculations for Cormand once when we still thought he wasn’t a terrible person and said that there were always 200 Dreamwalkers stationed around the Empire. 200 exactly. The same number that Archer killed. That means that the Empire’s police force is gone. This makes this easy and difficult at the same time. We are immune to mental attacks, and the police force depended on mental attacks. That takes away half of our area of expertise, because that means that almost all of Cormand’s henchmen will have physical attack abilities, which we can get injured by. And when he learns we survived, you can bet that he’ll make damn sure to not use Generators or Flints because we’re immune to both electricity and fire. Which means we’d better train, and train hard while preparing to spy on Cormand and his people, wherever they are. Sound good?”
Shiraz gave a hint of a smile. “Seth, those are actually brilliant ideas. The problem is, who would be willing to act as a spy?”
Calvin had been gritting his teeth the whole time waiting for Seth to finish. Once he stopped talking, Calvin said softly, “This mission has a high risk of failure. Do you know what will happen if we fail?”
“No…?” Shiraz said. “Do tell.”
“I’ve been running some projections based on current data. I have reason to suspect that Cormand is making a go for the Empire itself, not just us Gifted, the Dreamwalkers and his memories. Killing the Dreamwalkers was just the beginning. I think he wants revenge on the entire system, and to take down as many people as he can along the way. This includes everyone we love and care about. This is no revolution. It is, no pun intended, blind rage. If we fail, he may destroy the planet.”
“How do we stop him?” Luna asked, shaking and holding tightly to him.
“We have to kill him, and kill him soon. He will only gain more power, and the more he uses the Drug, he will begin to unlock Gifts. He will ultimately become immortal, omniscient, and omnipotent. Cormand MacDowell will become a god.”
“But he can’t die,” Shiraz said. “How can we kill someone who can’t die?”
“I have no clue,” Calvin said, hanging his head.
**********
“Are you any kind of through yet?” Archer called to Pitt, who was building some form of antenna in the main part of the tunnel, or so it seemed to her. Archer hated being on bedrest, especially in a bed full of sand.
“Nearly,” the boy replied. He’d been at it for hours, gathering scrap metal suitable for a small radio tower. It was hard to work with Archer on his back at all times, pressuring him to go faster. Based on what she’d told him, he knew that the signal would have to reach nearly to Manzikert, halfway across the continent, and that was no mean feat, especially for him to do it in the space of a few hours. The calculations were the easy part. It would have to be eighteen-point-two eighth-standards tall, and finding metal that exact length was both an art and a science. But after nine and a half hours of laboring, the radio tower was done. He used an antique comm device to find the right frequency, and said a quick prayer to himself. He said in a cool, calm voice, “This is Tower One, broadcasting from coordinates 42 degrees, 2.0 minutes north, 80 degrees, 9.4 minutes east. We have Archer Merrin here. I repeat, this is Tower One, broadcasting from coordinates 42 degrees, 2.0 minutes north, 80 degrees, 9.4 minutes east. We have Archer Merrin here. Over.”
He heard nothing in reply.
Far in the north, far in the east, and far in the south, three bases simultaneously heard their broadcast. Pitt had made a grave error. He had accidentally set the radio to broadcast on all frequencies, which had allowed anyone on the planet to hear their summons, the signal had traveled that far. And now all three knew their location.
The north base belonged to a group of people with mixed Gifts with a tall, blonde haired Generator boy by the name of Sam Rigel at their lead. These boys had all been victims of the Dreamwalkers in one way, shape or form at one point, and had managed to escape their clutches. Bound by that brotherhood, they set up camp in the north and became petty thieves for a living.
The north base’s radio operator, a scrawny boy called Foxy, heard Pitt’s broadcast and got an idea. “Hey,” he hissed to his buddy, a stocky Mover whom everyone called Betty, “Idiot’s all over the airwaves, tellin’ everyone where he lives. Whaddaya say we go’n beat ‘im up?”
Betty was a strict rule-follower. “Gotta get approval from the bossman. He’d say naw.”
Knowing that Betty would not go anywhere without approval from Sam, Foxy dropped the subject with a huff.
Meanwhile, at the south base, the radio operator Raphael Grain was at the edge of sleep when he heard the voice of some idiot announcing that he had found Archer Merrin. He immediately ran up the slick underground stairs to his master’s bedroom, where he found him deep in meditation.
“Sir,” he said, out of breath.
“Yes?” Cormand MacDowell replied, coming out of his trance. “This had best be important.”
“It is, sir. I found the girl.”
“Where?”
“42 degrees, 2.0 minutes north, 80 degrees, 9.4 minutes east.”
“Translate for me. I’m no Cipher.”
“I have no idea. I failed geography class.”
“Go look at a damn map!” Cormand spat. “I want her apprehended by nightfall.”
Finally, in the ice tunnels, Sol sat bolt upright for the second time that night. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Everyone had long gone to sleep, but his shout of exultation woke everyone. Luna came running, extricating herself from Calvin’s arms, thinking that someone was in trouble. Shiraz was half asleep, but she came shuffling out slowly. Gretta, who was on watch, huffed into the room. “What is it?” Luna asked breathlessly.
Sol turned to face them. “I - I think I found Archer.”
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