《Cries from the Dust (Working title)》


 Chapter 1: The Future Past

    [Johannesburg, South Africa: 2320]


    Isaac Pavarti leaned his head against the cold window, taking in the what little grandeur he could of the feeble world thirty stories below. Black smoke clouds floated by the high rise at a slow pace, too fat and content with the progress of ill will already beset the land under its shadows.


    No living thing stirred in his view. Just machines running on autopilot, or worse, controlled by an alien artificial intelligence with a whopper of a goal and no conscience. When they came, humanity practically gift wrapped the Earth for them. Every weapon, vehicle, financial system, pretty much everything important was theirs within minutes. All assimilated at mind boggling speeds. What little was left of humanity was not putting up much of a fight in this one.


    "Son, that''s enough of a break. Time to get back to your studies." His father, Thomas Pavarti said behind him.


    Isaac turned and picked up a worn bible off of a table with three legs and moved to the living room.


    "No fight today?" Thomas asked from his recliner. Probably the nicest chair on the whole floor.


    "The last few chapters of Mark made it through contradiction free." Isaac sat down in his well worn chair. "Let''s see if the streak continues."


    Thomas rolled his eyes and resumed his reading. Isaac flipped through a few passages, but nothing was sticking. He glanced down at his wrist, and the chip embedded by the aliens. Every living human had one. The aliens used it to summon individuals for manual labor or for execution, depending on who you asked. Isaac had his altered.


    "Isaac, what do you think we should teach our flock this Sunday?" Thomas asked.


    "That if we wish really hard, the second coming may happen in our kid''s lifetime."


    "I''m serious," Thomas continued. "Should we dive into the book of proverbs?"


    "Whatever you want, dad." Isaac shut his bible and looked at the front door longingly.


    "Son, you put up a good show at the services, but you''re going to need to do more than that if you want to be protected from our enemies."


    "I what, need to have faith?" Isaac asked.


    "In a roundabout way, yes. But it helps that our captors have agreed to keep all ministers and their families protected, so long as they keep ministering."


    "Well, there you go, you''ve got us both covered then."


    "I won''t be around for long, son. If you want to keep surviving, you need to take up-"


    "Your congregation seems to come every week. Why aren''t they dying?"


    Isaac''s tracer alarm beeped, indicating he was being summoned. Thomas''s face went white. Isaac could see his father play out a million scenarios in his head, trying to avoid the summons, and hope the aliens didn''t come searching for him.


    "What do you suppose they want you for?" Thomas'' voice shook a little bit, but his face went firm. He knew running would lead to the certainty of death, and facing them provided the greatest chance of survival. Thomas would always use the status quo to stay alive.


    "Probably just some routine check. It''s been a long time since they replaced this." Isaac shook his arm around like he had a defective watch. "I should probably be going. Wouldn''t want to make them upset."


    "I''ll get the door behind you." Thomas stood up and walked to the door as Isaac was unlocking each of the seven dead bolts.


    Isaac finished opening the door and stepped into the dark hallway beyond.


    "You be careful now," Thomas said.


    "Don''t worry, Dad" Isaac gave him a casual salute. "I''ll be back before supper."


    Once free of the door, he stepped out into the hallway, and his father locked up behind him. The stairs were to his right, he turned left at a brisk walk.


    In the dark, his feet kicked up against garbage, animal feces, and even a few people too tired or too dead to make it to a room. A few lights flickered feebly from the ceiling, but they provided no more light to the hallway than the stars hidden behind thick clouds.


    Seven doors down, Isaac stopped at an unmarked door. At one time, it was probably numbered, but over the years, the markings faded away. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in.


    This apartment was less furnished, but also less run down. More than half of the carpet remained intact, if not stained, and a little slimy in places. Only a few small holes littered the walls. And, this one had a large counter hiding a tipped over fridge. If it had had a door lock, Isaac would have suggested to live here.


    He quietly shut the door and walked around the counter to the fridge. The motor had gone bad long ago, but Isaac found another use for it.


    The fridge door gave a soft squeak as he opened it, revealing a pristine black box with a lock at the top. With the key already in his hand, he unlocked the box. The bulk of the fridge was full of textbooks from various universities. On the right, another small container held a small watch.


    "Found a way to get away from your dad this afternoon, Pavarti?" Came a familiar voice from behind him.


    Isaac smiled as he locked his box and turned to face Neicia. She was a head shorter that he was, black hair, green eyes, and a crooked nose.


    "Yup. Poor guy will probably have died from fright and stress before I get back though." Isaac pulled out an old Physics book and sat on the fridge.


    Neicia sat down next to him and put her arm around his shoulder. "You should be easier on your dad, he''s trying to keep you safe."


    "There is no safe," Isaac said as he flipped open the book. "Only the optimum chance of survival."


    "Which he is giving you."


    "He grew up when humanity was safe. The thing people feared the most back then was public speaking. It''s different now. We have before us something incredibly dangerous, and no one knows how to deal with it, least of all him."


    "Can''t we try just giving them our water, see if that makes them go away?"


    Isaac put his finger in a page and shut the book. "I keep telling you it would be impractical to steal our water. Plenty of that in space. No need to fight us for it."


    "Then what do they want?"


    "I''m not sure."


    They sat in silence for a while. Isaac reopened his book and read while Neicia rubbed the back of his neck with her finger nails. After he''d read a few chapters, she grabbed a biology book and read with him.


    Isaac reflected on his good fortune of the afternoon. Quality reading time with his favorite person in the world. Hours of quiet reflection time to study. Not much more he could ask for these days.


    That''s when his tracker alarm beeped again.


    "Did you set it twice?" Neicia asked.


    "No, I uh.." Isaac examined the red beeping tracker imbedded in his arm. This wasn''t his hack. It was a real summons from the aliens.


    *****


    [Kobuk National Park Bay, Alaska 2117]


    Water sloshed around Doctor Isaac Pavarti''s feet as he stepped through the portal, and into a dark cave. What little light the portal provided vanished when it turned off the instant he was through. Despite the darkness, he navigated the cave like a familiar living room during a power outage.


    Three steps to the left, a high step over a small icy stalactite, and he knelt down to open the hatch of a large supply chest half buried in the ground. The combination was fluid to him, and the box opened instantly.


    Three bright non burning flares lit up, providing enough light to get his real bearings. The cave was icy and empty except for the box. The box held a lot of supplies packed into a small frame. No portals were at work here by design, he to limit the access to this location.


    First, he put on a long leather jacket, some cloves and thermal clothing. This place was cold. Second he loaded the jacket pockets with food, a knife, flares and a flare gun.


    As the feeling returned to his fingers and body, he pulled out a map and consulted it. He was currently in a remote cave in the Kobuk National Park, in Alaska. This was placed here as a marker to get to his more secure location closer to the northern tip of the state. There were seven such markers spread throughout the world, but none of them could be accessed by portals. Most of them were out in the middle of nowhere, and the closest portal to them was very far away. This was to prevent imitators from messing up his equipment while he was dead.


    But now he had to make it out though a frozen tundra, get to the lab and hit the reset button. Professor Kiandoli''s report was just too grim. So many variables were changed this time. Did Scott, Miranda and Dixon actually make it to Earth? What about Donovan and his wife? What was her name? They always screwed things up. In the end of every simulation with them, Dixon would steal their suits and beat everybody.


    And how powerful was the Phantom Queen and her followers? How long have they been here? That group was always a wild card. Either completely irrelevant or completely critical to his success. Occasionally they were his downfall.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.But none of this mattered. If he could just get to the Alaskan command center, he could power up all of the portals, including the time portals and he could reset this whole mess. Start over and try again when everything was just perfect.


    He had a small window of making it through the snow outside. He consulted his watch and then wadded the map into his pocket. Outside, his heavier clothes were no match against the raging storm. In his other simulations of this moment, he was always in a younger body. This old body grew stiff in the joints and everything ached.


    Visibility was next to zero, and the winds were so loud there was no use in shouting. Still, Pavarti raised the flair gun and shot into the air. After a moment, he shot another one. He waited 2 minutes and then threw a flair into the ground ahead of him. And finally he dropped the last flair by his feet.


    Normally in a storm like this in the remote corners of Alaska, the hope of rescue was minimal. Standing out in the cold would result in hypothermia, no matter how well you were dressed. But Pavarti had been here at this exact time before. And he knew there was a native man out driving around in the perfect vehicle.


    Like clockwork, the faint rumblings of a diesel Jeep heralded the presence of his rescue. The driver pulled the vehicle so the passenger door faced Pavarti and opened. Pavarti took a few steps, and then fell down, pretending to be beaten by the cold. His body complained that it was nearly beaten, and would only stand a few more minutes of the task.


    Like in the other simulations, the driver got out of the car and started to walk around the hood. Pavarti had fought this man several times. Again all in a younger body. The driver knew how to handle himself. Pavarti once pulled a knife of the driver, only to have it stolen and wielded against him. A gun forced the driver back into the car and he drove off. A flat out brawl was a fifty percent chance of winning. Pavarti didn''t have room for those odds. The best chance of gaining the vehicle was to simply run in.


    Just as the driver was around the hood of the car, Pavarti pushed himself off of the snow and lunged for the open passenger door. The driver stood in shock for a second too long. Pavarti leapt inside, slammed the door and locked it. The driver pounded on the windows while Pavarti struggled to recover his breath. After a moment, he climbed into the driver''s seat and put the car into gear.


    The driver pounded harder. Shouting could barely be heard over the noise of the storm. Pavarti hit the gas and sped off. Out of concern the driver might have a way to call for help, and thus alert others to his presence, he flipped the car around and ran him over. In the end, it was more merciful than simply letting him freeze to death.


    There were a few different options open to him now. The base was north. But there was almost no civilization directly between here and there. In all of his tests, he never made it on a direct shot. East was treacherous and the car would sometimes make it there the fastest, but there was a stronger chance of brake down. His best chance was west, out towards Alleket city. It would take a few more hours, but he knew where a better vehicle would be and then he could use the interstate system to drive where he needed to go.


    The tires spun for a second and he was off to Allaket. There was still a lot of snow to plow through, but the Jeep was ready to handle it. Visibility was still next to nothing, but he had practiced hands for the job. He was confident he was navigating a straight line.


    The fuel tank chimed, and flashed the warning low gas sign. The world in front of him was white. No signs of anything other than snow. He''d been driving for five and a half hours now. He should be nearing the outskirts of Allaket, the closest town with its own airport.


    Snow powder turned to ice, and ice to road way, and gradually into a small, one gas station city. The town was just as he''d remembered it. A small banner hung between two light poles, inviting citizens to a picnic that happened two months ago. A blue 1989 pickup truck with a snow scrapper was parked outside the city bank. A man was shoveling snow off the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.


    Pavarti parked behind the truck and got out of the car. His legs ached from sitting so long. In all of his test runs, he never thought to simulate driving with atrophied legs. He wasn''t sure he could handle another round of driving. But his window was closing. The owner of the truck would turn around in two minutes and the man shoveling the sidewalk across the street would notice him shortly.


    He walked over to the truck and pulled out the spare key hidden by magnets on the underside of the wheel well. One last stretch and then he was in the truck and down the road before anyone knew what had happened.


    Five minutes later, he pulled into the airport parking lot. The crew were on their lunch break and not accustomed to invaders and thieves. A single prop plane was already gassed up and waiting in the hangar.


    He took off, heading north, for Deadhorse, Alaska. Most of the towns this far north were small, but they all had their own airport. People were flying small planes all over the place, rather than navigate the frozen and rocky terrain.


    He landed without incident, stole another truck and turned onto route eleven.


    More driving. More endless seas of white. This time south, where the land was flat and covered with tons of snow. A plow had come through since the last snowstorm, so the roads were clear, but around him the snow piled high.


    He stopped several times to stretch and eat the small amount of food he brought with him. There were no gas stations along the way.


    After driving for two hours, he pulled off the right side of the highway and popped the truck into four wheel drive. The terrain was icy and uneven, but the truck managed the slippery conditions.


    At last he reached his destination. From the truck, it didn''t look like much. Just a flat stretch of land covered in small patches of snow and cold resistant grass. But underground, Pavarti had built a small and secluded base of operations. One of several throughout the planet. Ones not directly accessible by portal, although it did have some control of his portal network. Also, they were impossible to get into if you didn''t know what you were doing.


    Right now, several soul jumpers were at the entrance, trying to trick the sensors into letting them in. The front sensor panel was raised above the ground, and resembled a conductor''s stand. A strait pipe out of the ground with a rectangular panel. On the panel were seven egg shaped holes. They pressed in like buttons, and the soul jumpers were trying different combinations to open the entrance. Pavarti knew it wouldn''t let them in.


    "So the legion league did find their way here." Pavarti said as he stepped out of the truck. He was impressed with their cleverness. But they were in his way. And there were only three of them.


    "Excuse me, this is private property." Pavarti called out.


    "Shove off old man." One soul jumper said as he turned from the group to face him.


    "Calling someone old is like laughing at a man getting hit by a train while you''re stuck on the tracks a few hundred feet behind."


    The soul jumper looked at him with a raised eyebrow.


    "What I mean by that is, nearly everyone grows old. The exception of course, is to die young."


    "Whatever." The soul Jumper said. "Just get out of here."


    "Would you like to grow old? Or are you more of a die young kind of guy?"


    "I said leave!" The soul jumper shouted.


    "Temper like that is going to make the choice for you." Pavarti kept waking, waiting for the man to soul jump him. "Being called old should be a badge of honor. A statement of how long you''ve survived."


    The man took a step back, cautious, but then his soul jumped out of his body and tried to latch onto Pavarti''s. The soul clung to Pavarti''s jacket and turned a murky orange.


    "Take me for example." Pavarti continued as the soul jumper quivered and fell to the ground. "I''ve been alive in one way or another for over a thousand years. So I have beaten all of you at this game of life."


    The other two turned around and looked at their fallen team mate, shaking on the floor. Pavarti released the soul and it shot back into the soul jumper. He screamed and kicked, and the other two turned to run away.


    Pavarti pulled out a gun he borrowed with the truck and shot them both. "Can''t have you linking up with your friends."


    He walked past the shaken soul jumper and shot him in the head. The entrance stand was glowing red, meaning it was about to open up security counter measures. Pavarti pressed the right sequence of buttons and they all turned a different color. In each of the buttons, he placed a small stone, precision cut to fit the hole. Each stone had a planted memory in it. The buttons switched from multi colored to green and the ground began shaking.


    The entrance panel opened up. Pavarti got back in the truck and drove in. It wouldn''t be long now.

 The hospital on the other side of the universe

    Miranda Whitlock was startled awake in a hospital room. She was alone, several IV''s were pumping fluids into her, and she was handcuffed to a bed. A faint beeping sounded faster. This turned her IV machine into high gear to pump more fluids into her.


    She pulled the IV out of her and started working on her monitors when an nurse came rushing in with a face of worry. Usually nurses had stone cold faces. They''d seen everything, nothing should faze them. But this one was scared of something, and hesitant to approach the bed to redo the IV''s.


    "Um, how are you feeling?" The nurse lingered by the door.


    "Like I''m waking up from an induced coma."


    "I..."


    "Just bring me whoever''s in charge."


    The nurse nodded, and left the room. While she was alone again, she reached over and pulled up her hospital chart.


    Concussion, bruised ribs, stressed lungs (from inhaling water), and a few minor symptoms from oxygen deprivation. Not bad considering she was hit by a tidal wave and pushed through a portal. The rest of that experience was a blur, she pretty much blacked out at impact.


    The door opened and a tan man in a business suit walked into the room. A little on the short side, wide eyes, and walked with long strides.


    "The nurse told me you woke up." The man said.


    "Do you believe her? The evidence seems suspect."


    The man clicked his tongue. "I''m agent Wilkins, FBI. I''m going to ask you a few questions."


    Miranda considered putting the IV back in her body, and let the agent sit in silence.


    Finally, he started. "What''s your name?"


    "Miranda Whitlock."


    The agent paused for a moment, surprised at the quick response. "Where are you from?"


    "No where you''ve heard of."


    "I''ve been to a lot of places."


    "Not this place."


    "Fine. What are you doing in the United States?"


    "So I am in the United States." Miranda concentrated and tried to talk to Scott and Dixon with their mental link. But it wasn''t working.


    "I asked what you are doing here."


    "An accident, I assure you."


    "People don''t just accidently come to America."


    Miranda opened her eyes and stared at the agent. "Read to me the file on how I got here."


    The agent pulled out a phone and opened the file. "It says several witnesses at an equipment rental company were working when a closet opened and a ''ton'' of water spilled out, carrying two women."


    "See there? Fell. Well, more pushed really. Water has a lot of force to it. Point is, I accidently came here."


    "How did you get all of that water in that closet?"


    "I didn''t," Miranda said.


    Agent Wilkins clenched his jaw slightly. "I have to admit, it is a fascinating story. Two women riding a tidal wave through a store, there was enough water to keep a pod of sharks happy for a while. Local authorities try to ID you, you''re not on any database they have. It gets pushed up the chain and more and more people come back with the same result. You don''t exist."


    "Like I said, not from around here."


    "Ok, if you don''t want to talk about you, let''s talk about your friend. The one with shards of bone sticking out of her hand."


    Skylar. In the last moments she had in the Underlabs, she had rescued Peter Dixon''s sister Skylar. Sort of. Using a few stolen memories, she worked out where Donovan kept Skylar''s consciousness and uploaded it into the only body available. A cured tetrapath. The monster was gone from her, but her mind had shut down. It was open to receive a new mind. The body was ravaged. Elongated spine, stretched jaw to form a huge under bite, and her right hand was replaced with a giant bone spear.


    "Where is she?" Miranda asked.


    "What is she?"


    "She''s a friend."


    "Is that what you do to your friends?"


    "You think I did that? Her body was riddled with disease you and your planet aren''t prepared to even consider is real. I saved her and brought her over here."


    "My planet? Are you saying you''re some sort of alien?"


    Miranda looked down at her wrist. The archive stone, her bracelet that held thousands of memories, was still there. If she could only touch the agent with it.


    Wilkins saw her looking at it. "And then there is your bracelet. It should be locked up in evidence, but no one was able to get it off your wrist. You started a viral story similar to King Arthur and his sword. People were wondering if it could be taken off. So, unless you have some convincing evidence to prove otherwise, I''d have to say alien, or mutant, or something. And I''m ready to send you to a secret facility where they can test all those theories."


    "I''m sure the tests will reveal human."


    "But you''ve already admitted to being an alien."


    "If that''s what you want your report to say."


    Wilkins scrunched his lips and walked up to her bed. "Just tell me you want to speak to a lawyer."


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.She swung her free hand at his face. She meant to hit him with her archive stone, but he caught her by the forearm.


    "Assaulting an officer isn''t going to get you anywhere," Wilkins said through gritted teeth.


    Miranda pulled a memory from the stone, down her arm, where it shot up through Wilkins'' hand. He fell on top of her, and she started searching him for keys. While her free arm did that, the handcuffed hand grabbed his head and pulled in some of his recent memories.


    Hospital security had stepped away, giving him a ten minute window to interrogate her with force if he chose. Skylar was one floor up on the west side.


    The keys fumbled in her hands and she managed to sneak them out and unlock the cuffs. Welkins'' fell right off of her and onto the floor. She found a change of clothes (the clothes she was wearing when she fell through the portal) and her belongings. The Shield of ascendance, the Ancestral Branch and the Dominion Rod.


    She holstered each of them and stepped into the hallway. A nurse turned to look at her with a wide eyed expression. Miranda shot her and a few other bystanders with the branch. Orbs of green shot out of the tips and her targets fell into memory trances.


    She did this through the hallway and up the stairs. The security in the hospital was very minimal. Some places needed key cards to get through, but she already collected five along her way.


    Skylar''s room was behind such a door. The third card she tried opened it and she made it through to the cell. This was a quarantine area. She had to be in and out before somebody put the area in lock down. All it took was a button and she would be trapped as long as they wanted her trapped.


    Miranda walked to the back and opened the last door. Inside, the room was lit only by sunlight through small windows. There was a toilet and a shower built into the room, and it resembled more jail cell than a hospital room.


    Skylar was sitting cross legged in the corner, dragging the bone spear arm along the linoleum floor. Her eyes were red from crying, and there were several dents in the wall where she may have been trying to stab her way out.


    "Skylar?" Miranda called out tentatively.


    "Oh, you." Skylar looked up, but didn''t make any other acknowledgment.


    "Hey, I can get us out of here. Let''s go."


    "What''s the point? Look, no offense, but I don''t know you lady." Her speech was slurred behind the overbite. "Just that you put me in this body somehow."


    "And I can explain all of that to you, but we''ve got to go."


    "The last thing I remember was running through that portal, hoping for rescue, trying to be strong for all of the younger kids in there."


    "And you were. I was one of those kids. You got us through. Now let me be strong for you."


    Skylar stood up, but moved to her bed and laid down.


    "Fine." Miranda shot her with the branch, putting her in a long trance. The memory was the collective memory from her mind, Scott''s mind, Dixon''s mind and Talia''s mind. It would catch her up on everything that had happened in the last 20 years, and hopefully put her in a more cooperative mood.


    The only problem was, she didn''t have time to sit here and wait for Skylar to go through those memories. She had to get out now. So Miranda walked back a few doors and got a gurney.


    Back in the room, she pushed the edge of the gurney into Skylar''s bed, and it attached to the gurney. Miranda rolled it around and then put several sheets to cover Skylar.


    The quarantine alarm didn''t sound until Miranda was well clear of the area, and getting into the elevator to get to the main floor.


    When the elevator doors opened again, there was no task force to trap her. There were a few confused looks, and a pair of elderly officers. The Branch made quick work of them.


    Once outside of the hospital, Miranda tried her mental link with Scott and Dixon again.


    [Guys, I was captured for a while by local authorities. I think I''m in the clear. Where are you?]


    There was no answer. She had lost the connection. She tried to run through her memories about the last time she remembered communicating with them. Something about portals, and America, and then there was a sudden stop in the conversation.


    Miranda played it out on her archive stone, the memory itself forming a sort of hologram above her archive stone. At that point in history she went unconscious, but she was still receiving the messages. The memory confirmed her fear.


    Scott and particularly Dixon were shouting at Talia. Talia was refusing help and saying that she wasn''t savable. That her portals no longer worked on her. Talia''s words grew quiet and stopped. Miranda stopped the recording and looked around for a place to hide a gurney carrying a deformed child.

 Chapter 3: Immigration policies

    Peter Dixon stepped through the portal, pushed on by his friend Scott. Water flowed quickly at his feet, and it was all he could do to stay standing. After a few steps, he stopped trying and fell down.


    The portal didn''t let up when Scott stepped through, and Dixon floated as if pushed by a raging river. The only problem with that was, he was in the middle of a road way packed with cars.


    This didn''t really bother him. Dixon looked back idly at the purple hole in the sky. It was one of the first artificial portals he had seen materialize in the air. Usually they were constricted to walls, buildings or other objects that they needed to latch onto. The only portals that worked in the sky that Dixon ever saw was Talia''s.


    Oh Talia. He had failed her. Let her die at the bottom of a sinking ship. First his parents, and then his sister, and now this. He was no good to anyone. The only things he was good at was killing and letting people die.


    At some point Scott pulled him by the collar off of the street. Clarity was sitting next to them, barely conscious.


    "Dixon!" Scott shouted. "Snap out of it! We have to move!"


    Dixon looked around at the busy intersection. The river of water was now a trickle, and the portal closed, but the damage had been done. Cars piled up, blocking both lanes of traffic. People were screaming in a language unfamiliar to him.


    "Just leave me." Dixon mumbled. "You and Clarity go on. Miranda''s out there somewhere. You find her. I can''t... I couldn''t... I can''t face her."


    The skies were covered with dark clouds, some of them clung to the buildings so thick, he couldn''t tell if there were people inside.


    Facing Miranda was a daunting thought, but more daunting was what he was about to do. Anger raged in him, threatening to break out. Weeks ago Kiandoli said he was conditioned to be this way, prone to violence. That she rewired his brain to use his pain to dish out pain to others in new and creative ways. This time is was too much.


    "I''m not leaving you in some random part of an alien world," Scott said. "Let''s get our bearings and then we can make a decision."


    "Fine. Where are we?" Dixon looked around again, but it did him no good.


    "Anybody know where we are?" Clarity said, presumably asking the sixteen other occupants in her head. She sat there for a minute as her face turned several different looks of confusion and bewilderment. When she spoke again, it was with a different cadence. "Hong Kong, China. That flag over there."


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it."Is that in America, or Africa?" Scott asked. "And do you remember which place Miranda was in?"


    "Neither. Looks like the little girl messed up the coordinates. Sent us to the wrong place."


    "You shut up about her!" Dixon yelled and pushed himself off the ground and readied his leg for a kick. "Show some respect for the girl who saved your life!"


    As his leg swung for her head, the screams of people intensified. Dixon grabbed his ears and pulled tightly, but it wasn''t enough. Car horns went from small background annoyance to trumpeting war calls. Lights from the cars grew brighter, until they were each miniature suns.


    Dixon fell to the ground, unable to bear the assault on his senses. But even here, the cold ground grew icy, and burned his skin. Bruises from his recent fights immobilized his arm and back. Then, just as suddenly, all of the noises and lights and pain drifted away.


    "You''re grieving, we get it. But taking it out on people who are trying to help will only make it worse." Clarity pointed to herself. "Every person in this body has seen loss, so don''t think for a second we are being insensitive. Now, deal with the pain and let''s get off the street."


    "Kiandoli did this to him." Scott said as he helped Dixon up. "Messed with his mind to turn him into a fighter."


    "We may be able to help him." Clarity said. "But for now, we need to find shelter. Regroup."


    Dixon didn''t want the help, but shelter sounded like the best plan for now. They needed to find a way to lay low, in case the Phantom Queen and her people came by.


    "Do you know your way around on this world?" Scott asked.


    "We''ve never been here. Very different from Cova. I think there are places to rent temporarily for money."


    "Great, where do we get money?" Scott asked.


    "Short term? No idea." Clarity admitted.


    "Well, let''s get moving then." Dixon looked in several directions, and picked one at random. "Hard to tell where the sun is, I''d hate to be out here at night. Earth has a sun, right?"


    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pair of colored ghosts. One green, one red. A scribe and a soul jumper. The phantom queen had already come to play.

 Chapter 4

    chapter 4: Pavarti (Part 2)


    [Johannesburg, South Africa: 2320]


    After an almost tearful goodbye, filled with half lies about everything being fine, Isaac descended the stairs of the apartment tower and stepped into the arid heat of Johannesburg. The sun was dim, blocked by the residue of smog from an earlier age.


    A group of people, mostly small children were across the street. A woman in the group spotted him and tensed up, ready to take her herd to a safer place. Isaac smiled slightly, and stared her down.


    Just as he reached the curb, a driverless electric bus pulled up in front of him and opened the door. Isaac didn''t need the robotic voice inside to tell him this was his ride. As soon as he sat down, the beeping on his arm stopped.


    The bus drove off, and the woman across the street looked relieved. Isaac made a mental note to look more threatening next time.


    Two others were in the car with him. A woman who must have been in her early thirties, and a young boy. The bus made a few more stops and picked up seven more people. All ages, different genders, and different nationalities, if that even mattered anymore.


    They travelled over a hill where he got a good view of the city for the first time in a while. His stomach tightened a little when he saw it.


    Several buildings were missing from the skyline. Of the remaining buildings, many had huge holes, and some of them looked like they were starting to tip over.


    Isaac taxed his mind, trying to remember when his last trip to down town was. However long, the visitors were not leaving earth''s inhabitants alone anymore.


    The bus drove on. Passed the outskirts of the city, and away from the tall buildings and concrete roads.


    "Anybody know where we''re going?" the man next to him asked.


    "No, but by the looks of things, this may take a while."


    Isaac sat back and closed his eyes. If there was nothing else to do, he may as well get some rest. The bus drove on and on, over dirt roads, through small swamps and forests, and across miles and miles of prairie and desert.


    While Africa had been a more popular living destination in recent years leading up to the invasion, it didn''t take long to find one''s self completely removed from civilization.


    The sun set and darkness enveloped them. The car needed no lights to navigate the dark, so those remained off. There was no moon to cast a silver light on the proceedings. In short, outside the window it was completely black.


    "Attention passengers," the bus'' computer spoke in a British accent. "We will be driving for the remainder of the night to our destination. It is recommended you sleep so that you are rested for tomorrow''s labor."


    "Which is what, exactly?" the young boy asked. "Where are you taking us?"


    "All you need to know will become apparent upon our arrival." With that, the interface shut off. The question and answer segment would be cut short.


    Isaac laid back and closed his eyes, while subtly changing his tracker to beep early in the morning. He wanted the stars to give him a bearing of where he was before the sun rise took those away.


    He didn''t get much sleep. Most of the drive was pretty rocky. And while the bus was amphibious, and could handle nearly every terrain thrown at it, there''s just no avoiding turbulence in the wild.


    Isaac woke up for good before his secret alarm. He turned that off and looked for familiar constellations. If memory served him right, then they were traveling north west. Diving a whole night through nature''s best, they may have gone three or four hundred miles. Unless the roads were smoother than anticipated. Then that distance could be closer to seven hundred miles.


    They were also increasing their elevation. His ears popped, and the windows were cold to the touch. Not even in the shadow of the sun would Johannesburg cool down any in the summer. As the darkness was swept away, patches of snow spotted the ground, and he could see that they were at an incline. He looked out the back window and saw that the incline extended quite a ways back down.


    These bits of data tumbled around in his brain. Three to seven hundred miles north west, steep elevation. He tried to pinpoint where they were being taken. And then it hit him. The bus was taking them to an active volcano.


    He turned around sharply, waking up the woman in her thirties, and looked out the front window. In the distance he could see smoke pluming out of the peak, probably another thirty miles away.


    The woman at first was angry at him, and then she saw it too. "Are they going to kill us in that?"


    This woke up most of the other''s in the bus. The sleep grog wore of fast as soon as they saw what they were driving towards.


    "Not very practical of them." Isaac observed. "There were probably a dozen or more closer areas they could have crashed us into on this trip and no one would have ever found us. "


    "Why else would they take us to a volcano?"


    "Look, one thing you have to know about our alien robot overlords, they''re not inherently evil." Isaac said, more to the group than to the woman specifically. "Their end goal isn''t killing you."


    "How do you know?" Someone in the back asked.


    "Because we''re not dead yet. If they wanted us dead, they wouldn''t need to bring us out here. They have seven nation''s fleets of predator drones at their disposal. And they don''t even need those to kill you."


    "So, we''re safe?" The young boy asked.


    "No." Isaac never liked sugar coating things. "They aren''t trying to kill you, but they''re not going to protect you. Whatever it is they want from us, it has to do with an active volcano. Chances are some of us are going to die on this trip."


    By now, the whole group was awake. They drove in silence for another twenty minutes, when the computer started talking to them.


    "We are arriving at our destination. Retrieve your gear from the back. More instructions will follow."


    Nobody moved, so Isaac got up and shuffled to the back of the bus. It was small, and given the long trip, the passengers had made themselves comfortable. In the back, there was a large military supply chest, unlocked. Inside there were several groups of gadgets. Ten pairs of tech gloves, and ten small glass cubes. To the side was some food.


    "Once we have arrived, you will be granted a twenty minute rest period for food." The robot voice continued. "Following which each passenger will put on the gloves and take a box. You will start collecting materials from the area into the box. If the edges glow red, you are to discard the object. If the object glows green, you will bring the material back to the bus for evaluation."


    The bus stopped on a flat section of the mountain. Everybody got out and stretched their legs while Isaac handed out the food.


    "How do you know so much about them anyway?" A man in his sixties asked as Isaac handed him a food tray.


    "My father''s a minister," Isaac said. "He deals with them like they''re people. Makes deals. I''ve been studying them pretty much my whole life."


    "Have you ever seen one?"


    "Not in person. I saw one once on a video feed. It was only for a brief second."


    "What did it look like?" The boy asked with a mouthful of processed cookie in his mouth.


    "Big. I got the impression of an octopus, but like I said, it was only a glimpse." He took the last meal and sat on a nearby rock. "Listen, we need to stick together as much as possible if we want to go home. The robot didn''t give us a cut off time, I''m guessing we''re here until we find whatever their looking for. But they only brought one meal. I''d like it not to be my last. Let''s start by going through who''s who and partnering up."


    They went around stating their names. The first woman he met was Laura. The young boy was Zach. He was not her son. The elderly man was Christian. The rest of the group was pretty middle of the pack, age wise, probably selected for mobility. Jessica looked frightened to be here, never taking her eyes off the smoke cloud in the close distance. There was also Danny and Lenora, they were picked up at the same spot, but it seemed they only knew each other casually. Rounding out the group was Jim, Bruce and Sara. They were the last to be picked up, and they did know each other. More causal passersby in the streets, but the familiarity was there.


    "Ok great. That''s twenty minutes. Better get to it, or they may send those predator drones after all." Isaac tried for a bit of humor, but the group didn''t chuckle at that.


    They did, however, put on the gloves and take their boxes. The group split off in teams of two, Isaac paired with Jessica, who was the most reluctant to move. But the rest of the group considered Isaac their best chance of survival, and she agreed to move if it was with him.


    They started close to the bus, collecting bits of grass and weeds. All yielding red buzzes from their boxes. Isaac tried some of the surrounding rocks, which were hot, even through his gloves. Still no luck.


    "It would be nice if they gave us a hint about what they were looking for." Isaac complained. Jessica grunted and frowned. She had yet to put anything in her box. "There were some flowers back down the hill a little ways, we could try those."


    Jessica considered this for a moment, but didn''t respond. She just made sure she was always close to him.


    "You''re right, they probably didn''t send us for flowers." Isaac turned towards the peak. "Probably something closer to the hot zone. We should go."


    Jessica''s eyes grew wide, but she didn''t protest. Isaac started walking and she followed. None of the rest of the group had started towards the volcano. He suspected that they had a feeling that what they were looking for was closer to the danger, but like most people confronted with these choices, decided to steer clear of it. He didn''t blame them. He just wanted to get this over with.


    The climb was steep. It didn''t help that the air was hot, and the ground shook occasionally. Isaac held out a hand to help Jessica over a slippery part of the slope. At last they reached the crest and took a look down.


    From here, it was a large, lopsided bowl, with a glowing red furnace at the bottom. The central lava pool wasn''t very big compared to the small valley, but there were spots of lava that had been shot out at various places.


    Isaac turned back to Jessica. "You ready?"


    "You''re not going into the volcano?" She asked vehemently.


    "Oh, you do say more than your name." Isaac chirped. "Yes. I am. You can stay at the ridge, or come with me, up to you. But I''m not waiting around for you."


    "I''ll stay here." Jessica laid down on the ridge.


    "Fine. At least make yourself useful and put stuff in that box."


    He turned around and slid down the hill, trying not to turn the slide into a tumble and fall. The soil was loose, but there were grassy patches that he used to slow himself down.


    At first he was trying the same things. Dirt, rocks, grass. Same results. He scanned the area, but it was hard to see, as the area was smoky, and the heat made visible light dance like snakes.


    Sweat dripped into his eyes and he wiped it with the gloves. The ground shook and a small discharge of lava shot out of the pool and landed on the other side of the valley.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.He kept sliding closer, scanning for anything unusual. The ground shook again and he fell, tumbling into a roll. He dropped the box and reached out with his hands, desperate for something solid to grab a hold of.


    He tumbled past a big rock, but he pushed it enough that it fell with him. His gloves slipped on a patch of grass. Finally he caught a thick set of weeds. More lava spewed out of the pool and landed just twenty feet to the left.


    Jessica yelled something from the ridge, but he couldn''t hear her. He grasped for breath and let his heart rate drop for a minute. He was close to the lava pool now. Another few rolls in his tumble and he may have been melted.


    With his nerves resettled, he sat back up and looked for his box. Just above him and to his right, he noticed a pool of purple liquid. It was small. Maybe a litter or two. That struck him as odd enough to be what they were looking for.


    He turned around and looked below him. His box was down to the side, making a straight line between the liquid, him, and the box. He stayed in his seated position and crawled down slowly.


    His skin was starting to peel in places. It was too hot down here. He had never intended to get this close. He should be wearing a special heat shield suit. But he inched on, and reached his box.


    A large burst of lava shot out, high into the sky and hit the ground above. There was enough of it that it started sliding down towards him. He grabbed the box and crawled quickly to the pool of purple liquid.


    Above him, Jessica was sliding down the side of the valley. Isaac wondered what would have fostered her new sense of adventure, but didn''t have time to figure out what she was doing. The lava flow was coming down fast and he needed to get the sample.


    As he got to the pool, he scooped the liquid into the box and then rolled to the side. The heat from the lava burned, his skin was still peeling, but he remained intact. Jessica yelled something from above him, but her message was still not discernible.


    The pool of purple liquid was run over, and probably incinerated. Isaac clutched the box and took a look. It was glowing green. He had found the what they were looking for. He closed the lid and started climbing again.


    Jessica was closer now, and while he couldn''t discern what she was saying, her meaning was becoming more clear. She was pointing frantically to his left. Was there a danger over there? It seemed safe enough.


    His pause was enough for her to head in that direction. Maybe she wanted him to go there. Maybe there was something over there to collect. Well, he already had what they were after, so no point in scooping up more of it. Still, he didn''t want to leave her in a volcano, as useless as she was.


    He scrambled over towards her, grateful the air was already cooling from his perspective. Halfway there, the dirt and rocks above him started to shake loose, and fall towards him. Now he knew what she was so desperate to tell him. There was a landslide coming.


    He redoubled his efforts to reach her. The terrain he was on was already slippery, and he kept stumbling and sliding. At last he was clear of the path, but Jessica got swept up in it. She fell screaming and Isaac maneuvered to reach her.


    He reached out his gloved hand at the edge of the landslide to catch her. He didn''t, and she fell tumbling into the lava pool below.


    He turned immediately and ran up the side of the hill. This place was a death trap, and staying here was no longer an option. The loose dirt betrayed his feet, and he scrambled to gain traction to move up.


    Two of the others peaked their head over the edge. He couldn''t see who they were at the moment, but he waved at them to run.


    The motion dislodged the box and he reached out and grabbed it. The ground shook and another blast of lava came shooting out.


    With all the effort he could, Isaac made it to a tree and ducked behind it. The surrounding area sizzled and popped and the tree creaked as it lit on fire. A hot rock zoomed by, hitting the box and breaking it. The purple liquid shot out and splattered on his gloves.


    It wasn''t lava hot, but hot enough that part of it melted into his tracker. He screamed in agony, and dropped to his knees. Every second he spent in here was killing him.


    He took a deep breath, tried to push the pain away and sprinted towards the top. The ground shook again, and he fell. The loose soil made it worse, and he fell another twenty feet before he stopped himself. Lava spewed out right for him.


    This was it. No more running, he wouldn''t dodge this one. A wave of lava was almost on him, when his tracker tingled. He looked and saw some of the purple liquid almost solidified inside his wrist. It was more of a gelatin now. It burned and his reaction was to grab it with his other hand.


    He closed his eyes as the burning shower reached him. Then, suddenly, the air turned cool. A breeze shot up at him. He opened his eyes and saw that he was on the outside of the mountain.


    He turned to look up, and the other two were still there. Below him, sounds of gunfire rang out in a small jungle growth.


    "What now?" Isaac asked no one in particular.


    A predator drone zoomed by, killing some of the other passengers. He scrambled again, running for the bus. The dirt here was more solid, and he reached it before the drone came around for another pass.


    Inside the bus, he turned on the computer. Something in his wrist flashed, and the computer turned on.


    "Ok. Didn''t expect that to work." Pavarti pressed the call button.


    The computer linked up to the closest computer it had. The drone.


    "What?" Isaac doubted his luck here, and the computer took over the drone for him. It was scanning the area for the trackers. He found his heat signature, but his location device was not betraying his location. Neither was the bus''. The only other two from the group were at the top of the volcano.


    He stopped the drone and piloted it to the ground, next to the bus. Isaac went out and touched the drone, trying to find out what happened. He stumbled a little bit, and caught himself on the tail.


    The edges of his vision went blurry and the other two passengers ran up to him. He couldn''t tell which ones they were.


    "Oh no. You''re... bleeding and burning."


    Hands rushed to his aid as he fell more, and blacked out.


    *****


    [Unknown location, Alaska]


    Pavarti parked his stolen truck on a wide circle of steel in the middle of the Alaskan hub. The room itself was cylindrical; fifty foot ceilings, a single desk lining the outer walls with multiple stations. Everything was a long lasting steel.


    Lights flicked on as he got out of the truck and headed to the main terminal directly in front of him. This one featured a simple computer like the rest of the stations, but on the wall was a large monitor with multiple feeds operating at once. They flickered on one by one, revealing dozens of locations. All feeds were active.


    As he sat in the chair, a large circular tube below him hummed. This was the height of his technological achievements. The reason he had survived as long as he had. This machine allowed him to reset the time line and even to peak out at different consequences of minor and major tweaks to the time line.


    Even though he would not be born on Earth''s timeline for hundreds of years, he was here, getting Earth ready for a hostile alien takeover. No matter how he changed things though, the future always projected to humanity loosing.


    Inside the tube, chunks of his discovered purple matter, the Pavarti matter, would be collecting and spinning at greater rates. Once up to the right speed, he could take a peek at what was a head, and press the red button to build back from the latest restore point.


    Rather than dying on a sandy beach and leaving everything to fate, Pavarti would try going back to rescue Scott and his friends from Donovan and the Coalition. He would put a stop to Azurand before he got out of control. And he would give Scott and Miranda time to give birth to the new generation of his creations.


    Something wasn''t right. Pavarti pushed his chair back to the grating floor section and looked below him. The engines were running, but the tubes were empty. The Pavarti Particle wasn''t there.


    Out of safety, he never kept the Pavarti Particle in the same location as the machine. Only by teleporting the Particle could he make it work. Somehow, the connection was lost.


    He got up from the chair and walked to the latch leading to the machine below. The ladder was long, and his current body had a programmed fear of heights. He grew woozy for a moment.


    That''s what he hated most about switching bodies. There were so many things to get used to. New tastes, new anxieties, different thresholds for pain. But no options to switch at the moment. Once he got this up and running again, he would have whatever he wanted.


    After descending the ladder for nearly a minute, he reached the portal panel that fed into the tubes. Nothing shorted on it. It looked fine, just dead. No power coming to it. He tapped it, and then pulled his hand away at the cold shock.


    He climbed back up the wall and went back to the main station. The monitors were all on now, showing what was happening in all of the key spots. One monitor in particular drew his attention.


    This one monitored his other Earthly time line restore base near his boyhood home, Johannesburg South Africa. There were people in it. Again, out of security, he programmed safety measures to prevent portals from delivering the Pavarti Particle to his machines unless his security measures were met. Obviously, the people in Africa had tripped the security and disabled the time portals.


    The Alaska base had little else other than the time portals. In all of his trial runs and other resets, never had his time portals been cut off this early in the game.


    No more resets, no more attempts. He would have to make some drastic changes to the timeline and hope they worked.


    To his right, was a small war chest. He retrieved it and opened it. Inside was a small pack of the Pavarti Particle, only enough to power his long leather jacket. He plugged that in and studied the monitors, assessing which variables he would have to plan for.


    Miranda was in America, that could pose a problem. Scott and Dixon were in Europe by design, but they brought somebody with them this time. He wasn''t quite sure who she was.


    The legion league was everywhere. Most of his private labs were found, and some of them were infiltrated. Pavarti would have to use caution when making this trip. He set the itinerary, and shook his head. It was the exact opposite journey he took so long ago as a youth. Fitting. It would end how it began.


    First things first, he would need resources. A few operations on his terminal, and old trust funds, stocks, and high yield bank accounts dumped money into several different personal accounts. With those he chartered a one way plane ticket, a large boat ticket, and acquired the services of a private trucking company that specialized in the discrete transportation of volatile materials.


    Fist stop, Sparks Nevada.

 Chapter five

    Miranda sat in a small booth inside a mobile home. The booth was nestled up to the table, which was nestled up to the kitchen. Everything was linked to everything. She had never seen such tight living quarters.


    The mobile home was one of many in the neighborhood. This one looked the most deserted. There was a sign out front that said something about foreclosure. None of the other residents peaked out when she broke into the home, and pulled a deformed woman from a hospital regulation gurney. Seems no one was curious around here.


    That suited Miranda just fine. When she saw the sign for the mobile home community, she didn''t quite understand what she would find, but anything was better than staying still and letting the hospital authorities chase her down.


    Skylar was still in the trance, sleeping on one of the bed panels in the back. There was no food, no furniture, even the mattresses on the bed panels were removed. Skylar looked uncomfortable as she was, Miranda hoped this would not heighten that discomfort.


    She played her own memories from her archive stone, nestled atop her bracelet. The most recent in particular were drawing her attention. The last few moments of communication with her friends painted a grim picture.


    Why had they stopped talking to her? What was Dixon shouting about with Talia? By the sounds of his desperation, Talia was in trouble. Miranda cut the memory, not wanting to dwell on just how much trouble her sister was in.


    From the back of the home, Skylar groaned. Miranda got up from the dining booth and the floorboards creaked in protest beneath the weight of her feet.


    "Who''s there?" Skylar called out in panic. A moment later, there was a thud as she rolled out of the bed panel.


    "It''s me, Miranda."


    Silence on the other end.


    "Can I come in?" Miranda stood at the threshold of the bedroom section. It wasn''t a door, just a part were the floors went from linoleum to carpet.


    Skylar looked around at their surroundings, and then suspiciously at Miranda. "Were all of those memories real?"


    "Yes, of course they were."


    "How did you get them all into one memory trance?"


    "That was pretty clear in the memories. I kept that part of my experiments in there."


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.Again, Skylar sat in silence. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to reconcile all of the images and memories of the trance.


    "Why did you put me in this body?"


    "I think the memory speaks for itself." Miranda folded her arms across her chest. "I barely pieced together where Donovan was keeping your consciousness, and by the time I found it, my sister was dumping a tsunami''s worth of water into the Underlabs. I only had moments to get you out of there."


    "And the only bodies down there without a mind of their own were the tetrapath experiments."


    "Right."


    "You could have brought my life memories with you through the portal."


    "And where would have I found a host here? Sure there are a lot of people around, but I can¡¯t rob a person of their consciousness just to upload you into them."


    "Do you still have my life memories?" Skylar looked down at her deformed body. "There has to be some other body somewhere. I can''t stand this body."


    "I have it stored in my archive stone now." Miranda held up her bracelet. "And I promise that if we find a more suitable host, I will do everything I can to make the transfer."


    Skylar smiled, and part of her skin cracked. "Thanks. Do you have food?"


    Miranda turned back to the kitchen impulsively to check. Even though she had already checked. Twice.


    Halfway there, she stopped herself and sat at the edge of the booth, her head resting in her hands. After a few short minutes, Skylar limped into the kitchen, her long bone arm dragging on the ground.


    "The kitchen''s empty," Miranda admitted. "It doesn''t look like any one has lived here for a while."


    "You think people lived in this place?" Skylar asked.


    Miranda shrugged her shoulders. "There are other dwellings surrounding this one with people in it."


    "So, we really are on Earth?"


    "Yes."


    "What do we do now?"


    Miranda stood back up from the booth. "We find your brother, and my family."


    "Do you know where they are?"


    "Somewhere in America, or Africa, I think. That''s where I told them I thought we were. We''ll have to look on news outlets to see if there are any other stories about portals."


    Skylar stared into space and held her stomach with her good hand.


    ¡°But, let¡¯s get some food fist.¡±

 chapter 6

    Scott tapped Dixon again, taking his soul jumping power. The ghosts of the scribe and the soul jumper grew colorful. They were a block away, and perfectly still.


    "What are they waiting for?" Dixon asked with a hunger in his voice.


    "The Calvary." Clarity said. "There are others on their way here."


    "I don''t see any other ghosts." Dixon said.


    "Not soul jumpers. Local authorities."


    Scott turned where she was looking and saw three large vans driving towards them. They screeched to a halt on the opposite side of the street and dozens of armed men jumped out and surrounded them.


    "I count thirty seven assault rifles," Dixon said calmly under his breath. "And I can''t soul jump any of them."


    Scott tried as well. Dixon had the ability to latch his soul onto others, and take control of nearly anyone. When Scott used his ability to borrow powers like that, he could as well. Here, his soul just slid off anyone he tried to take control of.


    One among them shouted an order of some kind. Scott couldn''t tell what he was saying.


    "Any other ideas?" Scott asked back.


    "When they fall over, we run." Clarity said.


    "Fall over?"


    At once, the armed men fell to the ground, dropping their guns and grabbing their ears.


    "Run!" Clarity said. "I can still assault their senses, but we can''t stay here forever."


    They ran away from the group and down the street. Scott looked back for a second and saw the swat team getting up.


    "We have to get more mobile!" Scott shouted.


    "I don''t know how to drive a car here, do you?" Dixon jumped up onto a curb.


    "You can!" Clarity shouted at Scott. "This is your chance to use some of the things I''ve been teaching you."


    Scott focused on their surroundings. The street was packed with cars from the crash from the portal. Some towards the back of the pile were in good condition and temporarily abandoned. The sidewalk had many people on foot.


    Those people all had talents and abilities. And those were represented by glowing white orbs in their chest. When he filtered for driving, Most of them had a small or nonexistent talent orb. One woman, slightly taller and paler than the rest of the crowd had a huge white driving talent. He ran to her and touched her hand. The contact lasted for a second, but the white driving orb copied, and the copy traveled from her chest to his. Another white talent, one to speak Chinese traveled over with it.


    Armed with a new ability to drive and speak to the locals, he ran for one of the abandoned cars. Clarity and Dixon followed. He slid into the driver''s seat, Dixon sat down up front with him, and Clarity sat in the back.


    "Seatbelts." Scott said, in Chinese, out of habit. Not his habit. But the habit of the woman.


    "Huh?" Dixon asked.


    "Strap in," Scott said in English and buckled himself to demonstrate.


    Down the road, the swat team was catching up. One took a shooting stance and let fire. A bullet hit the hood of the car and bounced away.


    Scott put the car into reverse, and turned around. The car slowly backed up. More gunfire pelted them. Once the reverse was made, Scott put the car into dive, and slowly turned the car around. The turning radius didn''t quite let them got the other way. He stopped a few feet from another car blocking his path.


    "Uh, Scott?" Dixon asked. "You do know we''re being shot at, right?"


    "Don''t want to get into an accident." He said, again in Chinese.


    Clarity put a hand on Scott''s neck. "There''s the problem."


    "I''ll keep them distracted while you fix it." Dixon said as he soul jumped a few people behind them. Several cars sped out of the grid lock and rammed into the local authorities.


    "Scott, you have to be more selective about who you take talents from." Clarity put her other hand on Dixon. "You stole an talent from an old lady, so you''re driving like an old lady. Get rid of the talent."


    Scott shot the driving talent out of his hand and the controls became foreign to him again. Seconds later, Clarity shoved another driving talent into his head.


    "Got this through Dixon''s soul jump." Clarity said. "Out of the crowd, this orb seemed the most competent."


    The car became an extension of his body as he floored it out of the grid lock and against traffic.


    "Now we''re talking." Dixon patted him on the back.


    Two of the tires squealed in protest as he swerved around a median and into correct lanes. There were a few gaps and he swerved in an out of the minor gridlock.


    "More people behind us," Dixon turned in his seat for a better look.


    Scott looked in the rear view mirror as Dixon sent wave after wave of soul jumped people to drive their cars to form a barricade against their pursuers.


    "This is going to be easy." Scott smiled.


    In the next intersection ahead, three more paramilitary vans screeched to a halt and formed a barricade of their own.


    "You had to say that, didn''t you?" Dixon mumbled as his soul jumps went from behind them to in front of them.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.A half dozen cars charged forward like battering rams.


    "No, don''t." Scott pulled on the hand brake and flipped the car around. "That''ll kill them. Just keep blocking their path."


    Heading back toward the gridlock, Scott weighed his options. There was one small intersection just before the crashed happened, meaning he could turn right or left.


    "I don''t know where I am." Scott said as he pulled the hand brake again, drifting into the right turn lane.


    "Use Dixon''s soul jump to steal talents without contact." Clarity said behind him. "Everyone around you should know their way around Hong Kong."


    Scott looked around. Drivers of the cars ahead were displaying talents. He filtered them to navigation. The biggest orb he saw was in the vehicle in front of them. It was a small, one seat electric car, perfect for maneuvering tight areas.


    As Scott passed the car, he shot out his soul and connected. The man grunted and panicked, but Scott took control. His soul latched onto the white sphere and he pulled it back, this time with a mental map of Hong Kong.


    They raced through the next intersection and sirens faintly filled the air.


    "More coming." Dixon said. "They''re bringing a lot of people with them this time. Probably five swat vans in every direction."


    "No gaps in their trap?" Scott asked as he swerved between two cars while running a red light.


    "No."


    Up ahead, there was a station for a bullet train.


    "Focus on the van''s ahead of us. If we can get through, we can catch a train."


    "You got it."


    Dixon and Scott both sent their ghosts to cars ahead of them. The oncoming vans dashed to the side as dozens of cars went sailing for them.


    "We should kidnap one of those activists." Clarity said from the back. Her multiple voices were comming up again. Each sentence was spoken with deeper or higher inflection, and a faster and slower cadence. "You know, to interrogate. Oh, I used to be good at interrogation. Quiet you, no one likes a show off."


    "Is she always like this?" Dixon asked.


    "Yes. She has a point though. Do you see where they are?"


    "On the other side of a caravan behind us."


    Scott pulled on the handbrake again and flipped the car around. More drivers were soul jumped and more of them rammed a path for Scott to drive through.


    "We''ll incapacitate them. Dixon, just pull in one of the soul jumpers. Leave the scribe." Clarity held her head and waved her free hand towards the activists.


    They fell to the ground in pain. Scott flipped the car around again, this time bringing it to a halt right next to the activists. Dixon rushed out and grabbed the closest soul jumper among them. He threw him in the back seat with Clarity and got back in the passenger seat.


    Scott backed up, and drove around the blockade, rather than risk being trapped on all sides again. "There''s another entrance this way."


    The activists screamed.


    ¡°This one¡¯s name is Gregory.¡± Clarity beamed. ¡°This is just like the old days.¡±


    There was a pause, and then Greg screamed loud enough to drown out Clarity¡¯s laugh. "They''ve lost control here. They used to have the top government officials in China under soul jumps. These two are all that''s left in Asia.¡±


    Another pause filled with screams. ¡°He thinks we were in Alaska earlier today. Somehow teleported here. Someone did something big in Alaska. Also, someone is making a mess of things in Ohio. I think that''s where Miranda is."


    "Alaska or Ohio?" Scott said as he swerved onto a partial sidewalk to get around a bus.


    "Ohio," Clarity said as her guest continued screaming. "He''s becoming less giving with the information. But there is a hidden network the soul jumpers use to communicate. The hubs here are under lock down with the Chinese government, and the closest that he is divulging is in Europe."


    Gun shots bounced off the trunk of the car, and his left tire popped.


    "They''ve got people on the roof tops." Dixon ducked a little. "If they see us go underground, they''ll pin us down there."


    "Tourist bus up ahead." Scott nodded towards it and willed the car to stay on the road. "Follow my lead. We''ll have to leave the activist here."


    He slammed on the breaks and the three of them got out the car. Scott started soul jumping everyone in the bus, including the driver. Dixon helped out. Soon, there was a crowd pouring out of the bus. They mixed in with the crowd and had them move in complicated patterns. Trading a hat here and a jacket there with the bus passengers.


    "Clarity, can you blind some of them for a moment?"


    "Done." She said.


    "Ok, half the group back on the bus, and the other half down the block. We sneak into the subway. "


    While the soldier''s regained their bearings, the crowds continued the patterns in different directions. Scott and the others made their way down underground. A few more soul jumps, and they were on a train, headed for the airport.

 chapter 7: Pavarti [3]

    [Mount Cova , South Africa]


    Isaac woke up in the bus. The sun was setting on the low horizon, the volcano was chirping and spewing lava behind him. He looked over at his arm, were his tracker was and where bandages now were. The bandages were a dark red, the blood had dried long ago.


    Laura was in the back talking to Danny. They were laughing, in a tired way. Their lives were probably just as bad back at home, so the present circumstances didn''t constitute a tragedy.


    "How long was I out?" Isaac asked.


    Laura was the first the turn her head. "Most of the day. You lost a lot of blood. Neither of us were compatible donors. Luckily, one of the others were. But, since she was dead, and bleeding herself, it was tricky getting her blood into you cleanly."


    "Why are we still here?"


    Danny shrugged. "Not sure. The computer on the bus is off. The drone you were grabbing earlier is powered down. We heard other things flying by; more drones, helicopters, planes. But none of them stopped."


    Isaac looked up and out the window. "How''d you know what blood type I was?"


    "I''ve had some medical training," Laura said. "And they had medical files on all of us. This is probably why I was brought along."


    Above them, the skies were dark, filled with hot smoky clouds from the volcano.


    "So, how did you get out of there?" Danny asked. "One second you were about to be melted, the next you were running for the bus on the other side of the ridge."


    "I... I don''t know."


    ¡°No answer. I told you so.¡± Danny stood up, his jaw clenched. ¡°You''re one of them man, I''m killing you right now."


    Isaac laughed a little. "I can see why you think that. I seem to know a lot about them. I teleported. Other than the blood evidence you have, I''m not sure what else I can do to prove my humanity."


    "Why don''t we worry about how we''re going to get home first?" Laura suggested.


    "Yeah sure, and if he is one of them, he''ll tell the rest of them and kill us along the way."


    "For the last time, if they wanted you dead, you¡¯d be dead. They don''t care if you die, but they aren''t trying to kill you."


    "Tell that to the dead people around the bus!" Danny shouted and pointed outside. "The one shot down by that drone you conveniently landed. Jessica, who was melted by lava. Not to mention the billions of people killed since they got here. If they don''t want us dead why kill most of humanity?"


    Isaac paused for a moment. Not in respect for the dead, they were collateral damage to the events. But at the puzzle. What switched gears in the aliens to make them more hostile? Why kill the explorers? And why not finish the job?


    "They can''t find us." Isaac blurted out.


    "Excuse me?" Danny said.


    "They can''t find us." Isaac sat up. "Think about it. If they were killing the rest of the crew, then why not us? You say they''ve been sending all kinds of aerial surveillance, but not another attack. For some reason they can''t see us."


    "Your tracker is broken." Laura held up her arm. "Ours are working fine."


    "And don''t drones have heat vision? Can''t they see our body heat?" Danny asked.


    "Uh, the volcano clouds must be messing with our heat signatures. They can''t find us through that. As for the trackers, I think mine is more than broken."


    "What do you mean?" Laura asked.


    "Don''t listen to this," Danny warned. "He''s just trying to lower your defenses."


    "Shut up Danny," Isaac said. "Just before I hurt my arm, I found the substance they were looking for. Purple, only a little thicker than water. It made my cube go green."


    "So?" Danny asked.


    "So, when it reacted with the lava rock and my tracker, that''s when weird stuff started to happen. I teleported. When I ran in here, I gained control of the drone automatically through the bus'' computer. I think this stuff linked me to their network. And by extension, linked me up to computer''s around me. Like your trackers."


    The other two looked at him, and then each other, unsure they could believe what was happening. Isaac pushed himself off of the booth and stumbled towards the computer up front.


    "Look, believe me or don''t. I''m not going to talk you into something that I barely understand. But right now I need to get home. Stay in the bus and I''ll get you there too."


    The computer turned on and the route back home popped onto the screen. He plugged it into reverse, and the bus turned around to take them home. He also pulled up a satellite to look for other incoming air craft. The volcano cloud cover wouldn''t protect them forever.


    It was soon dark again, and since the bus still knew where it was going, he thought it was prudent to keep the lights off. The less heat they gave off the better. Danny and Laura took shifts sleeping, on the insistence of Danny. Danny was first to stay awake and watch Isaac.


    Having slept all day, Isaac didn''t feel much like sleeping, but he didn''t feel like spending company with Danny either. That and his attention wasn''t needed right at the moment. So he popped a pain killer and laid back down.


    It felt like seconds later when Laura woke him up.


    "You''re radar thing is beeping." She said.


    He looked at it. Two dots were sweeping in from the south. Isaac activated the previous drone and in seconds it was engaged in a firefight with the new intruders. He made sure to bring it up from the side, in an attempt to hide their path from the aliens.


    The other drones couldn¡¯t see his drone, or at least didn¡¯t react to it, and they were brought down in three passes. Isaac set the drone to patrol the area, looking for other targets.


    "Seriously, how are you doing this?" Laura asked.


    "I''m not sure." Isaac scrolled through more options on the van¡¯s computer. "But however I''m doing it, this is the chance to run. If I can just get home to my dad, we can go wherever we want. Out of the reach of the robots. Out of the reach of anyone."


    "So that''s it?" Laura asked. "You just run away?"


    "What else am I supposed to do? I can''t fight them." Isaac gazed into the darkness. "Did you know that there are probably only five of them on Earth?"


    "Five?" Laura asked. "Are you sure?"


    "Pretty sure. One of them could have done it. All of our computer automation gift wrapped the planet for them. Point is, five of them took out Earth. One of me sure as hell isn''t taking them out."


    Laura sat back in her seat. "So where do we run?"


    "I don''t know. There''s a lot of rural areas in Africa. Maybe we can settle down with a nice native tribe somewhere."


    Somewhere in the distance, another drone was shot down.


    "They''re getting the sense that we''re on the move." Isaac tapped on the screen to get a read out of how fast enemy drones were coming in.


    "Don''t they have satellites too?" Laura asked. "They could be looking at us right now."


    "They could. I''ve been looking at the satellite feeds though. We have another twenty minutes before one is in range to see us."


    "What do we do then?"


    "We hide the bus and the drone, and then wait for the next gap in satellite coverage. There are a lot of satellites up there, but only so many that actually have a camera capable of spotting us."


    They rode on for ten minutes, and Isaac turned on the head lights. The map didn''t mark convenient hiding places, and they were running out of time. They were on a paved road now, halfway to their destination.


    "Too urban to find a cave."


    "How about a parking garage?" Laura suggested.


    "Do you think there will be one close by?"


    "We''ll have to pull off the next exit and try."


    Isaac took manual control of the bus and pulled off at the next exit, the map told him they were in Gaborone, a city at the border of Botswana. The satellite would be in range in minutes.


    The problem though, was he had to drive really slowly in the city center.


    "Come on! I thought you said the satellite would spot us any minute!"


    "Yeah, but traffic camera''s will spot us in a second if I don''t disable them first." Isaac tapped out a few more commands on the screen.


    "Oh." The color drained from Laura''s face. "There''s no escaping them."


    "Hush." Isaac put a finger to her lips.


    Every traffic light had four visible cameras. And many more were hidden. Isaac could sense them. Like he was hearing their vibrations. What to do about them? He couldn''t disable them, that would trigger an alert. But he could put them in loop mode. Playing the previous hours in random order. He also switched them to picture mode instead of video mode. Less chance of the bus sneaking up on the reel.


    Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.Slowly, they made their way to the tallest looking building in the city. Next to it, was a parking garage. They pulled in, at this time of night, the parking meters were not active. He decided to go down deeper into the garage, not wanting to take any chances. Once he was parked, he programmed the drone out of autopilot, and took control of that.


    "Where are you going to park the drone?" Laura asked.


    Danny woke up in the back. "Are we stopping?"


    "Shut up." Isaac said curtly.


    He took control of the craft, and used the same strategy. Look for a city center and park the thing in a parking garage. But he would have to do it at another garage just in case they found it. Somewhere in the opposite direction. He flew it up to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. It was more or less the same travel time, plus the scanners had no way of knowing when they left.


    The drone flew strait there, and the clock clicked down the seconds until the satellite would be able to see it. Through the camera, he saw Bulawayo, and made his descent. This one would be harder as he couldn''t deactivate the security in that city. But there was no time to worry about that. They would certainly find it if it continued to circle the sky.


    He spotted a parking garage that looked to have enough clearance. The drone was big, but compact enough to get into tight spaces. Rather than rely on his landing skills, he gave the instructions to the drone to land on the second level and wait for the next objective.


    "What the hell are you doing?" Danny asked, moving closer to them.


    "Saving you," Isaac pointed outside the bus. "Now be a good boy and plug the battery into the charger."


    "What did you-"


    "Danny, do as he says." Laura cautioned.


    Silence reined in the bus for a moment while Isaac watched the monitors. The drone touched down in the garage perfectly. But there were cameras in that garage. And driver-less cars that needed to be shut down. Isaac tried, but nothing was connecting.


    "Well, there goes our drone," Isaac sat back in his seat. "At least they''ll be diverted up to Bulawayo. Danny, why are you still in the bus?"


    "Who put you in charge?" Danny asked.


    "A majority vote. Massive competence. Go plug in the battery so we can get out of here. We only have a short window, no drone, and not enough charge to get back home in time. If you want to get home alive, then plug the battery in now."


    Danny clenched his jaw and left the bus. Isaac checked the monitor, where several big cars were parked around the drone. He gave the drone instructions to spin in circles, blasting the cars.


    Sparks and glass flew everywhere. More cars drove in, trying to block off any escape. On one of the rotations, Isaac saw the fleeting glimpse of a missile, and then the feed buzzed out.


    "Now what?" Laura asked.


    Isaac was about to respond when his arm tingled and data flowed into his mind. Scores of ones and zeroes raced across his eyes and the screen, and then he was filled with information.


    "They think we''re in Bulawayo," Isaac said. "Or in that area at least."


    "How do you know?"


    "Because I think I just intercepted a major transmission from them." Isaac got on the computer and made some calculations. "They will be zooming in all satellites along those routes and cities. Drones will adjust their passages. They were growing frustrated with the fruitless search in this area, and now they''re sure we''re over there. All the activity is there. Once the battery is charged, if we floor it back, we can reach Johannesburg before they broaden their search again."


    "If the plan is to run, why are we going back?" Laura asked.


    "Don''t you have any family or loved ones?" Isaac thought a little of his father, but mostly of Neicia. "We should get them first and then run."


    "I... I don''t."


    "Oh, well, stick with me then."


    "What about Danny?"


    "Eh, whatever he wants to do. Once we leave for good though, he''ll have to abide by the rules if he wants to continue tagging along."


    After thirty minutes, Danny came back in. "Ok, battery is charged. What''s the plan now?"


    "Buckle up. We got a clear shot for home and we''re taking it."


    "How do you know we have a clear shot?"


    "All of the variables are taken care of." Isaac said as the bus started back up. "Get some more sleep if you want to. We should be home an hour after dawn."


    The bus pulled back out of the garage and headed for the freeway. Soon he would keep his promise to Neicia.


    *****


    [Sparks Nevada 2027]


    Signs of automation had already begun in even this desert town. Big rig trucks flew down the freeways and highways without a driver. People walked the streets with virtual reality headsets displaying an augmented reality over their terrain. Just taking a stroll, some of them were conducting important meetings with people in Hong Kong, losing a fortune in online casinos or developing new applications for their devices in the hopes of making a fortune. Some may have been doing all three.


    Pavarti rented an all terrain vehicle and headed for Interstate 80. An interstate that would stretch nearly across America. He drove east for a few hours before turning north off the main roads and into the unpaved desert. It was still mostly tame, but it was completely left alone. America, Nevada in particular had many sections were people just didn''t live. Meanwhile there were cities packed full of people complaining of over population.


    At last he came to small area he designed to look like an abandoned mine. Here is where it all unhinged for him as a boy. Here he suffered loss, made hard choices, and discovered Earth''s main source of the Pavarti matter.


    This base too, was already occupied by the Phantom queen''s people. This time three scribes and two soul jumpers.


    The soul jumpers had a small military outfit with them, scanning the environment for any kind of way in. Taking out his creations would still be easy, but the military presence would prove a challenge. He didn''t have anything to stop bullets. But at the same time, his transport crew would be arriving in a few hours and he needed the place to be cleaned up.


    One military man spotted him and his truck on approach. A few warning shots were fired and Pavarti stopped the vehicle and got out. Several small drones armed with machine guns hovered maliciously. He put on his long jacket, which was very hot in the sun. He applied the pack of the Pavarti matter, not concerned with how little was left because he had a lifetime supply of it nearby.


    Two soldiers took aim, and Pavarti teleported out of their sites and into the underground storage facility.


    By that, he meant cave. It was his dream of actually turning this place into a high tech storage place, but it would mess too much with his young time line. All of his bases were close to where he lived, but out of areas he actually visited as a boy. There was just too much to mess up if he actually tried to alter his timeline directly.


    Outside, the soldiers were shouting, confused at his sudden disappearance. Pavarti filled the suit''s reserves to the brim and teleported behind a soldier near the vehicle. He stabbed him in the back, pulled the pin from a grenade in his belt and pushed him under the car.


    He teleported back into the cave just as the explosion rumbled the cave tops above. From here, his wrist easily hacked into the remaining drones and he took out the rest of the soldier''s in quick order. All that was left were his creations. He waited a while before he attacked them.


    He wanted the soul jumpers scared. He wanted them desperate and scattered. So he let the soul jumpers try and communicate with the rest of the group around the world. They were hooked up to a network and word would travel fast. Once he was sure the message was sent, Pavarti shot them down with the drones and looked at his vast resources. All he had to do now was clean up his mess and wait for the delivery boys to show up.

 Chapter 8

    The airport terminal was crowded. They moved along to a large wall with a terminal screen while the other people moved along efficiently to their destinations.


    "We need to find a flight to America," Scott said as the three of them looked up at the flight lists.


    "But the Phantom queen is in London," Dixon said.


    "It¡¯d be better to fight her with Miranda." Scott scratched his head and looked at Clarity. "If we have to fight at all. I say we just pick her up and head home."


    "There is no going home yet," Clarity said. "All of the portals are disconnected. We don''t know how to activate them again, but what the Phantom Queen and her people know may give us what we need to get home."


    "Miranda may know already."


    "Possibly. But there are other things in play." Clarity reached out and put the palm of her hand on a passing man. He jerked his head back like her hand was covered in acid. "We didn''t get to see all of what the phantom queen was up to, but it is something that needs our attention."


    "So, London then?" Scott sighed and scanned the departure screen for his new destination. "Fine. A quick stop in London and then we are off to America. There, connecting flights. We''ll have to plane hop, but we can make it work."


    "Who''s going to let us get on a plane?" Dixon said. "We''ve got no papers or anything."


    "We don''t need papers." Scott clapped him on the back. "We''re pilots."


    "Huh?"


    "We impersonate pilots to get past the metal detectors, and then use soul jumps to get past anyone who thinks we''re suspicious."


    The side of the room was a solid door with a key combination on it. They soul jumped their way through it, a few locker rooms, and arrived at the pilot''s gate, dressed as pilots.


    Scott walked up to the man at a check in booth, to try and just hop on a flight heading for London.


    "Oh, we can do that," Said the man. "But how would you like to make some extra money? We happen to need a pilot and co-pilot to fly to Germany. From there, you can catch a ride to London."


    "Oh, uh, I''m pretty tired and..."


    "Please!" The man begged. "The plane has already been delayed an hour! The passengers are growing restless. The backups are still a ways out."


    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement."Can you pay in cash?" Scott asked.


    The man raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "That''s not a request I hear often anymore. But I''m only paying two of you. The third will just have to ride along."


    "Deal." Scott shook his hand, but there was no flying talent in him.


    He walked back to his friends. "Uh, we''re flying to Germany."


    "Fine. We''ll just find another plane there."


    "No, I mean we''re flying the plane." Scott looked around. There weren''t any pilots in sight.


    "Oh." Dixon looked around as well. "How hard can it be? I''ve flown a few different things for the Coalition."


    They picked up two payment vouchers and made their way to the plane. The sky was dark, and the plane was lit up on the runway. He had to tilt his head back slightly to get a better view.


    "Uh, I''ll bet this thing is a little more complicated than those float pods." Scott said.


    "With no pilots to touch, you''ll have to use a soul jump to steal the talent remotely." Clarity pointed to a few planes in the far distance.


    "I don''t think I can reach that far." Scott said.


    Dixon put his hand on Scott''s shoulder and the soul jumper power was copied again. "There''s a few people between here and there. Just bridge it."


    Scott saw them now. Faint ghosts driving luggage cars, septic tanks and other things. He soul jumped the first one, standing on the tarmac ready to guide a plane out. From there he soul hopped to the man in the luggage car. From there, to a woman driving a gas tanker, and then a man emptying the septic from a plane on the other side of the landing strip. Once there, he grabbed a hold of the pilot and sucked the flying talent out of him.


    His soul shot all the way back without the middle jumps, carrying a gray orb. Once reunited, Scott was at once comfortable with the controls of the plane. They got on and Scott started it up.


    Most of it was autopilot. He pressed a few buttons, but even during takeoff the on board computers handled most of the work. They were up in the sky very quickly.


    "You''re a natural at this." Dixon said.


    Scott looked out the window into the dark sky. "This is pretty cool."

 Chapter 9

    [Johannesburg, South Africa 2320]


    The bus pulled up to Isaac¡¯s home sweet dilapidated high rise and he got out. They already dropped Danny off, and Laura was right beside him. Without introductions, Isaac walked into the building and up the stairs. They were more strenuous than he remembered.


    In the events of the last few days, his humble home had changed slightly. Most of the people living in the stairwells were no longer there, and the ones who were, weren''t among the living.


    "This seems like a high death count," Laura said. "Is it always this bad here?"


    "It wasn¡¯t the best," the hairs on the back of Isaac''s neck stood up. "But this is a new development."


    Laura stiffened a little bit at this, but she kept walking up the stairs with him. Whatever came through here, Isaac was certain it was up there now. Probably waiting for him.


    Still, he trudged on. There was almost no point in running if he couldn''t run with Neicia. Without her, he would not have the courage to keep going. While he talked a good tale to Laura, the prospect of just how far they would have to run was daunting. His mind raced at the logistics of hiding from an advanced supercomputer bent on finding him specifically. Really, he was shocked he made it this far.


    The exit door from the stairwell to his floor was scratched and hanging open. On the other side was the familiar blackness he had encountered nearly every day of his life. He hesitated on the landing. There could be anything in there now. His once sure footing would be more detriment to him than help.


    His tracker tingled in his arm. He checked it and it connected to a machine halfway between him and his door. Here, a machine gun on a mounted tripod stood in century mode. Isaac held his hand back to stop Laura.


    "There¡¯s a gun just outside of the light. It won''t see our trackers, but I''m pretty sure it will blast anything that moves." Isaac whispered.


    "Why don''t you disable it?"


    "A loss of communication may let whoever put it there know that I am here."


    After a minute, Laura broke the silence. "I''m not staying in this stairwell."


    "Then go back down. We have to find another way."


    He knew full well that there was no other viable way onto the floor. The other stairwell had caved in several years ago. None of the elevators worked anymore. Any kind of service shaft or ventilation shaft would prove to be too weak to hold even one of them.


    One floor down, he lead Laura through the hallway, stopping at a particular door. It opened freely and he walked to the back.


    "What are we doing here?" Laura asked.


    "Getting a girl''s attention." Isaac picked up an old broom and proceeded to pound the ceiling with it.


    Hopefully, if Neicia was still alive, she would hear this and interpret it as coming from him. He bumped the ceiling for a minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Dread started to set in. Then doubt. Was he under her apartment? Or was it the next one over? Or was she among the newly deceased in the building?


    He dropped the broom, unable to continue his train of thought. Just as the broom hit the floor, a slight tapping came from the ceiling above. She was alive! Now, did she know it was him?


    He picked up the broom and jammed it hard into the ceiling. Repeatedly. This made a lot of noise, but it was really his only option. After seven or eight attempts, the broom stick broke, leaving a wedge in the ceiling.


    Neicia hit it out, revealing a small hole. She pushed a cardboard tube through it, and he put it up to his ear.


    "Who is this?" Neicia asked.


    Isaac switched positions so he was talking into the tube. "It''s Isaac. Are you alright?"


    "Am I alright? What about you? Isaac, it''s so good to hear your voice."


    "I''m fine. Better than fine. We''re getting out of here."


    "But, they have your dad."


    "What? Who has my dad?"


    "The aliens."


    The hairs on his neck stood up again. "Personally?"


    "Yes. I saw one of them set up the gun before going into your apartment. There was a bulletin calling for your apprehension."


    "What did it look like?"


    Neicia paused before responding. "Like a nest of snakes forming a giant praying mantis."


    "What are we going to do?" Laura asked quietly behind him.


    "Neicia, can you get to my apartment? Without being shot I mean?"


    "I don''t think so. I didn''t bother to test it out."


    "Ok, in exactly three minutes, I want you to go to my apartment and say you are looking for a healer for someone downstairs. If you''re not out in a two minutes, I''m coming in after you."


    "But... the gun."


    "Don''t worry about the gun. Just wait three minutes, and head out your door when you hear it start shooting."


    "You''re not going to do something stupid are you?"


    "Yes, but not what you''re thinking. Just time it. Three minutes from... now. See you soon, and remember, don''t come out until you hear the gun fire."


    Pavarti left the room and ran down the hallway, Laura was panting trying to keep up behind him. He tripped over a few things in the dark, but they made it back to the stairwell.


    "Are you trying to kill your girlfriend, or yourself?" Laura asked.


    "Neither, preferably. I''m trying to extract her. Only way out is through."


    "Through an automatic robot gun."


    "I prefer the term bullet dispensing machine."


    The timer in his head was down to thirty seconds. He had a small window to make this work. He grabbed his injured wrist and waved it in the direction of the sentry gun. With a spark of ozone, his tracker connected to the gun and he readied the plan.


    "Uh, I thought disabling the gun would alert the alien." Laura whispered.


    "Yes. That''s why I''m just giving it multiple fake targets."


    "What''s that going to do?"


    "Cover your ears and get down."


    "Oh sh-"


    Her swear was cut off by roaring gunfire. Isaac aimed the gun at the far wall and hoped that no one was in the apartment on the other side. Expended bullet casings rolled down the stairs around them.


    Isaac peeked over the top of the stairs, trying to keep the gun pointed away from him and Neicia, while getting a good view of the hallway.


    Neicia was at his door, knocking. She stood there, shoulders hunched against the noise for what seemed like forever. The gun kept hammering the wall opposite her, while she waited diligently.


    The door opened and she was pulled in by a large tentacle like thing. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Without thinking, Isaac lunged up the last few stairs and charged his apartment door.


    It opened when he got there, and the thing had Neicia in its arms, and it looked like it was squeezing her. His dad was on the couch, two swollen eyes and a few cuts here and there.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it."Hey." Isaac shouted. "Here I am."


    The alien dropped Neicia and sprang for him. It was fast. Faster than he anticipated. He slammed the door shut and ran back for the stairwell. The door splintered behind him as he passed the gun.


    Now on the other side, he overloaded the gun sensors again, telling it to shoot in the direction of the alien.


    The gun turned and stopped firing. Of course, the alien programmed the gun with a safety. Why didn''t he think of that before?


    Tentacles grabbed at his arms and legs, and slammed him against the wall. His head went dizzy and the air was knocked out of him. He was now suspended against the wall via tentacle, the alien leaning in for a close look.


    Isaac got a look of his own. The "skin" of the creature was translucent. Inside, instead of muscles, was a complicated labyrinth of what looked like fiber optic cables and tiny interconnected motors. Limbs in this sense didn''t quite make sense. The whole body was limbs, and they could seemingly arrange themselves to fit whatever form they deemed efficient.


    One of the limbs turned sharp and readied a stab. He still had to admire the efficiency. He closed his eyes in brace for the impact.


    His wrist grew hot again, and he fell to the floor. He opened his eyes and saw he was laying in the threshold of his apartment.


    The alien let out an inhuman sound. Something loud. In normal circumstances he might have called it cheery. Here it was downright frightening. He backed into his apartment, and out of sight.


    Now, human screams joined the chorus. Laura. It must have spotted her in the stairwell.


    Isaac focused on the machine gun and tried to take out the safety. It wouldn''t budge. Then he tried to change the parameters of the safety. That worked. He switched it from ceasing fire on the alien to ceasing fire on himself and his friends.


    "Isaac, how''d move from the wall to the door so fast?" Neicia whispered behind him.


    "I''ll explain in a minute. Now, stay here, don''t follow me, and don''t let my dad follow either."


    He stood back up and entered the hallway. The gun turned to him, but didn''t fire. Laura was held upside down by her foot at the edge of the stairwell. The same sharp appendage braced for a kill.


    "Hey noodle brain." Isaac shouted. "She''s just along for the ride. I''m the one in your systems."


    The alien dropped her and slithered at speed towards him. Reasonably sure Laura was out of the line of fire, he turned the gun back on. The sensors were overloaded without his help. The alien was all spindly mass in constant motion.


    Bits of robotic tentacles splintered off in pieces, but there was no scream. Just the slippery determination to kill. The bullets did very little to slow the creature down. At this point, Isaac was glad he had one more wrinkle to the plan.


    As the alien rush him, the central mass of the thing engulfed the gun. Probably just to disarm it. At this moment, Isaac activated the self destruct mode. The hallway buckled and Isaac was launched back. He rolled and took cover as bits of plastic skin and muscle fell around him.


    Isaac waited for his ears to stop ringing before he got up. If the alien survived that, there was nothing Isaac could have done but cower in the fetal position anyway. The explosion was as small as he could have hoped for, but it still did some damage.


    For one thing, there was a large hole in the floor where the gun had been. The walls and ceiling were charred black. And the alien was gone. He had to look at the now exposed lower floor, but the only thing that remained was fragments of the creature.


    "What have you done?" Thomas, his father asked, standing in the door with shock.


    "I''ve saved your life. Now, come with me, we have to get out of here."


    Neicia came to the door frame, but went no further. Instead of rushing to his side, she looked at him like he had leprosy. "How did you do that?"


    "I''ll explain everything, but on the way. We have to move before reinforcements arrive."


    "It''s not safe out there." Thomas shook his head, and took a small step back.


    "It''s not safe anywhere, dad." Isaac held out his hand in frustration. "I have a way of making it less dangerous-"


    "Is this what you call less dangerous?" Neicia asked.


    "He saved me too." Laura called from the stairwell. She was leaning against the door frame. "That thing on his arm, it lets him override their controls of the systems. You should have seen him guiding a predator drone on our way home."


    Neicia eyed this new comer, obviously assessing the threat. Thomas was too busy holding his head in pain to have a look.


    "I can do other stuff too. And I''ll explain all of that later before a fleet of drones comes in to reduce this high rise to a pile of rubble." Isaac said out of irritation.


    His dad took a quick look up, and then nodded. "No time to pack our things, I take it?"


    "I''m afraid not." Isaac offered to help him across the newly minted hallway chasm. "But I have supplies in a bus a few streets down."


    Together they walked down the stairs, while Isaac thought about how they were going to get out of the city alive.


    *****


    [Outside New Orleans Louisiana]


    The tanks of Pavarti Matter were in their places, the shipping crew gone partying in the city. Pavarti wiped the sweat off of his face after hooking up the machine. This one was in another underground station, next to a nuclear power plant. Lots of power needed to get this baby running.


    The engines hummed along, and the control panels worked smoothly. Here, the set up was similar to Alaska. Huge platform supporting the control station, while the mechanics of the machines ran underneath.


    Instead of a pneumatic tube underneath him, there was a centrifuge. One large enough to contain thirty large eggs, of sorts. These eggs contained embryos of his making. The product of years of genetic engineering and human advancement. His scribes. They weren''t the cream of the crop, but they were all he had.


    The idea was the use the Pavarti matter to sling these eggs into the world, disrupt the power on a massive scale, and force people to see that these new abilities fostered in mankind were better than the automated devices.


    In his Florida and Africa locations, the machines were similar, but more effective. He could launch the genesis eggs into the distant past. Not as effective as resetting the time line, but this would have to do. The only way into the past now was through the centrifuge. And that required the egg as a mode of transportation. This body was not suited for that.


    Pavarti activated the sequence, and the centrifuge came to life. Around the machine, a purple mist developed. One by one, the eggs were shot through the mist, and into various parts of the world. Right after their departure, those sections of the world were hit with massive EMPs.


    Step one was done. Now onto Florida for step two.

 Chapter 10

    "What about a coma patient?" Skylar asked in the subway car.


    Over the last few days, Miranda and Skylar had traveled to New York City. People stared at Skylar where ever they went. This was Skylar''s fifth time asking the same question on the trip.


    "Because I can''t cure a coma. Adding your consciousness into a coma patient would put you into a coma," Miranda closed her eyes and breathed slowly. She had to remind herself that Skylar''s consciousness was still a little girl. She did not get a chance to grow up.


    When Skylar looked poised to ask the next repeated question, Miranda answered it ahead of time, "And the same thing for disabled people. I can''t cure that with your consciousness. Those brains are chemically wired different. Just like this body is different than your original one beyond the physical differences. What tastes good, the reaction to stress, every little thing is chemically different and therefore not a match. I promised we would find you a better body, but we have to do it in a way that gives you the best life possible."


    A lone woman across the way was doing her best to ignore the conversation. Miranda didn''t blame her. This was weird even by her standards. The train stopped and the two of them got out, at the edge of a massive city.


    New York was bigger than Cantera Bay back home, though the Coalition''s Illurium building would probably dominate the city skyline. Just the same, the buildings were massive, the lights were bright and people were everywhere.


    They walked among a procession across walkways, sidewalks and side streets. Skylar limped noticeably, and her bone spear hung out of one of the hooded sweatshirt, but people here didn''t notice. They were too busy walking and looking at phones.


    After a few miles, they reached a large intersection filled with billboards and glowing signs. Skylar let out a grunt. Her eyes grew wide, and she tried to speak a warning, but nothing came out. Her posture went ridged.


    Miranda put an arm out, trying to decipher what was wrong when the wind was knocked out of her too. She lost control of her body, a familiar sensation. She was being soul jumped.


    "I was wondering when you would find us," Miranda said, scanning the crowds where she could to find the culprits.


    They were walked among the crowd for a moment until they came to a small Chinese restaurant. Inside were three people Miranda vaguely recognized from the Activists group back on Cova. They sat at a large circular table nestled into a corner.


    "You waltz through time square, and we are going to notice." The tallest one said. She had short red hair, and her nose was now pierced.


    "Why''d you bring the freak with you?" The man to her left said.


    Skylar and Miranda were forced to sit down at the table opposite them. Food was brought out to the activists, but the waitress made no indication she was going to acknowledge Miranda''s or Skylar''s presence.


    "I''m not a freak." Skylar growled next to her.


    The three across the table laughed.


    "Not so tough without the suit to block our soul jumps are you?" The nose pierced one said.


    "Speaking of tough," Miranda responded. "You''ve been here for half a year. Maybe a little more, I''m losing track of time. And the only thing you''ve got on us is your same old soul jumps?"


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more."You''re just trying to gloat our new secrets out of us." Nose ring said.


    "No, you''ve got noting. I can see it in your eyes."


    A flash of doubt crept over the tall nose ring girl. But then she regained the false confidence. "A soul jump is all we need against you."


    "Your mighty queen had ten soul jumps, and she couldn''t beat me without that suit."


    The three of them looked at each other and the soul jump on her wavered a little bit. The soul jumper was holding her, but allowing free lip movement for the conversation. At this point, the free movement extended to her hand. It was enough to reach into her satchel and pull out the Ancestral Branch. A lacquered Branch object capable of shooting memory trances like a tranquilizer gun.


    One shot fired three orbs from the extended branches and their three captors were out. Miranda put her hand on the back of each of their heads in turn and pulled memories from the past few months into her archive stone.


    "What are you doing?" Skylar asked.


    "I''m gaining intelligence. These guys have been here for a while. They know the lay of the land. That and they may have found Scott and Dixon."


    The memories were pretty strait forward until about a week ago. Someone took out the Local legions in Alaska, and then in Nevada. They thought - and Miranda hoped - it was Scott and Dixon. But they turned out to be in England.


    "I told them I was in America or Africa," Miranda complained to herself.


    She dug further into the past to find out what they¡¯d been doing. Most of their focus was on a series of secret labs, apparently built by Pavarti. Most of them remained unopened. Perhaps the most useful thing was the central communication using the soul jumpers like wireless internet waves. Maybe she could sneak a message on their to Scott, Dixon and Talia.


    She pulled out of the memories to the sound of Skylar shrieking. Outside the window, a giant egg shaped rock sat on top of a crushed car. Above it, a mass of glowing purple fog, with streaks of lightning.


    "Talia?" Miranda stood up and ran to the window for a better look.


    The fog sent out a shock wave, and all of the lights in Times Square went out. It was still day time outside, but resulting darkness felt deep. The purple mist turned black, and made a sphere around the egg.


    Inside the egg turned a bright glowing red, and cracked open.


    Miranda stood from her seat and went to the window. A man pulled himself out of the egg and walked to the edge of the black sphere. His silhouette matched the color of the now cracked egg. He reached out his hand and put it on the edge.


    A woman who was close, walked to the sphere, trembling. She put her hand out to touch his. The instant the connection was made, the woman was vaporized.


    "What is that?" Nose ring girl said as she got up from her trance.


    "Probably what you''ve been looking for this whole time." Miranda said as she pulled out the Dominion rod, a short stick handy for keeping soul jumpers in their own bodies without hitting them with a trance. It would also allow Miranda to control them. She activated the rod and nose ring girl was at her command, instead of the other way around.

 Chapter 11

    Dixon stretched his legs and popped his lower back. He was ready to be off the plane. After landing in Germany, they found a connecting flight to London. The plane landed on its own as much as it took off. They soul jumped their way past customs, and into the heart of London.


    "They have subways here." Dixon said. "We should ride around until we get a good look at where Brooke is." [Brooke sets an obvious trap. They chase some legion leaguers down into the sub ways.]


    "Great idea." Clarity said. "And there will be a lot of people down there to keep practicing Scott."


    Scott nodded and they headed for the London Underground. It was crowded and noisy. Scott bumped a few people to get a general layout of the labyrinth they were descending into.


    A few more soul jumps convinced a generous woman to pay for their admittance to the train station. Once they were there, they got on the first train.


    "We''re pretty far down, do you think you''ll be able to see any of the soul jumper ghosts up there?" Scott sat down and pointed at the ceiling.


    Dixon looked up and squinted his eyes. He couldn''t see any ghost above them. "It''s too thick."


    "Well, we should go then." Scott said. "Take a tour bus or something."


    "That would be better." Dixon agreed.


    But the train started to move.


    "Next stop then." Clarity sat down and stared at the other passengers. There were only seven others in this car. Most of them were listening to music or reading a book.


    The walls outside rushed by in a blur, not providing any detail. Occasionally a service door would appear, or some other different marker.


    At the next stop, Clarity got up and they made to leave the train. But outside was a wave of cops, and they issued an order for everyone to remain inside the train.


    Dixon counted twenty officers, though none of them entered their particular car. He didn''t get a good look at them, couldn''t see who well armed they were, but they had grey ghosts. None of them were soul jumpers or scribes.


    With the police, about fifty new passengers boarded. Again, none of them to their car. The hairs on the back of Dixon''s neck stood up.


    "We should leave." Dixon said.


    "And risk becoming fugitives?" Scott asked. The doors shut and the train started moving. "Let''s just wait it out. Sneak off at the next station."


    Clarity sat back down. "I don''t think this is a routine operation here."


    Dixon made his way to the front of the car, to have a better look. There was a door with a glass window on top, allowing him to peer into the car ahead of them.


    There were three police officers there. All of them were talking with various passengers, and otherwise looking busy. All of them were armed to the teeth. Two handguns, an assault rifle, and tactical concussion grenade each. And that''s just what was carried openly.


    "They''re looking for somebody dangerous." Dixon turned around and looked at the car behind them. Again three officers, and many weapons.


    "We''re almost to the next stop." Scott pointed to the sign indicating the train''s travel path.


    Just as he spoke those words, the train zipped past the next platform. Dixon could see the confused faces of the waiting crowd as the train didn''t even acknowledge their presence.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.The train passed another stop. And then another. After the fourth pass, Dixon walked back over to the front door of the car. He put his hand on the handle, and readied to move. "I''ll be back. Just going to the driver to see why this thing is still moving."


    The nearest police officer watched Dixon, hand on a gun, and shook his head when he was ready to open the door.


    A faint sound of static cracked through the air. A woman coughed and a loudspeaker was turned on.


    "Well well." A woman''s voice. Faintly familiar, but he couldn''t place who it was.


    "Brooke." Scott said.


    "The phantom queen." Clarity agreed.


    "You take forever showing up, but boy did you arrive with a bang." The phantom queen crooned over the loudspeaker. "Just about messed up the whole operation. But that''s the story of your life, isn''t it Scott?"


    "We have to get out of here." Scott whispered.


    "And go where?" Dixon pointed at the blurry wall and the armed men surrounding the car. "Also, you don''t have to whisper. Pretty sure she can''t hear you."


    "I''ll hand it to you for being on the right track, literally," Brooke continued. "But it was a mistake coming in here unarmed."


    Glass broke on the back door of the car, and Clarity fell down with a yelp. Dixon dived down to get a look. Her shoulder was bleeding. The other passengers looked up from their books and phones with wide eyes.


    "And revealing her secrets to my boys in China. Honestly, Alaska was such a clean job. Nevada too. Did Miranda do those? She always seemed more inconspicuous than you two."


    "That''s rich coming from her." Scott snorted.


    "Is anybody here a doctor?"


    The room stayed quiet.


    "Keep the blood loss minimal," Scott said. "I''ll do what I can to take out the police in the surrounding cars.¡±


    Dixon ripped out a small chunk of his shirt and applied pressure to the wound, careful not to press the bullet further in.


    Scott sent out several ghosts, and took control of passengers in the other cars. It was obvious he wouldn''t take control of the officers while Brooke had them in a soul jump. The next best option was to fight with bystanders.


    Scott yelled in pain and at once, all of his ghosts rushed back into him. He fell to the ground and began convulsing.


    "You''ll see that I''ve picked up a few more tricks." Brooke said. "Undetectable soul poisoning. If your soul jump comes into contact with someone I''ve poisoned, this is what happens."


    "Let me." Clarity wheezed. "I can help him."


    Dixon picked her up as gently as he could, and tried to drag her over to Scott. Police officers let out more shots, glass and seat fabric were flying everywhere. Dixon dropped her and pushed her in-between two seat stalls. He then took cover as best he could.


    "Two neutralized, one to go." Brooke said. "Let''s finish this quickly."


    Two cans of tear gas rolled into the room and hissed menacingly. At that moment, the lights went out, leaving Dixon and his injured friends in a smoke filled darkness. Both doors from the other cars opened and red beams of gun laser sights scanned the room.

 Chapter 12

    Times Square was blocked off. The barricades kept anyone from getting too close to the sphere. Miranda was just at the blockade, watching as several people in hazmat suits checked for radiation.


    Skylar was next to her, holding the Dominion rod and keeping the soul jumpers in check. They were brought along for any kind of explanation they could offer on the situation.


    Miranda didn''t care about them anymore. She had all the information she could glean from them. The dark sphere in front of her was all that held her attention.


    The team ahead was sent by the government. Some of them wore camouflage apparel, some carried guns, and some carried medical equipment.


    Not that anything could be done for the victims. Since the sphere burst into the scene, there had been twenty fatalities and no injuries. All who had made contact with it were vaporized.


    The man, or creature inside the sphere had made several attempts to get out. But it seemed stuck. Even now, it stood at the edge of the sphere, watching those around it.


    The team tried a few different tactics. They drove a drone and a driver-less car into it. Both were equipped with cameras, both were vaporized at the moment of contact. They tried all kinds of sensors on the outside, testing for radiation, different types of light, responses to energy and heat. Everything had to be brought in, New York was still without power. Everything electrical was fried.


    Miranda had a few tests she would have liked to run. The response to this crises was unbelievably fast. By the time she got to the sphere, a team with guns was clearing her out. She would have put them all in a trance, but there were so many bystanders recording the event on their phones. She was curious, but not at the expense of her safety and anonymity.


    Still, there were a few things she could try from her spot. She held out the Ancestral branch and shot it at the sphere itself, and at the man inside. The orb shot at the sphere evaporated. The orb shot at the man held on his hand for a moment before puffing into non existence.


    Nothing. There were no return memories to pull. She would have to get closer.


    Just then, a helicopter flew over head. The helicopter centered over the sphere, and a glass ball was dropped.


    Miranda shot the ball with multiple orbs. The ball landed in the sphere, and Miranda began pulling the memory spheres back just before they were disintegrated.


    The spheres returned, and Miranda moved them to her archive stone to get a better look. From there, she patched together the memories into one small projection.


    The glass ball was actually a series of glass balls, one inside another, with a camera in the middle. As the ball hit, the outer layers evaporated one by one, until only the camera was left. But the camera stayed intact. Until the man inside the sphere came over and touched it.


    The helicopter touched down and three people got out of it. The helicopter took off again and the new people started talking with the old people. Miranda shot more memory orbs from the branch to find out what they were planning.


    "The camera survived the outer shell." One person said.


    "It''s the special material we''re using. We have a guy here suited up with it."


    Eventually, they agreed that they would send the guy in, shielding him first with a car. Miranda shot that guy in the head with an orb before he put a helmet on. The guy got in a car, and drove into the sphere.


    The crowd gasped as the car disintegrated, and cheered when they could see an outline of the guy who drove it standing up. Then the man in the sphere made his way to the new guy.


    There was a struggle. The man in the sphere grabbed the new guy and it was hard to see exactly what was happening, but after the struggle, the new guy was vaporized.


    Before that happened, Miranda pulled the memory orb back with the branch, and put it into the archive stone.


    The memory was brief. The man drove into the sphere, and fell to the ground when his car vanished around him. Inside the dome, it was dark. Pitch dark. But his arms and body glowed red like the other man. Bits of light flashed from the edge of the sphere, and the man inside it made his way to him.


    The new guy tried to talk, tried to scream, but no words came out. When the man inside the sphere grabbed him, Miranda knew what his intentions were. He saw the jacket made it through the barrier. Maybe if he had it, he could get out.


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.The new guy struggled to break the grip, but it was no use. The man inside the sphere tore off the jacket and helmet, and the memory was retracted before disintegration.


    Miranda looked at the sphere, and was relieved to see the man in the sphere still stuck in there.


    "There''s nothing more I can test from here." Miranda backed up a little bit. "Let''s go tap into the legion league¡¯s network and see if we can find our friends."


    Skylar nodded and they moved through the crowd, a pair of soul jumper''s in tow. Once clear, Miranda guided them to where the legion league''s memories indicated the hub existed. In a high rise building, near the top floor.


    The view outside the window was not nearly as impressive as her former penthouse lab in the Illorium building, but it was new. She looked at it briefly and then walked into the room where the legion league connected around the world.


    The room was bare; wood floors, shambled lights, stucco walls and a rectangular table with two chairs were the lounge furniture pieces.


    On the table were the hubs. Two identical cubes made out of metal. Each had grooves in it that looked like they articulated.


    She knew how it worked. The memories were clear. A soul jumper held the device, and their soul hooked up to a hub that brought all of the world together. A sort of metaphysical internet.


    "Skylar, you can release our hosts." Miranda nodded. "But keep watch on them."


    Skylar waved the Dominion rod and the two soul jumpers collapsed to the floor.


    "Where did you get that thing?" Nose ring girl said.


    "What matters is that we can activate it during any soul jump. There is no way for you to overpower us while we have it. Now, I need to you active the network."


    Nose ring girl got up and sat at one end of the table. The other soul jumper sat opposite her. They clasped the two machines and they started to hum. Several pieces of the hubs moved and the inside of them were glowing.


    A small red wispy beam of light passed between them, occasionally small flecks of green would also pass through. Miranda held out her archive stone and collected all of the green bits into it. Dozens of memory transfers over great distances. It was marvelous.


    After a minute, she realized the memories and messages were repeating. She pulled her hand back out and turned to the door.


    "Come on Skylar. We''ve got what we needed."


    "Where are you going now?" Nose ring girl said.


    "None of your business. Now stay out of my way and you can go back to wasting time doing whatever it was you were doing."


    On the way back down the stairs, Miranda played her new memories on her archive stone in fast motion. She was getting better at taking in vast amounts of information in fractions of the time this way. Each post was like a video post on a computer, but just a hologram on her wrist.


    One message was about the missing Alaska people. Someone was trying to reach them, but they were far away. Another group posted their findings in Nevada. Someone came in and killed the crew and made Pavarti''s base of operations there more secure. Meanwhile, Scott, Dixon and another elderly woman was spotted in China, and the local people there managed to communicate that Scott and Dixon were looking for Miranda and trying to get to America. Good, she could wait for them to find her.


    People thought for a while that Scott and Dixon must have done something in Alaska and then moved to China. Without all the information, someone else guessed that Miranda split up from them and went to Nevada because later it was found out she''d been in Ohio.


    Nose ring girl and crew had been unable to update their findings here in New York. Latest Intel put her in New Orleans. Apparently there was a large scuffle there, and Pavarti''s base of operations there had recently been activated. Others from the area were now congregating to try and find out who was behind this.


    And by this, they meant the occurrence of these dark spheres all over the world. With the power out in New York City, there had been little talk of this happening anywhere else. But most of the major cities were without power and were dealing with some mystical ball of doom.


    And the legion league thought it had something to do with the New Orleans secret base.


    "We need to find a way to get you on a plane." Miranda looked at Skylar''s sharp, bony arm.

 Chapter 13

    Dixon felt the train slowing down. Brooke was no longer gloating in the loud speaker. But the officers pressed on. Red laser sights waved back and forth showing the smoke in the darkness.


    Dixon saw a crowd of ghosts to the side of the train as it passed another platform with momentum. He figured Brooke wouldn''t have poisoned one of those people since it wasn''t part of the plan to have them board, so soul jumping them should be safe. He was right. A woman at the platform accepted his ghost and went to check out what was happening outside.


    One officer let fire. Clarity yelled and Dixon leapt up behind the officer. He threw a quick jab to the throat. The officer didn''t back down, but smashed him in the chest with the butt of the rifle.


    Dixon grabbed the riffle on the way down and pulled the officer with him. Under the soul jump, the officer didn''t react to the pain of the throat strike. Dixon was impressed with the discipline of Brooke, or whoever was soul jumping the officer. They could block out pain of their subjects because it was not their pain.


    But he figured he had one skill they did not. Soul jumping the dead. Without hesitation, Dixon reached into the holster of the officer and pulled out a hand gun.


    The officer tried to stand back up, but it was too late. Dixon shot him in the head. The other red lights drifted towards the sound of the gunshot.


    Dixon soul jumped the recently deceased officer and it worked. Brooke was out. With tears burning in his eyes, he tried to aim the handgun at the red laser sights to the right. He guessed where the heads would be based on the red lights and their ghosts. The officer he had a soul jump on did the same thing with officers to the left. One by one they were taken out.


    Dixon fell to the ground coughing, and held his head in his hands. He soul jumped all of the dead officers and used them to carry him and his friends and the few other passengers to the next car back.


    His lungs burned, but fresh air felt great. The passengers in this car stepped back as smoke spilled between the two cars. More officers were coming from the other cars. Dixon sent his soul jumped officers after them to form a perimeter. With every dead officer, his army grew larger. Soon, he had them all under his command.


    Somewhere, a flashlight turned on. Dixon still couldn''t see, but there was an audible gasp.


    "I''m a nurse." Someone said as she moved to Clarity.


    "Those rozzers are dead." A man exclaimed. "How are they walking around with holes in their heads?"


    Dixon pinched his eyes shut and kept to the shadows. Meanwhile, the woman from the platform was trying to call her husband, who was staying late at work tonight. Dixon let the woman have control of her life. He was simply observing.


    "Bloody mobile." The woman looked at it. Lifeless. "It was over 30 percent charge ten minutes ago!"


    By now she was out of the station and at the surface. The whole of London looked dark. Not a single light on. Cars lay motionless in the street. Some of them were abandoned.


    The woman walked quickly in the direction of her husband''s work. It was closer than home, and he would have to go by the tube as well. If he left work, they would run into each other. Still, it was several city blocks. Dixon kept the soul in her, but brought his focus back to the train.


    With a slight strain to his eyes, he opened them. Everything was blurry, but the pain was lessened. He got up and moved towards Clarity. She was putting her hands on Scott''s head while the nurse was trying to get her to stop.


    "Let her do it." Dixon told the nurse.


    The nurse pulled a flashlight out of her mouth. "If she doesn''t hold still, her wounds will split and she''ll lose blood."


    Dixon kneeled next to her. "But if she doesn''t do that, my other friend here is going to suffer a much worse fate."


    "Which is?"


    "I''m not sure, but it doesn''t look good." Dixon looked deep into Scott''s troubled eyes. "And she says she can stop it."


    "Praying isn''t going to stop that shaking."


    Just as she said that, Scott stopped shaking. He was already passed out, and Dixon went to move him to a more comfortable position.


    The nurse re-tended to Clarity''s wounds and walked over to him. "So, who are you?"


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation."Dixon. And you are?"


    "Amy."


    "Thanks for helping, Amy. How''s Clarity?" Dixon asked, nodding to Clarity.


    "Fine." Amy nodded. "The bullets didn''t go deep, one was the shoulder, the other her leg. I got both out, disinfected and stitched the wounds. She''ll limp for a while, have some scars, but she''ll be just fine."


    Dixon nodded and watched Amy move the flashlight through the rest of the cab.


    "So, do you know what''s going on?" Amy asked.


    "I was going to ask you the same thing." Dixon sat down next to Scott.


    "No, why would I?"


    "Because, we''re on a train, near the middle of the night, and you just happen to have a med kit with enough supplies to properly clean two gunshot wounds and stitch the patient up."


    "I''m a nurse, it''s kind of what I do."


    "Maybe. Doesn''t explain how London is without power in any form right now. How the gun sights on the officers don''t work, how cars are just dead, we''re stuck in the dark. And yet, your flashlight works fine."


    "My med kit is a Faraday cage. London must have been hit with an EMP." She pointed the light on her kit. "Anything in there will be protected. But how do you know all of London is without power? How do you know cars are left for dead?"


    "I have eyes on the surface."


    "Because you knew there would be an electrical attack?"


    "No, because I have eyes. Did you buy that bag because you knew this would happen?"


    Amy paused for a moment. "What about these dead policemen everywhere? Do you know what''s going on with them? One minute they''re shooting at you, and the next they''re shooting at each other, and now, they''re just standing there, dead but very animated."


    "You''re guess is as good as mine." Dixon looked at them. "Let''s focus on getting out of here."


    Back in the eyes of the woman from the platform, he saw a faint glow in the distance. It was like an enormous black light was turned on and set in the middle of the street. The woman wasn''t curious enough to investigate. Here, Dixon took control and forced her to have a closer look.


    "Okay, say you''re right." Amy tapped him on the shoulder. "Say London is without power, what good is getting out of the tube going to do?"


    "We''re trapped down here." Dixon pointed around them. "Trapped and isolated. We need to get out so we can escape whatever is coming next."


    "What do you think is coming next?"


    Dixon shook his head. "Nothing good."


    "Aren''t you the optimistic one?" She said sarcastically.


    "I am optimistic." Dixon stood up and opened the door. Several dead officers brought passengers with them, into the car. "Optimistic that we''re all getting out of here."


    "How did you know they were coming back in?" Amy asked.


    "I told you. I have eyes," Dixon said, checking in on the woman from the platform.


    She was at the source of the glowing. A huge black sphere, with bolts of red striking through. A red silhouette of a man trying to get out. Piles of ashes lay at the ground in front of the sphere. He made the woman throw her dead phone into the sphere. It disintegrated. He could feel the woman''s fear welling up in her. Her usefulness was at an end anyway. Most of London was without power, and there wasn''t much more he could learn from the situation. So he let go of the soul jump, and that part of his soul shot into the sphere.


    It burned. It was searing hot in a way that severe cold burns. He could feel the ghost splitting, tearing, writhing. It tried to jump back out, but the red silhouette lashed into it and grabbed it.


    He screamed out. His other ghosts returned to him, and the officers all dropped to the ground at once. A hand reached out to touch him. He wanted to swat it away, but he had no control.


    The hand was warm, and then bright. A thousand rats squeaked in his head. And then the pain was gone.


    "You''re lucky it only got one." Clarity said with a raspy voice. "That thing, that man in the sphere you saw, eats souls. We had to cut that soul from you. It''s alright, you have many spares. If we didn''t, you would have lost your soul jumping powers, and your sanity."


    "You were controlling the police." Amy half whispered.


    Dixon didn''t deny it. There was no point.


    "You''re Peter Dixon. Come to restore balance to our world."


    "Come again?" Dixon asked.


    "It has to be you." Amy pointed excitedly at the bodies around them. "''And he shall save the people with their dead.''"

 Chapter 14

    Chapter 14: Pavarti [5]


    [South Africa, 2217]


    As they walked, Isaac explained everything to Neicia and his dad. Both took it with apprehension. He''d expected that from his dad, always one to play it safe. Neicia''s reaction was less anticipated. She refused to hold his hand, there was no welcoming hug. Just a cold determination, and a blank stare.


    Across the street, a man in a tattered jacket watched them. There were more people along the path. Eyes everywhere. Isaac kept a mental note of where they were, and ordered the bus to drive to pick them up along the route.


    They crossed an empty intersection, and Thomas fell to the ground.


    "Dad!" Isaac turned around and went to help him up.


    "We should go back," Thomas said. "Explain this was all a mistake."


    "Dad, I killed one of them." Isaac pointed to the sky. "There were only five that came. We need to run, and hide."


    "Where can we run?" Thomas refused the help and stood up on his own power. "Where is it safe? With them. They can protect us."


    "Protect us?" The bus pulled around the corner the side door opened for them. "They''re trying to kill us. They hurt you. They''re using your and your cowardice to inspire cowardice into others."


    "Cowardice?" Thomas stood tall and clenched his fists.


    "Yes." Isaac nodded and gestured for everyone to get in the van.


    Laura went first, followed by Neicia. Thomas stood planted in the middle of the road.


    "Son, we need to go back and fix this."


    "There is no fixing this."


    "Who''s showing cowardice now? I''m ready to face the enemy. Are you?"


    "You can face the enemy, but you can''t face your fears. Fears that the enemy will strike. Fears that-"


    "Fears that I will see you killed at their hand."


    "If one of them gets the chance to kill me, they''ll take it. Nothing you say or do can change that. The further I am from them, the longer I live. Now get in the bus."


    Thomas clenched his jaw, but then hopped in. Isaac was the last in, and the bus took off. After a few blocks, it stopped, and picked up Danny, who was carrying a large back pack, but brought no one with him.


    "Nobody in your life Danny? Why don''t I find that surprising?" Isaac gave him a quick glance and the bus was off again.


    As they reached the outskirts of Johannesburg, Isaac made his way to the back of the bus, where Neicia was sitting with her arms folded, staring out the window. He casually sat down next to her in the booth.


    "So, what do you think?" Isaac asked.


    Neicia smiled, tensely and sarcastically. "For being a bookworm, you''re intensely stupid."


    "How so?"


    "You''ll get caught. It''s only a matter of time."


    "You think I chose this?" He held out his hand, showing her the singed tracker. "I told you, forces beyond my control. It''s almost like this stuff wants me to fight back."


    "But if they''re after that stuff, then you should just give it to them. And then they''ll leave us alone. This could be over, right now."


    "It''s not that simple."


    "It never was with you."


    "What''s that supposed to mean?"


    "How long have we been seeing each other?"


    "I don''t know. A year. Maybe two now that I think about it."


    She nodded over to Thomas. "This is the first time your dad has seen us together like this."


    "Because he would take it the wrong way."


    "No, because you made it more complicated than it needed to be. I love you. But this is too much. We need to find a way to give them what they want and get them off this planet. And you need to tell your dad about us. His eyes are about to pop from intense staring."


    Isaac looked over at his dad, who''s eyes did resemble an inflated balloon. "This is a hell of a time to tell him."


    "There''s never a good time for it." She whispered. "Go tell him."


    He stood back up, and made his way back towards the front of the bus, where Thomas was sitting. Halfway there, the ground shook slightly. It was hard to tell, in the moving vehicle, but he was sure it was the ground and not the suspension.


    He looked out the window, and the source was pretty clear. The high rise Isaac, his dad, and Neicia had spent the last decade living in was dust. A large cloud of rubble, the more solid parts toppling to the ground.


    The rest of the bus was gaping too. The spectacle was impressive. Rather than destroy a city block bombing the place, they surgically imploded the building. How they did it that fast was beyond Isaac. He didn''t even register predator drones in the area.


    "Anyone still think we should have stayed home?" Isaac asked the bus. No one answered.


    The bus came to an unscheduled, gradual stop. Isaac turned his gaze from the side window to the windshield. Two elderly people were standing in the middle of the road, holding out boxes, asking for supplies.


    This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it."We have to help them." Thomas said.


    "Like hell we do. We need to help ourselves."


    "Watch your language boy." Thomas stood up and made his way to the front door to greet the stricken.


    "Why don''t we just take them with us?" Neicia asked.


    "Just where are we going, anyway?" Danny chimed in. "Doesn''t do those people any good to wander about with us if we don''t even know where we''re going."


    Just as the front door opened, dozens of men and women with guns charged out of the surrounding buildings, bushes, and toppled cars. Half of them were carrying guns. The other half had kitchen knives, sticks, shovels, and other random weapons.


    "Do as they say." Isaac held up his hands. "They have us."


    The rest of the bus crew held up their hands and slowly got out.


    Towards the back, a tall man with the biggest gun was standing on an old park bench.


    "No need to worry. We don''t want to hurt you. We''re just gathering supplies and you can be on your way."


    "But we need those!" Laura shouted.


    "Need?" Tall man said. "For what? To help the aliens? I don''t think so."


    "We''ve taken over this bus." Laura took a few steps towards the man.


    "Come again?" The man got down from the bench and looked her over.


    "It''s true. We''re running." Laura stopped walking as the guns bore down on her.


    The whole group broke into laughter.


    "Are you people idiots?" Tall man said. "Where are you going to run? You''ll be dead in a few hours."


    "Or a few minutes." Isaac pointed to the sky, just behind tall man.


    Tall man looked behind to see a predator drone flying their direction.


    "Take cover!" Tall man yelled.


    The whole crowd ran back into their crevices. Isaac stood alone in the street. He connected to the onboard computer of the drone just as it launched a missile at him.


    Isaac switched to tracking the missile and changed its target. The missile curved and flew right back into the drone, pulverizing it in a giant fireball.


    "Dad, Neicia, Laura, back in the van." Isaac ordered. "Danny, you can stay with these folk if you like, they seem your type."


    Tall man was the first out of his hidey hole, pointing his gun strait at Isaac. "How''d you do that?"


    "Don''t worry about that." Isaac said. "Just know that those aliens want me specifically dead. And the longer you stand next to me, the bigger the waves of war will come sweeping over you. Let me and my friends go, try your luck with the next transport."


    Tall man considered it for a minute. But then he yelled to the crowd; "Change of plans. We take this one to the dead zone."


    The crowd rushed him and he was dragged away from the city and into a jungle outgrowth.


    *****


    [Florida Present day]


    Pavarti parked the truck on a flat stretch of land just at the boarders of NASA''s cape Canaveral. A group of soul jumpers and scribes were waiting for him. Just not the ones he had to worry about.


    As the driver-less delivery trucks full of the Pavarti particle pulled in behind him, Pavarti stepped out of his vehicle and took a few bold steps towards the group.


    "I''m sure you''ve heard what happened to your friends in Alaska." Pavarti said casually. "And then again in Nevada."


    One of the younger ones nodded, but the rest remained still.


    Pavarti smiled and continued his approach. "I''ll give you one bit of warning. The only chance they had to survive was the one I gave them. The same chance I''m giving you: Run, tell your leaders an old man is doing all of this."


    Nobody moved. Pavarti shrugged. "Very well then."


    He reached into his jacket as if he was going to pull out a gun. That forced the soul jumpers to attack with their souls. As they collided with his jacket, all of the soul jumpers screamed and fell to the ground. This left two scribes.


    This time he actually pulled out a gun and shot them on the spot. Worried about incoming surveillance, he made his way to the entrance key and a giant circle of land dipped into the ground as a large platform. Once at the bottom, the trucks left the platform and plugged the cargo into specific slots in the wall.


    This lab didn''t go that deep comparatively. But the size was tremendous. It was circular, as most of the others. With the tubes for the Pavarti Matter circling the facility like a giant science dough-nut. The trucks were already unloading the matter into the tube, filling it about a quarter full.


    As soon as Pavarti stepped off the platform, it lifted back up to the surface, supported by more than a dozen pillars. Once the platform sealed him in, artificial lights hummed to life.


    Pavarti weaved between the pillars in the floor, and made his way to the command console. There, plastered in big red letters, was an error message. There was something wrong with the machine. He would have to fix it before he could carry out his plans for another salvo of genesis eggs.

 Chapter 15

    Miranda took in a deep breath of fresh air when they stepped out of the airport, and into New Orleans. Traveling with a girl who had a bone spear for an arm was brutally exhausting. Several airline employees had to secure her arm to various objects and three FBI agents were seated close to her at all times.


    They were only barely allowed through, and all the while there were whispers about prophesies and chosen people just outside of her field of hearing. She had no idea what that all meant, but it was getting her through the airport.


    Skylar, for her part, held her patience. She didn''t complain about the frightened stares of mothers, the over jumpy flight attendants, or the impossible to convince marshals.


    "I''m hungry." Skylar moaned. Miranda was too, the meals on the flight were pitiful.


    "Let''s find a place to eat." Miranda wished she had her old tablet that could tell her where the best deals were.


    Soon enough they found a cheap place selling hamburgers with a big golden ''m'' sign standing in the front. The food was awful, but they ate it and continued to what the locals referred to as the French Quarter.


    This area was very rustic compared to other spots of the city. Where concrete and metal buildings dominated most landscapes she had seen on earth, this small section was built mostly out of wood. It had a certain refinement of people sticking to the best of the old ways.


    Every other building had a wrap around balcony, street vendors greeted them on every turn with a smile, a fragrance of better food than her "hamburger" filled the air.


    "Miranda, can we stop?" Skylar asked after about ten minutes of exploring. "Sit on that bench over there? I need to rest my legs."


    Miranda nodded and they walked to the bench. It was inside a small park of sorts, there were two gold statues, trees, flowers and carefully trimmed hedges. To the east, a river ran through the city. Directly to the west, just on the other side of an open cast iron gate, was a large castle looking structure. Miranda guessed it was a church of some kind. The sort of atmosphere that would undoubtedly attract the phantom queen''s crowd.


    "We need to find a place to sleep," Skylar moaned as she swung her heavy bone spear arm onto the bench.


    Miranda turned towards the church. "You wait here, I''m going to have a look around."


    "But-"


    Miranda didn''t stop to hear the rebuttal. She crossed the gates and stepped up to the cathedral. Colorful stain glass windows accented the heavy wood door, the stone engravings, and the door greeters.


    She pulled out the Dominion rod and activated it. It honed in on five soul jumpers. She swung it casually, creating locks on them, preventing any soul jumps. She put that back in her satchel, and pulled out the Ancestral Branch.


    With caution, she stepped into the church. At first, the contrast of the setting sun against the entry way of the cathedral made it had to see. She thought someone was playing a trick on her eyes.


    Once the door shut behind her, the field of view became clear. She was standing inside the spaceship Naprea. She checked with her Archive stone, no new memories had come to her through the door knobs. This was no trance.


    After contemplating heading back out the door, she instead went deeper in, ready to shoot a memory at anyone she came across.


    She came across no one. The ship was empty. And not only empty, but apparently unharmed by sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The thought came to her then, that this could be a similar ship instead of the same one. But still, what was it doing inside a large church in the middle of New Orleans?


    After turning a corner, she stumbled and almost tripped on something. She straitened herself, and looked for the source of her clumsiness. There was none that she could see. She reached out her hand and felt the outlines of a bench. Invisible.


    She moved slowly to her right, and reached out to touch the wall. Not solid. Her hand went right through it. After sticking her head through the wall, she discovered another section of the ship. A large room filled with tests tubes the size of humans. Green liquid filled them, and a few had a floating man or woman in them. Her hand went through everything. Something rattled in the distance. The sound of a tetrapath.


    Miranda ran back for the entrance. Her foot tumbled on another invisible bench on her way. After turning the corner and running through the door, she had to take a moment to process her surroundings.


    It was properly night now. And while the square hadn''t been deserted when she entered, the place was now packed with people. Loud music was blaring everywhere. Some people were dressed head to toe in peacock like gowns, while others wore little at all. A few were dressed normally, and those people were looking around in disbelief.


    A big sign hung above the iron gates: Welcome to Mardis Gras. The gates were closed. Miranda scanned around the crowds, looking for signs of Skylar. She was not visible.


    Slowly, Miranda moved about the crowd. Some of them were intangible. Like ghosts, while others were solid. The pattern was the people dressed normally were solid. The party going dance crowd was not. But she was still leery, as a scribe may be hidden anywhere.


    The closed gates proved to be an illusion as well. She walked through them with ease and headed for the bench. Skylar was watching the crowd intently. Her eyes followed the brightest dancers as they moved around the park.


    A gun shot rang out, and everybody ran towards the gate, both hallucination dancers and real people, unable to distinguish the difference.


    One real scribe was running with a knife drawn. Miranda grabbed the knife and pushed her to the ground, saving a man in a three piece suit.


    "We have to go." Miranda held out her hand to Skylar.


    "They just appeared out of thin air," Skylar swung her spear at a phantom dancer. "One second the sun was up and things were peaceful, the next it was midnight and people were dancing and showing off their-"


    "Yes, that''s great." Miranda shook her head. "But we''ve got to go before anymore trouble hits."


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon."Trouble like that?" Skylar pointed to the closest statute, where man in a black hood materialized under the golden horse.


    "Yes." Miranda pulled Skylar up from the bench, but not out of the mesmerized state she was in. "That''s the kind of trouble we need to get away from."


    The figure rubbed his hands together in an over the top display. Mists of dark purple formed between them as they separated and out came three ghostly looking creatures. Spots like a leopard, thin legs, big teeth, and bright red eyes. Their fur was black with gay undertones.


    Miranda tugged on Skylar''s arm and the three creatures charged at once. This brought Skylar back to the situation and they ran back towards the church. Skylar hesitated close to the gates, but Miranda pulled her through.


    The creatures hit the bars and fell back. Miranda sighed with relief, but kept running. Skylar was right behind her, but had a hard time keeping up, due to the need to drag her heavy bone spear arm.


    The creatures howled, and turned back into dark clouds. Miranda turned the corner and this part of the street was relatively quiet. She dodged around a couple making out, and almost ran into a sign: Quiet. Prayer center.


    One of the jackal like creatures rounded the corner and ran down the alley way. Miranda shot it with the ancestral branch, but the orb of memory energy went right through it.


    They reached the back of the church, and Miranda pulled them through the back entrance. Inside, it was the peaceful spaceship she had left. Skylar was panting heavily, her arm sagging with the weight.


    They ran through the walls, which weren''t really there, and stumbled on church pews, which were there, but invisible. Someone was shouting to their left. Miranda shot a barrage of memory trances out of her branch, praying for a hit.


    After about five salvoes, the mirage of the ship was gone, and all that was left was the church. They were running down one of the aisles, towards the front of the church. Skylar tripped and Miranda turned back to get her.


    When she got Skylar back up again, the front doors opened and the conjuror in the hooded cloak came in through the entrance. He floated, more than walked, and even in the light of the church his face was completely blacked out in shadow.


    Miranda hit him with a heavy salvo from the branch. The memory orb passed right through him. He rubbed his hands together and conjured floating arrows. They were more smoke than wood or metal, but Miranda wasn''t about to volunteer to test how real they would feel in her chest.


    "Duck!" Miranda pushed Skylar into the pews and jumped in behind her as the shadow arrows hit the tops of the benches.


    Someone was shouting to the right, but Miranda was distracted by a sudden hissing noise. She looked in the direction of the conjuror, but under the benches. She wasn''t interested in an arrow to the eye.


    On the floor at the back of the pews, more than a dozen shadowy serpents came into being. They slithered towards them like lions to a kill.


    Skylar let out a scream, and the two of them scurried backwards as fast as they could. The snakes were unnaturally fast, slithering on a cloud, almost flying towards them. Arrows continued to pelt the tops of the benches, splintering the wood. They were running out of pews.


    In the gaps in the benches, Miranda shot memory trances blindly to her right, hoping to bring down the real conjurer and take out this mirage. It kept coming. The snakes kept coming.


    With about ten pews left, she grabbed a hymn book. On the move, she planted a simple memory of Skylar''s head. It was small, but it would have to be enough.


    "Skylar, take the branch, and when you hear me shout your name, stand up and shoot anyone you see!"


    "I don''t have any memories!" Skylar shouted back. "That thing works on memories."


    Five rows left, and the snakes were ten rows away. Miranda pulled out a small handkerchief and placed in on the branch. "Go now!"


    Miranda crawled to the left, and all of the snakes chased her. She got up on a pew, and they slid under her for going so fast. She held up the hymn book and played the memory of Skylar''s head. It was a projection memory, so to a casual observer, it would look like Skylar stood up slightly over the pew.


    Dozens of arrows shot at it. The snakes arched over the pew to bite at it, rather than slither back under.


    "Skylar! Now!" Miranda shouted.


    There was a pause. A long and horrible pause as the weight of the snakes brought them perilously close to devouring Miranda, as the pew was splintered to the point where it would soon cease to be an effective shield.


    Just as the jaws of the closest snake widened around Miranda''s face, it evaporated. The rest of the snakes followed suit. Arrows were no longer pummeling. She risked a quick glance, at the room. The cloaked conjurer was not in sight.


    She sat up fully. Skylar was shaking at the other end of the pew, her spear arm through the bench for support, and the branch hanging by a few fingers at her side. Miranda went to her.


    "That was great, Sky." Miranda put a hand on her shoulder.


    "Thanks." Skylar panted, sounded like she was on the verge of a break down. "Now can we find a place to sleep?"


    "Yes." Miranda took the branch from her hand and helped remove the spear from the pew. "I have to take some memories though."


    She walked around and collected memories from all the tranced scribes in the room. This wasn''t the time to pour through the memories just yet, but as they were collected, she went through some of them in fast motion, trying to catch glimpses of information.


    "The scribe who was creating that cloaked conjurer isn''t here." Miranda gestured to the fallen scribes. "He ran off when you started shooting the branch. We''ll probably see him again."


    She shot a few recording orbs into the pews and doors of the church. It was apparent this was the base of operations for the legion league in New Orleans. And when these scribes woke up, they would probably talk about what happened, and what they would do next. The orbs would record that in her absence.


    "All right Skylar." Miranda nodded to the exit. "Let''s get going. I saw a charming bed and breakfast while we were running around. Let''s see if they have any rooms."

 Chapter 16

    He didn''t know how, but he knew the silhouette in the sphere had escaped its prison. That is was no longer a shape in the ball, but a living, hungry creature. A hungry creature who had a taste of his essence. His soul.


    In the moments before the piece of his soul was devoured he could feel the creature''s hunger. It''s brutality.


    He soul jumped the cops and moved most of them to the back side of the train car. Amy and Clarinthia both raised eyebrows.


    "Sorry." Amy was panting. "I just never thought I''d get to meet you. To be the one to help you."


    "Trust me, meeting me is the worst thing that could have possibly happened to you." Dixon nodded at Scott, who was still unconscious. "We need to move, right now."


    "Why?"


    Dixon pulled on a seat cushion, hoping it would pull off. "No time to explain. Just help me find a way to construct something to carry Scott in. Does anybody have a knife?"


    Amy pulled one out of her pocket. It was large, but mostly built around utility rather than combat.


    "Good. Cut some of the fabric off the couch." He walked to the center of the train car where there was a series of metal poles.


    Amy began cutting, while Dixon forced a few police officers to smash a hole in the ceiling and floor with their guns. The holes were around the metal support poles and this allowed Dixon to pull them out to use as the stretcher.


    Clarity hobbled over and took the pole and laid it down. She exchanged a somber look with Dixon and then pulled the seat cushions from Amy. With precision, she fastened everything together to make a crude stretcher.


    "I guess I''ll have to carry you on my back." Dixon said to Clarity.


    "There''s no need. We''ve located a crutch. It will be slow going, but we''ll manage." She grimaced a little. ¡°We are low on energy though. So we won¡¯t be much use to you should the worst happen.


    ¡°Hopefully the worst has already happened.¡± Dixon turned back to Amy. "Are there any other injured? We need to get moving fast."


    "Not really."


    "Ok, gather them, and help me carry Scott."


    The group had their things packed quickly, and Dixon picked up his end of the stretcher while facing away from it, Scott''s head right behind him.


    "We''re heading away from the last platform?" Amy asked, picking up the rear of the stretcher by Scott''s feet.


    "Danger is coming from that platform." Dixon started walking.


    They moved through a few train cars. Starting first with the one he was tear gassed in. There were still remnants of the gas, and his eyes twitched in discomfort. But he wasn''t able to scratch them for fear of dropping his friend.


    Once that was clear, it took them a few train cars before they found other passengers. The new passengers readily joined the group with a working flashlight. Dixon was just glad to get as many people out of the path of the incoming monster as he could.


    Dixon kept his squad of dead policemen in the shadows, around the trains, and out of sight. He didn''t want to scare off any one else. If that creature from the sphere came down here looking for him, there was no telling if he would feast on the souls of those he crossed.


    They reached the end of the train and stepped into the tunnels. It was bigger than he thought it would have been. The locals were leery of walking on the tracks in the dark, and with good reason. If the power did come back on, there would be nowhere for them to move should a train come barreling down the tube at them.


    Dixon assured them the power wouldn''t be coming back on for a while. They had no choice but to step into the dark.


    There wasn''t really a lot of room for stepping. Amy was trying to keep her flashlight pointed at everyone¡¯s feet to help them avoid tripping, but there were too many people. Clarity hobbled along with her crutch, occasionally moaning in pain, but otherwise keeping up.


    Dixon''s hands and arms ached after a while. The pace was slow, and the tunnel stretched on. He shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to keep them loose, but Scott was a heavy guy.


    They found another train and rested there for a while. After fifteen minutes, Dixon grew anxious about his pursuer. He could almost feel it getting closer.


    "Time to go." Dixon ordered.


    They were almost all back out on the tracks, when nearly a quarter mile ahead, one of his dead cops spotted a glowing red ghost. Then two, then five. A few green ghosts were there as well. All in all, about twelve ghost from the legion league were standing in a tunnel junction. Behind them, three tunnels split off from the tunnel they were now in. The league was standing right in the middle, obviously prepared for a fight.


    They were trapped. Behind them, some unknowable monster of a shadow stalked them. It was possibly very close. In front of them a more knowable but still formidable group of soul jumpers and scribes blocked the path of escape.


    Dixon sent all of the dead cops running ahead to confront the legion league. They had a few flood lights set up, pointing brightly in all directions.


    "How are those lights working?" Dixon asked through the first cop to arrive. All of the cops were now in battle stance with guns pointed right at the Phantom Queen.


    "A little consolation prize from one of Pavarti''s nearby labs." Brooke rubbed the top of of a light with her finger. "Nothing in there was effected."


    "Move out of the way." Dixon ordered.


    "No."


    Dixon looked around at the crowd of passengers next to him. "Everybody, there''s going to be gunfire up ahead. Don''t panic. They''re the good guys taking out the bad ones."


    All of the cops under his command opened fire. The bullets bounced off an invisible wall, inches in front of Brooke. He tried shooting the others. They were likewise protected.


    Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences."Pretty neat, huh?" Brooke shouted when the gunfire stopped. "I saw Azurand do something similar back on Cova, I just had to find out how.¡±


    Twelve more of her souls shot out of her body and at his cops. Dixon thought nothing of it, he already knew she couldn''t soul jump the dead.


    Just before the souls reached the cops, something changed about the texture of them. They grew less cloudy and murky and more solid. The first one ripped through the closest cop and tore him in half. In a few quick seconds, all of his cops were on the ground and in pieces.


    Dixon''s ghosts had nothing left to cling to, and they returned to him around the corner.


    "Turn around. Run." Dixon shifted his weight and looked back at Clarity. She was leaning against the wall, eyes closed, and the color was draining from her face.


    The crowd didn''t move, as if frozen in fear.


    "I thought you said we were being chased by a monster," Amy protested.


    "I did, didn''t I?" He set his end of Scott''s stretcher down. "Wait here, I''ll see what I can do. If I don''t come back, pick which fate you fear worst and run from it."


    He started to run, the legion league was already rounding the bend. He could see the invisible shield now, a light red glare in the shape of the tunnel.


    "You''re very resourceful." Brooke shouted. "Killing those cops to get them out of my control was a particular touch of genius. But, heartless. Do the rest of these passengers know how those fallen officers died?"


    "It didn''t come up."


    ¡°You would''ve been a good team mate of mine."


    "I''ve got enough crazy in my life." Dixon shouted back.


    "True." Brooke smiled and almost two dozen souls appeared by her side. "You''re trying to save a bunch of people in a tunnel by killing their sworn protectors. And then you try to convince them you can save them. Well, I think it''s time they discovered just how powerless you were."


    Dixon turned and ran. He picked up Scott and slung him over his shoulders. Her ghosts tore into the other passengers.


    "Get back in the train!" Dixon yelled at Amy. She was beside him, carrying Clarity.


    Someone next to them fell as he was impaled by a hardened spirit.


    "Leave him!" Dixon reached the entrance door and opened hit.


    He threw Scott into the train and climbed in. He pulled Amy in and she moved the other two back. Three more people were helped in, before another was impaled.


    He soul jumped a few of the passengers to get them running a bit faster. From here, he could also see clearer to move them out of the way of flying soul spears.


    After a minute, those who remained alive were on the train. He shut the door and moved in deeper with the rest of the crew.


    "How was she doing that?" Amy said.


    A soul spear clanged against the glass outside. "She''s throwing a part of her soul at us."


    "Is that why we can''t see it?"


    Dixon forgot about that part. From their point of view, those people were torn to pieces by something invisible.


    "Yes."


    A woman next to Amy was soul jumped by Brooke. And a man at the end of the crowd. Then two more. Soon all of the passengers except for Amy, Scott, Clarity and Dixon were possessed.


    "Are you going to kill all of these passengers Dixon?" Brooke said through Amy.


    At once the people got up and converged on him. He stepped back and grappled the arm of a man to his left. A the rest of the group reached him, he threw the man into crowd, knocking them down.


    This cleared a path for him to run to the other end of the train car. On the other side of the door, the monster was walking towards him.


    "Come on Dixon, you know you want to kill us," Amy called out behind him. "Or maybe I should do it for you."


    Dixon turned back around. At that moment, Brooke''s soul hardened and shot out of Amy¡¯s body. She fell, and the spirit soared like a spear towards Dixon.


    He tried to block it with his soul. But his never liked being out in the air. And there was nothing solid about it. It did nothing to slow down the soul spear.


    There was only one thing left for it. At the last second, he opened the door to the train car and jumped out of the way.


    The soul spear shot through the open doorway, and the silhouette monster caught it. Somewhere outside of the train, Brooke screamed in pain. An unknowable sound escaped the silhouette and it let go of Brooke''s soul.


    A few things happened at once. First, the silhouette started evaporating and writhing in pain. Second, all of the possessed passengers fell as their soul jumps were released. Brooke was down. The others were vulnerable.


    Since the soul eating monster was gone, Dixon sprang to his feet and ran back out of the train and into the dark tunnels. Brooke and her cronies were running away, and all he could see was their ghosts in the distance.


    He ran in the darkness for a minute, picked up a few weapons from the fallen police officers, passed the spotlights, and gained on one of the closest scribes from the legion league.


    He shot the guy in the leg.


    "Ahh!" The scribe fell to one leg and Dixon kicked him in the face.


    Dixon then shot out at the colored Ghosts in the distance, some of them fell down, others were behind the corner.


    He ran at a slower pace, following but not gaining on the legion league. After a few minutes, he reached a dead end. A locked door on the side of the tunnel. He tried breaking the lock with a shot from the gun, but it did nothing.


    Red and green ghosts shrank in the distance behind the door. He cursed and kicked the door, earning himself a stubbed toe.