Tim

  Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

  --Sun Tzu

  I emerge at last from the parking deck, and stare at the wreckage around me. To be fair, it’s so scattered some of it isn’t even obvious.

  Or maybe the weird lightshow over the fountain is just drawing my eyes like a magnet.

  Are those Dragons? I wonder. I shake myself and turn in the direction of Waycross Trauma Center.

  Whatever happens to Ghost next, I want to be at her side, or at least close by. When she…

  My mind pulls back from the obvious.

  She took a sword through the heart. There’s no coming back from that.

  Then I recognize one of the only two people in the square other than me.

  Anton. The hulking redhead is a mountain of muscle and impossible to miss once I realize there are other people here. And I think the big, serious-looking black guy next to him is Dante.

  Well, Waycross is on the far side of the square, so my path goes right past them. And I’d rather get closer to them than the eerily floating ring of blue-green energy and the tiny, um…

  Those are definitely Dragons, I decide. Okay.

  I try to push the sight out of my thoughts, but it’s impossible when every step is bringing me closer to them and to Anton and Dante, who I swear are both holding plasma rifles in each hand until both guys start setting one down while they adjust the other weapon, and then set that one down while they modify the first gun.

  “This had better work,” Anton remarks as he picks his rifles back up and sights along them. He’s aiming straight at the ring. For the closest point to him on the edge, judging from where the pair of laser sights on the weapons are converging.

  “Or…” Dante asks as points his plasma cannons at the same point. Now four laser sights meet at the same point.

  “Or ‘I have no backup plan,’” Anton answers. “‘So I hope you do.’”

  I approach and say nothing. The scent of smoke and ash and ozone fills the air, along with the aroma of several immense, flash-barbequed boars near the parking deck.

  I can see stretches of flagstones tilted until they’re half out of the ground, as though the Earth itself had rippled beneath them, driven by some unseen force. I smell the freshly overturned soil as I walk around one such patch.

  Shattered concrete and pavement also greet me. The windows are surprisingly intact, but I’ve always suspected a few of these buildings have bulletproof glass.

  And except for Anton and Dante, there’s no one else around. No one but me and dozens of unconscious Circle shock troops draped over every flat surface around us, and more than a few doorways, park benches and even tree limbs.

  Circle troops who had been about to fire on an unarmed crowd.

  And who, if Ghost is to be believed, may be the Circle’s greatest victims.

  Brainwashed to the point they would kill and be killed without hesitation. Or motivation, beyond their latest orders.

  I keep walking. Victims or not, I can’t look at them and not think of Ghost, bleeding out from her heart as she tried to save one last deadly… ‘victim.’

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  I’m close to Anton and Dante now. I walk past, silently.

  What, really, is there to say? I’d be running, but my adrenaline crashed when Ghost fell, and I’m just now feeling it. I have to keep walking, or I might go down and not get back up.

  It’s been that kind of a day.

  “On three,” Dante says, bracing himself and still aiming at the ring, the glowing points of their laser sights still overlapping.

  “Got it,” Anton replies, also settling into a firing stance, as if expecting a huge double kick from the plasma cannons when he fires.

  “One…” Dante says, his forefingers tightening ever so slightly on their triggers.

  And I see a glimmer of white in the darkness of the ring. Instinctively I turn towards it.

  “Two…”

  And that whiteness resolves into a hallucination. Or an outright break in my sanity.

  And within that break, Ghost smiles at me, raising a finger to her lips. Bidding me to be silent.

  But I can’t.

  Then she turns and rushes into the stars and the deeper blackness.

  “Thr—”

  “Ghost!” I thunder, slamming into Dante, or trying to. “Stop!”

  I’m fast and I’m invisible, but my shout breaks my invisibility.

  Dante fires even as he turns a piercing glance at me. He elbows me straight in the sternum, dropping me down. He’s still firing his converging beams.

  Anton fires also but looks over at me.

  “Tim, why stop? We have to do this.”

  “Ghost’s in there,” I gasp out. Dante’s casual elbow to my chest hit like a sledgehammer, and I’m still struggling to draw breath. I pull myself to my feet.

  “What?” Anton and Dante say together.

  “Her spirit,” I tell them. “I saw her go in there.”

  “Is he serious?” Dante asks. He doesn’t sound disbelieving. More like trying to make a snap judgement on almost no data.

  Anton stops firing. “He believes it.” His gaze is intent, and suddenly I wonder if I’ve ever been invisible to this guy. My heart isn’t. His eyes are going right through me.

  “Is that possible?” Dante asks, his rifles still blazing away with a muffled roar of ionized gas.

  “That’s what they’re built for. Doesn’t mean that’s what he saw, but…”

  “Then where’s she going?”

  “When.” Anton lowers his rifles. “If that physical wormhole leads back to the Temporal Lock, then she’s headed for the world’s one-and-only time machine.”

  “And she can use it?” Dante stops firing, perhaps because the muzzles of his rifles are already glowing white-gold from the heat.

  “One of the few who can,” Anton assures him.

  “I don’t understand,” I cough out.

  “Sorry if I hit you too hard,” Dante tells me, sounding regretful. “You came out of nowhere.”

  I shake my head. “My fault. Invisibility. I’m sure I surprised you.”

  “You okay?” Dante looks concerned.

  I nod. “I’m Enhanced, just not as Enhanced.” I wave at him and Anton. Both of them Archons, unless I miss my guess.

  “So Ghost went through there in spirit,” Dante says, as if trying the words out in his mouth, to see if they tasted believable.

  “Her body’s in Waycross Trauma Center,” I tell them, only the taste of bitter ashes in mine. “That might have been…”

  “Ghost’s actual ghost,” Anton finishes, his shoulders slumping. His face looks stricken. “She was such a good kid.”

  “She was trying to save someone,” I say, waving back at the parking deck. Already it feels like I spent a week of my life in there. “But I think he killed her, or almost.” I remember the name she used. “Escalante.”

  They both react to the name. Dante’s eyes go hard and his hands tense on his weapons. Anton’s face also changes, but I just see even more regret surge through him to well up in his watery eyes.

  “Where is she now?” Dante asks, looking past me to the deck. “In there?”

  “No, some medivac drone and a really fast girl came to get her.” I thought of those blurring moments. Things moved so fast, yet each instant stands out crystal clear in my mind.

  Anton’s head jerks towards me. “This girl, was she blonde? Or black?”

  “Blonde,” I say. “I think her name might be… Lyra?”

  Anton sags in relief. “Okay,” he sighs, turning to look from Dante to me and back again. “If that was your cousin, then if Ghost can be saved, she will be.”

  Dante gives the slightest nod, as if agreeing to something so obvious it barely needs acknowledgement.

  “What do we do about this, then?” he asks, pointing a plasma rifle at the spinning ring and the tiny Dragons in their endless, spiraling dance.

  “Ask an expert?” Anton offers. “Or at least someone with better contacts who might know more? We should be able to crash this physical wormhole without affecting the temporal gate Ghost took. Or might have taken. Unless…”

  “Unless?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  “Unless the far end of this is right next to the temporal wormhole, and they both get taken out in the explosion or something.”

  “So we’re rolling the dice, either way,” Dante sums up, looking grim.

  Anton focuses on me. “Did Ghost say anything? Communicate anything?”

  I shake my head. “She just gestured to stay silent. And then went through.”

  “So she probably didn’t want you to interfere, then. Maybe.” Anton taps his earpiece. “They keep going in and out on the comms, but our tech team wants us to blow the gate, no question.”

  I draw in a breath to shout a protest, and he nods at me.

  “Still a gamble, I know. And more to the point,” he turns to Dante, “I don’t know that we can. Maybe Stormforge and Hammersmith have the tech and the raw power. But unless either of you has any bright ideas, we’re stuck until they get here.”

  “‘Stuck’?” Dante raises an eyebrow and looks from me to Anton. “What if we tried going through?”

  Patreon page for subscribers there. The first chapters released on here are already up there, even for free subscribers.