Chapter SIXTEEN
Landon
It was one of the last places I wanted to be. It was one of those things that a person would never want to have to relive, or remember, and one of the worst experiences of my short mortal life. Not a total loss type of experience, but an embarrassing one.
"Awww, you look so cute," Charis said.
We were standing in the gymnasium of Philip Randolph High School. We were surrounded by teenagers decked out in their youthful finest. Other than the athletes, the boys looked awkward in their rented suits that didn't fit quite right, and the girls looked overdone in bright, frilly gowns that were too tight, or too short, or too revealing. Some random pop song was playing over the strategically placed speakers, and directly in front of us, swaying like a robot with his hands on the hips of Carly Lane, was one of P.R. High's biggest geeks.
Me.
"Daddy, you suck at dancing." Clara had been giggling at me since we had arrived in the memory, stepping out of the door of the eighteenth century mansion and into the door of the gym.
"What did I do to deserve this?" I watched my younger self shift from side to side, the anxiety obvious from a mile away, and flexed my leg.
The wound had healed when we had time-warped, thanks to what Clara called the 'carryover effect'. We were using our connected power to change the Box, to recreate its world in the image of these memories, and make it as real as could be expected here. The creation countered Ross' destruction, and so it had carried over to the damage done to my knee. It was still a little stiff, but it was good to know I could still recover from a hit if needed, even if Clara said it wasn't safe to do a full regeneration.
"I think you're adorable." Charis had watched little me with a smile on her face from the minute we'd arrived. "Just think, in two years you'd be under arrest."
"I wasn't always this nervous. Just with girls." I turned to her. "You're like a whole different world."
"A bad one?"
"I wouldn't say that. Now."
We'd been here for at least an hour; a long time considering how fast Ross had discovered us the first time. I wasn't convinced his delay wasn't intentional. Maybe he was hoping to catch us off-guard? We had passed the time standing there, trying to look like a pair of chaperones, though Clara had drawn a lot of confused glances.
I scanned the room, taking in all of the familiar faces. The captain of the football team, the cheerleaders, the glee club and the nerds. Everything had seemed so contained when I had been in school. Life had seemed so simple... and now? So much was happening behind the scenes. So much that most people would never have a clue about, and I was sure it was better that way.
Harold Nash wasn't looking where he was going, and his shoulder bumped my arm as he stumbled by, trying not to let anyone see the tears in his eyes because his girlfriend had chosen a very poor and public moment to dump him. He muttered an 'excuse me' below his breath without slowing, and I looked back to where Tanisha Peck was watching him go with a sad satisfaction. It was hard to believe that the re-creation of my memories could be so lifelike. In fact, now that we had a few minutes away from Ross, it was amazing to me that we had made all of this inside a cube that would fit in the palm of my hand.
"Bigger on the inside," I said.
Charis' eyes told me she had caught the reference.
"Shouldn't we stand closer to the door?" I asked Clara. She had moved us away from it when we arrived.
"The door doesn't mean anything, dad," she said.
"What do you mean?"
She rolled her eyes. Again. "When we run, we don't need to go through a door. Anything will do."
I pointed to the other side of the gym. "Like a basketball hoop?"
"If you want to think of it that way."
I didn't think I would fit through the hoop. "So we just stand here and wait?"
"I wouldn't recommend it."
I had been expecting Clara's voice. The speaker wasn't her. I looked past her to where one of the kids was standing. Tim. I had known him from the computer class we had been in together. He was tall, thin, brown hair and blue eyes, and smart, very smart. His idols were Aristotle, Copernicus, Tesla, and da Vinci. He had taught me everything I knew about hacking, and I guess in a way was indirectly responsible for me being here. Which is why it also made some kind of twisted sense that he was talking to me, as if he knew what he was talking about.
"What do you mean?"
He looked at Clara, and then Charis before putting his eyes back on me. "It's all about positioning," he said. "Think of it like the sun. All the planets revolve around the sun, and they have orbits that bring them in alignment once in a while, in a period of time that can be calculated based on velocity, gravitational forces, et. cetera. You're like Earth, and he's like Jupiter. If you never move, he'll know exactly when you'll be aligned, and you won't have time to get out of the way."
"Clara?" Charis asked, looking for confirmation.
"You're cute," she said. "It isn't that simple."
Tim looked offended. "Why not?"
"You haven't accounted for interference. Variable gravitational force."
"It's minimal. You're over-emphasizing the effect."
"I am not."
Tim smiled. "You are."
"I am not."
"Yes, you are. Don't believe me? Just keep standing there. He already knows exactly where you are, he's just waiting for the right moment."
I had no idea what they were arguing about, but those were all the words I needed to hear. "There's no harm in moving," I said, reaching out and taking Clara by the hand. For a minute, I thought she would resist, but she followed along, with Charis bringing up the rear.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Does it matter?" I replied, pulling them towards the doors on the opposite side of the gym. We'd have to cut through the middle of the dance floor, and maybe I'd even have to come face to face with myself, but it was better than the thousand ton anvil that was Ross falling on our heads.
"See, I was right," Tim said, watching us run. "You gained a few seconds."
I still had no idea how he knew what was going on, but I would work that one out later. We reached the crowd of teenagers at the center of the room, and I very unceremoniously shoved geek-me aside. "Excuse me."
The activity drew the attention of the real chaperones, who starting shouting to one another. A moment later the music vanished, and a couple of unarmed security guards moved into our path. I didn't remember any guards at my prom.
"Not that way," Clara said when she saw them. Both guards began to grow, gaining height, fur, and claws, until a pair of Great Weres were blocking the doors instead.
"Where then?" I turned around, searching for another way out. The kids were all backing away, leaving us standing alone in the middle of the room. I heard a scream, and one of the teachers arced up over the kids, coming to land in front of us, her head nearly severed from her neck.
"You remember Mrs. Trainor, don't you?" Ross asked. I couldn't see him yet, but the sight sent the others into a scattered panic. They rushed in every direction, trying to escape him, or the Weres, or both.
I looked down at the body of my science teacher. She had always been one of my favorites. "Clara?" We needed a way out. Any way out.
"Climb," she said.
"Climb wh-" A rope was hanging from the rafters. A rope that hadn't been there a second ago. "Charis, take Clara. I'll slow him down."
"How are you going to do that?" she asked.
"Just climb."
She didn't question, because she knew it would only be a waste of time. She picked Clara up and positioned her to cling from her back. Then she started to climb.
I heard snarls and I turned to face the Weres. They were both coming at me, their huge forms covering the distance in a half-dozen strides. I realized as I watched them gather that I wasn't the target at all.
I focused and pushed, sending a shockwave through the ground and shattering the wood floor with the force of my launch. I got there before they could lift off, using my momentum to grab the arm of one and swing him into the other, and letting it pull us all back to the end of the room. I felt my heart catch in fear as the wall of the gym came rocketing towards us. There was no healing here, and I was about to splatter myself.
Only, I didn't. Somehow, I found enough of something to get myself turned so that one of the Weres was between the wall and me. He hit it first, with enough force to break every bone in his body, and to smash through the cinderblocks to expose the outside. I felt my body compress against his, his ribs breaking, and my own stretching to their limit. Then I tumbled to the floor, the wind knocked out of me.
"Your artistry was decent, but your technical was crap, kid," Ross said.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to regain myself. He was standing a few feet away, and I could see Clara and Charis dangling from the top of the rope behind him. He noticed me looking back, so he turned too.
"Don't worry about them. They can't go anywhere without you, and you can't go anywhere without going through me. Which, I don't think I need to tell you, doesn't look promising."
I shoved myself to my feet, prepared to take my chances.
"You had me there for a minute, kid. It's a weird feeling, not being able to find someone in a finite space. Then, I remembered something."
"What's that?" I shouldn't have given him the satisfaction, but I needed every second I could get to regain my strength.
He smiled.
"I'm the god here."
He turned and waved his hand. The rope snapped, sending Charis and Clara into a hundred foot free-fall. In the same motion, he turned back to me and I felt my breath get choked off.
It's a strange thing, when you think you have a chance, and then discover that you don't. Thousands of thoughts race through your head at once, but in front of them all is the pain of failure, and the terror of knowing the consequences. We had been on the run for an hour out of an eternity. It might as well have been a millisecond for all the good we had done. Clara was going to die and this time she wouldn't be back. Ross would cage us, and keep us, to flog and flay until the end of time, or until he sprung himself from the Box, and our torture continued back in the 'real'. I would have hung my head had there been time. I would have at least felt that first drop of remorse.
It was all interrupted by the twist, the change in expectations that brought everything full-circle. My eyes were blurring, my throat was on fire, and Ross was standing over me, the satisfied, arrogant grin painted across his face. I could see myself in the reflection of his shades, on my knees, my face white. I could feel the life draining from me, the death that when added to Charis' would reset this squared universe back into his design.
Then his face changed. The grin morphed into a scream, and a burst of light exploded from the corner of his neck, growing in intensity as the line moved from right to left until it severed his head from his body.
I had seen them fall, but I hadn't seen Charis catch them. I hadn't seen her use her own control of Ross' power to rip a claw from the other Great Were's hand, or come up behind him to use the improvised weapon.
"Some god," she said, while the corpse tumbled to the floor. My ability to breathe returned, and everything around us began to crumble.
"Take my hand," Clara said, holding it out to me.
I fell forward in order to latch on, and the world around us reorganized.