“How are we still alive?” Rhys said once he was able to think clearly. “Didn’t Lenal knock everyone out? We were helpless…”

  Milla, investigating what remained of two uniforms, murmured to herself, “Did I do this…? God…” She stood up and told the others, “I think Caeden took over when we lost consciousness.”

  “So… that’s real? It can really happen?”

  Milla looked at Rhys, unsure of what to say.

  “The spotlight doesn’t have much juice left,” Simon reported. “We should switch to our shoulder lights the rest of the way.”

  “Hey,” Xavier came in. “There’s a less obvious entryway into the treatment center. A dried-up old drainage outlet, that mostly runs beneath other buildings. It shouldn’t be in plain sight, so I doubt Lenal took it.”

  “Nish probably has traps, or at least surveillance systems around his lab,” Rhys said. “Hopefully fewer in a place like that. Should be safer.”

  “Okay,” Garder said once everyone was ready to go, their shoulder lights guiding them. “Tell us where to go.”

  With Xavier reading a map from his safe place up in the capitol building, the twins’ team made a detour towards an industrial block in the east, where several storage buildings were lined up but separated by large rusted grating. Shining their lights through one of the openings revealed the dry concrete ditch running beneath the area. Verim pried open one of the grates with his sword, and the others lifted it and moved it aside before jumping down into the hole. After a quick check for anything dangerous, they proceeded cautiously towards the treatment center.

  “Something’s running ahead,” Rhys said. “I can feel it in the air.”

  “If we sneak up on Nish, then we watch him and wait for an opening,” Milla ordered. “We don’t know what he’s capable of.”

  They stopped at the large drainage pipe at the end of the trench. Rhys place his hand on the metal of the pipe and concentrated.

  “I’m sensitive to vibrations,” he explained to the others.

  “As in… you could sense any monitoring devices?” Garder asked.

  “And air currents—good at reading those, too. Give me a minute.”

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t knocking them out be just as bad as being detected?” Verim wondered. “I say we just run through as fast as possible.”

  “Guys, I could sneak us through the pipe,” Simon offered. “It’ll take a toll on me, but I can bend light around us. You know… cloak us.”

  “You learned how to do that?” Garder questioned.

  “Yeah, a while ago. I’ll just probably be running dry by the time we get to Nish. Guess we should weigh if getting a jump on him is worth it.”

  “Probably is,” Rhys said. “There are definitely at least a few sensors in there. We’ll trip something if just plow ahead.”

  Simon looked at everyone and gauged their reactions.

  “Okay,” he huffed. “Everyone stay close and be quiet.”

  “Does this work on infrared?” Wendell asked.

  “All forms of light, yes. I bend the entire spectrum. But it does nothing for sound, so stay quiet.”

  As evidence of the spell’s complexity, Simon had to extend one finger on both his hands just to get the field going. After several seconds of concentration, his body began to waver and fade away.

  “Need an unbroken chain,” he explained, his voice undiminished. “So, we go in single file, hands on shoulders. It only works if we all touch.”

  “Garder may have some issues with that,” Verim jested lightly.

  “I’ll make an exception,” Garder grunted and placed his hands on Simon’s shoulders, which made him disappear.

  As he faded, Milla, believing her war-shaken sibling would likely be the most accepting of her touch, lightly did the same with his shoulders. It was hard to tell if he was uncomfortable; he was, surprisingly, completely still, almost cold and lifeless. Verim was next, though he was shorter and had to keep his arms up to reach Milla. Wendell, by comparison, could have been holding the shoulders of a young lad.

  “Guess I should be in front,” Rhys said. “I’ll feel what’s ahead before any of you do. Hope you can keep that field up, Simon.”

  “I’ll try,” he replied and gripped Rhys’ shoulders as tightly as he could, while keeping his fingers out in their spell-casting position. “Okay, lights off, everyone. I’ll keep mine going, but I’ll dilute it as much as I can. It’s going to be very dark, but hopefully… it’s a straight shot.”

  It took great effort to bend the light around himself and five others, and he could feel his alchemagi drain, but Simon kept up the spell throughout their journey down the old drainage pipe, which lasted for at least five hundred feet. His lamp light had been dimmed and spread around them, making it less powerful than a candle in a big room. But it was still enough to keep Rhys from running into the ladder at the end.

  Simon released his cloaking spell, and was so exhausted that he had to take a moment to lean against the pipe siding. He kept his light wide and dim, and Milla could just make out the hatch above them. She climbed onto a rung and reached up to test it. Pressing against it revealed that it was split in two, but only gave a little bit as it must have been locked in the middle.

  “Doesn’t look covered in alchemagi sealant,” she whispered. “Okay, I’m going to get us through as quietly as I can…”

  Holding onto the ladder with one hand, she used the other to create a basic vector square, which she slowly propelled into the metal. It sliced straight through, bringing down two pieces of the doors that Verim caught. The small segments were held together by the lock itself, running through the handles. Simon studied the metal in Verim’s hands.

  “It’s heavier than I thought it’d be,” Verim huffed and lowered the pieces to the bottom of the pipe, keeping them from making any sound.

  “Looks like titanium,” Simon replied. “Synthesized, but still strong. Vector cuts through metal like its butter, but watairres would have trouble doing any damage to it. Milla, what’s up there?”

  Slowly and cautiously, she pushed open what remained of the doors before climbing through. There was no light in the room above, so she formed a single vector line and used its glow to look around briefly before peeking back into the pipe and signaling the others to come up.

  Once they were above and with Simon’s light barely filling the room, they saw that they were in a pantry, with metal shelves holding containers of food—with one rack in front of them blocking their way out.

  “This may be an escape route of sorts,” Wendell suggested. “So…”

  He examined the shelf, rattled it, and soon discovered that it could slide a few feet into the wall. Able to leave the small hidden space, they squeezed their way into the rest of the pantry, which was sizeable. The variety of food was limited, but the quantity large; suitable for feeding many mouths but probably without any love put into the meals.

  Milla used another small vector shape on the pantry’s locked door latch, and then opened the door into the lit space beyond. She peeked in before pulling back and looking at the others.

  “It’s a hallway,” she explained. “But there are security cameras. Wait, hold on… I think…” she poked her head out again, having heard something echoing in the corridor. “I can’t make it out, but there’s talking. Lenal’s voice, maybe? The other one is… too deep, it’s almost a rumbling.”

  “Maybe Lenal’s confronting Nish?” Rhys wondered. “Milla, he always worked alone. Even if he has security cameras, if he’s talking to Lenal right now, I doubt he’s looking at them. We may have a chance.”

  Milla looked at Simon and asked, “How much longer do you think you could keep a field up again?”

  “For everyone?” he huffed. “Maybe just another minute or two.”

  She took a breath and replied, “Okay. We stay quiet, and we just go, assuming Nish is distracted right now. Ready?”

  The others nodded, and ready to react quickly with a defensive vector spell, Milla swung open the door and began leading the way down a dark and musty industrial hallway, the paint over its concrete blocks nearly entirely peeled away. Most of the metal doors were ajar, offering brief glimpses of unused rooms, but then Rhys stopped at one that was closed and had a barred-over window. He got onto his toes to peek inside, audibly exhaled a burst of air, and tried the handle—to find it wasn’t locked.

  “Rhys?” Garder was the first to notice he was being left behind. “Keep up, kid. We have to get to Nish.”

  “But this is…” was all he said before he opened the door.

  The others double-backed and joined him as he turned on his shoulder light and swept it through a dark and cold nursery of sorts, if it could even be called one. Lighting up dust as he moved his light, he revealed a series of small beds, twelve in all, their sheets messy. Each one of them had a pillow and a stuffed animal, and there was a shelf of books in the back, but the room was otherwise a prison with no windows other than the one in the door—keeping the room’s inhabitants from seeing the lights of the City in the distance, if nothing else.

  “Ah… hell,” Wendell grunted. “This is where they grow up?”

  “Our room was just like this…” Rhys said, a shakiness in his voice. “W-where are they…?”

  “We can’t be too late again,” Milla replied.

  “Rhys, how old would they look at this point?” Verim asked him, trying to keep his own anger from boiling over.

  “If… ah… If the acceleration was at the same rate, they would appear to be… maybe twelve years old? To any other Aurrian child.”

  “That’s too young to know for sure how powerful they are, right?”

  “I… I don’t know. Are you trying to say, Nish wouldn’t know if they were failures yet or not? I just… I don’t have an answer.”

  The confrontation going on in another room suddenly escalated, and Lenal could clearly be heard yelling. The words “property” and “paid for by the Guard” were distinguishable among many others.

  Knowing they couldn’t linger, they walked quickly the rest of the way, going past sliding doors that opened on their own and emerging into a large room that looked like a far cruder version of the burrow’s atrium. The place was covered with wires, machines, and Aurrian computers.

  After nearly exposing themselves upon walking into plain sight, they ducked behind several water barrels towards the back of the room, where they kept their eyes on the situation from the gaps between objects.

  The room was the laboratory’s only one to be properly lit, so everyone inside was easily visible—though the man who must have been Nish had his back facing them. From what they could see, it appeared that he was covered in a mechanical suit, which he either used for strength and protection, or required for life support. Past him was Lenal, sword out, with his archers and riflemen behind him, weapons fixed on Nish. Further in the back, guarding the entrance, was another rifleman.

  Tucked away towards the side and connected to a large array of more machines was the stolen Uluru portal, its diagnostic lights blinking and seemingly ready to run. But absent were the clones, if any were still alive. Lenal, however, wasn’t taking any chances despite his numbers. His men looked ready to take down Nish with a flurry of projectiles.

  “The Guard only tolerated your continued existence for this long because you promised us results,” Lenal said angrily. “And we are willing to forgive you for cutting us off, if you just surrender your product.”

  “Oh?” Nish’s muffled, deep voice replied from behind a breathing mask. “Is this ‘we’ you, or the entirety of the Guard? And what makes you believe that I’m after your forgiveness?”

  His patience running out, Lenal continued, “I understand if you felt like we were rushing you, or getting too involved. You were an important asset. You knew we’d be upset if you disappeared on us. But if you were able to perfect the program while in isolation, all crimes will be forgiven if you simply surrender the current line of clones. We only really care about the end result. But you must hand them over, now.”

  “They are not for you, Pretorian. I have my own plans that concern my children. You destroyed a viable ‘product’ when you killed Kamsa.”

  “She betrayed us.”

  “And that is a failure of Guard leadership.”

  Rhys breathed a sigh of relief. “They’re still alive…”

  “Last chance, Mr. Formel,” Lenal threatened. “Surrender. Now.”

  “You will regret not taking the opportunity to leave here,” Nish muttered and raised his arm, despite so many weapons fixed on him.

  The machine on his back whirred loudly, and through the openings in its ventilation a moving fan blade could be seen spinning. Lenal only hesitated for a moment longer before ordering his men to open fire.

  But a strange barrier had appeared in front of Nish. It was thin and wispy, and its surface moved like colorful waves with the greens, pinks, and purples of a soap bubble. The projectiles passed into it… and stopped.

  The two intruding parties watched the arrows and fired slugs for several seconds and noticed that they actually were still moving, only very slowly. Nish stepped out of the way, released his spell, and the projectiles hit the concrete wall just behind the Angels in the room, who tried not to react too strongly and give themselves away.

  “What kind of alchemagi is that?” Simon whispered.

  Though visibly startled by Nish’s ability, Lenal’s men prepared to fire again—but all of them suddenly found themselves trapped inside of two separate spheres. Unable to move any faster than snails, all they could attempt to do was reload their weapons in slow motion. Lenal looked at them with a shaken demeanor, back to Nish, and raised his sword into a striking stance. He looked ready to charge at the scientist.

  Before Lenal could move forward, Nish expanded his spheres and they enveloped his arms from either side. Trapped, the pretorian struggled and tried to free his arms even as the rest of him was outside of the space where time had been slowed to a crawl. No matter how much he tried, his arms wouldn’t move any faster and remained within the affected places.

  “The Guard’s arrogance has never changed, even when it seems like half the world has risen up against you,” Nish said, approaching Lenal.

  “Release me!” Lenal demanded, who seemed to be in increasing pain as he looked at his men. “Agh, damn it… what is this?”

  “Pure alchemagi, with all of its impurities filtered out. It takes a form that can be manipulated into controlling energy.”

  “Impossible…”

  “No. Only technology you don’t yet understand. Pretorian, tell me, who else is coming here? I don’t have time for these nuisances.”

  “Do anything to me, and the entirety of the Guard will storm in.”

  “You fail to frighten or intimidate. Soon enough, both the Guard and the Administration will be destroyed. My children will see to that.”

  “What are you after? If you want to destroy the Administration, we may still be able to work together. There are some in the Guard who also feel animosity for those cowards below who refuse to help us…”

  “I don’t need your help nor partnership.” Nish watched as Lenal grimaced in pain and tried to move his arms, even in just the slightest. “Ah. Your blood is clotting. The flow in your arms is far slower, and out of sync with the rest of you. Does that hurt? I apologize. I don’t value life in the slightest, including my own, but I do not like to incur suffering.”

  “You will never leave Z for this,” Lenal said angrily, his self-assuredness now completely gone. “You will be born there for lifetimes.”

  “Of course. Now we’re onto the typical, tired old threats. This is where we have to part, Pretorian.”

  Lenal had been buying himself enough time to straighten his index finger, and the moment he could cast a spell, he must have hit Nish with a mind shock—the scientist momentarily looked down and with his left hand, rubbed his forehead as his right maintained the two fields.

  “Interesting…” Nish took a deep breath through his mask. “You just tried to pacify me, didn’t you? But it will take more than that to subdue a mind such as mine. Goodbye.”

  Nish brought the two low-energy spheres together, and then moved them into the ground. The single bubble stopped just below the necks of Lenal and his men, who instantly struggled to breathe. Milla and Simon, both realizing what the slower time meant for them, gasped lightly.

  “What… are you?” Lenal managed to exhale.

  In Lenal’s last seconds, in his struggle to survive, his eyes settled onto the water barrels in the back of the laboratory, and he saw, for just a moment, that he and his men had failed to eliminate any of the Angels.

  With their lungs unable to supply everything above them with air anywhere near fast enough, Nish watched as they all passed out within ten seconds. The lone rifleman in the back fired at Nish, but he was too nervous and the range was too great; the scientist didn’t have to move aside or slow the bullet down, and it lightly grazed his shoulder armor.

  Nish then raised his left arm and projected another smaller sphere towards the back—but the rifleman managed to get away, barely. It looked like when Nish tried to control energy from further away, there was a small delay, just long enough to get out of the affected area.

  “I don’t have the time for this…” Nish grumbled.

  One by one, Lenal’s men vanished into smoke, leaving behind uniforms that remained suspended in the energy field. The pretorian himself, even while unconscious, managed to hold onto life for several more seconds before joining his subordinates in Hold.

  “Jesus…” Wendell murmured. “Wouldn’t wish that on anyone…”

  Nish released his energy field, and the impact of Lenal’s sword was the loudest among all the weapons crashing to the floor. Nish walked up to it, his mechanized suit limiting his movement. He picked up the blade and studied it, leaving him in an exposed position.

  “I can hit that thing on his back…” Rhys whispered as he put his knives together. “It revs up when he’s maintaining a field.”

  “So, we take it out, and he’s helpless, right?” Garder asked. “Does he have any other alchemagi he can use? Of the… normal variety?”

  Wendell shook his head. “He’s an earth adept, but I don’t ever remember him using any or showing much interest in alchemagi.”

  “Rhys, don’t miss,” Milla cautioned him.

  “Not a problem,” he assured her and stood up.

  Using his air powers, Rhys propelled the knives ahead with great speed and accuracy, and it looked like they would hit the machine on Nish’s back with full force. He was so certain his ‘father’ was about to be rendered helpless, that he took on a smirk for Nish to see once he turned around.

  Then the knife came to a near total stop in midair. A bubble about three times larger than Nish had appeared behind him—automatically. He looked back up, grumbled, tossed away Lenal’s sword, and then turned to investigate. Rhys had ducked back behind the barrels before he saw a face.

  “What happened?” Garder whispered.

  “Run. And don’t stick together,” Rhys replied.

  “What?” Garder asked, and then looked back out at Nish.

  His arms were raised—and Rhys had already left cover and was running from his group before Garder extended a finger to create a small blast of air in the middle of those still in hiding. He propelled himself backward and the others away from him, just before a sphere of low energy could form around them. After barely evading capture, the six scattered across the lab, with Simon and Milla taking cover behind Nish’s array of monitors as the others fled out into the open.

  “More intruders…” Nish muttered angrily.

  He turned to his guests and for the first time, they got a good look at his face—what little of it there was to see. The breathing mask covered his nose and mouth, and the rest of him was little more than wrinkled skin, sunken, cold eyes and the last remnants of light gray hair. Rhys was too busy running through the room at high speed to see it, plotting his attack patterns and waiting for the right moment to strike.

  Determined to trap everyone before asking questions, Nish fired another sphere towards Wendell, Verim, and Garder, who further separated to avoid being ensnared. Garder could feel the very edge of the bubble grab his foot for just a second, slowing his escape enough to make him an easy target for a follow-up. Nish only seemed to be able to maintain two spheres at once, with one of them still holding Rhys’ knife. He released his newest bubble and prepared to launch another to completely capture Garder.

  Then Rhys sped by his creator, nicking the machine on his back with a knife. Nish reacted by turning to track him down, and then suffered another light hit on his shoulder. Rhys was using his agility to run by and check his armor for weaknesses, thinking he’d be safe.

  As Rhys kept him distracted, Simon and Milla repositioned while remaining undetected, and Garder fired off an air slash, Nish’s back again facing him. But, once more, the armor’s systems seemingly reacted on their own, creating a sphere of slow time even around nothing but “sharp” air.

  Nish stepped out of the way and released the sphere. Once freed, the gust slammed into a metal table at the other end of the lab. Verim then came out of hiding and ran at Nish, sword ready for a lethal blow. But, even though it should have cut through his fingers, Nish raised his left arm and grabbed onto the edge of the blade—stopping it on impact. For a moment, the sword hung there, frozen in his palm, before the energy was redirected back into it, propelling it upward. Verim barely managed to hang onto it.

  Garder, upon realizing where Verim had positioned himself, called out to warn him, “Verim, the knife!”

  He looked at it hanging in the air as Nish muttered, “Verim…?”

  It looked like Nish had hesitated at the last moment, but Rhys’ knife was nevertheless freed and returned to its prior velocity, launching ahead. Verim was just barely able to lower his blade enough, and the knife clanked against it right above the hilt, with enough force to cause him to drop the sword. Nish then wrapped one of his mechanized hands around Verim’s neck, studied him for a second, and trapped him in a bubble.

  “Rhys!” Garder shouted, trying to reach him. “Stop!”

  He didn’t listen or couldn’t hear him, and rushed by Nish twice more, still only accomplishing glancing blows. On his third attempt, with Nish having learned his circular running pattern, he put up a second sphere that Rhys ended up running into, catching him in a sprinting pose.

  Assuming that he had reached his maximum of two spheres at once, Wendell, who had snuck around and was now behind Nish, fired a shot from his rifle. And for a third time, his rear system responded on its own, ensnaring the bullet a few feet away from its target.

  “Stop going for his back!” Garder yelled in aggravation. “We need a frontal assault, all four of us, stay apart!”

  Garder and Milla repositioned so they were in line with Wendell, at which point the three of them charged at Nish, Wendell’s rifle a powerful cudgel. Garder wondered why Simon hadn’t joined them, but felt confident in his charge nevertheless. But Nish wasn’t defenseless. Able to move his spheres even when they were occupied, he combined the ones holding Verim and Rhys, letting him generate another new bubble.

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  The twins and Wendell split up before it appeared, though it ended up catching Wendell’s rifle, keeping it locked in midair. Burly and a capable pugilist, he let go of it and got close enough to his former mentor to start throwing punches. Nish batted away every swing, the rapid-fire servos surrounding his arms whirring away. Once he found an opening, Wendell went for a haymaker straight at Nish’s chest, which appeared unprotected.

  In fact, it was protected. While unarmored, the padded fabric over Nish’s ribs was also wired up, and on impact the energy was redirected.

  Wendell’s strike was strong enough to shove him backward once its power betrayed its dispenser, and he ended up partially sinking into the same sphere holding his rifle. His back a couple inches into a space of slowed time, he struggled to free himself as Nish turned his attention to the twins. Milla had just begun to create a mandala.

  Nish released the sphere holding Wendell and his rifle so that he could create another new one around her vector lines, slowing their growth down to the point where they only expanded about an inch a second. Wendell caught his rifle before it hit the floor, took aim, and was about to fire with no concern about how Nish could just neutralize another bullet.

  Then the Uluru portal suddenly activated, with a bright blue flare hovering in the air between its metal support columns. The tear it had just formed burned brightly, distracting everyone in the room.

  “Earth…” Nish exclaimed.

  Seeing a chance to act, but looking for something more dramatic and possibly effective, Garder noticed that Nish and the portal were perfectly lined up. Keeping his sword at his side, Garder generated a burst of wind at his back that got him going, and with a running leap, slammed into Nish after creating a wall of air in front of himself. The scientist faced him, but as Garder wasn’t physically attacking him and he couldn’t redirect the energy in the air, he took the full force of a miniature hurricane, which sent him airborne and blasted him straight through the portal.

  With Nish’s influence in Aurra gone, the spheres vanished and freed their prisoners. Garder didn’t waste any time seeing if his friends were okay, knowing Nish could come back through at any moment. Believing his foe may be more manageable on the other side, he ran ahead.

  “Garder, wait!” Milla called out. “You don’t know where—”

  He was through before she could finish. It was bright, and his eyes burned. The landscape was washed out, and as he waited for his pupils to adjust he began to feel the heat from the sun pounding down. A vast blue sky, a desert of shrubs, oranges and reds, and a single road, stretching into two horizons… He was the second Aurrian to see Earth in seven years.

  Both of them somewhere in the middle of southern Australia’s arid expanse, Garder watched as Nish dug into the earth, pushed himself off the ground, and turned to him. He seemed to still be holding back his anger.

  Not thinking about whether or not Nish could use his powers on Earth, Garder ran at him again with sword ready. Nish raised his right arm, aimed at Garder, and all but stopped his target mid-step.

  He retained his momentum; he could still feel himself moving. Yet everything was slow compared to the outside, except for the light reaching him. His thoughts came just as quickly, but his body wouldn’t respond.

  It was like trying to move in amber moments before it solidified. And worse, Earth gave Nish’s energy spheres one peculiar aspect: they were invisible. It was impossible to tell where the low-energy area ended.

  But he was only alone with Nish for a moment, as Milla, Wendell, and Verim came in from behind. Milla launched a mandala—remembering to say the words out loud—and Wendell lined up a shot. Forced to react, Nish freed Garder and instead ensnared the two. Verim was able to get close, but instead of going for strikes that would be deflected, he held his sword out with both hands, its edge ready to slice into Nish wherever it could. Nish was forced to back up while Verim studied his armor, looking for any vulnerable points and stalling for time, hoping Garder would come up with a plan while Nish was on the defensive. As the two did this dance in slow motion, Nish also seemed to be studying Verim again.

  With Milla and Wendell held in place on either side of him, Garder, now fed up and realizing he could be trapped along with them if Nish saw the chance to smash the bubbles together, looked around for anything he could use to end the fight. He soon noticed that a large truck was coming down the road at a high speed. It reminded him of that incident years ago, when he and his friends escaped several Guardsmen by fleeing to Earth, where one of their pursuers ended up being hit by a similar vehicle. Maybe a forty-ton metal machine would lead to a victory once again.

  Determined to shove Nish into the road, Garder raised two fingers, muttered to himself, “Gust-Gust-Breeze-Gust,” and launched a strong ball of air. Stirring up sand as it blasted ahead, it hit Nish, pushing him across the desert a few inches—and causing his feet to plow into the ground as well. Thanks to Verim’s constant push, Nish was unable to really focus on Garder and had to endure another three bursts of air. But their returns were diminishing. He now braced against the wind, and his feet were partially buried in the sand, so he wasn’t getting any closer to the road.

  Nish suddenly reached out and grabbed Verim’s sword. With his enhanced strength, he yanked it out of his grasp and flung it away. Without the pressure against him, Nish would no doubt go back on the offensive.

  The truck getting closer and Garder running out of time, he dug through his mind, accessed a portion where the few earth spells he knew were held, and after thinking of his follow-up, planted his foot into the ground, which he would use to channel a technique.

  “Sand-Mantle-Stone-Sand,” he shouted out quickly.

  A surge of subsurface movement fired out from his foot, slithered ahead, and after reaching Nish’s position, resulted in a burst of energy and upwelling of desert underneath him. Even in his weighty mechanical suit, Nish was propelled into the air by more than five feet.

  Not done yet and with one finger out on each hand, Garder went through with a dual spell, unsure if the words would result in a success when spoken verbally and rapidly. He combined them out loud just as they would otherwise come out in his head.

  “Gust-Flame-Flare-Wind-Air-Wisp-Flame.”

  A hot ball of air formed between his hands, laden with alchemagi that would combust on impact. The explosive power was small, but Garder was only looking to give this particular air burst a little more oomph.

  The air hit Nish just before he was back on the ground, igniting into a flash of flames that disappeared within a second. The force was enough to send him rocketing backwards and into the middle of the road, where he skidded to a stop following a rough landing. The truck was close enough that it wouldn’t be able to stop in time.

  Freed again, Wendell and Milla joined Garder in watching the end result, with Verim, closest to the road, taking a few steps back for safety. Nish got up on one knee and turned to look at the truck, which following a blare of its horns, had its tires lock up as it spewed smoke and its driver slammed on the brakes. It didn’t look like Nish could possibly survive.

  Even so, he remained confident in his abilities. Still only up on one knee, Nish simply raised an arm again, his hand at the height of the truck’s front bumper, his palm wide open as if he were commanding it to stop.

  “No way…” Milla had just enough time to say before impact.

  Defying all of the physics they had learned and been taught, Nish didn’t go flying back once he met the truck’s engine, nor did the vehicle’s frame deform around him. Instead, the truck and its trailer came to an impossibly sudden stop, took to the air by several inches, and simply froze in place for a fraction of a second before landing again. All of the energy then passed through it at the speed of sound in a compression wave that distorted the air around the truck as it traveled down its length, instead of ripping through the solid matter and tearing the vehicle apart. Once the redirected energy reached the trailer’s tail lights, the air behind it exploded into a shock wave, scattering the nearby sand and small rocks.

  “You have to be joking,” Verim huffed after rejoining the others. “And I was really hoping that would work a second time…”

  “Damn it…” Garder muttered.

  The truck driver seemed to be unharmed, but was too confused or terrified about what he was seeing to leave his cab. In front of his engine, Nish steadily got to his feet again, the fan on his back audibly working in overdrive to cool the pack—which had become so hot that it was glowing red, heating up and the air around it. Moments after he had fully recovered, Nish began stomping towards them, unabated.

  “He can do anything he wants with energy itself,” Wendell huffed. “How the hell are we supposed to stop him?”

  “Come back!” Rhys’ voice shouted at them from behind.

  They turned to see him in midair, halfway through the portal opening. He was having a negative reaction to Earth, and had to cover his eyes with one hand as he waved at them with the other.

  “We’re shutting down the gateway. Let him be stuck in the desert. Ah, damn it… why is Earth so bright?”

  “Sounds like the best option at this point,” Verim agreed.

  They glanced at each other to quietly vote on the matter. Garder was clearly the only one among them who still wanted to try fighting Nish, but like the others, he knew the smarter choice. They turned and ran.

  Nish was only able to move so fast in his mechanized armor, so they easily made it back to Aurra before he did, Rhys waving them in and the last to fully return through the tear. On the other side, Simon was busy monitoring the portal’s control terminal. The moment everyone was safely through, he began the process to close it—but it wasn’t instantaneous.

  “Come on…” Simon murmured. “Come on…”

  The others took up defensive positions around the portal, not one of them blinking. Any moment, Nish could come back to his lab.

  The portal began to safely shut down, and the tear shrank. After another five seconds, it disappeared entirely. Everyone exhaled.

  “Whew…” Rhys exclaimed. “Too close.” After a chuckle of relief, he asked the others, “How do you live on Earth with a sun that bright?”

  “You’ll get used to it one day,” Milla assured him.

  “Simon, I have to ask…” Garder turned to him, who was running some system checks. “Why didn’t you help us a few minutes ago?”

  “Hm? Oh, during the fight? I didn’t want to give myself away.” He gave his glasses a nudge. “As a solar, I mean. I figure he can’t really slow down light, so if all of us got caught, I could surprise him.”

  “Oh.” Garder scratched his neck. “Yeah, uh… I see your point.”

  “I just wonder if it was Nish that found a way back to Earth.”

  Milla shrugged. “Possibly. But it was going to happen eventually.”

  “Let’s find the kids, get them out of here, and call Xidona,” Rhys said. “I’m guessing Nish will find his way back eventually, but for now—”

  A point of light erupted ahead of them, near the portal machinery. There was barely any time to react—within a couple of seconds, a new tear had opened up. The twins recognized the shape, the roughness of the dimensional edges. Attached directly to the two mechanical hands were large claws, their strength also enhanced by machinery.

  “He has demon—” was all Garder managed to get out.

  Every one of them had been frozen in place, trapped inside a large sphere that Nish had generated before he had fully stepped through. With everything outside of their slowed time-space sped up, they watched Nish emerge, close the tear, and walk around the bubble to study them, taking his time as he did so—all within the span of only a few seconds, to their eyes.

  Neurons firing and carrying signals, and thoughts, moved at about the typical speed, but their bodies barely reacted to commands, rendering them helpless. If Nish felt like being cruel, he could easily throw a knife inside the sphere at someone, who would be forced to watch it approach in slow motion before striking them with unchanged force.

  “Telepathy,” Rhys whispered to Garder’s mind. “It’s as fast as usual! Me and Verim learned about it before. Already told Milla.”

  “Try to extend your fingers, think up a spell,” Verim added. “I’m telling that to the others. This place is hell. I just… want to move!”

  “Garder,” Milla’s voice came next. “Simon’s behind you—I know you can’t really move your eyes, either, but I see him. He’ll save us. Garder? Talk to me. We can use this time to think up a strategy. Talk to me.”

  Nish had gone back and forth studying Rhys several times, but he seemed to be the most interested in Verim. He knew he had so much time on his hands, that he went to check something on another terminal.

  “My index finger is about halfway there,” Simon’s voice told Garder. “But I still have to move my others into my palm to press the light switch… Maybe another three minutes, our time. This is agony…”

  “Garder,” Milla’s voice came through again. “Why won’t you talk to me? All the others are coming up with ideas… You can’t just be silent.”

  “M-Milla…” he finally responded—in a voice not totally his own.

  “Garder? Was that you? Your telepathy…”

  “I… I told you, I… changed,” his deep, unfamiliar inner voice told her. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

  “I’m not scared, I just… I didn’t know that voice could change.”

  Nish came back to the edge of the sphere, and without warning commanded the large bubble to lower into the floor. It stopped just as its surface reached everyone’s stomachs, keeping their lungs working at a normal speed. Unfortunately—and he must have carefully calculated this—everyone’s hands were also still trapped in the slowed time.

  “This is quite the meeting…” he started, looking at the group curiously. “At first, I thought I only had a connection to three of you. Wendell. Verim. Azeth,” he said, looking at his ‘son.’

  “My name is Rhys…” he growled back.

  “Really now. That’s not the one I gave you. But I’ll respect it. I didn’t expect you to return home. And with friends.”

  “Formel, for God sake, what have you done?” Wendell asked him. “I know we got off to a rough start tonight, but is there a chance we could still talk this out? Perhaps… we share in some motivations.”

  “Mm. I doubt that. And don’t think of us as friends, Mr. Celin. The Watchers program was a mere side project, something to entertain me and give me some favor with the king as I accumulated resources for a much more important pursuit. One that has spanned lifetimes…”

  “I have nothing to do with you,” Verim spat. “You must be mistaking me for someone else. I’m sure you’ve made many enemies.”

  “Verim, lad, you’re a boy out of time…” Nish sighed. “I had heard that you were working for Hold’s kingdom. I suppose they don’t let you out all that much, if you still look… relatively youthful.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, and why do you have claws?”

  “These?” Nish extended the pair from his gauntlets’ side hatches. “I took them from the Guard. They weren’t in need of an extra pair. Though I suppose they’d want them back even more now. But I think I’ve earned them. I did just make travel to Earth possible again.”

  “How?” Milla asked him. “With the portal?”

  “You’re on the right track. A method of amplification to speed up a process already near its end. But I won’t go into the details. It’s something I doubt the Guard would have been able to pull off. As I told Lenal… my mind is not ordinary. And neither is yours, Verim.” He stared at him again.

  Verim breathed out, “W-what…”

  “I want you to know that I was the one that gave you your power to break providence. You must have wondered about that for so long.”

  “No… That isn’t…”

  “What are you talking about?” Milla replied, and her eyes met Verim’s, who was looking very confused all of a sudden. “Verim, do you have any idea… Is that even possible?”

  “I’ll spare you the time trying to understand it,” Nish scoffed. “The boy is my son, from two Aurrian lives ago. I tend to live for a long while.”

  Verim, his heart beating rapidly, snarled back, “You aren’t…”

  “I am. You were a surrogate birth, and I left you at a children’s ward when you were three. No memory wipe involved—you just wouldn’t have remembered me. My body then was not… this sickly waste of flesh.”

  “You lying old bastard… Even… even if that were true, it doesn’t explain why… Why since I was ten, I knew I could hurt Guardsmen.”

  “Ten, was it? Interesting. Interesting… If I still cared about that old experiment at all, I would add that to my notes.”

  “Experiment?” Milla shouted angrily. “What the hell did—”

  “I gave him an organic implant when he was an infant, one that I had developed and perfected decades earlier. It was designed to grow with him, and eventually block the part of his brain that listens to suppression commands involving the Guard’s providence.”

  “I…” Verim was at a loss for words.

  “You were only one part of a trial run, but I soon lost interest in you. Your… let’s say, predecessor had already produced all the results I was truly after. Still, you returning to me does make for a good book end.”

  “Predecessor…” Verim said, barely audibly.

  The other five trapped with him were so invested that they had seemingly forgotten that they couldn’t move for a moment.

  Nish wheezed and continued, “I had to go through a dozen or so children to get it right, to replicate the ability to break providence that I’d been given, but the results were truly worth the arduous scientific process.”

  Milla muttered, “By ‘go through children…’ Do you mean…”

  “They didn’t survive the operation or process,” Nish stated.

  “You…”

  “But I had to get it right first, don’t you see? When it really mattered, failure wasn’t an option. I only had one chance to give the experiment purpose, in order to…” Nish stopped and looked at the twins. “And you two make five. I recognize you as the Nollands. Five of you… I share a connection to five of you. Should I tell you how?”

  Garder derided him, “If you’re going to say you’re our dad, too, you’re a bit late. We already went through that.”

  “That Leovyn fellow, yes. Perhaps I am closer to a grandfather.”

  “Yeah? You want to talk about that next, then?” Garder asked, now just hoping to give Simon time to plan and take aim or whatever he was doing behind him, unseen. “Go on. Spill it.”

  “Relinia Escellé. Still the current watairre paradigm. I kidnapped her when she was eight and I was a younger man. I made her a providence breaker. I told her what she had become—while I let Verim discover it on his own, without my influence, just to see what he might do.

  “She, ah… heh…” Nish rubbed his forehead. “I’m not sure what the Guard must have done to her in a past life, but she enjoyed the slaughter.”

  Milla had become enraged in a short time, and her eyes began to show flashes of gold as she put all her strength into freeing herself.

  “You monster,” she snapped. “Free us. Right now.”

  “So that you can kill me? For all the horrible things I’ve done? So that justice is served?” Nish looked at Garder. “I’m surprised you aren’t as livid. Aren’t you the one known for your rampages?”

  “Yes, but I’m used to them,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ve learned how to keep it inside. Trust me. I also want to kill you.”

  “Escellé isn’t…” Verim tried to find reason in the chaotic words he had just heard. “She’s… kind, and intelligent, and graceful…”

  “I haven’t seen her recently,” Nish said. “I wouldn’t know. But I doubt she’s truly sated her bloodlust. Unfortunately, my plans with her were delayed for… a couple of centuries, give or take. I don’t know how she ended up dying on Earth, exactly. Maybe an accident. Possible she took one of the last fully-functional demirriages there for a visit and it malfunctioned. She went off on her own at that point, decided to try making her own small kingdom in a void of white, came and went as she wanted, and stopped reporting to me. This was all back when genetics were poorly understood, and when there was a concept of doppelg?ngers, but not clones per se. I knew I needed an army, but she was only raised to lead one.”

  “And then it occurred to you in this life that if you only had a sample, you could recreate her…” Garder concluded for him.

  “Yes. Yes, exactly. But I hadn’t expected her to have children! She was good at taking life, not giving it. I found out too late when she was last out of Hold, but then King Lontonkon… He comes to me with a crystal, her hair frozen inside. And he asks me, ‘what can you do with this, Mr. Formel?’ Ha! If he only who she was, who made her into a monster!”

  “What were you hoping to do with this army?” Simon asked, now assuredly in a position to try something—but also knowing how important this information would prove itself. “With all of these kids…”

  “Destroy the Administration,” Nish answered plainly. “They’re still protected by a separate layer of providence, but my clones can break it. And their alignment has another benefit. I plan to use them… to bring us under the Indian Ocean, just off of the island of Ceylon… Then I shall use these claws, to take the Administration capital by surprise, and… destroy them.”

  “Ceylon?” Garder questioned.

  “The country now known as Sri Lanka,” Simon explained.

  “And that’s… close to opposite of U,” Wendell said. “Is that where the Administration operates from?”

  “I think I’ve said more than enough,” Nish said tiredly. “You’re all more of a nuisance. Far more interesting guests than the pretorian, yes, but I have no need for any of you.”

  “Is that what you told all the children you killed?” Milla spat.

  “No. They served a purpose.”

  “Don’t you feel any remorse about sending kids to their deaths?”

  “If the newsouls I put into my clones actually did fade away… I would envy them. Existence is such a chore.”

  “Oh, good, this old nihilistic diatribe again.”

  “Yet it’s still a valid point of view. Think about it. Time and time again, to be reborn, to repeat everything for all eternity… No, it all needs to end. Destroying the Administration is the first step to complete collapse.”

  “I don’t care how ancient you are, Nish. I’ve known many older souls with many past lives, and they always find a reason to—”

  “I’m bored of this,” he stopped her. “Goodbye.”

  Just like that, he raised his sphere to their necks, choking the life out of them, and all six struggled for air that would never come.

  “Those workers in Hold, who greet you and keep you in line on your way to the worlds? Those are transient Administrators. When you get there, tell those slaves that Gnell Chi’velix is coming for them.”

  They had no time to ponder the strange name, or what it meant to Nish. As they were mere seconds from blacking out, Simon had to act. He applied the last bit of pressure he needed on his palm switch to trigger the spotlight, and the beam escaped the sphere effortlessly. At the same time, he completed his spell. The light began to bend, as did what came from all the other bright lamps in the lab. Nish watched this phenomenon and took a step back, looking for the one responsible for the manipulation.

  By the time he saw that it was coming from the young man in the back, it was too late. The lab’s illumination dimmed to near total darkness, and all the light in the room had been compacted into two thin, high-intensity strands that were aimed at Nish’s gauntlets. After several seconds, the powerful beams fried the advanced but fragile energy devices on his wrists, and the group was freed. After the light filled the room again, Nish was left in a stunned silence, looking at his smoking gauntlets.

  “It’s over,” Garder muttered, as he and the others readied their weapons and spells. “Do you want to live, or die, Nish?”

  “You ask me if I wish to suffer in Hold or in a prison in Z…”

  “Life is pain, Mr. Formel,” Milla said. “But you can’t destroy the system just because of it. It needs to be fixed, not annihilated.”

  Suddenly feeling helpless amid the angry faces, Nish took another step back, shook his head, and let out one last long sigh.

  “I choose neither,” he told them and crossed his arms, placing his palms on either shoulder. “And I pity you, having to serve that man…”

  “What man?” Milla fired back. “Rivia?”

  “The grand liar, Ms. Nolland. The one who calls himself Pangs. Ask him yourself. This war is a farce. And I will sleep through it.”

  The machine on his back made a noise, and he became still.

  They watched and waited for his next move, desperate and ready to bombard him with everything they had. He was too cunning to just give up.

  And yet, after ten seconds or more, he still hadn’t moved, or even blinked. But Milla wasn’t going to wait any longer or give him a chance to pull off some final trick.

  “You’re not getting away with any of this…” she growled.

  She formed a complex mandala and slammed it into Nish. It should have cut him into pieces, but instead her vector pattern broke apart on impact, a few of the lines making it to the wall behind him before they fizzled out. Nish was unaffected, having become an impervious statue.

  Cautiously, Wendell approached him and placed a hand on his forehead. As a tracker, he was able to read his spirit and feel its strength.

  “Nothing,” he reported. “No activity. And he’s cold as stone.”

  “So, he… froze his own, what… flow of time?” Rhys wondered.

  “Didn’t I destroy the devices that let him do that?” Simon added.

  Wendell took a guess, “Maybe only the projectors for his bubbles. He reversed his energy control, and I suppose… got what he wanted.” He looked at Milla, whose eyes were returning to normal as she calmed down.

  “I’m sorry…” she sighed. “I was losing control.”

  “It’s hard not to be angry, hearing about all the things he did. Verim? Are you okay, lad?”

  He was clearly upset, yet had become unnaturally quiet.

  “He was using alchemagi to do all of that,” Simon pondered. “If he entered into an anti-alchemagi field, he might, ah… unfreeze.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think we want that,” Garder replied. “Let’s turn him over to Xidona, let her decide where to keep him.”

  “Z may still be an option,” Milla said. “Security would be better, but as it’s run by the Guard, if he has any friends… he might come back.”

  “We still need to find my siblings,” Rhys reminded them.

  “There’s a safe here, too,” Simon mentioned, pointing to a hefty box of metal under a computer desk. “Covered in alchemagi-sealant. We might want to see what’s inside before W does.”

  He went back to looking at Nish’s terminals, though most of the files were encrypted and inaccessible. Verim stayed behind as well, as he wasn’t in an emotional state where he could help or think clearly.

  “God sake, these surprises just keep getting worse…” Garder muttered as they went into the hallway on the other side of the lab. “What else was that man behind? How will Verim deal with all of that?”

  “He could have been lying about some of it,” Wendell suggested.

  “I… don’t know,” Milla sighed. “Too many questions. If Nish knew Pangs, then we need to ask him what he knows about him.”

  “Escellé didn’t strike me as a mass murderer,” Garder said.

  “But she didn’t say anything about her past when you met her.”

  “No, I guess not. Hey, look at these rooms…”

  This hallway was shorter than the one they had first gone through, and only had a few doors. Two stood out—one marked “Armory”, and another with a sign that simply read, “Prep”. Both were reinforced metal doors with keycard readers, and as soon as Milla heard the faint rustling of movement on the other side of the latter, she created a vector triangle.

  “Weapons ready,” she told the others. “Just in case…”

  “Wait,” Rhys said. “Give me a chance to talk with them first.”

  Once he was in front of Milla, she cut apart the lock. Rhys slowly pushed it open, revealing an array of lockers in the room. After it opened a little more, dark gray uniforms came into view—covering a dozen children, each of them armed with knives and elemental swords. Six boys and six girls, all of them with silver hair and nearly identical to each other, turned and saw the intruders, a couple of them freezing in place as they were tying up the laces of their black boots. They immediately raised their weapons.

  “They look ready for war…” Wendell whispered. “We must’ve gotten here just as they were about to head out.”

  “Kamsa…” Garder murmured. “The girls look… just like Kamsa.”

  “Wait,” Rhys said and gestured to his successors to stand down. “I’m like you. These are my friends. They’re here to help.”

  The kids looked at each other, back to Rhys, back at each other, grouped up, whispered for a minute, and looked at Rhys again. One of the girls, who was slightly taller than her siblings, stepped away and approached Rhys. She may have been something of a leader to the others.

  “Are you from a prior line?” she asked Rhys.

  “Yes… I just, uh… painted my hair. You know about the lines?”

  “Our father has told us that we are replicas, and there were more before us. We are destroying the Administration. Are you here to assist?”

  “Ah, um… No. Plans have changed. Did our father promise anything to you for obeying his orders and going to war?”

  One of the boys answered, “He said we would earn our souls and become real people, and then get to leave this home.”

  “Holy hell…” Rhys grumbled. “Look, you already have them, and this is not a home. Could you all please come out? You have some people to meet, and then someone will… take better care of you all.”

  They glanced at each other and the girl replied, “These are not the orders Father gave to us. Are we allowed to listen to you?”

  “Yes, of course. He decided that instead of attacking, he’s going to take a very long sleep. He can’t give you orders anymore.”

  “Oh,” she relaxed her shoulders, “then… we should listen to you.”

  “Good idea. So… just follow me, then. Leave the weapons here.”

  On the way back to the lab, with all twelve kids following the adults, the girl looked up at Milla and asked, “Are you like us?”

  She peered into her eyes, and also seeing Kamsa, answered once the knot in her chest passed, “You could say we’re related. You and your sisters and brothers are tough, but I hope we can get you into some real homes, where you don’t need to hurt people. What’s your name?”

  “Sherwa. Father often called me ‘perfect…’ But I don’t understand how I’m different from the others. We’re all the same.”

  “Not quite, Sherwa. In time, you’ll see—you’re all unique.”

  “Are you from the bigger world?”

  Realizing that none of them had even seen the sky, Milla replied, “People have two worlds. There’s more than enough room for all of you.”

  Upon reaching the lab, the children gathered around Nish, curious why he wasn’t moving. A few introductions were shared, and after several minutes, despite still being dressed for combat, they seemed to have taken a liking to the group—and even managed to cheer up Verim a little.

  Nish must have considered newsouls born into Aurra easy to both control and program, and yet they were also innocent and open to change, ready to follow whomever was there to guide them. It had been Kamsa’s greatest flaw, which led to her changing sides all those years ago, but Nish had never bothered to seek an alternate way to go about his plans, or how to create his assets. He had never moved past hedging his bets on the blind obedience of his young soldiers. Arrogance was often seen in ancients.

  “Do any of you know the combination to this thing?” Rhys asked them, pointing at the safe. “Surely one of you must have done some spying.”

  One of the boys emerged from the crowd, crouched down under the desk, and turned the dial three times. The safe unlocked with a deep click, and the boy got back up and looked at Rhys, almost smiling.

  “Father won’t be happy, though,” he warned his older brother.

  “He may be asleep for a long time,” Simon said as he walked over and investigated the safe’s contents. “By the time he wakes up, he might not… care anymore… Um, Garder and Milla—come look at this.”

  Surrounded by children that were looking up and studying them, the twins freed themselves from their touchless grasp to see what Simon had found. The safe only had two objects, which Nish must have carried everywhere he went: a demirriage scroll, in good condition, and an oval pendant made of light green crystal. Garder took it, held the translucent material in front of the light of a computer monitor, and saw the silver hairs locked inside, separated from their owner by a great distance.

  “Dad might want this back,” Garder said and handed it to Milla.

  “That’s… our mother’s hair?” she replied.

  “Yeah. Yeah…” Garder looked back at the clones. “Just a few strands, and they were all the result. What are we going to do with them?”

  “Hope Xidona keeps them safe. But if the Guard ever found out they were still alive… They could still all end up just like Kamsa.”

  “Maybe we should have her destroy this place, as if Nish had it set to self-destruct. Have them ‘perish’ in the blaze. After she moves the portal machinery and retrieves his hard drives, of course.”

  “I bet there’s a lot of interesting files in here,” Simon sighed, and looked like he had officially given up on trying to get deeper access. “I’m not sure about this, but I saw some references that makes me think Nish developed a new demirriage engine for the Guard some years back. If he rediscovered the tech, that’s not good. The Mezik could have competition.”

  His transponder in his hand, Wendell asked, “Should I go ahead and get Xidona over here? We need to get back to Colt, and on towards C.”

  “Damn it, I forgot we got shot down…” Milla said, and then grabbed Nish’s demirriage scroll. “Guess we can just use this to head back.” She looked at the digital clock hanging in the lab. “But C’s running on its night schedule now; we can only get in once before morning, in about three hours. Garder, you have to come with us and help with the debrief.”

  “And you may want to be in the room when we confront Pangs,” Simon added. “Whew… we still have a long night ahead of us.”

  Garder watched the children talk with Verim for a few moments, who they had surrounded. His spirits seemed to be steadily lifting.

  Garder then said with a yawn, “We have to return our sling to the Red Tenor first, and I need to request my leave to my… ah, commanding officer in any case. Milla… you want to meet her?”

  She gave him the smallest of smiles in response, but was suddenly again concerned with what had changed in her brother’s mind so much that it had altered his inner voice.

  As Wendell contacted Xidona and her security team, Milla and Garder looked around at the lab and those that they had rescued. An old promise to a brief friend had finally been fulfilled, but on the way, their world had been shattered by yet more revelations from an old being.

  Nish Formel, another relic of Aurra’s enigmatic past, had taken perhaps all but a few of his secrets into the deepest of slumbers.