THE NEXT MORNING, MIRA BOUNDS us to a new place to train. Instead of one giant deck, she brings us to a tiered training space. There are probably a dozen circular decks layered among the clouds.
Today we leave the packs on the deck, she tells us.
Hmm… This should be interesting.
Marco swings his blast pack off his shoulders and flings it to the ground. “Let’s go!” Then he immediately face-plants on the deck.
Addy bursts out laughing. She wipes her gloved hands on her training uniform. “Serves you right, hotshot!”
“You asked for it!” he says.
Addy shoots into the air with her blast pack and guns for the tier above. Marco picks up his pack and chases after her.
“Can you go ahead and show us, sweetie?” Lucy asks Mira. “I’m not waiting around for that duo to come back.”
Sparkly energy ripples through my brain. Let’s practice pair boosting for now.
“Pairs?” Lucy asks, looking from Mira to me and Cole.
“I’ll work with Jasper,” Cole says.
Lucy shakes her head. “Oh no, you won’t. Jasper will pair up with Mira. You’re stuck with me.” She grabs Cole’s arm and drags him to the other side of the deck, shooting me a glare over her shoulder that clearly says you owe me.
She’s right—I definitely do. Pairing up with Cole after their fight last night can’t have been easy. They may end up in a full-on glove war.
I turn my back on Cole and Lucy. They can sort out their own issues. I may not have many more moments with Mira here on the Youli home world—and I’m not sure what comes next—so I’m going to enjoy them while I can.
Mira lifts her eyes to mine. I smile. Where should we start?
Sense the connection? She lifts her hand and reaches out with her mind. Our connection is so strong already, I feel her touch instantly.
I raise my own hand and press back. Usually, there’s a distinct barrier where I end and Mira begins, but as we both push into our power, the barrier blurs, and we start to blend. It’s a glimpse of what I felt when we were alone on the bounding deck a month ago.
Her cheeks color pink. Access your power, and I’ll amplify it. She nods at my blast pack, discarded on the ground.
I grab hold of the pack with the power of my gloves and start to lift. Mira begins to infuse her own power into my neural stream. Suddenly, I’m back in the Ezone, lifting the practice chair with Mira feeding me her energy. How did she know how to do this all the way back then?
I just know. I feel her smile at my back. She’s obviously eavesdropping on my memories, but I don’t care. I open my mind and let her in. Her power surges through me, and my blast pack rockets through the clouds.
I let go of control.
Mira drops our connection. I feel her brain scrambling. I spin around, and her hands are lifted. Seconds later, my blast pack lowers to the deck. She shoots me an annoyed look. You can’t just drop it! I don’t want to have to search the whole planet for your blast pack!
I rub my forehead. I thought it would just fall back down.
That’s not how it works here. She waves away her annoyance. Switch! You boost me now.
She grabs my blast pack and sends it into the air. This time, instead of tossing it on a linear path, she spins it through the air in the shape of an infinity symbol. I reach out with my mind, sense her source of power, and feed her my own. My blast pack accelerates at startling speed. Soon, I can hardly keep track of it with my eyes. It’s just a whirling blur before us.
“Incoming!” Addy shouts. Marco and my sister gun from above.
Mira jerks, and the pack falls to the deck and skids across the surface. Careful! she lectures Addy and Marco. That pack was spinning so fast, we’d be scraping your guts off the deck if you’d collided with it.
“Nice visual, Magic Mira. We’re back.”
Obviously, I say, annoyed that my one-on-one time with Mira is over.
She draws closed our mental curtain. Later, I promise.
Yeah, I definitely don’t mind her eavesdropping.
The next few hours, we focus on networked power boosting and flying without packs, although Mira is always quick to remind us that we’re not really flying, we’re manipulating matter to move and stay aloft. In other words: flying.
Soon, we’re leaping from deck to deck and gliding back down, all with the power of our gloves. When we add networked power, the results are simply amazing. With the aid of my pod mates, I can bullet through every deck layer in a second while suspending all of our blast packs in the air. And I’ve only touched the surface of our joint power. Our combined strength is so immense, I’m pretty sure we could toss a bounding ship in the air, or drag a space station off its anchor, or rip through a force field.
Speaking of force fields, Mira teaches us this neat trick where we can invert our networked power to maintain a shield. Nothing outside the shield can reach our atoms or physically penetrate. It’s like having our own personal force field and occludium shield rolled into one.
We want to keep practicing our new skills, but we’re also starving. Virtual nachos never sounded so good.
One more thing, Mira says. You can use your mental communication circle now, even when I’m not there. With his brain patch, Jasper is strong enough to hold the connection.
“You mean we’ll still be able to brain-talk once we leave the Youli planet?” Cole asks. When Mira nods, he adds, “That’s incredible!”
“Why would we ever talk to one another like this once we leave?” Marco asks.
You never know when you may need to talk privately.
“You and your girlfriend can whisper sweet love notes, brain-to-brain,” Lucy teases Marco.
Lucy’s crack clearly digs at Addy, too, but my sister doesn’t flinch. She looks at Mira with a tilt of her head. When do you think we’ll need to communicate in secret?
I recognize the look on Addy’s face. She thinks Mira’s withholding something again. Drop it, Addy. It’s time for lunch.
Addy keeps eyeing Mira, waiting for a response, but Mira doesn’t answer. Instead, she projects an image of a huge spread of delicious food complete with enticing aromas directly into our brains. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we rush to her side to head back to the copycat pod room. In a flash, we bound.
I feel solid ground beneath my feet and open my eyes. I’m not in the pod room. The others are gone. It’s just me and Mira.
We’re in a small room. It has a pallet on one side layered with white cloth. There is a small table attached to the wall with a crystal on top. On the floor is a white rug woven from the same white cloth. There are billowing white sheets hung by a window that looks out over a central courtyard.
Mira pulls the curtains and sits down on the floor.
I sit beside her. Is this your room?
She nods. I know you’re hungry, but this was a chance for us to talk.
She thinks I’d rather eat than spend time with her alone? I’m not hungry.
She gives me the side-eye.
Okay, fine, I’m a little bit hungry.
I could get you some chlorophyll.
I practically gag on the saliva that’s been pooling in my mouth. Uh, no. Don’t you remember my food issues? If you ever want to torture me, just send me to Gulaga.
BERF.
Barf. Seriously, Mira, don’t worry about food. This is where I want to be. With you.
She smiles. A familiar melody fills my mind. “Heart and Soul.” We played it on the piano together on Alkalinia. I sang it in her mind when the Youli attacked. It’s how I kept her awake as we raced to take down the occludium shield.
So much has happened since then—the rift, the Lost Heroes Homecoming Tour, the Earth Force invasion of Gulaga—but not much has happened with us, Mira and me. Since we escaped the rift, thanks to the Youli, the only times we’ve been together were a month ago at the bounding base and the days we’ve spent here on the Youli planet. How are you?
She doesn’t answer with words. Like before, a wave of emotion rushes out of her. Happiness. Despair. Hope. Regret. The emotions are so intense, they threaten to pull me under. I close my eyes and open my mind, allowing her to fill me with her feelings, without judgment, without interpretation.
It would be impossible for me to decipher what it all means, but when the flow slows to a trickle, and I open my eyes, Mira is staring back expectantly.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to brain dump my feelings like that. Plus, all I really want to say is I’ve missed you. And all I want to know is why she left and whether she’s coming back. But I’m scared of the answer, and I don’t want everything to be all doom and gloom between us.
So I try to keep it light. Union Song was awesome!
She lifts her lips in a small smile. Yes.
She sends me a memory. We’re in our pod room, our real pod room, with our pod mates. She fills the room with twinkling lights and music, and we dance together in the starlight, finding a moment of peace and fun even after learning the truth about why Earth Force needed the Bounders.
I smile back and generate my own memory to share. We’re at the space station, in the music room down the hall from the sensory gym. Mira’s playing the piano, and I’m playing my clarinet. Our first duet.
Mira slips inside my mind, right into my memory. She lassos the music in my mind, pulls it into the present moment, and sets it on a loop. The music—which a moment ago existed only in my mind—plays in her room all by itself. Before long, the song starts to evolve, more instruments and tones are added, the melody becomes more complex, and the harmonies grow more sophisticated.
Amazing! How did you do that?
Mira shrugs. She waves her hands and multicolored lights appear. They dance around the room in time to our song.
How was Earth? she asks.
Keeping it light seems to be working. I tell her funny stories about the Lost Heroes Homecoming Tour. She loves hearing about Nev and Dev and their golden boy (me!). And her brain sparkles when I tell her that Florine Statton is now a hotel command system voice-over specialist.
Time slips by so easily. My stomach’s not even grumbling anymore. I feel like I could sit with Mira, right here in this room, forever.
You leave tomorrow, she says.
I can tell she doesn’t want this to end, either. You’re coming.
Yes, but it will be different.
How?
Mira starts to answer, but then there’s a flash, and suddenly Wind Chimes is standing beside us. I push back against the wall. There’s not room in the small space for all three of us.
Mira jumps to her feet and slams closed a mental door that shuts me out.
Something is wrong. I don’t know what they’re saying to each other, but Mira is upset. So is Wind Chimes. And there’s no doubt in my mind that it has something to do with me.
My mental door flies open. You need to go back to your room, Mira says. Her voice feels nervous and deeply upset.
Okay, what’s—
There’s another flash. Then a bound.
When I open my eyes, I’m standing in the pod room with Wind Chimes by my side.
Where’s Mira? I demand of the Youli.
Before Wind Chimes can answer, Lucy starts talking. “Where have you been, Jasper? We’ve been worried sick! We thought something happened to you! And you… you… you Youli… This is our room! You can’t just pop in here like that! You nearly scared us to death!”
Wind Chimes surges into our mental circle. Come, young ones. I’m taking you to the surface.
My questions about Mira are ignored as Wind Chimes gathers us together. My pod mates shoot me questioning looks, but all I can do is shake my head. I have no idea what’s going on. A minute later, we bound.
We emerge inside a small bubble, like the one we used to tour the planet yesterday. Only, today, we appear to be on the surface of a planet. Although this can’t possibly be the Youli planet.
It’s a world without color. Everything is gray or grayer. Decrepit towers lay in crumbled ruins on the ground. The land is cracked and dry and devoid of life.
The only color near the surface is the green of the Youli who seem to be working. They’re covered from head to toe in protective suits. Many of them hold equipment. They appear to be doing something to the soil.
“What is this place?” Marco asks.
This is our planet, Wind Chimes says.
Above us, storm clouds churn. They’re purple and black, like bruises in the sky. Electric charges strike, ripping the sky like knives.
“I don’t understand,” Lucy says.
Wind Chimes sighs. It feels like steam along the edge of my mind. You’ve been above. This is below.