We accelerated quickly and flew high over Saint Dane’s mini-kingdom. Seeing it from the sky gave me an even better idea of how huge the place was. It was a sprawling green oasis surrounded by that gigantic wall…in the middle of a dead, gray city.
“They’re coming after us,” I said to Mark.
“I hope they do. Maybe we’ll snag another one of these babies,” he answered while staying focused on flying.
Unbelievable. It was Mark, but it wasn’t. I was thrilled to see him, though totally thrown by how much he had changed. Up until that moment, Mark and I had been aging at the same rate. It didn’t matter that we were on different territories. For whatever reason, our time lines had been the same. Not anymore. Did that mean I had spent five years on Solara? Or floating in space? Or was that the wrong way to look at it? Maybe when I left for Third Earth, the spirits of Solara put me here, five years past the time when Patrick was killed. If that was the case, did that mean that the turning point of Third Earth had shifted? I was always sent where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. Thinking this way actually gave me hope. Third Earth was definitely still in play.
All my confused questioning ended abruptly when our helicopter was rocked by an explosion.
“Whoa,” I exclaimed. “What was that?”
“They’re shooting from the ground,” Mark said calmly. “It won’t last. As soon as we get past the wall, we’ll be out of range.”
I looked down out of the window to see that we were about to cross out of the green and into the gray. Two more explosions rocked us. The helicopter shuddered but we weren’t hit. A moment later I looked down to see the wall passing underneath us. We were back over the dead city of New York.
Whoosh! Something flew by to my right, barely missing us. It left a smoke trail in its wake.
“I thought you said we’d be out of range?”
“Yeah, of their ground guns,” Mark replied. “That came from the chopper that’s chasing us.”
Oh. Swell.
“I saw what those rockets can do,” I said nervously. “I was at the zoo when you helped those people out.”
Mark gave me a quick glance.
“Where have you been for five years?” he asked.
“That is a very long story.”
Whoosh. Whoosh. Two more rockets passed by, one on each side.
“I gotta concentrate,” Mark said, and pushed the joystick forward. We immediately went nose down, headed for the ground. I put my foot out to brace myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Mark’s flying, it was just that, well, okay, I didn’t trust Mark’s flying. But then again, I trusted the guys behind us even less, so whatever Mark did was okay with me.
“We’ll lose them in the haze,” Mark announced.
The air was once again filled with the same brown, dusty clouds that swirled through the zoo, which meant that the visibility quickly dropped back to near zero. Mark pushed the helicopter down toward the river. After a nauseating plunge, he leveled us out and sped southward. We couldn’t have been more than ten feet above the water, skimming the surface.
“This is, uh, dangerous,” I said, trying not to show how terrified I was. At the speed we were going, we wouldn’t see anything solid in front of us until a second before the crunch.
“Yeah, it is,” he said with no trace of fear. Or stutter. That was good. If Mark didn’t stutter, it meant he wasn’t nervous. That made one of us.
“You, uh, you’ve done this before?” I asked, hoping that my skepticism didn’t bleed through.
“Couple times,” he answered. “The bad visibility will make us tough to hit.”
He seemed confident at the controls. I mean, he wasn’t like a fighter-jock or anything, but on the other hand, he wasn’t looking around with a “What’s this button do?” attitude. I figured that as long as we didn’t hit anything, we’d have a chance at getting away. The helicopter behind us stopped shooting. I guessed it couldn’t see us anymore. Mark knew what he was doing. I watched him for a few seconds, amazed at the transformation that had happened over the past five years. It kind of made me sad, because the time had been rough on him. You don’t become toughened like that by hanging around reading books and eating carrots. Mark had definitely been through some stuff.
A huge shadow passed overhead. Or should I say, we passed under something huge. I ducked. I know, dumb. It was an involuntary reaction. I saw through the bubble roof that it was one of the wrecked bridges that had connected Manhattan to the rest of the world.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Home” was his answer. “But not until we shake this guy. We don’t need to show him the way.”
Another shadow flew overhead. I ducked again. This time it wasn’t a bridge. It was the other helicopter.
“Did he see us?” I asked.
“Let’s find out.”
Mark pulled back the joystick. We immediately shot skyward. I was pressed back into my seat, fighting nausea all the way. It was like being on a ride at Playland. A really sickening ride that could end in certain death at any second. Knowing that didn’t help the nausea. It was a reminder that as much as I was a spirit from Solara, I was still very much a human being. At the moment I was kind of wishing that I was a little less human. The wrecked tower of another bridge appeared out of the haze. Mark veered us to the left. We would pass by safely, but too close for my taste.
“So? Did we lose—”
Two rockets hit the top of the bridge’s tower. It exploded, sending off a cloud of smoke and a shower of metal shrapnel. Mark banked hard to the left and flew down. Chunks of metal hit the chopper, pinging the surface, rocking us.
“No,” Mark said.
“‘No’ what?”
“No, we didn’t lose him.”
Mark dropped us down to the river again. We leveled off and flew over the choppy, dark water.
“Why don’t we go over land?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want anything falling on anybody.”
Good answer. I hoped we wouldn’t be the ones doing the falling.
“So we just try to lose him in the haze?” I asked.
“That. Or I’ll drop him in the harbor.”
Mark said that so matter-of-factly I actually believed he could do it.
“You have a plan for this or are you just winging it?”
He didn’t answer. Not good. We were approaching another bridge. The roadway loomed overhead. No sooner did we pass under it, than the roadbed exploded. The chasing helicopter was above us. Still shooting.
“You ever play chicken as a kid?” he asked.
“No, and neither did you.”
Mark laughed, as if remembering the geeky kid he used to be. That kid was long gone. “He’s not giving up. We’re going to have to play.”
There was a reason I never played chicken. It was dumb. It was a test of wills. There was no point to it other than to prove who was the bigger idiot. But this was Mark’s show. I wasn’t going to argue. We flew under another bridge. It could have been the Brooklyn Bridge. It was hard to tell. We were going too fast and I didn’t care anyway. Mark accelerated and drove us skyward again.
“We’ve got to get far enough ahead of him to make this work,” he explained.
The haze cleared a bit once we were over New York Harbor. It was still pretty thick, but visibility had increased slightly.
“He can see us now,” I cautioned.
“Good. I want him to.”
Up ahead I saw the last bridge before open ocean. It was the long Verrazano Narrows Bridge that connected Brooklyn and Staten Island. Its two towers still stood tall.
Mark explained, “For whatever reason, this bridge is still pretty much intact.”
I twisted and looked back to see that the chasing helicopter had fallen far behind us. I caught glimpses of it through the haze to see it was just clearing the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Maybe we can lose it now,” I offered hopefully.
“No way. We’re in the open now. It’s going to have to end here. One way or the other.”
We flashed over the bridge, directly between the two towers. Mark pressed the chopper on, headed for open ocean.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we play.”
Mark banked the chopper hard, doing a one-eighty. In seconds we were on our way back toward the bridge, and directly for the other helicopter. We drifted to the left, headed toward the south tower.
“If we’re lucky, he won’t know this bridge is still in such good shape,” Mark growled. His calm was gone. He was now focused and intent.
“What if we’re not lucky?” I asked.
“Then we’ll see who’s chicken.”
I couldn’t see the other helicopter through the haze. But at the speed we were traveling, it couldn’t be more than thirty seconds before we’d cross paths. Or collide head-on. Mark gripped the joystick and fired a rocket. It sailed straight ahead, hitting nothing.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“I want him to know where we are.”
Our helicopter continued to drift to the left until we were lined up directly on the south tower of the bridge. It looked as if we were flying at an altitude just above the roadbed.
“Look out!” I shouted.
A rocket was incoming, shooting out of the mist. Mark easily dodged it.
“I guess he knows where we are,” he said.
“This is crazy!” I shouted. “Let’s just try to lose him.”
“We won’t, Bobby. He’ll keep coming. Then other choppers will join him. We’ve got to end it here.”
That’s when I saw it. Maybe a half mile ahead, directly in front of us. We were on a collision course with the other helicopter. Chicken time. I figured the odds were fifty-fifty.
“Shoot it!” I screamed.
Mark fired off a shot, then another. The oncoming chopper dodged them easily and fired back. Mark dipped our chopper and veered left, ducking both missiles. He then brought us back up to the same level as the enemy helicopter. On this course we would fly just over the roadbed of the bridge, inside the south tower…and crash head-on with the other chopper.
“Keep shooting!” I shouted.
“Don’t need to,” Mark said calmly.
The chopper fired another rocket. It missed us, and didn’t let off another shot. It was starting to look as if our hunter didn’t care about shooting us down anymore.
“He wants to kamikaze into us,” Mark said, reading my mind.
“That’s not how you play chicken!” I screamed.
“He doesn’t know the rules.”
The oncoming chopper was about to reach the bridge.
“Mark, I can’t let you die.”
Mark smiled. “I won’t. We’ve got him.”
Huh?
I looked ahead. We were a couple of seconds away from flying head-on into this guy. In seconds we’d be wreckage. I squinted. It was going to hurt.
Suddenly the oncoming helicopter exploded in midair. One second it was bearing down on us, the next there were chunks of wreckage scattering every which way.
“Gotcha!” Mark shouted.
The doomed chopper’s rotor spun wildly off on its own. The skids flew in opposite directions. The remainder of the rockets exploded, followed by a violent eruption that had to have been the fuel tank.
Mark pulled back on the joystick, and we sailed up and over the carnage.
“Whooooo!” he yelled, totally psyched.
“What the heck happened?” I shouted.
“I told you, that bridge is pretty much intact. It’s a suspension bridge. All of the cables are still there that connect the two towers. Trouble is, you can’t see them through the haze.”
I looked back over my shoulder in time to see the shattered helicopter hit the bridge roadbed, bounce off, and plummet toward the ocean below.
“So you lured him into a spiderweb,” I said. “That’s why you were flying so close to the tower.” I punched him in the shoulder. “You could have told me, you know.”
“I could have, but I didn’t want to look bad if it didn’t work.”
“If it didn’t work, looking bad would have been the least of your worries. That was awesome, Mark.”
“Thank you. Now we gotta get down before they send more choppers after us.”
I sat back in my seat and tried to catch my breath. I don’t know what was more shocking: The fact that we had nearly been killed by that chopper, or that Mark Dimond was the cool pilot who set the trap and calmly sprang it, saving our lives. We flew back toward Manhattan, staying low to the water in case any other dado pilots came looking for us. I remembered the tip of Manhattan as being a place that was loaded with tall buildings. It was like a whole separate city. Not anymore. It looked as if the buildings had all been sheared off around the tenth story. It wasn’t like Rubic City on Veelox, where the city was simply crumbling from age and neglect. No, something had happened here. Something bad.
“What’s the story here?” I asked Mark, gesturing to the sad remains of a once-great city.
Mark nodded. “They didn’t officially give it a name, but they should have called it World War Three,” he said. “Except that it wasn’t about countries. It was Ravinia against the rest of the world.”
“Who won?”
“Nobody. Though I guess you could say it was Ravinia. Once it came to power, Ravinia thought it had crushed all of its opposition. But a revolt was brewing. It took centuries to grow strong enough to challenge the Ravinian authority. Up until then, if you weren’t a Ravinian, you lived in squalor. The people finally grew strong enough to fight back in numbers large enough that it scared the Ravinians. So this is how they dealt with the revolt.”
“By destroying the city?” I asked.
“Many cities. But not before moving the most valued possessions of the world to their various conclaves.”
“So that really was Big Ben back there? And the Taj Mahal and the Mona Lisa?”
“Yup. They have hundreds of those garden spots all over. Once they looted the world of its treasures, they unleashed Armageddon. Basically, the entire arsenal of mankind was ignited. I think in some places they even used nukes. Like in Washington DC. From what I heard, it only took a few days, and the entire non-Ravinian world was laid to waste…along with most everyone in it.”
Looking down at the devastation, Mark’s story seemed possible. It truly was Armageddon.
Mark continued, “They didn’t kill everyone, of course. There were survivors. But not in any numbers, and certainly not enough to stand up to the Ravinians.”
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“I’m not exactly sure. I think it was about four years ago.”
That rocked me. “Four years ago? That’s all?”
Mark turned away from his flying long enough to give me a dark look. “I think it was the turning point of Third Earth, Bobby.”
I couldn’t breathe. Was it possible? Had we been sent back too late? Was the battle for Third Earth, and Halla, truly over before we’d had a chance to stop it?
Mark looked back ahead. He had tears in his eyes. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “Obviously this is all about Saint Dane, but what does he gain by destroying most of the population of Earth?”
I didn’t answer. I knew of course, but it wasn’t the time to give Mark a crash course in Solara. Still, he deserved an answer. Every last survivor deserved an answer.
“Because it’s about more than just Earth,” I said. “And it’s about more than Halla, believe it or not. What Saint Dane is doing is crushing the positive spirit of man. Once that happens, he can rebuild a universe any way he chooses.”
Mark frowned and nodded. There was no way he could understand exactly what my words meant, and maybe it didn’t matter.
“But there is hope,” I added.
“Is there?” he asked, sounding tired and a little more than skeptical.
“The hope is you, Mark. And everyone like you. It’s about all those who were exiled through the flumes.”
Mark gave me a surprised look.
I added, “Why do you think Saint Dane wants you dead?”
“Because we’re all that remains of the opposition.”
“That’s more true than you know. What happened to you when you went into the flume in the Bronx on Second Earth? Where did you go?”
Mark’s expression turned dark. “Cloral,” he said softly. That was all he said at first. I think it was tough for him to wind his mind back to that time. He was struggling to keep a lid on his emotions. I didn’t want to press him, but I had to know.
“I messed things up pretty bad, Bobby.”
“You?” I said, trying not to laugh. “Mark, with all that’s been going on, I don’t think there’s anything you could have done that would make it any worse.”
He didn’t believe me. Something was eating him up.
“Tell me,” I said.
After another minute Mark got himself together and told me his story.
“A couple dozen of us ended up on Cloral in that underwater cave. I was the only one who knew enough to swim out. But once we got to the surface, it was nuts. It wasn’t like the Cloral you described in your journals. There were battles between barges. The raiders were everywhere. Each barge was like its own fortress trying to defend itself. We were picked up by some raiders and forced to work on their ships. It was nasty.” He looked me dead in the eye and said, “It’s where I learned to fight. You don’t want to know why.”
There was one question I had to ask. I had been holding off because I was afraid of the answer, but I couldn’t wait any longer.
“What about Courtney? Was she with you?”
Mark shook his head gravely. “No. I don’t know what happened to her. We went into the flume together, but she didn’t land on Cloral. Once other exiles started arriving, I started piecing together what must have happened. We figured that the Ravinians were tossing their enemies into the flume and sending them to other territories randomly. A few more showed up on Cloral. There may have been others, but I had no way of knowing.”
Mark hadn’t yet heard about the Bronx Massacre and the multiple thousands of people that Ravinia tossed into the flume that black day in Yankee Stadium.
He added, “I haven’t seen Courtney since we went into that flume together.”
“We were afraid you were all executed,” I said.
“Sometimes I wish we had been.”
My heart ached for my friend.
“How did you end up on Third Earth?”
“I didn’t know what had happened on Second Earth, but from the way things were going with Ravinia, I was pretty sure it was lost. That meant Third Earth was the only territory that Saint Dane hadn’t brought to a turning point. As dumb as this sounds, I still felt as if we were on the mission, Bobby. I wanted to get here to try and stop Saint Dane. I gathered together a bunch of the other exiles, and we mutinied against the raiders. We stole a couple of skimmers and took off to the flume. I hoped that a Traveler would come by, maybe even you, and get us out of there, but nobody showed. I knew that traveling without a Traveler would damage the flume, so we sat and waited. I don’t know for how long. Too long. I was beginning to think we’d have to live in that underwater cavern, eating the fruit from the walls forever. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and called “Third Earth” into the flume. I knew it was wrong, but I guess I was going a little out of my mind. I expected things to start rumbling, but nothing bad happened. The flume activated normally and we were on our way here. Twenty of us. At first I thought it was okay. I hoped things had somehow changed. It wasn’t until we got here that I realized I was wrong. As soon as we set foot on Third Earth, the flume started rocking. It was like Eelong all over again, Bobby. The flume collapsed. It was my fault. Bringing those guys here was wrong. I’m the one who destroyed the flumes.”
I smiled. Mark gave me an odd look. I guess that’s what happens when you bare your soul to your best friend, and all he does is smile.
“You didn’t destroy them, Mark. It would have happened anyway.”
“But…what?”
I wanted to put his mind at ease, but I didn’t want to start the whole lesson on Solara just then.
“The flumes were destroyed, Mark,” I said. “All of them. It had nothing to do with you. Trust me. There are bigger forces at work.”
Mark stared at me a long time, trying to understand. He wanted to believe, but he was having trouble. “Are you serious or just trying to make me feel better?”
“Both.”
“You’re not kidding?”
“No. It wasn’t you, Mark. I swear.”
He relaxed. It was like the weight of guilt was physically lifted off his shoulders. Mark may not have understood it all, but he believed me. Probably because he needed to.
Although, his story raised questions. I knew exactly how the flumes were destroyed, but now I wasn’t so sure when they were destroyed. I had thought it happened right after I was sucked into the flume on Second Earth. But if Mark had lived on Cloral for so long, the time lines didn’t match up. As confusing as that was, it actually fit with what I was seeing. Sort of. Mark aged when I didn’t. Though it felt like minutes, I may have been floating in time and space limbo for years. Or maybe time didn’t matter once you left a physical world. Or maybe now that I knew I was a spirit, any pretense of living a normal physical life didn’t matter anymore. Or maybe I should stop freakin’ worrying about things I couldn’t control. Yeah, that was the way to go.
“Tell me what happened after you got here,” I asked Mark.
“We barely got out of the flume before it was crushed under some big, marble building I’d never seen before. I figured it was a new flume on Third Earth until we started exploring. It was the flume in Stony Brook, Bobby. But it wasn’t the Stony Brook we grew up in.”
I didn’t want to hear those details. I knew they couldn’t be good.
“The place was deserted, so we made our way toward the city. We found some survivors, and that’s how we found out about the war. That was around three years ago. We’ve been fighting to survive ever since, waiting for something to happen. Or maybe I should say, we were waiting for you to come. Are you serious about the flumes?”
“Yes. So there are only twenty exiles here on Third Earth?”
“No. After today we’re down to twelve. I don’t understand it. There are plenty of war survivors, but the Ravinians only target us.”
“That’s because the exiles are the last thing standing in Saint Dane’s way.”
Mark gave me a confused look. That made no sense to him, and I wasn’t so sure my explanation would help much.
We stopped talking for a while as he brought the helicopter in for a landing. We touched down in an empty lot on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. No sooner did we hit the ground than a group of men and woman ran toward us. I tensed up. Were we under attack again?
“It’s okay,” Mark assured me. “They’re my guys.”
Mark and I climbed out of the chopper. Not a word was spoken because everyone knew exactly what to do. Four small flatbed dollies were dropped on the ground. Half the group went to one side of the chopper, half on the other. They didn’t even wait until the rotor stopped turning. Everyone lifted the small helicopter up and placed it onto the dollies. Soon we were under way, pushing the helicopter toward the open doors of a derelict garage. Once the chopper was wheeled inside, four more people ran back out to scuff up the tracks from our journey, while the others pushed the huge door shut. The whole operation didn’t take more than a couple of minutes. The helicopter was hidden away, safe from the prying eyes of Ravinians.
Once the job was done, I turned to look into the garage and saw a half dozen other choppers, along with a number of yellow taxicabs.
“What do you think of our collection?” Mark asked with a smile. “The choppers are courtesy of the Ravinians.”
“You stole them?” I asked in surprise.
“There’s more, too. Hidden all over the city. We’ve been acting like guerrillas since the minute we arrived here, Bobby. We hope to put this stuff to good use someday.” Mark looked me right in the eye and asked, “Is today that day?”
I debated about how much to tell him. The truth about Halla and Solara was a huge, impossible story. I decided that the details would wait for another time. There were more important things to do. So I told him what I thought he needed to know. We sat on the far side of the garage, away from the others. I knew they’d have a million questions, and they deserved answers, but they would have to wait.
“This is the deal, Mark,” I began. “Saint Dane and the Ravinians exiled thousands of people. From what I’ve heard and what you tell me, they were sent all over Halla. Those people are now the last hope. The Travelers have been sent back to their home territories to find them. But Saint Dane wants to find them too. Desperately. That’s why he tortured that poor guy today. He’s afraid of you, Mark. I don’t think the turning point on Third Earth was that war. I think it’s you.”
“Me?” he echoed, shocked.
“You and all the other exiles. You represent the future of Third Earth and of Halla. That’s why Saint Dane wants you dead.”
“Why us? What can we do to him? There’s only a handful of us left.”
“There’s more than that. Way more. Seventy thousand people were dumped into a flume on Second Earth. I was there. I saw it. The exiles are the ones who stood up to Ravinia so long ago, and it’s your collective spirit that’s keeping the battle going. It’s that spirit that Saint Dane wants to kill. You represent independence. Free will. Unique thinking. Everything that goes against his ideal. You and the others are the last positive force in Halla.”
Mark nodded thoughtfully.
“You’re getting a little cosmic on me,” he said with a small smile.
“I know.”
“Seventy thousand?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Man, I’d love to have half those people here with us. We’ve been coming up with ideas on how to bring down that Ravinian conclave. None of ’em work with a few dozen of us. But seventy thousand…that’s a whole different ball game.”
“Maybe you’ll get the chance.”
Mark had a gleam in his eye. He was imagining the possibilities. “There were more exiles on Cloral,” he said. “Do you think the rest could be there?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I’m going to Cloral.”
“What should we do in the meantime?”
“Stay alive. That’s the most important thing. Once I know the other exiles are safe, I’m coming back, and we’ll take our last shot at Saint Dane. Together.”
“There’s something else you have to do,” Mark said.
“What’s that?”
“Find Courtney.”
Courtney. Where could she be? After seeing Mark, I had no doubt that she would still be alive. I had to believe that. If anyone represented the positive spirit of Halla, it was Courtney. Heck, she could probably keep Solara going all on her own.
“I missed you, man. There were so many times I wished you were with me.”
Mark and I finally broke down and hugged. He was my best friend. The guy I grew up with. The guy who was loyal to me throughout everything. He was my acolyte. Now he was one of the forces that would try to save Halla. I was certain of that. It was the way it was meant to be.
“Why did you take so long to come back?” he asked.
“I didn’t, Mark,” I explained. “I feel as if I’ve only been gone for a short time. Maybe hours.”
He gave me a confused look.
“Strange, huh?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“You know something,” I added. “I think that’s good news.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I’ve been sent here to Third Earth five years after Patrick’s time. That tells me that the turning point may have shifted. I’m here because I need to be here. Now. I think we’ve still got a chance.”
Mark nodded thoughtfully. “You gonna explain all this to me a little better some time?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “It’ll make your head explode.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s incredible. I know it all, Mark. Everything. And I found my family.”
“Really!” he exclaimed. “Where are they?”
“They’re safe, but I don’t want to explain it now. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
“I’m happy for you, Bobby,” he said with total sincerity. “I know what it’s like to lose your family.”
“I know you do,” I said. There was nothing more to add, so I stood and took a deep breath. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Better not be another five years,” Mark cautioned.
“I don’t think that’ll happen. This is where I need to be. This time. I may not be gone very long at all.”
“However long it takes, we’ll be ready. We’ve been ready for a while.”
“For what?”
“To bring down that conclave. That’s what we’re going to do, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “Listen to you, getting all macho on me.”
Mark shrugged. “What can I say? I’m ready for this to end.”
Mark and I hugged one last time.
“Find them,” he said softly. “And find her.”
“I will.”
We pulled apart and he said, “Hey, how are you going to get to Cloral if the flumes are destroyed?”
“I’ll find a way.”
Mark shrugged and turned toward his friends. If he had looked back at me a second later, he would have been surprised to see that I was no longer there. I had stepped off Third Earth….
And onto the deck of a burning barge on the territory of Cloral. It took me all of five seconds to realize that it was under attack.