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A few days later, we were finally flying back to the airship. Lance had wrapped his arm around my waist. At first I flinched, worried another memory attack was going to start, but considering how cold the borrowed South African jet was, I didn’t complain. Inese sat with the radio between her hands, staring at the solid wall across from her, and Lily chatted with Dad about the life-spirit elementals she had encountered during her previous missions.
“We’ll dock in ten minutes,” the intercom said.
Inese released a sigh of relief. She had fixed the radio the same day we brought her the parts, but it took a few days for South Africa to arrange plans for a recovery team to sneak in and get us out. They didn’t have the advantage of the cloaking device our car used to have. The team retrieved Jack and Quin from their independent mission regarding Spectator three days ago.
When we arrived at the airship, Mom was waiting in the hangar. Once Dad stepped off the ramp, she hurried to him, a small, worried smile crossing her lips. “You’re back.” He held her close, running his fingers under her hair.
We were finally home.
Lance squeezed my hand and pushed me toward them. “Go on.” He forced a smile, and then headed on upstairs and into the second deck of the airship. My chest constricted. He didn’t have family to return to. Not with his mom already dead and his father so focused on the security of the Community.
Maybe that’s why he was so quick to break away from the Community’s ideals.
“Jenna.” Mom took me into their hug. “I was afraid I’d lost you. When we didn’t hear back—”
“Shh.” Dad pressed his forehead to hers. “We’re here now. No need to fret. We got a bit beaten up by a sphinx, but a local family took us in and cared for us until we got back on our feet. We even learned a few things.”
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Mom murmured, though she didn’t sound convinced we were as fine as he said. “Why don’t you tell me about it over dinner? I have enough macaroni and cheese ready for everyone.”
Dad chuckled before removing his watch from his wrist. He’d had it ever since I was little, when Mom gave it to him as a Father’s Day gift. Like most the electronics in the car, it had been fried. “Do you think you can fix this? The sphinx didn’t like it much.”
“Of course.” Mom rubbed his shoulder and guided him out the door. I smiled. It wouldn’t matter what she’d made, or if she had told him she couldn’t fix the watch. He’d just be happy to have her back.
“Glad to see ya made it.” Jack squeezed my shoulder, and then shoved a flimsy comic book into my hands. “Here, I thought you and Lance might get a kick out of this.”
I stared at the white-haired protagonist on the cover. Vines grew like clothing around her. Behind her, a buff, dual-wielding swordsman sliced through a raging fire beast. “The Adventures of Plant Girl and Russian Katana,” I read aloud, citing the title. “What in the Community is this?” Like the miniatures in the game shop, this seemed a little too close to reality for comfort.
Jack grinned. “I gave a certain comic book artist permission to use the Coalition’s likenesses in her work.”
“How does this help our research?” I flipped through the comic, scowling as Plant Girl wrangled beasties with her vines and left them tangled in a net. Not a bad idea, though her vines looked a bit... revealing.
“Wolf’s a writer, and one of her storylines involved a fourthwalling cult. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s a fourthwaller herself, the way she kept talking about games and gamemasters. I figured she was the perfect person to ask about Spectator.”
“Did she know anything?”
“Yes, actually.” Jack crossed his arms over his dark green jacket. “He’s the cult’s founder.”
“He... what?” I stared at him, confused.
“Not only that, but there’s several theories out there saying that he’s a time traveler—constantly trying to push events one way or the other. Kind of like what your friend Cass said.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call him a friend. But he seems to be onto something.” I fiddled with my flower charm. “Spectator showed up again when the sphinx attacked us.”
“Inese said something about that. Did he give ya any more clues about what he wanted?”
“He said had a score to settle, and an incident to prevent. One he thought I could help with.”
Jack cocked his head. “Did he say anything about what that score or incident was?”
“No. That’s when he started going on about the riddles with the sphinx. It seemed like the sphinx had dealt with him before, and they weren’t friends. Still, they were both interested in the riddle game, which makes me think there may be another connection between the time stones and Spectator.”
Jack scratched his chin. “I wonder if those Catonians were fourthwallers.”
“If the stones are as ancient as we think they are, that wouldn’t make sense,” I pointed out. “Not if Spectator formed the fourthwalling cult. Besides, the sphinx made a distinction between humans and Catonians. Said that either could have been the answer to its riddle.”
Jack thumped the comic book thoughtfully. “Huh. That’s new. What was the riddle?” I tried my best to recount the riddle, and Jack gaped at me. “You seriously haven’t heard that one? It’s a classic!”
I scowled. “Not in the Community, it isn’t.”
Jack sighed and scratched his chin with his claw. “You poor, deprived people. Anyways, I guess it doesn’t really matter. If Spectator is a time traveler, like they say, then maybe he went back to the time of these so-called Catonians and did something to get on their bad side.”
I frowned. “Even if he did, why bring us into this? What score does he want to settle? What incident does he want to prevent? And what part does he want us to play?”
Jack shrugged. “That’s what we’ve got to figure out. But we’re not going to figure it out in a day.”
“I guess you’re right.” I handed back the comic. “Either way, Lance will probably enjoy this.”
“Thought so. I’ll go find him. See if I can cheer him up.” He jogged out of the hangar and I headed to Jim’s room. I wanted to ask him about Jamel’s concept of a deity and how it might relate to the time stones.
Once I got there, though, I found Lance explaining his theory regarding time travel and parallel universes. I slipped in and took a seat in one of the plush chairs, patiently waiting for their conversation to end.
“So... what do you think?” Lance asked, once he finished explaining to Jim the same things he had explained to me in the desert.
Jim rubbed his forehead. “There are many theories regarding time travel and parallel universes... none of them proven. However, I may be able to offer some explanation of the concept you are talking about.” He pulled a piece of paper from his desk and sketched a straight line. “Think of this as our universe. Time can only move forward, because time is a forward movement between point A and point B.” He marked the dots on the paper. “Now, if you want to go back in time to stop the Camaraderie from ever creating the Community...” He drew a loop that curved back on the line and intersected with dot A at the beginning. “You want to return to a point that already exists. In order for this new timeline to begin, you must remember everything that happened in your timeline, and time must still move forward. So the universe splits, creating two possibilities.” He drew a new line veering off the original.
“So the Camaraderie continues their reign regardless of what we do,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “That doesn’t help us. That just creates a whole new universe with new problems.”
Jim settled back in his chair. “In that theory, yes.”
Lance drummed his fingers on the armrest, his chin propped against his other hand. “In the event that we do go back in our timeline and stop the Camaraderie, and we don’t lose our memories about what happened previously, the Community wouldn’t exist, right?”
“Without someone to create it,” Jim agreed, “the Community would never come to be.”
I shifted uneasily in my seat. For all that I wanted to stop the Camaraderie, Lance had a point. The one good thing the Camaraderie did was create the Community. Without them, we would lose the efficiency and safety it offered. We’d go back to the chaos of before.
I glanced down at the flower charm on my chest. Even if we managed to exist through some weird paradox that didn’t make any more sense than probability powers or laser eyes, everyone who was born because the Community had helped pair their parents would be gone. They would be dead, because they would never be born, and we’d be responsible.
“This is a bad idea.” I’d rather face the brain seed while trying to find a way to fix this timeline than be responsible for killing decades of people. “I mean... stopping the Camaraderie from creating beasts is a good thing, but what about the people of the Community? Who are we to say they don’t get to exist?”
Lance scowled. “The Community is wrong, Jen. It creates beasties and takes away everyone’s freedom—it needs to be stopped. If we stop it at its source... think of all the heartache we could prevent.”
My stomach lurched. Lance was doing it again. He wasn’t thinking about the Community, just about what he wanted. “The people in the Community aren’t at fault,” I protested. “Those without powers are safe. They are secure, and they do have peace, and efficiency. Are we any better than the Camaraderie if we change their lives without asking them?”
Jim’s expression soured. “Let me show you something.” He reached for the old red book he’d been reading last time, flipped it open in his lap, and then removed a faded photo from its pages. He handed it to me. There were at least forty people in the picture. “That was me.” Jim pointed to a proud young man in the corner. Beside him, I recognized Gwen from the pictures on her wall. I passed the photograph to Lance, numb. So many people... “This was one segment of the Coalition of Freedom, before the Camaraderie destroyed Freedom Tower.”
“What happened to them?” Lance handed back the photo, which Jim gently replaced in the book. It was hard to imagine so many people being in our rebellion at one time.
“When the Camaraderie destroyed the tower, that attack alone killed most of our team.” Jim leaned back in his seat, the plush fabric sinking underneath him. “After that, we decided the airship was safer. Of those who survived, many died over the coming years. Raids... bounties... general missions. This is not a safe job. Never forget that.”
We’d lost several people already in the short time I’d been here.
Chill. Alec. Crush.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The cycle of death hadn’t ended when I joined the Coalition, and it likely wouldn’t end after I left. That must have been the weariness I sensed from Jim the first time I tried using the flower charm. But destroying an entire timeline just to prevent what the Camaraderie had done?
“How did this all happen in the first place?” I asked. “How did the Camaraderie get the power they did? For all that they’ve done some terrible things, uniting the Community couldn’t have been easy.”
“Right before the Camaraderie gained power, two North American cities were destroyed in a struggle between those with powers and the Special Forces agents who, at the time, mostly served ordinary citizens. The Camaraderie quickly gained favor from those who distrusted the heroes. There was resistance to the Camaraderie’s ideas, but Jellyman, posed as the noble ‘Lord Black,’ backed the Camaraderie and came out as the hero who founded EYEnet. Secretly, he uprooted the government by general vote and assassination. Anything that stood in his way was destroyed or forced into submission. Where the economy had suffered, now there were enough jobs for everyone—because the Camaraderie killed anyone who did not blindly follow. They masked their actions by blaming the destruction on theophrenia.”
“I see,” I whispered. Lance looked pale. “But why was everyone so resistant to the idea of a safe community?” As boring as it was, the Community had its perks.
“We were asked to give up freedoms we were accustomed to. Did you play video games in the Community, or speak as freely as you do here? When we had questions, we asked. We chose our leaders and made our own mistakes. When we made a mistake, we learned from it, and then tried again.” His voice softened. “If we could go back in time, we could make history right.”
I clenched my fists. “If we go back in time, how would we learn that creating beasts is a terrible idea? What does freedom matter if we aren’t safe to make those decisions? It’s hardly efficient to make our own mistakes. We learn from the past. You’ve said so yourself—knowledge of history is one of the greatest weapons we have.” I didn’t like beasts, but if what Jim said was true, changing time wasn’t such a good idea. “Is freedom so important to you that you would never give the Community a chance?”
“It may not make much sense to you now,” Jim said softly, “but could you return to the Community knowing you could not live as you do now?”
“Yes,” I retorted.
But was I too outspoken? Was I too sure of myself, too ready to say the leaders were wrong? It might not be as easy to return as I’d like.
“Maybe,” I conceded, a heavy weight settling in my chest.
Lance moved his hand to where he normally kept his sword. “Never.”
A chill flushed through me, cold and unrelenting. Lance didn’t want to return to the Community. I felt like a toughness beastie had wrapped its thick hands around my chest and sunk icy spikes inside me. I had hoped... I had hoped that when all this was over, Lance and I would be able to return. I had hoped we could go back to the way things were before, but with fewer secrets. Fewer atrocities against those with powers.
I had hoped for too much.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to keep my thoughts inward, to not let the flower charm pass along my wound to anyone around me.
Lance was a true rebel. That was why he didn’t mind changing the past. Why he didn’t mind killing the beasts and the security guards. He didn’t see anything in them. They were cut off from him, a relic of a society he saw no value in.
I opened my eyes and realized I was holding the charm between my fingers. Rubbing it. Tracing the contours of the petals.
Determination rolled from Lance, proud and raw, and I barely needed the charm to know how much he wanted the freedom Jack spoke of and Jim recounted. I didn’t need the charm to know he was willing to give up safety, security, and efficiency, to get what he wanted.
We didn’t want the same thing.
“Enough about the past.” Jim sat upright and grunted, rubbing his lower back. “My old bones are aching more than they used to. We can talk later, but for now I could use some rest.”
“Of course,” I said, my voice almost too soft to be heard. Respect for the elders—some traits still remained from the Community, even if I could forget to say “good morning” to a waitress.
But what Jim said about returning... how would I return when this was over?
Could I return?
I felt the tips of my hair and considered the print on the smiling tree shirt I liked to wear. Would there even be a Community once we succeeded? Beastie creation had to stop, that much I was sure of. I didn’t like how secretive the Community had been about my grandfather and the daily pills. But when it came down to it, the Community was safe, secure, and efficient. We didn’t have that here, and never would, not with the Camaraderie creating monsters like the Legion Spore.
Maybe Tim had the right idea. Maybe the only way to stop them was to work from within.
I stood, told Lance he should go find Jack, and then I excused myself.
Alone, I returned to my room and removed my empty armbands from my pockets. I picked up a pair of clippers. I couldn’t give up on the Community. Never mind the brain seed, or the memory attacks.
The leaves hanging from the ceiling rattled with unspoken anticipation. I took a deep breath, listening as the whisper of leaves gave way to the airship’s calming hum, and then I chose my next set of vines for my armbands.
