[Temporary timeline, possible future.]
The portal shimmered. On the other side was the access route to the CARF, operated by unmanned machines and subroutines that not even Samantha knew what they were really there for, or who put them there in the first place. Still, the family lingered on the known side of the portal for only the least amount of time necessary before taking the plunge, deciding not to waste any rewindable time when they were this close to their target. Albert was back on full mana and the others were as ready as they could ever be.
The room on the other side, an unknown variable up until the very moment the trio emerged from the opaque portal, was empty. Albert was quick to scan it with his enhanced senses, draining a negligible amount of mana from his reserves, and confirmed that there was nobody there. It was, as predicted, an access route most people didn’t know, its presence a well kept secret. There were no windows to the outside, just a single reinforced door that could only be opened from the inside using a secret code.
Samantha entered it, looking at the numbers and letters appearing on her phone in quick succession. The Quadrangle was once again making their job much easier than it would have been otherwise. Then, as the door hissed open, the absence of windows in the room suddenly made total sense. They were several hundred meters up in the air, inside a concrete cube built almost at the summit of a rocky plateau of deep red stone, tall enough that the whole valley below was clearly visible, together with the signs of yet another storm brewing at the horizon.
At the top of a few flights of stairs carved in the stone, surrounded by tiny bushes of shy green leaves cooked by the cold, a helipad was built in the side of the massive rock pillar.
“I guess it’s time to show your grandson your skills as a pilot, old man.” Samantha said.
“Finally. Time to be useful!”
They were up in the air in a matter of moments, with the old man showing no signs of being rusty in the way he handled the helicopter like it was one of his own limbs. Now it was all a matter of reaching the CARF and land on its roof, a journey that was already not very pleasant due to the conformation of the land and the path the helicopter was forced to take in order to leave the valley they were in, and was made even worse by the rapidly deteriorating meteorological conditions. The storm, previously only a dark path at the horizon, now took up almost all of the sky, with tendrils of dark clouds obscuring the sun and taking over what little blue was left with incredible speed.
Strong air currents tugged at the helicopter, making it sway and move around.
“We are heading straight into the storm, get ready because it’s gonna get very bumpy from now on.”
Right on cue, the real turbulence began. And it ramped up quickly, turning the flight into a very disorienting and frightening experience for Albert, who had never even taken a plane his whole life. He tried his best not to look down, but it didn’t help that the helicopter was of the open variety, like those used by the military just without the guns, and the wind and hail pelted him with icy cold blasts and soaked his clothes.
Beside him, his mother was impassible. It was like she wasn’t even aware of the weather and of the discomfort, instead looking around and scanning the sky in search of something, her fingers gripping the trigger of her rifle. It wasn’t long before the shield around Albert began to shimmer to protect him from the elements, but even then his mother simply kept looking, disregarding everything else.
He didn’t speak. There was enough wind and noise to drown out any conversation, but even if that hadn’t been the case he still felt that he didn’t have anything to say. He knew the plan and he knew what to do once they reached the CARF, and until then it was all a matter of waiting and keeping his eyes open, careful about whatever threat his mother was worried about.
In truth, he knew well what she was worried about. He had seen PsyOps take off flying after he wounded him at the Pylon outside of Tryte. He wondered, though, if the man would be able to fly even with this weather and this far high without trouble.
His question was soon answered.
“We got incoming!” Lloyd yelled on the internal comms, while alarm bells went off and added to the already deafening cacophony of sounds that invaded the open cabin.
The helicopter suddenly left its former straight flight pattern and the world around Albert lurched, gravity no longer working as intended for a moment, and he caught glimpse of a shadow in the clouds, like a little floating silhouette in the distance. Then the missile that had been locked onto the helicopter, responsible for the alarms and the sudden evasive maneuver shot past, chasing one of the flares his grandpa had deployed instead of hitting them.
Albert cranked both [Perception] and [Bullet Time] to the max right as his mother shifted to grab the heavy guns she had loaded on the heli before taking off. She scanned the sky, taking stock of the presence of the silhouette after a few seconds of searching, and immediately started to shoot. The explosions inside the rifle accelerated the bullets to incredible speeds, and even with a five-factor time dilation Albert was almost unable to follow their path as they shot towards the shadow in the distance.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
But he saw it. He saw it ditch the rocket launcher and dodge so fast it was almost impossible to follow it. Before a shot could hit it, the shadow moved and danced around, getting closer and closer and avoiding the shots like it knew exactly where they were being aimed at before they were even fired.
Because that’s exactly what he’s doing, isn’t it? He can read minds.
Then the mental attacks started. Right when Albert was about to join the skirmish with his fireballs, that’s when he felt his mental defenses trigger. [Mental Fortress] was a passive skill, and it activated immediately in response to the attacks, drawing whatever mana it needed to fend off the alien power trying to take over his mind. He resisted the attack, but it was clear that the other two passengers had not. Samantha groaned, realizing too late that her grip on the weapon had loosened and that her rifle was now tumbling down and into the void below.
Albert didn’t help her. He shot to the control cabin of the helicopter just as they were about to lose their upright position and shook his grandfather awake before it was too late. The old man woke up with a jolt and grabbed the stick tight, trying to stabilize the helicopter before he lost control of their flight. As he did so, Albert ran back to the open section and tracked the movements of the attacker, readying fireball after fireball and making them split into two right as they were about to be dodged.
There was a plan to deal with PsyOps, which made use of his telepathic powers to trick him into a false sense of security. Samantha made her firing patters more predictable. Albert kept throwing with just enough accuracy to scare but not to hit the flying man. After a while the fireballs, and the hail of bullets from Sam’s many weapons (she had packed many more than she could ever use for the occasion) forced the psion into a predictable flight pattern.
Then Samantha made her next shot a bit too easy to read, displaying it clearly in the front of her mind.
The psion bought it, dodging right where albert was aiming his next shot.
Both fireballs managed to hit, and the shadow seemed to fall, but then it resumed flying and disappeared into the storm.
“Shit. He’s still flying! How far is the CARF?” Samantha yelled.
“5 minutes out! Can you hold on?” Lloyd replied.
“Of course. You keep flying!” She said, and turned to Albert, who had disabled the time dilation skill to listen in. “It’s okay. This is all within plans.”
She was heaving, clearly fatigued after having been mentally attacked by the psion. “But! Another attack and I’m out.” She said, spitting some blood from a ruptured capillary in the back of her nose. “Fuck that guy. Listen, you nicked him. Good job. Now, we just fly straight and if you see anything move – shoot it.”
“Understood.”
***
There they saw it, the helipad at the top of the CARF. It was a bright green circle, drawn in a special metamaterial that could be visible in any weather, glowing in a field of utter black. All around the descending helicopter was only darkness, but it was not because it was night – it was barely afternoon after all – but it was the storm that had robbed the day of its light. The powerful spotlights both on the helicopter and on the roof of the CARF, around the landing pad, barely managed to penetrate a few meters of darkness before the rain and hail ate their glow and swallowed it.
The whole roof was a blurry shadow of blacker black, without edge.
“Stay close.” Sam ordered, and the helicopter’s engines died, and the lights stayed on. They hopped off together, but when they went to the cabin to see why Lloyd was not joining him, they found it empty.
“Something is wrong.”
Albert looked around. Then he felt something.
He turned to face his mother. She was gone. What he had felt was a rush of space mana, and it was too late now to activate his Hazegem – even in bullet time – because a powerful force had sent him flying and his grip on the gem loosened. It tumbled on the ground, a luminous dot of purple.
But Albert was still outside the teleportation wards of the CARF. He tried to use teleportation to disappear in a hurry and reappear right where the gem was to snatch it and rewind before it was too late.
A fatal mistake, because as he concentrated on the Teleportation Map, his mental defenses went momentarily down. That’s when PsyOps attacked.
As images of his own plan to take down the psion flashed his awareness, mental attacks digging through his brain and finding old memories, the world shifted. He was falling. In his mind the conversation he had with his mother and grandfather played again and again, while Albert thrashed on the ground, spasming and convulsing. Then, as semblance of reason returned to his mind, he realized that he had indeed teleported and was clutching the gem in his hand.
But he also felt pain flaring in his arm. There was a boot there, he could only see the boot, pushing him down against the wet concrete. It ground and pressed until his hand was forced to open from the pressure on his tendons, unable as he was to use any skill with his mind turned to mush like that.
It was now or never. He struggled to push mana into the gem, feeling it activate.
PsyOps bent down to examine the Hazegem. He hummed. “So this is how you planned to take me down, eh? Interesting.”
He poured his own psionic energy into it, right when the gem activated.
Instead of Albert traveling to the past, PsyOps did. He appeared right at the CARF, alone, in the past.
“What the fuck?”
But it didn’t take him long to understand, not with the memories he now had. Pocketing the now unusable gem until its cooldown was over, PsyOps took flight, determined to kill Albert before he even had a chance to enact his plan. He knew where he was now.
***
“Albert, if you ever need to rewind, rewind back to this moment. If you do that we’ll see you disappear before our eyes and then teleport in, right?”
“Yes, that’s how it looks from the—”
Silence. Suddenly Albert looked distressed, as if in a state of panic.
“Shit. The Hazegem is gone.”
Then there was the sound of a phone ringing.
“Were you expecting calls?” Lloyd asked.
Samantha took out her phone. “This is impossible.” She muttered.
The others looked at the screen. The Quadrangle itself was calling her.