{Earth}

Tameka died. No, Pax did. Kyle burned in the fire. Lucas died in the chateau. Tempest and Dolor sank with the quantum comm system at the Hoover dam. But Andrew knew better than these Probabilities. He followed the guide that Kyle made in his memories.

His childhood.

School.

Meeting his friends.

And then…

{Earth | 2004}

“Andrew, I want you to meet someone.” Rayne nervously wet her lips and wrung her hands before she looked to the sky.

A heavy thud sounded behind him with a whoosh. Andrew turned to see what made her eyes so big. The nondescript parking lot lost its lights long ago, but he still made out the figure surrounded by black wings. They unfurled and retracted, revealing a handsome man. Tall. His skin was pale and kinda gray. With a fantastic smile. Jeez.

“I’m Xelan.” Calm and kind, he held out his hand for Andrew to shake.

Sure, why not? “Andrew. She told me about you.”

The girl in question walked up beside him and nudged him with an elbow. Rayne teased him, “I didn’t make him up.”

“Yea, yea.” He rolled his eyes and slapped a five-dollar bill in her palm. “So you gonna tell me I’m descended from a hybrid species and need to train for the upcoming apocalypse, too?”

A look passed between Xelan and Rayne. They already had secret looks after a month since she told Andrew of the close encounter. Eventually, the winged alien turned his attention back to the younger man. “I’m glad she got some preliminary information out of the way. And yes. The five of you will save Earth.”

“What if I don’t want to join your little army of underage heroes?”

“Rayne, can you excuse us a minute?”

She scoffed a little at Andrew before groaning and walking away. “Fine!”

Left with Xelan, the teenage hybrid shrank and shuffled awkwardly. “Yea, well. What do you wanna say to me?”

The tall man crouched to half his height, meeting Andrew’s eyes even kilter. Black with a deep blue ring around the iris. “If you don’t join the cause, the worlds will fail. If you join us, you’ll only see the truth after we’ve succeeded. You’ll look back on this moment many times and remember how pivotal you were to the salvation of this unit. Tell me, is that something you’re willing to let down? To let go?”

Andrew glanced across the parking lot at Rayne, who punched the shit out of a tree. With every blow, she yelped in pain. Dedicated. Certain in her trust. The gravity of this moment strung between him and the people he cared for. The world.

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“Okay. But I want a statue made of me when we win.”

That fantastic grin again. “Deal.”

{Earth | Present Day}

This was a bad time to bring up that statue.

“Kyle isn’t dead,” Andrew announced to the terrified people he loved, gathered in the Iona Medical Ecology lobby. Other voices—other of his voices—echoed those words in his head. The many Probabilities he filtered through to anchor his proper reality.

The glass walls and ceiling displayed a scorched field at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The Ecology hung from the cliffside in a building of glass and concrete. A quarter mile from the entrance, the conduit leading to the Iona Arsenal spewed a column of fire.

Lynn Renee, Chief Weapons Engineer, sank to the floor, staring out the window in shock. Her deep skin tone contrasted with her white coveralls. Black hair coiled in locs draped over her face, hiding her tears. Hoarsely, she repeated, “I tried to stop him. I tried…”

Her husband, Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Pablo Suarez, swept his white lab coat off and draped it over his wife’s shoulders. “You’re in shock, honey.” He kissed her temple before turning serious brown eyes on Andrew. “I hope you’re right, but how do you know?”

“Because in a gazillion Probabilities that matches our current path, he lives on to crack a few more jokes.”

Lynn faced him with eye contact and sat straighter.

Silence, the mysterious amnesia-stricken Icarean woman, spoke up from the suspension staircase’s landing. “If not dead, then what happened to him?” The youthful cadence of her deep voice belied the age in her steely gray eyes. Eons lingered in there. Empty ones.

It struck Andrew as interesting and convenient that Kyle, the memory-reading Progeny known as Story Taker, vanished right as they found a way to hack into her memory. But she asked an excellent question. He shook his head and offered nothing. “I don’t know.” He turned back to Lynn and put as much reassurance in his tone as possible. “But I know he’s alive.”

“We trust you.” Lucas, resolute and gorgeous, shot Silence an unexpected glare as he passed her on the stairs. Did he suspect her of something? The sandy-blond Icarus with golden eyes nodded at the disaster outside. “We can worry about Kyle later. In the meantime, what can you do to stop that fire, Lynn?”

The human woman survived a load of bullshit in the last few weeks. It leadened her shoulders with the heft of its burden. “I need a comms device.”

“I got you, boss.” Smith, her second officer, jogged up the stairs. He also shot Silence a strange look as he ran passed before handing a comm unit to his superior.

Lynn allowed a moment, as if she physically switched to the commander hat. Her voice came firm and clear. “Weapons Division Max. This is Chief. Over.”

Andrew and Lucas exchanged curious glances. As the agricultural team in Australia, they rarely encountered protocols for this area of Iona’s asylum operations.

“This is Weapons Division Max. We’re glad to hear from you, boss. What are your orders? Over.”

The Chief swallowed and wet her lips before ordering, “O.P. 324. Seal it off. Over.”

Smith’s brown eyes widened twice their size, and his mouth gaped open. “Chief…”

She cut him off with a firm shake of her head.

The engineer’s voice stuttered, “3—324. Yes, Chief. I need your code before I can execute. Over.”

Heavy, tired, Lynn hung her head as she confirmed, “Iona. Banana. Yellowstone. Treehouse. Delete after reception. I’m compromised. Over and Out.” The woman acknowledged her husband’s kind smile before standing and shuffling to the glass outer wall. And waited.

They watched with her. One second the fire roared from the spiral it created inside the Arsenal’s tubular entryway. The next, it ceased altogether as if they sucked out the oxygen.

Her back to everyone, Lynn’s voice trembled. But not with fear. The brave human female demanded, “We save Kyle. Then we find Imminent. We kill them. Then we get our lives back.” She turned with her deep brown eyes burning. “For Earth and Cinder.” When she pounded her fist to her chest over her nacre, the others followed. Even Silence, who looked perplexed at the gesture, seemed to understand its significance.

“Iona Medical Ecology. This is Bones. We need help at the Stronghold. Over.”

“The nightmare continues…” Lucas stated dramatically.

Smith looked to the ceiling and groaned, “We need a miracle.”

They needed a Seamswalker.