“We could have been friends, you know.” Cordell spoke to me like he was talking to sentient garbage. His words dripped out of his mouth like acid. Not the kind of person I would want to be friends with. “But now? You can die alone, hundreds of miles from home, forgotten within a decade. I hope trying to touch the Sphere was worth it, boy.”
Touch the Sphere? As I thought about it, I was reminded why I brought everyone there to begin with. It wasn’t to fight those guys, it was because I thought the Sphere was the way out of this.
Something changed in Cordell’s eyes when he saw my reaction. He went from confident and disgusted to angered. He sent a cable speeding toward me, black ooze flying off in random directions. The thing moved so fast that I could barely react to it. I couldn’t get a barrier up in front of me to stop it, so I had to settle for putting one up behind me to somewhat cushion the impact of my body slamming into something. If I had to choose between slamming into a cold stone wall and my own barrier, I was going to choose the thing I could soften a little.
That plan worked! My barrier did stop me from getting slammed into the wall. But, and there’s always a but, my armor was totaled. It took its last hit and fell away, leaving me completely exposed to attacks. And man, those guys weren’t ones to waste an opportunity like that. I couldn’t even look up before there was a burning pain below the right part of my ribcage. There, a bit of purple-black ice stuck out, dark frost spreading slightly to the area around the wound. Ordosi’s hands gripped the ice so hard I thought his knuckles would start to bleed.
I’d touched ice that felt like it burned my hand before. Hell, I even had an actual minor ice burn from leaving an ice pack on me for way too long. It was annoying, but I didn’t think much of it past the first couple of hours when it had been a nuisance. The ice dagger I was stabbed with was in a completely different universe. It felt like everything it touched in my body just stopped. Everything ceased to work, except my pain receptors. Those were passing every inspection and running at full power, the traitorous bastards.
I was running so low on power that I didn’t have much left in the tank. It was all or nothing, then or never, so I went back to one of the most horrific events of my life. Not trying to focus on a particular shape, I created a solid orb, about the size of a baseball and stronger than anything I’d made up to that point. As hard as I possibly could, I slammed it into Ordosi’s torso. I felt—and heard—his chest buckle under the force of my attack. He was sent crashing into the wall with a sickening crunch. It looked like he was hit by a cannonball more than a last-ditch attack I threw out. I knew from the moment I hit him that he was going to die. The second impact against the wall was what ensured he would never take another breath.
I made peace with what I had to do there before I did it. From the moment Cordell swiped at my hand with his tentacle when we arrived in the chamber, I knew that the odds of everyone leaving alive were very low. That went for either side. Of course, that didn’t make what I did next any easier.
Out of the corner of my eye, Cregene twitched, placing one foot toward me. She barely moved, but I still generated another orb and sent it directly to her. It hit her square in the chest too, and just because I couldn’t hear her ribs cracking from it didn’t mean I was ignorant of what happened. That attack wasn’t as strong as the one I hit Ordosi with, which ended up being overkill. She didn’t rise again from the weaker attack I’d hit her with. I knew that I didn’t have to attack her. I had the control over my power that I lacked with Eric. I still made the decision to attack and to kill her, even if I was panicked. She wasn’t a threat to me at that point. There weren’t even any mannequins attacking me that I could have used to justify doing what I did. Feeling like I was going to die alone, and without my friends there to be at risk, I just put everything I could into those two small attacks.
Cordell’s roar snapped me back to my painful reality. Cables whirled around the room indiscriminately. He downed his last remaining allies with his rage-filled outburst, his cables breaking their bodies as easily as my orbs had Ordosi and Cregene. When he gained enough control over his cables, he sent them all at me. I didn’t have time to count, but it was at least a few dozen, all ready to rip my body to shreds. Way later than I should have, I reached out and touched the Sphere, putting my trust in its ability to save me.
The world around me erupted in a flash of white, warm light. It was so intense that I thought it burned my eyes and made me go blind. Could it have burned my eyes completely? Blinking once, I realized how stupid that was as my vision worked perfectly fine. My eyes didn’t hurt. The pain from where I was stabbed was still there, turned down to a dull throb more than searing agony.
Sitting in a chair, watching me with intense and love-filled eyes, was my mother. She looked just as I remembered her before the break-in. In fact, she was wearing the same clothes she had been when she came home that day. The woman there was smiling and happy like she had been waiting for me to get home myself.
But I knew that it wasn’t her and it couldn’t be her.
“Look, I don’t know what game this is. I know what I’m seeing isn’t real, so you can cut the crap. I know you’re not my mom.” I sat down, letting my fatigue take over. Even though the woman in front of me was not my mother, I still felt safe where I was. There was no danger of the Sentinels attacking me there. I could finally take a moment to rest and gather myself.
“I’m not, no.” Not My Mom sounded a little disappointed, her voice bringing mixed feelings up into my chest. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to someone else, I thought it would be easier if you saw someone you loved. You had a lot of choices.”
“Okay, so if you’re not my mom, who are you?” I put an elbow on my thigh and rested my chin on my open palm.
“I am...it’s hard to explain. I’m very ill and I’m not one of you. None of your medicine nor machines could fix me. I require something more. I require something beyond your capabilities.” She didn’t look sick to me. She still looked like a happy version of my mom.
“If you don’t want to tell me, I can’t force you. I am getting a little tired of everyone being cryptic, so can you at least give me something to work with?” I put my hands behind me and tried to stretch my torso out. The shard was gone, but there was still some residual ice that was binding my shirt to my skin. I sucked in a breath through my teeth to help cope with the new throb of pain that hit me. It was like the wound was waiting for me to look at it again before it reminded me of its presence.
“I’m the one that you know as the Sphere. What resides inside the shell, anyway. Its heart and soul, if you will.” When I frowned at her, she sighed. “As I said, it’s difficult to explain. The only ones who can help me are very far away. When our conversation is done, you’ll get to meet them. I’m hoping that they’ll listen to you and come help me. I’ve been alone for so long. After I send you to them, I won’t have much energy left to continue. Maybe a year at most.”
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“Alone? Haven’t you had these people here to protect you?”
“Protect? Hah!” The Sphere masquerading as my mother slapped her knee. “They kept me prisoner. Cordell was right in that the others before him wanted to learn about me, but they didn’t have what I required. Cordell didn’t either. He just wanted to keep me all to himself. That fool, he also didn’t understand what I wanted.”
“And yet, somehow, I do,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “And that’s why you brought me here.”
“I’m not sure you understand me,” the Sphere admitted, “but you do have something about you. A rational way of thinking, uncommon in all youth. A kind, but perhaps guilty, heart. When you touched me, you opened all your memories to me. I know how you feel about what happened to your parents. I know how you’ve forgiven Lori after the things she’s said to you. I know how you care for Rebecca and your sister, in different two vastly different ways, yet both equally strong.”
I flushed, both from embarrassment and anger. I didn’t like having my mind prodded and I really wasn’t keen on having my memories used as a personality test, least of all by something pretending to be my mother. I wanted to get up and leave, but all around me was an empty, white space.
“I can tell that I’ve made you angry. I’m sorry, I’ve felt myself degrade gradually over the past few centuries.” Centuries. She said it as casually as I would have mentioned a few weeks or months. “I believe that you have the right blend of strength, compassion, and rationality to help me.”
“Okay, why should I help you?” I felt bad asking it in such a harsh tone, but this thing was using me for its own gain, and I didn’t appreciate that.
“Because I saved your life,” she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Well, she kind of did, I had to give her that. She sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m not asking you to do this...to help because I saved your life. I’m asking you because I’ve been trapped here by those animals, slowly withering away. Each day, I get a little bit weaker. I want...I want to be well again.”
“Ugh, fine, whatever.” My stupid bleeding heart wasn’t going to let me leave without agreeing to help someone in need. Especially when it was presenting itself as my mother. “How do I help you?”
“I...I don’t know. Not exactly.”
“Awesome start. Can my friends help you? Are they okay?” I had been trying to avoid the question. I was scared that I wouldn’t like the answer. I almost spoke up again to tell her not to tell me. I sighed, realizing I had to know.
“I don’t know about your friends, I’m sorry.” The disappointment must have been clear on my face because she hurried to find a silver lining. “But the Sentinels are dealt with! When you touched me, it released enough energy to make sure that they wouldn’t be a problem anymore.”
“Did it kill them?” I looked toward my crossed legs, already knowing that answer.
“It did, yes. It was limited to the chamber you were located in. I don’t know if your friends are safe, but I do know that they didn’t perish the way the Sentinels did.”
“Well, that’s something, at least. Okay, where do I go to help you?” I stood up slowly, my legs wobbly beneath me.
Suddenly, the Sphere was there to support me. She may have looked like my mom, but she was a hell of a lot stronger. “I’ve forgotten much. I only remember bits and pieces during increasingly brief moments of lucidity. Tell them everything you’ve learned here from me. They can help you.”
“Well, that tells me nothing,” I said. The Sphere pursed her lips and I sighed. “Fine, take me to wherever you need me to go. You did save my life after all, so you’re the only reason I’d be able to see my friends again. I owe you for that.”
When I blinked again, I wasn’t in the stone chamber or on a frozen mountain. It was barely above freezing, so for a second, I thought I might have still been on a mountain. That couldn’t have been right. The area was flat, the grass underneath me lush and healthy, not like what you’d find in the middle of a blizzard. I had to be somewhere that was maintained regularly. The grass, while difficult for me to see, looked to have been recently trimmed. Looking up, I let out a sigh of relief. Seeing the dark, starry sky out in the open after being stuck in the mountain was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever laid my eyes on. Still, even with its beauty, something about it looked and felt off to me.
Pulling out my phone, I tried to call everyone I could. No dice for any of them. Checking my screen again, I saw a fat signal indicating I had no reception where I was. Worse than that, two full days had passed since our battle in the mountain. I swore, hunting through my phone’s calendar in hope that I was just seeing things or the date displayed was wrong. Sadly, the calendar told no lies. Weirdly, my phone said it was five thirty in the morning. I was seeing an awful lot of stars for five thirty in the morning.
I wanted to use my phone’s flashlight, but its battery life was getting low, and I wanted to keep it in the event of an emergency. I put my phone away and focused. Around me were the vague, dark silhouettes of trees, shaking in the gentle wind. I couldn’t see past them, but after turning around, I did see some faint light pollution peeking over the tree line. I made a small celebratory gesture with my right hand, forgetting about my wound. It had healed somewhat, the slight sting reminding me it was more than happy to tear open again if I wasn’t going to be careful.
With newfound humility and a humble attitude, I walked in the direction I saw the light. The deeper I got into the trees, the more I was shielded from the wind. As little as it helped against the chill, I was going to count every blessing I got and appreciate them. Still tired from my confrontation, with the wound in my side, and my head still feeling the effects of the mannequin, I carried on into the cold night. It was tough to see the edges of the trees before they hit me. Fortunately, I was on some kind of path, heading toward light. If I stuck with that, I’d have to find some civilization again eventually.
Walking through, I heard strange noises in the nature around me. Lots of little chirping and chattering in the trees. While it was interesting, I didn’t hear much bird activity in the winter back in Oregon, so it spooked me a little bit. I thought that the Sphere sent me to an area that was getting a bit of a cold snap, the last gasp of cool weather before the unforgiving summer moved in, or maybe it dumped me somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere that would have been cooling down instead of warming up. The birds seemed to be enjoying the chill, so I tried my best to follow their lead. I let their weird songs carry me through my walk, guiding me in the event that I got a bit too close to the edge of my path.
Then I walked through the clearing and found the source of the light.
Something in my brain told me I was out of place where I was, so I kept myself hidden behind one of the trees while I peered out into civilization. Rounded buildings with multicolored lights stood strong in defiance of the relaxing darkness that night brought. I didn’t know what architecture I was staring at. It certainly wasn’t any kind of brutalist work I’d become accustomed to. Credit to the guy or gal who drew up that little piece of city. They clearly had some fun taste. Most importantly, they understood how much my eyes needed light to see.
When I saw the first couple with pink skin and rough, scaly heads, I thought it was a couple of folks for the costume party on the yacht dressing up as aliens. When I saw an impossibly tall guy with blue skin and little horns coming out of his head, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Fresh sweat started to run down my torso, my hands suddenly clammy. I wished I had never taken up the Sphere on its offer and just asked it to send me right back to that chamber.
I pulled out my phone and started to put everything together in my head. No reception, middle of the night at five thirty in the morning, near-freezing weather on the doorstep of summer, and the unfamiliar sounds in the wilderness. I was mad it even took me that long to figure it out. I’d never been the sharpest, I’d be the first to tell anyone that, but it was so obvious when I put any thought at all into it. I couldn't stop the feeling of sickness that hit my stomach. Taking a few steps back into the treeline, I threw up, my brain unable to take the new revelation on top of everything else I'd gone through.
I wasn’t on Earth anymore. The Sphere had transported me to an entirely different planet.