They lost time detouring around Page, Arizona. From a distance they saw that something was very wrong with the town. As they approached cautiously along I-89 from the South, they continued periodically looking ahead with the binoculars. When they got within a mile, from their vantage point they saw evidence of what they had already expected. The center of town was a crater a half mile wide. From that point outward, there were hardly more than a handful of buildings still standing until near the outskirts of town. It was one of the landing sites of the Abominations.
When they’d come, they’d come in great spherical ships that had crashed indiscriminately in fields, forests, bodies of water, and yes, the middles of towns and cities. These crashes had been like nuclear detonations in terms of their destructive power, and the dust that they had kicked up was a big part of what had darkened the skies and left a perpetual red glow over the land. Of course, much of the blame for the blanket of dust that now lay between earth and sky was on the world’s governments, who had quickly responded to the overwhelming power of the Abominations by dropping actual nukes on them.
From their ships, they had spread out in every direction, leaving death and destruction in their wake. They emitted a sort of energy field around their bodies that sapped Hypes of their powers within seconds. Spending too long within these fields would render a Hype powerless for good, but short spells could be recovered from. But this effect had meant that humanity’s best hope of fighting or defeating the Abominations had been rendered immediately impotent. And as they spread, they left behind them the very apocalyptic hellscape that Adam and Tomas were now trudging through.
But at the sites where they had made their landing, they left some creatures behind, and looking through the binoculars now, Adam could see that the town of Page wasn’t as dead as it looked at first glance. Amongst the rubble and ruin, there were bodies that were almost human twitching and writhing and crawling and clawing their malevolent way around on patrol. The sphere itself had been made out of some semi-organic material, and it had mostly rotted into the earth where it rested, leaving behind what looked like the moist and festering ruin of a gigantic melon that had been left out too long in the sun.
“We can’t get through there. No fucking shot,” said Adam.
“For once we are in complete agreement, my friend.”
“So what do we do?”
In the end, they decided that the best course was to backtrack a few miles on I-89 and cross the Colorado river at Horseshoe Bend. At one time this would have been an absurd proposal. Horseshoe Bend had been a popular spot for tourists to take pictures specifically because of how wide and beautiful the Colorado River was at that spot, as it curved around a great outcropping of stone. Now though, the river itself was bone dry, and the sheer cliffs that had ringed it at that point had been reduced to a gentle slope on both sides by a poorly aimed missile launched from a satellite that had been meant to wipe out the Abominations' presence at Page. Many in the military had believed that the missile would have been on target, but that the spheres must have had some sort of deflection technology to turn explosives away. This theory was proven out as more and more missiles—nuclear and otherwise—managed to miss their marks.
Adam knew all this because he and his team had still been in regular contact and cooperation with the military in the early days of the invasion. They had been right up until the military had realized that Hypes couldn’t fight the Abominations, and at that point they had been cut off completely and forgotten. It had become clear that the Abominations’ whole reason for coming to Earth was to capture and experiment, and they saw ordinary humans as nothing more than bugs to dispatch when they got in the way. And when the world realized this, all the goodwill that Hypes like Adam had worked hard for years to build with the governments and peoples of the world disappeared in a flash. Ordinary humans and Hypes abandoned each other to their respective fates, and neither group had fared any better for it.
Despite all this, he hadn’t expected there to still be a contingent of Abominations at Page, and the fact that they were so near to the town of Shale right on the other side of the Arizona-Utah border where Kali and her group of resistance fighters were apparently stationed didn’t bode well for their mission. It didn’t feel like a coincidence.
By the time they made it to the Western side of the Colorado, and worked their way back North far enough to find some dirt roads that would eventually lead back to the Interstate, it was twilight. Or at least, it was as close to twilight as it got in this new world. If the sky could have been seen, it would have been starting to fill with stars. God, Adam thought, I never realized I could miss stars so much.
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Although they had fewer than ten miles to go to the border, and only two more past there to their destination, they were both exhausted and more than a little terrified by the implication of what they had seen earlier in the day. Neither of them felt much like walking in the dark with the fresh reminder of what could be out there, stalking the night.
They found a small sheltered alcove in the middle of a group of three boulders and made camp. No fire, of course. They ate cold canned soup in silence. Neither of them wanted to talk about it, and neither of them had the mental energy to talk around it. But eventually the silence became harder to bear than the conversation.
“I’ve been thinking,” Adam began, aiming to work his way strategically toward the insanity of what they were going to attempt. “Why did we waste our time walking two miles backward today? Why didn’t you just use your power to send me a few hours back and save us both the time and effort?”
Tomas stared away into the horizon and seemed to consider the question. He had been staring for so long that Adam began to think he hadn’t heard him. He was about to repeat himself when finally Tomas answered, and Adam was shocked to hear that Tomas sounded choked up.
“Do you still consider me a villain, Adam?”
“I … I guess so. But it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
“Quite the contrary, my friend. It matters now more than ever. We’re as close to judgment as we’ll ever be.”
“I don’t see how that answers my question.”
“I have done many things using my power. Most were selfish and served only to increase my wealth and power. Some were downright evil. You know these things. You tried to stop me many times, and a few times you were successful. I’ve been thinking about the nature of power, you know. Not just powers like ours, but power in general. I’ve heard it said that power corrupts. You know this saying?”
“Sure, I’m with you so far.”
“Right. Power corrupts. Except maybe it doesn’t, at least not always. Before I got my power, I was an ordinary man. I had a decent job. I had a home. I even had a wife and child … Did you know that?”
“I read your file, so yes. I knew.” Adam wasn’t sure where this was going, but it seemed important to Tomas to say it, and somehow he thought it was important for him to hear.
“I’m getting long winded, my friend. I hope you’ll allow the indulgence. As I was saying, I have used my power many times, and for me at least, the adage held true. I was a good man, and power corrupted me. But you … you were an ordinary, mundane man, much like myself, and power made you into something more. Something better. If I have to use my power again—in this world, in this timeline—I want it to be for something good, something important, something necessary. Every mundane, trivial, or simple time-saving use of my power is a step on the path that leads toward corruption. I’m hoping to just use it once more. I’m hoping that will undo all the bad uses. Do you understand me, my friend?”
“I understand, Tomas.”
Something about the conversation still felt unfinished.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what ever happened to your wife and your son?”
“They left me and I let them go. It was the last good thing I did.”
And then he excused himself and wandered out into the night, not so far that Adam couldn’t still sense him with his powers, but far enough away that no one could hear his sobs.
When he came back, the silence resumed, but this time it was the calm silence of two men with peace between them.
Eventually Tomas stood up and said, “I think we should try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is bound to be …”
“It’s bound to be something,” Adam finished.
“Whatever happens. I think this is the end of the line for us, my friend.”
“I’ve told you many times not to call me friend—”
“Of course. I’m very sorry, Adam—”
“No, I was just thinking. I think I’m okay with it now. If this is the end, I mean. It might be better to go out with a friend by my side.” He looked up and smiled at this man who had been a thorn in his side more times than he could count. The line between hero and villain had never seemed thinner, or more meaningless.
“If we die, we die as friends. And if not … If we succeed, I mean … Then perhaps you will remember what I did for you, and you let me get away with a little more next time around,” Tomas said with a genial smile.
“Oh no. If this works, I’m afraid we go right back to where we started. Maybe I could go a tiny bit easier on you, though … my friend.”
With that, they slept, and they dreamed of failure, of success, of hope, of death.