Fair warning: I might never finish this story. I found it floating in the recesses of my computer and there's definitely a bunch of things I wanted to explore, but I'm not sure how well I'll pick up the threads after so long away from it. But, there's a chance that if people like it that might motivate me to get back into it so... I thought I'd post it anyway.
Her hands were chaffed from banging on the rock, her voice raw from yelling. They were right there, just out of her reach. She knew that if she could just get through this wall then everything would be okay. But the wall was solid. And her hands were useless, human hands.
Her voice broke, tears spilling from her eyes.
Beside her, Maria had stopped yelling. She was pressed, silently against the wall, hands and forehead. Her eyes were closed, her face screwed up in concentration, like if she just focussed enough then she could will herself through the wall. Or maybe that expression was just grief.
Kyle was running up and down the slope, trying the walls above and below them, circling around like he might find another way in.
"Max," Liz whispered one more time.
She stepped back from the solid rock that she knew was a doorway. There was nothing left to do. They'd figured it out, they were right there, but that wasn't enough.
She was helpless.
Kyle staggered to a stop beside her, his eyes met hers and she knew they were both on the same page. They'd failed. They were too late.
Maria sniffed loudly. She turned away from the wall, wiping her face with her sleeve.
The three stood there, unwilling to speak the words aloud, unwilling to leave, though they had no hope left between them.
The ground shook with a loud rumble and Liz grasped for Maria, who was closest to her.
Maria moved forward again, reaching for the door.
"Maria," Liz warned.
She glanced up at the cliff above them and saw stones dislodge above them as another tremor rattled through them.
"Maria!" Liz lunged forward, dragging her friend back from the unstable rock face.
"No, no, no," Maria was whispering repeatedly, struggling to get away from Liz. "We can't just let them go."
Liz tried reasoning, tears and dust choking her voice, as she and Kyle dragged the other girl down the slope.
They were halfway down when a blast made them all stop and turn back to see a large part of the rock formation blown away and a strange metallic-like liquid pouring out of the cracks.
Maria stopped fighting them as the liquid kept pouring out, following them down the slope as they broke into a run.
They dashed behind an outcropping of rock that offered some shelter and turned back in time to see an indistinct shape shoot out of the cliff and disappear in a graceful parabolic curve.
Liz woke with a gasp.
She rolled to her side and pressed her hands to her eyes.
Again.
It had been months since she'd dreamed about that day. She'd almost started to hope that she'd moved on. Surely 6 years was enough time to move on.
She flopped back over to her back. At least it was the real one this time. Sometimes she dreamed that she got there in time, that they saved everyone. And then she would wake up and there would be a fraction of a second when she forgot the truth, before it all came rushing back more painfully than ever.
Liz glanced over at the clock. Half an hour until her alarm was meant to go off. No point in trying to go back to sleep now. She'd figured out a long time ago that the best way to deal with this recurring dream was to push it to the back of her mind; to find something that would distract her. She'd spent so long mourning Max and missing him and hating him. But she still had to get out of bed every morning. Still had to eat breakfast and go to classes and talk to people. It was just easier to pretend that she had moved on like everyone else had. Sometimes she could even convince herself.
At least she wouldn't have any problem finding a distraction today, she smiled to herself. Today Maria was arriving.
Liz teetered on her tip toes trying to see over the heads of the crowd of people at the airport terminal. The screen said that the flight from New York had landed 10 minutes ago. Liz elbowed her way around a few people until she could see the doors more clearly. A second later, her best friend appeared through the doors.
Liz yelled her name and ran towards her. They were both laughing as their arms twined around each other. But as soon as her hands touched her friend, Liz froze.
"Could you be any louder?" Maria laughed as she pulled back from the hug. But when she saw the look on Liz's face her heart started racing, "What is it?"
"I...it's…" Liz stuttered and fell silent.
"Oh god, am I gonna die?" Panic laced Maria's voice.
Liz shook her head still unable to say it out loud.
"Tell me!" Maria grabbed Liz's shoulders and practically shook her. "It's my future, just tell me how bad it is."
Liz looked at her best friend, wishing she could erase what she'd seen. Maria was so happy now. She'd found her place in the world and she loved every minute of it. But when Liz saw something… She couldn't protect Maria from this by hiding it from her. The best she could do was prepare her. Liz took a deep breath.
"I saw Michael."
The visions had started almost a year after the aliens had flown away.
It was disconcerting, but by that point she'd suffered through much more painful and terrifying manifestations of power. She'd spent a week covered in painful green lightening that had her skipping school and coming up with progressively unconvincing lies to tell her parents to avoid them seeing. She'd wondered if it would kill her, if the legacy Max would leave behind was going to be a trail of people he tried to save, dying of mysterious unexplained illnesses years after he'd healed them.
She'd wished for him then. Certain that he would have known what to do, how to fix it. But he didn't come back no matter how many thoughts she sent his way. And she got better anyway. There were a few mishaps here and there as she figured out how to control the sporadic explosions of energy, but she'd found her way on her own. She didn't need a hero to save her.
The visions were a different kind of problem. It had taken only 2 premonitions to convince her that what she was seeing was real, but a lot more to convince the others. Over the years she'd seen a lot of different things. It turned out that the most difficult part was hiding her reactions to the visions. It was so tempting to jump or shout or give cryptic warnings to strangers. But that only ended in people staring at her and, in one memorable case, calling an ambulance.
She'd had 5 years to master keeping a straight face when she saw people crying or dying or worse. She'd learnt that it was often quite easy to change the futures that she saw without raising anyone's suspicions. When she saw someone getting hit by a car crossing the road all it really took was delaying them somehow. Asking them for the time or directions to somewhere. Then just reach out and touch them again and if she focussed just right then she could trigger another flash and see whether they would make it through the day alive.
More often than not the flashes were of something dramatic. Kyle had theories about that but they didn't really know how it worked so they couldn't say for sure. When she was searching for a vision she could see benign things, but when she had all of her mental defences up and something got through anyway it was usually pretty big. The bigger the event the further ahead she could see it, but the details got pretty vague if it was more than a couple of days into the future. The furthest ahead she'd seen was 3 weeks and all she'd gotten was the impression of horrible pain and loud noises. She'd had to basically stalk the girl until she could get a clearer flash to work with.
But these days Liz mostly avoided contact with people at all if she could help it. If she saw the future then she felt responsible for changing it, but what she didn't know she couldn't change. It was easier that way. Sometimes she felt guilty about that, but she'd learned the hard way that you can't save others if you're falling apart yourself.
"So where was it? When do you think this is going to be? Could he be here already? Is he coming back alone? What was he wearing?"
Liz had managed to convince Maria to hold off on the questions until they got back to her house and had some privacy. Which of course meant that Maria had started spouting a million questions the minute they walked in the door.
"I don't know, Maria," Liz sighed, "It was very impressionistic so I'd say it's further away than usual. Maybe even a couple of weeks. I didn't really get a sense of a place or time. Just sort of the idea of an opening door and then… Michael. I didn't even really see him clearly. Just knew that the blur of colour was him."
Liz dropped Maria's suitcase into the corner of her room and collapsed onto the bed.
"It's not exactly a science," She continued, "I guess I could try searching for more info, but to be honest when they're this indistinct it usually takes time for things to get clearer."
"Okay," Maria was pacing now, "So we'll give it some time. Then we try again. And then again. Eventually we'll be able to pin point exactly where he's going to show up. Hell, maybe we can even figure out how he's going to show up. Maybe there's going to be a mass invasion and the whole world will see them coming. I bet that would be easier for you to see. Then maybe other people would be able to give you different perspectives. You could map the whole arrival from a dozen different points of view so that we know exactly what is going to happen and we will have enough information so that we can know what the right thing to do is."
Liz watched Maria tread back and forth across the room, one hand gesturing wildly as she rambled off on more tangents. Finally she sat back up and snagged Maria's arm as she charged past the bed.
"Maria, stop" Liz pulled Maria down to sit next to her on the bed, "Just stop and breathe and look at me."
They held each other's gaze for a few seconds, each understanding completely that the other was just as terrified and just as uncertain.
Finally Maria let out a long breath and let herself collapse backwards onto the bed. Liz lay down beside her and they both stared at the ceiling.
"Michael," Maria sighed.
"Michael," Liz agreed.
"Well, I guess we'd better call in the cavalry."
The next day they were back at the airport once more, this time waiting for the flight from Albuquerque.
Kyle had agreed to skip a few days of classes to come up straight away. The day that he first started manifesting powers he and Liz had made a promise to each other; that if the one of them needed help for anything related to their alien powers then the other would come running, no questions asked. That deal had been called in a couple of times already, but always only when it was really important. So all Liz had needed to say was "I need you to come" and Kyle was on the next plane.
Unlike Maria, when Kyle walked through the doors he didn't automatically reach out for a hug from Liz. He understood better her trepidation about touching people, the fear that came with the power. His own power wasn't tied so much to the tactile so he always allowed Liz to decide whether to reach out.
Liz smiled and reached out to pull him into an embrace, seeking the comfort of her most undemanding friend. As his arms came around her images and feelings leapt into her head.
SurpriseIsabelReliefHowFearTessWhyMaxConfusionAngerMichaelSudden
Slowly she pulled back from the hug.
She was accustomed to these flashes after so many years. While she avoided them when she could, images still got through fairly regularly. Sometimes she saw whole scenes play out, but more often there were fractured impressions. Sometimes she heard entire conversations, but usually she only got a word or two. Every once in a while she smelled things, though only certain kinds of things. And more often than not there came the gut punch of the emotional response that the events she was glimpsing would inflict on the person she was reading.
That was her least favourite part, but it was also the most reliable. It gave indistinct images and fragmented phrases a foundation to build a premonition on. Sometimes that was the only thing that separated the flashes of someone being raped from someone stubbing their toe.
The flash she'd gotten from Kyle was as indistinct as the one from Maria had been. There was no reference for time or place, no clues for how or why. Only that, if it weren't for Liz's particular gift, it would have been completely unexpected. And one other thing…
"It's all of them," Liz looked at Maria, "They're all coming back."
That's it for chapter 1. I have got a couple of other chapters already written, but I might hold onto them for a bit to see if I can get some sort of momentum going on the rest of the writing.
Let me know what you think!