Astrid let out a shaky gasp as her stomach dropped. It felt like the floor was pulled out from under her.
One minute the smoke and fire were snaking towards them with a determination she didn't know something inanimate could possess. The next, Little Pete had started to levitate, palms outstretched.
"Angry," he said with a clarity and awareness that seemed impossible. He spun his head around and looked at her – looked at her. Recognition sparked across his blue eyes. "Diftneref emag."
Astrid blinked. She opened her mouth to say something, but then everything blurred, like an out-of-focus photograph. She let out a gasp, but it felt all wrong, as if the air in her lungs was backwards.
Then the smoke began to recede. Astrid stared, uncomprehendingly, as it retreated through the shattered windows. The shards of glass on the floor began to vibrate, and then lifted in the air. She could hear clearly as the windows unshattered and saw as the shards came together and the cracks faded away.
He's rewinding, she thought with a thrill of terror. Pete can control time.
There was another reverse breaking sound. Astrid felt light and dizzy, as if she was spinning at a hundred miles an hour. She tried to stand, but the effort forced her pulse to rush backwards through her.
She felt like she was going to throw up and wondered if that, too, would happen in reverse.
"Yetep," she said, not entirely surprised at how the words sounded. The stench of smoke was ripped from her lungs and Astrid un-breathed clean air. "Siht gniod uoy era woh, Yetep?"
After that, Astrid opened her mouth in reverse. No point in communicating.
An aura surrounded Pete, a colour Astrid had no name for. Looking at him was like looking at a second light spectrum.
She had never seen such pure power in her life. In this one moment, even creating the FAYZ to prevent a nuclear meltdown paled in comparison.
This is mastery, dominion over the universe. My brother is a god.
Astrid felt a lurch that told her that she would never again look at her own faith in the same way. What she was witnessing right now was infinitely more divine.
There was a great sucking sound, and Astrid knew that the daycare explosion was undone. Even in this state, part of her realised that the scrapes on her legs from the scramble to safety persisted.
So many questions burned in her mind, smothered by the knowledge that she would never be able to gain answers. Once Pete had finished here, his frightening clarity and awareness would cease to be.
The avatars will never be able to interact with the Player.
Astrid wondered where that thought came from, but it scrambled in her head as she tried to repeat it.
The shadows encompassed by golden light shortened. Astrid stared as the sun's position reversed. Impossible.
No more impossible than anything else she had witnessed these past few weeks.
Pete floated along the length of the hallway, chanting words she could almost recognise. The shadows on the walls seemed to diminish as Pete passed them. He was the light, and the darkness trembled before him.
The wailing of a siren rewound as Astrid finally stood to her feet. She tried to look, but found her gaze transfixed on Little Pete. He was the centre of their universe. She was powerless to look away.
Even as time rippled across her brain and distorted her thoughts, Astrid couldn't help but realise the gravity of the situation. This isn't like the power plant. This time, everyone will know that this came from one of us.
Then Pete touched her, and it was like bathing in the caress of the sun.
In her mind's eye, Astrid saw the bar system that Diana had used to gauge the powers of everyone in the FAYZ. She remembered the shock when Sam's came out as four bars. The most powerful mutant in the FAYZ.
Pete had ten.
She wanted to recoil and run. She wanted to bow at her little brother's feet. The paralysis that Pete had put her into prevented either action.
The touch of his power was dizzying, like an ocean of molten gold. If shadows existed, they were far beyond here. Bubbles lazily rose up and oozed through to the sky above. It could be real, this place. It could be a representation of a concept too complex for Astrid ever to understand.
Then a pair of hands pushed her. The touch was cautious but heavy-handed. Astrid staggered back into the wall. She barely managed to spin around and put her arms out to break her fall in time.
A few seconds later, time stopped rewinding. Pete stopped glowing and sunk to the floor.
"Petey," Astrid said. She took a few tentative steps towards her brother, shaking off the effects of the rewind.
"Different game," he said, and they were standing outside of the town hall. The steps were coated in a paper-thin layer of grey soot that crunched like snow under Astrid's sneakers. The sky above was golden and the sun lazily crawling towards the horizon. They truly had gone back an hour.
For a brief moment, Astrid was overwhelmed by the awe and the beauty and the sheer power of this phenomenon, until she saw the charred body of John Terrafino curled into a ball at the bottom of the stairs.
She forgot about Zil Sperry entirely.
He was choking. Horrible, horrible black smoke clouded his vision and entered his lungs. His insides burned. Somewhere nearby, Taylor let out a despairing choke.
For Quinn Gaither, it was as if with every breath, he swallowed more and more of his own death. Thick, burning poison slid down his throat and he knew he was on the verge of keeling over.
Until he wasn't.
It was impossible to describe the sensation of breathing backwards, the way that tainted air sucked out of your lungs and pure air shot in. Or the way that the overwhelming cloud of smoke shrunk and shrunk as it drifted away from you.
Or the way that Taylor rose to her feet in reverse.
"Rolyat," Quinn un-gasped. "Dog ym ho."
He didn't care that his words sounded funny. He felt alive.
Taylor let out a rewound rasp and staggered over to him. "Gnineppah s'tahw?"
Quinn didn't listen. He couldn't help but look as fire and smoke and death receded and shadows shortened. If he listened carefully, he thought he could hear the laughter of a child on the reverse wind. He didn't listen for long.
And then the smoke was gone and the sensation was done and it was just him and Taylor standing on a rooftop overlooking the second sunset of the day as it kissed the tip of the golden water.
"It's beautiful," Taylor said. Her voice caught. "Quinn, I don't know what's gonna happen from now on, but I don't want to face it alone."
"Me neither," Quinn mumbled.
Taylor carefully slid her hand into his. Quinn let her. And then, after a few minutes, gently gripped her hand right back.
It was only him, her, and the sunset on the water. For this one moment in time, the rest of the world slipped away and all that met him was simplistic beauty.
"Tsirhc Susej!" screamed a girl with blonde braids.
"Hcaeb Odidrep si... si?" whispered a boy that could be Bug, could be anyone.
"Kcuf," said Diana Ladris simply. From atop the hill that Coates Academy rested upon, they could all see the ember-stained cloud that choked the town against the bruised sky.
They could also see as said cloud shrunk in on itself.
"Driew nmad yllaer gnitteg si siht."
The experience lasted maybe two minutes, full of reverse words and indescribable sensations and the sight of a town that a few minutes before had been burned to oblivion.
And the sky was golden again.
Did we go back in time? Diana wondered as the other Coates kids recovered from the disorienting experience. Anything's possible.
She closed her eyes, and breathed.
Instead of the familiar comfort, Diana saw a featureless landscape within a circle that she immediately knew was the FAYZ. All around she could see blank figures standing, or wandering. And above each and every head was a set of bars.
Some had a set of blank bars above their heads. Some one or two filled in, and a couple boasted three. My power, Diana realised with a shock. Something's changed.
This mental landscape drifted over to where Perdido Beach was. The most three-bars were seen here, and right in the middle of the town, glowing like a beacon, was a figure with ten bars of power. Little Pete, the voice in her head said.
Nemesis, another distant voice growled.
She looked again at the other, lesser avatars. She called them avatars because no other word fit into that slot in her brain. To her surprise but not really, every avatar had ten blank bars above their heads.
The significance of this didn't hit her until Diana watched a two-bar in Perdido Beach suddenly become a three-bar.
They can change, she realised with a mental gasp. Our powers. We can get stronger.
For one horrific moment, she envisioned the FAYZ overrun with four-bar mutants, let alone ten bars. She wondered if it was even possible for anyone else to get that high.
Then, out of curiosity, Diana looked upon her own avatar. She was completely unsurprised to see three bars glowing neatly above her head. I've grown stronger.
A hand tapped against her shoulder, dragging Diana out of the landscape that wasn't quite real. "Hey!" a kid shouted. "What are we gonna do now?"
She looked at him. Eleven years old, a one-bar whose power would surely tip over to two bars in the near future. "Now?" Diana said, returning her gaze to Perdido Beach bathed in evening light. It looked like something out of a photograph. "Now, we're going back to Perdido Beach."
The sight of something that could only be described as divinely reverent convinced a total of twenty-four kids to come down with her.
Nobody above one bar stayed behind.
Jack realised he had gone back in time when he re-entered the evening's golden hour and his laptop's battery increased by forty percent.
And the fact that both the computer's clock and his watch had rewound from 21:39 to 20:39.
He tentatively stood up and opened the RV's door. Beyond him was the expanse of the desert that was eventually bisected by the wall of the FAYZ. Drake Merwin had left fifteen minutes from now. Jack had no idea when he would be back, but knew he wouldn't survive if he tried to escape.
A dent appeared in the door despite Jack's best efforts to close it gently. A spike of self-loathing like no other snaked itself down his throat as he returned to the laptop.
And then he saw that all the notes he had taken in the next hour were gone. No.
The feeling of failure burned through him and pulled tears from his eyes. Too much valuable work was lost. His heart in his throat, Jack checked the video file.
The five seconds of footage showing the moment Andrew vanished were corrupted. I can't find out how to beat the poof now. Oh God, and if Drake finds out...
Computer Jack thought about the tearing agony of Drake Merwin's whip and buried his face in his hands. The table splintered beneath him.
"Seriously, I'm fine. You two can go check out the damage."
Edilio smiled bravely but Lana wasn't convinced. The smoke had pulled back but the burn wounds remained. The worst cases had been dealt with, but there still remained children with with small strips of pink, raw flesh.
Patrick rested his head on the bed of a little girl with a face that might scar even with Lana's powers. While her touch could heal the body, his loving licks and nuzzles could heal the mind and soul. She had never been more grateful for his presence than in the past three days. If you don't count traversing the desert with the coyotes and the—
DO NOT THINK OF IT.
She stopped thinking of it.
Roger walked up from the bed of a boy who currently cradled a sketch of something Lana couldn't make out. Roger clapped a hand on Edilio's shoulder and smiled. "Don't worry," he said. "If he tires himself out too much, I'm sending him back to bed."
"Whatever you say," Edilio retorted. "Madre."
Roger flushed red. Next to Lana, Dahra let out a mischievous laugh. The laughter seemed to help clear the sudden headache.
"I guess there's not much I can say to convince you not to," Dahra said with a growing smirk. "So I'll trust Mother Roger to tuck you in bed and kiss you goodnight when you get too tired."
It was Edilio's turn to blush now. As Roger howled with laughter, Edilio tactically wormed free of his touch. "You still have some painkillers by the towels, right?" he asked, red-faced.
"Yeah," Dahra said. "There's not much but it should be enough for an hour if you only give them to the ones with really bad problems."
Edilio nodded and walked over to the far side of the room. Roger followed like an obedient dog.
"Anyway, let's find out about whatever the hell just now was," Dahra said. Lana followed her through a sea of children that weakly whined "Healer" whenever they got too close. Lana raised her head high and ignored them. It would be stupid to let them think they can take advantage of me.
Dahra pushed open the spotless pair of doors that had been flooded with smoke not ten minutes ago and stepped out onto the staircase that led up to the pharmacy. Lana followed with caution, looking at the walls. No sign of smoke or embers or burning or anything. Just what the hell happened?
"I think this is more weird FAYZ crap for sure," Lana said.
Dahra looked back and nodded grimly. "Sucking back smoke does sound like that," she said. "I'm just worried that people caught in it before are still injured."
"If they were exposed to that for more than a few seconds, then there's no way they survived," Lana replied. "I can't raise the dead."
Grim silence followed them as they reached the top of the stairs and walked out into the pharmacy.
Up here, the store was immaculate. The windows were whole and clear. The shelves and aisles were remarkably uncharred.
The only thing that signified that there had even been an issue was a figure in a fire-fighter's jacket lying face-down with a slowly dripping hose near the doorway. Lana and Dahra approached with caution.
"It's Ellen," Dahra said, kneeling down to touch her. "From the firehouse."
And Lana realised. She saved the store from burning. An image of the reality where the fire didn't cease danced across the shadows of her mind. No medicine, no buildings. No Perdido Beach. Just burning and chaos and starvation and suffering.
"She would have saved the pharmacy," Lana said, noticing droplets of water on the shelves. "She risked her life for this."
"She's still breathing," Dahra said. She turned Ellen over and looked at her soot-streaked face. "We'd need to rinse her down before we can see the damage for sure."
Lana drew closer and heard shallow breaths. It sounded like something was caught in Ellen's lungs. She wasn't sure. Carefully, she bent down and wiped a little bit of the soot off her face. Ellen winced and made a pained sound. Terrible red blisters marred Ellen's light brown skin. Her black hair felt like brittle straw and her lips were cracked and dry. "Dehydration will kill her before the burns do," Lana said, placing a hand on Ellen's cheek. She whimpered again, but her face softened as the blisters faded away. "Help me carry her down."
Dahra carefully wrapped her arms around Ellen's lower half and gently lifted her into the air. Lana grabbed her torso with a little more force, but Ellen relaxed as burns and blisters beneath her clothes faded away. "Damn," Dahra said. "She risked her life to save the pharmacy from burning? If there was ever a hero in my life, it's her."
Lana smiled and felt like saying fuck you to someone, but when she thought about it, her mind drew a blank.
Mary couldn't help but think about how small Brianna looked in Dekka's arms. She'd always thought of the Breeze as some force of nature, something invulnerable. Now, she looked like a child resting in the evening sunlight. Just as frail as one of the littles.
She didn't want to think about the littles right now. She could still clearly see the moment that Kevin beckoned Mera to set him ablaze. A wave of nausea that for once had nothing to do with food racked her stomach.
Kevin had had an older sister John's age. The family had lived out of town, but had sent Kevin to the daycare here for reasons unknown. Mary wanted to throw up again as she realised they had no clue what happened to him. He was only three.
So many other littles had vanished into the chaos. She knew not all them would have managed to shelter from the smoke and flames in time. She knew there would be tiny charred bodies in the streets.
"It's weird," Elwood said, touching the side of a building. "The streets are clean. Like the smoke wasn't pulled back, but it never happened."
Dekka nodded stoically in response, but focused more on the way that sweat beaded on Brianna's head.
Mary let out a breath that very nearly became a sob. Hunter placed a hand on her shoulder and gave a reassuring smile. "Don't worry," he said. In her mind, all Mary could see was Brianna pulling her away from John as the wall of burning smoke descended on them.
He has to be fine. If Little Pete can survive, so can he. She knew Pete was alive because when the smoke pulled back she saw an image of him floating in a hallway with Astrid standing beside him. Maybe he'd done it; if a baby could burn like a sun, was it really a stretch for a five-year-old to undo an explosion?
There was a fire truck by the plaza. A hose led into the pharmacy that housed the infirmary.
"Wonder what happened," Hunter said. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets that Mary recognised as a nervous gesture. She did it when she was desperately trying to fight the urge to binge but knew that it was ultimately futile and she would give in and raid the refrigerator for—
Mary let out a shaky breath. She didn't need to eat right now. It was just nerves. She tried to think about Mera burning Kevin to oblivion but it only made the craving worse.
She conjured the image of John sleeping in the daycare and felt a little better.
Brianna made a weak noise in Dekka's arms. Dekka stopped for a moment, but kept going once Brianna's eyes fluttered shut.
A sense of weariness followed Mary as well, but too many thoughts rattled around her head. She had to find out if the daycare was all right. She had to find out how many littles survived.
She had to know if John was still alive.
They drew up to the town hall. Astrid stood at the bottom of the steps holding Pete's hand. A thin layer of snow-like ash coated the plaza despite the warmth to the air. Pete was staring at his Gameboy, playing with one hand. Astrid was looking at something on the steps but turned around at the sound of others.
When her eyes met Mary's, Astrid's face softened. No. Oh, please, no.
"Mary," Astrid said weakly. Her face said it all.
Mary's heart hammered in desperation as she pushed past Hunter, past Brianna and Dekka, up to the town hall. Astrid tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but Mary knocked past it. An acidic flame burned inside her stomach and she knew, she knew, but she had to see for herself, couldn't believe it until the irrefutable evidence was in front of her eyes.
Surprisingly, when her eyes finally rested on the blackened figure coated in ash, her first words were, "We can get him to Lana, right?"
When silence greeted her, the tears sprung free and Mary began to weep. She sunk to her knees and with tender hands cradled what had once been John Terrafino.
On instinct, her hands went to push the curls of hair that always landed on his face away, but saw that there was no hair and no face. There was just a blackened shape that suggested a head. She didn't look at the rest of the body.
Ten seconds later, Mary Terrafino howled with grief, a wounded animal in mourning.
The air was pure again and it was sunset again and everyone's attention was on him again.
But this time, it wasn't Astrid looking down on him with righteous scorn, it was Hank and Antoine and Lance looking at him with reverence and respect.
For the first time in his life, Zil Sperry felt powerful.
"Okay, so, not dead," Lance muttered. He'd kind of sobered up. Kind of. "That's a thing that happened."
"Probably some moof or something wanting to save their ass," Zil said. He didn't want to linger on the sight of the roaring black cloud pressing up against the apartment. He didn't. "Doesn't matter."
"But I mean, to do that?" Antoine said. "Isn't that, like, major powerful?"
"Who gives a crap," Zil retorted. An irritation headache danced along the peripherals of his brain. He raised a hand to massage his temple. "So we have a smoke-sucker. Pretty sure that's half the kids in town anyway."
Hank laughed. Zil decided he was his favourite person for the moment. Luckily, Hank's laugh was contagious, and soon Lance and Antoine were laughing as well and Zil's ego soaked it up.
"Besides," he continued. "Sure, a moof might have stopped the smoke, but another one caused it." They didn't know either way on that front, but he was going to make them believe it. "They're dangerous freaks who think they've got all the entitlement and privileges in the world." He'd picked those words up from Astrid, moof-sympathiser, and hoped he was using them correctly. But from looking at his audience, he had an inkling that only Lance might know those words.
A tinge of inferiority coloured his vision for a moment. Zil had to tell himself that Lance was enraptured with him, was looking up to him, admired him. I am better than Lance. Get that in your stupid head.
Lance looked up at him and smiled lazily through languid blue eyes. Zil elected to focus his attention on Antoine. "I think the important thing here is to realise that the freaks are dangerous," he said. "They'll only do this again in the future, only worse."
"They're gonna kill us all," Hank chimed in.
"Exactly," Zil said. He stood a little straighter. "So we gotta get them out of here before it happens." He breathed deeply. "Even though the freaks have powers, there are more humans than them. If all the humans come together and take them on, we'll have to win. We'll make Perdido Beach a safe place for humans once again."
"Hell yes," Antoine said. "We were here first. They can't come in and take over just because they can make light from their asses or whatever."
Lance laughed. A choked noise lodged itself in Zil's throat. "We need to make it, like, a movement," Lance said. His voice was deeper than Antoine's and Hank's, who sounded like scratchy chickens in a puberty blender, and infinitely more pleasant to listen to. "Solidarity, man. Perdido Beach for humans, a… a… squad for humans."
"Team human?" Hank offered.
Lance shook his head. "Nah, nah," he said, and Zil only just noticed the freshly-rolled joint burning in the ashtray next to him. "It's gotta be catchier. Something everyone will remember without it sounding retarded. Like, uh, the human…" He trailed off, staring pensively into nothing. Zil felt naked when looking into the intensely vacant stare.
Then, Lance bolted upright as if holding the secrets of the universe in his head. "The Human Crew!" he announced. Hank and Antoine smiled appreciatively.
Zil mulled it over in his head. Human Crew. Yeah, that works. It was simple but memorable. He envisioned a Perdido Beach where the words Human Crew were written on every surface. It sounded violent and powerful, and more importantly, it was humans only. No moofs.
"Yeah," Zil said. "We're the Human Crew. A group for humans only. Those dirty… chuds won't know what hit them." He turned to Lance and smiled and ignored the sweat beading on his palms. "Awesome name man. I owe you."
"Owe me nothing. It's the least I can do for the effort." Lance smiled and sighed and it was as if he was emanating easygoing vibes. Of course, it was probably the weed doing it, but Zil still let himself be swayed.
Lance grabbed the joint, took a drag, and handed it to Zil. "To the Human Crew?" he said with a movie star's smile.
Zil took the joint and didn't break eye contact. "To the Human Crew." He puffed in and managed not to cough.
Hank and Antoine were chattering excitedly about means of defeating the freaks, Zil's mind filled with images of himself standing as the leader of a human-only Perdido Beach, and Lance looked at him like he was the most important person in the universe.
Life was good.
The boy with the whip knelt in front of its glorious mass and looked up with reverent, glossy eyes. "I heard your call, Darkness," he said in the same way a person might talk to one of their imagined gods.
If the Gaiaphage were capable of of feeling smug joy, it would be feeling it right now.
The boy rested his whip on an ephemeral green stone of the Gaiaphage's making and ripped open a gateway into his own mind. The Gaiaphage sent a probing tentacle with eyes and took in a landscape composed of millions of pathways made of cracked glass that threatened to shatter into true insanity.
The Gaiaphage let the boy's mind remain whole for the moment. It still had use for him.
It did, however, leave streaks of thick, black oil tinged with a soft green glow to make his loyalty absolute. In some places, the oil remained as puddles marring the pathways. In the areas where the desire to cause pain and suffering and to dominate rested, the oil was absorbed into the fabric of his mind and strengthened the urges.
The boy would make a good weapon. He would be perfect to use for the Gaiaphage's new plan.
The Gaiaphage retreated from his mind and set its vision on the very human figure in front of it. If the Gaiaphage wanted to, it could possess his body here and now.
But no. Not when there were seeds planted in the thoughts of the one who dared to defy it and not when Nemesis had unwittingly unveiled the Ball's new Game.
Oh, how the design was so simplistic yet so intricate, so unlike the physical brain that Nemesis suffered within. There were rules to this new Game, so many new rules, but the Gaiaphage was learning. And once it knew the rules for itself, could twist them to suit its designs, Nemesis would be nothing.
Or maybe the Gaiaphage would keep Nemesis alive for a while and let him feel that crushingly human despair as the Gaiaphage utterly ravished the planet. It would see how it felt when it was done.
"Is… is there something you require from me?" the boy asked. The Gaiaphage sent razors into his brain for the insolence. He screamed and screamed and the Gaiaphage felt pleasure.
Yes. Nemesis has revealed to us his Game at last. You are to be my avatar for this stage.
The boy nodded, overcome with an agony like no other. The Gaiaphage made it worse, just because. It yielded only after liquid urea touched its glowing form and produced an unpleasant steam. The boy babbled and babbled like his sense of self was crumbling.
The Gaiaphage rooted through his mind. No pathways had broken. It hoped this wasn't a sign the boy was weaker than it thought.
"Yes… yes!" the boy cried in rapture. The Gaiaphage enveloped him in warm green particles that made him bark out laughing howls like the talking beasts of the desert. Its vision turned from the cave and to the Game.
It saw Nemesis on the far side of the Ball playing with avatars like puppets made of glass. It saw him tentatively touching the bars above the avatars, curious but careful.
The Gaiaphage had no need for such finesse. It simply carved a space above the boy's head and forced the empty bars into existence. For now, his power was dormant. But that would soon change.
It glanced across the Ball, to the avatar with three bars and knew that this would soon spill over to four. The Gaiaphage forced the image onto the boy. He laughed and screamed in joyous rapture.
This is your target. Bring them to me when I say.
For good measure, the Gaiaphage latched a few hooks into the avatar's mind. They twitched, but would only think of it as the first onset of a mild headache, unaware of the black hooks that buried deeper with every second.
It never hurt to be prepared.