something else. And I wanted to find out exactly what that was.
“The time is coming soon,” the Wanderer said. “Everything is changing. And you will be the one to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
He gestured outward, and with a sweep of the hand, including everything now attacking us. “This. This invasion from another world. Though a thousand worlds shall fall, one will remain. It is a prophecy as deep as energy. This cannot be altered. It was written from the beginning, in the fabric of everything.”
I understood little of what his cryptic words actually meant, this blending of prophecy and science. I was beginning to think that they were one and the same — that the deeper we came to the infinitesimally small, the closer we came to the truth of reality. Was that truth God? Prophecy? Fate? I couldn’t have said.
The crawlers and flyers were dangerously close, now. Still, we remained standing, to be consumed in pointless sacrifice.
“I want to do whatever I can to stop them,” I said. “We all do.”
He smiled. “You will get your chance, Alex. You must merely be patient. You must merely be open to the possibilities — to what the lords of fate place before you.”
I had no idea what that meant, and didn’t have time to think about it. A crawler, twisted and with three white eyes glowing, sailed through the air ahead of the swarm, on course to crash into me. I could only watch in horror as that twisted face gnawed at empty air, as its long claws curled in the expectation of entering my flesh. The end of my life was near, but still, I stood calm, defiant.
In a roar and beating of wings, a completely white dragon swooped right in front of me, striking at the crawler with extended claws. The crawler gave a wretched scream when another dragon, this one colored red, appeared on our left, giving a bone-shaking roar that stopped the frontrunners in their tracks. Both dragons swirled toward the ground, landing between us and the oncoming horde.
“We must go,” the Wanderer said.
The dragons lowered their wings. The Wanderer ran forward, climbing onto the back of the white dragon. He meant to fly on it. Once mounted, the Wanderer looked at me with white eyes, expecting me to do the same.
Unthinking, I ran to the red dragon, scrambling up its leg and onto its back. I settled between two ridges there, and found myself surprisingly secure. I held onto the ridge in front of me. The hard, scaly skin was warm to the touch. No sooner was I settled than both dragons took flight, beating their wings and lifting off from the ground, where the crawlers writhed in a teeming mass in the spot we had vacated. The fungus and Crater fell away. We angled south as the sun victoriously burst through the clouds.
I smiled, wondering if any of this was real. I knew it was a dream, but it felt more real than reality.
We sped on, going even faster, the air sharp and revitalizing. Soon, the spire appeared in the distance — no longer sinister, but welcome — like returning home. I didn’t understand this sentiment, because I had never had a home in my life. Even Bunker 108 had felt unreal — humans weren’t meant to dwell underground, surrounded by gears and machines and bolts.
I suddenly had an outward vision of myself, riding on the dragon. It was such a strange sensation that it knocked the wind out of me. I saw myself, eyes staring ahead intensely toward the spire to the south.
And my eyes were completely white.
Chapter 15
I shot up in bed in a dark room, fear and panic clutching my heart. Cold sweat ran down my bare chest.
“Alex!”
It was Anna. I felt her hand on mine before I even had a chance to realize where I was and what was happening. A moment of chaos passed, where I didn’t know or understand anything. There was a deep pulse, a thrumming, surrounding everything. It was a moment before I realized that this sound and vibration was
“What happened?” I asked, my voice parched.
Anna reached for a nearby canteen in the darkness, and held it to my lips. I felt the cool water enter my mouth. I drank a good long while.
Anna didn’t answer me for a moment. “I’ll get the light. I’ll tell you everything.”
“No. Don’t. Keep it off, unless you want to split my head open.”
My mind was still spinning. The images I’d seen were a maelstrom, overwhelming me, keeping me pinned. I had no idea where to start — whether I should try to connect to that reality, or this one.
Anna sat down next to me, the cushion of her stool swishing. She held my hand again.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said. “You were out for the longest time.”
“How long?” I asked. “Spores, right?”
I could see Anna’s head nod in affirmation in the darkness. “They got in through our skin. Maybe through the mask, too. But yeah. We were all out for a long while, but all came to with the morning. You, though…you stayed unconscious. We moved you onto the ship. We didn’t lose anyone, but we also weren’t attacked. Makara gave the order to blast that damn thing to pieces.”
At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I realized that she was referring to the spire.
“No,” I said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about that. I was remembering my dream. The spire was the last vision I’d had, apart from the fact that my eyes were –
I closed my eyes.
“Alex?”
No. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. Still, I kept my eyes closed.
“So, it’s really gone?” I asked. “The spire?”
“Yeah. It is.”
Anna wasn’t telling me something, and it was driving me crazy.
“You never told me how long I was out.”
She hesitated. “Two days, Alex.”
I sat up straighter in bed, opening my eyes. “Two days? We should have left that thing alone. It wasn’t what we thought, at all. Is Vegas still there?”
Anna didn’t answer me, and her lack of an answer was answer enough.
“I didn’t want to shock you,” she said. “Not at first. You’ve been through a lot.”
I felt coldness crawl over me. Another city, gone. The second largest one in the Wasteland. Thousands of people dead, in a couple of days. And I had been asleep during all of it.
“That’s why we’re in the air, then,” I said. “That’s why we’re not helping.”
“Makara and the gang lords gathered who they could,” Anna said. “A couple thousand, maybe. Thousands more died. The farms were the hardest hit.”
The farms. Michael’s wife and kid would have been there.
“Michael’s wife is fine,” Anna said. “So is his kid. They’re both on the ship, safe.” She sighed. “Much more so than everyone else. They’re all heading west.
“Have there been any?”
Anna shook her head. “No. Not now, at least. They attacked the city, and there was nothing we could do. When we shot that spire thing down, it made them all go haywire. The only thing we could do was try to evacuate everyone. Luckily, Rey and some of the other lords had already prepared a lot of supplies and trucks. The water trucks are filled, and will help water the people and fuel the vehicles…at least for a little while. They won’t last forever, though.”
“How long?”
Anna paused. “A week, maybe. Even with the amount we have, we’re going to have to find another water
