Intrepid (20 page)

“Where are we?” I asked.
 

“It’s an extremely Stagnant planet,” Iago said. “One where humans have been wiped clean from it.”

It was a statement that should have made me sad. I’d never considered before that there were worlds where no one existed. That meant Iago and I were the only humans on Earth in this reality, and it left a starched feeling of loneliness in my veins.
 

Iago continued with his explanation: “These planets used to be really rare, but they are happening more and more often. On this one, the polar ice caps melted and covered everything. No one survived, and eventually, the water receded back into the ocean and refroze back into caps so that patches of land have pulled themselves out of the water.”
 

I could see the edges of ocean in the short distance as it wrapped around the rubble like a blanket of empty.

“It’s a good reminder that everything is cyclical, and every end is really the beginning of something different.”
 

“Okay, Yoda.” I rolled my eyes.
 

“Yoda, I may be. Skywalker, you are not.” He managed to laugh at his own joke, and it echoed off the emptiness before it filled my ears.
 

My body adjusted to the lack of Energy on the planet, and I shuddered. “You’re right though—about new beginnings. There’s still life here, but it’s evolved differently.”
 

Iago stretched his arms and his back as if he’d just woken up from a nap. I heard the crackle of bones as he adjusted. “You’re quick to pick that up. It took me months to figure out how Evolution Nuances worked.”

I ignored the new term he threw out. Evolution Nuances? I was curious, but there were other questions pressing on my brain I needed to get to first. “I’m still not sure how Sully Jumped back there without entering coordinates into his bracelet. I thought you said I was the only one you knew of who could—”

“It’s a Bucket Hop. Within five miles, you can think and appear without entering coordinates. All you need is the bracelet activated. Then there’s the Hop, which is when you travel within the same universe. This does require entering coordinates. A Jump? That’s to travel within the Multiverse.”
 

“Oh.”
 

“Did Sully trigger your Hop?” he asked and I nodded. There was no point in keeping it to myself now. “How?”

“He kissed me.”
 

“A kiss?”

“No. It wasn’t that part.” I swallowed. “He tried to strangle me after he kissed me.” I said it quickly so it would hurt less, and Iago’s expression landed between anger and pity. I should have told Iago about Sully sooner. Maybe it would have prompted him to think about trackers. I just couldn’t get used to revealing all of my secrets when it seemed like he held onto so many.

“I’m sorry,” he said.
 

I nodded, but something else occurred to me. “Back on Geronimo, when Sully tried to—” I couldn’t say it again. I swallowed and moved past it. “Sully was holding me, and when I Hopped, he didn’t come with me. But back there, you did. Why?”

“I don’t have an answer for that, but I have a theory, if it helps. Maybe you will us to come with you. Back home, you were escaping someone trying to hurt you, so you kept him from joining you. In Barcelona, you wanted me to come with you, so I did.”
 

“But that’s not normal? We Jump to the same location.”
 

“Only after I’ve entered the coordinates into the screens and merged our locations. I hate to break it to you, but I think it’s another freak side effect of your mutation.”
 

I tried to ignore how shaken Iago was because I knew my nerves were a mirror image of his. Even with the Knowing, there was still so much I didn’t understand about what I could do. I’d Created universes without much effort involved, and I’d dragged him across them without even trying. Another side effect? The fact that I had yet another ability that made me abnormal (even if it was just amongst abnormal Saltadors), terrified me in new ways, but I tried to push the fear back down as I asked, “What are we doing here?”
 

“We are about to Bucket Hop, actually. There’s a boat here, but it’s safer to Jump on solid land when it’s available. Moving objects get tricky if you’re not skilled enough to land on them. For this one, just keep your bracelet on, hold my hand, and let me do the thinking for both of us.”
 

“You? Thinking? Now that’s a something that doesn’t happen every day.”
 

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Boat” was an understatement. It was more like a floating mansion. I couldn’t fit the idea in my head, so I said, “This is a yacht. No. It’s a floating city!”
 

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Iago said.
 

It was chrome in color, with two stories above water, and who knew how many below. On one of the walls, the word GEETA was written in loopy, black paint, and I assumed it was the name of the vessel. “How does this exist here?”

“The civilization that was here before the end built it to live on before the icecaps completely deflated. Humans are adaptable, and when disaster strikes, we find any way to hang onto survival. This is just one example of staving off the inevitable. There’s fresh water converters, a place to farm smaller crops up top, and a food processing lab. And obviously, there’s all the seafood we can eat. We think a small community lived here.”

I ignored the urge to ask the question of who this “we” was because I had the feeling I’d find out sooner rather than later. I ran my fingers along the railing to the deck. It was smooth to the feel, and everything felt entirely too clean.
 

I looked at Iago, and a concerned look crossed his face. “Did you really think I was bringing you to him?” he asked. “Did you really think I wanted to harm you?”
 

“Can you blame me? There’s a lot going on, and it’s a little hard to keep it all straight.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but the presence of it was too overpowering to hide. “You’re so cryptic most of the time. It gets confusing.”
 

He nodded. “Fair enough. You have every right to have trust issues, but I need you to
try
to trust me.”
 

I didn’t have a reply to that. The way he said “trust issues” might have been condescending under other circumstances, but the past couple days had put me face to face with readjusting my definitions of trust. Instead of gracing him with a response, I asked, “What do we do now?”
 

“We wait,” Iago said. “And while we do, I’m gonna catch some Zs. I got no sleep this morning.”
 

“Why not?”

“I wanted to be awake when the Change happened.”
 

“Oh.” I wasn’t tired at all, and waiting for whatever we were waiting for ended up dragging each minute to the limits of infinity. The lulling feeling of the boat made me lethargic, but I didn’t want to sit down and do nothing. I had movement in my veins.
 

I set out to explore the ship, and I finally found a room on the second deck that intrigued me. It had expansive windows taking up three walls and the roof, and I couldn’t figure out how they let in just enough light to not be overwhelming. The fourth wall, connected to the inside of the ship, was filled from floor to glass ceiling with books. I wondered how the bindings weren’t faded from all the sunshine that lit them up, but I couldn’t think of a logical reason as I ran my fingers along their bindings. All the titles were strange and foreign:
Gaian Law
,
The Manifesto
,
Oceana and the Fellowship of the Tower
… Some of the texts wavered a bit in my vision, like they were shifting into a language I could understand. It made my head swim, so I stepped away from the shivering shelves. There were two comfy-looking chairs nuzzled up next to a round fish tank that served as a coffee table, and I sat down to look out over the water.
 

The sun was tickling the horizon, and it reached over the soft waves to spread into the evening sky. It unfolded and retracted the brightness into night, and I turned on the lamp that rested on the table. There were fish in there that had names I could never know. They were a soft glowing neon as they swum around. I guessed that from now on, wherever I landed, evolution could have participated in a different dance. There were probably piranhas as big as whales in that big turquoise ocean we floated on, and the thought made me shiver.
 

Next to the lamp was a journal lying flat and open. I picked it up, and the handwriting startled me. Every letter was straight and perfect, but the notes looked scientific and boring. The last line rested in the middle of the page and read:
subject still shows restraint and refuses to be pulled into Collective Energy.
Subject? I closed the journal and set it under the lamp. Despite the fact that what I glimpsed sounded as boring as dirt, I wasn’t one to invade someone’s private thoughts.

A fluffy bed rested in the center of the room, and as much as I wanted to swim in it, I didn’t. Whoever lived here was surgically clean, and to compare it to the little cabin Ringo and I lived in, with its piles of unfolded laundry and perpetually half-full sink, was uncomfortable. Who was that neat?
 

I watched the stars gather in the cloudless sky. They were timid until the moment they became bold, and soon, they were all I could see. I shut off the lamp and stared at them until it hurt. I’d never seen anything so brilliant, even during those camping trips Ringo and Papa would take me on to Big Bend. I remember Papa tracing pictures in the sky with his wrinkled finger and wondering how it was possible that
that
many stars existed. But with the absence of light pollution, this sky was a million times more vibrant. Not to mention, my eyes felt sharper than ever before, and I could catch every waver and every flash within the light.
 

I wasn’t sure when the tears started, but I eventually noticed the way crying stuffed up my nose. The Change. It wasn’t just about what happened to my body. It was about what happened to my life. Everything I knew was gone. Whoever I thought I had been was gone. Lindsay? I’d never see her again. Sully? He’d tried to kill me—twice—and even despite that, I couldn’t let Iago shoot him in Spain. He’d asked me to let him explain, but how could he explain away his betrayal? Ringo and Papa? They’d lied to me my entire life. Iago? He wasn’t a pain-in-the-rear neighbor, but my new guardian. These were my new realities, but they still felt unbelievably unrealistic.
 

I had asked Iago, “Why didn’t y’all tell me from the start?”
 

“Because they couldn’t risk the secret accidentally getting out. Plus, if it didn’t work…”
 

“Just say it.”
 

“They truly thought the mutation wouldn’t catch. We all expected you to die.”
 

It was hard to swallow. It was death or this, and no one thought I’d beat the odds. What did it mean that I had? This kind of knowledge should have given me a new reverence for life, and I should have been overjoyed that I survived even if it meant my life must change. “I could have died just as easily as mutated,” I whispered to the stars. Either way, life as I knew it was destined to disappear.
 

I closed my eyes and remembered my whispering spot by the river. All the stories I spoke up into the sky as a kid, thinking my mother heard them all. And here I was still whispering my thoughts up to her out of habit. The fact that she never existed hurt in new ways, and I let out a gargled sob.
 

I wanted to stick my head in the sand and pretend it hadn’t happened because I didn’t ask for any of it, nor did I want it. But then I found myself thinking about what Iago said about humans being adaptable—how we do anything to survive when disaster strikes. I knew I was too stubborn to curl up in a ball and give up, and I’d learn to accept and deal with it all. I always did. Why should this be any different?
 

Instead of concentrating on what I no longer had, I tried to concentrate on what I did have. And right then and there, I had the sky and access to more stars than I ever knew existed. I wanted my eyes to drink in every spark that glittered off them. There was a bigger picture out there, one that I was just now starting to glimpse, and suddenly I wanted to see it all.
 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was as familiar as an ancient memory. I reached out to turn the lamp back on, but he said, “No. Don’t. Let’s just enjoy it for a minute.” My hand stilled around the chain, but I didn’t tug it down. The boy walked to the other chair and sat. I had half a mind to be scared, but I was too tired to be afraid. The starlight adjusted around him, and I could make out some of his features. He had a solid feel about him, like I could crash an entire mountain against him, and he’d still be standing when all was said and done.
 

He spoke again. “Neat, huh? If you sit just still enough, it’s almost like you turned on the lamp. Sometimes, I spend an entire night without turning on a single light.” He pointed a strong finger towards the sky and started tracing pictures between the freckles of light.
 

The motion reminded me of Papa and the countless times he connected those dots into stories for me. It also reminded me of someone else, and I said the words even though they really belonged to Lindsay. “Where I’m from, it’s never a good sign when a boy starts a conversation with starry-eyed clichés. It’s an immediate warning that he’s only trying to get into your pants.”
 
I remembered her telling me about the time Gunner Proctor tried to make out with her out on his ranch. He’d pointed up at the stars while trying to drape his arm around her shoulders. Knowing Lindsay, she wasn’t kind to him for the attempt.

This boy laughed, and it triggered a strange tingle in my ear. Once again, it sounded familiar, although I’d never heard it before. “Don’t worry, Champ. That’s the last place I’d try to get into. But have you ever seen anything like it before?”