Chapter Twenty-four #2
“Five minutes!” Nick said, checking the countdown.
Kevin turned to the twins. “We have to do this now. Let’s get him back while we still can. When are we sending you?”
“I’ll guide that,” he said. “I don’t know how many changes I’m going back to with all the lives you’re about to save, but I should be back not long after I left.” He looked at his parents. “I’ll see you all again. Just, please, no one sell the house. That’s where I’m going back to.”
“It will be there,” Nick said.
“And . . . maybe go a little easier on me during training this time?”
“Not a chance, son. I love you.” Nick hugged him.
“Love you too, Dad. And Mom!” He pulled back as Annie wrapped her arms around him.
“I love you, baby.”
Anali and Antonio, still weak but standing, moved to either side of Jay. “Ready when you are,” Antonio said.
Jay held on to the twins. “Let’s do this.”
Kevin added his power to theirs, creating the temporal gateway. As Jay looked back one last time, he said, “Oh, and Aunty Ryan? Thanks for teaching me how to fight dirty.”
Then he was gone, and as much as I wanted to cry, I had work to do. I looked at Jack and ruffled his hair. “You’re gonna be so brave, kiddo.”
“Three minutes!” Nick called out. “Everyone in position!”
“Here you go,” Annie said, the blue storm in her eyes expanding as she boosted me.
“Okay, I’m ready.” I squeezed Kevin’s hand. It was time to finish what Jay and Rash had come back to help us accomplish. “Come on, help me.”
“My powers won’t help with this,” Kevin said.
“They’ll help me. Just shove teleportation in there. It can’t hurt.”
Purple light pulsed through my veins, brighter than ever before. Kevin’s electricity crackled around us both, helping to stabilize the overwhelming influx of power. Our hands glowed where purple and blue energy merged. Then I held on to Gabby, starting to amplify her.
As the purple started lighting her up, Rash stopped us. “Wait. I can’t send it out this way. You need to pull it from her and send it back out. We need you as a conduit.”
“But I can—”
“I told you! My powers will only control yours. I can’t send the block through her.” He looked at the screen. “Two minutes.”
I looked at the vast web of energy signatures pulsing on Rash’s screens. “Okay, let’s do it.”
I pulled from the room and from Kevin, using the boost Annie gave me. Then I absorbed all I could from Gabby and tried to send it out, but I felt lightheaded. Even with me pulling from everything, I was too weak. I let go of everyone.
“I think you’re depleted from earlier,” Kevin said.
“I think so. But I can do it. I’ll just have to sense for more. The city’s entire power grid might be the only thing I can pull from.”
“No!” Rash said. “If the power goes, I can’t send anything out.”
“Take mine,” Annie said. “All of it.”
I shook my head. “Annie, no. It’s dangerous to drain you the way I need to.”
“There’s no time for this.” Annie’s sky-blue light pulsed as she reached for my hand again. “Do it.”
“Sixty seconds!”
Kevin grabbed my other hand, with Rash locking his right over ours. Kevin’s electricity harmonizing with my purple glow pushed me forward. “I’ll help you channel it. Gabby, get ready!”
I closed my eyes, one hand in Annie’s, the other locked between Kevin and Rash’s grips. The moment I opened myself to Annie’s power, I nearly buckled. Pure kinetic energy flooded into me, sky-blue merging with my lilac in pulsing bursts.
“Forty-five seconds!”
Each surge of power felt like fire in my veins as I channeled Annie’s energy through me.
The buildup was becoming unbearable, threatening to tear me apart from the inside .
. . not unlike the built-up, unused energy I had before.
I guess it was always an overload of energy.
But I couldn’t stop. Everything depended on maintaining the connection just a few seconds longer.
My vision blurred, and I felt like throwing up, but I forced myself to keep going.
Annie stumbled as I continued pulling. The raw power built inside me as her eyes faded. The blue swirling in them disappeared until they were just her brown eyes. Then she dropped to the floor, curling into herself.
“Thirty seconds!” Nick said. “Don’t worry about Annie.”
I nodded, still staring at her on the floor, as Gabby took her place so I could pull the blocker. Okay, okay. I can do this.
Kevin’s blue electricity wrapped around me like a containment field, stabilizing the surge from Gabby and the massive intake from Annie.
“Now, Ryan!” Rash shouted. “Let go. I’ll channel it into the satellites!”
I gripped their hands tighter, threw my head back, and released everything.
Purple-blue lightning shot upward, carrying the Luminary cure with it.
As it rerouted through the satellite network, Rash’s fiery orange energy merged with ours, and everything went outward in expanding circles.
The resulting aurora spread across the screens.
Ripples of purple, blue, and orange-red danced across the globe like some divine light show.
The air itself seemed to vibrate with power as every Luminary on Earth felt the frequency pass through them—taking away everything they’d ever known.
As I opened my eyes, the kaleidoscope of colors intensified, turning everything into a multicolored twilight, spreading from horizon to horizon.
Then, like a coiled spring finally giving way, everything reversed.
The energy blast rebounded, bringing the Luminary cure back toward us, and I felt my connection to everything flicker and fade.
Guess we didn’t need that injection after all.
Five seconds.
Park’s kill switch activated just after our surge peaked. She was too late. But the reverberation was still ongoing, and the two forces collided in the upper atmosphere, creating a sonic boom that shattered windows for blocks.
Then the world went quiet.
The silence didn’t last long before reality crashed back in waves. First came the ringing in my ears, then the sensation of the cool floor against my cheek. I hadn’t even felt myself fall.
“Ryan?” Kevin’s voice sounded distant, like it was underwater. His hand found mine, but there was no electrical spark when we touched. Just warmth.
I forced my eyes open. The room was dark . . . all monitors fried. Emergency lights cast everything in a dim red glow. Through the broken windows, I could see the aurora across the sky, though its brightness was fading.
“Annie?” Nick’s panicked voice cut through the haze I was in. I looked down to see him cradling both his wife and his son.
“Oh God. Please tell me she’s okay.” My lips trembled.
Annie’s eyes fluttered open, and Jack reached for her face, babbling happily. Did anything faze that child? He remained perfectly calm through the chaos.
“Don’t be dramatic. I’m fine,” Annie said. “Just needed a nap.”
I laughed. “Hope it was a good one.”
“Hmm, hard to say.” She sat up. “Is it me or does anyone else feel empty?”
“Yep,” Kevin said.
“You okay with this? No more powers?” Nick asked her. “I know it was a big sacrifice for you.”
She nodded, looking at Jack. “I think maybe the toughest sacrifice is just ditching the person we thought we were supposed to be, for who we need to become. Maybe this is the whole point . . . just being human.”
Nick raised an eyebrow. “Who are you and what did you do to my wife?”
“I’m the one who sends this guy back,” she said, hugging Jack.
“I’m pretty sure I was part of that, too.”
“Sure, honey.”
Around us, people were slowly sitting up. The formerly controlled Luminaries looked dazed but clear-eyed. Park lay unconscious where she’d fallen after the blast recoiled.
“Did it work?” Gabby asked. “No more danger?”
Rash checked his one working tablet. “The kill command is neutralized. And . . .” He tapped a few keys. “I’m not detecting any Luminary signatures. Anywhere. But the satellites are fried, so I don’t know. It all seems done, though.”
“It worked then,” I said, trying to sit up. Kevin helped steady me. “We’re—what’s it called? Normies?”
I touched my chest, feeling the hollow space where my powers used to pulse. It hurt, like a phantom limb, but somehow it also felt right.
“We need to secure Park,” Nick said, ever the strategist even without powers. “And destroy any remaining tech that could be used to restore any of her control systems.”
“Already took care of that,” Rash said, showing us his tablet’s screen. “Everything’s been wiped. Permanently.”
“Speaking of permanent.” Kevin turned to our still-groggy friends. “Andrew? You with us?”
Andrew had already been standing. His eyes might never have left Park. “Yeah. It’s quiet in my head. Finally.”
Jenny and Beth were helping each other up while the twins sat together, holding hands. All of them touching their chests, feeling the same emptiness we were all experiencing.
“The chips?” I asked Rash.
“Fried with everything else. They’re just inert metal now. We can remove them safely once everyone’s stronger.”
“And the children?” Gabby asked suddenly.
“Safe,” Rash assured her. “I’m not sure your dampeners would’ve been able to fight against the intense blast we sent out, though. They probably won’t develop powers anymore.”
“But you said that’s how you guys were able to come back?”
He nodded. “In that timeline, yes. Remember, it was a kill command for Luminary signatures. They were hidden, so they kept their abilities. This time you sent out the cure blast through all our powers. It makes a difference, you know? That magnitude and potency. I think Luminary genes are dormant now.”
“If she had the command to track all Luminary signatures, does that mean she knew where all of them were hiding? The ones she didn’t have locked away?” Kevin asked.