That thought instantly fills me with a feeling I cannot figure out. It’s not dread, but it feels similar. It’s not fear so much as anxiety. I look out toward the ocean, confused. Why would the prospect of fixing Levi leave me like this? With a feeling I can’t name?
Each trip through the Rift is becoming easier. I explained to Levi how I managed to basically fly within its tunnel and then use the gravity and light of the approaching Earth to get my bearings and end up on my feet instead of my ass. He seemed dubious, especially with the part about us not being grappled to each other, but in the end he trusted me and we both walked out of the Rift on our feet with only minor stumbles.
The first few seconds are always the tensest. Where will we end up? In the middle of a volcano? A freeway? Someplace where a Rift will be seen as a horror and we, by default, some sort of monsters? Thankfully, we find ourselves in the middle of yet another forest and when I listen, I can hear nothing but animals scurrying, and from somewhere above, the screech of a bird in flight.
I stare at the ground and then the trees. The terrain looks to be high mountain desert, the landscape I’ve seen and loved on family trips to central Oregon. It’s rocky and barren at my feet, but then the desert disappears as my gaze lifts upward to the ponderosas. From this vantage point it is clearly the Pacific Northwest.
But there’s something off.
I mentally scan all the trees, making a slow 360-degree sweep. I take a mental picture of each one and close my eyes, calling them up in my memory. I compare them side by side. The smell is right. Ponderosas are smoke and evergreen. I walk up to one and put my hand on its large, rough bark.
“They’re too perfect, right?” I ask Levi to back up my hunch. “And the placement—it’s meant to be chaotic, but there’s a pattern to it.”
Levi squints a little and cranes his neck back and forth. “Yeah. The branches of that one,” he gestures, meaning the one I’ve touched, “and the one eighteen feet away are almost identical except for two variables. That doesn’t happen in nature.”
“So, it’s man-made and the trees must have been cloned. What kind of an Earth is that, you think?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, but you must have clocked those buildings about six klicks away. We should go and check it out.”
Before I can answer we hear a noise, a buzzing, getting closer. Without saying anything further, we both grab our rifles and unclip them from our chest pads. We don’t have to wait long to see the source of the sound. It’s a drone, although it’s not like any drone I’ve ever seen. It’s a silver disk that’s just hovering with no discernable way of actually flying. I stare at it, almost transfixed. It gets closer, and then light pours out of a thin circular strip in its midsection. The light races up and down our bodies in a long blue flash.
Observing is one thing, this is obviously something else. I point my rifle at it and squeeze the trigger twice. The drone stops and drops almost immediately and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
“That was either a really good idea or a really bad one,” I say before Levi can, because I know he’ll have a choice comment.
“I vote good one. That thing was scanning us.” I side-eye him because I think he just lobbed me a compliment. Levi walks over to the downed object and bends forward to have a better look.
“Don’t touch it, even with your foot,” I warn.
“Yeah, okay, Mom, are you sure? Because weird alien hovering silver disks that scan people never explode.”
“Noted. Thank you, Levi.” I leave him be for a couple of minutes. It’s not like I couldn’t make useful observations, but I’ve already annoyed him with my previous—and admittedly unnecessary—comments, and besides, my skill set in that area leans more toward noticing the tree thing. Levi’s mind is more mechanical. Which, if I’m being honest, kind of pisses me off a little bit because it feels so typically gender biased. Citadels don’t do gender bias. Except, it seems, in this case. Right here.
Annoying.
Levi straightens and walks back over to me, but before he can say anything we both hear another noise and this one is much louder. It is the sound of helicopter blades slicing through air.
“That came out of nowhere,” I say, taking hold of my rifle yet again. My pulse quickens. “It’s almost on top of us, so where the hell did it come from?” We both look up to the sky and sure enough, it’s a chopper. It is moving with alarming speed, and at two hundred yards away, it’s closing in fast. I can see its sleek design—black chrome and streamlined, with none of the bulky aerodynamics of helicopters on our Earth.
“We’re on a future Earth. A time line way more advanced than ours. We must be.” Although I don’t know why I bother to say it. Levi has eyes. I suppose saying it out loud makes it more real somehow, because right now I feel like we’re in a movie.
“We could run,” Levi suggests.
“No. Why waste the energy? If we’re going to have to fight, we’ll need it.” So both of us just stand there unmoving as the helicopter approaches. It’s noisy, but it’s not overwhelmingly loud. In a way, the propellers are almost soothing. They whoosh in the cloudless sky in precise measures. When the chopper is about fifty feet above us, the door slides open and two men emerge. They don’t jump, but rather float down gracefully as if being lowered by cables. Except there are no cables, and no pilot, either.
I just look at them and stare because, holy fuck, I literally don’t know what else to do. I look at Levi, and he’s just as dumbstruck. Finally, I have to say something.
“Did Jason Momoa and Andy Warhol just fly down from up there?”
“I feel like yes, that is what happened. Unless we’re being drugged or that drone thing brainwashed us.”
When the two men are about twenty feet away, I put my rifle up. “Stay where you are. Do. Not. Move,” I yell. They both stop and look at us, puzzled. As if the way they arrived was totally normal and why are we surprised.
“Hello!” Jason Momoa says enthusiastically (which already seems not very Jason Momoa–like, though I don’t know him personally, obviously). “You are humans, yes?”
“We will not harm you,” Andy Warhol says brightly. “We were alerted to your presence and were sent to retrieve you.” They both take a step forward.
“I said don’t move, and keep your hands up!”
More bewilderment, although they don’t come any closer. Eventually they both raise their hands. “We do not possess any weapons. We are no threat to you,” Jason Momoa says earnestly.
“Fine. You can come closer, but stop when we tell you, and walk slowly,” I command. When they are about ten feet away I tell them to halt. “I’m going to frisk them. Cover me.”
“Really? You’re going to go frisk Aquaman? That’s going to be your job?” Levi throws out.
“Not now, Levi. God.” There’s a time and place for sarcasm, but this is not it. I quickly move over to the two and I am able to get a good look at them close-up. If I needed any more proof that something absolutely bonkers is going on here, I get it after I see their silver eyes. They are as round and luminous as full moons, but the irises are a darker silver, the color of bracelets or rings left forgotten in a drawer. On Andy Warhol it looks creepy as fuck. On Jason Momoa it’s kinda sexy in an otherworldly way. Both have hair cut close to their scalps and they are wearing matching