Vanished

  Suddenly Harper recognized the building.

  “Hey—that’s the Tampa Theater!”

  It was a historic landmark for the city—the first air-conditioned structure in town and a common spot for school field trips. It had been built in the 1920s as one of America’s most elaborate movie palaces and had only one screen. Rows of plush red velvet seats surrounded the single screen and marble steps led up to an elaborate balcony where the blue ceiling was gilded with stars like the night sky outside.

  Harper had loved the old theater as a kid and even as an adult she and her girlfriends often came on Friday nights. The Tampa Theater was the place to go see first run indie films that weren’t playing at any of the multiplexes.

  Seeing the familiar building crumbling but still proud, its few front windows boarded up and its sign broken on the ground brought the reality of the situation home to Harper as nothing had before.

  “My God,” she whispered, staring at the half-ruined building. “This is really real, isn’t it? We’re really in the future.”

  “One possible future,” Shad said pointedly. “There are many paths the loop can take. If we can get you to She Who Alters we can change all this.” He made a sweeping gesture with one hand to indicate the bleak landscape around them. “But before we can do that, we have to forge you a new identity. She Who Alters won’t see just anyone, no matter how great their need, unfortunately.”

  “She Who Alters? New identity? What are you talking about?” Harper looked at him in confusion. The big Kindred wasn’t making any sense.

  But he only shook his head.

  “Never mind. Before we can do any of that, we have to clear Earth’s atmosphere. And that part is always tricky. Come on—we’re going to make a run for it from my ship to that small, side entrance there.” He pointed to a metal door to the side of the main entrance which was so covered in dirt and rust it almost blended in with the blackened bricks. “You ready?”

  “I guess so. But…you’re sure none of those big, nasty-ass grasshopper looking Seeker things will get us?” Harper looked around anxiously. She really did hate bugs—especially giant ones. And I thought palmetto bugs were bad!

  “None around,” Shad assured her. “We’ll be fine getting in—it’s getting out and making it out of orbit that’s the hard part. Come with me. Oh, and you might want to hold your nose.”

  Before she could ask why he had popped open the front driver’s side door and was pulling her out onto the pitted and cracked pavement below.

  Harper took in a deep breath and nearly gagged. A stench like nothing she’d ever smelled before assaulted her nostrils. It seemed to be made up of rotting garbage, dirty diapers, burning hair, and decomposing corpses.

  “Ugh!” Harper clapped a hand over her mouth and nose to keep from inhaling any more of the horrid miasma and hurried to keep up with the big Kindred who was striding swiftly towards the side door.

  He rapped in quick succession and then stood back, waiting until the door opened a crack and a bright eye peered out. Harper saw with some surprise that the iris had gold and silver rings before the door opened more fully, revealing what could only be a Beast Kindred. He had broad shoulders and a wild mane of black hair streaked with gold.

  “Shad,” he growled in a low, hoarse voice.

  “Daniel—I’m back,” Shad said.

  The strange gold and silver eyes of the Beast Kindred lit with hope.

  “You’ve got the girl? The looper worked?”

  “Yes and yes but it’s complicated,” Shad said. “Let us in before the latest stench Kara and Kaleb whipped up kills us.”

  “Come in then.” The huge Beast Kindred with the strangely mixed eyes and hair stood aside, ushering them into the dark interior of the theater.

  The door slammed shut with a muffled thud and the Beast Kindred bolted and barricaded it behind them.

  “Harper, this is Daniel, our leader,” Shad said, nodding at the other Kindred. “We grew up together—our mothers were best friends on Earth before our fathers called them to the Mother Ship as brides.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the Beast Kindred said gruffly. “You can breathe easy in here. The scent blowers are all outside.”

  Cautiously, Harper lifted her hand from her face and took a small sip of air. The scent inside the old theater was musty and dusty but not nearly as horrible as the rotten miasma outside. What the Beast Kindred had said about “scent blowers” struck her as strange though.

  “So…that smell outside is on purpose?” she asked.

  “Hell yeah.” The Beast Kindred Shad had called Daniel nodded easily. “Pheromones—keeps the Seekers away.”

  “The Seekers aren’t too bright,” a new voice said. A tall Kindred with dark brown hair and green eyes stepped into the limited light. When he spoke, Harper thought she saw a flash of fangs—was he a Blood Kindred then?

  The new male was hand-in-hand with a tall girl with straight, pale blonde hair and ice blue eyes.

  “They aren’t sentient,” she said, as though continuing the male’s thought.

  To Harper’s surprise, she saw that the girl had fangs too. But wasn’t it only Blood Kindred males who had fangs?

  “And everything in the Hive runs on smell,” the male went on, continuing the girl’s sentence.

  “So if you mix the right scents and pheromones together and blow them around the building,” the girl said.

  “You present a very effective deterrent to the Seekers,” the Blood Kindred said.

  “Which means you can keep them away,” they finished together in perfect unison, both sets of fangs winking in the dim light.

  “I think this last batch you two mixed is the most effective yet,” Shad told them. “It’s fucking horrible.” He turned to Harper. “Harper, these two are Kara and Kaleb—they’re twins—the son and daughter of Commander Sylvan who was the head of the Kindred High Council in your timeline. They run our science division.”

  “Such as it is,” Kaleb said. Kara kept silent, staring at Harper in a way so intense her look was almost a glare. At last she spoke.

  “You are the ten’sora. You’re the reason the Hive were able to take over. It’s your fault my parents are dead. Your fault everyone on the Mother Ship is dead.”

  “Hey now, Kara…” Daniel put a hand on her arm but she shook him off.

  “It’s true and you know it.” She looked at Harper coldly but spoke to Shad. “You should have had the Time Warden set the loop to before the Hive found her. You should have gone back and killed her instead of trying to save her. The death of one is preferable to the death of many.”

  “You know that’s not how it works, Kara,” Shad said roughly. “You can’t change the past through violence—only love. The Time Warden himself told me that.”

  “What does he know?” Kara gave Harper one last, hostile glare, bared her fangs and actually hissed at her. Then, still clutching Kaleb’s hand, she turned back and she and her twin disappeared into the darkened husk of the theater.

  “You’ll have to excuse her,” Daniel said roughly. “She’s brilliant but losing her parents—losing all our parents—did something to her. She can’t stand anyone but her twin, Kaleb. Everyone else is the enemy.”

  “Come on,” Shad said. “We need to make a plan so I can get Harper out of here.”

  “This way.” Daniel turned and led the way into the darkness.

  Harper started to follow but stumbled over the uneven floor.

  “Careful.” Shad grabbed her by the hand and pulled her along in his wake. “Step where I step. Some of this place is booby-trapped.”

  Harper stepped carefully after him, wondering what else she would see in the harsh, awful future world.

  Wondering if everything she saw here really was her fault.

  * * * * *

  Shad took a deep breath as Daniel led them through the echoing shell of the main auditorium to the small door under the tall wooden stage. He looked up at it, letting his memory wande
r.

  There was a rectangular hole at stage left where the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ used to rise before the movie started. He still remembered seeing it as a kid, mesmerized by its melodious tones, wishing his mother, Kat, could have come along on their field trip from the Mother Ship to see it. Later on he had wished it even harder, desperately wanting to see her face even once more—but by then it was too late…

  Stop thinking of the past, he told himself roughly. Right now you need to concentrate on the future—on making a definite change and getting to the end of the loop.

  He had some hope that this time it could happen. The fact that the time path they were on seemed to be a new one made him cautiously optimistic. But then, he’d had hope before—so many times—and every time it had been shattered.

  And no matter how much hope he had for his possible success this go-around, the fact was that time was running out. The dying red light on the looper implanted under the skin of his left forearm proved it.

  Have to get it right this time, he told himself, steadying Harper as she nearly stumbled again. They had made the decision to leave the interior of the old theater dark and cluttered to preserve the illusion that it was uninhabited—hence the mess. He knew every step by heart but of course, the Tampa Theater wasn’t like this in her time. It was clean and well-lighted and carefully preserved by the volunteers who staffed it and loved to tell about its history.

  And it will be again, Shad vowed to himself. This time we’re going all the way to the end of the loop. This time I’ll be successful.

  He hoped.

  They entered the side door under the stage and a familiar sight met his eyes. His twin brothers, War and Peace, were sitting behind the control bank. Most of the monitors and viewscreens had been scavenged out of junked Kindred ships but Peace—who was a technical genius—had welded them together into a workable conglomeration which ensured they knew exactly what was going on around the theater at all times. He had sandy brown hair like their father, Lock, and blue eyes like their mother, Kat.

  “Hello, Brother,” War, who was the tactician of the two, greeted him quietly. He had dark auburn hair as their mother had, but his eyes were as black as their other father, Deep’s had been.

  Shad could still remember how their Dark Twin father’s eyes had blazed when he disciplined the three of them. Although War got the most discipline, since he always got into the most trouble, usually dragging poor Peace along with him. How the two of them had laughed and teased each other back in those happy days. Shad, being a Shadow Twin, had always stood by and watched their antics but still, he felt a quiet enjoyment of his brothers’ happiness.

  There was no more mischief or humor left in his brothers’ faces now, though. They had suffered a deep loss—one Shad knew they would never recover from.

  “War,” he said. “Peace. Meet Harper.”

  “Oh, hello.” Peace looked up dully and then turned away, apparently losing interest in the new addition to their party. His eyes were bloodshot as though he hadn’t slept for days. Before him, resting on the console, was a small holo cube. He picked it up and flicked it idly with his thumb, causing it to hum to life.

  A holo appeared hovering above the cube—the head and shoulders of a girl who had the same creamy brown skin tones as Harper. But her eyes were different—the irises a warm amber while the sclera around the iris which should have been white was a deep, rich black instead.

  Shad heard Harper catch her breath.

  “Who is that? Her eyes…”

  “Ziza is…was half Scourge.” War’s deep voice faltered on his use of the past tense.

  Shad’s heart ached for his brothers. As a Shadow Twin, he knew it was extremely unlikely he would ever form a bond with a female himself. But War and Peace were true Twin Kindred. The pair of them had been in love with the headstrong, beautiful Aziz—or Ziza, as they all called her—since they were children playing together on the Mother Ship. She had finally returned their love and agreed to bond with the two of them just a month before.

  The trio had enjoyed a week of love—the three of them blissfully happy despite the harsh and awful world they lived in. And then Ziza had been snatched by a rogue Seeker while she was out on a routine patrol and taken to the Hive’s Earth headquarters. War and Peace had mounted a desperate campaign to get her back…but they had been too late.

  “She was already swollen with grubs,” Peace had told Shad bleakly. “She begged us to…to kill her. I couldn’t…couldn’t do what had to be done. But War…he could. He did it.”

  Shad knew well enough what that meant, the same way he knew why the Dark Twin’s hand twitched when he held his blaster and why his black eyes were hard and dead inside.

  He had to shoot her—had to kill the only woman he and Peace ever loved.

  It twisted Shad’s heart to admit it to himself. But he knew there had been no other option other than to leave Ziza to die in agony when the grubs reached maturity and gnawed their way out. Impregnation with grubs was a death sentence to any female who wasn't a ten'sora. What War had done was a mercy killing—not that the Dark Twin saw it that way.

  It was a wonder he hadn’t turned the weapon on himself next but somehow Peace had stopped him. Shad didn’t know why—it was clear that the Light Twin was as dead inside as his brother.

  His heart ached fiercely for the twins—his blood brothers—though he had never been as close to either of them as they were to each other. A Shadow Twin was always set apart—different…lacking in the world of the Twin Kindred. Nevertheless he loved his siblings and his very soul cried out to the Goddess for their healing and for a way to avenge Ziza or somehow change her fate.

  He had cried to her after Ziza’s death—cried out in pain—and for the first time since he was a child, the Goddess had answered him…had given him his mission. Shad could still remember it now though it felt as though the encounter had been years ago…

  “Child,” the Goddess had said to him, her face too bright to look upon as she appeared in the dimness of the ruined closet he called a room. “I have heard your sorrow and come to you.”

  “Why now?” Shad’s grief had made him fierce, reckless. “Why now after all these years? Why didn’t you stop the Hive from killing the Mother Ship? From taking over the Earth? What good can it do for you to come to me now?”

  “Child…” There was a pained note in the Goddess’s beautiful voice. “I ache for you and grieve for your pain but though I love my children, I cannot alter history.”

  “Then what good are you?” Shad had raged at her. “What fucking good are you? Why did you come? Just to tell me you’re sorry? Just leave me the fuck alone.”

  “Child,” the Goddess had repeated gently, patiently, for the third time. “I tell you, I cannot change history. But it is possible that you can…For you are a Shadow Twin—a special one. You were born for this very task and only you can perform it…”

  Before his disbelieving eyes, the dimensional door had opened…the way to the Time Warden where he had been given the looper now implanted under his forearm. And his life had changed forever…

  And what good has it done me? Shad asked himself fiercely, shaking off the old memory. I just keep failing again and again and again…

  “So you got the time-looper and the girl,” War said, breaking into his bleak thoughts.

  “Did he?” Peace looked up, a dull kind of hope lighting his eyes. “Does that mean you could go back and change history? Make it so…so Ziza is still…still alive and we all…” He shook his head, unable to finish.

  “I’m going to try,” Shad said carefully. “But brothers, you must know, this isn’t the first time I’ve tried—the first path I’ve taken.”

  “So you’ve tried before and failed,” War said flatly. “Well, we knew the past would resist change. The Time Warden warned as much. And a big event like the Hive domination is even harder to change.”

  “I’ll do it this time,” Shad swore. “We’re on a new pat
h. But in order to get her altered so the Hive can’t use her…” he nodded at Harper who stood quietly by his side. “I have to take her off Earth—out of this solar system.”

  “You’ll need some cover then,” Daniel said heartily. “A distraction to keep the Hive off you until you break orbit and get past Jupiter at least.”

  “We can do that,” Peace said quickly. “We can keep them off your trail, Brother.”

  “I know you can.” Shad cleared his throat. “But Brothers…there’s something else you need to know.”

  He waited until he had all their eyes before continuing. There was no easy way to say this.

  “Yes, Shad—go on.” Daniel’s deep voice was oddly gentle, as though he knew what Shad had to say.

  “I’ve done this—tried this—hundreds of times now,” Shad told them. “And in every path I’ve ever taken, the Hive finds the source of your distraction and blasts the base the minute I leave orbit. I don’t…” He cleared his throat. “Don’t think the base survives the blast. It’s massive.”

  “So we need to evacuate and stage the distraction remotely,” Daniel said practically.

  “Can’t,” Peace said at once. “I need to be here to make it work—it’s retinal-print activated.”

  “If you stay, I stay, Brother,” War said at once.

  “But that’s a death sentence,” Daniel protested.

  “Don’t care.” War turned bleak eyes on their leader.

  “Besides, anything we can do to help Shad change the past…bring back Ziza…” Peace lifted his chin. “We’ll do it.”

  “You need to know something else,” Shad told them. “This…might be my last chance. The looper is almost out of power. And you know the Warden can’t be found more than once in a lifetime. It’s a dimensional impossibility.”