The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (22 page)

      "You brawl dirtier than anyone I've ever met, girl," Rose said.

      Kate smiled, but said nothing.

      "You think I need to see you to fight you?" Rose said.

      Kate opened one of the pouches on her belt and poured a handful of table salt into the palm of her hand.

      "No, but seeing you flail is so much more fun," Kate said.

      Rose turned, arching her arm to throw her knife, but Kate tossed the salt at the same time. The knife soared millimeters from Kate's head as the cloud of salt exploded in Rose's face. The huntress screamed.

      "His mother took my eye!" Rose yelled, her voice cracking. "Do you understand that, you little monster!"

      Kate walked in closer, and Rose pulled out two more knives, but one fell weakly from her hand. She lashed out with the other, and Kate caught her wrist, pulling Rose's arm behind her back. She pushed the lead huntress into a tree.

      "Where is he?" Kate said. She clutched Rose's other wrist and turned, pushing little bones to the breaking point. "Where is the man who sent you."

      "Man?" Rose said.

      "The White Shadow," Kate said.

      "Every single one of you is an idiot," Rose said.

      "Tell me what I need to know and maybe you'll live," she said.

      Rose laughed, a bitter laugh filled with loathing so deep Kate could barely stomach hearing it.

      "Where is
he
?" Rose said

      She moved quickly, pulling her knees up and pushing off the tree with both legs. Kate stumbled backward, caught herself, and spun out of the way when Rose grabbed another knife. The knife skimmed the back of her wrist and drew blood. She hissed and took a quick step back, trying to get away from Rose's haphazard knife-swings.

      Rose ran forward, losing all decorum. Screams of hatred spewed from her lips. She plunged into the waiting point of her own broken sword, still jutting out from the tree trunk. The silver blade passed with brutal ease through her chest, bursting out the back.

      Rose gasped, and then laughed. "We won this war twenty years ago," she said, her fingers clutching at the bare blade in her gut. "This was already over."

      "Rose," Kate said.

      "What a stupid way to die," Rose said.

      And then she was gone.

Chapter 43:

It's not giving up

      Jane and Solar landed outside an deserted National Guard depot just beyond the City borders, a ghost town of rusty hardware and abandoned buildings.
Jane could envision the remnants of a battle here, where soldiers—real, human heroes, not super-powered kids—once made a stand and failed. It took a moment for Jane to realize she stood in a giant footprint.

      "They attacked this place with robots?" Jane said.

      "The enemy hit here first," Solar said. "They wanted to stamp out all resistance."

      "This is awful," Jane said.

      "It gave the citizens of the City enough time to get out, though," Solar said. "We were tied up with another attack along the coast and couldn't respond in time."

      "The whole thing just makes no sense," Jane said, taking in the destruction around her. "Why did they want the City so badly?"

      Solar walked up to a concrete bunker and started shimmying the lock. The metal frame creaked as she worked the door loose with inhuman strength.

      "I don't know," Solar said. "Revenge? If this really is the White Shadow behind everything, maybe he wanted to get back at the place he defended for so long? Maybe there was something about this place that made it easier to control Emily's powers?"

      Jane grabbed the other side of the door and together they gave up on trying to open the armored gateway and just ripped it off its hinges.

      They walked inside the bunker, both women letting a hand burst into flames to give off light. Firearms, some leftover artillery, a combat vehicle—what remained of the depot's supplies—surrounded them.

      "Lotta things that can blow up in here," Jane said.

      "Good thing we're both flammable," Solar said.

      As they walked through rows of what once had been carefully compiled storage units, Jane found her curiosity growing. Why was all this still here? Where did everyone go?

      "Is every place this empty?" she asked. "Who's left out there?"

      "There's so many people in hiding," Solar said. "We've done what we can to help, but . . . On the upside, the enemy seems to ignore people if they're just getting by. They drop a hammer on anyone who takes up arms against them, but the rest? They don't really seem to care."

      "Is every city in such terrible shape?"

      "The big ones are," Solar said. "New York, London . . . The worst are the places where they used Emily's powers to cause natural disasters. Flooding, drought. There are so few of us. We did everything we could, but how could we keep up?"

      "So you went on the offensive," Jane said.

      "We tried to," Solar said. "They had those stupid robots, and they had their even stupider followers—you know people who really thought all this destruction was the right thing to do. And the natural disasters and . . . It was unremitting. Just relentless tragedy day after day."

      They found a couple of high-quality flashlights on one shelf and switched to these less flammable, somewhat prehistoric light sources. We're both close to invulnerable, Jane thought, but if the whole place ignites in an explosion it couldn't possibly do anyone any good.

      "I've been thinking," Solar said, her tone suddenly shifting from emotional to stone-cold serious.

      Jane stopped and directed the flashlight towards her future counterpart's face.

      "About what?"

      "If things go badly, I want Annie to bring all of you home. To your own timeline."

      Jane shook her head.

      "No. We're not quitting. Or abandoning you. We're gonna help."

      "That's not what I meant."

      "You're asking us to give up," Jane said, overwhelmed by the existential strangeness of being disappointed in herself, peering at her own face in the future.

      "It's not quite giving up," Solar said. "It's not fair, what we're asking you. You've done everything you can. You've tried to save our timeline. But maybe it's destiny. Maybe we're just destined to end here like this. And if you don't go back before it's all over, your fate ends here as well."

      "And perhaps that's how it's meant to end for us," Jane said.

      "I don't believe that," Solar said. "No matter what happens, you'll go back to your timeline better for having been here and trying to help."

      Jane raised an eyebrow.

      "And how is that?" she said.

      "Because you've seen our mistakes," Solar said. "If we can't save this timeline, at least you've come here to see how terrible things can get. You can go home and make sure these things never happen in your own timeline. You can pave the way to a better future."

      Jane turned her light away from Solar's face and went through the motions of inspecting the bunker. Was she right? Was that the whole reason they'd come to visit this dark future? To serve as a warning? Maybe they can't stop the White Shadow. Perhaps this really is a dead timeline. Incapable of saving. Undeserving of rescue.

      "Has Annie ever told you how many timelines there are?" Jane asked.

      Solar let out a hard, barking laugh.

      "I don't believe there's a finite number," Solar said. "Or if there is, I don't think Annie knows."

      "Then why save this one?" Jane said. "She says it's our fault this timeline is dying."

      "It's always our fault," Solar said. "I don't mean you and I, or the Indestructibles, or . . . in every timeline, there's a catalyst. There's something important that makes it or breaks it. There's an act of horror or an act of heroism. This is what I know from Annie. That every timeline is changed—and charged—by heroes."

      "And we're heroes," Jane said.

      "I have some bad news for you," Solar said, putting a hand on Jane's shoulder. "You never escape this fate. For you and me and the millions of other Jane Hawkins out there in this . . ."

      "Multiverse," Jane said. "Emily would call it a multiverse."

      "Well then. This multiverse. I don't think we ever get to be an ordinary person, Jane," Solar said. "We are cursed to always be special."

      Jane felt a twinge of melancholy in her chest, a longing for something she never knew she wanted.

      "It would be nice to think there's a timeline where we're ordinary, isn't it?" Jane said. "Where Jane Hawkins gets to be a kid. Grow up, and fall in love. Drive a boring car, go to college. Have a house with a mortgage. Take her girls to soccer."

      "Yeah," Solar said.

      Jane spied the glistening in her future self's eyes.

      "Maybe there is, somewhere. A Jane who has a chance to be ordinary," Solar said.

      "But we're stuck being heroes," Jane said.

      "There are worse things to be," Solar said. Together, they shone their flashlights on another door, this one blazoned with an alarming emblem warning that explosives were contained within.

      Jane laughed. "I have no idea what Emily thinks she's going to do with these things, but I suppose we should get her a few bombs," she said.

      "I wish I had a chance to know her here," Solar said. "She seems like, in the right world, she'd be a wonderful friend."

      "No one's perfect," Jane said. "But I'm glad she's mine."

Chapter 44:

Tell me how the world ends

      Keaton Bohr stormed into the White Shadow's chambers.
The image of Emily judging him from behind her glass bubble burned into his mind, he remained hell-bent on a mission. Bohr found the Shadow sitting in the dark once again, as if waiting for him to arrive.

      "I can't do this anymore," Bohr said.

      The White Shadow sighed. A sigh neither impatient nor frustrated; there was something Zen-like about it. The slow, deliberate, release of air.

      "Do what?" the Shadow asked.

      "Watch us destroy the world. I can't do this. I have to try to stop it."

      "Isn't this what you signed on for, though?" the White Shadow said. "Isn't this what we wanted?"

      "I wanted a better world!" Bohr said.

      "And we failed," the Shadow said, standing up.

      "Oh, we have most certainly failed," Bohr said. "We've ruined everything."

      "No," the Shadow said. "We stood up and destroyed the world's supervillains. Things did not get better. And when the supervillains were gone, we toppled corrupt governments. And still things did not get better. We took away the crutches humanity depended on in order to stay complacent and dull. And, did things improve?"

      "We turned the planet into a constant battleground," Bohr said. "Is that what you wanted?"

      "What I wanted was a world without suffering!" the Shadow said, speaking so quickly Bohr found himself cut-off mid-thought. "For all bad things to finally come to an end. And you know what I discovered?"

      "That there are always more bad things?" Bohr said. "There's no limit to the terrible things in this world?"

      The Shadow crossed the room, walked up to a window, and opened a blind. The City, in all its crumbling decay, unfolded before them, a bleak red sunrise slowly crept over the horizon.

      "No," the Shadow said. "Not exactly."

      Bohr rubbed his eyes. The space felt stifling, as if all oxygen abandoned the room.

      "Then what? Why won't you stop? Why did we do all of this?" Bohr said. "Is it because you wanted to tear down the old world to build a better one? Because I have some bad news for you—there won't be a better one. We've made certain of that."

      "You know what I hate about heroes?" the Shadow said.

      "Don't change the subject," Bohr said. "You can't quit this conversation."

      "Heroes are missing something in their heads," the Shadow said. "Some sort of off button. A sliver of reason. They go out every day and they stupidly risk their future, they lay down their lives, they die, and there's nothing, no one, nobody anywhere, who is truly deserving of that kind of ultimate sacrifice."

      "What are you talking about?" Bohr said. "I thought that's what we were doing here! We were sacrificing ourselves. We were being the bad guys so that we could lay the groundwork for a better world, not turn it into an ash tray!"

      "Heroes are given these wonderful send-offs when they die," the Shadow said. "If they're lucky. If anyone ever knows what type of sacrifices the hero has performed, what type of superhuman feats. And then, a few days, or a few weeks, or a few years later, the world gradually goes back to normal. Nothing's changed. Nothing ever improves."

      "So you're doing this because nobody appreciates heroes?" Bohr said.

      "And you know what's worse?" the White Shadow said, ignoring Bohr's question. "You know what's truly even worse than not being able to change anything?"

      Bohr waited in silence, a growing fury burning an acidic pit in the cauldron of his stomach.

      "This world will match you blow for blow. Heroes create villains. Every good act is matched in equal or greater force by something significantly more evil," the Shadow said. "Have you ever noticed that? You'd think, after decades of advancement. Year after year of heroic acts. That we'd develop, evolve. That we would move toward enlightenment. That we'd help create a better world."

      Bohr's heart raced now. He wanted to rush across the room, throw his ally and friend out that giant window, and end all of this. But that would do nothing, in the final analysis, he knew. And worse, the Shadow was far from wrong. Bohr thought about the world he knew before. Not only realizing that for each new hero who stood up against the darkness, someone else worse always rose up to stand in his or her way, but how, for a very long time, the whole concept of heroism had become reactive. The world kept getting worse, throwing its heroes at its problems—its wars, its disasters, its famines and nightmares—and there was always something more terrifying waiting in the wings.

      "I hate you for saying this out loud," Bohr said. "Did you always think this way?"

      The Shadow waved him off with a dismissive gesture.

      "When I met you, Keaton, I really thought we could save this place," the Shadow said. "I really did."

      "And now?"

      "Now I think the problem is us," the Shadow said, turning back to the window and the bloody sunrise. "People. Humanity. We're the problem. We're the monster at the door."

      "And your solution is to simply wipe us out?" Bohr said.

      "I didn't plan it this way, you know," the Shadow said, a vein of sadness once again creeping into that raspy, soft voice. "I didn't realize this would happen when we took that girl all those years ago. I believed we were doing the right thing."

      "When did you know?" Bohr said. "When did you figure out where we were headed?"

      "If you ever bothered to step out of your lab, you might have seen it sooner," the Shadow said. "But truly I didn't understand how final this plan had become until you told me about the girl's change of condition. Congratulations, Keaton. Your brilliant machines have doomed the world."

      Bohr slammed a fist into the wall. "I'm going to stop this. I am!" he said.

      "After all this time, Keaton, do you really think you've landed on the side of angels? It's much too late. Sit back. Enjoy. Watch the world fade into darkness. We've earned this. Front row seats to the apocalypse."