Break The Ice (16 page)

“Wait!” It’s Dan. He’s out of breath.

His feet pound against heavy earth behind me as he runs up the hill. If I look away, I’m going to lose my nerve. I need to act. I need to finish this.

“Can’t you see what’s happening?” he says. I don’t respond, and he continues talking. “They’re playing you. They have been since the beginning.”

“Says the guy who lied to me and almost got my friends killed searching for him.”

“If I had known they were going to extract me that way, I never would have tagged along,” he says. He’s standing right next to me. “If the Dinmani is on your side, why does he have your friends tied up?”

I look at Kaitlyn again.

She meets my eyes this time, but still says nothing. Then she shakes her head, subtle, almost unnoticeable.

“He’s not holding them hostage,” I say. “Your men chased them down, remember? Lured them into a trap. And now I’m saving them.”

Tinjo steps forward. “They are stalling you.”

He’s right. Dan’s done it once already, tried to convince me of something he lied about. I release the pressure from inside my palm. A long spike slides into my grip.”

“Finish him,” Tinjo says. “Finish him and we can visit your mother. My men say she is doing better.”

A smile spreads across my lips. I knew they could do it.

The Sunjin faces me, ten feet away and arms open wide. “I will not fight you. Do what you must. But remember, the choices you make–”

No more delays. I hurl the ice, aiming for the Sunjin’s heart. It digs into his chest like butter, causing him to stumble backwards. His foot trips over one of the burning Dinmani hands, and he falls back into the flames.

He made no move to dodge the attack. Why? The thought buzzes around my brain as the flames inhale him. Every other Sunjin had enough spirit to fight to their death. But their leader, the one who should be strongest of them all…he didn’t raise a hand.

I shake my head. That’s not important. He’s dead, and we win. I killed him and now mom can be around to see me graduate, go to college, get married. She’ll be there.

Dan runs over to the fire. He’s screaming, trying to pull the Sunjin leader out. He tugs on an unlit arm, but pulls back with only a burning sleeve. Inside the flames, the Sunjin’s body glows red like the hottest ember in a pile of ash.

“You son of a bitch,” Dan says, turning to me. “Damn it. I’m going to kill you!” He charges straight for me. Two steps away, a portal blinks between us and, within a fraction of a second, Dan is gone.

I spin around, and Tinjo stands in front of me, his face solemn.

“Shouldn’t you be smiling?” I say.

“I have no time for celebrating yet. There is still a lot of work to be done.”

I shake my head. “They’re dead. You can go back home now without fear.”

Someone laughs beside me, but I don’t look.

“We can, thanks to you. And once we are done here, that is what I plan to do.”

A sharp chill blows through the portal behind me.

“Take the girl back to the others,” Tinjo says. “Learn what you can from the three of them. I will finish up here and meet you there.”

“Yes, sir,” Tinwel says. He grabs hold of Kaitlyn and pulls her up.

She struggles against his grip. That’s not right. She should be laughing, smiling, cheering. She should trust him, like I do. Finally, as if the words she held in weren’t worth saving anymore, she looks me in the eyes and screams, “Run!”

Her words echo around us as Tinwel grabs her and disappears into thin air.

“Now, if you will be so kind as to return my Dinmow, I will be on my way. As a kindness, I will let you stay here. It is the best gift I can offer.”

Tinjo steps forward, extending a hand. It glows a dark, iridescent blue. Even though it doesn’t touch me, it tugs at my chest, pulls at my very soul. The pain is almost numbing. It knocks out my other senses.

Concentrate. Dan. Need to find Dan.

I dig my heels into the ground, fighting against Tinjo’s pull. I wait until he’s close enough to touch. Even though I can’t see him, I sense it. Only a foot away. I don’t hear myself say it, but I shout the words, “This isn’t over.”

I push forward and my hands bounce off of Tinjo’s shoulders. The force shoves me back, and I tumble into the cold world behind me.

The darkness shrouding Yellowstone disappears in an instant. A cloudless, pale sky spreads out above me, getting farther and farther away as I plummet downwards. Three moons evenly spaced across the horizon–red, yellow, and blue–light the icy atmosphere.

Cold wind whips at my back, burning worse than the fire only moments ago. I’m falling fast and the ground can’t be far. I have no idea what will happen when I stop. It has to be a better death than at the hands of Tinjo.

Right?

Something hard pelts me in the back. Shards of ice fly off to the side as the object breaks apart underneath me. And then I’m no longer falling. I’m sliding, backwards, head first, down an ice covered slope.

I can see the path I’m leaving behind me. Fields of ice to the left and the right with only one path in between. My path. I can’t explain it, but the ice isn’t spearing me. It explodes on impact, forcing a storm of hail to rain down over me. I close my eyes and hope none of the spikes hit me at the wrong angle.

The steep slope lets up. I slow down, eyes still shut until I’m moving at a crawl. When I finally stop, I have to look out to stop my mind from spinning. I take a minute to absorb the scene around me. Thousands of shards still stand on the hill I slid down, but I’m on the outskirts of a small clearing. A dozen feet open up on both sides of me. I couldn’t have created it.

I have trouble planting my feet square on the ground. The world spins too fast, and I can’t balance myself right away. I wobble a few steps and, even though I’m afraid to move, I’m upright.

“You.”

The voice comes from behind me. I have a hard time distinguishing it from the rushing in my ears, but I know who it is. By the time I turn around, Dan is three feet from me.

He doesn’t stop coming until his chest smacks up against mine. Instead of saying anything, he pushes my shoulders.

With already poor balance, I fall backwards, slamming my head on the exposed sheet of ice. Spots speckle my vision. Dan advances on me, so I kick the ground and scramble as far back as I can.

In no time, I’m up against the ice shards again. I lean on one to stand, and it breaks off at the base. I catch myself with another behind it.

Dan marches forward, hatred burning behind his eyes, a look I haven’t seen on him before. He wrings his hands together, ready to strangle something. Ready to strangle me.

The broken ice piece rolls around at my feet. In a desperate attempt to hold Dan back, I pick it up, brandishing it like a sword. He doesn’t hesitate. At this point, if I really want to stop him, I only have one choice. Aiming low, I hurl the shard at his legs.

The ice comes within a foot of him and then disappears. Not at once. Slow enough that the water drips from the end as it melts. I had gotten so used to the heat wave, I didn’t notice the warmth around me comes solely from Dan.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he says, five feet from me. “Who you killed? What you started?”

“I did what I had to,” I say.

“Spoken like a true puppet.”

The anger radiating from him sparks something in me, and I close half the distance between us. “They were saving my mom. What did you want me to do? Deny that chance?”

“They played you. Your mom is already dead.”

His words trigger an inhuman growl, a bodily instinct that I can’t control. The Dinmow pumps through me. It’s pulsing, ready to escape. If I thought it was strong on Earth, there’s no comparison for right now. I could resurrect a hundred Dinmani, slay a thousand Sunjin.

I shake my head, trying to get the tainted thoughts out. I killed the Sunjin already. And the Dinmani betrayed me.

“I don’t know what’s real,” I shout, spitting the words at Dan. “I don’t know, alright?”

“Do you want to know something real?” he says. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “You murdered the only man who had a chance at saving your mother.”

“But…he…” I can’t untangle my thoughts. Nothing makes sense. It was all a lie. I can’t cope with that. Not if it means that mom is gone. “Who was he?” I say, softer than before.

Hatred flickers through Dan’s features again. The heat pours off his body. It melts more of the ice around us, extending the outreach of the clearing. As fast as it came on, the heat dissipates, and Dan sighs. “It doesn’t matter now,” he says.

“It matters to me. If I damned our lives, I want to know who I stopped from saving them.”

He looks up at me, his eyes darker than ever before. “My father.”

“Your father’s dead,” I say without thinking.

“I couldn’t tell you the actual reason I was on that train.”

“You helped me kill the Sunjin.”

“A few cross over who …” He rubs his eyes, searching for a word. “Who are crazy. There’s no other word for it. The ones who would take out an entire train full of people in hopes of killing a single Dinmani. They should never have made it through, but some did and you happened to meet a couple.”

“I saw so many killing only humans.”

“It’s never only humans,” Dan says, defensive. “There were always Dinmani around, somewhere. Or you. Whatever power Tinjo gave you, every Sunjin senses it. Those few radicals didn’t care if they mixed some humans into the destruction as long as they got rid of whoever they’re hunting.”

I shake my head. “That’s not okay.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s why I helped you outside the train. I tried to stop him, but he figured out what you were.”

“
What
I am? I’m me, that’s all.”

Dan laughs, a dry sound compared to usual. “Sorry, but you’re stained, just like they are. Rumor spread about a young kid who teamed up with the Dinmani. I didn’t believe it until I met you on the train. You seemed like a genuine guy, so that’s why I followed you. I expected you were helping them because of something other than malice.”

“They promised–”

“That’s what they do,” he says, cutting me off.

I stare at my feet for a few seconds. “So you’re Sunjin. Does that mean you’re…” How do I say this?

“An alien?” he says, finishing my thought. “Not exactly. I was born on Earth, like my parents. Although that’s not saying someone in my family long ago might have come from somewhere else.”

“So your family helps an alien race heat up and explode a super volcano, saving the world in the process?”

“They never planned to use the caldera at Yellowstone. They needed the hotspot underneath to cross over.”

“And that’s why you were here?”

“My father wanted to show me what to do if the Dinmani attacked again. I guess he was too late.”

A surge of guilt begins, but curiosity replaces it. “Again?”

“The last ice age,” he says.

I laugh out loud, but he keeps a straight face. “You’re not joking?”

He shakes his head. “Look, we have to find a way back. Now that there’s nobody to stop them, the Dinmani are going to do whatever it takes to bring about a new ice age.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not as long as I’d like. Four, five days tops. Then there’s no going back. You’ll have to open a portal.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have the same weapons in your arsenal that they do.”

My face grows red. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Dan walks away, back across the clearing. After five steps, he looks back at me. “Then we find somebody who does and get it out of them.”

“Any idea where you’re going?” I say. We’ve walked for an hour and there hasn’t been anything besides the fields.

“My guess is as good as yours,” Dan says. “My father told stories about Dintar when I was young. There’s a city somewhere on this planet which should be crawling with Dinmani.”

“Dintar?” I say. I already know the answer but can’t help myself.

“They convinced you to help them without even telling you the name of their planet you were trying to save? You really did get played.”

Not the answer I had hoped for.

“Dintar,” he says. “A small planet that orbits between the three moons.” He looks at me for a second and nods. “The planet weaves itself around them. Each moon gives off so much radiation that the planet always has the same glowing sky.”

“Night and day?” I say.

“That doesn’t mean anything here.”

“And the people? Are they all like Tinjo?”

Dan shrugs. “Honestly? I doubt it. The legends suggest that every Dinmani born is naturally evil. But they’re legends being told from ancient Sunjin. Things get misinterpreted along the way.”

“But we’re going to need to treat them all the same,” I say.

“If you want to get back home before everybody you know dies.”

“Very blunt,” I say.

“I still have family back home. I want them to survive as much as you want yours.”

One less since you met me.

“Look,” he says, reading my expressions. “I understand what you did. I wish you hadn’t, and I’m sure at some point I’ll get the offer for revenge. I’ll probably even take it. But I understand. Be honest with me, don’t try anything shady behind my back, and we’ll be fine for the time being.”

A wispy chill blows against my back, but I ignore it.

How are we ever going to be fine? If he was the one who put mom in the hospital, I wouldn’t be walking calmly next to him right now. Things would have ended one way or another at first sight. “Look, I’m–”

“I heard somebody stained my world with Sunjin.”

Dan and I spin around together. I’m unsure whether to attack or run. I spot the Dinmani and pause. I recognize him. His size isn’t easily matched, even by many of the Dinmani I’ve encountered.

“Striker,” I say.

His eyes narrow on mine. “Human.”

“I guess we can have them coming to us, huh?” He steps towards Striker.

“I don’t think this is the one you want to try and break,” I say.

“What are you doing on my planet? We had a deal,” Striker says.

“One your people broke,” Dan says.

“A group of outlaws who betrayed me.”

“I don’t care if they hurt your feelings.” Dan takes a running start. His hand glows red, a sharp contrast to all the ice surrounding us. He’s only a few steps away from Striker when he jumps.

Striker pivots back, leans to the side, and strikes Dan in the chest. Without missing a beat, he continues spinning around full circle before placing his foot back on the ground. He completes the entire rotation before Dan hits the ground.

In an effort to help, I snap the largest shard within reach and throw it with all of my might. It crashes into Striker’s chest, crumbling into ice cubes.

“Enough,” he says. “If you want a fight, I will give you one. You and I both know that is not the solution. Leave my world, and we will both win.”

“We can’t,” I say. “We don’t know how to get back.”

“He can send us,” Dan says, climbing to his feet. “Create one of your passageways and let us cross back to Earth. We’ll find Tinjo from there.”

“If you cannot even create a simple portal, how do you expect to defeat Tinjo’s army?” Striker says. “He was my best soldier. I want to ensure he does not betray me again. For that, you must kill him.”

“With pleasure,” Dan says.

“Why can’t you do it?” I say.

Striker doesn’t shy away from the question. No hints of embarrassment even cross his features. “He may be a traitor, but he served by my side for many years. I will not dishonor my people by killing one of our own.”

“See, I don’t care about any of that,” Dan says. “Point us in the right direction.”

“Travel to the City of Light. Find Shindrow. He can teach you how to use your Dinmow. I cut off Tinjo’s access to Dintar, but his followers are strong here. If you die, your world dies. Either way, I am rid of you.”

Above us, a whistling noise grabs my attention. A flaming meteor falls from above. It appears to be heading over us, but the trajectory changes last second and it dives into the ice between Striker and me.

Once the dust and smoke settle, a creature waits in the crater. It stands on four legs with broad shoulders and a thick body made entirely of rock. Hundreds of cracks split the rocks, slivers of yellow and red lighting through like veins filled with magma. Two beady, black eyes blink open. The creature takes in its surroundings before stopping on Striker.

“Yes, master?” it says in a low, gravelly voice.

The sound sends a chill down my spine.

“Show these two the path to Enrom.”

The creature bows. “Yes, master.” It faces us, and glues its eyes to Dan. Two rocky lips curl back, revealing blade-like teeth. The accompanying growl makes my hair stand. “Sunjin, master.”

“Stand down,” Striker says. He looks at me. “Fa will take you to Shindrow. Once he is out of my sight, you will have full command over him. If he comes to any harm, I will destroy you faster than any army can.”

In one blink, Striker is gone.