Coronation: A Kid Sensation Novel (Kid Sensation #5) (27 page)

I went down to one knee, head ringing, with the realization that Vicra was in the room. That’s what Myshtal and Indigo had been trying to tell me. As if to further confirm this, I was walloped in the back by something like a sledgehammer, causing me to flop forward onto all fours.

My armor’s systems went fuzzy for a second, and then returned to normal, showing damage at eight percent. The visor display also revealed that someone was immediately behind me – presumably Vicra.

“I gave you a chance,” I heard Vicra say.

I kicked out with my right leg towards where Vicra was standing, but connected with nothing. The armor now showed no one there. I rose quickly to my feet.

“All you had to do was leave,” said Vicra, the voice coming from behind me.

Worried about being blindsided again, I spun to the rear. Seeing no one there, I swiftly turned back around – and was rewarded with a battering ram to the chest.

I went flying backwards, broadsiding a sealed crate of figurines and smashing them all.

“All you had to do was stay away,” Vicra said.

Staggering to my feet, I looked in the last direction the voice had come from and finally saw him.

Dressed in his usual military style, Vicra was slowly walking towards me, expertly twirling in one hand a metal baton that emitted a soft red glow. I recognized it as a battle baton, one of the various types of items Berran had shown me in the castellum’s armory. It was a powered weapon, and when fully charged was capable of delivering a blow that could dent steel.

The fact that Vicra held one of these batons in his hand was disturbing. What he held in his other hand was surprising: the Beobona Jewel.

I looked around in shock, finally locating the Beobona device where I’d last seen it against a wall. As expected, its chest cavity was open. I didn’t know how Vicra had gotten the jewel (because I honestly couldn’t imagine the Beobona device opening for him willingly), but I knew he couldn’t be allowed to keep it.

I charged at Vicra, running and leaping at his midsection like an NFL linebacker. Just before I made contact, however, Vicra simply vanished. My arms closed on empty air, and I went awkwardly and painfully plowing into the floor, tumbling for a moment before coming to rest on my back.

Suddenly Vicra was over me, swinging down with the baton. In mad haste I rolled to the side; as I scrambled to my feet, I heard a distinctive crack, like a boulder splintering down the middle. Looking back, I saw wicked-looking cavity in the floor where I’d been laying a moment before, as if a portion of it had been roughly gouged out.

The baton suddenly whacked me across the shoulders, making me arch my back and grunt in pain as Vicra screamed, “I told you to leave and never come back!

“But you,” Vicra said, appearing on my right and slugging my arm.

“Just.” Vicra was suddenly in front of me, the baton connecting with my shin.

“Don’t.” Now he was apparently behind me, nailing the back of my thigh.

“Listen.” A lick that I never even saw pounded the side of my helmet, sending me stumbling.

The visor display showed the armor to be at fifty-one percent. It was doing a good job keeping me from getting killed, but it wouldn’t last forever. And with his temporal techniques down to a science, there was no way I was going to overpower Vicra or outmaneuver him – at least not physically. Not unless I could take away his ability to manipulate time, or gain the ability myself.

Suddenly, I recalled something Yelere had said during our meeting, and with that memory the rudiments of a plan began to form.

Vicra appeared a few feet away from me, spouting invective. Since I needed time to organize my thoughts and he seemed willing to talk, I decided to play into it.

“The Beobona Jewel,” I said. “What are you doing with it?”

“This?” Vicra said, laughing as he held up the gem. “I’ve actually had my eye on the Beobona construct since the moment it healed you of the Yolathan poisoning. If it healed you from that, who knew what else it might be able to save you from? I realized that I needed to take possession of it.”

“That’s what you were doing here the other day – when you found me looking at that display. You were here for the Beobona.”

“No, I’d actually come to shut that holographic display down – the one that was broken and wouldn’t turn off. It was flat-out evidence of what I’d done. In fact, I almost had a seizure when it turned on and I recognized the scene it was showing.”

“And that’s when you hustled the rest of us out of there.”

“Yes. Thankfully, none of you seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Later, after finding you here, I had my robots destroy it.”

“And the Beobona?”

“I’d actually forgotten about it, since I was suddenly preoccupied with making sure you got credit for a number of actions that took place later.”

“You mean setting me up – poisoning the queen, planting evidence in my room, and so on.”

“If you want to take a pessimistic view of things, sure. But it wasn’t until your grandmother disappeared with the queen that I started thinking about it – and even then I didn’t put things together right away.”

“But when you did…”

“When I did,” Vicra said, picking up where I’d left off, “I knew where the two of them had to be. So I came straight here and there they were, although Myshtal also being present was a bit of a surprise. I had hoped to catch them by surprise, but I’d forgotten about Princess N’d’go’s abilities. She must have sensed my presence and activated the force field.”

“Too bad for you.”

“Well, it wasn’t a completely wasted effort, as you can see.” Vicra held up the Beobona Jewel. “The others may have objected to my presence, but apparently the Beobona device did not. It simply opened up and presented the gem without me having to do anything.”

Vicra continued talking, but in all honesty I had barely paid attention to the things he’d said. I had been focusing instead on my germ of an idea, my long shot of a plan. It was incredibly risky, but I didn’t have many options.

In addition to voice commands, the armor I wore was also designed to respond to non-verbal cues – primarily eye movement and blinks. My training had been far too brief, but thankfully had included how to work the ocular controls. I was quickly able to bring the proper systems up and tell the suit what I wanted it to do. The armor, obviously designed to protect the wearer’s best interests, asked me three times to confirm the action I wanted taken. When everything was ready, I had the armor lift the visor from my eyes and retract the faceplate.

Vicra was still talking, but stopped abruptly upon noticing that my face was suddenly visible.

“Vicra,” I said in a bored tone, “you’re pathetic. With every advantage at your disposal – advanced knowledge, superior technology, even the ability to control time – you still continue to come up short. You know why I was sitting on that throne and not you when you went into the future? It’s because I deserved to be. It’s because I’m better than you in every way imaginable. Even with the ability to manipulate time, you still end up being a nothing and a nobody. I’ve never seen a bigger loser.”

Vicra’s face became a mask of fury, a near-maniacal scowl punctuated by gritted teeth and rage-induced trembling. I continued talking, calling him a failure, a bum – any insult I could think of. All the while, in my mind, I focused on what I hoped his next act would be.

Come on
, I thought.
Do it…do it…

Without warning, Vicra screamed – a fierce battle cry – and then vanished. Still screaming, he reappeared directly in front of me a moment later, smashing a fist into my jaw.

Bingo
, I thought as the blow connected.

There was a crackle of electricity and Vicra howled – this time in pain – while I staggered back from the punch I’d received. When I looked, Vicra was wincing and shaking his hand as if it had been hurt in some way; on the floor was the baton. Despite my throbbing jaw, an involuntary smile crept onto my face. My plan had worked – at least the first part.

I’d had the armor redirect power to create a minor electrical field around me. My hope was that Vicra wouldn’t be able to resist a direct shot at my face (especially with me talking smack), and I’d been right. He had socked me with a fist that was still curled around the handle of the baton. When he connected, he’d received a shock for his trouble – a jolt strong enough to make him drop his weapon.

My risky bet had paid off, but I didn’t have time to rest on my laurels. While Vicra was still distracted by the sting his hand had received, I charged him. Seeing me coming, Vicra appeared to try to reach under his military jacket, towards where a belt buckle would normally be. However, his hand must still have been bothering him because he fumbled a bit. I plowed into him just as he seemed to find whatever he was looking for.

Unexpectedly, the world came to a complete halt. It didn’t gradually slow down, the way it does when I shift into super speed; it came to a full and utter stop, as if I had somehow stepped into a photo that someone had taken of…well, everything. There was no motion or movement anywhere.

I immediately understood what had happened: I was in Vicra’s temporal field. To be honest, it wasn’t that far removed from what happens when I’m being a speedster, but there was something unnatural about what was happening that made my skin crawl.

Somehow, despite me bulling into him, Vicra and I had remained on our feet. He twisted wildly, trying to break free, while I held him with both hands – one gripping a shoulder, the other latched on one of his forearms – as tightly as I could, like a wino who had snagged the world’s last bottle of booze.

“Let go!” Vicra screamed, striking at my right arm with his free hand in an attempt to make me release my hold.

There was no way that was happening. From what Yelere had said, I would stay in his temporal field as long as I was in contact with him. I instinctively knew that Vicra was through playing around; if I released my grip, I was as good as dead.

Vicra swung at me with the Beobona Jewel. I took a calculated risk, releasing my handhold on his forearm in order to catch the gem before it struck. A moment later, we were in a fierce tug-of-war for it.

Vicra reached for his waist and I was momentarily disoriented as the world suddenly seemed to tilt on its axis and spin. When it stopped, I felt slightly woozy but was able to recognize that we were no longer in the museum repository.

From all appearances, we seemed to be in some type of barroom. There were people – oddly-dressed Caelesians, to be exact – sitting at various tables, as well as a number of beings that I assumed came from other worlds: a feathered woman with eyes like a hammerhead shark; a nebulous gray blob with a mouth full of teeth; a leonine creature with eyes on its palms.

Still struggling with each other, Vicra and I bumped into a reptilian creature that seemed to be a waitress, making her spill a tray of drinks on a patron.

All of a sudden, a mild beeping noise began sounding from the area of Vicra’s waist. Grunting in frustration, he reached towards that area, and the world spun crazily again. When it stopped, we appeared to be in some type of forest.

My thinking was slightly muddled, still disoriented from what was obviously time travel. Vicra must have noticed my discombobulation, because he once again began trying to shake me off.

I heard a squeal of terror – some kind of animal – from nearby, followed by the roar of a large predator. A second later, some species of large rodent, about the size of a rabbit, went streaking by us. The roar came again, from much closer, and I saw something like a six-legged wolf-bear hybrid heading in our direction, obviously in pursuit of the little beast I had just seen.

Once more, the beeping noise began, causing Vicra to reach to his waist. As before, the scene changed again, and then again, and a third time in quick succession. My mind muddled by the jarring temporal moves, I almost went down to one knee.

With a hard shove, Vicra knocked away the hand I was using to grip his shoulder, leaving my hold on the Beobona as my only connection to him. That’s when I realized what he was trying to do: disorient me with temporal jumps and then knock me loose – maybe even strand me in time.

Suddenly fearing for my life, I got an adrenaline rush that seemed to clear my head for a moment. With my free hand, I quickly reached forward, getting a grip on the lapel of Vicra’s jacket. I then yanked on it, pulling his head towards me, at the same time thrusting my own head forward.

There followed a satisfying crunch and a howl of pain from Vicra. When I pulled back, Vicra was blinking madly, trying to clear his vision, and blood was pouring from his obviously-broken nose.

Far sooner than I would have surmised, Vicra’s eyes seemed to focus. Gritting his teeth in anger, he reached for his temporal device again. The world changed once more, and we were back in our own time, in the repository. I must have been getting used to time travel, because this time the disorientation was nowhere near as extreme.

Without warning, Vicra reached to his side with his free hand and came up with a weapon – a pulse pistol. Trying to maintain a grip on him, I twisted wildly as he brought the weapon up to my chest and fired. It hit at an angle, tearing away the right portion of the breastplate and leaving that side of my chest exposed.

Vicra raised the weapon up towards my head. Almost in a panic, I released my hold on his lapel and reached for his gun hand, gripping it and twisting it outward. The pistol discharged near my right temple, blasting away a portion of the helmet covering the ear on that side.

Almost immediately, there was a ringing in my head and a weird tingling sensation where the helmet had been hit, and I briefly wondered if Vicra had actually shot my ear off. I didn’t have time to worry about it, though; there was too much at stake.

At the moment, Vicra and I were locked in what was almost hand-to-hand combat. Each of us still had a rigid handhold on the Beobona Jewel, and at the same time were struggling for control of the gun (which went off two more times near the side of my head, blasting a hole in a wall and causing a statue of an ancient Caelesian general to topple over after shearing off one of its legs).