Jeff didn’t open his eyes to look at the man with the machete; instead, he tried to convince himself that there was a reality where a force field lay at his feet. He started to feel the connection form in his mind, but the man’s voice broke his concentration.
“I don’t think he’s right in the head.”
Jeff opened his eyes to see the man gesture with his hands, signaling the others to move in. But before Jeff could even move to defend himself, something crashed into the ground next to him, sending the mob running. They scattered in all directions, a few of them firing guns wildly over their shoulders as they sprinted away.
“We can’t take you anywhere, Handsome,” Stefani said. He looked over to see that her body armor had been transformed into a flight suit. It was bulky, angled, and terrifying. And he wanted one.
“Sorry.”
“Of course you are.” She grabbed his shoulder, but he looked over at her disapprovingly.
“I want to fly this time.”
She didn’t open the helmet that hid her face, but he didn’t need to actually see her to know the look he was getting.
“Never could say no to a pretty face . . .” Stefani grumbled. Reality bent around him as Stefani pressed another time line on top of their own, replacing the matter that had composed his body armor with a matching flight suit.
26 FLYING
A HELMET APPEARED AROUND HIS head, blocking his sight for a split second until it came online, overriding his vision with an enhanced view of the real world. It wasn’t unlike the hood experience the vagrant uniform offered, except this suit of armor had the ability to fly.
He intuitively activated the flight controls with a mental flick, and his stomach surged, almost emptying itself, as he launched several feet diagonally into the air. Bullets clanked against his armor as he tried to stabilize himself. Carlee’s instructions on how to use a flight suit weren’t much help at the moment.
Stefani grabbed hold of his suit and tugged him into the air as more projectiles chased after them. Energy blasts that could do some serious damage blew by them as she helped him fly for the first time. They picked up altitude quickly, and soon they were beyond the reach of Nula’s militia. Carlee had said many times that it was dangerous to fly high, but they didn’t have any other choice.
Stefani gradually eased how much she was helping him, and soon he was cruising east next to her. He figured out how to patch a communication line to her and took a deep breath.
“Thanks,” Jeff said. He had planned to say more, but it was all that came out.
“No worries. Those ladies were a bunch of jerks anyway. Very cliquey. I think they were judging me because I didn’t have any Smallbrain children.”
Jeff was relieved to hear that she was back to her normal self. He didn’t realize how much he had enjoyed conversing with the loose Stefani before. It reminded him of hanging out with a pretty, female version of Dane—before Dane had left him for dead.
“Did you learn anything about what was going on there?” Jeff asked.
They swooped below a cloud just above a gorgeous landscape that sprawled in front of them. They veered heavily to the north as the suits sensed a leech preparing to fire on them in the distance. He felt natural now, like he had been born to soar through the sky. He wanted to spread his arms out and fly around in circles like a bird, but he didn’t want to slow them down. The main propulsion was from his chest and the back of his calves, but moving his arms would cause a great deal of wind resistance.
“Not too much. Those ladies weren’t a very trusting bunch. Too many hours spent preaching stranger danger to their kids or something.”
“I guess they were right. We did sneak into their camp and kill one of them.”
“Of course they were right, but . . . wait. You murdered someone?”
“I wouldn’t use that word . . .”
“You killed him in his own village?”
“Yes. But he tried to stab me first.”
“Oh. All right, we’re good then,” Stefani said. He had expected to be scolded for what he had done, but instead she sounded like it was just another joke worth chuckling about.
“Before you and Carlee found me, the man I killed back there laughed at me when I asked for help. He was a brave, sworn to do everything and anything to save the people of Fifth Springs; instead, he hid during Horus’s attack. I called him out about that while lying on the ground, and he gave me a knife. He told me to be brave instead. I gave the knife back to him today.”
“Sounds like the chump deserved it.”
“He did.”
“So, how do you feel?” Stefani asked. “To have your revenge?”
“I don’t know . . .” He was conflicted, and thinking of killing others over the past was too much for him to think about right now.
“It better at least feel a little bit good after the way I had to save you. Again.”
“I don’t regret it if that’s what you’re asking. But I don’t know. I was mostly just confused at the time. I pressed in the knife he left me. Felt like the right way to do it, but it—”
“You pressed?”
“Yeah, I did.” Jeff laughed softly as it set in. He had done the certified impossible, the one thing that was so inexplicable that not even the robot gods who had infinite wisdom could explain. He had done it. He had finally become a true vagrant.
“Congratulations! I’ll take most of the credit since you did it under my supervision.”
“Thanks . . . I think.”
“You sound unsure,” Stefani said, but it felt more like she was leading him than actually inquiring about his feelings.
“It wasn’t what I expected . . . I mean, it worked. That was crazy. But my mind . . . it felt . . . wrong. Or confused, at least.”
“That sounds about right.” Her voice had lost the unrighteous edge it had held for the past few minutes of their flight.
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked. She didn’t answer right away as they swerved in midair to avoid flying directly over an upcoming group of humans. There was no way to tell if it was a coalition city, a community, or a warlord camp, but they avoided it anyway.
“Do you remember Drew?”
“Yeah, the old man who’s not all the way there? Nice guy.”
“Right . . . Well, the truth is that Drew isn’t that old. And there is more to pressing than you’ve been told.”
“OK . . .”
“When your mind bridges realities and makes that connection strong enough to leave an imprint on our own reality, there is a cost to it. Part of the mind never really recovers from that . . . it sort of gets stuck in the other time line. That’s what you were feeling; your mind was having trouble figuring out what was happening between the two time lines it was forced to bridge.”
“So, that happens every time?”
“Yes. But it’s worst at first. Then you sort of adjust to it for a while. I hardly notice it now. In fact, it’s just sort of become natural to me.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“But,” Stefani began, her voice heavy now, as if she were about to deliver horrible news, “over time, the mind becomes overwhelmed, too many pieces stuck between time lines, and . . .”
“You turn into Drew,” Jeff finished for her. He wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand, he felt like he had just received a medical death sentence, but on the other, becoming a vagrant had given him a second life.
“Right, but it can get worse than Drew.” Her voice was practically a whisper. “Much worse.”
They blasted past a field that was full of cattle that had been grazing peacefully. The sheer number of animals was impressive; it would have been enough to feed Fifth Springs for years. But that was one of the benefits of a drastically reduced human population—there was more room for everything else. Fifth Springs had sent out hunting expeditions when necessary, but it was too dangerous to leave their community often.