Berlin, Earth

The Sixth Attraction was obviously entering its final stages. Events were accelerating. Emilio awoke from what felt like the worse nightmare conceivable. The vision of Marilyn as the infection of this green lush world was not random. Nothing in this simulation was reassuring. He just had put lipstick on a chilling pig. The energy made him sweat profusely, and on the monitor next to the tube he had not used, his heart rate measured at one hundred and eighty beats per minute.

In the small room, the furniture had been packed in the other rooms to make room for the Rho Chamber. For the first time in an eternity, there was privacy in the President’s life. The blinds were closed, but more importantly, those who normally pried shamelessly on the lives of others now knew better.

“This was difficult to watch, I can imagine being there,” offered Kaï to Emilio. “You were unable to save them, how come? Could you not see a solution?” with the Asian bluntness of a tiger mother, he added, “You scored very low.”

Emilio tried and failed to fully wake up. He had to hold his boyfriend’s hand to stay up. The tube structure pulverized. “The time for deception is gone,” whispered Emilio to his lover. “The Multiverse is dying. Sophie alone can cure it. I hope she watches it once she returns.”

“Why should she?” Kai said sarcastically.

“She is,” he stopped himself. His lover was right. Images were reshuffling in his mind.

Kai’s bluntness was shocking. The man had been silent all these years, “The girl cannot and should not be manipulated. You should know better.” There was a pause. The seer was looking at futures unfold. The visions were realigning. He saw Sophie would never watch this. His eyes were open, yet the flood of images filled his mind. Emilio panicked for a second until his lover spoke.

“It is easy to get information to her.”

“How so?”

“My mother was very stubborn. Nothing you could say or do could make her change her mind. But there is a simple way.”

“Which is?”

“We would give a gift to my aunt, her sister. She was poor. My aunt would call my mom, and sure enough, my mother would ask us what she could do in return for us helping her sister. My mom hated to owe favors and rewarded kindness to those she loved. Be nice to Laurent, just,” he dabbed the lovingly offered towel to his forehead, “be kind to Laurent. Focus on him.” Emilio looked at Kai, his lover. All in one package.

Emilio remained silent with a wide grin on his face.

“The time for deception is gone,” he concluded. “Sophie was clear, that’s the only thing she wants. None of this charade and show of lights. Done!”

Emilio was wrestling internally with the decision to speak. He wasn’t one to like giving bad news. His expression darkened but for a moment. As only a lover could, Kaï lovingly slapped him across the face. Emilio’s expression returned to an amused look.

“We had our moment, now go save the world. I am not selfish enough to keep you to myself. I got more than I should.” Emilio started to tear up. Kaï walked to the front door, opened it, and pointed like a mother sending her prodigious son to his violin lesson. “Go and kiss me.”

“Should I bring you back a gift?”

“Where are you going?”

“Paris,” he smiled. “Takeda is there.” Emilio had started to feel the Great Curvature. He braced for what came next. The Asian lover pointed at his expensive Birkin bag on the table. It was a very expensive bag from the famous French manufacturer. Emilio smiled and knew he would need to go to the mother ship of Hermès in Paris where Takeda would be tomorrow. The Asian stiffened his body, proud of himself, and pointed to the way out. As Emilio passed on the way to the stairs, Emilio was entitled to a very short kiss on the lips. There were so many things he wanted to say. He said none just felt the energy, pride, and this elusive thing he had never known. Love.

As the President zipped his coat and began running down the flights of stairs, but then his mind slipped. Instinctively, he stopped walking and grabbed the handrail knowing Kai would rush down. This shit wasn’t close to done.

Time changed.

His mind was submerged by a strange new vision.

He was wrong.

***

The world moved again, power shifted and humans felt dizzy. They were now two weeks before the Sixth Attraction and things were already this unstable.

***

He had just imagined Rho waves to be the power of love, but that was selling the Multiverse short of yet another dimension. The images were undefined. In his mind’s eye, he saw Sophie but could not see her surroundings. She floated in darkness. Her face was puffed red, her veins bursting from sheer pain and rage. All controls were off; she was enraged. The Attractor stood both fists clenched defiantly. Her face and half her clothing were covered in deep red blood, but she did not appear to be wounded. She had just been splattered by someone else’s blood. She let out a primal cry, a noise no child of twelve or even thirteen should ever hear, much less make.

Other children could, at the hands of someone with no ethics or morality, become victims; pawns. Not Sophie. She was power incarnate. She was the Attractor, and she made her choice. He saw her shake with rage.

He saw a blast of black energy radiate out of her as if she was the heart of a dark supernova. The blast destroyed her immediate surroundings with astonishing destructive force. It was complete and total annihilation. Where she stood, she continued to pulse out in every direction. In a flash of sheer havoc and destruction, mars was pulverized, vaporized, no vanished. Every atom of it was wiped from the Cold.

In his vision, the earth and the solar system were next as the wave radiated and travelled outwardly from the young girl. The blast grew, and the wave destroyed, with ease, the entirety of the Milky Way and then spread to the entire Cold. In seconds, the dimension was no more. The power, like a virus, quickly spread. It touched other worlds and dimensions. Emilio saw the Purple get reduced to dust with the same unyielding power. The Lower fell next, and Liam's kind were killed instantly. One by one, the worlds of the Multiverse were pulverized as the Nexus vanished branch after branch. Then, as the Multiverse disappeared and died, there was darkness.

***

The images were such a shock to Emilio, his knees buckled on the way out the building, and he fell. The heavy man rolled down the stairs. There were cries and commotion.

“Are you okay, sir?" said a rushing bodyguard. Emilio just had the time to look up the stairs to feel reassured Kaï had not seen his weakness. Before Emilio could respond, as the man held him up, the vision changed gears and continued. Emilio’s eyes were bleeding.

This Sixth Attraction was a pain, it demanded more for his insolence.

***

The real world was gone again. Emilio saw Sophie in the same darkness, but this time there was no blood or rage. She was in her bedroom, bouncing on her bed. She slowly stopped and stood up, after which she remained motionless, staring at a pair of little birds. A red cardinal, the image of her mother, had flown in to seduce her father’s brown bird. Emilio knew he was witnessing past; the scene moments that had induced Sophie to lose her control and create the time-altering pinch. Sophie’s eyes filled with tears as both birds touched and kissed. The power in the room was different; it was vibrating, and as she had stood up, a pulse of energy blasted out. The wave and power were utterly different the dark erasure of what Emilio had just seen moments ago. The pink detonation wasn’t one of violent impact. Instead, it caressed.

Emilio’s saw the universe, the dimensions, and the world transformed by the energy once again, albeit it to a completely different end result. Instead of crushing everything in its wake, the power embraced and molded the same way a comb passes in long hair. The power rolled over every life and enhanced life, making it more advanced, mature, and intelligent.

This time, the power healed the Multiverse. Sophie’s mindset was part of the key.

***

In a heartbeat, Emilio was back on Earth - the message was clear. As he walked out into the street where the presidential limo awaited, he looked at the colors in the sky. The sun was not yet up. There was a smoking image of red and fire over the moon. Two short weeks remained before the end of life. Time was short.

Few things ever scared the President, this just did.

He still had no clue what the Sixth Attraction absolutely was. But at least he knew how to survive it. The world was trying to hurt the girl; it wanted Sophie to get upset and destroy it. Marilyn was trying to shield Sophie from harm and give her a healthy birthday. Marilyn’s plan now made sense. She simply wanted the Attractor to enjoy her birthday. Somehow Emilio knew these weren’t the solutions.