-----Ipsiota-----

Ouno was waiting for me just inside the doors to the hangar.

"Take me back to Montressor!" I yelled, "I don't have the time or energy to make a portal."

"Not until you tell me what the hell that was!" he yelled back, "What did you do?!"

"I was trying to destroy Earth!" I yelled. This was weird, we didn't know each other. Why were we yelling at each other like we did?

"Why?!" He was obviously frustrated, "Why do you need to go to Montressor now?"

"The Hagyan demon," I began somewhat shakily, "The Liadans imprisoned it. When they find out I let it go, they're going to fucking destroy Montressor."

"But you can't save it on your own!" he yelled.

Oops.

"I'm not going to save it," I said calmly this time, "I'm going to use the Elin portal to escape to the Shadowrealms. I'll go through Elin and make my way to Yanipreuta—I'll be a fugitive of the Magai Empire."

This was a rough idea, freshly made, but it should work.

"What if I turn you in?" he asked, "I don't want any part in this!"

"You're already my accomplice. Just take me to Montressor and drop me off. I know how to get to the portal,"

He stared at me for a few seconds.

"And that demon won't follow us?"

"I don't know, but if we stay here, how can you be sure we'll live?"

He turned around without another word. He exhaled black smoke.

We made our way to the cockpit and Ouno made a show of slamming his hands on the keyboard to get the ship to turn around. Then he stared at the screens for a moment.

"I haven't ever gone warp speed back-to-back in this thing. I'm not sure the structure of the ship can handle that..." he trailed off.

"Do it," I said as intimidatingly as he had done with his smoke. I was glowing now, too.

"If we die?" He asked.

"It'll be painless,"

He pressed the button. The computers took a few moments to calculate the trajectory.

One moment we were facing the Earth's moon and the next we were looming over Montressor.

The typical orderly flow of space traffic coming out from the Federal District and Galaxis was gone. It was replaced by erratic swarms of Liadan war ships attacking multiple cities in Origin and Promethea.

"The warp speed sent us forward an hour or two," Ouno said, pointing at the navigation clocks.

I cursed out loud.

"I told you,"

"Bring us down on Magai City," I was tapping my foot on the floor now, "Ouno, you can go wherever you want after that."

He set the trajectory and we descended to the surface of the planet.

From this height I could see all the destruction. There was a giant vessel blocking the view, though...

"Oh, fucking hell," my eyes bulged, "That's the mothership!"

"Pull up! Pull up!" he yelled.

A message from the computer came onto the screen, "Courtesy programming override. Beginning towing of vessel: Liada Conquest."

We both screamed at the top of our lungs. For some reason it was getting pummeled by Liadan war planes. We couldn't hear the explosion from so high up in such an enormous ship, but it was taking massive damage.

"Override. Teleporting passengers,"

A screen changed to a camera view of a holding room. Civilian Liadans and two humans remained.

"Hey!" I exclaimed, "I know who that is! Where is that?"

"That's just in the next room to the right down the hall," Ouno responded, "l just opened the lock for you."

I walked out of the cockpit and into the hallway. I looked the windowed door and saw the avian kid. It was Carlos's friend.

In a matter of minutes I had fucked up a century's worth of intergalactic peace, but this made up for it in my eyes.

I typed on the panel beside the door and teleported him out into the hallway. His unconscious body lay on the floor. There were windows at both ends of the hall, so I blasted one with a laser and grabbed him.

His skin didn't burn where I touched him. With confidence I picked him up and ran out the window.

I could still redeem myself.

-----Carlos-----

The next day passed and then so did another. There was not elaborate tech down here. Just a bare and minimal bunker.

Grady didn't speak. She seemed to be in some kind of unexpected catatonic stupor. There were no medics. There was no relief.

Food was robotically distributed three times every day. Announcements came on over low-tech speakers regarding proper behavior in the bunker and the status of conditions above.

On the third day we were released onto a freight carrier hovercraft that would take us up. So were the thousands of other bunker floors. I held Grady telekinetically and I continued. We came up into the city and our ship docked onto a massive central ship that looked over the city. As we rose slowly I could see that the black Liadan mothership was attached to the hull of an even bigger Starliner vessel. The two cast an enormous shadow over the city.

The carrier docked and Grady and I and the endless crowd of other people walked into the lobby, where I was given an e-ticket to board an X Flier to our apartment. I walked through the millions of refugees to the exit station and boarded our hovercraft.

We flew over the city and saw the destruction. Where there were once tall, pristine towers shining in cool tones and hues, now there was a vast field of jagged spikes with smoke still billowing from many of the ruined buildings.

The damage was not distributed evenly, though. The city edges, like where our apartment was, were nearly untouched.

I turned the news channel on as we rode through the aftermath.

Of course there were crucial details lacking, our presence in the command center, for one, but the news probably had it right. After the mothership was bombarded by thousands of kamikaze attacks, it was going to fall on the city. There was footage of the Starliner almost sluggishly attaching the mothership to itself and holding it high above the city. I had never seen anything like that in my life.

A sudden message on the screen startled me.

REDIRECTING TO THE OLD CAPITAL CHAMBERS

I almost asked Grady what she thought that was but there was no point. She was still out.

We flew south and into a portion of the city I had not been to. It was significantly shorter and less dense than Magai City. It was nearly untouched by the war.

The hovercraft descended in between the buildings and it made its way to a building that looked a lot like a normal Earth stadium. Short but still majestic. It was grayish white and dome-shaped. We landed on its front lawn.

The door opened and a helmeted soldier stepped in. The humanoid soldier wore a black uniform with only a triangular button with the colors of the empire pinned to his shirt.

Lavender, sky, grass, and gold. What did those colors stand for? Where were those colors when the city was massacred? What did those colors stand for when my friends were killed and taken and lost and unspeaking?

A surge of anger ran through me. I hated this place. Why were we not defended? How is this pathetic excuse for an empire be the strongest in existence?

I ran to the soldier and blindly beat on his chest. He knocked me to the ground and I was left without breath.

He picked me up and flung me over his shoulder. He carried me across the lawn and to the doors of the capital building. I saw another soldier go in for Grady.

I waited limply for him to let me go. We approached loud yelling. Parliamentary yelling. Someone, of course, was yelling for order.

We reached the room of the source of the roaring argument. He sat me down in a white velvet chair in a small room. He pressed on the button on his uniform and it disassembled the helmet. It was Merius.

"You and Grady are here to make a statement to the Syndicate. The Senate and the Millenium Chamber are here. So are several foreign dignitaries and various gubernatorial legislatures. Be careful of what you say."

He stepped out of the room and the walls came down.

I sat before more than a thousand people in an auditorium.

I looked behind me and the Triumvirate presided over the whole body.

"We will now hear from Carlos Galván," Oriys Eutos proclaimed in a magically amplified voice. I flinched and here was murmuration, "Triumvir Merlin Talanjanix will lead the inquiry."

Merlin teleported from his seat behind me to the floor before me.

"Carlos Galván," he began, "tell us about you. Tell us where you are from."

"I'm from Houston, Texas. From the United States of America. Mexican blood of Aztecs and the European conquistadores courses through my veins," my voice broke, "I live on planet Earth and I have been alive for 16 years."

Gasps arose from the audience. I continued.

"I am gay and a male. I speak English and Spanish. I love music and writing and art. I struggle with anxiety and I have fought against depression. I faced death several times in this week alone. I want to rest. This is all too much for me," suddenly I couldn't bring up the anger that was in me earlier.

"Thank you, Carlos," he proceeded. Merlin was wearing a black suit with the same Empire button Merius had. No reaction, "Now, I would like you to tell me how you got here."

"I teleported. Uma Celen Reqqna told me I had abilities. I went back to Earth, I empowered my friends, and then we voluntarily came here, but I don't remember how we actually did it. There's a gap in my me—"

"Get out of this country!" I heard someone yell. I was too distraught to understand the significance of that.

"Now!" Merlin boomed, "We will allow the guest to speak."

"Uma registered me for citizenship and enrolled us in the UM," I recounted, "We met Logan Yanaie and Noah Hayfields."

"I support you, Carlos!" he yelled from a different end of the audience. His voice rang out and I was glad to know he was actually here. I didn't know what was going on and he was out of my telepathic reach.

"We went on the field trip and this girl who had attacked us before kidnapped me. Her name is Ipsiota Anteibos. She's an avian."

"We know of her," Merlin's brown eyes didn't reveal his thoughts.

"And she took me to the End. We got out. The classes started right away and then all of a sudden there was a war over our heads. Several of us came to the city to save Uma but Dania and Stacey stayed behind. Jozeey died in some amber bullshit. We made it onto the Liadan mothership," I was leaving out details for my own sake, "and we helped forge a path to the Eminent Hyos Joachin. Liadan civilians sent us to the refugee bunkers before the ship was bombed."

"You omitted several important details," Merlin remarked solemnly.

"I had to," I responded, "I was asked to keep it a secret."

"The End base is not a secret to us," he clarified, "You must include the information you have omitted."

"Fine," I squinted, "I have some sort of enhancement that gives me increased power. The Energy Modulator."

That brought up a roar of controversy. Merlin silenced them by force. He drained the sound from the room.

I spoke again, "Sabine was abducted by a time-traveling older version of me."

The legislators were taken by surprise.

Merlin restored sound.

"Will this information be enough to satisfy the Syndicate?" Merlin asked with brows furrowed.

A tall insect woman in regal clothing and a crown spoke, "We are ready and informed. The Syndicate will take a vote."

"All in favor of allowing this war-hero and his group to stay within the Magai Empire," he called out.

On a Statusin screen, a display showed only a third of the body in favor of this motion. The rest of the semicircle indicated deportation.

Deportation. Even in this place, there was that bullshit.

"I am sorry to inform you, Carlos Galván, that you will be obliviated and deported to Earth. Your friends will face the same fate," The insect queen said with contempt, "You pose a danger to the Empire that we will not allow."

I shot up out of my chair and yelled, "No!"

She raised her hand and I was suddenly immobile.

Images of our days here flashed before my eyes. Everything was escaping me. I felt powerless and unseeing. My person, my existence was taken from me just as it had been before—by my parents the past year, even before this.

Even before what?

I was home, lying in my bed as I had for hours, for days. There was no happiness to that. Why should there be?