Lost Friends, Chapter Five

The Four Heroes and friends hurried the refugees back to the hideout, beneath a thunderous black sky that was now torn every minute by furious flashes of lightning. Their arrival was greeted with a hundred happy reunions as the former prisoners ran to loved ones and relatives they’d feared they would never see again. Proteus made his way over to his comrades through the joyful laughing crowd, beaming and exclaiming: “You did it, guys! I knew you would!”

Dylan sat down on a packing crate. “But we’ve still failed,” he said heavily. “We may have beaten Mekanikron but we’re trapped in the Ring of Fire with no way of getting these people to safety. The rift’s going to open in just about half an hour, and without any way of putting out the flames it’s curtains for all of us!”

Suddenly the door banged open and Neetra flew into the room, her eyes enormous.

“Guys!” she burst out. “It’s Noctes!”

The company rushed through into the sick-bay. Diem was weakly glowing on the bed as before and Noctes remained kneeling by his side, but for the first time in months, the latter had moved. His arm was raised at right-angles to his body, trembling under the strain but holding firm, and one black finger pointed unmoving at the side of the room. Kumiko’s gaze followed the direction he was indicating.

“It’s…er…a wall,” she declared, puzzled.

“Wait. He’s pointing south-west, and the quickest route by foot to the perimeter of the Ring is that way,” said Dylan. “That must be what he means – he wants us to go there. But why now? What’s changed?”

“All of ze humans stranded in zis region are togethair for ze first time since ze attack,” Phoenix continued for him, working as hard as Dylan to try and figure it out. “It is ze only variable zat ’as modified in zese last moments, so it must logically be ze factor which ’as predicated zis. So…”

“So Noctes has a way to help, but it requires all of us to be in the same place at the same time,” Dylan went on quickly, pacing the room. “Maybe he’s been waiting for that to happen – it would explain why he’s been struggling against the odds to keep himself and Diem alive, instead of letting nature take its course. But what can he do? They’re both dying! What would be achieved by all of us going to the edge of the Ring, when they’re – ”

Dylan had reached Phoenix in his crossing and re-crossing of the sick-bay floor, and their eyes met. His voice fell silent all at once as they stared at each other, then grasped each other by the arms. Their fellow heroes looked on, hardly daring to breathe.

“It can’t be,” Dylan whispered. “But…”

“Scientifically speaking, it does…it does make sense!” was all Phoenix seemed able to say, her tones even more awed and hushed than his.

Dylan whipped around to face the others. “Get everyone together, fire up the Ultimate Cycle and let’s move!” he commanded. “We may just have a way out of this, if only we’ve got enough time!”

Through the ruinous streets the great procession flocked, bearing torches and lamps to light their way in the lowering dark of the rift, while The Four Heroes and their companions hurried them on. Rumbling along at the heart of the masses was the Ultimate Cycle, driven by Dylan, with the bed bearing Diem lashed to the drive section and Noctes by his side, maintaining his vigil to the last. Before long the gloom was cast asunder as they reached the awesome wall of fire that penned them in, roaring out of sight to the heavens in vast blazing tongues too piercingly bright to look at, dwarfing the hundreds-strong crowd as they clustered as close as the overpowering heat would allow. Making sure the citizens stayed safely back, The Four Heroes followed Dylan to the very foot of the inferno with Kumiko, Jeffrey, Proteus and Phoenix close at hand.

“OK, guys, we’re here!” Bret announced, hefting the bed single-handed from the Cycle and carrying it over to where Dylan indicated. “Now how about telling the rest of us what this is all about?”

“When Proteus found ze twins, Noctes can ’ave been thinking only of preserving ’is brothair’s life,” Phoenix began, as Bret carefully laid the bed down. “But when ze Ring of Fire took ’old and ze human survivors were scattered, both saw zere was a greater reason to postpone Diem’s death as long as zey could.”

“We’ve always just supposed Luxumbrians were symbiotic pairs,” Dylan went on, bearing Noctes over to his twin with Joe supporting the alien’s other shoulder. “But think about it! Light and darkness…each one defines what the other is, but only because they’re opposites. Noctes and Diem’s bodies don’t exist in a state of mutually supportive harmony, but rather a constant state of imbalance! That has to be how it works, and when they die, the balance is restored. They cancel each other out – ”

Jeffrey drew in breath. “Leaving behind a vacuum,” he whispered, in tones of absolute revelation.

“Hopefully, a big enough vacuum for our purposes,” Dylan finished. “Because that’s the reason they held on.”

He and Joe helped Noctes to kneel, and Dylan crouched down beside him.

“Thank you,” he said to him gently. “You can now. It’s time.”

To those looking on it seemed almost as if Noctes inclined his faceless head in brief acknowledgment of Dylan’s words, before standing and then lifting silently off the dusty ground. At the same time, Diem rose from the bed and the twins began to circle each other, levitating higher and higher before the flames. Streams of black emitted from Noctes’s silhouette and bound themselves about Diem’s luminous frame, while similar rivers of light flowed out of him and entangled his brother. Closer and closer they drew as their final dance neared its culmination, and it became harder and harder for the awestruck spectators to tell what was light and what was shadow. For just a single moment The Four Heroes and their friends felt as if they were looking for the first time at those two eternal opposites merging into a state that was somehow one. Then, in a howling eruption of utter silence that seemed to make all reality blink out of being, Noctes and Diem were no more.

The vacuum smothered the flames behind it in an instant and pushed its nothingness onward, swallowing up the Ring of Fire in an airless void where no blaze could live. From that point in either direction, heat and light vanished all around the devastated neighbourhood until the quenching force met itself on the other side, and the last of the inferno dissipated away as if it had never been.

Tears were flowing out of control down Neetra’s cheeks, and she was not alone in weeping. “They’re home, Neetra,” Dylan told her, though his own voice was choked. “If they ever had a mother and father, or brothers and sisters…they’re with them now.”

His words rang true. The friends who had known the last survivors of Planet Luxumbria saw in that moment that one of the universe’s lost tribes was together again at last, and though perhaps none of them had ever truly understood or related to the mysterious pair they had fought alongside, all were sure that Noctes and Diem were taking their love and respect with them wherever they were bound. Sunlight from areas of Nottingham not afflicted by the rift shone through the region that the flames had lately surrendered, lighting another lost tribe on the path they were to follow.

“So long, guys,” Proteus smiled, wiping away a tear. “Heroes, I’d say that’s our road.”

“Lead the way, Proteus,” said Dylan, clapping him on his back. “You’ll find the rescue crews and a new group called the Next Four ready to give these citizens the help they need. You too, Kumiko, you’ve been roughing it long enough!”

“Go with them, Jeffrey, your friends will be wondering where you’ve got to!” Neetra added, and with a grateful smile the round schoolboy joined the others. Soon the exodus was well on its way, heading off into the restored realms of Nottingham where the opening of the rift could do them no harm.

Phoenix dried her eyes. “Mes amis…ze rift,” said she.

“Right,” said Dylan. “Our visitor from the future’s about to check in, so let’s make sure we’re there to welcome him!”

The Four Heroes and Phoenix soared back to the area beneath the temporal disturbance and arrived just in time. Before their eyes the tumultuous sky split open, lightning jagging in all directions from the periphery of the rent, as the shockwave it spawned descended on the broken towers below. The Mekanikron building, tallest and so first in its path, crumbled to a pile of rubble at its touch.

Dylan flicked on the Ultimate Cycle’s forcefield generator and a protective sphere sprang into life around the vehicle. Even so, The Four Heroes felt the terrible force as it hit ground zero and coursed through the district like a gale of light and noise, reducing what little remained of the buildings and streets to a flattened barren wasteland. Nothing could have survived it. If the evacuation had failed, the death-toll would have been catastrophic.

As the impact began to subside, he who had caused it made his appearance. Flying out of the rift came a figure, tall, gaunt and male, clad only in trousers and a ragged grey cloak. That was as much as our heroes could determine about him, for across his bare skin played a strange half-light that obscured all his features but his fuming red eyes. However, it was neither his outlandish physical aspect, nor the waves of fearsome raw power that seemed to radiate from his incandescent body, that sent through The Four Heroes a jolt of shock and apprehension making them start forward in their seats as one.

“The psychic presence I am sensing in him,” Joe gasped, “is like…like nothing I have ever known!”

Tearing to street level the stranger touched down and blasted off again, vanishing in a second and leaving resonant aftershocks and echoes in his wake. The rift was beginning to close and daylight was returning, but suddenly Bret called out: “There’s something else coming through!”

He was right. An instant before the rift winked out of existence, a gleaming silver air vehicle cruised out of its maw and began to land. Deactivating their forcefield, The Four Heroes and Phoenix leapt out of the Ultimate Cycle as the pilots of the incoming craft did likewise. They were four young people, clad in predominantly black uniforms with a flash of another colour, and The Four Heroes gazed when they beheld their own scarlet and golden insignia emblazoned on each one’s breast. It was the newcomer in the blue outfit, however, a proud young man with Martian silver skin and purple eyes and hair, who transformed their intrigue to pure amazement. For he was someone they had seen before.

“Thassal?” Dylan breathed.

His three companions were a youth of around his own age, with long black hair and a red uniform, and a somewhat younger brown-haired teenage boy and girl whose matching costumes were pink. “Who are you guys?” Neetra exclaimed.

“Who are we?” the boy in pink repeated. “We’re The Four Heroes!”

NEXT: HEREDITY