Endgame (Book 3)

Chapter 37

When I managed to get back again, Metagor had already arrived. Ben had taken his place, and he was trying to wake Sage and Jeremiah, who were still unconscious.

"Sage should have woken up by now," I said with a frown, approaching Ben. Not a single vehicle could be seen in either direction.

"What happened to you?" Ben asked, turning his attention to me. "She got here as fast as she could trying to save you."

"After all hell broke loose?" I jokingly asked, trying to shake off the depression stemming from Cassie's betrayal. I waited, but he didn't ask for elaboration. "Zero wanted to show me something about myself," I explained seriously. "He teleported me away and left me to get back here on my own."

He considered my words before replying. "Don't take this the wrong way, but..." Ben stood from a crouched position, looking at me. "Why didn't he kill you?"

"He thinks he's making me a better person by being the bad guy." I shrugged with one arm. "So he's waiting for us to have some sort of end battle. A big winner-takes-all thing. I'm not entirely sure he's wrong in his purpose, but his methods are disagreeable."

"To say the least," Ben said dubiously. 

"Yeah," I said dismissively. 

I knelt over Sage's body and rubbed my hands together, small sparks jumping from my hands. I laid them across her chest and prepared to send a small surge of electricity through her. 

Ben lunged for me out of nowhere and tackled me. He pinned my wrists to the ground, staying clear of my hands. 

"What the fuck, man!" I yelled. "Get off of me!"

Why did I say that? I never curse like that. 

"What are you doing? You'll kill her!" He looked over his shoulder at her body lying still on the concrete. 

"I'm waking her up." My head bobbed as I spoke. 

He remained on top of me a moment more, confusion twisting his face, and slowly got off of me. 

"Why do you look so surprised? I do it all the time," I said. 

"No, you've never done that before. You used to-" He stopped mid-sentence. "Wait, do you remember how to do that? I thought you didn't have your memories?"

"I...don't..." I said, watching the sparks fizzle out around my hands. Suddenly, I gained my bearings. 

I held my head, a headache beginning to throb against the sides of my skull. I couldn't do that with my electrical abilities, I had no idea how to yet. That wasn't a memory; it was instinct. That wasn't possible. 

Jay was still weak in my mind. He couldn't communicate with me right now. So if he couldn't even do that, how had he filtered into my actions?  

"I'll have to figure it out later," I said with a shake of my head. "Let's get them back to my house."

*****

Flying at an easy speed alongside Metagor, him jumping, we made it to my place without any mishaps- which was a miracle. He transformed back to Ben on my doorstep with Jeremiah in his arms. Even as his human self, he carried him effortlessly. 

Because she was my sister, I had Sage slung over my shoulder. Sweat poured down my temples with the effort of both flying and carrying her. 

When Mom answered the door, I muttered a quick hello before pushing past her to dump Sage's limp body on the couch. Then, I crossed the room to hug her as she showered me with both reprimands and relief at making it back. Dad came downstairs and silently raised his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation. 

Ben placed Jeremiah carefully next to Sage. He hugged Mom with a smile and shook Dad's hand. I guess they were well acquainted, though I halfway wondered why they didn't do this the first time Ben came around to drop off Ashley. Speaking of...

Before I could ask where she was, Mom burst out impatiently. "Tell us everything that happened," she demanded as soon as we were situated. 

Ben and I looked at each other, agreeing not to mention our conflict, and began talking at the same time, giving our takes on what had transpired since I had arrived at the MARAD facility. 

Mom was lost after the first few seconds- I could tell by the hopeless way she was moving her head between Ben and me- and Dad had to intervene. 

"Stop. One at a time. Concisely," Dad said, using a bit of his manipulative power to separate our words. "Start off with why you brought Jeremiah here," he said with slight disgust, "and why he and Sage are unconscious right now." 

As he instructed, I started with the most recent event. "We're not really sure what happened to Sage, but I can tell you what happened before that." Though, after I mentioned Zero and Di-Men, I had to go way back to my dream state to explain. Even Ben looked a little lost. 

When I saw they still weren't understanding, I summed it up in a simple statement. "Look, Zero's going to try to kill the entire human population on the planet unless I stop him,  and I have neither the level of power or the means to beat him."

"Okay, I don't completely get everything, but can't your dad just mind blast him or something?" Ben suggested. 

"He sounds mentally unstable. I can't work with people like that," Dad said. "It also sounds like he has D.I.D."

"D.I.D.?" The term rang a bell. Ashley had mentioned it...earlier.

"Split-personality disorder," he said. "You used to suffer from it sometimes, but that was before we got this version of you."

Now I was the one who was lost. 

Suddenly, the light bulb clicked on in my mind. 

Split-personality disorder. Why I betrayed my friends. Why Zero was so messed up. 

I used to be Zero. 

Sensing my revelation, Jay silently sent flashes of his memory to me. They helped put the rest of the picture together.

I brushed past my parents to get some space. I needed to decode some of this. 

Di-Men used to be a part of me. But Jay was also me. In fact, I didn't even exist. It was just him and Jay. They were two people fighting for control over the same body, much like Zero was internally now. Except, he didn't have the body. I did. 

What happened on the highway...Di-Men had taken over Jeremiah's body and used it to get Jay, along with his body, back. When I had confronted Zero in the prison at the MARAD facility, I had taken Jay away from Di-Men. Zero was the combined temporary form of them both. He displayed green energy because the internal battle between the two was killing him. He was near death. But before he could die, I split him. 

On the highway, Di-Men had tried to take all of Jay, but Sage must have interrupted whatever he was doing. Now, I had a little bit of him, and Di-Men had a little bit of him. The whole process had begun again, but the countdown timer on Zero's life had restarted. Jay was weak because he had been split, and Zero was at full strength. 

Which meant that I had to take all of Jay back and destroy Di-Men along with myself. I had a clear-cut mission to complete.

I had committed a terrible crime. I wasn't even supposed to be part of any of this. 

The only reason I existed was because of a malfunction in that godforsaken pod. It had created my consciousness, stuck it in Jay's body, and booted him to a place where I didn't know he existed in my mind until we were separated into myself and Zero in the explosion Jake had set off. Unknowingly, he had released a shit-ton of dimensional energy that screwed up the entire planet, with me at the center of it all.  

Even if I didn't mean to, this was a problem I had caused. Now, I needed to fix it all before the consequences came into play.