The Indestructibles (Book 3): The Entropy of Everything (3 page)

Chapter 4:

The girl in the glass bubble

      Keaton Bohr never expected to become a zealot.

      And yet here, at the end of the world, it seemed the only word appropriate anymore. He'd been called many things in his life: scientist, optimist, dreamer, genius; but never a believer, never a warrior for any cause other than knowledge.

      Until he met the White Shadow.

      He'd been angry then, disillusioned, a scientist cast aside for unpopular ideas, an idealist screaming to deaf ears. The White Shadow had come to him, found him on a bridge in the City at the end of his rope, thinking about the home he would need to sell, fingers sooty from setting his lab coat on fire in effigy for the corporations who rejected his ideas on clean and alternate energy concepts, and the Shadow had given him purpose.

      "I need a man like you," the Shadow said. "I could use someone to help me change the world."

      And they certainly did, Keaton the scientist and Shadow the planner, Shadow the avenger, Shadow the former hero.

      But this is the end of the world, and it's all our fault, Keaton thought. He had just watched the hero Solar battling his latest weapons, giant mechs like creatures from an old anime. He knew they wouldn't stand up to her, but they were something to keep the hero distracted. And distracting the aging and dwindling Indestructibles had become Keaton's leisure activity these days, when he wasn't doing the bidding of the White Shadow, when he wasn't using their captive to change the face of the world.

      When does it all end? Keaton thought. He ran a hand through his thin hair, looked for the cup of instant coffee he'd abandoned earlier, and wondered how their not-so-secret weapon was doing today.

      Their secret weapon. We built this future on the back of a little girl, Keaton silently said to himself. And with the things they had created, the monsters and miracles, they'd drawn so many other zealots to their cause. Keaton knew that if any of those fanatics, those blind followers of the White Shadow, knew the doubts he had in his heart, they would kill him.

      Or not. He was, after all, the only one who knew how to talk to the girl in glass bubble anymore.

      Why not go see her, he thought. He picked up the room-temperature cup of coffee he'd lost and headed downstairs.

      The hallways of his lab echoed like a tomb. When they'd first started, there'd been so many other people like him, believers in the White Shadow's cause, people who wanted to change the world by force. They made it easier, those others. Staff and assistants and colleagues, feeding on each others' beliefs and energy. They really did think they could make a better world. There were still followers, but the smart ones—the scientists, the explorers—wandered off, literally and metaphorically. The thinkers had driven themselves to despair. They still had foot soldiers, extremists willing to die for the cause, but men and women of science . . . the world didn't have many of them left anymore.

      Keaton sometimes wondered if they'd been just as enthusiastic about something better how differently things might have turned out. Certainly the thought had occurred to others before him, accounting for some of the attrition as the different scientists began to realize the fruits of their labor were strangling the very world they wanted to change. Many more left after what had become known as the California incident.

      There wasn't much disguising the White Shadow's true intentions after the California incident, after all.

      Keaton sometimes wondered why he stayed. In part, he thought, it was love. He did love the Shadow, as a friend, as a makeshift family, despite his monstrous decisions. The Shadow had saved Keaton's life after all, had reeled him in from the brink, had given him purpose. The Shadow made Keaton something, and gave him a legacy. A horrific legacy, but, Keaton thought, was it better to be the man who helped end the world, or to simply be nothing at all? The world was on a fast track to self-destruction anyway. All Keaton did was help clear the path for some other species to give it all a try. Let the cats inherit the Earth. The apes had done a lousy job as caretakers.

      But the real reason Keaton stayed was locked in the basement laboratory. The girl in the glass bubble.

      He remembered first meeting her, when she was just a child, with brightly colored hair and a mouth that never stopped talking. They'd let her keep the hair that color, a way of making her feel human, but after a while the experiments dulled her personality and her spirit, and dying her hair no longer lifted her spirits. Nothing did, really. She rarely spoke anymore, had barely said a word in years, trapped in a bubble the size of a room, the thin geodesic patterns on the glass that harvested her power and turned it into a never-ending supply of energy gleaming in the dark.

      Tonight, the girl sat in a chair in the center of the globe where she remained a captive, staring into the darkness beyond her glass room.

      Keaton watched her, pity and regret welling up in his gut as it always did. He wanted to set her free, but he knew they'd tampered with her powers too much over the years. They'd done irreparable harm. The dome they kept her in was designed not only to harvest her energy but to keep it in check. The girl had no control over her abilities any longer. To set her free would be like inviting the cosmos to kick Earth into deep space. She was trapped.

      And ultimately that was why Keaton stayed. This was his fault, and the girl was his responsibility.

      He put an earpiece in allowing him to speak to her through the glass. She didn't turn to look at him as he wandered into view, though her eyes were open, staring off into space.

      "How are you today, Emily?" Keaton said, trying to keep his voice cheerful.

      She tilted her head in his general direction, but didn't speak. She used to talk with him, to verbally joust with him, to challenge him on scientific theory. Once upon a time, the girl had possessed a great intellect. Another thing wasted in pursuing the Shadow's dream.

      And then the girl surprised him.

      "They're coming," Emily said, in a voice just above a whisper.

      "What's that?" Keaton said, not even attempting to disguise the shock in his voice.

      "Don't worry Keaton," Emily said. She smiled, something else Keaton hadn't seen her do in years. "It'll all be over soon."

      And the girl closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and drifted off to sleep. Keaton slowly removed his earpiece and backed away.

      "Who's coming?" he said, to no one at all.

Chapter 5:

Moral quandaries

      Jane sat in a corner booth at a coffee shop where they did
not
carry the Entropy Emi-latte, hoping no one would recognize her, her fiery hair tucked up under a knit hat.
Jon Broadstreet, the reporter the local news outlet had assigned as the Indestructibles "expert," sat across from her, typing notes onto an iPad as they chatted. Jane agreed at some point—or maybe someone else arranged it, Jane was never sure—to sit down with Broadstreet every so often to update him on the latest news from the Indestructibles' floating base. It was easier to give controlled interviews than to ignore the press, and Broadstreet was a friendly ear.

      Or more than friendly. Emily regularly taunted her that the reporter went easy on them because Broadstreet had a crush on Jane. If that was the case, Jane thought, then the least she could do was be polite during his usually lighthearted interviews. They hadn't had a really tough discussion since the incident with the now-ousted new management of the Department, when they'd taken Jane, Billy, and Emily captive. Henry Winter, the hero formerly known as Coldwall and an old teammate of Doc's, had taken over as head of the Department and had done an incredible amount of public relations work to get the heroes and the agency back on the same page. After the dust settled, though, these conversations with Broadstreet had mostly involved updates on the Indestructible's search for escapees from the Labyrinth prison.

      "So other than looking for a missing man-shark hybrid capable of sinking a fishing vessel with his teeth, you're really not that busy right now," Broadstreet said, looking up from his tablet to smirk. The reporter was growing a beard and it made him look ridiculous.

      "We're trying not to alarm anyone with that information," Jane said, tucking her unnaturally fire-colored hair back up under a wool hat she borrowed from Emily.

      "Yeah, good luck with that. Man-shark hybrid. Not alarming at all."

      "He's probably just really lonely," Jane said.

      "So he's not a super-villain, he just in need of a date," Broadstreet said.

      "Couldn't hurt," Jane said, cracking a smile. "He'd be easier to find at the movies."

      "Speaking of," Broadstreet said.

      "Come on," Jane said, letting out a frustrated laugh.

      "The minute you stop laughing when I ask, I'll stop asking," Broadstreet said. "Because I'll know you're actually annoyed. Until then, I'm going to keep asking until I get a 'yes.'"

      "So I should practice wearing my annoyed face?" Jane said.

      "I'm sure it's terrifying," Broadstreet said, tucking his iPad into a messenger bag. "Really, though? None of you have social lives? You never go out?"

      Jane shrugged.

      "Fine," Broadstreet said. "You'll tell me all about man-shark, but you won't spill any gossip. I can live with that. Man-shark leads as a headline almost as well as your social lives would. Same time next week?"

      "If I'm not off saving the world," Jane said.

      "Obviously. Take care, Solar."

      "Be good."

      Jane watched the reporter head out the front door of the café and put her head down on the table. Why am I the PR person on this team, she thought. I need to delegate. Maybe Doc will help me out.

      "One of my old teammates went out with a reporter," Doc Silence said, startling Jane out of her self-pity. The older hero stood over the table, dressed as always in jeans, tee shirt, and his long dark coat. He sat down across from Jane, coffee in hand already.

      "I'm not going out with him," Jane said.

      "Did I say that?" Doc said. "I'm just making an observation. Heroes and reporters. Long history of dysfunctional . . ."

      Jane pulled her hat down over her eyes and leaned back in her seat.

      "Have I mentioned how glad I am you're back, Doc?"

      "Not nearly enough," Doc said. "I need to run something by you, Jane."

      "Run something by me?"

      "Yes."

      "This is backward," Jane said. "I run things by you. You're Doc."

      "You realize who you sound like right now?"

      "All right, all right," Jane said. "I'll be the responsible adult. As usual. What's going on?"

      "Annie wants us to do something I'm not sure I'm morally okay with."

      "Don't tell me she wants us to time travel," Jane said, then took a sip of her cooling coffee.

      Doc rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb, his eyes scrunched closed.

      "She wants us to time travel," Jane said, answering her own question. "One of the first things you taught me was that time travel is bad."

      "Exactly."

      "In fact, you said that was 'Annie's Rule: Time travel is bad,'" Jane said.

      "You see why this is so troubling," Doc said.

      Jane stuck her hands up inside her hat and ran her fingers through her hair nervously.

      "So did she give you a why?"

      "Because," Doc said. "An entire future is dying due to us."

      "I don't understand how that's possible," Jane said.

      "And now, Jane, you understand the first reason why time travel is bad," Doc said.

Chapter 6:

Anachronism Annie's request

      Titus found himself in a part of the Tower he'd never been before.
As with much of the Tower's layout, it was hard to figure out if he'd gone left or right, up or down. The building frequently felt as if it adjusted itself to where you wanted to be rather than having a set layout. It occasionally made him dizzy. It also felt as if the structure itself were hiding things.

      Like this room, for example. A wide open space with strangely reflective walls, it seemed to be a museum of some kind, with objects—weapons that didn't seem quite ordinary, gadgets out of a steampunk convention's dreams, photographs of historical figures in places they'd never been—on display behind glass cases or organized like trophies on shelves.

      Kate, Emily, and Billy were already there when Titus arrived. Billy and Emily were snooping, picking up objects—that clearly looked like they should not touched—and guessing their purpose.

      "This is definitely a steam-driven back scratcher," Emily said, waving a pitchfork wrapped in copper coils in Billy's general direction.

      He responded by blocking her makeshift weapon with a sepia-toned photograph of Theodore Roosevelt in an astronaut suit.

      "Hoax or historical cosplay gone wrong? You decide!" he said.

      Emily aimed the pitchfork at Billy like a spear.

      "Beware, my giant dinglehopper!" she yelled.

      "Dinglehopper?" Billy said.

      "What, you want a thingamabob instead?"

      "Well you do have twenty," Billy said.

      "
I want more!
" Emily sang, breaking into a pitch perfect imitation of Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
. She and Billy started harmonizing to "Part of Your World" in startlingly good voices.

      "You guys have been practicing this, haven't you?" Titus said.

      They both pointed at him in dramatic fashion.

     
"Flippin' your fins, you don't get too far. Legs are required for jumping, dancing . . ."
Billy and Emily sang together.

      "Don't encourage them," Kate said, sidling up beside Titus and bumping him slightly with her shoulder. "They've been at this a while."

      "Are they supposed to be touching those things?" Titus asked.

      Kate shrugged.

      "Worst that can happen, they disintegrate each other, we no longer have Disney show tunes," she said. "A win win."

      Annie, Doc, and Jane walked in together behind Titus, mid conversation.

      "Put the dinglehopper down," Annie said.

     
"I'm ready to know what the people know. Ask 'em my questions, and get some answers,"
Emily sang. "So seriously. We going to get some answers? Like why are we here? And is this actually a dinglehopper?"

      "It's an electrified trident from another timeline where . . . never mind, just stop pointing it at people," Annie said.

      Emily frowned, but set the trident aside.

      Doc gestured to the scattered chairs around the room. Most of the heroes picked a seat. Kate, as usual, chose to pace around the back of the room. Titus didn't join her. She was easier to take when you let her roam, he knew from experience.

      "Okay, boss," Billy said. "You got us. What's the story?"

      "Annie wants to ask us for a favor," Doc said. "And I said we have to let you decide for yourselves if we go through with it."

      "A favor?" Kate said, questioning.

      Doc gestured for Annie to speak.

      She took a deep breath and took her red-tinted glasses off the same way Doc always did, rubbing her eyes. Instead of Doc's strange glowing eyes, however, her irises were an unnatural shade of pink, but otherwise ordinary. Titus wondered who picked up the affect from whom.

      "While this guy," Annie said, gesturing at Doc, "was gallivanting across the astral planes last year, I was trapped. In a future."

      "A future? Not
the
future?" Billy said.

      "You're a Time Lord?" Emily said.

      "I'm a chronomancer," Annie said.

      "So you're a Time Lord," Emily said.

      "A chronomancer."

      "Are you the Doctor?"

      "He's the doctor," Annie said, pointing at Doc Silence.

      "Who?" Emily said. She turned, beaming at everyone. "You see what I did there? It looks easy but it's really not."

      "Emily, please stop," Jane said.

      Titus picked up an edge to her voice. Jane was almost as serious as Kate most of the time, but rarely frustrated, and he could sense Emily's usual playfulness was irritating her.

      Emily huffed and crossed her arms.

      Annie continued. "I'm a time traveler. There aren't many of us. It's more complicated than you'd even imagine," Annie said. "But I ended up stuck in another timeline, one in which something went wrong not long after Doc found most of you. A series of events led to the creation of an alternate timeline. And by the time I found myself there, it was, as I said, terminal—it was a timeline reaching its final stages. A dead branch on the tree."

      "How many timelines are there?" Titus said.

      Annie smiled.

      "We don't know," she said. "It's not an exact science. We don't know how many timelines there are, or what makes an event significant enough to spawn a split in a current timeline. But there are many."

      "You told me something about this once, Doc," Jane said. "There are so many worlds. You told me that when you thought you were going to die fighting the Lady."

      "I did," Doc said. "There are other realities, other planes, and other timelines. The universe doesn't go in one direction. It's four dimensional."

      "Four dimensional?" Billy said. "That' doesn't make any—"

      "—You said you wanted to ask us a favor," Kate interrupted from the back of the room.

      "I did," Annie said. "I want you to help me save this other timeline."

      Doc chimed in.

      "This is why we needed to present it to everyone," he said. "Because there are ethics to discuss when interfering with another timeline. We generally thought it was a bad idea to get involved in other timelines before. There are a lot of questions we need to present."

      "I like ethics," Emily said. "Ethics are fun. What are we talking about here, hedonistic calculus?"

      Jane leaned back in her chair, which creaked when her shoulders pushed against it.

      "Last time you started talking ethics, Em, a kid died," she said.

      "Yeah, but for the greater good," Emily said.

      Billy leaned in, uncharacteristically serious.

      Titus wondered what Dude was saying in Billy's ear.

      "So would we go back in time? Change their future somehow? Prevent whatever is making it . . . what did you call it? A terminal timeline?" Billy said.

      "Here's where things get weird," Annie said. "Going back in time never actually fixes anything. Believe me, I've tried. If you're successful in making a major change, you risk just creating a new splinter timeline. But once a timeline exists, it exists. You can't go back and alter it."

      "That makes absolutely no sense," Billy said.

      "This is why it gets strange," Annie said.

      "So what are we really doing, then," Jane said. "Going into someone else's future to stop it from, ah, terminating?"

      "It's coming up on a terminal event," Annie said. "An event that will cause that timeline to sunset. If we can stop that event from happening, we can, if not make it a better future, at least let the people living there have some sort of future at all."

      Kate chimed in next.

      "But why this future? You said there are countless timelines. Why fix this one? What's so important about it?"

      "When Doc first started teaching me, he said that it was dangerous to mess with other timelines," Jane weighed in. "You're asking us to break a rule you yourself invented."

      Annie sighed, her shoulders slumped; her entire frame sagged with exhaustion.

      "To be completely truthful?" Annie said. "In part, because I was stuck there, and I came to care about their world, and I don't want to see it end."

      "And?" Titus said.

      "And because the terminal event is our fault," Annie said. "Our mistakes, this group in this room right now, have led to a world with a dead future. And I feel like we owe it to them to try to save their world."

      "Why can't we save it ourselves?" Billy said. "I mean us in the future. We're already there, right? Future us? Why do now us need to go to future us and . . . I can't believe I'm having this conversation. Am I really having this conversation?"

      Annie smiled. It was a smile tinged with such weighty sadness Titus found himself suddenly terrified at what the future did have in store for them all.

      "The future Indestructibles need help," Annie said.

      "Are we in trouble there?" Jane said.

      "It's better if you not know. You'll find out when you get there, but it's never safe to talk about a future that will never happen," Annie said.

      "This future can't happen?" Titus said. "You said something happened when we all first came together that changed the timeline. Does that mean this other future is . . . ?"

      "Not something this current timeline can become," Annie said. "I know. It's weird. It makes no sense. You just have to trust me on it."

      Kate stopped pacing in the back of the room and squeezed in between Billy and Titus's chairs to be closer to Annie.

      "And if we go, won't that have an impact on our own timeline?" Kate said. "If we go, we effectively leave our own timeline. That has to change things here."

      "I can bring you back to the exact moment you left," Annie said. "If I do it right."

      "And if we don't die in the future," Billy said.

      Everyone stared at him. Emily punched him in the arm.

      "What? Someone had to say it."

      "You're right. I can't guarantee everyone will come home," Annie said.

      "This seems like a really bad precedent," Emily said. "Even us leaving has to have an impact on our own timeline. Everything changes. We change. We're gone. Transfer of energy. Poof. This is a terrible idea."

      "And this is why we put it to a vote," Doc said. "You have to decide for yourselves. This is someone else's future. There's no guarantee it will work. There's no guarantee we'll come back. It's incredibly dangerous. But if we succeed, we save an entire timeline from extinction."

      "Let's vote, then," Jane said.

      "I vote yes," Emily said.

      "You just said . . .You just said five seconds ago that it was a terrible idea," Billy said, staring at her incredulously.

      "Did you just meet me? Today?" Emily said. "Just because I think something's a bad idea doesn't mean I don't think it'll be totally awesome."

      Billy rubbed his face and turned away from Emily.

      "I think we should go," he said. "I know it puts our world at risk too, but I can't just . . . let another world die. It feels like the exact opposite of what we do."

      Titus saw both Jane and Doc smile slightly at Billy's phrasing. He knew they both took pride in watching those rare moments when Billy spoke like a hero. Although they were infrequent, Titus knew Billy was always genuine when he did it.

      "I think we stay," Kate said. "We have our responsibilities here. This world is depending on us. If we go, we put everyone here in danger for a future that has already had its chance."

      Titus looked at her, trying to hide his own emotions. He understood her logic, but sometimes Kate could be so coldly logical, so ruthlessly efficient that she scared him.

      "I understand what you're saying, Kate," Jane said. "And I almost could agree with you. But if something we did wrong doomed an entire timeline . . . maybe we need to go make it right somehow. Maybe it's our destiny to save them."

      "I think you're all crazy," Kate said. She looked at Titus. "Where do you stand on this?"

      Titus exhaled long and slowly. He remembered what his mentors among the other werewolves had told him last year. That they were the shaman on the hill. That they were put here to keep the monsters at bay. Did that mean the monsters in some other timeline as well? Or just the monsters in his own small village here? How big was the village he was supposed to protect?

      "I think it's our responsibility to go," Titus said. "We have it in our power to help them. If we don't, we're letting a whole world come to an end. I can't bring myself to let that happen."