Mythic Uprising: A Fantastical Sci-Fi Drama (The Strader Notebooks Book 2), page 1
Mythic Uprising
A Fantastical Sci-Fi Drama
By Justin K. Nuckles
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Published by Justin K. Nuckles
© 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or modified in any form, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover designed by GetCovers
For Claire:
My Sammy
Chapter 1
I threw myself behind one of the huge Ponderosa pines, swallowing hard and sucking in air through my mouth. My left arm hung useless at my side as I grimaced, my teeth squeaking as they ground over each other. The bullet had hit just inside of my shoulder, and it hurt. Bad. I listened as bullets sprayed the other side of the tree and whizzed past, thwacking faintly as they buried themselves into the trees behind me.
Heretic’s voice came over the speakers within my helmet. “James, you’ve got to focus. You’ll never come out of this unscathed unless you can calm your mind and focus! Remember, you’re looking for Flow.”
I mentally cursed the android but made no verbal reply. Let’s see you focus while bullets are flying around you like bees! I closed my eyes and took a few more breaths, trying to make them deep ones. My chest shook as I forced it to expand while fighting the urge to exhale quickly. Three, four. I let myself breathe out, controlling it to release it slowly. Two, three, four. I repeated it a couple more times.
The bullets had stopped. That probably meant that the shooters were changing position, most likely trying to flank me on either side and catch me in their crossfire. It’s what I would do.
Trying not to imagine how I would look through another person’s rifle sights, I forced myself to think. How am I going to get out of this? I needed more time. I looked down at my hands; nothing yet. I closed my eyes, took several additional deep breaths, and imagined myself squeezing through a hole the size of a tennis ball in the air above my left palm.
My heart wasn’t beating quite as quickly as it had been, and my hands weren’t shaking quite as much. It seemed like my body was finally getting the message that my brain had been trying to send it. After another moment with my eyes closed, I realized that I could hear my heartbeat. The rest of the world had gone silent around me.
I opened my eyes to the now-familiar scape of my own private pocket dimension. There was no ground, no sky, no floor, no ceiling, no walls. Simply bluish-grayish fog as far as the eye could see. In the area immediately around me hovered three familiar swirling masses suspended in the air: two large ones and another much smaller. The small one was the converted antimatter atoms that made up a pacifier, a baby blanket, and a small baby beanie. I’d absorbed them in a fit of newborn rage. The second and third mass, with their unique swirling golden lights, rather than just flat blue swirl, I still had trouble looking at.
One was what was left of Linda Benson, a nurse who had been conducting a routine medical procedure that I’d… reacted poorly to, also as a newborn. The third mass was the remains of Julian Danton, the man who’d ordered the murder of my parents and father to the Danton children, Jessica, Steven, Elizabeth, and Mary.
Thinking of them jogged me out of my reverie. They were the reason I was in my current situation. I shook my head and probed my shoulder gingerly. How was I going to get out of this?
From tests I’d done with Heretic, I knew that time wasn’t passing outside the pocket dimension. Or, at least, it was passing so slowly that I couldn’t even measure its passing. I tried to imagine the situation as I’d left it.
I was being flanked. Before long, the bullets that had been peppering the Ponderosas would be tearing into me. I had to do something, and it had to be something unexpected. Be creative.
Beyond the three masses closest to me, swirled a growing collection of shifting masses of various sizes. I’d done a lot of practicing, but I by no means had this ability mastered yet. Focus!
The easiest thing would be to absorb the tree in front of me and hope that the surprise gave me enough time to run the gauntlet between the two shooters and hopefully get to my objective before being drilled by bullets. Simple, and probably ineffective.
I needed to do something unexpected. Something I hadn’t tried before.
I had an idea, but I wasn’t sure how it would pan out. Only one way to know for sure. I closed my eyes again and imagined going out of that tennis-ball sized hole again.
I knew when I heard the wind blowing through the pines that I was back. There wasn’t time to waste. I directed my palms toward each other, wincing at the pain in my left arm. A blinding flash lit up the trees around me as I directed a single antimatter atom from my left hand to collide with a single atom from my right. Almost as good as a flashbang. Before the flash had even finished fading, I stepped around the tree and pointed both palms down at my feet. Widening my stance and squaring my shoulders, I closed my eyes and mentally crossed my fingers. A larger and significantly louder bang sounded right beneath my feet, and I was blasted into the air. This was another fact we’d verified through rigorous testing: I was immune to the energy of these blasts. I was apparently built to withstand them with no ill effects.
Fortunately, I maintained enough presence of mind not to yell throughout the duration of my ungraceful flight, at least preserving my surprise. Now, I just had to make it down to the ground in one piece. I had just enough time to absorb the branches that would have broken bones or worse as I flew through the air. Unfortunately, that meant that my flight was a perfect, uninterrupted parabola, and I rushed toward the ground with increasing speed. Out of instinct, I pointed both palms toward the ground and directed a couple of blasts there. I slowed, but not enough. I crashed to the ground, managing a clumsy, badly executed half-roll that saved my legs from breaking. Instead, my right shoulder and side crashed heavily into the ground, leaving me wincing in pain and breathless on the forest floor. Looking down at my feet, I realized that, although I was immune to the energy of my blasts, my clothing was definitely not. My boots were shreds of rubber and leather, held together by some melted lace. Maybe this wasn’t a great tactic, after all.
Pat and Clara Walker, co-directors of Safeguard, came stumbling out of the trees, both still rubbing their eyes and blinking furiously, rifles slung over their shoulders.
“James? Was that crunch you, man? You got us with the flashbang. I can’t see anything behind this glare!” Pat blinked harder, like he thought he could will his eyes to regain their vision faster.
Clara swore. “What was that?”
I stood up gingerly. “I think I flew?”
Pat hooted in disbelief, cackling. “You can fly? This is crazy, man! It’s like there isn’t anything you can’t do with these abilities!”
Clara stepped to my side, her eyes simply closed as she waited for the glare to fade. She put a hand on my shoulder. “You okay? Where’d we hit you earlier?”
“Shoulder,” I said, as I did a check-in on the rest of my body to see whether anything hurt more than anything else. Luckily, the liquid armor that was standard issue among those who served with Safeguard, the organization dedicated to the relocating and managing of Mythic children, had done its job well. Beyond a bruise that I was sure would be the size of a softball on my shoulder that I’d get in the coming days, my shoulder would be just fine. The bruise would be right at home among the many others I had across my body.
“You okay?” Clara repeated.
“I’ll be all right,” I said.
“James, that was a foolish risk to take.” Heretic stepped out of the woods, his dark clothing providing him a surprising amount of camouflage effect.
I took a step and winced as one of my ankles buckled weakly. I may have lightly sprained it.
“You’re the one always pushing me to be creative, to try things I haven’t done yet!”
The android was inscrutable, as always, behind his face-covering and goggles. Not that the video screen hidden behind them was any better. I still wasn’t sure which I preferred. The screen, when utilized, displayed images of my parents’ faces, when they were the uploaded personalities speaking through the android. Long before they’d died, they’d created Heretic to do what they felt like they couldn’t at the time. He’d worked counter to the aims of Safeguard for years, finding the Mythic children who Safeguard Swept, Bitted, and Hosted and takin
“Creative, yes. Reckless, no.” It was completely Heretic at the controls now; his bland, almost lazy tone was entirely his own, and fit his personality perfectly.
“Isn’t that the point of these live exercises?” I countered. “To force us to improvise against each other and push the boundaries of what we know about my powers? Every time I try something new, I learn to master my abilities a little bit more. Every time I do that, we learn a little bit more about what Caine is capable of, and Clara and Pat can learn to adapt to and anticipate it.”
Heretic didn’t move, facing me. He didn’t say anything for an uncomfortably long time.
“Did you guys leave? You still here?” Pat piped up, still blinded from the flash-bang effect. Pat abhorred silences.
“Be more careful.” Heretic turned and walked back toward the vehicle. “Let’s go. I want to get back to the home in time for dinner.”
Pat whispered to us behind Heretic’s back. “Why? He doesn’t eat.”
Heretic glanced back and shouted, “I heard that!”
Clara took Pat by the elbow. Apparently, her vision had cleared quicker. “C’mon,” she said, offering me an arm as well.
I waved it away as I limped after Heretic.
Pat sniffed slightly and said, “Hey, does anyone else think these trees smell like Neapolitan ice cream?”
Clara affectionately punched him in the gut.
***
“How’d things go out there today?” Rachel Kline, my biological mother, jumped nimbly over the gap between the boulders then stopped and waited for me to follow.
It was tricky with my ankle, but I managed to cross it with the help of a stick I’d picked up at the beginning of our daily short hike.
“Not bad. I think I’m getting a better feel for the balance between my hands. The blasts feel more consistent, somehow, than they did when we started. I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.”
She nodded and smiled encouragingly. “Well, that’s good.”
I squinted. “Yeah. I still just have a hard time getting into it. It isn’t easy to lose yourself in something when you have bullets flying all around you.”
She laughed. “I can’t imagine why that might be.” She rolled her eyes.
“Good point.” I tapped my walking stick on a large red boulder with a crack down the middle.
Rachel sat down on another rock and looked back toward the home.
Located on a remote corner of a Navajo reservation in the American southwest, the home was a huge Earthship: a structure essentially built from earth, used tires, and old bottles to be entirely self-sufficient and self-sustaining. There were twenty-seven children living there, in total. There used to be twenty-eight, but the oldest, Shanice Turman, had recently gone back to her family in Georgia. I was equal parts disappointed and relieved about that. Shanice and I had parted ways as significantly less than friends. I’d tricked her into helping me leave the old home in California with the Danton children. She’d never really forgiven me, not even a year later. I still had scars from the first time I’d seen her after that, and she’d had a flock of birds dive-bomb me. Shanice was a Tamer.
Because this home wasn’t a House of Bricks like the last one, children all over the place were doing all sorts of things normal children just didn’t do.
I watched in amusement and amazement as two Tank teen boys jousted with entire fallen trees, a third girl looking on in feigned disgust. The trees shattered as they hit each other, and the boys collapsed on the ground, laughing. Some of the shattering tree debris had hit the girl, and she flicked a boulder the size of a toaster oven at them in annoyance.
Two Tamer boys ran laughing among several coyotes that barked and whined in pleasure while three Tamer girls sat petting a veritable menagerie of desert wildlife: I saw several hawks, a crow or two, several lizards, and a large skunk which had curled up contentedly in one of the girls’ laps.
I wasn’t sure what was going on between the two little girls and four boys sitting in a circle but based on the fact that one of them was walking around the outside of the circle, putting his hands on either side of one of their heads every so often, at which they would burst out laughing, I knew these were the Thinkers.
I could imagine that the Tinkers and Techs were inside, probably passing most closely for normal children, either controlling electronics or building some contraption together.
“I love it here.” Rachel sighed, and rested her chin in her hand, a smile playing with the corners of her mouth.
“Really? It’s so hot and dusty,” I pointed out, stamping my foot and raising a small red cloud to demonstrate.
“Not here, here.” She waved her finger in a wide circle around her head. She pointed down the hill back at the home and all the children. “Here.”
I smiled. The equivalent of a lifetime ago, I’d been an Assistant Director in a university childcare facility. I came by my interests honestly, it seemed.
I smiled teasingly. “I know.”
Rachel glanced at me and smiled.
“So, what’s next? Do you have a timeframe for when you’re going to move against Caine?”
I shook my head gently. “Nothing concrete.” I started absently peeling bark from the stick. It was sticky with resin. Pine. I brought it to my nose and took a deep breath in. Pat was right: there was a faint hint of something like vanilla.
Rachel furrowed her brows, tucking her chin toward her throat. “What are you doing?”
I held the stick out to her. “Pat said these pines smell like ice cream earlier. He’s not wrong.”
“What? Get outta’ here. Lemme’ see.” She took the stick and held it a few inches from her nose. She sniffed gingerly. “Huh.” She brought it closer and breathed deeper. “Weird.”
“I know, right? Who knew?” I took it back when she offered it and sniffed one more time myself before laughing and going back to watching the kids around the home.
I cleared my throat. “Hey, there was something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
Rachel ran a hand absently through her pixie-cut hair, nodding for me to go on. This had become a normal part of our routine, getting to know one another, and asking questions about each other’s lives.
“What can you tell me about my dad?”
Rachel nodded gently and looked back at the home. “Yeah, I’ve been waiting for this.” She leaned back, resting her palms on the ground behind her and putting one knee up on the other as she stared up into the sky.
“Your dad: my husband. His name was Joseph Kline. He was a wonderful, wonderful man.” Her eyes closed somewhat and lost their focus. She was remembering something vividly. “I remember how we were both devastated at the thought that we’d lost you. When I told him I’d lost the baby, he was just absolutely crushed. He was so tender with Raven, too, throughout that time.” She shifted, sitting forward again and rubbing a pebble she’d picked up absently between her fingers. “And he was so patient with me. We hung in for five years after we lost you. Those were hard years. Even when I started to fall apart, he was still there, still trying to help me through it, trying to bring me back from it.”
The skin around Rachel’s eyes grew tight and lined, as her eyes slowly filled with tears. “I left them. Your parents, Jared and Deby, had Swept you from my mind, but I lost Raven and Joseph on my own. All those years, I was so high, so drunk, that I lost everything, not just what was taken from me.”
I shifted, uncomfortable with the pain I’d caused her with my question. “Have you ever thought about looking him up again? Finding them?”
Rachel quickly shook her head. “No. I always figured that they were better off without me. No use reopening wounds that old.”
“I don’t know; it seems to be working out for us pretty good.”
That brought her up short. “That’s true. I have no complaints about what’s happened with us.”
I thought briefly about what I knew of Heretic, and my suspicions that there was a fourth personality buried in his programming, in addition to my adoptive parents. I hadn’t been able to get him to outright confirm it yet, but I suspected that Heretic also had an upload of my sister somewhere in his neural circuits. I’d gathered that Rachel didn’t know anything about this, so I’d decided not to say anything.
