Should’ve known better not to trust a guy who hit me with a cartoon mallet not to plant me into the ground. I’d fallen like a stone and slammed into a patch of dirt so hard that all I could taste for a solid minute was dust and grainy saliva. I coughed and beat my hand in front of me, clearing the dust that was trying its best to get into my eyes. Bastard. I spat dirt out of my mouth and shook my head, shedding soil and climbing my way out of the small crater I’d made. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the sun beating down on my shoulders. Heat bubbled in the air, warping the plains and plains of vast emptiness stretching out in front of me. Where the hell did he take me?

  Nowhere, seemingly, because I couldn’t hear a single thing for dozens of miles except the quiet hiss of heat burning up the soil around me. The sun lingered high in the sky, making me sweat barely a minute after I got here. I tied my t-shirt above my midsection and put my hands on my hips, sweat trickling down my neck. Absolutely nothing around me for miles. My eyes couldn’t even see so much as an ant skittering along in the dirt. Dozens of miles, and everything was barren. I crouched and burst into the sky with a dull whumph, hovering for a second, looking around for anything at all, and still nothing. So I searched, flying and flying, skimming over nothing but mounds of soil and dust and harsh, hot winds that felt like I was flying straight into an oven. Nothing below me.

  Nothing at all except my shadow skimming across the Earth beneath me. If this is even Earth to begin with. Finally, though, I found an outcrop of stone sticking out of the ground. An old, rotting building slanted to the right. I landed underneath it, panting from the heat. I ran my forearm across my forehead and found a rock to sit on, but the shade barely held back the heat. I groaned and searched my surroundings again, hoping for something that wasn’t just more sand and dirt and rugged, sun-beaten soil. The building was empty, though. That was for sure. Its empty windows revealed a skeletal white concrete shell. No insides. No furniture. Rusted pipes and old wires that stuck out at awkward angles. Why the hell did he bring me here in the first place? If I wanted to go check out what a desert wasteland looked like, I’d have gone to Texas where Sunburst cooked the place up way back in dad’s day.

  Hell, this place kind of looked like some of the planets I'd been raised on. It almost looks like dad's home. Barren. Dead. A wasteland of dirt and heat and nothing at all. Life just wasn't a factor around here apart from the species that sucked everything dry. It was almost eerie, sitting here sweaty and alone, because if this place was Arkath, then that wouldn't be great for me, but on the other hand, what the hell? Why'd the guy in the suit even bring me here in the first place? If this was the 'bad' ending, then it was just plain old boring. Whatever, I thought, wringing my shirt dry of sweat. If this is some kind of lesson I need to learn, he should've sent me somewhere more, I don't know, worse?

  But on the other hand, if this really was Earth, then that meant we lost, didn't it?

  The Conquest came and went and marched onward through stars.

  Or not, and this reality just had nothing at all going for it.

  “This sucks,” I muttered, tying my hair into a ponytail, keeping it from sticking to my face. “Should’ve just gone to the witch for some help instead. Who the hell does he think he is, flipping out on me like that?”

  The wasteland around me answered with howling, gusty winds that shoved dust into my face and into my mouth.

  A woman stood in front of me, the gust of wind snapping the cape behind her in the wind. She was the gust of violent wind a second ago. I stood, my sneakers crunching in the dirt as we stared at one another. She was taller than me. More regal. Had dad’s posture with her squared shoulders and raised chin, narrowed golden eyes and dark eyebrows. She kinda looks like me. The longer we waited, the more I figured that hell, she might actually be me. The costume almost gave it away, except it was black and red, the bolt on her chest a deep shade of filthy gold. Her cape flowed behind her, a tattered, long black rag. She feels like dad. She looked at me the same way he always did. Anger. Disapproval. Like I was this tiny little insect that had somehow stolen his powers and tried to make them my own, and that made me tense. Made my muscles tighten and my fists reflexively tighten so hard they cracked.

  It was instinctual to tense for our kind. To either fucking run, or dare to fight and possibly die.

  Neither happened, because all she did was cock an eyebrow. “Where’s your uniform?”

  Uniform? I stayed silent for a moment, watching her watch me. Her eyes were fully golden, bright like dad’s, maybe even a fraction sharper. I swallowed, trying to relax, but every hair on my body was upright, scared as all hell. She folded her arms and tapped her finger against her bicep. It felt like a countdown. A warning to hurry.

  “I…lost it,” I lied. She unfolded her arms and hovered closer. I backed up. “It’s kinda been a long—”

  Her hand wrapped around my throat in an instant, snapping the air out of me. My face burned. I clawed at her fingers, trying to pry them off, choking on what felt like liquid fire that bubbled around my lips as saliva. And not once did her face move on from slight curiosity as she lifted me off the ground and brought me closer to her.

  So close that I could see the faint scar splitting her eyebrow. The same one Adam had given me.

  The same one Adam had given us.

  Her brows raised the same time mine did.

  Then her eyes narrowed, and her mouth twisted into a snarl. “Another one of you clones,” she muttered. “Gods, I told them the fucking humans weren’t done trying to mimic us yet. Godsdamned roaches scurrying around in their little underground tunnels. Tenacity and stupidity, one and the same. Where were you made? How long have you been alive?” She shook me. I gasped, my head going light. She sighed and dropped me onto my hands and knees, and I stayed there underneath her, coughing and gagging, saliva dribbling out of my mouth. I massaged my throat and knuckled away the spit, got to one knee, and fucking bolted. I skimmed across the desert floor, a tidal wave of dust in my wake ripping apart the ground. Heart beating. Lungs burning. And then a shadow passed me.

  It passed me so fast I barely had the time to blink before she was in front of me.

  Next thing I knew, I was spinning through the air and then slamming into the ground, over and over again like a stone skipping across a lake. I tumbled and whacked against the ground, finally smacking into another out crop of stone that suddenly stopped me. I groaned. Shook my head. Didn’t even see what she’d smacked me with, but I couldn’t afford to wait. I got up, then my foot buckled and I fell. Fuck, come on, not now. I glanced at my leg, and somewhere along my one thousand mile an hour tumble, I’d lost my sneaker, and my foot looked puffy and red. I flinched as large slabs of decrepit, sun-burnt old concrete slammed into the dirt around me, a chorus of archaic rock thumping into the dirt. I tried to stand, flinched when I put weight on my leg, then chose to hop into the air.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The shadow appeared over me again, and this time, she didn’t waste any time putting her boot to the back of my head and smashing me into the soil. My brain felt like it smacked against the side of my skull, bouncing from end to end and dizzying me numb. She picked me up by the hair. Blood dribbled from my nose. I tried to gather my bearings, to put the world back together—too many sounds, too many colors; what the hell was she shouting about, but I guess it didn’t matter, not as she smashed the back of her hand against my mouth, shocking me back to reality.

  “Where,” she demanded, getting us nice and close, “are the rest of you hiding?”

  “You tell me,” I wheezed, blood bubbling from my split lip. “I just got here.”

  “You’re new,” she muttered, lips twisting in disgust. “Must have some kind of defect if you’re running around all by yourself. You look too old to be stuck in premature development. Your powers haven’t manifested to their fullest yet.” She looked like dad. She spoke like dad. My gut coiled with anger, but I bit down on my tongue, because if there’s one thing that I’ve learnt, it’s that trying to fight my kind—trying to fight myself—was a terrible idea for my overall health. “I swear, they can’t get any of them right, can they? Who made you? Answer me, clone.”

  “We came from the same bed that mom and dad hooked up on, genius,” I muttered, my words slurring. My tongue was a cut up mess, chewed by how many times my face grinded along the dirt as I’d skipped along all of it.

  “Gods,” she muttered, then threw me back to the soil, leaving me gasping and aching in a crater.

  Then, for a moment, I thought she’d put her fist through me as she landed above me. Her legs were either side of my torso. I tried to move, but she grabbed me by the hair and crouched, flexing her fingers. She paused, sighed, and looked just to my left. I glanced over, but there was nothing except rubble and upturned dirt. “I know,” she said quietly, fingers yanking my hair even more, making me bite down on a scream. “But you know how bad these things are. They wander around until they either find trouble or come together to create even more trouble.”

  Who the hell is she even talking to right now?

  She swore, tossing my head to the side as if she was even disgusted by the fact she was touching me. She stood and put her hands on her hips, sighing under her breath. “You’re right,” she said quietly. “I might as well get it back to the rest of them. Maybe try to figure out where it came from. Can’t hurt to jog its memory a little bit.”

  Then she looked down at me, the sun just over her head blindingly bright. “Last chance, clone.”

  “I’m not a clone,” I groaned in pain, sitting upright with one hell of an effort. “I’m the real deal.”

  “Delusional,” she said. “Incapable of full thought. Must’ve gotten out of your developmental chamber too early. I’d almost feel bad about what’s happening to you, but…well, Earth’s already ours. I might as well have fun.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but it wasn’t me that got put into the dirt in the very next second.

  Somehow, even faster than the one in black and red, another flicker of gold slammed her into the dirt. I cringed against the blast of dust that whipped against my face, rolling me over several times, only bruising me up some more. I slowly got up, trying not to choke on the muck of blood and soil stuck in my throat. Is that another one? I hated where this was going. Really didn’t want to see where this was going. So I made the decision to get up and run, or I would have, if I wasn’t tackled into the dirt again, skidding along the soil so harshly both red and I made a divot in the soil. We stopped. She raised her fist, face feral and teeth bared. I braced, arms raised to block her and hoping to the Gods she didn’t put her fist through my forearms and into my skull. But the blow didn’t come.

  I waited, and waited, then opened my eyes, huffing underneath her, choking on the dust.

  And saw a woman standing over both of us. A woman with a short frock of blonde hair that was slowly turning black from the roots. Her eyes were a stark, icy blue, and her smile was infectiously wide, but she stood tall and proud, wearing a white costume accented with blue and red and, of course, the golden lightning bolt on her chest. She had her fingers wrapped around red’s wrist, stopping her from moving. I remained tense, hurting, blood on my lips and spilling from cuts on my face, watching as red whirled around, her free fist cutting through the air.

  The gust of wind that erupted from the impact shook the ground underneath me. It was a clean cut hook. A bare knuckle punch that slammed into the taller woman’s jaw. But nothing happened. She barely even moved.

  “Guess that means it’s my turn,” she said.

  I’d like to describe what happened next, but I’ll come clean and say that I was just too slow to see it. My eyes couldn’t keep track of what happened. One moment they were on top of me. The next second they were a storm of golden light and dust pinging around the sky above me, blowing apart the clouds. I lay there on the soil, gaping at the arcs of golden light slamming into each other again and again until, finally, in the same second it took me to

  blink and swallow, red slammed into the dirt beside me—limp. I winced and backpedaled, getting off the floor. I waited for her to get up and kill me. To lunge at me and put her hand through me. Instead, her arm was twisted around her throat like a noose. Where her arm used to be was a meaty web of veins and arteries spilling blood onto the soil. She remained unconscious, face down in the soil, but she was alive. I could hear her heartbeat and her labored breathing. That’s my cue to run. When I turned to leave, tall, blonde, and powerful was standing right there.

  When I bumped into her, she was like a brick wall. No, harder than that, because I’ve felt a couple of those in my time. I took a step backward, looking up at her. Hands on her hips, smiling down at me softly. No teeth. Just lips. “Sorry I got here so late,” she said. “Long trip, busy schedule, too many days in a week and too few hours in a day. You know how it goes.” She stuck out her hand, paused, then excused herself as she walked past me. Red was getting off the ground again, and goddamn, she was one hell of a unit. Her severed arm slipped off her neck and dropped to the ground as she kneeled. She used her good arm to wipe the blood from underneath her nose. Hate was in her eyes, burning bright and golden at the two of us. But this wasn’t my fight, because the other one—the other me—grabbed her by the cape, wrapped it tightly around her head, and threw her so hard into the sky I could only freaking wish I ever had that kind of gas in my arm. We both watched her disappear into the sky, so far she vanished.

  “How…” I shook my head in amazement, then looked at the lady glancing over her shoulder.

  “She’ll probably crash down somewhere over what used to be Europe in a day or two, and she will not be happy, tell you what, so we should probably start getting acquainted, don’t you think, Ry?” she said, heading over to me. She stopped and stuck out her hand, and I very tentatively took it—as soon as our fingers touched, golden static bit my fingertips. She grabbed hold of my hand and shook. “Gods, it’s like looking into a younger mirror of myself, and I forgot how badly we used to have it. All those beat downs really did a number on our nose, huh? Spoiler alert, but a healing factor does not fix crooked noses and bent teeth—they just replace them, so for my sake, just try not to get hit in the face so much. Plus you’ll get headaches at some point that won’t leave, like, ever, and that’s what we call a really bad concussion. So always protect that dome of yours. It’s got important bits inside it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling my hand away. “Are you—”

  “One and only,” she said, spreading her arms. “I’m Olympia, and welcome to the future.”