Color me stupid for not believing a single word of what she just said. I stared at her, the cuts and bruises around my face and body slowly healing underneath the harsh sun. She’s gotta be some kind of shapeshifter. Those weren’t very common. At least, I never came across any that were sane enough to hold a proper conversation. I figured that she was waiting for me to be impressed by this grand old reveal, with her grand smile and wide spread arms. But yeah, right. The future? Who the hell did she take me for? It had been one hell of a year so far for someone who’d just graduated high school a few months ago, but this was kinda ridiculous. If this is the future, I’m a college grad.

  The woman folded her arms and nodded. “Spoiler, but we are. Bachelors in journalism from Olympus U.”

  I gagged and blew a raspberry. “A superhero that does journalism. Gee, how original.” I ignored that tiny little tidbit about her finishing my thought, but come on—the guy in the suit said he could see into my mind, so of course this figment of his imagination can finish my sentences. I turned around and gave her a half-heated wave of thanks, I guess. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but thanks for the assist, but I was wearing down the chick in red.”

  She laughed dryly. “We both know you’d have gotten your head severed from your throat.”

  “Me?” I asked, jerking my thumb at myself. “Lose to some cheap evil knock-off Olympia?”

  “Ah,” she said, suddenly in front of me. I didn’t flinch—I was getting pretty used to people doing that, and it was about time someone did something more flashy. “You still think all of this is some kind of illusion, right?”

  “How couldn’t it be?” I asked her, waving my hand around us. “This place is a desert, that chick was just evil Rylee who, lemme guess, went over to the Conquest, and now I’m supposed to learn some kinda lesson about how I’ve got some weird potential for evil, and then this is gonna end in me giving up my powers for the greater good, blah, blah, fucking blah.” Yeah, that’s right, people, I’m smarter than some broad who punches things really hard. “I’m a superhero, plain and simple. Some people might not like it, but if that guy in the suit conjured you up to help teach me that somewhere inside of me I can be an even better superhero, then that’s a really shitty plan.”

  She tilted her head a little. “Gods, it’s a miracle I didn’t die earlier in life from getting drunk off being cynical,” Older Me muttered. I was about to give her some more of what I thought until she put up her hand. “You don’t have to believe me, because trust me, I didn’t either when this whole thing happened to me. Life’s been ass and summer was tough, and now your skin is a little thicker, but unfortunately, so was our skull. It wouldn’t kill you to trust someone, at least yourself, Ry.” Her voice softened. “And I know that’s not really what you want to hear right now, not after Rhea. But take it from someone who did actually live through all of this—trust the pilot, OK?”

  The wind pushed my hair over my shoulder and hers against her cheeks. I couldn’t help but admit that she really did look just like me, or what I’d want to look like eventually. She must be as tall as mom, maybe as strong as dad, but I also had to figure out why her eyes were blue and she could still beat the chick with the full set of golden eyes. Unless this is the guy in the suit telling me that ‘being human is being stronger’ or whatever. I sighed and massaged my temples. She let me mutter under my breath for a while, gathering my thoughts long enough to say:

  “Prove it,” I told her, folding my arms. “Prove that this is somehow the future, and that you’re me.”

  “Easy,” she said, one hand on her hip, the other pointing a finger at my chest. “The mark on your chest would have hurt if this was an Alternate Realm. Remember the labyrinth with Circe? It stung the entire time you were down there. And besides, even if this was an Alternate Realm, this place wouldn’t let you use your powers.”

  “Bull,” I argued. “Dominion put me into one, and I used my powers there, didn’t I?”

  “Dominion’s a half-baked idiot that’s gonna die from alcohol poisoning a few months from Christmas back in your timeline,” she said, waving her hand through the air. “Either that, or the Olympiad is gonna say he died in the line of duty on foreign soil, but let’s hope your reality doesn’t take that route, unless you wanna join the army.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question,” I said to her. The sun was only climbing higher, getting hotter.

  “Rylee,” she said, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “Think! Bloodforge had put you inside of an Alternate Realm, right?” I nodded, kinda feeling like I was being scolded by one of my old teachers. “And you had your powers there for at least a short while before they started fritzing and nearly killed you, right?” Where are you even going with this, lady? “In Dominion’s, he was both way too weak to fully neutralize your powers, and second, he would have hurt you regardless because eventually, your powers would have given up on you. Is that clear?”

  “Mm,” I hummed, then shook my head. “Still not buying that you’re from the future, or this is real.”

  She swore under her breath and muttered, “Now I get why she found me such a pain to deal with last time around.” She looked around, then snapped her fingers. “Look. I’ve done this, and now you’re doing this, but we’re not even the only ones who have done this.” She waved her hand over her shoulder. “There are more of us out there right now. Nearly countless realities with variations of us that span generations and timelines and on and on and on, and hell, I get why you wouldn’t buy any of this. Thirteen was always a bastard to deal with, and if there’s one thing you can trust me with, it’s this: Bianca won’t live if you stand here and keep doubting me. She’ll never be the same girl who once held our hand in eighth grade bio, or the girl who kissed Olympia knowing in her heart it was you.” I

  froze, my mouth going dry. She let go of my shoulders and said, “Rylee, Thirteen can only see what’s inside your mind, but he can’t see into the future, and if you need any more proof of me being who I say, then there’s also this.”

  She slid her fingers underneath her collar and pulled out a necklace, one that still had the tiny golden bolt of lightning that Cleopatra gave me, and a wedding ring, too. Not mom’s, but something I’d never even seen before.

  “If you’re wondering,” she said, tucking it away again, “she says yes before we even finish asking.”

  We…Me and…I ask…

  She put her arm out to catch me before I fell to the dirt. “Yeah, figured as much.”

  I mean, it kinda made sense, didn’t it? Or was I just kidding myself into thinking this way because this was the future I actually lived long enough to get on one knee and actually pop the questions which is, like, holy shit, you know? I hadn’t felt this hot underneath my clothes in ages. My head was a mess of thoughts. My gut was a mess of emotions and feelings that were stirring around and frothing into some sickeningly sweet boil until I puked onto the soil at my feet. I groaned and spat, waving Older Me off so I could hunch over and dry heave until it was only saliva dribbling out of my mouth. Bianca Addams. Rylee Ross. Fuck me, Thirteen hated my guts—he wanted to show me the consequences of what would happen to the world if I chose to keep fighting—so why would he show me a version of myself that would make it easier to know that I do actually save Bianca. That, however small, there was a shot of me being able to beat the supervillains, save the day, and get with Bianca. Would he really conjure up a version of Olympia that was old enough to beat a fully grown Arkathian without using a droplet of her powers?

  Of course, this could all be some illusion still, but… Why? Why would he show me hope if all he wanted to do at first was show me that I was some massive failure just waiting to happen? That just didn’t make any sense.

  She patted my back and gently squeezed my shoulder. “It’s Ross. Roles off the tongue easier.”

  I slowly straighten up again, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand. “We saved her?”

  “We saved her.”

  “And…I don’t have to give up being a superhero?”

  “Look at me,” she said. “This doesn’t look like a suit and tie.”

  “So there’s a chance?” I whispered. “That I’m good enough to do it?”

  “Welllll,” she said, her voice waning.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m not you per say, but a version of you,” she explained. “But this’ll be a lot easier to explain with the others so I don’t have to give you all this speech over and over again. Besides, more Legionnaires are gonna be on their way soon the second they realize the atmosphere is being warped by us two. Follow me? Keep up if you can.” With that, she was in the sky, parting the clouds like a bullet. I watched her, my mouth only slightly open, my cheeks pulling into a tight smile. A part of me was hesitant, scared—label it whatever you want, but trusting a guy like that with anything was a big red flag, but… I told myself it wasn’t just the ring that dragged me into the sky after her, but also the scent of Bianca’s perfume lingering on her body, too. Besides, there’s a hickey on her neck.

  All I’m doing is investigating where that bruise came from after she’d tugged down her collar. What can I say? I’m just making sure that future me isn’t developing some kind of blood clot. Those things can kill, you know.

  It was nearly night by the time we reached a cluster of lights glowing softly below us. Keeping up with her had been one hell of a challenge, I’ll admit. She was consistently fast, not sporadically like me. I just wasn’t used to flying long distances like she was apparently, because we’d been going about mach two for several hours straight, and that nearly threw me right out of the sky out of pure exhaustion. Gotta work on that cardio, Ry. Fighting and flying was easy, mostly because the people I fought came apart like jelly. I guess I still wasn’t really using my powers the way I should be. No breaks. No shade. Hours and hours underneath the scathing sunlight, burning my arms as I copied her.

  I usually flew with my arms by my side, but I’d figured to change that up a little and stretched them out, just as she was doing. She’d almost smirked at me as I did, and maybe it was in my head, but she’d flown even faster. You couldn’t even blame me for plummeting to the ground as soon as we stopped. I groaned onto my hands and knees, thirsty and exhausted and covered in sweat that caked my t-shirt. My back and shoulders burned as I let my arms hang loosely either side of me, and Gods above, she still had enough energy to hover above the small collection of tents we’d landed inside of. I wasn’t complaining, by the way. I took that time to catch a breather.

  “You look like you’re about to barf or die,” a voice said, which was true—I’d found a short stool to sit on beside one of the larger green canvas tents. Didn’t even bother trying to find out why we were here or who lived in these things—I’d have probably shriveled away if I did. I looked up from my feet, loose strands of hair hanging in front of my face, expecting to see Older Me, but this wasn’t her. It was someone else. A chick in costume—red lower half, blue upper half, golden lightning bolt on her chest, wearing a leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up—had her hands on her hips as she looked me over. Another one? Her hair looked fuller. Healthier. A lot more blonde, a lot less rat’s nest with brown strands, like mine. Freckle-less cheeks. Scarless face. She looked like some actress.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  The kind of actresses on movie posters you’d see back home promoting a new Olympia movie.

  A movie, mind you, that I never saw any money from. Not judging’, just sayin’.

  I mean, hell, to top it off, she had a pair of aviators resting on her head. She screamed L.A.

  “Lemme guess,” I muttered, wincing as I straightened my posture. “You’re also Olympia?”

  “‘Course I am,” she said, grinning. “Must’ve heard about me from my new show. Autograph?”

  “I’m you, dumbass,” I said, very slowly standing up. Her boots made her a little taller, and she also very much smelt like Emelia—clean, washed, and expensive. “If I wanted an autograph, I’d write down my own name.”

  Her nose wrinkled, maybe from the smell of caked blood and dried sweat on me, but that was just a guess. “Just because you’re the homeless version of me doesn’t mean you’ve got to be rude. That’s the kind of attitude that makes you poor, like, always. Forever. All the time.” Her eyes undressed me from head to toe. “Where’s your gear?”

  “Try fighting a giant Kaiju several times over and see if your costume holds up.”

  “That makes zero sense,” she said. “Don’t you have more than one?”

  “Well, not really, but—”

  She patted my shoulder, but only slightly—she wiped her fingerless gloves on her thigh afterward. “There, there, things get a lot easier if you have a better attitude. I mean, when I started being Olympia, I had way too many outfits I could pick from. It was too much of a headache, so I hired someone to pick them out for me depending on the day, you know?” She nodded, and I was kinda starting to hate this version of myself. “I mean, how else are the people who cheer me on supposed to know that doing what we do is glamorous? They’re supposed to be motivated by us, but if you go flying around in your stinky old, stitched up costume, day in and day out, never ever washing it unless it smells like the insides of some weird giant monster, then everyone will think this superhero gig sucks.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Have you ever fought anything that’s not just your hair brush in the morning?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, like, all the time.”

  “Then how do you keep the nail polish on?” I asked, folding my arms.

  She brandished her fingers, wriggling them. “Like ‘em? They’re from my new makeup line.”

  “You know what?” I said, brushing past her. “I’m sick of you already. Where’s the older one of us?”

  “She usually circles for about half an hour,” someone else said, pushing open a tent flap. It was a guy this time around. Messy blonde hair, wearing a white t-shirt and Olympus U varsity jacket, torn blue jeans and sneakers. The same necklace I had dangling in front of my shirt was doing the same for him. “Making sure that if we do have to bolt, we can do it without getting caught off guard.” He stopped in front of me and offered a hand. “Olympia?”

  I shook his hand, but not after we both winced from the jolt of electricity. “Yeah, and you’re…?”

  “I’m also Olympia,” he said, shrugging. “I usually prefer All-Star, but since everyone’s doing it…”

  I sighed under my breath. “There’s more?”

  “Yep!” the girl with the leather jacket said. “Two more. Think they’re asleep. You took ages to get here.”

  “You guys knew I was coming?” I asked them, and before you start wondering: yes, this is a mind fuck as much as it is for me as it is for you, but since nobody else was freaking out, I figured that maybe I should also relax and not start trying to fight people for information, as any reasonable person would probably be doing, right?

  We all turned at once, hearing an eruption of wind far, far into the distance. I squinted my eyes and watched something glint through the sky—something black and sleek, metallic and shiny. Then it vanished a second later, followed by Older Me—Older Us?—a moment later. I could barely track her through the sky, too.

  “She’s fuckin’ fast,” the guy beside me muttered.

  I folded my arms. “Bet I could do that, too.”

  “Doubt it,” he said, patting my shoulder. “I heard you wheezing about an hour before you got here.”

  “I call bull on that.” We turned, and there sitting at a long wooden table, where most of the tiny orange fairy lights were hung around, was a chick in a suit, her blazer on the bench and a cigarette packet beside her. I didn’t know where she came from. Maybe she’d been there the entire time. She looked more like Older Me than I did, with her short, messy hair, and bags of exhaustion underneath her eyes. She smelt of sweat and smoke and the stuffiness of an office. “You could barely hear that Legionnaire that tried to take you out a few days ago, bucko.”

  “I was half asleep!” he said. “And I kinda just got dumped on my head, so I’m sorry I was a little dazed.”

  The girl in the suit snorted. “Yeah, right. Hey, new chick. Tell me you heard the one that attacked you.”

  I sucked air through my teeth. “I’m on this dude’s side. She smacked me around before I even noticed.”

  “So that’s why you look like this,” he muttered. “No offence.”

  “Part of the Olympia package, right?” I said, shrugging. “You get your head banged a few times.”

  “Maybe that’s why both of you got beat up,” Suit muttered, tapping out a cigarette. “You’re kinda deaf.”

  “Symptoms of actually fighting crime,” I said, sitting on the table, not the bench, facing the open desert with my back to Suit over here. “Instead of, I don’t know, being in an office all day long, doing spreadsheets.”

  She flicked her cigarette at me. “I’m a government official, thank you very much.”

  “Ew,” said Leather Jacket, folding her hands. “No wonder your face is breaking out. Offence, this time.”

  Suit jerked her thumb at her and looked at me. “You hate her just as much as I do, right?”

  “I think,” the guy said, sitting on the bench, “that we should introduce ourselves so this gets a lot easier for all of us, because I kinda have this internal monologue thing going on right now and it’s really hard to keep up.”

  “What are you, an idiot?” Suit asked. “We’re all Olympia, and we’re all Rylee, right? I’m just the best.”

  I laughed dryly and rolled my eyes. “You? The best? You work for the freaking government, sell out.”

  “It’s better than writing comic books for zero dollars an hour,” she said. “Heard of health insurance?”

  The guy clapped his hands, making us all flinch with the small thunderous clap resonating through my skull. He had this quarterback authority to him. A hard jaw and straight nose and strong shoulders of someone that would probably be in charge of almost every single team he’d ever been on. “I’ll start,” he said, after we’d all fallen quiet. “I’m Riley, spelt R-I-L-E-Y. Usually go by All-Star, ‘cause Olympia just wasn’t on the market for me. Got stuck here after some guy duped me into believing he was gonna help me save someone I cared about, so…yeah.” He sat down, elbows on the table, then gestured with his hand. “Well, go on. We’ve got time to kill, so you next.”

  Suits sighed and lit another cigarette. She swung one leg off the bench and leaned on the table. “Olympia. Nineteen. R-Y-L-E-I-G-H. Dumped here before any of you bozos showed up late to the party because I got sent on a piece accord to England. I also don’t do the whole ‘superhero’ thing anymore, so I usually just use my first name.”

  “Shill, much?” I muttered. She shot me a look.

  “Okay, my turn,” Leather Jacket said, putting her hands on the table. “So my name’s R-H-Y-L-I-E, I come from the West Coast, because judging from all your pale skin, I doubt any of you do. Uh…Right. Been Olympia for literally my entire life, which has rocked so far, and I got here because I went to bed one morning in my penthouse, you guys know what that is, right? Anyway, I had a crazy after party. Lots of partying. Must’ve taken something off brand, because I got this nasty headache, then I remembered seeing this guy in my bedroom, and now here I am!”

  “You really are an idiot,” Ryleigh muttered (Suits—easier to remember this way, I’ll be honest).

  “A rich idiot who doesn’t lick America’s boots for ten bucks an hour,” Leather Jacket said.

  “It’s actually twenty bucks an hour, dumb broad,” Suits muttered.

  “Fancy, Miss Minimum Wage,” I said, making the movie star snort with laughter. “Like you guessed, I’m Rylee. R-Y-L-E-E, the correct spelling.” Before any of them could argue with me on that, I said, “And I was sent here a lot like you, quarterback. I thought I’d get help trying to find a friend of mine, but he turned out to be a nut job.”

  “Hang on a sec,” Quarterback said, looking at the movie star. “You’ve been Olympia since childhood?”

  She nodded. “Uh huh. I’ve had my powers since I was born.”

  “Must’ve been nice,” the three of us muttered.

  “Um, hi…everyone,” a soft voice said. We turned to look at the final of five large tents loosely arranged in a large circle. A scrawny blonde girl with a buzzcut stood with her hands in front of her, a loose orange jumpsuit hanging off her shoulders, and large glasses awkwardly sitting on her face. Who the hell is this? I know how that sounded, considering I was in the process of talking to myself right now, but she didn’t even feel like us. Being around our kind leaves your skin feeling slightly irritated, almost rubbed against the wrong way. Even now, every once in a while, each of us would twitch or scratch or pick our nails, trying to satiate the annoyance on our flesh.

  But her? She just felt like a human.

  “Are you lost?” Suits asked her.

  “Thought you said you came here before everyone,” I said. “Don’t you know her?”

  “She does,” Quarterback muttered. “She’s just being an asshole.”

  He waved her over, patting the seat beside himself. She sat stiffly, almost scared straight with Suits looking at her through her hanging cloud of smoke. Her eyes darted briefly toward me, then away. “I’m, uh—”

  “Reily, we know,” Suits said. She waved her hand through the air, then looked at me. “You’ve got muscles on you, unlike the rest of these chumps. Me personally? I bench two hundred tons. Bet I can beat you in a pinch.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Arms like that? Most you lift is someone else’s stack of work folders.”

  “Work folders?” she asked me. “They’re called files. Documents. Gods, you people are thick.”

  “Calling people stupid over and over won’t make you any nicer to look at, honey,” Leather Jacket said.

  Suits scoffed. “Coming from the ‘superhero’ with painted fingernails?”

  “You really should lay off on her,” I said. “At least she’s not bent over some desk for Uncle Sam.”

  She suddenly stood, spreading her arms. “It’s a stable job and I get to save the world!”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Quarterback muttered. “But is that after the quarterly sales meeting?”

  A hand patted my shoulder, and there stood Older Me, not even a bead of sweat on her forehead. “Don’t pretend like you also don’t work for a branch of the government, too,” she said to me. Didn’t even hear her arrive. How powerful is this chick? “And yeah, yeah, I know they don’t pay you, but still—pot calling the kettle black in a few years’ time, trust me.” She clapped her hands and smiled at us. “But now that we’re all here, it’s time for the big

  welcome: my name is Olympia. I stopped going by Rylee—R-Y-L-E-E—”—I stuck my tongue out to the rest of them—“a really long time ago, and the reason you’re all here at the same time is pretty simple. What you’re all experiencing right now is what I like to call a Calamity Event. Think of it like the moment in time when dad died.”

  “What?” Leather Jacket asked. “Dad is doing just fine, last I checked. Old and cranky, but totally alive.”

  Silence hung in the air between us for a while, until Suits said, “You’re either really lucky—”

  “—or you’re about to have the worst couple years of your life,” I finished.

  Quarterback patted her shoulder and said, “You should probably sit.”

  Older Me sucked air through her teeth. “Spoiler? Sorry ‘bout that. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough not to have to experience that, but at the end of the day, how lucky is it to have him around, huh?” We all grimly laughed quietly, almost bitterly, except for the one wearing the glasses and prison jumpsuit. And Leather Jacket, too, who was staring at each of us, her face suddenly ghostly pale. “Back to the Calamity Event: you’re all about to have your lives drastically changed in the next few months, maybe years, depending on what happens right now.” She folded her arms, suddenly looking a lot more Arkathian than human, despite her normal eyes. “I’ll be honest, there should have been more of us here, but as you can tell, we’ve got a miniscule chance of actually living this long, or not getting killed to live long enough to see this all happen. My job is to make sure that you all survive, alright?”

  “Hold on,” I said, getting off the table. “But what’s this got to do with the future?”

  “Or the cunt that sent us here?” Suit asked.

  “And that’s the Calamity Event,” Olympia told us. “We rarely ever live past it.”

  “Um…” The girl in the jumpsuit raised her hand, then quietly asked, “Who’s gonna kill us?”

  She stayed silent for a moment, chewing her tongue. We remained quiet, watching her search the sky, then each of our faces. Her jaw tensed, then she said, “It’s usually a ‘what’ that gets rid of us, and her name is Bianca.”