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Maribelle glares as if I have some nerve to say anything to her.
I could offer her a lifetime of apologies, and it wouldn’t matter as long as Atlas is dead. Instead of bothering her anymore, I close my eyes and take deep breaths to mentally prepare for this next attempt to the past.
“Trust in your instincts again,” Tala says in a hushed voice. “Remember the history, breathe it, and fly back to it.”
I hear Maribelle’s flames burst to life, and I ignite too. I haven’t used the Dayrose salve since two nights ago, but thankfully my power is significantly less painful than before. I’m able to build Bautista’s life, beginning with his voice, which I know better now from those broadcasts, and I search and search for a way into his last day. I feel stuck, like my legs are buried in sand, and I think about how desperately I want to figure out those ingredients so I don’t have to be trapped in this war.
Everything becomes blurry as muffled voices surface. A younger Bautista flickers against a darkness, screaming as he finds his hand on fire, telling someone that he doesn’t want to be a weapon. I’ve been asked before if I ever experienced any flashbacks to lives I didn’t live, and now I can say I have. For several moments I forget my own face and name and history. I’m brought back as Emil Donato Rey with this memory of Bautista begging not to fight, and I can feel his hopelessness like fingers in my throat, suffocating me. We share this pain across lifetimes. Bautista wanted an escape too, and I urge him to help me even though he’s dead, even though I’m the new us, but it’s like asking yourself to solve a problem you can’t possibly know the answer to. Then Bautista, much older than the flashback, slightly older than the videos, flickers in the darkness again, mouthing words I’ve never heard him say—words like dry-tear and crimson root. The ingredients. I keep reaching for his voice like it’s something physical I can grab and squeeze. The other ingredients keep coming to me, like how my hands always know what words I want to type into a text, a total connection between body and brain.
Then I’m standing on darkness. I feel like I should be falling forever.
Bautista appears before me. His hair isn’t buzzed, it’s brown and messy and probably overdue for a haircut. His shadow of a beard has grown out in patches. His brown eyes look like he’s in need of sleep. Sweat bullets down his face. He’s wearing a raggedy gray sleeveless shirt tucked into his black jeans, and dang he’s got some muscular arms. It’s no surprise that everyone saw a superhero in him. I suddenly feel determination and hope increasing within me, and getting this far is huge, but there’s something off about these feelings, like a shirt that fits but I’ve spent the day not realizing is backward. I think I’m reading Bautista’s emotions. I’m standing right in front of him, though he can’t seem to see me, not even as the darkness shrinks around us, replaced with color and light that paints the wide room we’re in.
There are metallic yellow beams above us and dried blood staining the white floor that’s harsh on my eyes. There’s a poster with safety precautions by the window. Then lined all along the walls are a range of weapons that are mostly only used by the military, like semiautomatic sniper wands and gem-grenade launchers. This is definitely the Incendiary Factory in the South Bronx, where Bautista was killed and a few blocks from where I was born. I already hate this place so much that I want to go back to my time, but then I turn and find a man in a chair holding something that might be more powerful than any weapon in this room—a vial with a thick liquid that reminds me of wet clay. Oh man, I pray to every damn star that that’s the power-binding potion.
“This has to work,” the man in the chair pleads. He isn’t shouting, but his voice rings loud in my head. He has a black eye and while his jaw hangs open I notice he’s missing half of his teeth. I’m guessing he’s a few years older than me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s actually my age and just aged poorly because of whatever he’s been through.
It’d be great if sharing a space with Bautista could hook me up with everything he knows, or at least let me read his mind in the moment, but I’ll take the emotions.
“Just like the other potions, this version of the Starstifler is a trial too,” Bautista says, casting a glance at the blue journal lying open on the deactivated conveyor belt.
I’ve never heard of the Starstifler before, but the name tracks with its purpose. If all powers originate from celestial bodies such as stars, then this name is appropriate for when you bind them. I walk over to the journal. The pages are still a crisp white, not yellowed like in my time, with an index card lying on top. I try picking up the card, but my hand phases right through it, over and over. I’m only here as an observer; I can’t touch anything. I lean over the index card and it’s about the Starstifler, written in penmanship I recognize as Sera’s from half of the pages in the journal.
Attempt #7—the Starstifler
bone tears (tears from a lamenting phoenix)
ghost husk (eggshell of a reborn phoenix)
feather-rock (shedding from a blood-plumed basilisk)
crimson root (root of a Dayrose flower)
riot pod (breath spawn shell)
water from the Shade Sea (saliva from a hibernating shadow-star hydra)
burnt-berry (crushed torch grains)
cumulus powder (a sprinkling of soil from high mountain that isn’t frequented because it’s infested by hydras)
crooked star (peculiar soil)
grim-ash (soot from a crowned elder)
I don’t know how much time I have before I’m kicked out of this life, so I’m committing all this to memory as quickly as I can. Tears from a lamenting phoenix, heartbreaking but simple enough. Ghost husk are literal eggshells from a phoenix that’s resurrected. Blood-plumed basili
sk shedding, blood-plumed basilisk shedding, blood-plumed basilisk shedding. I’ve got Dayrose down thanks to Wyatt. I would’ve never cracked the code that water from the Shade Sea was saliva from a hibernating shadow-star hydra, and that’s the point, but man, who knows how many times I can retrocycle, so I’m dead set on getting everything right now. Crushed torch grains, which I know are common. And the Halo Knights can hopefully hook us up with soot from a crowned elder.
I’m running through everything over and over—lamenting phoenix tears, phoenix eggshell, blood-plumed basilisk shedding, Dayrose, hibernating shadow-star hydra saliva, crushed torch grains, crowned elder soot—when Bautista steps closer to the man, pulling me with him even as I resist, as if we’re tethered together.
This is such a trip, I wish Brighton were here to tag-team this with me. He’d be losing his mind about how Bautista smells like armpits and street cologne.
The Spell Walker founder stands before the man as he trembles to unscrew the vial, tucking it between his legs, and then holding out his forearm. Bautista grabs his wrist. “Take a deep breath, Price. I’m going to count down from three.”
Price squirms. “As if you ever actually count down from—”
Bautista drives the dagger through Price’s hand, and Price’s yell echoes so loudly that I cover my ears. Blood spills into the vial, staining Price’s pants too, and once Bautista seems satisfied with how much blood has gone in he puts the cork back on and gives it a shake like a bartender mixing a cocktail. “You’ll heal any second now” is all he says. I would’ve apologized.
