We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Forty-Two

I was tense, ready for some kind of psychic blowback to Noah twisting the doorknob, but it opened with no issue. We all waited a few terrifying seconds. Nothing happened. Noah stepped into the hallway outside, looking both ways before he gestured to them to follow him. Ella took Noah's hand, then Daisy's, and Daisy took her mom's.

As Elise's children tugged her around the corner, she held my gaze as long as she could. and any doubt I had about bringing Decker back with us flickered out. Her eyes silently pleaded with me not to leave him.

I crouched and heaved Decker Lord's body over my shoulder. He was heavy, but I steadied myself, found my centre of gravity, and headed toward the door. Elise's neck craned to see us. Even though the soul inside this body—if it even was—wasn't the person she had married and raised her children with, I saw in her eyes that she loved him beyond all reason. He was her true love.

Once she saw me carrying him, she finally turned her head and moved her feet to keep up with the others. Her true love was safe.

I could carry him, but I couldn't keep up. Decker Lord's body bounced on my shoulder when I kicked it up to a jog and threw me off balance, so I had to slow down.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought, adjusting my grip around the backs of his knees. But it was fine—Noah wasn't encountering any trouble as he charged ahead, and there was nothing behind us.

But the hallway stretched on and on. Sweat beaded on my forehead as we ran onward and onward. I couldn't see ahead of Elise, the twins, and Noah's bobbing head. What were they seeing? What were they running toward? I tried to hurry but Elise's back was getting further and further away. My shoulder felt like it was going to be wrenched away from my neck by Decker Lord's weight, the muscle tearing, sinew splintering.

I stopped to catch my breath, which was rattling up my raw, aching throat. I squished my eyes shut and tried to connect the bots in my head to any idea that would bring me to the car. Efficiency. Technology. Home. Going the fuck home. It didn't work.

Then I felt the bots inside me rise up in a way they never had, before. They rushed outward through my extremities, over my whole body.

I was still running, my brain was still commanding my legs to move and my upper body muscles to stay tense to support Decker Lord's weight, but it felt like there was a hazy, golden veil between myself and my body. I couldn't feel anything.

The pain was gone. Decker Lord weighed nothing. My feet picked themselves up and my knees churned, propelling me forward. Ahead, Noah and family charged through a doorway that let out to that colorless landscape. I could see Noah's Edison and Decker's, too, sitting on the pale, soft grass.

Then I heard a voice inside my head—only it wasn't a voice. It was a presence that, somehow, I knew was legion. It was all of them, all of the occupants of this place, imparting a series of emotions that I understood as explicitly as if they spoke in words.

You are free, they were telling me. You are safe. You are human.

It was that simple, but their conception of "human" was so huge it landed on me like a tidal wave. Their conception of us was so strange and beautiful that my eyes filled with tears. We were so small to them, specks of dust in a universe we didn't understand, but on their sojourns into our minds, they discovered a whole new baffling point of view, where specks of dust mattered more than anything. They were one, the individuals blending into the whole, and we were many, and fractured. We confused them and even worried them—how could we survive, being so atomized?—but in this moment, I had taught them something about what humans are capable of.

Decker Lord, as I knew him, had done harm to my family, my society, and to the human I loved the most, but still I was carrying him to safety at great pain and risk to myself. In their world, if any individual were to cause harm to the whole, they would be swiftly anihilated, with all recognizing that it must be done for the greater good. That was what they were going to do to the interloper that had possessed Decker Lord. What I had done in saving my enemy was unfathomable to them, but they thought it was admirable. They thought it was brave, right, and good.

They thought we were extraordinary.

I opened the door of Decker Lord's SUV and laid him on the back seat. I felt a rush of muscle pain. They had left my body; I was alone in my head again. Noah safely installed his family in his car before he stalked over to me.

"Riley, I told you to leave him the fuck behind. We need to get the fuck out of here right now, and if he slowed you down, I swear to God—"

"It's okay, Noah," I said. "We're safe."

"How do you know that?"

"They spoke to me. It's okay, really. They said we can leave in peace."

Noah slumped against the Edison, face in his hands. I held his wrists instinctively, pulling him toward me. He gave in after a moment and let me hug him close.

"I was so scared," he whispered.

"I know. But I couldn't leave him."

He nodded. "You're a better man than me."

"I don't know about that." I glanced up. Elise and the kids had finally settled in the car. She was rocking Ben, glancing up at us every few seconds. "But maybe let's wait until we're back on Earth for any discussions about humanity."

He nodded. "Meet at my house?"

"See you there."

Noah's car lifted off, but I didn't want to appear almost immediately back at the Lord residence. I needed a minute not just to calm down, but to give my body a rest. I started the car and asked the AI system—a mellow male voice named Charles—to chart a course for earth, but to give me half an hour or so in the journey.

"All right, emergency driver Riley Axford," it said. "Time to arrival at 1150 Eyremount Drive: thirty minutes."   

Noah gave me a thumbs-up and then the Edison took off, a single blink and it was gone. The SUV shot forward with the same speed, and then we were in the black void of space, travelling faster than the speed of light toward home.

I leaned my seat back, but of course I couldn't nap. Everything spun in my mind on an endless loop: aliens, other planets, Decker Lord defeated, back to aliens...

When it cycled back to Decker Lord again, I sighed. It was a good thing, for sure, that the tyrannical alien soul had been removed from his body, but what would happen now? Would he ever wake up? If he didn't, that would be one brand of tragedy. Elise would probably have to take charge of his companies and estate, and who knew how well prepared she was for that? On the other hand, if he did wake up, he would be a confused and traumatized seventeen-year-old in a thirty-five-year-old CEO's body, suddenly finding himself married with four kids. That would be complicated beyond belief.

I didn't know which eventuality would be best for Noah, so I didn't know which to hope for.

I had cycled back around to a general "whoa" about the mind-reading aliens when I heard a rustle behind me.

I turned to see Decker Lord struggling to sit up.