Terrence Brooks Jr's Arc

Chapter 13 of 7

Terrence walked up the ramp first. The others followed. Inside, the ship was warm and clean. Blue lights ran along the walls. In the center sat a round seat and a wide panel of controls. Terrence stared at the panel. He had the key. He had the ship. But he did not know how to make it move. The war hound climbed in last. The ramp sealed behind it. Gold marks glowed on its black coat. "I know this ship," the hound said. "Your father flew it. I rode with him. Sit, and I will show you the way home." Terrence sat. The hound pressed its paw to a dark stone on the panel. The stone lit purple. The whole ship woke. Screens filled with symbols Terrence could not read but somehow felt. The ground under them dropped away. "Yo, we moving," Demo said. He grabbed a rail with one diamond-ringed hand. "We actually moving, bro." His grin flashed under the blue light. Then the ship broke through the ground and shot into the dark sky above the dead city. Beno held the seat back and said nothing. His jersey glowed pale in the cabin light. He watched the stars come up outside the glass and kept his mouth shut, the way he did when a thing was too big to talk over. Ladybug leaned close to the front glass. Her red boots left mud on the clean floor. "How far?" she asked. The hound did not turn. "Far. Weeks of flying. His world is not close." It looked at Terrence. "You will sleep. You will wake. And you will still be flying. But at the end waits the place you came from." Terrence gripped the seat. Weeks. He had wanted answers today. Now the truth sat weeks away across black space. He thought about leaving. He thought about the notebooks at home, three of them, full of things he could not explain. This ship held the last answer. He would not turn back for time. "Then set the course," Terrence said. "All the way." The hound pressed the stone twice. The engines pulled hard. Everyone rocked back. The dead city shrank below until it was a gray smudge, then gone. Only stars remained. Hours passed. Terrence sat with the purple stone glowing under his hand. Then the front glass changed. Far ahead, small at first, a shape rose out of the dark. Towers stacked on towers. Purple and green and yellow light burned along their edges. A whole city, floating in the black, far beyond anything Earth had built. Demo stopped talking. Ladybug went still. Beno stepped up to the glass. "That's it," the hound said. "Shubhamvo. Where they took you from." Terrence stood. The sky behind those towers was deep purple, with light inside it. The exact sky from his memory. Age three. Laughing. He had drawn it once and torn the page out. "It's real," he said. "It was always real." The ship flew on toward the purple sky.