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"Right." They ran down the open halls, past the gardens and the Library, and careened around a corner, only to find a horrific sight: twenty bodies or more, all looking like they were asleep, the thick residual slime of vris on the walls nearby. It was a gas synthesized by the Muterans, though they were mostly immune to its devastating effects; it was as bad—if not worse—as the mustard gas from the wars of old.

"Come on!" They doubled back, not daring to cross the ground where the dead lay, and turned at another cross section. They were forced to change direction several times, finding patches of those dead or dying from the choking vris.

"He can't get you, I swore to your mother that I'd save you at any cost!"

A tentacle rammed through Rye, impaling her as she faced Lethya. She glanced down, surprised, and flecks of blood rained on the Preservex's clear panel. A choking cough wracked her body, and a thin line of scarlet trickled out of her mouth. Her eyes locking with Lethya's for the last time, she said desperately, "Live."

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"Freak." The blonde boy folded his arms and waited for Ander's reply.

"Screw off," the Levitator's companion suggested helpfully, gray-green eyes narrowed behind hair so dark a brown it almost seemed black, rounded chin jutting out slightly in irritation.

"And you're a freak too, Sparky." Sigof leaned forward, grinning maliciously. "Frrr-reak."

"Oh, I get it, Ander," Jerik said in the manner of one who has achieved enlightenment. "He's trying to speak to us in his native tongue. 'Freak' in the language of dumbasses must translate into 'sexy beast.' I'm sorry, Sigof, but my door doesn't swing that way."

Ander gave his friend a warning look, but the rather dimwitted Sigof started forward, opting for physical abuse since his oh-so-eloquent verbal abuse had failed miserably.

In an instant, Ander had him by the collar and pinned against a locker. "I'm going to tell you something right now," he growled, looking fairly threatening. He was tall for his age, and from a distance he didn't seem too unusual—but at close range, those uncanny eyes of his were rumored to have made grown men cry. "And you're going to listen, because I'm sure you don't want to bother us again. Now, if you're stupid, you're going to tick off Jerik. He'll twist everything you say and make you feel like crap by the time he's done with you." He put more pressure on the pale Sigof, who was starting to sweat. "But if you're really stupid, you're going to tick off me. And I don't need words to make you feel even worse." His eyes, once a golden orange like candle flame, had darkened to a reddish-orange in anger that nearly glowed. "Are we clear?" Sigof muttered something that sounded vaguely like 'yes' and Ander released him. "Get out of here."

After stumbling clumsily to his feet, the boy shouted, "You are freaks, both of you! And you're nothing special, you Levitator freak, just some jumped-up freak's brat who even killed his own—"

"Shut up! Shut up shut up shut up!" His cronies dragged him off, casting nervous looks over their shoulders as if the infamous duo were demigods who were waiting to let them think they got off and would then smite them.

"Oooh, I love breaking in the new ones," Jerik said smugly, absentmindedly tugging on his tool belt. His love of mechanics forbade him from leaving anything of use in his room, where most normal people left their tools. "All high and mighty till we pound them into the dirt."

"Quality entertainment," Ander commented dryly, "I'm sure. Of course, you're the one who gets to spout off cunning little witticisms while I get to do the dirty work and act like the Big Bad."

"You know you love it," shot back Jerik. " 'I am Levitator, hear me roar.'"

"Whatever. Are we going to stand around and talk, or are we going to get our schedules?" Without even waiting for his friend's reply, Ander moved off.

The two had been friends for over ten years now, and were infamous around the school. Ander's reception of wary respect stemmed partly from being the son of an unapproved union between one of the last Levitators and the daughter of Neo Tokyo's Psymantic Hime; Jerik's social leprosy originated from being an orphan and burdened with a genetic glitch. That glitch had been the downfall of his family since Jaegar had discovered it. It meant that he most likely would someday suffer a horrible, painful death. For only a sixteen—soon to seventeen for both of them—year-old, it would be something of a downer, but this was Jerik and it took more than the prospect of an early and grisly death to get him down.

They'd both been shunned, Jerik for his glitch, Ander for his strange eyes and unwelcome heritage…and that he had been the only one to witness his parents' death, emerging from their room drenched head-to-foot in their blood. It hadn't taken very long for rumors to start flying that the little five-year-old Levitator had murdered his parents. Even the confirmation a year later that it was most likely Jaegar hadn't stemmed the flow; it never helped that at sixteen he still refused to talk about it.

And then, the year before, it had happened all over again…

Now he was one of the last—if not the last—Levitator left alive. The first Levitators had been a race of humans that had been genetically constructed from square one, but with the four common abilities of the Muterans infused into them. The result had been a race that was stronger and sturdier than humans, had the Muteran Rintyran, exceptional senses, and could fly; virtually Muterans in human form, only they had a human intellect. The genes had been mostly dominant, so any offspring was a Levitator as well. All Ander had from his mother were her exceptional psymantic powers, but in appearance he was almost identical to his father—tall, with shoulders almost a little narrower than normal, an angular face, and light brown hair that constantly fell into his eyes, just brushing the tips of his ears. He would have kept it shorter, but it grew back too fast for it to be worth it. The only unusual thing about him—that was seen, of course—were his eyes, eyes that shifted from yellow to orange to deep red, betraying whatever emotion ruled him—if you knew what each color meant.

Naturally, the Levitators had been an enormous threat to Jaegar, so he'd targeted them, and over the centuries, they'd slowly died out. He didn't know how many other Levitators were alive, but if there were any left, they weren't making themselves blatantly open. Ander, though, had never had a choice.

"Say something offensive," Jerik said suddenly. "You're quiet and it's creeping me out."

Ander rolled his eyes and refused to dignify that with a response. They reached the Transportation Shafts and each stepped into one, saying clearly, "Scanner Level." A light flicked on, showing that the anti-momentum module was working, then blinked off, and they stepped out. Before them was a huge room of Basic Scanners, computers that were connected to the inter-school network and that contained possibly all information that could be gathered from everything in the school with the exception of the dust bunnies.

Setting a hand palm-down on the panel, Ander waited for the screen to load as Jerik did the same. "Genetic Scan complete: Anderian Tientas."

"I always feel so loved when I use these things," Jerik said regretfully. "They're the only things that are polite to me anymore."

"And one of these days someone's going to program it to insult you like anything with biological or artificial intelligence does nowadays." Ander pushed the School Data section waited impatiently. "Please select an option," the Scanners chimed again in unison.

Simultaneously they hit Schedule Printout, then tore off the procured sheets of paper.

"How's yours look?" Jerik asked, taking Ander's before he responded and holding them up for comparison. "Exactly the same. Surprise, surprise." Ever since they'd met when they were six, Jerik had guaranteed they'd be in the same classes by throwing a tantrum in every class until they eventually switched him to all of his best friend's classes, until finally the teachers caught on and put them in the same schedule every semester. Later they'd justify their actions to their peers in the Teacher's Lounge by claiming that both the boys had lost their families and were clearly psychologically damaged; the least they could do was let them stick together. Ander himself, with his sharp ears, had heard it through the thick door. Life at Valiandessa E. Obrieun Academy of the Martial and Psymantic Arts, more commonly known as V.E.O. Academy, was easy enough once you figured out precisely how to manipulate it.

"Y'know," Jerik said casually as they headed towards the other side of the room, "rumor is they built the school on the foundation of some old building they found here. If this is the bottom level"—he tapped his foot for emphasis—"then what do you think is underneath here?"

"Who cares?" Ander shrugged.

"I do! What if there's a super-advanced weapon hidden underneath there that was lost in the First Apocalypse? Or Psymantic secrets that could destroy Jaegar for good? Or the secret to who or whatever kept him back for so long before?"

"There's nothing down there," Ander snapped, irritated. Only Jerik could bring up the subject of Jaegar in front of him after his parents' murder without being tossed into a wall "Just a lot of concrete, probably."

"But what if it's something else? What if—"

"What if you're full of crap and there's nothing but a bunch of rock down there?" Ander stomped his foot against the floor in indication. "If there was something in the foundation they would have found it—" He would have commented further, but a resounding crack rang in the air, a shudder running beneath the soles of their boots.

That was, right before they discovered they were standing on air. Which, of course, did not last for very long before they dropped. Fast.

Ander saw the ground rushing closer and braced himself, managing to slow the fall with his flight ability and seizing Jerik's arm, knowing his friend didn't have that luck and would have broken something.The pair hit the ground with a solid thump, raising an enormous cloud of dust, and after a few sneezes and as many gagging coughs, Jerik muttered, "Fantastic job, Ander, you broke the school. So where are we?"

"Like I know." It was true enough: wherever they'd fallen, it was like nothing he'd ever seen before. Enormous stone columns either towered in the dark, cold vault or lay on their sides, riddled in cracks. Some were just piles of rubble. If there was a floor, it wasn't visible; it was just an endless sea of broken stone as far as the eye could see in the dim stream of light that came from the hole they'd made, some hundred feet up.

"Can you fly us out?"

Ander glanced over at Jerik, then frowned. After a second, he shook his head. "No. None of the air currents are strong enough for me to use."

"How long do you think it'll take before someone finds us?" Jerik asked after a moment's pause, sounding faintly ill.

"Yet again, like I know." Ander decided to do something rather than just stand around and pulled the Lumanite flashlight all the students had been issued since entry, sweeping it around in a broad arc. The chamber was huge, spacious enough to fit maybe a thousand people; more columns stretched on beyond the visible reach of the light.

Jerik prodded at a pile of dusty black granules in a strange cord-like formation, then bit back a yelp of surprise when it rang with the biting mental acidity Jaegar's kraken reeked of. An idea came, and he said slowly, "Hey, Ander, what if they didn't really build on the building's foundation, they built on what they thought was the foundation and there was really a lot more?"

"You think we just happened to fall into some ancient tomb or something, Jerik?" Ander snorted. "I've got news for you: the world doesn't work that way. People have probably been down here, decided it was a waste of cement to fill in, and built over it. End of story." Nevertheless, he started climbing the huge pile of rubble and twisted metal, headed for what looked like another column at the top.

It wasn't, though. A skeletal hand protruded from the heap, still clutching a blade about a foot and a half long that gleamed like it was newly-forged; he flinched and stepped to the side, wondering who had died fighting—and fighting what? Were they protecting something?

Taking another look, he made out wrought metal and the top of some kind of clear panel from what he'd thought was a column, but the inside was thick with some kind of fog and he couldn't see inside.

Moving quickly, he started pulling the pieces of broken stone away from it, trying his best to ignore the rest of the skeleton. The narrow hipbone and longer leg structure said it had been a girl—whatever this was, it had to be old: everyone knew girls didn't fight and weren't supposed to. Was the empire whose ruins they were in so desperate that they'd resorted to using women as fighters?

Once the rubble was gone, Ander realized that there was no way anyone could have come before them. "Jerik, get over here!"

Jerik had been studying what looked like a control panel of some kind—there'd been several other detached ones lying around—and busily punching and flicking anything he could find. His friend's voice told him that whatever it was, it was urgent though, so he scrambled to his feet and headed over. "What is it?"

"Look!"

Huffing, Jerik raised his head, only to find something that, though he didn't know it then, would send the world as he, Ander, and millions of others knew it into upheaval.

A girl stared at them, wide light-lavender eyes blank; she was a little short, with long, light blond hair falling to her waist and a strange, fearful look on her face. They couldn't see her very well due to the dim light and the misty gas surrounding her—the most they could make out was the color of her eyes. She didn't blink, didn't move, and yet somehow she was definitely alive.

The dark-haired boy rapped on the strange panel with his knuckles. "Um…hello? We come in peace!" There was no reply except for the steady blinking of a green light, but that had been going since Ander had found her.

"Now what?" Ander asked after a moment.

"How did you put it?" said Jerik thoughtfully. "Oh yes: Like I know."

Giving his friend a dirty look, he leaned forward and examined the control board. There were far too many buttons for him to even care to think about, but the large round one in the center was begging to be pushed. After a much-too-short moment of deliberation, Ander stabbed it with a finger, and it let out a stiff click.

"No!" Jerik yelled. "You idiot! You don't know what that—oh, crap!" The top snapped open, vapors billowing out, yet the girl didn't move and the clear door didn't budge. "You killed her! You killed the dead chick!"

Mama didn't save me…

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