Chapter 157 Future Spear

The line on the spear was written in Jace's own handwriting.

Throw me at yourself.

[FUTURE SPEAR: UNIDENTIFIED]

[SOURCE: TIMELINE OFFSET +4 MINUTES]

[HEALTH: 174/520. CHARGE: 128/220. CORRUPTION: 90%]

[PRECISION PENALTY: -12% ACTIVE]

"That's a threat," Penelope said, reading over his shoulder.

"It's my handwriting."

"That makes it a worse threat."

The spear hummed louder. The ruins of the Mirror Colossus had stopped falling, and every flake of glass in the hall hung motionless in the air, waiting.

"Everybody back," Selene said slowly. "Everything is holding its breath."

Jace reached for the shaft.

The moment his fingers closed on it, the hall stopped being a hall. Time pulled sideways like a rug. The party froze mid-motion, Scarlett's mouth half open, Alexander's hand on his sword, the lightning girl caught in the middle of a blink. The glass went silver and then clear. Jace stood alone in a white room with no walls, holding a spear that was now taller than he was.

[TIME POCKET OPENED]

[PARTY: OUTSIDE]

[DURATION: ONE FIGHT]

"Okay," Jace said to the empty air. "Where's the part where somebody explains this?"

"I am the explanation."

The voice came from behind him. Jace turned, and a man stepped out of the white.

He had Jace's face. He had Jace's height. But his hair was streaked silver down one side, a scar ran from his jaw to his collar, and the brand of gold code on his chest had spread up his throat and over his left eye. He wore a coat that was a better version of the one Jace was wearing, and he carried a broken piece of the same spear across his back.

[FUTURE ECHO: JACE]

[CORRUPTION: 97%]

[STATUS: TEMPORAL, UNSTABLE]

"I've come a long way," the echo said. "I have four minutes before the timeline closes."

"Four minutes of what?"

"Of me trying to kill you."

Jace blinked. "Sorry?"

"The spear has to be thrown at you by someone who knows exactly where you'll be. I'm the only one who does." The echo drew the broken half from his back and it reformed into a perfect spear of light. "It teaches you to see before you move. That's the only way to learn it. By surviving it."

"Is there a version where you just tell me?"

"There was. You died in it."

The echo vanished.

Jace looked at his hands. The precision penalty made every finger feel half a size too big, and a Floor 2 reward that arrived with a duel attached was not what he had hoped for.

"Last time I fought myself," he said, "I had eleven friends and a planet."

"This time you have a spear," said the echo. "And me. I'm not as nice as the planet."

The first blow came from above. Jace barely got the shaft of his spear up in time, and the force of it drove him through the white floor. The floor was not floor. It was sky. He tumbled through a sheet of falling stars and hit a floating rock, spun, and saw the echo already standing on the next rock down, spear levelled at him.

[HEALTH: 174 -> 159]

"You're too slow," the echo said. "I'm already past your guard."

He was. The next thing Jace knew, a spear tip was through his shoulder. He had not seen it move. He had not seen anything move. The precision penalty was making his hands lag a half-beat behind his eyes, and the echo was fighting four steps ahead of that.

[HEALTH: 159 -> 144]

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Jace tore free and swung back. The echo wasn't there. The echo was two rocks away, leaning on his spear.

"The Window," he said. "It is a door in your head, same as the six. It will open if you can stand to look through it. Look."

"I don't know how!"

"Stop watching me. Watch where I am about to be."

The echo struck again, and this time Jace did not follow the spear. He closed his eyes. He let the pressure of the sealed doors behind his ribs pulse once, twice, and in the dark behind his eyelids a faint outline appeared in the air, a ghost of a man a few seconds ahead of the real one.

"There," he whispered.

He swung where the ghost was going to be, and his spear met the echo's with a crack like a falling tower.

[PREMONITION WINDOW: OPENING]

[PREDICTION RANGE: 1 SECOND]

"Better," said the echo. "Again."

From somewhere outside the pocket, through the walls of white, Jace felt the Mutual Shelter pulse once, faint and steady. Zoey could not reach him. Hazel could not reach him. But fourteen people were still down there thinking his name, and the thought arrived as a small warm weight against his ribs.

"They're still with you," the echo said, watching his face. "I remember that part. It's the only part I kept."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"Because I'm the version where nobody taught you. Let me not be the version where nobody taught you."

They fought across a hundred floating stones. Each strike sent shockwaves through the sky and cracked the rocks into rubble. The echo's spear left trails of silver; Jace's left trails of gold. Every time he got ahead by a hair, the echo stepped further forward, and the range of the window crawled out a little longer.

[PREDICTION RANGE: 2 SECONDS]

The echo smiled. "You're getting it."

"You're a terrible teacher."

"I'm the only one you have."

The echo's aura flared. He threw his spear into the air and it split into nine, each one a perfect copy, and they all turned their points toward Jace in a spiral.

"Nine Futures," the echo said. "Pick the real one."

The spears fell. Jace's window flickered, throwing up nine ghosts at once, every possible next second laid over each other like a deck of cards. He was supposed to choose. He did not know how. He grabbed the Gravity Chain out of his shadow and flung it at the spiral.

[GRAVITY CHAIN: ACTIVATED]

[CHARGE: 128 -> 123]

The chain caught eight of the nine and dragged them off course. The ninth spear came through anyway. Jace spun his body, felt the point go by his ear, and caught the shaft in his bare hand.

[HEALTH: 144 -> 135]

"There it is," the echo said softly.

It was the real one. The spear Jace had caught was the one from the hall, the one with his own handwriting on it, and when his fingers closed around it the writing turned to light and ran up his arm.

The window opened all the way.

[PREDICTION RANGE: 3 SECONDS]

The sky went quiet. Jace could see the echo's next step. The one after. The way his shoulder would turn, the half-second before the spear came, the exact spot where the silver aura thinned at the ribs. He could see how all of it ended.

"Throw me at yourself," he said.

He drew back his arm and threw the spear.

It crossed the white sky in a line of pure gold. The echo saw it coming and lifted his own spear to block, and Jace was already beside him, where the echo would have been if he had been looking at the right second. The Overwrite Pulse went off against the echo's chest like a small sun.

[OVERWRITE PULSE: SURGICAL APPLICATION]

[TARGET: FUTURE ECHO]

[COMMAND: REMEMBER YOUR NAME]

[CHARGE COST: 2]

[CHARGE: 123 -> 121]

The spear hit the echo's guard. The Pulse went into the echo's heart. The two forces met in the same instant, and the echo's body lit from the inside like a lantern.

He looked down at his own chest, then at Jace.

"That's it," he said. "That's the whole lesson."

"Don't go yet."

"I have to. I have about eleven seconds. Listen." His voice was flickering. "There are three of them waiting on the stair to Floor 3. They are not what you think. Do not fight them one at a time."

"Three what?"

"Don't fight them one at a time," the echo said again. "And Jace. The brand. It is about to go to ninety-one. Don't fight it. Let it go. It's the only way to keep the window."

The white room cracked. The echo's body unspooled into silver thread, pulled upward into the spear, and the spear fell apart into light that went straight into Jace's chest. He cried out. His knees hit the white floor.

[PREMONITION WINDOW: UNLOCKED]

[PREDICTION RANGE: 3 SECONDS]

[CORRUPTION: 90% -> 91%]

[CAUSE: FUTURE LINK ACCEPTED]

The time pocket closed.

The hall came back all at once. Scarlett's mouth finished its word. Alexander drew his sword. The lightning girl finished her blink, and then nine champions all stopped and stared at Jace, who was on his knees with a gold line burning across his throat.

"What happened?" Scarlett said.

"I was gone for a bit."

"You were gone for no time at all. You left and came back in the same second."

"Four minutes," Jace said. "It was four minutes."

He tried to stand. His legs refused. Scarlett ducked under his arm and got him up.

"Your hair has a silver streak," Penelope said, very quietly.

"Is it a good one?"

"It's a streak that says you've seen a lot."

He laughed, and it hurt.

Alexander lowered his sword with the slow care of a man who had just watched a friend vanish and return in the same breath. "You were calm," he said. "When you stood up. You were calmer than I have ever seen you."

"I just spent four minutes being killed by my own future. It has a way of putting things in perspective."

"Is the future bad?"

Jace thought about the scar, the silver hair, the coat. About a man who had come four minutes through a closing timeline to teach him one trick and give him one warning.

"The future is tired," he said. "But he still came back. That's something."

Caleb coughed, exactly when the window said he would, and looked offended when Jace smiled.

"What?"

"Nothing. You're early."

"I am what?" In the back of his eyes, the window was open. Three seconds ahead of every breath, a ghost of the room was waiting for him to catch up. He saw Scarlett about to reach for his hand. He saw Penelope about to start writing. He saw, a moment before it happened, the ceiling of the hall opening a second time.

[FLOOR 3 ASCENT: OPEN]

[WARNING: THREE GUARDIANS ON THE LANDING]

"Don't fight them one at a time," Jace said aloud, before he could stop himself.

"Who said anything about one at a time?" Scarlett said. She lit her blade. "We're a party. We cheat."

"Twelve seats," Caleb added. "Not a roster."

Jace took one step toward the stair, and the window showed him what the three shapes were going to do.

He stopped walking. He had never wanted to be wrong about the future so badly in his life.

A staircase came down out of it, spiral and white, its steps ringing like struck bells.

On the landing at the top stood three shapes, too far away to make out. But in the window, three seconds ahead, they were already moving.

Health: 135/520.

Charge: 121/220.