The Mantis Synchronicity - Book Five - Prologue. Prologue - Tygo & Filiou

Vast scorching deserts stretched for miles in all directions, and two teenage girls were in the middle of it. The Infinite Waste was not comprised merely of sand, and instead, the desert was made of parched soil that allowed sparse and thorny vegetation to grow. Strange cacti protruded from the rocky landscape, and only the most rugged animals made that desolate place their home. The two girls had managed to survive in the wasteland for over three weeks. Their names were Tygo and Filiou. They were both 14.

Tygo looked similar to many other girls her age, with bright eyes, a clever smile, and her hair often fixed in tidy braids. Her mother used to do her hair, but that was before Tygo’s parents turned on her, when it was revealed that she was one of the others. They delivered their own child into the hands of torturous men, men who took children and warped them into soldiers.

In contrast, Filiou’s appearance was very peculiar. It had been just over two months since her photonova gland activated, and she changed. The end result of her transformation left the young girl’s body covered in tiny spikes that were similar to those of a hedgehog. Filiou’s eyes became like the compound optical organs of a bee, allowing her to see into the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. Her complex multifaceted eyes also grew enormous, to the size of tea saucers, and they shimmered in the light. In other ways, Filiou looked almost parrot-like. A row of thin appendages extended from the center of her forehead, stretching back over her crown all the way to the nape of her neck. They were vibrant, iridescent purple and green, and they looked almost like feathers. Both of her ears were no longer comprised of gently folding cartilage and soft skin, and a pair of slits graced either side of her head. Like her eyesight, Filiou was now able to hear auditory frequencies well beyond the capacities of a human.

With the activation of her photonova gland, the changes to Filiou’s body also affected her skeleton. Bony protrusions poked through her flesh from many of her joints. The little spikes stuck out from her elbows, knees, hips, and shoulders. Smaller ones jutted out from her knuckles and her toes, and a row of them ran down the length of her spine. As Filiou moved, they flexed like strange claws. A pair of them even stuck out from each side of her jaw, like horns positioned on the wrong part of her face, and when she spoke, her jaw-horns moved.

Like Tygo, Filiou had also been abandoned by her family and left with the officers at the isolated military compound, and when Tygo escaped, she saved Filiou.

There had also been a boy.

On the morning that the two girls liberated themselves from the compound one month earlier, the three children had been brought into a room by several officers and medics. They were drugged into unconsciousness, and when Tygo was awoken, the boy had already been taken somewhere else.

Tygo was escorted into an execution chamber, and the brutal initiation ceremony began. In the small room, a row of chairs was set up with a prisoner bound to each, and an officer slit one of their throats.

Tygo’s powers reacted by reflex. Her abilities were new to her, and she did not comprehend them yet, but they suddenly protected her. A bubble of light expanded from the center of her heartspace, and as it reached out from Tygo, everything it touched became perfectly motionless.

The officer’s knife had just pulled away from his victim’s throat, but he now remained frozen in his attack, with the tip of his blade pointing at the gash in the prisoner’s neck. A stream of blood was arching through the air, but it too was holding in place without splattering on the floor. The dying man’s face was stuck in a pained and desperate expression.

Tygo’s bubble of light expanded until it reached the walls of the room, and everything within except for her was frozen solid. She crept to the door and peered out into the hallway. An officer was stuck in mid-step, unmoving while appearing to walk. Tygo snuck around him and continued down the hall. She could not see how far her bubble of motionlessness had spread out from her, but the farther she moved through the compound, the more frozen people she found.

Then Tygo came upon a trail of mangled corpses that led to a monster. Something with an uncanny resemblance to a woman was standing frozen in one of the hallways. It possessed far too many body parts in all the wrong places. Multiple arms and legs stuck out all over it. Teeth and eyes and fingers speckled the limbs and torso. The naked thing was even covered in weird breasts. Many dead soldiers lay behind the beastly creature, which had used one of its multiple legs to kick open the door to the room where Tygo and the two other children had been drugged into unconsciousness.

Tygo carefully crept around the hideous female monstrosity and entered the room, but only the Biological Shift girl was still inside. Despite Filiou’s startling appearance, Tygo knew she could not leave her fellow Shift. Tygo was not familiar with the term Shift because it was not used in that part of the world, and Filiou may have looked very strange to Tygo, but she knew they were the same.

Tygo grabbed the girl’s spiny hand, and Filiou was startled to suddenly find herself in a frozen world. Everything else in the entire compound was stuck in motionlessness, including the monster. Filiou looked from Tygo to the ghastly creature and back to Tygo again, and her terror shifted to awe.

“Are you doing this?” she asked in a voice of wonder. The bony horns on the sides of her jaw moved with her words.

“Yeah,” Tygo replied, “I am.”

Filiou was astonished by the other girl’s ability. “Wow,” she whispered.

“Where’s the boy?” Tygo asked. “He was in here when they knocked us out.”

Filiou did not know. “Let’s see if we can find him.”

The two girls snuck through the base until they came upon the third young Shift’s remains. The boy had been torn to pieces in a room full of insects, and Filiou and Tygo fled together into the Infinite Waste.

The sun had just been starting to rise, and it remained in the same place as the girls rushed away from the horrible base. They traveled a distance that would have taken them over thirteen days to walk without Tygo’s power surrounding them. When they were deep in the wastes, much farther than either of them realized, she deactivated her power.

Tygo had saved Filiou from the compound, but in the desert, Filiou was their salvation. Without food or water, the two girls would not have lasted more than a day or two, but Filiou’s powers allowed them to survive. When her photonova gland activated, it caused the physiological changes to her body, and it also provided her with the ability of language. Filiou was able to communicate with every animal on the planet.

Poisonous serpents and scorpions slithered and crawled across the burning sands to her, and the vicious creatures acted toward Filiou as if they were the cutest little baby animals that only wanted her attention and affection. Fire vipers, death asps, and bangslangs coiled around her ankles and wrists. Swarms of stone scorpions and goldstingers scuttled in formation before her feet, and the animals guided Filiou and Tygo to hidden sources of water. The desert creatures also led them to buried roots, fruiting plants, and even several thunderquail nests. The girls were not able to catch the birds, but their eggs were particularly tasty. Tygo and Filiou cleaned flat rocks in the water they had been shown, and they laid them out in the sun to let the eggs cook, while the girls sat together in the shade.

It may have taken Tygo a little while to get used to Filiou’s appearance, but the two girls became friends in their isolation.

Springtime was creeping toward summer, and the desert was already scorching hot during the days.

“We need to leave,” Filiou stated one morning, as the blazing sun began climbing up the sky.

They had just finished eating a very filling breakfast of thunderquail eggs and cactus fruit.

“Where are we supposed to go?” Tygo did not like thinking about her parents, and she did not consider the home she grew up in as a viable option. She also knew that Filiou’s home had been even worse before her parents abandoned her with the violent men at the compound.

Filiou looked into Tygo’s eyes with her own massive multifaceted ones. “Can you freeze everything like you did when we ran away?” she asked.

Tygo did not understand why Filiou wanted her to use her strange powers again. “But there’s no one to freeze out here in the desert.”

Filiou’s huge eyes were incapable of blinking, but the shimmer across their surfaces rippled. “When we left the bad place, we went a long way before you turned off your power, but the sun stayed in the same place in the sky. I think if you do the thing you can do, maybe we could walk a long way and find someplace else.”

“Where would we go?”

“In the evenings,” Filiou replied, “the nightmice have been warning me that it’s gonna keep getting hotter. They also told me that the nearest cities are to the east and the west. They said the bad place where we came from is to the south, and the desert stretches north to harsh mountains.”

Tygo scrunched up her face in thought. “But why do you want me to use my powers? Why shouldn’t we just walk?”

“The birds out here tell me we’re really really far from the cities. They say there have never been any people out here. I think we’re too far to walk during the hot days, and we would probably have to go slow at night.” The flicker across Filiou’s eyes shifted again. “Is it hard to use your powers?”

Tygo thought about it. The bubble of light may have appeared without her conscious creation of it, but once it was active, it felt as normal as breathing. Without another word, she reached into the vast well of cosmic energies within her, and a bubble of light stretched out and encompassed the two girls.

“Wow,” Filiou whispered, and her jaw-horns flexed like she was still speaking, but she did not say anything else; she just stared.

The illuminating sphere expanded in all directions until eventually, neither of the girls could see it. Tygo felt her powers all around her, and they made her happy. She did not know why, but it felt good for them to be active. Tygo smiled. “Which way?” she asked.

Filiou looked east and west. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Go west?”

Filiou nodded, and the iridescent feather-like extensions that stretched up in a row over her head swayed.

The two girls began to walk. The sun did not climb any higher in the sky above them, and the temperature of the air did not increase. Neither of them could have guessed that while Tygo’s powers were active, they walked the equivalent of nineteen long days. They did not stop for a single rest or any food. Hunger never nagged at their stomachs, and neither of them grew tired.

They talked the entire time. They discussed topics endlessly, from foods they liked or did not care for, to their favorite hobbies and activities, to places they had visited with their families. Both girls opened up about the cruelty they had faced at the hands of their parents. They shared in the misery of what they had endured, and they rejoiced at having gained their freedom.

The girls commented on the frozen desert landscape around them, despite its lack of variance. They occasionally saw little sandhoppers hovering in mid-jump, or snakes with their tongues out but motionless. The only moment in that extended period of timelessness that truly stood out was when the two girls came across an enormous swarm of butterflies. They crested a rise in the land, and an expanse of flowering cactus stretched out for miles to the south with the butterflies frozen motionless above and around and inside the blossoms.

When Tygo and Filiou eventually got their first glimpse of a city in the distance, Tygo disengaged her powers.

A warm desert breeze began to blow against them, and the two girls immediately felt the heat of the sun.

“Is that weird?” Filiou asked. “That’s weird, right?” With her unique face, it was hard for Tygo to read what emotions Filiou was feeling at any given moment, but it was clear from her tone of voice that she was amazed. “Did we travel through time or something? Does your power affect the whole world? Wow,” she repeated.

Tygo looked all around herself with a little confusion. She had not noticed, but while her powers were active, nature had almost no effect on the two girls. Now Tygo’s senses picked up everything. Birds were chirping. Insects were buzzing. She could even hear the murmur of life coming from the far-off city, but while inside her bubble, nothing could touch her.

The shimmer on Filiou’s huge eyes shifted. “Tygo, are you okay?”

Tygo brought her hands to her heart and whispered, “What does this thing I can do actually do?”

Filiou did not know how to answer the very complex question. Her ability to communicate with animals felt much more straightforward.

The two girls fell silent for the first time since Tygo activated her powers to leave the deep desert. Their minds swirled with shifting thoughts.

On the outskirts of the town was the community’s well, but most of the residents collected their water from it earlier in the day, and there were only two men still filling their jugs when Tygo and Filiou suddenly appeared on a rise out past the edge of the desert.

The men spotted them and started waving. One of them grabbed a pitcher of their water and ran out into the wastes, but he slowed as he approached and Filiou’s appearance became clearer to him. He extended the pitcher and spoke a single word that Tygo could not understand. His eyes did not leave Filiou, and he looked sad.

“Water,” Filiou translated. “He said water,” and she repeated his word back to him. He was pleased to find that one of them could understand him, and he began talking quickly. Filiou translated for Tygo. “His name’s Ollo and that’s his husband, Pinac.” She paused and listened to what he had to say, only giving Tygo tidbits. “That’s Gossin Town… not a friendly place… no others… they…” she paused again. “Okay, okay,” she replied to whatever Ollo was saying, and she turned to Tygo.

“What is it? What did he say?”

Filiou took a breath and her jaw-horns flexed. “He says they’ve killed people like us in their town. I guess not all the people who live there are bad. He and his husband are nice, and they don’t want us to get hurt, but he says we can’t stay here.”

Tygo frowned. “Is there anywhere where our people are safe?” Tygo did not mean for Filiou to translate her words to the man, but the spiny girl suddenly started speaking to him in his language.

Ollo perked up at her words and replied to her in an excited voice.

“He says there’s an island,” Filiou translated. “Shifts, what are Shifts?” she asked in the man’s language.

Ollo stepped back, looking worried, and he stared Filiou up and down.

Even though Tygo was unfamiliar with the term Shift, and the man could not understand her, she took his meaning and declared, “Well if she is, we both are!”

Filiou said something else in his language, and Tygo realized she had translated her words for the man again.

He looked at Tygo with alarm, began shaking his head, and started speaking urgently.

“Ollo says…” Filiou paused. “Oh, it’s much worse for Shifts like you. He says your kind are called the insidious, and he keeps calling us Shifts.”

“Maybe that’s what people like us are called,” Tygo replied.

Ollo said something else to Filiou, and she answered him with her spikey face scrunched up in confusion. “No, I’m not hungry. I feel like I just ate.” She looked at Tygo. “He just offered us food, but I can still taste the thunderquail eggs. I know we’ve been walking for…” she turned back and looked out at the vast desert, “a long ways.” The sun was rising. “But it’s still morning, and I’m still full from breakfast.”

Tygo felt the same. “So am I.” She rubbed her stomach.

A shrill bell began ringing from the city, and Ollo spun around. He shouted something and pointed.

Filiou informed Tygo, “He says their police have spotted us and sounded an alarm. He says we need to go!”

Tygo did not need convincing, and after the girls each had another quick drink from the pitcher of water, Tygo activated her powers.

From Ollo’s perspective, the two girls simply vanished.

The bubble of light stretched out from Tygo and froze Ollo, his husband, the town, and everything else that surrounded the two girls. Beyond the Infinite Waste, the landscape changed, and the pair began to cross motionless grasslands. Now that they had become aware of how Tygo’s power blocked them from the effects of nature, the girls were curious, and they discussed it.

“What exactly is this thing I can do?” Tygo asked the universe at large.

Filiou replied quietly, “I think it’s wondrous. It’s like magic.”

Tygo gave Filiou an embarrassed smile and brought a hand to the back of her neck. “But I can’t do magic!”

Filiou reached out to the motionless stalk of a spindly plant with a little flower at its top, and the plant shifted as she touched it, but the instant the stem was no longer in contact with her finger, it froze again.

“Your power is really neat!” Filiou said with a little laugh. She plucked the flower and went to drop it, but as she released it into the air and moved her hand away, the flower did not fall; it remained hovering. “Weird, so weird, but I like it.” Filiou looked at Tygo with her massive multifaceted eyes, and she smiled.

Tygo’s forehead furrowed in thought, and she reached out and touched the flower. It dropped to the ground by her feet.

“Wow,” Filiou said again, “it’s like you can even control what’s frozen!”

“It is weird, isn’t it?” Tygo replied, her mouth curling up into a half-smile that made Filiou snort a laugh.

Hunger and weariness did not rear their ugly heads as Tygo and Filiou walked and talked, and the girls did not realize they traveled for what would have taken another six more days. They stopped when they reached the edge of a forest, and Tygo deactivated her power.

Motionless leaves started rustling again. The silenced breeze began whooshing over the treetops. Everything frozen was moving again, and it had all been completely oblivious to the effect of Tygo’s unique power.

The forest before them was not dark and imposing, but the girls were hesitant to enter it. Filiou and Tygo looked to the north and to the south; the forest’s border stretched for miles.

“Do we go around?” Filiou asked. When Tygo did not reply, the spiny Biological Shift girl added, “Do we go through?”

The two of them stood staring at the trees for several minutes.

However, when they eventually resigned themselves to enter the forest, a voice behind them called out, “Don’t go in there, girls!”✪