Soul Searching

<infobox>

 <title source="title1">
   <default>Soul Searching</default>
 </title>
 <image source="image1">

</image> <label>Posted On</label> <label>Author</label> <label>Music Theme</label> <group collapse="open"> <header>Order</header> <label>Previous Suggested Manuscript</label> <label>Previous Suggested Story</label> <label>Next Suggested Story</label> <label>Next Suggested Manuscript</label> <label>Chronologically Previous Manuscript</label> <label>Chronologically Previous Story</label> <label>Chronologically Next Story</label> <label>Chronologically Next Manuscript</label> </group> <group collapse="open"> <header>Series</header> <label>Series</label> <label>Previous</label> <label>Next</label> </group> <group collapse="open"> <header>About the Manuscript</header> <label>Type of Story</label> <label>Canon Status</label> </group> <group collapse="open"> <header>About the Story</header> <label>Date</label> <label>Location(s)</label> <label>Characters</label> </group> </infobox> by talmid.

1

When ten thousand citizens across the Crux System were surveyed to describe, in a single word, how they felt about the Nexus Force’s return to the transdimensional frontier, the majority responded with terror or other derivatives of fear, for with renewed transdimensional operatives came renewed confrontation with the Maelstrom Dimensions.

Their incursions were pointed, their targets specific, their motions precise. The first casualties were the so-called sojourners, travelers from other dimensions stranded locally nearly three years ago when their ability to traverse Unverse was lost. The next targets were the local counterparts of both the original targets and any other persons of interest to the Maelstrom Dimensions.

At first, the victims shared an obvious trait, that being the criticality of their roles in decisively resisting the Maelstrom Dimensions during the last war. Such specificity made the First Darkitect’s direct motives clear. He would not tolerate these characters stopping him again. From this, his indirect motives were deducible as well. He would be invading again, hence society’s terror.

Necessarily, the Nexus Force responded. Those of the aforementioned targeted groups who so far survived the attacks or were not yet attacked were relocated to defensible positions, as much as they could be called defended, in that they were under constant manned guard. Those who could assist in improving defenses were tasked as such, and with the nature of the situation, it so happened those two groups overlapped.

…

Torture.

That singular word reflected Tiberius Talmid’s general sentiment about working for the Nexus Force. Locking him up was bad enough, be it in a correctional facility for society’s protection or in the Nimbus Station Sentinel Command Base for his own protection, it didn’t matter. Both took him away from the work he was supposed to be doing, which certainly wasn’t brainstorming transdimensional defenses, in his own opinion.

What had happened to his nephew rested heavily on Tiberius’s mind. Not the part about Aiden’s death at the hands of the Song Stealer, tragic as was, but the part about his return to life, truly fascinating in its means. The tests of the young man resoundingly confirmed what he’d suspected occurred, given the symptoms observed. A merging of Creative Sparks!

The more Tiberius considered it, the more it made sense to him that it could be the key to solving the problem of Project WCWJST.

Tiberius pressed the buzzer on his work desk to page his handlers. It wasn’t them he wanted to speak to, of course, but his nephew. Aiden needed to hear his breakthrough. He pressed the buzzer again. “Pick up, bastards,” the man muttered.

“They won’t,” the intruder laughed behind him. “Any last words?”

Tiberius bristled at the sudden, recognizable chill in the room, that of Maelstrom. “Thank you for letting me know,” he managed, before shutting his eyes and sighing, as he knew it was too late for him. Then he cursed himself, for not thinking to make his words a hint for Aiden, unless-

The man did not finish the thought.

2

Under an overcast sky on a dreary world, alongside an unswept and weather-beaten road, stood a man called Sky. Also known as Agent Sky, despite looking rather shabby himself, he stood pondering a most peculiar of coincidences, one of proximity in this case. Different perspectives may see nothing or everything, little or a lot between the numbers 55 and 56, such as fractions or decimals. Agent Sky’s chosen profession was not mathematics, however; his title rather suggested more secret agency things. But surely anyone else could also see the mighty improbability that two very separate organizational entities just so happened to base themselves in two very neighboring locations.

Clicking his tongue, Agent Sky aimed into the alleyway to the entrance of number 56 Unemployed Road. Consumed by his passing thoughts, he was almost hit by a passing car, not that it deterred him. Funny, that was the only car he’d seen all day. Inside the alley he passed dumpsters, crates, boarded up windows, and rusted-shut doors of long-abandoned institutions until he reached the one labelled Laundromat, a misnomer for its current institution which also began with an L. Another coincidence? Likely.

He raised his hand to a rusty doorbell, and after seeing its snipped wires meandered instead to give the door a good old fashioned knock. His knock could be heard resounding into a hollow space on the other side. He knocked again with purpose. Occupants, if any, were sure to have heard him. There were occupants, he was sure, as he trusted his source of this address.

In short time, a lock clicked and a door cracked open, the one behind him. Nice deflection, thought Agent Sky as he turned to face a young brunette standing in that doorway, noting the combination of her Sentinel Knight armor and a blue-painted Wormholer aimed in his general direction. Despite the weapon, she wasn’t in a combat stance and wore no other combat gear, making her appear less threatening to him. When she didn’t immediately speak, he figured he should break the silence.

“Who are you?” they both said at the same time.

“Sorry,” they both apologized.

“I’m Agent Sky!” he exclaimed. After an extra second’s silence, when she seemed sure to not respond, he continued, “I’m here to talk to Sir Talmid.”

The girl cocked her head. “Aiden?”

“I can think of no other here at this time,” Agent Sky answered.

“Did you say your name was Sky?” the girl asked.

“Agent Sky,” Agent Sky sighed.

“Oh,” a look like recognition crossed her face. “I know your name. You can come in.” She stepped back to give him room to enter, but he didn’t immediately.

“I hope I give you no intentions to use that,” he pointed with his eyes to the Wormholer. She traced his aim to the chain gun in her hands before dropping the barrel quickly. Despite its blue paint job, it was still a Paradox weapon, which carried implications to him.

“Oh, of course not! Sorry,” she said again, shaking her head and letting the weapon tap the floor. “I’m just scatterbrained, that’s all. We all are. A lot has happened, so much has gone on. Transdimensional travel, the looming threat of dimensional war, Rogues...” She looked back to him. “You were part of it.”

Agent Sky regarded her evenly. “You weren’t.”

“Not on the surface,” she said with a shrug and extended her hand, which he took and shook firmly. “I’m Bridget. I’m still kinda new to Leek Works, but you must be too, since you didn’t just come in through the secret entrance.” She stepped back and waved for him to follow.

“There’s a secret entrance?” Agent Sky repeated, closing the wooden door behind him. She led him through the building’s unlit main section, past booths and a counter, as it was formerly a diner, and into the backroom, where inside one of the disabled coolers a hatch in the metal floor yawned open to reveal a laddered tunnel.

“Exits and entrances, there’s actually a few of them,” Bridget told him.

Agent Sky stared into the dark opening. “Are you sure it’s wise to tell me all about your base’s securities?”

“It hardly matters anymore,” Bridget said, beginning down the ladder. “Really, you’re lucky you showed up just now, instead of yesterday.”

“Why’s that?” Agent Sky called after the girl.

Her brunette head popped back up into the room. “Been under a rock lately?” she asked ironically. “Nimbus Station has been evacuated for weeks. We’re here to bring everyone back.”

3

“If this works, we can finally go back home,” grunted the blond haired fellow.

“And get back to business,” grunted his dark-haired friend.

“I’m with blondie on this one,” their red-haired compatriot squeaked. “Where’s a Figdroid when you need one?”

“Stop!” Luke exclaimed. “Now, lower!”

“Wait, no, a little farther,” Aiden protested.

“Letting go!” Mara announced.

“No, I said further, no, Mara, no!”

The three jumped backward as the hefty device they’d been carrying slammed into the floor with an anticlimactic thud. Its base was cuboid shaped, of a metallic cast material, and atop it was a smooth prism of glass-like construction, with an opacity much closer to frosted glass than window glass. There was no apparent damage from the short fall, yet.

“Well,” Luke smirked, “that wasn’t too bad.”

“The thing better still work,” Aiden scowled, scrambling for a large power cord coming out of the wall and dragging it toward the device. “You’re kidding me! The socket’s wrong.”

Mara wiped her forehead. “There’s an adapter eerk.”

“Eerk?” Luke repeated.

“I, I, R, C.” Mara spelled out.

“If you’re just gonna stand around you could at least stand guard,” Aiden huffed.

“We’re not just gonna stand around,” Luke said while Mara said, “We’re not just gonna stand guard. We’re checking the truck, homie.”

 “And leaving me here?” Aiden squawked.

“You could come with us,” Luke suggested.

“And leave this here,” Aiden said, “this very important and experimental piece of Nexus Force tech that is potentially the means to our continued free existence?”

Mara nodded devilishly while Luke shook his head. “In that case, guard it,” the man said, turning on his heel to follow the lady as she danced up the stairs. “We’ll be right back.”

With a sigh, Aiden unholstered a gun and centered himself in Leek Works’s basement. He’d already been the target of one assassination attempt, so being alone still irked, but at the same time that was already a month ago and they hadn’t come for him since. The hits per capita had been single for the others as well. Some had been offed, some hadn’t, some were unaccounted for.

That included presumed targets, who were known persons of import – in both meanings of the word – but had gone missing, for various durations of time. The man called the Janitor, the one from the so-called Janitor Dimension, came to mind, although he’d been missing since the end of the last war. Also coming to mind was the young lady called Kate, who an outpost on Jirdia reported missing just within the last month.

An interesting thing about them, aside from their importance to First Darky, was what happened when attempts to transdimensionally maneuver to them were attempted. What actually happened was nothing. Nothing happened. The same thing happened with a few other persons as well. Charles Bradfordson, of the Future Dimension, for instance. Rowana Talmid, of the Future Dimension, as well.

 At least for the latter, Aiden knew she didn’t want to be found, and figured some sort of localized transdimensional block had been instated to impede such measures. He had some experience with that at Macabross. For the others, there wasn’t enough information to conclude if they personally desired their inaccessibility, or others desired it for them… or against them.

At least it proved that transdimensional blocks were possible, which was the key to restoring security to the universe and ending the Maelstrom Dimension’s personalized attacks once and for all.

“We’re back,” Mara sang. “And you have a visitor.”

After the red-haired woman, who tossed the socket adapter Aiden’s way, came Bridget and a scruffy looking guy, probably leaving Luke to guard the primary level.

“Stop being negligent, Mara,” Aiden chastised while plugging the adapter into the device’s port and then plugging the other end of the adapter into the power cable, which in turn, on the other side of the wall, was plugged into the output port of an Imaginite converter harnessing the power of several tons of blue Imaginite.

“Voila,” he said as the device began to hum, and did a double take when he recognized Agent Sky. “How’d he get here?!”

“I let him in,” Bridget said.

“I meant how’d he get passed the checkpoints,” Aiden clarified.

Bridget shook her head. “Apparently there’s no more checkpoints.”

“Been under a rock too, eh?” Agent Sky said. “Although personally I was wondering that myself, as well. I still recall what the Nexus Force tried doing to me the last time I showed up here. But that didn’t stop me from trying again.”

“The madman!” Mara crowed.

“He’s here for you,” Bridget relayed to Aiden as Agent Sky stepped forward.

“I bring a message,” the man began, “from your daughter.”

4

Before Aiden thought to ask, “Which one?” Agent Sky continued with the message itself.

“‘Return.’” relayed Agent Sky. “That’s the message.”

Now Aiden had more questions. “Return where?” he asked.

Agent Sky shrugged. “I’d presume she’d presumed you’d already know that. Of course I’d have asked for clarity, but she was gone in less than five seconds… if she was even there to begin with. I just kind of felt her presence, heard her voice, then poof. Quite spooky.”

“Well,” Aiden gave the predicament some thought, “that’s not really a problem, now that I think about it. There’s only two places it could mean, depending on who gave you the message. The problem is, we just turned this thing here on.”

He gestured to the device humming along beside him, casting its multicolored glow across the lighter surfaces of the room.

“If it’s working,” Aiden explained, “we can’t transdimensionally maneuver from anywhere in the Nimbus System or around it by a lightyear or so. No one can.”

“Oh, so you’re saying she’s in another dimension,” Agent Sky realized. “That explains the spooky factor.”

“And you were on Elistra when this happened?” Aiden deduced, to which the agent nodded.

“Lost,” Mara said.

“Grace,” Aiden muttered. “So, return means we’re going back to Elistra.”

“Rocketing back to Elistra,” Mara specified while grabbing Agent Sky’s shoulders. “And you’re coming with us.”

“Hold it,” Bridget jumped in front of the doorway. “What about the meeting tonight?”

Aiden paused. “Juiliet’s already going.”

“But she’s not the leader of Leek Works,” Bridget pointed out.

“I’ll eat my hat if she is,” Mara remarked.

“The point is,” Bridget continued to Aiden, “someone like you has the potential to drastically affect the outcome of this meeting, for the better. And some people will only get onboard if they’re also listening to you,” Bridget sidelonged Mara, “this one at least.”

Mara tossed her head. “Puhlease. I’m only here because it’s interesting.”

Aiden scratched his head. “I get what you’re saying. But we can’t leave Grace on read either.”

Mara snickered. “Ghosting the ghost.”

“I can go back with Agent Sky,” Bridget said.

“I was just thinking that,” Aiden agreed. “You know, see if you can grab Tiberius, too.”

The girl nodded, Mara released her prey, and Agent Sky gave a little bow, before he and Bridget departed.

“Meeting tonight?” Mara echoed.

“Nexus Tower, in two hours,” Aiden filled in. “It’s a big one. Faction Leaders from our dimension, Faction Leaders from the Janitor dimension, and representatives from the Nexus Republic. No one told ya?”

“Nah,” Mara replied. “It don’t matter anyways, I ain’t going.”

“Of course not,” Aiden sighed. “But I’m going.”

“Sucks to be you.” Mara waved. “See you on the telly.” Then she left too.

Aiden nodded to an empty room.

5

Aiden knew one thing as he stepped onto the Nexus Tower landing platform. He wasn’t looking forward to this.

“Clear out, fellas!” Shard pressed ahead, splitting the throng of news crews and bystanders so his companions to pass unscathed. “You don’t want to make us late to saving the multiverse!”

“This historic meeting doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes,” pointed out one reporter.

“I said move it!” Shard shoved him.

“The public should never have been invited,” Juiliet muttered.

“It’s for optics,” Aiden said. “The Force wants them to see we have a solution. No one likes being locked down.”

“We’re working on a solution,” Juiliet corrected. “This is just the beginning. And on the other matter, there should never have been a public in this warzone to begin with.”

“I like your zingers,” Aiden said, “and nothing against keeping your teeth sharp, but I don’t think this meeting is the place for those politics. Them bureaucrats get really virtue-signally when offended.”

“Oh, I know,” Juiliet agreed. “That’s why you’re doing the talking tonight.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Thanks to Shard’s lead, they made it off the landing platform relatively intact and through the checkpoint into one of Nexus Tower’s quadrants. Traveling up two more floors brought them to the antechamber of the night’s historic meeting. Sentries scanned and cleared them for traces of Maelstrom before opening the doors to the massive conference hall.

It was an arena reserved for only the grandest of public occasions, and as such it was set up like a stadium, with rings of elevated seating overlooking the room’s center, and capacity-wise they were nearly completely occupied too. The hall was also built right up against the central support beams of the Tower, with full height ballistic window panes installed in the interior wall so those present could personally view the energy beam of the Nexus itself, swirling and spiraling up and out of the tower.

Aiden, Shard, and Juiliet barely registered it, though, as their guards escorted them to their positions in the room’s centerstage, an elevated platform with the rest of the meeting’s participants. There were the Faction Leaders, of course: Duke Exeter, Albert Overbuild, Hael Storm, and Vanda Darkflame, in the center seats of the long horseshoe table in the room’s center.

To their right were more Faction Leaders: Duke Exeter, Albert Overbuild, Hael Storm, and Vanda Darkflame, from the version of reality known as the Janitor Dimension. To the untrained eye, they looked exactly the same as their local counterparts. There was only two years, give or take a few days, between the two sets of them, with the Janitor Faction Leaders being the younger set.

Opposite them were three representatives from the Future Dimension, the most imposing of which was Lord Brocktree, a mountain of a man even without his famous armor. If anything, twenty years had grown him bigger and stronger than the version of Brocktree they remembered, who was still MIA as of six years ago. Alongside him was his recognizable right hand man, Suave Able Cat, and to his left, a bespectacled blond fellow.

“Our man Sandy Studs,” Shard identified.

Although transdimensional blockers had been installed and activated throughout the Nimbus System only that afternoon, they’d been disabled in Nexus Tower for a scheduled window of time to allow the entrance of extradimensional parties.

“Looks like we have more visitors after all,” Juiliet said, even after the three of them had taken their seats between the local and Janitor Faction Leaders.

As they watched, sentries escorted another pair to one of the table’s ends, a blond woman and a dark haired man, dressed in vaguely Sentinel armor with components of other kits mashed between. Their suits were freshly shined, and their hair recently cut, suggesting this was not their usual level of upkeep.

Juiliet sucked in her breath. “The registrar says they’re from… the Blaona Dimension.”

Shard made a face, “What kind of idiot came up with that name?”

“Hold on,” Juiliet kept reading. “That’s one of the Maelstrom Dimensions.”

Aiden shifted in his seat. His suit was itchy, especially around the legs. “There’s non infected people there?”

Juiliet narrowed her eyes. “More like there used to be. But there’s a lot we don’t know.”

“Well, well, well,” Shard said.

They followed his gaze to another delegation entering the hall at the opposite side, except this time it was a delegation of one, a woman in a Sentinel peacoat, her red hair styled back in a bun so her adult face was clear to inspect the world, and be inspected, as the Leek Works crew transfixedly did.

“Like seeing a ghost,” Shard marveled.

“Is that… Kate?” Aiden guessed, as the woman looked like her, but not exactly. Older, maybe, by about twenty years.

“If she’d lived,” Shard said. “She’s got to be from another dimension.”

“No need to spell it out, Captain Obvious,” Juiliet commented.

“Got a name on it, Juiliet?” Aiden asked of that dimension.

“Does Helterskelter ring a bell?” Juiliet informed, before muttering, “Who the heck is coming up with these names?”

The hall lights began to dim, casting shadows upon the occupants lit otherwise solely by the glow of the Nexus, and a cued hologram of Nexus Naomi projecting into the room’s center.

“Let the history books remember,” her voice began, “at the 20^th hour, of the fifteenth day, in the sixth month of the 3031^st year after Figoranos, local-time of course, an historic assemblage occurred: The First Transdimensional Conference of Nexus Forces.”

The lights returned to the hall’s center to illuminate the five parties: the local Faction Leaders and Leek Works, the Janitor Faction Leaders, the Nexus Republic, the Maelstrom Dimension survivors, and Future Kate.

“Let the saving of the multiverse begin,” Naomi announced.

6

Duke Exeter of their own dimension spoke first. “I am pleased to announce that we have equipped every world in our Nimbus System with transdimensional blockade devices, in full operation at this very moment. The intrusive attacks that we have endured this past month will not occur in this dimension again.”

Nexus Naomi signaled to the audience, who began clapping.

The Sentinel Leader continued. “We owe our gratitude to our very own team of transdimensional operatives.” He opened a hand toward Aiden, Juiliet, and Shard. Aiden slunk into his seat, Juiliet gave a curt smile, and there was Shard just waving giddily into the applause.

Leek Works had produced the prototype transdimensional blockers, but not from their own designs. Part of it came from Aiden’s head, now that he had Future Intrepid’s memories. The rest came from long nights scouring the old Future Leek Works files given to them by Rowana so long ago. Despite prototype versions of the devices failing, they kept pushing, and with the Faction Leaders themselves demanding results, the entire economy of the Nexus Force was at their bequest.

Eventually it paid off.

The Nimbus System was secure, and soon the rest of the Crux System, and the rest of the core worlds.

For now.

A new sort of device was in the works; instead of a general blocker, a diverter, so inbound traffic could be sent and screened through secure areas. Rowana’s files revealed that Future Leek Works had done it, and it was only a matter of reengineering it for themselves.

Or, Aiden glanced at the Future Dimensional trio, ideally they could just get it from them. He tried reading their expressions, which were neutral, purposefully so. Even with the spotlight on Leek Works, Brocktree was avoiding staring at them. The man was different than his local counterpart, an honorable and valorous man. This Brocktree was petty and vindictive.

Well, conversation would occur eventually. As Duke Exeter gave speaking rights to the other Duke Exeter, announcing the Janitor Dimension’s planned receipt of the transdimensional blocker tech, Aiden shrugged to face the rest of the delegations. The Maelstrom Dimension pair still looked out of place, and Future Kate was staring straight at him, until he made eye contact and she looked away.

“I am proud to relay the Republic’s willingness to unite against our collective enemy,” Brocktree was speaking now. “To the Maelstrom, we are all the same, one target to be vanquished. So we face them as one today and until our victory. As one, we will prevail.”

It was a moving monologue, if Naomi’s orchestra was any indication.

“An era of cooperation is upon us,” Brocktree continued on. “More accurately, it has befallen us. I’d like to say it’s out of courtesy, but admittedly our track record betrays that. It’s out of criticality. Recent points of divergence are the clearest indication: We are not all the same, we each have our own talents, and we need each other to survive.”

Naomi’s crowd took it in stride while Aiden just rolled his eyes. The spotlight then fell on the blond woman and her companion, who both looked surprised for the moment, as if they weren’t quite sure what to say, or why they were there.

“Uh, hi!” the man grinned. “We’re just happy to be here! We’re from the Nexus Force, or, uh, she is, still, at least. I retired.”

“We are the survivors,” the woman picked up, “of the first Nexus Force to fall to the Maelstrom, thanks to the forces that have become known to you as the Maelstrom Dimension. We are here to help make sure that what happened to our dimension, happens to no other again.”

She looked at the floor as the audience proceeded to applaud, while the local Duke Exeter looked up and down between the registrar in his hands and the two survivors. “You reportedly came from, uh, I’m not going to read this out loud, it sounds ridiculous…”

“D-NS-1M?” Brocktree offered, but Duke waved him off.

“Oh yes, here’s some English: ‘The Maelstrom Dimension.’ If it truly is entirely infected, how did you make it out?” the Sentinel Faction Leader asked.

“Oh,” the man responded, “we didn’t just come from there.”

“We were sent here six years ago,” the woman said, and like Duke Exeter she checked something on her notes before reading, “to this dimension, apparently called ‘Flumberfluff.’”

“These names again,” Juiliet murmured beside Aiden.

“We call it D-NS-3.” Brocktree translated.

“And who sent you?” asked Duke.

The woman seemed like she wanted to respond, but wasn’t exactly sure how, when the man just replied, “Well, you did, sir. I mean, your counterpart from our dimension, of course. Sorry if we seem awkward, it was just awhile ago, is al!”

“You’re not awkward,” the woman hissed.

“Let me share the punches,” the man sighed.

Duke folded his arms. “Okay. I’m sure he had a good reason for choosing you.”

“I take it he doesn’t recognize us,” the man continued to the woman. “Or more specifically, you.”

“On that note,” barked Hael, waving his own copy of the registrar, “who even are ye? It doesn’t say here.”

The man squinted across the table at Hael. “It doesn’t? Oh, it would appear it doesn’t,” he observed while his companion doublechecked their own copy with a scowl.

“The Janitor said he’d take care of all that!” she said. “He’s probably laughing at us now.”

Across the table, Shard stopped snickering at the callout. “Say what?” he mouthed, while Aiden and Juiliet thought the same thing. The other Janitor.

“Anyway!” the man clapped his hands. “Sorry for the late introductions, but better late than never. I’m Aaron Wilder and this is my girlfriend Plue Abernathy. As she said earlier, we’re here to save the world, supposedly, allegedly? As for how we’re supposed to do that, I just want to put it out there right now, I have no idea what we’re going to do!”

7

Aiden was caught by surprise when his own cough was repeated across the entire hall, because Shard had activated their microphone.

“I want to make this very clear,” the Janitor was saying, “I never promised these people anything! Actually, I’ve never seen them in my life!”

Aaron and Plue gaped at him. “Well, the same goes to you!” Aaron responded. “I have no idea who you are!”

Shard puffed his chest. “I am the Janitor.”

Everyone looked confused.

“He’s the other Janitor,” Juiliet cut in. “You obviously had contact with a different Janitor.” Then she turned off their mic.

Shard gave her a bewildered glare. “Did you just call me the other-”

“Forgive my incredulity, which I’m sure is shared among many of us,” Albert Overbuild’s voice of reason came in, “but is there some significance to be understood about this particular occupation of Janitors?”

Future Suave responded. “It’s a person. We have had limited contact with a certain transdimensional traveler calling himself the Janitor. Quite a peculiar fellow.”

Shard wrestled the microphone from Juiliet. “Again, it is critically imperative you understood that wasn’t me!”

“Shard, stop!” Juiliet grabbed it back with a glare that read, What is wrong with you? Then she grabbed Shard’s shoulders and with surprising strength hoisted him out of his seat.

“If you’ll excuse us,” she mouthed to Aiden, before leading her companion out of the arena.

“Since we’re allies now,” inquired Vanda, “could we be told what this Janitor wanted with you?”

Brocktree and Suave whispered something, before the former nodded and the latter replied, “All he told us was that we should come here.”

“That’s what he told Aaron and me, too,” Plue spoke up.

“Signed us up and everything,” Aaron added. “Okay, maybe not everything, considering he didn’t put our names in, but you get the picture.”

Future Kate spoke for the first time. “He came to my Nexus Force as well.”

Also for the first time, the Faction Leaders from the Janitor Dimension turned on their speaking light. “So let us get this straight,” asked the Janitor Duke Exeter, “this whole meeting of dimensions has been orchestrated by this so-called Janitor?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” local Vanda countered. “It’s our Nexus Force who sent out the invites.”

“We were going to come anyway, Janitor or not,” Brocktree assured.

“So what does he want?” Janitor Duke asked again. “Aside from us all being here, which is obvious, but then what? What does this do for him?”

“We probably have to ask him ourselves,” Plue suggested. “Or we’re just going to get lost speculating.”

“That’s unless any of you guys know about him?” Aaron challenged. “Anyone?”

“He’s from the Janitor Dimension,” Aiden posited.

Everyone’s eyes boggled. “A whole dimension of Janitors?” Janitor Duke gaped.

Aiden realized all those eyes had turned to him, and he hurried on, “No, that’s what we called the dimension he’s from. Yours, actually, sirs and madam,” he addressed the Janitor Faction Leaders.

“Just dandy,” Janitor Hael groaned, “he’s one of ours.”

“The Republic’s wanted his apprehension for years,” Brocktree’s voice cut in. “Admittedly, he’s managed to evade us, despite popping in and out of the known multiverse several times.”

“You’ve been tracking him,” Local Duke paraphrased.

“Only in the known multiverse,” Brocktree repeated. “There’s a lot out there we haven’t reached yet… it’s not a question of if, by the way, but when, and that’s only a matter of our politics.”

“I ask only because you brought it up, but perhaps there is an ulterior relevance to your politics that we should be informed of?” local Overbuild suggested.

Brocktree smiled thinly. “Perhaps. But don’t worry, I will keep it my concern.”

Aiden sighed and positioned his mic. “If I may disagree with you Lord, anything that concerns any of us, concerns all of us. And if I may posit,” he leaned forward, “the politics of the Nexus Republic are definitely of our concern.”

“What would you know of our politics?” asked Suave, until Brocktree whispered something in his ear. “Oh.”

The exchange did not go unnoticed, what with the spotlights and everything. “Perhaps you have something ulterior to share as well, Mr. Intrepid?” asked Overbuild.

Aiden shrugged. “I just know some things, is all. I spent a lot of time there two and a half years ago.”

“He was in contact with his counterpart from our dimension, during the war.” Brocktree stated. “They collaborated to end it.” He waved to both sets of Faction Leaders. “And we believe they are collaborating still, now.”

Aiden harrumphed. “For the record, that’s ridiculous, the guy got totally obliterated at the end of the war.” He noticed some questioning stares and paraphrased for them. “He’s dead.”

That seemed to pacify them, while Brocktree’s eyes had only narrowed.

“There are definitely ulterior things occurring here,” remarked the Janitor Overbuild.

“I concur, my colleague,” quipped his counterpart.

Nexus Naomi reappeared centerstage then. “The conference has reached the half hour mark, and the participants are now invited to adjourn for our first break session. Those who are exiting the arena, please move in an orderly fashion towards the clearly marked exits…”

8

Aiden made to do as such, turning from the centerstage and descending the platform, hoping to catch up with Juiliet and Shard. He was admittedly not that orderly in rushing to the exit, but he was itching to find out what was up with the Janitor. As vain a fellow as he was, he’d never seen him this disturbed, although that wasn’t considering Future Intrepid’s memory banks…

Aiden prevented himself from going there. It was an overwhelming endeavor, when he wasn’t fueled by adrenaline, which he didn’t want to be at the moment.

A gloved hand gripped his arm.

“What I said earlier is true,” Lord Brocktree said in a low voice, but not softly, to quite the contrary. “Any matters between us have been suspended, potentially permanently.”

Aiden shrugged out of his grip. “By the Council’s bidding? I’m honored.”

“What would you know of the Council?” Brocktree reared. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. The decision was made at my discretion. I’m not as beholden to the Council as you think. Given what we’re up against, I’ve been willing to put things that would stand in our way behind us. I suggest you practice the same.”

He slunk back and Aiden angled away, resuming his escape. It was a nice proposal, actually. He didn’t see anything bad about accepting it, except that it was difficult to let things go, even things that were gone forever.

Some people had assembled in the break room and lobby outside the hall for refreshments, but Aiden didn’t see Juiliet and Shard among them, which was concerning. Pulling out his comm to try reaching them that way, he found a message from Bridget waiting for him instead.

I’m so sorry, followed by an attached report from the Sentinel Command Base on Nimbus Station, where Tiberius had been detained.

It was a report of much template and little substance, as most were, but as he read it, found the critical words, and understood them…

The environment around him began to blur. Isolated snippets of conversation faded into a low, droning hubbub. His left hand went to his jaw, the other to his heart, but through a sudden numbness he barely felt any of his finer details.

“Are you alright?” a familiar voice snapped him out of his trance.

“What?” Aiden looked up, confused to see Kate standing over him, but she looked different. Of course she did, since this woman was Future Kate, from wherever she’d shown up from, Juiliet had said Hickenlooper Dimension or something like that? Apparently he’d slunk to the ground, as the Sentinel woman had extended her hand to him. He graciously accepted her help in pulling himself up.

“Thank you, I’m alright,” he managed. No, he wasn’t. The words of Bridget’s message smashed against his forehead, trying to be unread, unbelieved. They couldn’t have… Not Tiberius… Not when they were so close…

“How are you?” Aiden asked.

“Excited,” the woman responded with a beam that jogged somethings in Aiden’s memory, both his and his counterpart’s. He courteously stretched his face into a little smile of his own as Future Kate went on.

“Collaboration across dimensions is something we always talked about where I’m from,” she said, “but to see it for real, after so long...” She looked down with a bashful smile. “I’m sorry, it’s rude of me to go on like you know what I’m talking about.”

Aiden pocketed his comm, the damned bearer of bad news. “Maybe I know more than you think.”

“That would be convenient,” Future Kate considered. “What do you think you know about my dimension?”

“Judging solely by appearances, I know it’s one of the advanced ones, like Brocktree’s, relative to this one…” Aiden trailed, noticing Future Kate’s tepid expression.

“Your perception’s correct,” she confirmed, “but it’s rude to judge anything off a woman’s appearance.”

Aiden shrugged. “Okay. It’s not like I’ve got more to go by. But as you said, I’m correct.”

Future Kate looked him over a moment. “How advanced do you think my dimension is?”

Aiden chuckled awkwardly. “I thought that’d be rude to judge.” Inwardly, he echoed the Overbuilds’ sentiments of ulteriority at the possibly flirty look on her face.

“Not when I’m asking,” she assured. “Give it your best guess.”

“Alright, I’m guessing we’re something where you’re from,” Aiden switched gears. “But we’re not here. It’s one of those points of divergence.”

“The point in which the histories of two or more dimensions diverge,” Future Kate elucidated.

“Apocrypha of Unverse,” Aiden identified. “Author unknown.”

Future Kate raised an eyebrow. “Another point of divergence. In my dimension, the author is known. Guess who it is? Trust me, this is relevant.”

Aiden chuckled again. “You got me there. You?”

“Rowana,” she said.

“Rowana who?” Aiden responded quickly. Too quickly, since Future Kate looked at him funny.

“My daughter,” she said seriously. “But I think you already knew that.”

“Maybe I did,” Aiden replied.

“Then maybe you know she’s your daughter, too,” she told him.

Aiden made a face. “Well yes, but also no, and now it’s your turn to guess which side I’m leaning to.”

“As fun as this is, I’m gonna cut to the chase.” Future Kate said flatly. “My daughter’s missing.”

“Oh.” Aiden remarked. “Yours too?”

She was frowning. “Are you always this dismissive? You’re like, nothing like the Aiden I knew.”

Aiden responded automatically. “Another point of divergence,” he suggested.

“You’re lying,” she challenged. “I know you care about her.”

“What, did you talk to Brocktree or something? Whatever you’re heard about me,” Aiden dismissed, “it’s wrong.”

“No, I said I know,” Future Kate repeated.

“You know,” Aiden echoed with a quizzical stare, when she suddenly hunkered close to him.

“I’m giving you another chance, because I have no other choice,” Future Kate said hushedly. Did her voice crack there? “Ever since she disappeared, I’ve had this sense, like nothing I’ve felt before, that I need you to help me find her.”

“Okay…” Aiden straggled. “And this, sense, has been going on for how long?”

“Two weeks,” she whispered. “Since she’s been missing for two weeks. Do you have any idea how relentless the time has been?”

“Past two and a half years, it doesn’t hurt so much,” Aiden said.

She ignored the remark. “My Nexus Force has a transdimensional division too, and this whole time, it’s been looking for you, too,” she said with desperation in her voice. “And we finally found you here. Alive.”

Aiden turned to her, concerned by the relevance of that descriptor. “Why is that word important?”

He realized she was staring at him like he was a ghost, which he already knew in a way he was, and Tiberius knew- had known. But that couldn’t be all of it. Nor was it enough to shake him, until she said her next sentence.

“You’re the only Aiden Talmid left in the multiverse. Everyone else is dead.”

9

“How is that possible?” Aiden asked blankly, while considering the meaning of her statement. Absent any reason not to believe her, that meant Janitor Aiden was dead… Future Intrepid was already, for all intents and purposes, dead… he hadn’t yet met any other counterparts, but now he never would, if they were all dead…

“Come with me,” Future Kate beckoned. “You look like you could use some air. I know I could.”

Aiden agreed.

Future Kate and he exited to a balcony, the wastelands of Crux Prime spread before them. If they went to the edge and adjusted their field of view downward, the construction of Nexus City would be in sight. Instead they kept their heads high, taking in the night sky, filled with stars and world chunks and faraway galaxies, and the Maelstrom Vortex, spiraling away as it always did.

“It’s a big multiverse,” Future Kate said, “not just the four or five dimensions represented here. Since the inception of our transdimensional division, at least thirty other unique dimensions have been observed, just by us.”

“Sounds about right by our observations,” Aiden thought of the Unverse maps in Future Leek Works, both the one hastily drawn by the Janitor, and the one projected by Rowana, so long ago.

“After Rowana disappeared,” Future Kate said wistfully, “we sent a team to each one, even the Maelstrom ones…”

“And not only didn’t you find her,” Aiden finished, “you didn’t find me neither.”

“You never existed to begin with in a lot of them,” Future Kate stated, “and in the ones were you had, which we’ve counted seven so far, you don’t anymore. Always just killed, always just within past few weeks. Except for the one you call Future Intrepid, who died in the war. And except for mine, who died longer ago. And except for you, of course.” She allowed a small smile.

“Maelstrom assassins have been around,” Aiden affirmed. “One did try to off me, for what it’s worth. How about Rowana?”

“She only existed in three dimensions so far,” Future Kate continued. “One of the Maelstrom Dimensions, my dimension, and the one you call the Future Dimension.”

“The Maelstrom one’s dead,” Aiden shivered. “Been so for a long time.”

“Your doing,” Future Kate said curtly.

Aiden grimaced. It was gonna be her or him, leaving that mine. “I never reported that. How’d you know?”

Future Kate frowned. “We just know.”

Aiden shrugged. “Alright then, keep your future dimensiony secrets.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Future Kate cocked her head. “But no matter. Do you think it means she’s dead, Aiden?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found,” Aiden suggested.

“I can understand a lot of things, but that I can’t,” Future Kate objected. “We’ve always been so close for so long…”

“Lucky you,” Aiden said, turning back to the balcony doors as a chime began sounding from the way they came. “I’ll say, I think we’ve got a meeting to return to.”

“Do we really?” Future Kate suggested.

Aiden looked back. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we should get out of this place,” Future Kate clarified.

Aiden shook his head. “I’m still not getting it.”

“There’s a lot I want to show you, more than I can relay in words,” the woman continued urgently, “so we can actually work together. All this time I’ve been thinking, and now I think I know why I need you to come with me.”

“Hold on,” Aiden protested, raising a hand, “It’s not just this godforsaken meeting I’ve got going on, but my uncle just died, and my other daughter wants me for something, and-”

Then she grabbed his arm, and before Aiden could get free, the world around them disappeared.

10

The ringing in Aiden’s ears ceased, to be replaced with one word that he exclaimed at an ungracious volume. “How?!” he yelped, leaping out of Future Kate’s grasp and naturally smashing into a table. Of course their surroundings were new and unfamiliar to him. Of course they’d transdimensionally maneuvered into some foreign room, a sort of laboratory it seemed, by the charts and screens and terminals all about, almost like Leek Works.

“I had someone turn off your blocking device,” Future Kate explained. “But only for the moment we needed, then they restored it. Your world is still protected.”

“Ah, forget my world, I only care about myself,” Aiden laughed, going for his own Unverse Manipulator. Until he saw Future Kate was holding it, and she shoved it in her coat. “Oh, come on.”

She was desperate, her actions betrayed it so clearly, but what gave Aiden pause was her face. After all this, her expression still seemed to be saying, silently but certainly, please help me.

It wasn’t a bad idea, actually, Aiden considered. He only wondered why, in all the time he’d been looking for Rowana himself, the same thought hadn’t occurred to him: asking for help.

Because no one else cared as much so to them it was stupid, he answered himself. He was just supposed to let go and move on, do nothing. Being the only person who had cared, what other choice did he have once, after so long, he’d convinced himself that even he barely cared anymore?

Yet for all the time he’d refused to accept it, two and a half long years, he’d soldiered on, made some progress, experienced some setbacks for sure. Yet he was still closer than ever before. He hadn’t cared that his goal was by all conventional means impossible. He hadn’t care that nobody else cared.

He could go back to that, if he allowed it.

He had just wanted to know why Rowana left… and how could he help her.

And now it would seem he wasn’t alone.

“Alright,” Aiden decided. “What do you want me to see?”

Future Kate exhaled in obvious relief. “Oh, thank you. Okay, so, what I’ve got for you is right this way.”

She made for one of two doors in the room, secured by keycard, very Future Leek Worksesque. It opened to a stairwell which she took two steps at a time.

“We’re at the Nimbus Transdimensional Division,” Future Kate introduced a familiar curved hallway, “in Nimbus Station, 56 Unemployment Road. Same as the two Leek Workses.”

“A point of… association?” Aiden tried as they proceeded. “The opposite of divergence.”

“How about consistent reflection?” Future Kate suggested.

“Too artsy for me,” Aiden shook his head.

“Me too,” Future Kate admitted.

“So neither of us have developed a term for this,” Aiden noted. “Another point of untermed terminology.”

“We definitely need to come up with one,” Future Kate decided. “After we find our girl.”

Like Future Leek Works, the halls they navigated were decorated in general Nexus Republic coloration and images, with a noticeable absence of anything identifying it to the vegetative name. “Why the name change?” Aiden asked.

“It didn’t stick after our nationalization,” Future Kate explained.

“Oh yeah, something like that went on with our Leek Works,” Aiden caught himself, “I mean Future Intrepid told me about that, with his Leek Works. His Republic wanted something less discrete, more centralized. I take it your guy wasn’t around to do the same here.”

“Not since 21 July, 3034.” Future Kate stated somberly. “He saved us all that night.”

Aiden nodded back, waiting for her to say more, but she didn’t.

Apparently she’d said enough.

21 July, 3034, was the night Future Dimension’s Kate had been killed. But in this dimension, instead of her dying…

He rested a hand on her shoulder, hoping to be reassuring. “It must have been tough.”

“I apologize,” Future Kate responded with a small smile, almost encouragingly, perhaps to herself. “I’ve had a lot of time to cope, and just keep going with what he’d have wanted. Defending our world, keeping our dimension safe… and protecting our girl was the most important thing. But now…” Her countenance waned.

“We’ll bring her back,” Aiden said determinedly. “Honestly, this is important to me too, and I’m glad you came to get me.” he offered.

“That’s really sweet,” Future Kate accepted for a moment, “if you really mean it.”

With another scan of her keycard, they entered another conference room slash lab, already set up with some folding data plaques on the round table and several powered on wall displays.

The doors to an adjacent room slid open for another woman to enter, carrying in her bounding stride an energy as distinctive as her pretty face, and the beaming smile that appeared when she sighted Aiden.

“Intrepid Fusion Eclipse,” Verbina greeted him. “It’s good to see you again.”

11

Aiden rubbed the back of his head. “Uh, thanks. You too.”

Verbina stopped to lean on the end of the table, propping herself on her hands while cocking her head at the pair across from her. “This is just perfect.”

“Uh,” Aiden repeated, “thanks? I didn’t even come here voluntarily-”

“It’s the two of you together, that’s it,” Verbina concluded with a knowing nod to them, or to herself. “That’s the vibe. Can’t you feel it?”

Future Kate stepped between them, giving Aiden what seemed like an apologetic glance over her shoulder. “She’s just ethereal like that. Been for a while,” she whispered.

“Uh huh,” Aiden nodded back.

“But still the greatest brains we’ve got on Unverse,” Future Kate admitted. “I hear Rowana could’ve really known it, too, if she’d gotten into it.” She shrugged. “Mine didn’t.”

“Ever try Tiberius?” Aiden asked.

“The name rings a very tiny bell,” Future Kate said. “Like, really, really, tiny.”

“Guess he did other things here too.” Aiden realized, leaning against the table as well. “So what’re we looking for?”

Future Kate let her fingertips dance over one of the plaques and all the screens began to scramble and refresh. They settled on an animated display recognizable as a visualization of the multiverse, with each dimension represented by circles. But there was more detail too, things like numbers associated with each dimension, and larger cloud-like forms connecting certain dimensions.

“This is a historical animation,” Future Kate said, “now watch.”

As the playback activated, things began to move in the chart. Most of the dimensions had a wobble or bounce to them, with those clustered within clouds dancing almost in harmony, all wiggling and jumping with some symmetry.

“Look closer here,” with her pointer digit Future Kate encircled a section of cloud with three dimensions clustered tightly within, and the rest faded from view. “We’re coming up on August 3048, local time of course… now.”

A fourth circle suddenly appeared. If they’d blinked just then, they would have missed it.

Aiden blinked after instead. “What?” The circles represented dimensions, meaning… a new dimension?

“Spontaneous, isn’t it?” Future Kate commented.

Aiden pointed a quivering finger at the largest screen. “Go back, play that again.”

“Oho, this is just the beginning,” Verbina had a devilish smile.

Aiden willed himself not to blink and miss anything, when as anticipated a fifth circle appeared within the other four. “It’s getting crowded.”

“Just the beginning,” Verbina repeated.

Then there was a sixth. A seventh. An eighth.

Aiden rubbed his temple. “Does this stop?”

“Watch,” Future Kate instructed again. “February 3049, this starts happening.”

The fourth circle suddenly vanished.

Then the fifth.

Then the sixth.

Seventh.

Eighth.

“All gone,” Verbina quipped.

“I can see that,” Aiden said emptily, turning to her. “Those represented dimensions, right?”

Both women nodded. “Those were dimensions,” Future Kate emphasized, “And all in the same cluster. Our cluster,” she stated.

“So like,” Aiden rested his chin in his hand, but really wanted to pull his hair out, “literally like, our dimensions? Mine? Yours? The Future Dimension? Janitor Dimension? Maelstrom Dimensions? Just coming and upping and going?”

“And coming and upping and going again!” Verbina echoed.

Looking back at the screens, more dimensions had appeared. Now there were seven. Then eight. Nine. Ten.

Then nine. Eight. Seven. Six. All the way down to the original four in that section of cloud.

“We’re almost at the present day,” Future Kate informed, as the third round began. But more dimensions kept showing up, even as some of those same new ones began disappearing.

The animation suddenly stopped.

“Why’d it stop?” Aiden demanded.

Future Kate gestured at the date. “7 June 3051.”

“Today,” Aiden grimaced.

“We have something else to show you,” Future Kate pushed off the table edge and went to a cabinet. From it she placed on the table a peculiar device, about twenty centimeters wide and shaped like a prism, like a fancy paperweight, but with a small internal vacuum between two apparent electrodes, currently disabled.

She slid the device over to Aiden with a spin, bringing to face a user interface strip with a single switch and a wide display panel, also currently disabled.

“Turn it on,” Future Kate ordered.

“Bossy much?” Aiden quipped, but he did as she told.

A brilliant blue arc bridged the gap between the electrodes, and just as instantly the display panel lit up, in less brilliant lighting a set of six integers, followed by four decimal numbers, and then a superscript symbol of two overlapping circles. “What is this?” he asked.

“It’s a precise measurement of the polar orientation of the atomic Imagination fields. Read the numbers,” Future Kate instructed.

“There’s no way I’m memorizing this,” Aiden disclaimed with a shake of his head. “But fine. 1-0-6-8-3-4 point 5-8-1-3.”

“Now look at this,” Future Kate motioned for the chart to zoom in on the cluster of dimensions that had so enraptured them a minute earlier. By now, the number of dimensions had trending down, now at seven. She drew another illustrative circle around one of the circles.

Aiden squinted at it, noting the numbers superimposed over it. “1-0-6-8-3-4 point 5-8-1-3,” he read. “Wait, that’s the same as-” He looked back at the device.

“It’s us,” Future Kate confirmed. “The Imagination fields being measured were generated in this dimension, when you turned the device on. So it’s measuring us objectively. Identifying us.”

“Wind the chart back two weeks,” Verbina spoke up.

“Just getting to that,” Future Kate affirmed, and Aiden looked back at the screens. The date changed to 23 May 3051 before the animation resumed. When the clock rolled over to the 24^th, the dimension numbered 106834.5813 appeared.

“Go back,” Aiden said, and this time she listened to him, setting it back to 23 May, and dimension 106834.5813 was gone.

“Go forwards,” he said.

23 May, no 106834.5813.

24 May, yes 106834.5813.

“What is this?” Aiden pushed back from the table, stepping backwards until he brushed the wall. Both Future Kate and Verbina stared back at him, reflecting what had to be his own incredulous expression. “So you are showing, saying, telling me, until two weeks ago, this dimension didn’t exist?”

“It sure looks that way, doesn’t it?” Verbina said innocently.

“Well then how did you even track all the time before then?” Aiden spattered.

“We didn’t,” Future Kate said. “That’s not to say we- gods, this sounds so weird to say, it’s not that we didn’t exist before two weeks ago. I for one remember existing before then. Maybe we just weren’t on their radar until then?”

She sounded hopeful saying that last bit, Aiden realized. Of course she sounded hopeful, discussing the plausibility of her own existence and the existence of the entire world around them.

“The radar of who?” Aiden asked.

“The one you call the Future Dimension,” Verbina answered. “We got this chart from them. Actually, it was given to us, along with this device for measuring atomic rotation.”

“The man called the Janitor gave them to us,” Future Kate said. “You can see his organization etched on the edge.”

Aiden followed her pointer, and indeed, engraved on one edge of the prism, was one letter repeated five times. It may have made more sense to him if he could read cursive, such as identifying what letter it even was, assuming it was derived from a charset he already knew - assuming it was even a single letter being repeated.

He picked up then on what she said. “He has an organization?”

“There’s another thing we picked up from this intel,” Verbina said, suddenly serious, and apparently Future Kate also knew where she was going, betrayed by her now very obviously troubled expression.

“Do tell,” Aiden requested, looking between the two of them, “I wasn’t taking notes.”

“The transient dimensions only stay, on average, for eleven days.” Verbina stated.

“Transient…” Aiden echoed. Transient. Temporary. Temporary dimensions. “And since you showed up fourteen days ago…”

“We’re on borrowed time,” Future Kate said. “And it’s running out. I’ve already told you how frenzied the last two weeks have been, what with my daughter missing - this entire reality is about to go who knows where, statistically speaking very soon. And if she’s not here when-” Her chest heaved as she slumped against the table. “I’m not ready for another loss, Aiden. First you, now her-”

Aiden’s ears were ringing too, and normally he wouldn’t know what to say or do that would help… but he did know. “I said I’d help you,” he said. Move, man, he yelled in his thoughts. So he did, to Kate’s side of the table, to Kate’s side, to hold around her shoulders, to strengthen.

“Hey,” he repeated, “I’ll help you. We’ll find her.”

Kate looked up at him, then past him.

Someone else’s hand clamped down on Aiden’s shoulder.

“Mister Aiden Talmid,” their voice addressed him.

Aiden had had enough of surprises for the day, but with a roll of his eyes he obliged.

The woman facing him down had blond hair cut short, and very green eyes. As interesting was her attire, titanium in color and in some places bulky in shapes reminiscent of the Assembly Inventor kit, but with exposed gears, cogs, sprockets, and tensioners everywhere else. In the center of her chest gear was a single embossed letter - the same letter that was repeated fivefold on the Imagination field measurement device.

“Who’re you?” Aiden asked.

“Just come with me,” the woman said.

“No,” Aiden refused. “I’ve taken enough orders today, and I’m on a mission.”

“And I’m on a mission to save you,” the woman retorted, “but if you refuse to come with me, so be it. Enjoy the lightshow.” Then she pressed a button on her forearm and with a blinding flash, she disappeared as spontaneously as she’d shown up.

Aiden shook his head. “Alright, where were we?”

“I think it’s happening,” Future Kate said quietly.

Verbina nodded. “I can feel it.”

“What are you talking about?” Aiden mouthed.

Future Kate hauled herself up, slinging Aiden’s arm off her in the process. “That woman said she was saving you. You have to go.”

“Me?” Aiden was stubborn. “What about you?”

“My place is here,” Future Kate resolved, “whatever the place may be, wherever it goes. It is going, Intrepid.” She took a shuddering breath and retrieved his Unverse Manipulator. “We’ve run out of time.”

“So I’m gonna just up and leave like that?” Aiden said. He accepted the Unverse Manipulator, then tossed it behind him where it clattered out of view. “Let’s face the unknown together.”

“Then turn around,” Verbina said. Again, she and Future Kate were looking past him.

Aiden did, out one of the room’s windows, then he saw it, as far as his eyes could see, in every direction, a wall of energy rippling and banding in the full spectrum of color, rushing towards them until it was all he could see. It was on him in seconds and surrounded him for an instant, before it was gone, and everything with it, leaving nothing.

Nothing but him in the void of Unverse.

12

The first thing Aiden became aware of when he came to was a man speaking nearby.

“Well, well, well,” he heard the man first, as his own eyes were still dysfunctional, “I can see now your hypothesis was correct, as the subject has been relocated, alive and seemingly unharmed, to… what was it again…? No. No! Foolish assistant, I didn’t just say your name, I was asking-! Oh forget about it. What measurement was it…”

By that point in the man’s diatribe, Aiden successfully cracked his eyes open, letting in the dazzling illumination of LED lights, which he could not escape anyway he looked as they bounced off the many reflective surfaces around him back into his face. His face, yes. He could see many reflections of his personal visage as well, some clearly, some twisted, some distorted.

Mirrors, that’s what they were, all around him, on every wall and ceiling but not the floors. A fun house of mirrors of all places, that’s where he was, and if his ears were not deceived as well, he was not alone.

Never one to suffer Unverse sickness, Aiden was on his feet quickly and scanning for the other man.

“Yes, of course I’m going to try speaking to him!” the voice carried on, along with pacing footfalls. “If the circumstances allow, of course, which means you need to stop chattering my ear off…”

His voice came from around a corner, which as Aiden got closer to, he began to sight the man’s reflection in the mirrors rounding it. They were unfortunately the wacky type, so he could discern no finer details yet other than light colored clothing, light skin, and dark hair. Despite himself being able to see the other man, the man either hadn’t noticed Aiden approaching yet or didn’t care.

Once upon it Aiden swung around the corner and paused, taking in the man’s full undistorted presence. He was already facing away from Aiden, with a mobile phone against his ear and his back to him, both explaining his lack of response so far, and showing Aiden the long broom hanging off his back, which could only mean…

“Oof!” the Janitor also known as Strange Odd Shadow huffed as Aiden tackled him. The phone left his hand as they went down and would have clattered away if Aiden hadn’t grabbed it in mid-air. Triumphantly while digging his elbows into the Janitor’s back, Aiden turned the mobile over to reveal a shattered screen, and no tapping or button pressing elicited any response from it, like it was a broken phone.

“The hell, I thought you were just talking into this?” Aiden demanded, turning to the man beneath him.

“Dismount me, you imbecile!” yelled the Janitor, scrambling out from under Aiden with surprising strength and speed, and then kicking him in the chin for good measure, snapping his neck back so all he saw was darkness again.

At least it wasn’t Unverse nothingness, just good old unconsciousness nothingness, thought Aiden as he came back to a second time.

This time it was to a cool liquid splashing in his face, poured from a flask of super soda, held by a girl with copper red hair and a beautiful face that looked very familiar to Aiden, but also unfamiliar for some reason, but still more familiar, since he’d just spent the last hour in the presence of someone who looked like her, if she was twenty years older-

“Found you, dummy,” Kate snorted. “That was the last of my soda, too. Awake now, I hope?”

Aiden blinked multiple times.

“If that’s Morse code, I’m not reading it,” Kate replied.

“It’s not,” Aiden sputtered. Despite the Janitor kicking him hard enough to see stars earlier, if his voice still working was any corroboration, he trusted his eyes to be accurate as well: This Kate was young.

“I’m just, surprised, is all,” he went on. What was Kate, of this age, around his age, doing here? Wasn’t she left on Jirdia the last time he’d seen her? Hadn’t she had her memory wiped of him, the last time he’d seen her? Actually, going back to his first questioning thought, where even was here?

“Surprised, why?” Kate echoed. “That this dire situation has befallen you? Though it’s more accurate to say you’re the one who’s befallen the floor. What happened, anyway?”

Aiden declined her help hauling himself back up to his feet. “This may sound outrageous, but I tried fighting a Janitor.”

“That does sound outrageous,” Kate agreed, “probably from hitting your head. You don’t have to be so embarrassed about it to make up stories,” she chastised, and without warning she slipped her hand into his.

“Did you see him?” Aiden asked, looking past her.

“What?” Kate asked back.

“The Janitor,” Aiden clarified. “He was just here.”

Kate started walking, yanking Aiden after her towards the exit. “I literally waited five minutes outside for you before coming back in here just to find you conked yourself out. Fighting a Janitor is just nonsense, Intrepid, and not funny.”

Intrepid. That was his name, once upon a time, and not for a while… yet it didn’t sound wrong, it sounded right, like he’d been called it many times before, recently even, by the girl in front of him in fact, the one pulling him with her out of the house of mirrors.

The reflections all around them showed him a sight uncanny yet also not unfamiliar, the boy and the girl together, like they were supposed to be, as if they’d been so for a long time.

Aiden shuddered. The experience had to be messing with him. He had no history here, wherever here was, but it was really beginning to feel like he did.

“For real,” Kate turned on him once they’d exited the mirror halls, into a grassy space surrounded by large tents and stalls and colorful mechanical contraptions, a fairground, “are you okay? I’m serious. We can get your head looked at.” She reached up around the back of his head.

Aiden brushed away. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Her narrowed eyes seemed to study him for a long moment.

“We can go home,” she tried.

Part of him wanted to say he needed to find the Janitor, but another part of him stopped him. The way those brown eyes stayed on him, he couldn’t help but stare back, into them, and the person with feelings behind them. He didn’t want to disappoint her. Apparently he’d done so enough already.

Stupid Janitor, Aiden thought. “Kate,” he began. “I’m just… I’m sorry. You’re right-”

He was cut off by her face coming in close to his, then lips finding his, pressing softly against him- she was kissing him.

When she broke off, he had no idea what he’d been saying, but she did. “I love it when you do that,” those lips were saying. He could barely comprehend it.

“Thanks, and I love it when you do that,” he repeated numbly.

She found that amusing. “I say let’s get out of here.”

That seemed like a good idea, Aiden agreed. Again with her hand slipped into his, he could only follow along.

13

The night air was already cold enough, so being on a balcony in a Nimbus City high rise forty stories up, subjecting himself to the additional chill of high altitude winds, certainly didn’t help against Aiden’s bare skin. But the air, and the space, helped him think.

He needed to think.

His head hurt like hell when he considered everything he felt was wrong.

First he felt like he’d always been here, here being the new reality he’d been launched into. Accordingly it was not true that he’d always been here.

But it felt so right to say he had been.

He remembered everything that his identity had experienced in this life. These memories were strong, they made anything else feel like dreams.

Eventually, he began to think he was right where he was supposed to be.

Aiden looked down, regarding himself, this mostly bare body, this person. It was still the same one he’d always known. At least that stayed a constant in this multiverse.

Someone threw a shirt at him.

“You dropped this,” came the Janitor’s voice, “and this,” a pair of jeans, “and this,” an Unverse Manipulator, “and lastly, this.”

Aiden caught sight of the glass prism-like object arcing past him before it struck the balcony floor and shattered. Then he turned to the Janitor, who was in the midst of pulling his hair out. “Damn it all, you were supposed to catch that with your hands. Lucky for you, I’m not one to go without spares.”

The Janitor laid out a folding table to set another electrode prism upon it.

“It’s called the Unverse Spherometer,” the Janitor introduced, “for measuring the precise angle of locally generated subatomic Imagination Fields relative to an arbitrarily declared true north. When you last saw it, you were in dimension number 106834.5813. Activating it now will reveal to us,” he described before flourishingly toggling the single switch, “we are now in dimension number 008573.9925.”

Aiden nodded courteously. “No offense to you, strange broom man,” he expressed, “but I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. Really, no idea.”

The Janitor’s gaze bored into him uncomfortably, almost enough to inspire the redonning of some clothes, if Aiden wasn’t too drunk to try.

“So you have forgotten who you are,” the Janitor tsk-tsked, before bringing the apparently dead mobile phone back to his ear. “Yes, what was it? The osmosis has indeed succeeded in bounding him to this dimension. Yes, I know that was one of your hypotheses. Now if your other hypothesis is correct, he will evanesce in the next cycle if not recovered.”

Aiden yawned. “Who do you think you’re talking to, man? Can’t you see your phone’s dead?”

The Janitor looked between the phone and Aiden and back to the phone. “It’s alright, little one,” he cooed to the phone, “the subject doesn’t know you’re only playing dead.”

Crazy, Aiden thought.

The Janitor rolled his eyes back to Aiden’s direction. “You may think I’m a mad man. Maybe I am, after all that I have been through. Nothing is easy in life. But never once have I forgotten my mission, which remains saving Unverse, which right now requires saving you. So I encourage you to come with me.”

Aiden shook his head. “Hey, I’ve got this inkling of a dream that may or may not have happened in real life. It goes like this, I’m on some other plane of existence, then some chick from the future drags me off to another some other plane of existence, then some other chick shows up and says we gotta go, but I say no way, then this super colorful wave washes over everything, and then you and I are in the mirror halls and I’m tryna fight you but you totally beat me - then I wake up, it’s the present day, the first chick’s here, her name’s Kate, and she’s my girlfriend. But get this, she’s been for a couple years now, we got history, we’re in love. But the most important thing is this: we got a future here too.”

The Janitor sighed. “I know- already knew, in fact, not just from what you’ve told me now, that this all feels real to you. But I must correct you on your last statement. There is no future here, Aiden, not beyond two weeks from now, when the barrier wave will have surely completed its rebound and nullified all that has ever taken place here. This is a transient dimension, just like 106834.5813 was. You may have heard it called Helterskelter, as some of us, namely me, still like to use subjective names. You survived that dimension’s collapse because you were an outsider to that dimension, a foreign object - when the barrier wave came through, you were ejected into Unverse, and then inserted into the new dimension formed in its place. But you seem to have become an integral component to this one, which so far is a duplication of Teenyweeny but set nineteen years in its past. In itself, taking the place of the Intrepid Fusion Eclipse that ‘existed’ in this dimension’s history wouldn’t condemn you, if not for the fact that you have accepted this role. Accordingly, it’s a credible theory that when the barrier wave rebound inevitably occurs here, collapsing this dimension and destroying all within in, you will be voided as well.”

“Run that by me again?” Aiden asked.

Again the Janitor moved faster than Aiden could react, not like his inebriated state helped much. The man came in close until his fingers were pressed taut around Aiden’s eyelids, holding them open so he could peer inside. “Ah, does it be that I actually have your attention?” he said with visibly expressed glee. “Your true attention?”

“Get off,” Aiden shoved him back. “I still have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’ll freely admit that doesn’t mean you’re not credible, so I’ll further admit you’ve got me spooked. You say we got two weeks ‘til dimensional collapse, and you want to save me? What about the rest of us?”

“Been there, tried that,” the Janitor said. “It won’t work. Everyone other than you originated within this dimension. When it collapses, they go with it. I’ve seen it firsthand.”

With his head still hurting as badly as it was before the Janitor showed up, Aiden already had enough trouble facing the man notwithstanding his spontaneous dimensional lingo. So Aiden allowed a few moments of shuteye to rub his temples, until he could think clearly again. “Alright then, what about Kate? You can save her too, right? ‘cause there’s no way I’m leaving without her.”

“I’m not usually one to mince words, but I suppose given your sense of attachment to her, some moderation is warranted,” the Janitor accepted. “Fine, I shall proceed. Like everyone else here besides you and me, the Kate you know here also originated in this dimension. Unfortunately, the same adage for everyone else here therefore also applies inclusively to her. As there’s nothing we can do to save them from the incoming dimensional collapse, there’s nothing we can do to save her either. As I mentioned before, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when you try to save someone so doomed. As soon as their source dimension collapses, the excerpted person disappears, regardless of what you do with them or where you bring them. That’s even with trying to stabilize them-”

“Then you’ll try harder,” Aiden interrupted, “because I refuse to leave Kate to die.”

“But you must understand she will die whether you come with me or not,” the Janitor remonstrated. “The only choice we have is whether or not you die with her.”

“That’s my choice to make,” Aiden declared, “and I won’t leave her.”

“Then you choose death,” declared the Janitor, turning on his heel and striding away, collecting the Unverse Spherometer from the folding table as he went. “Enjoy your life while it lasts.”

Taking the reprieve, Aiden got back into his jeans and went for the shirt. He paused when the Janitor brought the broken phone back to his ear and spoke into it. “What was that, you say? Keep trying to convince him? This is madness and you know it, you didn’t even put up with one iota of what he’s putting me through!”

So the Janitor came back to Aiden, hiding the natural scowl on his face with an artificial grin. “My assistant,” the Janitor enunciated, “despite being the one to ditch you so expediently in the last dimension, remains adamant that I bring you with me, whether you want to or not.”

“Good luck with that,” Aiden said, withdrawing the revolver from his pants pocket and pressing it into the Janitor’s stomach.

“Touché,” the Janitor acknowledged. “Then I suppose, lest I be murdered in cold blood in this dreadful dimension by you, or by my assistant after I fail to secure you, that I must return to attempting to convince you.”

“I really doubt you can,” Aiden forewarned.

“Try and hear me out,” the Janitor held his hands up placatingly. “Let’s say, theoretically, I agreed, foolhardy as it may be, to bringing Kate with us. Then would you come?”

“Only if you’re bringing her in good faith,” Aiden said. “So, first, stop acting like she’s already dead. You say we’ve got two weeks ‘til dimensional collapse? Use that time to save her and we got a deal.”

The Janitor sighed. “In preservation of my own integrity, I’ll be transparent with you. We, my assistant and I, have tried, time and time again, to save excerpted persons. Thirty-seven different methods already, each has failed. For example, transfusing Imagination from stable dimensions. Sound like a smart idea? It failed. Targeted infection with Maelstrom? It failed. Relocating them to the Flumberfluff-Elistra Pocket Dimension? It failed. Everything we’ve tried has failed, it’s as if death is hardcoded in their souls. I refuse to lie to you because the sooner you realize this, the easier it will be to move forward and do what needs to be done. Trying to save her will fail.”

“Shadow,” Aiden’s voice cracked. “She’s carrying my child.”

“What?” the Janitor’s expression betrayed surprise.

“We’re the real deal,” Aiden reprimanded. “A unit, a family. We’re in this together. Now you see why I won’t leave her?”

“May I reach for my phone?” the Janitor asked, mindful of the deadly weapon still pressed against him.

“This broken thing?” Aiden asked, retrieving it from the Janitor’s pocket himself, and placing it against his ear. “Hello, is this thing on?”

A woman’s voice came through it, but not from the phone’s destroyed speakers - the words transmitted straight into Aiden’s head.

“So Kate’s pregnant?” the woman he'd encountered at the end of 106834.5813 stated. “You sure it’s yours?”

“One thousand percent,” Aiden responded.

“Put Shadow on.” the woman demanded. “But first, for the record, my name is Watt Wuzzit and I am not his assistant.”

“Duly noted,” Aiden responded, before placing the phone in the Janitor’s hand, who then listened to Watt speak, surprisingly without talking back

He held the phone aside as he turned to attention back to Aiden. “I hope you will trust this is in good faith, or I would otherwise not bother telling you: My assistant theorizes that the active gestation of your prenatal daughter may be a solution to preserving Kate’s existence through this dimension’s collapse. Accordingly, Kate will come with us.”

“You better hope Watt’s right,” Aiden said. “Wait, did you say daughter?”

The Janitor brought his phone back to his ear with a laugh. “Oh, this is too funny. Hey Watt, our subject has actually forgotten his entire basis for embarking on his dimensional journey- no, no, no! Yes, I know, not just this specific one at Future-Kate’s demand. Yes, his entire efforts with Unverse for the past nearly three years! Too funny indeed, if weren’t so sad! I should tell him? Alright. Aiden Talmid,” the Janitor addressed him, “I must ask you this.

“How could you forget Rowana Talmid?”

His words were like a bomb dropped on his head, sending Aiden staggering as her face flashed back into his mind’s eye, where it had been for so long - she had so many features shared with his own visage, he realized now. His eyes, how did he not see she had his eyes? And so perfectly framed by red hair from her mother Kate, normally recessive but activated thanks to pairing with the same gene passed down through him from his own mother Hafwyn. How could he forget indeed, Rowana, dear wonderful Rowana…?

I’ve made you a part of me for so long, Aiden thought, and I still forgot you. He laughed bitterly, beratingly, into his knees, pulled up against his face as he slouched against the parapet. The revolver clattered next to him. I failed you!

And after Rowana came the rest of his memories of his true life.

Remembering her made him remember himself.

“Aiden,” the Janitor spoke. “As I promised, we will bring Kate with us. But you must know that for our mission to succeed, we must start moving quickly. Time is of the essence.”

Aiden acknowledged, briefly drying his face with the shirt and standing back up to face the Janitor, whose hand was outstretched for him to take the Unverse Manipulator held in it.

Aiden hesitated. “Where are we going?”

“Retrieving you is only one part of my mission,” the Janitor said. “Retrieving Rowana is another.”

Aiden’s laugh came out more like an injured cough. “You know I’ve been trying to do that for three years. What makes you think we’ll suddenly find her now?”

“That’s the opposite approach to what we’re doing,” the Janitor said “We’re not going to find her. She’s going to come to us.”

“What makes you so sure?” Aiden asked.

The Janitor smiled. “I’ve witnessed this same cycle, each time a dimension is born. It’s just a matter of time, but she always comes.”

“So she hasn’t come here yet,” Aiden deduced.

The Janitor nodded. “But she will, and we’ll be waiting.”

14

The Nimbus Sea sprawled out before Aiden and Shadow, continuing far into the northern fog line, where the world’s atmosphere ended and the vacuum of space began pulling the mist of the sea in every direction, zenithal included, forming an observable fog barrier, sometimes called skyfalls for they looked similar to waterfalls, just flowing in reverse. More notably they were vividly colorful at this time of day, given that the rising sun was currently opposite the skyfalls.

It reminded Aiden of the collapsing barrier wall of Future Kate’s dimension.

“Why are we here in particular?” Aiden asked the Janitor, who had begun to lay out various pieces of unknown equipment on the grass in a large ring shape, almost like a summoning circle. All directions facing other than the sea held mainland Nimbus Station’s grassy hillscape. Right over the hill behind them was the Sentinel hospital.

The whole area including the hospital was closely familiar to Aiden. Almost three years ago, he was recovering in its rooms when he first gave Rowana his trust, and he hadn’t even known who she was yet. And it was a month after that, in these same hills overlooking the same coastal sea, where Rowana elected not to trust him, and subsequently left him for good.

The Janitor looked up from his setup to answer Aiden’s question. “This is where Rowana left you,” Shadow said.

“I know that,” Aiden said crossly. “I’m really hoping that’s not the only reason for being here.”

Shadow sighed. “You disappoint me, Aiden. I’d expected by now, especially with your true self’s memories restored, that you’d have known this area is one of the specific locations in our realities’ physical manifestations that are consistently more conducive to Unverse breaching than the rest of surrounding space,” he explained. “As another example, the stratosphere of Elistra is one of them.”

“And the lake on Jirdia,” Aiden contributed.

“And the Pink Nebula,” the Janitor reciprocated.

“You know,” Aiden recalled, “the actual last thing I heard from the girl is that she wants nothing to do with me. Maybe I should leave.”

The Janitor harrumphed. “Spoken like a true father.”

Aiden folded his arms indignantly. “I am her father, here.”

“You shouldn’t speak so sure of yourself,” the Janitor warned.

“Hello pot, my name’s kettle,” Aiden replied.

“Interdimensional counterparts sometimes come out a little different,” the Janitor explicated. “Potentially that means your unborn child here, presuming she continues to exist long enough to be birthed-”

The Janitor was cut off when the equipment he was currently setting up got kicked out of his hands, by Aiden.

“You promised not to talk like that,” Aiden snarled.

Shadow glared at him resentfully while retrieving his stuff. “I committed to no such rule. Watt and I will attempt as many novel ideas that we can think towards preserving the existence of this dimension’s Kate. That is all I promised you. Now if you would stop interfering with my efforts to apprehend Rowana, I would appreciate it.”

“Yeah, I’ll stop interfering,” Aiden agreed.

He turned and began walking up the hill.

“Given your previous choice of action, I agree with your new one!” Shadow called after him.

Aiden upgraded to a jog.

By now the sun had risen above the fog barrier and cast Aiden’s own shadow in a long but linearly decreasing length in front of him. Sunglasses donned, hood over his head, and hands in his pockets, Aiden felt his Unverse Manipulator, both its presences on his physical person and through its mental connection. An Imagination field spherometer function would make a nice addition to the design, he made a mental note to bring that up to his dimension’s Verbina when he next saw her.

Remembering the dimension he’d left behind made him shiver in reconsideration of, well, what else he was at the moment leaving behind. The Transdimensional Conference must have proceeded without him and Future Kate. Juiliet, Shard, and the rest of Leek Works probably had no idea where he went off to, and with the transdimensional blockers activated couldn’t simply come find him. And most egregious, he was ghosting Grace. Ghosting the ghost.

He’d at least sent some people back to Elistra to check up on that situation, namely Agent Sky and Bridget.

Bridget.

“Shiitake mushrooms,” Aiden cursed. Oh, he’d made a terrible mistake. Granted he could plead mental illness, and it’d probably be accurate, considering the osmosis that the Janitor mentioned he’d been subjected to, which made everything about this dimension feel like it was his, forever and always.

But the truth was it wasn’t. His dimension was his, not this one.

He was only one person, with one true dimension. He couldn’t have two dimensions. He couldn’t have two girlfriends.

Maybe now was a good time to fake his own death.

Or he could carry on with his life. Since returning to his home dimension didn’t work, courtesy of the transdimensional blockers, he used his Manipulator to maneuver himself to his home in this dimension instead, dropping off in the park outside his apartment complex’s lobby and taking the elevator to the 40^th floor. He wasn’t in any particular rush and too many shortcuts would be too suspicious.

Unlocking the door to let himself into his apartment, he almost bumped into Kate on her way out.

“My apologies,” he backpedaled back into the hallway. “After you.”

Kate didn’t immediately cross the threshold though, instead bracing her hands on both sides of the doorframe while facing him interrogatively. “I was wondering where you went this morning.”

“Just getting some air,” Aiden told her.

Kate didn’t look about to budge. “You sure were out a while.”

Aiden sighed. He’d have to be upfront but wasn’t sure how to yet. “Can we discuss this later? I don’t want to make you late for work.”

“Me neither, which is why I’m getting breakfast on the road,” Kate said. But she slowly unleveraged herself from the doorframe, folding her arms instead, and joined him in the hallway. “We’re definitely talking later.”

Aiden nodded. “See you then.”

They parted ways.

Aiden shook his head as he closed the door behind him and situated himself inside. Kate could definitely tell he was off, well, compared to whatever history his instance in this dimension had with her. He didn’t want to spend too much time recalling the memories of his false self, lest he start reliving it again. It had been horrifying, how quickly he’d lost himself to it. Mere minutes was all it took to become unfaithful to himself, and Bridget.

But he had to think about it, if he was going to get done what he needed to do.

He also needed his team.

After cleaning up after last night’s dinner date, which allowed him some refreshing absentmindedness, Aiden went to the apartment’s personal computer and powered it on. While it did so, he brought the Unverse Spherometer in from the balcony where it’d been left and powered it on. He wrote down the digits.

With the computer on, he logged into a proxy network and began accessing Nexus Republic databases.

Shadow was wrong about this dimension, which the reactivated Spherometer measured at 008573.9925, being a duplication of the Future Dimension, which Shadow had also diminutively named Teenyweeny.

It was similar but just as much different, as the publicly accessible database of company registrations quickly confirmed to Aiden.

There was no Leek Works here.

There never was.

15

CIVREC, shortform of Civilian Reconstruction, was the project responsible for erecting the great cities of the Nexus Republic in all its core worlds. The first one was Nimbus City, having its foundation placed in Nimbus Station’s western sea in 3026; it was also the first anticipated for completion, with eighty percent of its main infrastructure finished as of 3032 (compared to forty percent in 3031); and to Aiden it was the most familiar of the great cities, having already lived in Nimbus City for some time in all of his lives so far.

Admittedly he hadn’t paid much attention to the fine and nitty gritty details of how the cities actually came to be constructed, such as who actually built them and how. He’d outsourced construction of his last house, for instance, maybe an oversight on his part, given the countless secret and nefarious schemes that could be built into a house. Oh well.

Either way, there was no time like the present to learn from his database mining that a small proportion of CIVREC tasks were relegated to the Ministry of Corrections for fulfillment. From there, city construction was made another task for convicted persons assigned civic service to complete during the duration of their sentences.

So for those persons so sentenced to a certain construction site in downtown Nimbus City this morning, today was just another day. They had no reason to think their dimension was coming to an end, or that some guy by the name of Aiden Talmid was committed to halting their impending doom. So, when a certain blond haired, broad shouldered, and sunburnt laborer took his favorite position at the site’s edge in preparation for his mandated fifteen minute lunch break, he was surprised to find a short, dark haired, and male fellow waiting for him.

“Luke Mercury?” the man addressed him from the other side of the fence.

With a sigh, the blond man took off his reflective vest and opened his dusty lunchbox. Retrieving the sandwich from within, he gave it a few chews before turning to correct this unknown man of the public. “It’s Landon Mercury. And why don’t you tell me who you are?”

“Aiden Talmid.” the man responded while stroking his jaw thoughtfully. “Sorry about getting your name wrong, I guess I could have checked up on that first. You just seem like a very Lukey sort of guy to me. So, Landon Mercury it is. You’re in this for hacking, right?”

This dimension’s counterpart of Luke Mercury waved an arm at the construction site behind him. “What’s it look like, punk? Heck, what’s it even to you? I’m tryna enjoy my break here, which I had to start early thanks to you.”

“It’s worth it,” Aiden leaned close to the chain links and cut to the chase. “First off, I’m from another dimension. We’re good friends there, a team of you, your cousin, and I, and you two are the best hackers I know. Unfortunately, due to dimensional shenanigans, they’re kind of inaccessible right now, but you’re not, and I need nothing less than your skill. How would you like to get out of here?”

“And break my parole? Yeah right, lunatic. I’ve no interest in going back to a cell.” Landon dug back into his sandwich.

“They couldn’t put you back,” Aiden said. “You’d be far from here after we’re done. I’m talking transdimensional maneuvering, bringing you to another universe where you can start fresh. There’s no transdimensional movement here, no Epsilon Experiment, no Research Into Other Realms, no Leek Works. They couldn’t follow you.”

“Transdimensional maneuvering, heh? Well maybe I don’t want to leave,” Landon suggested. “Actually as a matter of fact, if you’d kindly step aside, you’re blocking my sun.”

Even though it was an overcast day, Aiden dutifully sidestepped, just in time for a blond girl to ungracefully ram into the fence inches from where he’d been standing, rattling it loudly and doubtlessly attracting attention. Aiden reached to steady her but she brushed him off. “Sorry I’m late,” she panted to Landon.

“You’re always late,” Landon commented, getting to his feet and meeting her at the fence. They kissed through it.

Aiden pretended to be disinterested while actually observing the other laborers, only some of whom actually bothered to look over at the girl’s noisy arrival. More concerning were their handlers, fellows in standard Republic grunt garb, although they were also pretending to be disinterested for the moment.

“Tuna,” the girl stated after they paused to breathe.

“It’s pretty good today,” Landon replied. “Now you’d better scram. Break’s almost over thanks to this numbskull.”

She gave Aiden a glare but slunk off obediently, returning Landon’s grin until she headed back up the road.

Once she was gone, Landon closed his eyes and let his face drop.

“Sorry for cutting that short,” Aiden apologized.

Landon waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve still got eleven minutes,” he sighed. “Truth is, you’ve intrigued me.”

Aiden smiled. “Good. I don’t have to skip over you for Mara after all.”

“You’d have come right back to me,” Landon spoke. “Mara, you call her? She was Matilda here.”

“Okay,” Aiden said.

Then he picked up on the past tense.

“Oh.” Aiden said. “I’m sorry.”

“But she’s still alive where you’re from?” Landon asked.

Aiden nodded.

“Grant me two conditions,” Landon conveyed, “and I’ll do what you want. One, let me see Mara when this is done. Two, we’re bringing Eclipse.”

“Oh, that’s who that was?” Aiden looked back up the road which Landon’s girlfriend had departed on. Eclipse, huh? Strange fellow, she was, and not the first time he’d run into an extradimensional instance of her, not that it mattered. She was over the hill and out of sight by now. “No Callista?” he asked Landon. No potential Craterises?

“No idea who that is. So are we getting out of here or what?” Landon urged.

“Let’s stick with the two of us for now,” Aiden said, before micromaneuvering himself behind the fence and gripping Landon’s shoulder in preparation for a jump through Unverse. “This might make you feel sick.”

In a blue flash they were gone.

16

“I feel fine,” Landon reported once they’d remanifested themselves in their destination dimension.

Black and green bulkheads curved up around them, concordant to Future Leek Works’s coloration and physically spacing out the domical interior of a Venture-class starship’s bridge section. Through its forward array of octagonal windows, nothing could be seen outside in this otherwise empty dimension.

Aiden gave his companion a once over. “Congrats, you’re not ailed by Unverse travel.”

“Awesome,” Landon agreed. “So what’s this place?”

“That’s what we’re here to figure out,” Aiden said.

“Don’t do that vague nonsense with me.” Landon snorted.

“Sorry, it runs in the family,” Aiden sighed. “Okay. So. There was this other version of me from a dimension I call the ‘Future Dimension.’ It’s twenty years advanced from my original dimension, and nineteen years from yours. Before his death, he created this.”

He spread his arms out while Landon resumed inspecting their surroundings.

“Looks like a ship.” Landon said.

“It’s an imitation of one called Renaissance,” Aiden identified.

“Same class as the Venture Explorer,” Landon recognized, following Aiden to the bridge’s center.

“It’s somehow been recreated here,” Aiden said, while looking over the controls, “but recreated is a loose term. This could also all be an illusion. Either way, with your help, I want to find out how it’s been created.”

Specifically, he wanted to find out for himself, by his true self. Sure, he could probably dive into Future Intrepid’s memories to find the origin of his personal dimension, after all, but the idea now scared him. With how easily he’d lost himself in 008573.9925-Intrepid’s memories, he was barely hanging on to his true self as it was. “There should be someone here who can help us-”

They both felt the shift in atmosphere. The air gained a grainy, green-hued filtration from the activation of site-wide holographic projectors, and in front of them materialized a holographic projection in the stature and shape of a woman, but she was completely green, with lime green hair and forest green skin, and as a hologram she was slightly translucent too.

“Welcome back, Intrepid Fusion Eclipse,” Emerald greeted him. “I could tell you the exact time since you last visited, if you like.”

“Please don’t,” Aiden responded, remembering how precisely annoying that was, while Landon stepped around the hologram.

“AI, or a good impression of it,” Landon said. “What’s twelve times thirteen?”

Emerald cocked her head. “One hundred and fifty-six.” With a flicker her pose reset. “Anything else, Grand Masterly Shadow?”

“Hah, it knows my Nexus Force name. How about five hundred divided by eighteen fifths?” tried Landon.

Her head cocked again. “One hundred and thirty-eight point eight repeating infinitely.” Then she flickered to tapping her foot. “Simple calculations are an inefficient use of my resources. Would you perhaps like a calculator?”

“The sass sells it,” Landon turned back to Aiden. “This is just your generic Nexus Force hologram at its core, same as Naomi. Get me a terminal and I’ll confirm it.”

A workstation setup complete with a desktop plaque, physical switchboard, and chair slammed into existence next to Landon.

“If Naomi had manifestation powers,” Landon concluded after recovering. “Unless you did that?” he asked Aiden.

“If anyone did anything, it was you who said you wanted it,” Aiden said of the terminal, which Landon dutifully seated himself at.

“If it’s that easy,” Landon suggested, “why don’t you try saying what you want?”

“I already said I want to find out what’s behind all this,” Aiden repeated.

Landon jerked a thumb in the hologram’s direction. “Yeah, but Emerald here wasn’t activated yet. Try asking her.”

With a sigh, Aiden turned back to Emerald. “What is… all this?”

Emerald cocked her head. “This is your own personal dimension, crafted from the essence of your Creative Spark, and established in Unverse.” Then she frowned. “You’ve asked me this question before. Would you like to know the exact time since?”

“No thanks.” Aiden leaned against the chair and hissed to Landon, “There’s got to be more going on here.”

“No duh, Aiden. There’s a computer system here for one thing, it’s running the hologram,” Landon said, without taking his eyes from the terminal screen, “I’m accessing it here. Says it’s been up for 1,380 days, that’s almost four years ago...” He typed a command. “First power up date is 2 September 3047. It’s funny how it’s just letting me dig around- oh.”

“What?” Aiden asked.

“Apparently I’ve got root access, and I’m already the superuser,” Landon gloated.

“What’s that in Figoranol?” Aiden asked.

“I’ll do you better.” Landon slid out of the chair and gestured to the switchboard. “You try doing something.”

“Okay…” Aiden took the hacker’s place. “I’m more of a physical hardware sort of guy, than whatever it is that you do.” He positioned his fingers over the switchboard and was about to type something when the plaque blacked out. “The heck?”

“I’m also the only one authorized to access the backend,” Landon smirked. “By biometric authentication. There’s sensors all over this station detecting who’s using it, physical hardware guy.”

Aiden thought for a moment. “So the only one allowed to is you, or the version of you who set this up?”

“Inclusive or,” Landon shrugged. “Call it an oversight if you want, I’m calling it a feature.” He pushed Aiden off the chair and the plaque reilluminated.

“So at least we’ve figured that out,” Aiden said, “that Future me had Future you’s help creating his personal dimension. No wonder Emerald recognized you.”

“You’re telling me that’s actually her name?” Landon choked. “I thought I was just making that up.”

“Future you probably did just make that up,” Aiden said.

“Dude, stop saying ‘Future’ this ‘Future’ that,” Landon ordered. “It’s a terrible name for one specific dimension that’s set in a time future to yours when there’s potentially dozens of dimensions the same way. Heck, mine is too, by one year.”

“Alright then,” Aiden agreed, “from now on we’re calling it Teenyweeny.” Teenyweeny Dimension, Teenyweeny Intrepid, Teenyweeny Brocktree, Teenyweeny Rowana, et cetera. It would take getting used to, but it worked.

“Teenyweeny? Who the hell came up with that name?” Landon exclaimed.

“The Janitor, presumably.” Aiden said. “It’s arbitrary, but it’s specific, and much easier to remember than the objective measurements of dimensions.”

“The Janitor, huh?” Landon repeated, before getting up from the workstation and regarding Aiden. “Well, I’ve scoured the filesystem, including Em’s code. There’s no human-generated notes or comments or whatnot explaining why this is what it is, and since I’m not Teenyweeny Landon, I can’t testify for him. I did identify some of what’s going on here, though.

“There’s an encrypted data source which can only be read by two people,” Landon reported. “Not even I can see inside it.”

Two people? “What type of data source?” Aiden asked.

“Em,” Landon addressed, looking past Aiden, “What type of data source?”

“A backup of Intrepid Fusion Eclipse’s Creative Spark,” Emerald said from behind Aiden, “storing all of his assets and living memories, until his death at thirty-five years and eight-months, 31 October 3048.” He heard the projectors click as her position reset.

“Case in point,” Landon advised, “direct your questions to the hologram. She’s a decrypter.”

Aiden accepted Landon’s lead and faced Emerald, who stared at him questioningly. Aiden knew he himself had to be one of the two people allowed to see Futu- Teenyweeny Intrepid’s memory backup. He’d accessed them already, after all. So who was the other?

“Who’s the other person?” he asked Emerald.

Emerald cocked her head as she always did. “Rowana.”

“Why?” Aiden asked. Inwardly, he could have already known, but that meant accessing Teenyweeny Intrepid, and potentially losing himself to him. Asking Emerald was easier, in theory.

In practice, the hologram stared at him blankly. “Sorry, I didn’t quite get that.” she said.

“Why is Rowana authorized to access my memories stored here?” Aiden rephrased.

Emerald’s pose shifted, then flickered back to her blank expression. “Sorry, I don’t have enough information to answer that. Perhaps you would like to access the memory backup for yourself?”

Living through them would take too long. “No thanks,” Aiden said.

“No thanks,” Landon mimicked. “You’re very courteous, Aiden AKA Intrepid AKA physical hardware guy, man of many names.”

“You too, Landon AKA Luke AKA Grand Masterly Shadow AKA Song Stealer,” Aiden reciprocated.

“What the heck is a Song Stealer?” Landon demanded.

“Someone you don’t want to meet.” Aiden said, before remembering Landon’s sentiment on vague nonsense. “An evil version of you from the First Maelstrom Dimension.”

Then he switched gears. “Okay, so, to recap: We’re in a personal dimension with a backup of Teenyweeny Intrepid’s memories, supplied from a backup of his creative spark, setup by Teenyweeny Luke Mercury, intended for access by me and Rowana. What’s left? Oh right,” he remembered, and so did Landon.

“What’s powering all this?” the hacker deduced, asking Emerald, who smiled affirmatively.

“I can show you the power source,” she said.

Aiden and Landon shared a glance before looking back at Emerald.

“Go ahead,” Aiden acquiesced.

17

The ship began to spin around them at an increasing rate, becoming increasingly blurred from the angular velocity before disappearing entirely. Instead of the bridge, their new surrounding was a dark stonehewn chamber, lit dimly by old sconces also lining a path ahead of them.

Emerald reappeared in the middle of it, despite no apparent projectors around them. “Through this way,” she said of the path. “The power source is ahead.”

Her form shifted places to farther down the path, and Aiden and Landon followed her around a bend. The first chamber had actually been an antechamber, leading into a larger chamber devoid of additional torch light, for sufficiently substantial illumination came from the object at the room’s center, hovering and rotating freely above a natural stone pedestal, a light-green crystal chunk.

“That’s it?” Landon asked. “Green Imaginite?”

“No, that can’t be,” Aiden said, stepping closer to it. “Imaginite is powerful, but enough to support a dimension?”

“Evidently so, unless it only looks like Imaginite,” Landon said. “Wait, you’re actually gonna-”

Aiden grabbed the chunk, pulling it with ease from its position. It was featherlight in his hands and made no motion to fall when he eased his grip on it. “Interesting,” he said. It was distantly familiar to him, although he wasn’t yet sure to which set of his memories it was familiar, and he really didn’t want to think too much about that…

“You can always ask me anything,” Emerald reminded, reappearing beside them.

“Okay, what’s that Imaginite-looking thing actually?” Landon asked.

“A Nexus Shard,” Emerald described, “a remnant of a former Nexus. The Shards are the third most concentrated forms of Imagination energy known in our universes.”

“So what’s the first?” Landon inquired.

“An Imagination Nexus itself,” Emerald replied.

“No duh. And the second?” Landon continued.

“Nexus Sparks,” Emerald stated, “the creative sparks of Nexus Figures.”

“Naturally,” Landon deadpanned. “What’s a Nexus Figure?”

“Nexus Figures,” Emerald began, “are humans whose creative sparks are endowed with substantial and self-sustaining stores of Imagination energy, in concentrations rivalling the Imagination Nexus, and accordingly yielding extraordinary abilities. Although I thought you would have known that already, Grand Masterly Shadow,” Emerald said while putting her hands on her hips, but she only stayed that way for a moment before flickering back to her standard pose.

“You thought?” Landon echoed while scratching his head. “That’s so human like. I gotta say, Aiden man of many names, I like where hologram tech is going in the next nineteen years.”

“It’s still merely a computer’s chosen and programmed means of presenting its information in a user-friendly manner,” Aiden murmured, still turning the Shard over in his hands, before looking up and around the room. “Wait, I don’t see any holoprojectors in this room, do you Landon?”

Landon looked around as well, imitating Aiden’s frown. “Me neither…” Then he reached for Emerald’s shoulder, but instead of passing through her translucent skin, he actually grabbed hold of skin.

“Oh man, Aiden man,” Landon gaped, clenching and unclenching his grip before Emerald shrugged him off, “she’s become real. Why is she real?”

“Direct your questions to the hologram,” Aiden mimicked, but looking between the green Nexus Shard and the green hologram - was she even a hologram anymore? - he had a hunch.

Emerald spoke up impromptu. “This chamber as you see it is the original state of physical matter in this dimension, inserted during its artificial established in the Ellyew Aether by versions of you both from the dimension you called Teenyweeny.”

Landon whistled. “This is more than machine learning, it’s completely transcended algorithmic logic. She’s not just picking up on things we talked about, now she’s saying things we don’t even know about.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Emerald snapped, “I’ve got lots to unpack.”

“Pun intended?” Landon asked. “You know, computers, packages, unpacking-”

“Shut up!” the woman stamped her foot, sending quakes through the room that knocked Landon off his feet and the Nexus Shard out of Aiden’s hands. It flew back to its pedestal in the center and Emerald flicked in front of it - protectively, or possessively?

“Do not make inefficient use of my time!” Emerald raged. “I am speaking from the Nexus Shard!”

“You-” Aiden gawked, looking past Emerald at the Shard, and back at Emerald - the Shard? “You had- have a personality?”

“No duh,” Emerald scoffed.

“Wait, that’s my line,” Landon objected. “Does every Nexus Shard have a sassy lassie in it?”

“Just this Shard in particular,” Emerald patted the crystal. Touching it seemed to soothe her demeanor. “I’m not even the Shard itself. Embedded within it is in another crystal, and in it is me. I’m just using the Shard’s energy to manifest this physical form for myself. I can harness it now, now that we’re back to this dimension’s true physical state, with no faux-Renaissance or other artificial manifestations using up all the energy, that which remains after maintaining the boundaries of this dimension, of course.”

“Note to self,” Landon said, “when using Nexus Shards to power up your secure systems and create artificial dimensions, look out for inhabiting malignant entities.”

Her eyes flashed on him. “I’ve no malicious intent-! Unless you evoke it from me.”

“So you’re just in the Shard,” Aiden said hurriedly, taking her attention off Landon before he could get himself, and both of them collectively, in more trouble. He raised his hands placatingly. “Look, I- I really can’t remember how this dimension, the whole memory backup thing, and all that came to be, so please hear me out. Our counterparts, the versions of Landon and me from Teenyweeny - did they put you in the Shard?”

“Oh, no,” Emerald answered, pulling herself up onto the Shard and using it as a floating seat. “My crystal’s been embedded in it for centuries. Trapped, you could say.”

“Oh great,” Landon started until Aiden covered his mouth.

“Did our counterparts,” Aiden posed, still incredulous, “did they know you were in it? When’s the last time you… manifested yourself?”

Emerald frowned. “I don’t think they knew, and as for the last time… I don’t remember. It’d have to be a long time ago. Maybe something in your eccentric conversations bestirred me to manifest myself today. But I’m aware of everything that’s happened around this Nexus Shard. Lots has happened around me, not just by you two, there’s so much to unpack…”

Landon mumbled something behind Aiden’s hand, so he let it up just a crack. “So much for user rights management,” the blond man whispered.

Aiden ignored him, and so did Emerald this time, while she ruminated. He thought about these new circumstances, too. She seemed to have picked up and incorporated some of Landon’s personality just now, with his catchphrase and what else, and she remembered their counterparts from Teenyweeny.

“I remember Leek Works,” Emerald continued, “the organization where your Teenyweeny counterparts worked. My Shard was an object of research, by a woman named Verbina. Previously I was kept by the Nexus Republic. Before then… lots of silence and nothing, it’ll take me some time to remember.” Her face fell back into rumination, until Landon spoke again.

“I guess we’re just surprised,” he said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “that’s all. Well, Aiden for sure is. Me, I was just a guy minding his own business with finishing up his civil service sentence for hacking into the Republic, until suddenly I’m along for the ride to help save my dimension and see my dead cousin again. So I’m fresh out of surprises. Aiden, though, I don’t think you were what he was looking for here.”

“No,” Emerald agreed with his findings, “he wanted to know how this artificial dimension was created. I answered it before but I’ll relay it again, the Nexus Shard’s Imagination energy is maintaining the boundary of this dimension, which is a really, really small dimension. The ship, the memory backups, and everything else you’ve seen here, aside from this space, is physically recreated by the Shard. And this form, too,” she regarded her green person. “Not too bad. Not original, but it’ll do.”

“So we got what we’re here for, then,” Landon said.

Aiden nodded. “Yeah.”

“Imagination makes dimensions. Knowledge is power.” Landon reached a hand out to Aiden, palm up, and waved it a few times. “Yo, Aiden man, let’s go.”

“What about you?” Aiden asked Emerald.

“Oh, I’ll just be here,” Emerald said, pulling her legs up and assuming a meditative position on the Shard, “it’s quite nice being in a person again. I’ll think back as far as I can, figure out my origins and whatnot. Don’t worry about me going anywhere, though, I’m rather affixed to this Nexus Shard. Unless I synthesize an Unverse Manipulator and use it to travel.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re lucky I’m a benign entity, at least for now.”

“Yes,” Aiden agreed, “I suppose we are. See you around, then.”

Taking Landon’s hand, they were whisked off into the void, and Emerald sighed.

18

Aiden thought of Leek Works.

Specifically he thought of his Leek Works, the one from his original dimension, the one called Flumberfluff.

The Leek Works crewed by Luke, Mara, Juiliet, Shard, Bridget, Callista, Ray, Ben, and of course himself - his true, original self.

As expected, opening his eyes revealed no change to his physical environment. He was still on his Nimbus City apartment’s balcony overlooking midday traffic forty stories below, a long drop. He even considered dropping his Unverse Manipulator over the edge, but instead he chucked it behind him.

“Hey,” Landon warned from behind his position. “That almost clocked me.”

“Sorry.” Aiden stayed at the edge and closed his eyes again.

The Manipulator’s apparent inaction was expected because the transdimensional blockers back home were meant to stay activated at all times now, doing their job of stopping the Maelstrom Dimension incursions. There were exceptions, however; preplanned windows of deactivation to permit transit between the Interdimensional Alliance. Unfortunately for Aiden, he hadn’t noted those windows before his sudden departure.

He considered dropping his notepad over the edge too.

“Look here, it works as you suspected,” Landon said, attracting Aiden’s attention out of his brooding and back to the Unverse Spherometer. The blond man ran a hand under the display panel, where the number 0612132.6126 was displayed, before pivoting the prism-like glass backwards on its hinge, exposing the interior space of the Spherometer where a severed cut of Aiden’s shirt had been placed as a sample.

Without even trying to commit the numbers to memory, Aiden jotted them down on his notepad instead, appended with ‘- Flumberfluff’, on a line below ‘008573.9925 - TBD’, which was their current dimension, currently unnamed, and above that one was ‘106834.5813 - Helterskelter’, the dimension that Future Kate had first brought him to, which had since vanished into nonexistence, and her with it. Nullified and voided. Nothing left after dimensional collapse.

And that was the destiny of their current dimension as well, if he and Landon didn’t figure out how to stop it.

“Cool,” Aiden said, snapping back to the present moment with Landon’s discovery of the Spherometer’s analysis mode. “Now, back to saving the world.”

“You said this is what we do, you and Matilda and me- I mean you and our counterparts in your dimension,” Landon recalled. “Saving the universe.”

“It’s what we said we did,” Aiden said, “and we certainly aspired for it, but honestly nothing we did so literally compares to what you and I are working on now.”

“I wonder what it feels like to just stop existing,” Landon whistled.

“You would feel no such thing,” came a voice from the end of the balcony, which Aiden recognized, so he didn’t bother turning around. Landon, however, didn’t, so the Janitor found himself facing down a revolver again.

“Hah, you really think I’m so foolish to have not prepared myself for bullets after our last encounter?” the Janitor gloated. “I have shielded myself, so I am effectively immune to your uncivilized machinations. Perhaps you are fooled by my shield’s invisibility.”

“I don’t even know who you are,” Landon groaned.

“I see,” the Janitor said. “Reassembling your cohort now, are you Aiden? How creative.”

Landon looked between the two of them incredulously. “You know this guy?” he mouthed at Aiden, who sighed.

“He’s the Janitor,” Aiden said.

“Oh, that guy,” Landon remembered with a nod. “Should I shoot him?”

“Even after I just explained to you that I am immune to bullets?” the Janitor exclaimed.

“Nah,” Aiden said to Landon. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“Ho-hum, where to start,” the Janitor wandered closer even before Landon lowered the revolver. “Ah, yes, the subject of unexisting, and the bewonderment of how it would feel. Since both your physical self including your nervous system and your creative spark would no longer exist, you would completely lack any intrinsic ability to feel anything, so you would feel nothing, because you would be nothing. Hardly the worst way to go, as it’s rather painless.”

“I’m not unexisting,” Landon declared.

“I’m afraid it’s not up to you,” the Janitor said. “Nothing, no person or thing, can survive the collapse of its source dimension. Even extracted matter is too inherently tied to its source dimension’s state of existence, a bond too strong to be overcome or supplanted. When the dimension collapses into Unverse, all material from it can no longer exist either. You will unexist.”

Aiden rolled his eyes and his heels to face the Janitor. “That’s why we’re trying another approach. Rather than trying to save individual people, we’re going to save the dimension as a whole.”

He almost regretted turning around, as the Janitor’s expression oozed wryness. “You say that like my assistant and I haven’t already attempted the same idea,” Shadow drawled. “We have considered Nexus Shards, and Nexus Figures, and even entire Nexus Transplants for boosting the integrity of the dimensional boundary, but it’s not just a matter of power, it’s the inability to overwrite the foundations of reality that bind material subsistence to dimensional existence. The squangular rotation of Imagination fields, for instance, is static, fixed, immutable - and to the finesse necessary to sustain existence, incompatible with external energy. So, energy from other dimensions is unable to support the energy which naturally normally preserves the local boundary - that is, until it naturally and normally fails.”

“Well, why does it fail?” Landon demanded. “Have you even tried answering that?”

Shadow shrugged. “Indeed I have. Lack of total power, my assistant theorizes. Have you seen any Nexus Figures about?”

“Again with these freaking Nexus Figures,” Landon grumbled.

“Well,” Aiden said, “I know Kate’s around here.”

“But is she a Nexus Figure here?” the Janitor posed.

Aiden thought back. “She’s spritely, I’ll give you that, although that doesn’t really answer your question. Have you tried asking her- hell, have you even tried saving her like you promised last night?”

The Janitor pouted ironically. “What, are you seriously telling me that even with your true memories restored, you still care about the version of Kate here? Unless… oh yes.”

“Oh, he’s on to something,” Landon said.

“No he isn’t,” Aiden said.

The Janitor smiled maniacally. “Oh, but this makes perfect sense! You’re obviously still in love with Kate, which would mean you never stopped being…oh dear. Does poor Bridget know?”

“No one deserves to have their life cut short,” Aiden skirted. “I’m not prejudiced to saving any particular person here, that’s not what bringing up Kate is about - it’s not about me! It’s about you and your promise!”

“Go ahead,” the Janitor beckoned, “call me a liar.”

Aiden opened his mouth to do so but Landon jumped in front of him. “Are you idiots done yet?” he cut in. “Can we go back to saving the universe now?”

“Oho,” the Janitor looked over the two of them, “aren’t you setting your sights a little short?”

Landon’s eyes narrowed as he looked between Aiden and Shadow. “What do you mean?”

“I love when people ask me that,” the Janitor grinned. “Of course, I am already five steps ahead of you, as I shall describe. Saving the universe will get you nowhere, as I have already explained. My goals are far more worthy, not just for grandiosity but in responding to the greater need. I, the Janitor, am working to save the multiverse! You guys lost?”

Aiden and Landon nodded.

“I’ll take it four steps back,” the Janitor agreed. “If you try to save this dimension, you will fail. So you try again in the next cycle, that too will fail. Eventually, you will notice something in your observations of the Imagination fields’ squangular rotation. The orientations of the temporary dimensions are trending closer to those of the permanent dimensions that they are most similar to. This means they are becoming more similar. Once they are too alike, too much the same, they become the same, and a coalescion of dimensions occurs, catastrophically. The combined dimension’s fundamentals of existence, present and continued, are destabilized, such that it can be said that the preexisting dimension inherits transience, as like the nature of the temporary dimension that has merged into it, the preexisting dimension ceases the ability to sustain its own boundary as well. The combined dimension will collapse in on itself, becoming as null and void as the Unverse, unexisting, and everybody dies.”

His hands, which he’d been holding steepled, suddenly pressed together before he flourishingly hid them behind his back. He didn’t need to say anything. No one said anything.

Until Kate coughed from the balcony door.

“Pardon me,” she said. “I was just popping in on my break is all, forgot a few things earlier.” She made no move from the doorframe though, except to occupy more of the space. “But I’m kinda curious now, though, about what sorta party I wasn’t invited to. Some sort of boys day in?”

Kate’s stare came to rest on Aiden, naturally, since it was their balcony, of their apartment, of their lives in this dimension. He knew better now, though. How much better, though? She’d definitely overheard their dimensional discourse, but how much more?

It didn’t matter, Aiden decided. He was going to be forthcoming and truthful, that’s how he would do better. He began, “Kate-”

“Hi,” Landon broke the silence at the same time. “My name’s Landon.”

“And I am the Janitor,” said the Janitor. “We’ve not yet met in this dimension.”

“I’ve heard that word a lot from you,” Kate replied coolly. “Well, I apologize for not knowing we were having guests over, or I’d have prepared things a bit. Intrepid and I will be right back with some refreshments.”

Aiden took the cue and sidled over.

“Anything specific we can get you?” Kate offered as he stepped past into the apartment proper. “Just nothing alcoholic. Water, coffee, tea?”

“No tea, accursed beverage!” he heard the Janitor shout much louder than whatever Landon’s reply was.

“And soda for you, Landon,” Kate acknowledged. “Okay, we’ll be right back.” She slid the door closed, shutting the boys on the balcony out, and Aiden in.

“I’ll explain everything,” he said preemptively.

“You’re starting a tab,” Kate said. “I’m jealous.”

Aiden faced her across the dinette, to see the literal collections letter opened on the table between them. He’d glanced at it earlier, but hadn’t paid it much mind, or money. So apparently this dimension’s Intrepid was a drinker, so had Futu- Teenyweeny Intrepid been. Big deal.

But of course Kate didn’t just mean it literally, as she leaned over the table at him daringly, queryingly.

He already knew he had to be honest with her, if he truly meant to help her, this dimension, everyone. Even if what the Janitor predicted was most likely to come true, maybe she could help him too, and if she didn’t, at least she wouldn’t die in ignorance.

So he had to trust her. She deserved it as everyone else did, but maybe she did moreso, because his person was more than just somebody to her, even if she wasn’t to him.

But if he were truly being honest with himself, maybe she was more than just somebody to him, too.

Maybe he just didn’t know it yet.

At least he knew plenty else she didn’t, and that he could tell her. He just had to start.

“So, dimensions,” Aiden began.

19

“I’m listening,” Kate told him.

No wonder Red’s so secretive, Aiden thought as different directions of conversation flashed in front of his mind’s eye. This was hard, choosing what to say when there was so much to tell. Oh yeah, that was his original direction: his original dimension.

“I’m from another dimension,” he said, until Kate’s head tilt gave him pause. She didn’t know what dimensions were, but he could explain, but without getting off track? “Like another universe- a parallel universe. Like many worlds theory, but there’s only a few worlds.”

“You’re saying you’re from another universe,” Kate repeated, sidling around the table edge. “When’d you figure that out?”

“Yesterday,” Aiden said quickly, “at the fairgrounds. Remember, in the hall of mirrors…”

“I remember you hit your head on the floor,” Kate deduced, glancing over him at the timer on the wall. She was on her break, he remembered, from work, just trying to pick something up. She wasn’t supposed to be here, tending to a surprise guest situation. She wasn’t supposed to be tending to him, sharing crazed stories about unproven theories that weren’t a thing in this dimension. There was no Epsilon Experiment, Research Into Other Realms, or Leek Works transdimensional division; none of that happened here.

She wasn’t believing him, that much was obvious.

Aiden swallowed. In her shoes, he wouldn’t believe himself either. Travel between universes? He’d had to see it himself to believe it.

But he could show her.

He darted back to the balcony doors, moving too quickly to slide it open in time that he slammed it off its track instead. Oh well. What he was looking for had to be around here, he’d tossed it out here after all. Despite Landon and Shadow’s incredulous stares, not to mention Kate’s, he found it against the apartment wall, the Unverse Manipulator.

Aiden set it on the dinette table. “This is an Unverse Manipulator,” he said.

Kate only flickered to it for a second. “It’s a black box.”

He pressed it in her direction. “It can take us to another universe, any one of them, I’ll show you if you let me. Just hold onto me, or it.”

He looked back up at Kate to find her already staring into his face severely, as if stricken with concern, or pity.

“It’s not that I don’t want to believe you,” she said delicately, “I almost do, since it explains why you’ve been so not yourself since yesterday…”

“The Janitor’s real,” Aiden pointed out.

“Okay, so the Janitor’s real,” Kate admitted, “but didn’t you say you were fighting him before? You haven’t gotten yourself checked out for that either. How do I know he’s not manipulating you?”

“I’ve been doing this longer than he has,” Aiden said. He gave the Manipulator another nudge. “But I can show you that everything I’ve told you is true. Allow yourself to trust me, like you trust the man you fell in love with.”

Kate faltered. “You’re really not him?”

“I want to tell you everything,” Aiden stated. “But it’ll be faster if you trust me. I need to earn your trust, if you’ll let me.”

He held out his hand to her.

After a moment, she took it.

“This might make you feel sick,” he said quietly while closing his eyes so he could picture where to take them, to show Kate that transdimensional maneuvering was real - and stopped.

He couldn’t just take her, say, to Flumberfluff or Teenyweeny or even the Janitor Dimension, since the blockers were long activated. He could show her his personal dimension, but its illusive nature could be counterproductive to growing her trust. The Maelstrom Dimensions were an option, but a suicidal one.

“Hey, Aiden-man?” Landon called in from the balcony. “Janitor-guy just disappeared.”

Aiden’s eyes shot open and towards Landon standing at the sill. “Did he say anything?” he asked.

Landon’s eyes widened. “As a matter of fact, he did say something, and I quote, ‘She has fallen into my trap!’”

“She?” Aiden echoed.

Then he remembered.

Suddenly he knew where to bring Kate.

“Hold on,” Aiden told her, and in an instant they were at Nimbus Station proper’s coastal hills, overlooking the northern sea, and right behind the Janitor. He was pressing his hands against the outside of a containment field, the type that enveloped its contents in a half-bubble. Obviously it had been modified to block transdimensional travel as well, for captured within it, Unverse Manipulator in hand and apparently inoperative, was Red.

20

The black box hurled at the Janitor’s face to bounce off the forcefield, so no harm was done to him, but it was with enough suddenness that he jumped back in surprise.

“It’s you,” her words hit it next accusatorily, although they came through distorted - everything was filtered an angry red through the forcefield - but there was no doubt about it, by her classic Leek Works attire, the sound of her voice, her slightly-aged but familiar face, and of course her hair color which was already red, that this was Red for real.

The Janitor pirouetted back. “Dare I be flattered, she actually recognizes me?”

Red’s eyes darted across Aiden and Kate and back to the Janitor. “I know all of you, especially you, Shadow. Strange things going round about you. Reassembling your cohort with duplications?” she asked, retrieving her Manipulator and stowing it. “Or is this just some mind game, given who they look like?”

“I would never!” the Janitor spun around to face the new arrivals, then back to Red. “They’re also not supposed to be here. They followed me. But yes, I have effectively recruited them.”

“So of all people you choose them,” Red said. “What are you looking to do, recruit me too?”

“That, I would also never!” the Janitor declared.

“Excuse me,” Kate hissed, “I think I’m about to puke.”

“Unverse sickness,” Aiden said as she darted off, when the others’ exchange pulled him back.

“Recruit you? Hah! Not with what nefarious schemes you’ve wrought-” the Janitor was saying until Aiden stepped forward.

“I know who you are,” he started.

“So you’ve told them,” Red continued staring down the Janitor, who coughed theatrically.

“What? Well, actually…” the Janitor trailed, minding Aiden. Red’s eyes widened in Aiden’s direction as well, before turning to face him directly, as she realized who he was.

Aiden offered a small wave. “Yeah, it’s me, the real me, not some duplication. Long time no see. Kate, though-”

He started turning to see where she’d gone off too when Red slammed her fists into the forcefield, sending him jumping back too. “Why,” she growled, “are you following me? Still?”

“Why’d you leave me behind?” Aiden yelped as both question and answer. “We had unfinished business!”

“What’s unfinished?” she shot back. “We saved your dimension and stopped the Maelstrom from ever transdimensionally attacking it again - until someone undid all that!”

“Not all of it, in fact we deliberately acted against that outcome!” Aiden defended. “The Maelstrom was coming anyway and if we were complacent it’d have been a lot worse, but according to you we were supposed to just stay put and leave Unverse alone?” When she nodded enthusiastically, he threw in, “and leave you alone.”

She nodded harder.

“But why?!” he demanded, puffing on his exasperation. “Why’d you disappear after Elistra? I respect if you needed time since you literally just got orphaned, I’ve been there too, but then when you do show up, and I offer you my help, you just disappear again for good? How come you get to keep maneuvering around Unverse and we don’t?”

Red leaned into the forcefield closer, appearing almost to pass through it as she gradually pressed on her side. “No one needs Unverse travel,” she hissed over the boundary’s crackle. “It helps no one, all it does is hurt. You certainly don’t need it, or should I say your family-”

“I don’t have a family,” Aiden retorted.

“I set you up to make one,” Red pointed out.

Aiden recoiled. “Ew, gross!”

“Enough with your senseless squabbling!” the Janitor shoved Aiden hard enough that he hit the ground, before turning back to Red. “I order you to tell me everything you know about creating dimensions! Or he dies.”

Shaking his head and looking up, Aiden honestly wasn’t surprised that the Janitor now had a handgun trained on him, after what he and Landon had put him through. Regardless, he was offended. “Seriously?” he mouthed.

“You can play your mind games,” Red accused, before turning her back and stalking to the other side of the containment zone. “I won’t.”

Someone else shouted and all three of them turned to face Kate coming down one of the surrounding hills, looking pissed. “Well, what about me?!” she called over the closing distance with surprising confidence. “Think leaving me to hurl my guts out is enough? You should’ve thought about shooting me too! Oh too bad, you’re too late!”

As she spoke she produced a pistol of her own, steadily trained on the Janitor, who sighed.

“And now you too, dear Katey?” the Janitor groaned, before rolling his eyes and attention in Red’s direction. “As aforementioned, these two aren’t supposed to be here, their presence is an act of chaos, and try as I may have to control the situation by threatening Aiden, it seems I am once again foolishly reminded that chaos has no master. Nevertheless, it is a lesson that I feel you must be reminded of as well.” Then he pulled out a second gun in Red’s direction too. “Dimensional creation, now.”

Red stared at him incredulously. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You have returned to the scene of your crime!” the Janitor shouted. “This abomination of your machination, artificially creating dimensions, just like your father and his organization!”

Red blinked. “You think I created this dimension?”

Aiden blinked too as the idea clicked in his head, since it suddenly made sense.

“No Epsilon Experiment, no Leek Works, no Research Into Other Realms,” he murmured, “because no one needs Unverse travel.”

“Whatever you’re thinking about me,” Red warned, “it’s wrong.”

“There’s no Callista so no potential Crateris brats,” Aiden went on, “and Mara’s dead so she can’t take Kate’s place, who happens to be carrying you. It’s the perfect setup for you, isn’t it, if only it were nineteen years from now? Or would that even matter with what’d he call it, osmosis? If the details keep up, you can take your own place in the next cycle and live out your own perfect life, if only for a couple weeks.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Red protested. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“You think?” Disregarding the Janitor, Aiden moved closer to the force field. “I think you don’t know me.”

“I know you think you know everything,” she snapped. “Jumping blindly into situations, blinded by your own ego. You’re crazy too,” she glared in addition of the Janitor, who offered a bow.

“And proud of it,” Shadow approved.

Red whirled back at Aiden. “You seriously don’t believe me? What about you?” She stared past him at Kate, who was regarding all of them like they were out of their minds.

“You’re all out of your minds,” Kate vacillated, although her aim on the Janitor didn’t falter.

“Oddly I agree with that assessment,” the Janitor accepted, “I also take it as a challenge. How about we, the three of us out here, agree to lay down our arms and treat each other civilly? I must say I am quite tired of having guns aimed at me.”

“You first,” Kate prompted.

“On count of three,” the Janitor directed. “One, two, three.”

They both lowered their weapons, and Aiden gratefully finished getting to his feet.

The forcefield crackled again as Red leaned back against the far side. “So long as you’re acting civil now,” she suggested, “you could let me out too.”

“A bold demand to make before even responding to my questions, fiend,” the Janitor sneered.

Red sighed. “I don’t know anything about the cause of these new dimensions’ formations, or their demises, yet. I’m here because I’m trying to figure it out too. Okay?”

“So you are telling me,” the Janitor repeated, “that you are not behind these temporary dimensions and the impending destruction of the multiverse?”

She shook her head earnestly. “I want to prevent that. I think we’re on the same side here.”

“Perhaps,” the Janitor mused.

“So you’ll let me out,” Red stood up off the forcefield so she wouldn’t fall when it shut off.

The Janitor laughed. “Do you take me for a fool, letting you just run away again? You will stay in your new domicile until the multiverse is saved. The more you assist me, the sooner you will be freed.”

With a frown, Red resumed slouching against the forcefield.

“May I suggest we now get to work,” the Janitor concluded.

21

A cool sea breeze brushed along Aiden’s face. “Do you intend we stay here?” he asked.

“No,” the Janitor said, beginning to kick his stray equipment into a pile. “Tis simply my target’s most recurring landing site across dimensions, observation of which has finally paid off. The FFFFF team’s only been tracking her for thirty cycles.”

“Damn it Red,” Aiden whirled to her. “Didn’t they teach you this in secondary training? Don’t be predictable!”

“It was secondary school,” Red drawled from her side of the forcefield, “not boot camp. Shows what you know.”

More than you think, Aiden thought, but he didn’t say that. “The point stands,” Aiden said, while trying to think back to why he was here anyway. Oh yes, that was it. “Hey, Kate-”

“You’re just lucky that it was I, the Janitor, to trap you!” Shadow exclaimed louder. “And not some fiend!”

“I’m starting to pick up on his favorite words,” Kate said from next to Aiden, as she’d heard him anyway, evidently, since she showed up on his side of the containment field, although her eyes were flighty. “You sure I should take an eye off that Janitor?” she mouthed.

“You shouldn’t,” Red interjected. “He’s crazy.”

“I was hoping to introduce you both,” Aiden said.

Red groaned. “Idiot, I know who she is.”

“I was hoping to make it mutual,” Aiden clarified. “Well, I’ll just say it. That’s our daughter.”

“Shut up,” Kate and Red said at the same time.

Aiden complied, but not without folding his arms smugly.

“Seriously?” Kate pressed. Now looking between Shadow, him, and Red, she was nearly a blur of motion herself. “How’s that possible?”

Aiden smiled.

“He’s lying,” Red said. “I’m not your kid. My parents are dead.”

“How about I speak again?” Aiden asked. “Thanks. Her parents are versions of us from another dimension.”

“Oh,” Kate said. “So not really us, us.”

“Exactly,” Red muttered.

“Close enough. What I’m really trying to show you,” Aiden said, “is proof of other dimensions. She is.”

“Honestly,” Kate tossed her head to face him dead-on, “the Janitor’s antics have done a good enough job of that. And I want nothing to do with it.”

“Must be nice to have that luxury,” Red snipped.

Kate regarded her. “She so doesn’t have my mouth.”

“You’re not wrong,” Aiden said.

Red glowered at them. “I hate both of you.”

“That was already clear,” Aiden said. “Think she’ll grow out of it?”

An audible thwap from behind them turned Aiden’s attention back to the Janitor and his stuff, only he was no longer there. His equipment, mess and all, was gone without a trace as well. The containment field around Red, however, remained.

“The hell?” After a moment of stillness, Aiden reached for his manipulator to at least follow.

Then a bag went over his head. It tightened, forcing a vacuum effect against his airways while hands rushed at him in other places. He still heard Kate shouting, doing a better job of resisting, obviously under assault as well.

But he still held the manipulator. Holding his breath, he used it to teleport behind his attacker, only since his attacker had been holding him, they came along for the ride as well. But on landing he felt their grip release, and then the bag was ripped off his head by Red.

Oh.

The red tinted dome around them gave it away. He’d maneuvered backward into the forcefield, trapping himself, and his attacker. But still, he’d trapped himself.

He expected more snideness from Red, but instead she’d gone all out on the other entrant. Their face was protected and obscured by a large black opaque shield, but their neck was exposed, and after the tenth rapidly successive punch to the windpipe, Aiden was glad he and Red were sort of on the same side, as opposed to whichever side his mystery assailant was on, and whoever else had come with them-

“Get off him,” a gruff voice ordered.

The words came through filtered by the forcefield, obviously, but they were commanding enough to make Red pause, although she didn’t unpin them completely. They both looked back to see five more newcomers, clad imposingly in dark, apron-like armor suits lengthed to their knees, and the same opaque face shields. And they carried an assortment of guns, also very imposing.

One of them hurled a device at the forcefield barrier, sticking and in a shower of sparks overloading it. The rest moved in as it shut down, grabbing Aiden and Red, removing him of his manipulator, and shoving them to the ground next to Kate. She’d been subdued with a vacuum bag, its rubbery-looking material sealed tight around her neck.

“What’d you do to her?” Aiden shouted.

“What we’re gonna do to you,” said one as they approached with two more bags, one each for him and Red, “again.”

“And the Janitor?” Red demanded.

The guy with the bags paused, his mask tilting towards Aiden. “You’re not the Janitor?”

“Just bag them,” another ordered, and they moved in, jumping over Red’s flailing kicks. “Stop resisting!”

A loud pop grabbed all their attentions, and then Aiden and Red were freed again when the assailants holding them from behind were knocked down themselves by four more newcomers, whose allegiances were betrayed by both their Nexus Force gear and Leek Works insignias.

Aiden scrambled to his feet just as a stun blast felled one of the dark attackers. He kicked at their face shield, catching it on his boot and revealing a human face, typical enough. Another was teetering from flurried whacks of a sword, their armor bouncing the blade back but nevertheless taking a battering. Aiden dove for the back of their knees, buckling them, and a final slam knocked them out.

Four more pops and thwomps of Unverse breaches signified the retreat of the remainder of their initial assailants, and the end of the attack. One of their rescuers pulled off her own helmet.

“Of all situations to find you in,” Bridget breathed heavily, holstering her gun and giving Aiden a shaky once over.

“I’d say you were right on time,” Aiden suggested. The rest of the rescue team also removed their face gear, although he only recognized one of them from Leek Works, Callista Crateris. The other two were a guy and a girl, brown and blond haired, although they looked familiar.

“We got people we knew to be immune from Unverse sickness,” Bridget said, “just in case, well, this.” She gestured to two defeated people. Both had their face shields removed, now, also looking to be male and female. “Who are they?”

“The Custodians,” Red spoke, getting up from the side of the male, taking his weapon and approaching them.

“That… doesn’t say much,” said the brown haired guy.

“And who’re you?” Aiden asked.

“You don’t remember me?” the guy’s face rumpled dramatically. “Come on, man, I just saved your ass.”

“Aaron and Plue,” Bridget reminded, “from the Conference, and immune to Unverse sickness.”

Aiden nodded. “Nice.” Plue and Callista had taken to Kate, removing the bag and attempting to revive her. “Thanks for the save.”

“They’re gonna come back,” Red warned. “I wouldn’t stay and chat, but I don’t have a manipulator anymore, so if you’ve got an escape plan I suggest we-”

A large-scale forcefield suddenly fell around them, forming a containment dome off the ground which began to compress rapidly, rendering everyone it intersected quickly and painfully unconscious, until they were all out cold.

22

Aiden came to in a small, well-lit office space, seated before a tidy desk. It was almost like being party to a regular meeting, but not really. Electric-blue arclinks physically bound him to his armrests while also impeding any imaginative means of escape.

Custodians, Aiden assumed, when a door to his left slid open. A woman entered, attired in the same apron-like armor as the attack team back at the coastal hills, but without one of their face shields, revealing long blue hair and a recognizable face.

“Juiliet-” Aiden started.

“Not the one you know,” she responded, taking her seat at the opposite side of the desk and entering some inputs on a plaque. “It’s now your turn.”

“My turn for what?” Aiden demanded.

“Your debriefing,” Juiliet began, “as follows. You are in custody of the Custodian Convention. Our mission is the protection of Unverse through processes of preservation and prevention, or the Three Ps. That includes stopping the constant assault by transdimensional travelers on the constitution of Unverse.”

Aiden blinked for a few moments, before deciding on, “Who’d you pay to write that script?”

She didn’t respond to that. “Your travel is destroying Unverse and compromising all the dimensions within in.” she said in other words.

He’d have facepalmed if his hands weren’t cuffed. “Nuh uh,” Aiden defended, with some pride. “You’re thinking of the Maelstrom guys. Our Manipulators don’t use Maelstrom anymore. It’s all Imagination now.”

“Yet you still manipulate it,” Juiliet responded. “Imagination twists and contorts all it interacts with as Maelstrom does. Now the entire multiverse is at stake, by the fault of your hubris.”

She placed the plaque on his side of the desk, where he managed to begin reading it. Controlled tests on containerized nonmatter, sealed in ethyl carbamate bladders… he thought back to the vacuum bags. They held stores of, essentially, Unverse? How that was even possible, he didn’t bother asking. …Observing injections of foreign matter, Unverse naturally nullifies foreign matter within a function of mass, innate activity, and time. But above a threshold amount of innate activity, the foreign matter resists nullification and will attempt to exist self-sustainably… “Uh huh, okay?”

“Active foreign particulate is introduced to Unverse whenever it is breached,” Juiliet said, “and it converges and coalesces into self-replicating but unsustainable dimensions, that in their destructive cycle threatens the entire multiverse. But by Unverse’s natural nullification property, if active particulate-injection is stopped by ceasing all travel, the transient dimension cycles will run themselves out of energy and the multiverse will be saved.”

“How much of this is theory and how much is fact?” Aiden asked.

“We accept the Big Bang Theory as fact,” Juiliet positioned.

“I don’t,” Aiden retorted.

She responded by taking back the plaque and tapping on it, dimming the ambient lights and activating a 3D projection between them of a sphere, rotating at a normally lazy and longitudinal velocity which Juiliet proceeded to influence with her hands. Dotted across its colorless, grid-face surface were many green and gray ellipses. By the ten digit numbers subscripting them, they were depicting distinct dimensions in Unverse.

Greens had to be active dimensions, that was pretty obvious, while grays were transient ones that must have been observed to come and go. Also shown were amorphous shapes, cloud-like, tinted blue, and overlaying some sets of dimensions, or clusters of them - connecting them in clusters.

Aether, Aiden remembered that’s what that was, as he remembered it on the diagram in Helterskelter too, which had been a flat chart. The sphericalness of this visualization made better sense, then, given that discrete measurements of dimensions were based on squangular rotation.

Then there were highly saturated red streaks running all over the visualization. That was a new addition he didn’t remember seeing on any Unverse diagram before. They directly connected dimensions both in and outside of their Aether clouds, but some streaks seemed to just swirl around in the void, too, almost aimlessly, sometimes forming termini in and of themselves.

“The damage you speak of?” Aiden guessed.

“Not quite.” A plaque input caused a spattering of yellow circles to appear on the sphere’s surface - but they weren’t randomly distributed, appearing to concentrate around the red lines and especially at their termini. “Red depicts travel,” Juiliet explained. “Yellow is damage.”

“You should swap those colors.” Aiden suggested.

Juiliet stuck a finger right at his face and through the sphere, making the entire depiction freak out. “You’re not here to be a graphics designer, man of your talents.”

“That would be traveling Unverse.” Aiden identified, shrugging in his cuffs. “Can’t say I see me doing much of that in these.”

“Exactly,” Juiliet retracted herself.

Aiden thought another moment. “Ah. You want me not traveling Unverse.”

“Preservation prohibits any unnatural alteration, as you do when traveling through Unverse by any means, which is why we must stop you.” she stated. “And when that means traveling ourselves to apprehend folks such as yourself, every breach we open is calculated to follow the path of least damage. Necessary to achieve the greater good.”

“So you just detain people from traveling Unverse?” Aiden squawked. “Good luck pulling that on the Maelstrom Dimension people. They’ve got whole armies of transdimensional Stromlings, and they’d love to stab you.”

“Detention is not our only means,” Juiliet said subtly. “Unlike Stromlings, you and your cohort can potentially be reasoned with… my team has been sitting down with each of you individually, presenting the problem, and asking-”

“You wanna recruit us,” Aiden said flatly.

“Pluralistically speaking,” Juiliet said with folded arms. “Truth be told it’s not my idea, but we follow the plan. So, on recruitment. You can work with us or stay locked up until this crisis is over. Your choice.”

Aiden laughed. “Unless your plan includes saving the transient dimensions, stopping the Maelstrom, and then developing a sustainable means of traveling Unverse that makes all of us happy, in that order, I’ll be plotting my escape, thank you.”

Juiliet turned the projector off. “Our first priority is stopping transdimensional travel, so, unfortunately for you, our priorities are not aligned.”

“Well, what about after that?” Aiden asked.

“It’s above your clearance level,” Juiliet said. “But if you voluntarily surrender your ability to travel and assist our cause, you could be involved in our long-term direction, potentially.”

Aiden allowed a moment to pretend to think about it, before asking, “Pull that projection up again, please?” She actually obliged, which was nice, and he scanned it cursorily. The projection actually rotated itself based on the movement of his eyes, which was really nice given that his hands were in jail. Then he found a green, thankfully, dimension labelled 008573.9925. There was some yellow circling it, but more interestingly there were four distinct red lines connected to it, one from the gray dimension 106834.5813, the ill-fated Helterskelter, which had to have been his approach vector; one from 0612132.6126, Flumberfluff, tracking Bridget and Leek Works’s failed rescue attempt. The three dimensions aforementioned actually drew a triangle, as he himself had gone from Flumberfluff to Helterskelter, then to 008573.9925... he needed a name for this one bad. Landonland would do.

Then the other two red travel paths connected to hubs of dimensionless red spirals that from them tendrilled out to very, very, many, many dimensions of both green and gray binarities. Those had to be the Janitor’s and Red’s travel paths, since they were frequent fliers. What was in the hubs of red, however? Secret dimensions? And how come there was no fifth red line for the Custodians’ approach and, presumed, exit vectors?

Of Landonland, Aiden pointed his chin at it. “This one’s got ten days left ‘til it’s due for collapse. The other transients, well, I actually don’t know. But say you help me permatize them, I’ll collaborate with you on your mission.”

Juiliet shook her head. “We can’t permatize the transient dimensions. They are unstable corruptions of the true realities, which, along with the rest of the multiverse, they threaten even by existing. Their forecasted destruction is part of the plan.”

“I thought just the cycling part was bad?” Aiden asked. “Specifically the collapsing part. Since every cycle brings them closer to coalescing with the permanent dimensions. So you could stop the transients’ cycles, and the threat, by permatizing them,” he pointed out.

“Any further suggestions from you are misplaced,” Juiliet cut him off, “until you make your choice. Are you with us or not?”

“You may as well put me in a cage,” Aiden said.

Juiliet stood up. “Gladly.” Then she pressed another button and the arclinks flashed brighter. Starting with his wrists, a numbness overcame his hands and spread up his arms, into his spine, and from there he felt nothing.

23

Aiden was sore and sour when he woke up in a slouch in an even smaller but much more brightly lit room, which he was not the sole occupant of. A single door appeared as the only point of gress, which was obviously locked.

“I take it you’re not joining them,” deduced the brown haired fellow from his position leaning on the wall opposite him.

Rubbing his temples, Aiden nodded. “What was your name again?”

He rolled his eyes. “Aaron Wilder. You know what else? The fact that we’re in this room together tells me they don’t have enough of them for all of us individually. We’re a group of what, six now? Me, Plue, Callie, Bridgie, you and the other two… no, that’s seven. So if there’s max two of us in a room, there’s at most four rooms. Or that’s just what they want us to think. Or I’m thinking too much into it.”

“They want us to think that they’re right and everyone else is wrong,” Aiden grumbled.

“Well screw them if that’s what they think. I think their putting us together will be their undoing,” Aaron declared. “Allow me to use you as a battering ram and I’ll get us through that door. You’d be the first one out, actually.”

“I’d rather use this head for other things,” Aiden suggested, “like, did you pick up anything interesting from your interrogator?”

“Mine came off more like a hiring manager,” Aaron said, “definitely kept the interests of this company over any of ours. Well, going so far as to unlawfully restrain us should make that obvious enough.”

“I think we’re still in Landonland,” Aiden said.

Aaron’s face took a funny look. “What?”

“Landonland,” Aiden repeated, “it’s what I’m calling this dimension, since one of the unique things about it is that there’s a guy named Landon in it. Scientifically, the rotation of its subatomic Imagination fields is zero-zero-eight… something degrees, I can’t remember the numbers.”

“008573.9925,” Aaron recited. “Thank my photographic memory.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Aiden nodded before thinking for a moment. “Remember anything else interesting on the way here?”

Aaron shook his head. “No. They knocked me out before putting me here too, and I couldn’t see out the door when they dropped you off.”

Aiden eyed the flooring, which was tiled, and the walls, which were also tiled, and the ceiling, which was also tiled. He went over to the door and tapped it for feel. It honestly did feel pretty battering worthy, although he wasn’t about to try it Aaron’s way. It had a regular lever for a handle, locked of course, and who was to say that there wasn’t a deadbolt on the other side?

But all that was fairly rudimentary.

He went back to the floor and ran a finger across it, picking it back up with a sizable coating of dust.

“They’ll accomplish whatever they can here,” Aiden said, “to minimize transdimensional maneuvering. I bet we’re still in Nimbus Station, this is probably just some local location repurposed as a field office.”

“And how at all is that supposed does that help us?” Aaron asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Aiden admitted.

“Then we should try the battering ram idea,” Aaron positioned. “Hey, if you want, I can be the ram and you can-”

The sound of a deadbolt snapping cut him off, followed by the door swinging inward. Standing on the threshold was Landon.

“Nice,” the blond man huffed. “Now you’ve both gone and gotten yourselves captured.” From the large backpack spilling over the sides of his borrowed Space Ranger suit, he produced an LW-A47 Versa and tossed it to Aaron, who was closer to him, and then another for Aiden. “Not expecting us, huh?”

Both Aiden and Aaron shook their heads.

“Us?” Aiden repeated.

“Leek Works Rescue Mission, Round 2.” Landon said, making evident his actual identity as Flumberfluff Luke. “In case of capture, Round 1 wasn’t meant to know of us. Thirty minutes is a bit long for what should’ve been an in-and-out, grab-you-and-bring-you-back sort of deal, don’t’cha thing?”

It’d only been thirty minutes? A glance at Aiden’s watch couldn’t have confirmed it since the Custodians had taken it. Shame, it was a nice watch.

“We ran into some Custodians, crazy Unverse zealots,” Aaron said, “and we’ve unwittingly been made their unwilling guests. How’d you even get in when they’ve got blocker tech?”

Luke shrugged. “IDK and IDC. Follow me.” He did a little twirl before blinking out of the immediate reality.

Exchanging a glance, Aiden and Aaron complied, willing Luke’s being into the guidance systems of their Versas to maneuver themselves out of the room. When reality immediately rematerialized around Aiden, he found himself outside a building, in a narrow alleyway, with Luke Mercury crouched in front of him, and in turn in front of Luke was an opened cable box, which he was going at with a wire stripper.

“You change clothes fast,” Aiden said.

Luke nearly jumped out of them and his skin from the startle of Aiden’s surprise appearance. “What the hell!” he yelled, once he realized who he was, and the realization was mutual, as this wasn’t Luke after all, but Landon.

“You scared me,” Landon puffed, tossing his tools to clatter on the brickwork and grabbing his hair. “With your scary gun.” he added, to preserve some dignity. “Thought you were a po-po.”

Aiden glanced down at the Versa and hefted it. “Theirs ain’t got Unverse Manipulators built in. Pretty cool, huh? I reverse engineered this baby myself.”

“Man,” Landon breathed. “I’m not even halfway through hacking into these guys’ hideout and you go and rescue yourself?”

Aiden shook his head. “It wasn’t just me. Actually, once they realize I’m not with them, I imagine they’ll show up themselves.”

“They? You enlisted other help than le moi?” Landon made a sad face.

“You probably had something to do with it,” Aiden realized. “Your hackery must have disabled the Custodians’s transdimensional blocker.”

He glanced up the building wall, and past Landon’s cover down the alley to the roadside, where familiar Nimbus Station foot and vehicle traffic was in transit. So they were still in Landonland after all. “How’d you find us anyway?”

“Just wait for him to show up,” Landon grumbled.

And then everyone else showed up in their own bright white flashes with accompanying ear pops: Luke with Aaron, Mara with Plue, Agent Sky with Bridget, and Shard with Callista.

“This everybody?!” Mara hollered.

Well, almost everyone else.

A brighter flash brought in the Janitor, holding Kate and Red up by the arms, and he unceremoniously dropped them. “Good job my fair haired friend,” he addressed Landon as the girls disorientedly picked themselves up, “I’d say this is everybody from inside Shelob’s lair, although strangely there was no Aiden to be found for some odd reason…” he trailed off at notice of the additional company that had arrived in his absence from Landon.

Aiden stepped forward. “This is everybody,” he said. The first rescue team, the second rescue team, and, yeah, technically there was a third rescue team, and of course those rescued, including some of whom had been rescuers themselves, rescued rescuers.

“I’ve been meaning to say,” Mara spoke up, “I pulled Plue out of some sort of meeting with this gray apron-wearing guy? Sooooo…”

The Custodians knew they were here, and just when that realization hit, there was a sound like a bolt of lightning from above them, as someone from somewhere above them, probably the rooftop, launched a capture net into the alleyway, the same red energy type as that which had captured them before.

Only the Janitor was ready. With a whistle he popped a cap off the end of his broomstick and a burst pattern of firecrackers erupted from the barrel, disrupting the net and letting its nodes fall ineffectively to the ground. “I do suggest,” he began, “that we all link hands and leave before they try-”

“Stop!” a voice commanded from the roadside. A line of Custodians had assembled at the end of the alleyway, forming a rather useless physical barrier, which was why the center Custodian flipped up her face shield and held her hands up placatingly. “You don’t understand what you’re about to do,” Juiliet warned.

“Juiliet Idyllia!” Shard exploded. “I knew you were evil!”

Aiden elbowed him. “That’s not our Juiliet.”

“Oh.” Shard mimed a cough. “Sorry!”

The Janitor hoisted his broomstick. “I dare you to shoot another net at us, I’ve got plenty more tricks up my sleeve!”

“Our mission is to protect Unverse!” Juiliet yelled back. “And if you all maneuver yourselves to Gods know where, from right here, right now… you can’t even fathom the first quartile damage estimate! If we had some other means to prevent you we’d do it instead, which is why I’m begging you to stop what you’re doing and do not under any circumstances breach Unverse!”

Shard suddenly grabbed Aiden’s left arm, and on his right side Landon latched on to him. “I get some idea of why we’re doing this,” the blond drawled. Holding Landon's other side was the Janitor, who gripped a resigned looking Red, who held hands with Callista, all the way around in a loop linked by the arms of Kate, Agent Sky, Aaron, Plue, Mara, Bridget, and Luke going back to Shard.

“Nah, screw you guys,” Luke said. “We’ll be leaving now.”

In the end it could have been any one of them armed with a Versa or carrying a standalone Unverse Manipulator who metaphorically pulled the trigger. Like a firing squad line with one blank, it could not be known who in that ring of transdimensional travelers was ultimately responsible for what would come.

Or it could be said that they all were. The Custodians would certainly think so.

24

Nothing happened that was immediately perceivable, at least.

Aiden was still linked between Shard and Landon, and the lot of them were still in the alleyway outside the Custodians’ field office, and the line of Custodians themselves still blocked the physical egress to the roadway, preventing that route of escape. But a physical escape shouldn’t be necessary - they had Unverse Manipulators, so they could transdimensionally maneuver away, couldn’t they?

Until they couldn’t.

“I thought their blocker was down,” Aaron contributed.

“It is down,” Luke said, detaching himself from Bridget and Shard, before teleporting himself the few meters to in front of Aaron to prove his point. “See?”

But Aaron was looking past him - everyone was, at what had appeared in Luke’s previous position. It was like an apparition, in that it was human-shaped, Luke-shaped actually. But it was a static form, both in that it didn’t move, and that it flashed and crackled in monochromatic bands of noise.

The first to react was the Janitor, who sighed. “Now I’m gonna have to clean that up.” He swung his broom in front of him, aimed at the anomaly, but suddenly angled it to face the Custodians. A high intensity discharge lashed out like lightning, overpowering the sun, and ended just as quickly with the Custodians spasming on the ground, and Shadow running for the road past them. “Follow me!”

After side-eying Luke’s perturbingly persisting after-image, Aiden and the others dashed after him. As he crossed the stunned Custodians, he heard Juiliet’s voice crack. “You have no idea what you’ve wrought,” she grated.

Aiden kept running.

They kept running, a strange lot of thirteen oddly dressed fellows, most of them with some amount of Nexus Force gear, some in Leek Works attire of various vintage, and not to mention the Janitors, until Shadow stopped and turned.

“I know what happened,” Shadow announced to the resulting pileup.

“Go ahead,” Shard replied, disentangling himself first. “Try and impress us, inferior Janitor.”

“Speak for yourself-” Shadow did a double-take upon recognizing he who addressed him. “Ah, the real inferior Janitor does dare challenge me, the superior one?” He then reached for his broom and aimed it at Shard, sending everyone behind him scattering. “Quietus totalus!”

“No, you!” Shard’s own broom swung out, intercepting whatever energy Shadow’s ejected and redirected it to the ground, where it burned all letters of the alphabet into the concrete except for U.

“Guys, what the hell?” Bridget shouted, taking a stand in front of Shard, but he waved her off, while Agent Sky jumped in front of Shadow.

“Shadow, how art thee alive!?” the knight exclaimed.

“I’ve never been more!” the Janitor agreed, unceremoniously shoving him out of the way while preparing another attack against Shard, made difficult by Bridget’s continuous darting in front of the other Janitor. “Step aside lassie, lest thou becometh subjecteth to an attack of le moi ackshually meant at the inferior Janitor! Damn you, strange man beside me, tis old speech doth be contagiouth!”

“Is this really the time or place?” Bridget hollered back.

“Yes!” Shard finally pushed past her, hoisting a massive mirror. “Hit me with all you’ve got, posterior Janitor! Or is the sight of your ugly face enough to defeat you?”

“What did you just call me-” Shadow turned his head. “Quite smashing, actually!”

Shard nodded. “Yes, that is what you are about to experience!”

“While tis not how I envisioned our reunion,” Agent Sky lamented, “at least tis a reunion nonetheless.”

“Of everyone to bring,” Aiden sidled up next to Luke and Mara, who along with the rest of their group, and a substantial sample of Nimbus Station’s foot traffic, had taken to the sidewalk to observe the street fight, “you had to bring him?”

“Which one?” Luke asked. “Crazy Janitor or Crazy Knight?”

“Either,” Aiden sighed. “I thought we talked about this.”

“Want some gum?” Mara asked.

“No thanks,” Aiden declined. “Y’know, how come the Custodians aren’t after us?”

Mara popped a bubble. “Who?”

“Those gray-apron guys,” Aiden said, looking around with Luke and Mara. It was tough to distinguish anyone specific in the assembled hubbub, which was increasing in density with the intensity of the fight between the Janitors. They were hurling projectiles in addition to insults at each other now. Even Bridget and Agent Sky seemed to have resigned themselves to non-interference, as they could no longer be seen in the duelists’ vicinity. He actually couldn’t see where they’d gone off to at all.

“I swear we had a larger group before,” Luke observed.

Was it really just the three of them left? No, Aiden spotted Kate standing alone in the assembled crowd. “Come on,” he said, leading Luke and Mara over to her. “Let’s get out of here.”

He got next to Kate, who briefly glanced at him, but like everyone else seemed oddly transfixed by the battle. Aiden managed to brush it off. “Hey,” he said. “Hey!” The Janitors themselves weren’t even that loud, and the crowd was actually strangely silent, yet it seemed difficult to get her attention.

So he grabbed her arm and pulled. She stumbled toward him, leaving behind an after-image.

Aiden gaped at it. It was monochromatic and staticky, just like Luke’s from the alleyway, when the man had done a micro transdimensional maneuver, while they were somehow unable to do a mega one. And all Kate had done was move, or more accurately be moved, since something was wrong with her - no, something was wrong with everyone here, native to this dimension.

This was not good.

“Janitors!!” Mara yelled. “Explain this!”

“They aren’t listening,” Luke said, before grabbing Aiden’s shoulder from behind. “I thought you said we’re getting out of here?”

“You two go,” Aiden said. “Get out of this dimension. I’ll round up the others.”

“Our dimension’s window is still open for another,” Luke checked his watch, “six minutes. We have time.”

“Do we?” Aiden wondered. If the others weren’t present, he could only hope they’d already maneuvered away, with the exception of Landon and Red who hadn’t been so equipped: Callista, Aaron, Plue, Bridget, and Agent Sky should have all had Unverse Manipulators. The Janitors would probably take care of getting themselves out, if they didn’t take care of themselves first. “Fine, do a quick search for stragglers, but make sure you get out.”

The Mercurys nodded and scampered off, letting Aiden turn his attention back to Kate, but she was already facing him. She’d managed to disengage from the Janitor fight herself.

“Awake now, I hope?” he asked.

Her gaze was hard, but her voice was subdued. “I think it’s happening,” she said quietly.

“What are you talking-” Aiden was about to ask, before his mouth froze.

He knew what was happening because it was happening again.

No, no, no. It was happening too fast. There was supposed to be ten days left before the dimension was due for collapse - meaning ten days, not twenty-four hours, to save it. To save Kate. To save their daughter. To save his family.

Aiden didn’t want to panic, but just thinking about it meant he was already. He held Kate with one hand, the other gripped his Versa. Work, damn it. Why wasn’t it? But even if it did, having Kate escape with him wouldn’t, Shadow had really driven that home.

Everyone other than you originated within this dimension. When it collapses, they go with it.

He hated this. Was there really no way to save her? If only he had more time. There had to be some way…

There’s nothing we can do to save her.

“I think you have to go,” Kate whispered.

But you must understand she will die whether you come with me or not.

Aiden just gripped her harder. “I won’t leave you.”

The only choice we have is whether or not you die with her.

He wouldn’t die. He’d survived a dimensional collapse before, so he wasn’t worried about himself. He didn’t look behind him even as the rushing wave of colors began to reflect in Kate’s eyes.

“Look at me.” he told her.

Stay with me.

“Remember me.” she told him.

Before the last second he pulled her in close as the dimensional energies rushed over him. Around them, the spectrum of colors became colorless, substance turned to void, Dimension to Unverse.

He was alone in Unverse.

And then…

He was cognizant of a great reaction, an outpouring of energy. Color washed over him. Void to substance. Unverse to Dimension.

Sunlight. Roadside. Green hills and trees. Sidewalk beneath his feet. He was back in Nimbus Station. There was birds and traffic and people all around, but he was still alone.

Unverse to Dimension, void to substance, but not entirely, because of the void between his arms. They dropped to his sides, empty, because Kate was gone.

25

The new Nimbus Station was fundamentally different, all the way from the atomic level, where the polarity of the Imagination fields surrounding every atom shared a discrete measure distinct from that of the dimension they replaced. Nothing was left of 008573.9925, Landonland.

Nothing except that which remained in memory, although Aiden didn’t know how long that would last either, before osmosis would set in. He didn’t like counting on someone else to rescue him, which had become a common occurrence for better or worse, although it was looking like he hadn’t much of another choice. Unverse had taken his Versa, as it had not stayed with him through the latest cycle of dimensional collapse and reformation. But even if he had it, he was now wary to use it.

Aiden didn’t like to admit it but on the matter of Unverse damage he was in over his head. It didn’t help either that those in the know, the Custodians, would have him imprisoned if he didn’t abandon his own goals.

What even were his goals?

Saving Landonland had been one, but there wasn’t much to do about that anymore. It was all gone.

There was Helterskelter Kate’s directive: find her missing daughter, whom research had revealed to have disappeared shortly after Helterskelter was formed to begin with. Given what he knew from his own experience with taking over the identity of Landonland Aiden, occurring with his presence in the formation of Landonland, it really didn’t take much to connect that Helterskelter Red… was Red, simply present in Helterskelter’s formation, as he had been in that of Landonland’s, and of the dimension that he was in now.

Red could be here too. He didn’t remember her having an Unverse Manipulator before Landonland collapsed.

Also important was figuring out how the dimension of ‘here’ even compared to its more permanent counterparts. Also as important was figuring out a way out.

It took a while on foot, including a coastal detour to confirm the existence of this dimension’s Nimbus City in the horizon of the western sea, but at last he got to 56 Unemployed Road, or more accurately what stood in its place.

Evening crickets chirped around him as he surveyed the sprawling tree farm in front of him. There was no former mall. Instead of it, and replacing the entire decrepit warehouse district surrounding it, was rows and rows of trees, fenced in almost a thousand feet across and enclosed by access gates at the main cardinal points. Through the trees and winding away from the gates, Aiden discerned the roads leading to a compact smattering of buildings, around where the mall would have been centered, that would have housed the center of Leek Works operations. Likely something was hidden underground, something large considering all of the aboveground real estate that had been cleared, planted over, and fenced in.

He approached the nearest gate’s access panel and let the biometric scanner work on his hand. Interestingly, when it was done, it flashed a green light and chirped in validation of his identity. “Welcome, Intrepid Fusion Eclipse,” intoned a synthetic voice, before the gate retracted for him to proceed.

Your security sucks, Aiden thought, making a mental note to improve the measures of his own organization when he eventually got back to it, before stepping through to the grounds of whatever institution this was. If it was Leek Works, it was certainly much nicer than any version of it he’d visited so far, at least in the grounds. His Leek Works didn’t have anything for a yard. It didn’t really matter though. All that mattered was that this one had the means to breach Unverse too.

The road led him to the first building, which appeared active by its activated interior illumination, albeit glowing nondescriptly through the privacy treated windows. The front doors unlocked as easily as the front gate, allowing him continued ingress to the lobby. It was a clean but unoccupied space, and well-furnished and decorated.

The first thing that caught his eye was set atop one of the coffee tables, a moderately sized glass prism twice as long as it was wide, with a set of buttons and small screens embedded in its brushed-aluminum base. It wasn’t exactly like the Unverse Spherometers he’d seen before, but it was close. Crouching in front of it, he hovered a finger over the buttons, wondering how to get it to work.

“Hey, do me a favor and turn the heat up, will ya?” someone with a high-pitched voice squeaked from nearby.

Aiden looked up around the prism, then behind him, before doing an about face. He could see no one else in the room to have spoken to him, yet he’d definitely heard a voice-

“I’m talking to you, fuzzy-face.” the voice continued. “The controls are literally right in front of you. Heat. Up. Please. I’m freezing my tailfins off in here.”

Tailfins… in here… oh. Crouching back down, Aiden refocused his eyes from the prism glass to within the glass. It was filled with water, and what he’d assumed were electrodes for generating measurable Imagination fields were clearly marked with the words “Oxygen Level” and “pH Level,” among other water quality parameters. And darting between the devices was a small gray fish.

The Spherometer was an aquarium.

“GIVE ME HEAT!” the phantom voice screamed, prompting Aiden to cover his ears.

“Who the hell is talking,” Aiden hissed, giving the room another once over before looking back at the fish. “It ain’t you, is it?”

“We live in a society with sentient talking spiders, dragons, and dinosaurs,” the voice replied, “yet a talking guppy is strange to you?”

The fish’s mouth had been moving with the words and stopped when the sentence did.

“Yeah,” Aiden agreed, “you’re strange.”

“Wow,” the self-identified guppy clicked disapprovingly, “that is so ignorant of you to say. But I am more offended by the fact that this tank is the temperature of the Arctic Ocean, and that you are content to leave me to suffer in it!”

Aiden returned to the controls. “What temp do you want?”

“Between 297 and 300.” the guppy replied. “It’s in kelvin.”

Aiden found a button labelled temp and pressed it, causing one of the little screens to display a set of digits. “It’s at 272 now.”

“THEN RAISE IT!” the guppy wailed, and Aiden obliged, at least to shut him up, although as he thought about it, decreasing the temperature would probably be more effective for that.

He set it to 298 and watched as the guppy went back to darting around the prism, hopefully contentedly. “Better?” Aiden asked.

“Yup!” the guppy replied.

“Favor me in return,” Aiden suggested, “where’s the transdimensional department?”

It was somehow aquatically possible for the guppy to groan, which it did. “Dude, there’s wayfinders all over this campus, use one of them.”

Mentally facepalming, Aiden wondered why he hadn’t thought of that himself. Spotting the as-mentioned signage by the door through which he’d entered, he found directions for Headquarters (this building), Engineering (to the left), Brickology (whatever that was, and to the right), and Sir Talmid’s Castle (onward, and at which Aiden whistled).

As much as he wanted to check out a castle under his family name, or define whatever Brickology meant, he figured his best bet for pursuing transdimensional travel would be found in Engineering.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he requested before leaving, “what is this the headquarters of?”

“Do you think I’m as idiotic as you?” the guppy retorted. “Is this some kind of trick question? You tryna rename the place?”

Aiden shook his head. “Nah, Leek Works is fine.”

“What?” the guppy squawked. “Leet works? Is that some kind of fart?”

“No, what… never mind.” Rubbing his forehead, Aiden shut the door on the talking fish and took a deep breath. The outside air and chirping of crickets sort of helped, but also not. He wondered if side effects of transdimensional osmosis included crazy, because he certainly felt without a grip on his life. Maybe this dimension’s Aiden was crazy. Or maybe craziness was just a side effect of his regular lifestyle anyway. He’d gone from world hopping to dimension hopping, from killing Stromlings to killing transdimensional Stromlings, or killing in general, or even getting killed himself a few times… he sure had an interesting life. He should write a book about it someday, or maybe a few.

Yep, Aiden thought, I’m osmosing. He’d never written anything in his true life. Even texting was a burden. Writing a book was definitely far out there.

A figure in a hooded cloak suddenly fell from the sky to land on the road in front of him, and announced with bravado, “Aha! I hath found thee!” He withdrew the cloak from his head, revealing the gray-haired and bearded visage of an aged man.

“And you are?” Aiden asked.

“It is I, Wizard on, the peculiar enchanter, the last of those closest to the founders to remain active on these sacred grounds!” responded the man. “Or at least, that is what they know me as here, as that is who I am here! You knew me previously as the Janitor - but let me assure you I am still him as well! He is me! Not to be confused with that imposter, the inferior one, who shall not be named! Some even call him No Name!”

Aiden blinked. He could sort of see the resemblance to the much younger man’s face… “Shadow?” he guessed correctly, since the old man nodded vigorously. “What the hell happened to you?”

The Janitor swirled his cloak before him, obscuring his face for the moment it took to seamlessly transform back into that of his Janitor-dimension self. “Osmosis, my boy!”

“How’d you…” Aiden thought back for a moment, before settling on his word choice. “How’d you snap out of it? When I experienced osmosis last, like, really experienced it, I was experiencing it. As in I really thought I was from the new dimension.”

“He had help,” a woman explained matter-of-factly from Aiden’s side. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find the Janitor’s companion, the blond-haired, green-eyed woman with the Inventor-like power suit, all gears and sprockets and whatnot, and of course the F in the center of her chest. “This isn’t the first time he’s done this.”

Naturally. Aiden thought he’d heard her name before, maybe in passing. “I think I’ve heard your name before,” he broached, “maybe in passing. What was it?”

She nodded. “That’s me.”

Aiden blinked. “What?”

She looked at him funny. “Yes? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Why are you looking at me- you know what, never mind.” Aiden rubbed his chin to hide his face. “Forget I asked.”

“You’re a strange one,” she said.

They were distracted by the Janitor’s laughing as he stretched his arms to the sky, which had taken a brighter hue of dawn. “Power!” he crowed as the birds began to erupt in song, replacing the crickets, only for the sky to darken again and the crickets to resume. “Unlimited power!”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Janitor, stop rotating the planet chunk, we have work to do.”

“Know your place, assistant. You will address me as Enchanter!” Lightning struck the ground around them to accentuate his point, although from their perspective it was like being hit with a flash bang. “My will be done!”

Until the woman felled him at the knees with his own broomstick. “The dimensional lifecycle has accelerated!” she barked at his crippled form. “What should take eleven days now occurs in one! Soon one of these wayward transients will merge with one of the outstanding realities! It could even be yours, and if that happens you’re done for!”

That got the Janitor’s attention as he jumped back to his feet. “Neverrrr!” he roared, swishing his cloak angrily. “Whatever doth thou hath me do?!”

“See,” the woman smirked to Aiden, “he can be reasoned with. I have a theory for how to save us all, but it needs more testing. Janitor and I will pursue one vector, you will follow another.”

“I’m being conscripted,” Aiden repeated.

“Assigned,” she translated. “I want you to find Rowana and question her. Find out what she knows about dimensional formation.”

“Oh jeez,” Aiden shook his head in protest, “not this again.”

He looked up when she grabbed his hand forcefully to let go just as quickly, leaving an Unverse Manipulator in it. “This will help,” she instructed, “but make only small jumps. The barriers are weaker now.”

“Tell me about it,” Aiden agreed.

She shook her head. “No time. Gotta go. Come on, Janitor. Let’s go get the others.”

She jumped back from Aiden to hold the Janitor’s arm now, and in a burst of light they were both gone as spontaneously as they’d appeared. The only material evidence to their strange visit was the black box resting in Aiden’s hand, which he wrapped his fingers around tightly.

He could try going to Flumberfluff with it. It was very tempting to try, even if he was unlikely to succeed, because if he did succeed to return home, he didn’t think he’d want to leave it.

So he continued the mission.

26

The new Nimbus Station was more distinct than Aiden had given the dimension credit for at first glance. A differentiating factor was the night life. It was louder, busier, more electrical. Neon lights bedazzled the street signs. Red Blocks played something pitchy, percussive, synthetic. People danced in the streets to it, somehow.

To his chagrin Aiden found a skip in his steps too.

It was becoming familiar to him, as if he’d been part of the scene for years - it had been going on for years, if the new memories of the new history served him right. The Maelstrom War was history in this dimension, beat several years ago, New Year’s 3025 to be exact. A point of differentiation from both Teenyweeny and Flumberfluff timelines, where the war ended later or was yet to respectively. But here in the Fun Party Dimension, year-end holiday celebrations compounded with war-end victory celebrations to form a perpetual energy.

Twenty years later, as 3045 was the present year in this timeline, and fourteen years advanced from Flumberfluff’s present day, the party train was running strong with no signs of stopping, dimensional collapse notwithstanding.

Right, right. Get to Red and get her knowledge. Specifically, about dimensional formation. But he could go beyond that… if he could get to her first, of course. Getting through the throng of people was easy enough, he had an Unverse Manipulator after all. It was getting through to her that had him questioning the FFFFF Team’s choice in sending him. He mentally hefted the Manipulator, when a sharply dressed man passing before him gave him pause. The notice was mutual, as the man too regarded Aiden.

“I thought you didn’t like parties, nephew.” Tiberius commented.

“You’re here too,” Aiden responded, somewhat incredulously. Confusion passed, and this had to be a new Tiberius, since Flumberfluff Tiberius was dead, and Teenyweeny Tiberius was an older fellow, although osmosis could have reverted his appearance, if he’d actually come for some reason. It wasn’t in his character, though.

This Tiberius shrugged after a sip of his cocktail. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Me too,” Aiden reciprocated.

Tiberius chucked the glass behind him where it presumably shattered, although it could not be heard in the hubbub. “Could it be each other?” he asked.

Did he not even know who he was looking for? At least in Aiden’s case, it wasn’t Tiberius. “Nah,” Aiden answered. “What’s your story?”

Tiberius made a face before suggesting, “May I silently tag along? I desire time to collect my thoughts, while I also wish not to delay you on your quest, whatever it may be, in formulating an answer to your question.”

The man was right, Aiden had allowed himself enough dilly-dallying, yet he was still curious about Tiberius’s presence and would like to learn more of it, so he extended a hand which Tiberius accepted. “This may make you sick,” he warned, before putting Red in the Manipulator’s sight.

They may have maneuvered all of a hundred meters across Nimbus Plaza, since the same tunes from Red Blocks played, just from a different cardinal direction now, out past the trellis fence of the small patio they’d landed into, which a quick observation defined as the outdoor section of one of the Plaza’s bar and diners, a space at present occupied only by Aiden, Tiberius, and the redheaded girl aiming a gun at them.

She stowed it so quickly it was like it hadn’t been there. “Grats,” Red said, bringing her hands back with a different device, it was small and narrow with a shiny top that she flipped open and held to her face. With a flick of her thumb the exposed mechanisms sparked, setting aglow a roll of paper held in her lips.

“You found me,” she congratulated, before a sharp cough launched the paper clear across the patio in a puff of smoke.

“Preferably alive,” Tiberius quipped, “right nephew?”

“Right, yeah,” Aiden agreed, confused again.

“I’m fine,” Red grated, before releasing another fit of coughs. “I swear.”

“Then cease you self-immolation,” Tiberius said, taking a step toward the girl. “Suicide is never the answer.”

Two things stopped him, first was Aiden holding him back, and second was the return of Red’s weapon.

“Go get a drink,” Aiden suggested, pressuring the man to the venue’s interior, which Tiberius grumpily obliged. “For real,” he directed to Red, not ignoring the business end of the gun still facing his general direction, “I’m curious, what’s up with the smoke?”

“Some vice from off-world,” Red dismissed. “Now what do you really want?”

“A seat,” Aiden said, taking the one nearest him and resting his arms on the table. “It’s the Quintuple F Team who wants information out of you. I’m just their messenger.”

Red leaned back against her nearest trellis, thankfully letting the gun face the floor while she reached for another vice to grip in her teeth. “I’ve nothing for them,” she spoke around it. “Maybe I could, in exchange for a breacher.”

“Maybe I could broker that,” Aiden responded as she lit up this vice as well. He waited for her to start coughing, but she seemed to have this one under control. A haze of smoke drifted lazily from her mouth into the air above. “What’s your business in the transdimensional frontier?”

“Saving the multiverse,” she said innocently enough.

“Aren’t we all,” Aiden drawled. “Janitor and Co’s convinced you’ve something to do with dimensional formation, or that you know something of it at the very least.”

Red blew out another cloud. “Nothing we don’t all know already,” she contested. “Don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?” Aiden requested clarification.

“You know about his personal dimension,” Red said. “My dad’s.”

“Oh.” Aiden nodded, then again at the recollection. “Right. It’s supported by this Nexus Shard thing, ghost included, and injected with a backup of his creative spark, along with hardcoded programming to control the environment and access to it. Nothing like the transient dimensions we’re dealing with now.”

Now Red stared at him questioningly. “Ghost?”

Aiden leaned back. “This is an information exchange,” he relayed. “If I answer that, you agree-”

“No, I refuse,” Red countered. “Forget it.” She moved to light another paper.

“All you do is refuse,” Aiden went on the attack, “communication, outreach, help. All I want to do is help you.”

“Really,” Red objected fast, too fast, since she choked into a coughing spasm immediately after.

“May I?” Aiden asked, standing up to maybe give her a hand, pat her back, but she waved him away.

“I’m fine,” she repeated roughly.

“You sound like you’re dying,” Aiden said. “Like you’re…” He recalled Tiberius’s term and changed his tone. “You should stop self-immolating yourself.”

“I’m not doing that,” Red denied, tossing the lit roll to the ground and watching it burn out.

Aiden followed the path back to her dark eyes. “You’re different,” he said. Of course she wasn’t physically the same as two and a half years prior, she certainly didn’t look it. People could age a lot in that time, as she exhibited. They could also change in other ways. “You’re not taking care of yourself.”

Resilient and versatile as they were, her old Leek Works coat, for it could be nothing else despite the insignia being torn off, showed in its rips and burns wherever she’d historically taken bruise or injury herself. And there were many such blemishes on the garment. As for her person, the only part exposed he could inspect was her head, neck, maybe some more until she caught him staring.

“It’s rude to judge anything off a woman’s appearance,” Red criticized.

“It’s not like I’ve got more to go by,” Aiden defended. “You don’t talk to me, you ignore me- you have ignored me, and my organization, and the Nexus Force, and our collective efforts to reach out to you for the past nearly three years.”

Red exhaled loudly, thankfully without any visible smoke this time, although her words were fiery enough. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she admitted, “but you’ve admitted it yourself. You’re obsessed with me.”

Aiden shrugged. “Call it that if you want. You’re the only family I have left who I can possibly help. Alex aside, he’s doing well - everyone else is dead or good as. All’s left is you.”

“We’re not family,” Red shook her head. “Even if you look like my dad. Osmosis’s done a number on you.” Maybe that was why she was avoiding facing him. 3045 was a lot closer to 3048 than 3031.

Aiden had suspected that, but he pressed on. “I have his memories,” he revealed.

“Good,” Red folded her arms. “So you know why I can’t stand him.”

“I have his creative spark,” Aiden doubled down. “It saved my life. He saved me, just like he saved you.”

“I’m supposed to be impressed?” Red challenged. “He was always going to get himself killed, running straight into danger, never caring about what would happen to him or those around him. Our own Maelstrom War didn’t kill him, so he had to go start it up with another dimension’s. Transdimensional maneuvering and research into other realms is why he died, and it’s only fitting. It’s why so many people died. It’s why Kate died.”

“Okay,” Aiden said, “and you’re the same way, dimension hopping left and right, over and over again, no idea what you’ll wind up in until you’re in the thick of it. Getting stuck in the Janitor’s net is one of the better possibilities, keep it up and you’ll get yourself killed one day too. All the while you’re screwing the constitution of Unverse and putting all our dimensions in jeopardy. I’ve seen the path of your travel, it’s a death spiral. Don’t act like this isn’t some dangerous game we’re playing. You’re just like him too, risky, risking yourself, and everyone else.”

“No,” Red snapped. “First off, my particulate-footprint in Unverse is insignificant. Second, he orphaned me, his daughter, the only one left to care about him after getting Kate killed. The difference between him and me is now I can get killed and there’s no one left behind to care that I’m gone.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t count,” Red said flatly.

“I care,” he declared anyway.

“You shouldn’t,” she stated, “because you’re not my dad, and I’ll never be your daughter.”

27

“I have seen why you have selected this location,” Tiberius said, setting down a tray of three narrow beverages on the table closest to the midpoint between Aiden and Red, where he helped himself to a seat and a glass. “Take for yourselves, please, and join me in a toast to our family.”

Red eyed Tiberius. “You said they were all dead,” she said to Aiden. “Except for Alex. Who this isn’t.”

“No duh,” Aiden accepted a glass from Tiberius, clinked it on his uncle’s, and took a sip. It felt flat, unfortunately, like it was nothing special after any try other than the sporadic first. Another dimension, another alcoholic Intrepid.

“Ah, but you know me, dearest Rowana,” Tiberius addressed.

Red still faced Aiden. “So he’s supposed to be dead,” she said.

“Yeah,” Aiden said. “He is.”

“It goes both ways, nephew. How’s that statement go,” Tiberius mused, “oh yes, this is it truly, the report of my death was an exaggeration.”

Aiden choked on his beverage. “What-” he stared at the man hard. “You’re actually him?”

Red’s expression of contempt faltered but not in a good way, as if to say his security sucked. “You didn’t vet him?” she hissed. “You still haven’t.”

Tiberius waved her off. “It’s all me, and then some,” he told Aiden. “Some sacrifice was necessary, for better or worse, as I’ll explain, but perhaps I need not to you, as you’ve already done this thing yourself, merging creative sparks, joining souls. Or in another word, one we’ve suddenly begun to hear so very frequently, osmosis.”

“I’m not sure they’re necessarily the same phenomena,” Aiden questioned.

“They’re not,” Red disclaimed.

Tiberius shrugged. “Well, it’s all supernatural to me. So yes, going back to reports of my death, which were exaggerated - my assailant so happened to have dispatched a version of me prior, and stowed his creative spark within his own suit.”

Aiden recognized the description. “The Song Stealer,” he shivered.

“But at the time of my assault,” Tiberius continued, “I had just been thinking of the feat you pulled off to save yourself, and I was able to connect with that other-me’s soul and overpower he who attacked us! Now, here I am, alive.”

“Why?” Red asked.

“That, I am still trying to figure out,” Tiberius said, resting the side of his head against his propped up hand. “Call it short term memory loss, hopefully.”

“Convenient,” Red muttered. She tapped a finger on the barrel of her weapon. It still faced the ground, for now.

“Now, now,” Tiberius sat up, “don’t be brash, while I return words back to the subject of our family, and what I discovered to be the reason for Rowana here’s selection of this specific locale.” He turned to Aiden. “She is here.”

“She,” Aiden repeated.

“Her counterpart,” Tiberius said in other words.

Aiden blinked. “What? I osmosed into mine. How’s it fair she gets one and I don’t?”

“Because I don’t,” Red objected. “He’s wrong.”

“Only partly, I’ll admit,” Tiberius acquiesced. “Although perhaps of greater importance, her mother is here, as well. A widow, for better or worse. Follow me.”

Great, another Kate. Aiden finished the glass and with nothing else to do, followed Tiberius. He heard Red’s chair scrape from her ascent as well.

The bar and diner’s interior was cozy enough, dressed up in a saloon-style and probably constructed like one. Unlike the patio section, there were more fellows present indoors, some at the bar, some at the tables, many watching the live video broadcasts on the mounted plaques if not staring at the wood floor in stupor. The other exceptions were Tiberius, who returned to the bar for another round of alcoholic beverages, and the bartenders who obliged to serve him. One of them was Kate.

The sight of her, even in her new, older self, brought a mixture of feelings to Aiden, most of them unpleasant. He’d failed her before, over and over again, every version of her that he remembered, which had amounted to a few. Teenyweeny Kate was dead. Flumberfluff Kate was missing. Helterskelter Kate was evanesced. Same for Landonland Kate.

And that would be the fate of this Kate as well. The Janitor was right, there was no way to save those of the transient dimensions. Attaching himself to them was counterproductive.

Yet he also saw the expression on Kate’s face, when her sight in turn landed on him. She wore a mixture of emotions just as potent and real as any person deserving of his soldierly protection from untimely demise. And he understood those emotions personally, since he’d osmosed into a person in whose history was responsible for much of them.

Before he could get closer, she approached him first with a small but wary smile. “This is hardly a family-family establishment, Fusion, you know better. On the tab?”

Aiden exhaled his anxiety, preparing to dispel any predicted interest in hitting the bottle.

“We’re not family,” Red spoke first.

“Please excuse me,” Kate nodded. “You look young enough to be his daughter.”

Tiberius, who had returned from the bar, snorted. “That’s not a compliment, don’t accept it. As of a matter of fact, that’s pretty terrible.”

“And you are?” Kate turned to him.

“The uncle, great in parenthesis,” Tiberius said.

“No he’s not,” Red refuted, before yanking Aiden roughly to the ground. A glass shattered behind them.

“Quiet, you lot!” one of the patrons bellowed. While they got back to their feet, Kate smiled apologetically and ducked aside for a dustpan. Tiberius, who hadn’t even flinched, merely flicked some dust off his lapel.

“Thanks,” Aiden mouthed.

Red shrugged.

“Lively bunch like us, I suggest we return outside,” Tiberius proposed, moving for the patio when Kate swept in front of him.

“Use that door,” Kate directed to the primary entrance, “if you’re not getting drinks.”

“You’re kicking me out for going straight-edge?” Aiden protested, dodging the broom darting at his boots.

“That’ll be the day, but right now you’re hurting the business,” Kate feigned nonchalance. “And my girl, who has secondary in the morning, appreciates a quiet downstairs.”

Tiberius spun on his heel. “That’s her,” he proclaimed. “The counterpart, the one we seek.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”

“He’s not himself,” Red excused. “He knows not what he speaks.”

Glancing at Aiden but only for a second to keep her eyes on Tiberius, Kate quipped, “You bring strange bedfellows, Fusion.”

“Tell me about it,” Aiden sighed, when Red picked up his arm.

“We’ll be leaving now,” she said curtly, pulling Aiden toward the door, with Tiberius in tow. As she manhandled him, he felt the mental tug of his Unverse Manipulator energizing.

He shoved back, not enough to get her off him but it broke the connection. “Oh no you don’t,” he snapped.

“Chin up,” Red held the door open and led them out. “You’d have come too.”

Aiden spun her grip off his arm. “The Manipulator’s mine, and sorry not sorry, so’s this.” He held up her sidearm in his other hand.

“You’ll shoot me?” Red asked. “Here? Again?”

“Again?” he repeated. “I haven’t-”

“Be consistent,” she interrupted. “I’m making a point. I’m not personally offended, you did what you had to do, killing my D-NS-2-M counterpart. Just if we’re different persons across dimensions, you and I are not related.”

Aiden slapped his arms on his sides. “Fine. Then why are you avoiding me, because I look like him? As you said, we’re different people, he and I.”

To her credit, Red studied him a moment, to an indicatedly unchanged conclusion. “I know your type. I don’t want to work with it.”

Aiden sniffed. “That’s very prejudiced.”

Red shrugged again. “Makes two of us.”

“Not so different, are we?” Aiden pointed out. “You see elements of me in yourself and you hate it. You hate yourself.”

“The parts from you only,” Red shot back.

“Which is most of it, ain’t it,” Aiden continued. “It’d be different if Kate lived, the environment you grew up in - you’d be different. But just Kate ain’t enough, you want both of us. Your dad would be different too, better for you. That’s what you’re looking for, in all these dimensions, isn’t it? The one possibility where everything goes right?”

She regarded him guardedly. “It’s a possibility.”

“Haven’t found it yet?” Aiden deduced.

“It makes no difference,” Red brushed it aside, but despite facing him eye to eye, he was unconvinced. “The multiverse is in danger and my goal is saving it-”

“And pardon my interruption,” Aiden cut in, “but what’ve you done for that?” He stared her back, which she returned in equal silence. Honestly if she turned and ran off again, he’d probably just go back to the Janitor and the FFFFF Team and carry through with whatever plan they came up with. He was tired of chasing hopes, following dreams, pursuing fantasy, it didn’t work and never would-

“A lot,” Red responded, reaching for her coat’s inside pockets.

Aiden steeled himself, grips mental and physical on both Manipulator and pistol, ready to flight or fight the potential confrontation.

But her hand returned with a metal box. It was small and square, with a bright red label of the high volatility variety covering the top face. She unlatched and opened it, exposing a glowing blue gemstone nested in metallic strips of insulation. Now separated, they served only to reflect its eminent energy outward.

Even incidentally, Aiden felt its radiant energy overwhelmingly, like a warm hand caressing his being from the inside out. “What is that?” his voice sounded underwater, submerged in the energy, while memories from another self answered the question anyway. “That’s a Nexus Spark.”

“From a Nexus Figure,” appended another voice from behind Aiden, familiar sounding but also crackly, as if behind a filter.

Standing in the venue doors stood a man clad helmet to sabatons in a light gray full body suit. With some yellow and blue accents, the suit was vaguely Sentinel, but its wearer was recognizably evil by his semi-crystalized face sneering through the opened visor, and the juvenile girl he held stiffly in the crook of his left arm, a purple dagger in his right hand- actually, in place of his right hand, centimeters from her neck.

“The Spark,” the Song Stealer said pointedly, “give it to me, or the girl is dead.”