Tertiary Positioning

<infobox>

 <title source="title1">
   <default>Tertiary Positioning</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

Chapter 1: Prelude

In the square confines of a small townhouse second floor bedroom, adjacent pairs of drawn curtains filtered the already waning sunlight of the late summer sunset to a dull orange glow, dimly illuminating the girl perched on a twin size bed with her legs crossed and eyes closed to the outside world, keeping her thoughts in. Internal lighting was already low, and timed to dim completely once night fell, to ease concurrent sleep, typical for a week night. But she only planned to rest those few hours that remained in which both she and company remained awake. Under cover of darkness, once her father, his wife, and Ben lay retired and none the wiser to undercover schemes – maybe not Ben, but he could keep secrets – she would disappear.

When she opened her eyes again, she was taken aback to see the lighting had changed. No more orange sunlight glowed through the squares of her adjacent window frames, replaced by the opaque black of predawn. The only illumination now came from her holographic timepiece, ravaging her eyes with its ghostly blue hue as she tried to squint into focus the numbers floating over her desk. She tilted her head, as they initially appeared sideways, because she’d tipped over in her sleep: 1:05 AM, thirteenth of August, in the year 3048. As well, a smaller number accompanied by a red priority mark indicated she had a few new messages to read, which she postponed for the moment.

Like her escape plan, she kept her exasperation to herself as she removed her pea coat from her desk chair, soundlessly slipped it on, and climbed onto the desk. From there she slid open the already unlocked window on its regularly greased tracks. As quickly as silence allowed, without touching its frame, she transferred her weight out the window onto the split in the trunk of the sturdy oak conveniently located on the townhouse’s southwest face. After sliding the window back down, her hand and boot grips facilitated a short shimmy downward before jumping became quietly landable, except for a sudden scrabbling when she touched the ground, probably from a small nocturnal critter.

She was out and within minutes of following the road, townhouses turned to industrial centers and office structures. She read her messages in the interim, some unwarranted taunts about her personality from her cousins, as expected from them, and nothing of importance regardless. At a private parking lot, she authorized her entry by keycard and unlocked her motor bike. At ten kilometers and ten minutes away, she needed to make up the time lost by oversleeping to keep her intended meeting. She cursed her ineptitude at sleep avoidance now as she ran the motor bike and raced for the lot exit. Time and place were decided nonsequentially and shared by word of mouth at each prior one’s conclusion. She and her contact agreed to keep their meetings off the books. At the speed she tore the bike down Nimbus City’s dark streets, she’d be lucky not to get booked herself.

This morning’s meeting was at 1:30 atop an abandoned apartment tower, in the center of Old Nimbus City, also known as the exclusion zone. Prior to meeting her contact, she’d never felt trepidation at the city’s unspoken story, but now, racing her motor bike toward the nearest checkpoint, she became aware of her underlying dread. The towering barriers erected around the exclusion zone kept more than the city’s tragedy tucked away in permanent memoriam.

For its importance to Research Into Other Realms, the governmental project she interned for, she knew that fourteen years and a month prior, the Maelstrom, the historical enemy of the Nexus Republic, had attacked from another dimension, transforming the center of the city into the wasteland it was now. Appropriately, her understanding of the city had been strictly professional, but the last meeting with her contact had changed that. No one had told her that the woman who nursed her, raised her, cherished her accomplishments, and redirected her mistakes was not her birth mother, until her contact did. No one had told her that fifteen years ago, Old Nimbus City had been the site of her real mother’s death, until her contact did, and she knew he had more to tell.

Dread boiled to anticipation in her stomach as the checkpoint to the old city approached fast. With its guard booth unmanned at this time of night, she opted to jump the gate arm, pulling the bike onto its drive wheel then throwing her weight forward as the front of the bike entered the space above the gate, while the rest of the bike caught on the gate’s arm with enough forward momentum to slide on it, but decelerating faster than her grip on the bike could handle, launching her farther and faster through the air on a trajectory to streak the road when a flash of light replaced the blur of motion, surrounding her for only an instant before all her physical senses were turned off. She had no sight, not of light or darkness or anything in between, nor sound, touch, taste, or smell, but a moment seemed to pass before her senses returned and she was falling again, but vertically and only like she’d just been dropped, this time facing upward, and her back thudded on the ground relatively softly.

From the change in scenery, she knew she was no longer at street level. Streetlights and highrises were absent, only the stars and worlds in the night sky were apparent before she propped herself into a sitting position. The small expanse of the parapeted rooftop she’d been transported to was clear except for a fallen water tower, two access structures at opposite corners, and a tall man in full body armor, matte gray with indigo ascents. He stood looking over the nearest ledge at the cityscape, shaking his head.

“I didn’t expect you to be an idiot.” His voice was modulated and filtered behind his helmet, fully obscuring his face behind a dark visor. “I was wrong.”

She got to her feet with some chagrin at his words and curiosity at her new placement. “Was that a teleporter?”

“Effectively, but a transdimensional drive does more than that. And don’t take my rescuing you for granted,” her contact warned, turning to face and raising a gloved finger her direction. “I’m not in the business of saving lives, I’m just less interested in seeing you be a meat crayon.”

He was in a condescending mood tonight, she figured, and fixed her eyes on where she pictured his were, behind the opaque shield of his visor. “Because you knew my mom.”

He didn’t dispute the connection, so she pushed. “I want to know more about Kate.”

He turned back to the ledge, resting his hands on the parapet and looking downward. “She was more than a friend.”

The girl followed to an adjacent but distant position. They were where he’d told her the meeting would be, overlooking the ruins of Old Nimbus City below. He couldn’t look more wistful without showing his face.

“I met her twenty-three years ago. We were connected by powers above our control. We were complements, but also constraints. If I was lightning, she was the rod. Without her, I’m without control, as I was the first time we parted. Now, it’s permanent. But it doesn’t need to be.”

They shared a look, on her face, curious, on the mask of his helmet, blank.

“What should I call you?” she asked.

“I wish to trust you further before I will offer suggestions,” he responded fairly.

“Then I’ll call you Indigo,” the girl decided, based on his armor.

The man nodded. “And I shall call you Red.”

Like everyone else, she thought.

Perhaps a reflection on her own wistfulness, the girl asked, “Am I your daughter?”

His head tipped slightly. “No, you’re his, for better or worse.”

She wondered what that meant. “For better or worse,” she repeated. Even from herself, she didn’t know yet. “I still haven’t told them that I know, that all my life’s been a lie that they’ve told.”

“I wouldn’t need you to keep me out when you do. What’s important is you believed me,” the man stated.

“I’ve confirmed what I’ve needed,” the girl responded. “Mara is not my mother, Kate is, and she was killed. What remains is, what do you want from me?”

“Mutual trust, curiosity, and willingness to think outside the box, challenge what you think you know, and create things you may never have realized you wanted. In that regard, I believe we may have common goals.”

“You’re thinking about dimensions,” she inferred.

“Within that subject.” The helmet nodded. She wished she could see his face. “Research Into Other Realms hasn’t covered the origin of dimensions,” the man expressed, “because they don’t know it.”

“But you want to,” she stated. “You want to know how to create a dimension. Interesting.”

“We understand each other,” he observed.

“Maybe. I’m good at reading people. Better if you show me your face,” she challenged.

“Tell me, if you could create a perfect dimension, what would you want in it?” the man asked.

“My mom.”

“As do I.” Charles took off his helmet. “Let’s get to work.”

Chapter 2: Present

Bridget Marcus tapped under the word Macabross printed on a whiteboard tacked to the unfinished plaster that was Leek Works’ war wall. “Sounds macabre,” she said, turning to her companion, Juiliet Idyllia, currently obscured beneath the largely opaque wrap of a shower-curtain.

“Finish screening for bugs,” was Juiliet’s muffled reply.

“Right.” Bridget looked around and remembered her task, including that she’d already completed it. “The room’s all clear of bugs.”

“And cameras?” Juiliet’s blue-haired head poked out from the curtain.

“No cameras,” Bridget said, and Juiliet hurled the curtain to a corner to settle with the other junk on the concrete floor. The entire room was largely gray, aesthetically unfinished but well-lit by hanging lamps. It was currently a multipurpose room, including for storage.

“Macabre is accurate,” Juiliet affirmed. “Macabross is an exoplanet in orbit of an artificial star, used as a prison planet by the Future Dimension. But, it’s also the only planet in its own mini-dimension. Pretty much purgatory.”

“And that’s where the girl, Rowana, was brought to.” Bridget ran a finger under the word. “Macabross.”

“The quantity and volume of classified intel Aiden tells you never ceases to amaze me.” Juiliet shook her head. “He can agree to my other security proposals, like checking for surveillance and counter surveillance. But keeping his mouth shut?” Her disapproving frown was all the answer.

“Well, it’s not like the others are better,” Bridget offered. “Especially the Sojourners, always working in that they’re not from around here. This is going to sound harsh, but it’s no wonder to me the Janitor went missing.”

Juiliet glared. “The amount of classified intel...” she trailed off. “You weren’t even with us when that happened.”

“Well I’m here now, and that’s what matters.” Bridget said brightly. “So, about Macabross, we’re getting Red back from there?”

Juiliet gave the room a once-over herself, before correcting the girl. “We as an organization. I personally won’t vouch for either of our positions on the roster.”

As she finished her sentence, the room lights dimmed and a sitewide alarm sounded, but only for a second. The lights returned to normal and on the empty wall opposing the whiteboard, two bright blue sparks appeared on the wall halfway between the ceiling and floor, etching up and down in parallel lines the height of a doorway before angling toward each other, completing the door.

The outlined section of wall rotated inward on one side, swinging into the room, and out of the new doorway stepped three young men, Aiden Talmid, Luke Mercury, and Alex Talmid. As Alex’s legs gave away, Aiden and Luke grabbed his shoulders and Bridget sprang to his side as well, looking between the brothers while extending a hand to help ease him to the ground. “Is he alright?”

“This is normal,” Luke said. “So far, four-fifths of all first-timers experienced what he’s feeling.”

“I feel like I’m dying,” Alex groaned.

“Hang on, it’ll pass.” assured Luke.

“’First-timers’?” Bridget questioned.

“We just transdimensionally maneuvered,” Aiden stated. “This was Alex’s first time, and he’s with the susceptible ones. When we escaped Jirdia, four of us were first-timers, three of whom were similarly sick on landing.”

“It was the pukening.” Luke said.

Bridget sent a horrified glance Aiden’s way. “Who didn’t get sick?” she asked.

Looking around the room, Luke’s eyes settled on Juiliet, still working on the lockbox as if she were pretending not to listen. “Not her. She got sick.”

“That’s the opposite of what she asked,” Alex said through clenched teeth.

“By the way,” Aiden turned to Bridget, glanced behind her at Juliet, then back to Bridget, “did either of you hear an alarm before we entered?”

“There was an alarm,” Juiliet reported, “but only for a second.”

“It should have gone longer,” Aiden said, when a mop held by a brown-haired man in scrubs entered the room.

“Did I hear some of ye asking about that alarm, from yay minutes ago?” asked Shard, the resident janitor, as he mopped around the room’s existing paths and pushing the clutter that leaked out back into the corners. “Because I turned it off.”

Aiden shrugged. “That mystery’s solved.”

“In the future, don’t just turn off alarms like that,” Luke chastised. “Especially not our new transdimensional intrusion alert, which that alarm happened to be. We set it up before we left for Elistra.”

“That’s another problem with the way this place is run,” Juiliet huffed as she stood up from the lockbox, the cross in her arms mirroring the tone of her expression. “You don’t communicate. The two of you set up a new alarm and didn’t practice the foresight to tell anyone else? That’s idiocy. Significant restructuring is needed, or this organization will shut down, whether you like or it not.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Are you volunteering to lead such restructuring?”

Juiliet smiled. “I am in fact volunteering.”

“Yippee, we’re all going to die,” Shard facepalmed.

“Only if you don’t listen to me.” Juiliet raised a finger. “I can enact policies and set directions, but they’re moot if you don’t follow them. This will be a team effort, and it sure as hell hasn’t been one until now.” She turned to Aiden. “Granted you grant me this responsibility?”

“Consider yourself in charge,” Aiden sighed. “Thanks for stepping up.”

“I’ll need a title,” Juiliet continued, turning away.

“Make one?” Aiden suggested. “Something overarching, but not overbearing.”

The young lady nodded to herself.

“Oh, to see history in the making again,” Shard sighed. “We now enter the dark ages of Leek Works, the years of Juiliet Idyllia.”

“Before I can go onto more important tasks,” Juiliet reminded, “someone needs to finish the filing of Tiberius’s lockbox contents. As well, I made some interesting findings unfortunately unshared while the four of you screwed off with my assistant.”

“Luke, Shard, finish the lockbox,” Aiden told his blond friend and the janitor, then nodded to Juiliet as he started walking for the hallway to his office. “Fill me in.”

Out of the storage room and into the circular hallway, Juiliet filled Aiden, Bridget, and an able Alex in. “Five years ago, Tiberius sampled the atomic orientations of fifty Stromlings from the battle of Elistra. In those fifty, he found three distinctly different orientations. Maelstrom from three different dimensions participated in the first attack on Elistra.”

“Three different dimensions,” Alex repeated.

“We’re not just dealing with one Maelstrom Dimension as previously thought. We never were.” Juiliet warned. “Worse, if there were three Maelstrom Dimensions five years ago, who here’s to say there aren’t more now?”

“Especially since we’ve been kept way out of the loop concerning Unverse.” Aiden muttered. “Thanks to the Future Dimension. Did you know the Unverse bomb we dropped only affected the Maelstrom and us? Damn them.”

“The sentiment’s shared,” agreed Juiliet.

“Surely they must be doing some good,” Bridget offered. “There haven’t been any transdimensional invasions in the past three years.”

“As far as we know,” Aiden said. “Not here, at least.”

“How much do we really know about their Nexus Force?” she continued.

“They call themselves a Nexus Republic,” Juiliet scoffed, “and if you can put up with Shard, he can tell you all about their political instability. We can’t trust them to do anything that’s not in their own self-interest.”

“Guys,” Alex rushed to catch up while they stopped at an adjoining corridor. “Just so you know, everything you’re talking about is flying way over my head.”

“It’s an unfortunate symptom,” Aiden conceded. “There’s too much to tell in so little time with too few interested to hear it all. Plus, we’ve historically been too few to branch out and prioritize more than one task, but now we’ve got Ray, Callista, and you both.” He regarded Bridget and Alex. “Thanks to you, we’re now more likely than ever to get things done.”

“Bringing our family back,” Alex said.

“Rescuing Red from Macabross,” Bridget said.

“Getting a foothold back in the transdimensional frontier,” Juiliet said.

“Confronting the Rogues on Jirdia,” Aiden said, “engaging the Maelstrom Dimensions.” He met the eyes of each team member. “We’ve got lots to do.”

Chapter 3: Prealter

“Oh no.”

“Found it.”

Soft giggling accompanied the words, along with the sliding of drawers.

“Stop it, she’s waking!”

Layers of blankets for the most part cushioned Kate from the pokes and prods of arms and legs as two bouncing masses evacuated what had to be her bed. She could figure not much more than that, as her head felt like it was squeezed between two opposing weights, one like an external force that pinned her head to her pillow, the other from inside, flaring against the sides of her head, painfully, when she tried to recall what sequence of events brought her to this situation, whatever it was.

She opened her eyes to find four pairs of wide brown eyes dancing in front of her, which morphed to two pairs as her vision corrected itself. They belonged to two girls standing at the bedside, both the same heights as the sloppily closed dresser drawer behind them, about a meter tall. Both had heart shaped faces surrounding by bushy red hair, and both held something until they dropped it to the floor with a thud.

“Who… are you?” Kate asked.

The girls went from staring at Kate to facing each other. “Get Ma,” they said at the same time.

“No…” Kate groaned, turning to watch as they ran around her bed and out the door, leaving her by herself. Conveniently, the pressure in her head moved to her eyes, forcing them closed, and an involuntary drowse came shortly after. As the room faded in and out, she heard a girl’s voice call out to her, even though there was no one else in the room.

“Kate! I’m with you Kate, I need you to listen to me…”

“I’m with you,” said a different voice when Kate’s eyes opened. Awake now, her sight was momentarily blocked by a woman’s hand combing Kate’s hair to the side of her own face. When done, she stifled a cry as it moved past to reveal the face of her mother. She tried to address her, but her throat refused to unconstrict, and her mother spoke sooner.

“There was an accident, Katherine.” Her mother’s lovely face wore a grave expression. “Do you remember?”

Accident? Kate thought to herself. She didn’t remember any accident, and while she tried thinking back to the last thing she did remember, nothing was coming up quickly either, and her mother took her silence as affirmation. “Dear girl, you don’t remember.”

Trying to keep remembering was pointless, Kate decided sullenly. “What happened?” she got her cracked voice to say.

Her mother shook her head sadly. “I wish I could give you a satisfactory answer. The Governor-General is still investigating, and without knowing the full story myself, I don’t want to burden you with rumors. I do know you’re strong and brave, and except for losing some memory of the event, everything else will come back, in time. You’re going to be fine.”

From a kettle on the bedside table, she poured a cup of tea and handed it to her daughter, who sat up to accept it. Despite scrunching her nose at the scent, Kate drank some to ease the dryness in her throat, so it was easier to talk. “How long have I been out?” she asked.

“Since you were last up, only a minute,” her mother said softly. “But in all, you’ve been recovering for a month. We only moved you back home last week.”

“A month.” Kate repeated. “That’s a lot of downtime from…” She trailed off, unable to find the missing piece of her sentence. “This is going to last awhile, isn’t it?” she said candidly.

“Everyone will surely fill you in as you need,” her mother assured her. “We’re always here for you. The twins in particular haven’t wanted to leave your side. I’m keeping them out now that you’re awake, until you want visitors again.”

“Twins.” Kate remembered them bouncing around her and raiding her drawers, but nothing else. “Who were they?”

Her mother’s lips parted in an expression of surprise, and Kate realized she was supposed to know their identities. “They’re my sisters,” she inferred quickly, and her mother nodded. It was a reasonable guess, but her chances of guessing correctly any details were poor.

Her mother looked about to say their names, but Kate stopped her. “Let it come to me,” she said. “Then I’ll know I’m getting better.”

Her mother nodded. “We will always support you, even if you don’t know it.” She kissed Kate’s forehead and patted her arm. “You deserve time to yourself. When you’re ready to resume your life, anything will be how you want, just let me, your father, or your sisters know.”

She closed the door behind her, leaving Kate to herself again. Setting the tea aside, she inspected her arms and hands, turning them over from palms to backs to palms again. She raised a hand to the side of her face, tracing the shape of her jaw, cheeks, nose, eye sockets, and hairline. It all felt new.

Will I even recognize myself? she wondered dourly, throwing off the covers and blanching at the room’s chill, before donning slippers and pattering to the bedroom’s full-length mirror. She faced her reflection with a puzzled expression, which turned into a double take as the girl in the mirror bedroom was fully clothed in jeans and a trench coat, with deathly pale skin, black hair, and a voice to call through it, “Kate, you need to destroy this mirror!”

Kate jumped back. “And who are you?!”

The girl tilted her hands up placatingly. “I’m Grace, but that’s beside the point – please destroy this mirror, quickly!”

“No,” Kate challenged, “not until you tell me how you’re talking to me through a… is it even a mirror?”

“It’s a mirror,” Grace stepped closer to the glass, “and somehow it’s also an exit portal for the Maelstrom, from the pocket dimension into a location in your dimension, I’m assuming Jirdia! It’s not the only exit either. I’ll try to find the next one before they do, but only the Maelstrom can pass through.”

“What’s the Maelstrom?” Kate asked.

Grace slammed her fists into the glass, causing Kate to jump back further, even though her effort had no physical effect on the mirror’s surface or structure, not even causing a tremor. Grace squeezed her fists into her temples in exasperation.

“I get your brain’s scrambled,” Grace said, “but I swear to god, if you don’t smash this mirror-” she looked over her shoulder at something only she could see, swore, and turned back with her arms folded now. “Forget it. See for yourself. They’re here.” Then she sidestepped out of the mirror’s field of view, revealing Kate’s true reflection, small, unarmored, and almost completely backed up to the opposing wall.

“The Maelstrom…” Kate repeated.

A large blade shot out of the mirror spilling purple mist across the glass, which somehow remained unbroken, followed by a scarred and blistered arm behind the blade and a leg coming through below the arm. Then an emaciated face emerged above it, with bared yellow teeth stubs and blood red eyes that fixed on Kate.

The monster grinned, until its head suddenly ignited in flame, the thermal shock of which cracked the mirror. Glass shards fell to the floor, along with the monster’s burning head, arm, and leg, but only the parts that had visibly emerged, severed at the mirror’s surface when the glass broke, leaving the rest of it behind, wherever that was. Grace had said pocket dimension…

“Grace!” Kate shouted, pulling back her arms which she’d unconsciously outstretched, becoming aware of the small fires burning on her fingers. “Ow!” She blew out each one, then rushed to the fire spreading to her carpet from the burning head, thankfully now lifeless. She cringed as she stamped its flames out, ignoring shoots of pain from the glass shards piercing her footwear, until the fire was gone.

Kate stumbled back to her bed and gingerly removed the slippers, carefully not touching the streaks of purple and brown or the glass shards inundating the soles, and dropped them to the ground. Then she inspected her hands and feet, grimacing at the pain from the burns and the glass – until it began to fade. Drawing in her breath, Kate watched as the blisters on her fingers and the pinpricks on her soles morphed into healthy skin.

“What in the world…” Kate looked between her hands, the broken mirror, the Maelstrom monster’s parts adorning the burnt floor, and back to herself. She put two and two together. She’d started the fire, the flames coming from her hands, and whatever energy sourced her power also healed her.

With widened eyes, she swung over to the other side of the bed, where the twins had messed around. It seemed so long ago now, but what they’d dropped on the ground remained, a scabbard. She picked it up and withdrew its sword, a katana with a curved jewel steel blade and ornate blue hilt. The uneven shine and imperfections betrayed a history of heavy use, but no accounts came to mind.

Between the revelations of the sword, fire and healing powers, and a magic mirror through which the Maelstrom tried to kill her, Kate shut her eyes and threw herself back onto her bed. She’d woken into a complex world with few clues to what roles she was expected to play, and what did she expect of herself?

After a moment, she set the katana aside and reapproached the drawers from which it had presumably been removed. If they contained any more hints to her history, she wanted to find them. She resolved to find out who she was.

Chapter 4: Perplexity

Numbers and symbols appeared to float and bob between the projected display and the dark eyes attempting to focus on them, bloodshot and bleary from a restless night. Head supported in her hands but in turn teetering on the desktop by her elbows, Rowana felt detached as the content on the screen failed to present any meaning. Shifting her distance from the screen or adjusting her tilt granted no analytical enlightenment, other than affirming that completing this project before its deadline was hopeless, and she dreadfully needed to improve her time management and attention skills.

A pebble striking the window didn’t help with the latter, but with nothing to lose Rowana leaned over and lifted the pane fully. She scrambled out of the way of the pair of legs swinging in, followed by a backpack-wearing torso and bushy brown haired head, that all intersected the projected display over the desk before landing feetfirst on the floor, without knocking anything down.

“Flawless,” said the newcomer of herself, before regarding Rowana. “You turned your messaging off, so I had to reach you the old fashioned way.”

“Fair,” Rowana commented after a moment. She gestured her desk chair to the other girl before throwing herself onto the bed and shutting her eyes.

“Row, I swear to god, I did this on Monday,” the girl groaned. “And if you’d worked with me, like I told you to, you’d have it done then too, instead of Sunday, technically past the deadline.”

“Jaycee. Just do it now,” Rowana muttered.

Jaycee took a seat. “Show me the comp.”

“I’ll pay you tomorrow.” Rowana said.

That was good enough, evidently, as the other girl got to work. “Just going to pay your way to tertiary?”

“I’m not going to tertiary,” Rowana stated. “I’m going straight to work after the internship. I’ll ditch secondary. It’s a waste of time.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jaycee said. “It helps when your boss is your dad.”

Rowana laughed into her pillow. “I’m not going to work for him.”

“I thought you liked dimension stuff?” Jaycee asked.

“Research Into Other Realms is just one venture,” Rowana said of her internship. “There’s others.” She thought of Luke Mercury, who her father still held in high regard, despite their friendship being old, at best; they’d been out of contact for years and she wished his spawn would do the same. She thought back to the past night with Indigo, too. He’d given his actual identity, after she convinced him to trust her: Charles Bradfordson, former soldier, former patriot, and former lover of her mother… her real mother. Both Luke and Charles offered alternative endeavors into the worlds beyond.

“Nimbus to Rowana,” Jaycee’s voice came from way too close for comfort, and Rowana cracked an eye open, expecting a mischievous grin from the other girl at the bedside. Instead, a serious look occupied Jaycee’s face.

“Your homework is done,” she said quietly, “so I closed out of it, and saw what you left up behind it.”

Rowana took a moment to remember but Jaycee snapped her fingers and the display reprojected itself to beside the bed, showing a newspaper scan, a birth certificate, and whatever else Charles had tipped her off to. Rowana responded with a motion of her own to shut the projection down. “I know what they say,” she muttered.

“And now I know, too,” Jaycee was still quiet. “I didn’t even have it up long. A second, tops? I’m sorry for prying, but who the hell is Kate?”

“My mother,” Rowana responded, sitting up on the bed, despite which she was still uncomfortable saying it. “My real mother. She died fourteen years ago.”

“Have you told Ben?” Jaycee whispered.

“No. Ben is mom’s- Mara’s,” Rowana corrected, “Ben is Mara’s son.” She looked down at herself and laughed. “You’d never have guessed we’re from different women, would you? Dad’s got a type.”

“I see what you mean,” Jaycee said. “He’s a dirtbag. I’m not sorry.”

“The thing is I don’t know what to do with this,” Rowana faced her friend. “No one knows I know, except you, now, and the guy who tipped me off, Charles.”

“I say you get answers,” Jaycee said. “What else don’t you know?”

“Why and how,” Rowana stated. “Why are my parents lying? Why is Charles telling me the truth? How did Kate die?” She wound back. “How do I go forward with this?”

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted Jaycee from responding and she fixed Rowana with a wide eyed, mouth open stare as they reflected on the volume of their voices. Playing cool, Rowana slid off and opened it for Mara holding a box of cookies.

“I thought I heard two voices,” Mara sang, handing the box to Rowana. “Remember to sweep up after, and there’s milk downstairs. Can’t really sweep that.”

“Thanks,” Rowana said, looking past Mara and seeing Ben, barely reaching his mother’s shoulder, peeking out from behind her.

Mara stepped back, headed back down, but Ben stayed put. Once Mara’s footsteps were soundly on the other floor, Ben said in a small voice, “Just so you know, I could hear everything you two said.”

Rowana held the door open for him and turned to Jaycee, who was back in the desk chair, before ushering in Ben and shutting them in. “Now he knows.”

“You didn’t confront her,” Jaycee noted.

“I can keep secrets too,” Rowana said.

“Me too,” Ben said.

“He can,” Rowana vouched.

“Do you need ideas for revenge?” Jaycee asked, spinning the desk chair. “Because I’ve got some good ones. Get an anonymous number and call your dad in the middle of the night, sign his address up to some weird stuff, release stray cats in Leek Works.”

“Just ideas for getting out,” Rowana said, getting back on the bed but sitting up this time. “Like getting a space gig, moving to another world.”Or another dimension. Even that seemed enticing. “After the internship. I’ll use the interim access to get info.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jaycee said, stopping the chair’s rotation to face Rowana with all seriousness again. “Hey, Row. Know I’ve got you covered during this, as far as math homework is concerned. If it was my dad giving me this crap, I’d expect the same support from you.”

Ben said something softly.

“Speak up, Ben,” Rowana said.

The boy rolled his eyes. “They’re friends,” he said again. “Our dads. He might have known.”

“My dad?” Jaycee asked. “You sure? Sandy Studs?”

“They’re not friends, Ben,” Rowana said slowly. “Just business partners.” Even then, there was a complex dynamic between the two of them given their different responsibilities. “Our dad answers to Jaycee’s.”

“Confidants, then,” Ben amended, staring at Jaycee. “I listen to things, more than Rowana does. Sandy’s got secrets too.”

“Like what?” Jaycee asked.

Ben looked down. “I don’t know.”

“Thanks for the heads up, at least,” Jaycee offered. “Row, be a sis and sniff out some dirt for me too, next time you’re in the office.”

“Will do,” Rowana agreed. “For now, promise nothing we’ve said today leaves this room.”

Jaycee smiled. “Just as always.”

Chapter 5: Perspective

Two brothers exited the shuttle bus to Nimbus Plaza, keeping their hoods up and their faces low on an otherwise cheery day, in order to avoid the attention that often came should Aiden’s infamy be recognized. While always a hotbed for the general populace, the plaza was especially populated this morning given the clement conditions, but neither Aiden nor Alex were of the sentiment to delay to a calmer, less risky time what could be done expeditiously, now that they were a united force.

They walked briskly to the Assembly faction office, inside of which secure entry beyond the publicly accessible lobby to the building’s more secluded areas was authorized by Aiden’s special operative card. Through an unlit hallway, they reached a dedicated storage room. Another scan of his card unlocked the door, revealing lines of file cabinets forming rows against the walls and against each other, indirectly creating pathways and junctions between and around them.

“Quite old-fashioned,” Alex commented as Aiden led him into the labyrinth, visually scanning the cabinet labels as they passed.

“These documents haven’t been uploaded to network storage yet,” Aiden said, “hence why my guys couldn’t find them through our regular means, if you know what I mean... Here we are.” He stopped at an array of units labelled U, backtracked to T, then found the specific drawer for Ta in the lowermost drawer, which he got on his knees to open. “Not quite a lockbox, but exactly where Verbina said it’d be,” he announced, withdrawing with triumph a folder labelled Personnel File: Killian Talmid.

“One down,” Alex said softly.

“One to go,” Aiden said, folder in hand and heading back past T and S to R, stopping at Re once he located it and proceeding to sift through its contents. It was possible his hunch would pay off. Research into this… Research into that… He found it. “Nice of them to leave this here,” he said, scanning the title and turning it to face his brother.

“What’s Research Into Other Realms?” Alex asked.

“I don’t particularly know myself,” Aiden admitted, while shaking his head disappointedly at the apparentness that even this subject was unimportant enough to Assembly, and by extension the rest of the Nexus Force, to be neglected in old storage. He gave the array of cabinets a long look before sighing. “Well, I might have an idea actually, but it’ll be a long story explaining how I have that idea. Let’s head out.”

Alex leaned in furtively. “You’re sure they won’t mind us just walking off with these?”

Aiden shrugged. “They’re hardly equipped to, even if they wanted to. Remember Elistra.”

Alex grimaced. “You needn’t tell me that.”

Aiden nodded. “Some things haven’t changed, I mean. Actually, it’s only getting worse.”

They redonned their hoods and walked out the way they came, heading now to the boarding platform to Nimbus City, which stationed the four train lines to different sections of the city. Despite keeping his own head low, Aiden could detect Alex’s quick peeking left and right as they passed through Brick Annex.

“Sightseeing?” Aiden asked.

“I didn’t get much chance to, the last time I was here,” Alex responded. “I was too busy looking for you, then.”

“Wait until you see the city.” Aiden smiled, although internally he was sad. He couldn’t see the city without picturing its ruined, Future Dimension state, as he’d seen it through his eyes and the memories of his Future Dimension counterpart, which gave him the insight to consider the full extent of all that was lost there, even before the Maelstrom attack.

The steps to the boarding platform were close enough that Alex bounded toward and up them, slowing to a stop once the platform’s opposite side on the other side of the rails came into view, as there was no opposite side of the platform. The rails were suspended over a precipice, beyond which stretched what used to be the Nimbus Station’s border seas, beyond which was only outer space.

Now, the sea had been redesignated a channel by the construction of Nimbus City, built up in the middle of the western sea and filling a significant angle of the perceivable horizon, propped upon an artificial island of Darneu rocks, a feat of design in itself.

Aiden followed at his own pace, giving his brother the moment. He, too, had felt the same awe that Alex now felt when he saw Nimbus City for the first time on this platform, when the City was completed just under three years prior, despite himself thinking it idiotic for the Nexus Force to approve constructing so magnificent a city for civilians to live in while their soldiers fought and died only worlds away. Even spiting that, he understood what the City was meant to represent, idealistically, pragmatically, and literally. To cooperatively build and reside in the City meant Minifigurekind had come out on top, be it on top of the Faction War, the ongoing Maelstrom war, or the ever present turmoil of raging waters.

In other worlds, it was a shame it didn’t last.

Aiden stopped next to Alex who turned and hissed, “It’s insane for them to build a city while people are fighting and dying literally worlds away.”

“Amen,” Aiden muttered. “But that’s where we’ll find her.”

Alex closed his eyes and nodded. “You say Tiberius did this to her.”

“Yes, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing would lead to… this.” Aiden said, despite his conflicting thoughts. It was a strange position, defending Tiberius, but his last encounter with the misguided man, and his misguided ways, seemed to establish some understanding of his uncle. Yet Tiberius had always understood Aiden; he seemed to know how to play him, after all.

“Give me the trip to collect my thoughts, and let’s just see her first,” Aiden advised, as the train to Nimbus City’s suburban district pulled into the station. “I’ll tell you everything I know then.” Damn, he sounded like Rowana. Having committed to recall diagnoses about Evelyne, he hated to pull himself off track, but the last train of thought inspired him to ask one last thing.

“Alex,” he asked as they boarded the train, “one thing, please. Do you remember, three years back, when I came back to Elistra, do you remember my companion? My height, thin, fair, red hair, trench coat, my age, too, probably. I called her Red, but her name was Rowana.”

Alex’s brows furrowed for the moment, before he responded. “I remember your visit. How would I forget that? Until then, I hadn’t seen you since the battle, so it was amazing to see you again.” He smiled at Aiden. “I’ll never forget that; but I don’t remember you having a girl companion.”

“Daughter.” Aiden corrected.

“What?” Alex’s expression betrayed his incredulity, before it clicked. “Oh. Dimension stuff?”

Aiden made a small nod. “She was there when we met,” he told his brother. “It was her transdimensional device that got me to you, that first time since the battle. But there’s a phenomenon that occurs when people travel to other dimensions. The people in the dimension they leave forgets about them. It happened to everyone but me and Grace, forgetting about Rowana.”

“It means she left the dimension,” Alex deduced.

Aiden nodded again. “So every now and then, I like to ask someone who knew her. The others are in an active state of forgetting, after some time they’ll have completely forgotten, so I get to ask again. It’s just a pet idea of mine, I haven’t tested it, but maybe if she’s back, someone will say they remember her.”

Alex nodded, too, with understanding. “She wouldn’t actually be your daughter, though? If this Rowana was your daughter in another dimension, she’d actually be the daughter of that version of you, but not you as you sit next to me now.”

Aiden smiled a little, but it was a troubled one. “I don’t know who I am anymore, Alex. Her father was killed in this dimension, protecting us all from the First Darkitect. But some part of his creative spark joined with mine, and ever since Kate and I froze Unverse and closed the rift, his damn memories have been infecting my dreams, by day and when I sleep, whatever god damn thing he was doing at this corresponding day, minute, hour, hell, second in his life.”

Aiden detected his voice had gained a bitter tone that was progressively growing with each word he said, but he figured he’d better spit it all out. There was no one better to share this with than his own blood. “I know everything. Every damn thing. He and Kate, that dimension’s Kate, they tried having a kid before Rowana, but she didn’t happen. Turns out, in another dimension, she did, and her name was Grace, and that was Tiberius’s transdimensional assassin, who if I recall correctly, you knew.”

“Damn.” Alex echoed. “She was off.”

“She got killed.” Aiden said.

Alex cursed. “The heck, you’re making me speak ill of the dead.”

“Okay,” Aiden amended, “she’s not really dead. She’s where the rest of our family went, to that pocket dimension. I didn’t want to go there like this, but it’s all coming out now so what the hell. I went there, to the pocket dimension, and I barely made it out. Something in there draws creative sparks into it, particularly those that are released, through death, in proximity to its entrance. And its entrance was above Elistra. Tiberius was right, Alex. I was there. Grace is there. Our mother is there.”

Aiden took a breath and leaned back into the train seat, closing his eyes and waving a hand at Alex for him to comment, which Alex did. “Our mother,” Alex’s voice barely contained his tension that built up with each of Aiden’s successive revelations. “But… okay. Give me a moment, now.”

They both sat in silence, lulled by the hum of the train’s travel across the channel.

“So,” Alex started after a moment of digestion. He flexed his jaw side to side and continued. “The creative sparks, and the consciousnesses of our murdered family, including your transdimensional daughter named Grace, who worked for Tiberius, are trapped in a pocket dimension above Elistra.”

“Yes.” Aiden said, remembering again. “I meant to say… they’re all there. Our father, Chloe, and Evelyne too.”

“But Tiberius brought Evelyne back.” Alex said stiffly.

“He brought her body back, but not her creative spark, her consciousness, soul, spirit, whatever it may be.” Aiden figured. “That got left in the pocket dimension, as with the others.”

“Tiberius only partially finished his work.” Alex stated.

“He wouldn’t have been able to finish,” Aiden said. “He used Maelstromnium, based his entire method on it. It was fundamentally flawed. What you’ll see of Evelyne is the result.”

Aiden looked out the window and was surprised to see green. The train had cleared the channel already, faster than he’d thought, but the conversation had become more than he’d intended, he’d lost track of the time. The train reached Nimbus City’s suburban station platform and in time, embarking on foot, Aiden and Alex reached a small townhouse, two stories tall with creamy beige siding and a brown open gable roof.

Aiden led his brother around to the backyard, small and partially wooded, then to the house’s back wall, where a bulkhead protruded. He produced a set of keys to open its doors and swung them open, taking Alex into the cellar.

“I’ve barely moved in,” Aiden explained, finding an overhead lamp chain and pulling it on. The cellar lacked furnishings, but one object stood in a far corner, about two meters tall and half a meter wide, a Nexus Force stasis tube with an independent, perpetual power source, its transparent aluminum shield in opaque mode.

Alex watched as Aiden unlocked the tube by pin pad, then stepped back as the tube’s shield defogged, revealing a skinny girl in basic garments, just a simple white tee and shorts, revealing the purple discoloration on the skin of her limbs, the sides of her neck and face, and presumably wherever else that couldn’t be seen. Two monitors, for pulse and electromagnetic activity, showed the most minimal of activity, just enough to keep the body alive.

“She’s infected,” Alex said.

Aiden turned to his brother. “She’s asleep,” he told him. “She agreed to this, almost three years ago, as she knew it wasn’t going to stop. In stasis, the infection rate is slowed to about one percent propagation a month. Instructions are to wake her up when a cure is found.”

“And there is no cure, no way to disinfect her,” Alex concluded, approaching the stasis tube and resting his forehead on the shield, “because her creative spark isn’t present.”

“Pretty much,” Aiden sighed. “Exposure to Imagination would kill her. Bringing back her creative spark is the cure. Until then…”

He waited for Alex. The younger man stepped back and turned to Aiden with his head held low. The moment finished, Aiden reset the stasis tube and they watched the shield return to its normal opacity.

Chapter 6: Perseverance

The specialist for assessing memory slid over a tablet with twelve blank boxes displayed on it, along with instructions to fill them in with the twelve unique words the specialist had just stated. At least, Kate figured the specialist had stated twelve unique words.

Kate looked up from the tablet. “This is a waste of time.”

“Do you remember the words?” the specialist asked.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” Kate said. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to pay attention, with her mind preoccupied by the matter of mysterious mirrors through which Maelstrom machinations and mystifying maidens manifested, a mission she didn’t appreciate being dragged away from to something as mundane as memory tests.

“Would you like me to repeat them?” the specialist asked.

Kate decided the best course of action was to get the session over with. “Go right ahead,” she said, resolving to pay attention this time, and the specialist slid the tablet over.

Kate stared down at it. “I thought you were repeating the words.”

“I did, Kate,” the specialist answered.

Kate felt flushed. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

The specialist withdrew the tablet. “That’s all for today. I believe I’ll see you again in a week.”

“In a week,” Kate nodded, getting out of her chair and out the door. Making her way through the halls away from medical services, she passed a glossy window and her thoughts returned to reflective surfaces. Her reflection narrowed her eyes in scrutiny of the mirrored surroundings. As far as she could see, there was no Maelstrom around, and there was no Grace either.

She stopped at a large metal door at the end of the hallway. Green grass and a stonework path visible through the windows at its sides indicated it was an exit door, so she pushed it open, scrambling through it when alarms sounded behind her. Apparently, it was a fire exit. She dashed away.

The grass led up a hill, past which was a lakeside street she descended to walk along, stuffing her hands in her jeans pockets. Storefronts, office fronts, and other windowed facades presented more reflective surfaces to search for Grace in. The girl had said there were more pocket dimension exits than just her late bedroom mirror, and since that mirror had housed such a portal, it made sense to look in other mirrors too, until the absurdity of the task paced her surveyance to a meandering walk

Maybe “Grace” was a figment of her imagination, Kate thought sourly, and her subconscious’s way of saying her brain was scrambled. The experience with the cognition specialist certainly supported that – she couldn’t even recall the specialist’s name.

“This is ridiculous,” she said aloud, when something tagged her shoulder. She jerked like a bee had stung her and swung around, ready to fight it off, but found a woman instead, a little taller than her with similar fashion and hair just as red.

“Easy there Kate,” the woman laughed. “Just wondering where you ran off to.”

Kate blinked. “I have no idea…” She let the words trail. She had no idea who the woman was, but she figured they were related.

The woman seemed unfazed. “Well, how’d the test go?”

Kate tried thinking back, but aside from doing the tests, there wasn’t much else to recall. “They want me back in a week,” she said eventually, while trying to think harder. There wasn’t much else that she could recall, if setting her mirror on fire actually happened, when something flashed in her mind. Like she’d been zapped with an information upload, in that flash she saw a few things, people, faces, names, and relations spelled out in words. One of the identities belonged to the woman. Kate zoomed in on it, and then she knew who she was.

The recollection really did stun her. Kate didn’t realize she’d hit the ground until her sister was picking her back up – or trying to. Kate could barely put any force under her, gravity kept pulling her down, and even though Morgan’s lips were moving, she couldn’t hear what she was saying from the siren blaring in her head.

“I need a second,” Kate tried to say.

Morgan shifted closer. “I can barely hear you either,” she said into her ear, “but we need to get inside now.”

She heard the siren too?

Kate harnessed the rush to push herself up. With Morgan stabilizing her, they hurried through the closest storefront door.

“Is that-” Kate started to ask, as she started to recognize the siren’s pattern, too. Now that they were indoors, it was a little quieter so they could at least hear each other.

“Shelter in place,” Morgan said, pushing Kate under a booth table and then sliding in herself. She had a hand on her ear, where Kate saw she was wearing a comm. “Something’s coming down.”

“What?” Kate whispered. “From where?”

“From space. It’s big.” Morgan relayed, and grabbed Kate’s head. “Put your head down!”

Kate complied, pulling her arms over her head and holding herself in place, squeezing her eyes shut as she wondered how big was big. When she thought of space, she first thought of rockets, which was strange since she’d never ridden a rocket as far as she could remember. Rockets were pretty small, nowhere near large enough to trigger a shelter warning, unless it was a missile. But Morgan said it was big. Asteroids were big.

“It’s down,” Morgan said, and Kate looked up.

“That was uneventful,” she said, beginning to unfold herself, but Morgan pushed her back. She was counting seconds on her fingers. At two, the ground started shaking, but it dissipated just as fast.

Morgan tapped the commpiece. “About sixteen kilometers from here,” she transmitted, pulling herself out of the booth and standing up. Her legs walked off faster than Kate could extricate herself. Getting to her own feet, Kate realized they were in a coffee shop. Beverages of the type adorned still other tables, the shockwave hadn’t been enough to knock them down. The other people had sheltered as well, but one person, a young man with ginger hair and wearing a white tee shirt and khakis, had his neck craned against the window. Morgan was nowhere to be seen, and Kate barged for the door.

“I saw it,” the man said, turning towards Kate.

Kate skidded to a stop. “What was it?” she asked, turning to him and noticing his jaw had dropped while facing her. It stayed like that for more seconds than the shockwave had lasted. “Seriously?” she shook her head, moving for the door again.

“It was a starship of some kind!” the man said quickly, jumping from the window. “Round, flat, about 500 meters across. Sorry, it’s just- hey, wait up!”

He followed her onto the sidewalk. “Kate, wait!”

Kate bristled. So this was someone else who knew her, who she didn’t know, or maybe used to know. She didn’t see Morgan outside either, so she turned around. Surprisingly, the man was grinning a wide smile that stretched to his eyes.

“It’s been too long,” he said, coming to a quick stop. A floof of his hair bounced in front of his face and he brushed it aside quickly.

His enthusiasm was so overpowering given the circumstances, Kate couldn’t help but smile back. “Silly, I’ve only been out a month.”

The man’s eyebrows pointed into a frown, but his contagious smile remained. “Oh no, I’m talking more like a few years. Two or three, I think? And I go by Nathaniel now, by the way, in case you thought I still went by the old callsign, whatever it was.”

She laughed. “Whatever it was.”

“Heck, I’m having trouble remembering it myself.” Nathaniel backhanded his forehead and went silent.

“Me too, honestly,” Kate said truthfully.

“Wait, what?” Nathaniel did a double take. “You forgot my name?”

“Like you said, it’s been awhile,” Kate said in response. “And to be fair, you forgot it, too.”

“Yeah, because I know myself by other names, too, like Nathaniel Thaddeus the Second. But that old callsign was the only name you knew me by. Did you forget my face, too?” Nathaniel inquired.

Kate smiled dashingly. “We’re talking now, aren’t we? Of course I didn’t,” she said, even though she still had no idea who he was.

Nathaniel looked at her quizzically for a few forlorn seconds, before grinning again. “Sure. So, what brings you to Jirdia?”

“I could ask you the same,” Kate deflected.

“I asked first,” Nathaniel stood fast.

“You’re seriously asking me what brings me to my homeworld,” Kate chastised.

“You’re from here?” Nathaniel posed it as a question as he processed the statement. “Jirdia’s your homeworld? Have you been here this whole time?”

“This whole time, being?” Kate mirrored, unsure herself, and hoping to get some hints, of the timeframe he referred too.

“Since only the past four months I’ve been here on extended fieldwork – extended, since our hotel caught fire, and there’s this big investigation pending, so I’m effectively stuck here.” Nathaniel sighed.

“Jericho’s a big city,” Kate said. “Since you’re not a university kid, I guess we never crossed paths.”

“You’ve been here since you left the Nexus Force, haven’t you?” Nathaniel asked.

“I left the- sorry, what?” Kate asked, confounded.

“What, did you forget that too, along with my name and my face?” Nathaniel stepped closer, fixing his eyes on hers head-on. “Do you remember rescuing Cyclone from the Darkitect? Or searching for your twin? Or the other time we rescued Cyclone from the Darkitect? How about killing the Darkitect? Although that’s a false memory on my part, apparently it was a dark Mythran we killed, not the Darkitect. Weird, it’s almost like someone rewrote my memory of that.”

“Hold on…” Kate’s voice trailed as he rambled on. If she actually had history with Nathaniel, which seemed plausible given he knew her name, she secretly hoped his talking would trigger another flashback. Losing consciousness from the effect didn’t worry her if it meant finding her memories again, and Nathaniel would probably grab her before she hit the ground, or Morgan, if she were around, but nothing happened.

Something tagged her shoulder and Kate yelled, nearly falling over herself as she spun around to face her sister. “Jeez, Morgan, you’ll give me a heart attack if you keep doing that,” Kate scolded.

“I’m going to the crash site,” Morgan said. “You’re going home.”

“Very funny,” Kate laughed. “Let’s go.”

Morgan held a hand up, but her facial expression stopped Kate first. “I said, you’re going home.” Her face carried a look of severe mixed with finality. Kate involuntarily shivered for some reason, which she took to mean not to cross the woman.

“I know the way back,” Kate said, and inwardly kicked herself for not saying something more normal that wouldn’t betray her not, actually, knowing the way back, but Morgan didn’t seem to notice. She nodded in confirmation and brushed past Kate.

After a deep breath, Kate turned around, surprised to see Nathaniel gone, too. Then his ginger head poked out of the coffee shop wearing a poker face.

“Hey, wanna ride to the crash site?” he asked. “I have a rocket.”

Chapter 7: Progression

He didn’t like her having a bike. “Four wheels are better than two,” her father had told her, facing his car, before turning to the long, pointed craft covered by a tarpaulin at the back of the garage. “But aren’t we beyond wheels, now?” Only its nose, pointed like a cone and painted yellow like the car, was exposed, with old cobwebs in its hollow center. His moment of introspection passed, and he turned back to Rowana. “When I said we, I meant we as a society. You can have the Corvette when you’re twenty, since you’re not driving anything until then. Hey, chin up, I’ll take you for a ride.”

He didn’t concede even after seeing the certificate of ownership, license of operation, and other important documents proving her ability to register and operate a motor bike. She’d got the vehicle herself, riding it into their backyard eight birthdays too early and scaring her parents to death when she took the helmet off. They were on her instantly, pulling her off the bike and holding back none of their disapproval of her blatant disregard for her health and safety. “To your room,” her father ordered, before stalking back to the grill to shut it off, while her mother pulled the rest of her safety gear off. “I apologize, friends and guests. This party’s over.”

“Intrepid, wait,” said Uncle Luke, stepping over to her father. “What’s this about?”

“This isn’t your place, Luke,” her father retorted, shutting the grill with finality and looking back at Rowana. “I said, to your room.”

“One moment, I’m helping her,” her mother called back, having gotten Rowana’s gloves off and now working on her kneepads. She’d secured them tightly, for safety, despite her parents’ exclamations to the contrary.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have a say,” Luke countered.

Her father looked back at him a moment. “Actually, it does.”

“Well, you know that’s never stopped me- but then again, I’m family now, you think I’ve forgotten that?” Luke said strangely, as he did oftentimes. “Accordingly, can’t you see she knows how to ride?”

That’s exactly the point! Rowana wanted to shout, but her mother began walking her into the house.

“It’s not about the bike, it’s the insolence – what kind of stunt is this?” her father thundered.

Luke folded his arms “The same things you pulled when you were her age. Mara, stop this.”

They were nearly at the door when her mother paused, conflicted.

“I was thirteen, not turning twelve,” her father corrected. “And what do you know about my youth?”

“I know Elistrans mature at twice the rate of the rest of us,” Luke said, running a hand over his beard, “and you used that to join-”

Her father had already begun walking away from him, towards the house. “Mara, get her in the house.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Luke shouted, following.

“Neither of you tell me what to do,” her mother said, but with trembling arms she pushed Rowana inside the rest of the way, shutting the door behind them, so her understanding of what continued outside was secondary from there.

“I’ll always be family,” Uncle Luke told her a week later when she was no longer grounded, outside the apartment complex in Nimbus City where he used to live.

Rowana laughed. “Why would you say that?” she asked him. “That’s obvious.”

Her uncle seemed to take a moment to consider, which was uncharacteristic of him as he was usually forthcoming with her. “I mean it in response to something your dad said, if you heard it.”

She hadn’t.

“I also mean it,” Luke continued, “in the sense that we may be apart for some time, and not able to reach other.”

“You’re leaving,” Rowana deduced.

“Smart.” Luke said. “But you don’t know where to. You won’t be able to guess, since you’ve never heard of it, so I’ll just tell you. Jirdia.”

“Jirdia,” Rowana repeated the name so she wouldn’t forget it. “Sounds pretty.”

Now Luke laughed. “That’s as pretty as it gets. Anyway, I’m not leaving you without something to keep.” He led her to one of the complex’s private parking lots and handed her a keycard, which she scanned at the entrance. “In fact, it’s actually something of yours.”

Under a matching purple tarpaulin in the furthest parking spot was the motor bike.

“Keep the bike here,” Luke instructed. “The spot’s yours too, I’m still paying for it.”

Three years later, he hadn’t stopped. In the parking spot, Rowana situated herself with same motor bike, tools to one side and new paneling on the other. She got to work taking off what the asphalt had chewed up the night before. No other damage had been sustained, luckily, on the bike or her person. She ran a hand across the gouges on the right side fairing, where her leg usually rested, and wondered what shape she’d be in if not for Charles.

“When are you going to tell them?” Ben asked from behind her.

She knew he’d followed her, as he had times before. “I don’t know yet. But now I know what Uncle Luke was talking about.” She pulled the fairing off and compared the fittings of the new part.

“About what?” Ben asked.

“Since your mom isn’t mine,” Rowana said, “your uncle isn’t mine either.”

“Not by blood,” Ben clarified. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t still family.”

“If he’d still be part of our lives.” She began installing the new fairing.

“Honestly, he still pays for the parking,” Ben pointed out. He swung onto the bike and mimicked twisting the throttle.

Rowana sighed. “I could just use his help now, is all.” Even though Luke, too, was complicit in maintaining the charade of her false parenthood, he seemed more like a reluctant participant than a proponent. She wished she could talk to him, now, as he’d certainly have things to share.

“I need to reach Luke,” she told Ben. “Get off the bike.”

The boy obliged. “That’s easier said than done,” he responded to her first statement. “No one knows where Uncle Luke is.”

She put the tools away in her pack and mounted the bike herself. “I have a lead. Jirdia.”

Ben crossed his arms as she began kickstarting the bike. “Rough place,” he commented, giving Rowana pause.

“What do you know about it?” she asked.

“You’ll find out for yourself,” Ben said, “unless you take me with you. Wherever you’re going.”

“The mainland,” she told him. “Leek Works. We’re going to lift something.”

Ben hoisted himself onto the tail fairing and clasped his hands around her waist. “Something being?”

The bike sputtered to life with a lucky kick. It was getting unreliable. “A transdimensional drive,” she said, as Charles called it, “or Unverse Manipulator, like what the operatives use.”

“You get one of those when your internship ends anyway,” Ben stated, “if you stay on the program.”

“If I stay,” Rowana echoed. “Now hold tight.” She shifted into gear and pulled the bike into traffic, aiming for one of the bridges to Nimbus Station.

Their route circumvented the exclusion zone, as all accessible roads did, albeit this one did so narrowly. Modern construction encroached closer and closer to the towering barriers surrounding Old Nimbus City. Some factions of local politics were even lobbying to build into the exclusion zone – the road they took now, which snaked around its entire border, was a recent construct of those efforts.

The opposing side included their father, who with a dwindling number of other influential people warned of supposed dangers associated with the geographic location of the zone. By participating in Research Into Other Realms, Rowana understood that Unverse, once traveled, became successively easier to travel, like wearing down a path.

On that posit, once the Maelstrom attacked Nimbus City, a path was established between the city and the extradimensional beyond. There was therefore a reasonable risk, according to her father and others, that Old Nimbus City would be the site of a future attack, and it was better that people not be immediately situated in it if such an attack occurred.

Granted, fourteen years had passed since it was attacked, and with no signs of another looming for just as long, the side for rebuilding Old Nimbus City was finally gaining traction.

“Idiots,” her father had referred to them on a Saturday four years ago, when the family situated themselves around the dinner table, as they traditionally used to do on weekends.

“Maybe the threat really is gone,” Mara responded, entering the room with a casserole.

Her husband scowled. “Please tell me you don’t really believe that.”

Mara set the dish down and swooped in to give the man a kiss. “I believe in you, Intrepid, and your ability to keep an open mind.”

“We beat them back,” Intrepid said, “but to what extent? It was in and out, we took out some infrastructure and neutralized some Stromlings, hardly a counterattack. It was more so the Republic could say we did something so we could forget about it and move on, which those idiots have done. Even Overbuild is coming to their side. The First Darkitect is still out there, building up, getting stronger every day as he has been the past ten years, while our own government debates on how much we should neuter ourselves.” He took a swig of his wine and poured another glass. “Now there’s a movement starting up about the ‘environmental adversities’ of transdimensional maneuvers.”

“What’s neuter mean?” ten year old Ben asked.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Mara said. “Intrepid, I told you not to talk like that in front of the kids.”

Intrepid shook his head. “I can’t keep it bottled up anymore. Now there’s reason to think this last resurgence was transdimensional, too. Have you read Katie’s report?”

Mara pursed her lips. “Intrepid, let’s talk about this outside.”

“But this is quality family time-” he protested, but he did listen to his wife, bracing himself against the table to try and stand up.

“No, this literally isn’t,” Mara said, reaching under his arms and helping him up, as he was obviously impaired. “I won’t have you scaring the kids, with classified intel no less. Family time’s over.”

It never resumed after that.

Chapter 8: Predestination

With the collaboration of all employed, with mostly the janitor helping, the interior spaces of the recently reacquired Leek Works site slowly but surely gained practicality, organization, and décor with new floorings, furnishings, and fixtures. The primary level featured gunmetal bronze tiled floors and walls, lit by warm yellow overhead lamps, not unlike the inside of a submarine, but without the claustrophobia. The new aesthetic was, by design, distinct compared to a certain other version of Leek Works, which had been bluer and brighter, a color scheme consistent with a certain other version of the Nexus Force. The team agreed on a mindset that the Future Dimension presented only a possible future, and one they wished not to replicate.

Divergence carried through to the chief executive office, arranged like a cozy lounge with wood panel walls, a full carpet, and faux windows emitting light synced, in brightness and hue, with the time and weather of the day outside.

For furnishings, there was still room to spare with the full team of ten Leek Works staff members gathered on four long black couches, facing each other around a low glass coffee table adorned by Tiberius’s unlocked lockbox, a few dataplaques, and the files retrieved by Aiden and Alex earlier. The brothers and Bridget occupied the nine o’clock couch. At twelve sat Ben, Callista, and Ray. On the next were Luke and Mara, the latter chewing gum and occasionally blowing a pink bubble of the plastic stuff. Juiliet and Shard occupied the final couch.

“Updates,” Aiden prompted.

Juiliet set a dataplaque on the table and spun it on its base, signaling the room’s occupants to read it, with Aiden picking it up first. On its display was a letter from the Assembly wing in Nexus Tower, which he read quickly before handing the plaque to Bridget.

“Our friends in the Nexus Force want in on our recent Unverse manipulation on Jirdia, which is all they know about our use of it,” Juiliet summarized, looking pointedly at Aiden and Alex. “The technology, as we’ve known since the Dimensional War, is tactically versatile.”

The plaque made it to Luke. “Who’s meeting with them?” the blond boy asked.

“Juiliet, Shard, Callista, and I are going to meet with them,” Ben answered.

“We knew this was coming,” continued Juiliet. “As Nexus Force operatives, the tech is theirs as much as ours. We can’t keep it from them; we can possibly advise and influence its use, but it’s really out of our hands by this point.”

“Especially since there’s bigger party in this playground, too, and I don’t mean the Rogues.” Ben stated. “Shard and my dimension’s Nexus Republic retained transdimensional tech, according to Aiden.”

“Do we reach out to them, or wait for them to come here first?” Bridget asked.

“That’ll be up to the Nexus Force to decide, as far as I’m concerned,” Juiliet decided.

Aiden nodded. “Like she said, as Nexus Force operatives, it’s out of our hands now. Unfortunately.”

The plaque had made it to Shard by then, who set it back on the table. “As much as I’d hoped otherwise,” he sighed, “you lot just had to go and slave for the Nexus Force. Again.”

Mara loudly popped a bubble. “Says the Janitor,” she said.

Shard ignored her. “All this ‘wait for the Nexus Force,’ ‘see what the Nexus Force’ says, makes me want to cry,” he sniffed. “The Leek Works you could have been, and should have been, is dead.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Aiden countered. “This Leek Works is a private organization. Granted, the conscripts among us have always served under the Nexus Force at the same time, and we did collaborate with it during the Dimensional War, naturally, but that was it. Leek Works never belonged to the Nexus Force, and it never will. That’s why we axed it when that war ended, so it wouldn’t fall into their hands.”

“And bear in mind,” Luke added, “we have a much less dominant Nexus Force than you had, Shard, what with all the other wars still going on around here. So I’d say we’ve got a pretty good chance at not just regaining our independence -”

“Which we’re doing right now by buying back our building,” Mara interjected.

“- but staying independent, too.” Luke completed. “For your sanity’s sake, I’d consider the plausibility that maybe your Leek Works, under the Nexus Republic, just never had the same chance that we do.”

Shard huffed. “Sane or not, and while I’m obviously not in charge here, I still wish you lot would listen to me.”

“We are listening,” Mara protested, “when you’re not degrading us.”

“I don’t think Shard is degrading anyone,” Bridget intervened.

“I’m not,” Shard agreed.

“And I’m trying to be sympathetic,” Luke defended.

“Hold it,” said Juiliet and Aiden at the same time. They looked at each other, he shrugged, and she motioned for him to proceed, so he did. “What do you want us to hear, Shard?”

“We need to stand up to the Nexus Force, even now.” Shard folded his arms. “Unlike Miss Bossy Head But Also A Pushover here. She wants to give everything we have about Unverse over to Verbina and everyone else wearing a Nexus Force patch just because they say so. Well, I say we don’t get complacent, and we should plan this out, starting with our story.”

Shard picked up a different dataplaque and pulled up the team’s final report to the Nexus Force on their Jirdian operation. “There’s gaps in this report that we can still fill in however we want.”

“So, making up stuff?” Alex asked with a frown.

“So, lying?” Bridget focused.

“Everyone else is literally talking about secret underground operations and you’re getting at me for lying,” Shard said dryly. “Anyway, look at how it says we got from Jirdia to Nimbus Station. All it says is ‘transdimensional maneuver.’ They don’t yet know we used Aiden’s old Unverse Manipulator. I’m saying we keep it that way.”

“So, lying by omission.” Bridget clarified.

“No, we already did that. Now, we’re gonna need to straight up lie.” Shard said. “Because this vague line here is exactly why Juiliet, Callista, Ben, and I are going to meet with the Nexus Force. They called us to meet with them because they have questions. ‘What’s transdimensional maneuver mean?’ they’ll ask. And when they do, I’m going to tell them we used the Rogue’s Interuniversal Projector to escape. So, yes, Bridget, I will be lying, and Aiden’s going to let me.”

Aiden frowned. “How do you know I’m going to… let you do anything?”

“Because it’s exactly what you’d do,” Shard said, “and exactly what you already did. Yes, I mean you, and not my Intrepid, although coincidentally, it’s exactly what he would do too. What I mean is, you didn’t tell the Nexus Force about your visit to Earth.”

Mara choked again. “His visit to what?” she wheezed.

“Oh, sorry,” Shard smirked, “what I really mean is, you didn’t tell anyone about your visit to Earth. Not even us.”

“What’s Earth?” Mara demanded.

Aiden closed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts and formulate a response. Shard was right, he hadn’t shared the details of his visit, yet. He had shared the result, which was Rowana’s location, at least.

“Don’t you dare hide behind your eyes, Intrepid.” Mara warned.

“I go by Aiden, now,” he muttered.

“Actually, Intrepid is a more accurate name when he’s being a liar,” came Shard’s voice.

“Look in a mirror, Shard,” Bridget retorted, and she grabbed Aiden’s hand. Then her voice, closer and softer, requested, “Look at me, Aiden.”

He did, opening his eyes to her concerned face, and Alex’s too, as she’d positioned herself directly in front of him, and Alex leaned over as well. Bridget was good for him. Too good, if he wasn’t taking their relationship seriously. And poor Alex, so lost in everything his brother was up to. He owed it to them as much, if not more, than everyone else to be open with them.

“It’s okay,” Aiden told her. “Shard’s right. Shard’s right,” he repeated to the others, as Bridget returned to her seat. “I should have been more forthcoming about how I found Rowana’s location. I wasn’t, and I apologize. I used the Unverse Manipulator to go directly to her, which brought me to another universe, and a planet called Earth.”

Aiden paused. How much did Shard actually know? He decided to test the Janitor’s knowledge. “But as soon as I got there, Lord Brocktree of the Nexus Republic, Transdimensional Division, arrived by his own transdimensional maneuver and took Rowana away without my involvement. Using the Manipulator, I traced their destination to Macabross, but I didn’t follow. I returned here, instead, and updated you accordingly. Then I went to Elistra to get Alex, bringing us to now.”

He waited to see if Shard pressed for more detail, but he didn’t, confirming the extent of the Janitor’s knowledge without revealing more. Perhaps he should, but at the moment he felt vindictive. “How did you trace my travel, anyway?” Aiden asked.

Shard tapped his fingers on the glass table. “Secret.”

“Enough of this!” Juiliet shouted and all eyes turned to her, as the woman rarely raised her voice. “This team cannot,” she emphasized the last syllable, “function like this, incohesive and incoherent. Get your acts together, or I’ll get mine. It’s called resignation.”

Mara looked about to say something snarky, but she elected to keep chewing her gum instead.

“Juiliet’s right,” said Callista, who, along with Ray, hadn’t had something to say so far. “You can count me out, too, unless things change, which they really can.”

“Thanks for ending on a positive note, at least,” Luke said.

“I try.” Callista blushed.

“Juiliet is right,” Ben added his voice. “But I won’t leave either way.”

“I probably shouldn’t even be here,” Alex murmured.

“Fine,” Shard rolled his eyes. “Aiden, let’s kiss and make up.”

“We don’t need to go that far,” Aiden responded. “Otherwise, Shard, I agree with you about having a… an advantageous report to give the Nexus Force. Definitely opportune. How can we trust them to steward Unverse travel better than the Nexus Republic, which would potentially limit ourselves?”

“Can we even trust ourselves to do better?” Juiliet countered with a dry laugh.

“We’ll get better,” Luke responded. “No more of this pointless bickering. Let’s stop it now. Right, Mara?”

Mara glowered, but nodded slightly.

“And so we enter a new era,” Shard propounded, “heralding the light age of Leek Works, a period under the influence, sensible and beneficent, of the Number One Janitor, in all his principality: Skilled Honored Ninja, AKA, Le Moi.”

“I thought kissing and making up was going too far,” Bridget said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

“Expectations are mine to exceed,” Shard bowed.

“Can we testify using the Interuniversal Projector to return from Jirdia?” Aiden asked Juiliet.

The woman shrugged rhetorically. “Who’s to contradict us, the Rogues? Yeah, I think we have more credence than them. However, stopping their transdimensional efforts ourselves must become a greater priority, since we’re keeping the Nexus Force out of it.” She sighed wearily.

“Hooray for lying,” Ben said softly.

“Hooray for being an underground, independent operation,” Shard said proudly, “instead of just pretending to be one. Welcome, my friends, to Leek Works.”

Chapter 9: Pursuit

A dirt, dust, and debris path gouged into Jirdia’s landscape marked the several thousand meter long landing path of the crashed starship once it had touched down, starting fifteen kilometers north of the city limits. Morgan’s estimate was nearly exact. Nathaniel and Kate followed it from the air, in the former’s personal rocket. The starship had plowed through fields, woods, and hills alike, leaving a three hundred meter wide skid mark up to a diminishing dust cloud, through which a round, low, and gray structure three hundred meters across was visible. Nathaniel banked the two-seater rocket wide, slowly bringing the front of the convex structure into view.

“Blimey, this thing is massive,” Nathaniel murmured. “There’s damage, too, on the top side. See those scorch marks?”

“Look at the middle,” Kate pointed, and Nathaniel followed her direction. “There’s some symbols on the front, they seem like letters, but…” She was about to say she didn’t recognize the language, but at the same time they felt familiar, somehow. “I’m having trouble reading it,” she said instead.

“It does look familiar,” Nathaniel said slowly. “Let’s get closer, see if there’s anyone needing help- ah, never mind.”

At their altitude, they saw it before they heard it: fiery explosions, beginning from both the top center and the circumferential border of the starship, progressed in rolls of flame towards each other, burning off the gray surface material and leaving charred structural framework behind, before that, too, disintegrated into ash. The unknown letters, printed midlevel, were engulfed last.

Kate found herself craning to keep watching as the rocket changed direction, taking them away from the crash. “Wait, we’re just leaving?”

“Sorry,” Nathaniel said. “There’s nothing left to do here.”

“What if there’s people down there?” Kate asked.

“The Jirdians will be here,” Nathaniel responded, “and I have a mandate to uphold. I can’t interfere with whatever operations go on from here.”

“Well, you can drop me off,” Kate suggested, “I don’t have any such mandate.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “Neither of us is equipped to brave that sort of fire. Besides, I’ve interfered enough bringing you with me. Consider this a favor.”

Kate slumped, resignedly, back into the rocket seat. “Thanks anyway,” she said, as it was the polite thing to do, while wondering to herself what she even expected to do with a crashed starship anyway, much less a burning one. Nathaniel was right, there was nothing left to do but go home.

The siren had dipped to a low, steady drone, signaling that the shelter in place order hadn’t lifted by the time Nathaniel returned himself and Kate to the Nexus Force outpost, which they’d only launched from five minutes earlier. Accordingly, the roadways were empty as Kate made her way back home. Nathaniel had offered an escort, but she declined. She was technically defying the order, but by keeping her head low and sticking to back alleys, she doubted anyone would stop her.

She didn’t dismiss the possibility of running into anyone, though. The back alleys were often hangouts for those who liked found comfort in the secluded, shadowy, unfinished, and neglected spaces between buildings. That included small reptiles, rats, wild cats, stray dogs, and of course some people as well. She hadn’t run into any people so far, but the animals were certainly around, she could hear them scrabbling around corners and in the darkness.

She found it interesting that she remembered this knowledge. She didn’t think she was one of the people to hangout in the back alleys, but if she was, maybe that was the part she didn’t remember. At one point, a broken picture frame in the middle of the path, surrounded by its own glass shards, reminded her of her own broken mirror.

She couldn’t recall how the mirror broke in the first place, but she knew anyone else entering her bedroom would be in for a surprise. Its glass fragments still littered her floor, as she hadn’t yet cleaned it up. She worried about the twins, who in their impish toddling could accidentally cut themselves. Pausing to think about them, Kate wondered if her brain would bring up the twin girls’ names, like it had for Morgan. She closed her eyes, welcoming her mind to show her its secrets, but nothing flashed in her head, no images of faces or names.

Dejected, Kate opened her eyes back to reality, and realized that at the moment, she didn’t hear any animals either. But there was something else instead, audible under the distant drone of the siren because of its comparative closeness, a deep, cyclic huffing from just around the next building corner. Labored breathing, and Kate was surprised, not by itself, but at how she’d nearly walked by without noticing it, so instead of continuing past, she turned the corner and stopped.

A dark haired man lay sideways on the ground, his back against the exterior wall and his face tucked under his right arm, passing over his chest with its hand grasping the opposing shoulder. That arm reached down to his left leg, which was extended straight, but by the angle that his booted foot pointed, too far backwards, the leg was obviously broken or twisted somewhere. His clothes, a black shirt with long red sleeves and color matched black pants, were mostly intact but stained and dirty. Taking a step closer toward him, Kate realized a lot of the stains were from blood. She also knew she wasn’t going to just leave him.

His breathing told her he was alive, but with his face hidden she couldn’t tell if he was awake. She wanted to get closer but didn’t want to startle him. “Can you hear me?” she asked softly.

The man’s head twitched at her voice, and in a short moment she could see the top of his face. His forehead and eyelids, shut tight, were covered with grime. Then his eyes opened slightly. He didn’t say anything, and she didn’t think he could.

“Are you alright?” Kate asked, and then kicked herself, because he obviously wasn’t. “No, you’re not. I’m going to help you, okay?”

His eyes stayed open, watching her, but as she thought about what he needed, she realized she would have to get help, but that meant leaving him, and where would she get help from? He was so dirty, and she wasn’t sure if he was still bleeding. If she left, would he still be alive when she got back?

The man made a noise, and Kate shook her head at her indecisiveness. “I’ll get help,” she said, turning away. As she did so, something in her hand scraped against the wall and she did a double take, because looking down, she saw she was holding a blue bottle.

What the hell… she thought, because the last thing she knew, her hands had been empty. She lifted it up and inspected the label, which read “Sentinel Super Soda.” Something liquid sloshed inside, and she pulled the cap to pour some out in her palm. It was clear and odorless like water, but bubbly, which made sense, since it called itself a soda. She gave the little bit a taste, too, and found it sweet.

Hoping it wasn’t poisonous or otherwise harmful in any way, Kate went back to the man and crouched down. His eyes flicked between hers and the soda, which he obviously wanted, but was unable to move for it himself. With her free hand, she tilted his head backwards, exposing the lower half of his face. His nose downward was fairly clean, he must have shielded it from whatever served to dirty the rest of him, and he was bearded. Bringing the top of the soda to his mouth, she tilted it carefully so as not to drown him with it, and giving him a little at a time, he was able to drink.

As she watched, it seemed to have a vitalizing effect on him. His breathing grew steadier, and his eyes less red. He even placed his left hand on her shoulder, but it was a light touch, when suddenly it tingled. Kate jerked, losing the soda in the process of standing up and causing the man to cough, but now seeing him in his entirety again, she saw an electric blue glow had surrounded him, and it was connected to her, by a stream of mist starting from her left hand, which tingled strongly.

“Am I…” she started.

“…Healing me?” the man finished. His voice was clear, healthy sounding. He and Kate both stared down at his self in wonder as all the stains and dirt on his clothes faded away, even the bloodstains, and his leg straightened itself as well. He gasped when that happened, and it must have felt strange, Kate thought. The tingling in her hand intensified and she took a shuddery breath, and then it stopped. She felt a sudden weight take her head and she managed to keep her footing, as the man, with the glow faded from him as well, began to cautiously stand.

They both braced against opposing walls, facing each other, trying to comprehend what just happened between them.

“I healed you,” Kate said.

“Yes, I think you did,” the man said with a curious tone in his voice. “Why?”

Why? Kate wondered. “I must have wanted to,” she deduced. “That’s why the Super Soda appeared, I made it appear, like the fire on the mirror.” The memory of that came back now, at least. “But the, uh, glowing was from me.” How can I do these things?

“How can I do these things?” she asked. She certainly didn’t have the answer herself, but she also doubted this man knew anything either, yet he answered anyway.

“Where I come from,” he said, “we recognize there are some entities with extraordinary powers. They tend to be mysterious, reclusive, and few. So, from my perspective of what just happened, please know I’m feeling incredibly lucky to have been come across by someone like you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kate said, regarding him. Now that he, and his attire, were restored, he definitely looked foreign. “Where you come from?” she echoed.

“Not from around here, most likely,” the man said, panning around at his surroundings before looking up at the sky, then back at Kate. “Are you capable of interstellar travel?”

“Me?” Kate asked.

“I mean your society,” the man clarified.

“Yeah,” Kate answered. “Well, I’ve never been off world personally, as far as I know.”

“Good,” the man rubbed his palm against his forehead. “That helps simplify things. I am… or, was, a starship captain. We came down maybe an hour ago.”

Kate nodded. It had to be the ship that she and Nathaniel had flown over. “There’s nothing left,” she told the man. “It all burned up on the ground.”

“Good,” the man said again, surprising Kate. “I set it to self-destruct, then beamed myself, well, here. It’ll never fly again, but it’s also too dangerous to leave around in an unknown world, let alone in another universe.”

Kate stared at him hard. “You’re from another-”

“Another universe,” the man repeated. “And now, I desperately need another starship. Maybe you can help with that, too.”

“I can,” Kate started, “but first off, I don’t even know where you’re from, why you’re here, and who you are.”

The man nodded. “I suppose I should have started with that. I’m from an interstellar union called the United Federation of Planets. I’m here pursuing an incredibly dangerous enemy known as the Spectre Borg, hailing from a different universe entirely where they have achieved galactic domination. But in following them to this universe, my starship was disabled, leading to its crash, and my injuries.”

The man regarded himself again, still incredulous at his recovery, and momentarily giving himself pause.

Kate nodded. “My name’s Kate,” she prompted, “Kate Dekairie,” and the man looked back up at her.

“My name,” he reciprocated, “is Edwin Talmid. Fleet Captain Talmid.”

Chapter 10: Predilect

Rowana and Ben dismounted the bike in a strip mall lot a kilometer south of Leek Works' site in Industrial Nimbus Station, continuing the rest of the way on foot. Despite the world's move to urbanization, the planners of Nimbus Station's civilization reconstruction project elected not to detonate and flatten the land's natural peaks, cliffs, and hills. As a result, some organizations' sites remained built up against or inside abutting hills and cliff faces, Leek Works included.

"We'll get in through the evac route," Rowana told Ben. "Tiberius told me about it."

"The safety procedures probably disclose it too," Ben figured. "But you didn't read them."

"I didn't," she affirmed. Their route took them into one of the Station's remaining housing districts, a smattering of residential towers built in a valley known as Brick Annex. "Leek Works is behind that cliff," she aimed toward the development's natural northern border, a steep hill.

"Some of it's in that cliff," Ben expanded. "It’s all so packed here."

"The route’s built into the drainage system," Rowana said.

Ben eyed a stormwater drain as they passed it. “Got one of these in mind?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s bigger than that, probably around back.”

The pathway they were on rounded the back of the complex, bringing them closer to the cliff, where a stormwater conveyance channel led into an aqueduct tunnel. The tunnel went into the cliff face and partway in it was gated by thick vertical bars, which Rowana and Ben easily slipped sideways through. Water collected in the tunnel’s center, which they stayed on either side of.

“We can really get into Leek Works this way?” Ben sounded incredulous.

“Doesn’t seem very secure,” Rowana agreed. The water tunnel was likely artificially carved through the hill. After a few bends, they were completely cut off from any residual light from the outside world.

Rowana activated a filtered flashlight on her wristband, lighting in green the way forward and panning it side to side occasionally, revealing eroded and structured pockets in the walls that could contain the exit they were looking for. “We’ll need a passcode at some point,” she advised.

“Tiberius’s,” Ben deduced.

“He gave it to me,” Rowana told him.

Ben nodded. “Definitely not secure. Why’s he trust you?”

“Because few else do,” Rowana said, recalling the takeaways from her last communication with the old man. “He said he relates to that.”

Her conversations with Tiberius were sporadic, coinciding with her rare ventures into Leek Works’ basement, which his abode adjoined. Furtive visits, but fulfilling, as the man was forthcoming like Luke, just hard to talk to. He always had so much to say.

“No one trusts me with anything,” Ben said crossly. “They say I won’t understand.”

“They’re wrong,” Rowana said. The poor kid was already wise beyond his years. “I trust you,” she assured.

“You do,” Ben said. “No one else does.”

“They’re missing out.” Rowana nearly missed the exit too, but Ben tugged her arm and she aimed the flashlight to land on an obvious doorway. Through it, after an additional few meters, was an actual door.

“Seriously,” Ben scolded. “Not secure. Who designed this place?”

“Hush now,” Rowana instructed, crouching in front of a closed access panel on the door’s side. She lifted up the cover, revealing a plethora of inputs: a retinal scanner, fingerprint reader, card swipe, and a good old number pad. “Redundant, or multifactor?” she wondered aloud. She did have a card and an authentication number of her own, but she didn’t produce them.

“Couldn’t we get in on your creds?” Ben asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. Either way Dad would know what I’m up to,” Rowana hovered a finger over the number pad, then typed in Tiberius’s nine digit code. The pad’s backlight lit green, signaling acceptance, but the other devices began to glow yellow, like they still needed them to get through.

Suddenly they all flashed green, and the door audibly unlocked.

“Someone just let us in,” Rowana said, glancing at Ben and guessing Tiberius. Ben shrugged, and she went back to the door, giving it a push inward. It led through another short passage, lit this time, to another unlocked door. As they approached, a few familiar sounds came from the other side. Ever-present in Leek Works was the hum of the generators that powered the site, periodically interspersed with the deep thuds of their massive pistons. But there were random, lighter noises too that gave Rowana additional caution.

With Ben right behind her, she deactivated her light and eased into the second door, practicing the stealth she was exercised in, and bringing her eyes right up to the point she could see sidelong around the opening. As she suspected, the door opened into Leek Works’ basement, a well-lit pillared space, not unlike a parking garage, containing the power generators, each one encased within meter thick concrete safety shielding. One of them was visible, and she eased the door open a little more, until someone moved past her field of view.

She froze, holding her breath.

Then the door was yanked open in front of her, nearly tumbling her with it, but a gloved hand reached out and stopped her. It belonged to the same person who held the door wide open, a woman or girl dressed in a full carbon-gray body suit and a face-obscuring mask, with an opening for eyes that Rowana couldn’t see, as they too were obscured by a visor. Exposed, however, was her long, untied, jet black hair.

Her dress reminded Rowana of a cat burglar, or a ninja, meaning she probably wasn’t supposed to be here, ironically even less so than Rowana and Ben were. She was about to ask, uncertain, sure until another voice, by the presence of its associated and known identity, confirmed this itself.

“Well, well, well. Look what the shy girl found,” the new voice said, belonging to a girl with dark brown hair and red eyes. She came up behind the other girl, who didn’t say anything or move, and smirked. “We weren’t expecting you to show up, Red.”

“I wasn’t expecting you, Crimson,” Rowana retorted.

Crimson Crateris’s eyes brightened artificially, the red irises dilating mechanically as she looked over Rowana’s shoulder. “Aw, you brought Ben too,” she said, before her eyes darted back to Rowana. “Wait, did you just say you weren’t expecting us?” She looked over her shoulder and yelled. “Get over here, Cailan!”

The black haired girl’s hand, which had remained pressed on Rowana’s shoulder steadyingly, shifted into a tight hold as Crimson’s blond and blue-eyed brother came out of an adjacent room. His face broke out into a grin as he walked over. “Hey, Red,” he said, almost endearingly, but she knew better. “So happy you could join us.”

“She’s not joining us,” Crimson said flatly.

“Then why’s she here?” Cailan asked, turning back to Rowana. “Didn’cha get the message?”

What message? Rowana thought, until it hit her. Indeed, the night before, she had seen a message from them on her ride into Old Nimbus City. She didn’t read much beyond the pleasantries, though, which weren’t very pleasant to begin with.

“Yeah,” Rowana answered. “I got the message. Didn’t read past the plentiful pejoratives, though.”

“Then…” Cailan narrowed his eyes. “Why are you here?”

“Not for the same reason we are,” Crimson concluded, and flicked her eyes to the girl the black hair, still gripping Rowana’s shoulder. “Take her out.”

Instantly Rowana’s vision went black and the sounds of the generators ceased, as all her senses were lost. Her chest compressed like it was devoid of air and her heart no longer beat in her chest, but she was momentarily aware, as her body was being pulled in one direction and her soul was being stretched in the other, of the nothingness surrounding her. She wanted to shout, not in pain or horror but just to hear her own voice, but her throat was frozen, or in the void there was no medium for sound waves to pass through, or she no longer had a mouth to scream with.

And then there was light, bright sunlight, beating down on her from above. She was outside, somewhere, when an instant ago, they’d been inside. Rowana did a double take and spun around, as the black haired girl no longer stood in front of her and found her coming from behind for a takedown. Rowana swung to the side and reached out herself, aiming to catch the girl in a headlock but got her arms instead, which she’d thrown up defensively.

Her momentum pulled Rowana backward, but she kicked out, knocking her assailant off balance and she pushed against her, tumbling both of them to the ground. Then she reached back and grabbed the girl around the waist, trying to push her weight against her to keep her down, but received an elbow to the face. Rowana didn’t let go and swung out with her other arm, contacting with the girl’s temple and knocking her visor off.

Suddenly she was in the blackness again, but this time Rowana felt things, a pounding in her head and also the presence of the other girl. They were closer together when they’d reentered the void, literally tangled up on the roadside, so maybe that had something to do with it. She also felt a mental connection to something else, that her brain somehow knew was a device. An Unverse Manipulator, she realized, the exact thing she and Ben had come to Leek Works.

Thinking of Ben, Rowana and the girl were suddenly sprawled out on the floor of Leek Works again, right between Ben and Cailan, who was in the process of charging the younger boy. Cailan tripped over their mass and thudded to the ground, and Ben swung a kick to his blond head, potentially knocking him out. Then the girl reached out and grabbed Ben’s boot, taking him and Rowana back into the void.

Unverse, Rowana identified. This wasn’t the first time she’d transdimensionally traveled, although neither circumstance was particularly how she wanted to experience it. Indigo, or Charles, had teleported her via his own device just the night before. She still felt the mental connection to the device, and she thought of Leek Works’ basement again. The site manifested around them as they rematerialized in it, only this time Ben immediately collapsed to the ground, making Rowana’s heart almost stop. If he had been injured, or killed-

She still had an arm wrapped around the girl’s waist. With her free hand, Rowana jammed it into her jeans pocket and withdrew a small folding knife, which she flipped open and stabbed into their assailant’s back. She yelled, and with sudden strength rotated around and kicked Rowana off her. She allowed it, shocked herself by her own attack. Without the visor blocking, Rowana could see her eyes, dark and tearing. The girl winced and in a flash of light teleported next to Crimson, then in another flash the both of them were suddenly next to Cailan, and with a final flash all three of them were gone.

Rowana rolled over and coughed, although she was relatively undamaged from the scuffle, which seemed to be over. As for Ben… she got to her feet and rushed next to the boy, slouched against the doorway to the tunnel. He looked deathly pale, but he was breathing fast and sweating hard.

“What did she do to you,” Rowana shifted, getting in front of Ben and holding his face in her hands. He looked about to say something, then he threw up on her. “Easy, Ben!” she shouted.

“I hope they’re gone,” came a man’s voice, and Rowana didn’t have to turn to face him to recognize Tiberius. He walked slow, with a distinctive shuffle as his pants legs rubbed together. “Came and demanded an Unverse Manipulator, they did. Got an Unverse Manipulator, they did. Stole mine, they did.”

“Get Dad,” Rowana said, putting aside her reservations about confronting him, as Ben slumped against her. She rubbed his back and the top of his head, trying to offer some care. She turned to the old man, who hadn’t moved. “Tiberius!”

“Can’t you hear the alarm?” the old man asked. “I’m tone-deaf and even I can hear the goddamn thing.”

Rowana glared at him. He looked old, but he wasn’t decrepit. “You’re not tone-deaf. What about it?”

“It’s a transdimensional intrusion alert,” Tiberius said, rubbing the side of his head. “Reinforcements are already on their way.”

A door at the top of a staircase burst open, and a brown-haired man in blue scrubs and a belt jangling with various items came barreling down the stairs, a customized blue and white trident extended in front of him, that he aimed in various directions as he surveyed the area. Counting only Rowana, Ben, and Tiberius, he rested the weapon on his shoulder and sauntered over. “Where’s the intruders?” he asked. “Not you two, I hope?” He spun the trident’s thick handle and charged up its zipgun attachment.

“Chill, Skill,” Rowana addressed him. “Ben’s dying.”

“I’m not dying,” the boy murmured. “Just feel like crap.”

“Who transdimensionally maneuvered?” the man, Skilled Honored Ninja, demanded. “’Cuz it looks like he’s got Unverse sickness.”

“We both did,” Rowana said, and before the janitor could think of levelling his weapon at her, she disclaimed, “We were brought along! Cailan and Crimson were here, and this other girl!”

The Janitor didn’t have time to question them further before there was another flash of light, restarting the transdimensional intrusion alert’s siren and the Janitor spun his trident to face the newcomer. He lowered it as soon as he recognized Intrepid Fusion Eclipse, dressed in plainclothes: a red sweater and black jeans. He gripped his own Unverse Manipulator, a black box which he quickly pocketed.

“What’s going on here?” Intrepid asked, and upon spotting his kids did a double take. “What are you doing here?”

“The Craterises were here,” Tiberius answered for them, “and this other girl. They came in through the evacuation exit and bypassed all the protocols. Then they took my Manipulator and brought Rowana and Ben here.”

Rowana stared at the old man in wonder. He was covering for them.

“They tried recruiting them to their cause, whatever it may be,” Tiberius continued, “but they said no, or at least Red did, since Ben started exhibiting emesis immediately upon arrival. There was a scuffle, some transdimensional maneuvering, and then they left.” Tiberius scowled. “With my Manipulator.”

Intrepid and Skilled both shook their heads. The latter mimed loading a shotgun round into the the trident, although knowing the weapon and its extensive modifications, it probably did have a shotgun implemented somewhere. “I knew them Crateris kids were trouble,” the Janitor muttered.

“Skilled,” Intrepid said, regarding Ben’s emesis, at least that which got on the floor, “clean up this mess.”

“You’re just telling me that because I’m a Janitor.” Skilled retorted.

“Sure I am,” Intrepid said, as Skilled set his trident on the ground and pulled a mop from its holder on its back, while unhooking a vial of disinfectant from his belt.

“Wait,” Rowana said. “Don’t mop up yet. There might be a blood sample.”

“Blood sample?” Intrepid repeated.

“Yes!” Tiberius cut in. “Our brave girl quite valiantly fought off our assailants, never mind that she was ultimately unsuccessful at detaining them, albeit successful at repelling them, so ultimately successful as all our lives have been spared, or at least that we remain in good health, with the exception of Ben-”

“Tiberius,” Intrepid cut him off. “Blood sample.”

“Yes,” Tiberius said. “I apologize for getting off track there. Red drew blood.”

“Thank you,” Intrepid said, and turned back to the Janitor. “Find the blood.”

“Bloody hell,” Skilled muttered, but he set the mop and disinfect down and produced from his belt a portable metal detector, which he unfolded.

Ben gently pushed off Rowana. “I’m okay now,” he said softly, and Rowana helped him stand, getting to her feet herself. She turned to her father, who was regarding her with a curious expression on his face. “You fought them?” he asked her.

Rowana nodded.

“No symptoms?” Intrepid continued. “No trembling, headaches, nausea… emesis?”

Rowana shook her head.

“Few people are naturally immune to transdimensional maneuvering,” Intrepid shared. “Although it’s too early to say, or we don’t have enough data yet, to know how you’re immune.”

“Maybe it’s something she ate.” Tiberius suggested.

“Can you bring Ben home?” Intrepid asked, remembering the older man was there. “Not by transdimensional maneuver.”

“Need I remind you, my Manipulator has been stolen,” Tiberius responded, “and even if I had it, I wouldn’t willingly put Ben through any more of this torment.”

“Thanks,” the boy said.

“By car will be fine.” Intrepid signaled.

“What about Red?” Tiberius asked.

“She’s with me,” Intrepid said, and Rowana stared at him with surprise as he turned to her. “That is, if you want to.”

“What… for?” Rowana asked with unhidden anticipation.

“If you’re up to more transdimensional maneuvering, I could use your help.” Intrepid said, withdrawing from his pocket not just the Unverse Manipulator, but also a key to Leek Works’ armory. “Chasing your cousins and getting Tiberius’s manipulator back.”

Chapter 11: Protraction

Alex returned to Elistra by transport ship, critically favoring the conventional way of travel after his diagnosed susceptibility to Unverse sickness. He also intended to stay on Elistra.

“It’s been good to see you again,” he told his brother, not yet ready to close the door.

“As always,” Aiden affirmed, staring up from the curbside to, once again, take in the scene. Alex Talmid stood in the doorway of his narrow row house, one of the inset units. With blue paint and a black roof, it was a faithful reproduction of their family home down to the interior layout, he knew from his last time inside. It had been a long while ago.

“I don’t visit enough,” Aiden said wistfully.

Alex nodded. “I’m glad you realize that,” he responded, before something caught his attention from behind him. “Would you like to come in?” he asked Aiden.

“I can’t stay,” Aiden reminded, deferring the impulse to check his wristwatch. “Got a ship to catch.”

“We have room,” Alex said, looking over his shoulder again, before reaching down and grabbing a toddling baby before it could run down the stoop. Alex picked him up to chest height and smoothed out his dark curls, as the boy turned to regard Aiden with the intense stare that babies do.

Implicit in Alex’s request, Aiden knew, was a suggestion. He’d heard it from others before, people who cared about him, and would hold him close, if he would let them. But the same goals had driven him almost three years now, he was getting closer every day, and he wasn’t going to give up now.

“I’ve let go,” Alex’s voice got his brother’s attention back. “And we’ve moved forward.”

When Aiden looked up again, he saw a woman he’d never seen before had joined Alex, too. She held the child now, and the two were facing each other, mother and son, Alex’s family.

Aiden put his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t at a loss for words, but he had to choose them carefully. “It’s not my time,” he finished.

Alex nodded, and Aiden reciprocated. Then he headed back to the shuttle station, to return to Nimbus Station by transport ship. While he could transdimensionally maneuver there, with no ill effect to his person unlike Alex, Kate, Juiliet, and many others, he advised himself against it.

Leek Works had to assume they were under surveillance by the Nexus Republic, as Lord Brocktree had so quickly tracked him to Earth when he used it last, using his lead to capture Rowana. Given that motive, Brocktree had probably been monitoring them for some time, and likely still was, watching and waiting for Leek Works’ next move in recovering the girl.

Either way, any transdimensional maneuver was also cause for attention from the local Nexus Force. But aside from the anxiety of it, Leek Works’ return to independent operation was liberating as well, and Aiden was glad to board the transport back to base, feeling undetected and without cause for detection as he settled into his window seat, ready for an uneventful, and boring, journey back home.

Brocktree could spy on him as much as he wanted, Aiden didn’t care about that. The Republic wouldn’t bother him so long as he kept under their radar. But unbeknownst to them, as it was purposely kept off even Leek Works’ own records, they were getting closer to cracking the puzzle of Macabross. That time was coming, and when it did-

“Sir Talmid,” interrupted a man’s voice from way too close.

The transport ship was a narrow craft, with a row of single seats on one side and benches on the other side. Aiden had taken a single seat, and the man who addressed him so peculiarly stood in the aisle, actively staring down at him, and obliviously blocking the procession of other passengers.

So much for being undetected, Aiden thought to himself as he got up to cross the aisle to the bench seats, pulling Agent Sky with him. “How are you, Sky?” Aiden asked courteously, while preparing himself for the trip ahead. With this new circumstance, it would be a plodding trip no longer.

“I’m alright,” Agent Sky said, taking the window seat. “Wait, that was my automatic response. I’m not alright.” He grabbed a bottle out of his pack and took a swig of it, which reeked of nasty chemicals. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and turned back to Aiden. “Sir Talmid, we need your help.”

Aiden regarded the man’s face, which was unshaven, and clothes, which were ripped and dirty. “I did help you,” Aiden said, although apparently his recommendation didn’t last. After Jirdia, they’d brought Agent Sky to Elistra where he could lay low, to keep the Nexus Force from committing the guy like they did Calm Thoughtful Tornado, and other persons considered too unstable for conscription.

“We need to go back to Militiregnum,” Agent Sky begged. “The dude is killing us all.”

Aiden withdrew his own water and sipped it as well, as Agent Sky carried on a tall tale about a dinosaur, a slain guppy, evil Mythrans, and grammar swords. “Interesting,” he commented.

“You’re not listening,” Agent Sky said crossly. “I should hath realized thee wouldst forsaketh me now, aft’r thou abandoned us all on Militiregnum. Alas, thou, and Sir Shard, I saw that gent with thee too. W’re thee both conspiring with the dude this whole timeth?”

“Sky, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Aiden said. Tuning him out didn’t help with that, of course, but who would listen to such blather anyway? He picked up on one thing, though. “Sir Shard, huh? You mean the Janitor?”

“I desire to smack some sense into thee,” Agent Sky threatened, “for thy dereliction of our cause, our commitment, our duty to the king, it’s unprofessional! No one will ever hire the Knights of the Olde Speech again!”

“Knights of the Olde Speech,” Aiden echoed. The name was actually slightly familiar, although he wasn’t sure where he’d last heard it, aside from Agent Sky. Then Agent Sky headbutt him into the aisle.

Aiden fell over his armrest, barely avoiding slamming his head again into the ground. “Frik’in hell!” he muttered, more upset at his evident vulnerability than the fact that Agent Sky had actually attacked him.

Getting back up, he waved away other passengers and steadied himself against the armrest, before fixing Agent Sky a nasty stare. The man was slumped into his corner of the bench, rubbing his head and groaning, having nearly knocked himself out with his own attack.

“The hell was that, Sky?” Aiden growled.

Agent Sky opened one eye, then the other, and then blinked a few times, as if he were seeing Aiden for the first time. “Oh,” he said after a moment. “You’re not Sir Talmid.”

“No,” Aiden said, taking his seat and straightening his coat. So Agent Sky had knocked some sense with his attack, into himself. “I don’t go by Sir Talmid. Nor do I know one.”

“But you are a Talmid,” Sky pressed.

“For what it’s worth. Maybe you know my uncle,” Aiden said, before the realization hit him like a ton of bricks. “Oh, hell no… no, no, no. Don’t tell me that’s what Uncle Killian’s been doing. LARPing as a knight? A Knight of the Olde Speech? Holy hell, that’s cringey.” In between the nonsense stories, the old timey talk, and the campy villains, it all made sense now.

“Your misnomer aside, everything I told you is true,” Agent Sky doubled down.

“I’ll admit I wasn’t listening,” Aiden said.

Agent Sky sighed and began to retell it. “We, the Knights of the Olde Speech, were hired by King Matthias of Morcia to fight back invaders from off-world, that world being Militiregnum. Turns out the invaders are a contingent of Paradox Rogues led by a man called thedude, one word, and his sidekick Barney who is a dinosaur. They summoned the Red Mythrans and allied themselves with the local tyrant Vladek and his shadow knight goons. Then they epically defeated us in battle. Now, we’re all either captured like I was, dead, or hopefully in hiding, so I obviously need help in stopping thedude and liberating the survivors. And it’s possible your uncle is one of them.”

“My uncle’s alive,” Aiden said. “I visited him on Militiregnum almost three… years ago.”

“We were defeated four years ago,” Agent Sky contributed to the timeline. “It’s good to know he survived the battle, at least up to three years ago.”

“He was imprisoned,” Aiden recalled.

“Like I said,” Agent Sky enumerated, “captured, dead, or hiding.”

How did I not make the connection before? Aiden grimaced as he smacked himself now. Maybe he did, but had forgotten. “I owe you an apology, Agent Sky,” he stated. And myself.

“I’m aware of my instability,” Agent Sky said, “it’s on account of what the Rogues have done to me all this time. I’d write myself off, too, as a blathering, insane man. Sometimes, I even wish they’d just killed me.”

“Let’s just get back to Nimbus Station first,” Aiden said. “We’ll have to discuss this with my team, gather intel, form a plan.” Aiden was pretty sure the Nexus Force was already on top of Militiregnum, so he hadn’t given that much thought, except in passing, but Killian’s predicament complicated things. Finding the man and bringing him back was the primary motivator for Aiden’s joining the Nexus Force to begin with. It demanded attention, even now.

You win for now, Brocktree, Aiden thought. But I’m still coming for you. I’m still coming for Rowana.

Chapter 12: Polytropos

The Nexus Force’s outpost had a proper name assigned to it. Camp Javelin, outside Jericho, Jirdia, was written in block text on a small sign that Kate passed on the way to the site. Javelin was a fitting name for a base whose principal structure was a single long and narrow landing strip. Even from the distance, she could see the concrete was dotted with some light rockets, like Nathaniel’s, and flanked by three buildings. There was single command building and two small hangers, probably containing more light craft.

Surrounding the airfield in the grasslands was a tall fence adorned by additional notices, warning of death by electrocution due to the fence’s electrical component.

“Are they always this aggressive, this bunch?” Edwin had asked after they’d passed the first few signs.

Kate hated to say she didn’t know, so she didn’t say anything. Regardless, she and the displaced Fleet Captain made sure not to touch it as they continued along it towards the sunset.

Following the fence’s circumference, they soon reached a tall gate, with its own warning of death by firing squad, a further deterrence against trespassing.

Edwin wrung his hands as Kate inspected the gate for any instructions to lawful entry. Dusk crept in quickly opposite the dying light of Jirdia’s rapid sunset, so Kate tried to read quickly, which was difficult as their own shadows stood in front of them. She took out her mobile phone, so she could shine the light of its screen on the signage, if only it would turn on. She frowned at it. Apparently, she’d forgotten to charge it, along with everything else for that matter.

Then Jirdia’s star passed over the horizon, plunging their entire world into night.

“Damn, it gets dark fast here,” Edwin commented.

“There’s no twilight here,” Kate said.

“That’s not a bad thing, the films are meh.” Edwin quipped. As Kate turned to him for explanation, he held out a bulky and metallic looking object that had seen better days. “What is bad, though, is my palm beacon seems to have died in the crash.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked.

“It’s a lamp. A dead lamp. Maybe you can recharge it or something,” Edwin suggested. “Like you recharged me.”

She still had no idea how she did that. “Maybe I can,” Kate agreed.

She took the “palm beacon” and turned it over in her hands, feeling its alloy surface while attempting to concentrate on something deeper than that, as if some picture of its internal workings might just pop into her head. She couldn’t seem to get past its greasiness, however.

Then a picture did appear in her mind, but it had nothing to do with the situation at hand. It was a literal picture of a man’s face, printed on a small paper and pinned against a well-lit wall. It was not a face she recalled seeing or knowing before, and too small to get a good luck at, but under the picture were two words written in cursive. She had trouble reading the flowing font, unfortunately, but the pairing of the words suggested a name, and the more she pondered it, the second and larger of the two words seemed to spell the Fleet Captain’s surname, “Talmid.” The first name definitely wasn’t Edwin, though.

Then an overhead spotlight flashed on, washing out the image in her mind and bathing Kate, Edwin, and ten meters in every direction of the surrounding grassland in a glaring white light. A husky male voice came through on a loudspeaker. “Step away from the gate.”

Edwin looked at Kate questioningly, but she shrugged and stepped back as instructed, so he followed suit. They continuing to walk backwards while waiting for the voice to continue, and the spotlight followed them until it didn’t. Then the voice came back.

“State your business,” it ordered.

“We’re here for Nathaniel,” Kate said tentatively, not sure how loud her voice needed to be to get picked up.

“Don’t mumble, I can’t hear you!” the voice scolded. He sounded bored.

“We’re here for Nathaniel!” Kate shouted.

“Not so loud!” the voice complained. “I’m wearing headphones. What’s your name?”

“Kate,” she answered, not as loudly.

“And your companion?” the voice continued.

Edwin sighed. “Fleet Captain Talmid of the USS Talmidon the third, may she rest in peace, former flagship of Minuteman Division in Star Fleet representing the United Federation of Planets,” he recited.

“Heck, I ain’t relaying all that,” the voice said. “What do you ragamuffins think you’re doing violating curfew at this hour?”

“Curfew?” Edwin echoed.

“We’re here for Nathaniel,” Kate repeated again.

“Don’t be a smartass,” the voice chastised.

“And don’t be a dumbass,” Kate shot back, suddenly feeling hot. “You probably didn’t realize it, but I’m Kate Dekairie, as in, from Dekairie Defense Company? And I’m here because the business of this man, Fleet Captain Talmid, is of the utmost urgency to the Nexus Force, because it’s about the security of not just this world, but our entire universe. Possibly more. There are countless lives being threatened right now, at this very moment, and you’re holding us up over what now, your attitude? Get us Nathaniel or we’ll get him ourselves.”

She took a step towards the gate and in doing so, noticed that Edwin’s palm beacon, still in her hand, had suddenly come to life. Aimed at the ground, its beam lit up a small section of grass, somehow even brighter than the spotlight, and hazier. It was setting the grass on fire.

Kate quickly flicked it off and observed that indeed, a small fire had started on the ground. She moved to stamp it out and did so when the gates started to creak open.

“You will meet Nathaniel. Proceed to the runway,” the voice said brusquely. The gates stopped just wide enough for Kate and Edwin to pass through single file, which they did. Leaving the spotlight’s glare behind, she turned the palm beacon back on, noting that it was significantly dimmer, in comparison to before, and thankfully didn’t burn the ground this time. It lit a wide path in front of them towards the runway, which by now had activated its landing lights system. There were no inbound aerospacecraft, but a pair of headlights from a wheeled vehicle began making their way from the command building to the point on the runway closest to them.

Once they approached, a ginger-haired driver got out. Kate’s heart jumped as the feature was almost unmistakably Nathaniel’s, but as they got closer, the driver’s slender face became recognizably female. The rest of her physique was largely obscured by a thick camo coat and a brown toque to protect against the night’s chill.

“You say you’re a Talmid?” the driver called to Edwin when they were within earshot. Leaning against the fender, she crossed her arms as they stepped onto the runway. “How come I don’t know you?” she asked.

“Maybe ‘cause I’m from another universe,” Edwin responded back. “That’s probably why I don’t know you either.”

The driver raised an eyebrow. “At least I know her,” she said, facing Kate.

Just like Nathaniel, Kate thought. Too bad I don’t know you, though.  

The woman turned back to Edwin and introduced herself. “The name’s Shira. Shira Talmid.”

“Interesting,” Edwin let the last syllable drag.

“Sure is,” Shira agreed, rebounding off the fender and looking back at the command building. “Well, I’m freezing my feet off out here and I ain’t here to chit chat. I’ll take you both to Nathaniel, since you need to see him so urgently.” She gave Kate a sideways look. “Get in.”

She opened the passenger door for them to enter, Kate taking the front and Edwin the rear, before rounding the vehicle and climbing back into the driver’s seat. While the vehicle’s cabin was open air, Kate was thankful that its vents emitted a powerful heat output. She had long started to shiver, as she was still in her daytime clothes and hadn’t expected to be out into nightfall. At Shira’s driving, they arrived outside the command building in only a minute. The stout, yellow building was cuboid shaped and three stories high, with a large dish-like structure creakily spinning atop it.

“Sounds like you need new bearings for that,” Edwin said of the dish while Shira cut the engine. The vehicle backfired a few times before fully shutting off. “And a tune-up for this,” he added.

“Not in the budget,” Shira grumbled, hopping out of her seat and unlocking the building’s front entrance for them. She pushed the door inward and ushered them into its dark foyer. “All the good stuff, from our wonderful friends at Dekairie, gets sent back to Crux for the war effort. The ships don’t even bother stopping here, most of the time.”

Shira shut the door and walked past them to activate some interior lighting. The hallway that lit up was scantly decorated, dusty, and unpainted. It almost seemed familiar.

“And these people can help me, how?” Edwin directed a critical look at Kate.

“Beggars don’t get to be choosers,” Kate responded, folding her arms and levelling him a stare back. Edwin looked miffed, but ultimately turned to follow Shira into the next room.

Kate wanted to add that she trusted the Nexus Force, but truly she only trusted Nathaniel. It was fair to trust him, because he evidently trusted her. Shira, too. They trusted her because they knew her, when she didn’t even know how she was supposed to knew them. Kate shook her head, dejected that she was going to let them down when they realized the truth.

She followed Shira and Edwin into a central room set up like a lobby, albeit a well-lived in one. The couch cushions were misaligned, the coffee table was cluttered, the houseplants were dead, and a single trash can was due to be emptied. The windowed walls, which allowed visibility into adjacent offices, had been poorly cleaned with soap streaks remaining.

Nathaniel and another man were in one of the offices, looking over a portable computer’s screen. Shira tapped on the window and Nathaniel looked up. He said a few more things to the unshaven, blond haired guy before opening the door and entering their space.

“Kate,” Nathaniel addressed her foremost. “What’s going on?”

Kate gestured to Edwin. “Ask him.”

“And you are?” Nathaniel asked.

“Fleet Captain Talmid of the USS Talmidon Three,” Edwin began reciting.

“No need to repeat yourself,” Nathaniel sighed. “I heard your chat with Oz, and you’re right, he was being a dumbass. Still is.” He jerked a thumb at the other man in the office. “We just don’t usually get visitors, you see.”

Kate nodded. “For an official Nexus Force base, this doesn’t look much better than-” She stopped, suddenly unsure of where she was going with that thought.

“Leek Works.” Shira finished. “Yeah, we know. Javelin is just a lonely foothold, nothing more. We don’t even get a Sentinel garrison. They know it’s boring, out here in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully we have each other to keep things… interesting.”

“So what’s the urgent business?” Nathaniel redirected, looking between Kate and Edwin.

“I’m from another universe,” Edwin began, “and so is the threat. It’s a ship belonging to the Spectre Borg, the greatest foe we have ever encountered, from a reality where they have achieved galactic assimilation, the process by which they physiologically convert you to their kind, although if you’re nothing new to them they just try to kill you. The ship, also called a Spectre, has a single devastating weapon that can destroy entire starships in one hit. So many times, they nearly got us…”

He took a few breaths, then a seat, and continued. “Before coming here, the Spectres had come to invade my universe, for the second time. We were beating their fleet into oblivion again, with heavy losses of course, when one of them separated from the rest and began creating a portal. Or perhaps the portal was already there. My ship noticed it first and we followed it through. It nearly tore us apart.”

“We saw your ship,” Nathaniel said. “The… Talmidon.”

Defying the mood, Shira cracked up.

“Yes,” Edwin said sullenly. “Poor thing, but rest assured I’ll make Star Fleet build another. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to your universe, my ship’s systems were minimally functional, the warp core was lost, and it was all I could to guide her to a relatively safe landing, for the people on the ground. It nearly killed me.”

“You don’t look so bad now, at least,” Shira noted.

“Kate found me in time,” Edwin said wearily, turning to regard her. He actually sounded appreciative for once, before returning to his story. “While I subsequently lost track of the rogue Spectre, the worst must be assumed, that there is an immensely powerful weapon ship loose in this galaxy…”

The Fleet Captain trailed off, leaving Kate, Nathaniel, and Shira to regard his words depressingly. Only the creaking of the dish on the building’s roof permeated the structure, when suddenly Edwin perked up again. “That’s a radar dish, isn’t it? Could you use it to detect the Spectre?”

“I was just thinking that,” Nathaniel said, heading back to the office and throwing the door open. “Oz, get in here, and bring the laptop.”

The man looked huffy as he picked up his portable and followed Nathaniel back into the lobby. “I’m doing important work here,” he complained in the husky voice previously heard over the gate’s loudspeaker.

“A ship that wants to give us death is more important. Bring up the orbital systems,” Nathaniel directed, and turned back to the others. “The device on the roof is just for landing craft,” he explained. “Our true pride and glory is our array of Imagination telescopes in high orbit around this rock.”

“Imagination telescopes?” Edwin repeated.

“They’re just called telescopes,” Shira said, “they actually work by measuring vibrations in distant strings of Imagination particulate. There’s about hundreds of them up there.”

Nathaniel nodded. “If it’s within two thousand lightyears in any direction, we’ll find it.”

“Yes, but Imagination?” Edwin focused.

Shira and Nathaniel looked at him like he was a strange, foreign object, which he was.

“He’s asking what’s Imagination,” Kate translated. “Maybe it isn’t in the universe where he’s from.”

“It’s the natural energy field that surrounds all matter in this universe,” Oz grumbled, “generated by and concentrated around the mythical Imagination Nexuses, of which but a shard of one is left. Everything else is trace amounts, which we’ve turned into a form of deep space sensory processing. Sergeant, look.”

Nathaniel went around Oz’s shoulder and stared at the portable’s screen. “The local logs picked up your crash,” he said of the Talmidon, “but no other abnormal traffic. Oz, focus extra telescopes around the source of his ship’s trajectory, thirty degrees.”

“Already on it,” Oz said.

“That should boost the range a little, if it went back that way,” Nathanial said.

“You should check between here and the nearest points of interest,” Shira suggested.

“That’s Danvaria, Alkavor, Gallant III, and Demakor currently, including interstellar traffic between each.” Oz reported. “Everything else is past two thousand LY, and out of range. Look.”

Kate, Shira, and Edwin joined Nathaniel behind Oz to observe screen, which showed a graphic of the galactic core overlaid by a series of cyan lines starting from a point identified as Jirdia. The lines, signifying the Imagination strings, all terminated at the same distance, around two thousand lightyears away from their points of origin, Imagination telescopes in high orbit around Jirdia. She could imagine what they looked like: Cylindrical objects about a person’s height, adorned with a mini radar-like dish on one end and a small thruster on the other for keeping orbit, and covered in golden reflective material to prevent heat loss in the deleterious vacuum of space. As Shira said, there were hundreds of them, too many to count, but in far greater volume was the so-called “trace amounts” of Imagination floating like dust through space but swaying and jittering in the wake of solar wind, orbiting planets, passing comets, careening asteroids, speeding starships. The telescopes were much too small to pick up all that activity, floating and dancing in the sea of Imagination, stretching for hundreds of thousands of lightyears beyond the limit Nathaniel suggested, yet Kate could picture it all through the harmonics of the Imagination: every speck of space dust, jettisoned cargo, abandoned debris, rockets, comets, starships, asteroids, planets, stars. Space was no void. But going back to starships, there was a large vessel, round like a moon but with an exposed skeletal structure, a machine of inky black metal slinking against the backdrop of stars. The Imagination that permeated everything else in the universe couldn’t penetrate this ship’s shields, which must have remained on since its arrival from the universe Edwin spoke of…

“Good job, Kate,” came a girl’s voice and Kate’s eyes would have shot open, if they weren’t already open. She stumbled backwards from Oz’s seat, looking across the room, past the questioning faces of Nathaniel, Shira, and Edwin, turning to regard her as she stared hard at its windowed wall – specifically, at its reflection, and the girl existing in it. The skin of her face was a pale white, deathly so, but her eyes were open, and her mouth was moving, although no sound came from her lips, except that which Kate could hear.

“They can’t hear me, Kate, just you,” came the girl’s ‘voice’ as she appeared to lean against the window’s surface. “Once again, there’s Maelstrom right behind me, but I’ll take care of them this time, because you need to stop that ship. Focus on it. Lead them to it.”

Grace looked backward at something Kate couldn’t see. “Finding these exit portals when you’re right next to them will soon be impossible. But know this, as well, even though I hate to pressure you given the stakes at large.” She turned back, gazing at Kate headlong. “Only you, and the others like you, can save us. You need to find them too.”

Then she pushed off and walked away, fading away into the glass. A second later, it shattered.

Chapter 13: Proposition

“I believe I owe you some apologies,” her father’s voice was sudden, but it was content of his sentence that caught Rowana off guard outside the secure entrance to Leek Works’ transdimensional launch room.

Until this point, the exchanges between them were brief, including their trip to the armory. She was long familiar with munitions, it was a subject her father had long encouraged proficiency in despite its dangers, or perhaps because of them. She had selected a basic sidearm from the weapons locker, but her father motioned her to wait and used his clearance to unlock a different weapon instead, of similar form but slightly bulkier to accommodate a revolving chamber.

“The Versa?” she verified.

“You’re good with it,” her father responded.

She was more than good with it, but she accepted the weapon and the acknowledgement. It was the best she could get from him, or so she had thought.

Now he stood facing the end of the corridor with his hand hovering just before the biometrics lock, but not close enough to scan it. Pausing mid-activity was not uncommon for him. Even this exchange could go two ways, if he changed his mind. She considered saying, “After the mission,” but he made up his mind faster.

“I’ve been distant,” Intrepid stated, removing his hand completely from the proximity of the scanner. “And that barely touches it, doesn’t it?” he continued. He leaned back against the hallway wall and turned to face Rowana.

She felt prickly. Her father was correct, he was distant to the effect that this sort of conversation just didn’t happen between them. She’d long accepted that, but now her expectations were subverted.

“Do you want me to respond?” Rowana broached. There was plenty she’d longed to say to him, but the time it would take to recall them wasn’t worth the cost to their mission.

“I want you to understand,” Intrepid responded, “that I understand. I haven’t acknowledged you or complimented you, and that’s not being good to you. But I do know what you’ve accomplished here and how you’re performing at the academy.”

Because no one knows about the cheating, Rowana thought to herself.

“Many people are impressed,” Intrepid continued. “The people here, department heads, even some councilmembers.”

What about you? she wondered.

“And I am very, very proud,” her father confirmed. “My first apology is for not sharing that with you enough. You deserve better, especially from me. For that I’m sorry.”

 Intrepid levelled his gaze and Rowana just stared back. While she had, in past musings, imagined a conversation taking place along these lines – his lines, at least – she was still taken aback by the impromptu nature of his confession. And that was all this was, as no conversation had taken place, and she knew her father well enough that no conversation would take place either. She just had to wait and see what he wanted.

“I want more time with you,” Intrepid told her, “and I want this mission to be the start of a better relationship between us, even after your internship ends. You have a future at Leek Works. But I won’t force you, so it’s up to you to accept.”

Do I even need to choose? Rowana considered, still staring her father on. She didn’t trust him, so why believe him? He all but gave away his knowledge of her was secondhand only, and there was still plenty he couldn’t know about, too, that neither she nor her confidants had told him. He could be selfishly motivated, wanting only to work with her to feel better about himself. He could also, truthfully, want to know her better, which would shift the guilt of being distant onto her, if she so remained that way.

“Do I get a Manipulator?” Rowana challenged.

Intrepid’s eyes brightened. “You already got one.”

Rowana called his bluff and concentrated, reaching out with her mind for the presence of an Unverse Manipulator on her person, ready to link her consciousness with the device’s Imaginite core. She was surprised again when she found it, coming from the Versa hanging on her hip. She touched it, strengthening the connection between her thoughts and the device’s controls.

“Do you see now?” Intrepid asked, standing upright. “I trust you, and I trust you to trust me.” He held out a hand, not to the biometrics scanner, but to her. “Take my hand.”

Rowana took hold, immediately feeling his rough callouses against her fingers.

“Now,” Intrepid instructed, “take us into the launch room.”

Rowana had been there before, so it was easy to picture the named room’s interior space and contents. They were so close, too, just on the other side of the door. They could just go through the door, but turning to look at it, she faced a completely different wall instead. Her father grabbed her shoulders before she could stumble, not that she would have.

“Disoriented?” Intrepid asked, sounding legitimately concerned. “Nauseous? Feeling bad at all?”

“No,” Rowana answered, reaching up for his hands, which he released anyway. She felt normal.

“I was always immune from Unverse sickness,” Intrepid commented, “naturally so; I theorize it’s genetic. Your mother wasn’t so lucky.”

Rowana bit her tongue from asking if he meant Kate. Perhaps he did, but didn’t intend her to think so, so she didn’t say anything. Looking around the launch room, it was precisely as she’d pictured it. Information displays and real-time graphs lined the walls, and a row of control desks, presently unmanned, sat offset from the front of the room.

At the room’s back was a large unassuming stage-like enclosure, eight feet tall and with a large enough floor area for multiple people to occupy it comfortably at once. It actually housed three dimensional light projectors, built into its ceiling and floor, designed to interface with an Unverse Manipulator and display a real-time preview of its user’s intended destination.

“Just so we’re not jumping into danger headfirst,” Intrepid said, stepping on the platform and seeming to seek out Cailan and Crimson, as the two of them appeared, projected of course, in a scene cropped to the platform’s confines. Conveniently, the Craterises were still together, appearing to sit on a bench of sorts, although it was fuzzy around the edges. The duo, too, showed up monochromatic and hazy.

Intrepid’s brow furrowed as he held the image, while turning his attention to one of the wall displays, several of which were redundant. “They’re in another dimension,” he reported. “The one we call D-NS-3… and on Elistra, of all places.”

“Can we see more?” Rowana asked.

“This is the extent of it, with current technology,” Intrepid shared. “Mara’s team is working on designing an automated probe, like a range extender of sorts, that we could send through and have transmit images back, but the most stable point-to-point connections can only be maintained by an active consciousness. That’s the magic of transdimensional maneuvering. The power is conventional, but the ability is all from the mind.”

Rowana eyed her cousins’ projections again. Crimson had taken to massaging her brother’s shoulders, and Rowana grimaced. They cared for each other, which was nice in itself, but it was less nice in the grander scheme of things, as they only cared for themselves.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Go in, get them, get out,” Intrepid said matter-of-factly. “Once back, we’ll get them into cryogenic pods so we can question them later. I’ll go first.”

And then her father disappeared, along with the extradimensional projections, faster than Rowana could wink. She shook her head at the empty platform instead; he was headstrong today. Steeling herself, she reconnected with the Unverse Manipulator built into the Versa and sent herself to Cailan and Crimson’s location.

She found herself in a room with concrete walls and metal beams, not unlike Leek Works’ own basement, but a lot smaller and colder, with no discernable exit as all the walls were solid. There was a single wooden bench in it, on which Cailan and Crimson perched, staring at her. Then she was slammed from the side and thrown against the floor, grazing her arm on the rough surface.

Someone grabbed her head and she was about to fight back when a glint in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Rowana stopped cold, as the blade’s wielder was behind her, practically on top of her, and set the sharp edge under her chin, precisely in front of her throat.

“Gotcha,” Cailan taunted from the bench, and Rowana’s anger flared at her evident ineptitude. Her father may have been impulsive, but that didn’t mean she had to be, yet she’d copied him anyway. Worse, she’d trusted him, and he led them into a setup – at least, he led her into one.

“Where’s-” she started to ask until the chill of the blade flashed against her neck. From the few long, black strands falling in front of her own face, it was probably the other girl, who she’d stabbed back at Leek Works, holding the blade. So the tables had turned. The blade was long, that she could tell without daring to move a twitch, but she wasn’t sure if it was already cutting into her skin or not. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried reconnecting to the Manipulator, but something kept it out of her mental reach.

Something clanked down close to her. “Let her go,” a new voice, distorted by filtering and modulation, ordered from above, and Rowana felt the blade’s chill withdraw, along with the girl. She immediately brought a hand to her neck and held it up, opening her eyes to it and drawing in her breath at the red staining her fingertips.

Higher up, past her fingers, looking down at her, was a familiar looking space helmet.

“Don’t say anything,” Charles ordered, before he reached down and grabbed her bloody hand.

The hard concrete beneath her was replaced by soft cushions. Directly above her was a classic glass chandelier hanging from a wood panel ceiling, casting a warm multifilament glow across the amber walls of the small, square room. She tilted her head lower and found a stout glass table with a full mug of something dark on it. It all contrasted in many ways with the setting she’d just been whisked out of – nicer ways, even where it was similar. There were no windows or doors, but the walls were covered with bulletin boards.

Charles materialized in front of one, a towel draped in his gloved hand. “Sorry about the incision,” he said, holding the towel out and stepping towards Rowana, who jumped up and over the backrest of the couch she had been deposited upon. She reached for her hip for the Versa, which hadn’t left her person in all the fracas. Even if its transdimensional component was inoperative, she bet the weapon still worked.

She swung the barrel over the satin backrest, aiming for where Charles had just been, when his presence manifested next to her and yanked the Versa from her hands, tossing it into a far corner.

“You’re outgunned,” he informed her.

Rowana grabbed his arms and kicked his groin, only to strike armor instead. She bit back the pain as Charles pushed her away.

“I was meaning to inform you,” Charles continued, “that this room is a construct of my meddling with Unverse. Call it a pocket dimension, if you will. My own little pocket dimension. And as it is mine, I can implode it in an instant. Not that I would.”

Rowana stood her ground. “Why have you brought me here?” she demanded. “Where’s my dad, and are you working with the Craterises?”

“They are my associates today,” Charles answered. This time, he stood his ground as well, taking a place at the adjacent corner of the room. “Intrepid, he is in good health. As for you, you are here because I have a proposition to make, one better than your father’s.”

He was spying, Rowana realized.

“My plans require expedition, as things are quickly changing that are beyond my control. The entire multiverse is at risk.” Charles revealed. “In order to outrun these changes, I want to trust that you will help me get what I need. In return, I will help you get what you want. But you already know that, of course.”

He flicked his visor up, so Rowana could meet his eyes face to face. She did know what he was offering her, and she did want it dearly, so much that whatever Charles thought he needed, he had but to tell her. But now, against all prior expectations, a new thought tugged against saying yes to Charles. She hadn’t thought it would come to this, choosing between Charles and Intrepid. Perhaps it was a choice her mother had to make, sixteen years ago.

It was also a choice between her father and her mother. Intrepid, who created a lie for her to live in for fourteen years, and Kate, who was killed before she ever got a chance to know her. But she would get a second chance, if Charles was successful.

“Tell me what you need,” Rowana said.

Chapter 14: Purveyor

“It’s about time you showed up, Aiden Talmid,” the holding’s sole occupant called out to greet them.

“He’s not alone,” Bridget shot back, stepping through the narrow doorway first and disappearing around a right turn.

Aiden gave her credit for jumping in headfirst. While conversing with her up to this point, he’d effectively betrayed his anxiety at reentering this certain facility on Nimbus Station, known properly as Nexus Force Correctional Facility 3. He’d respectfully explained, however, that the discomfort came not from the facility per se, but rather the man he and Bridget anticipated meeting. Evidenced by the man’s greeting, Tiberius had anticipated him as well.

“Out of a Jirdian cell and into a Nimbian one,” Tiberius was scoffing to Bridget as Aiden rounded the corner himself to face the two. She had taken the wall opposite Tiberius’s prison cot, on which he sat cross-legged while looking quite cross himself in his checkered dark and light gray prison jumpsuit. Appropriately so; Aiden had all but promised to get him out of this cell, too. About a month had passed since.

Tiberius turned to his favorite nephew. “Ah, my favorite nephew,” the man smiled forcefully. “Have you finally come to liberate me from this dreadful place? The attire is quite itchy.”

“Keep scratching,” Aiden advised. “I can’t maneuver you out of here for as long as I still work for these guys. At least you’ll be the first to know as soon as I resign.”

Bridget tossed her head. “There’s a fat chance of that happening,” she disclaimed.

“Not anytime soon, for sure,” Aiden assured. “Anyway, you’re more likely to get out of here naturally. Juiliet’s been corresponding assertively with the warden, and Verbina’s involved too. Your utility to our cause, lack of a flight risk, and good behavior is all accounted for. Our goal is getting you transferred to our supervision, where you’ll have just about anything you want, short of a clean slate.”

Tiberius folded his arms. “So, I’d still be a prisoner. But aren’t we all, ultimately, captive to society, and the only variable to this predicament is our perception to the fact? I agree with you, nephew, that seems a more reasonable goal than getting these nonsensical charges against me dropped.”

“You and your associates impersonated Nexus Force personnel, broke into our secure locations, and stole valuable resources,” Bridget retorted. “Unfortunately, you can’t escape your past, which is so conveniently recorded in your files.”

“Except for what isn’t recorded, or has been expunged,” Aiden leaned against the edge of the cot, which was easy to do as the mattress was hard like a rock. “We want to talk to you about Militiregnum.”

Tiberius, who’d been glancing sidelong at Aiden, maintained the stare. “I’ve never heard of that place.”

 “Check again,” Aiden withdrew a portable plaque and displayed the first image on it, captured by Juiliet during her last dive into Tiberius’s files, of a damaged notebook. “The whole family went there in 3012. Almost 20 years ago. Your journal from the period had five pages ripped out.”

Tiberius sighed. “Alright, children, I confess. In 3012, the Talmid family went to Militiregnum, and nothing spectacular whatsoever occurred there. On that note, I encourage you to take the removed pages as indication that if anything spectacular did in fact occur there that you think I may happen to know about, I certainly won’t be telling you about it.” He looked between Aiden and Bridget before unfolding himself, lying back on the cot, and closing his eyes. “If that’s what you came here for, you can leave now.”

Aiden and Bridget shared a look. “We’re not looking for specifics,” Bridget said. “If you want to keep your experience to yourself, that’s fine. We just want to talk about Militiregnum in general.”

“Why shouldn’t your computer savvy friends just hack into that info or something?” Tiberius muttered, still with his eyes closed.

“They’re working on it,” Aiden said, “and encountering difficulty. Everything about Militiregnum is locked up tightly, behind walls of encryption millions of times tougher to crack than your lockbox. The world itself is blockaded by a flotilla, not that we can be physically blocked from getting there. It’s getting off that’s the problem.”

“Ah, you speak of the technology curse.” Tiberius raised his eyebrows. His eyes themselves appeared to move under his eyelids as he did some introspection. “Such a randomly selective blight, or so it would seem. I theorize it’s not foolproof, or perhaps in itself manipulable by design, but no reliable bypass has yet been discovered, to my knowledge, nor am I keen to discover one myself. On that note, however, I do believ you were conceived there.”

“In general, Tiberius,” Aiden redirected.

“Please tell me the two of you are not going there to be wed as well,” Tiberius minded, “as Abe and Hafwyn were.”

“For friks sake,” Aiden groaned, “we’re trying to rescue Uncle Killian.”

“Who?” Tiberius asked.

“You dingus. Killian Talmid, your brother,” Bridget said with annoyance. “He’s been imprisoned there by some guy called The Dude.”

Tiberius’s eyebrows seemed to rise even higher, before his expression reset. “Oh, that Killian?” he said. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“We did,” Aiden said curtly. “And as stated, we want to know how to get off Militiregnum. Our family did so, evidently.”

“We were lucky,” Tiberius said. “Nothing more than that.”

“Well, what did they do, sprout wings and fly?” Bridget pressed.

“I’m not keen to share specifics, you know that.” Tiberius reminded.

“How far does the curse extend?” Aiden asked.

“You mean its range?” Tiberius clicked his tongue. “Use your intelligence, boy. It stops at its atmosphere, evidently, or just up to whatever altitude that blockading flotilla you mentioned sits at, if they haven’t all malfunctioned and crashed. But you could have figured that out yourself. Nephew,” Tiberius opened his eyes and affixed them on Aiden, “even if you warped me out of this cell right now, which you of course know I very dearly want, I would still insist on sitting this one out. I swear to God, I know no more about Militiregnum than you do, and I care not to learn more, because I will never of my own volition step a foot back on that godforsaken planet again.”

Tiberius stared intently at Aiden, then Bridget, and then at the ceiling. “I’m sure you can respect that.”

After a moment, Aiden nodded, and dejectedly Bridget did too.

“I suppose that was all you came for,” Tiberius prodded.

“Yes,” Aiden admitted, standing up and picking up the plaque. “That was.”

“It’s always a pleasure, nephew,” Tiberius said.

“Until next time,” Aiden exchanged, and he and Bridget rounded the corner back to the door, which shut behind them with several clicks and hisses as its locks reengaged. From there they followed the facility’s drearily tiled hallways to its exit.

“Hopefully Luke and Mara have made progress,” Bridget broke the silence on the walkway outside, headed through industrial Nimbus Station back to Leek Works.

“Hope so,” Aiden agreed. As strong as Agent Sky’s case was, and Aiden himself wanted Killian back as well, safe return was a requisite to any mission proposal. The same applied to liberating Rowana from Macabross and furthering research of the pocket dimension around Elistra, along with the eventual recovery of those trapped within. As things stood, random luck wasn’t enough to justify landing on Militiregnum.

“I don’t think I’ve told you I’ve been to Militiregnum before.” Aiden revealed.

“Nothing surprises me anymore,” Bridget responded. “So, how did you make it back?”

“Random luck,” Aiden answered as he recalled the event. “No, that’s not true,” he corrected himself. “Luke Mercury from the Future Dimension pulled me out. I wasn’t making it out on my own, that’s for certain.” It was a harrowing experience, he remembered that for sure.

“Must have been harrowing,” Bridget said softly.

“I wonder if we can replicate that,” Aiden theorized. “Future Luke opened a transdimensional rift from an external location, presumably, and it worked, evidently, in this case.”

“What’s it like, maneuvering?” Bridget asked.

“There’s a lot to it,” Aiden ran a hand through his hair, unsure where to begin.

“How about after you step through a rift?” Bridget directed.

“Well, it depends on chronology,” Aiden said. “The devices didn’t always open rifts, not the Leek Works ones, at least. They’d just warp you to your destination instantaneously, wherever it was. Some of the other tech, though, like the Ring, would open a portal between locations that you could look through, but the traveling part was still instant. It only lasted a time if you wanted to stay in the Unverse itself, and there’s supposed to be nothing there, so you don’t feel anything, not even the passage of time. But there’s also this astral zone we call Aether, which can be understood as connecting similar dimensions, such as this one, the Future Dimension, the Janitor Dimension, the Maelstrom Dimensions, and who knows how many others. Traveling through Aether now has a perceivable time aspect, ever since the Freezing. It’s consequential that our new device is programmed to open a rift rather than just throw you to your destination, since it can’t do that anymore. You have to get through the Aether first and transform it as you go. It’s an active process.”

“You could write an encyclopedia on Unverse travel,” Bridget marveled.

Aiden smiled back. “I’ve just spent too much time on this,” he said. “But it’ll be worth it.” They turned into the alleyway to Leek Works’s front door and let themselves in. A warmly furnished lobby welcomed them. Consistent with the renovations occurring throughout the rest of the site, Leek Works was truly transforming into their own place.

“You know,” Bridget broached, “I’ve been thinking a bit about after all is said and done, Tiberius will be here, Killian will be back, Rowana will be back, Elistra will be restored. What’s next?”

“There’s still the Rogues and the Maelstrom to deal with,” Aiden suggested.

“There’s always going to be division,” Bridget debated, “and some compelling studies have been done, suggesting that Chaos, not necessarily Maelstrom, is a constant force like Imagination.”

“Point taken,” Aiden acknowledged.

“My actual point is,” Bridget said, “these things will always be around, but we’re not always going to be there to fight them or influence them. So why spend our entire lives on things we can’t control, when there’s other things in life we can?”

“I suppose we’ll have to get there first,” Aiden proposed, unlocking the door to the main hallway and opening it for her to enter.

“Fair enough, I’ll go check on Luke and Mara,” Bridget said, going silent as she passed through.

“But I have thought about the future too,” Aiden called after her. After a moment, she looked back with a smile, and Aiden smiled back, while internally berating himself for lying. He closed the door and regarded the lobby, to distract himself from the future. Screw it, he told himself. He had no plans for the future. What happened in the future anyway? Marriage? Retirement? Dying? He certainly had no plans for dying. If the universe ran out of things for him to do, he’d find a universe that did.

It was hard to picture that Leek Works’s sparkling new lobby had once been full of junk and debris, and a lockbox, and a whiteboard, as recent as a week ago, when he’d brought Alex to check it out. Alex didn’t like it and left. But Alex seemed to be doing well. He’d settled down, rebuilt the family house, got a wife, had a kid. Good for him. That was Alex’s life, not Aiden’s.

He traced a finger on the wall he used to create Unverse rifts against, doorways to other worlds.

“One of these days,” he said, thinking of Macabross and the secrets within. Would Rowana stay in his future?

The wall began to glow blue and Aiden jumped back, bringing a hand to his pocket where his Unverse Manipulator was. He confirmed he hadn’t activated it, but a rectangular perimeter continued to trace itself on the wall. Only then did the transdimensional intrusion alert sound, affirming what Aiden suspected. Then the outlined section of gunmetal contorted, twisting and spinning while taking on a deep blue hue, darker than the typical cyan mist of transforming Aether.

Then a figure jumped out, landing towards the center of the room and nearly stumbling into Aiden, who sidestepped. The unknown person was clad helmet to boots in unknown, advanced looking gear, mostly gray-white with some yellow and blue elements, vaguely Sentinel.

“Whoa,” the person said in a familiar male voice, taking in the scene. “This is different.”

“Luke?” Aiden said carefully.

 The man’s visor flipped up with a violence that took the helmet with it, clattering away to reveal a nastily scarred face. One half of his head was blond, the other half had calcified with some of crystal purple effuse. “Luke Mercury, Grand Masterly Shadow, yadda-yadda-yadda,” the man introduced. “My old names are meaningless compared to my new, better one, which I gave to myself, so it’s all me, and then some.”

The not-Luke took a step towards Aiden, who stepped so his back was aimed at the site’s entrance door, to potentially use as an exit. If there was a potential fight, he wanted it outside Leek Works. He didn’t like this. The only other Luke he’d met was Future Luke, who hadn’t looked this bad the last time they met. This seemed to be someone else, someone worse.

“Alright then,” Aiden said. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Song Stealer,” the man cackled, and Aiden made a face. “What?” the Song Stealer pouted.

“You’re the Song Stealer.” Aiden enunciated, and the Song Stealer nodded. “That’s it?”

“No, it’s not,” the Song Stealer said, beginning again. “I, the man formerly named Luke Mercury and then designated Grand Masterly Shadow by the Nexus Force, now call myself the Song Stealer. And I am here to kill you.”

Then the Song Stealer rushed him, impacting him with enough force to knock Aiden into the door, and through it. He landed with a crash in the alleyway, the door disintegrating underneath him, and the Song Stealer appeared above him, a long crystal dagger in his hand– no, in place of his hand, aimed straight at Aiden’s chest, which he promptly plunged in. The blade pilloried through his Imagination field like butter and sliced through his shirt, embedding into his sternum. Tingling spread out quickly from the point of the impact, both inside and outside Aiden’s body, which he could see was from crystalline growth, solidifying him in place and cutting off his breath.

“Can’t scream?” the Song Stealer said. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it for you.” Then he let out a pitch perfect recreation of Aiden’s own voice, an animalistic shout against impending demise. Then he twisted the blade, shattering Aiden’s ribcage and its crystalized contents into oblivion.

Chapter 15: Prerogative

“Where do you think you’ve been?”

It was strange getting caught off guard by her own sister’s voice, but Kate didn’t feel like admitting anything of it. She’d of course figured others would be around the tower lobby, mainly overnight workers at this time – her family ran a massive interstellar corporation after all – but she’d also figured they wouldn’t much care for her moving about. No one had so far, and she’d been about plenty. Leading to that misguided conclusion, she’d accidentally left Morgan out of the equation.

“I’ve been around,” Kate dodged, offering a quick half smile while making for the tower’s main elevators, but not too quickly. Morgan, who’d had her feet up on the lobby desk, had her boots on the ground faster and used them to cut her off.

“Don’t think you’ll get off that easy,” the woman warned. “No one knew where you went and you never answered your comm.”

“It was dead,” Kate said.

“And you didn’t think to rectify that?” Morgan shot back. Her face was red. “It’s been hours. Something could have happened to you.”

“Well I’m standing here, aren’t I?” Kate responded. “Evidently I can take care of myself.”

Morgan shook her head without taking her eyes off Kate. “Are you forgetting that you were just comatose for a month?”

Kate looked away, trying to hide the heat rising in her face. It honestly had slipped her mind, but she wasn’t about to share that either.

“Mother was worried sick,” Morgan stated. “She wanted me to mobilize the garrison to find you, but-”

“But you didn’t,” Kate interjected and began pacing. Still facing away, she noted the sound of Morgan’s footfalls, matching her changing position. “Why didn’t you?” she continued. “Honestly I’d rather deal with them, at least they don’t interrogate the chief executive’s kids.”

“Why, you’re such a-” Morgan checked herself, before answering. “I didn’t, because that would be ridiculous. It wouldn’t be worth it, it wasn’t worth it, right? It was just nothing, right?”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Kate challenged.

“The truth,” Morgan jumped close and spun Kate to face her. This whole encounter was stupid, maybe avoidable, but Morgan seemed to have a script in mind so Kate let her lead it. “I’d like to have guessed right,” Morgan said in a low voice, “that it’s all harmless shenanigans with you, but if it’s not, you’re no better off lying. You’re mentally compromised, after all, so I can get it out of you. Don’t make me.”

Her expression was mad serious enough that Kate felt a tinge of fear, even though she could break Morgan’s hold on her shoulders at any moment, knowing what she knew of her capabilities. It wouldn’t come to that, though, not if she played her game. She just had to win, of course.

Knowing what she was going to say, Kate took a soft breath, and asked quietly, “Have you ever been in love?”

Morgan’s grip tightened. “This isn’t a game-”

“I get it!” Kate yelped. “You wanna ask the questions, I give you the answers, fine! I’m in love.”

When she made eye contact with Morgan again, she saw her sister’s eyes were narrowed dubiously, and Kate internally shuddered. She was definitely fact-checking her, it made sense with what the Javelin crew discovered. At least it gave her an edge, she hoped.

“You want more answers,” Kate voiced.

“Details,” Morgan clarified. “So I know you’re not lying. What’s he like? Or she?”

 “He,” Kate said, “works for the Nexus Force. We knew each other from Crux, just friends then, went our separate ways, and then he got assigned here four months back and turns out we liked each other, always have.”

“Why’d you keep it a secret this long?” Morgan pressed.

“Every relationship’s got its secrets to an extent,” Kate excused. “On a variable scale, ours is way up there. It has to be. Not that the grunts would ask questions, but that ignores the gossip, which you know would get to the shareholders. Then that leads to questions, since they’d feel threatened by this new presence, who to them can just hold hands into the company they had to buy into.”

“And you don’t want any of that,” her sister mused. “What’s his name?”

“Getting too privy now,” Kate smiled bashfully. “I already told you, he’s Nexus Force. There’s only ever been a few of them hanging around here.”

“That we know of,” Morgan quipped.

“You can figure it out yourself,” Kate kept going. “You can figure out a lot of things, actually, if you wanna go there. I think I’ve told you enough.”

Morgan agreed, since she dropped her hands from Kate’s shoulders. Taking the cue, Kate slunk back and rubbed one of her arms pathetically, while Morgan folded her own arms and held her head up triumphantly. As she was supposed to. “So you remembered him,” Morgan stated.

“He’s hard to forget,” Kate said quickly, wondering what Morgan had in mind with a memory question. Morgan had seemed appeased with her false story corroborated by verifiable facts, but maybe it was a feint, or she was going to hit her with something completely unexpected and indefensible. A question on memory triggered alarm bells. There was more going on than she knew about, she knew that much, and her memory loss disadvantaged her regardless.

Then Morgan stepped aside. “Get some sleep,” her sister ordered. “You’re seeing more specialists in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Kate sighed. She stepped past Morgan warily, only accelerating to a brisk pace when within arm’s length of an open elevator. She only looked back out as the doors closed. Morgan was still watching her, until the doors separated them.

But even as the cart took her up to the residential levels, they weren’t truly separated. Closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, Kate reached around herself to the small of her back, feeling the approximate area where Shira said she’d been provided with a spinal implant, one of two. With her other hand, Kate felt above her neck.

“Redundant transceivers,” Shira had rationalized, “in case your head gets separated from your body, since they’re both individually valuable.”

It was an area wave scan that had tipped them off to the transmitting part. While still in Camp Javelin, Oz had tried the scan to learn more about how Kate could have possibly known where to find the Spectre that his Imagination Telescopes couldn’t. Serendipitously, they’d found something more localized, personally so, and possibly devious.

“They’re definitely phoning home, or somewhere on this planet,” Oz had reported. “The patterns are encrypted, but the most obvious thing I can think to transmit is her geolocation.”

“Someone’s tracking her,” Shira stated. “Maybe she has helicopter parents.”

“They’re plausibly general biostatus reports as well,” Edwin had contributed. “Blood pressure, oxygen levels. Imagination levels?”

While Oz had been more concerned about site security after this discovery, and Shira was just unabashedly morbidly fascinated, the Captain’s tone and expression more appropriately conveyed concern for her, despite his acting pompous previously. It was only fair, given what she’d done for him, that he care about her wellbeing in turn.

Nathaniel just cared for her regardless. “Did you know you had these in you?” he asked softly.

Kate had shaken her head but withdrew her hand from her neck confidently. “I’m alright,” she reported, giving a hopefully reassuring smile each to Edwin and Nathaniel. “It’s not the only unusual thing about me, you know.”

“I still don’t get how she thinks she found that Spectre,” Oz said crossly.

“I get it,” Nathaniel said, looking over Kate to his coworker. “It’s all in the Imagination.” He turned back to Kate imploringly. “This is classified intel, if I recall correctly. May I share?”

As if he needed her permission, she didn’t even know what he was talking about. But certainly wanting to, Kate nodded eagerly.

“Kate is a Nexus Figure,” Nathaniel said. “Her Creative Spark is gifted with a massive capacity for Imagination stores, to a self-sustaining level, if not overtaxed. Having an affinity to such concentrations of Imagination just leads to remarkable abilities, like tuning in to the harmonics in the stray Imagination energy spread across this galaxy. She was able to do what our telescopes could, and couldn’t.”

“Affiniwhat to remarkable abilities? Say what? How’s that work?” Shira asked.

“I don’t know, as far as I’m concerned it just does,” Nathaniel answered. “That’s the conclusion our researchers reached a long time ago, I can tell you that much. The papers are out there, if you want a more in depth explanation.”

“With all due respect Serge, I didn’t drop out of high school to read papers,” Shira scoffed.

“College here,” Oz said with a rare wry grin.

“Jesus,” Edwin muttered, “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

“Welcome to my life,” Nathaniel sighed.

“A fellow your age should be in school too,” Edwin reprimanded.

“Aye, I used to be,” Nathaniel said, “I thought I missed the bus one day. Turned out the Maelstrom caught it first. I cope well, though. Makes for a good soldier. I prefer leadership, though, we ain’t got enough good ones of those.”

“Agreed, and I can see you do the job well,” Edwin nodded. “This lot would be nothing without you. I do extend my condolences, for what it’s worth, to the losses around you, and within you. You deserve better than this. Everyone touched by the poison of war deserves better. But we do what we must. Right now, that’s stopping that Spectre.”

The rogue ship’s location still remained clearly in Kate’s mind, and with Edwin’s reminder the conversation so returned to it. While the trade routes between Jirdia and Crux were periodically traveled by Nexus Force convoys, neither those nor any uncommitted Nexus Force starships were nearby enough to be commandeered, Nathaniel informed them. Not that redirecting any old transport ship to intercept a weapon ship purportedly as dangerous as the Spectre was anything but suicide.

“I need a fleet of warships,” Edwin laid out next, “fast, maneuverable, and lots of weapons. Like my own ship, in fact.”

“Too bad you blew up your own ship,” Shira pointed out. “It’d sure be useful now, didn’cha think of that Mister Talmido?”

“Of course,” Edwin defended himself, “but it had to be done, lest it fall into potentially dangerous hands. And while I’ve gotten to know you lot somewhat now, enough perhaps that I could trust you with it under Nathaniel’s supervision, it’s also true that you are sojourners on this planet nearly as much as I am, so it wouldn’t even be in your hands what would happen to my ship, should it have survived.”

“It would be in the jurisdiction of the Jirdians,” Nathaniel affirmed. “By now they’ll be salvaging what they can from the wreckage.”

“Exactly,” Edwin nodded. “Hopefully there’s not much left.”

“I’m not confident there isn’t,” Nathaniel warned, and from there the conversation gradually moved to the back of Kate’s mind as she returned to following the Spectre’s travel through space. It was tiring, but her connection to the galaxy’s stray Imagination gave her a picture of all the astronomic contents in the area of the galactic core. She risked being overwhelmed without careful and deliberate tuning out, which she attended to, until someone, Oz, dropped her name.

Kate let the image fade and looked up. “Pardon?”

“I said the technocracy is more skilled at destroying things than they are at putting things together,” Oz repeated. “I thought you’d have an opinion one way or another, given that you’re technocratic royalty.”

Her perplexed expression must have been obvious, since Shira cut in, “She’s either too offended to know what to say, or she has no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe, but she ought to, since Jericho’s entire tech operation is literally run by one family,” Oz pressed. “Hers.”

“For what it’s worth, you lost me too as soon as you started rambling about the technocrats versus the transcendentalists,” Shira rolled her eyes.

“Neo-transcendentalists,” Oz corrected, “and there’s a lot more to local politics than the false dichotomy-”

“I’m gonna pull a hard stop,” Nathaniel interrupted and turned to Kate apologetically. “I apologize on Ozwald’s behalf, he’s still working on his social skills, including when discussing politics is appropriate, which is rare, and when assuming things about people is appropriate, which is never.”

“It’s fine,” Kate assured, although she was actually thankful for the accidental hint to her family’s business, or anything about them really. He was probably right, that she ought to have an opinion on the matter. Surely she would have, if not for the knowledge and memories missing from her brain.

“We’re cool,” she said pointedly to Oz, for his sake.

The man folded his arms in response to Nathaniel’s intervention. To Kate, he just muttered, “Whatever.”

Then there was the matter of even communicating to the Nexus Force the threat of the Spectre. The aforementioned convoy was at present nearly two thousand light years from Jirdia, in one of the Gallant sectors, according to the travel schedules Oz had access too, and Kate took her mind’s eye off the Spectre for the moment to confirm it.

“We can send an alert to the Nexus Force,” Nathaniel said, “but it takes around two days just for it to reach them, then there’s another two days for us to get one back.”

“That’s a lot of time to give a rampaging Spectre,” Edwin warned. “Trust me, it can do a lot of damage. How about regional authorities?”

“Well, there’s the Jirdians of course,” Shira said. “Two days, pssh. It takes all of two seconds to ring them.”

“I can authorize it,” Nathaniel admitted, before sighing. “I have to, now that I think about it. Part of maintaining a mutually beneficial presence on this planet, a requisite to our presence here, is doing nothing that would threaten them, such as being negligent to a marauding threat. Yeah, Shira, ring them. Tell them we need to meet.”

He turned to Edwin. “I take it you’re on board.”

“We do what we must,” Edwin repeated.

“How about you?” Nathaniel asked Kate with a frown. “I remember that woman you were with earlier. I get the feeling you’re not even supposed to be out here.”

Kate shook her head drearily, perhaps a bit drowsily as well.

“Shira will give you a ride home,” Nathaniel decided. “We’ll keep your involvement classified, pursuant to the confidentiality of your abilities, but not because I want to withhold you due credit. Your assistance has been invaluable today, Edwin can attest I’m sure, and your presence, as always, is warmly welcomed.” He looked pointedly at Oz, who rolled his eyes. “Now, go get some sleep.”

Some sleep involuntarily came to Kate on the ride back home, Shira had to shake her awake quite violently to get her out of the car before driving off. Some rest was for the best, Kate figured, as she’d groggily made her way up the front steps toward the lobby of Dekairie Defense’s tower, each thudding stair climb pounding more alertness into her brain. It certainly came in handy, which was an understatement, to get through her encounter Morgan.

Through the elevator doors and then her bedroom door, which she locked, Kate collapsed on her bed without bothering to remove even her sneakers. In the cover of darkness, the day’s events still flashed distractingly in her mind. It had been a long day, and it was only the first day in recent memory.

She could do without more surprises, Kate reasoned, but her involvement in the events so far, and events moving forward, was not without appeal. Excitement was part of it, but so was being part of something bigger, and making a difference. Maybe that was why she allegedly joined the Nexus Force in the first place. Utilizing her creative abilities in a war against indiscriminate destruction and chaos seemed to fit the bill. But if helping save the world was so important to her, what was moreso to make her want to leave?

“Wake up, Kate,” said a voice. It was familiar, more familiar than Grace’s. She jolted with surprise, finding herself in a seated position, with hard surfaces against her back and thighs but unable to stand up from it, and while certain her eyes were open, all she saw was black.

Until the bag was lifted off her head and glaring red light invaded her dilated eyes. Blinking several times until the glare subsided, her surroundings came into focus – dark metallic bulkheads with red light strips made three of the walls in the narrow square space she was in. The fourth wall was only partially bulkhead with a trapezoidal cutout spanned by an energy field. A force field. And the chair she sat in, her arms and legs were tied to it, but not for long.

Kate felt the heat on her skin as the binds ignited, burning to ash and releasing her. She stood up and whirled, looking for the cell’s other occupant, if there was one, and found him retreated in the room’s opposite corner. He was covered in dark gray armor over a red jumpsuit, with an imposing helmet concealing his face behind an inky black visor. There was a gun in his hand, aimed in her direction but not directly at her, which he pointed to with his other hand.

“Listen, I don’t want to use this,” the marauder said, and Kate assumed a combat stance.

“As if you get a chance,” she snarled, and with a flick of her wrist the weapon deconstructed, spilling loose components on the floor.

The man responded with a thrust of his own wrist, releasing a cloud of purple energy that filled the space, numbing her at its encroaching touch. Holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut, she reached out with her mind to analyze its composition. There was Imagination surrounding it, so she could manipulate it, but the potency of its payload came from something menacing and chaotic.

Regardless, she grabbed hold of the Imagination component and compressed it into a bubble, which she lobbed back at her attacker. It struck him fast in the chest and slammed him into the bulkhead, leaving a dent as he bounced off and hit the floor. He tried getting up but she got to him faster, delivering a kick to the ribs that sprawled him, groaning, back on the ground.

“Wait, please,” he coughed, moving his hands up, as if to release his helmet, which Kate also detected was powered by Imagination. She grabbed hold of that energy to rip it off herself, ready to do more damage until his face stopped her cold.

“Kate,” the man stared at her with wide, blue eyes, which, along with the rest of his features, she regarded with incredulity. “It’s me, it’s-”

“Cyclone,” she finished for him. She recognized Gallant Strong Cyclone.

Chapter 16: Provision

They rendezvoused at a site in mainland Nimbus Station, a coastal bluff overlooking the channel sea that, in their original dimension, separated their vantage point from the landmass of Nimbus City.

But they were no longer in their original dimension. The last time Rowana observed the sky outside Leek Works, which she’d just revisited under a minute ago, the sky had been bright as mid-morning. Jere, on this version of the mainland, night seemed to have long fallen. The other difference contrasted just as starkly. Nimbus City no longer filled a significant angle of the perceivable horizon. In its place, there was just sea all the way to the end of the world.

“This is D-NS-3,” Rowana said, allowing some marvel to creep out of her normally rigid demeanor, or she’d have said nothing otherwise. It was happening a lot lately. Since taking Charles’s side earlier that day, she could feel herself, her feelings, starting to break free of what had become an unconscious restraint on them. Right now it was excitement, and she decided to allow it. It seemed appropriate, as things were going well.

Rowana withdrew the box she’d procured from Leek Works’s storage. It was square and small, so its bright red label warning of dangerously high volatility covered its entire face. She handed it to Charles, who shook his head at the warning. Disregarding it, he ran the box along a serrated edge of his wrist cuff, breaking its seal and allowing it to open.

“This is a very special dimension,” Charles responded to her idly as he inspected the box’s contents and sifted through some crinkly material, probably shielding, until he revealed the core of the matter to himself. Whatever it was, it cast a bright blue glow onto his visor, almost enough to pierce through it to his face. Because of his helmet, his voice had come out filtered, but it didn’t hide a tinge of giddiness. If anything he was growing more excited.

“The entire dimension is set back twenty years to ours,” Rowana filled in.

“That’s not what makes it special to me,” Charles reached in and lifted out a small and blue gemstone, glowing and pulsating wildly. In the open, in addition to its visual intensity, it cast an effect that Rowana felt in her spirit, nourishment, enrichment. She wanted to step closer but held her ground, and Charles only allowed it a second anyway. With some force he shoved the gem back into its shielding material and snapping the box shut. The effect was instantaneous on Rowana, their surroundings suddenly seemed boring. It had an effect on Charles, too, as he was taking deep breaths.

Rowana recollected her thoughts. “This dimension’s history is the same as ours until our respective year 3026s,” she tried again. “We won our Maelstrom War then, but here it continues.”

“The first half of your answer isn’t proven,” Charles evaluated, “and the second half is irrelevant.”

“I’m not here to be schooled by you,” Rowana positioned.

“And with all due respect, I’m not here to argue with you,” Charles responded levelly.

“Then you can shut up and leave, as you’re not doing a good job at that,” Rowana snapped faster than she could hold herself back.

Internally she reared herself. Hadn’t she just been feeling good before? Was the mysterious gem affecting her adversely?

But truly she knew her feelings needed a warning label themselves. Of course she didn’t want Charles to go. They had to keep moving forward with their mutually beneficial mission, even though working with Charles was difficult. She’d met him on enough rooftops to have concluded that. He was vague and spoke like he knew more than he was letting on, even now when they were an established team effort. It was counterproductive, but so was arguing, which she’d objectively contributed to as well, because she’d mistakenly allowed herself to feel.

Charles interrupted her muster by laughing. This time she kept from saying anything, at least, when he surprised her with an apology himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you just reminded me of someone, the way we had that back and forth there.”

Rowana knew. “I’m sorry too.”

“No hard feelings,” Charles said, stowing the box and its resecured contents into a storage compartment on his chest. “I know this is strange to you, but you’ve done everything I’ve asked well. You haven’t even asked me any questions about this mission. What’s in the box? Is it safe? Are we putting the integrity of the multiverse at risk? How does this accomplish our goal? How does the whole plan even work? For what it’s worth, you may as well know this is illegal, too.”

“I figured that out a long time ago, and I don’t care,” Rowana responded.

“You should care,” Charles said, “but I can assure you, there are no risks. Not in this stage, or the next. Except…” He regarded her, perhaps reconsidering her recent unfortunate outburst, in spite of his immediate reassurance. “I need you to stay committed.”

Or maybe he was having cold feet in general, and now he could make it about her? How offensive. “I could have bailed at any moment,” Rowana reminded, and took it a step further, “and told the Republic what you’re up to, or checked up on my dad, but I’m still here.”

Charles didn’t nod, but he affirmed, “I see that.”

“So you have what you need from me, but you also need to trust me. Which is on you.” Rowana pointed out.

This time he did nod, barely. “Yes, it is,” he agreed with a sigh. “We’ve made it this far. Too far. It’s just I’m putting a lot on the line as well.” He put a hand over his chest, and underneath it, the gemstone.

Again, there were a few ways the man she was dealing with could go, and Rowana couldn’t have him let up now. “Where am I going?” she directed.

Charles replied, “The one universe in which she and I still coexist.”

Despite being taken aback, Rowana just nodded. “Is that around here?” she asked.

“In a sense, no,” Charles said. “Some dimensions are, in a sense, closer than others. Bonded, even, in formation and existence, and we shouldn’t ignore their presumed demise, either. The incarnations of Charles and Kate we need are from this dimension, D-NS-3 you called it? But they’re not here anymore. They’ve vanished from this cluster of dimensions, for better or worse. Better, actually, since it means they haven’t been around to get killed.”

Rowana kept from rolling her eyes. Now he was being like Intrepid and Tiberius, talkative and overexplanatory while deliberately unforthcoming and barely tolerable. But she had sent him on the tangent, so she just had to redirect him again. “So I’m going to find them,” she stated. And bring them back?

“You’ll find them,” Charles repeated, “and bring back something of them. But not themselves. They’re safe where they are, and I’d rather they stay that way. Just some material is all we need, for me to do my part.”

Rowana shrugged internally, while keeping her form rigid as usual. She had to get her feelings back under her own control. It didn’t make a difference that she’d be seeing someone who looked like her mom, since the truth was she wasn’t her mom. Her Kate was killed fourteen years ago. And apparently other Charleses and Kates had been killed too?

Charles cleared his throat, apparently having more to say. “If you’re wondering why you,” he sighed again, “and why not me… well I suppose it’s only appropriate I tell you why it can’t be me to do this. I’d have done it already otherwise. I tried, in fact, to the extent I could, but there were none of us left.” He took a long breath that sent pops and hisses through his suit. It struck Rowana then that she’d never seen him outside it. Like it was life support.

“I’m a broken man,” Charles said. “Damaged, dismembered, ripped to shreds inside and out and haphazardly pieced back together for an unscrupulous cause. The only meaning in my life left me as I lay dying, but it was an honest mistake on her part, I forgive her that. If only she had the chance to know the truth, before it was too late. For her. For the both of us.” His blank visor had meandered, until he heaved his shoulders, steeling himself back in the present. “The item you recovered for me was my Creative Spark, excised and reconstituted into this Imaginite Crystal sixteen years ago. It’s been mostly stable, as am I, to one very unfortunate effect in the context of this mission. Because it’s no longer part of me, I can no longer travel outside the ether.”

“The what?” Rowana asked.

“The stuff that holds similar dimensions together,” Charles explained. “It’s not just the void out there. There’s ether, spelled Aether. I can travel through that, since there’s an Imagination component to it that permits my suit to support me, but beyond that… I’d die in the void.”

So this was the part where he truly needed her, perhaps in more contexts than one. “We don’t want that,” Rowana offered with deliberate softness.

“No, I don’t think I do at this time,” Charles affirmed with a laugh, before continuing, “The Charles and Kate from this dimension are beyond Aether. I can’t reach them, but you can, and you hold a powerful device. It’s my understanding you can land right on top of them if you’re not careful. But use your judgement. I’m trusting you on this.”

“It’s not like you have a choice,” Rowana minded.

“Indeed, I trust no one else not to stab me in the back,” Charles whistled. “Well, I won’t keep you.”

Rowana nodded but didn’t connect with the Manipulator just yet. She was ready, but in many ways also not. “Where do I meet you?” she inquired.

“Find me,” was all Charles said. “I’ll watch you go, but I have to leave too. The sooner the better. I need time to prepare myself.”

Rowana nodded, to Charles and to herself. So, the moment had finally come, she was going to execute a transdimensional maneuver and see Kate. But it wasn’t really her Kate, and this was no normal maneuver, if normal ones even existed. It was like none she’d done before, at least, in her very limited experience. She had no idea where she was going, only that it was far removed. But to travel it would take only an instant of mental effort. The rest of the mission was up to Charles.

She hoped his Creative Spark was up to the task, before she gripped the Manipulator and let it take her into the void.