Chapter Fourteen
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 When Intrepid awoke, it was to a horrible ringing in his ears. Despite the feeling of being put back together, his whole body ached, and sitting up, more like trying to sit up, made him want to throw up. He'd never felt like this before - he could remember many times he'd been subject to transdimensional maneuvers in the past, and he never felt this bad.
 Then again, considering his crash on Elistra had apparently coincided with traveling to another dimension, it was more accurate to say he had felt this bad before. Maybe it had to do with traveling to new dimensions. Or Red's piloting.
 Groaning inwardly to himself, Intrepid opted to wait for the fluttering in his stomach to subside, and while doing so he heard voices. He recognized Kate's voice. Then he heard another voice, which was familiar, which he verified with a turn of his head to be that of the Stromling.
 "I'm Cyclone." the Stromling said.
 Sitting next to him was Kate, and she answered, "I know." She paused and smiled at the Stromling's surprise. "My name's Kate. In another dimension, we're friends."
 "But..." the Stromling, Cyclone, stammered, "...how? I'm infected."
 "You were cleansed," Kate explained. "We both were."
 "You were infected?" this Cyclone asked. "But you're not now."
 "Exactly. And soon, you won't be either." Then Kate turned to Intrepid. "You got any disinfection kits on you?"
 Intrepid found his voice. "No." he muttered. Maybe someone here did, but he didn't know exactly yet where 'here' was. Some HQ, of whatever organization Red worked for? He figured he could ask.
 "Where are we?" he asked.
 Kate shook her head. "If you can get up, you'll see we're in some sort of blank room. That girl's gone, she wasn't here when I woke up."
 "Her name's Red." Intrepid said.
 "Really? That's a dull name."
 That rules out Kate naming her, Intrepid thought sulkily. He did attempt to get up now. He put his right elbow on the ground, a smooth, cold floor - tile perhaps? - and then his left poked into something soft, and Strange Odd Shadow screamed.
 "Gah!" the boy cried. "Do watch where you put your elb-blargh." Apparently he wasn't feeling too good either.
 Intrepid sat up and looked around, at the ground first, then upwards. Indeed, the floor was tile, improved, a stark contrast to the unfinished concrete walls that surrounded them in all directions. The ceiling seemed to have lighting integrated into the edges where it met the walls; there were no protruding lamps. One wall had a metal doorframe, with a door, and some sort of peripheral scanner, and no other visible means of opening it. Unless one of them had a passkey, they wouldn't be getting through.
 There was a logo on the door. The same green infinity-with-a-slash that was on Red's coat. But printed on such a large object, Intrepid could now discern that one of the slash was actually shaped like a vegetable.
 Like a leek.
 Together, that and the concrete made sense.
 "I think I know where we are." Intrepid said, standing. He tottered for a bit, then steadied his bearings and approached the door. The scanner had a dark screen, which lit up at his approach. It displayed the image of a fingerprint, and Intrepid swiped his hand over it.
 The scanner whirred and the door slid open. "Credentials confirmed, Intrepid Fusion Eclipse." a voice without a source intoned.
 The door was open, so he intrepidly crossed the threshold.
 The room he entered was lined with tables, atop which sat a bunch of transparent screens, with a chair for each one. Intrepid tapped the surface in front of one of them, and the screen lit up with text. A gel keyboard oozed out of the table. Gross, Intrepid thought. In one corner, he recognized an actual laptop computer, which he happily approached. When he tapped its physical buttons, it exited a screensaver to display a Winbrick Experience Index, which it was in the process of running. So far it had completed the CPU test, in which it had achieved a score of some decimal less than 1.
 "No way." Intrepid muttered, when he heard the scraping of a chair against the floor. He turned around, and saw that the room wasn't empty. In the far corner, visible through all the transparent screens, a boy with auburn hair was getting up. Quickly, Intrepid darted back and ran his hand over the surface of the table, activating all the screens and turning them opaque. Then he ducked behind a chair and peeked under the table.
 The boy turned around and noticed the screens. He had a round face and looked fairly young. "Is someone there?" he called, craning to look over the tops of the monitors, but he wasn't very tall either. He rotated his head towards another doorway on his side of the room. "Red?" he called, before disappearing into it.
 Intrepid wondered who this guy was. He was about to get up and follow him, and maybe find Red in the process, when someone touched his arm and he nearly cried out in surprise.
 "Don't do that!" he hissed to Kate, who had snuck up next to him. Wordlessly, Kate pointed at both her eyes, and then at the other doorway. They both stayed crouched and watched as the boy returned, this time with a different girl. She had dark hair, a chiseled face, conspicuous freckles, and eyebrows that were tilted in attack mode. Unlike the boy, who dressed in a plaid shirt and simple pants, she wore jeans and a large sleeved coat.
 "You said there were intruders here?" the girl asked loudly. "I don't see anybody."
 "Hush or you'll scare them off!" the boy said anxiously.
 "That's one to get rid of them."
 "We plan not to leave so easily!" someone else spoke, and Intrepid and Kate whirled to see Strange Odd Shadow in their doorway, decked out in his Rank 3 Engineer gear and looking ready to fight. He looked down at his two teammates. "Why are you hiding there?"
 The girl laughed. "Psh. It's one of those Maelstrom War reenactment guys. Check out his outfit."
 Shadow looked back at them and set his jaw. "I am wearing the latest and greatest Assembly gear." he informed them.
 Intrepid had seen a Rank 5 Inventor, but he didn't say anything.
 "I won't need to use it if you would so kindly tell us where we are!" the Engineer continued.
 In response, the girl held up her wrists, and out of each sleeve extended... frying pans? "Fight me." she said.
 "We're in Leek Works." Intrepid spoke up, standing now before either this boy or girl felt gung-ho enough to attack them. For his teammates' sakes, Intrepid clarified, "We're in my secret base. Evidently it's changed a bit in the past twenty years. The year here is 2036."
 Shadow raised his eyebrows. "You've been here before?"
 "No." Intrepid said. "I just know a few things." He turned to the two who they had intruded upon. "I don't know who you are, though, so I'll introduce myself first. I'm-"
 "I'm Kate!" Kate interrupted.
 "Strange Odd Shadow." Shadow said.
 "I'm Intrepid Fusion Eclipse." Intrepid grumbled. At this, both teenagers' eyes widened.
 "No way." the boy said.
 "Way." the girl said. "So this is what Red meant when she met..." she clammed up and turned to her companion. "Do they know?"
 "Red brought us here." Kate said.
 The girl nodded. "Aha! So this is what Red meant she said she met her dad."
 Now Kate whirled on Intrepid. She looked at him with a puzzled expression on her face. She opened her mouth a few times, was silent, and then decided. "WHAT?" she shouted.
 The girl continued. "And that must be-"
 "Hush!" Intrepid interrupted. He couldn't let this get out of control. "Tell us who you are," he instructed.
 The girl gestured to the boy. "This is Ben," she introduced him, "and I myself am Allison Ryder! It's very 'interesting', as is your catchphrase here, to make your acquaintance! Our Intrepid Fusion Eclipse is pretty weird." As she spoke, the frying pans folded up and retracted back into her coat. An odd choice of weaponry. Perhaps she was the cook.
 "Are you the cook?" Intrepid asked.
 "I specialize in all-natural, healthy, gluten free, high-fructose corn syrup free, baking." Allison confirmed proudly.
 The boy, Ben, sighed. "I'm a-"
 "-walking, talking hardware maintenance manual." Allison finished, and poked him. "That's what he was talking about before, about consulting a hardware maintenance manual to rebuild the old laptops around here. He's always talking about geek stuff and things. 'Core i12s', 'random access memory', 'five hundred petabyte cloud state drives'."
 "Am not." Ben pouted.
 Intrepid wasn't sure if he could take more of this. Before Allison could talk more, he directed, "So where's... everybody?"
 Allison and Ben looked at him curiously.
 He continued, "Elite Distant Tofu, Grand Masterly Shadow, Red, ...me?"
 Allison shrugged. "Elite just went to Guppy Forest. I dunno who Grand Masterly Shadow is. Red was just here, and so were you. The janitor and-"
 "They went that way." Ben interrupted, pointing to yet another doorway. "Red and Intrepid. To talk." Intrepid recognized it. This one lead out.
 "I was telling him about the others." Allison protested.
 "He didn't ask about anyone else."
 Intrepid wondered what he'd see if he stepped outside, but he remembered their other companion, and asked, "You wouldn't happen to have any disinfection kits on you?"
 "No idea what that is." Allison said.
 "I do." Ben told them. "They were used in the war, but production ended a long time ago. We don't have any, but we have something that can accomplish the same thing." He turned to Allison, as if for approval, and she raised her eyebrows.
 "I don't think Intrepid wants us using The Ring." she warned.
 Intrepid had an idea. "Well I'm Intrepid, and I'm authorizing you to show Kate, Shadow, and Cyclone how to operate it. Can you use it, Ben?"
 "I'm sure." the boy said with a nod, and headed for his doorway.
 "When Intrepid, our Intrepid, comes back and yells at us, I'll tell him it's your fault." Allison said, giving him the evil eye. Cyclone appeared beside them, still looking like a Stromling and also looking confused, perhaps awestruck by their surroundings, and Shadow lead him around the tables to the doorway, while Intrepid began walking for the door.
 "Where are you going?" Kate asked him.
 "I have more questions." Intrepid said briskly. He made it to the door, but before moving to open it, he noticed that Kate was behind him. "You shouldn't come." he said.
 Kate rolled her eyes. "Don't get anti-social on me, Intrep. I'm forgiving you for abandoning me on that planet, so all things considered, we've made it this far together."
 "Great." Intrepid said. "So when you hear something you don't like, I'll make Red do the talking." That was being hopeful. And maybe someone else, Intrepid thought. Maybe this dimension's Intrepid Fusion Eclipse would be more willing to share what he knew than Red. Maybe he would understand him better. Maybe he could learn what was going on in this dimension, with Maelstrom Ore-stealing kids and people trying to trick him, and how it affected his original dimension. Maybe this Intrepid knew more about his family, and Tiberius.
 Maybe maybe maybe.
 He would know by stepping out of this door. It had an old-fashioned brass door handle. With a steady hand, Intrepid gripped it, turned it, and swung the door open. A shallow breeze entered the room. Taking deep breathes, Intrepid and Kate stepped through it.
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 The first thing Intrepid noticed was the snow that coated the surface of the alleyway. It was as if, sometime between 2016 and 2036, Nimbus Station had become Frostburgh. In the Nimbus Station Intrepid knew, the world never had more than dustings of snow during the holidays. Here there had to be a few inches.
 Crunch, crunch was the sound his and Kate's shoes made in the snow, even though it was already flattened by the footsteps of others. Kate suddenly pulled on his arm, and he heard voices ahead, but they were hushed. Turning around, he saw Kate had paused behind a dumpster, and she gestured silently for him to crouch down as well. Smart. People who already talking discreetly wouldn't want to know they were being watched.
 Kate held a finger to her lips and Intrepid nodded. Then he peeked around the edge, his eyes followed the footprints already tracked up the alley to a point twenty five feet away, halfway to the street. There stood Red, covered in her coat and hood. In front of her, partly obscured in the line of sight from their hiding place, stood a taller man with black hair and a long coat of his own, his hands in his pockets. His face was dark in the shadow of an overhang. This man almost looked like his father, from a time when he was slimmer.
 Intrepid swallowed his anxiety. He knew who this man was. So this was him in the future, or more accurately, this was him in another dimension set in the future. So he did have some more vertical room to grow, Intrepid noted gladly. This man had to be in his late thirties, he calculated. But exactly how much of a difference twenty years could make, Intrepid could only tell if he could get a closer look.
 He considered adjusting his earpiece again to snoop, but then someone would slam a dumpster and he'd lose his hearing for good. There were other objects in the alleyway between himself and Kate and himself and Red. He might be able to dart over to a closer one, if he picked the right spots in the snow to tread...
 Kate poked him and Intrepid looked up. Abruptly, his older self turned and left to the street. Then he was gone, and it was just him, Kate, and Red. By the way Red looked in their direction and proceeded to approach them, Intrepid suspected she knew they were there.
 His suspicion turned to confuzzlement when she said, "He's gone, you can come out now."
 Intrepid stood up, Kate as well. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I'm trustworthy, right?"
 Red stopped and looked at the ground. "I trust you, a lot. Both of you. But Intrepid, your version from this dimension doesn't know you're here. What I've done by bringing you here is a secret."
 Kate glanced at Intrepid warily. "Actually, we might not be so much of a secret."
 Red looked up. "You've met the others?"
 "Just..." Intrepid tried to remember their names, "Ben and Allison. They're trying to disinfect Cyclone."
 "With the ring? That won't work." Red walked past them and waved a hand over the door's fingerprint scanner. "We'd best stop them before they implode the dimensions." she said while it scanned.
 Kate laughed. "You're a dramatic one." The scanner chirped and the door unlocked, while Red sighed. Intrepid didn't think she was being dramatic, and Kate frowned, doubting her words as well. "Imploding the dimensions... sounds like destroying the universe. That's not a real danger, is it?" she asked.
 Red sighed again. "Actually, it is."
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 They found Ben, Shadow, and Cyclone in the junk room, which was more cluttered than Intrepid remembered. Allison Ryder was there was as well, and she and the other three were standing at different points in the room. It was hard for them to stay together in this room, Intrepid knew, because navigating the room was less like walking, more like wading through the towers of tools, computer equipment, old artifacts, and canned food conglomerated within these four walls. Their arrangement was as haphazard as before, and Intrepid made a mental note to do some housecleaning when they got back to his Nimbus Station.
 Intrepid stepped into a file cabinet and nearly knocked over the air conditioning unit perched atop it. "Wait." he said, holding out his hands and looking around. Everyone was standing in different places, where should he look first? "What are we looking for?"
 "Oh, it's that thing." Kate said, and Intrepid turned to see was pointing to.
 She spoke of an object with a large circular structure atop it, that stood ten studs tall with an equal diameter, more than tall enough for a minifigure to step through. At the object's, or device's sides were two control panels with levers, requiring two people to operate it. Right now only Bed stood by it, tinkering with its left side control panel.
 "What is that?" Intrepid asked. "I've never seen it before."
 "It's some sort of teleportation device from Nexus Tower." Kate explained. "The Faction Leaders used it back when Cyclone, Rover, Blade and I were infected. Cyclone and Blade had strong Imagination sparks which created doubles of them, and the Faction Leaders used the teleporter's portal to merge them."
 "And it worked to disinfect you too?" Intrepid asked.
 Kate shook her head. "No, that was separate. They used a disinfection room."
 "Well I don't see any clones around here, so why are we playing with this?" Intrepid questioned.
 "That's exactly why we shouldn't." Red said. She took a look at the mess between herself and Ben, then looked down at her TM device on her belt.
 Intrepid expected her to warp over, but instead she left it stowed, then proceeded to stomp very noisily across the expanse. Towers of junk tipped and stuff fell noisily. Intrepid cringed as one tromp resulted in a glass cracking sound, since what had glass, related to computers, and would be kept in his storage room? But Red kept going, finally getting to Ben and she grabbed his shoulder. Ben flinched at her touch, and Red said firmly, "That's enough toying with things you don't know about."
 Ben looked up from his work. He'd had the control panel off and was inspecting the wiring. "We're trying to disinfect the Stromling." he said.
 "Didn't you hear what Kate said? This isn't a disinfection device." Red said brusquely, waving a hand at the teleportation device and nearly hitting it.
 "It's probably the source of all our problems." she added under her breath, but Intrepid caught it. Maybe Kate was right, Red was dramatic. But she didn't speak without reason, so Intrepid suspected there was more to that sentence that she knew, and she ought to tell them.
 "What do you mean, the source of problems?" Intrepid inquired. "What problems?"
 "It's always questions with you." Red snapped, glaring at him.Â
 Wow. Intrepid thought, taken aback. Red was in a bad mood. He was about to say something back, ideally something snarky, when Kate somehow stepped in front of him and cut him off. Intrepid let his mind calm and stepped back. Kate could read people - if anyone could get the truth out of Red, Intrepid would bet on Kate.
 "Listen, Red? That's your name?" Kate asked, and Red nodded. "Right, so, you brought us here for some reason, and none of us know what it is. You're keeping us a secret from your father, your Intrepid Fusion Eclipse, and none of us know why. And except for our Intrepid, who recognized something when you brought us here, none of us knew where we were."
 "We're at Leek Works." Intrepid repeated.
 "I know that." Kate said. "My point is, Red - there's a lot we don't know. But there's a lot you know. And it would help all of us a LOT if you would tell us something. You need to help us help you - because that's why you brought us here, isn't it? To help you?"
 Intrepid nodded to himself. Good job, Kate. It made sense. And Kate was right. Red seemed less angry now, since her typical poker-face was gone, and in fact she looked perturbed. Why, Intrepid couldn't figure out, but maybe she'd tell them now.
 "Fine." Red said, lifting her chin and straightening her posture. "You're right, I did bring you here to help me. That doesn't mean you deserve to know everything. Intrepid has helped me in the past, and there's a lot he doesn't know."
 "I can attest to that." Intrepid agreed.
 "But there is a lot I can tell you," Red continued, "and Kate, you're right, it will help you, and me, if you understand what's going on." She paused. "Where should I start?"
 "I know." Kate said. "Tell us about you."
 Now she'll know. Intrepid thought worriedly. Maybe he should leave. He glanced at the doorway, but Allison and Shadow had moved to between him and it, so he'd have to tread on more laptops to get out.
 "Actually," Intrepid heard Red's voice, "Intrepid already asked about that." Intrepid turned back, trying to remember what she meant. Then he smiled. Good job, Red! he cheered in his head. Earlier he'd asked who she worked for. So Red had re-interpretated Kate's question to be about that specifically. It was great.
 But still, Intrepid stopped and wondered, why was he so adamant to Kate knowing her potential relation to Red? Why should that be a secret?
 Maybe he was scared of how she'd react, but Intrepid couldn't think for certain what his motives were.
 So there were things he didn't know about himself, he realized. There could be things nobody knew.
 Then he looked up, and turned his attention back to Red, to whom Kate, Shadow, Cyclone, Ben, and Allison were looking as well.
 Red began her story.