by A M Lopez
A bright light shimmered slightly to their left as the glorious image of Dawn appeared.
Anston's eyes widened as he took a step backwards.
"Woah."
Chapter Fourteen
Anston’s mouth dropped wide open as his grass green eyes bulged out. Eva rolled her eyes and glanced over to Connor, who smirked and punched him lightly on the shoulder.
"You gonna want to come in or no?" Connor cocked his head towards the escalator.
Anston nodded his head wildly, snapping out of his trance. Eva briskly walked to the escalator, the boys following behind. All the while, Anston was drooling over the structure.
"How . . . what . . ?" Anston sputtered.
Eva sighed, remembering her fetus days on the team. "You can meet up with Allison later, she built it."
Eva looked behind her, seeing his head snap back to her.
"Yep."
Faced with the the circular opening, they stepped inside. Anston was practically an owl, with his head turning every which way, trying to take in everything.
“You might want to stop before your head falls off your neck.”
Everyone turned to see the twins walking out a doorway at the end of the hallway. Suddenly, Arthur tripped and Dimitri grabbed him, both fell into the room.
Dimitri sighed, staring up at the ceiling as if it was a familiar sight. “Arthur.”
Arthur raised his head from the floor. “Yeah?”
“Please get off.”
Arthur grumbled at his twin, who had broken his fall. “Now, I don’t want to.”
Dimitri turned his stare to Aaron. At his silent begging, Aaron raised a brow at Arthur, who huffed.
“Fine.”
With both twins now standing, Anston’s gentle voice hesitantly spoke. “Are you two good?”
Arthur perked up and brushed himself off. “Yeah, thanks for asking! No one really asks anymore because I do it a lot, they just help me up. They also usually snitch to Dimitri so he can check on me.”
Anston raised a brow, crossing his arms. “That isn’t cool.”
Arthur laughed. “Despite being the tech guy, I can deal with pain. I’m just fragile. So, I’m like a flower that has a high pain tolerance.”
“Does that actually exist?”
Dimitri laughed as his twin rapidly nodded his head and bounced on the balls of his feet. “Yeah, I made it while at school. I missed Arthur a lot and I had been working on plants at the time so it just happened. It didn’t really make sense but my mentor was impressed.”
Anston grinned. “It healed your homesickness so it counted, I guess.”
The twins looked at him, brows raised.
He shrugged. “Not all injuries are physical.”
Everyone stared at Anston in shock, except for the twins. Anston looked at everyone’s reactions, smirking.
“What? Not expecting my amazingness? My dyslexia makes me more observant and stuff—”
“That was awesome!”
Anston looked at Arthur and softly shrugged.
Arthur laughed slightly, eyes scanning Anston. “You just grabbed information and made accurate assumptions. Plus, the fact that you said all that without stuttering was impressive.”
Anston’s head tilted up. “Thanks. I love keeping my voice level, shows how perfect I am. My dad hates it when I stutter, anyway.”
Suddenly, Arthur got closer and raised a hand for a high five. “You are pretty cool despite manipulating us. You’re a part of this team now which means we will help you. Just try to keep exploiting us to a minimum.”
Anston slowly high fived Arthur back, looking at him and then to his twin.
Dimitri smirked, walking over and putting a hand on Anston’s shoulder. “Welcome to the team. Hurt anyone and I’ll hurt you.”
Everyone else watched in silence. The twins were always cautious about new people, their trust long broken. The only reason they had warmed up to Eva so quickly was because they read a file on her before meeting her.
Aaron spoke up, distracting Anston. “How about we continue his tour?”
Arthur gasped dramatically, a plan forming in his head. “We can show him around! He can meet Clark!”
Dimitri froze, looking at his twin then Anston. “Yes.”
Suddenly, the twins dragged Anston away, not listening to Aaron’s calls. Connor had stayed silent, watching the three leave.
Eva looked at where they had disappeared. “They will skin him if he steps out of line.”
Connor started to laugh, knowing the truth in that statement. Eva glared at him, gently punching him on the shoulder.
Aaron sighed. “Dawn, just let everyone know to meet in the Conference Room when Anston is situated and keep the twins from killing him, please.”
“Of course, captain.”
She turned to Connor and Eva. “Do what you want, just be ready for the meeting.”
At their nods, Aaron left the room, already going through the bag Anston had handed to her.
Together, they headed back to his room. They were about to enter when someone called out to them.
“Eva! Connor!” It was Arthur, standing in front of the staircase with Clark in his arms. Dimitri and Anston were standing next to him, the twin watching Anston closely.
Connor smiles at her before turning back to the rest. “What’s up?”
“We’re about to give Anston the tour, we wanted him to meet Clark first! You guys should join us!”
Eva accidentally makes eye contact with Anston, both rolling their eyes. Turning to Connor, she realized he had begun smirking. Eva met his gaze, raising a brow.
This is for your own good. He mouthed, obviously hiding a smile.
Eva’s eyes widened when she understood what Connor was going to do to her. Before she could stop him, Connor snorted.
“Missing a chance to spend time with Clark? Never. Right, Eva?”
She froze looking at him in shock, his face held no regrets.
Arthur piped up. “Don’t worry, Eva. If you want to work, you can come anyway! Aaron and Dawn have already scanned the files and put them onto my database so you can read as we walk! Dimitri is.”
Eva looked at Arthur, her one excuse stolen from her. “Uh, shouldn’t you and Anston be reading them too?”
Arthur laughed, sneakily eying Anston. “I have Guinevere quickly sorting through it for me. Anston had already read over the files.”
Anston puffed out his chest. “I wanted to get better at reading but my dad didn’t buy me any books that I had an interest in. So instead I read his files, which took a few tries but not that many.”
Connor tilted his head. “If you already knew about his files and how to get to them, why did it take so long this time?”
Anston huffed, offended. “My dad is always switching their order after he caught me re-reading them one day. He tried his best to keep me out in general but when he realized he couldn’t, he decided to use my dyslexia against me. I wasn’t sure which ones dealt with the Xenia Proposal because of it. And even if there aren’t a lot of them, I had to keep re-reading to be sure they were about it.”
Connor nodded, grinning. “Thanks for trying really hard to help us then.”
Anston smirked, running a hand through his hair. “It was nothing.”
Eva opened her mouth to lie about how she wasn’t feeling well when Arthur interrupted her. “Here, these are some of my spare tablets, you can borrow them to read the files.”
Eva and Connor both took one, turning them on. They quickly found the files. There weren’t many but they were decently long.
Arthur announced. “Now, come on. The tour awaits!”
Looking towards Connor, she saw him glance back at her. He smiled, winking. Eva groaned in annoyance before smiling back. They joined the tour and began to read the files that had just expanded their team by one.
~
The five headed to the Conference Room, with Anston boasting about his newfound interest of mechanics
and medicine making.
"If he does take the test in Triangulum, what school would he be in?" Connor asked, looking over at Arthur who was deep in thought.
"Probably a mixture of Engineering and Health, half and half." He responded, and Anston quickly interrupted.
"Why do I have to go to school?"
Eva decided to butt in. "When someone gets chosen to be an agent, they have to go through a test that determines what area you're going to be working in, but you have to go to a school first."
They glanced over to Eva.
"What?" Eva shrugged. "I'm over the pettiness, even if I don't agree."
Connor chuckled and opened the door to the Conference Room where Allison and Aaron were waiting for them around the table.
"You guys done?" Aaron gave a small smile and waved them towards the table. "Dawn, prop up one more chair for Anston."
Dawn stayed silent.
"Please." Aaron rolled her eyes and Dawn responded, "Sure thing!"
Allison held her giggle behind her hand and Eva slid into her chair beside Allison. The rest of the team and Anston sat down.
"Okay here's what we found out." Arthur slid his tablet towards Aaron who connected it to the holographic screen.
"The Xenia Proposal is a mutant generating project that, like I said before, was built to help Headquarters." Many different images appeared on the screen, from normal looking humans to humans with scales. "This project was a complete failure, at least, that's what HQ thinks." A burly man with curly hair appeared on the screen.
"This is the only survivor. There are no files on what changed about him, but for some reason James let him go." They did a 360 search of his body, but saw nothing out of order.
"So, what does this project have to do with Richard?" Aaron asked, looking intently at the screen.
"From what we know, Richard used to work a bit with James and with the information your sister got, we can only assume that's what he's working on."
Anston furrowed his eyebrows. "So, this, so called Richard used to work with my dad. I don't think we have to worry about them working together again, my dad is not physically or mentally capable of doing anything anymore."
"Even still, we have to be cautious. I had planted a moveable bug inside your house when we went there just to see what he would do after being confronted. Turns out, having a bug there worked well."
Eva looked to Aaron and said. "His name is Cato Slate, he now lives in the dimension Orae, which has people with orange skin and blue hair." She looked over to Allison. "I can't imagine that."
"Well, if Richard succeeds in performing the mutations, we need to find a cure. Sooner rather than later, because you heard what Chloe said. Many dead people were found, they're working on finding the current lab. We can at least find this." Aaron closed the screen.
"We're going to go find him. This time, either he works with us, or we're capturing him. I wouldn’t like to do the latter, but it's a life or death situation." Aaron walked towards the door. "We're getting that man."
The team followed Aaron upstairs into the control room as she got everything into motion. The ship was already in Proteus, causing Anston's eyes to widen.
"Where are we?" He whispered, slipping onto a chair, mesmerized.
"Anston, welcome to Proteus, the land of the portals." Aaron smiled softly. "Everyone settle in, we are soon going to INDT."
"What does INDT mean?" Anston asked to no one in particular.
Eva decided to be a better person and explain rather than just torture the poor boy. "INDT means Inter-Dimensional Travel.” Eva couldn’t resist. “You’ll see.” Connor's glinting eyes shone from the side of the room.
Silence coated them like frosting, for minutes coming until Aaron announced, "Heading into there now."
This portal had a blue shine to it, however, the swirls were orange and they were headed straight into it. Eva looked over to Anston who looked permanently frozen, until they confronted the vortex. When he saw the colors, he melted into a certain look.
Eva whispered to herself, in disbelief. "Did I look that idiotic when I first INDT'd?"
Allison snickered, patting her on the shoulder. "You still look idiotic."
Chapter Fifteen
“Why did I think this dimension would be weird?" Allison asked herself, taking in her surroundings.
The team had arrived at the dimension moments before, but the sight had taken their breath away. Many islands scattered over the planet and lush green plant life took over each one. The water surrounding the islands were drowned in deep blue, the coasts covered in yellow sand. As Dawn lowered, Astrolabe began to see the orange inhabitants of the planet, who were easy to spot against their more common colored surroundings.
Other than their unique coloring, they looked exactly like people relaxing at the beach on a Sunday afternoon. Some were playing sports none of the team could recognize, though the distance between Orae’s people and Astrolabe didn’t help. Others were busy playing with the sand, burying each other and building strange structures out of it. There wasere even some swimming in the ocean, though they were hard to see because their blue hair blended well with the water.
“Where are we landing?”
The team turned to Anston, who was practically pressing his face against the glass window.
Aaron pulled up a scan of the planet, the light bouncing onto her face. “The one that looks like a rectangle. It is the only one in the area with the space to land Dawn.”
Anston hummed in response, not leaving the window despite the rest of the team gathering around their leader. Suddenly, he gasped, jerking away from the window and falling onto the floor. Their heads quickly turned, just in time to see a specimen hovering near. One of Orae’s inhabitants was flying next to the ship. Wearing orange clothing that was slightly off from that of her skin color, her shorts and a tube top matched in color. Her long blue hair flew behind her in the wind, reminding them of a woman in a hair product commercial. She waved her hand, and Anston’s mouth dropped. However, he was the only one to wave through his shock. The girl’s body slightly shook, a hand rising to cover her mouth as if she was giggling.
She winked at Anston and sped up, passing them with ease, a few other inhabitants joining her in front of Dawn. The girl turned to them and flew backwards to keep from getting hit by their ship. She gestured them to follow her and headed in the direction of the island the team had already been going to. They shared a look before following the girl and her friends, who kept looking over their shoulders at Dawn and the team within. Anston rose from the floor, grabbing a hold of the chair he had been sitting on to keep from falling again.
“Can we trust them?”
Eyes snapped to Anston, with brows raised. He was finally walking over to them, confident that he had regained his balance.
He raised his hands in surrender, rolling his eyes. “I get it, I tricked you. How the tables have turned. Ironic.”
Aaron sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yes, it is. However, you do have a point. We don’t know half as much about this dimension and its people as we thought. Arthur, check for anything referencing the fact that Orae’s inhabitants can fly.”
Arthur nodded, typing away on a tablet. “Already on it.”
Anston raised a brow. “You do know the things you will see will most likely be more accurate than what you have on the database?”
The twins narrowed their eyes at him, causing him to let out a dramatic sigh. “I’m actually really smart, people. I thought that was obvious. Honestly, I am so underappreciated.”
Anston huffed, running a hand through his hair. Eva scoffed at his antics, wondering how he could be so childish. Turning back to the rest of the team, she caughttched Connor staring at her, then Anston, and back again. He looked deep in thought, and chills immediately went up Eva’s back. She knew he would probably try to get her to open up and make Anston her friend. Before he got the chance, Eva looked up and saw the flying group beginning t
o descend, which she quickly commented on. Aaron began Dawn’s descent, allowing Orae’s inhabitants to guide her.
Landing in the clearing, Aaron stood up and turned to her team, ready to give another speech when there was an interruption. Looking at the window, the group from before were all flying in front of it, looking in. Her eyes narrowed, but before she could try to shoo them away every inch of the windows was covered by them. The team stared with wide eyes, slowly backing out of the control room. Astrolabe’s members only started breathing again after the door closed, blocking the inhabitants from sight.
Aaron sighed heavily, rubbing her temples. “Now that I can think, Dawn please tint the windows. We aren’t sure if Orae’s people are friendly, so I don’t want them to know too much about the inside of our ship.”
“Of course, Aaron. Thank you for using please without my prompting.”
Dimitri rolled his eyes while Connor snorted once before trying to pretend that it never happened. The corners of Eva’s mouth lifted up, looking at one of Dawn’s cameras and sending a wink.
“I should’ve already been doing that. My apologizes, Dawn.”
“Why thank you, captain. However, I am not that forgiving. Apologies not accepted.”
Aaron looked at Dawn’s camera offense painted all over her face and she was shocked into silence. Behind her, the twins were covering their mouths to muffle their laughs. Eva held her breath waiting to see if Aaron would respond, a smile poorly hidden on her face.
Aaron started walking to the entrance of the ship. “Let’s just go.”
The team followed her, snickering at her glares toward Dawn’s cameras. Aaron sighed, nicely asking Dawn to open the door and lower the escalator.
The team stepped on it and were relieved to find the inhabitants of Orae waiting patiently at the bottom instead of flying up to them. However, the large gathering of orange beings made them weary. Reaching the bottom of the escalator, they got off and Aaron stepped forward. The girl from earlier stepped forward from her group as well.
“Welcome to Abscondam. What is it that you’re here for?”
Aaron stood tall, despite her size. “We are looking for a man. His name is Cato Slate—”