by Aaron Frale
The leader saw Jon and charged. He was a massive man in bone armor that was stained in blood. Unlike the flunky cultists, he had three star-scars on his forehead. Hailey tossed a dagger at him, and it struck him in the eye. She used the distraction to climb up on top of him, clearing the way for Jon. The leader pulled the knife from his eye and drew a giant mace from his back. He began to swing his weapon wildly, knocking down friend and foe alike.
Jon made it to Ludie and retrieved the cylinder from his backpack. It was filled with a glowing blue and white liquid. A cultist kicked Jon to the floor and pulled out a gnarled blade with one hand and ejected a hand blade with the other. She snarled and lunged for Jon. Meathook knocked her with his hammer as if she was a golf ball, and she landed somewhere on the second floor. Jon had let go of the cylinder, and it rolled towards DeAndre’s feet.
“Be careful with this!” DeAndre yelled and nudged it on to his foot and tossed it to Jon with a flick. Jon snatched it out of the air.
“Why?” Jon asked. “What’s in it?”
“Just break it inside the breach!” DeAndre yelled as he ducked another blow, hit a cultist in the face with his nunchucks, and spun them to defend against the oncoming onslaught. “Just be careful that you don’t get sucked inside when you do!”
Jon checked on Hailey. The battle with the leader had taken them all the way to an empty food court nearby. Even though he was blind in one eye and bleeding, he was a fearsome opponent. She was ducking and dodging between the massive swings of his mace. She had whacked him several times while dancing around for another shot. He could see that she was beginning to tire.
Jon turned towards the breach. It was growing much faster now. A pillar that held up the second story ceiling crumbled and got sucked inside. The entire backside of the stage collapsed. An unlucky person was lifted off the ground and disappeared into the abyss.
Jon wanted to help Hailey, but he also needed to plug up the breach. Hailey was running across tables while the mace smashed everything behind her. She slipped and fell between two of them and tumbled to the floor. Jon grabbed one of the skateboard squares from Ludie’s belt.
“Hey!” Ludie said.
Jon plopped it on the ground and built speed. He headed towards Hailey.
“What are you doing?” DeAndre yelled. “The breach! You need to seal it!”
The leader raised his mace for the killing blow when Jon ground to a halt behind the guy. “Hey! Jerkwad!” Jon yelled and stabbed the guy in the shins. “I heard the holy noise! It was your old man taking a crap. It sounded pretty religious to me.”
The leader roared and turned to swipe, but Jon was already off in the opposite direction, going full speed for the breach. The leader bounded after him. Jon jumped his board and flipped it around in midair at the last possible moment. The gravity was light enough on this planet to get some serious height but nothing like New Amsterdam. He placed the cylinder in the leader’s hands and said, “Could you hold this for me?”
Before the leader could react, one of Hailey’s daggers shattered the cylinder, and Jon pushed the man into the breach. Before the cultist could regain his balance, the guy was sucked into the growing portal with the swirling blue and white goo. The goop from the cylinder grew brighter and brighter.
Hailey yelled towards Jon, “Let’s get out of here!”
Jon tossed his skateboard on the floor and took off in the opposite direction. He scooped up Hailey, and they darted through the mall. The rest of the cultists and the other Tuners scattered. There was blue and white lighting crackling through the portal. It built in intensity until it exploded, and a shockwave rippled through the mall, shattering the windows of all the stores. Hailey, Jon, and any cultist near the blast were knocked over.
Before Jon had time to think, the breach spewed forth a blue and white foam. It spread like a tsunami in all directions. A few cultists were hit by the wave, and it instantly hardened around them, turning them into hard-blue blocks.
Jon jumped to his feet and hopped on his skateboard. Hailey wrapped her arms around Jon, and they went at top speed. The wave roared through the mall after them. Hailey squeezed as the foam drew closer. They were about to be overwhelmed when Jon noticed a stairwell leading towards a basement. He hopped on to the railing and ground towards a set of double doors.
They crashed through and tumbled to a halt. John and Hailey quickly slammed the doors shut, and the foam crashed against the makeshift barrier. They could see it harden around the edges. Once the wave passed, they both dropped to the floor, exhausted.
15
When Jon finally got the door open, the stairwell they had just come down was encased in a solid blue block. He could see a cultist stuck in mid-scream deep within. It was like the mall was an aquarium frozen in time.
“What was that?” Jon asked.
“It’s the sealing goo,” Hailey said between breaths. “It’s the only way to prevent a universe collapse. It gives the breach time to heal. Think of it as a lacquer for the universe.”
“You could have warned me.”
“We never sealed one that big before. In fact, I’ve never seen them grow like that.”
Jon spotted a quarter on the ground. He picked it up and put it into his pocket, “Hey, it’s my lucky day.”
“You know, you probably won’t be able to spend that without risk of contaminating…” She trailed off in midsentence. Jon picked her up from the floor.
“Hailey?” Jon asked.
“Has anyone seen Ludie?” Hailey asked. “I think I—need him—to patch me up.”
Jon lifted her jacket. There was a large wound on her side, and her clothes were soaked in blood. A piece of glass was stuck in her abdomen. Her head went limp.
“Stay with me, Hailey,” he said.
He tore off his jacket and wrapped it around her. He knew that if he removed the glass, she could bleed even worse. His earbuds dangled from his pocket. After connecting them to the TF3, he said. “Hector—Hector. Do you hear me? Hector!”
At first, there was no response, then he heard Hector’s voice. “Jon? Where are you? We lost your feed. Where’s Hailey?”
“She’s here with me. She’s hurt,” Jon said.
“Listen, you need to find a spot and tune her back right now,” Hector said. Jon could hear the urgency in his voice. “There are cultists who survived the sealing. They are converging on your location. There are too many to fight. I’m recalling the team.”
Jon heard two cultists from around the corner.
“I think I heard them over here,” a voice snarled.
Jon looked around for another way out. Aside from the sealed entrance, the only other option was a hallway leading deeper into the building. Jon dragged Hailey down it until he saw a door. He pulled her into a janitorial closet and locked it behind him. He held his breath and listened. Footsteps walked towards the door and stopped. The handle jiggled. He heard a blade eject.
Another cultist said, “Come on. The police of this world have surrounded the place. Die in a blaze of glory.”
“Die in a blaze of glory!” the other cultist said, and they ran off.
“Hector—Hector,” Jon said, but there wasn’t any signal. He was too deep in the basement. He found a first aid kit in the closet and did a better job of patching Hailey up. He contemplated trying to get a better connection to reach Hector again but didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire between the police of this world and the cultists. He imagined it would be a brutal fight.
Jon wasn’t sure how he was going to get out of this when he remembered his tuning device. He pulled the TF3 from his jacket. It unlocked with facial recognition. Like a smartphone, there were several apps on the screen. There was even an email app with a red number three indicating he had new messages.
He swiped through the screen until he got to the tuning app. The terrible music played while he spun the dial. He heard static noises. There wasn’t as much of a selection as when he was on the platform, and t
hey were weak and distant. He eventually found the one that he thought was Tuners HQ. He went out of the closet and strolled deeper into the basement until he found the spot where the noise was the clearest. He went back for Hailey and dragged her to the location. The building rumbled and shuttered as he heard an explosion.
The static buzzed through his ears as he got close to the spot. He concentrated again. It sounded right. Jon was pretty sure it was the noise of Tuners HQ. He held Hailey’s hand and hit the tune button.
16
It was only when he could have killed Hailey and himself that he remembered Patel’s lectures. There were so many ways for an inexperienced Tuner to bite it. A universe where the planet Earth blew up would leave him floating in the vacuum of space without a spacesuit. A world made of anti-matter would most likely result in his annihilation. A universe without protons would scatter his atoms. Misidentifying the sound could end in death, and Jon really didn’t know what he was listening for. He could hear something there. He didn’t know what was on the other end of it.
He remembered Patel’s lecture about taking care of his ears. “Everything from listening to loud music, the roar of subway trains or airplanes, and even certain diseases can cause hearing loss,” She had said. “Most people wouldn’t notice it on a day to day basis. They would only realize the hearing was gone well into old age after the cumulative effects over a life were stacked up. A frequency here, or a tone there disappearing from a normal person’s range of hearing won’t register. However, a .01% hearing loss could have big consequences for a Tuner. .01% variation in the noise patterns would be the difference between the intended destination and death.”
Jon had dozed through the rest of the lecture. Now he wished he had listened or maybe not blasted his music. A subtle noise was the difference between him arriving at Tuners HQ and the dark warehouse where he had ended up. Through his earbuds, there was a very low howl in the background that in hindsight sounded nothing like Tuners HQ at all. He cursed himself for being stupid and went to tune again. But something was off. His TF3 was heavy, too heavy for something the size of a phone.
Before he could touch the dial, he heard a noise echo from some distant part of the room that was obscured by darkness. There were rows and rows of shelves with crates of various sizes that were labeled with a strange writing Jon had never seen before. The gravity was taking its toll on him. He was exhausted by the sheer act of keeping himself in a standing position. Even Hailey’s hand felt heavy in his. Jon needed to get out of here and fast.
He dialed through the universes trying to find Tuners HQ. A light appeared from deep within the warehouse. Voices seemed to be moving toward him with the illumination. Jon didn’t have any luck finding Tuners HQ before two people holding some sort of lantern were almost upon him.
Jon strained to drag Hailey between two large wooden crates. He could barely move his own muscles, much less her. Each time he lifted his leg to walk, he felt like what the people of Easter Island must have felt like when they were hauling giant stones across the countryside. As much as he pulled, pushed, and strained, she wouldn’t budge. The people were about to turn the corner, and Jon had to abandon her. As much as he hated doing it, he knew if there was any chance to save Hailey, he’d have to think of something else.
He forced his muscles to walk towards the crates. The men’s lantern illuminated the darkness around Hailey just as Jon made it to his hiding spot. He slumped behind a container and attempted to stifle his breathing even though he was winded from the endeavor.
When Jon got a good look at the men, he saw the distinctive scar across the forehead. They were cultists. However, instead of their unique bone armor, they were wearing crimson robes.
The first one said to the other, “Is that—?”
“A Tuner.” The other grinned and leaned over Hailey.
The two men moved like the gravity wasn’t affecting them at all. It was no wonder they were such a fearsome opponent. Their sense of normal was much more punishing than Jon’s world. Even the atmospheric pressure felt like it was compressing Jon. His chest began to feel like there was a weight on it.
One of the men cocked his head and happened to notice Jon. He slapped his compatriot on the shoulder and pointed. “It’s one of them!”
“A heretic!” the other said and pulled a curved blade from his robe. Jon felt for his sword, but it was stuck in the boss cultist from 39e. He reached for his crossbow and pulled it over his shoulders. It felt like the heaviest dumbbell he had ever held. He was lucky that it was cocked and ready to go.
He used both hands to aim and strained to pull the trigger. The cultist with the curved blade was right on top of him. Jon fired, and it hit the man square in the chest. The body collapsed on top of the Tuner.
The second pushed his dead partner out of the way. Jon used the distraction and his last bit of energy to cycle through the tuning options. He was lucky that he was on the spot where a universe came in loud and clear. He hit the button and disappeared right before the blade decapitated him.
17
“Are you sure it was the cultist’s homeworld?” Hector asked. All the Tuners, except for Hailey, were around the conference table.
“I’m sure of it,” Jon said. He had made it to some universe where the ’70s never went out of style. His TF3 connected to HQ, and Hector was able to guide him home. When coming from the other direction, he had to hop a few more universes before he found one that had a path to HQ. “The two guys I saw had scars on their forehead. The gravity was tremendous. I could barely move.”
“That explains why they are so strong,” Meathook said.
“And sloppy too,” DeAndre added. “If you are stronger than other people, why bother training?”
“Tell me about it, bro!” Meathook said. “Give me a hammer and point me in the right direction.”
“I see you playing that bass all day when you should be practicing,” DeAndre smirked.
“Enough!” Hector said. “We need a plan to get Hailey back.”
“Plan?” Jon asked. “We should be going there right now. I’m telling you I can find it again.”
“What can we do?” DeAndre said. “We can’t help her if we can’t move.”
“Meathook is super strong, right? He came from a similar universe?”
“Bro,” Meathook said. “I know I’m pretty good, but what about all of you? You guys came in pretty handy tearing them up in 39e.”
“It’s amazing you hit anything at all with that snail-paced swing,” DeAndre said.
“What about Universe 89?” Patel said. “They have those—”
“No,” Hector said. “Universe 89 is off the table.”
“But—”
“I said no, and that’s final.”
∆∆∆
They discussed well into the night, but no idea seemed viable. Eventually, Jon got sick of the whole thing and left the room. He said a few things that he might regret later, but the discussion was going nowhere. The Tuners were going in circles, and Hailey’s life was on the line. There had to be something to help with the higher gravity universes.
He went to go visit his dad. The tubes were still sticking out of his body. The machines monitored his life. It was like nothing had changed since he saw him last. Jon wondered if his dad was still in there.
A nurse stood at the doorway. He had brown hair and brown eyes. He looked like he was in his thirties.
“You’re lucky he is alive, kiddo,” the man said, startling Jon.
Jon glared at the guy in the doorway. “Yeah, whatever.”
“I’m not his doctor, but I’ve seen it before. He lost a lot of blood. There’s no telling how long he’ll take to recover, and he may not even do it at all. There isn’t anything you can do about it, and sitting here stewing in it isn’t going to help you any.”
Jon was surprised by the way the guy talked to him. Usually, hospital staff was always beating around the bush, trying not to hurt his feelings. Jon wished
that people would give him a clear answer and tell him what was going on even if it was bad news. “So how’d you get this gig?”
“I was a Tuner once just like you.”
“You tuned?”
“Yeah, I only tuned for about six months when an explosion damaged my hearing. Most people wouldn’t notice the loss, but for a Tuner, it was devastating. I could no longer tell the difference between HQ and my own universe. I wanted to stay, so they put me to work cleaning the linens. I worked my way up to nurse.”
Jon could see his name tag. It said Rory, Registered Nurse. “Are most of the staff here Tuners?”
“Yeah, a lot. There are some universes where we recruit staff. The surgeon that worked on your father was recruited from U-66, known for their advanced medicine, to give you an idea of what kind of care he received.”
“How do you people get to HQ for your shift? I know you can use the platform to send yourself home, but is half my job bussing people to work?”
Rory laughed, “Most people are here for life. We live, sleep, and die here.”
“You never leave?” Jon asked.
Rory laughed again, “We do get cable from every universe. What job can boast that perk?”
For the first time since Jon began this awful affair, he laughed. It wasn’t a huge laugh, just a tiny chuckle, but it was enough to lift his spirits somewhat. He might have lost his dad, and now that he met a girl, there was a chance he could lose her too.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” Jon asked.
“I don’t know. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. But one thing’s for sure: we spend too much time worrying about the people we can’t help over the people we can.”