by Mark Russo
My right hand grabbed the pocket watch in the viscose pants I was wearing and activated it. At least, that was what I tried to do. The side button I had used not a day before to open a portal to Plane K would not work. My thumb squished it numerous times.
Something came to my mind, I had one last chance. I had to find a way to Plane K, and I knew just who might help with that.
12
Laura
My elbows were leaning on a windowsill as I stared outside to the quiet of the woods when it all started. I was trying to figure out what that bird watching activity Brian had talked about even meant; it really appeared like pure boredom to me. That impression would not last.
From below my feet, a loud rumble exploded. I looked outside and saw, in Lee’s lab’s direction, flames rising and growing. A lump grew in my throat as I remembered what Brian had told me the day before. He had to install some specific equipment; he was still probably down there.
I looked behind me to see people crowding the corridor. Students, service staff members, and some robots all rushed down the alley from the source of the blaze. I squeezed against the windowpanes to avoid them trampling me, but someone still stomped on my right foot. There was no need to panic. It would not help. My human heart still pounded like never before.
A confusing message reached my mind from the Great Communion. I had to help them; their safety was too important.
I ran. With every step, my foot would remind me I could get hurt. I began limping, and it helped. Their room was fifty steps ahead in the flames’ direction, but I still went that way.
Another frenzied stampede of humans frolicked toward me, but I avoided them.
I staggered forward, ignoring most of the pain in my heel would trigger at every step. The room was now before me and the door ajar. I took a quick look inside, but the room was vacant. Chairs and tables lay in perfect order, almost immune to the chaos bursting in the corridors.
I remembered Brian, and I was again in the corridor. It was way less crowded, but I heard people running in the distance. The elevators were out of order, so I took the stairs. Gosh, there were so many steps. The air around me became warmer. How could this happen again?
A heavy fireproof door appeared in front of me—the side door to level minus two. Going that way would allow the flames to engorge me. I did something else instead. I activated my time walk skill and passed through the door from within the temporal series. The fire inside the tunnel of potential realities was completely harmless. At least, I told myself so.
I was accelerating again. Behind the threshold, I expected a searing hell of blazing fire, but that was not the case. I saw the fire in front of me, but those came from the labs at the end of the corridor. Nothing was burning in the hallway.
I exited the series. My body reacted, becoming dizzy with the steep increase of temperature I had forced it to undergo. It took me a moment to get used to the heat. When I could bear the rising temperature, I moved forward. The farther I ventured down the hallway, the more breathing and walking became arduous.
Reaching Lee’s lab was not an option, so I decided I would try the storage room a few meters before that. I staggered forward, and my head became lighter. I removed my sweater and put it over my face. I had defeated at least the fumes.
I saw a few unconscious people on the floor among some metallic boxes. At a closer look, I noticed one of them was Brian. I placed my right ear on his mouth, and I felt a faint, noiseless breath. That’s when those body enhancement devices came in handy; lifting Brian’s body out of there proved nothing but a small effort.
“The trapdoor,” he mumbled very close to my ear.
“Which one?”
“In the corridor. It leads to an escape tunnel. Outside, we should bring the people outside.” Then he fainted again, or just became much heavier in a second.
I let him sit on the ground, his back against the wall.
The manhole Brian had spluttered about was not ten meters back in the corridor.
I deactivated the security mechanisms and lifted the metal panel, conscientious to not fan the flames blazing at the other end of the hallway. It was dark inside the hole, but, as soon as I lowered a foot, some lights automatically switched on; they had those everywhere in EIBM.
Carrying down Brian and his colleagues proved a lot of effort, but I managed. I closed the trapdoor above my head.
“Where is Lee?” Brian asked.
“I didn’t see him.”
“Let’s get out of here. This tunnel is only a hundred meters long.”
“Why is the firefighting system not working?”
“That’s a very good question, Laura.”
We walked ahead. I didn’t know the other two guys with us. They thanked me then kept their mouths shut. When we were out, Brian’s colleagues left immediately.
He turned his back to me instead. “This is happening again.”
My jaw dropped. “You knew this wasn’t the first time this happened? What else do you know?”
“Not now. We have to find Charles.”
“The members of the Communion are not in their rooms. Maybe he moved them somewhere safe.”
He nodded but seemed distracted. “Come, let’s head to the research center. We’ll be safe there.”
“Yes, just let me have a look around here. You know, time skills moment.”
“Sure, I’ll wait for you there. I’ll manually activate the firefighting system. Be careful out here.”
“I will, Brian. I will.”
He left and disappeared inside the building’s main door.
I heard the crackling of the flames consuming Lee’s lab, strengthening in the distance. The tunnel of different realities was in front of me, but something was off; it felt like someone was watching me. I hesitated, looked around and focused on the woods before me. Then I heard a sound, like someone was grinding a brittle rock while stomping on it.
The series opened before me again, and I leaped inside it. A torrent of rocks crashed behind me, scarring the ground as heavy projectiles would. I ran, circling the area from where the rain of pebbles came from, and drew closer.
My attacker remained in hiding.
I saw something moving among the trees. My sword erupted from the series, the noise of the branches being sheared and slashed followed me the entire way. The sound of metal cutting through the outer perimeter of the thicket ended when the point of the blade hit a rock wall. I dropped my weapon and smacked the stone with my left elbow, my forehead next. Everything around me blurred for a second. I touched my face. I was bleeding.
The soil rumbled as an earthquake prepared to erupt below me. I leaped backward in the series as another fountain of stones sprinkled from the ground. The trees blocked my vision, and I would not risk another blind attack. The pouring blood from my forehead reached my eyebrows and clotted. I hid behind a large oak and focused on the little noises around me; it was the first time I noticed it was cold.
The wind was almost absent, so every little sound resonated with more intensity. When the sound of grinding rocks took over and propagated far and wide, I ran straight and forward like scared prey. I dove into the temporal series again, circling the group of trees from which the sound emanated.
That time, I saw him. He was human and riding something resembling a skateboard. I jumped toward him, my sword aiming for the middle of his chest.
He didn’t protect himself or dodge the attack. I should have seen this coming.
My sword hit his chest, bounced back and slipped from my hand.
“So, you have no idea who I am, right?” he asked.
“No, I have no clue who you are.”
“Why did you save those humans?”
I kneeled to grab my blade, but he pushed it away using one of his magic rocks.
“Why would someone from Path of Time help the Communion?”
“I bet you know that even if you kill this body, I will come back,” I grunted.
“I sur
e do. That’s why I didn’t do it.”
I glared at him. “Do you expect me to thank you?”
“I wouldn’t ask for much. Just two minutes of your time.”
I stood up and stepped backward. “I’m listening.”
“I saw you helping those people. You are not like them.”
I looked away. “Even if that was true, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
“What’s in this for you? What do you get if they colonize Plane R?” He lowered his arms, as he felt no longer in danger.
“Do you think this is the first time we do it? Plane R is not anything special. Your planet is an even smaller part of it.”
He walked by the side of a tree, like an actor trying to compensate for his poor acting skills. “I know they did the same with Aeg, am I wrong?”
I looked away. “How do you know that?”
“That’s not important.” Something with his eyes insinuated he had been to places I had never even thought of. “I will tear down this place. I know you will not stop me.” He turned to walk away.
A few sentences got stuck in my throat. My thoughts wouldn’t transform into sounds. I darted at him again, my fingertips touching the hilt of my blade.
Then the ground exploded. Something resembling a terrestrial serpent but more enormous lifted me and threw me in the air. The late afternoon sky saw me rising then plummet to the ground, a more than deadly fall, as if I hadn’t used my time walk skill.
My velocity diminished as I fell in the series of realities that situation might evolve into; none of them looked very good. I swam in the air of that surreal place and grasped a long branch of a tree below me. The inner part of my left arm got scratched deep, and I screamed in pain.
The monster looked left and right but didn’t seem too interested in me.
I climbed down from the tree and ran. My arm bled profusely, and it stained my clothes in red polka dots. My body felt tired after a few minutes of uninterrupted running and bleeding. It looked like I was alone; no huge monsters were chasing me down, and the surrounding stones seemed peaceful.
Blood soaked my arm. The red substance’s color and smell were so intense my head became light. I barfed a little and, eventually, fainted.
I landed on a carpet of dead yellow leaves, my head bent laterally, like I had dozed off in the middle of a boring movie.
13
James
The worm took down the demon; too bad I had to do it, I thought she differed from the others. She was nothing like Frank. I ordered the beast to hide. I wanted to inspect the area before putting my plan into action.
In the distant outer court, buses moved left and right, bringing EIBM personnel and students away from the building I had just set on fire. No one was caring for me. In the distance, I heard the fire brigade vehicles’ sirens screaming. It was time to check the inside. I did not want anyone to get hurt.
The school looked exactly like it had two years before—a huge block of concrete with wide windows thrown in the middle of the Swiss forest. I went by the side door, the one leading to the underground tunnel. I entered the building quietly and popped up by the main staircase. The main lobby appeared deserted. I heard people and vehicles in the close distance but did see them.
The snake had said the members of the Communion would return to Plane K as soon as I started the fire, and so it looked. They abandoned the building immediately. “They would not fight yet. Converting, not annihilating is their new strategy,” Vagras had said. Thinking of him made me clench my fists.
I got rid of my negative emotions, and headed left, in the opposite direction to the greenhouses area. The next bullet point on my plan was to take care of the main technical room. The short corridor leading to that area of the building looked uncared for, as only robots would normally walk there. It didn’t have to look pretty. The metal panel leading to that room seemed heavy and had no handles or button or anything to help me open it.
A stone wall raised right below it, crushed it and folded like a piece of scrap paper. I entered and turned on the manual light switch—quite an old-fashioned perk for such a small space. The first thing I noticed among the huge whirring machines was someone sitting on the floor, his face crumpled between his arms. By his clothes, he looked like a student, a quite scared one, and his fine reddish hair vaguely resembled mine.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“The door was open before. Something was outside, something huge. I ran here and slammed it behind me. Then a huge rock spur raised from the ground. I thought I’d be safe here.”
This would slow me down. “What is your name?”
“Pavel. Pavel Vesely. I am a student here.”
“Well, I attended EIBM too, but we can’t stay here now. There’s a fire in the underground level. Soon, it will propagate to the rest of the building.”
He held his head in his hands. “How do we know where to go?”
“I saw the huge beast too. It went for the forest. It is no longer around.”
“What is your name? You didn’t say it yet.” He made eye contact for the first time.
“James. Pavel, we have to leave now.”
He looked at his knees again. Words were not affecting him.
I charged a rockjet, and it created cracks on the crude concrete floor. “I guess this might be that monster. We either leave now or we die.” I was lying but for a good cause.
He got up and came very close to me.
I almost feared he would hug me.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.”
We were together in the deserted hallway and could not hear the distant sound of the sirens anymore. They had evacuated the building. But why had the fire brigade been called off?
I released the rockjet in the maintenance area and directed it toward the machinery. Apparently, I could use that remotely. The explosion of rocks caused a loud rumble to propagate in the hallway. I had expected it, but Pavel did not.
He bolted forward, bounding for the door.
I yelled his name, but he would not listen. I chased after him as he passed through the main door. The sky was colored in a deep green, announcing a violet storm. The wind rose higher, and dead leaves scattered and fluttered in all directions.
Pavel stopped ten meters from the woods and crumpled to his knees.
I was right behind him. I had no clue what a mental breakdown would look like, but that was close to my idea of it.
His head was bent forward when I faced him; his neck seemed long and thin. Then he lifted it, and his eyes were brighter, emitting a green light, like someone had switched on a light bulb within his skull. His muscles were tense, and his clothes looked too tight on his body. He rose from the ground, a strength I could not see lifting him.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
Without replying, Pavel appeared almost unconscious and floated a meter from the ground. His chest’s skin had thinned, and that same green light emanated from his torso.
I was about to attack him or flee the scene. The light intensified, almost blinding. I covered my eyes with my hands. I didn’t have time to act. As soon as it had begun, it ended.
His body plummeted to the ground.
I went by his side and didn’t know whether I could touch him. “Pavel, are you okay?”
He did not reply, nor was he moving.
The school caught my attention. It looked like it was moving. The rift Emma and I had walked in for many days was before me once again. This time, it was much bigger than the last time I had seen it. Wind whistled in a whirl, and it soon enfolded the building. The external EIBM’s walls cracked in many points, and rubble fell from above. Without hesitating, I approached Pavel and summoned a stone board below us. We ran for a short distance—a hundred meters at most—and stopped right before the woods. I gave my former school another look. The concrete and bricks rose in the sky like leaves spurred by a sudden gust of breeze, but some still plummeted to the ground.
&n
bsp; We were safe by the tree, but Pavel still was unresponsive, even to all that was happening around us. What had once been a majestic Victorian construction was now but a pile of debris and metallic cables scattered randomly on top of them. The wind whistle weakened, lost power and returned to a mild puff. The hole in the ground enlarged and devoured what remained of EIBM without a trace. That was the biggest rift I had ever seen opening in Plan R, in my world, on planet Earth. A hole more than a hundred meters wide tore the ground before me.
“What happened?” Pavel mumbled from behind me.
I almost jumped when I heard his voice. “I don’t know, Pavel. Just stay behind me.”
“Who are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your skin is gray.”
“The less you know, the better. Just stay where you are.” Apparently, I did not have full control over my stone skin skill yet. I left him by the tree.
He asked something else, but I didn’t pay much attention.
When I reached the edge of the rift, I looked into it. Before me lay a large hole, way deeper than my eyes could see. It had an almost perfect circular shape and was a hundred meters wide, or so it looked to me. I had accomplished the goal of destroying the lab for turning humans into proxies, but now we had another, much bigger problem.
From within the hole, three small things jumped out, rolled in the air above my head and landed behind me.
I swiftly turned to gain a full perspective on the creatures.
Three slender figures crouched on the ground, staring at me.
I waited for them to attack me or to do something, but they didn’t.
By our side, with its usual thundering noise, the stone worm appeared.
The much smaller creatures almost crawled off what remained of EIBM’s green lawn. One of them came half a step closer to me. “Who are you?” he asked me in a raucous voice.
“No one.”
The three demons stepped backward, their tiny arms and legs tensing, as if they were ready to jump at me.
When my gigantic friend broke the ground and growled in their direction, they bolted in the air again and back into the rift.