AWOL

by Traci Harding

  ‘Probably because we were all hugging it so tight during the quake,’ Telmo replied, observing the rock in question with a frown.

  ‘I am home!’ Ahura approached the canal, whereupon a walkway of the same white stone appeared and he crossed over onto the outer island. ‘Come and see!’

  ‘If we are where he says we are …’ Telmo paused to watch Ahura go bounding off towards one of the exit portals that appeared to lead out into nature, but the Dropa prince just vanished into the scenery. ‘This is not good.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Zeven concurred — they’d just arrived and had already lost a team member.

  ‘No, I mean this!’

  Zeven swung around to see that Telmo was referring to the rock that Khalid was laid out on.

  Telmo leaned in closer to whisper his concern. ‘This is the rock I hid the curse in.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I asked if there was a problem with using it?’ Zeven hissed back quietly, as he noted his family appear across the canal from them.

  ‘I didn’t know we were going to open a portal to a higher dimension, now did I?’ Telmo defended the call. ‘The objective was not to let anyone know. If I’d mentioned it, then you would have known.’

  ‘So why are you telling me now?’ Zeven uttered aside to his cohort, as he waved to his wife and daughter, and they headed towards the bridge Ahura had left in his wake.

  ‘Because you are leading this mission, and I am required to advise you of any threat.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve doubled the threat,’ Zeven chided.

  ‘Zeven?’ Telmo called for his full attention, and when he looked Telmo in the eye, he instructed, ‘Forget I mentioned a threat.’

  It took Zeven a moment to realise that he’d completely forgotten what they were talking about. ‘Sorry, I drifted off, what were you saying?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Telmo grinned.

  ‘You just mind-zapped me about something, didn’t you?’ Zeven didn’t vague out like that often, and then only when he was with Telmo.

  ‘That would be against my AMIE contract,’ he defended.

  ‘Which you haven’t signed in this timeline yet,’ Zeven called his bluff.

  ‘A minor technicality,’ he insisted.

  Thurraya finally reached Zeven and crash-hugged his waist. ‘That was fully sick, Dad!’ she beamed, exhilarated.

  ‘What just happened?’ Aurora was too filled with wonder to be angered by the fright of their passage.

  ‘I believe we just found a place where no one can find us.’ Zeven grinned in a cocky fashion. He was unsure if there was a way back, but he felt a positive spin was best.

  ‘Are we going to follow Frank?’ Ray was very curious about his vanishing act, but looking to Khalid she was distracted. ‘Top Secret is healed! You did it, Dad!’ She slapped her father’s hand with her own for a job well done and moved to observe Khalid more closely. ‘Time to wake up, sleepy head, you’re all better.’ She nudged him a little and Khalid’s eyelids flickered open.

  As he came to focus on Ray, he was less grouchy than usual. ‘What’s happening, kid?’

  ‘You saved me from the possessed vampire monkey, but then you got real sick,’ she recounted. ‘So Dad brought you to a secret planet where you could heal, but when your wounds mingled with the atmosphere … it created a cosmic eruption that opened a portal to another world! That’s where we are. Oh, and you’re all fixed.’

  ‘Sounds like I missed all the fun.’ He propped himself up onto his elbows, and took a look around, bemused. ‘Where the f—’

  ‘Ah!’ Zeven cautioned.

  ‘Frank,’ Khalid recanted, ‘are we, exactly?’ He looked to Zeven for answers as he sat up and had a proper look around.

  ‘Your home planet, according to your father,’ Zeven clued him in.

  ‘Rubbish!’ Khalid insisted, observing beauty around him. ‘I was born on Phemoria.’

  ‘Funny that you yelled the name of this city just before we were all transported here then,’ Telmo said. ‘And that your blood created the portal here.’

  ‘Get the f— out of here!’ Khalid stood. ‘You weren’t bullshitting about the Old Ones?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’ Zeven frowned at Khalid’s inability to control his cussing.

  Ray chuckled at the error. ‘He’s hopeless.’

  ‘So you really have been out to aid me, this whole time?’ Khalid realised.

  ‘What, breaking you out of prison and freeing you from that curse wasn’t proof enough?’ Zeven grinned at Khalid’s quiet elation.

  ‘No,’ Khalid reasoned. ‘I figured you were either delaying killing me, or handing me over to someone else who wants that pleasure, and there’s a long list.’

  ‘Daddy could have let you die,’ Ray told him in no uncertain terms.

  ‘Actually,’ Telmo expanded on that premise, ‘Zeven had to fight many people he holds dear in order to even gain permission to save your life.’

  Khalid looked to Zeven completely dumbfounded. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I made you a promise —’ Zeven began and Khalid finished the sentence.

  ‘Once upon another universe, I know,’ he emphasised, obviously still not believing that claim.

  Aurora folded her arms and looked to her husband. ‘When were you in another universe?’

  ‘In the future,’ Zeven stated, ‘but not this future, another one.’ Aurora frowned in disbelief also.

  ‘I know he sounds insane,’ Telmo reassured both Aurora and Khalid. ‘But I can confirm his account is quite true.’

  Zeven raised both brows to appeal to Khalid. ‘Is another universe any more nuts than another dimension? Yet, here we are.’ He motioned around him.

  ‘Come!’ Ahura suddenly emerged from the scenery beyond the exit door. ‘Everyone is waiting,’ he announced, smiling broadly.

  ‘Who is this?’ Khalid queried, half-expecting what the answer would be.

  ‘Um,’ Zeven had planned for this to be a more private affair, ‘this is your father, the Kaveh Ahura Mazida of the Dropa.’

  ‘The Dropa,’ Khalid uttered.

  ‘That name is familiar to you?’ Zeven was surprised that it would be.

  ‘No more than the man in front of me, really.’ Khalid appeared dazed.

  ‘Father!’ Ahura directed the greeting at Khalid.

  ‘What?’ everyone replied, equally confused.

  ‘I thought you said he was my father?’ Khalid looked to Zeven who was just as perplexed.

  ‘Ahura?’ He tossed the query back to the only man who knew the answer.

  ‘On the physical plane of demonstration you were my son, yes.’ Ahura was unable to suppress his elation and sounded a little crazed. ‘But on this semi-etheric plane of expression you are my father, the Sharrujahan of Karmandi.’ He bowed to Khalid, and everyone’s jaws dropped.

  ‘You’ve got to be f-freaking kidding me?’ Khalid was utterly horrified. ‘I’m not fit to rule my own body let alone a kingdom!’

  ‘Well, hasn’t your tune changed?’ Zeven grinned, very pleased by the result of his efforts.

  ‘Yes, it has!’ Khalid stressed. ‘I’ve just discovered the beauty of nature and the joy of a quiet life, and now you want to make me a ruler!’

  ‘We are not thrusting anything upon you, Father, you are the Sharrujahan,’ Ahura reasoned.

  ‘Stop saying that,’ Khalid insisted, ‘and stop calling me Father! I think this is another one of your tests.’ He looked to Zeven, with hope in his eyes.

  ‘How did you know what Sharrujahan meant?’ Zeven queried him back.

  ‘Did I?’ Khalid was horrified to admit. ‘I’ve no clue.’

  ‘Me either,’ Zeven concluded. ‘So let’s hear Ahura out and find out, shall we?’

  They all looked to Ahura who suddenly shook off his physical form like water, and assumed a spirit form that appeared like a colourful, vaporous mass that was primarily mauve and blue in colour.

  ‘Did you kill us, Vidor?’ Khal
id queried aside to Zeven, his eyes transfixed on the anomaly.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure.’ Zeven could not look away from the spirit form either, as an impression of Ahura’s physical face, torso and arms emerged to speak with them.

  ‘Majesty,’ Ahura began his address, without moving his lips, his thoughts echoed out loud. ‘Your Qusay, and your subjects, are waiting to welcome you home.’

  ‘I have a wife!’ Khalid was shocked and intrigued.

  ‘Well yes, Majesty, that’s how I got here,’ Ahura joked. ‘Won’t you please accompany me to your court?’

  ‘I need a moment …’ Khalid sat back down on the slab of rock.

  ‘It’s a lot to digest,’ Zeven advised Ahura; even he was having trouble keeping up.

  ‘I shall inform the court that you are still recovering from your reality shift.’ Ahura reduced into a vapour, which flew back out the door.

  ‘Wow!’ Ray slapped her hands together, delighted. ‘Frank is so pretty! Can I go with him?’

  Zeven clamped a hand down on his daughter’s head before she had a chance to run off. ‘I think we should all hang together until we learn the lay of the land here.’

  ‘Not only am I married, but I’m not even human, is that what you’re telling me?’ Khalid was bemused.

  ‘You are a splendid being,’ Telmo replied, with a grin of acknowledgement. ‘It takes a superior kind of intelligence to survive what you did and still not be beyond redemption,’ Telmo addressed his cynicism very seriously. ‘For as the history of any universe will tell you, those souls become luminary to all who follow.’

  ‘Look, after the things I’ve done and seen, I doubt I even have a soul worth speaking of, so forgive me if I am a little sceptical.’ Khalid gripped his head.

  ‘Well, the way I see it,’ Zeven slapped a hand on his shoulder, ‘the life you left behind was less than ideal, so what have you got to lose by investigating this one?’

  ‘I have a wife!’ Khalid stressed. ‘All I know about women is how to torture one!’

  Zeven looked to Aurora who frowned upon hearing this. ‘That was the curse,’ Zeven assured them all, and then crouched before Khalid to give him a pep talk. ‘But back in that other universe, the ladies found you rather charming, and Wu Geng is in you somewhere —’

  ‘Who?’ Khalid frowned in disbelief.

  ‘Here, allow me.’ Telmo approached Khalid, intending to place a palm over his forehead, but Khalid deflected his hand before it could make contact.

  ‘Allow you to what?’

  ‘Help you to remember,’ Telmo enlightened.

  ‘Wait!’ Zeven cut in. ‘You could have made him remember Wu Geng at any time? Why didn’t you mention that earlier?’

  ‘It would have only confused his discovery of who he is in this life,’ Telmo defended. ‘But at this point in that journey, some of Wu Geng’s tact would not go astray.’

  ‘Yes,’ Khalid agreed. ‘Make me charming, or at least not as obnoxious.’

  ‘You are charming.’ Ray took hold of his hand. ‘You saved my life; you’re a hero!’

  Khalid grinned at her sentiment. ‘I wish I had your view of me.’ He shifted his attention back to Telmo. ‘Hit me, boy wonder.’

  As Telmo held a hand over his subject’s forehead, Zeven waylaid the process.

  ‘I want him to have my memories of Wu Geng, as I spent more time with him than you did.’

  ‘Well, I’m not really giving him any one person’s memory,’ Telmo explained, ‘but merely opening the door to the Akashic memory of those events.’

  ‘So he’ll remember everything,’ Zeven clarified. ‘As though he’d never —’ He stopped short of mentioning Wu Geng’s death.

  ‘Never what?’ Khalid encouraged him to finish.

  ‘Forgotten,’ Zeven filled in the blank neatly.

  ‘Shall we proceed?’ Telmo proffered, to ensure they’d all said their piece on the matter.

  Khalid appeared a little wary, but gave the nod.

  As soon as Telmo made contact with Khalid’s forehead the subject closed his eyes and his eyelids began flickering rapidly, whilst Telmo acted as a conduit for Khalid to access recollections of their time in the universe parallel.

  Shortly after, Telmo retracted his hand and then gripped Khalid by both shoulders, to steady him as he processed information and recovered from their interface.

  Zeven observed with bated breath as Khalid’s eyelids parted and he looked about, his focus coming to rest upon him. ‘You left me for dead!’ Khalid broke free of Telmo’s grip and rose to confront Zeven.

  ‘I had no choice,’ Zeven defended — he’d suspected that might be a sore point.

  Khalid slapped Zeven’s shoulder and burst into a smile. ‘But you saved my arse in this universe, so I forgive you.’ He embraced his old friend. ‘The day I died I thought my mastery and cause were lost … it blows my mind that they were not.’

  ‘Well the insight seems to have perked up your spirits somewhat,’ Zeven awarded, and with a mutual slap on the back they parted.

  ‘As Khalid, I had a very narrow world view,’ he explained with renewed confidence. ‘But now that I remember Wu Geng … being in another universe, on alien planets, becoming a timekeeper … I’m not so afraid of venturing into another world.’

  ‘A timekeeper?’ Aurora queried. ‘Like Taren?’

  He turned to Aurora and grinned. ‘Hello, cousin, I haven’t seen you since Ji Fa’s rebellious brothers left me at Yin to face this one’s wrath.’ He referred to Zeven and then looked to him. ‘Ji Song found Hui Ru again. Of course she turned out to be the girl in the cafe.’

  ‘The bitchin’ blonde,’ Zeven quoted with pride, Khalid’s previous description of her.

  ‘We were together in this other universe?’ Aurora approached Zeven, grinning with delight.

  ‘He spared my life as a wedding gift to you,’ Khalid recalled. ‘But I do believe he would have given you anything you asked for.’

  ‘Really?’ Aurora shimmied up beside her husband, savouring the news with deep gratification. ‘That’s very good to know.’

  ‘You know I’d give you your own planet if you wanted it.’ Zeven, who would normally have been discomforted by the exposure, returned her adoration.

  ‘Another dimension isn’t a bad conciliation.’ Aurora gazed up at him, sentimental tears rimming her baby blues, as she smiled broadly.

  ‘I wonder if this place has private rooms.’ His wife’s lips beckoned a kiss and as he leaned in to oblige, Khalid turned to Telmo.

  ‘That reminds me, whatever became of Ansel when all the timelines changed?’

  Zeven burst into a smile and the kiss went unaddressed. ‘I knew it!’ He left Aurora to join the conversation. ‘Ansel was seducing you the night she passed out.’

  ‘I guess you were right about me and the ladies.’ Khalid grinned.

  ‘Who was Ansel?’ Aurora sounded a little annoyed.

  ‘She was a shapeshifting reptilian that we met in our travels, who had a bit of a thing for Wu Geng,’ Zeven informed her. He couldn’t fail to notice that her expression appeared even more perplexed than it had before.

  ‘So what happened to her?’ Khalid prompted them to spill. ‘Last time I saw her she was bleeding out on the floor beside me, after we were both slain by her ex, Vugar.’

  ‘As we stopped the mind-eater virus from ever entering that universe, Ansel remained happily married to Vugar,’ Telmo recounted in a clinical fashion, and Zeven considered that he might have been a little more tactful with the delivery. ‘The Dracon became allied to Kila, and they aided the clean up of the rogue reptilian element on Earth.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ Khalid was underwhelmed. ‘Good for her.’ ‘Good grief! This sounds like some mission you went on,’ Aurora had to say.

  ‘It took approximately, what? Sixty — seventy years to complete?’ Telmo was taking into account all the sidetracking — incarnation shifting, quantum jumps — they’d done, and Zeven nodded to co
ncur that was about right.

  ‘And I never even noticed you missing …’ Aurora was completely mind-blown.

  ‘And Dorje Pema?’ Khalid’s spirits lifted with the thought of his spiritual mentor. ‘We’ve found the Dropa here, but what became of them when you changed the timelines?’

  ‘We don’t really know,’ Telmo gave the short answer, but Khalid wasn’t satisfied, for he raised his brows, eager to hear more. ‘The Dropa never crashed on Earth the second time around. What became of them instead, we don’t know. But they might?’ Telmo motioned to the exit portal through which Ahura had disappeared.

  ‘Then let’s go!’ Ray was already halfway across the bridge.

  ‘You ready?’ Zeven looked to Khalid, who raised both brows to consider.

  ‘How do I look?’ He glanced to Aurora for her opinion.

  ‘Good,’ she allowed, ‘in a roguish kind of way.’

  Khalid suddenly transformed his appearance to be more akin to Wu Geng’s — clean shaven, hair short and slicked back off his face; this gave him a more noble and handsome appearance.

  ‘Much better!’ Aurora emphasised her delight. ‘Wow!’

  ‘Let’s not get too excited.’ Zeven grabbed his wife’s hand to lead her off in pursuit of their daughter.

  ‘Who knew he was that attractive under all that hair?’ she commented aside to Zeven, who decided to ignore her doting tease. ‘Sorry, you were saying something about a private room?’ She invited him to resume a topic he might find more pleasing, and Zeven was more than happy to return to their thwarted kiss.

  ‘Can I go through?’ Ray snatched her parents’ attention from each other, reaching into the imagery through the exit doorway and watching her hands disappear and then pulling them back out to make them visible again.

  ‘No, Ray,’ Zeven called to waylay her. ‘Wait for us.’

  ‘It’s okay, Dad —’ The girl vanished into the portal, which set everyone to running after her.

  ‘Here goes!’ Zeven charged on into the portal after Ray.

  In this spectral state, suspended between the dominion of the living and the realm of the dead, Lucian felt like he was still present in the physical world, yet no one perceived him, nothing of the world responded to his touch. Much like being in a constant lucid dream, he’d been reduced to an observer. He could now sympathise with all the spectres he was used to seeing flitting about, and how frustrated the Grigori must be watching over their charges, with only intuition to guide them. It had been harrowing watching his wife trying to save his life, knowing the ship would be destroyed at any moment. He was still very connected to his emotions, and at that time he’d feared losing Taren more than the ship, which, given he was already deceased himself, seemed a touch moronic. Unfortunately, no one else on his crew saw ghosts, so it was a good thing Trance had happened along when he had, as now Lucian had the means to communicate with his wife from beyond the grave.