Darkest Designs

by Dale Mayer

  “I understand that. But we have to do what we can to make sure that we have all options covered. If her paper can create a portal to get us out – like she created to allow us to rescue my father – then we should have more in this situation.” Maybe the gentle reminder of how many times Storey had used paper to save their lives would help nudge Paxton. Eric didn’t know if cross-dimension travel was an issue based in reality or just another of Paxton’s unfounded worries.

  How could anyone know?

  “Then make it quick. In and out. Let no one see you and get back here immediately. Time is running out. If you’re going to try and find Storey, I think you need to go there as soon as possible. The damage to her system, providing she’s even alive, will increase by the hour.”

  Crap. “I didn’t need to hear that,” Eric muttered. “I’m going to run. Back within the hour.”

  Storey took another look at the man leaning at the impossible angle. If she’d found one person, would she find more if she stayed here longer? And how? She couldn’t help but think it was only dumb luck that had brought her to this man in the first place. He still hadn’t given her his name. She’d feel better talking to him if she knew what to call him.

  She leaned across and nudged his shoulder. Then nudged it again – harder.

  He blinked at her. Damn that was irritating. “Hey, remember me? What is your name?” She spoke clearly and slowly. Maybe it would help him understand.

  “Dillon.” He frowned as if surprised by his answer. “I think.”

  “Dillon. Good. That’s a good start. How long have you been here, Dillon?”

  His frown deepened. “I…don’t know.”

  “Right. That probably wasn’t the best question to ask you as time doesn’t seem to matter here. Okay, Dillon, do you have any family back home that might be missing you?”

  She winced. Probably not a good question either. But she needed to find out something about him. Just in case they could find a way to keep him alive. She refused to entertain the concept of failure in this case. Any information she could find would help Paxton sort this out. And let Dillon’s family know what had happened to him.

  “Brother,” he said faintly, closing his eyes and swaying as if the effort had taxed him.

  Excellent. His brain was functioning. “Good. You have a brother. He might be still alive too. What’s his name?”

  Dillon looked at her in confusion. Not that she’d seen many other expressions from him yet. She did get the impression she was disturbing his sleep. Something he was falling back into every time she stopped talking to him. So she kept talking. “Dillon?” she sharpened her voice this time.

  He straightened ever so slightly. But it helped. His face had a familiar look to it. But, then, the Torans looked like humans.

  “Yes?”

  “You have a brother,” she prompted, trying to hold in her exasperation. “What is his name?”

  “Paxton.”

  “Paxton! Your brother is Paxton?” What were the odds? She shook her head. “Wait there must be more than one man with that name in your world. Hell, we have thousands of guys named Eric in mine. It must be a different man.” But wouldn’t it be cool if it was the Paxton she knew? She’d love to reunite the brothers.

  If this one survived the trip. She wasn’t even sure he could walk. What would happen to his body in a normal dimension? Whatever ‘normal’ meant. Space travel in her world apparently did horrible things to the human body. Something to do with radiation and no gravity. She couldn’t imagine the gravity issue being any better on the body here.

  “Stylus, we can’t leave him behind. That’s so not going to happen.”

  Dillon raised his head slightly. “Leave? There is no way to leave.” His face crumpled. “I’ve been here for so long.”

  “What about water and food? Have you eaten anything in all these years?”

  Dillon’s eyes widened. “No. Sleep. I’ve been asleep. Until you came.” He straightened a little more and looked around. “I remember hoping, waiting for rescue. When it didn’t come, I slept. Until now.”

  “Until now? Really?” So not good. “Stylus, is that possible?”

  In a comatose state similar to an animal in hibernation, yes, I believe so.

  “Yes, but even a bear wakes up and comes out of his home when he’s hungry. Dillon’s system shut down. Completely.”

  Not completely. He is waking up. Slowly. If his body had shut down, he’d be dead. But there will be more problems as his body comes back to a more normal state.

  “And is that going to mean his bodily needs are going to wake up too? I doubt I have enough food and water for a century long appetite.” She’d reverted to speaking to the stylus out loud instead of in her mind. The sound of her voice was more appealing than the smothering silence. The normalcy of hearing her own voice somehow added balance to yet another bizarre situation.

  “Stylus…I was thinking. Can’t we just go back in time to before I was pushed out of the portal?”

  They’d gone back in time accidentally before, but they’d survived that trip and she had no doubt that she’d survive it again. Staying here didn’t look very survivable – not if Dillon was anything to go by.

  No. I don’t believe so.

  “But that’s not the same thing as no. Is it?” she prodded.

  No. As the air here is different, I can’t say that anything will work. We have no archival information of this.

  “You guys did time travel before, right? Because you helped us last time.”

  But you didn’t use my help to go back in time. I helped you find a way forward.

  Splitting hairs as far as she was concerned. Time travel was time travel. Although technically the stylus was correct – again. That didn’t mean it was always correct.

  She sat down in front of Dillon. “I should have some paper and rations. I think.” She pulled out the shrunken pack Eric had made for her in triumph. “And I have this.” She waved it around. Eric should have the other pack – maybe. “Stylus can you open this?”

  Yes.

  “Good. Um…how? What do I need to do?”

  Even as the last words tripped off her lips, a weird set of musical notes that sounded familiar rang out. And how the stylus could do that without speakers she didn’t know. She laughed. “That’s perfect. How come you don’t play music to lighten the air?”

  How can music lighten the air?

  Storey shook her head. “It’s a figure of speech. Music makes people feel good. It lightens their moods, their souls. Makes people happy.”

  Interesting.

  She stared at it. “That’s all you have to say? It seems much of your education is missing.”

  Education? We have had no education. We are Louers. Slaves. We received no education.

  That whole ugly history thing again. She sympathized, but this was so not the time. “Back to the problem then. I have a piece of paper. Why not just draw a portal back to Paxton’s lab?”

  We don’t have a location for where we are at.

  She pursed her lips, finally starting to understand there were limitations to the stylus. She hadn’t come up against them before, because she hadn’t really understood how the stylus had done what it did. Now she realized it had need of certain information to follow through on some of her requirements and for the first time they were both in new territory and neither knew what to do.

  “What if we try it anyway?”

  She pulled out an old portal she’d stashed in the pack a long time ago. Unfolding it, she found it led to Paxton’s lab. She grinned and stood up. She placed the portal on the ground and reached out a hand to Dillon. “Dillon, step on this paper, please.”

  He blinked. He reached out a hand. Grabbed hers and stepped on the paper.

  ***

  Eric studied the trees and bushes of Storey’s world as the black mist of the portal dissipated. It looked the same as the first time he’d ventured here. The size of the trees and the season all
appeared to fit. But with the time shifts and new dimensions being created – he no longer trusted what stood before his own eyes. And how sad was that.

  Before meeting Storey, life had been simple and complete…and boring. Now he felt so energized and alive. In ways he’d never experienced before and could hardly explain. But life thrummed through his veins now. Sure, so did worry and fear, but that was better than ennui.

  And the weird thing was, he hadn’t realized how lacking his previous life really had been. Ignorance really was bliss. He’d read that saying in the archives and had to admit there was some truth to it.

  He walked the path to Storey’s house, keeping a wary eye out. He should be in the right dimension and the right time frame, but as Storey had messed with things here, twisted time as the stylus had put it, he didn’t know what to expect each time he came.

  That brought back memories of Tammy, the little Louer child they’d rescued from her old home dimension. He grinned at the memory of her insatiable appetite. And her scream. He shuddered. That was very forgettable. At least he wished it were.

  The house loomed ahead of him. He walked cautiously around to the front to see if any of the metal boxes Storey called cars were there. None. His breath gusted out in relief. That didn’t mean no one was home, just meant there were likely less people at home. He stepped back into the trees and punched the coordinates for Storey’s bedroom into his codex. He could have done it this way from the beginning, but the thought of porting into a stranger’s bedroom while they were there made him cringe. With Storey having shifted time, there was no guarantee that he was in the same time as when Storey had lived here. The less he had to explain the better. And according to Storey, he should avoid capture at all costs. Something about not having the right identification or history. He shrugged. The black mist rose up around his shoulders, quickly blocking out the world around him. When it cleared he smiled. This was still Storey’s bedroom.

  The same bed, pictures on the wall, sketchbooks and paper tossed haphazardly around the room. So much of her personality permeated the room it made him smile. And then he froze. This was exactly like the first time he’d seen Storey’s room. When only her mother lived with her here.

  What had happened to the time twist where Storey’s life had shifted, creating an alternate form of the reality she had lived? In the new reality, her father, whom she hadn’t seen in a decade, now lived as if he’d never separated from her mother. And the family’s religious beliefs and lifestyles were all different. For Storey, it had been incredibly unnerving. For Eric, it was just plain fascinating. Who knew how many realities co-existed out there.

  But time was wasting. He stepped through and grabbed up anything he thought Storey might need. Some larger sheets of paper folded within a smaller sketch book and a sweater. She’d had everything she needed for the last trip to the Louers’ dimension, and as far as he remembered, she’d still had her travelling pouch during that last jump with his father. But…that didn’t mean she still had it. He still had his packets. He checked to make sure, but they were both there. Good. Now what else could they need?

  As he rummaged through her desk he found several of her granola bars. Perfect! He snatched them up and wondered at the sensibility of going downstairs for more food. She had to be hungry and not knowing how long they’d be before getting out, he crept down the stairs and into the kitchen. The room was empty. He pulled cupboards open and studied their contents. Nothing looked familiar. He shrugged, and started filling his package with anything that looked edible. Then he opened the fridge and grinned when he saw a block of cheese. Tammy would be in heaven. As would her pet, Skorky. Those two had eaten anything and everything, but especially cheese.

  He snagged the block and several apples and decided he’d taken enough time. He slipped out the kitchen door and ran to the treed area. Once under cover, he coded in Paxton’s lab. Within minutes he stood inside the normalcy of his world, his mentor still huddled over his key board.

  “Any news?” He asked striding forward.

  Paxton swiveled, his features brightening as he saw Eric. “No. Nothing.”

  Damn. Even as he registered the swear word, he realized using it no longer mattered. The simple rules he’d lived by all his life were overshadowed by the urgency of Storey’s situation. “Then we have no option.”

  He walked over to the monitor, noted the coordinates where Storey currently stood and punched them into his codex. “I’ll send you a message as soon as I land.”

  Not giving Paxton a chance to argue, Eric walked to the portal station and hit the button on his codex to take him to Storey. The last thing he saw as the smoke rose quickly to take him away, was the stricken look on Paxton’s face.

  Storey stared as Dillon stood on the paper. On, not in. She groaned. She needed the portals to work. “Stylus, it didn’t work.”

  No. It can’t.

  “But I need it to work. This one was going to Paxton’s lab. Would it be better to try for my dimension?” She searched through her packet for a portal to her bedroom.

  No.

  She sighed, trying hard to hold back the frustration and fear from overwhelming her. This couldn’t be. “Okay,” she said slowly thinking, “We came from the Louers’ new dimension. Then it makes sense to return that way. That pathway has to be relatively fresh – as compared to one which Dillon traveled so long ago. So in theory, we should have an easier time going back there.”

  And she’d take that place over this one any day.

  Silence.

  “Correct?” She snapped, her voice sharper than she’d intended. Shit. Fear ate away at her nerves. She ran her fingers through her hair.

  Possibly. We have no data to confirm that. Based on dimensional travel history, we do know it is easier to move through a pathway already forged.

  Storey brightened. “Of course it is. Same as any path. The person who walks in the lead breaks the path and the person who comes behind will be able to walk easier. So therefore, we should take the same way back to where I was. In the portal between the Louers’ caves and Paxton’s lab.”

  Excitement surged between her. She knew there’d be a way out of this. She just had to get her mind wrapped around the concept.

  In theory.

  She laughed. “Stylus, you are getting downright maudlin.”

  We do not like the lack of data. Decisions should be made on facts.

  “Sure, but like you said,” she added cheerfully, “We don’t have any to go on. We will be the first. Therefore we are creating the data for you to store for others.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but it was almost as if the air lightened. She grinned. There was more personality from the stylus every day. There were souls in there. Such a fascinating concept.

  “Now to test that theory, we have to try from the point where we arrived in this dimension.” She hesitated, then asked, “Do you agree with that logic?”

  Yes.

  She smiled, feeling much better. It always felt better to have others agree – even if they were both wrong. “Okay. So…we need to return to the physical location where we arrived. You have those coordinates.”

  Yes.

  Storey turned to look at Dillon. He had fallen asleep again. On the damn paper. She sighed and nudged his shoulder. He slept on. She nudged him harder. “Dillon? Wake up.”

  He snuffled.

  At least that’s the way it sounded. Bizarre. “Dillon. It’s time to go. Wake up please. I need to pick up that piece of paper.”

  Dillon opened his eyes. Looked down, and stepped back. “Sorry,” he whispered. “So tired.”

  Returning wasn’t looking so easy. Storey started to realize just how much of a problem she had on her hand. She didn’t know if Dillon would survive the trip. The biggest concern was that his physical body couldn’t handle the travel or even worse, couldn’t handle another reality. Gravity, atmosphere, and whatever else was different here would suddenly impact a body held in stasis for over a centu
ry. His muscles – would they even hold him upright after all this time? If she managed to get him out of here would he collapse and die in her arms?

  Was he better off here? He was alive this way. If his existence here was life. Maybe down the road, Paxton’s people could create the technology to come back here and find Dillon.

  No. He’s almost gone.

  Shit.

  “I’m his only hope, aren’t I?”

  We believe so.

  Believe? Such an odd word for the stylus. Everything the stylus had spoken of before had been definite, based on facts. It had been sure, almost computerized in its analysis of problems and optimal solutions. Until this mess. This was a new scenario for the stylus. And it had no answers. Only suggestions.