by C. R. Asay
Rippling lightning brightened the deep clouds. A grumble of thunder answered a few seconds later.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. This whole thing was a nightmare, a hallucination brought on by shock. I mean, I’d been shot. I could be in shock, right? Yet the pain, the wind, the alien faces before me all seemed so real and . . .
Familiar?
No. None of this was familiar!
Then run. Run and they’ll hunt you. Hide and they’ll find you, the voice whispered in a singsong voice. They’ll find you. They’ll find you.
“Okay, so let’s imagine for a second what you’re saying is true,” I said, with as much skepticism as I could. I opened my hand again. “What’s my crime?”
“Kris,” Rannen closed my hand, engulfing my dirty fist in his massive white paw. The personal use of my first name, the look in his eye, and the sad droop to his mouth combined into an expression so desolate it made my heart falter. “I don’t need to read your inscription to know your crime.”
A jolt of electricity passed from his hand into mine, but instead of causing me discomfort it raced across my arm and into my head. An image solidified before my mind’s eye for a millisecond, not giving me enough time to examine but leaving behind the trace of an intense personal connection to this complete stranger.
I narrowed my eyes, examining his face. The pleasant mouth, the straight nose, the thick brows. Every tiny feature hid a clue, a tool in helping me pin down the memory that hovered like a gnat just outside my present recollections.
“We’ve met before.”
“We have,” Rannen said.
“What’d I do?”
“You brutally murdered two hundred thirty-six Rethans,” Rannen whispered.
The two of us froze in an icy box. His eyes held no anger. Nothing hinted at the despair from before. He might as well have been an icicle for all the information his face contained. And yet the accusation hung between us. A black, ugly thing, riddled with cause and consequence.
Killed them. Killed them all. Forty thousand volts of Earth amperage and an elegant blade of silver. The voice laughed with a breathy sigh.
Lightning flashed across Rannen’s face. A clap of thunder answered, making me jump. I blinked. The otherworldly tension connecting us lifted. I pried his fingers from my hand. He leaned back quickly, pulling his hand away and rubbing his knuckles. I turned to Thurmond, hoping he’d bring me back to Earth where I belonged.
But where I hoped to see humor, disbelief, and skepticism, I found instead a grim, thoughtful expression.
“So.” I kept my voice light in an attempt to bring the mood back to my originally planned interrogation. “Why have all these little dimensional catapult thingies been left all over the US in the last several years?”
“They have?” Rannen looked genuinely surprised. “I don’t know. As far as I know, the portal chamber is locked tight. With no jump through the portal, no coin is needed to get back. We use that one over there because we can’t mimic the technology of the chamber. It’s been thousands of years since it was created. You think we’d have figured it out by now.”
My gut tightened. Retha, coins, dimensional aliens, and portals. The one thing I understood, though, was that if a coin were left at the site of the crime, a dimensional jump would have been made. Did that mean Dad was in Retha?
I dropped my eyes to the coin in my lap. I barely listened as Thurmond picked up the questioning.
“Retha is the twelfth dimension and you said Earth is the third?”
Rannen answered, “Yes.”
“And there are thirteen?”
“That’s correct, but dimensions six through eleven no longer exist. I guess you could say there are only seven now.”
“Where’d they go? The ones that don’t exist anymore.”
“The Thirteenth Dimension, the Heart, as the governing power of the entire planet, reserves the right to exercise genocidal authority over the lower dimensions.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Thurmond asked.
“It means they can and have destroyed entire dimensions to maintain the planet’s balance. I remember when the eleventh dimension was destroyed. Too corrupt, or something.”
His answer was vague enough that he probably knew exactly what had happened but didn’t want to reveal it. Pretty bad then.
“They are the center dimension. The original dimension.” Rannen went on. “It is their right as our forefathers.”
“Sounds like one hell of a God complex.” Thurmond finally relaxed enough to sit against the wall. “Not something you should just let them get away with.”
Rannen sat back, his face thoughtful. After a moment he spoke. “There was a group once who tried to stand up to them. They believed that even the most intelligent and advanced governors need to be governed. We chalk it up to mythology now. A warning to the rest of us. No one wants to become like the Ehtar.” He frowned. “It’s not something we like to talk about.”
“Ehtar’s right under Earth, right?” Thurmond said.
“No, Tareh. Ehtar is—was the first dimension.”
“Was?” I scoffed, shaking my head.
“Oh,” Rannen’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t misunderstand. The Thirteenth Dimension is simply protecting the rest of us. They’re quite benevolent.”
Oh yes. Quite benevolent, the voice offered.
“Sure they are.” I let it go. I was barely interested. I looked toward the tower, where the officiate shouted orders.
“So, there are different societies in each dimension?” Thurmond asked.
He talked in the background as I studied the route to the tower. Would I be detained if I got up and walked over there? Would I even make it, or pass out cold?
“Yes,” Rannen said. “In the dimensions that are populated, that is.”
“How come we can’t see or sense each other?”
“Sometimes we can. There are places where the dimensional fabric is so thin a presence can be detected. I understand this is where your ghost stories come from.”
“Or we have ghosts,” I said, my eyes still following the officiate.
Rannen shrugged. “It’s the simplicity and primal nature of your dimension that allows you such thoughts. It’s a way of understanding something outside your realm of technological comprehension. This is why Earth makes such a perfect prison system. There’s less mischief for the inmates to get into.”
“Why go to all this trouble?” Thurmond asked. “With exiling and everything? Why not intern your inmates in your own dimension, or put them to death, or something?”
“Put them to death?” Rannen sat back, astonishment at this notion printed plainly across his face. “We could never do that. Rethans are a strictly non-violent society. We don’t exile many, but the ones we do are those unable to conform to the basic standards of etiquette and serenity. They are too violent to be allowed to stay in Retha.”
Great, we were back to that. Me, the too-violent-to-be-Rethan inmate type. My limbs buzzed with energy. The spot above my ear pounded venom through my veins. I turned on him.
“Okay, so answer me this, Rannen. If I was such a hard-core person back on Retha, then why do I do everything now from paying my taxes and obeying the speed limit, to—to not swearing. Shouldn’t I be running around murdering people?”
Rannen chewed on his bottom lip. “Most of Earth’s genocidal dictators and serial killers have been RAGE inmates.”
“And you keep sending them here?” Thurmond sounded offended.
Rannen scratched his jaw. “The percentage is small enough to keep our contract intact.”
I agreed with Thurmond on this one. But what did that mean for me? Volting, anger, voices in my head. Either I was coming apart at the seams, or there was truth in his words.
“But I’m not a serial killer, or a genocidal dictator. ”
“It will be interesting to see what happens in your future,” Rannen interrupted.
“Oh please.” Thurmond rolled his eyes.
“She’s had twenty years for a test run.”
“Twenty-one,” I corrected.
“It’s easy for a person to maintain a moral persona when there is nothing to challenge them,” Rannen said. “It’s quite another when the circumstances are more—extreme.”
“Yeah, well they’ve been extreme in the last twenty-four hours and I haven’t seen any bodies piling up under Rose’s murderous little thumb.”
Rannen sat back and folded his arms. He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. I didn’t either. I’d wanted to kill Justet and Sanderford back at the base. I’d wanted to kill the commander on the plane, and I’d had my heart set on putting a bullet through the officiate’s head. The bodies may not be piling up under my thumb, but they were certainly piling up in my mind.
Thurmond took my fist and smoothed my hand open across my knee. I loved the warmth of his skin after the cold of Rannen’s. So very human.
We sat quietly for a few minutes, the conversation hitting a dead end. The working Rethans continued to chatter. The camp looked much less cluttered. The wind plucked at my hair and uniform. I couldn’t seem to stop shivering.
“Okay, so what do you guys need this lowly, psychotic inmate for?” I sighed. “And don’t just tell me your portal’s busted, because that doesn’t explain anything.”
Rannen didn’t move but his eyes locked back onto me. “In the Twelfth Dimension our society and technology is powered by electricity—”
“Sort of like here,” Thurmond interrupted.
“Not exactly. In fact, it’s not even a close comparison.” Rannen shook his head. “The currents in our dimension are very different and much stronger. Our bodies can store up to well over five hundred thousand volts of electricity. We power our society, not the other way around. The majority of your dimension is made up of earthy materials that cannot conduct electricity. Everything in our society can.”
“Okay, so what do you need Rose for if we are all so very beneath you?”
“The type of electricity in your dimension is not the same as that used in Retha. You think of it as one dimensional—amperes, voltage, resistance. This is scientific fact. However, on Retha, electricity has a variation not included in Earth. Kilvran: output by any object determines how much energy our bodies need to expend in order to power it to its maximum potential.”
“Okay.” I was pretty sure my brain had exploded. “I didn’t understand a word of that.”
“Our bodies don’t understand the kilvran deficiency here in Earth, and are therefore unable to either absorb your currents or wield them. However, with an extended amount of exposure to Earth currents, we’ve discovered that a Rethan body is able to adapt and channel it. Although it’s more like throwing a round from one of your weapons into a fire versus shooting it from a gun. It’s clumsy and inelegant.” Rannen gave a thin-lipped smile. “But as an unintentional flaw in the dimensional camouflage, it will be enough for what we need from you. Your twenty some years of acclimatization may very well save our lives.”
Rannen nodded, trying to get me to approve. I watched him, wondering if I should agree with him or not, and I realized I couldn’t pin down his age. My mind had created a first impression for me based on the silvery hair and translucent skin, telling me that he was much older. Now as I studied his face I saw the smooth skin, the taut muscles of his jaw and the clear, silver eyes, and realized he could barely be considered middle aged. Definitely older than Thurmond and myself, but not by much. This made me feel less threatened by him. He was also a young soldier. Almost a peer.
But from another dimension. And despite his soft voice, honest face, and explanations that almost made sense, he was still holding Thurmond and me captive.
“Rannen, you said I was given some kind of drug to make me look human.”
Marshal Rannen sighed, rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He glanced over to where the officiate was scolding a Rethan over the contents of a spilled crate, and stood. Thurmond stood as well, but less defensively this time.
“Yes. We are not so different, Kris. The continual charge in the air on our dimension has leeched the majority of the pigment from our bodies, which is why we look different from your human friend here.” Rannen sighed. “When a Rethan is sentenced, a pigment enhancer and memory inhibitor serum called Vizshathain is injected before the sentence is carried out.” The wind flipped up Rannen’s collar against his jaw. His eyes captured my attention. Like he was examining me for some sort of physical evidence the numbers on my hand had supposedly proven. He smoothed down his collar. “You don’t have to believe anything I say, Kris. But the fact remains. You are a convicted inmate from Retha. You were sentenced to RAGE and grew up in Earth as a human.”
All my bluster and hope deflated in a tired whoosh of air. I felt dirty, contaminated. Something filthy in hiding. An alien to the place I loved and considered home.
I fingered the makeshift bandage around my arm and found Thurmond staring at me, his mouth open.
“Don’t look at me like that, Corporal.” I was trying to sound angry, but the words came out sad. Resigned.
Thurmond closed his mouth slowly. Before he could respond the shuffling of feet and a quiet “ahem” made us look around. The rat-like tech guy stood a few feet away, shifting from foot to foot, his hands hidden behind his back. Marshal Rannen ran a hand across his short-cropped scalp, sent me one last piercing look, and gave the tech guy his attention.
“What is it, Deputy Boderick?” Rannen asked.
“The officiate asked that I give this to the inmate.” He opened his hand.
Where I hoped to see a cell phone or a set of car keys, I was supremely disappointed if not downright disturbed to see a huge hypodermic syringe filled with an opaque, light blue substance.
“Oh, no you don’t.” I pulled my feet closer so I could stand up quickly if needed.
Deputy Boderick took a step back “It’s just human-grade epinephrine combined with Azshatath—”
“What’s it do?” Thurmond folded his arms, letting his biceps bulge. Deputy Boderick’s eyes left my face.
“Epinephrine? It’s adrenaline to help with,” he waved a finger at me, “that. It’s a vasoconstrictor to slow the bleeding and stuff.” Speaking to Thurmond seemed to be easier for him anyway. No sense in engaging the psychopath if you didn’t have to.
“And the ash—whatever?” I asked.
“Azshatath?” He glanced at me and then back to Thurmond. “On Retha we use it to help with voltage asthenia. It increases the metallic mass, strips away current inhibitions brought on by bodily abstruseness and—”
“It suppresses the dimensional camouflage, Kris Rose.” Rannen took a formal tone. “It will help you better absorb electrical currents.”
Boderick glanced at Rannen. Rannen gave an almost imperceptible headshake. Boderick spoke fast, in a breathless voice. “I’m afraid the Azshatath will also lessen the amnesic effect the Vizshathain produces, so we’ll need to reinject you before—”
“Amnesic effect? So, I could start acting like . . .” I couldn’t finish.
There wasn’t a chance in the world I was taking this weird, other dimensional camouflage junk, vasoconstrictor or no. I widened my eyes and pursed my lips to show everyone how serious I was, and then looked to Thurmond for support. He rubbed the back of his neck, his face thoughtful. My eyebrows shot up.
“You don’t actually think I should take it, do you?”
“Would that stuff hurt someone who’s human?” he asked Boderick.
“No. Well, the adrenaline would react the same on anyone, but only someone who’s been injected with Vizshathain will be affected in any way by the camouflage reducer.”
Thurmond held out his hand. Deputy Boderick clutched the syringe and then handed it reluctantly to Thurmond.
“I’m not taking that, T.” I cringed as far away from him as the wall would allow.
“Knock it off, Rose.” Thurmond crouched in front of me. “You heard wha
t he said. The adrenaline will help control the bleeding.”
“What about the dimensional—camo—azz—whatever it’s called?”
“Come on. At best it will help you stop losing so much blood. And at worst,” he paused, and I could see his mind churning on how to continue, “it will help clear things up a bit.”
I scowled at him, furious that he was siding with anyone other than me.
“You want me to take it first?” he asked, and for a moment I hated him for being so noble.
“No,” I grumbled. “No, I don’t want you to take it at all.” I wasn’t going to last forever especially if I kept losing blood like this. I drew in a sharp breath, holding my arm close to my body. Thurmond’s face was a controlled mask of neutrality but with a dash of now-will-you-listen? I brushed cold sweat from my lip.
“Bodie. Can I call you Bodie?” I asked. Boderick shook his head. “You got any alcohol swabs or disinfectant of any kind?”
He gave me a blank stare, which I took as a no. I held my hand out to Thurmond for the syringe. “I’ll do it.”
“Fine.” Thurmond took off the cap, looking pained. The needle was much smaller than I’d expected. I took the syringe. He didn’t stop me.
“So, Bodie, what side effects can I expect? Vomiting, rash, trouble sleeping, increased risk of cancer, premature graying, or maybe the uncontrollable urge to shoot electricity from my fingers and kill people?”
Boderick tripped back with a little squawk. Thurmond gave me a brief, gratuitous smile that didn’t touch his eyes. With only a second of hesitation, I jabbed the needle through the fabric into my thigh. Everyone around me jumped. I depressed the plunger, choking back a groan. The blue liquid emptied into my body in a chilling wave. An enormous rush of electricity tore through my body. My heart raced in frantic, pounding bounds.
“Holy . . . ow!” I put my head between my knees with a violent shudder.
“You okay?” Thurmond asked.
“That stuff has quite a kick.” My knees muffled my voice. The needle dropped from my hands. I pressed my knuckles against the injection site and raised my head. “How’s my camouflage looking?”