At that moment, the red light changed to green and a siren began to sound throughout the complex. The surface of the mirror started to shimmer.
Jodi screamed as soon as she heard the siren and Braden started to back away from the device.
Nik held out his hand to the boy and said in his best calm but firm teacher voice, “Braden, I need the gun. Now.”
Braden complied, handing it to him as quickly as he could manage, shaking fingers and all. Nik took the gun and lifted it to fire. Realizing someone could be coming through in moments, he aimed at the green light and fired. And missed. He was more used to rifles for hunting than pistols. After hitting the wall right above the portal, he lowered his aim and fired again and did better on his second shot.
The device scattered apart into shrapnel and the portal itself went dormant. The alarm ceased after a few more moments. Nik lowered the weapon and took a deep breath. He turned to the kids and asked, “Have you seen any more of these portals with lights on?”
The kids looked at each other and nodded. Braden held up two fingers. “I’ve seen two others.”
“I think I’ve seen at least three,” Jodi added.
Nik acknowledged their comments with a nod, stepped up to the nearest portal and examined the device on the top. Seeing two wires coming out of it, he grabbed them and pulled. The sleep indicator on the device faded out and it appeared completely lifeless.
Nik turned to the two kids with a task. “Quick, split up and go look for them and pull the plugs. Go as fast as you can!”
Jodi was gone even before he could finish and Braden stumbled out in a different direction. Nik watched them leave and decided to make his way back to his own entry point. The kids would find him there and so would Smith or Anna.
Marie
Smith held Hoppenweiler by his bicep and propelled him forward towards the door at the end of the hall. They were almost there when Smith reconsidered his next move.
He stopped and held Hoppy back from opening the door. “Would you wait here for a minute?” he asked.
“Why? I thought this was urgent.”
Smith agreed. “It is, but I think that what’s on the other side of that door could be another kind of animal.”
Hoppy got a weird look on his face. It must have been his thinking face, because then he gained a look of understanding. “It’s Marie! Is it? Am I right?” He began pushing to get past while Smith was trying to hold him back.
“Okay. Calm down.” Words weren’t having the desired effect so he slapped Hoppy’s cheek. “Come on. Get a grip. It’s not that easy. We were being chased on our side and…” He didn’t get to finish because a loud alarm began to sound in the hall and in every room surrounding them.
Somehow Hoppy scooted by Smith and got through the door and into the room ahead of him. He hurried to a station filled with monitor screens and tapped a few keys and up popped an image of a portal with three people in front of it. One person—was that Nik?—lifted a weapon and fired toward the portal. The sound didn’t come through but Smith could see the muzzle flash. In another moment, it was obvious what had happened. Nik had disabled the portal. Hoppy slammed a red button on the console with a three-fingered hand—why hadn’t he noticed that before?—and the sirens stopped.
He glanced over at Smith. “Is that guy who I think it is? If so, he’s usually a much better shot.”
Smith shook his head. “No. He’s the double from our world. Everyone that came through is from our world.” He stepped back and looked at the girl he had left in the room. Marie was standing with her arms held tightly around her chest, staring at Hoppy with tear-filled, disbelieving eyes.
“What. The. Hell?” Her face was racked with confusion.
Hoppy held out his arms as if to make a peace offering—or perhaps even to offer a hug.
Marie was not receptive. Wiping tears away, she bolted out of the room.
Smith grabbed Hoppy’s shoulder before he could follow. “Stay here. I’ll see if I can calm her down.”
_____
Smith didn’t have far to go. He found her huddled in a corner in the cavern just outside the room. She was crying again, facing away. Smith knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder. Her body shook with the tears. Occasionally she had to take a big breath but the crying continued.
They sat together. After a while she reached back and took his hand in hers.
Smith waited. There wasn’t anything else he could think of to do. It appeared that Nik and Hoppy were on the case keeping the facility locked down for the time being. This girl needed...something, so he lowered himself from his kneeling position and sat with her, laying his whole arm across her back. She stiffened at first, seeming to reject his gesture, but after a few more sobs she relaxed and leaned her head back onto his shoulder.
“I can’t do this, Wayne.” Marie said.
Smith whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I mean, he’s dead, right? My partner. My Liszt. Dead.”
“Yes.” He rubbed the shoulder his hand was on top of. It seemed the right thing to do.
“This is messed up. I can’t believe, I just, I just, I can’t...” she trailed off incoherently, not able to complete her thought.
Smith squeezed her shoulder and didn’t say anything.
Marie turned and looked right in his eyes. “That’s him, right? I’m not imagining it, am I?
“Yes, that’s him.” Smith said. “But then again, not really.” She nodded at that. There was something immediately apparent with Hoppy that set him apart from Liszt. “I know this: that man in there is scared to death of whoever’s coming back out of that portal. He seems ready to help us and we could use the help.”
She was facing away again, but he could see her eyes close. “I’m still grieving for him,” she said. “Liszt. The one that just died a half hour ago. This is just wrong. To see him here so soon.”
“I know,” he said. He let that sit for a moment before saying anything else. “So you two were close?” Smith let the question hang out there.
He could see her swallow. She nodded while blinking. “Yes, we were close. He was like…my nerdy little brother. Extra nerdy, actually.”
Smith was surprised to feel a sense of relief at those words. She wasn’t romantically attached to Liszt. That was good news to Smith.
“Well this guy—his name is Hoppy by the way,” he saw the corner of her mouth rise for a second—he’s not going to take the place of Liszt. He can’t. That, and I think he’s a different guy. Nick’s double on this side is very different and so is his wife’s. Mine might have been pretty similar but I can already tell this guy is different.”
She nodded at that statement. There was a creak behind them and they both turned to look. The door was opening and Hoppy peeked out into the cavern.
“Smith?” he called out before he recognized him sitting on the floor. “Your friend out there who is…not Agent Green?” he paused and Smith nodded for him to go on, “Anyway, he’s systematically taking out every possible entrance into here from Sedona except for one. You’ll need to do that personally.”
Smith stood up. “All right, you’ll have to walk me through it.”
“More than that. I’ll take you there personally. In the meantime, I had an idea. Marie…” he paused again, this time the tension much more palpable in the room. “The Marie over here specialized in system failure analysis. Is that the same for you?”
She looked up at Smith, took a deep breath, and turned back to Hoppy. “Yes, but I was having some trouble with the programming language.”
“It’s a hybrid of telecommunication, traffic control and some inter-dimensional physics plus whatever programming advancements we’ve come up with in the last fifteen years. My idea has to do with the traffic control aspect mainly. With your friend out there shutting down all those gates, we can disguise our situation as cascading transmission failures.”
Marie perked up a little. �
��We’d need to do some other things…”
“Misdirections...”
“Accidents...”
“U-turns...”
“Stoppages. And, yes I think you’re right. It could work. If you point me in the right direction, I can start trying to figure it out.”
“Great.” He looked at her still sitting on the floor and Smith standing next to her. “I’ll, uh, pull up a few files on the workstations in here.” He ducked back in the door, leaving Smith and Marie alone.
Smith reached down and grabbed her hand to pull her up. “Do you think you’ll be okay?” he asked.
“Yes, I think so. It’ll help for you to take him away for a bit. But having a job will help, too.” She pulled his hand so he had to bend down and she kissed his cheek.
Smith’s eyes opened wide. “What was that for?”
“For being patient, sweet, and not being a jerk.” She reached up and wiped the cheek she’d kissed. “You’d better go. Take care of yourself.”
Smith wasn’t sure how to leave that so he gave her a short side hug. “I always do. You take care, too.”
He opened the door for her, thinking to himself that he didn’t remember the last time he’d felt so awkward.
The Last Gate
Nik was waiting at the place where Smith and Anna had left him when the kids returned, both a bit red in the face and breathing hard. He had found an outcropping of rock just the right size to sit on when they arrived.
“We got them, Mr. Davidson,” Jodi announced as she came in. Braden, having a bit more trouble with his breathing, nodded his head.
“We found one side cavern that had several of them all in one location,” Braden said. “They’re off now.”
Nik smiled at them and thanked them as he pulled himself up. “Well, I feel a little safer now. Great job, you two.”
A loud gurgle came from one of the teenagers’ stomachs, which brought up a good question for Nik as well. “How long have you two been down here? And, have you had anything to eat?”
“We’ve been here for hours and hours, Mr. Davidson. We slept for a while once. We found a restroom installed in the farthest cavern, so we’ve been able to go and have a drink of water, but we’re starving.”
Another voice came from just around the bend. “Well, let’s get them fed, then.”
Smith walked in and went straight to his backpack and pulled out two energy bars. The teens watched him with some distrust, but when he came out holding out a bar for each of them, they each grabbed one.
“Have you seen a room with a lot of computer screens?” Smith asked the two.
They mumbled something affirmative while shoving their energy bars into their mouths.
“If you go find it, you’ll find a woman there who can direct you to some rooms with a stocked kitchen, bunks, and other facilities. You guys look like you could use a rest. Why don’t you go get some?”
The kids agreed and headed back the way that Smith had come.
Another person cleared his throat and Nik saw him for the first time. It looked like Liszt, but not really. The guy had an odd haircut, longer on one side than on the other, and he seemed to carry himself differently.
Smith reached out to Nik as he lost his balance. “Are you okay there? You’re looking better than I thought you would a few minutes ago. Nik, I’d like you to meet Hoppy. He wants to help us out. Turns out, he doesn’t trust the other guy who looks like you.”
Nik and Hoppy sized each other up a moment. “Then we have something in common,” Nik said and then broke the ice by reaching his hand out to shake. Hoppy responded in kind, but that led to an awkward moment with the three fingered hand.
“What happened there?” Nik asked.
“Um, actually, I got too close to a gate when someone else was shutting it down.” He looked away from Nik. It seemed the subject was a bit touchy.
Nik glanced back to Smith. “Does he know about…?” He jerked his head back towards the covered form on the floor.
Hoppy waved his hands almost frantically. “Don’t. Don’t go there. I’m really bad with blood and guts and acts of stupid bravery.”
Smith smiled back at Nik. He knew there was no way Hoppy hadn’t figured it out yet, but it appeared that Hoppy shared Liszt’s weak stomach.
“Nik, we need your help. There’s a door that requires the authorization of two team leaders to be shut down. Hoppy’s taking us there.”
“Team leader?” Nik asked.
“I guess our friend Nicholas has a status similar to mine on this world. Hoppy tells me this will work.” He gestured after the departing scientist and they both started walking after him. Smith stopped at the backpacks and fished out the two smaller packs before moving on.
“What exactly is it that you think will work?” Nik asked.
“We call it the front door,” Hoppy said. “It’s a direct access portal from the same exact point in your world. It’s also the place they’ll try once they exhaust the portals in the house.”
They turned a corner and came to it. It certainly looked like a door in the wall of the cavern. Hoppy opened the door and they saw a mirrored surface reflecting back at them.
“What’s beyond that mirror, Hoppy?” Smith asked.
“In this world, tons of rock, reinforced concrete, and the engine that drives this place.”
“And in the world we came from?”
“It’s a cave outside of Sedona. We had the same thing here but the powers that be decided to bury it. There’s literally no physical way in or out of here right now.”
Smith raised his eyebrows at that one. It might complicate matters to be completely trapped, but he figured he’d cross that bridge when he got to it.
“So what now?” Nik asked.
“First, we have to key in that we’re making a hard change.” Hoppy flipped open a panel to the right of the door. “I’ll type it in. The system needs an eye scan and DNA scan from both of you. After that, one of you has to go into the engine and shut down the input from your world into this door.” He turned to the panel and started typing.
“So anyone could come through here any time until then?” Smith asked.
“Yes.” Hoppy answered distractedly. “And they have to have figured it out by now. I’m getting out of here when I can.”
Smith reached in his pocket and handed something to Nik. Nik looked at the thing in his hand and back at Smith. “What is this?” He asked.
“It’s an earpiece. It will allow you to communicate with me and Marie.” Smith said.
“Who’s Marie?”
“Dr. Anna’s real name. She asked me not to call her by her code name anymore since, you know.” Smith glanced back toward Hoppy.
Nik took the thing and tried to wrap a loop behind his ear and then...
“Give me that thing,” Smith said. “I’ll put it on you.” He had it on Nik in a second and then began rummaging in his pack for some more items.
Hoppy was still working on the terminal but muttered something about if nothing else convinced him...And then beep…beep…beeeep...
Hoppy slapped a lid closed and asked, “Who’s first?”
Nik stepped up before Smith could and Hoppy had the device scan his eye then take a DNA sample by simply putting his thumb on a pad. Hoppy told them the device could get a DNA sample from sweat or just a bit of skin flake. The device also read the body’s biometric signature, including heartbeat, chemical composition, electric impulse analysis and more.
“You have to be you in order for this thing to work,” he said. “Luckily, you really are you— enough for this machine. We haven’t done any research on the difference between two identical people from neighboring dimensions, yet.”
“Why is that?” Nik asked.
Hoppy glanced up from his work to answer, “Actually, yours is the first and only dimension we’ve been able to maintain a consistent connection with.” He looked back down and in a moment gestured at Smith. “Your turn.”
Smith stepped up and went through the same process as Nik. In the middle of the eye scan, Hoppy stopped the process.
“Something’s off, Smith. Do you have something different about your eyes?”
Smith took a contact case out of a pocket. “I wear them so much it’s like they’re a part of me.” He removed the contacts and tried the scan again.
“That’s better,” Hoppy said. He clicked one more button and a hatch opened next to them revealing a mirrored surface about three feet in. It was beginning to shimmer, the telltale sign of portal activity.
“Through there will be a panel that is similar to this one. It will control access from your world into this entire center. I don’t have the ability to shut down the door because it was designed to be a failsafe tamper-proof entry from your world. The only way to shut it off is to shut it all—and I mean all—off.”
“Can we turn it back on again to get back home?” Smith asked.
“Ummm...that will be complicated, but with Marie we can come up with a plan that should work. Also, you’re taking me with you when you go.” He said that with a firm, yet hopeful tone to his voice.
“Of course,” Smith replied. There was no way he was leaving this man behind on this world.
Hoppy looked relieved, but Smith waved for him to continue.
“Did you decide who is going in?”
Nik raised his hand. “I’ll go. I’m guessing Smith will be needed to guard the door.”
Smith nodded with a grim look on his face.
Hoppy acknowledged that and turned to Nik. “When you go through this mirror, you’re going to actually go through a series of them. We call it the Tunnel of Infinite Possibilities. Keep going straight. Don’t turn or you might not come back to this world or yours ever.”
Nik, for the umpteenth time, wondered how a rural high school history teacher got pulled into this. He swallowed and asked, “Why the mirror tunnel? Couldn’t you just drill out a physical tunnel?”
Hoppy shook his head. “The engine room where you’re going is actually behind twenty feet of solid rock. It has to be separate from a place where people live and work or it would drive us crazy. It’s really quite a trip. You need to stay focused on you. Who you are, what defines you and why you’re there. If you don’t, well, some people have needed rescuing from there in the past and I don’t think we’ve got time for that.
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