by D. N. Leo
He felt his knees weaken, but he remained standing. SF…Sara Fraser. His mother. You’re blessed and loved, as always. That was what she said to him every night when she tucked him in and kissed him goodnight. It was what he’d had for the good first eight years of his life.
He looked around. The alley was empty. The car still waited for him.
He had no spiritual beliefs. He didn’t believe in magic or anything like that. The multiverse had been an enormous stretch for him, but once Ciaran had explained it to him and he’d accepted it as his reality, things became clear.
But the things happening here were about as clear as mud. What had just happened wasn’t in any scope of the multiverse. He had met angels and shapeshifters and all sorts of different creatures from Xiilok. But he had no idea what this one was. The only explanation he could come up with was one he couldn’t accept—a ghost.
He felt the icy sting of cold metal on his chest. He looked down and saw that his chain with the stone had returned to him.
Chapter Six
Lyla went down to the lobby of the hotel. She had promised Michael she wouldn’t leave the hotel, but she just couldn’t sit in the room and do nothing. She had been careful enough to not operate any system or device that would allow someone to trace her whereabouts. But she couldn’t do anything about the fact that her natural Eudaizian energy sent out signals that could be tracked. She was Eudaizian and had Silver Blood eudqi, a precious and most powerful energy source in Eudaiz that allowed one to switch the superpower energy on and off—and mask it. Unfortunately, she had not yet earned the access to such energy.
“May I help you, ma’am?” the concierge asked.
“Oh, no… I mean, yes. I want to plan a trip to Hue and Ha Long Bay. What are my transportation options?”
“Oh, that’s easy. If you want a quick trip, you can fly. If you want to sightsee along the way, you can drive. Or you can take a train.”
She figured that when he said she could fly, he meant some sort of transportation that could fly like the capsules in Eudaiz.
“That sounds great. I’d like more information. Is there any way I can use some public equipment?”
“Public equipment?”
She pointed at the computer on the reception desk. “Yes, like that station.”
“Oh, you mean a public computer. Yes, we have a business center here you can use. It’s complimentary.” He gestured for her to follow him to an adjacent room.
While they walked, from the corner of her eye, she saw a woman checking in to the hotel. The woman showed a card that looked like some sort of identity card to the receptionist.
“Is that an ID card?” she asked.
“Yes, that customer is local, so she can use that to check in. But foreigners like you must use a passport.”
“All right, sure, I know that.” She smiled as the concierge cleared a business station and showed her the computer she could use.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“What would happen if someone lost their ID card in Vietnam? Where I come from, without an ID, you can’t even go to visit your next-door neighbor.”
“Well, that’s a very strict policy.” The man smiled politely. “If you lose your ID here, you just register for a new one. If you don’t travel via airplane or do something that annoys the police, you really don’t need it.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
The man nodded a goodbye and went back to the main foyer of the hotel.
Lyla turned on the computer. It didn’t take her long to figure out the search engine called Google. She searched for travel procedures, documentation, locations, maps, and other information she thought might come in handy. She glanced outside. It was almost dark, and Michael had not yet come back.
Her stomach gave her a reminder growl, but she ignored it. She loved good food, but when she was too busy to eat, she normally switched on the nutrition system, and her body would receive the energy it needed for the day. She couldn’t use the system now because she didn’t want to alert her adversary, but she still had to keep it at a certain level so that Gale could track her. What a dilemma! If she were in her station, she would have been pacing. But not here.
She glanced around. People went about their business. A good number of people in the hotel looked somewhat like she did—they had the obvious appearance of foreigners. People milled around the hotel lobby, oblivious to the fact that in a short time, if she wasn’t able to find the source file of the Shadow, he would burn more than three thousand people in Ha Long Bay.
She supposed they couldn’t worry about what they didn’t know. Michael had said that the economy in this country was a lot poorer than where her parents lived in New York and London. It didn’t make sense to her that people living in the same universe weren’t equal and didn’t live under the same economic conditions. When she had more time, she would have to do more research on that subject.
She needed to focus on the situation at hand and help Michael out as much as she could. She saw an abandoned ID card dangling from a cart that a male staff member had just parked outside the elevator. She scooted in that direction, yanked off the card, and shoved it into her pants pocket.
Then she walked past the counter of the reception desk where several staff members were processing paperwork for another female customer. She noticed an ID card on the counter and saw that the workers behind the desk were bent down to fix the printer under the counter. When the customer walked away toward a vending machine, Lyla grabbed the card and scurried away in the opposite direction.
She couldn’t believe she had just stolen two ID cards. Her heart thundered. Sweat streamed down her forehead. The concierge had told her it was no big deal to lose your ID card here. But still, she knew it was wrong to steal from people. Nobody called out for her, so she walked away as fast as she could.
“Lyla!” someone called.
She wanted to curse but held it in.
From behind her, Michael approached. “Lyla,” he said again.
She exhaled a sigh of gigantic relief when she saw him. She waved frantically for him to get into the elevator with her, and he rushed in.
“I stole. I just took something from people in the hotel. I’m so sorry. But we’ll need what I took to travel…”
“Lyla.”
“I’m sorry!”
Michael grabbed her shoulders. “Lyla, calm down and tell me what’s going on!”
The elevator stopped at their floor. As they stepped out into the long corridor and headed toward their room, she said, “I stole ID cards. I took them because we’ll need them to travel. I could make them, but you said I shouldn’t operate any machines because we might be tracked. So I had to take them from other people.”
As they pushed their way into their room, Michael laughed. “That’s great. It’s a lot easier when you’re a bit less strict with moral things. On Earth, especially in this part of the world, flexibility is a virtue.”
She shook her head, still not comfortable with the rationale behind her action.
“Grab your stuff, Lyla. We should leave now. We’ve got to keep moving. I found us a car. I’ll get you some food on the way.”
“Right away.” It took her only a few minutes to gather her things, and then they made their way back to the corridor. In front of her, a human female walked toward her, carrying some sort of embodied weapon at the front of her.
Lyla withdrew and pushed Michael back into the room, slamming the door. “Armed creature,” she said.
“What?”
“A creature disguised in human form. I’m sure it’s hiding its weapon in the front of it—no human female looks like that.”
Michael pulled her behind him and approached the door.
“Don’t kill if you don’t have to, Michael. We need to stay low profile, remember?”
Michael pulled the door open slowly, looked down the long hallway, and then closed the door gently. “Lyla,” he said.
“Yes? I can see you refrained from killing. Great job, Michael!”
“That was a pregnant woman.”
“I know what pregnancy is and what it looks like, Michael. I’m not an idiot, and I’m not ignorant.”
“No, you’re neither. But the thing is, in our universe, the gestation period is only seven days. The child goes into the protective box on day two, and the system takes it from there. But human gestation here is approximately nine months. The child stays inside the mother’s body the whole time. That’s why her tummy grows that big. What you saw out there is not a creature in disguise.”
She could feel her face burning, but she said nothing. Michael held her hands gently. “It’s okay, Lyla. I know you have a lot of human make in you, but you’ve never spent time here. So it’s okay…we’ll learn along the way.”
She nodded.
Michael turned quickly and threw the door open. As fast as lightning, he pulled his laser gun and fired a beam into the corridor. Then he slammed the door closed.
“You shot the pregnant woman?”
“No, I shot a creature, and it wasn’t in disguise. They’ve traced us. Let’s get out of here. We’ll take the stairs.”
They rushed out into the hallway and turned toward the exit for the stairs. In the middle of the hall, Lyla saw a creature melting into the carpet. Smoke whirled up from its burned metallic body.
The fire alarm was triggered.
Michael grabbed her hand, and they stormed down the stairs.
Chapter Seven
What are you doing, Gale? he asked himself as he hid behind a large rock at the riverbank, waiting for the explosion to settle. Not only was the Daimon Gate an elusive universe, it was also a smart one. When the explosion occurred, the landscape had changed to adjust to the environment to bring it back to its optimal condition. So it was natural that the air was now freezing cold to cool down the heat and it whirled around like a cosmic storm to clear away the debris.
Gale was so cold his teeth chattered. His throat felt like a block of ice. He heard the voices of commanders and other figures of authority at the site of the fire. He could only hope that the Daimon Gate council and the Host weren’t here.
Unlike other civilizations, the Daimon Gate was a universe of virtue and justice. It was controlled by the council, which was led by the Host. Not everyone had a chance to meet the Host in person. He knew his parents had not only met the Host but had also built a close unofficial relationship with him. But Gale had never met the Host, and his parents wouldn’t speak about their association. He hadn’t thought much about it before now.
He managed a high-ranking station and had high-level access to data. But there were times when he’d gone off to do his own investigation on the suspected Shadow once he’d gained access to some data he’d never thought possible. It would make perfect sense that the Host was aware of his activities and had granted him some kind of special access privilege he wasn’t aware of.
But why?
He shook his head, trying to stay conscious.
Gale had used his privilege to gain access to the system beyond his rank, and he had sent Lyla and Michael on a trip to Earth on a suspicion that the Shadow had infiltrated the system. The only way to prevent further attack was to destroy the source file. A suspicion wasn’t good grounds for an action of this scale, but Lyla was very confident about it, and with her royal connections, her reason was convincing. So he supported her.
Now his station had been destroyed, and staff had been killed—most likely because of this action, which he couldn’t explain to the Daimon Gate authority without revealing Lyla’s identity.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to pound his head against the rock next to him.
He could walk out, make himself known, and have his injuries taken care of by the medical staff. But he remained hidden. He needed to think.
The Shadow must have traced his actions—and possibly Lyla and Michael’s movement on Earth. It had followed Lex and blown him up in the same way it had killed several multiverse travelers in Xillok. Lyla’s theory was right—it tapped into one’s emotional weakness and triggered a response. As soon as there was a mental connectivity, it burned their body and stole their identity.
Lyla suspected that the Shadow was building an empire of some sort, and maybe a universe where these burned individuals were revived and lived without an identity. That meant they would be enslaved to the Shadow. But Gale couldn’t see how it could do that.
He needed to reopen the portal for Lyla and Michael so they could come back to the Daimon Gate, or at least reengage with them to find out how their mission was going. But he couldn’t do that hiding behind this rock without any equipment.
Something cold touched his feet. He looked down to see that the water from the river has risen to his feet and was coming up fast.
“Oh shit!” he said aloud.
The water was going to clean the surface of the entire area. He had to get away from it or at least climb on top of the rock. Then he saw the shape of a large black fish the size of his computer station in the water. A fish that size couldn’t possibly swim through the knee-deep water.
But something about this fish froze his body. He couldn’t run from the rock, nor could he climb on top of it. The fish raised its head slightly above the water and opened its beady monstrous green eyes to look at him. He felt an urge to respond.
A part of him screamed out in terror. That part of him knew he was in trouble. He had been targeted. What is it about a fish that would trigger an emotional response from me? he wondered. I have nothing to do with fish.
He gave himself a hard mental punch in the head. Don’t think! he told himself.
He still couldn’t move, and the water was now up to his waist. The gigantic fish swam around him, locking eyes with him. It could easily open its mouth and swallow him alive, but it didn’t.
It was an illusion. The fish wasn’t real.
From behind his eyes, he saw a string of text appear. Alert. Dangerous signals. System shutting down.
In his mind, he could hear that same part of him screaming again for him not to think. But the text he had just seen was so real. He’d figured out the fish wasn’t real. But this text must have come from a microchip of some kind. He knew high-ranking commanders in Eudaiz had such a chip embedded in their brains.
But he wasn’t Eudaizian, nor was he a commander. So why had he seen the text? The water rose even higher. He couldn’t move at all and couldn’t even speak to cry out for help. He was going to drown.
He saw the text again, counting down. System shutting down in 5…4…3…2…
The watered covered his head now. And he stopped breathing.
1…0…
Black screen.
Chapter Eight
The street outside the hotel in Ho Chi Minh City was buzzing with activity. People were oblivious to what had happened inside the building. Michael had no idea what they would do when they discovered the dead body of the space creature he’d shot. The car was still where he’d left it, parked silently at the edge of the sidewalk in a nearby alley. The experience he’d just had was so surreal that he wouldn’t be surprised if the car vanished on him at any time.
“Where are we going, Michael?”
“Hue. I mean, the correct Hue City, not the theme park. It’s about an eighteen-hour drive.”
They approached the car.
Lyla gawked at the vehicle. “Where did you get this?” she asked.
He opened the passenger’s side door for her. “I have my resources. Get in, please. It won’t bite.” He winked at her.
In the car, he handed her a folded paper map. Lyla looked at the map with curiosity. He was pretty sure she’d never seen a paper map before. In his opinion, even the superior technology in her world left room for improvement. “They only had the Vietnamese version. Can you make any sense of it?”
Lyla turned the map upside down. Michael rolled his eyes but said n
othing.
“I’ve never studied Vietnamese, but yes, I can make some sense of the text and the meaning.” She turned the map the right way and pointed. “Here’s the city, right?”
Michael glanced at it. “Yes. Are you sure the two locations we need to go to are Hue City and Ha Long Bay?”
“More than sure.”
“And if we keep moving, Gale can track us before the Shadow does?”
“I’m sure Gale can track us because my natural Eudaizian energy sends out signals whether I like it or not. But whether he can get to us before the Shadow, I don’t know.”
He nodded. “That’s good enough. Let’s go.”
They had been on the road for about an hour. He smiled at Lyla and said, “Relax. If you grip the seat any harder, you’ll tear the fabric. This car is only rented. I have to return it to the owner when we finish here.”
“Well, if you’d slow down and stay on one side of the road, it would help ease my nerves and save the car seat.”
He understood where she was coming from. In Eudaiz, the capsule system they used for transport was the best in the multiverse. It was almost as if you had stayed in your house—it barely registered any movement at all. They didn’t even have to drive it themselves. Lyla had never had to see traffic on the road and feel the real speed of a moving vehicle. He slowed down significantly.
Then he heard sirens and saw a flashing light. Two policemen on motorbikes he had seen stopped on the side of the road zoomed up behind their car.
I should have slowed down earlier, he thought as he slowed to a stop.
One of the officers walked up to the window and spoke to him in English. “Too fast, sir.”
Michael cursed to himself. Then he put on a smile. “So sorry. We’re in a hurry.”
“May I see your ID, sir?”
He smiled as nicely as he could at the officer. “You mean my driver’s license?” he asked.