The Nex

by Tim Pratt

  Wisp was trying to help – he possessed the body of one of the bigger orphans, a gorilla-like thing armored in bony plates, with a head covered in long curved beaks, and he turned on the other orphans, knocking them away. But he barely made a dent – and then something bizarre happened. A big scratched-up clear plastic box just appeared, popping into empty air from nowhere, surrounding Wisp completely. His motes spewed out of the orphan and bumped into the plastic, but couldn’t seem to escape, and I couldn’t reach him to send the box away because of the pressure of attacking orphans. The one mote in my ear said, “Miranda, I’m trapped! It’s airtight! The orphan I possessed will suffocate, but – I don’t think the others care.”

  That’s when it started raining stuff. Tires. Buckets. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. Sheets of scrap metal. Even, for real, an anvil. All appearing in bursts of light from the air itself, then falling, victims of gravity. The orphans were snatching stuff from other worlds and throwing it down on me. It took all my attention to jump and dodge away from injury. I tried to stay close to the main parts of the engines, because the orphans seemed reluctant to drop heavy junk on delicate machinery, but the little monsters wised up and started guarding the engine more closely, clinging to its surfaces and lashing and slashing at me wherever I appeared. I wasn’t hurting them anymore, wasn’t sending pieces of the snatch-engine away, wasn’t even holding my own.

  One time, I zigged when I should have zagged, and a splintery hunk of wood hit my shoulder, knocking me from a catwalk into empty space, and I screamed, too shocked from the pain and the surprise to consciously jump to a place of safety. My automatic self-preservation circuits must have kicked in, because I jumped –

  – and found myself back in one of the palace’s faintly glowing corridors. I rubbed my aching shoulder and sat on the floor, closing my eyes, wondering what to do next. The engines were too much for me. Maybe with Howlaa in there to help fight the orphans I could have gotten somewhere, but alone? Without even Wisp, anymore?

  The walls rippled and opened, revealing another oval-shaped passageway, this one leading downward. “What now? Whatever you want me to do, Miss Palace, I don’t think I can manage it.”

  The light in the walls pulsed rapidly, and I sighed. “I’m going. I hope there’s a bed and a buffet down there.” I walked along for ages, until my legs got tired, then just started short-hop teleporting as far down the sloping corridor as I could see. Eventually the steep downward slope leveled off and the hallway widened until I encountered metal gates set into the reddened infected flesh of the palace.

  But these gates weren’t the size of doors. Not even garage-door sized. Not even loading-dock door sized. These doors were three or four stories high, huge bolt-studded metal walls without visible hinges, shut with girder-sized crossbars lumpily welded across the seam. Whatever these doors were meant to hold in was big, and someone really didn’t want it getting out. But that wasn’t the scariest part.

  The scariest parts were all the dents bulging outward, where something on the other side had obviously been pounding on the door trying to get out.

  “I’m supposed to go in there?”

  The palace walls pulsed. I sighed, put my hand on the metal, and stepped through.

  And through, and through, and through. It took at least five big steps – the doors were incredibly thick.

  Once I emerged on the other side, I couldn’t even comprehend what I saw. The snatch-engines had been overwhelming, but they were made up of recognizable things, metal and glass and electricity and machine parts. Now I was in a cathedral-sized space, filled with towering pillars, and bound to those pillars by metal chains was – was –

  A whale turned inside-out. A tumor the size of a skyscraper, all pulsing with veins and sprouting weird floral growths that opened and closed and bobbed like flowers in a breeze. A great bulbous shifting thing that moved in and out like a beating heart, that seemed to sigh and breathe.

  The air inside the room was humid, like a sauna, and the pillars and chains were slick with moisture. The smell, under the heat, was like a fresh-turned compost heap. The chains – which disappeared into the thing, anchored inside that nasty mass of flesh – rattled as it shifted around. I couldn’t tell if it was an animal or a plant or something completely different, but it was definitely alive.

  The thing moved, body convulsing, and a horrible face started to appear deep in the parting folds, mouth a wet hole, eyes all milky white and red-rimmed, and I realized it was straining against its chains, reaching for me.

  >A visitor.< The voice was inside my head, almost like my own thoughts, but with a dead monotone delivery I’d only heard inside my mind at my most depressed. >It’s been so long since I had a visitor. Come to me.<

  I jumped, blindly, just aiming to get somewhere safe.

  Chapter 14

  I landed in my own backyard.

  It was night in Pomegranate Grove, and I wondered how many days had passed, if time went by the same way here as it did on the Nex, and fantasized that maybe only a few hours had gone by here... but the apple tree, in bloom when I left, had lost all its blossoms, and the moon was fatter than before, so I knew at least a few days had gone by. The windows in my house were dark, and I decided it was worth the risk to get some clean clothes and some food from the kitchen before returning to the Nex to do... whatever I could do.

  I was really happy to see home, and surprised at myself for being happy. Being away is fun – at least until everything starts to fail and fall apart – but part of the fun of being away is having a home to come back to, maybe.

  Tempting as it was just to go sleep in my own bed and accept the inevitable grounding – or worse – that I’d get in the morning when Mom found me, I knew I couldn’t stay. For one thing, there was Dad, maybe still alive out there. For another, there was Howlaa and Wisp, who were now both captured, because of me. And then there was the Regent. I didn’t like him, and didn’t want him to win.

  Besides, he could reach me with his snatch-engines here, and I didn’t think I’d done nearly enough damage to disable those things, even temporarily. The Regent would drag me back to the Nex if I tried to stay, because I had something he wanted. I was something he wanted. Wisp and Howlaa’s revolution wasn’t the great good thing I’d originally imagined – not even really a revolution at all – but now that I had the jump-engine, I had as much reason as they did to want the Regent kicked out of power.

  I jumped to the dark of the pantry, surrounded by shelves packed with canned food and dry goods in plastic pest-proof tubs. Mom bought massive quantities of stuff from the warehouse store every month. She’d gotten into hoarding after Dad died, trying to make us feel more secure I guess, even though she hardly cooked. I listened at the door and heard only silence in the kitchen, so I eased the pantry door open and slipped out. There was a light on over the stove, but the rest of the house was dark, Mom and her dumb boyfriend and Cal all asleep upstairs. I went to the fridge and opened it up, wondering what I could eat that wouldn’t be missed. It was full of take-out containers – no shock – and I found a box of mu shu pork, which I’m always happy to eat cold. I opened a drawer as quietly as I could and pulled out a couple of chopsticks. The thought of sitting in my own kitchen and having a meal, even a cold greasy take-out meal, was amazing.

  After I sat down, I heard a tap-ratt-tat-tap.

  I knew the sound. Drumsticks rattling on walls or tables or whatever. My brother Cal is a drummer, and he carries drumsticks with him everywhere, rapping on everything he passes – he says he’s practicing, but I think he’s just equal parts obsessive and annoying. He’s in a crappy garage band called Feral Sex Herd. The sound of his tap-tapping made me think of Dad, which was kind of weird, but not really – he’s the one who got Cal his first drum kit, and he said drummers can always get gigs, because every teenage kid in the world plays guitar, but there aren’t that many decent drummers.

  The tap-tapping got louder, and I almost jumped away... but I was so
tired of jumping, of running, and maybe I even kind of missed my stupid brother, so I just waited to see what would happen.

  Cal came into the kitchen, dressed in boxer shorts and nothing else – he’s so gross – and stared at me. “Randy.” His bushy eyebrows, just like Dad’s, went up and down. “You’re eating my breakfast.”

  “Sorry.” I ate another mouthful.

  “What the hell happened to your hair?”

  I ran my hand through the purple stubble and winced. “The dye’s only temporary.”

  “Uh huh. And why are you dressed like you’re in a third-grade dance recital?”

  I looked down at my unitard and shrugged. “Didn’t have a ton of options. I was going to change.”

  Cal leaned against the counter, drumsticks tapping on his thighs. “Mom’s sleeping in your bed. If you go in there she’ll jump on you and never let go.”

  I winced. “She’s pissed.”

  Cal snorted. “She thinks you’re on drugs living under a freeway in Atlanta having sex with strangers for crack. But when she sees you here, yeah, she’ll go from being scared to being pissed off.”

  “Didn’t she get my note?”

  “Yep. Not your best idea, sis. Leaving a note that doesn’t make sense on the kitchen table. Mom just flipped out even more knowing you’d been in the house and she’d missed you. That’s when she started sleeping in your bed every night. She keeps saying she should’ve gotten one of those GPS tracker things for your cell phone, which she’s been calling every hour on the hour. She can’t even get your voicemail.”

  “Yeah, the phone’s been... not working.” Way out of range, I thought. Seriously roaming.

  “So where have you been? And how much did you get for the necklace?”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “The necklace you stole from me, I figured you must’ve pawned it or something, gone on a shopping spree with Jenny Kay. Except she swears she hasn’t seen you, and she’s worried too. So’s that boy, Ryan -- or is it Joshua? I can’t tell them apart. Whichever, he came by asking after you. I was almost worried about you myself. Anyway, however much money you got, you owe it to me now.”

  “The necklace wasn’t yours either, Cal.”

  He stopped drumming and crossed his arms. “I bought it. For Clarissa.”

  Cal’s skanky on-again-off-again girlfriend, who everyone knew was really in love with Brandon, the singer in his band, and just hung out with Cal to get close to him. I shook my head. “Right. If you had that kind of money you’d spend it on cymbals or something. Where’d you really find it?”

  I’ll say this for me and Cal, there’s never been a lot of bullcrap between us. He shrugged. “It was just glittering in the dirt out by the fairgrounds. Some rich lady must have dropped it. Finder’s keepers, though, Randy.”

  “I didn’t pawn it. I traded it. For this ring.” I held out my hand.

  “What’s that, gold? Randy, that necklace had diamonds on it.” He frowned. “Or emeralds? I can’t remember.”

  Because it changed.

  “Anyway, you got cheated,” he said. “But we can work out some kind of compensation plan, right? Now that you’re back, you can start doing my chores for me –”

  I just laughed. “Or what? You’ll tell Mom I stole the necklace you stole first? You think she’ll believe your ‘I found it in the dirt’ thing?”

  “Because you’re the trustworthy one, runaway? Please. You’re at the top of mom’s shitlist. And you don’t want to get any farther onto my bad side. I was gonna let you sleep on the couch and deal with Mom in the morning, but I can go wake her up now, if you want.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not staying, Cal. I just stopped by for a little while. I have to go back out again.”

  “Are you crazy? Miranda, you’re thirteen. You can’t leave home and, like, seek your fortune. If Mom finds out you were here and I let you go, she’ll kill me.” His eyebrows went up again. “You aren’t on drugs, or mixed up in.... anything like that... are you? I didn’t think you were that dumb. I mean, a little weed, sure, but anything more –”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. Just don’t tell Mom I was here. You never saw me.”

  “No way, Randy. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but if you’re in some kind of trouble, let Mom help. And if you’re not in some kind of trouble yet, you will be. It’s not like I never cut a class, but you’ve missed days of school – miss too many more, and you’ll be screwed. You like middle school so much you want to stay an extra year?”

  “Cal. I think Dad is still alive.”

  He came to the table slowly, sat down across from me, and put his drumsticks aside. “Randy. Dad’s dead.”

  “They never found his body. What if he... if something whacked him in the head and he got amnesia or something, and just wandered away from the explosion?”

  “You’re telling me you’ve been out looking for Dad? What... why?”

  “I can’t explain right now. But trust me – I’ll know for sure soon.”

  “This is crazy, Randy. I think somebody’s scamming you, trying to use you, I don’t know what, but there’s no way Dad survived. There was nothing left of the restaurant but a hole in the ground.”

  I didn’t dare take Cal to the Nex – no reason to bring him to the Regent’s attention, plus he’d waste my time by freaking out – but I wished I could show him something. Any demonstration of my new power would just lead to more questions, though, and there’s no easy way to say, “Well, there’s this other universe, only it’s actually outside the universe, and it’s full of monsters, only they’re mostly just people like us, and oh yeah, I’m the last free member of a revolutionary force...” So I fell back on, “Just trust me. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “Cal? Honey, who are you talking to?”

  I stiffened at Mom’s voice – she was calling from the living room, and I heard her approaching footsteps. When Cal twisted in his chair to answer her, I took advantage of the moment and jumped to my own bedroom.

  I heard distant shouting in the kitchen – I guess it had to do with me being there, then suddenly not – so I hurried past my rumpled bed to the closet. I had a pretty serious privacy-invasion pang at the thought of Mom in my room, going through my stuff, probably trying to read my e-mail (fortunately my friend Jenny Kay set up some sweet encryption so I could keep my secrets, such as they are). But there was nothing I could do about that now. I opened the closet and grabbed my go-bag. That was another of Mom’s post-Dad life changes, forcing us all to put together little overnight bags to grab in case of fire or terrorist attack or natural disaster, with changes of clothes and nasty dry granola bars and other stuff like that. I scooped up the bag, paused to listen to the ongoing yelling, then sighed. I went to my desk, scribbled a quick note with a sharpie on a piece of printer paper, and left it on the pillow. “Mom – sorry – love you – home soon – don’t worry.” I didn’t think it would help, but it probably wouldn’t hurt.

  I looked around the room, at the pictures thumbtacked to the walls, my bed, my vanity, my bookshelves, and wished I could stay. Who would’ve thought I’d miss home? A few nights sleeping in birds nests and lengths of pipe made home seem pretty inviting, even with Mom’s dumb boyfriend there half the time.

  I jumped back to the Nex, to a corridor deep in the palace, near the big gates that held back the humongous icky thing I’d found before.

  Going home had actually given me some ideas about what to do next. Maybe I was relying on the jump-engine too much. Cal banged his drumsticks on everything, because to a drummer, everything looks like a drum. To a teleporter, everything looks like a job for teleportation. The problem was, Wisp and Howlaa and me had been calling this thing of ours a revolution, but it wasn’t – it was just a jailbreak. The jump-engine could help with a jailbreak, maybe, but a revolution took more than three people with some badass powers. A real revolution needed a plan more complicated than punching people until they disappeared.
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br />   I’d realized something else at home, or maybe not so much realized as hoped. Hearing Mom’s voice made me think about mothers in general, how mothers would supposedly do anything for their kids – whether their kids wanted them to or not. So I got to wondering....

  I went to the big metal gates, stepped through them again, and faced the warty gelatinous mountain of flesh chained up on the other side.

  “Hey,” I said. “Your majesty?”

  >Yes<, the Queen of Nexington-on-Axis replied.

  Chapter 15

  Talking to the Queen of Nexington-on-Axis, mother of the royal orphans, secretly imprisoned rightful ruler of the world outside all possible worlds, was pretty freaky. She didn’t think in straight lines like a person does, and she didn’t always answer my questions in a way that made sense, but after an hour of her dropping images and words into my brain while I ate granola bars and sipped old bottled water, I kind of got the gist. It wasn’t much like the story the Regent had told me, but I got the feeling the Queen wouldn’t even know how to lie.

  The Regent had gained her trust years before, and promised to stop all the various denizens of the Nex from attacking the palace and trying to kill her family (which apparently happened a lot in the old days, which was how a couple of her husbands died). It was a pretty simple deal: He was the public face of the government, and in exchange, the Queen and Kings waited until the citizens died before harvesting any interesting body parts for their own use, and they’d occasionally steal things to help the Regent improve the city, build sewers, homes, enough food, stuff like that. I got the idea the Queen didn’t give two craps about the other people living on the Nex, and was happy to let the Regent deal with their problems. The city-state grew, the snatch-engines got fancier, and everything was great. But over the years, all the Queen’s husbands sickened and died, and she realized she didn’t have anyone left to mate with, and her children were the only children she was going to have for a while... until some of the kids grew up enough to mate with her, which was going to take like hundreds of years.