by S Breaker
She blew out a breath as soon as she had finished speaking. Her heart was pounding nervously but she had done it! She had said her lines perfectly. Not one mistake. She thought she might even have sounded like she knew even remotely what the hell she was talking about.
“Oui. Bien.” Macon nodded amicably after a moment. “I have plenty of this. Of course, Mr. Berry remembers from the old days.”
Laney shot Noah a brief look of relief before she smiled back at Macon. “Of course. That would be great, thanks.”
Macon stepped back to rummage in some supply cabinets behind him before turning back around to them. “So, how are things going over there with your multiverses research?” he asked, as he began to mix the copper solution using some droppers. “I thought I heard a rumor that the whole thing got eh…shall we say, shit-canned?”
Laney shot Noah a quick worried look, but he put his hands up at a loss, shrugging.
She blinked. “Uhh…no, no.” She waved her hand to dismiss it. “It’s still—it’s still going on,” she said. “Still on-going… There’s a lot of stuff to discover with that—multiverses, you know. There’s too many of them. That’s why it’s a multiverse.” She chuckled nervously. “Multi means many. There’s too much stuff to research…with that,” she relayed, meeting Noah’s flat, incredulous gaze.
Laney gave Noah a sharp look and drawled on. “I mean, you know what I mean, right? I mean, they tried to shut me down,” she added cockily. “They just…couldn’t. I have a super team. Super, super…” she trailed off, ignoring Noah, who was rolling his eyes.
Macon was nodding, otherwise occupied to notice anything else. “Good, good. Last time we spoke, I thought you had run into some kind of a problem with the uh…qu'est-ce que c'est, double—these overlaps? In the frequencies of the alpha and delta brain waves in your sleep studies?” he queried, though still not looking at them.
Noah had opened his mouth to respond but Laney waved him away.
“That’s right.” Laney began to nod, almost too eagerly. “Those crazy brain waves. All of them. The alphas, the deltas, the phi omegas—they just won’t stay still. But ah…I got over them. Figured it all out, you know. ‘Cause I’m kind of a genius.” She grinned, as she met Macon’s gaze briefly. “I mean, I see things seven steps ahead of everyone else, right? Problem solver. That’s what I am.”
Noah was visibly biting his lip to keep from chuckling, and when Macon wasn’t looking, Laney whacked him on the arm.
“Ah, ici c'est, the sample.” Macon held up the little vial once he was done.
Noah walked up to examine the vial briefly then gave a slight nod.
Macon acknowledged the nod, placed the vial in a little case, and dropped it into a pneumatic tube inlet in the wall for collection back at the depot at The Louvre.
“Thanks for this.” Noah looked over at Macon. “Hey, no hard feelings, right? About before? It was my job,” he explained with a neutral facial expression.
Macon narrowed his eyes. “I’m not doing this for you, Mr. Soldier. I’m doing this for Laney ma belle here. For old times’ sake,” he remarked with a smile.
Laney managed the most sickeningly sweet smile she could muster. “Thanks a lot, Jay-jay. You always come through for me. Merci beaucoup!”
Noah cleared his throat, glaring at Laney.
Macon spoke again. “I must say, Donovan, I honestly thought you would have shown your true colors by now, and Laney would realize she’s much too good for you and break off your engagement.”
Laney almost choked. “Our engagement—?” she echoed in a startle, before she caught herself, clearing her throat. “I mean, of course.” She shook her head briskly to recover. “Our…engagement, of course, of course,” she said. “Nope…no, uh…I think…uh…” She looked up at Noah meaningfully. “This one just can’t keep himself out of trouble without me, if you know what I mean.”
Macon laughed. “Ah, of that I am certain you have precisely right.”
And with that, he bid them a wave and adieu.
Fight or Flight
As soon as Laney had taken her helmet off, she smacked Noah’s arm again.
“We’re engaged?” she hissed in disbelief.
Noah cleared his throat loudly. “We are not,” he replied. “But I am. With Laney.”
Laney blinked, still a bit in shock over the revelation.
“We’ve been together for six years.”
She whistled. Six years. She cast a cautious glance up sideways at him. “So you and Laney…?” she began, trying to phrase her question as delicately as she could.
Noah simply met her gaze as a reply.
Laney sucked in a breath. “Oh-kay.” She swallowed hard, feeling shivers. “Well, you should have told me that,” she told him off. “It’s hard enough to pretend to be someone else when you don’t even know who that someone is, and people keep these kinds of things from you—important things. I mean, I barely knew what the hell I was doing in there. And you were absolutely no help.”
“Sorry.”
She studied his face suspiciously. “You are so not sorry,” she said. “You totally thought that was funny, didn’t you?”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “But uh…thanks for reminding us that ‘multi’ means many. You are a total problem solver. And a genius, let’s not forget.” His shoulders were shaking in mirth.
Laney’s jaw dropped slightly at his impertinence. “Hey, considering I had no idea what the hell I was talking about in there, I thought I did pretty well. I mean, heck, give me my microscope now,” she said airily. Then she started to recite and carelessly string together the most complex science words she knew, “Nuclear mitosis, acute cerebral autoimmune embolism, subatomic quantum parallelogram. See? I’m plenty smart.”
And Noah burst out laughing.
“What?” she asked, giving him an almost offended gaze, but the humor and light in his eyes were too infectious. “All right, fine.” She resigned with a roll of her eyes. “Maybe not.”
Noah shot her a look of ridicule, even as he was still smiling.
She glanced up at him briefly, unable to resist smiling back. That was the first time she had heard him laugh.
“I still can’t believe you ever went out with that French douchebag,” he remarked, with a slight shake of his head as they left the cubicle.
Laney shot him a look. “He seemed brilliant,” she commented.
He huffed, not looking at her. “Sure, but when was the last time he published something in an actually respectable scientific journal?” he prompted haughtily.
She pursed her lips, amused as he looked jealous. “And I suppose you publish to scientific journals all the time?”
“For your information, my last paper on ‘Residual Energy and Matter Transfer through Quantum Phenomena’ was very well received by the scientific community.”
“Well then, I suppose frequency of publication to scientific journals wasn’t really a big thing on Laney’s hot-or-not list, and you’ll just have to accept being sloppy seconds,” she said with a slightly teasing tone. “Besides, it’s hard to beat that sexy French accent.”
Noah gave her a flat look. “Seriously. You thought that guy was sexy?”
Laney blinked, tilting her head slightly, and replied after a moment. “I think the issue here is whether or not Laney thought he was sexy.”
“Yeah, but I’m asking you.” He looked at her expectantly.
She looked up at him and his gaze held hers. Why must he look so intense all the time? She swallowed hard, looking deep into his blue, blue eyes. But after a moment, she blinked out of her trance, managing to look away, trying to sound as disinterested as she could. “My boyfriend Kevin is blonde. I like blondes.”
He creased his forehead at the bluntness of her answer but didn’t press.
They arrived back at the lobby and headed toward a set of drop boxes near a wall panel to get the copper ink vial. Noah held it up in his hand for Laney to see.
&nb
sp; “Mission accomplished,” he said, before slipping the vial inside his zip-up jacket pocket. “Now let’s get out of here,” he gestured, leading the way.
“That’s not the way we came in,” Laney noted.
“We’re taking the back way out to be safe.”
Once they got out the door, Laney gasped again. They were going through the gardens behind The Louvre.
There was a walkway lined with green trees, with several stone benches lining the path. At the end of the path was an old fountain. The fountain was cracked and broken to be sure, and the trees all overgrown, but she was still spellbound by the beauty of her surroundings.
This place was lucky to have had survived the central blast, she thought, recalling how London had been cleared of anything even remotely green. She sighed in wonder.
“I think…we’re being followed,” Noah whispered.
For a second, Laney forgot that they were actually on a mission and were supposed to be incognito. In another time and place, she and Noah could have just been taking a leisurely stroll across these gardens. But her expression changed altogether when she remembered why they were there to begin with.
“What do you mean?” she asked, trying to look around as subtly as she could, starting to get anxious.
Noah tapped his HUD where there was a blinking red dot on a little radar screen. “Drone, flying six o’clock of us, about twenty feet away.” He groaned as he confirmed it. “Shit, they must have been monitoring my VRX logins, too.”
She shot him a questioning look. “You? Why would they be looking for you too?”
“I can’t tell if the drone is government-issued,” he mumbled, trying to get a clear look at it. “It’s just there might also be a certain group of people who aren’t very happy with me either. They think I’ve become too…patriotic. But you can’t win with these people. You’re either too patriotic or not enough.” He shrugged, looking frustrated.
Laney remembered the assassin back on her world who had used the word “traitor,” as well as the look that Berry and Noah had exchanged back at the mobile submersible lab when they were talking about Laney’s captivity. Everyone breaks…eventually…
Her eyes cleared. “It was you, wasn’t it? You told the bad guys about the prototype.”
Noah pursed his lips, stiffening. “You have to understand,” he explained. “These people…they can make you lose control—” He stopped short, clenching his jaw and shook his head to clear the thought, not willing to elaborate any further.
Laney peered into his face sympathetically. “It’s okay. You probably didn’t have any other choice,” she rationalized. “I don’t blame you—”
That made him chuckle somberly. “Yeah, you did,” he pointed out, referring to the other Laney. “You told me I should’ve died with the information. That I should’ve resisted harder. I should’ve resisted…” he trailed off as if disgusted with himself. “Their methods wouldn’t work on you—her.” He glanced up at Laney. “They couldn’t understand why either.” He paused. “You can look at that however you want. Since if they had gotten to her earlier, maybe you wouldn’t even have had to have been dragged into this whole mess in the first place.” He looked weary, his gaze off into the distance.
Laney winced slightly. It sounded like it would have been a no-win situation either way. She didn’t know what she could possibly say to make him feel better. She stopped to put her hand on his arm lightly. “Hey, I think it’s great you’re doing all this for her,” she started. “If it makes any difference, I know I’d appreciate it.”
Noah met her gaze and held it, a corner of his mouth turned up in the slightest possible way, and after a moment, he spoke, “I know you would.”
Laney’s heart skipped a beat and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from his.
Just then, his HUD beeped again and Noah’s face sobered. “It’s coming closer.”
She clenched her teeth in worry as they both resumed walking. “What should we do?”
Noah bit his lip. “I think we should split up,” he started. “You go that way and head north.” He gestured toward the end of the lane. “And I’ll go the long way to meet up with you.”
Laney started to heave in anxiety. “Are you sure?” She was absolutely not a fan of splitting up, but she supposed it would also be the easiest way to determine which one of them the drone was chasing after.
He nodded. “Whichever one of us it goes for has to run, do you understand?”
She blinked, nodding, unable to speak from fright. And before she could psyche herself up for running for her life once more, Noah said, “Now.” He immediately broke right, walking away from Laney.
Her heart was pounding in her chest again as she continued to walk straight ahead, and unfortunately, when she turned to glance back over her shoulder, she saw the drone still following behind her, even closer. It was close enough that when Laney had turned to look, a red light on the drone lit up—and not in a good way.
She was so busted.
Laney started to run, with the drone practically at her heels. She ran toward the end of the lane, past the hedges, and out the other side of the courtyard columns onto the street. And when she looked up, her worst nightmare began. Two more drones were closing in on her from the left.
Shit! Laney ran faster down a narrow lane, past several buildings with canopied windows, through a gate, almost tripping on the sidewalk.
After a few minutes, she glanced over her shoulder. She had somehow lost the drones through the little gate that she had come through. She stopped for breath outside a big picture window, fronting what could have been another old café.
Noah had gone through his instructions so quickly that she wasn’t able to ask him how the hell she was supposed to know which way north was. She could be halfway to Spain already for all she knew.
Oh crap. Laney’s eyes were wide in panic as she edged back along a brick wall, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She was trying not to breathe heavily, but her heart was hammering in her chest again. And when she turned a corner, she felt someone grab her hand.
Her gasp of fright caught in her throat until she met his gaze.
Noah put a finger to his mouth to signal quiet as he pulled her back underneath the wide doorway of another building.
Laney was breathless. “They’re after me,” she told him.
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “If it’s after you, I can’t just shoot it down, or they’ll definitely find us.”
“It?” she echoed in incredulity. “There were three of them.”
“Three?” Noah repeated before he glanced up and down the street furtively. “We have to go now,” he said, pulling her along.
Laney heard a whooshing sound, and when she looked up she saw a large airship flying above the low Parisian apartment buildings before it blocked the setting sun’s light completely, and several commando trackers dropped from the air.
“Noah, look out!” she cried out.
Noah looked up in time to dodge the beam from one of the trackers’ energy weapons. Except, his jumping away gave one of the other trackers the opportunity to grab Laney. She screamed.
Close calls
“Laney!” Noah called out, jumping onto the tracker, managing to get Laney free, as another one ran up to grab her again.
Noah went at tracker after tracker, but soon they were all over him too. There were over a dozen of them, notably more than there were on the previous night at the bridge.
There was another loud rumble and Laney looked up.
A truck was coming down the road. It was coming to take her.
“Holy shit,” she cursed, breathing so hard her lungs were hurting. She could barely move from the grapple hold of the tracker that had gotten her.
Noah glanced up and saw the truck too. Laney saw him swallow hard and meet her gaze across the way. His eyebrows furrowed deeply from the severe look of dread and panic on her face. He looked up at the airship in the sky, then at th
e truck, then back at her.
Without another word Noah fiddled with his HUD and, despite the multiple trackers surrounding him, somehow disappeared into a puff of smoke.
Laney blinked. Her heart dropped to her stomach. He was gone.
Or… She looked up, still heaving and spotted Noah again, rappelling down from the top of one of the buildings.
What happened next was almost imperceptibly quick—Noah dropped down, clipped a hook onto the tactical vest of the tracker holding onto Laney, and she gasped as she zipped up into the air, still being held by the tracker. Laney watched her feet leave the ground, in time to see Noah back on the street, grab a tracker’s energy weapon, and shoot a wide beam toward the airship’s large parachute-like envelope in the sky.
The airship burst into flames and exploded in mid-air, sending a whole heap of debris down. Laney screamed before she tumbled onto the roof deck of a nearby building.
The tracker holding her had rolled away from the fall. She tried to scramble up quickly, and when she saw him push up off the floor to chase after her again, she instinctively swung her bag at him, hearing a loud thunk since her bag was heavy with a metal bottle full of water, instantly knocking him unconscious—before a large piece of airship debris fell right onto him, splattering red everywhere.
She screamed again, jumping away, and crawled to curl up into a ball under an exhaust pipe shelter, as more dust and debris fell in the airship’s wake. She peered up over her arms, still wincing, to see what remained of the airship crash loudly down two streets over.
Laney pushed herself up slowly on her forearms, her bottom still sore from her fall. She coughed from the dust as she gasped, trying to blink her view clear.
The sun had set, its last rays of light streaking across the purple sky. The block was quiet once again. Too quiet. She was still alone on the top of the building, except for what remained of the tracker a few feet away. She made a face in revulsion but shook her head quickly to shake off the creeps.