by S Breaker
“Everyone’s at the quantum jump platform,” Noah replied. “The way we came in was pretty isolated, through the old accelerator maintenance tunnels.”
“It won’t be isolated soon,” Eleanor said knowingly. “They’ve found a way to power the platform using the accelerator.”
“What?”
“Remember that problem we were having with certain power sources overheating the plasma generator?” Eleanor reminded him. “That new kid, Johnny, he rigged a scale-model that worked.”
Noah shot her a look. “Are you saying that Blakely’s people are actually making headway with the quantum shear propagation?”
Eleanor pursed her lips.
“Laney—Eleanor,” Noah began firmly. “Are you saying that they’re actually going to be able to make the deadline for the jump tonight?”
Eleanor fidgeted uncomfortably. “What does it matter?” she said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Laney frowned as she had partly understood that conversation. “Wait a minute.” She put her hand up. “Isn’t that the thing that’s going to erase everyone from existence that we’re supposed to be stopping?” she prompted. “Shouldn’t you guys do something about it?”
Noah met Eleanor’s pointed gaze before he looked over at Laney. “Let’s just get out of here,” he echoed after a moment.
Laney blinked, catching his arm. “Now, wait one gosh-darned minute,” she started, authoritatively. “Are you two seriously not going to do anything to stop the bad guys from doing this stupid quantum jump thingy?”
“Laney, there won’t be much we can do to stop them at this point,” Eleanor tried to reason. “And it’s much more dangerous for you—for all of us—to be here right now. If we get caught this time, I don’t think they’ll be of a mind to still keep us alive.”
“But they’re about to invade other worlds, aren’t they?” Laney protested. “We have to try to at least stop them. Come on, the great genius Laney Carter? There’s really nothing you can do to stop them at this point? Really?”
Noah braced his hands on her shoulders. “Laney, I know I told you we were going to save the multiverse, but right now, it’s too dangerous for us to be here,” he told her.
“Which world are they going to invade, Noah?” Laney prompted. “Mine?”
Noah didn’t answer.
Laney broke away from him as she looked at each of the two in turn. “This is you guys’ mess! I shouldn’t even freaking be here!” She threw up her hands, arguing as quietly as she could manage. “Now you’re going to let them invade my world? I’m not going to let you let them.”
“Actually, it’s not the invasion you should be worrying about,” Eleanor said, as though she was speaking on some documentary, talking about hypotheticals. “The energy input of a large population through a quantum shear with no equal return output exchange? It’s like—causing a short circuit without a grounding wire.”
Laney blinked, blankly. “Yeah, that explanation doesn’t help me at all.”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter!”
Suddenly, Noah spoke up. “She’s right.”
Laney and Eleanor both looked over at him.
Laney raised an eyebrow at him. “She’s right?” She pointed at Eleanor. “Or she’s right?” She pointed at herself.
Noah met Eleanor’s gaze evenly. “We can’t let Kyle do this. We know the stakes,” he said calmly. “Like it or not, this is our mess. And we have to clean it up.”
“Seriously?” Eleanor’s jaw dropped slightly. She looked over at Laney. “Seriously.” Then back at Noah. Then back at Laney again.
Laney raised her eyebrows at her in a silent prompt.
And Eleanor groaned out loud, in frustration, but seemingly in defeat, before she tapped a few keys on the touch screen panel, making it light up green, and the elevator began to move. She glared at Noah, sighing heavily. “Didn’t I tell you? That Kyle Blakely was going to be nothing but trouble. You and your giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
Noah narrowed his eyes. “Uh, I remember at the time we both thought it was a good idea to introduce him to the Quantum Jump Project,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, he was just an underling at the time,” Eleanor reminded him. “He’s kiss-assed his way to his position and now he’s making the most of it.” She glanced over at Laney as though to elaborate. “Kyle thinks he’s a scientist, but he’s not. He thinks he’s ahead of his time, that he’s smarter than everyone, but he’s a complete douche. And it’s even worse now that he’s got all the king’s men backing him, so to speak.”
“Which is why we’d classified the rest of the research away from him, or don’t you remember?” Noah threw up his hands, exasperated.
Disguises
The elevator arrived at their destination. Noah checked his HUD first to see if the coast was clear, before motioning the two of them to follow him.
Strangely, and for the first time, Noah had more to say. “Besides,” he defended to Eleanor who was behind him as they moved forward. “If I had known that they would try to leverage me for information, you know I would never have even agreed to anything. How were we supposed to know that they would find out about the prototype development?”
“Of course I knew they would find out!” Eleanor exclaimed as quietly as she could. “Why do you think I took great pains to destroy all the evidence? And got myself locked up for my trouble.”
“Well, I’m sorry I went out of my way to save your life then,” Noah drawled in incredulity. “Apparently, it’s a terrible habit I seem to have,” he remarked, glancing back briefly over at Laney.
Laney was watching their argument, amused. They fought like an old married couple. She stopped short. A point in fact, they actually were about to be married. Whoa. She shivered at the thought.
“Either way, I knew we never should have trusted him,” Eleanor said stubbornly.
“Yes, yes, you are the great Laney Carter, the genius who knows everything,” Noah waved his hand, sarcasm dripping from his statement.
“Hey, you two!” Laney hissed in pointed disbelief. “Can you please focus on coming up with some kind of plan to disable the stupid vortex of doom thingy before we all explode or something?”
Eleanor dismissed it with a careless flick of her hand. “Oh, we wouldn’t explode. In theory, the quantum stresses will probably feel like someone is pulling you apart atom by atom.” She stopped short as Laney gawked at her. “Right, not the point,” she said quickly.
Noah put a finger to his mouth to signal quiet. They flattened themselves against the wall as two patrol guards and three guys in lab coats walked past the corridor heading down the hall the other way.
Once the guards were gone, Eleanor peeked out into the hallway herself. “We can take a shortcut through the Mat Lab,” she whispered, gesturing to the second door to the right as she led the way.
Laney met Noah’s gaze. “It’s the Materials Lab,” he told her.
Eleanor opened the door for them and closed it just as quickly once they were inside. The lights were off but the room was fortunately empty.
Eleanor headed straight for the supply closets in the back. “Here, put these on,” she said, starting to take out some spare lab coats, “lost and found” hats, and some other accessories for them to wear. “With so many people on-site tonight, we’ll blend in easier if we act busy like we’re supposed to be here. Just don’t show anyone your faces.”
Laney felt as though a lump had been in her throat since they had found The Front Door, and having to pretend to be a scientist again was not easing her discomfort. She took off her jacket, shaking her head quickly to clear it, as thoughts of what the bad guys might do to them if they get caught were rushing into her brain like a living nightmare. She clenched her jaw anxiously. She wasn’t even supposed to freaking be here!
Noah walked up to Laney to help her put the lab coat on. He was peering at her face as though he could sense her worry, as though he wa
nted to say something to make her feel better. But he didn’t. He just helped her with the clothes, as if silently hoping that it was enough.
Eleanor watched as Noah helped Laney, but when Laney looked up to meet her gaze, Eleanor looked away. Laney shot her a weird curious glance but didn’t say anything.
Then Noah came over to help Eleanor with her lab coat as well.
“So…” Eleanor began to Noah, almost secretively, with a slightly mischievous look on her face. “You kiss her yet?”
Laney’s eyes darted up to hers in shock upon overhearing. How in the world—? “What?” she sputtered out but then bit her tongue in case she said anything more to give them away.
But Noah sighed heavily, giving Eleanor an even look. “Yes Laney, now can we please move on?”
Laney felt even more baffled than before.
Eleanor knew. How on Earth did she find out? Eleanor knew that Laney and Noah had kissed, but she didn’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact. Noah, on the other hand, didn’t look at all upset or guilty about it either. He didn’t even seem willing to defend that it had only happened the one time—by accident—and that he had explicitly told Laney off about it so that it never happened again.
Laney was heaving again. She felt sick. But there was no time to be sick.
Eleanor waved them over to the door at the other end of the laboratory room. “Come on, you two. Time to save the world.”
Eleanor peered over Noah’s shoulder at his HUD, discreetly hidden behind a clipboard, as they walked down a long hallway. “The main lab is at the end of this hall. The jump platform is in Section 12.”
Laney followed suit behind the two of them, pretending to scratch her forehead to hide her face as two other lab coats passed them by, busy talking amongst themselves. She wrung her hands anxiously, trying to shake off her nerves, trying to focus on anything that didn’t make her stomach keep turning over in cold dread. She tried to imagine that she was back in school, which wasn’t difficult given that the lab staff and even the military guards looked around about her age.
So far, Laney, Eleanor, and Noah had managed to “blend in” and navigate the place successfully in disguise, and in the spotty lights of the hallway, any other people passing them by hadn’t paid them any mind. It was getting late, and the other personnel and guards were probably also tired themselves.
Laney glanced past the doors that they were passing by to the left of the hallway. Some of them looked like laboratories. Some of them looked like offices. She read some labels on the doors to distract herself. Organic computing lab… Nuclear research foundation… Dark matter lab… Strange matter lab…
Then Laney happened to look out the horizontal windows that ran along the hallway to her right and her jaw dropped.
At first glance, it almost looked like a high school scouts assembly at night. But what Laney saw out the window were actually hundreds of soldiers, assembled in neat rows outside the main laboratory complex, while several other uniformed officers led different exercises and demonstrations. Two noisy helicopters, a large airship, and about a dozen combat drones were in the air at the ready. Even in the dark, she could see the blue glow of all of their high-tech weaponry. There were so many weapons that they probably barely needed the handful of spotlights above them to organize themselves.
It was the invasion force. She swallowed hard. By this point, Laney was way past exhausted and frazzled. She just really wanted to go home. But if General Blakely completed his mission, she wouldn’t even have a home to go back to. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment to shake off her panic. She had to stay focused.
Eleanor pressed her hand against the panel of an unlabelled door and it lit up green again.
“In here.” Noah pushed open the heavy door and motioned for Laney to come inside.
Laney peered into the door before she followed Eleanor down the stairs, and along another long corridor before they finally emerged into another large room that, this time, was probably really a labyrinth.
Large wall panels were arranged in blocks like cubicles, with machines and display screens stored inside tall shelves, lots of red and blue blinking lights, exposed circuitry, different-sized tubes, and dials and toggles everywhere. A narrow path was shaped along the floor amidst the wall panels where they could walk. It was a total maze.
It was the underbelly of the quantum jump platform.
Laney glanced back at Noah.
“This is it,” he said.
Noah and Eleanor took their positions in front of what must have been their respective control panels against the walls and began to work.
Noah looked up at Eleanor. “What do you think?” he prompted.
Eleanor nodded as though she already knew what he was going to say. “Yeah, disable the throttle for the overheat sensor,” she said. “I’ll tweak the induction field on the reactor.” She glanced up at Laney who was standing closer to her. “I can’t tell you the number of times we had trouble with the plasma generator. At first, the jump machine would start up fine, then after 84% warm-up, everything would come to a grinding halt. It turns out it was the magnetic induction field. And I wouldn’t even have figured it out if I hadn’t been randomly thinking about EMFs while having a messy bagel one morning.”
Laney smirked and wondered if Eleanor had any idea that Laney had absolutely no idea what the hell she was talking about.
After a few minutes, Eleanor paused from her work, looked up and met Laney’s gaze again, a small smile on her face. “I’m kind of impressed that you convinced Noah to do this,” she remarked.
Laney’s smirk faded. “It was the right thing to do,” she replied evasively, not being able to help a quick glance up at Noah, who was reconfiguring something at his control panel over at the other wall panel station across from them.
Then, as though Noah had heard them, he glanced up and met Laney’s gaze, holding it for a moment before he turned back to the control panel.
Eleanor noticed the subtle exchange, and she furrowed her eyebrows, looking amused. She met Laney’s gaze again just as she averted hers from Noah’s.
Laney blinked at her, as though having been caught red-handed for something, but didn’t say anything.
Eleanor cracked a smirk herself and elbowed Laney suggestively. “So…how do you like our boy over there, huh?”
Laney cleared her throat nervously. “Um, I already have a boyfriend,” she replied. “Back in my world.”
“Well, sure,” she went on. “But what has he got compared to our Noah, right? No contest.”
She looked at Eleanor strangely for a moment, thinking she might be trying to bait her again. “I’m…really sorry about the kiss thing,” she started, defeated. “I for certain never wanted you to find out about it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how you found out about it at all in the first place. But it was a huge mistake—an accident,” she assured firmly.
But Eleanor waved it away like it was nothing. “Noah’s a sweetie,” she said, as if in explanation. “He was always the more sensitive, emotionally-available one between the two of us.”
Laney blinked, almost in shock. “He—he—what?”
And Eleanor went on casually. “I mean, I know he loves me so much and all that, but I’ll tell you something, I always kind of knew that maybe I wasn’t built for that kind of stuff.”
Laney narrowed her eyes at Eleanor in bafflement. “You—w-what?”
Eleanor chuckled lightly, patting her shoulder. “Never mind,” she said. “I think maybe this is too much information for you to process all at once.”
All Laney could do was manage a weak smile back at her. She tugged on her shirt collar nervously. It suddenly felt really warm in the underbelly.
Eleanor was staring at Laney’s neck.
Laney looked down questioningly. “What?”
A small smile curved the corner of Eleanor’s mouth again. “That’s my necklace.”
Laney blinked, alerted. “Oh.” She began to take it
off. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She gestured to Noah. “Mr. Sensitivity over there gave it to me this morning.” She put the necklace in Eleanor’s hand. “Apparently it’s also a—”
“Well, isn’t this a happy reunion?” a voice boomed from above.
The Cake is a Lie
Friday, 20 March 2020 9:01 p.m.
“I think there’s a joke in here somewhere, hey Donovan?” General Blakely mused out loud. “Isn’t this a fantasy you may have had at some point—two girlfriends, nay, two of the same girlfriend,” he amended, sounding highly entertained.
Laney looked up in alarm, her scream trapped in her throat.
General Blakely (bordering on rotund, loner Kyle Blakely from French Lit, always with the weird vein protruding out of his pimply forehead) was standing at a platform above the underbelly control labyrinth, with several armed guards alongside him. “I must say, I’m actually impressed that you made it this far,” he went on.
Noah looked up at Blakely wryly. “You almost sound like you didn’t expect me back at all.”
“Oh, I had my doubts about the dodgy anchor device that we let your little assistant Berry acquire,” Blakely smirked. “For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to kick off my Plan B. But I guess Berry is as skillful as he is persistent.”
Let him acquire? Laney blinked as she had caught that.
“I mean, that was good work, you almost escaped detection altogether,” Blakely went on, then he shook his head. “But I should have known you would be reneging on our deal. Gotta say, Donovan, how many times have you double-crossed everyone so far, just to save your fiancée? Is it a triple-cross or a quadruple-cross at this point?”
“Shut up, Kyle,” Noah snapped.
Eleanor’s eyes were already narrowed as she absorbed all this. “Deal? What deal?” she asked. “What the hell is going on, Noah?”
Noah’s face was dark. He didn’t say anything.