by S Breaker
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Carter.” Blakely waved his apology. “You see Mr. Donovan and I had an agreement. The Zeta device, in exchange for your release.”
That made Laney’s jaw drop big time. What?
Blakely chuckled slightly. “You know what, let’s get you all out of there first,” he said, signaling some of his men to get them. “I thought it would be such a shame if you girls missed the big event. This was, after all, in fact, your brilliant idea.”
Laney frowned as she looked up at Noah who was being led onto the platform, but he didn’t seem eager to meet anyone’s gaze at the moment. She swallowed hard and a single word flashed hot in her brain.
Traitor.
Laney glanced back at Eleanor, but she looked stunned herself.
After everything that Noah had told her about the consequences of Blakely’s plan, Laney didn’t want to believe that he was okay with it, that he was willing to sacrifice the entire multiverse to get Eleanor back. She clearly recalled the desperate look on his face when he had asked for her help. How could he have been lying the entire time?
Blakely’s men escorted everyone out of the underbelly and walked them across the facility toward Section 12.
Laney couldn’t help but drop her jaw again.
The section was huge, the size of an airplane hangar. The quantum jump platform itself was in the middle of the room—a giant round silver stage made entirely of glass and mirrors, with green lights shining up from underneath it, making it look other-worldly. Around the platform were more control panels and machines, and cabling ran all over the floor.
From Laney’s perspective, it wasn’t difficult to imagine a large invasion force all jumping through a swirling vortex of doom upon the platform. And given what time it was, it looked like the machine was already on standby. She shivered in dread again, even as she tried to shrug off the guard who was holding her arm like a vise.
Eleanor herself looked bored, as she was probably sick of seeing the jump platform by then, even as she was also being dragged along by an armed military guard.
“Miss Carter,” Blakely addressed her then. “Fun fact for you,” he began. “Did you know that on the first working version of the quantum jump platform, you couldn’t even send anything inorganic through it,” he relayed with a chuckle. “Like you’d have to go through naked, if you get my drift.”
Laney made a face, trying to shake off the chills.
Eleanor looked at Noah again. “Noah, did you honestly make a deal with this snake? How could you possibly have thought you could take his word about anything?” she wanted to know. “After everything we know, after everything we’ve seen him do, after everything we know he’s planning to do.”
“Frankly, I don’t know why everyone is so upset,” Blakely noted loudly, his forehead creased. “I only wanted to shore up our advantage, and I had simply convinced the joint chiefs that this is for our own world’s security as well. Seeing as, in case other worlds develop the same kind of technology, how would we defend ourselves then? Even the President agrees with me.”
“The President is a twelve-year-old D&D nerd,” Eleanor supplied distastefully before she glanced back at Noah again. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Well, obviously I tried to back out of it, didn’t I?” Noah snapped. His gaze strayed to meet Laney’s briefly. “I—changed my mind right away.”
“I never thought you would bring Laney here.” Eleanor shook her head, somewhat in despair. “That was why I’d ordered everything to be destroyed, but I guess Berry got his hands on an anchor device anyway. Thanks to Mr. General over there.”
“It was the only way I could save you,” Noah told Eleanor pointedly. “Besides, I didn’t find the Zeta device. Nothing on Laney’s world tested positive for it. I basically ransacked her entire room—”
Laney’s eyes lit up in shock. “What? You ransacked my room? It was you?”
Noah bit his lip, as though he wasn’t intending to reveal that.
“Whatever,” Eleanor dismissed. “The point is, you shouldn’t have brought Laney to this world.”
The urgency in Eleanor’s tone made Noah’s eyebrows furrow, as it seemed to indicate that there was more to it than Laney’s being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He narrowed his eyes at Eleanor. “Why?” he asked. “You’ve been saying that all night. What’s wrong with Laney being here?”
Laney sighed heavily. “I keep telling you all, I don’t have your stupid Zeta device,” she protested, exasperated. “I don’t even know what the hell it looks like.”
Blakely let out a laugh.
Laney blinked blankly, looking at each of the others in turn. It felt like everyone knew something she didn’t again. The guard holding her arm nudged her back for her to move, and she shifted forward, confused. “What is going on?”
Eleanor’s face clouded over but she didn’t say anything.
“I guess Dr. Carter hasn’t exactly been entirely forthcoming with regards to her full culpability in this little venture,” Blakely said with a smirk. He met Laney’s gaze again as the guard led her closer to the jump platform. “Let me guess, Miss Carter. You haven’t been sleeping well, have you? For, oh…about three weeks now?”
Laney quirked an eyebrow, stunned, looking at him with incredulous suspicion, “How could you possibly know that?”
He smirked again. “Dr. Carter, would you like to tell her, or should I?” he prompted.
Eleanor bit her lip, her gaze still on the floor.
Laney looking over at Eleanor in unease. “What is he talking about, Eleanor?”
Eleanor slowly looked up and gave her a pained look. “I’m very sorry, Laney. But you have to understand, I was on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. This discovery changed everything we knew about the multiverses. There was too much at stake for me to stop—”
Noah stared at Eleanor. “What did you do?”
“I…” Eleanor dropped her gaze again. “When we tested the first anchor prototype, and the first world we found was Laney’s, I kind of…dosed her with a tracking solution when she was sleeping. It was just a bunch of exotic particles that synched her delta brain waves to my monitor when she’s asleep,” she explained, with a dismissive tone as though messing with someone else’s brain was absolutely no big deal.
Noah glared at her flatly. “Eleanor, the first working anchor prototype test was one year ago.”
Laney felt like she had been slapped. What?
“It’s not my fault!” Eleanor threw her hands up. “It was completely harmless! And by the way, that ended up being the key for making all of our subsequent breakthroughs possible,” she added, actually with a hint of pride in her voice. “But when Kyle found out about it three weeks ago, they decided to increase the engagement of the brain activity imprints. Except, I had that problem with the interference of the waves—remember I told you about that, Noah? Increasing brain engagement makes the alpha and delta waves conflict. That’s why technically, Laney’s brain hasn’t been sleeping for the last three weeks.”
Laney was heaving. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Eleanor had been experimenting on her brain for an entire year and she didn’t even know about it. The bad guys had been practically messing with her brain for nearly a whole month. She felt as though her entire world was collapsing. Nothing she thought she knew was true. Noah was working for the bad guys. Eleanor was a morally-bankrupt genius.
She felt as though she was going to faint.
“I swear, you weren’t supposed to even feel anything, and the side effects would have eventually worn off—,” Eleanor implored Laney. “If you had stayed in your world…” she trailed off, looking almost sheepish. “You would have been all back to normal and none of this was supposed to have happened. But Kyle found out. It was that stupid truth serum cocktail’s fault!” she exclaimed, before putting up her hands. “But that’s as much as they got out of me, I promise.”
“Oh, is that all?” Laney prompted,
her tone bordering on enraged.
But Noah’s forehead was still creased. “So you did tell them where to find the Zeta device?” he prompted Eleanor, looking puzzled.
Eleanor made a face again.
And Blakely smiled slyly. He paused, as though ceremoniously, before saying, “There was no Zeta device. Dr. Carter never developed a prototype.”
Laney’s jaw dropped again.
“What?” Noah asked indignantly. “Then what the hell have we been searching for all this time? What the hell were you really after?”
Blakely tilted his head deviously before briefly glancing at Laney again.
Noah’s face paled and he met Laney’s gaze looking up.
Laney’s stomach churned. Every dropping bombshell was absolutely going against her favor at the moment. “What…the hell…is he talking about, Noah?” she asked.
Blakely laughed. “I’m sorry, Miss Carter, but you were the objective. Getting you through the quantum shear and into this world was the mission. The Zeta device was just a…distraction that Dr. Carter came up with, something for people to focus on, an excuse—a rather convenient one.”
Laney swallowed hard.
Blakely chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. “Lucky for us, Donovan couldn’t bear to be apart from his lovely Dr. Carter. He was ready to deal. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t read the fine print.”
Noah stared at Blakely in stunned disbelief. “I am so stupid. How did I actually fall for that? You wanted Laney to come here. You knew I wouldn’t find the Zeta device in her world. And you knew I would do anything to get the other Laney back. You son of a—,” he cursed.
Noah looked over to meet Eleanor’s gaze, his eyes clearing as though something dawned on him. “The energy exchange problem,” he and Eleanor said at the same time.
Eleanor shrugged.
“That’s your solution,” Noah said.
“I believe credit again goes to Dr. Carter for that,” Blakely gestured to Eleanor.
“The grounding wire,” Eleanor said ruefully.
“You figured out that you needed a totem from the other world to hold the shear stable to compensate for the significant energy influx,” Noah said, almost to himself. “And without that, either world could get completely wiped from spacetime.”
“And nothing else worked, except—”
“A person,” Noah breathed in conclusion.
Eleanor’s silence was affirmation enough.
Noah blinked as he realized something else. “That’s why you pulled the plug on the entire project. It was never going to be sustainable unless you sacrificed—” He looked up and saw Laney’s horrified gaze.
Laney was absolutely speechless and the creeping dread had come over her entire body. Her brain was overflowing with indignation and confusion. She could barely move as she was frozen in terror. She swallowed hard again, meeting Noah’s gaze instantly, his own forehead creased with concern and remorse and guilt.
“Laney, I am so sorry,” Noah told Laney fervently. “I just wanted to save Eleanor. I never…” He shook his head helplessly.
“I have to say,” Blakely spoke up then. “I know I’m supposed to be the bad guy, but for a bunch of geniuses, I never thought you would all have even less scruples than I.”
Then he grinned, looking up at the large baroque brass clock on the wall. “And on that note, I think we’re about ready to test this baby. You’ll see, Carters.” He gave both girls another sly smile, before calling out instructions to his minions to start up the machine. “The future is golden. Our world will have the single greatest advantage across all the multiverses. And you will all bear witness to the first step toward our brighter future.”
The Carter Effect
“Did you hear that, Noah?” Eleanor prompted dryly. “We’re all about to have first row seats to the end of the entire multiverse.”
Noah was rigidly staring off into space, as though the weight of the situation had rendered him incapacitated, even more than the two guards who were holding him, and the other one who was pointing a laser rifle right up against the back of his neck.
Blakely’s military guards came up to lead Laney onto a smaller intersecting receptacle circle along the arc of the quantum jump platform.
By this point, Laney was overcome with panic. “No—!” She made one last desperate struggle away from her captor, only to get as far as Eleanor’s big gorilla guard so that he caught her by the collar and held both Laneys with each arm.
Blakely chuckled again as he looked from one Laney to the other. “Two Laneys, well. This must be a pickle for you, Donovan.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Kyle.” He glared back at him.
“Well, we’ll need to use one, won’t we? Wouldn’t it be interesting if I made you choose who to save between them now?” Blakely prompted, as though he was kidding—half-kidding. “At this point, they’re probably both pumped with enough exotic particles, it doesn’t really matter which one.”
Noah scoffed, looking bored. “Not really, egghead. Of course, I’m going to choose my Laney. You think I’ve gone through all of this to get her back and then actually not save her.” He clenched his jaw. “I don’t even know that other one.”
That made Laney’s heart stop. Her chest constricted in desolation. It wasn’t enough that he felt repulsed by her. He wasn’t even going to think twice about leaving her to die—exchanging her life for Eleanor’s. She took a deep breath. Then again, she thought, he was probably right. The “real” Dr. Laney Carter was the one who deserved to be free, the one who deserved to live. Laney didn’t even belong here. It would probably make no difference if she disappeared into thin air right then.
“Well, we have to put one of them in it,” Blakely explained, walking up to them. “Except, I’ve really enjoyed Dr. Carter’s particular company these past few months.” He grinned, pulling her closer to him. “I mean, she is the genius.”
Eleanor made a face, pulling as far away as she could from him.
Blakely motioned the gorilla guard to move Laney back onto the receptacle circle, then he said, “Turn it on,” waving at one of the lab coats, standing at a control panel.
The quantum jump platform began to warm-up with a loud hum from the generator and the glowing green lights turned blue.
Laney’s legs felt incredibly heavy. She looked down and realized that the receptacle circle had some sort of gravity thing that pinned her in place. She made a face as she tried to shift her left foot, then her right—to no avail. She was trapped!
Laney was hyperventilating, as she stood helplessly on the quantum jump platform receptacle. Eleanor’s gaze was still dropped and she wouldn’t look at her. Noah was looking at her blankly, his face unreadable.
Laney swallowed hard as she felt large tears welling up in her eyes.
This was it. The end.
Friday, 20 March 2020 9:19 p.m.
“It doesn’t work.” Blakely frowned.
Laney was still frozen in panic, but she blew out a breath when she heard the machine seem to power down.
“What’s going on? Why doesn’t it work? Make it work!” Blakely yelled at some minion to adjust some settings.
Noah couldn’t help a smirk. “Kyle, really, are you telling me that you have in your custody two Laney Carters and you still can’t get this stupid old machine to work properly?”
He glared at him. “I will in a minute. Shut up.”
Noah glanced up at the clock, only looking slightly anxious. Blakely was almost out of time. “Give it up, Kyle. You’re never going to pull this off. Someone like you was never going to be able to pull this off.”
Blakely was pacing the floor, his eyebrows furrowed, as all he could do was wait for his minions to do his bidding, as obviously, he knew absolutely nothing about the technology himself. He stopped short, turning to grab Eleanor’s arm again, his eyes narrowed. “You know what’s going on, don’t you? Tell me how to fix it now!”
Eleanor simply ga
ve him an even look. “Seriously, Kyle,” she drawled. “You really ought to read up on some quantum physics the next time you attempt to generate a persistent quantum shear to cross into a parallel world. That way you might even have half a chance of succeeding,” she coaxed, mostly to try to shake his confidence, as there wasn’t much else she could do except stall. “Better watch out for that kickback—remember that, Noah?” she prompted casually. “It’s that unidirectional wave variation on the quantum shear. If it’s not calibrated correctly,” she said, shaking her head again. “It might just shoot you into any of several unidentified multiverses. Either that or it might just dissolve all the atoms of your body straight off. I mean, that’s all theoretical of course, since we never really got to testing it.”
Blakely’s eyes blazed. “Or maybe, we need to put a little more kindling in the fire,” he suggested, grabbing Eleanor’s arm to push her up toward the receptacle where Laney was.
Eleanor’s eyes lit up in alarm and she tried to struggle away in vain. “No!”
“I guess we’re doing Plan A and B,” Blakely remarked with a wicked grin, as Eleanor became fastened to the receptacle right beside Laney.
The machine started up again, and the quantum jump platform lights flicked back to blue, before quickly turning into indigo.
And Blakely stepped back to watch, a pleased smile on his face. “Yes…” he murmured in triumph. “Yes!” he cried out.
In an instant, a large, spiraling, black hole of a mouth appeared right above the quantum jump platform.
It was massive, easily the size of a two-story house. It did not look at all inviting, and it seemed to snap, crackle and pop loudly, sounding like a bad storm. It may have looked like an F3 twister gone sideways. And it looked like it was decidedly eager to start sucking things into it.
Laney’s eyes widened. Holy shit…
Eleanor’s eyes were just as wide, but it was mostly in wonder. This was the largest quantum shear that they had ever attempted to generate. There was still absolutely no telling how stable it was.