Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  And before Laney knew what was going on, he had bent his head and caught her lips in his. He kissed her deep, ardent—familiar—as though he knew her, as though he had known her all her life.

  Noah felt her stop struggling as she resigned herself to the intensity of his kiss. But she didn’t kiss him back. He broke off slowly, his eyes still closed.

  Laney’s eyelids were heavy when she finally met his lustrous gaze. “Do I know you?” she whispered.

  His chest constricted as he replied, “Yes.”

  But she didn’t know him. She didn’t remember.

  Laney’s eyes popped open and she pushed him away, hard. “My boyfriend Kevin is waiting for me,” she relayed, pointedly.

  Noah visibly clenched his jaw.

  “I seriously don’t know what the hell is going on with you, and what the hell you think this is, but maybe you also need a quick trip to the nurse’s office,” she suggested.

  “Laney, I really need to talk to you,” he said, an urgent look in his eyes.

  “Look, Jake…that was um…very nice,” she phrased carefully, starting to back away. “But I really have to go now. So if you want to alert your friends, who are no doubt all watching, that you’ve accomplished your little prank, then maybe we can all get to class,” she said, before pausing. “Unless of course, you actually have some sort of rational explanation that you’re maybe willing to share?” she prompted, an almost incredulous look on her face. She wasn’t really sure why she wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but she did.

  Noah shook his head, muttering, “I can’t believe I have to go through all this with you again.”

  Laney shot him a stubborn look, even if she didn’t fully understand. “Well, you’re gonna.”

  He let out a sigh and paused for a moment. “Alright,” he started. “My name is Noah—”

  “But Jake—”

  “He’s not me, okay!” Noah threw up his hands at her interruption, quickly cutting her off. “Yes, we look alike, but we have different names, different personalities—I don’t know why. That’s just the way it is. Now, will you please, for once, let me finish before you say anything? I’m kind of on the clock here,” he stated.

  Laney looked taken aback at his seemingly extreme response, but she rolled her eyes and gestured for him to continue.

  He sighed again, before calmly starting over. “My name is Noah. I’m from another parallel world. And about eight months ago, you helped me save my world and yours. Yes.” He nodded, upon seeing her eyes widen again in response. “We have met before. And we’ve…” He hesitated. “Been through a lot together. I’ve saved your life many times and…you’ve saved mine.”

  Laney raised her hand as if to interject a question politely.

  He stopped. “Yes?”

  She smirked, whispering, “You’re nuts.”

  He clenched his jaw again.

  “If we have met before, then how come I can’t remember?” she prompted.

  “We gave you something to make you forget, so you could go back to your normal life,” he replied.

  Laney laughed. “That is absolutely impossible,” she said. “And even if you were telling the truth, which is highly unlikely, if all of that did indeed happen eight whole months ago—that we’d already met and saved a bunch of parallel worlds together, then,” she posited with a mocking tone. “What the hell are you doing back here?”

  He met her gaze. “I’m here to save you again.”

  The gravity in the tone of his voice made Laney pause, that vaguely familiar chill running through her. She shook her head quickly to clear it. “Um, okay, I’m sufficiently freaked out now,” she said. “So I think I’ll just—” She gestured behind her, starting to walk away again. “Go.”

  “How long ago did the hallucinations start?” Noah called out with a casual tone.

  Laney looked stunned. “What?”

  He gave her a steady look. “Things not seeming to be where they should…suddenly finding yourself in different places altogether,” he supplied. “Doing things you’ve never done before, things you didn’t even know you could do.”

  She started to breathe heavily. “I spoke French fluently for fifteen minutes this morning.” She looked up to meet his gaze, bewildered. “How do you…?”

  He pursed his lips. “I’m sorry, Laney,” he said, almost under his breath. “It’s all my fault.”

  She was still frowning as she looked up at him, a sick feeling starting in her stomach.

  Just hearing him describe what she’d been struggling through in the past few months only made the reality sink in even more. And the look on his face didn’t make it seem like any of it was going to get any better. She swallowed hard, still trying to get a grip.

  But after a moment, Noah raised his eyebrows at her in a somewhat impatient prompt. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.” He tapped his wrist. “I’ve only got a limited-time anchor. I honestly didn’t think it would take this long to come get you. I was obviously sorely mistaken.”

  Laney gave him a look of exasperated disbelief. “Well, excuse me while I grapple with every self-doubt that I’ve been fighting for the past few months. You have no idea what kind of hell I’ve been going through!”

  A shadow crossed his face and his next words were gentler. “But do you believe me now?” He was holding her gaze intently, and Laney took a moment before nodding.

  “Good,” Noah said. “Because I need you to come with me.”

  Her gaze turned wary. “Where?”

  Noah took her hand and led her through the thicket that lined the school walkway, emerging into a small clearing within the school backyard, out of view from anyone at the quad gardens.

  Laney glanced around anxiously to check if anybody had noticed that she had disappeared through the bushes with not-Jake Donovan. But all the other students in the garden were busy with their lunches, talking and hanging out with their own friends, blissfully unaware of any life-altering phenomena going on.

  She spotted Kevin and Darla among a small group of people across the garden. Darla was laughing. Someone tossed some Cheetos across the way. Kevin high-fived somebody.

  Laney bit her lip, taking a slow deep breath, before she turned back to Noah, who was then preoccupied with some type of gadget with a glowing holographic update display (HUD) hovering above his left forearm, tapping a few keys seemingly in mid-air.

  Then he looked up.

  Laney followed his gaze and she noticed a dense black ball seeming to form in mid-air. “What…the hell is that?”

  The ball grew into a hole, getting bigger and bigger, its frayed edges seeming to spin around its center. The wind rose up, whipping the leaves around them on the ground and Laney’s hair around her face. Then she blinked, alarmed, as the sky seemed to instantly darken, but when she looked up, she could see that the afternoon sun was still in the sky, right where it was supposed to be.

  And she realized that it wasn’t so much that it was getting dark, but instead everything around her was changing in hue. She looked back up at Noah, puzzled. “Why is everything turning red?” she asked, over the increasing noise of the blowing gale.

  “The quantum shear sucks in every spectrum of light—red goes last,” Noah explained.

  Laney’s eyes were still wide as she stared at what was tearing a hole right down the middle of her reality. “The quantum shear, you mean that swirling—”

  “Yes, yes, swirling vortex of doom.” He waved dismissively.

  Her eyebrows snapped together. “Hey, you’re not suggesting that we’re actually going to go through that thing, are you?” she asked, taking a step back, looking horrified. “See, when you said you needed me to come with you, I just assumed we were just going outside campus.”

  Noah gave her a look. “Believe me, you have done this before.”

  She let out a loud sigh. “Well, excuse me. To me, it feels like the first time.”

  He was entering the last of the quantum shear calibrations on his
HUD, not looking at her.

  “What is that thing on your arm?” Laney wrinkled her nose.

  Noah groaned. “Are you seriously going to ask me all the exact same questions again?” he asked, not at all expecting an answer. “Look, we have to go now,” he told her, gesturing toward the quantum shear.

  Laney hesitated, looking between Noah and the conveniently person-sized, but ridiculously creepy and frightening, black hole before them. The dark gaping hole looked like a scream in her head. She felt chills all over again from the mere sight of the thing, as though for some reason, instinctively, she knew this wasn’t going to end well for her.

  He raised his eyebrows in a prompt. “Well? Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” she wanted to know, trying to stall, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “It’s going to be okay, Laney.” He tried to reassure her. “All the answers you want—the explanations for all your hallucinations, why you can’t remember anything, they’re all right through there.”

  “H-how do I know that for sure?”

  He pressed his hands to his face, frustrated. “Why is it so much harder to get you through the quantum shear this time? Is it because there’s not a half-dead guy lying around who just tried to kill you?”

  “A half-dead what?”

  Noah rolled his eyes. “You just have to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Laney echoed in a mocking tone. “I don’t even know you! And you just go around kissing a girl you don’t even know, who by the way, already has a boyfriend.”

  That irked him somewhat. “Hey,” he began defensively. “The last time, you kissed me first! And I was engaged!”

  “I did no such thing,” she said haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest. “There’s no way I would have done that.”

  He gritted his teeth in annoyance.

  “I don’t even believe it,” she went on in disbelief. “How old are you anyway? You—have a fiancée?”

  His face clouded over. “Not anymore.”

  Laney stopped, taken aback, and somehow, she sensed that she should stop that particular line of questioning immediately.

  “Now, would you please just get in the damn black hole?” Noah insisted.

  Laney motioned forward. “Why don’t you go ahead?”

  He tilted his head slightly. “Ladies first.”

  She let out a loud suffering, but resigned, groan. “Fiiiine.” Then she took another deep breath. “Someone has a deeply twisted definition of chivalry,” she muttered, before jumping into the swirling vortex of doom.

  Parallel

  Noah braced his hands on his knees, coughing.

  Laney made a face. “Jeez, are you okay?” She was about to move to pat his back when she looked up to see where she was and her jaw dropped. “Holy shhh…”

  The place was about as big as an airplane hangar, all gray and metal—certainly a stark contrast from the green, green quad gardens at her school.

  About a dozen people wearing white lab coats and safety goggles were walking about, carefully stepping over cables on the floor as they came up to, and away from, several control panels, adjusting knobs and dials on the multitude of metal boxes arranged around a ginormous platform made of glass and mirrors in the middle of the room.

  At first glance, the platform looked pretty daunting. That was until Laney noticed that it looked as though it—whatever it was—was only half-built, with several of its huge mirrored panels missing, or broken, or cracked.

  Then she looked down at the ethereal blue light still shining up from underneath her and she noticed that the glass-and-mirrors platform she was currently standing on, set up in one far corner of the hangar, looked exactly like a smaller-scale replica of the ginormous one.

  “Well, hell’s bells, you made it.”

  Laney heard the voice from the sidelines and she turned slightly to see the person walk around to the front of their little platform.

  “Laney, welcome back!” The guy with wheat blond hair and glasses greeted her with a grin. He was also, strangely, wearing a formal tie over a collarless woolly green sweater.

  She shot him a weird look. “What?”

  He kept smiling, as though proud. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  Laney jumped slightly as the blue light of the platform flickered off and the loud humming stopped. She looked around again, bewildered, astounded. “Oh my god, this is really a parallel world, isn’t it?” She glanced back down at Noah who was still bent down, seeming to be catching his breath and wrinkled her nose, looking up at the other guy. “Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

  The guy dismissed it with a wave. “He’ll be fine. Quantum jumps usually have that effect, being that you basically just squeezed through a singularity, your entire body having been stretched apart at a subatomic level.”

  Laney looked down at herself. “I don’t feel anything.”

  He grinned again. “You really don’t, don’t you?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him as he was speaking to her like he knew her very well. “Do I know you?”

  “Oh, sorry. I’m your assistant, Berry.” He held out his hand to help her down off the platform. “Well, technically, I’m Dr. Laney Carter’s assistant. The other Laney, from this dimension,” he supplied.

  She shot his hand a suspicious look, before looking around at some of the lab coats working in the room, many of whom seemed to be looking to him for instruction. She remarked, “You seem like you’re more than just an assistant,” as she stepped down.

  “Well,” Berry began. “I’ve sort of taken over as head of this lab since…well, um…since Laney uh…left.” He glanced up at Noah, still on the platform. “Noah, you okay, man?”

  Noah didn’t answer right away. His hands were still braced on his knees, his head down.

  “Hey, maybe you better get some rest,” Berry suggested to him. “Nobody’s been through that thing more than you have. You must be absolutely knackered.”

  “I’m fine,” he spoke up, not looking up at them. “It’s-it’s actually not so bad anymore.”

  Laney looked from Berry to Noah and back to Berry again, her eyebrows raised, wondering if Berry would buy that. She barely knew him and she could already tell Noah was lying.

  But before either Laney or Berry could say anything, Noah straightened up and stepped off the platform. “We’ve got work to do. This burned out again,” he added, handing over a round little gadget to Berry.

  Berry pursed his lips, pocketing the anchor device. “Alrighty.” He shrugged in resignation. He called out several instructions to the lab coats standing by, all sounding like scientific gibberish to Laney, before he led the way out of the hangar. “Come this way.”

  Laney glanced back warily at Noah before following Berry. “Excuse me,” she began as she caught up with Berry. “Hey, so what is this place?”

  “This is GNR, Global Nuclear Research,” Berry replied as they walked down the hallway. “It’s the most advanced laboratory facility on Earth—that is, in our dimension. We work on ground-breaking research, mostly to do with quantum worlds and multiverses, and whatever else the cutting edge is on technology. And we also facilitate the remaining handful of military projects.” He looked a bit uneasy. “We’re still funded by the military branch of the government, but uh…let’s just say, they’ve recently taken a step back to re-evaluate their involvement with regards to our scope of work.”

  Laney had paused by another large laboratory, as someone entered through the swinging double doors, allowing her a glimpse into the room, within which looked like there was a raging white-out blizzard, just seconds before the room lit up and entirely changed scenery to look like it was the middle of a scorching dry, sandy desert. “Wow.” She breathed in awe.

  Berry grinned at her reaction. “Don’t get too attached. We’re still undergoing major reconstruction in some parts of the lab. The uh…last administration left a lot of mess to clean up.” He glanced back again to meet Noah
’s gaze briefly. “And we’re still cleaning it.”

  Noah pursed his lips but didn’t say anything. The way Berry said it made it all sound so simple. But the last eight months had absolutely not been a piece of cake. At least not as far as Noah was concerned.

  As if it wasn’t enough that he’d had to deal with the political aftermath of thwarting the government-sponsored destruction of the multiverse eight months ago, there was, of course, the world-altering, significant, and irreversible loss of his fiancée, the other Laney.

  And the feelings he’d had to struggle with were deeply strange, and in no uncertain terms, unbearable, since at the time, Noah had been working so hard for so long. He had been so focused on his mission of getting her back, that now that she was really gone, everything almost seemed pointless.

  And then there was Laney. This Laney.

  He watched her engrossed face as she listened to something that Berry was explaining and his chest tightened. He knew he definitely shouldn’t have kissed her earlier, and inwardly, he was cursing himself. He had to make absolutely sure he didn’t lose control like that again. He knew she didn’t remember him. He knew she wasn’t his Laney either.

  But a Laney he did know was locked up in that mind. He hadn’t even wanted to admit to himself until that morning how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again. Her. It was such an intense level-up in the severity of confusing, it was bordering on ridiculous.

  The three of them arrived at the door to a big office with floor-to-ceiling glass windows that looked out to the busy lobby of the facility.

  Berry placed his hand on the panel beside the door and it lit up green as the door opened. “Sorry about the mess,” he said as they all walked into the office.

  Laney raised her eyebrows as the large office sort of resembled her dorm room—stacks and stacks of half-unpacked boxes everywhere, with several blackboards and whiteboards lining the walls, books, papers, and strange contraptions piled high on tables, on chairs and on the floor, an odd stack of orange traffic cones was haphazardly strewn in one corner.