Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  “Sure.” She shrugged nonchalantly as she walked up to the big windows to watch the people bustling outside. She glanced back over at Noah, easily meeting his gaze as she was acutely aware that he had been staring at her since they had left the jump platform.

  But Noah just looked away.

  Laney chewed on her bottom lip. He’d said she knew him. It was absolutely nerve-wracking to think about how he could possibly know her when she couldn’t even remember anything about him. Especially since he even believed he knew her well enough to kiss her this morning.

  She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up at the memory. Not because it had felt good. But because it had felt really, really, ridiculously, really good.

  She shook her head to clear the thought and let out a sigh as she regarded the two guys with a look. “So,” she started. “Not to bring up the giant elephant in the room, but why am I here—‘again’ allegedly?” she added skeptically.

  “Well,” Berry said. “I’m not sure how much Noah has told you about what’s going on—”

  Laney raised her eyebrows at him before shooting Noah a cursory glance. “Somehow I get the feeling he’s not much of a talker.”

  Berry chuckled under his breath. “Okay, then maybe let’s start from the beginning.” He waved his hand ceremoniously. “About eight months ago, you crossed over to this world with Noah through a quantum shear—”

  She blinked. “Why?” she wanted to know.

  Berry shot Noah a cautious look before uneasily meeting Laney’s gaze again. “Um…maybe let’s put a pin in that first, shall we?”

  Laney had a hint of puzzlement on her face, but then just gestured for him to continue. “If you say so.”

  “Uh, anyway,” Berry went on. “You got hit by an energy beam just as you tried to enter the quantum shear—”

  “An energy beam, what, like from a weapon?” Laney prompted.

  “Yes.”

  “What, someone shot me? Who? Why?”

  Berry wrinkled his nose, looking over at Noah again. “Um, let me get back to that.”

  Laney frowned. “It doesn’t sound like you’re actually telling me anything.”

  “It’s not really relevant to your current situation,” Noah interjected.

  She turned to glare at him. “How about I decide that?”

  “Guys! Please.” Berry put up his hands. Then he sighed. “How about I just jump right to it.” He looked over at Laney. “Basically, on that first jump that you made with Noah eight months ago, you got hit by an energy beam just as you tried to enter a quantum shear.”

  Laney raised her eyebrows in a prompt.

  “Well, first of all, it destabilized your jump calibrations,” Berry relayed. “Which was by the way, why you and he got separated when you first arrived in this world. But most importantly, it caused your entire atomic structure to phase.”

  She gave him a blank, pointed look. “Uh…what?”

  Berry pursed his lips. “You’ve been…detached, from your original world—uprooted, as it were. And now, your other parallel world selves are bleeding through you.” He tilted his head meaningfully. “It means your hallucinations—what you’ve been experiencing, is an apparent shifting between a random selection of your other selves, inhabiting them, sometimes inheriting their characteristics, their personalities, gaining some of their memories.” He paused. “I think Noah mentioned it’s already started happening. And unfortunately, it’s going to keep happening. Until the actual ‘you’ eventually fades away into uh…” He cleared his throat, uneasy. “Nothing.”

  Laney took a deep breath. The true gravity of the situation wasn’t quite settling in with her yet, and aside from the strange dreams and hallucinations, she had no gauge as to how serious the problem actually was. She couldn’t even remember any of it to begin with. She didn’t even know any of these people. For all she knew, she was still dreaming. She just shrugged again. “And I suppose you know how to fix it?”

  “Well, no,” Berry replied with another frown before his eyes lit up. “But I’ve been working on it, and I’ve come to a crucial point. That’s sort of why I asked Noah to go get you.”

  Laney met Noah’s stoic gaze again for a moment before he turned to stare out the big window. He was just standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, in a complete one-eighty-degree of his earlier attitude, as though he suddenly couldn’t stand to be around her, as though he wanted to be someplace else entirely.

  Berry waved his hand again, cutting into her musing. “Either way, I don’t think it’s safe for you to go back to your original world until this is all sorted,” he told her. “Your doctors or…scientists over there definitely won’t be equipped to deal with your particularly…unique situation.”

  “So, what—I’m like, stuck here?” Laney moaned.

  “Actually, quite the opposite,” Berry rationalized. “You’re displaced. You’re not stuck anywhere.”

  She frowned again. “But my friends, my parents—I have finals this week. I’ll never get a chance to make it up before I graduate.”

  “Graduate?” Berry repeated the word as if it was alien to him.

  “Yeah, graduate, you know—move on from high school to college, or whatever,” Laney explained.

  Noah and Berry exchanged odd looks.

  Laney looked at them. “What, you guys don’t have school here?”

  “Yes, of course, but we don’t ‘graduate’,” Berry relayed. “We all just go to school, do an apprenticeship, and then eventually settle straight into a career based on our aptitude. Besides,” he rationalized. “I think it would be pretty pointless to have to mark each occasion whenever we would level-up a school year. It would happen too frequently.”

  Laney shot him a curious look. “Why?”

  “Because our brains age faster, remember? Caused by the—oh right, you don’t remember uh…” Berry shook his head before he relayed as though it was no big deal whatsoever, “Sixty-seven years ago, nearly all organic life on our world was obliterated by a global cascade bomb.”

  “W-what?” Laney gasped in shock, horrified. Then she considered something. “Wait, then how come you all are still here? And shouldn’t we be worried about like radiation or something?” she asked, as she had like zero knowledge about bombs.

  Noah rolled his eyes, having heard all this before.

  “No, no.” Berry shook his head again. “That’s not exactly—you know what?” He stopped short, his eyes lighting up. “I have a clip you can watch.”

  Laney shot him a skeptical look. “You do?”

  For Real

  Berry was rummaging through several boxes in his office, looking for something. He cleared a stack of papers off a control board on the table and made a face. “Dude, at some point, you’ve really got to get rid of some of this stuff,” he told Noah, picking up several books and contraptions to show him before he fished out a little metal box with a single red light indicator, which was hooked up to the control panel and began to unplug it to put it out of the way.

  Noah snapped. “No!”

  Laney looked up, surprised at his outburst.

  Berry stopped short.

  “This is Laney’s stuff. We’re leaving everything as it is,” Noah said, his tone firm.

  Berry gave him a meaningful look but didn’t say anything else. He just went on to scour the mess for something. “There has to be something here—,” he went on mumbling. “I’m pretty sure I had a—aha!” He had unearthed what looked like an old film reel.

  Berry walked across the room and dragged something out of a dark corner. It was a filmstrip viewer mounted on a squeaky old roller cart.

  Then he slipped the film reel in, pressed a few buttons, and an old video crackled against a white screen on the wall.

  He turned to Laney. “Well, this actually shows the population migration after the cascade bomb event, but it’s pretty informative.”

  Laney braced herself as she watched what she could only describ
e as a vintage-filtered black-and-white YouTube video.

  It showed an image of the globe turning counter-clockwise slowly. After a moment, a pin dropped onto the continental U.K., zooming in and landing on London, right before a giant explosion blew across the continent.

  Noah didn’t have to look. He had seen the film multiple times. It was taught in their schools as part of their history. It was just plain fact. But the look of uncontained shock, of horror, of bewilderment on Laney’s face as she absorbed the content was intriguing.

  He narrowed his eyes. In her world, the cascade bomb had never happened. Life had simply moved on and everything was normal. But before Noah could even consider wondering what “normal” was like, he quickly dismissed the thought. There was no point in thinking about what could have been.

  “Holy cow…” Laney breathed.

  Noah glanced up to see that she was remarking on the casualty count being displayed on the screen, but he didn’t flinch. To him, it wasn’t just a movie, it wasn’t make-believe, and he already knew how it ended.

  Laney on the other hand, couldn’t tear her gaze away from the screen.

  She watched as several arrows appeared, flashing in indication of movement from Africa and Europe, as those continents were engulfed by a dark cloud before the cloud moved to cover America and Asia as well. She decided to ignore the continuous flickering display of casualty numbers as they were all in the hundreds of millions—and totally depressing. Instead, she focused on the arrows. They were all headed downward.

  Then the globe spun again to show the complete opposite side of the world from London and another pin dropped on the lower part of the northern island of the little country right at the bottom of the world—a place where the dark cloud had not quite managed to reach, where all the arrows converged.

  The end of the film in the reel clicked as it spun around the projector dial.

  Berry reached over to flip the switch off before turning to Laney. “Did you understand?”

  She spoke slowly. “Ssooo…some type of massive bomb killed this whole planet and everyone who didn’t die moved down to that bottom country?”

  “Exactly!” Berry grinned, looking pleased. “In the past few decades, even though some areas of the world have regenerated in terms of biodiversity, only certain parts have been repopulated,” he relayed. “Most of them serve as science stations, or outposts tasked by the government to retrieve specific resources. Some places have been restored, mainly because it would be a major feat to reconstruct its infrastructure elsewhere. Like this place.” He gestured around them, before going on. “But in terms of people density, the numbers haven’t quite recovered enough to warrant building settlements elsewhere.”

  Laney swallowed hard. She barely heard the rest of Berry’s words. The image of the dark cloud engulfing the entire Earth was still vivid in her mind, and it was not a cheery one. “This is so terrible…”

  “It’s just history,” Noah spoke up, his tone clipped, taking her reaction as criticism against his world, instead of compassion. “This is our reality. Our world. We didn’t have a choice in the matter, but we’re doing the best we can with it. And maybe instead of judging us, you need to contemplate how you’re taking your world for granted.”

  Laney sighed, shooting a pleading look toward Berry. “Dear god, does he have a muzzle?”

  Berry covered his mouth with his hand, stifling his chuckle.

  But after a moment, Laney just rolled her eyes. “So, okay,” she started. “Now that I’ve been shocked to death—in addition to being sufficiently freaked out, what’s next?”

  Berry spoke up. “First things first. We have to get your memory back. Dr. Chambers, I mentioned her to you once before. She specializes in the research into the biological and genetic changes brought about by the global cascade bomb. But she’s also a neuroscientist,” he explained. “I’d been working with her on the serum that we used to make you forget your time here last time. So you’ll have to go and get the anti-serum from her. She runs her lab out of Wellington.”

  “Wellington,” she echoed. “Is it far? Where the hell are we anyway?”

  Berry crossed over to his desk and spun a silver metal globe on his table and pointed to Switzerland. “We are here.” Then he spun it again, to the absolute opposite side, to point. “Wellington is here.”

  Laney blew out a breath. “Whoa. It has to be at the other end of the world, doesn’t it?” She squinted to read the words on the globe. “New…Zealand. I think I’ve heard of it.”

  Berry nodded. “Yes, which is why you should leave as soon as possible. The fastest airship leaves tonight. But first, I’ll need to run some tests, take some samples, DNA, blood,” he said, moving to check the console on his desk for reference. “So I can work on figuring out how to fix your displacement problem from here. I’ll need to stay behind and look after the rehabilitation of the lab, to make sure everything stays on track.”

  “Really?” Laney looked puzzled, but before she could ask her question, Berry answered it.

  “But Noah will take you.”

  Laney met Noah’s gaze and made a face, repeating in distaste, “Really?”

  Berry stifled his chuckle again, glancing over at Noah, whose eyebrows were raised in irritated slight. “Don’t worry. It’s a commuter airship, so you won’t be alone. And I’ll be on the radio if you need to talk to me. I’ll have to keep you posted on my progress for your cure anyway.”

  “I don’t suppose I have much of a choice, do I?”

  “Uh, no, not really,” Berry replied with a small grin. “Let me just go get my kit from my old lab. You can wait here in this office.” He moved to leave before he stopped short of Noah, as though he remembered something. “Oh, one thing.” He glanced up at him tentatively. “Uh…I was going to tell you. I mean, I thought I should let you know. My preliminary results indicated that the effects of the cure would be irreversible.”

  “Meaning?” Laney overheard from across the room, and drawled her prompt, sounding almost bored.

  “Meaning…if we actually manage to root you back to your original world,” Berry began, flicking a glance over at Noah again, before meeting Laney’s gaze. “You’ll no longer be able to stand the stresses of a quantum jump thereafter, or perhaps not even be able to perceive anything extra-dimensionally any longer.”

  Noah met her gaze, an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Why does he do that?” Laney asked Noah, looking puzzled again. “I didn’t understand a single word he said.”

  Noah took a deep breath. “He means—you’ll never see us again.”

  She threw up her hands. “Thank god! When do we start this curing thing?”

  Noah looked over at Berry again, his face sullen.

  Berry just made a show of shrugging. “You guys just wait here. I’ll be right back,” he said, turning to go, but Noah stopped him just outside the room.

  “Hey, it feels like she’s a completely different person again,” Noah said under his breath, so Laney couldn’t hear. “Are you sure this is the right Laney?”

  Berry replied, looking bemused. “I thought you would know.”

  Noah visibly clenched his jaw again.

  Berry noticed, a faint smirk appearing on his face. “So you’ve kissed her again, huh?”

  Noah just glared at him for a moment, before turning away.

  “That’s a yes,” Berry quipped.

  Noah watched as Laney looked around the office which used to be Eleanor’s. She was peering at certain objects on the tables and shelves curiously. It was a bit strange to watch for Noah as, despite appearances, here was Laney, alive and well, back in her own office, inspecting a framed magazine cover with a stylized portrait of herself on it, beside her own framed Nobel Prize plaque.

  Awarded to Dr. Eleanor Carter. For outstanding breakthroughs in the pursuit of the understanding of the multiverse.

  “Wow,” Laney breathed as she read the inscription. “That other Laney’s some
kind of super-genius, huh?”

  “She certainly liked to think so,” Noah said.

  She shot him a brief amused look at the phrasing of his reply.

  “Eleanor was the one who made all the discoveries to make it possible to cross into other dimensions. It was her life’s work,” Noah relayed. “None of this would even be happening if it wasn’t for her.”

  At that last statement, Laney noticed his expression change. It was subtle, but it was almost like there was regret, mixed in with the pride in his voice.

  “Eleanor,” she repeated, as she looked around the room. “Suits her,” she said. “Certainly more than it suits me,” she added in a slightly mocking manner.

  Then her gaze fell on a framed photo on the table.

  A photo of Eleanor and Noah.

  And her jaw dropped. “Whoa. She totally looks exactly like me.” Then she stopped, straightening up to meet his gaze as she realized something. “You were engaged to her.”

  Noah narrowed his eyes, only slightly surprised that she had already figured that out. “Yes.”

  “Ohhh!” She slapped her palm to her forehead. “That’s why you kissed me.”

  Noah creased his forehead upon hearing the relief in her voice.

  Then Laney made a face, in sympathy. “You must miss her a lot then, huh? What happened to her?”

  Noah stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Right…of course.” Laney rolled her eyes.

  And then she reared her arm back to swing her fist right at his face.

  The Bleed

  Berry heard a crash coming from around the corner as he walked back to the big office, carrying his lab kit. He creased his forehead, walking faster, and skidded to a stop outside the open office door just as Noah commando-rolled out of it.

  “Noah?” he prompted, watching in disbelief as Noah jumped to brace himself flat against the wall beside the doorway. “What’s going—?”

  Noah cut him off, grabbing his sweater, just in time to pull him back from the path of a large metal stapler having been hurtled out the doorway.