Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  “Whoa!” Berry exclaimed as he stood behind Noah, pressing against the wall himself. “Holy heck, are you bleeding?” he gasped, only then noticing that Noah had bleeding cuts on his lip and his eyebrow, looking as though he had just come out of a fight.

  Noah’s eyebrows were furrowed as he heaved, sneaking furtive glances into the office.

  “You’re disrupting my mission again, Donovan!” Laney’s voice hissed out, and several more unidentified heavy things crashed inside the office before a coffee mug smashed against the wall outside.

  “Jeez!” Berry’s eyes widened in shock. “What the hell is Laney doing in there?”

  “That’s not freaking Laney!” Noah told him.

  “What?” Berry looked confused. “How do you know?”

  “I just—I just do, alright?” Noah replied, still trying to catch his breath. “She’s phased or something. I think it’s one of her alternate selves bleeding through.”

  “One that just so happens to want to kill you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, technically, the other one wanted to kill you too, but just not this way.”

  “Alright, thanks, it’s hilarious.” He rubbed his bruised jaw, looking annoyed as hell. “It feels like she’s also trained in Special Forces, like she knew every move I was going to make before I made it.”

  Just then, an ornate silver metal letter opener whizzed past Noah’s head before it lodged halfway into the wall across the doorway.

  “Uh-oh,” Berry started, wrinkling his nose. “I think she’s found—”

  “Please tell me you don’t collect letter openers,” Noah cut in his warning.

  Berry gave him a wan smile, just as three more fancy-looking letter openers shot through the doorway like arrows, one of them smashing to pieces on the tile floor. “Oh man, not my antique ivory one!” He groaned. “I lifted that from a poacher down in—”

  Noah shot him a look of disbelief. “Berry!” he snapped, giving him an expectant look.

  “Oh, right.” Berry nodded. He stretched out his hand past Noah, to enter a code into the door’s touch panel to trigger the “intruder alert” inside the office.

  They heard a soft beep and a loud fizzle, just before they heard Laney moan and then fall to the floor, unconscious.

  Noah was bent down at Laney’s eye-level, watching intently as her eyes began to flutter open.

  She met his gaze, feeling dazed. “Noah…?” she asked, her eyes instantly widening in alarm as she realized that she was strapped down to a chair in a small examination room, and she struggled in panic. “What the hell is going on? Why am I tied down?”

  Noah watched her face for another moment before he glanced up at Berry. “She’s back,” he said.

  Berry let out a sigh of relief. “Thank god,” he said as he pressed a button on the console behind him, which instantly released the clamps holding Laney’s wrists and ankles to the chair.

  “It’s okay, Laney.” Noah took her hands to help her up, his forehead creasing as he noticed she was still shaking from panic, but he just swallowed hard and stepped back. “Sorry about that. You weren’t quite yourself.”

  “Did I…Was I someone else?”

  Noah nodded.

  Laney noticed the cuts on his face and her jaw dropped. “Oh my god, I did that—to you?” she asked, even as her tone sounded more amused, almost pleased, rather than aghast.

  And Berry chuckled. “You were totally kicking his ass,” he remarked.

  Laney cracked a grin.

  Noah shook his head. “I’m glad you’re all amused.”

  Berry was still grinning. “All kidding aside, we probably need to monitor all these ‘bleed throughs’ more closely, in case one of your random personalities goes apples and bananas out of control again.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

  “This.” Berry held up a little opaque strip closer to her face. “It’s a cerebral cortex link. It’ll track your brain activity for any anomalies…and…” He hesitated.

  She blinked expectantly. “And?”

  Berry didn’t reply.

  Laney glanced up at Noah instead. “And?”

  Noah pursed his lips before spelling it out. “And it could be programmed to deliver a sharp jolt to your system, in case we need to incapacitate you again.”

  Laney blew out a breath sharply. “Huh.”

  Noah tilted his head slightly as he regarded her with a look. “You can say no. We’re not going to force you to wear it.”

  She paused, seeming to be thinking about it, then her eyes moved to the cut on his mouth, and as she averted her gaze. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

  Berry glanced up at Noah as if seeking his approval first. Then he just shrugged and reached over to attach the little strip behind Laney’s ear.

  “Ow.” Laney winced, making a face, as the strip bonded to her skin.

  Berry let out a sigh. “Well, now that all the excitement is over,” he began. “I better get those samples quickly or you’re going to miss your flight.”

  She nodded and sat back down again toward where Berry gestured as he pulled an instrument table closer. She glanced over at Noah who had gone to stand by the door. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing,” she said, turning to Berry. “The…hallucinations in the past, I’ve always been completely aware of them, and aware that they weren’t real. And I had no idea any one of my alternate world selves could possibly do that.” She motioned her chin in the direction of Noah’s face.

  “Well,” Berry began, even as he worked. “You know the nature of the multiverse is exactly that. It means anything that can happen, will, or already has happened, in at least one parallel world, and there could be billions upon billions of permutations and quantum worlds and alternate selves.”

  Laney screwed up her face, as the incident had just sorely driven home the gravity of her situation, and it dawned on her what it actually meant when Berry had said that she could potentially lose herself, as if any of her alternate selves decided to stay, she definitely would fade away into nothing. She swallowed hard.

  “Have you been having weird dreams in the past few months?” Berry asked.

  “To say the least.”

  “About what?”

  “Well,” she started slowly. “Different things, different places. Sometimes I’m in the middle of a busy city, and sometimes I’m up a mountain in the middle of nowhere.” She narrowed her eyes in recall. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I’ve dreamt about that giant platform thingy back there a few times. But it’s like…when I’ve seen things happen over and over again, each time something is slightly different.” She looked up at Berry. “That must be what you meant by the billions of permutations, huh?”

  He nodded. “You know, Laney was in the middle of an experiment where she postulated that dreaming was actually an artifact of a ‘bleed through’. You know how you always dream that you’re falling, or being chased or something? She reckoned you were possibly seeing through the eyes of another you, in another dimension.”

  Laney’s eyes were glazed over as she absorbed the information. “Fascinating…”

  Berry shot Noah another amused look at her use of the expression before he shrugged to go on. “Except, of course, you don’t usually remember what happened when you wake up the next morning.”

  “And they definitely shouldn’t be manifesting when I’m wide awake and taking over my consciousness altogether,” Laney supplied.

  “That’s right.” Berry nodded. “But because of Eleanor’s experiment, your delta and alpha waves might still be all muddled up from last time.”

  Laney tilted her head, taking a moment to absorb Berry’s last statement. “Eleanor’s what?” she asked in disbelief. “Did you just say the other Laney was doing some kind of experiment on my brain waves?”

  “Uh…” Berry blinked, flustered.

  “Eleanor did a lo
t of things,” Noah spoke up, in Eleanor’s defense. “Some things she wasn’t proud of, but part of science is pushing the boundaries. She may have done some morally questionable things in the past, but she believed what she was doing was for the betterment of the whole world.”

  Laney met his gaze, frowning slightly. Noah never seemed to show as much emotion as whenever he spoke about Eleanor. She wasn’t even here and he was protecting her stuff, protecting her memory. And for a crazy split second, Laney felt envious of Eleanor. It might have been obvious, being that they were intending to get married, but she could tell that he really loved her—still really loved her.

  “Oh, look who’s here to see you!” Berry announced, the wide grin on his face absolutely betraying his total relief for the timely interruption.

  Laney followed his gaze expectantly, but her gaze stopped short at the empty doorway, not seeing what he was referring to. “What? Who are you talking about?”

  Then she heard two chirps coming from beneath her and she looked down to see a little metal robot, its gears and spokes visible from the outside, running on three-wheeled little treads. She looked blankly at the robot. “Do I know…it?”

  Berry smiled. “His name is P.T.,” he told her. “You guys had gone on some adventures the last time you were here.”

  “Oh.”

  The little robot chirped again and it appeared to tilt its “head”, or whatever the front section of its mechanism was, looking up at her curiously.

  “Oh.” Berry was looking at the robot before he looked up at Laney again. “He wants to come with you. I think he really likes you,” he whispered with a grin, leaning closer to her.

  “Um, I’m flattered…?”

  “P.T.’s had some upgrades. I’m sure he’ll come in handy again,” Berry told her.

  She chuckled, amused, as she watched P.T. do spinning circles on the floor. “If you say so.”

  Then Berry blew out a breath. “There.” He zipped up the last sample bag with a satisfied nod. “I should have enough to work with for now, with this, plus the data from your CCL—”

  “My what?”

  “That.” Berry pointed to the strip behind her ear. “I’ll be monitoring your readings from my lab, but it’ll also ping Noah’s HUD if there are any irregularities with your brain waves—not that he wouldn’t have already noticed if you start suddenly kicking down doors or throwing people against windows.” He attempted the joke, glancing up at Noah who was already fiddling with his HUD to make sure the gadget was all synched up.

  Laney looked unenthused. “Fun.”

  “I don’t think I have to tell you, Noah, but you do know time is of the essence,” Berry said loudly, making sure Noah met his pointed look.

  “When is it ever not?” Noah replied, already looking bothered before he glanced over at Laney with an unveiled condescending look. “Do you think you could possibly keep that in mind so that we can deliver you to Dr. Chambers as expediently as possible?”

  “Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Then let’s go see this amazing brain doctor, and see if she can’t shrink my head and wake me up from this obvious nightmare…” she trailed off as she walked out the door first, with P.T. zipping suit at her heels.

  Noah watched the two of them head away with a slight shake of his head.

  Berry smirked, his shoulders shaking. He patted Noah’s shoulder once. “Good luck, man.”

  The Community

  Laney didn’t know how long they had been flying for, except that the sky outside the airship vessel windows was purple.

  It was still dusk. Or rather, it was dusk again.

  “Are we there yet?” she asked as she felt the airship dip in descent.

  Noah glanced out the window from beside her. “No, they’re just breaking the trip in half to reload the burners, because it’s such a long way to go.”

  Laney had never been on a hot air balloon before, but she figured it was probably the closest thing to riding in the giant commuter airship that she was on, except that the airship was somehow incredibly fast. She looked out the window, up at the massive silver-bronze envelope lit underneath by several burners, which enabled the gondola vessel structure to float in the air, then glanced down at the shadows of the spinning propellers in the back against the smattering of clouds in the sky beneath them.

  P.T. was perched on the backrest of the bench seat and when Laney straightened up to look out the window, it rolled closer to the windows as well, as though to look outside itself.

  On the horizon, Laney saw a row of low colonial-style-columned buildings along the waterfront of what looked like a flat urban area, but upon closer inspection, and even in the dusk light, she could see that the entire place looked more like a jungle, with overgrown forests that had spilled onto the roadways and encroaching over ruins of city structures further inland.

  The airship was coming down toward a concrete strip that jutted out from the main island. It was probably where the airship was going to dock to refuel.

  “What is this place?” she asked, feeling the humid air against her skin as the airship descended, as though they had flown into a layer of hot atmosphere.

  Noah replied, “It used to be a British colony called Singapore. We’re very near the equator. That’s why it’s suddenly warmer.”

  Laney’s eyebrows rose up. “Really?” She was no geography buff, but she was pretty sure that Singapore was a country in its own right. Then again, maybe all that would only have happened if the cascade bomb hadn’t torn the entire world apart. “Wow. I bet it would be just fascinating to compare how small or how big the differences are between our worlds since our histories deviated sixty-seven years ago,” she mused aloud.

  At that, Noah glanced over and she met his gaze. It looked as though he wanted to say something more, but instead, he reached down to retrieve his jacket, which had been bundled up for Laney to sleep on earlier, to hang it up on a wall peg, before standing up. “I’ll go get some food,” he said and turned to walk away.

  Laney puzzled at his bizarre response but dismissed it. She looked over at P.T. “So? Are you having fun so far?” she asked with a slightly mocking tone, as of course, she was trying to communicate with a “robot”. It was like trying to talk to a paperweight on wheels. “Berry said we went on some adventures together last time,” she said. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what happened back then, can you?”

  P.T. just squeaked and chirped, spinning his wheels.

  She shook her head. “No? Yeah, didn’t think so.”

  Noah came back with two bottles of chocolate-flavored whey protein and he held one out to her. “I figured you actually haven’t had any food since lunch yesterday.”

  “Well, since before lunch,” Laney corrected. “You actually dropped in during my lunch break.” He gave her a pointed look and she supplied the reply he was waiting for, “But thanks.” She took a big gulp before asking, “How much longer until we get there?”

  “We still have a few more hours to go if you want to rest some more.”

  Laney made a face. She had managed to get a few hours of sleep earlier, only to be woken up, gasping and panicking. Not even being in this strange parallel world could cure her of her vivid, scary nightmares. And the thought of going to sleep only to have those nightmares again was not at all appealing to her. “Maybe I’ll just take a little stroll outside and watch the ship land,” she said, starting to stand.

  Noah caught her arm. “I’m—not sure that’s a good idea.”

  She shrugged him off, rolling her eyes as she pulled on the fur-collared vintage trench coat that Berry had found for her to wear so she could blend in easier with the population. “I think it’s a safe bet I’m not going to get lost in this airship. Also, I wasn’t asking for your permission,” she pointed out. “Also, I can take care of myself.”

  He gave her an even look. “Can you? And who’s going to take care of all these innocent people when one of your alternate selves bleeds through again? Parti
cularly G.I. Janey?”

  Laney sighed. “Look, if I phase again, feel free to zap me.”

  Noah did not look satisfied, but he knew full well he wasn’t going to win this one. “Fine. Then take P.T. with you, just in case.”

  She shot him a weird look. “Just in case what? Just in case the little robot can tackle me to the ground if I start attacking people?” she mocked before she stopped short. “Wait, can it actually do that?” she asked cautiously.

  P.T. spun its wheels, chirping on the window, in response.

  Noah gave her an exasperated look. “Just in case you need to call me for help,” he supplied.

  Laney huffed. “Fine,” she said. “Somehow, I don’t think it wants to stay here with you anyway,” she added with a smirk, picking up the robot, before moving toward the door of the cabin to head outside.

  After only a few minutes, Noah craned his neck to check on Laney. He saw her on the airship deck with P.T. on her shoulder. Laney was already animatedly chatting up a dark-haired girl, who had come aboard at the same time as several other new passengers from Singapore.

  Noah clenched his jaw as he looked out the window toward the horizon, thinking about Eleanor again, since if she hadn’t been such an immoral scientific genius, he would have never even attempted to cross into the other world, and he would have never met this Laney. There wouldn’t be any unnecessary complications to this mission, and he would just be doing her a service, like the unaffected neutral party protective detail he was supposed to be. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how simple his life would have been had that been the case.

  And in some alternate world, it probably was.

  Several little signs mounted on the cabin ceiling clicked, switching from saying ‘ARRIVED’ to ‘DEPARTING’. A loud whistle blew outside to indicate that the airship was about to take off again.

  Noah was looking up toward the deck to make sure Laney was heading back into the cabin, when he felt a prickly sensation in the back of his neck, as though he was being watched himself. He narrowed his eyes, looking around trying to spot anything suspicious nearby.