Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  But before she could turn to Noah to ask if he could feel that, the entire cable car jolted sharply up and down, as though someone had pulled a giant, invisible rug out from underneath it, and all the lights in the cable car and the tunnel flickered off, prompting some passengers to start screaming.

  Laney’s gasp caught in her throat.

  Earthquake!

  There was some loud rattling above the trolley, caused by big rocks falling down as the tunnel started to cave in. In another moment, a tremendous aftershock shook the ground, with the cable car giving a loud creak as it slowly began to tip over to one side.

  “Whoa!” Laney cried out, trying to brace herself against the back of the seat, before she lost her grip and fell off balance, falling to the floor herself, along with several other people being thrown out of their seats, spilling onto the aisle.

  Bags rolled off the overhead storage, brochures fell out of their dispensers, someone’s push scooter crashed against a window across the way, cracking the shatterproof glass with a loud bang.

  Then Laney glanced down toward the rear window in dread as the cable car, having gone off its rails, began to slip off the steep incline. The cable car was going to slide down and crash into the depot on the street at the bottom of the hill!

  “We’re gonna crash! Look out!”

  “Laney, are you okay?”

  Laney glanced up at Noah in distress. “Am I okay? Do I look like I’m freaking okay?” she demanded.

  Noah paused, his eyebrow still raised in curiosity, holding onto the pole in the middle of the cable car aisle, as he stood looking down at her.

  For some reason, Laney had scrambled down to press herself flat on the aisle floor.

  She let out a breath, before she turned, looking around at the other passengers sitting calmly in their seats, if not just staring at her strangely, inside the perfectly-fine, normally-lit cable car rolling slowly up the rails on the hill.

  Noah’s eyes lit up in recognition at the same time that he heard his HUD beep softly since his left hand was in his pocket.

  Laney quickly scrambled back up, dusting herself off, blinking a few more times to get her bearings. “Uh, nothing,” she said, her cheeks flaming red as she took her seat again. “Uh, sorry—sorry!” she apologized out loud, looking sheepishly at the people sitting behind her and across the aisle.

  Fortunately, the cable car reached its destination at the top of the hill and Laney was glad to be on the move as she followed behind Noah and the rest of the passengers getting off. Her face still felt hot in embarrassment. She wanted to hide behind Noah for the rest of the day.

  As soon as they were clear of the station and the crowd, and headed down the street again, Noah glanced back at her. “Do I even need to ask?”

  Laney just pursed her lips and didn’t say anything.

  “Interesting,” Berry-AI remarked. “Am I correct to assume that Miss Carter has just experienced a ‘bleed through’ in which she had a hallucination of a tragedy striking the cable car whilst we were on it?”

  Noah replied, even as he kept walking, not looking back. “I think Miss Carter doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  Laney let out a big sigh. “An earthquake, okay? I thought there was an earthquake.”

  Berry-AI’s eyes lit up. “Ah! You might be interested to know that there is actually a big fault line that crosses the greater Wellington region. An actual recent significant earthquake had gutted several important buildings in town, such as what used to be the main library and town hall, as well as having done some major damage to the shoreline of the southern island. There has always been talk of the ‘next big one’ coming ever since the massive earthquake of 1855.”

  Laney stared at him. “No, Berry,” she stated flatly. “I’m actually not interested to know that.” She shook her head. “Jeez, it’s like you want me to worry about natural disasters too, on top of everything else.”

  She glanced up at Noah. She was still frowning when she met his gaze.

  His expression didn’t change so that when he spoke under his breath, she almost didn’t catch it.

  “Are you okay?”

  And Laney blinked, surprised at the timbre in his voice, as it seemed to denote actual concern, but she just managed a resigned nod.

  Berry-AI waved at them. “Dr. Vermillion is on the radio,” he announced, holding his hand out for Laney to hand over P.T.

  They stopped at the sidewalk and Berry-AI clicked a few buttons on the robot before the holographic screen with Berry’s face came up.

  “Just checking in, guys,” Berry started. “I see you’ve met my AI prototype,” he said with a big smile. It looked like Berry was in the ‘airplane hangar’ lab at GNR, while other lab coats scurried around busily behind him.

  “Berry,” Laney began eagerly. “He’s amazing! I totally thought it was you coming to see us before.”

  “Yeah, thanks for the additional confusion,” Noah quipped.

  Berry shrugged, holding his palms out. “What? My face was the easiest pattern I could access,” he explained. “Besides,” he said, hooking something around his ear. It looked like an earpiece. “I’m also experimenting with a super-duper long-distance walkie-talkie-type thing with him too—check it out. Hi guys!” he greeted.

  “Hi, guys!” Berry-AI said with a wave.

  “You should try the milkshakes at Sweet Mother’s Café—,” Berry in the holographic screen started to say.

  “They are phenomenal,” Berry-AI said at almost the exact same time.

  Then Berry grinned. “There’s a bit of a lag, but—”

  “There’s a bit of a lag, but—,” Berry-AI began.

  “Oops!” Berry jumped, reaching up to click off his earpiece, and Berry-AI stopped transmitting, returning to his at-ease stance. “It’s a work in progress,” he explained. “But basically, you can talk to him pretty much as though you were talking to me.”

  At that, Berry-AI flashed Laney a giant toothy grin.

  Laney cringed in apprehension. “That’s super freaky,” she told Berry. “And he looks exactly like your clone.”

  Berry made a face. “Ewe.” Then he laughed, raising his eyebrows in a prompt. “Do you get it? ‘Ewe’?” he asked. But when Laney just shot him a look like he was crazy, he waved it away. “Never mind,” he dismissed. “Cloning is so boring,” he drawled. “If you ask me, the next logical step is human augmentation. In fact, some of our scientists are already working on replicating every organ in the human body in some manner of enhanced mechanical form or another.”

  “In the meantime,” Noah interjected. “Maybe we can get a move on? We don’t want to keep Dr. Chambers waiting.”

  Laney rolled her eyes. “Relax, the University’s just around the corner.”

  Noah gave her another strange look, at her unexplainable familiarity with the area.

  Berry chuckled. “Yeah Noah, relax,” he told him, looking amused with himself. “You know, stress is linked to the six leading causes of death among the people in Laney’s world.”

  At that, Noah glared at him. “And when exactly were you going to tell me about the recovery of the Quantum Jump Project data?” he prompted.

  Berry’s expression changed to guilty dread as his eyes lit up. “Oh! Oh no, sorry, look at that, uh, I think you’re breaking up—,” he announced. “The reception is getting really bad. Noah, I’m going to have to hang up now. Sorry, guys. Talk to you later! Bye!”

  And the hologram switched off.

  Laney laughed and Noah shook his head.

  Berry-AI quirked an eyebrow. “That was odd. I wasn’t detecting any interference. The reception was perfectly crystal clear,” he noted.

  And Laney laughed again.

  The main University building itself was beautiful, with gothic spires, stained-glass windows, and green ivy crawling up the external brick red walls.

  Laney looked around the grassy courtyard leading up to it in awe. Someone had planted different-colored flowers over o
ne area of the lawn, with the flowers arranged to form certain shapes. She grinned as she recognized a certain iconic round arcade game character pattern chasing ghost shape patterns made up of planted yellow and purple flowers against the background of the verdant grass.

  It was absolutely fascinating, Laney noted, which facets of her world had managed to make it through to this dimension. It was as though they were…inevitable.

  She smiled to herself at the thought, glancing down at P.T. in her pocket again. “When we get a second, have I got a game to teach you,” she said.

  Noah led the way up the front steps and into the building, and Laney noticed the handful of young people around them all bustling around purposefully, most of them wearing lab coats or suit coats over quaint casual clothing, and she figured they were all probably geniuses too.

  Then she craned her neck to do a double-take as she recognized someone that they passed by in the hallway.

  Noah noticed her awkward movement. “What is it?”

  Laney pointed out a blonde guy, who was stopped in front of a bulletin board and was juggling a few thick textbooks in his arms. “Holy crap, that’s Kevin,” she said, surprised.

  “Who’s Kevin?” Berry-AI asked, craning his own neck to see for himself.

  “My boyfriend,” she replied, before pausing. “I mean, back in my world,” she amended. “Is he a scientist here too?” she wanted to know, looking impressed.

  “Dr. Whitfield is one of our best researchers. His primary fields are mathematical modeling, combinatorics, statistics, and computer science,” Berry-AI relayed.

  “He’s a Math geek?” Noah asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

  “Wow,” Laney breathed, still staring at him. “He looks hot in a lab coat,” she noted, cracking another smile. “Would you introduce me?”

  Noah looked annoyed and put one hand on her shoulder firmly to steer her back around toward the other end of the hall. “Need I remind you of a certain ‘time is of the essence’ warning from Berry, and ‘expedience’ being the theme of this mission?”

  “What—hey,” Laney protested innocently. “I just wanted to say hi.”

  “We are not here so you can flirt with your little boyfriend,” he reminded her, his tone clipped.

  Laney was studying his face. “You sound jealous.”

  He huffed, making a face in ridicule. “Am not.”

  She shot a self-satisfied look back toward Berry-AI who just grinned in response, even as she started walking down the hall again. “Whatever, jealous,” she quipped.

  Traces

  They arrived at one of the larger labs on the south side of the building and found Dr. Chambers, the world-leading scientist in the fields of genetics and neurology, and Laney noticed, impressed, that she also had a certain inscribed plaque hanging up on her wall.

  “Hi, I’m Maia.” Dr. Chambers held her hand out to shake Laney’s as soon as she walked in. “You must be the other famous Laney Carter.”

  Laney stared at her as she shook her hand. “Hi…”

  Dr. Maia Chambers had dark hair, twisted up into a high ponytail on top of her head, almond-shaped dark eyes buried in dark eyeliner, and a tattoo of what looked like a seashell on the curve of her neck, near her collarbone—a complete contrast to Darla Addleton’s fair skin, red bob, and green eyes—but that’s who Laney felt she was when she shook her hand. She felt like she was looking at her best friend.

  Laney narrowed her eyes at her before pausing, snapping back to the present. “Sorry,” she said. “I just had a weird feeling.”

  Maia raised her eyebrows. “Hey, in my lab, we welcome anything weird.” She smiled, looking up past Laney. “Hey Noah, how’s it going?” she greeted. “Hey Berry-bot, thanks for bringing them up here.”

  “I am Berry’s AI prototype,” Berry-AI began. “I am designed to simulate an exact replica of Dr. Berry Vermillion. I was only activated at oh-six-thirty hours this morning, so I’m still running in alpha-testing mode—”

  “I know, dude. I activated you,” Maia said, her eyebrows raised.

  “I utilize the cutting edge of meta-materials science to simulate human skin tone and elasticity,” Berry-AI went on. “As well as voice approximation and a complete faculty for physical movements. I am also designed to—”

  “Shut up, Berry,” Maia and Noah snapped at the same time.

  Berry-AI stopped talking instantly.

  Laney raised an eyebrow. “Wow,” she remarked with a laugh. “I bet you guys would love it if that worked on the real Berry.”

  Maia gave her a sly look but didn’t respond to that. Instead, she gave Laney a once-over. “Well,” she started, blowing out a breath. “I see Berry didn’t exactly follow my advice regarding that memory serum prototype. I never suggested that he should test it on an extra-dimensional person.”

  “It was an emergency,” Noah explained. “And we were really confident that you already had a working anti-serum. At least, that’s what your latest paper said.”

  She chuckled at his almost affront. “You’re lucky I’m brilliant.”

  Laney blinked. “So, you can fix me?”

  “Of course,” she replied, the confidence in her tone almost sounding dismissive. “I am ecstatic though about the results. So, she really doesn’t remember anything from her time here before?” she asked, turning to Noah.

  “Zero.”

  “And how long would you say it took for her to respond to the serum?” Maia prompted Noah again, her eyes shining.

  “It was almost instantaneous,” Noah said. “She displayed an almost instant recovery of her bearings, and she showed no recognition of any immediate visual cues.”

  Laney raised her hand. “Uh, she is standing right here.”

  Maia chuckled again. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just amazing when you see your baby project work so well on its first outing—especially with a highly unorthodox test subject.”

  “So,” Laney prompted with a loud clap of her hands. “Why not let’s bring out the anti-serum and wham-bam-thank-you-doctor, I can shoot off home, shall we?”

  Maia pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not sure what Berry told you, but there is no ‘anti-serum’ per se.” Then she gestured toward a cylindrical glass enclosure, standing in one corner of the lab. “There is however a memory-doohickey reversal chamber,” she said, grinning. “I’m still working on the name.”

  “Oh.”

  Maia walked up toward the control panels beside the chamber, turning up switches and dials, flicking on several lights, and the mechanism began to hum steadily. Then she looked back at Laney. “We just need to get you inside this chamber, press the ‘Go’ button, and see what happens,” she relayed. “But before that, I need to do some baseline measurements, and test the process on a small sample of your DNA first, to make sure there are no immediate adverse side-effects.”

  Laney groaned. “Ugh, you talk like Berry,” she said. “I hardly understand anything.”

  Maia chuckled. “Don’t worry,” she assured, despite the catch in her tone. “I would never intentionally compromise your safety just to further my scientific research. That would be completely unethical.”

  Noah cleared his throat loudly, shooting Maia a very pointed look, as that was a very blatant jab at Eleanor’s work ethic.

  But Maia just smirked, undaunted, before looking over to meet Laney’s gaze again. “So, let us begin, shall we?” she prompted.

  Laney looked at Noah and Maia in turn as the two of them were obviously trying to hide something, but she just let out a resigned sigh, knowing full well it was pointless to ask. She just wanted the entire procedure to be over and done with already. Secrets were one thing, but she was beginning to find being around giant know-it-alls with arrogant, inflated egos to be quite tiresome.

  “Noah, why don’t you go take a break or something?” Maia suggested, not looking up from her instrument table as she prepared her little gadgets. “You’ve delivered Laney safely to her destination,
into my very capable hands. Surely, you’ve earned it.”

  “I’m fine,” Noah said, leaning against a bookshelf, his arms crossed over his chest.

  She shot him a look. “Seriously dude, this is going to take a while,” she told him. “I know you’re a tough guy, but you can’t just stand around there all day.”

  He met Laney’s gaze, looking hesitant for a split second. Then he shrugged. “Fine, I guess I could go check out the Physics lab, say ‘hi’ to the old team. I haven’t exactly been here in a while.”

  “We all started out of this University,” Maia told Laney. “Then Noah and Laney moved on to bigger and better things over at GNR.”

  “And a fat lot of good that did,” Noah mumbled under his breath as he turned to leave.

  Berry-AI perked up. “I’ll go with you. Dr. Vermillion has a running bet about dark matter stars with Dr. Destefano that he’s been eager to rub his nose in…” His voice trailed off as the two of them walked out the doorway.

  Laney watched the two guys leave, before she blew out a breath, moving to sit on a stool at the table where Maia was preparing her instruments. “Thanks for that,” she said. “I think I may have had just about enough of that guy for the last few days.”

  “Who, Noah?” Maia’s eyebrows rose, looking incredulous. “Really?”

  Laney’s mouth dropped open slightly. “I mean, I’m just glad to have someone else to talk to for a change,” she amended, trying to sound neutral.

  “Ohh yeah.” She nodded. “I suppose talking isn’t what Noah does best, is it?”

  Laney huffed in agreement.

  But then Maia added, “He’s pretty hot though.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Nobody else can brood like Noah Donovan.”

  Laney looked doubtful. “I guess.”

  Maia shot her a knowing look.

  “Alright, fine.” She threw her hands up. “I realize that he’s hot,” she said. “But I already have a boyfriend, back in my world. Kevin Whitfield. In fact, I think I saw him in the halls.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the door.