by S Breaker
Laney’s feet landed on the ground and she met his gaze for a moment, her eyes shining with triumph before she pushed off again to run.
He grinned as he sprinted after her, running ahead, headed downhill into the lush green gardens.
The next path that Noah and Laney turned onto led to an empty grassy clearing—a dead end.
Noah stopped short, panting before he whirled around.
One moment, the clearing was empty. Then as though it happened in a split second, they were surrounded by easily three dozen agents—all teenagers—boys, girls, all dressed in long off-white trench coats with buttons all down the front, with the same slicked-back hairstyles, same shoes, same neutral facial expressions.
Noah held his arm back to shield Laney as he looked around cautiously.
But these agents didn’t advance or seem to move otherwise. They all just stood in their stances, watching Noah and Laney silently.
“What’s going on, Noah?” Laney asked, trying to even out her ragged breathing.
Noah straightened up, sensing that she had phased back to herself. “Just stay close to me,” he said to her, under his breath. Then he called out loud. “Jacob! Come on, dude. I know you’ve got to be out there.”
Almost out of nowhere, one guy stepped forward from among the other agents crowding the grassy lawn, even as some of them were also perched against the surrounding hill above and around them.
Jacob had silver-white hair and was also wearing the same outfit as the others. But when he looked up at Noah, he smiled. “Dr. Noah Donovan,” he greeted with a formal tone. “It’s been a while.”
Noah’s face darkened. “So you’re doing this out in the daylight now, in plain view of the public?”
“They don’t see us,” Jacob told him, looking confident. “We’re just a momentary blur and then we’re gone.”
Noah huffed then he tilted his head slightly to remark. “I thought you and your little crew had disbanded completely after Blakely kicked it.”
Kyle Blakely? From French lit? Laney made a face as she recognized the name, but she was feeling that highly ominous vibe again, and she was busy trying to imagine that she was someplace else entirely.
Jacob simply bit back his grin. “You of all people should know better than that.” Then he shook his head. “Don’t think we’ve forgotten what you owe us.”
“What is he talking about, Noah?” Laney whispered.
Jacob’s eyes lit up. “Ah, Miss Carter,” he said, regarding her with a look. “Welcome back. Or perhaps you’re not so welcome after all.”
Laney frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Jacob grinned again. He glanced back at Noah. “Your girlfriend back there is trouble.”
Noah replied through gritted teeth, “she’s not my girlfriend—” almost at the same time that Laney interjected, making a face, “oh, I am so not his girlfriend.”
But Jacob just smirked before his expression cleared. “You need to surrender her to us.”
Noah shot him a contemptuous look, stepping back even closer to Laney. “Just try it,” he warned, glancing up furtively at the other agents in case they began to descend on them, but the other agents surrounding them remained immobile.
Jacob laughed. “Come on, Donovan,” he said. “We don’t have to play this game. You say ‘try it’, we will, we’ll win, you’ll lose, you’ll die.” He shrugged, giving him a knowing look. “Besides, this matter is a little out of your league, and our authority supersedes the President’s.”
“Since when?” Noah prompted in mocking.
Jacob tilted his head, his gaze condescending. “The President’s jurisdiction is only limited to this world. Our mission is the ultimate safety of the multiverse, in every dimension, in every world.”
“You’re starting to sound like Blakely,” Noah huffed.
Jacob smirked again. “General Blakely was an idiot,” he said. “He was a megalomaniac who would have destroyed us all had he been allowed to proceed with his plan. You actually did us a favor by erasing him.”
“It was an accident,” Noah said, as if in distaste.
Jacob raised an eyebrow.
“You erased someone?” Laney, overcome with curiosity, prompted from behind him.
Noah pursed his lips. “He was trying to kill you,” he replied hoarsely.
“Ah…super.”
Jacob waved his hand. “Either way, the approach of my organization is the complete opposite of his,” he relayed. “We want absolutely nothing to do with the other parallel worlds. We believe each dimension should just be left to themselves. Her presence,” he said, gesturing to Laney. “Here in our world is an anomaly. One that needs to be corrected.” He gave him a deadpan look. “Immediately.”
Noah gave him a sneer. “Berry’s already working on a cure.”
Jacob raised his eyebrows. “It won’t be soon enough,” he said, something in his tone hinting as though he knew more than he was letting on.
But Noah just clenched his jaw, standing fast. “You are not taking her.”
Jacob chuckled, shaking his head again. “You know as well as anyone, Donovan, that if we really wanted to take her, we would have her already,” he told him. “This was just a…courtesy.” He gestured with his hand. “A little check-up on you. We wanted to see where your loyalties were lying nowadays,” he added to Noah.
Noah visibly clenched his jaw.
“Besides,” Jacob added airily. “We’ve still got a few ducks to line up.” He turned to meet Laney’s gaze with another cold smile. “But rest assured, we’ll be seeing you soon.”
Laney swallowed, her nails practically digging into Noah’s skin as she clutched his arm, her pulse still racing in alarm.
But in the next second, all the agents pretty much simply, subtly disappeared, as though fading into the bushes somehow.
Noah swallowed hard himself, slowly straightening up as Laney moved up from behind him, her grip loosening on his arm. He shook his head in displeasure.
“It’s okay, P.T.,” Laney whispered to her pocket. “They’re gone.” She took a haggard deep breath. “Who the hell were those people?” she wanted to know.
“The Alliance,” Noah said. “They call themselves the ‘Guardians of Science’.”
“Guardians? Of Science?” She wrinkled her nose in disbelief. “What the hell is that?”
“Basically, it’s a consortium of people—scientists, actually—who want to control what scientific discoveries are made,” he explained. “Based on what they think is too dangerous for humanity. Like the atom bomb. They’re supposed to be a secret society. Nobody is supposed to know they exist, or at least, nobody can confirm that they do. They work outside the system.”
“Hah. Like the ‘Men in Black’.”
“The what?”
“Nothing.”
“They say they formed after the global cascade bomb event, to try to prevent anything like it from ever happening again.” Noah paused meaningfully. “They were really against the Quantum Jump Project right from the beginning, since they claimed it messes with the way things are, the way things were supposed to be. You know they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? Well, so is a lot,” he stated.
“Is that why they’re after me?”
Noah looked at her for a while before responding. “You heard him. You’re not from this world. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Well, duh!” Laney threw up her hands. “Isn’t that what we’re trying to fix now?”
“Yeah, except they don’t like to wait,” he said. “They couldn’t care less what happens to you. The Alliance will be happy as long as you were no longer in this world, one way or another. If they had their way, you’d probably have been shunted off to a different parallel world already. Or back to your own world to deal with your problem by yourself. Or…” he trailed off.
“Or?”
“Well,” Noah started, his eyebrows raised. “It’s a much easier solution to eli
minate you altogether, thereby ridding every world of the anomaly.”
Laney sucked her breath in. “Alrighty.”
“Whatever the case, they don’t want you to contaminate this world,” Noah went on. “And the longer you stay here, the higher that possibility becomes likely.”
“What the—am I like a ticking time bomb?”
He gave her a strange look. “If you like that phrase.”
Powwow
Noah and Laney made their way back up to the University, taking the back way through another garden leading to a little courtyard.
Noah was still looking around furtively to make sure they weren’t being followed, but it seemed Jacob had meant what he’d said about leaving them alone for the moment. Of course, Noah knew, it also meant that he was being serious about coming back for Laney later on, so he didn’t want to completely drop his guard.
When Noah looked over, Laney was no longer walking beside him, and he glanced back, his forehead creasing.
Laney had stalled in front of a statue. It was mounted beside a park bench, in the deserted little brick courtyard behind the University, and she was looking up at it curiously.
He walked up to her. “What are you doing?” he wanted to know.
“This place… It reminds me of something,” she said, her voice soft. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t tell if it’s my memories coming back or a ‘bleed through’ but…this location.” She gestured where she was standing. “It’s… For some reason, it brings images to my mind.” Then she looked up to meet his gaze, looking mystified. “Of you.”
He stopped, only then realizing where they were. He looked around the courtyard.
This was the place. It used to be their favorite spot. The two of them would sit on the bench and read the latest abstract submissions while powering through lunch. They would analyze the latest empirical formulas, spitball ideas for resolving the next crisis points that may have come up in the project, and plan working weekends together.
So it was also the spot, last year, where Noah had proposed to Eleanor.
Noah watched Laney warily, half-dreading, half-wondering exactly what she was actually remembering.
But Laney was still staring at his face.
“What do you mean?” he asked, looking uncomfortable.
She tilted her head as if in a trance. “A few days ago, back in my world, I think I…had a dream about you,” she spoke slowly. “You and…” She furrowed her eyebrows, trying to remember more before she finished her statement with, “sparks.”
Noah blinked. Sparks? “Pardon?”
She looked as though she was trying to grasp the wispy fragments of a dream. “I don’t know exactly. I just remember you were there and…we were surrounded by sparks…” She trailed off, confused. “What do you suppose that was?”
He swallowed. “It could be anything.” He shrugged, despite the inkling of a memory nagging in the back of his mind.
“Huh.” Laney held his gaze for another second before she turned back to look up at the statue again, still looking mystified.
Noah cleared his throat, eager to change the subject. “Come on, we’d better get back.” He waved for her to follow him back to Dr. Chambers’ lab.
“What the hell happened? Where were you guys?” Berry, transmitting through Berry-AI, asked as soon as Laney and Noah arrived at the door back at Dr. Chambers’ lab. “Laney’s CCL monitor was going totally bonkers over here.”
Noah glanced up at Maia who was across the lab, talking to a lab assistant, before she went to focus on a read-out from a control panel, and he pulled Berry-AI aside so that Maia wouldn’t hear the hushed conversation. “The Alliance found us and Laney phased,” he told him.
Berry-AI motioned his arm to Noah. “Let me scan your HUD.”
“Not here,” Noah said, glancing up discreetly at Maia again.
“What’s the matter?” Laney asked, noticing his hesitation, and glancing up over at Maia herself, but Maia had moved on to examining some specimen slides through an electron microscope.
Noah stuffed his hand in his pocket, stiffening slightly as he glanced out the open door to the hallway as another lab tech walked past. “I can’t show my HUD around The Community,” Noah told Laney, looking hesitant to even be mentioning it at all. “It’s…one of those ‘Top Secret’ prototypes,” he relayed with a dismissive tone.
“Oh, okay.” Laney nodded with a careless shrug.
“Hey, you’re back!” Maia turned to smile as she noticed them just then. “How were the waffles?”
“Um.” Laney met Noah’s gaze before she turned back to Maia with a smile. “Actually, I smelled bacon and I just couldn’t resist,” she relayed, walking over to her across the lab.
She quirked her eyebrow. “Surely you could have had bacon with waffles.”
Laney chuckled. “What is it with you and waffles?” she asked.
“What? They’re delicious!” Maia replied, sounding almost defensive.
Laney laughed again, casting a discreet glance over at Noah and Berry-AI still by the door, still discussing something between themselves.
Noah had said that The Alliance was a secret society, so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that Maia probably didn’t know about them either, so Laney figured she shouldn’t say anything. She just gave Maia another small smile. “Next time, we can get waffles, alright?”
Then Noah and Berry-AI walked over, having concluded their conversation.
“Berry had to go to a meeting, but he says he’s going to send the results of his analysis as soon as he can,” Noah announced, indicating that Berry had signed off from Berry-AI. “How did it go?” he asked Maia. “Did you figure out why it didn’t work?”
Maia bit her lip. “Not really,” she said. “I’m still waiting on some chem panels. I think it’s close though. I mean, I honestly thought it was supposed to work already. I’d have to go back to the board and re-check the formulas. I just need a little bit more time.”
“Time.” Noah’s eyes lit up as he glanced up at the large baroque clock hanging on the wall. “Shit, I have to go meet with the President now,” he said, then he looked over at Laney again.
“What?” she prompted.
“You can’t come with me,” he said, then frowned. “But I can’t leave you here by yourself.”
Maia raised her hand. “I can take her to the reception. And we can meet up with you after your meeting,” she offered.
Noah met Maia’s gaze uncertainly.
“Don’t worry,” Maia assured with a small wave. “She’ll be perfectly safe with me—and Berry-bot.” She gestured sideways toward Berry-AI.
Noah looked over at Laney again.
Laney raised her eyebrows. “I’ll be fine,” she told him, a little in disbelief. He didn’t seem to trust anyone at all. “I’m sure Berry-bot would be happy to shift his role from talking encyclopedia to a bodyguard for just a few hours.”
Berry-AI flashed him a grin and a thumbs-up sign.
“Alright,” Noah said finally after a pause, then he looked over at Maia and Berry-AI in turn, as though in silent instruction before he finally turned to leave.
Maia shook her head once he was gone. “Jeez, it’s like he’s worried you’ll disappear into thin air all of a sudden if he doesn’t keep his eye on you or something.”
Laney just met Maia’s gaze. Obviously, Maia was not aware that that was actually an entirely plausible scenario, but she didn’t want to alarm her. Besides, they were going to The President’s reception. Surely, there would be enough security there to ward off The Alliance.
“Hey Berry-bot, would you hold the fort for a second?” Maia told Berry-AI, gesturing around the lab. “Laney and I need to get ready.”
Laney blinked at her. “What do you mean ‘get ready’?”
Maia shot her a pointed, authoritative look. “Well, we can’t show up at the President’s reception just dressed like this now, can we?”
***
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��That’s a joke, right?” Laney prompted Maia, as she and Berry-AI walked with Laney down the street on the way to the Presidential reception that was being held at some place called—
“The Beehive? It’s not really called that,” Laney asked in ridicule.
“It’s the government house,” Maia replied.
Berry-AI began his discourse. “It’s the Executive Wing of the Government Parliament buildings. The architecture is meant to mimic the shape of a traditional woven form of a beehive. That part of the complex was built in 1977 by—”
“Sshhh,” Maia shushed him fast.
Laney snickered to herself. “It sounds like it’s implying that all the politicians are busy bees, flying around, buzzing all the time. I mean, do they even have a queen?”
“Actually, the Prime Minister is female,” Berry-AI supplied.
Laney looked confused. “Wait, I thought you had a President—that boy on the TV.”
“We have both,” Maia explained. “They’re sort of…co-presidents. It originated from the coalition government concept. It’s how the ‘checks and balances’ system works. This way, not any one person has all the power.”
“We’re coming up to The Beehive now,” Berry-AI spoke up.
Laney marveled as she looked up at the strange round dome on the building of the government house coming up behind the trees. It was indeed shaped somewhat like a real beehive. She shook her head. “Surely, it doesn’t look this weird in my world.”
“When I get my next data import from GNR on the Quantum Jump Project, I can confirm that for you,” Berry-AI offered with a smile.
“Thanks, Berry-bot.” Laney grinned as the three of them walked down the paved lane, flanked on each side with the rolling green grass, which led toward the building.
Laney noticed that there were also some other people headed toward the wide main front steps. They were dressed in formal clothes, top hats, and black suits, the women wore funny, frilly hats and long dresses. She guessed they were all likely politicians or scientists too. She was still boggled at the knowledge that they were still, of course, all only kids.