by S Breaker
“I sent Dr. Vermillion the readouts from earlier this morning, Dr. Chambers,” Berry-AI relayed as he poured her a cup of coffee. “He should be in touch to discuss the results later today.”
Maia walked up toward the lab table that had been converted into a breakfast counter, before she glanced over at Noah, sitting on a stool at the end, his dour mood only then registering with her. “What’s up with you?” she wanted to know.
Noah looked away. “Nothing,” he said, brooding over his cup of coffee.
Maia watched him for a moment. “Fine,” she said. “In case, you were interested to know, according to the latest chem panels, Laney seems to be in ship-shape. Hopefully, in ship-shapier shape than before.”
“Great.”
Maia just rolled her eyes in resignation. She turned to Berry-AI. “I found an interesting pattern in Laney’s brain wave activity. Do you know if Berry can help do some extrapolations back at GNR?” she asked.
“I’ll send the message, Dr. Chambers,” Berry-AI replied. “Perhaps you could also reach out to Dr. Whitfield. My search indicates he is the closest local expert on modeling projections.”
Maia considered it with a nod. “Thanks, Berry-bot.” She reached for a bagel on a plate, with the bagel going straight to her mouth for a big bite. “Hey, Isn’t Laney awake yet?” she asked, her voice muffled by the bagel, as she craned her neck to look around. “We talked about having waffles today.”
Noah stiffened, feeling a sudden wake-up jolt in his system, better than the coffee, already somehow in dread. He quickly flicked up his HUD to get a GPS location on Laney’s CCL, and his eyes widened in alarm as an instant panic seized him.
“What is it?” Berry-AI peered at the HUD sideways from across the table.
“I’m not getting any reading on her CCL,” Noah said, his tone grim before he looked up to meet Maia’s gaze.
But Maia’s eyes were wide as she stared at the HUD on Noah’s arm. “What…the hell is that?” she asked, looking taken aback. “Why do you have one of those?”
Noah froze. He had momentarily forgotten that he wasn’t meant to show his HUD around The Community.
But Berry-AI’s eyes were moving rapidly from side to side. “I am also unable to track Miss Carter’s location,” he stated.
“Laney’s locator must have been turned off altogether,” Noah concluded, swallowing hard.
There was only one group of people he knew of who would know enough not to just jam Laney’s CCL signal, but disable it entirely.
Maia put her hand up. “Hold on a minute,” she interjected. “What the heck is going on? Laney is gone? Where did she go? And why on Earth do you have one of those?”
Noah gave her an even look. “Do you know what this is?”
Maia bit her lip, seeming unwilling to reply.
Noah stood up fast. “We’re wasting time,” he said, reaching for his jacket draped over the back of a chair. “Laney’s life is in danger.”
“What?” Maia asked, frowning. “Why? Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she’s been taken, but I definitely know by whom,” Noah replied as he hastily stuffed his pockets with certain gadgets. “Come on, Berry-bot.” He waved him over. “If they got to her this fast, the odds are The Alliance has a headquarters right here in town.”
Maia shot him a mocking look as she stood up herself, turning around to watch them. “That’s a myth! They don’t exist.”
Noah just gave her a steady look, even with the urgency in his tone. “Maia, you just stay here in case Laney comes back,” he ordered.
“Seriously?” she called out after them as they rushed out, but they were gone in seconds. Maia threw up her hands in exasperation, looking around the empty lab. “What just happened?”
***
Laney moaned softly as she woke up, but even with her eyes still shut, she could already tell exactly what the smell was that was overpowering her senses.
The smell of old books.
“What…?” She opened her eyes, confused, only to find that she was waking up sitting upon a steel chair, with her wrists and ankles clamped to it with metal restraints. “What?” She tried to shake off the restraints to no avail. Her pulse began to race in dread as she looked around.
The building where she was at was obviously a library—or what would have previously served as a library, if not for all the mostly empty bookshelves, the sagging platforms up on the third and fourth floor, the tall columns propped up with temporary supporting steel girders, all the boarded-up windows and doorways—and of course, the dozens of Alliance agents hanging about, standing guard.
Laney spotted the one called Jacob across the open-plan reading room on the ground floor, talking to a female Alliance agent with long red hair.
“Are you sure we have the right, Laney?” Jacob was asking her.
“Positive,” she replied. “You can’t fool Noah. He definitely fetched the right one.” Then she looked over at Laney to notice that she was awake. “Jacob,” she said.
And Jacob turned around. He smiled when he met her gaze, spreading out his arms as though to gesture around him. “Miss Carter,” he began. “How lucky you must feel to finally be around people who are true to their word.”
Laney glared at him in disbelief. “Sure, that’s the word I’m looking for right now. Lucky,” she remarked.
He walked up toward her, observing her attempts to pull free from her restraints. “So sorry about that, by the way,” he remarked. “What with all your ‘bleed through’ personas, we couldn’t take any chances.”
“Sorry?” Laney echoed indignantly. “You kidnapped me!” she exclaimed.
“Nuh-uh.” Jacob shook his head. “As a matter of fact, you came here on your own,” he told her. “Of course, it took a little bit of creative hacking on our end.”
Laney’s eyes widened. “You hacked my CCL!” she realized. “Oh my god, people have got to stop playing around with my brain! And how in the freaking world,” she cried out, still trying to rattle her restraints off, “do you all have this type of chair?”
That made Jacob chuckle. He glanced up at the red-headed girl again. “She’s funny,” he noted. “Laneys aren’t usually funny.”
The red-headed girl smirked before she glanced back down at the control panel she was working on. “We need your confirmation on the go-ahead order,” she told him, and he nodded in acknowledgment.
Laney squinted to see. It looked like Jacob was tapping on invisible keys in mid-air upon a HUD of his own on his left arm. She grimaced. “What is that? Is that a…HUD?” she asked, looking baffled. “I thought Noah had the only one. It was supposed to be a prototype.”
Jacob glanced up at her. “Is that what he told you?” he asked, sounding highly entertained. “Oh boy, that Donovan is such a master of deception.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Laney prompted, already annoyed at his ambiguity. “Did you steal that HUD from him?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Jacob gave her a look. “Where do you think Noah got his?” he quipped. “Only Alliance carry this tech.”
Laney’s stomach turned over and her pulse began to race again in disbelief. “What the hell are you saying? That Noah is in The Alliance?”
“Jacob,” the red-headed girl called out. “We’re ready.”
Laney’s eyes lit up as she looked over at her. “What does that mean? Ready for what?”
Jacob beamed at her. “The fix, of course.”
A couple of agents walked over to secure Laney, as her restraints unclipped with a loud click, and they pulled her up, taking her arms on each side.
“The fix of what?” Laney asked, her eyes still wide in dread, even as she let the two agents escort her across the reading room to a corner where the old sign for ‘Photocopying’ was still hanging, except for instead of a photocopying machine, what was there was a strange-looking metal bed with a curved bottom.
“I understand you’re not very happy in this dimension, Mi
ss Carter,” Jacob said as he walked over to the machine with her. “And no doubt you’ve sensed that despite how pretty it looks on the surface, this world is a mask—a fact that even the people living in it don’t want to acknowledge themselves. Fortunately for you,” he said with a smile. “This isn’t your world. And we’re simply trying to facilitate your departure from it as expediently as possible.”
Laney remembered how Noah said their expedience might possibly affect her—as in permanently and she began to try to struggle away from their grasp. “No, no, no.” She shook her head, starting to panic. “Please don’t. Please, oh my god, this can’t be happening to me again,” she said, as horrible flashbacks of the giant quantum jump platform receptacle back at GNR raced through her mind.
But a third agent came up to help hold Laney up as they half-dragged her toward the metal bed and carried her in, quickly fastening her feet onto the bed.
Laney glanced up to give Jacob an imploring look. “But I’m not contagious yet,” she told him. “Berry will come up with a cure soon. Please. Please! The ‘bleed throughs’ have only just started,” she tried to reason, even as another agent pushed her to lie down so they could fasten her wrists.
Jacob rolled his eyes. “Please, you’ve been displaced right from the beginning,” he told her. “Try to think back. The ‘bleed throughs’ have been happening even since the last time you were here. You’ve been an anomaly for eight months. Why do you think Blakely’s quantum jump platform wouldn’t work with you? You were already displaced at the time.”
She swallowed hard as she absorbed his words. What? She wanted to speak up to protest again, except the memory of Paris flashed vividly in her brain, and she blinked in recognition. No wonder everything had felt so familiar.
Jacob was right.
Shit. Laney heaved in anxiety, even as she tried to pull against the clamps on her hands and feet in vain.
“Now just relax,” he advised. “The biobed will cure all your ills.” He reached over to shift down a curved metal arc to prop around Laney’s head.
Laney felt incredibly helpless, and tears were starting to roll down her cheeks.
Just then, Laney heard a familiar beep, and she stopped short. What the hell?
“What was that?” the red-headed girl asked, looking up from her control panel.
Jacob was looking around furtively. “What is that? Is that the smoke detector?” he asked. “Oi, Teina!” He waved his hand at one of the other agents. “Go to the back and check the fuse box.”
Whatever it was beeped again.
“It’s coming from this room, Jacob,” the red-headed girl told him as she had paused, her head tilted slightly, straining to hear.
Jacob began to walk around the room, trying to zone in on the strange beeping sound. He lingered near the boarded-up revolving front doors leading to the outside and narrowed his eyes. “What is that…?”
Laney was trying to peer up from the bed to see what Jacob was doing.
The thing beeped again.
Jacob sauntered across the room, toward where Laney’s jacket was heaped haphazardly onto a chair in the corner, before brusquely tossing it aside to uncover a little metal robot with exposed gears and spokes.
P.T. had been hiding in Laney’s coat pocket the entire time.
P.T.! Laney almost screamed in absolute relief.
“It’s a little robot!” the red-headed girl exclaimed in dismay, and she noted the blinking red light on its ‘head’. “And it’s got a locator beacon, Jacob. It’s been spying on us the whole time. Noah will have tracked this robot. He’ll know exactly where we are!”
“You sneaky little—” Jacob snatched P.T. off the chair in anger, before immediately hurling it across the room.
“NO!” Laney cried out, aghast.
But it was too late.
The little robot hit the wall squarely, smashing against it, sending pieces of metal and fragments flying around, falling to the floor in unrecognizable heaps. A few bits and pieces whirred softly for a few seconds before each gear and mechanism stopped dead completely.
Laney heaved heavily, her chest constricting, a lump in her throat. She turned to glare up a Jacob. “You big jerk!”
“That’s enough,” Jacob growled. “We’re out of time.” He walked up to the control panel himself and pushed a button quickly, making the biobed hum loudly.
“No! No!” Laney tried to struggle against her restraints, but it was no use. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a bright yellow glow form at her feet and start to slowly move its way up her body. It almost looked like the golden halo glow from Maia’s memory-doohickey reversal chamber, except for—
“Aaahh—aagghh!” Laney started to seize in the machine as excruciating pain began to explode from within her.
The red-headed girl looked over at Jacob warily. “What’s going on, Jacob?”
Jacob looked stunned. “I don’t know.”
The red-headed girl’s palm hovered over the ‘Off’ button. “Should we stop it?”
“No,” Jacob yelled out. “Just let it finish.”
Laney kept screaming in pain as the yellow glow had come halfway up her body.
“Her vitals are going ballistic,” the red-headed girl spoke up, sounding alarmed, as several control panels began to give off shrill warning beeps. The machine was being overloaded. “Jacob!” she yelled out. “What do we do? Jacob!”
All the sounds began to mute to Laney, and she felt as though she was starting to float out of her body, even as the constant unbearable pain was coursing through her, she didn’t have enough strength left to scream.
There was a sudden loud crash and when Jacob looked up, he spotted Noah rappelling down through the broken skylight, just as Noah shot an energy beam from a weapon directed straight at the control panel where the red-headed girl was standing.
The panel exploded and the girl yelped aloud, falling back on the floor.
The biobed shut off instantly.
A couple of agents tried to rush toward Noah, but not before Berry-AI rappelled down next, landing flat on all of them.
Noah glanced up at him. “Thanks, dude.”
Berry-AI grinned. “No problemo, amigo.”
Noah hurried straight toward the biobed where Laney was unconscious. Except, Jacob knew that was exactly what he was going to do, so he had aimed his weapon up toward him and fired.
Berry-AI leaped across to block the energy beam, and he fell back as the shot hit him squarely in the chest. “Agh—!” was the only sound he managed to make before he crumpled to the ground.
“Berry!” Noah yelled as about a dozen agents began to descend on him. He moved quickly, climbing onto an empty bookshelf before he fished something from his pocket, tossing it down to the floor.
POOF!
And all the Alliance agents collapsed, out cold, on the tiled library floor.
Noah glanced up, spotting movement up on the second floor.
Jacob was upstairs with the red-headed girl, getting ready to run away out the fire exit. He met Noah’s gaze. “You know we’ll be back for her again,” he called out. “We are duty-bound not to stop until she’s removed from this world. One way or another,” he vowed. “She’s a threat and you know it.”
Noah sneered at him. “Thanks for the warning.”
He didn’t bother to watch them escape. He jumped down and skidded to a stop beside the biobed to check on Laney, leaning over her.
With the machine off, her restraints had unclamped themselves. But he couldn’t check her vitals effectively since his own heart was pounding in his chest.
He was still heaving. “Laney.” He shook her shoulders, but she didn’t respond.
She didn’t seem to be breathing.
Laney looked dead.
“No, Laney no,” he urged. “Come back. Come back to me.” He shook her shoulders harder. “Come on!” He swallowed hard, looking around, feeling extraordinarily, unusually helpless. He knew he only had a few minu
tes before The Alliance agents woke up again from their enforced nap.
He leaned over her face. “Laney, come on,” he whispered, still breathless, pressing his forehead against hers, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please…if you die too, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Only the silence of the library answered him.
After another moment, Noah took a deep resigned breath, trying to dull the acute pain in his chest as he began to think of a plan of how to carry both Laney and the broken Berry-AI out of the library.
His head shot up when he heard a small moan—coming from Laney. “Laney?” he prompted again, a lump in his throat.
Laney’s chest rose and fell and she made another faint moaning sound.
And Noah blew a breath out in relief, blinking hard.
Laney was alive.
Theoretically
Berry-AI looked a bit silly with a giant battery cell plug sticking out of his side as he walked up to Noah, who was brooding in the hallway of the infirmary wing of the University. He tilted his head to peer at what Noah was discreetly looking at on his HUD.
Pictures of Noah and Eleanor.
“What are you doing?” Berry-AI prompted, his tone mocking. “Are you still pining over Eleanor? Laney is alive.”
Noah jumped upon hearing his voice, putting away his HUD quickly. He looked up, narrowing his eyes at Berry-AI. “Berry, is that you?”
Berry-AI rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s me,” he replied. “Now why aren’t you in there?” he asked, gesturing toward the room where Laney had been recovering for the last eighteen hours.
Noah looked up through the window in time to see Laney laugh at something that Maia said, while Kevin stood by her side, arranging a bouquet of flowers by her bed. He creased his forehead. “I’m confused enough as it is, okay?”
“How long are you going to pretend she’s not the one you want?” Berry-AI threw up his hands.
Noah shot him a pointed look. “You said it yourself. The effects of the cure will be irreversible,” he reminded him. “Once she gets rooted back to her world, I’ll never see her again. But if she stays here, The Alliance is going to kill her,” he concluded in frustration. “Either way, I’m going to lose her. And I don’t want to lose her too.”