Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  He rolled his eyes. “Alright then! Not ‘relativity’. But we have to decide on something.”

  Laney rubbed her forehead. “Jeez, I feel like I’m taking a pop quiz right now. Are you sure we need to have a code word?”

  Noah groaned out loud again, looking like he wanted to start tearing his hair out in frustration. “Laney—!”

  There was a loud explosion from outside.

  Noah’s eyes lit up in alert.

  “What was that?” Berry asked, reaching over to flick some buttons on some panels to show the surveillance outside the submarine.

  The night having fallen was making the view hard to see, but it looked like something was burning right by the terminal building, and black smoke obviously not coming from the cross-country train was wafting downwind.

  Just then there was another explosion.

  “Is that outside? What’s going on?” Laney leaned over Berry’s shoulder to see.

  Berry put his fingers to his ear again, listening on his internal walkie-talkie. “Terrorists…?”

  Noah huffed. “The Alliance.”

  Laney’s eyes widened. “What? The Alliance is back? Already?” She balked in skepticism. “Don’t these people have day jobs?”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Noah reminded her.

  “Still,” she mocked obstinately.

  “Oh boy.” Berry almost leaped across to several other control panels, pushing buttons frantically. “All hands, we’re casting off,” he said loudly on the PA. “We have to go. Now! Now!” He hit another button and something made a loud whooshing sound at the same time that the sub pushed off from the dock.

  Laney swayed on her feet and she held on to one side of a control panel as the sub jerked sideways. Noah was looking around, on his guard, and he cast a glance at the table full of weapons.

  “Jeez, that was close!” Berry remarked, continuously fiddling with the control boards, before checking the surveillance again. “Uh guys, I think our timetable has just been pushed up.”

  “What?” Laney nearly squeaked. “We’re not ready, are we?”

  Berry’s back was to her so she couldn’t see what he was doing, but after a moment, he turned around. “Give me your hand,” he instructed.

  And even before Laney could question further or move, he leaned over and deftly attached something to her wrist.

  “Here,” he said. “You hang on to Zeta device.” He met her gaze evenly. “Let’s say for the record: it is your mission,” he declared with a smile.

  Laney gave him an appreciative look. “Thanks,” she said, giving the Zeta device a cursory appraising scan. It was strapped to her wrist on a brace with an ornate latch.

  He put his hand on her shoulder to relay, “Now you don’t want to get stuck in some random alternate dimension, so you have to make sure you and Noah stay together.”

  “Oh, fabulous.”

  The next explosion must have been in the water as the impact was enough to make the entire submarine shudder.

  “Berry,” Noah called out his warning, his eyes focused on what was outside the big windows in front of the sub.

  “Holy cats.” Berry shooed Laney toward the jump platform. “I bet they’ll be gunning for my power reactor and let me tell you, it’s not exactly industry-standard. You two better go before they break out their anti-submarine weapons.”

  “No, wait!” Laney threw up her hands. “We don’t even have the complete traversal path yet.” She glanced back and forth from Berry to Noah.

  “There’s no time. We’ll have to do it on the fly,” Noah replied, running around to grab certain things in preparation.

  “Do it on the fly—well, that sounds like a genius plan. I wonder what can go wrong with that?”

  Berry was hurriedly clicking buttons and flicking switches to configure the jump platform. “We can use your homeworld as a launch point. That should be safe enough.”

  “Time to go!” Noah hollered, walking past Laney.

  Her eyes lit up as she remembered something else. “Hey, my CCL—!” she called out to Berry. She still had it on.

  “I’m sorry, Laney. We don’t have time,” Berry yelled, slamming on a big red button on the console behind him.

  The wind rose as the quantum shear ignited upon the jump platform.

  Noah stepped up to it and turned back to look at Laney.

  Laney was staring at the swirling vortex of doom, already breathing heavily in panic, anticipation, anxiety.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Here goes nothing.”

  “Good luck.”

  Homeworld

  Laney took a step forward and did a 360-degree survey of her surroundings.

  Only the faint sounds of crickets filtered through the trees that lined the deserted paved walkway leading up to the dorms and back toward the school clinic. It was dark but the gardens at the quad were still the same shade of green that she remembered.

  Laney took a deep breath.

  She was back.

  She was home.

  It was pretty bizarre to think that she had successfully traveled back to her dimension again. It wasn’t even the first time. She hadn’t acknowledged yet how normal it was starting to feel for her to be jumping through quantum shears either, to be journeying through parallel worlds.

  It was a little bit exhilarating, sure. But freaky.

  She turned to look at the space where the quantum shear had dissolved into nothing.

  There was no telling if The Alliance had caught up to the sub or if the sub had already been sunk or destroyed. There was also no telling if the explosions in the dock were isolated there or if they had reached further into town.

  She frowned. All she could do was hope that Maia and Berry were okay.

  Then she heard Noah coughing. His head was bent low, his hands propped on his knees. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing.

  Laney almost forgot that quantum jumps were supposed to have that effect because you’ve basically been squeezed through a singularity and stretched at an atomic level.

  But the odds were that because of the interdimensional insulation that Eleanor had dosed her with, quantum jumps didn’t affect Laney that way, which, unfortunately, was the only fortunate thing about it.

  She watched Noah warily. She wanted to go over to help him but she was still feeling on edge about having been rushed to start their impossible, highly theoretical mission.

  Not to mention, she was feeling quite skittish about Berry’s revelation regarding “primaries.” The situation was complicated enough. And counter to all her efforts of trying to stay away from him for the past day or so, there they were, just the two of them. Again.

  When Noah finally straightened up, he met her somber gaze. Then he dropped his eyes back down to his HUD, probably to check that they were in the right place.

  Laney narrowed her eyes upon seeing the HUD flicker above his arm. It was the first time she’d seen it again up close since her recovery from the hospital.

  Noah had never really explained where he had gotten it from. And as far as she had seen, only one other person in his world had anything like it.

  The Alliance agent named Jacob.

  Only Alliance carry this tech…

  There was a sinking feeling in Laney’s stomach as she glared at the HUD like it would self-destruct if she stared long enough, but when Noah looked over again, she averted her gaze.

  His eyebrows furrowed a little as he noticed, but he didn’t comment on it. “So we’re back,” he concluded, looking around before gesturing to the Zeta device. “Are you getting anything?”

  Laney remembered that this time around, for a change, she also had a gadget. She checked the little device on her wrist, flicking the holographic screen on, but there were so many numbers and symbols swimming about on it.

  She frowned again, trying to focus. The Zeta device might be a revolutionary little thing but it wasn’t very intuit
ive. Leave it to Berry to design something probably only he could decipher.

  Noah registered her lost expression. “Give it to me.”

  It was the combination of anxiety and trepidation, layered with newfound suspicion, that Laney clutched at her arm, shooting him a sharp look.

  He gave her a look of disbelief. “I just want to synchronize it with my HUD,” he told her. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing!” Her tone a clear indication of the opposite.

  “Are you still on about this being ‘your’ mission?” He gestured air quotes sarcastically.

  She didn’t reply.

  Noah looked at her steadily. “Look, I’m not very good with people, but I can tell when someone’s avoiding me. And it doesn’t take a genius to know that something’s bothering you. Now, what is it?”

  Laney pursed her lips.

  Noah was a traitor and he’d been rightly accused of double-crossing, even triple-crossing, other people before.

  She was torn between reason and something undefined, something that wouldn’t stop nagging her. Perhaps the urge to know, to have him defend himself, to have him prove none of it was true. That he was anything other than what one might easily conclude he was: a bad guy.

  “Laney, I need to know in case it affects our mission,” he stated. He studied her expression before he asked, “What did Jacob tell you?”

  Her eyes widened slightly at his perceptiveness.

  “Did he tell you I worked for The Alliance?”

  Laney met his gaze, looking even more bewildered. “Yes,” she replied after a moment.

  Noah tilted his head, giving her an incredulous mocking look.

  “What? I mean, you have a HUD,” she rationalized hoarsely, trying to make her point while not risking being too loud. “It’s Alliance tech! And you couldn’t show it around The Community because The Alliance is a super-secret organization.” She dropped her gaze at the jumble of thoughts in her head. “And you’re really good at keeping secrets. And betraying people. Who knows what kinds of tricks you’ve got up those vintage sleeves and who you’re going to throw under the bus the next time around?” she finished, giving him an accusing look.

  His response was steady. “No, you’re right.”

  She blinked. She didn’t think he would just flat out admit it. “Huh?”

  “Laney,” he began, sounding calm. “I had a HUD installed, because last year, I did join The Alliance,” he relayed and went on to add before her worst fears could be confirmed. “But undercover.”

  Her eyes lit up.

  “To help locate Eleanor.”

  Laney’s jaw dropped slightly as the revelation dawned in her eyes.

  Noah shrugged. “And Jacob found out. That’s why they obviously aren’t very happy with me because they think I stole their tech.” He held his arm closer to her so she could inspect it. “But as you can see, it’s integrated to me now. It’s not like I can just return it.”

  Laney furrowed her eyebrows. “No?”

  He shook his head.

  It hit her again. What Noah was willing to go through for Eleanor, the sacrifices he was willing to make. Who knew what he’d had to go through to join The Alliance? What kind of process was required to integrate technology into humans like that? It couldn’t have just been a pinprick. But he did it.

  He did it all. As always.

  For Eleanor.

  His eyes softened. “So do you trust me now?”

  She gave him a wary look. “You still keep an awful lot of secrets.”

  He met her gaze, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t you have secrets?”

  Laney stiffened as she remembered a particular whopper of a one, one she’d been specifically instructed to keep from him.

  But he didn’t press and just bit back a smirk. “Now, can I have a look at the Zeta device?” He held his hand out. “Please.”

  She sighed and obliged, holding up her wrist so Noah could configure the Zeta device to synchronize with his HUD, even as she watched him carefully.

  Maybe he explained the HUD but that didn’t mean she needed to trust him. At the end of the day, she had to remember this was really her mission. And hers alone.

  She gave herself a mental shake to attempt to settle her unease.

  “Look.” His tone was gentle as he leaned his head slightly toward hers to point something out on the gadget. “There’s the anchor for the ‘boomerang’ protocol.” He swiped across the display. “If you nudge this, it shows you where we came from, and here’s where we are right now. These are the coordinates of your homeworld.”

  She nodded as she took note, shivering again, despite her long-sleeved sweater. It was an easy reminder that she was back in the northern hemisphere with its brisk climate.

  Noah gave her a once-over. “Are you okay?” he asked a little more than curiously as he finished up with the Zeta device and let go of her wrist.

  “Just a little cold.”

  He sniffed. “Now you’re wishing you had a jacket like mine.”

  And despite all her reservations, that unexpected quip from Noah made her stifle a sudden, snorted laugh such that she had to look around vigilantly to make sure nobody had heard.

  She gave him a wry, bemused look. “Honestly,” she spoke after a pause. “You look like you should be at some type of postmodern renaissance fair or something.” “That should have tipped me off right from the start. I should have known when we first met that there was no way you were the real Jake Donovan.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Please, I was all panicked. You were acting like a total psycho,” she recalled, rolling her eyes. “You couldn’t just talk to me like a real person?”

  “Remember I tried that too the next time around? You still thought I was crazy,” Noah reminded her before referring back to his HUD as they proceeded down the walkway.

  “Could you blame me? In case you forgot, here in my world, we don’t live our daily lives concerned with the fate of multiple universes. I honestly don’t envy you people who have to live with these types of concerns,” she drawled, looking around the gardens again.

  All going well, she would be back home in a week and forget about everything. Only, the damage will have already been done. To Noah’s world. To Eleanor.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to live with that, even if she wouldn’t be able to remember.

  “Do you think after all this,” Laney mused, looking gloomy. “Berry could just send me back to that first day? Like last time? That way all this would never have happened.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure the small-scale jump platform can manage that. It won’t have enough grunt.”

  “Oh.”

  “In any case,” Noah went on. “It’s probably not a good idea. It’s been too long. Too much will have already changed. And like Berry said, we don’t want to affect spacetime any more than we have to.” He gave her a meaningful shrug. “We need to accept that some things are…inevitable.”

  The Odds

  Laney felt off-balance for a second, almost tripping over her own feet, and Noah caught her arm. “Oh, sorry,” she said, straightening up. “I guess going through the shear this time’s actually got to me a little bit.”

  But Noah’s forehead was creased. He took a quick look around. “No. I felt that too. What the hell was that?” He checked his HUD again. “Something just happened to this world.”

  Laney was craning her neck to look at his HUD herself. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” Noah took a deep breath, betraying a little apprehension on his face. “We’d better locate that exit trace before we’re too late.” He gestured to the Zeta device.

  But Laney didn’t have to check her wrist. “I still remember. It’s this way,” she said as she moved past him toward the thicket along the walkway.

  And true enough, after a few more yards, Noah spoke up to note, “There’s the traffic cone.”

  Laney looked over toward where Noa
h was pointing and she spotted a slightly bent orange traffic cone by the gutter. As they approached it, she could see it looked like it had seen better days but at least it was still there.

  “So,” she began, twirling around on her heels. “Of all the spots in all the membranes in all the multiverses, this is where it is. Right past the gym at my boring old high school.”

  Noah hunched down beside the orange cone.

  Laney watched with vague interest. “You’re just going to open the quantum shear back up? How does that work anyway?”

  Noah replied even as he was concentrating on his HUD. “Well, if you recall your M-theory physics,” he began with an obvious satirical tone. “All the dimensions in the multiverse are separated by thin membranes. Like a curtain. And if you give these curtains a good enough shake—”

  “Ah. Then you can pass through them,” she finished with a nod, ignoring his little veiled insult. She shook her head. “Well, I still can’t believe it. And all this time,” she mused. “This dirty old thing has been spying on my world and nobody ever noticed. Nobody even cared. You see these things lying about in the strangest places, honestly. I’ve seen a picture of one someone had put on top of this like seventy-foot-tall pine tree.” She paused in thought. “Huh. They said it was a prank, but now I have to wonder, maybe it was actually a portal marker.”

  Noah stopped short, his eyes narrowing slightly and he put a finger to his lips. “Sshh.”

  Laney ducked slightly as she looked around. But the sound that she heard made her face brighten. “Oh my gosh, that’s Darla!”

  The mere sound of her friend’s voice lifted her mood instantly. She eagerly moved toward the sound, peering through a gap in the thicket to try to see. She figured Darla and Kevin were hanging out at one of the benches behind the dorms.

  “I can hear her. And Kevin too.” Then she smirked. “Those two. It’s totally after hours. They shouldn’t be out this late. We got into so much trouble the last time we all did this,” she relayed with a small chuckle. “I’m totally going to tell the R.A. the next time I see her. Oh—” Laney shot Noah a pleading look. “Could I say hi to them? Just for a second? Pretty please? I mean, it’s been five days. They must be worried sick by now, not to mention my parents.”