by S Breaker
Noah studied her expression, trying to read what her vague response meant. He creased his forehead, leaning toward her slightly. “I mean it’s not like we don’t have a choice. Like we can’t control it.”
“I know.”
“And we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.”
“I know.”
After a quiet pause, he turned back to face forward in his seat, his tone changing to add, “And you’re going home soon.”
“I know…”
She studied his profile. He looked like he was having an internal struggle himself and her heart began to pound again. Connection or not, she was certain they were both thinking the same thing.
It would be fighting a losing battle any way anyone looked at it.
I can’t believe you still don’t trust me after everything we’ve been through…
The fact of the matter was it was easier not to fully trust him. It was easier to think that he was a bad guy. That way, she could more easily rationalize her choice to stay away. It was likely the last thing stopping her from falling into that trap.
Alarm bells rang in her head.
Home. You have to go home.
She shook her head briskly. Focus.
But Noah seemed to be on the same page as well. He cleared his throat, piercing the silence. “We need to get back to the quarantine zone,” he said, his tone reverting to authoritative.
Laney nodded and she looked up to check the road to make sure it was all quiet before she propped her hands on the steering wheel again. “That should be enough time.”
Noah looked at her briefly before he turned to watch the back of the car as Laney reversed out of the grove.
Only as soon as they had returned to the main road, they heard a screeching of wheels and the same car from before appeared on the road behind them, along with its friend: other identical suspicious black sedan.
Laney checked the mirror irritably. “What? How do they keep finding us so fast?” She floored the gas again, heading away from the suburbs.
She wasn’t really a car racer and she was going to run out of moves before this world ran out of bad guys. Their only hope was to find the quantum shear exit trace and get out of the current dimension.
She looked up ahead as the features on the roadside changed from rows of houses to uninhabited wild green bushes, providing quite the contrast from the dry, brown desolation of the quarantine zone right across the street.
After a moment, Laney spoke up. “You said we’d need to cut through the fence.”
“Yeah.” Then his eyes lit up as he easily realized where Laney was going with her statement.
She gave him a sideways glance. “What do you think? Do you think it’ll work?”
Noah was already busy checking to make sure both their seatbelts were clicked on properly. “I think maybe you’ve gone a little bit nuts. But yeah, that would do it.”
Laney revved the engine again, watching in the mirrors as she got some distance from the other car. Then her gaze flickered up at the next stretch of quarantine fencing, making sure the area would be as isolated as it could be.
Noah braced his hands on either side.
“Here we go!” Laney gripped her hands on the wheel, steeling herself for the impact as she quickly veered the car to the left, jarring over the roadside gravel as they careened toward the high fence.
But instead of giving way or crumpling back to let the car through like Laney hoped it might, the reinforced steel fence merely bent to wrap around the front of the Mustang as it smashed head-on, making the car come to a full stop.
Laney coughed through the smoke, whacking away the deflated airbag and already beginning to undo her seatbelt before she noticed that Noah was unconscious and was bleeding from the side of his head. Oh shit. “Noah?” she called, tapping on his shoulder lightly at first, then harder. “Noah! Wake up!”
The sound of other roaring engines made her sit up in alarm. She glanced over her shoulder to see the cars that had been chasing them weaving closer into view.
“Oh no. Noah, come on!” she yelled in his face, but he didn’t respond. She looked up and down the road anxiously. There was no way in hell she was going to be able to carry his unconscious freaking hockey player figure to be able to run or hide.
She was going to have to leave him. Again.
Laney flung the car door open and moved to go but her hand froze on the door latch. She knit her eyebrows, heaving as she wavered for a moment. If she left him here in his condition, The Alliance would definitely get him. But if she didn’t, The Alliance would get them both.
After another second of indecision, she groaned out a curse before turning back into the car. “Noah! Dammit, wake up!” She patted his cheek even harder, short of slapping him.
And when he stirred, Laney breathed a huge sigh of relief as she flew around to his door to drag him out of the car, putting his arm over her neck and shoulders as she labored to make their way through the gap in the fence.
Gravity
Laney had a feeling that the six gargantuan guys hopping out of the two black sedans were merely dressed like college students. She tried to move faster but it wasn’t easy supporting Noah along. “Oh no—”
All at once, she felt someone pull Noah away and someone else grabbed her arm, hooking an elbow around her neck. “Agh!” She squeezed her eyes shut in pain.
But before she could gag or try to struggle away, the next thing she knew, she was hoisted up onto something and she felt a sudden rush of wind all around her.
And after a few moments, everything went silent.
Laney opened her eyes, her expression of dread transforming instantly into amazement as she looked around to find that all six goons were passed out on the ground around the cars.
Noah, his eyebrows furrowed in alert and wakefulness, had scooped her up and climbed on top of one of the black sedans before deploying whatever it was that had incapacitated everyone.
She looked up at him with an almost knowing expression. “Do I even need to ask if that was one of Berry’s weapons you sneaked through?”
Noah smirked as he set her down. “Let’s go.” He motioned for her to jump off the car. “Those guys are not going to be passed out for long,” he informed her before making a break for it through the quarantine fence.
The fog was rolling in, giving the night and the empty desert a spooky feel, but Laney shook it off as she struggled to keep up with Noah’s long strides.
His eyes were locked on his HUD as he pressed on. “I’m getting readings from right up ahead.”
Laney glanced down to check on her Zeta device as she ran to follow suit.
The device had begun to beep faster pulses in an indication of how close they were getting to the portal location.
“We’re almost there,” Noah noted.
Laney tried to catch her breath, looking up ahead in eager anticipation.
“There’s the orange cone!” they both said at the same time.
Laney and Noah looked at each other in surprise as they had pointed in two different directions.
She squinted to see more clearly in the dark and her jaw dropped again.
That entire area of the quarantine zone was littered with an assortment of orange cones.
“Oh no.”
Some of the orange cones were tattered, even crushed or flattened, even as some were pristine and looked almost new.
Noah raised his HUD to analyze the two orange cones closest to them.
“Jeez! How many Laneys have been through this world?” Laney looked bewildered. “They can’t all be portal markers.”
He frowned as he read the data. “Nope. They all are,” he told her. “Some of these cones are reading as having come from miles away. Could be that another side effect caused by the quantum event has made them all converge in this location.”
“Well, hey, if they’re all portal markers, let’s just pick one and get the hell out of here ASAP,” she began,
moving to walk toward one.
Noah caught her arm. “I’m also reading some erratic gravity readings throughout this area.”
Laney keyed off the word “erratic” and she froze, her expression turning wary. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Noah pulled her along as he stepped back. He bent down to pick up some stones. Then he flung one toward the nearest orange cone before it zoomed straight down with a crunch, piercing through the ground like a bullet, making an actual hole.
“Whoa!”
He flung another toward a second orange cone and this time, the stone catapulted straight up into the air.
“Watch out!” Laney covered her head as she tried to watch where the stone would land. She peered up at the sky. “Hey, where did it go?”
“This must be why this whole area is fenced off. They didn’t want anyone to come any closer.” He threw up his hands. “It’s a freaking gravity minefield.”
“Seriously?”
He turned his attention back to his HUD. “Stay close. I’ll map the gravity fields as they form.”
Laney held on to Noah’s arm as they navigated the gravity minefield to approach an orange cone for assessment. She winced as she started to feel droplets of rain falling from the sky. “What—?” She looked up and was going to complain again until she noticed the effect of the gravity fluctuations on the rain. There were some spots around them where the rain didn’t fall and the ground remained dry.
“Give me your hand,” Noah’s voice cut into her reverie.
Laney raised her wrist so that Noah could analyze the Zeta device readings.
“Something’s wrong.”
Laney grumbled, already annoyed. “Of course it is.”
Noah ran his hand through his hair, shaking off droplets of water. “The exact vibratory coordinates for the next world on the chain won’t resolve. Or maybe some of these cones only accept certain trajectories…”
He moved to lead them both carefully toward another orange cone to try again. “It’s still not working,” he groaned. “I can’t isolate the exact position of the next world.”
“Oh, come on!” He yelled out in aggravation as another cone failed to match and they approached yet another orange cone.
Laney looked down at the Zeta device on her wrist in helpless dejection then out of the corner of her eye, she noticed several orange cones seem to stir.
But Noah was doing some magic on his HUD and Laney’s ears perked up at the familiar sound of the wind rising as a result of the forming quantum shear.
“Wait, I think I have something—,” he began.
“Stop, stop.” She grabbed his arm. “Stop that for a sec.”
She gestured to a couple of orange cones which she could then visibly see were slowly, inexplicably, moving on their own. “Are you seeing this?” she asked, a bit of dread creeping into her tone.
He consulted his HUD for a moment before his expression darkened.
“What?”
He moved toward another orange cone. “We have to get out of here now.”
But she held him back, warily. “What’s going on?”
Noah looked hesitant to explain. “The exit trace we’re trying to open,” he started. “It’s disrupting the electromagnetic levels in this entire area. It looks like all the gravity wells are trying to converge. And if all the gravity wells come together, it’s going to become a single massive event.”
“A black hole?” Laney had to raise her voice to be audible as the rain had begun to fall harder.
“And it’s going to swallow the whole state and who knows what else.”
Her eyes widened in alarmed devastation.
Was she about to destroy this entire state? This entire world? Was she going to ruin the lives of every living being here too just so she could go home?
Noah read her expression. “I’m sorry, Laney, but we need to get a move on. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”
Laney blinked through the rain, her heart almost stopping.
No. That was Eleanor.
Eleanor was the one who didn’t care about ethics and morality and was willing to sacrifice everything to advance her own goals.
Unless… Laney felt sick to her stomach. Was she Eleanor now?
“I’ve got it!” Noah exclaimed all of a sudden.
Laney swallowed hard in remorse. “Wait—” Except when she stepped back, she felt the rain stop falling completely and her eyes popped open in recognition. “Oh no shit—!”
The gravity fluctuation had shot her up into the air in an instant, and the next thing she knew, something tugged on her arm. She looked down in amazement.
Noah had abandoned the forming quantum shear and somehow shot a rope up from his HUD from the ground to latch on to her. She looked up to see that the rest of her was flailing upward into the dark sky.
“Hold on, Laney!” Noah called out.
The wind was whipping rain sideways into Laney’s face and she felt the upward pull of gravity increase and Noah’s rope began to slip off from around her muddy arm. “Oh no!” She struggled to grab the rope with both hands, before looking back at Noah again, horrified distress written all over her face.
But his gaze was pinned on his HUD. “Hang on! The gravity fields are about to shift again,” he yelled out.
“Help me!” Laney cried out, breathing in short gasps, holding on for dear life as she also didn’t want to catapult into orbit either. Her heart pounded in her chest. “It’s getting harder to hold on!”
Noah was pulling hard on the rope. His eyes widened as he felt the ground shake from underneath him, making him lose his footing, slipping in the mud for a second. He looked around as the trembling continued. “Oh no.”
Laney looked on in horror. From up high, she could see several massive networks of cracks appearing on the wet ground across the quarantine zone, accompanied by a loud rumbling, as the shaking continued.
Without warning, the upward tug of gravity on her ceased and she began to hurtle back down to earth. “Oh no!” She squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of the pain as she fell from some twenty feet in the air.
But it was a shorter fall than she expected.
“Ohh—” She still groaned from the impact. She opened her eyes and looked around. The earthquake had caused parts of the ground to plateau. It was still quaking beneath her as the ledge kept rising. She peered over the edge to see Noah down a thirty-foot drop, across what looked like a six-foot-wide canyon that was being gouged across the desert, with several orange cones and chunks of earth crumbling and falling into its dark abyss.
“Noah!” Laney was panicked.
The earthquake had knocked Noah on his back. He managed to get back on his feet and looked up to follow her voice. His eyes were urgent. “This world is about to collapse!”
“No kidding!”
He squinted through the rain, consulting his HUD again, his forehead creased in deep thought. “Laney,” he began out loud after a moment. “You’re going to have to jump to me.” His statement was punctuated by a flash of lightning.
Laney shot him a look of disbelief as she struggled to get up. “Are you crazy? There’s no way I can jump across this.”
“Laney, you have to. I’ll catch you. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry?” she echoed, aghast. “Don’t tell me not to worry. That’s a stupid thing to say.”
The ground trembled again and Laney fell on her knees.
“I’m tracking a gravitational anomaly. I’ll jump up to catch you, Laney,” Noah explained, sounding frustrated that he couldn’t elaborate further. “There’s no time to explain the math right now.”
“Math?” She looked incredulous. “What does math have to do with anything?”
“Look, just—when I say ‘now’, you have to jump across to me, okay?”
Laney’s stomach turned as she stared into the dark depths of the chasm between them. She was surely going to fall into it. She couldn’t figure out what
the hell was going on in Noah’s brain. She was heaving as she straightened up, struggling to keep her balance. Was he really making her jump off a cliff?
Noah glanced down at his HUD briefly and when he called out to her again, there was a hitch in his tone, mixed in with confident reassurance.
“Trust me.”
Laney’s gaze snapped to his and the look in his eyes silenced her doubts.
Because she understood. Because she knew.
She swallowed hard, getting ready.
“NOW!”
And Laney leaped off the cliff.
Feedback
“Ohh!” Laney fell on top of Noah and the two of them sprawled on the floor.
Noah coughed out a groan, squeezing his eyes shut to recover from the quantum jump. He was probably having difficulty breathing with Laney’s entire weight on him restricting his airflow but he kept holding on to her as though it was a force of habit.
They were both still soaked through from the rain.
But they were indoors now. Somewhere.
Laney’s head shot up with a gasp, almost already in distress over whatever threat their new surroundings posed.
The hallway was dark, deserted.
She could just make out what looked like shelves or trolleys parked alongside a corridor of closed doors. The place smelled like alcohol and formaldehyde that Laney figured they must be in some sort of hospital.
She took a deep breath in an attempt to stop heaving.
Despite it looking as though they were safe for the moment, she was still having trouble willing her pulse to settle down since she had just almost fallen into a dark chasm to her death.
If Noah hadn’t managed to hitch a ride on a gravity fluctuation to catch her and then open up a quantum shear exit trace at the exact right moment, Laney figured they both would have been done for.
Even in the faint light, she easily met his gaze when he opened his eyes again and she couldn’t help a nervous, extremely relieved chuckle.
“I can’t believe we made it,” she remarked in awe.
A slow smile spread across his face as he looked up at her.
Her gaze distracted to where her fingers were involuntarily stroking his hair and she furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh.”