Selfless Series Box Set

by S Breaker

  She couldn’t seem to stop touching his hair, the sides of his face.

  He didn’t stop her either.

  Her heart began to pound in her chest, and when her eyes met his again, there was no mistaking the intensity in it. His stormy blue eyes were practically searing into her.

  “I thought I told you to stop saving my life all the time,” she chided softly, a slight jest in her tone.

  Noah’s arms tightened around her in response, his voice low. “Last time I promise.”

  She could feel his heart pounding in his chest against hers even through his clothes and she felt a warm shiver course through her. Her fingers grazed his bottom lip as her gaze dropped to it.

  It wouldn’t have taken much. She only needed to dip her head a couple of inches for her lips to catch his. Even less when he lifted his head to willingly receive her.

  BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

  Laney jumped, startled, instantly pulling back.

  Noah groaned in acute displeasure, his head falling back onto the floor and he muttered a sharp curse. “Whatever the hell it is, ignore it,” he told her, the roughness in his voice resembling gravel.

  She gave him a pointed look as she pushed up off of him. “It’s from the Zeta device, Noah.”

  “I don’t care if it’s from a weapon of mass destruction right now. That timing sucks.”

  She bit her lip from the fiery look in his eyes. Honestly, she was disappointed too. And for the first time, she didn’t feel any regret or remorse about their almost kiss.

  It was incredibly liberating.

  She cast him an amused smirk. “At ease, soldier.”

  He chuckled in his throat.

  She moved to settle cross-legged on the floor to check the device on her wrist. “Hmm.” She curled her lips. “That’s weird. There’s something wrong with this. Looks like it’s on the fritz.”

  “What?” Noah sat up, alerted, an instant crease of concern on his forehead. “Show me,” he beckoned her over so he could inspect the device. His face blanked. “That’s not good.”

  She wrinkled her nose as she tapped on the Zeta device’s garbled screen in an unsuccessful attempt to clear it.

  Then she heard Noah curse again.

  He was checking his own HUD, an irritated frown on his face. “Dammit. That last jump must have damaged my HUD too.”

  “Oh.” The hairs on the back of her neck stood up in ominous apprehension. Without their devices, it would be near impossible to find the next exit trace or even to figure out where they were.

  “Where do you suppose we are then? What is this place?” Laney scanned up and down the hallway again.

  But Noah was still grumbling over his broken HUD in extreme aggravation, and Laney figured, despite its origins, to Noah, losing his HUD must have felt as though he had lost an appendage.

  She squinted enough to make out a window to a room across the way. “Hey.” She tapped on his shoulder. “Look. An office.”

  “So?”

  She rolled her eyes. “So if you stop crying over your broken toy for two seconds, maybe you could try to take a peek inside and see if there’s anything useful in there that might tell us where we are. You know, a company logo, a stationery header, a postage-paid envelope,” she supplied, half in mocking.

  Noah blinked at her, snapping out of his daze. He looked almost surprised at her reasoning, but he just sneaked toward the window and craned his neck to look. His posture eased as he found the office empty, only to immediately stiffen again, his eyes widening in flat dread.

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh no, what? Where are we?”

  He signaled for her to come up to the window. “Look when we are.” He gestured to a calendar propped on top of a table.

  Laney checked the flip calendar and her blood ran cold. Then she looked up the brass clock that was mounted on the wall inside the room as well.

  “Oh. No.”

  20th March 2020 was the date.

  8:55 p.m. was the time.

  She looked around. “Do you think—?”

  He was already nodding. “Yup. We’ve gotta be at GNR.”

  Laney made a retching noise. “Perfect.”

  “Well, the good news is, at least we know exactly where we can locate a quantum shear exit trace.” He looked around, trying to recognize by sight in which part of the lab they were.

  “Do you know how to get to the jump platform from here?” she wanted to know.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he replied, straightening up.

  She straightened up herself, but before she could move to brush past him, he stepped in her way, standing almost close enough to her that she could feel his warmth. She looked up at him expectantly.

  His gaze on her was heavy with unsaid words. “Listen, Laney…” he began under his breath.

  It was enough to make her stomach flutter but then he lifted his hand to touch her cheek and her heart skipped a beat.

  She covered his hand with hers, giving him a small smile. “I know.” She acknowledged with a nod. “We can talk later.”

  His eyebrow rose in suggestion. “Talk?”

  Another streak of thrilled anticipation shot through her but she just waved for him to get going. “Come on, Noah,” she teased. “Don’t you remember? Time is of the essence.”

  He smirked and motioned for her to follow him down the hall.

  Laney tried to make out the strange shadows and shapes in the dark hallway. So far, she didn’t recognize anything, so she figured they must be in a completely different part of the humungous lab complex.

  The creepy feel of her surroundings brought her back down to reality and her anxiety intensified as she registered the actual gravity of the situation.

  “I can’t believe we’re back here,” she said, her face sullen.

  “There’s no telling where we are,” Noah supplied with a solemn tone. “It may just be a different alternate dimension that just so happens to have the same lab, the same standard-issue GNR coffee mugs,” he drawled. “The same bake sale fundraiser.” He pointed to the cupcake poster on the bulletin board before nonchalantly gesturing to the small window to the outside that they passed by. “The same interdimensional invading force assembled outside.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Either way, we have to be careful. Good thing I still remember where the guards would be posted. We really can’t be caught this time,” he pointed out. “The last thing we’re going to want to have to deal with right now is a time loop paradox.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. What is that?”

  “Never mind,” Noah dismissed. “I just want to get the hell out of here ASAP.”

  “Ditto. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Laney rubbed her hands over her arms.

  He looked at her. “That doesn’t sound good. What is that?”

  “Never mind.” She smirked in mocking. “I just mean I have really bad memories of this place.”

  A shadow crossed Noah’s face and he looked away. “Me too.”

  Laney stopped short as she realized what he meant. “Oh shit. I’m—so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  Noah looked like he was a million miles away. “You won’t believe how much badgering Berry had to do to make me agree to dismantle the quantum jump platform to build the smaller form factor.” The struggle was obvious in his tone but he tried to joke about it. “We’d worked for months trying to reverse the effects of the energy wave that had taken Eleanor. But I understood.” He pursed his lips. “We had to make sure that the new version wouldn’t be capable of sending the multiverse into oblivion again.”

  Laney watched as a tortured expression flashed across his face. It was a though he was reliving the past eight months of his loss in his mind.

  There was an unexpected constriction in her chest and she wanted to kick herself for stirring up those bad memories.

  But there was a strange look on Noah’s face when he spoke again. “I have to admit it took a while
for me to accept the fact. You know…that Eleanor was gone.”

  Laney made a face. She almost felt the silence that followed choke her, as it was a stark reminder of the secret that she had promised Berry she wouldn’t tell Noah. And it was beginning to burn a hole in her conscience.

  She cringed in tension. “What if she’s not…? Gone, that is.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, almost in ridicule.

  “What if…you could get Eleanor back?”

  He shot her a look. “What do you mean?”

  And she caught the brief spark that flickered in his eyes.

  That was his hope of being reunited with Eleanor—his long-time girlfriend, his actual fiancée, the Laney from his own parallel world with whom he could actually be.

  For a split second, Laney felt a strong wave of jealousy, and possessiveness, and confusion. And she chickened out. “Um, nothing,” she mumbled and she turned to keep moving so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  Noah watched her in puzzlement.

  But before he could say anything, there was a concentrated bright glow around the corner and he winced, alerted, motioning for them to press back against the wall as he crept forward to investigate.

  Laney followed cautiously behind him but then it dawned on her exactly what could be glowing at the end of the hallway.

  It appeared that she and Noah had found themselves in a hallway which led to some scaffolding that overhung a very familiar scene transpiring below.

  “Oh god,” she breathed in recognition. “It’s happening again.”

  It almost felt like she was watching a show. Not counting the handful of lab assistants operating the machinery and the soldiers, Laney recognized the four main characters in the scene.

  Off to one side was Noah, being held at rifle-point by three faceless military goons. The megalomaniac General Blakely was holding onto Eleanor’s arm as they stood beside a control panel. And then there was a Laney, who was trapped in the quantum jump platform receptacle as she was about to be used as some type of energy conduit.

  No. It wasn’t a show. It was real.

  Laney vividly recalled the helpless, terrified, panicked sensation she’d felt from being trapped in that godforsaken platform receptacle. She tried to shake the feeling off, even as her heart was already pounding in distress.

  She looked up at Noah, but his face had an unusually curious and strangely wondrous expression on it. “What is it?”

  Noah murmured, “She’s still alive. I can save her.”

  Laney thought she’d misheard. “What?”

  But Noah went on, almost eagerly. “You were right. She’s not gone yet. There wasn’t enough time to save her before, but now there’s two of me. I can save Eleanor.”

  She shot him a look of incredulous disbelief. “What? Noah, no! That’s not what I meant. You heard what Berry said. We’re not supposed to have any contact with our other selves. It could jeopardize everything.”

  “Could,” he echoed. “Or maybe Berry was wrong and nothing’s going to happen.”

  Laney couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No! You said it yourself, remember? There’s some things we shouldn’t mess with,” she reminded him.

  But Noah was quick and stealthy. Before Laney even noticed, he had started to move down the ladder toward the ground level.

  Ohh shit. Laney hissed out a curse as she had no choice but to follow suit, hoping that everybody else would be otherwise preoccupied to notice the two of them climbing down the side of the huge hangar lab.

  As soon as Laney was close enough to the ground, she jumped off the ladder to catch up to Noah who was marching straight toward the quantum jump platform.

  “Noah, stop it!” she whispered hoarsely as she pulled on his arm, tugging him back into the darkness behind the corner wall.

  “Let me go, Laney. I have to do this.”

  Laney tried to meet his gaze, her grip on his arm tight. “Think about it, Noah,” she implored. “We have no idea where we really are. This might not even be the same parallel world. Even if we save her here in this dimension, it still won’t change what’s already happened on yours.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Noah, you’re being totally irrational. Snap out of it!”

  “I said let me go,” Noah insisted.

  Blakely’s laughter rang in the air.

  The sound made Laney’s stomach turn.

  It was almost time.

  Noah was struggling even harder against her, trying to break free.

  Just then, a bright violet light illuminated the entire lab.

  Noah’s eyes were full of urgency. “That’s the kickback. I have to save her!”

  “Noah—NO!” Laney cried out and with all the strength she could muster, she grabbed and very nearly slammed him back against the wall to pin him against it.

  His eyes were ablaze with the light when she met his gaze.

  “Eleanor has the lo-jack necklace!” she yelled in his face at the same time that Blakely’s scream rang in the air.

  “NO!”

  Noah’s eyes widened at her statement and he instantly stopped struggling.

  But Laney squeezed her own eyes shut, turning back to bury her face in Noah’s chest. She didn’t want to watch everything happen again.

  Noah clenched his jaw as he put his arm protectively around Laney, his heart pounding, and all he could do was watch as Eleanor and Blakely’s images got dissolved by the quantum jump platform energy wave all over again.

  And all the power in the entire lab facility, across the thirty kilometers between France and Switzerland, went out in a blink, accompanied by all the lab staff’s moans Oohhh in unison.

  And after a few minutes, everything was quiet again.

  Compensate

  She should have known. She did know.

  Even Berry had told Laney that Noah would be obsessed with getting Eleanor back. And given the opportunity, Noah would take it every single time.

  Laney’s face felt hot and she couldn’t help the sharp stinging in her chest even as she clutched at Noah’s shirt.

  She pulled away slightly, sneaking a look up at him. She was dreading what she would find in his eyes.

  Noah was standing frozen, a seemingly shattering degree of remorse in his eyes.

  Laney clearly remembered how devastated he had looked when he had lost Eleanor the first time. She couldn’t even imagine what it must be like for him to have to go through those emotions again. Especially since he had an opportunity to save her this time around. She’d always had a feeling he had regretted which one of them he had saved.

  She was right.

  Incredibly loyal. That’s what Maia had said he was.

  Noah would still do anything for Eleanor. She was the one he truly loved.

  Laney stepped back from him, a deep furrow on her brows. “I’m sorry.”

  But she told herself she had done the right thing. Of course she had. They couldn’t risk any more damage to the spacetime continuum than there already was.

  She blinked in the recall of just the previous parallel world they had been to and what may have happened to it as a result of their opening up another quantum shear to escape.

  There was another one of her in that reality. And another Darla. Another Kevin.

  Normal people living their normal lives. And it was highly conceivable that their entire alternate world had just been sucked into a convergence of gravity and could be no more.

  Because of her.

  She shook her head, almost feeling sick.

  Because of her, Eleanor had been lost to the quantum shear eight months ago. Because of her, every alternate dimension she’d ever been to had been irreparably damaged and/or was possibly gone completely.

  Now she was getting all hung up over someone else’s fiancé. And all this despite herself already having a boyfriend.

  Had a boyfriend?

  Her chest tightened. She couldn’t even recall one single thin
g she’d done in the past week that was of any virtue.

  To think, she’d spent all this time worrying about what if Noah was the bad guy, when the truth was that she was the bad guy.

  She watched the other pair of Noah and Laney recovering by the other side of the disabled quantum jump platform.

  Her heart pounded in her chest as memories of that particular exchange flooded her senses.

  It seemed so long ago, even though it had only been a few months.

  She couldn’t possibly have imagined at the time what was in store for them next. So much had happened since.

  And yet…

  There was a lump in her throat as the same realization struck her again.

  She hadn’t belonged there. And she hadn’t belonged with him.

  She still didn’t.

  The other Noah and Laney finally straightened up to leave the lab.

  Laney’s eyebrows were still furrowed when she looked back at the Noah beside her in the shadows. She took a deep breath, as though finally reconciling with the truth and she regarded him with a plain look. “Are you okay?”

  Noah met her gaze and somehow recognized the concession in her eyes. “Laney…” he started, already intent on explaining.

  “It’s fine,” she dismissed, dropping her gaze and taking another breath. “I totally understand. Eleanor was your fiancée. You love her. You’ve always loved her. Of course you wanted to save her. I’m so sorry.”

  He clenched his jaw again.

  “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the necklace. When you get back to your world, you can work with Berry to try to get the Laney you love back,” she suggested with an encouraging shrug before moving to walk toward the quantum jump platform. “Now, let’s better do this before those soldiers wake up or before the other you comes back.”

  He caught her arm again. “Wait. Laney. You don’t understand,” he stated. He gave her a pointed look as though in incredulity of how she could still possibly doubt him. “It wasn’t love. It was…”

  “What?”

  “Guilt.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him in question.

  Noah sighed after a moment. “The truth is, I wanted to save Eleanor because…” He shrugged a little. “Because I knew, even if I had to make the same choice again, I would have always saved you.” His chest felt tight from holding back, but there was no escaping the truth.