by S Breaker
Laney bit her lip and turned back to Red again. “Please.” She didn’t know what else to try. She took a long shot. “I’m just like you,” she started. “I’m trying to right a wrong, trying to set things right—”
“LOOK AROUND!” Red whirled around, cutting her off, so loud she made Laney wince. Her eyes blazed in anger, betraying the cool and calm façade she had been effectively representing as she gestured around them. “This is what’s wrong! This is what interdimensional breaches have done to us! We’re not the bad guys here. We just want to end this.”
Red stopped, taking a moment as if to even herself out, and her expression turned calm again.
But Laney had gone still, her gaze empty.
Noah started in alarm, almost already knowing what was going to happen next.
And when Laney started to scream so loud, it startled Verren, making him let her go.
Laney’s hands flew up to either side of her head again, her legs immediately turning to jelly, before she collapsed on the floor, seizing violently.
“Laney!” Noah called out, his voice still hoarse.
The look in Red’s eyes was critical at the most as she merely watched Laney have a fit on the floor. “What’s going on?”
Noah’s expression was urgent. “She’s having a ‘bleed through’,” he snapped. “Untie me! I have to help her.”
Red looked mildly puzzled. “What is a ‘bleed through’?”
“I have to help her! Let me go!”
“I’ll get a sedative,” Verren said, rushing to a table.
“Verren, did we give her something that could cause this?” Red wanted to know.
“Not me.” He shook his head as he prepared a shot in a syringe.
Laney was still crumpled on the floor, shrieking like a banshee, racked in pain, her hands pressed to her head.
“Do something!” Noah demanded, struggling against his bindings so forcefully he was managing to rattle the heavy slab.
“Oh, this is a trick, isn’t it?” Red’s eyes shone. “It’s some kind of diversion.”
“For god’s sake, let me go!”
Laney was still convulsing on the floor, the ‘bleed through’ having lasted longer than her previous episode in the car. Then after another minute, she stopped moving altogether and fell slack on the floor.
And everything was quiet.
Verren looked over, vile of sedative still in his hand.
Noah’s eyes widened. “What happened?” He looked frantically back and forth between Red and Verren. “What happened? Answer me!” He struggled even harder against his bindings, jerking up as though he wanted to tear them all apart with his bare hands. “Laney!” he yelled, but all he could do was look on in distress as Laney stayed still. She didn’t respond or stir or breathe. “Laney!”
Red raised an eyebrow as she cautiously stepped up to Laney to nudge her in the side with the toe of her shoe.
Nothing.
Noah looked ashen. “What have you done? Laney! No!”
Verren walked over and bent down to check Laney’s vitals. It didn’t take him long. He looked up to meet Red’s gaze with a slight shrug.
Noah’s eyebrows furrowed in protest. “No. No! You’re wrong. Check again!” he demanded. “I said check her again!” He was heaving in despair, a lump in his throat.
Verren straightened up, stuffing his hands in his lab coat pockets.
Red eyed Laney’s dead body. “Hmm.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “We should probably get someone to clean that up.”
Noah shot the two of them a look of disbelief. “What the hell is wrong with you people? You just—” he broke off, dropping his gaze, his chest constricting as though he’d been torn apart.
Red put her hands up as though she couldn’t understand the intensity of his anger. “What?” Then she gestured a wave at Verren, presumably to go get someone to “clean it up.” “It’s just as well. We couldn’t study her anyway,” she went on in the most casual of tones.
She watched Verren disappear past the plastic sheet curtain. “And even if we were so inclined, we couldn’t figure out where to send her back either.” She shrugged. “As far as we could tell, her world doesn’t exist.”
“Of course her world exists,” Noah replied, glaring murderously up at Red.
“Well, we couldn’t detect it. Unless…” she trailed off and after a moment, her eyes cleared. “Ohhh…”
“Oh, what?”
“Oh, that is fascinating,” Red murmured in awe, her expression glazed in deep thought.
He studied her expression. “Something was happening to her homeworld.” He narrowed his eyes in conclusion. “And you know what it is.”
She waved him away.
“Tell me!” he demanded.
Red rolled her eyes. “Oh, calm down.” She regarded him with a plain look. “Ever…snag your arm on a tree branch, running in the woods? Or by the looks of you, your training obstacle course?” she amended.
“What happens next?” she went on to prompt. “You get a little gash, might bleed a little, maybe a lot. But guess what? The human body is a wonderful thing.” She tilted her head. “You tell me. You’ll know the answer to this, Mr. Genius. What happens to an open wound after a few days, say, maybe even after a few weeks?”
Noah blinked as the answer popped into his head. “It heals…”
Red looked self-satisfied. “Precisely,” she said. “Will you believe me when I say that the multiverse likely has the same nature?”
He looked thrown. “What are you saying? You’re saying that her homeworld is healing itself? Reforming itself around a configuration wherein Laney no longer exists?”
“Wherein she never existed,” she enunciated. “And I didn’t say ‘healing’,” she corrected. “I mean she seemed so desperate, it must have been a while ago now. By this point, I’m betting it’s healed itself already.”
“No.”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
She threw up her hands in incredulous disbelief. “Come on! She’s been displaced for eight months? Even celery grows faster than that.” Then she smacked her palm on her forehead at her epiphany. “That’s why she was so fuzzy on our scans!” Then she blew out a breath. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
Noah swallowed hard.
He felt weak.
He closed his eyes.
Out of Mind
Laney opened her eyes.
She was lying on the floor.
What the hell just happened?
Her heart began to pound.
Danger.
Her eyes popped wide as she tried to look around without moving but upon seeing nobody else around, she figured she could lift her head to check again.
The lab was empty.
Laney groaned, pushing through the pain to get up. Her head felt like it was split in two, she felt sore all over, and something under her ear was throbbing badly. She felt up her neck.
Her CCL! Her eyes lit up as everything came rushing back to her.
She must have had a ‘bleed through.’ But how was she still alive?
Then she blinked in the recall. “Oh shit. Noah,” she mumbled in alarm, whirling around to see Noah still bound to the heavy slab, unconscious again.
Except for this time, it didn’t look like he was breathing.
Oh no. She bit her lip as she rushed over.
She was looking around the lab fervently to figure out how to free him when someone caught her from behind. “Aagh!”
Verren had wound his arm around Laney’s neck in a chokehold. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed. “Did you have a good nap?”
Laney coughed, trying her best to struggle free, her arms flailing on either side. “Ugh,” she croaked.
“How are you alive?” he demanded. “What are you?” He squeezed her neck. “Tell me!”
She wailed in pain, racking her brain in distress, but she was no match for him. Then her
eyes caught Noah’s stuff on the table and she tried to make a break for it, hoping to catch Verren off-guard with her sudden movement.
But he slammed her against the table, his grip around her neck tightening. “You know, if it was up to me, you’d all be dead by now,” he relayed with a sneer.
Laney was waving her hand over the table desperately as she choked, scattering objects around, some of them dropping on the floor with a loud clatter.
“The boss thinks you should all be studied, but I think that’s giving you too much credit,” Verren spoke hoarsely. “You know I lost my whole family in a sinkhole, caused by that damn spacetime disruption. One that swallowed three cities.”
Laney cried out loud as she stretched to try to reach for something, her fingertips just brushing against it. Just a little bit closer… She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration and only felt her fingers close around a little cylinder.
The next thing Verren knew, Laney had jabbed the memory serum syringe right into his arm.
“Aaahh!” Verren screeched. “What the hell was that?” he asked, seemingly not even hurt at all and still holding on to her.
Laney’s eyes were smarting from desperation. She had zero options left. She was close to passing out. She peeked up at Noah still unconscious on the slab. Noah… She tried to wheeze in enough air into her lungs, trying to kick and struggle loose from Verren’s python-like grip.
Almost at her last breath, Verren’s grip loosened and he finally collapsed on the floor.
Laney sprang away, grabbing onto the table for support, gasping and coughing, trying to suck in oxygen until her throat felt raw.
She staggered toward the slab where Noah was, examining some buttons closely until she found the release button and he collapsed off the slab, falling right onto her. “Oh, ow,” she groaned as he was too heavy for her to hold upright. She sank on the floor with him.
He still didn’t seem to be breathing.
Laney furrowed her eyebrows, shifting to prop his head on her lap, even with her hands shaking. She glanced up furtively to see if Verren’s racket had caught anyone else’s attention but it seemed they were in luck.
She looked down at Noah, trying to focus so as not to completely freak out. “Noah. Noah?” She patted his cheek lightly at first then harder. “Oh please, please, please.” She brushed his hair off his forehead. “Wake up. Please wake up. Please be alive.”
She gritted her teeth, looking around again. If Red came back, they would both be done for. “Noah? Come on, do you hear me? We have to go now. Wake up,” she urged, stroking his cheek.
Noah didn’t wake up, didn’t respond, didn’t move.
Laney frowned, a wave of annoyance coming over her. “Dammit, Noah,” she cursed, her teeth clenched. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing. Wake the hell up!”
But he remained still, lifeless, his face pale.
Her breath caught in her throat.
What if Noah was dead?
She would really have to leave him.
Laney’s shoulders sank, her entire being felt heavy. She sat with an empty stare, having almost lost the will to move altogether. Her stomach felt like a pit.
It felt different to leave him knowing he would simply be stuck on another world, as opposed to knowing it wouldn’t make a difference because he was actually gone.
Noah was gone.
There was a deep stinging ache forming inside her.
It felt like it was cutting right through.
And a part of her was slowly sinking into a deep, dark abyss.
Noah…
Just then, with a deep breath, Noah’s eyes opened.
Laney’s eyes lit up. “Noah?”
His eyelids were heavy when he met her gaze. “Laney?” he spoke uncertainly, as if in awed reverence.
She felt like laughing out loud. Her smile almost cracked her face, her chest constricting in incredible relief and disbelief, her eyes watering as she cradled his face in her hands. “Hi.”
His forehead was creased, his voice quiet. “I thought I lost you.”
She sniffed, managing to tone down her smile, not to mention her racing pulse. “I thought I lost you.”
He groaned as he tried to sit up. “How did you—are you okay? I thought you…died just now.”
Laney shook her head quickly as she helped him to stand up and gather up his stuff. “I have no idea but right now, you have to help me.” She hastened toward the quantum jump machine. First things first. “We need to destroy this thing.”
“What?” he grunted lightly as he put his jacket back on.
“Come on.” She waved him over. “You’re the scientist. You need to disable it. Make sure that girl can’t open up a quantum shear to invade your world. Do you know how?”
Noah’s eyebrows rose. “Do I know how to tamper with what’s basically an electromagnetic generator?” His tone was almost mocking.
“Without hurting anybody,” Laney amended, meeting his gaze pointedly. “This ship has tens of thousands of innocent people on it.”
He rolled his eyes, groaning again as he bent down under the mechanism to have a look. “I’m hurt, but who cares, right?”
Laney was craning her neck, keeping a lookout. She put her hands on her hips and peered over his shoulder. “You figure it out?”
He grunted in the effort. “Back at GNR, eight months ago, it was the main capacitor that had blown out and I’m betting…aha!” He pulled out a little shelf compartment from under the enclosure. “They use the same approach. The raw material these things use takes decades to regenerate, so all we’ll need to do is—”
“STOP!”
Laney whirled around upon hearing Red’s voice call out from the doorway. She put her hand up and shot Red a warning look. “Stay back!”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Red’s tone was low, grave.
“Oh, I think he does.” Laney gestured to Noah.
Noah straightened up from underneath the quantum jump machine, eyeing Red warily, even as he held the extracted machine component in his hands.
“You’re about to destroy years of hard work,” Red pointed out, her eyes wide in urgency.
Laney shot her a mocking look. “Then maybe you should have put your years of hard work to better use. You think we’re just going to let your giant invasion army attack Noah’s world?”
Red looked at her, almost in astonishment. “That’s what you think we’re trying to do? You think that’s my mission?”
Laney cast Noah a puzzled glance before prompting Red, “If not that, then what?”
Red shook her head in resolve. “There’s no way I’m risking opening another hole in the universe. If we let these incursions keep happening, the entire spacetime continuum will unravel. It will destroy us all,” she declared.
Laney’s jaw almost dropped as it dawned on her. “You’re trying to—”
“I’m trying to trigger a countering chain reaction to fix your mess. And our data suggests it starts with his world. Like I said before, we’re not the bad guys here. All we want is to end this. Everywhere,” Red stated. “Nobody should have this capability. It’s for the good of everyone. We need to close the window.”
Laney leaned slightly toward Noah. “Can she really do that?”
“I’d imagine the technology required to open a quantum shear is similar to one that can seal it,” Noah replied, his eyes narrowed in disdain.
But Red’s gaze was pinned on Laney. “Tell me the truth, Miss Carter. You want the interdimensional shears sealed just as much as I do, don’t you? You understand the danger it poses. You’ve seen it first-hand. Heck, it’s the reason you’re stuck here to begin with.”
Laney’s mouth dropped open slightly as Red’s words hit home.
Noah frowned at Laney’s expression. “Laney, don’t listen to her,” he advised. “Besides, if she closes the window now, you’ll be trapped in this dimension. And you know damn well, they’ll just keep you in a box for the
rest of your life.” He glanced at her. “We don’t belong here. We need to go home.”
Red blinked at him. “Oh.” She caught on a slightly quizzical expression. “You haven’t told her.”
Laney felt another deep pit in her stomach. “Told me what?”
Red gave her a wan look. “Honey, you have nowhere to go. Your homeworld has reset. Just like I told your boyfriend.”
Laney turned stunned eyes over to Noah.
He met her gaze, an off-guard hint of guilt in his eyes. “I was going to tell you.”
But Laney furrowed her eyebrows, the wheels in her head spinning. What if it was true? If she couldn’t go home, then did it really matter anymore where she went? Would it matter anymore what happened to her?
She met Red’s steely gaze again before looking up at Noah.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the solution. To close all the interdimensional windows. Even if it meant she was trapped here forever.
“Laney?” Noah looked wary.
“What if she’s right?” Laney’s voice was quiet.
“What do you mean ‘what if she’s right’?”
She gave him a meaningful look. “This technology. It is dangerous. Maybe we do need to seal all the interdimensional windows.”
He looked determined. “Laney, I know you want to fix this. First of all, it’s not your mess. But second of all, whether she’s right or not, sacrificing your life is not the solution to anything.” Then he tossed a glance back at Red. “Besides, she could be lying,” he accused out loud. “We can’t trust her.”
Red chuckled in her throat. “You think I care if you believe me?” She moved her hand slowly and before Laney could figure out what she was doing, Red’s little silver handgun was already aimed straight at Laney’s face. “I’ve got work to do.”
Laney froze.
“Now step away from the machine. Both of you.” Red flicked her weapon to gesture them to move.
Noah’s eyes were pinned on Red’s weapon as he stepped sideways, not wanting to make any sudden movements.
“Put the capacitor down,” Red told Noah, training the weapon onto him.
Laney narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to shoot him. You need him to make your machine work.”