Copula Chronicles: The Complete Collection: Origin, Descend, Ascend, Legacy

by Venessa Kimball

  I tried to hold on to both him and Sam when we fell. Wherever we landed, I needed answers from him, even if I had to beat it out of him. But once we were in the vortex, the propulsion and pull of energy surrounding us was so strong, I couldn’t keep my eyes on them even though I held on for dear life. The few seconds I was able to open my eyes against the intense spin, the blinding light the wormhole produced kept me from seeing much of anything. I was losing consciousness quickly with the amount of pressure inside the vortex and the tighter I held on to Sam and Nate, the weaker I became. My body felt like it was stretching in all directions, my muscle tissue being drawn slow and deep. My description sounds more painful than it was. It wasn’t painful once I passed out. But before that happened, the weightlessness took over. It sounds strange, but it’s like I became a part of the swirl of the vortex, stretched and pulled along the lines of the wormhole. Not humanly possible, but that’s why I passed out I assume––my body rejected the law of physics being broken along with my body. How could something like that ever revert to human form? I know. That’s my question every time.

  Just before I blacked out, I lost my grip on Nate and Sam. A wave of intense heat hit so forcefully, it physically knocked me away from them and took my breath. As I got my bearings, I tried to breathe in air, but there was none––oxygen ceased to exist in the spin. I panicked as I tried to breathe having not experienced this sensation in my traverse between Earth and Dobria. Suddenly a blast of icy cold air attacks my body, sending me into a full-bodied seizure of tightened limbs––instant rigor mortis. Thinking back now, that could have very well been us passing through the event horizon of the black hole––maybe through the event horizon of the white hole on the other side.

  A sound accustomed to our world brings me to––birds chirping. Sensing the bright light of the sky above me, I open my eyes slowly. I blink a few times to clear my blurry vision, revealing a small figure hovering above me to my right. It’s a boy, maybe five years old. I don’t try to sit up. I stay very still, not wanting to scare him off.

  His brown, curly hair hangs just above his brow and he is wearing a white button-down shirt. I look around us cautiously. Was there anyone else with him? Surely he isn’t alone.

  The boy studies my small, cautious movements with his startling blue eyes as I turn my head ever so slightly to check for Nate and Sam’s whereabouts. I see Nate a few feet away to my right and relief washes over me. I’d hoped he hadn’t fallen too far away from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the child’s movement–– stepping away from me. I slowly step backwards toward Nate’s body, careful not to startle the boy anymore than I already have. Nate’s face down on the grass. I need to check if he’s breathing––please God, let him be breathing. As I make the smallest movements, I take in the environment. It looks like a park––large trees, a few sidewalks intersecting each other. It’s familiar for some reason. I notice the leaves turning orange like they did on campus back in Georgia. This isn’t our world though––not my campus in Georgia. Where is this?

  I only lose focus for a moment, but that’s long enough for the sole witness of our arrival to have vanished. I quickly turn to tend to Nate and I’m met with the same blue transfixed eyes of the boy, now standing over Nate staring at me. The stark blue of his eyes suddenly transform, filling from the irises out with the color of onyx. His thin lined and unanimated lips, suddenly twitch at the corner, then widen in what might very well be a smile, until it stretches beyond what’s humanly possible. The angles of his teeth, all canine and sharp are revealed as his cheekbones raise and protrude, stretching the confines of his skin farther. Suddenly, the shifted image of the child blurs and his face is as it was moments ago––a simple, human-like, angelic looking child with the most startling of crystalline blue eyes. This isn’t a simple child though, not in the slightest. Memories of my sifting through the abduction files in Florida flood me. This is one of them. The beings that possessed and consumed the abductees Sam had sent to Sonde. I look around. This isn’t Sonde though. The environment doesn’t fit the descriptions I’ve read.

  I rest my fingers on his neck until I find his pulse, all the while keeping my eyes on the boy-like being staring at me.

  “Nate, get up,” I whisper as I scan the eerily, desolate park, making sure I don’t stray too far from a possible attack of this being in front of us. We need to find shelter before anyone else makes contact with us. I glance down at Nate, he’s still out. Shit, he isn’t coming too. I put both hands on him and shake him vigorously as I lean down to him. “Nate, we need to find shelter. Get up!”

  The urgency in my voice as it rises doesn’t seem to affect the boy this time, so I take the initiative and roll Nate over just as he releases a groan.

  “Ezra?”

  He squints into the sunlight above us and shields his hand in front of him to block its blinding effect on him.

  “Yeah, we need to move.”

  Nate blinks his eyes and widens them as he sits up slowly with my help. I glance back up to see that the boy is gone, vanished again. This can’t be good. What if he went to get others?

  I put my hands under Nate’s arms and lift to help him rise to his feet. Once he’s standing, I’m scanning the area hard, hoping I can catch a glimpse of that little kid running off, but I don’t, which really has me on edge.

  Nate shakes his head, trying to pull himself from lethargic effects of the traverse. I can see he’s struggling as he wobbles on his feet. I take hold of his arm and pull him along in what I’m hoping is the opposite direction of the being that is stalking us.

  “Where are we?” He asks as I search for a place to get out of sight.

  “Don’t know.”

  I see a stone bridge and underpass about a hundred feet ahead.

  His strength starts to return as he pulls his arm free from me and moves on his own along side of me. “Where’s Sam?” he asks fully alert and with rightful concern in his voice. “I had ahold of him, and then he just got pulled away from me.”

  Getting closer to the bridge, I notice a carved cut out in the stone wall that supports it, a wrought iron gate at the opening. “I did too. The pull of the vortex, passing through the event horizon, it separated us.”

  I look around us again, worried for who’s watching. Sam’s out there. The likelihood that he landed by us is high since Nate did. He obviously woke and fled before we came to. Getting to the gate, I pull it open and usher Nate in before me, then close it behind us.

  The area beyond the gate is small, the depth of the wall supporting the bridge, but enough to keep us sheltered for now. “It looks like our world,” he says.

  I glance over at him as he leans against the wall and looks through the wrought iron balusters. I shake my head slowly, and then look back out over the foreign terrain. “Yeah, but it most definitely isn’t.”

  As Nate and I take up camp in our small shelter, the day seems to go on forever, the sun still high sending filtered light through the heavy trees surrounding us. I fold my arms over my chest as I lean against the stone wall, staring off deep in thought––thoughts of where Sam could be, what that child-like being really was, and if Jesca is safe back on Earth. The fucking intersection––we were too late to close the wormhole. So many got through. Xander had her though. All of the guardians, Sebastian, Balthazar, they’ll watch over her.

  Instinctively, I look down at my watch then realize how asinine it is––time doesn’t matter beyond the veil of our world. What is hours in our world, what I would imagine here, could be days for all we know. I look over at Nate, his head down and his knees up as he leans against the wall on the other side of our makeshift shelter. He’s thinking about her, wondering if he did the right thing, then telling himself that he did. “I told Xander to protect her,” he says suddenly seeming to know that I’m reading him.

  I turn away from him and look back out through the gate as Nate continues
. “I trust him Ezra. I don’t know why I should, but I do.”

  I know it’s the link that has him trusting without a solid reason. “He’ll keep her safe.”

  We were able to reach Jesca and Xander through a dream state. For a brief moment, I worried that Nate’s link to Jesca and Xander would not be strong enough. However, when I felt Xander’s presence in the projection, a tangible weight lifted from my chest. I tried not to eavesdrop on the matters of love as they rival over for Jes, but when Xander told Nate how she reacted to us vanishing into the wormhole with Sam, I felt a vacancy in my heart. I needed to send her proof that Nate and I were okay and the only way I could do it from here was to ask Xander to go to Sebastian for the ant farm.

  In the cabin, I had a divination, something rare with me––a gift that never seemed to show itself but only when revolving around those I loved. Anna first, now Jes. She was standing in the kitchen and I saw the moment I left her, falling into the wormhole. She saw something in me and asked what was the matter. I told her nothing was wrong and left the room back down to the basement to immerse myself fully in the likelihood that my taking her place was going to be the last time I saw her. In the darkness beneath the cabin, I cried and lamented to Anna’s spirit––praying that she would give me strength from beyond.

  Later, when Sebastian and I were in the safe house in New York, I gave him the ant farm and told him if anything was to happen to me, he needed to give it to her. He looked at me like I was crazy, until I told him how Jes and I both know what they really mean. That seemed to make sense to him; one father to another I suppose.

  Soon after I ended the dream within Nate’s dream with Xander, Nate reached out to Jesca. Her uniquely potent energy was hard to miss even this far beyond our world’s veil.

  At dusk, I whisper to Nate, “You ready to move?”

  After contacting Xander and Jes, both Nate and I started making our plan. Sitting in here until a possible rescue wasn’t an option. We had regained our strength and while we had it, we needed to seek out what we had lost after our traverse––Sam Crest.

  Nate coughs and clears his throat as he rises. “Yeah.”

  The hoarseness his voice has taken on is similar to my own when I first traversed to Dobria. “You okay?” I ask

  He clears his throat again and dusts off his pant legs. “Yeah, just dry.”

  I nod understanding his thirst. I’m starting to feel the effects of it. “We’ll find something drinkable. Keep your block up all right?”

  Before I pull the gate open fully, Nate probes, “You feel him, don’t you?”

  Keeping my hand on the gate, I look back at him. The doubt resonates in his blue-green eyes. “It feels like he is standing right here next to me.”

  Nate shakes his head, looks up at the rock ceiling. “Listen to me. I sound delusional.”

  “You aren’t delusional. I felt him about an hour ago. I didn’t want to say anything.”

  I look out beyond the open gate. “His essence is strong all of a sudden.”

  Dusk has finally settled on the landscape, the grass turning from its bright, daylight green to its darkened night tone. “This place, Nate.”

  I pause considering the right words to convey my worry, but not bring panic to him.

  “If we can sense his energy, then whatever exists here is bound to have sensed ours the moment we arrived. We need to be cautious and aware of everything and anything that may seem out of place. If there are beings here, they will try to attack us mentally and physically.”

  Nate clears his throat again. “You saw something, didn’t you?”

  He hadn’t seen the boy. He was gone before he had full consciousness. “While you were out, I saw what looked like a little boy. He appeared normal enough until his face transformed into something I’ve seen before in my research. It was just for seconds before it shifted back, but long enough to recognize the signature features––something that has taken human hosts like parasites. Those abducted by Sam, the ones that resurfaced, they had similar appearances.”

  The silence between us as Nate takes in what I’m saying is broken when he absorbs the severity of what I’m saying. “It wasn’t a child.”

  I look back out into world beyond our shelter. “No, not even close.”

  CHAPTER 5: HEALER

  Isabel

  It’s been two days and my sister, Corinna, lies stagnate in this sterile room, metal bed, metal fixtures keeping her body rhythmically oxygenated, unable to do it herself yet.

  Every time I close my eyes, the moments upon returning to the Kyoto facility play in my head.

  ***

  “She is waking up! Quick Siobhan, inject her again!” Monica commands as I watch Corinna begin to move. Siobhan fumbles with the sharp tip of the syringe and the glass bottle of liquid she’s going to use to drug my sister.

  Monica warns, “You saw how she thrashed when Sam went into the wormhole with Ezra and Nate. It took three tranquilizers, enough for a fucking elephant, to subdue her. We can’t risk her hurting herself or anyone else. Hurry up!”

  Siobhan yells back at her. “All right! All right!”

  Monica warned us. Warned me. Corinna wasn’t my Corinna anymore. I didn’t want to believe it until I looked into her eyes––it’s eyes. The blue completely gone, replaced by black pools.

  The thing that took her over saw through me. Saw my worry and fear for my sister. When she lunged at me, Siobhan and Monica reacted, each shooting her in the chest with tranquilizer darts. As they stuck out of her chest, she looked down at them, before looking passed me and yelled for Sam. The man that Nate and Ezra were struggling with near the wormhole. As she yelled, she tried to lunge out of Nick’s and Jake’s hold again. Siobhan reloaded and shot another dart into her neck, making me wince and look away. Yeah, it wasn’t my sister, but it was her physically and in my mind, I couldn’t separate the two. I thought I could, but I couldn’t. Just like now, I can’t divide my emotions for my sister as Siobhan inserts the tip of the needle into my sister’s arm. “There! Done!”

  Monica commands, “Jake, Nick, take her to the last room on the right. Go through the double doors and get her on the table. Make sure to strap her in just in case. I’m going to get scrubbed in. We need to do this now!”

  Everyone starts moving, all except me. Siobhan takes the baby in Balthazar’s arms and he follows Monica to the washroom to scrub in. I block them from passing through the doors, panicked with what they are planning to do with her. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  She looks beyond me and motions to a few of the Kyoto guardians waiting in the wings to join her. “I need you two to assist me on the removal of an implant. The redhead in room three. I’m going to need as much help as I can get.”

  She looks over her shoulder at Siobhan. “Take the baby to room four for implantation.”

  Implant removal. Shit. I remember what they said about the removal. It could kill her! Thoughts of my sister’s fate are spinning out of control in my mind when Monica turns around to face me. She grabs hold of me by the shoulders. “We are going to try and save her, Isabel. I need you to stay out of there.”

  When she releases me and walks past to wash up with Balthazar, I want to follow, but everyone is moving around so fast around me, I just stand there watching Jake and Nick take my sister away into a room.

  “Luke, get her out of here!”

  Sebastian’s request is dull in my ears as Monica brushes past me with Balthazar toward the rooms Corinna and the baby occupy. Balthazar and her both part, her going into room three, Corinna’s, while he goes into room four, the baby’s.

  A hand gently wraps around my arm attempting to pull me away. “Isabel.”

  Luke’s looking down on me with his honey colored eyes. “It’s best if you come with me.”

  As he tugs on me slightly, the apparent shock of the chaos around
me slips away and my need to be with my sister takes over. Not realizing the strength of the adrenaline coursing through me, I yank my arm from his and start running down the hall. I know he’s right behind me, ready to grab me, but he has to know I can’t leave her. “There is no way I am leaving my sister!”

  Pushing open the door, my eyes focus on Corinna lying face down on a steel table. My immediate reaction is to go to her.

  “Damn it, Luke, get a hold of her!”

  Monica’s demand comes too late as I rush the table and the metal bar on the side of the table to anchor myself. As Luke takes hold of my arms, I grip the bar tighter, shifting the table and my sister on it, “No, Monica, I’m staying! I’m staying!”

  “Fine! Fine!” She yells at me. I don’t let go of the bar, thinking she’s going to trick me and have Luke drag me off. Holding her gloved hands away from her, she looks from Luke to me. “You can stay! But you need to stand back there!”

  She points to the door, and then looks at me, shaking her head. “One wrong move and she might not make it Isabel! Do you understand! I’m trying to fucking save her!”

  The fear in her eyes stuns me to submission as I release the metal bar and let Luke pull me back from her and my sister.

  Two more other guardians in scrubs and masks come in, holding their gloved hands upright. Monica nods at them, then looks beyond me at Luke. “If she moves, you get her the fuck out of here. You understand?”

  “Yeah,” Luke says over my shoulder, responding to Monica’s bitchy command.

  Reading me, Luke leans forward and whispers, “She can be a bitch but she means well. Don’t make me take you out of here Isabel.”

  I watch my sister’s limp body as two masked guardians work around her, first inserting an IV, and then cutting off her shirt. The urge to cover her body comes, but I hold still as they attach electrode pads to different places on her body... The familiar sound of a heart monitor masks the sound of clanking metal as one of the guardians sets in motion the prelude of her fate. Once they stop working, Monica moves in. My chest tightens when her gloved hand picks up the scalpel. She’s trying to save her. Don’t do anything. Suddenly, I hear Luke’s thoughts in my head, “Monica is brilliant, Isabel. She’ll do everything she can to save her.”