Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  She slept and ate in a dream state, not worried any more, and much more aware of how much stress her body was under. Jesse never left her. Within a few days, she was up and mobile again, and she found the underground city a changed place. The women chatted with each other as they worked around the infirmary, happy noises compared to the somber silence that had been there before. They came to her two or three times a day and layered a pale green mush onto her skin - different from the food mush, they assured her, though Cassie thought they might have been lying to her - and then Jesse would take over, wiping the mush to a thin layer that would turn rust-colored and dry in a soft layer, like mashed potatoes, that kept her skin from cracking and injuring over and over again.

  “How did you know it was copper?” she asked one morning. Jesse sat up against the wall and arched his back, stretching for a moment.

  “The water was green,” he said.

  “The water is always green,” she told him.

  “That’s why it went unnoticed for so long,” he said. “It was actually leaving deposits in the collection troughs in the dormitory. I have a theory that if they hadn’t gotten so sick and been taken here, where the water didn’t have so much copper, they would have killed it off in a few days, with the level of concentration they had up there.”

  “Are we in danger?” Cassie asked. “We drank it, too.”

  “You make your pipes out of copper,” Jesse said.

  “Good point.”

  “What happens now?” Cassie asked.

  “Aaron sent runners to try to see if anyone else is still alive. Their network of towns used to be a lot better connected; he hasn’t got any idea how farspread the issue was. As far as we go, we should probably get you back. Kenzi medicine would keep you healthy, but I think you’ve got a better shot at not being scarred for life if we get you back to Earth.”

  That was a jolt she hadn’t been expecting.

  “Plus you need another shirt,” she said. It was the first thing that popped into her head. He laughed.

  “Plus I need another shirt.”

  She watched as a Kenzi woman went past the door carrying a large shallow bowl that they used for bathing. The infirmary was mostly empty at this point, just populated with some of the younger children who didn’t deal with the high concentrations of copper so well. They had a hard time keeping food down and Cassie understood they were fighting dehydration, but they regained feeling in their hands and feet days earlier.

  “Will they be okay?” Cassie asked.

  “I don’t think this disease is going to wipe them out,” Jesse said, pushing himself off the floor. “Beyond that, all we can do is hope.”

  She stood and watched him stretch for a moment, then he looked at her with blue eyes that were scary in how sincere and how knowing they were.

  “You should go say goodbye.”

  She startled.

  “You mean now?”

  “We don’t live here, Cassie. They’ve been generous hosts, and we’ve both paid our own way, but it’s time to go.”

  It occurred to Cassie that Jesse didn’t live on Earth either, but she kept that to herself. He watched her indecision, then smiled.

  “We can’t watch over them forever. I don’t want to be a benevolent god, because I know myself way too well for that. Now is a good time. Go find Charm and tell her, and then we’ll go.”

  Charm was in the main hall, sitting against a wall while Aaron did the work of governing the small city. Cassie motioned for her not to get up.

  “How are you feeling?” Charm asked as Cassie carefully sat down next to her.

  “Better every day,” Cassie said, watching Aaron. “Jesse says that I need to see a healer of my own species, though.”

  “It would be very good, yes,” Charm said. “Our healers just don’t know how to manage your fragile skin.”

  There was a pause, then Charm looked at her.

  “You mean now, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “And you won’t come back.”

  “No.”

  Charm turned away.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said.

  “Why?” Charm asked, looking back at her with genuine curiosity. “You saved me, and your friend saved all of us. Don’t apologize to me.”

  “I’m sorry to leave,” Cassie said. “I will miss you.”

  “I will remember you always,” Charm answered.

  “Tell Jash I said goodbye,” Cassie said. “I hope you two are very happy.”

  There was a moment of realization and then Charm stood. The room grew quiet as Charm walked to the center of it and turned to face Cassie.

  “Today my friend leaves to return to her own people,” Charm said, looking around the room. “She and her companion have given me my life back, and have given our people a shot at a long and happy survival. We grieve her departure and wish her great successes in her travels.”

  She coughed from deep in her throat, and the rest of the room echoed it. Cassie stood and acknowledged the room.

  “Thank you,” she said. “The Kenzi people are an amazing, strong people, and I think that you will do amazing things.”

  The women who were seated stood and the ones who leaned against walls pushed free, standing straight as Cassie walked to Charm. She hugged the woman gingerly, careful to keep the surface of her skin still against Charm’s skin.

  “This is how my people say goodbye,” she said, then stepped back. “Good luck.”

  Charm bowed her head and Cassie left. She found Jesse waiting in the hallway.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she answered. “We can go.”

  It really hadn’t been that long, only a couple of weeks, but it felt strange to be standing in the great room of the portal complex. Clean, efficient, technically capable, and ridiculously safe, but foreign. The flat floor, the bright white lights, the cavernous space, they were almost more than Cassie could cope with at first.

  Jesse’s head was up, and he led her gently between the loads of merchandise and military goods around the floor. A guard stopped them.

  “You’re not on my list,” he said.

  “And you’re not wearing a shirt,” someone else observed dryly. Cassie reached for her badge, but couldn’t find it. She did come up with her cell phone.

  “Cassie,” Troy answered.

  “Can you come get us?” she asked. “We’re on the portal floor and I left my badge somewhere.”

  There was a long pause and Cassie frowned at the phone.

  “Sorry, I’m on my way,” Troy said. “That’s just not like you.”

  “Other things going on,” she said, eying the guard. He eyed her back. She was covered in white-green goop up and down her arms and wearing a blood-stained shirt. And Jesse was, as observed, shirtless.

  “I’m going to call my supervisor,” he said.

  “I have an analyst coming,” she said, turning the phone to indicate Troy on the other end.

  “Are they really giving you grief?” Troy asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been challenged on my way out before,” Cassie said. Jesse was looking around innocently.

  “I’d heard they were going to change the protocols, but it hadn’t gotten back to me what that meant,” Troy said. “Cassie…”

  That tone meant something to her. Something specific.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m going to try to get you out of here before everything blows up, but you need to know…”

  There was another long pause.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sorry, more guards. You need to know that General Thompson is pissed. You left without his blessing, and he’s determined…”

  She heard a door open on the other side of the phone and waited.

  “He’s determined to take a piece of your hide for it.”

  “I left after a six-hour interrogation, like a hostile, and I was completely within my rights,” Cassie said. “Besides, I�
�m not sure there’s that much of my hide left for him to take a piece of.”

  “What?” Troy asked. “And what?”

  “Been a long couple of weeks,” Cassie said. “I’m sorry I left so fast, but I was mad.”

  She’d forgotten how mad. Standing here in front of a dull-eyed guard who was talking into his wrist, it came back in a thrill of hot temper.

  “I’m almost there. Don’t do anything dumb and get yourself in more trouble,” Troy said.

  “You know there are sixteen other ways out of here, not counting the portal itself,” Jesse said. “Well, sixteen I count from right here.”

  “Troy is coming,” she said. The sense of calm, that the Kenzi were going to survive; the quiet and knowing way that she had left them; the awe of the technology and accomplishment of her home - these were all completely gone. The first person who tried to hold her for questioning was going to get an earful out of her.

  “Your world,” Jesse said, the corner of his mouth turning up. “I’m just going along.”

  There was a commotion around the edge of the portal floor as a door opened and a number of security guards came out. The door just feet away from Cassie opened seconds later and Troy walked through, his pace brisk.

  “Airman, you’ve held up two important assets for quite long enough,” he said, poking at his phone as he spoke.

  “Sir, I need you to confirm your identity before I can let them go with you,” the guard said. Troy held a badge out, looking up at the guard through his eyebrows.

  “Captain Troy Rutger.”

  “He outranks you,” Jesse observed. “How did I miss that?”

  “Sorry, sir,” the guard said, taking a step back. Troy glanced at Cassie and she gave the guard a final look before following Troy back out of the room.

  “Much as I appreciate the rescue, she needs medical attention,” Jesse said as they walked.

  “She what?” Troy asked, turning. He got his first good look at Cassie.

  “Holy crap, is that yours?” he asked, looking at the blood on the shirt.

  “The reason she’s wearing my shirt is because hers was a lost cause,” Jesse said. “We held her together for a few days, but you’ll want a trauma surgeon to have a good look at her. Burn unit might be your best bet.”

  “I’m fine,” Cassie said, heading off Troy’s response, “but he’s right. I need to get off-base, whether or not they’re happy about it.”

  “What have you got all over you?” Troy asked, touching her arm.

  “Something to keep her from bleeding out or scabbing,” Jesse said. “We were just trying to keep her from making it worse.”

  “You mean…”

  “I kind of sanded all my skin off,” Cassie said, calculating the fastest way out to her car. The idea of sitting in the seat made her cringe, but she needed to keep moving.

  “How did you do that?” Troy asked.

  “Saving someone’s life,” Jesse answered. He followed Cassie with Troy trailing along behind now. Cassie’s phone rang and she looked at it. Word had gotten to the general quickly that they were back. She answered simply because ignoring it was more rebellious than she had the willingness to be.

  “Sir,” she said.

  “Lieutenant, you left in the middle of a formal interrogation. I need you to report back there immediately. I will be coming to speak with you myself.”

  “Sir,” she said, “I need to check myself into a hospital. With your permission, I’d rather wait for you there.”

  “What happened, Lieutenant?”

  “I’ve lost a lot of blood and most of the skin on my upper body,” she said. “I will go to interrogation if that’s your order, but please keep in mind that I will be seeking care as soon as possible afterward.”

  Jesse made a face and she glared at him. This was her world, and she played it by the rules she had.

  “Go,” he said. “You have Troy with you, I assume?”

  “Yes sir,” she said.

  “Have him call me when you’re checked in. I will be coming to see you.”

  “Yes sir,” she said. She waited for the click on the other end of the line and hung up.

  “How bad is it?” Troy asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” Cassie said.

  “Both sides, across her shoulders, and both arms,” Jesse said. “I’d put it at at least fifty percent of her upper body.”

  “It’s starting to heal,” Cassie said.

  “Not really,” Jesse said. “We got the inflammation down so it doesn’t hurt as much, but she hasn’t had enough iron to replace the blood she lost. Someone with less physical training wouldn’t be upright.”

  She turned and glared at him.

  “You’re making me tired,” she said. “Will you shut up?”

  Jesse nodded at Troy.

  “I’m not exaggerating.”

  “I’m driving,” Troy said.

  “Yeah, you’re supposed to call the general once we get there. He’s probably going to put me on lockdown.”

  “What did you do?” Troy asked.

  “Do you still keep a change of clothes in your locker?” Cassie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you please get him a shirt? He really is embarrassing like that.”

  “Do I make you uncomfortable?” Jesse asked.

  “Yes,” Cassie said. “You’re a skinny nerd with white, white skin. You should be wearing a shirt.”

  It was an unkind description; he had a well-muscled torso and arms, but he didn’t take it in any worse of a spirit than it was intended. He shrugged and winked. She grinned back.

  “I’ll have someone meet us,” Troy said, looking exasperated that they weren’t taking it seriously enough.

  “Is a hospital one of those no shirt, no shoes, no service kind of places?” Jesse asked.

  “Wouldn’t seem right,” Cassie said. “Bet there are a bunch of people who end up there with foot injuries because they weren’t wearing shoes. Surely they don’t have to put shoes on to get in.”

  “Good point,” Jesse said.

  “What is wrong with you two?” Troy asked. They made it to the parking lot and Cassie took the back seat, trying not to rub her shoulders on the seat while Troy drove. Jesse looked out the window.

  In the waiting room, Jesse sat down next to Cassie while Troy got paperwork from the nurse.

  “Listen,” he said, his voice low. “I’m going to let them do what they do. Agree or not. I’m sorry.”

  “Why would that make you sorry?” she asked. He swallowed and looked away.

  “Because they’re going to hurt you. They’ll do the best they can, but…” He took a breath. “You have to remember that your medicine looks to me the way Kenzi medicine looked to you. About a thousand years out of date. I’m just…” His jaw set. “I’m sorry.”

  There were needles and washcloths and water and salves, steroids and painkillers and specialists who oversaw grafts on her ribs and shoulders, where the flesh was most exposed. She was wrapped and unwrapped with gauze and there was mind-numbing pain that she couldn’t get away from. Most of the time, the sedatives and the painkillers kept it from being unlivable, but when the nurses were working on her actively, or some mornings when she first woke up and hadn’t yet remembered how to mentally block out the pain, it was excruciating. The time wandered in stops and jolts, and she was never sure what the sun outside would have told her about what the world was supposed to be like. Jesse and Troy were there as much as they could be, but they both had responsibilities on base that they had to keep up with. The one constant through the entire time was the glimpse of the guard standing outside of her room, as if there were a chance she would suddenly decide walking around was a good idea and try to escape.

  It made her mad, in her more conscious moments. Under the drugs and the discomfort, she felt betrayed that General Thompson would assign her to Jesse - willingly or not - then treat her like a criminal or a traitor when she got back. She knew there were
politics involved, and that the people on the other end of the phone wouldn’t always be reasonable, but the general had always gone out of his way to shield them from unreasonable people, in the past. The portal was a big deal, and decisions pertaining to it were charged in most every way possible, but the agents and the analysts who worked it day in and day out were seldom aware of those tensions.

  But there was a guard outside of her room.

  She drifted.

  Maybe a week later, as the procedures to re-establish skin were mostly completed, the blood transfusions had quit, and the pain meds were tapering, the general came to see her.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he asked as he sat.

  “It’s illegal to interrogate a prisoner while he’s on mind-altering drugs,” Cassie said. The man’s wrinkles deepened around his eyes and his mouth and he ran his hand through his hair.

  “This isn’t supposed to go like this. You know that, right?”

  “How is it supposed to go?” she asked. “You made me sign that contract. You knew what was in it.”

  “You have some of the most valuable intel we have ever gotten as a species on the nature of foreign terrestrial life. You really think that we didn’t go over that contract a hundred times before we agreed to it, to make sure there was a loophole to get that information back from you?”

  “A loophole that depended on me being unethical,” she said. “I signed it. I meant it. You can’t order me to tell you what you want to know, because you agreed not to. All you can do is try to punish me into breaking the spirit, if not the letter of it.”

  It was only hot anger, long-simmering, that kept her mind focused well enough to get the words out. He said something in reply that she missed, somehow. She blinked and shifted, the soft skin down the back of her arm tearing again. She gritted her teeth, the flash of pain bringing her focus again.

  “Sir, I don’t have anything new to tell you. I injured myself as part of the task you assigned to me, not out of any act or lack of action in malice or negligence on Jesse’s part or my own. There’s no legal cause for investigation, and I decline to discuss it with you, as politely as possible.”