With a sigh, Dr. Lowell turns in the general direction of Steve. “That was traumatic. If you’d given me two seconds’ notice before removing us from that tesseract, I would have brought the journal. This was a useless trip without it.”
Steve snickers. “I brought it.” A leather-bound journal appears, pinched between claw tips. “And Tyler’s equipment.” Two laptops and a tablet arrive. A mass of cords and cables rains down on our heads.
I don’t want to look overly interested in which computers Steve brought—or in the journal, which Miss Rose asked me to keep an eye out for. So I ask, “You carried all that, plus us? How many hands do you have?”
“When the program is finished,” Steve purrs, “you can see for yourself.”
I shudder. I don’t think our lives will be worth much to them after the program is finished, and I don’t want Steve to be the last thing I see! Then I chase that thought away. I need to stop acting like we’re dead because we didn’t end up where Miss Rose thought we would. I’m an Agent. I can figure this out.
Step one: What can I learn about this place? The gravity feels similar to Earth’s, maybe a little less strong. Sound waves travel normally. Looking down, I see that I’m kneeling on a platform made of the same metal grating as the ones on the Transporter, although there’s no sign of a console or port-lock. A bulbous orange eye and a slitted nostril hang over our heads—Steve. Beyond him, I can’t see much. The platform is about the size of the toddler playground where I once met Ty, and the whole thing seems to be floating in a dense white fog lit by sparkling lights. The air here is warmer than it was in 4-space, humid and kind of locker-room-smelling.
One of the sparkling lights zooms toward the tip of my nose. I feel the slightest touch, like a fluttering insect, but it shoots away before I can raise my hand.
While I examine our surroundings, Ty untangles the cables. “Don’t know where he thinks I’m gonna plug this in,” he mutters, tossing aside a power cord. He hasn’t noticed the switch of the computers yet.
That gives me a minute, so I get down on my hands and knees and crawl across the platform. I could stand, as far as gravity is concerned, but the fog is thick enough that I’m afraid of accidentally stepping off the edge.
“J.D.,” Dr. Lowell says sharply. “Be careful!”
“I’m always careful.” My groping hand finds a place where the platform angles downward. It’s not steep, but when I lie flat and peer down the length of it, I see nothing but fog and a scattering of twinkling lights. As I watch, the lights coalesce into a denser cloud and stretch in my direction like the tentacle of an octopus.
“I don’t think you should wander off.” Dr. Lowell grabs my ankle and gently pulls me back from the edge. I start to protest, but Ty is opening one of the laptops, so I scramble back.
He seems shaken by his experience in the wormhole and doesn’t notice anything until he tries to wake up the screen by swiping the touchpad. Nothing. He scowls and, for the first time, really looks at the device.
Leaning over to block Steve’s view of the computer, I wrap my fingers around his arm and squeeze.
Ty tilts his head back to look at me. I have never gotten this close to him voluntarily, and I shouldn’t now, considering how he reeks. His gaze slides back to the laptop that isn’t his. He punches the power key, which is the way to wake up Marius’s computer. The screen brightens and displays a message in small type.
They’re gonna kill you as soon as the program is finished. STALL. —Marius
33. JADIE
“What is the problem?” Steve asks, his eyeball dipping toward the screen.
“Nothing.” Ty dismisses the message with a swipe of his finger. “It was slow to wake up, but it seems fine now.”
I let go of his arm and glance at my father. Dr. Lowell read the message over Ty’s shoulder. He nods once and picks up the journal.
“Your electric things work here,” Steve says. “You will fix the program now.”
“Okay, okay already.” Extricating a USB cable from the snarl he was given, Ty connects the tablet to Sam’s older computer and starts that one up, since Marius’s computer is useless to him. While it whirs and chugs to life, Ty glances sideways at me.
“Do you need my help?” I hope he understands I’m offering to cover our deception, because I sure can’t help with the program.
“I’ll help him,” Dr. Lowell says. “I’ll do my part…” He looks at me. You do yours.
Thank heavens, he gets it. I don’t realize I’m smiling until I see my reflection in his glasses—and his eyes go wide behind them. It’s the first time he’s seen me smile since I was a baby.
Nope, nope, nope. Not going there. I look away.
My part in this charade is to provide distraction. So I ask that eyeball and nostril hanging over us, “Who built this platform at the end of the wormhole? People from 4-space?”
“Yes. It was meant to be a Transporter like the one at the border of your braneworld. But there were accidents, and it was never completed.” The eyeball swoops closer to Ty. “How long until you are finished?”
“Uhhhh.” Ty is more rattled than I’ve ever seen him. His snake-oil slickness has evaporated. “I don’t know.”
“You told Dave it only needed Dr. Lowell’s equations.”
“Yes, but inserting them isn’t as easy as it sounds!”
“Half an hour.” Dr. Lowell places a steady hand on Ty’s shoulder. “Then we’ll test to see if adjustments need to be made.”
“A Transporter out here would be a big deal, right?” I say to divert Steve’s attention. “Traveling in 4-space must be difficult with your gravity.”
The eyeball shifts, and the curved shaft of something white and sharp flashes in front of me. A tooth. “Yes, Jadie. That is true.”
“And 5-space creatures don’t mind you being here, building stuff on their world?”
“There is no significant life on this world.”
“What about these?” I raise my hands. Flickering lights gather, tickling my fingertips. Inquisitive. Searching.
A muscular limb flashes through my field of vision, scattering them. “This is not significant life. They are like flying insects on your world. A nuisance.”
Ty and Dr. Lowell are also surrounded by fluid groupings of light. Dr. Lowell ignores them, tapping keys on Sam’s computer while reading from that leather-bound journal. Ty, however, watches the lights with an intense expression. “I’m not sure they’re flying,” he mutters. “Or if they is the right pronoun.”
I nod in agreement. Ty sees what I see. But Steve doesn’t.
An astonishing idea occurs to me.
Miss Rose’s clan has been manipulating human lives for decades to create a computerized method of putting together images in a higher dimension… while Ty and I—through repeated exposure to 4-space—are beginning to do it on our own.
Isn’t that a gear? Ty pointed out the first time we hijacked the Transporter together. And that looks like a roller chain.
Computers have to be programmed, but human brains learn and adapt. Especially kids’ brains. Steve doesn’t suspect it, and neither does Miss Rose, but maybe the technology they want is already developing inside the minds of their human Agents. Because what Ty and I have noticed—and what Dr. Lowell and Steve seem oblivious to—is that the lights don’t move like a swarm of insects.
They move like parts of a single organism.
With his four-dimensional eyes, Steve should be able to see more of this creature than we can, but he isn’t used to being out of his natural space. He can’t put those “slices of pineapple” together into a whole fruit, and he doesn’t realize that we aren’t alone on this platform. We’re in the company of at least one 5-space being who seems quite curious about us.
At that moment, an angry caterwauling splits the air, and the twinkling lights withdraw in streaming rivulets. An eyeball with a steel-gray iris swells into view. Rubbery lips swing so close, I feel and smell rancid breath.
“Treacherous little beast,” bellows a deep voice that must be the “Dave” we’ve been waiting for. “You made a scent beacon for Rrhoessha!”
Oh no. Dave is onto me!
“See here,” Dr. Lowell begins indignantly, standing up. Then he ducks.
A claw slashes past him and swipes at Ty, ripping through his shirt. Ty yelps in surprise and pain and gets hauled off the platform like a fish on a hook. For a couple of seconds, he dangles six feet in the air, caught between fleshy bits and talons and that angry gray eye. Then his shirt tears some more. He falls out of it and lands on the platform.
There’s blood on his back where the claw sliced his skin, and when I look up, I see the scrap of fabric that was his shirt disappear into a maw of pointed teeth and pink, glistening flesh.
Dave ate Ty’s shirt to eliminate the smell.
My ears pound with the sound of rushing blood. Steve is creepy, but Dave is terrifying. Our beacon is gone… is there still a trail? Can Miss Rose find us?
“No help is coming,” Dave growls as if reading my mind. “You will do what we have brought you here to do!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ty yells, sitting up. “I was already doing what you wanted!”
I exhale, relieved to see he isn’t hurt too badly. If Dave had eaten Ty along with his shirt, it would’ve been my fault.
Dr. Lowell unbuttons his shirt and puts it around Ty, leaving himself in a sleeveless undershirt. Ty winces when the fabric touches his wounded back, but he puts his arms through the sleeves.
On the other side of the platform, muscular limbs scramble back and forth while Steve’s high-pitched voice complains in his native language.
“No!” Dave exclaims in English. “I will not return to our clianthh in disgrace.” He thrusts his head between me and Ty, and although I can only see disjointed pieces, I have no trouble imagining what those bulging eyes, slitted nostrils, and cruel teeth look like altogether. “You miserable 3-space creatures will not thwart me now.”
A horrible pain lances through me, and I look down in shock, expecting to see Dave’s talon embedded in my chest. There’s nothing there. Nevertheless, breath leaves my lungs in a rush. My mouth hangs open, my chest throbs, but my lungs won’t expand. My sight grows dim and my knees buckle.
As suddenly as it began, the terrible pressure vanishes.
“I can see inside you,” Dave hisses. “Every one of you. Finish the program now, or I will choose another one of Jadie’s organs to squeeze!”
I suck air in and out and in again before the spots clear from my eyes. When I realize Dr. Lowell is holding me up, I force my wobbly legs to do their job, but he doesn’t let go.
Ty hunches over Sam’s computer with Dr. Lowell’s sleeves pushed up, holding the journal in one hand and typing feverishly with the other. Dr. Lowell shouts at Dave. I tune out his words because arguing is pointless. I know what’s going to happen next.
First Dave tortures me because I’m not needed. Then he tortures my father because they’ve already got his work. As soon as Ty gives them what they want, we’re all dead.
My eyes search the barren platform and decide upon the most valuable item here. The one thing that is irreplaceable.
Wrenching free from Dr. Lowell, I snatch the journal out of Ty’s hand and throw myself over the edge of the platform—down the incline, into white fog and unknown 5-space.
34. JADIE
I tumble in a barely controlled body roll, hugging the journal to my chest. Something heavy hits the incline behind me. Talons scrabble on metal. Tucking my elbows to my sides, I roll faster.
This is the stupidest, riskiest thing I’ve ever done. An incline usually leads somewhere is what I was thinking when I went over the side. But now I remember Steve saying there were “accidents” and this structure was never completed.
No sooner have I recognized the danger than the incline ends, jettisoning me into the fog. My stomach spasms in free fall, and a second later, I belly-flop with a whomp onto something firm but yielding, like a gym mat. I can’t have fallen more than three feet, but it’s enough to jar the journal out of my hand.
No… I need that!
I scramble into a crouch and scan my surroundings, well aware of the vibrating incline above me and the pursuer on my heels. The fog is dense, but the dark leather cover of the journal stands out in contrast, a yard ahead. I grab it and take off running across the spongy surface with no destination in mind.
This journal is the only thing that can keep us alive until Miss Rose finds us. I have no value, except that I’m in possession of the only written record of a working universal theory. While the journal is missing, Dave won’t hurt Dr. Lowell, the only person capable of understanding and re-creating it. Ty is replaceable, but he’s the only computer programmer Dave has on hand.
Dave won’t kill any of us as long as I have the journal.
Beyond that, there is no plan as I run blindly across an unknown landscape. The stuff beneath my feet—greenish brown and knobbly—might be grass, or a shag carpet. Maybe I’m running across a 5-space guy’s rec room while he hangs out with his gamer buddies double-kata from me!
The white fog is thicker here, which makes it hard to judge distances. When a forest of tall shadows looms ahead, I can’t tell if it’s a soccer field away, or a mile. But it’s the only cover available.
“Run as fast as you can, Jadie!” Steve’s high-pitched voice sings out behind me. “You are a little mouse. And I am a lion.”
Mouse. Lion. He’s going to pounce on me. I veer to my right. Something huge sails over my head, missing me by a wide margin.
Whoa! Maybe my three-dimensional “player” in this deadly version of Cosmic Knight actually does have special powers in 5-space.
1. I’m used to the gravity here. Steve is not.
2. I have experience seeing and acting in a dimension higher than my own. I don’t think Steve does.
3. I’m small and fast, and I can hide.
Shadows ahead coalesce into fibrous gray stalks. My brain wants to classify them as plants, but who knows what they are. Patting my way along the outside of one, I gather information about its shape in the dimensions I understand.
When my hand encounters a narrow gap between two of the rough shafts, I squeeze into it. I don’t know how visible I’ll be from the ana and kata directions, but no matter what, I plan on being hard to reach. Like a cell phone slipped down between the sofa cushions.
“Jadieeeee,” Steve taunts from someplace close by. The stalks vibrate. “Come out of there, or I will rip off your limbs one by one!”
There’s a logical flaw to his plan, but I don’t point it out. Instead I holler, “Back off, or I’ll rip this journal to pieces!” To demonstrate my superior threat, I tear a page out of the book—a blank one—and shred it as noisily as I can.
“Stop!” Steve wails. The stalks cease vibrating, but something large and sepia-colored moves past the cracks between them. He’s trying to reach me.
“I know it’s valuable to you.” I tuck the journal into the back of my waistband. “Because I don’t think your people understand the math.”
Steve hisses like an angry teakettle. “You think you are smarter than we are?”
I find another crevice and wriggle into it. “I think your Seers aren’t as smart as they pretend to be.”
“You know nothing about my world!”
“We know a bit. You come from a rival clan, and you were sent here to steal these equations and the computer technology to use them. If you accomplish your mission”—an idea occurs to me—“Dave will be rewarded.”
A moment of silence follows. Then Steve corrects me. “We will be rewarded.”
“You think he’s going to share the credit? I mean, he’s in charge of the mission.”
“He is not in charge! We are equals!” The stalks around me shudder violently.
I burrow in the opposite direction. “You and Dave were equals, before you came here. But Mis
s Rose says you’ve got two different loyalty stones in your body, and that makes you sick, right? Dave told Ty and Marius it was worse for you than for him.”
“What did Dave say?”
“That you were getting sloppy, making mistakes. He’s right. I doused Ty with something smelly on purpose and you didn’t figure it out.”
The tip of a talon wiggles in my direction.
“Dave’s going to double-cross you. But you and I can work together. He’s got Dr. Lowell and Ty. You and I have the journal.”
The talon retracts.
“What do you want, Steve?” I ask, trying to sound conversational while squeezed between musty-smelling, five-dimensional possible–plant stalks. “What’s the reward you’re hoping for? A higher rank? Miss Rose told me about them. How do they go? Seer, Technician, Drone, and then something else…?”
“Breeeeeder.”
“You were probably a Technician in your old clan, right? But when you came to Miss Rose’s clan, you had to take a lower rank. If you go back with this journal and Ty’s computer, you can rise to Technician again.”
His talons scritch and scratch. “Seeeeer.”
Of course. Why go to all this trouble to stay in the same position? “You want to be a Seer. You think they’ll do that? With you coming back so sick and Dave claiming he did the work? Steve, you and I have the most important thing, the journal. If you can get me back to Miss Rose, I’m sure she’ll be grateful.” Miss Rose never discussed the possibility of converting one of the spies, but it seems worth a shot.
Steve screams, and the stalks thrash wildly, like they’ve been assaulted by a hyperactive battering ram.
“Miss Rose will reward you better than Dave will!” I shout.
But I must have crossed the wrong line. A stalk in front of me snaps in two. Thick, pungent liquid oozes from the remaining stump, while the top half disappears, snatched from my sight. Three clawed fingers appear in the newly opened space as Steve digs deeper.
“Leave me alone, or you’ll never get what you want!” I scream.
Jadie in Five Dimensions Page 15