

# INERTIA

Book One:

The Threestone

Trilogy

A.R. Rivera

INERTIA, FORCE, REACTION

The Threestone Trilogy Boxset

By A.R. Rivera

**The Threestone Trilogy is an original work of science fiction, low fantasy, and speculative fiction, created and written by A.R. Rivera.**

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, objects, locales, or any other named or unnamed thing is unintended and coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions hereof in any form. This book is licensed and intended for the reader's personal enjoyment. It is not to be given, copied, manipulated, or resold without express permission from the author.

If you enjoy this novel, please encourage others to purchase a copy for themselves. Writing a book is not easy. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All Rights reserved. Copyright 2018 A.R. Rivera

Cover images provided by _creativeindie.com_ and Derek Murphy, used in cooperation with terms and conditions therein. All images have been manipulated into cover artwork by the author.

Fonts provided _1001fonts.com, fontbaby.com_

# Table of Contents

INERTIA 1

Table of Contents 6

More Books by A.R. Rivera 15

PART I 16

Before 18

During 31

After 42

Part II 48

The Boy 49

Just Warming Up 68

Things I Tell Myself So I Can Sleep 94

Weirdest Day Of My Life So Far 119

Can Someone Tell Me What The Hell Just Happened? 138

Marvelous Shithead 155

Crazy Pills 174

You Can't Make Me 190

Losing Track 195

Memory Lane 214

I Take It Back. This Is The Weirdest Day Of My Life So Far 231

Fool's Gold 249

The Road To Hell 266

Here's Hoping 289

Me And A Shadow 310

Learning By Repetition 343

Lamentations 367

Remains 382

Angel Of Death 387

PART III 419

Increments 420

Ripple Effect 450

No Kiss, Just Goodbye 481

Valley Of Shadow 507

Reunion 519

The Last Piece 547

The Accident Experiment 552

Time Travel 101 591

The End 618

of Book One 618

A.R. RIVERA 620

Preamble 625

Postcards From The End 627

 In the Interest of Full Disclosure 635

Scream To Breathe 645

 Burning Bridges Is My Specialty 658

World Two 681

Other Means Of Travel 697

All In a Daze Work 724

 The Wheels in My Mind Go Flat 737

Going Back To Cali 750

The One Doing The Screwing 757

World Six 769

Strange Day 784

Bearers Burden 796

 Here I Come To Save The Day 811

Modes Of Transportation 819

 Definitely Not In Kansas Anymore 828

 Click Your Heels Together Three Times 833

Adventures in Baby-sitting 852

 Ninety-Nine Problems But a Kid Ain't One 863

 Insert Sarcastic Commentary Anywhere 889

Clear As Mud 896

Oh The Irony 902

 When In Doubt Kick'em In The Nuts 926

World Eight 956

Observations 965

Cobwebs 981

Super Slow-Mo 988

Three Days and Counting 990

Straight Trippin' 1000

Carry Me 1010

Keep On Keepin' On 1016

Natives 1034

 Look, Everybody, I'm Indiana Jones 1047

Eighty-Eight Miles Per Hour 1054

One + Nine = Confused 1059

Another Life 1069

Steaming Pile Of Awesome 1076

Schooling Me 1083

Much Easier Than it Looks 1097

 A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma Smothered in Horseshit 1105

 It Starts With M and Rhymes With Turder 1117

Part 6 1130

 I'm Like a Bird The World Is My Toilet 1131

Maca-freaking-roni! 1140

And Then There Were Two 1175

My Dearest Abigail 1207

It's Not Alright 1230

Killing With Kindness 1238

The End... of Book Two 1259

About The Author 1888

"... _And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it."_

– _Revelation 2:17_

in·er·tia [in- **ur** -shuh, ih- **nur** -]

Noun

1. Inertness; especially with regard to effort, motion, action, and the like; inactivity; sluggishness.

2. Physics.

A. the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

B. an analogous property of a force: _electric inertia._

*Miriam-Webster Dictionary*

#  More Books by A.R. Rivera

_Savor The Days Series:_ This is a series of novels that explores the dynamic of each character within one blended family. It deals with grief, friendship, family values, and why we should keep fighting even if we think we can't win. Each novel is categorized as women's fiction with elements of suspense, romance, and tragedy.

_Between Octobers, Book 1_

_September Rain, Book 2_

_November Mourning, Book 3_

_January Falls, Book 4 (Coming Soon)_

Visit authorarrivera.com for more.

# PART I

# Before

Death is coming for me, but not for a few more weeks.

The truth is, I've died more times than I can count. I don't know how I keep coming back. I just do. Each time I've leapt from the edge of physical existence, traversing the void, hoping to disappear into that great unknown, I've managed to find myself again. One moment I'm lying in the road bleeding to death and the next, in the hospital or back home. Sometimes perfectly healthy; others, not so much and I'm not sure what it was that made the difference in each scenario.

But it's been a while since the last time I passed. I'm old now. And slow.

My adventures have caught up with me in the form of rheumatism, a hip replacement, psoriasis, bone spurs in the tops of my feet, cancerous lesions in my esophagus, and of course, brain damage that's looking more and more like dementia. None of that is what's going to kill me though, so I don't worry too much about it.

I don't know exactly what it is that keeps me from meeting my Maker. I don't subscribe to theories of reincarnation or collective consciousness or any other crap being peddled this century. Although, experience has taught me that believing or not believing in something doesn't change the facts. Truth is not subjective, but unchangeable; anyone who thinks different is a fool.

These days I'm writing everything down. Everything that's important, anyway. There's a lot more to my story than I'm able to pen, so some of it I have to record. That's what the discs are for. What comes after that, I have to leave up to the boy.

He has to know everything. Every bit of information I can offer, so long as it leaves him clueless. He can't know the specifics or he'll make the same choices, repeat the same mistakes.

"Knock, knock." A pleasant voice follows a quick rap on the open door. I don't need to look up to know its Abi. She's a welcome interruption to my bleak planning.

"Come in, sweetheart." I fell asleep in my clothes again. My pants uncomfortably furl as I work to sit up. "I've got some things for you to do."

"I figured you would. I heard Jeanine's got the day off and G isn't up yet. I brought you some coffee." She's got two foam cups and a warm smile.

"I could kiss you." The Joe around here's all decaf. "You are too good to me, girl."

"Heaven knows you don't deserve it," she snickers placing a cup on my nightstand. "I thought I'd check-in on my way to work. What do you need, Gerry?"

Her sweet eyes stare with fondness as if she sees the heart inside this decrepit shell. And for a small moment, I wonder... What if I told her everything?

She wouldn't believe me. Nothing would change.

"Abi, grab those discs over there," I point towards the dresser, "put them inside the brown box under my bed. See that Jeanine gets it. They're for the boy."

"Why don't I just take the box? I can hold it for G."

Strained silence answers her question. She's well-intentioned and already knows how events must play out. To a point. If I told her everything she should know—as a friend would—she might change her mind about the boy. Then that decision would affect his decisions. It'd be the same ripple effect all over again and I can't have that.

Sipping my coffee with morning meds, I wiggle my feet into orthotic shoes and grab my cane. "Is Burbank too far?" I know Abi will take me wherever I need to go even if it makes her late for work. That's just the kind of soul she is. But her generosity doesn't ease my having to ask.

* * *

I wait until her car is out of sight before entering the studio lot. The security guy at the front gate lets me pass. His Granddad was a good friend of mine. I walk up the main road, cane in hand, trying to ignore the pain in my hip as I swerve through the witless crowds.

Getting closer, I can feel the shifting forces in my bones; the familiar power of the stones already at work. The earth groans beneath my feet.

Today is important and if I'm not mistaken—which I'm not—three streets over on the corner near the potted Palm trees will be the place.

I hate being here. I don't want to see him again. I don't want to remember.

Regret is the most difficult and probably the worst part of getting old. Through all the things I've seen, the cyclical mistakes I swore I'd never make again, I've come to accept it is my legacy, this regret, for there's more of it than anything else.

As I come upon the last corner, I spot the potted grouping of palm trees. And it's there: the humming, as familiar as my own hands. Not an audible noise, no, but a slight vibration in the inner ear that I've learned to recognize because of those regrets I mentioned. This is numbered among them. It is the sound of the gateway opening.

I move off to a side street and try to disappear behind another pluming cluster of trees.

No one sees him coming. They only see him burst onto the road—hands out in front like he's been flung from a moving vehicle. He probably was. For them, the ones blessed enough to be ignorant of this man and his secrets, the burst is instantaneous. For me, it's like a scene from my own life playing out at half speed and I don't miss a thing.

The energy overflow makes gravel of the pavement. I imagine the pain of pebbles digging into his skin, lodging under a fingernail. It hurts when that happens. It's petty, but I hope that's what's happening to him right now. I hope dozens of pebbles get lodged under his skin so deep, he can't pry them out. And I hope they swell with infection.

This man who's flown through unseen portals, seemingly appearing from nowhere—he's wearing the same tattered trench coat I've come to identify him by. I watch his shoulder blades slam together as his body meets the ground, grating bone against bone. The plastic guards strapped to his legs slam against the man-made street. The sound is like shattering glass.

Despite his efforts in deflection, the man's chin hits next. I smile a bit seeing his neck snap back, knowing his mangled beard is no help against impact—only road rash and hiding scars. When you travel this way, one of the first things you learn is how important it is to keep your face away from the impact. My teeth nearly sliced clean through my tongue once. After that I started using a mouth guard. Either this version of him was in a hurry or he's new to the game. He's not even wearing a helmet.

Seconds stretch like minutes as he meets terra firma and remnants of intemperate energy pitch him into a roll.

This scene is so familiar. Bile rises, coaxing my breakfast into my throat. How I loathe and regret his part in my life. I'm not looking forward to our next meeting and wonder how many collisions he'll endure before his body breaks down completely. Like mine. We've both walked away from things no one has a right to.

This section of road is now a shallow crater—the impact marking his entry into my world. His body limply tumbles another twenty feet before hitting a concrete step in front of what is supposed to be a flower shop. Blood spatters onto the ground as he coughs, turning his head for a look around. I feel the black, like an aura surrounding him as the bearded mans' face twists into a misplaced grin. He loves a violent landing.

A normal man would be dead, but this one—this Keeper—is like me. We aren't normal, only men in the classic sense that we were born and one day we will die. But not before I take the thing that keeps him going—those three, precious stones that make him so capable and dangerous.

This man has many names—the one he gave me many years ago was Nahuiollin. As he grew, he began calling himself Serpent and Revenge. His tribe was also called the Keepers, for they were the protectors of the Threestone. His father was Guardian to the Sacred Powers, a title that was supposed to fall to his son when he passed.

To me, this man is Death Incarnate because his purpose is my destruction.

Observations make good assessments and my guess is he's using the surrounding noise to find his current position, identify any miscalculations on his part. It seems he hasn't learned much since discovering to manipulate the power of the stones. Of course, there are the memory problems to contend with. Too many concussions and variant times distort a Keepers view. This odd spot for a landing can confuse even the most seasoned traveler. It's a place of entertainment. They make movies and television shows here. I look around the lot, taking in the wagons on paved roads, the swarms of people dressed in confusing ways, but there are still plenty of clues.

A groan slips as Death adjusts himself.

I know what he's thinking: the noises don't match the scenery. Horse hooves smack in cadence, vibrating the burning pavement beneath his bald head. The heat probably stings, but not enough to make him want to move. Travelling makes you sick, like riding the roller coaster a few too many times after a big meal.

I work my way into the crowd gathering nearby. Getting caught is not part of the plan. Not yet, anyway.

Deaths' scattered thoughts come together at some point. I watch his features sharpen as he tries to focus on the watching crowd. Turn-of-century clothing paired with the casual use of profanity: these are things he will notice. But he won't see me standing behind a fat man in a lousy hat. Death removes the broken shin guards from his legs. The gathered swarms of people stare, as I do, in a large circle from a safe distance. Some raise small objects to the sides of their heads and speak. Communication without wires—the size and shape of the phones is a dead giveaway to the decade. None ask after his condition but inquire among themselves, indicating a progression in dehumanization—a byproduct of advancing technology. He can put two and two together. It's the twenty-first century.

A woman presses through the crowd. "What happened?" She kneels near Death, offering water in a bright, metal container and a cloth for the blood on his mouth. "Where's your crew? What stage are you on?" Before he responds, she's directing her excited language into a handheld radio.

As Death rises from the pavement to his feet, she tries to assist but is put off by his black stare and subsequent sneer.

When one man asks, "Did he just hiss at you?" Death laughs. He knows this is the right place to begin another search.

The woman seems to freeze, finally realizing what instinct should have told her at first glance: he is dangerous.

Exactly when is three weeks before I die, hopefully for the last time. Precisely where is one of many television studio parks in Burbank, California. People come to these places to watch the taping of various sitcoms and talk shows. It's a vacation. It's entertainment. But right now nothing is amusing.

I leave the cover of the crowd. Of all fifty or so people staring at him as he moves, I'm the only one stupid enough, desperate enough, to follow. At a distance. He trails past a tall gate, wherein lies a body of water. I count to five and stalk after him. It's not a natural inlet, but part of a set. The odor and color tell it's not safe to drink; still Death shoves his face into the tepid water to wash away the stinging dirt and blood. Odds of infection ever increasing.

I sneak into a shop full of costumed people pretending to be what they're not. No one understands what they're heading for. They're just living in the moment as if there are millions more to be had. What I don't understand is how generations can 'cleanse' themselves of knowledge, seeking to be 'enlightened' through pleasure. It's a binge and purge way of life that always ends in disaster. Mankind must remember the past to gauge a future. But no one cares about remembering or discovery anymore. Nothing new under the sun as they say.

The paved road continues around the waterway. I follow him along that road until it ends at an iron gateway. As Death raises a leg to climb over, a man in studio uniform begs a request to "please exit through the turnstiles."

Though my hip is popping, I manage to keep my tail. His habits change from place to place. I need to know how he's going to get around while he's here. That will help me figure out how he'll find us. After that, the rest will happen on its own.

Outside the park, a rail-thin man in long boots and mustache holds a sign. "The end is near, the end is near!" He shouts, but this wisdom falls on deaf ears.

"Not yet." Death leers at the man's booted feet. "What size are those?"

The poor dooms-dayer hesitates, looking into the face of evil. Plainly, he is puzzled by this question. Until my bearded nemesis yanks him by the collar: in one move, he's subdued. In the second, he's barefooted.

On the paved road leading out, Death walks with his new boots heading towards the highest buildings in the distance. He knows exactly where to begin his search. In each ring, I am almost always lingering in the city of Angels.

# During

There was an accident downtown last week. The story goes that a diesel truck ran a red light and t-boned a city bus. My boy was on that bus just like he was supposed to be.

"They keep saying he won't come back, but I know he will." He has to.

As I fall into my wheelchair, I worry if that's one decision I should have changed. My nurse, Jeanine, pulls the lever on the wheel, releasing the brake. I don't need to see the pitiful worry on her face to know it's there. It always is.

* * *

If not for the headstones, the thick green grass of the cemetery might remind me of the last golf course I was on. It's been more than a year since I played. The last time was with Henry, one of my two good friends from the Home. Well, they call it a home but it's not. Home never had nurses making me roll over every two hours or strangers assigned to keep track of my every bowel movement, but I digress.

Henry dragged me onto the course with him even though I didn't want to go. He'd said, "Golf is relaxing, Gerry. You need to relax."

Henry used golf to unwind. I remember that morning, he was out of sorts because he'd talked to his granddaughter on the phone; the two had argued over something and Henry hung up on her. Somewhere near the third hole, Henry said he was going to call and apologize. In the meantime he was on fire and thought, like every good golfer, that the call might throw off his game. At the fourth hole came the heart attack. Poor guy was dead before his knees hit the green. Left stains on his best trousers.

Henry didn't plan on dying that day. He was a good man who didn't see death coming. That's the way life is, I guess. Feels endless as we walk through then, in a blink, it's passed us by. I am not like Henry. I am not a good man and I am cursed with the knowledge of exactly when Death will come for me. Only a few more days. When my boy comes back, it'll be my turn to go. I'm not looking forward to it, but it's better than any of the alternatives.

The groundskeeper is making the rounds here at the cemetery. His riding mower weaves through the rows of stones, passing a compact car parked near the memorial cannon that's two rows back from Carrie's plot. My eyes catch on a tall man with dark hair and a short, neat beard. Looks like he's standing over my daughters' marker. The last time I came by there were wilting wildflowers resting against her headstone. I know her brother never visits. After all these years, the pain is still too fresh. Guilt rarely loses potency though. So I asked the groundskeeper to call me when the man came back because I wanted to know who's been leaving flowers for her and why.

It's a lot of work to get out of the car, but eventually, I get to my feet. "I'll be right back, Jeanine."

"Twenty minutes, Mr. Springer." She reminds from the drivers' seat between bites of her burrito.

Jeanine was kind enough to ask me along on her lunch break today. She feels bad for me because I'm old. She thinks I'm all alone in this world. I agreed to come even though she's wrong because I needed to get here before the mystery man left the cemetery. I was gonna take the bus, but Jeanine insisted. One of the perks of being an old fart.

The bottom of my cane presses into the grass, sinking the rubber end into the soft soil. The suction pops when I lift it—no, that's my hip. My legs aren't so dependable today, progress is slow and noisy.

The man is hunching over, hiding his face as his shoulders shake. Two rows away, I realize this man is no stranger.

"Elijah? Is that you?" I ask, though I'm sure it's him. "Boy, what are you doing here?"

He turns to me wiping his wide eyes. "Mr. Springer, sir? I'm sorry. I should go."

I haven't seen him in years. I forgot how fidgety and irritating he can be. "I don't own the place. You're free to come and go as you please." Her stone is laden with fresh flowers. I use my cane to point. "I wanted to know who was leaving those and told the groundskeeper to call me. He said you come at least once a month to see her?"

He shakes his head. I wait for him to speak, but his eyes wander.

"It doesn't look like you're going to volunteer an explanation as to why you're visiting my girl's grave, but I'm demanding one. Why are you here, Elijah?"

"I'm running late, so—"

"Not only does he cry like a girl, he runs like one, too." The comment's out of line but it's alright because the boy halts his retreat.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm old, not blind. I saw you from over there." I point back at Jeanine's car. "I've been watching you, trying to figure out why the hell you'd be here. Carrie was only three, so it's not like you two were close. Tell me what you're sorry for, Elijah."

His chin trembles as his fingers play with the pencil thin tie over his shirt buttons. "How is your health, sir?"

"Well enough to know your explanation isn't going to kill me. I don't need conversation, just spit it out."

He nods, real twitchy, mumbling and wiping his hands over his pants. "I have been coming here once a month. Every first Thursday lately because my work schedule changed. Before that, it was every first Tuesday."

The cemetery clears away the flowers every Tuesday. That explains why I never noticed before. "For how long?"

"Years. I'm so sorry." He whimpers.

"Why?"

"I hate Thursdays. Do you know what you were doing that Thursday night before it happened, around seven-thirty in the evening?"

"That's rhetorical, right? I can't remember breakfast."

"Well, I know where I was, what I was doing." His voice cracks. He stops, takes a deep breath, and plays with his tie some more. "I was standing on a lawn chair using a hammer to pry a street sign from the post. You know the one: diamond shaped, yellow, read, 'Not a through Street.'"

I shake my head. _Another one_. "How many of you kids are gonna torture yourselves over that damned drunk driver?"

Elijah's hands clutch the front of his button up shirt, tugging as if he's trying to physically remove the cloth along with the pain. "I'm sorry."

How well I recognize that suffocating shame... it's just too bad that I can't do anything about it. "Son, you've been holding onto this for nearly twenty years? What makes you think anything I say could relieve your precious guilt?"

He mumbles something about 'all this' and 'fault,' but I don't quite catch it. The waste and anger in seeing him here makes me deaf to his cause.

"You know, my boy thinks it was his fault because he was with her that day and didn't see it happen. His mother—God rest her soul—thought she was at fault for having to work to put food on the table, for not being with her baby. I thought it was mine, because I was her father and I was supposed to protect her."

Elijah has eyes the same color as his hair: dark brown. They widen until I'm sure I can see all the way into his soul. There are secrets buried there; mystery and intelligence. Yet, when he responds it's all naivete. "How could it be your fault? You weren't even there."

"Neither were you. It was that worthless driver—he was the one drinking at ten in the morning. So, it's not your fault for taking down some damned street sign that no one even knew was missing." I have to calm down. Talking about it gets me worked up. "I forgave that piece of garbage and I'd forgive you, too, if there were any need for it."

His confession reminds me so much of young Gerry. The boy who thought he killed his sister. I am as sure now as I was then that some of life's most painful events are the ones that shape us—make us who we are destined to become—and that shaping makes those moments unavoidable. If we are ever to meet our destiny, they have to happen.

"Elijah, no matter how much you wish you could change the past, you can't. But you don't have to let it control the future."

This childhood friend of my son, this strange young man, he begins to weep. Bawling like a calf without warning. Normally, something like this would piss me off, but right now, being so close to the end of all things, the only emotion his tears draw from me is sympathy. I pat his back.

After he regains composure, we start to talk. I ask about the job he mentioned. His answer is a genuine mind-job if ever there was one. Elijah says he is a physicist. _A Physicist!_ He's working on his second PhD in cosmology at a university in Pasadena.

The announcement makes me laugh. He stares at me like I'm crazy because he doesn't know what I do—that Fate has introduced a new variable into the equation that is my legacy. It multiplies my hopes for the future. His passion is my necessity. Quantum mechanics!

I have to make a move. "In case you still feel a need, I may know a way to ease your conscience."

"That is not possible, Mr. Springer, but I would be content to try." He answers solemnly.

"I need a decent cup of coffee. How 'bout we talk over one? I'll tell you all about it."

Hope for the past, present and future is restored by his acceptance. The boy will need all the hope I can give him to do what needs to be done.

Through the variant ages I've learned there are always two constants. The first is Nahuiollin—Death. Each encounter with him is the same; he's violent and vengeful with delusions of grandeur. If I'd known enough to take advantage of that, maybe I could have stopped him. The second is me. I am different in every place, no matter the age. And my boy is so much like me; I bet the farm he'll encounter the same problems. But he's different, too. Better. He'll only let fear push him so far. Once he reaches that tipping point, all hell breaks loose.

I laugh again, overjoyed by the forgotten thrill of possibility. It's easy to forget that things can still get better when you've seen as much as I have. Gerry's stubbornness combined with this one's brains... that Snake is going to shit his pants.

# After

This is gonna be hard for my boy.

I hate it, but can't stop it. I'm sure this is the way it's supposed to be.

"Is this thing on? I hope so, because I am not doing this twice."

My face was on the computer screen, I clicked the record button and the red light turned on, but then I touched something I wasn't supposed to and the screen went black. The red light is still on, though, so I'm sure it's still recording.

"Well, Gerry, it's Thursday. The day you come back and I... go away." My hand rubs across the scar on my head. Soon, he will understand.

"I want you to know that I'm not afraid. Maybe I should be, but I know you can set things right. Whatever sounds reasonable to the rest of us, you do the opposite so that will help. Even if you're mad at me for what I'm about to do, you have to know, there is no other choice. I like to think of it as hedging my bets. Sacrifice for a purpose."

My hands grip the arms of my wheelchair as I raise myself up. Working into a shuffle, I make my way to the bed. My dress trousers are already wrinkled. The lines crumple again when I sit on my bed. My final resting place.

I look back to Jeanine's computer to give one, last reassurance. "I love you, son. If you don't want to see this, you'd better stop the tape now." My legs swing up on to the bed. I lie down, make myself comfortable, and then all I can do is wait.

Searching for just the right way to rest my arms, the heavy regret returns, weighing down my chest, reminding me of why this is so important, why I have to go through with this. So many times I was sure that what I was doing was the right thing. But how can anyone beat a demon at his own game when he's the one that makes the rules? I never realized the implications could be so severe. I'm sure now that he was counting on that—knowing I was like most men and would ultimately do what was best for me.

The authority I felt, the things I could do with it... it was entrancing. I held ultimate power, but at such a cost.

My father taught me the fundamentals but in the end, no one could teach me not to be greedy. That was a lesson I had to learn on my own. I couldn't gather the courage to face the monster I created, so I had to let him go. Now he's grown and I can see one final time the ways I have failed. From here on out my son must carry the cost of my sins just as I carried the cost of my fathers.

All my life, all I wanted was a way out of the legacy that held me captive. Now I'm passing it on. Another regret; another failure to add to my list.

The door moves and though its slight, I startle at Jeanine strolling in, holding a covered breakfast tray.

"I'm not hungry. Go away."

"You don't have to eat it, but I have to leave it." She rhymes, setting the food on a bed side table.

"I'm going to sleep. Make sure you give my son that box. He'll come by for it soon." She looks worried and I don't have time to argue. "Humor me and go away."

After the door closes I cross my hands over my chest. To the camera, I say, "Make sure you tell her I said 'thank you.'"

In the quiet of the still room, I start to hum my favorite hymnal. The soft words bring me comfort. Freedom from a life enslaved.

The door moves again and a wiry beard pokes through the opening. Hovering in the space above it are two beady, black eyes.

"Nahuiollin," I use his proper name, "I have been waiting for you." _Merciful Heaven, let it be quick._

He slinks to my bedside, hissing, "Where are they?"

"They're not yours anymore." As sorry as I am for the harm I've caused, I can't give him what he wants. Even if I changed my mind, they're buried too far away. In a place where he'll never find them.

"Liar!" He spits, following with a string of words in his native tongue. My muscles lock up as his calloused, dirty hands stretch around my neck. "Where are they?"

"For-give me." With the apology, goes the last of my air.

My mind is resigned to going quietly though my body wants to do what it has always done. Breathe. Struggling will only prolong the process and I want to get this over with. He's come for vengeance and when he feels he's taken it, he'll go. It isn't enough, but offering my life in return for the ones I took is all I can do. I have nothing else for him.

Amazingly, his coiled grip tightens. Sickening joy glosses his eyes and maintaining a penitent heart quickly becomes unbearable.

My skin boils hot and bloated. Tiny pricks burst on my cheeks and forehead—blood vessels popping over the surface of my face. The pressure is unbelievable. My bulbous eyes try to fly from their sockets. My lungs scream, my fingers fumble over his grip on my throat.

His grunting and ruthless grin makes it all so plain: I was wrong. This was a stupid idea. And I'm failing again.

This isn't the way it's supposed to be. This isn't right.

# Part II

# 

# The Boy

"I don't want to be scarred just clean shaven. The goal is to look good in my casket and I won't if I'm covered with scabs." The gravelly timber of my fathers' command grates every nerve.

Despite the fact that I've successfully shaved my own face for more than a decade, he is convinced I'm going to screw this up.

"Okay, Dad." I concede smiling like the idiot he believes me to be.

He's sitting in the wheelchair that came with the room. I stand behind him waiting and watching as he leans back, nestling his head in the crook of my arm.

Staring down into the abyss of his right nostril—where years of overgrowth have compressed the stout, tree-like hairs into a mangled forest of gray packed inside a black hole—I take a deep breath.

"Hurry up." He instructs, adjusting himself.

"Don't move."

I raise the small pen-like shaver and begin the process of deforestation. At the first sense of vibration Dad jerks, forcing the dull blade against the rim of his nostril. His worried grimace morphs into fury while one hand flies out. "You're gonna bleed me dry!"

A last second defensive move saves my right cheek. His blow glances off my forearm. "Dad, you've got to stay still."

I thrust the micro-shaver at him and step to the opposite side of the bathroom, out of patience and his reach. It's no use arguing when he gets like this. Dad is always right and I am always wrong.

There's no sign of blood, but he's sure there should be so I hand him a tissue.

"Two weeks from Thursday, huh? You want potted flowers at your service or will a wreath suffice?" I'm smiling, but there's nothing humorous about my tone or the way his mouth hardens to a thin line beneath the rumpled tissue.

"Two weeks from _next_ Thursday, smart-ass. If you can't remember, maybe you should write it down. Death is nothing to joke about." He continues wiping at his nostril and checking the tissue for blood. There is none. "Hear me, kid: no matter what you do or where you go for the rest of your life, you will remember this conversation."

"Change the subject." In my head it sounds like an order, but in the convalescent bathroom it comes out like a murmur. My gaze shifts to the ground.

I don't have to look to know he's staring. I can feel his eyes burning into the side of my face; feel them measuring me as his retort bites back. "Let's talk about the floor, instead. Never know what it may do next."

The sarcasm doesn't bother me. It's the timing that feels cruel. I'd dismiss the topic entirely if not for the pointed alarm in my stomach, driving up into my chest, and piercing me with a knowledge that few others would make a connection with.

See, my dad is almost always _eerily_ right. About this sort of thing, anyway. He insists he isn't psychic, but over the years his peculiar instinct has proven to be little less than second sight. 'Call it intuition,' he'll often say, but no other explanation is plausible. From minor occurrences, like every time I fell off a bicycle to the stock market collapse, the train bombings in London, the tsunami in Thailand, and the Red Socks winning the Series (no one could have foreseen that). All of them, he predicted. At the time, I refused to believe. Mainly because there were other things he said would happen that never did. In this case, I have to hope for the latter. He is right about one thing, though: that no matter how old I live to be or how many women I marry and kids I manage to screw up along the way, I know I'll never forget this conversation. No matter how hard I try.

Though, I should probably be grateful as he is being his usual belligerent self. I don't see that side of him often enough anymore. If not for this most recent morbid prediction, I might be very glad to have this time together.

"Your hair will grow back before your funeral." I take a marker from my pocket and write on my palm. "'Thursday after next—Dad dies.' Did you say how it would happen?"

"I'll tell you whennn..."

The last word drags from his mouth. Light leaves his eyes like someone's flipped a switch. A countenance of absolute vacuity is suddenly staring at me from where my father used to be. It's not the first time I've seen this look. For some reason, I expected it to get easier to deal with, but it doesn't. Just keeps me awake at night.

Sighing, I lean back against the bathroom wall. There's nothing to do but wait for the episode to end. I can't look at him like that, all helpless and empty in his wheelchair. My eyes wander towards the clock hanging over his bed. The numbers are a blur so I stare at the fluffy pillows and crisp sheets.

No wonder he wants to live here. The retirement home gives three squares a day, laundry and turndown service. There are even a few cute nurses in this wing. Ramblings about electrical outages in Burbank float from the flat screen mounted over his dresser. I shake my head. Even his television is nicer than mine.

To me, Dad has always seemed unconquerable but watching the constant decline, the pieces just vanishing away... it's like watching an eagle being plucked. He hates the way age caps his usefulness. I hate the way it makes him feel and especially his tendency to take his frustrations out on me. He says on the inside he feels the same as he did at my age, that it's his reflection that doesn't belong. He believes it with every fiber of his being, too. I see the shock on his face sometimes when he looks in the mirror or catches sight of the deep wrinkles in his hands. His body has changed without permission and he's powerless to stop it.

I need to be at work by noon, but it feels wrong to think about leaving. Dad's journey usually picks up where it left off and I hate the idea that, were I to leave now, to him it would seem as if I disappeared. But there's no way of knowing how long he'll be gone. Sometimes it's a few minutes, other episodes lasted hours. The latter seems more common lately.

When I look back at him, I can tell by the slack of his jaw that he's still off some place else, his one shaking hand still clenching the hair trimmer. He's not the only one trembling now, because I know one of these times he won't come back at all.

"Dad?" I test, reaching for his hand.

My touch stops the empty gaping. His face fills with this misplaced childish wonder as he examines his own raised hand. It's as if he's never seen his fingers move before. The thin shaver drops into his lap.

"I got it."

"No, I've got it. You'll bleed me dry!" He suddenly complains, picking up the conversation and the shaver. The light has returned to his eyes, burning brighter than before.

"Sorry, Dad."

He raises the hair trimmer, hand still trembling. "You gonna help or not?"

"Yes, sir."

I step closely behind his chair, lean over and begin again—this time, only guiding. The hairy terrain is rough and wiry, pointing in every direction. I help set the small edge at various angles to ensure an even cut. This frustrates him but he cooperates. Once Dad is sure I can be trusted enough not to clip the flesh, he lets go.

The fluorescent lighting reflects off his smooth scalp as I work and I can't help but think how strange it is that a man who can barely gather a fistful of hair on his head could have such thick underbrush in his nose and ears. It's as if gravity has shifted all follicle growth from the top to the bottom of his head. That gives me something to look forward to. By the time I reach my seventies, I'll be able to braid it. Maybe use the ropes for hanging my glasses.

Once the lumber from his nasal passages is all clear, I start on the ears. He turns his head to one side and I catch sight of the concave scar on the left side. The depression is barely larger than a dime and I'm intrigued by the mystery it represents. I know he wasn't born with it, but it's been there as long as I can remember. How the scar came to be is a subject he refuses to discuss.

I learned very early on, there are some things Dad will not talk about, no matter how much I beg. The origin of this blemish seems to upset him more than any other, so naturally, it's the subject that provokes the most curiosity. He gets weepy when I ask and Dad has only ever cried when he drank, which he hardly ever does anymore. During the years when I'd frequently find him pickled in beer and feeling liberal with information, all I could ever drag out of him about this scar was a cryptic response. "This is my reminder," he'd say but would never elaborate.

He was never a member of any armed services, so he's never been to war. I suppose it might have resulted from a fist fight; a solid crack to the noggin.

"Dad, how—"

"Don't ask, Gerry."

I want to answer back, tell him how unfair it is that he's willing to tell me all about his supposed impending demise but refuses to answer a simple question about a scar on his head. But I don't. Enough damage has been done for one day. The doctor says his episodes may be triggered by stress.

"I know I don't tell you enough, but you're a real good kid. You'll be okay." His reflection in the low mirror holds a rare tenderness.

It drives my shoulders into a slump. He's really and truly convinced of his limited future and I cannot stomach it. Where does that leave me? He's my whole family. My mother has been gone forever and my little sister... We don't talk about them, either.

"So will you."

A sudden pressure wrings my chin, which is now locked between the old man's fingers—a belated alarm that I have overstepped. Dad has always had a quick temper but age, which has slowed and dulled every other sense, has only sharpened his temperament. Today he's especially cantankerous.

I try to pull away but his grip tightens. "Let me go."

"Gerry!" He barks my name, commanding me to listen.

I'm twelve years-old, again. "Sorry, sir."

"You. Will. Be. Alright." His face softens, though the words are firm. "I am trying to tell you something important. Why do you always make jokes about serious things?"

I start to defend myself, but the planned sarcasm will only prove his point. Instead, I lock my lips together and shrug.

"I know you can't help it. It's who you are. I suppose that's my fault."

I don't notice my blatant agreement right away. Not until the old man scowls do I identify and put a stop to my subconscious bobble head motion.

Dad sighs, looking very serious. "Son, bear with me. I don't know how to let you take this burden. We are so alike, Gerry, and I don't want you to be like me, to make my same mistakes. But here you are: a carbon copied, selfish, dumbass. How am I supposed to hand over my legacy to you, to ensure the—" he stops and inhales deeply.

Beginning again in controlled calm, he says, "I have concerns that I don't know how to change."

He looks down and away, softening his rigid posture. "I thought you might be more courageous if I gave some slack. You do the right things sometimes, but nothing is based on how it affects others. That's a tough lesson to learn, son. My father, your grandfather, was... well, strict doesn't even begin to describe him. Because of that, my decisions were based on what I was taught would work rather than what I thought was right and I hoped by holding out on the teaching—making a different choice within the others—seeing if I could change things that way." He shakes his head, "I never knew there was such danger in recurrence. My father used to say knowledge is the first line of defense. He was talking about football, of course, but it still applies. I need a way to balance this equation, to make sure you go in the right direction after I'm gone."

Somewhere in the middle of this rant he began talking more to himself than to me. I thought he'd forgotten I was here until I saw him eyeing my reflection. He spins in his chair, rolling over my shoe to face me with wary eyes.

"It's a terrible fate, Gerry. Living in fear, letting it make decisions for you—it's the worst kind of regret and I want more for you. Do you understand?"

My head goes up and down but I say, "No."

He coughs to clear his throat. "Promise me that when your time comes you won't hold back, even if you're afraid. Promise that you will do what is right."

"Of course, Dad."

"No, don't just speak the words. You have to mean them!"

"I promise." My eyes widen as his nostrils flare.

"Promise what?" He demands and I flinch.

"I won't be afraid."

"Dammit, that's a stupid thing to say!" As he scoffs, air catches in his throat and sends him into a fit of coughing.

The mucus roils in his chest as he hacks and I'm nauseated by the gurgling. His aged hand swipes at me, again. One would think the coughing spasm would keep him from connecting, but it doesn't. He slaps my wrist and the hair trimmer hits the tile floor. The plastic casing shatters.

His craggy fist then clenches my shirt. "You can't promise not to feel fear, idiot. Come down here and I'll knock some sense into that empty shell you call a head!"

He coughs again and his complaint becomes mumbles of indecipherable words mixed with clear insults of my intelligence.

I genuinely do not understand my father. It's true that we have always been very much alike in looks, but I have never understood him or his need to give cryptic warnings. Why not just come out and say what you mean? He thinks I can't understand his needs

"Tell me why, Dad."

"You promise me some things, first."

Of course. "If I do, then will you explain?"

"One: promise you'll be brave. It's too hard to live with the easy decisions, Gerry. It's my dying wish."

Not exactly the response I was hoping for, but I consent quickly, anxious to get on with it.

Dads' eyes tighten. "You know, I'm not going to be around forever. You should use this time wisely and avoid pissing me off."

"Maybe you should stop trying to hit me."

He shrugs.

"Look, I'm not sure why you're suddenly so convinced you're gonna die but I promise to do my best to be brave and make you proud." My words are sincere though it's clear I'm oblivious.

He releases my shirt and color returns to his knuckles.

"Thank you. Now, the second part," The same withered hand points out the bathroom door. "Over there, get the box under my bed. Go through it, read everything, memorize every page, even if you don't understand. Guard it with your life. It's your legacy." He coughs loudly again and curses.

My gaze hits the bed and immediately climbs up to the clock. This time, I can't see anything but the crown of numbers looming larger than they should.

"My bus."

"Gerry, get the box. It's important. Take it with you." He rolls out of the restroom behind me.

"Alright." I have to get out of here.

Bending down, I find a box sticking out from under the edge of the bed. To my relief, it's small.

"Not that one, look behind it." Dad waves his hands, motioning, wishing he were able to get it himself.

I touch my knees to the hard floor and bend all the way down. "Is it in one of these shoe boxes?"

"No. It's a plain brown box." He's right beside me now, talking to himself, going over the last conversation he had with his regular nurse, Jeanine. "I told her to put it exactly under the left side of the bed near the headboard. I said, 'headboard'. What's so damned difficult about that?"

I stand, dusting my jeans. "Dad, I'm out of time. If I miss the bus, I'll be late."

I'm already on thin ice with Ahmed. Too much is riding on my miniscule paychecks and he knows it. He won't be able to stay in his private room anymore and I'm barely making ends as it is. It would be cheaper to have him with me at my apartment but we can't tolerate one another for more than a few hours at a stretch. He'd probably end up getting high blood pressure or something.

"Jeanine!" Dad wheels towards the door, yelling. "Where's my box?"

"I'll be back right after work, I promise."

"Don't forget. Jeanine!"

Running down the passage, past the echoes of my father's blaring voice, I cut through the nurses' station and come out near the end of the main hall. I'm nearly at full speed coming around the last corner when a wire laundry cart appears in the middle of the corridor. I veer out to pass without slowing, but still clip my knee on the metal corner. The pain sends me into a dance.

"Mother—"

"Mr. Springer, are you alright?"

Jeanine is standing in the doorway of another residents' room on the opposite side of the cart.

Bending to rub away the pain helps to hide my rolling eyes. It's the formal address: we've known each other for years. "I'm fine, Mrs. Watkins. My father, Mr. Springer, is looking for you."

The edge of her mouth curves up. "Tell him I'll be right there, G."

"Can't. I'm late. He's looking for some box. I'll be back after work to pick it up."

As I speak, I can't help but notice how Jeanine's usually sleek hairdo is messy on one side. She drops an arm-full of crumpled sheets into the laundry cart, revealing her green uniform scrubs are covered in a wet substance. When she turns to face me head on, one of her golden cheeks is a burning cherry red. I want to ask if she's alright, but it looks like a lengthy explanation. And it's not like she's crying or anything.

"I'm off at seven. I'll hold it for you at the nurses' station, but don't forget."

"Sure thing!" I call down the long corridor on my way out of the air conditioned lobby and into the sweltering summer heat.

# Just Warming Up

The thirty-seven west bound is running right on schedule as it speeds towards downtown.

I barely made it to the stop in time. I'm winded, clutching my side, and panting my way to the nearest open seat. I should probably quit smoking again if running two blocks has my chest burning this way.

The moment I step off the bus at the corner I'm sweating. There is enough time to smoke before I start my shift, but the relentless heat has me galloping across the blazing lot after only two drags, seeking the controlled air of the convenience store. Swinging the glass door open, the chilled air rushes down, cooling me in passage.

Before I get anywhere near the counter, my nose is assaulted with the stench of cheap cologne. "Ugh, what died in here?"

"Ahmed's on a tear today." Sharif, the source of the smell, is behind the counter overusing body spray. Ahmed's nephew is bright-eyed, pimple-faced and half my age. This is his first job, and I bet he makes more money than me.

"I got to see a man about a dog." He's already removing his mustard colored vest.

"I think I'd rather smell that."

He pinches the front of his shirt, pulling it up to sniff. "No, man, I'm getting a dog. I'm supposed to be in Glendale by one." He ambles towards the hallway behind the register.

"Hold up, let me clock in first."

At least one of us has to be on the clock or Ahmed will start crowing. I push him aside, sneak through the passageway, and relax a little when I see that the door to the manager's office is shut. Avoiding Ahmed all afternoon is impossible, but I'd like to go unnoticed for as long as I can. I know exactly why he's in a crap-mood and am sure it means he wants to talk to me.

Inside my locker is the mandatory smock that makes me look like the convenience store clerk from 1973. Everyone else has the new gold vests but I'm stuck with the oversized, vomit yellow number. It's thick and heavy, made of polyester, reeks of old mustard and gasoline. The zipper's broken—stuck in the up position, of course, so no matter what the temperature is I feel like a boiling chicken. Slinking the mini-dress over my head, I make plans to visit the walk-in freezer.

When my time card slides into the clock, his thick Pakistani accent tears through the quiet. "Not so fast Gerry Springer."

"Hey Ahmed," I can't stand when he uses my full name.

"You are not scheduled to start until exactly noon."

Ahmed steps out of his small office, straightening a stack of soda crates as he saunters past. My focus is fixed on the marked sweat rings covering most of the shirt below his arms. He casts a glance at his nephew, Sharif, who's standing nearby. "You can go, Sharif. I need to speak with Gerry Springer."

Sharif is gone like a fart behind a fan.

"Come on, Ahmed. It's two minutes 'til—"

"Do not 'come on' me, Gerry." He wags his finger at me. "You are working eight hours today, not one minute more or less. If you start early, you must leave early, and your shift is not over until eight-thirty. I will not pay one minute for overtime. Wait until exactly noon."

"Ahmed—"

"Do you have something for me?" He crosses his arms, touching the sweaty fabric of his shirt with tense fingers.

"Eternal friendship," I set my hand across my chest.

Ahmed tightens his eyes. "Where is my money?"

"I don't have it." Sarcasm never goes over well with him. I don't know why I try.

"I knew you would not pay me back." He shakes his head.

I want to ask, 'Then, why loan me the money, Ahmed?' because it's one of the first things my dad ever taught me: never loan money, only give it. Always. If you get it back, great. If not, you didn't expect it, so it's no loss. I guess I sort of assumed this was par for the course with small loans amongst 'friends'.

"This is the third and last time." A giant vein—the angry vein as I call it—pulses, splitting Ahmed's forehead into Eastern and Western territories.

"Ahmed, I had the money yesterday," I lie, "but had to... use it to help my dad. See, the doctor put him on this new medication—which, it turns out he was allergic to—and I had to take him to the emergency room. We were there all night. His insurance has a hundred dollar copay, plus I had to shell out another hundred for the new medicine and antibiotics."

His eyes are slits as he inquires. "Is he okay now?"

"Yes, he is. Thank you for asking." I slip my timecard into the clock. It stamps the minute onto the paper in black ink. I turn to show Ahmed before putting it away.

"Then, you can give me the rest on payday."

_Relentless._ "Oh... I wanted to talk to you about that."

"You will pay me back, Gerry Springer. I am not a bank."

My blood boils. Everyone calls me G—which is probably why he refuses to.

"I'll scrape together what I can, but I have to make rent." Maybe I can borrow some cash from Abi.

"I am not paying you to stand around." Ahmed turns and steps back into his office, slamming the door on our conversation.

Thirty five hours a week at ten bucks an hour. Math has never been my strongest subject, but it seems that if Ahmed wants to get paid back so fast he could try giving me a raise or at least a few extra shifts. Every dime I make is spent twice before I get it and Ahmed knew that before he loaned me the three hundred. If I'd known he expected me to give it back in a week, I never would have asked him.

Ahmed didn't use to be such a pain in the ass but inflation and the crumbling economy's been tough on business. He's been especially difficult since his second store closed. This one absorbed the inventory which means it's overstocked and, according to him, underselling. Sharif told me a few days ago his wife wants a divorce, too.

Well, we've all got our problems.

* * *

The first few hours fly by. A steady flow of customers puts Ahmed in a decent mood and helps keep me busy. But as the flow is choked into a trickle, the minutes start dragging. I'm not even half way through my shift and almost to the end of my checklist. Soon I'll have to make up chores. To help pass the time, I turn on the small radio behind the counter.

Outside the heat is peaking. Warmth seeps through the rag as I wash the plate glass store front. Across the way, the banks' electronic sign flashes between reassuring phrases—'What matters to you matters to us' and 'your money matters,'—then flashes lame pictures of houses with smiling families posing in front yards next to sold signs. About every thirty seconds it flashes the time and temperature. Right now the barometer is nearing Seventh Circle of Hell. Steam rises from the blacktop in blurry wisps.

Working on a sticky finger print, I can't help but notice the how fast-food drive-thru across the street is packed.

"No one wants to get out of their cars for anything, anymore." Ahmed has appeared beside me. He's staring mournfully out the window. "Did you know I used to own a video store? People don't want to leave their houses to rent movies, either."

Without missing a beat, he takes the rag and spray bottle from me, ordering instead that I should sweep again and turn off the radio. After another fifteen minutes, he decides to finish himself, telling me to face the store. I already have but if I say so, he'll send me home.

I walk through the aisles dusting things here and there, straightening bags of chips and cans of dip that don't need straightening. When Ahmed heads back to his office, I head to the walk-in freezer to cool off behind the racks of energy drinks. From there, it's easy to see when customers approach the door.

The frigid air reeks of metal and forgotten milk. I lift and flutter the huge smock to work the cold beneath it. The frosty comfort and silence help me focus.

Just two more paychecks. Only a few more weeks of Cup O' Noodles and gas station chicken. Then, I'll have enough saved to get my car fixed. She's been gathering dust beneath the carport in front of my apartment for the last four months. It's been too long since I drove her. I miss being able to get behind the wheel and just go. Then, no more shame train. No more standing next to smelly strangers bumping into me at every turn. No more screaming babies. I'll go from point A to B in under an hour. I am so close. My savings, stuffed inside a crumpled pillowcase and hidden between my mattresses, is nearly enough for the transmission. I can call the new mechanic, have the parts delivered, and get back into the land of freedom and mobility. I can start looking for a better job and start living a normal life. Maybe then, Abi will ease up with the when-are-you-going-to-grow-up lectures.

The electronic chirp sounds just as I light up. I take a quick drag, then stomp out the butt and rush back to the store front where several people have come in. One in particular catches my attention the second I step behind the register. She slips her sunglasses up over her wavy bronze hair. Her eyes land on me, sweet wickedness gleaming from them. Wearing a bright green bikini top that matches those eyes and tiny denim shorts complimenting legs for days—she's gorgeous.

She glances at my name tag. "G?"

"Y-yes," It's sweltering in here.

"Can you help me?"

"Um, I help. You." Wait... take two, "How can I help you?"

She palms the counter, jiggling her impressive apparel. "My gas cap is stuck. I want you... to unscrew it."

Her blatant innuendo has my mind stuck in question mode: who is she, why is she? But more than that, I don't care. I'm too busy staring.

Yeah, yeah, I know I have Abi, but this woman is beautiful. I mean, all women are beautiful on general principal that they embody the gender with which my biology dictates I seek to mate. Attraction is the basest instinct. It's in my DNA. And even though L.A. is filled with thousands of lovely girls, it is still rare to come across one whose appearance forces you stop and gape. Even if this woman were wearing a sack, I'd know that I was staring at perfection.

She wipes away the glisten from her neck and lets her fingertips slither down her collarbone. She leans onto the high counter, leaving me unable to form a coherent response.

"Please?" Her pink lips press into a pout.

It takes a second to remember the question. "Oh. I would love to help open your tank," I smile, "but I can't leave the register." There are very strict rules about leaving the front when customers are present.

"Pretty, please?"

I cannot help my wandering eyes. All I see are gloriously stuffed, green triangles bouncing as she shifts her weight, reminding me of the first time I saw _Baywatch_. My eyes bulge from their sockets—among other things.

I press the buzzer below the counter twice before remembering it's broken. Why can't Ahmed appear out of nowhere when I need him?

"If you wait a few minutes I can help you, then." I am transfixed by her ample charms.

"Aw, but I'm already late. Please?"

"If I could get away with it, I would. In a heartbeat."

"I won't tell," she smirks.

"You have no idea how sorry I am, but really, I can't leave the register unattended."

"I don't want you to get into trouble." She reaches out and brushes my chest, flicking my tame tag with a French manicured nail. "What's the G stand for?"

"Gerald." I look down, commanding the region beyond my southern border to calm. "I was named after my father."

She leans into my line of sight. "Hey, do you carry super glue?"

"Yeah, over in aisle five," I point to the far corner of the store.

"Could you show me?"

"I'd rather watch you try to find it."

She pouts again, "But I left my glasses at home."

"What about those?" I point to the pair on her head.

"Oh, these aren't prescription. I don't need glasses for driving, silly, only reading." She smiles expectantly.

"Follow me."

I move towards the end of the counter and jump in front of her, leading towards the far aisle. Looking to the sky, I pray she stays behind me—hyper-aware of the perfectly natural physical reaction induced by her scant attire. The sheer fear of discovery should make my inconvenient friend withdraw but, of course, virile creature that I am, a disappearing act is too much to hope for.

Once we reach the aisle, I'm careful to keep my eyes on the floor as I point out the two types of glue we carry. Gorgeous asks me to read the labels to her, and so I accommodate to the best of my ability; going over the differences between the products and summing them up for her.

"This one sets in thirty seconds, the other in fifteen, but they're both extra super hold."

She thinks for a long moment, humming to herself and shifting her weight from one tanned leg to the other. I swear she's trying to taunt me and its working. I'm totally gassed up. Distraction is my only defense if I don't want to turn and walk past her at full mast, so I force myself to concentrate on the one thing I don't like about her—her pedicure. It's ridiculously lavish.

Being a person of limited means has prompted a certain amount of sensitivity to the exorbitance of others. Her ten, shiny, little nails are painted with superfluous detail: various fluorescent colors overlaid with zebra stripes and tiny jewels set into the ends of each nail. Topped off with three—count'em three—toe rings on each foot. Toe rings? Come on.

The name ' _Armando'_ is tattooed just above her ankle, painting the picture of a poor, neglected heiress, ignored by daddy—a coke addicted Hollywood producer with no time for family. How could he have time for anything but work with such an expensive habit and a daughter who must have a five hundred dollar pedicure just to go to the convenience store in her thirteen hundred dollar flip-flops? I imagine her dipping her diamond encrusted foot into the seaside pool of Daddy's beach house bungalow, complaining the sun is casting bad lighting.

I roll my eyes, disgusted and grateful that Abi isn't like that.

Setting my mind to more important matters, like straightening the hanging packages, I wait for the girl to make up her neglected mind.

Suddenly a very warm hand is on my arm. When I turn to ask what she needs, I'm stopped by two soft lips pressing roughly against mine. And, _damn_... but this is wrong. Absolutely wrong.

As her hands climb to embrace me, I back away, shaking my head. "I have a girlfriend."

The girl's eyes darken as one side of her mouth lifts. There's no trace of apology as she mutters, "Sorry."

"What is wrong with you?" I snap, but she doesn't notice. She and her jiggles are already outside crawling into her car. She speeds away in a small red convertible with black smoke fuming from the tailpipe. Tragically erotic.

"What did she buy?"

The sudden sound of his voice makes me jump. "Geez, Ahmed!" I gasp, "How do you keep doing that?"

"What?"

"She didn't buy anything, Houdini." Rather than going into detail about the whole weird scenario, I give an excuse. "She forgot her wallet."

He shakes his head. "Gerry, what medication was your father allergic to?"

Tearing my eyes away from the empty lot, I ask, "Huh?"

"What medication was your father prescribed that he was allergic to?"

I remember the lie and guilt comes charging in. Not enough to make me admit anything, but it's there. "Oh, I don't know, I can't remember the name."

"You should. Your father's health is too important. I'll watch the register. You, mop." He hands me the dry mop and points towards the utility room.

I head into the back and start filling the rolling bucket with water and sanitizer, then set up the wet floor signs and start in the back corner, opposite the door. My insides shrivel with guilt when I pass the super glue, wondering, _what am I going to tell Abi?_

Working my way from the back to the front of each aisle, I'm saving the high traffic area in front of the register and aisle one for last. Starting at the back of the second row I am completely focused as the sweat drips down my forehead. Until one drop runs into my eye, stinging it with salt.

"Ahmed, can I take this off?" I pull at the stuffy smock. "I'm baking."

He shakes his head. "No."

"Well, then can I turn up the air conditioner?"

"The air conditioner is up."

"I mean down."

He sighs, pausing from his count of cash in the register. "I'm not afraid to break a sweat in work."

I stare pointedly at the marked rings of perspiration on his button down. "Point taken."

Ahmed sighs. "Fine, but it goes back on when you are done."

I toss the smock onto the top shelf in the cereal aisle and get back to mopping.

At the back of aisle one, the matted ropes of the mop swipe across a blackened piece of candy. I wash over it several times before setting the mop aside to go for the scraper. As I reach, there's a flash from somewhere in my peripheral vision. But when I look, nothing. Going back towards the bucket, I spot the flicker again and follow it deeper into the aisle. Its shiny, metallic, and a few feet away. An odd, L shaped scrap of metal. I've seen it before, but can't place it. When I turn to ask Ahmed, there's more of the same scattered all over the floor.

Like a kick to the gut, the thoughts connect. It's part of the locking mechanism on the cigarette cases. I look up to verify what I already know.

"We've been robbed."

Ahmed's in and out of the aisle before I say the words, running for the phone. I am stuck, stupefied as to how every single tall Plexiglas casing has been nearly emptied.

This is bad. This is very, _very_ bad.

* * *

I never would've believed a person with such high levels of melanin could turn three shades of purple if I hadn't seen it firsthand. Ahmed's complexion changes with each passing second.

He knows I don't like cops, but forces me to sit in his cramped office while he talks to them. In the past hour, they've made me repeat my story about ten times, asking the same questions over and over in different ways. To three different officers. Finally, one decides to review the surveillance footage that's been cued up since they got here.

One distrustful policeman turns the computer monitor our direction and a hush comes over the room. The single screen shows nine squares, each offering a view from a camera. I had no idea there were so many. I knew about the one over the register and the front door, but not the others. My stomach knots up when one mentions watching my whole shift. Anger rolls from Ahmed as he tells them he knows the merchandise was in place at a specific time and requests they forward the footage.

Squiggly lines appear and disappear. Ahmed's wagging finger points out the stocked shelves and the room goes quiet again.

One of the cops standing behind me whistles as Bikini Top enters, then points out two men entering behind her who head straight to the first aisle. Then, I run into view. One shot shows the crooks nabbing the cartons of cigarettes, taking their time while I'm completely enamored by her juggling act, and worse, swept away to the opposite side of the store while they make their getaway.

Once it's over, they rewind to the entry and ask me to walk them through what happened. As I begin, Ahmed brings up the register camera, so it's the only footage playing. The cops want to know what words were exchanged since there's no audio on the recordings and what I saw. As I explain the ways the woman begged me to leave my post, all sense of professionalism disappears.

There's snickering between the uniforms as the scene plays out. I mean, there's no arguing where my attention was so booby-trap jokes start right away. I see myself behind the counter, glancing in the general direction of the shoplifters as they fill black trash bags with cases of cigarettes only to be distracted by the baited woman. Spitefully used and lulled into a false sense of security by her evil twins.

In my defense, I explain the complexity of the situation, how I had no way of knowing what was happening or that it was being done for a malicious purpose. I'm a victim. They pretend to sympathize until I come out from behind the counter.

"Hold on. Rewind that a second." The voice is deep and full of authority.

I watch the squiggle lines appear on the screen then stop. The tape begins to replay. Looking around at the faces in front and behind me, the room starts to shrink.

I hardly ever remember my dreams, but when I was in High School, I used to have this one recurring nightmare. It was probably a puberty thing, but basically, what would happen was there was this girl. I didn't know her but she was beautiful. She'd walk up to me in the hall at school and start a conversation. She would flirt, play with her hair, laugh at whatever nonsense I said, and ignore every guy that approached asking her what she was doing with a loser like me. Then, just as I was gaining confidence she would turn to me and say, "That's a good question. What am I doing with a loser like you?" Then my clothes would disappear.

This moment feels exactly like that, only worse because I can't wake up.

_Gasp!_ The policewoman standing next to me—the only one who hasn't lost her sense of duty—coughs, disguising a laugh when another officer remarks about my choice of smock. The others break into unreserved laughter when Ahmed asks if I planned to go camping since I'm obviously packing a tent. He slaps his knee. The cops slap me on the back and make more jokes at my expense.

"Why did you wear skinny jeans today?" I can't see who makes the stupid remark as my face is now buried in my hands.

Ahmed's kidding now, but I know he sees I neglected the storefront. When I reached down for the glue, Bikini Lady waved to the thieves. They slipped out the door while she was kissing me and then she followed behind a second later. I was clueless the entire time, irritated that the woman thought she could just kiss me, like there was no way I'd have a girlfriend. As if she were so hot that I couldn't deny her.

It's all so funny to them. But this is my life. My job. My girlfriend. Thinking about that kiss... Abi would want to know about it, but the thought of telling her fills me with dread.

And the jokes keep flowing as my dignity dissolves.

One more second of their criticism is too many.

"Not so fast," Ahmed's hand catches my shoulder. "Wait in the break room."

I agree to do as he says. Allowing the officers to continue their investigation uninterrupted seems better than having to witness it.

While I wait for whatever I've got coming, the first and fifth aisles are taped off and dusted for prints. The surveillance videos are taken as evidence. After the storefront lock clicks a final time, it's still another hour before Ahmed comes back. When he does, I just want him to go away.

"Thousands of dollars in merchandise—gone! I'm still losing money because of you, on top of what you already owe me!" He slams his fist on the desk. The open laptop leaps and falls over.

"I'm really, really sorry, Ahmed. I had no idea—"

"I know you are," he agrees acidly, "I wish I would have known how sorry you were before I hired your sorry ass. Get out of my store! You are fired!"

"How am I supposed to pay you back if I don't have a job?"

He gives a quick guffaw. "Oh, do not worry about that. I'm taking the balance of the loan from your final paycheck."

"You can't do that. How am I supposed to pay rent?"

"They don't charge rent in jail." He eyes me and I know what's kept him occupied this last hour. He watched my whole shift. "By my count, you took much more than a loan." He waves towards the door.

"You're overreacting. It was two burritos. They were being thrown out anyways." I complain and he shakes his head.

"For tax purposes, they must go into the trash. I have told you over and over."

"Insurance will cover your losses. What about mine?"

He looks like he wants to say something so I wait. When it doesn't happen, I offer my most sincere farewell. "Have fun in divorce court, asshole."

The putrid smock hits the wall behind his chair. I won't miss it.

On my way out the door that sinking feeling settles in my chest. I've lost enough jobs to know it's nothing more than a bruised ego. It will heal when I find another job.

# Things I Tell Myself So I Can Sleep

Burning shafts of light peak through the half open glass door. The breeze is barely enough to flutter the leaves of the fruitless trees outside. Needless to say, the stuffy air in my little apartment is going to stay that way. Sitting near the open door, I watch the orange and pink colors disappear into the soon-to-be blinding light of another August morning. The dawn of another day of unemployment.

And I thought things were tight before I got fired.

Pouring a last cup of coffee, I'm still unsure how to find a way through this financial meltdown. There are no bail-outs for me. I've spent the last few days ignoring all calls and my voicemail's almost full. Bill Collectors won't leave me alone. They don't seem to understand that I don't bank with the Fed Reserve—I can't print my own money.

I have to wait six months to file Bankruptcy again. I'm too broke to do it now, anyways.

Abi's probably mad at me. I haven't returned her calls, either. How am I going to look at her and tell her what happened: that I lost another job? I can already see the disappointment in her face.

My dad keeps calling, too, but I don't know how to tell him what has to happen next. I keep hoping courage will come with the next cup of coffee but it's gone and I'm still empty.

I've searched the usual websites, filled out an e-app for every listed opening of every job at every chain store and restaurant within twenty miles, even at a few places in the mall. All that's left to do is hope my stock has not plunged so low that no one will hire me. It will make the impending conversation with my dad much easier if I can tell him I've got prospects.

My dad's a difficult man. He's good, but difficult. He's always been there for me when I needed him, but maintains a general disappointment with my choices. He thinks, like I do, that by the age of thirty, a man ought to have something to show for himself. A house, a car, a job, a family—any one of them would do.

The closest thing I have to representation of manhood is a near negative credit score. My car is sitting downstairs, deserted beneath the carport. The once-white windshield sized visor, now yellowed with age, obscures the brand new stereo and navigation system I bought with last years' tax return. I would've spent it on a new transmission, had I known. The brand new tires are still intact, which is good in case I need to tow it to Abi's house.

I've gone over and over my options. No matter how I slice it, things are not looking good. Option one: I pay rent in my place and dads, using up most of my savings—any chance of fixing my car this year goes bye-bye—and hope to have a job and paycheck before I need to pay rent again. In the mean time, I fall behind in the more important bills like utilities, groceries, and communication. I end up broke. Option two: Pay only dad's rent and stay here as long as I can, face other problems listed in option one but he gets to stay put a little longer. Best case scenario: I'm the only one living on the street next month. Then there's option three: Pay nothing—except the cell phone, of course—save as much as I can and see about moving in with Abi.

All contingencies are deeply flawed because no matter what I do, if I don't find work right away I lose my apartment two months shy of the end of my lease.

A huge yawn forces me to close my eyes. I stand to stretch, stiff from sitting so long.

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to simply move in with Abi. She rents one side of a duplex with a two-car garage. With her family's money she could afford more, but she prefers to live a separate existence. 'To remain independent from their wealth and the submission that goes with it' is very important to her, so she says. I think she's going through a slum phase.

We've been together for a little over two years, but haven't really talked about a future so I'm not sure how to start the conversation. Telling the truth is out—Abi's very sensitive about me ogling other women and she's had the same job as long as I've known her. We used to work together, that's how we met. She was the hostess who took my application. A few weeks later, I suggested quitting so we could date. Five jobs later, I'm unemployed and she's a restaurant manager. No, the truth will only irritate her. I'm pretty sure she'll let me move in if I ask the right way. If I can figure out how to face her.

What am I going to tell my dad?

Worry pools in my stomach, cramping it up as a sense of urgency overtakes me. It very rarely happens—when I get an inclination over something I don't understand—but I almost always regret not heeding the warning, the same kind I feel now, telling me that change is coming. I'll have to leave this apartment quickly and it's crucial to be prepared.

There was a pile of empty boxes out by the dumpster yesterday. Standing on the balcony, I look down and see that there are still two decent sized ones left. It's not enough, but it's enough to start.

Clearing off the shelves, I take CD's, actual pictures, and thumb drives. They nearly fill the first box. There's one framed picture hanging on the wall. An old disposable camera in the kitchen, I grab those and toss them in. I have no idea what's on the camera—I'm not even sure how it got here but better to take it with me then to remember later on and regret leaving it. Next, I gather a few select DVD's—namely my boxed set of the television series _Lost_ , because my dad gave it to me. It's really not my thing but we used to watch it together.

I have very few childhood keepsakes, but the ones I do are precious. I dig them out from the bottom of my closet—one of Carrie's baby blankets and her first rattle, a silver-plated hair brush set my mother bought for her—reminiscing over each piece as I stuff them away.

Little more than an hour passes before I'm in the carport staring into my cars' open door at the grey leather interior of my '97 BMW five-series. Truthfully, the sight is a little depressing. Not only because it's so sleek and isn't drivable but also because everything I value in this life fits into two boxes stacked in the back seat. I pop the trunk and shove them deep into furthest corner. Back there, I won't have to look at them.

Perhaps there's something to be said for insolvency; having nothing makes it easy to move.

I leap back up the iron staircase and into my front door. Collapsing on the futon couch, an overwhelming lethargy hits me like a brick over the head. I surrender, thankful for the opportunity to pass time unaccounted.

One good thing about unemployment is having nowhere to go. I plan on taking advantage while I can.

* * *

The caffeine must have worked its way into my subconscious because I remember my dream with complete clarity. It was so vivid, like I was really there. I was playing guitar for a stadium full of people. I was rich and famous and everyone loved me.

Waking up to this hole is the nightmare. It makes me wish I listened to my dad and finished college. I really thought I had a future in music when I quit. I was going to show the world what I could do.

Looking back it seems pitiful, even a tad ironic. But at the time, I wasn't going to let anything stop me—not my father, or friends, or the countless doors being slammed in my face, not even common sense. Then, one day I put off rehearsal to work because I wanted a new amp which grew to cancelling gigs for money to cover other expenses; like a bigger apartment. That quickly turned into not being able to book gigs because I couldn't afford not to work.

Who knew losing sight of a passion could happen so quickly?

I was sure I was destined for greatness. I love music. I just wish I could make her love me back.

Yes, nothing like a good dream to send my perception into the toilet. The depressing apartment is too quiet. Not having anywhere to go gets old once you're caught up on sleep.

Checking my voicemail—it's been long enough, maybe there's a message from a potential employer—I press seven to delete anything I don't want and keep listening with fading hope. One message catches me by surprise. Her voice sounds small and unsure.

"Hi Gerry, this is Jeanine, your dad's nurse." I roll my eyes at the superfluous introduction. "I know it's late, but I was hoping to catch you. Your dad is worried about you. He hasn't said anything, but you know how he gets. He's been real low since you left in such a hurry. Don't tell him I called, okay? Bye." _BEEP_

I'm dialing before I realize how late it is. A woman picks up on the first ring. "Golden Valley Retirement and Rehabilitation Center, Elizabeth speaking."

"Yeah, I'm calling about my father, Mr. Springer. He's a resident."

"We don't put calls through to the rooms after nine, sir. You can speak to him in the morning after seven."

"I know but, I was wondering. Is he doing okay? I got a call from his nurse, Jeanine, she's worried about him."

The morbid topic of our last conversation still pricks at my brain. I tell myself it's nonsense, aiming to repress the memory until it's forgotten.

"Jeanine is off tomorrow, but she will return the following day. Would you like to leave her a message?"

"No, thank you. Could you give my dad a message?"

"Yes, sir. What's his room number?"

"One-thirty-seven. Tell him that Gerry called to say I'll be by on Wednesday morning." If I go at my usual time, maybe he won't get suspicious.

"Your message will be delivered with breakfast. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"No, that's everything. Thank you."

My dad resides in one of the few private rooms Golden Valley has to offer. They have a heated pool he can use anytime he wants, plus movies and games nights. He actually has a friend. He loves it there (as much as anyone as grumpy as he is can love anything). I don't want to deprive him of the few things he enjoys.

That uneasy feeling is growing. It's difficult not knowing what I'm facing, unable to control the outcome of something so important. I can't stand the waiting so I figure I may as well get it over with.

Abi's off work in three hours. That is, if she's still on swing shift. I can't imagine much has changed in the two days since we spoke. She's texted me numerous times. I know she's upset with me because the tone of them has been steadily increasing in agitation. The topic I have in mind requires a real conversation though. I skip to the last her messages and respond; typing that I'm jumping in the shower and heading over. I can be there by the time she gets home from work.

Travel by night is much better. It's quiet and cool, almost cold inside. The bus is still crowded, but there are a few open seats. I find the one nearest the back. I don't much care for public transportation—travelling by bus in L.A. is ridiculous—but try to get what I can out of it. This bus is one of the extra long models with an accordion area in the center. It bends as it turns, slinging the back end around the corners. It's immature, but I get a kick out of it, especially when the driver's going a little too fast. If the back is full, I usually stand in the center, surrounded by the black accordion rubber. The floor there moves independently from the rest of the bus so it's almost like being on a Merry-Go-Round on the turns. I pass the time looking out the window, watching the lights from skyscrapers blur and change as we sail toward the suburbs.

Abi lives in a better neighborhood. So, I'm surprised to see the broken streetlamp in front of her house when I walk up. Red flickers off the small shards of glass beneath the post as I smoke. The sounds of music and laughter sail from down the street. After a cautionary knock on the door I take my seat on the small steps to wait. The moon is high and bright. There are no stars or clouds—everything above is dulled by smog and light pollution.

Burning away the time, trying not to think, I'm careful to bury my cigarette butts in the empty planter. Abi hates it when I leave them in the gutter. By the time I finish the fourth, her uneven headlights are coming up the street and I make a mental note to pick up a pair of new headlamps tomorrow. I'll need to replace them before the one burns out. I'm nearly blinded by the beams as they sweep over me, shocking my retinas as her car maneuvers into the driveway.

I rush over, opening the door for her.

"Now, that's service." She smiles pleasantly, feigning shock at my chivalry.

"I missed you." She is so beautiful. Every time I see her, it's a knock-out punch.

"Why didn't you call?" She hands me her purse before getting out.

"I was asleep." I reach around to unlock the back door where she has several more bags.

"For thirty-six hours?"

"How was work?"

"Awful. Two of my servers were no-shows, so I got stuck waiting tables and I had to finish the daily totals before closing. I have, literally, no food in the house so I swung by the store, too. My feet are killing me. Have you been waiting long?" She steps out barefooted. Her feet are just as perfect as her face: proportioned nicely to her slender legs, not too big, not too small. No roman-toe. Simple nude polish adorns the end of each. Her small hands are holding a pair of pointy high heels.

"Not long." I smile through the fear that's trying to swallow me.

This is my Abi. For some unknown reason she loves me. Still, it's a fight to keep from panicking as we make our way inside. I don't want to tell her—she won't understand—but there's no way around it.

In an effort to calm myself I consider how she's always lecturing me about honesty.

Once the bags are on the counter I take a step back and a deep breath. I hate it when she gets mad at me and she'll be furious once she knows.

"Abi... would you marry me?"

I blew it. I said it all monotone and I blew it. Here is where I screw up everything. The plane has left the runway, and it's a one way flight ending in a nose dive.

She stops, a hand clamped on a stack of diet frozen dinners.

My tongue feels swollen. "I-I mean, _will_ you?" My hands are sweating, but it could just be the heat. I take the cold cardboard packages from her and set them on the counter, keeping her hand in mine.

"Why would you ask me that?" Her tone is not quite as gentle as I expect. In fact, it's very near harsh.

"That's not an answer."

Her eyebrows scrunch together. "G, how long have we been together?"

I'm drawing a blank. "That doesn't matter; it's long enough for me to know that you are perfect, and way too good for me. I should lock you up before you realize it, too."

She shoves me towards the nearest exit. "Get out of my house!"

"Ab? What'd I do?"

"You never even ask what I want for my birthday and now you want to marry me?"

"You have expensive taste." Has my voice always been so high-pitched?

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Her face scrunches.

"What? No, of course not." Though I have to admit that sometimes I wish she was. Then I wouldn't have to worry that one day she'll wake up and leave me.

"You quit your job again, didn't you?"

"No!" That much is true.

"I can't pay your rent."

"I think you mean 'won't.'" I mumble and instantly regret it. Lucky me, she's too busy yelling to hear.

"I cannot believe you quit _another_ job. How can you be so irresponsible?"

"I didn't quit. I'm not an idiot. I got fired." I start out strong, but mutter the ending.

"Why?" She stretches out the word, somehow making it more meaningful, her arms impatiently folded.

"You assume it's my fault. Of course." I toss my hands dramatically; knowing that she's right, but we've had this conversation too many times. My reaction is knee-jerk.

Rolling my neck, I answer, clearly mocking the tone of her question. "We were robbed and Ahmed was already having money problems so he had let me go."

She gasps, covering her mouth. "Robbed? Oh no. Are you okay? Were you hurt?"

She sets her hands so tenderly on my face. I don't know what I ever did to deserve her.

"I'm fine."

"You are supposed to do exactly what you're told. How could Ahmed fire you? He can't expect you to fight someone with a gun."

Right away, my beautiful Abi proves she still has faith in me by assuming there was a weapon involved. Which is very reasonable: this is Los Angeles; a dangerous place, rife with street gangs. She's probably picturing menacing thugs with hard faces and sawed-off shot guns.

While she waits for agreement, I calculate the odds of her finding out what really happened against the chance of coming up with a more believable alternative, versus simply coming out and telling her the whole, ugly truth.

Bikini Girl flashes through my mind. How would Abi take it if I told her the woman kissed me?

She wouldn't listen. She'd finish shoving me out the door and lock it behind me.

But, if I let Abi think what she wants... she's less likely to question anything. Then again, Sharif, Ahmed's nephew, will definitely find out, if he hasn't already. His sister, her name escapes me, but she's close friends with Abis' cousin, Angie. There's no question that if Angie finds out, she will tell Abi.

The real question then, is will Sharif tell his sister? I don't know how close the two are or how often they talk. I'm not even sure if they live in the same house.

But Abi is, above all else, loyal. She also expects it in return.

But I'm on the spot. She's staring at me, waiting. If I give some contrived explanation and she sniffs out the lie, I'm screwed. If I tell her the truth, she'll be pissed.

But if I let her lead the explanation... if I'm totally moved in before she finds out, it will be harder for her to break it off.

Besides, I already asked her to marry me.

I'll have to lay the ground work, build up to confessing. Keep her too busy for friends until then. Do something for her, something romantic.

"There were three of them. One was a woman." Keeping things nearest the truth, my eyes are wild, expressing all the fright she expects: except this fear is very real. My fear of losing her because I know better than anybody how much I don't deserve her. "They said they would kill me. I thought they would. I was so scared I'd never see you again. That you would never know..." and choke into silence. Perfect.

Perfect. A perfect piece of crap.

It's scary how good I am at lying at the drop of a hat, and right into the face of the one girl that is most important to me. I'm offering the perfect explanation for my unexpected proposal and am riddled with guilt but it doesn't show in my face. If she buys the story, doubting my sincerity won't even occur to her. Her romantic mind will delve right into: G has faced death and all he thought of was me.

I did think of her, didn't I? I'm sure I did for a few seconds in there somewhere. So, it's hardly a lie. More like a stretch of a very subjective truth.

"You're with me now." Her eyes fill as she sets her head on my shoulder.

I'm the world's biggest douche. But, it's not like I don't love her. We'd end up getting married at some point anyway. Why not now? This way, we both get what we want and no one gets hurt. Actually, I'm the one bearing the cross here, because I have to deal with her mother for the rest of my life.

"Would you marry me, Abi?" It's scary how much I want her to accept.

"Of course," her face lights with that gorgeous grin that erases every other thought.

There are only my hands in her hair, my lips on hers, and our hearts beating.

* * *

When I wake, the bright light seeping through the window combined with the hum of the air conditioner tells me it's late. We talked endlessly last night, about everything except the robbery. She never asked, I never offered. The exact subjects were indistinguishable, flowing from one to the next without effort. Abi can't keep a secret to save her life—one of the things I love about her, even though it means we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about her friends. It was the kind of girlie communique she loves, but I owed her and so I didn't change the subject once we got onto it. I had a hard time staying awake near the end but did manage to stay up longer than her. Brownie points for me because I'm usually the first one out when she starts on the latest episode of _Vampire Diaries_.

Abi's side of the bed is cold and empty. I'm disappointed to have missed her waking up; she's most beautiful first thing in the morning. When she's convinced her breath smells too much for a kiss and her hair is a mess.

She left a note on her pillow:

_G – I got called into work._  _I'll be back around 4. We can move some of your stuff in today._  _Make arrangements to have your car towed first. I'll bring boxes to your place and we can get started. I love you! –xoxo Abi_ 

She's drawn three little hearts after her name. She's happy, and that makes me happy.

A sweet smell wafts into the room from the hall. Following my nose, I spot the full pot of coffee and move toward it. Next to the pot is another note tucked beneath a new ashtray.

Breakfast is in the microwave. You're welcome.

Got to love her.

Inside is a large stack of pancakes. I rummage through the cabinets searching for the peanut butter and jelly. After the cakes are thoroughly smothered, I sit down to eat and pass the time with Angry Birds and coffee. After a few victories, it's time to move onto other things.

Joy becomes nearly uncontainable when I check my voicemail—I've got a job interview. It's a scramble to find something to write with. All the pertinent information—phone number, street address, room number, and manager's name. I also make notes about possible bus routes and times. After a few well deserved fist pumps, Abi gets the good news. We make plans to go out later. She reminds me of the dress clothes she bought for my birthday still hanging in her closet and says she'll iron them for me to wear at the interview tomorrow morning. We say an oohy-gooey goodbye and hang up.

It's amazing how much motivation lies in a single drop of hope. Finally, the fates are working in my favor.

I jump in the shower and dress in record time, making it to the bus stop just as it comes around the corner. Perfect timing. This is the way things are supposed to be. Had I known moving forward would feel so good, I might've tried it years ago.

Back at my apartment, getting all the essentials together is quick work. I toss them into the car making sure to pack it full. I want to get as much of my stuff to her place as possible.

There isn't much left after the front and back seats are filled. I make sure to pack my laptop and most of my electronics on the floorboards of the backseat. My guitar and amp go in the trunk. On top of that I'm able to fit nearly all my clothes.

When I run back up the stairs and walk through the open door, the scant view shocks me. Not because I'm sad to leave the nearly empty apartment—which never had more than two sticks of furniture to begin with—more because, the scene brings a sense of familiarity, of rightness.

I'm on the right track.

# Weirdest Day Of My Life So Far

The stitching of my back pocket keeps catching on the seam of the front seat. Still, I squirm, trying to find a comfortable position. My frustration erupts with a fist to the dashboard.

Nothing I want ever works out.

If I ever see that big mouth Sharif again I'm going to kick his ass.

After I got back to Abis' place with my car, I decided to do something nice, to show her how grateful I was. I made her bed, loaded the dishwasher, took out the trash, vacuumed, and got out the clothes she said she would iron. I even set up the ironing board so when she came in, I could be caught in the act of doing it myself. Abi was supposed to be pleased with the way the house looked and find assurance she was making the right decision. I wanted her to smile.

Instead... if I'm being completely honest, I probably got what I deserve. Still doesn't help the heartache.

I didn't hear her come in because the music was too loud. One second, I was jamming to _Guerilla Radio_. The next, the stereo shut off. She was standing by the audio pier with her arms folded. Like an idiot, I asked what was wrong. She responded by throwing her apron at my feet. The force she put into it told me she wished it could hurt me.

She said Angie came by the restaurant to have lunch with her and my heart sank.

"Why can't you ever be honest with me?"

I shrugged, unable to call upon a decent reason. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I knew she'd be upset, but I thought I could make her understand.

The story she heard was all twisted. Angie told her I came on to Bikini Girl. Abi didn't have to say that she believed her cousin, who'd heard the whole story second-hand from Sharif's sister. All she had to do was accuse me of never loving her.

I disagreed—the generalization that "all men are alike" was patently unfair—but she was caught in a fit tears.

"So what if she was pretty? She's not you and I can't control what she was wearing!" I shouted, trying to make her understand that the situation didn't warrant this reaction—it was nothing more than me getting in trouble over something that wasn't my fault.

I knew she'd think I was flirting and get all worked up. "That's why I didn't tell you. Not because I did anything wrong, but because I knew you'd think I did, and blame me."

She threw my class ring at me, then her car keys, followed by the iron, without even testing to see if it was hot.

She drew a deep breath and pulled her hair back, twirling it into a bun. "I accept that you have zero ambition. I deal pretty well with the reality that I love you far more than you will ever love me."

Abi sniffed as a well of tears spilled down her face. "You repay me with lies. You just don't get it. You live in this imaginary world where the only thing that matters is that you get what you want. You take no matter how much it costs me and never give back."

"Abi, I love you more than anything." I raised my palm to her face, caressing her cheek. I wanted to kick my own ass for making her cry.

"Such a charming smile." She observed and slipped from my grasp. "You're a whore—you pay lip-service for a roof over your head."

Then she threw my things out on the front lawn while I begged her not to. Abi's not usually a screamer, but she did plenty of it—wailing to me and half the neighborhood my unforgiveable offenses. She told us all that I'm abusive in the worst way imaginable because I treat her heart as if it were my personal doormat. Coming and going from it at my leisure and she's tired of being trampled. She's obviously wrong, but knowing that point was easily proven in the last thirty six hours, I didn't argue. I did repeatedly apologized, though, which only seemed to feed her anger.

She continued rolling down the list of injuries I inflicted over the course of our relationship. Most I caused without knowing, which apparently made it worse. Then she told me, what she feels is the most painful part of all: I am settling for her. No, that _I_ _feel_ like I'm settling for her—which is a complete lie: it's common knowledge that she's way too good for me.

So, I spent the next hour picking thorns out of everything that landed in the spiny shrubs while she cried and yelled her insults out her living room window.

Well, she may be within her rights to force my car off her driveway but there's nothing she can do about my parking in front of her house. The sidewalk and street are public property.

So, here I am spitefully squirming on the leather seat and choking on my victory.

When I was growing up, money was tight—a stark contrast to Abi's circumstances—but when I complained to my dad, he would say, "when you get older, you'll understand." It feels as though I am doomed to comprehend.

One invaluable tidbit he used to repeat on occasions when we were particularly destitute was, when it comes to choosing between paying rent and paying for your car, always choose the car. You can live in a vehicle if you have to, but you can't drive your house to work. The obvious flaw in that logic is that I can't drive my car anywhere and there is no work at the moment.

I'm way past fed-up with poverty.

There is no way I'm selling. It's not an option. I've put too much time and money in this car to consider it. I would never be able to get back all I put in. It would be a seven thousand dollar loss to sell now.

I want to lie down, so I turn the key and press the lever to make the seat recline as far back as it can go, smashing the unimportant stuff stacked in the back seat.

Abi is vulnerable right now and I want to be close by even if she can't stand the sight of me. I refuse to go back to my apartment tonight. My mind was set on leaving and going back will only get me more depressed. I don't want to leave my car out here, anyways. Besides, I flipped off the manager when she asked if I would have the rent money on-time. I knew it was stupid as I was doing it, but I didn't think I'd have to see her again.

If I'm careful, I should have enough to stay afloat for a few weeks without making a serious dent into savings. I need a job in the worst way, so my meeting tomorrow has to go well. There's still that to look forward to and my interview clothes aren't really wrinkled. As a precaution, I laid them on top of the stuff in the trunk to keep them looking good until morning. I can dress in the bathroom of wherever I pick up breakfast. For now, I'll focus on the positive, thinking only of how graciously I will accept the position of Packing Assistant Level One. Until my thoughts drift into sweaty sleep.

The sky is still dark when I wake though there are hints of dawn in the pink clouds on the horizon. My knees have been bent all night beneath the steering wheel and I have to stretch. I swing the door open, feeling my bones pop in about ten different places, including my jaw, as I yawn. It hurts, but helps wake me up.

I wish I could go back in time. Knowing what I know now, I'd do everything different; study harder, make wiser investments. I would be a better person. I'd definitely be rich.

Memories of last night start sinking in. That heaviness settles in my chest. I knew there'd be trouble when Abi found out but I should've thought more about how she would be affected. I really hurt her. Worse yet, she thinks I would cheat on her, or attempted to. I might have looked, but touching never crossed my mind.

I unplug the phone and start the car, letting it run for a few minutes to charge the battery and listen closely for any new sounds that don't belong. When the roar lulls into a gentle purr, I shut her off.

Wistful, I think, if I could only go over fifteen miles an hour... damned mechanic. He said the car was fine, that all it needed was a new timing belt when the real problem was the thermostat. So, on top of a new transmission, I need a new head gasket. Replacing that is nearly the same cost as a new engine. He really screwed me.

The sound of a door catches my attention. It's Abi, locking the dead bolt and glaring. The light is enough to see she's dressed for work. Her long, blond hair is pulled back. When she turns, I feel the heat of her anger, see her eyes are red and tired as if she hasn't slept. The glisten on her cheeks reflects the orange sunrise as she tosses her work apron in the back seat. She starts her car, revving the engine, and backs down the driveway.

When our eyes meet in passing, I do the only thing I can think of. Beg. "Please don't do this, Abi."

"You better be gone before I get back." The threat is barely audible over the screech of tires.

The two-lane road is empty for a solid minute before I remember there are things I need in the trunk. I open the back to retrieve my clothes and a backpack. Working slowly, lightly folding my slacks and dress shirt to avoid wrinkles, I tuck the clothes, iPod, and other essentials in the bag before closing it up. Lastly, I grab my savings from the glove box and tuck it inside the front pocket of my jeans. I'm not very comfortable carrying it around the city but I'm not leaving it in the car. I can't put it in the bank. I made the mistake of getting a credit card through them. The card's maxed out and overdue, so anything I put into my account will end up being drafted out and I can't afford that right now.

Once my interview's over, I should have a better idea of my situation. On the way back, I'll visit Dad and tell him either way what the future holds. Then, I have to get the car moved. First things first: find a place to get cleaned up and eat breakfast. There's a McDonalds a few blocks away, that is my destination.

It's ten minutes door to door. I'm as clean as I can get with a sink for a bath and a wall dryer. I'm well-dressed and on my way to the bus stop, going over interview questions and answers in my head. The breakfast sandwich I ordered is piping hot and before long, I'm sweating. I take long sips of ice water, swirling the cold in my mouth, letting it linger on my tongue.

As a bus approaches, I see it's the route I need and also a newer model, electric and bendy. This ought to be an adventure. I take a few swigs before the bus stops and the double doors open. There's a sign posted just below the machine that prints transfers. In bold, red letters it reads, 'absolutely no food or drink.' I toss the cup away and board.

Of course, it's nearly at capacity. I search for an empty seat but the odds are slim as dozens of people are already standing. But I was cramped up in that car all night and don't mind. I make my way to the center section and stand behind a man who has already taken position at the center pole. I'm gonna take it if he gets off before me. There's nothing to grab hold of, so I stuff my hand into a plastic strap that's bolted near my head for balance before the bus takes off.

Most morning commuters are all busy with their headphones and lap tops. I take out my iPod. After a while, the guy in front of me gets off and I step over, making myself more comfortable by claiming the open space. A woman opposite me latches onto the center post at the same time I do. There's a round faced boy clinging to her leg, teetering as the bus pulls out. I give way, stuffing my hand back inside the high, uncomfortable strap.

Looking into the boys' small face, a tension sets in. He shouldn't be standing in a moving vehicle. As I'm searching for someone to volunteer their seat, someone does. An elderly man with a bamboo cane, seated between two teenagers, rings the bell and rises. I see at least three other people try to lunge for the open seat, but the old man holds them back, offering the spot to the woman and her little boy. After they're securely in place, he departs, hobbling down the steps. And I've wasted my opportunity. Another passenger has taken my post.

The bus is moving again and I feel anxious, more so than just a moment ago. I try to ignore it and start going over typical interview questions and answers in my head.

My biggest flaw? I work too hard.

The bus stops once more and there's a shuffling up front—more passengers getting on and off. My arm starts to tingle. I use my free hand to turn up the music trying to drown out the distractions and stare at the intermittent spaces between buildings outside the long window. We're in downtown now. The traffic is heavy but we seem to be catching most of the lights green.

The bus drags, picking up speed to make it through the next light. Cars anticipating the green fretfully inch forward as we pass. One honks.

I've faithfully ridden the buses in this city for the past four months and am familiar with the habits of some regular drivers. I wasn't paying attention when I got on, but this driver possesses a recognizable habit. I can't see who's piloting through the crowd but when we go around the next corner, sure enough, the front tires clip the curb. One woman's lap top falls and half the passengers grumble. An apology booms over the loudspeaker outside my headphones. As the bus straightens, bouncing curls and a face that's older than one would guess from a distance reflect in the rear view mirror. Paula. Amid my wondering as to why she neglected to say hello when she picked me up—she usually does—I see something I'm not altogether comfortable with.

I can't say why the sight is so disturbing, but it sends a haunting jolt through me just the same. All I can think are words that mean nothing when used in print, probably because they're used too often in today's news stories. Simple, benign letters arranged in a particular way, used to describe a general sense of fear. But seeing their human embodiment here, in front of me, they mean everything.

Danger. Threat. Hazard.

Terrorist.

Blood drains from my face, pooling in my feet, and cementing me in place as I stare at the bald man about half way up the front section.

He is standing in the middle of an open circle—a wide berth—granted by the wary passengers stuck next to him. Their bodies press against one another forming a wall of flesh, hoping to avoid contact. His back is to me and maybe that's why I'm staring so freely. He's solid, wearing cut off shorts, combat boots and no shirt. While we all watch, he slides on a white tank top and pulls up a pair of red suspenders draping around his waist.

It's not odd to see someone doing these things on the bus in the morning. Sometimes you're running behind and you have to do what you have to do. What I find so striking is the massive tattoo that covers his entire torso. It's not a collage like most people have, one tattoo bleeding into another. This is a single tattoo, comprised of crude dots instead of lines. It appears to be a snake, a giant black snake, painted as if it's constricted around his upper body. The thick shape slithers up past the neck of his tank top, onto the back of his neck, where the head of the snake covers his scalp, all the way to the hairline. I watch, alarmed and simultaneously intrigued as he straps on a bike helmet.

Bulging eyes of several passengers rake over him as they whisper amongst themselves. "I hope he's getting off," someone mutters.

My music stopped. I look to my hand, checking. My iPod is dead? I'm sure it had a full battery.

Feet and shadows stir up front. Other passengers are moving around as the bus's interior lights flicker and go out.

The bald man turns his head, staring or listening I can't tell, but it's enough to make me look away. Not before I see that he has a filthy beard, long and unruly like it's never seen soap or a comb. And the unnatural color—it's too dark for his pale skin. The only other notable feature is the peculiar, almost Grecian way his forehead connects to the slope of his nose. He just looks strange.

A moment later, I turn back. Dying to know what he'll do, afraid to find out. I'm stuck staring while he pulls a piece of black fabric from a bag set near his feet. He slips his arms inside a long, black jacket and then draws a black backpack from the floor to his shoulders.

A trench coat in the middle of summer? Not a good sign.

He looks out the window on my right. Then, turns and starts making his way towards the back. He doesn't need to lend a single second to who's in his way. The crowd just parts like he's a leper. No one wants to get close enough to touch.

My eyes are stuck on the faded black coat, wondering what he's trying to hide. As he approaches, I notice how tall he is. His sudden black gaze sends another shock through me, waking my sleeping mind from this unreal scenario. Instinctively, I shrink away, turning quickly toward the long window.

A woman behind me is on her cell phone, talking urgently in a hoarse whisper. Normally, I would strain to hear, but what I'm seeing outside the bus window renders her qualms useless. Mine, too.

Fear no longer matters. Not anymore. Nothing does. Not the flickering lights overhead, not the end of the song I'll never hear, or the threatening man stomping towards the rear of the bendy bus. His intentions, whatever they may be, are nothing compared to the real threat that lies just outside my window, hurdling toward all of us.

It's probably my brain trying to savor its' last few seconds of life, but each moment seems to stretch. Hundreds of thoughts occur and pass in a microsecond as I absorb everything. The tinted Plexiglas pane, the one I looked through to watch the city pass by, is the only thing standing between every one of us passengers and certain death. We're on collision course with a shining red and chrome diesel fuel truck. As our bus passes into the intersection, I can tell by trajectory, the truck will strike through the accordion section, my section. It will tear the bus and most of us passengers in two.

My lips are just starting to call the driver when I'm hit—not by the truck, but the creepy bald guy. He's slamming his shoulder into my stomach. While half of me recognizes that something needs to be done about the nuisance this man is causing, the other half wonders why it matters. It's not like he can do anything about the huge truck that's not supposed to be travelling on the inner city roads at this hour and consequently, heading straight for us, poised to burn us all alive when the impact lights the tanker on fire. None of us can. There's no point in alerting Paula. Both vehicles are going too fast and it isn't her fault, anyway. Some sort of power outage has all the traffic lights out. The 'walk' sign isn't even blinking.

There is a terrible ripping noise. It takes a moment to realize it's coming from inside my body. Another blow smashes against my chest, knocking me off my feet but I don't fall. My purple hand is stretched beyond its natural limitations, held captive to the pleather strap above my head.

Gasps pour from terrified faces as the shiny grill of the huge diesel truck tears through the black rubber covering the side of the bus. Stupidly, some try to run only to stumble from the jerk of impact. I want to shout at them. Where do they think they can run? Others simply cover their faces. The little boy is holding his mother's face between his tiny hands. He's smiling at her.

Suddenly, the strap breaks and I fly away from the huge tires beneath the roaring engine. The crashes of tearing metal and pain roll through the ruptured cabin. For some reason, my mind conjures an image of Carrie. Life as it was before when we were still a family. I wonder what it felt like when that car hit her.

I'm weightless, far away from everything around me, except the bearded man. He faces his death as I do, only him first because he's in front. He's falling back, too, thrusting his hands out locking the metal grill of the diesel in his grip.

Everything—the people, the walls of the bus, the buildings beyond it and the sky outside—all of them bend into a blur, nothing more than shapes in wispy fog that swirls into the purest blue I have ever seen, shining like the sun while I float.

Another jolt and my brain vibrates.

A shower of rainbows lights my tunnel drifting toward the dead.

# Can Someone Tell Me What The Hell Just Happened?

I want to accomplish the simplest task and am finding it beyond difficult.

_Open your eyes._ Just open your damned eyes.

My eyeballs feel like they should pop out with the effort I'm making. My exertion's wasted, for they open slowly and it burns. Before the sudden pain clamps them shut, I'm able to make out a single object: a long line set below a rectangle. It's shiny and tall like a street sign set near my throbbing head. I reach for the phantom shape with my left arm, but a sharp pain in my ribs calls off the effort. I switch sides, intending another probe, but a tearing sting in my shoulder puts a stop to that search, as well. I give up on exploration for the moment and start groping within my own borders, making sure the rest of me is intact. Something soft; like a large pillow is stuck to the side of my chest. It's so close, I can't lift my head. Not that I could, but it would be nice to have room to try.

Every muscle feels painfully stiff.

A growing tickle just below my nose has gone from troublesome to absolutely taxing. Its real work at first, keeping my reach from veering off to one side. Finally, with a moderate amount of effort, my fingers crawl up my chest, sticking close to the pillow set to one side, until I'm able to make the small move to my nose, landing my fingertips on a hard line set across my face.

I crack open one eye; just enough to examine my raised hand and find it's also burdened with a mess of tubes and tape. I feel weak and sick. My arm is like lead. I let it fall back to my side. Once I had the stomach flu for an entire week, the worst case I have ever had in my life, this feels ten times worse. I must be groaning because suddenly someone's next to me.

"Time for pain meds?" The sound is soothing, offsetting the sharp smell of rubbing alcohol invading my nostrils.

"Where am I?"

A shadow blocks the blinding light and I open my eyes. Everything's hazy, distorted. Blinking, I'm able to make out the form of a woman standing at my bedside.

"In the hospital," she says.

Her pink and white shirt bears a large name tag. The laminate reads, Chelsea Gibbons, R.N. I can't be sure, but something in her smile makes me think she's teasing. She shifts and the light blinds me again.

"Shut off the light?"

A thread of cool wanders up my arm, medicine flowing through the tube and into my bloodstream. The pain disappears. Then, specks. Little points of nothing start on the fringes, growing to dim blotches that bleed together until they meet and close me in.

The peaceful void is contradicted by a rolling heave that constricts my stomach and widens my throat. The feeling turns me to one side. I don't see where the vomit lands but hear a long sigh after the splash.

* * *

Floating. Lost in some pleasant cloud, seeing nothing and hearing voices. They're quiet and far off at first, becoming clearer as the knowledge of pain streams in. But it's bearable. I pull myself from the medicated slumber to listen.

"I've never heard anything so terrible. Mugging an unconscious man? What's the world coming to? It makes me glad I don't have children."

"The woman who called said she was stopped at a red light and suddenly there were two guys on the hood of her car. Fighting."

"What did she do?" Both voices are full of interest and trepidation though they speak low.

"What do you think? She called 9-1-1. When she got back to her car, the whole intersection was backed up. The one guy was gone—police are still looking for him. This one's been in and out since yesterday."

"Has he said anything?"

"We don't know his name, either. Whoever it was must've taken his wallet. Dr. Shepard should be here soon to go over his x-rays. So far, all we have is mild concussion and simple dislocation."

"What caused the burns around his hands and ears, though?"

My stomach twists in knots when there's no audible response to the question. Papers shuffle before one woman excuses herself while the second greets who I guess must be the doctor.

"Give me the rundown," a man's voice says.

There's a click and more papers rustling while the second voice repeats the previous conversation in more technical terms, using words like contusions, emesis, and leukocytosis.

During the riveting back and forth the doctor just hmm's and clears his throat. I want to ask what all of it means but I feel so sick, I may puke again if I open my mouth. I'd rather just lie here and hope for sweet death to take me.

"It appears the dislocation has taken care of itself and the concussion is mild. I'm not comfortable with the blood counts. What's his L.O.C?"

"He's woken a few times, briefly. There's a note in his chart to call the police when he wakes. They want to be the first to question him. What should I tell them?"

"He should be fine. Next time he wakes, ask him if he's in radiation therapy. I want blood, stool, and vomit samples sent to the lab. The white counts are high and I want to know why. Page me when the results are back. I'm due in O.R."

"Yes, Doctor."

What?

"Make sure you get info on next of kin, too. I want everything." Padded footsteps fade to silence.

There are several things wrong with this picture but placing what those exact things might be is difficult. I can't say why, but I know in the pit of my stomach, I'm not supposed to be here. My thoughts linger on the mystery, but its presence of it makes no sense. I should know how I got here.

After some deliberation, memories start rolling in, like pictures flashing before my eyes. I focus on the details. Sitting with my dad, helping him trim his nose and ear hair so he can look good in his casket. Ahmed firing me... the way the store looked from across the street as I waited for the bus. Abi throwing me out, my job interview, fear, passengers, a red diesel truck, broken metal, the frozen face of the driver inside and most clearly, a bearded stranger shoving me out of the way.

The accident.

Dad!

I'm burned? What happened to everyone else? Is that why the police want to talk to me?

To the first two questions, I have no answer. To the last I can only assume. There may not be other survivors to question. It had to be a horrific scene. But... how is it possible that I could survive and no one else? I was in the thick of it. No one was closer to that truck than me. Except the one guy who probably saved my life. A tinge of guilt sets in as I remember: I thought he was trying to hurt me.

My body demands respite as my mind runs wild. Rest is impossible. I need to get up and find out what's going on. But that means they'll ask questions. They'll want answers I don't have. Even if I did, something about this whole scenario feels off, prompting a few questions of my own.

Here's a really good one: how am I going to pay for all this?

My good hand automatically gropes, searching for my pants pocket. I find a thin sheet and a hospital gown instead.

I'm upright with no conscious thought about how I got that way, heart throbbing in my head and chest. My eyes scream as I force them open, searching for a cabinet or closet inside the lonely space.

It can't be gone.

The only light comes from the wall behind me. Making my way to the edge of the bed to better see the bright rectangular glow over my bed, I stare. It stings, though the light is shielded by dark semi-transparent images. As I focus on those, the shapes start to make sense. Its x-rays. I try, for a second, to get a closer look but my eyes refuse to cooperate.

For the next part, it takes a few deep breaths to mentally prepare. My errand demands accuracy and my legs may not manage. My feet ache and tingle as I stand. After gaining balance, I count to five before letting go of the bed. I feel the disconnecting fuzz coming and fight against passing out.

Somehow, I catch myself on the edge of the tray table. The wheels under it spin toward the wall. It doesn't take long to realize I'll be flat on my face if I don't do something quick. Using my bad shoulder and aching arm, I shift my weight, leaving the tray table for the IV stand. The table rolls into the wall with a placid thump. By the time that happens, I'm at the end of my bed, using the rails and IV pole to hoof it toward the wide wooden door on the far wall. Relieved to have reached it without falling, I push the door open.

There's nothing but a toilet and a small sink. No clothes. The door hits the shower wall and wobbles, then I hear something—a _swish_ and hobble around to check it out. Hanging on the back of the door is a yellow and white bag swinging from the inside handle. I take it and make my way back to bed, heart racing and palms sweating.

My shoe is stuck in the mouth of the bag. I've got no strength to shake it, but try to loosen the stupid rubber from the plastic. I can't grip it the way I need to. My hands are covered in red blotches and my fingers won't work right. Finally, the bag tears and the shoes fall onto the faded blanket. Everything else falls on top. The pants I was wearing are mangled. They don't look burned, just dirty. I check the pockets. My heart sinks. Nothing. Something's missing... my backpack! I changed clothes for the interview.

The interview! Aw, I missed that, too!

Water streams from my stinging eyes while I grope the space beneath my bed to find nothing but dust bunnies. About to give up, my blurry gaze falls to a chair in the dark corner. And there it is.

Inside the backpack, my jeans are wadded just the way I left them. Within the front pocket, I find what I'm searching for. My money.

Relief floods me. As I relax, the effects of my hurried journey surface in more dizziness. Clutching the priceless paper to my chest, I fall back into bed.

* * *

"You've been up I see. How are you feeling?"

Warily, my eyes open to find the room is comfortably lit. My belongings are still crumpled around my legs. I'm shivering, and half-way beneath the blankets before it registers both my arms are moving. The mass of cotton and gauze that was taped to my shoulder is gone. Quickly, I give myself a once over and see the reddish marks on my hands are also nearly gone.

"You must be feeling better, because you're moving like lightning. Take it slow; you don't want to overdo it." The nurse, Chelsea, is back. She raises the rolling tray table, setting it in front of my bed, laden with covered containers.

"How long have I been sleeping?" My voice sounds scratchy, like I haven't used it for days.

"So far as I know, the last time you woke was eleven hours ago."

Her hands locate a lever on the side of my bed and soon I'm sitting up. My stomach growls at the welcome sight and I suddenly feel ravenous, watching delicious steam rising from the edges of the lids.

"I bet you're hungry. Your chart says you haven't had solids since you got here."

No time for chitchat, I commence with shoveling, gobbling down half the entrée before I taste the food. I'm not sure what the bland beef and vegetables are supposed to be, but they aren't as appetizing as they look. Not that it'll stop me from demolishing them.

"Don't eat too quickly, your stomach may be sensitive."

"It's fine," I say, but the words are garbled.

She chuckles.

After the last bite, I start on the box of apple juice, finish it and move on to coffee. It's weak, but hot. Only then, is my mouth freed up for small talk. I palm the plastic mug trying to absorb the heat.

"How are your eyes? Still light sensitive?"

Her question prompts me to take the first good look at my surroundings. The walls are a pasty pink and off-white pinstripe with some sort of weird, gray swishes through them at random intervals. There's a wood-framed, baby blue arm chair in the corner set beneath a large picture of a woman in a blue dress staring at a piano. The gaudy frame is painted wood with gold accents. Next to my bed there's a plastic plant on a simple wooden nightstand that matches the chair. The thin blankets set around my waist match the walls. It all looks ancient, like a color scheme you might see in old episodes of _Doogie Howser, MD_. Right down to the outdated heart monitors and television set on a metal shelf bolted in the corner. The set is so old it actually has round knobs to change the channel.

"Fine, I guess."

This has to be County hospital. That's where they send people without insurance. As I sip my coffee, the worries resurface. They're probably charging a weeks' pay for breakfast alone. My financial prospects are getting shakier by the minute.

"Can you tell me your name?"

I look to the plastic wrist band and see the bold print: 'J. DOE'.

"Jonas Wakefield," It's the first name to pop into my head. A product of the last song I remember hearing. I hope she isn't a Weezer fan.

Chelsea shakes her head, making notes in my chart. "It's nice to meet you Mr. Wakefield. I'm Chelsea, your nurse for today. Do you know why you're here?"

"I was in an accident." It isn't a question, but it sounds like one.

She nods again. "I have to step out to notify the doctor. He's been waiting to speak with you. Is there anyone I can call, a family member or friend?"

I look at her face, gentle and kind. Her eyes are big, brown, and filled with a concern that mirrors my own.

I can't tell Dad about this. He's been preoccupied by something he won't explain because he's convinced I can't understand and he's too sensitive to stress these days. And Abi... if she knows, doesn't care.

"Nah, it's just me."

"If you need anything, press the call button. It's on the railing near your elbow." She points towards the plastic covered barrier at my side before sweeping out into the hall.

Left alone to rest, with pangs of hunger quieted—I feel much better than the first time I woke. Whatever was causing the nausea must have gone away. Or I slept through it. That reminds me of one, very important question. I hit the button to call a nurse.

A scratchy voice answers, "Do you need something?"

"Yes, is Chelsea available?"

A pause, then more scratches, this time a high-pitched almost shrieking. It sounds like a bad PA system. "She's on a phone call Mr. Wakefield."

"I just want to know what day of the week it is."

"Tuesday. Anything else?"

"No, I'm going to sleep now."

I go over the numbers in my head. Is it possible I've been here for six days? At the going rate of what—two-thousand a day?

The soreness in all my muscles is especially evident as I stretch for the phone on the nightstand. My effort's futile because I can't recall the number I want to dial. I stretch a little further down for my backpack on the floor. Inside is my phone, which is turned off. I press the green button and wait for the light, but no orange bars appear. Battery's dead.

There's little chance of recalling anything with my brain so fuzzy.

Drowsiness makes giving up easy. I lay the bed back and search for the remote to shut off the lights. I can't find it but don't really care. The ease of a full stomach soothes and soon I'm drifting.

# Marvelous Shithead

There are very few things in life that can be counted on.

Girls will always disappoint, friends will betray, strangers will never care, and bosses will dismiss. On top of these there is the ever-faithful death and taxes. But for me, there's one thing that I count on more than any other and have neglected to realize in these last few conscious hours. It's just as sure as death and occurs as often as a governing body demands their taxes. It is my subconscious need to destroy every plan I make or create for myself.

The severity of these lapses never strikes me right away. It's only when I find myself looking at the aftermath that I realize what I've forced myself into. Like that lady who paints herself into a corner.

There's something about the clarity of semi-consciousness. It is here, on the verge of sleep, at the very edge of cognizant thought, that I realize what a marvelous shithead I am.

Rest grows to rigidity while I weigh my options. I can choose to stay here and get questioned by the police while using a false name, risk discovery—is that what they call obstruction of justice?—and probably be charged for trying to skip out on the hospital bill.

Or I can remove myself from the situation.

It's really not a hard choice.

I sit up slowly, mindful not to make myself dizzy again. Carefully crawling from bed, I take my good friend, IV Pole, for a short stroll. The cold from the floor seeps through my standard issue hospital socks as we peek out the half-open door. All I see is a white hall, lined with wooden doors. There are a few people, visitors from the looks of them, making their way around the ward.

Warily rolling down the hall, I head towards a wider area of tile ahead—evidence of upcoming corners—and peek around the angled wall to view the raised work surface of the nurse's station. Behind the pale colored counters are several women. Some are socializing and others are picking at a basket of muffins set on the low edge of what looks like someone's desk. Near the basket stands Chelsea. I can tell by the way one hand is raised that she's on the phone. In the other, she's holding a business card, staring at it through a pair of glasses set low on her nose.

"... Please tell Officer Markham that the patient he inquired about is lucid and considered fit for questioning by Doctor Shepard. His name is Jonas Wakefield. The room is seven-three-one." _Pause_. "Yes, until four p.m." _Pause_. "No, not on anything with regard to the incident."

Well. There is now only one road to take, and it leads straight back to my apartment.

There's no time to shower, which is too bad because I could really use one. I retrieve my bag from under the bed and head to the bathroom to wipe down the important stuff. When I switch on the light, the image before me is shocking. For the smallest moment, it appears as though someone's using my private restroom. I'm about ready to apologize for the intrusion when I realize, the stranger is me. My reflection in the mirror above the sink. It disturbs, captivates, and appalls all at once.

I raise a hand, wanting to touch the glass to make sure it's real. It's unsettling, looking in the mirror expecting one thing and finding another. I look awful—my clear complexion's gone, replaced by chapped red cheeks and hundreds of red, freckle-like dots reaching across my scraped nose and under my irritated eyes, the whites of which are noticeably marked with bright red lines. If I didn't know better I'd think I was really, really high. The tops of my ears look scaly. My chin is scraped. There's a bandage I didn't know was there, strapped to the back of my head. The only thing about me that looks normal is the front of my hair. Still a little too long and brown.

Some moments about the wreck are clear while others stay veiled by the fog on my brain that can't seem to lift. It obscures the finer details. I recall the events leading up to the crash—why I was on the bus and where I was going—but beyond that, it's as if the film in my minds projector has broken and only gives partial images between bits of black.

There's not enough time for a thorough exam. I've got to get out of here and the horror-show reflection is too much to deal with right now. So, I scrub what I can and try not to irritate the IV in my hand.

My most immediate worry is the foamy, pink puddle forming in the sink as I brush my teeth. I look to my reflection, ignoring the parts I don't care for, and open my mouth to search for a source. Maybe I scraped my gums or bit my cheek and don't remember. I've always taken excellent care of my teeth and I don't see anything wrong with them. There's nothing marking the insides my cheeks, but my gums are swollen and gingivitis red. Nothing can be done about it right now, except watering down the mouthwash to avoid the burn.

It still stings.

After I'm half-dressed, I examine my hand, looking at the clear tubes and tape attached to the rolling metal pole. There is no avoiding this one. My old pal, IV, has to go. Gently as I can manage, I peel the tape from my hand. Still, it feels like it's taking a layer of skin with it. The needle rolls with my vein as I tug. Checking over the tube connected to the IV bag I shudder, considering what has to happen next. I can't put my shirt on until its disconnected and I can't leave without a shirt. I've never been one to faint at the sight of blood but don't find incidents of self-mutilation particularly fun, either. So, when I see a pellet of smelling salts taped to the wall just above the mounted toilet paper, I yank it down, just in case. Outside the bathroom, I rummage through the drawers near the doctors' sink. There I find giant cotton swabs, a roll of tape, and a dozen or so sheets of gauze.

No amount of mental preparation can help at this point. I take a deep breath and hold it. With my sore arm, I reach and give one, quick jerk. The needle comes straight out. But the gaping hole it's left in my vein stays wide open.

I'm frozen for a fraction of a second—watching my blood dribble onto the floor—then apply pressure with the hospital gown. The next part really is a two person job. And for a moment I'm stuck. I make my way back to the bathroom sink, being careful not to step in the bits of red and press the back of my hand against the mirror as hard as I can and awkwardly try to get the tape and mound of gauze ready to apply. I should've thought further ahead.

It takes longer than I want it to. I'm a little unsteady from the sight of the cavernous hole in my hand and my fingers on the left hand are not cooperating. Cursing myself for the slow pace, I feel like a turtle trying to swim through a pool of peanut butter, as my dad would say.

I'm sure the lack of speed will cost me.

Setting on the edge of the bed to rest, I try to avoid seeing the blood puddles while making sure I have everything I came in with. When I check the clock, surprise overrules my irritation. It's only been five minutes since I got back to the room.

My flu symptoms make a reprisal. I choose to ignore them, pressing on toward my goal of making a clean get away. One last look in the mirror over the doctors sink and I decide the head bandage has to go. But I can't see the back of my head to survey the wound—it feels like only one or two stitches—I opt for keeping the bandage and wearing a hat.

A file sits inside the bin on the outside of my door. There's a certain amount of humor in seeing my alias printed on it. I stuff it into my backpack and walk out the opposite direction of the nurses' station as soon as the coast is clear.

I wonder who else made it through the wreck—hopefully someone who remembers it. From my vantage point, I saw nothing but the truck. Hopefully, the traffic cameras answer the other questions. Even if I knew something, I have no intention of opening up.

If I stayed for the inquisition, I'd have to tell them my real name and that means the hospital staff would know it. I'm not sure if it's considered fraud since, technically, the nurse gave them my fake name, but no way am I sticking around to find out—not with the streak of shit-luck I've been having.

This really is the best way to handle the situation. Truly, it's nothing more than finding a way out of a bill I can't afford to pay. And why should I stay? It will only drive up the price of the debt. So, really, I'm doing the hospital a favor by leaving. Besides, they can write off the expense at the end of the year.

The ward they have me stowed in is shaped like a rectangle with only one exit directly in front of the nurses' station. This is an obvious safety hazard, and a serious monkey wrench. I think my clothes are inconspicuous enough, but I'm not sure how many staff members might recognize me. After some internal debate, I determine the worst thing to do is wait around to be discovered and decide that as long as Chelsea is not at the nurses' station, I'll walk right by. No problem. Preparing for final departure, my headphones go on. My iPod battery is still dead but, should anyone call out to me I can pretend not to hear.

I make my way from the hall, slowly approaching a cluster of nurses. There are fewer now than before. Encouraged, I charge ahead with the baseball cap pulled way down. The hospital bracelet, which somehow managed to go unnoticed up to this point, screams at me. I tuck my hand deep into my pocket. In a moment of unexplained bravery—or stupidity—I grab a muffin from the basket on the counter as I pass.

The exit looms closer. My pace quickens. I get to the double wide electric doors, step on the mat, and wait. Nothing. On the wall is a giant square button with a blue wheelchair printed on it. I press the shape and the doors open in precise, jerking increments. In three steps, I'm outside the ward and chest to chest with a police officer.

"Where's the fire?"

"Sorry," Ah, my tongue is dry, "I'm late for work." My eyes are down and away.

"Watch where you're going next time. This is a hospital."

"Absolutely, Officer," as I step aside, the light catches on his shield. The name below the badge number reads 'Markham.'

The weather is sunny but not hot. The unfiltered sunlight burns my sensitive eyes. Now that I am officially liberated, I can think about transportation. There's no way I am taking a bus, so I walk around the outside of the building near the emergency entrance remembering that I once saw a taxi around there. I think. There are cars all over the lot, one is yellow, but it's not a cab. There has to be an internet café nearby. I need coffee and a taxi.

The first few places don't have anything. Most of the people give me funny looks, like I'm crazy or something. One woman acts like she can't understand what I'm saying, though I repeat the question a half-dozen times.

"You know, Wi-Fi? Wireless internet access?"

She shakes her head. "I can't understand a word you're saying."

"If you don't want to help, all you have to do is say so!"

I'm in the middle of a one of the largest cities in southern California and there isn't a hot spot or Starbucks in sight? Not that I can see much of anything with my eyes constantly watering. I can't remember what happened to my sunglasses.

Finally, I settle on an older retro-type restaurant because I'm exhausted, and it's the nearest doorway that promises a place to sit. When my eyes adjust to the dim foyer, I can tell from the looks of the place that they probably don't have internet. The empty hostess station at the front has a rotary phone.

I'm trapped in the Stone Age!

My head is pounding, eyes are aching, and my shoulder burns with each step. The sign up front says 'Seat Yourself,' so I do, nearly stumbling into a padded booth in the back corner. The inside is mostly brown. Dark wooden tables and carpet, the walls are paneled with wallpaper that looks like old newspaper clippings. It reminds me of a place I used to go to with my dad before it became a Friday's, then went out of business last year. I rest my head on the cool tabletop, struggling to keep my eyes open.

A waiter appears and asks if I'm waiting for anyone. I answer with a negative and he offers me a smaller table. I refuse and order a regular coffee since they don't have Espresso and ask whether there are any working payphones in the area.

"Sure, located in the back near the restrooms."

"Does it work?"

"It did a few minutes ago."

"Is there a phone book?"

"Yes," he answers, giving an exaggerated nod, like I'm slow.

He won't be getting a tip.

After I finish my first cup of coffee, I order a refill, since it's free, and walk towards the dark hall near the restrooms. To my astonishment, the payphone is practically brand new. No graffiti or anything. There's a large vending machine next to it. All I want is coffee and peanut M&Ms.

"Snap!"

As I'm about to drop in a few quarters, I notice the machine doesn't sell candy. Weren't cigarette machines outlawed in the eighties? I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid. I dig deeper in my pocket trying to find enough quarters since it doesn't take paper. I'm shocked once again by the low, low price; only two dollars. They must not be charging the fifty cent tax per pack. I'm coming here for my cigarettes from now on. I have just enough change for one pack and a phone call to the nearest cab company.

When I get back to the table, the check has been left for me. I guzzle enough caffeine in the next fifteen minutes to see me through the drive home, then leave the money on the table, hit the head, and go outside for a well deserved, much anticipated smoke while waiting for my yellow chariot to arrive.

Dusk moves in. It's been a very long day and I cannot wait to see it end. I want to be on my own lumpy futon bed in my own crappy apartment. Before long the taxi pulls up. I give my address to the driver, asking that, since it is on the way, we swing by Abi's place so I can get a look at my car. I just have to make sure it hasn't been broken into or towed away.

"What's the name of the street?" The driver says.

"15937 Palm Court."

"Never heard of it."

"Punch the address into your GPS." I say.

"What's a GPS?" he turns to look at me.

What is with everyone today?

Frustrated, I offer directions. I've never heard of a cab without a navigation system. Once he has them down, I lean my head back. It's still hurting but not as much. There was a vending machine inside the restroom that sold pain reliever, I got change for a dollar from the waiter and bought a couple packets. Seems they're kicking in.

I wake up to the sound of a coarse voice and look out the window. Nothing looks familiar.

"Where are we?"

"15397 Palm,"

"No, this is wrong." I repeat the address and ask him to take me a little further down the road. "It will only take a minute." I assure.

The neighborhood looks weird. The houses are the same, mostly, but the landscapes look different. Maybe the city finally came out to trim the trees. It's hard to tell in the evening light. When the car stops, the first thing I notice is the street light's fixed and my car is not where I left it. Not near the curb or on her driveway.

How could she do this? My whole life is in that car!

I look to the meter and am pleased to find the expense is less than eight dollars—not pleased enough to distract me, but enough to appreciate the economic value.

"Keep the change," I mutter, tossing a crisp new ten at the cabbie.

Walking up the driveway, all I can think about are the threats I'm going to make. If this woman thinks she can do whatever she wants just because we broke up... What is her problem anyway? I almost died, and she towed my car? I can hardly believe that my sweet Abi could ever be so insensitive. It is uncharacteristic. It has to be in her garage. It has to be.

"Hey, I can't take this!"

I scale the small set of steps in one bound and knock on her door. Shushing interjections sound from inside.

"Hey! Mister, I can't take this!"

I knock, again, louder. "I can hear you in there—I know you're home!"

Abi doesn't open the door, but it does open. Standing on the threshold is a man about my age, maybe younger, wearing small basketball shorts and matching sleeveless shirt. The blow to my ego is substantial, but I won't acknowledge it.

"Go get Abi."

"Who?" His brow pulls together with such genuine confusion I actually have to take a step back to double-check the address. My hopes are quickly shattered.

"Mister, I told you I can't take your Monopoly money. If you don't pay me right now, I'm calling the cops." The taxi driver is beside me shaking a fist in my face.

"I paid you." The guy won't listen so I give a shove to his chest. The ache in my shoulder and arm start to burn again.

Turning back to Abi's door I hear the driver walking off, grumbling. "Look, I don't care if you two are dating; I just need to know what she did with my car."

"Dude, you have the wrong house." He steps back and starts to close the door.

I thrust my foot over the threshold. "Abi! Where's my car?"

"Get your foot out of my doorway." His eyes burn fierce. I've hit a nerve.

"I'm not leaving until I talk to Abi."

He looks away and yells, "Jamie, call the police."

I push my way through the half-open door and stop. The walls that should be plain white are covered with flowery wallpaper. Pictures of people I've never seen before, save the man who answered the door, are hanging everywhere.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know what's happening, I can see it. But the _weird_ I'm faced with in this moment has me knocked off balance. I can't get out in front of what's happening to objectively look and deal with what comes next. All I feel is a quick pointed pressure and wind at my back. Then, it's too late to react.

A heavy thrust has knocked me out the front door, off the small porch, and onto the grass. My back breaks my fall. While I struggle to inhale, the pain in my head starts up again.

I must have the wrong house, but how can that be? Have I been wrong about her address all this time?

A tall man leans over me, his face obscured by the night. "You alright? I didn't want to shove you that hard, but you were scaring my daughter." I try to get up. "No, no, you stay down. You don't look so good."

Before long, there's a bright flashing light and I'm being shoved, prodded, searched, and cuffed—mercifully, the arresting officer lets me keep my hands in front. I guess they figure anyone who looks as bad me can't be much of a threat—then, stuffed into the caged back seat of a police car.

# Crazy Pills

There's no way this is actually happening. I couldn't believe my ears when they said what I was being arrested for—I don't even remember the names for the charges they are so ridiculous—something to do with attempted forced entry, harassment, and the taxi drivers' complaint, which is the most ridiculous charge of all.

"For the hundredth time, I got the money from a bank. How can it be counterfeit?"

I've never used the word weary in my life. It's a girlie word. But right now, cuffed to this uncomfortable, rusty metal chair, feeling the weight of all my troubles, the mysterious way everyone's been looking at me as I explain myself and getting nowhere, I can say that I am truly weary. Yes, weary is just right.

This investigator seems to take a certain level of pleasure at my frustration with the repetition. I swear it's like something out of a movie. This guy, this cop, looks almost exactly like Burt Reynolds from his Smokey and the Bandit days, if the Bandit was six inches shorter, fifty pounds heavier, and wore a badge on his gun belt.

"Alright, let's say for the sake of argument that a bank actually handed you this," Smokey raises the ten dollar bill confiscated from the taxi driver. "How did you get it, being that you have no proof of identification?"

I watch, hopeless, as he sets the bill back on top of the rest of my confiscated life savings. "I got it before—and I told you, I don't know where my wallet is."

"Oh yeah, you said..." he turns his eyes down, looking through the notes he's taken, "you lost it in or after you got into an accident that we have no record of—which coincidentally should have killed you and about a hundred other people, which we also have no record of. Then, you ran from the hospital to see your girlfriend, who you say lives at the house you were attempting to break into. But the man who actually lives there says he's never heard of this Abigail Winston." He looks back to me, "Does that sound right?"

"You're mocking me?"

He squints. "Don't you think that _if_ there was a pile up like the one you're describing that I would know about it? Wouldn't you be soot?"

"Exactly!"

His eyes are wide and wild though his castigation is given with deadly calm. "I'm done with you."

He snatches the hospital records and money from the table, stands up and roughly leads me out by the cuffs. I've been in this room for hours. I have a million questions and objections—where is he taking me and for how long, why am I the only person who will acknowledge the bus accident, why was I wanted for questioning if it wasn't about the accident and what in the world makes him think my money is counterfeit? I've already given them my date of birth, social security and drivers' license numbers, so why won't he just call the bank to verify or run my prints through the DMV database?—But I'm so tired right now, I can't make myself care enough to complain anymore. My head is foggy. All I want is sleep. I need it.

When they finally get me to a holding cell, I'm able to think up one good question. "What about my phone call?"

He laughs and slams the metal door. The clanging reverb aggravates my headache. I set my hands near the bars, as ordered, and he proceeds with removing the handcuffs.

I'm content to be swept aside like yesterdays newspaper and settle into the small bunk and cover up with the thin sheet. Sleep overtakes me immediately, but I wake often to the sounds of shuffling feet, ringing phones, and conversations near and far.

Some of them are about me. There are too many voices to differentiate one from another but from what I gather, I'm not the only one baffled by my situation. From the pieces of conversation picked up between blocks of sleep, I decipher that most of the officers have all taken turns "examining" my money. At first I was yelling, telling them to leave the evidence alone, but quickly grew sick of being ignored. At this rate there will be nothing left for me when I get out. I still have no idea what the problem is or what I've done to warrant being arrested.

Dad might tell me I just need to be patient that all of this nonsense should be taken care of by morning.

But still, I can't help noticing how peculiar the conversations are. Most remarks aren't even based on why I was carrying such a large amount of cash. Shouldn't that be the first question: why do you have so much money? Followed by: what are you going to do with it? Yet there are next to zero assumptions of illegal dealings. I first found this comforting, but then it just seemed strange. Most people would assume I was a drug dealer or something.

Contrarily, the comments I'm hearing seem centered on this fascination with the color and quality of the bills, as if they really are fake. It makes me wonder if I really looked at them. I remember taking the bills from the bank teller and putting them into my pocket each time I cashed my paycheck. I saw, but didn't really look. I had no reason to be suspicious; banks don't hand out funny money. And wouldn't I have noticed while handling them if they looked unusual? Maybe not. I am concussed and haven't really been able to make out shapes as sharply as usual.

No, I'm sure they're real.

I think.

Even if I managed to, somehow, miss the fact that I was carrying around three thousand dollars worth of counterfeit bills, I can't overlook the situation it's gotten me into or why an entire group sworn to uphold the law would go to such lengths to mess with me. That makes no sense.

Dad is gonna be pissed, though. I hope he's alright. I need to call, and soon, before he starts making Jeanine's life miserable.

After another few hours of tossing and turning I have to sit up. I can't rest anymore so there's no use lying down. The clock at the end of the hall says it isn't even five a.m., though it feels like it should be closer to lunch. I want to scream. Every second in this place feels like an hour. It doesn't help that the lights are always on and people are filing through every five minutes.

I do feel better though. My head is much clearer and the prominent lump on the back is not so tender. Still, the clarity that is supposed come with distance is running behind. I don't want to keep thinking about my extreme turn of luck and try to distract myself with other things.

The work I don't have.

The home I won't have much longer.

I don't think Abi will take me back this time.

My Dad and his freaky predictions.

More frustration is all I get since my life happens to suck at the moment.

I need to shut-off my brain for a while and watch some television. I want to play a game on my phone and listen to music. I want to mindlessly search the internet while blasting the stereo or watch stupid videos of animals acting like humans and play my guitar.

I want. I want. I want everything I cannot have.

I can't think of anything else, so I work my way off the uncomfortable cot and walk to the bars. All the empty time has me lost. I can't calm my nerves with a smoke and have no idea what to do with my hands.

Pacing now, I swing my arm, trying out the improved range of motion on my recovering shoulder. As I do, my image in the foggy mirror stops me. It might be just the dull sheen of the polished metal obscuring the finer details but I think my color looks better today. The red blotches in the whites of my eyes seem to have disappeared. The only traces of the accident are the bruises and scrapes on my arms.

The sound of feet shuffling up the hall gives me an idea. I stuff my face between the bars and call out.

"Excuse me!"

A younger looking man in a blue uniform comes into view. He stops and stares with his small, interested eyes.

"Do you allow access to television?"

His cold face lights. "You're new here, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Then let me break things down for you: no, you don't get to watch TV." He spins, heading back the direction he came from.

"Wait, please! You have to help—I'm losing my mind in here."

He stops, turns his head to one side in a half-look back. "I hear you lost it before you got here. What do you expect me to do about it?"

"Do you have a magazine or a newspaper? I'd really like to find out what's happening with my game."

He turns to look me full in the face. "Which game is that?"

"Football," I shrug. "Have the Bears started training camp yet?"

His hand automatically touches the collar of his uniform where sets the small orange pin I noticed just a second before. "You're a Chicago fan, huh?"

"Of course."

"You from L.A?"

"Born and raised."

He laughs, "You really are crazy. Figured you for a Raider fan." As he's talking, he walks to a space obscured by a partition and reaches inside. "I hope they get you outta here soon." He turns back and steps closer, setting a folded newspaper between the bars. "We need the room for the real criminals."

"Thank you."

After slightly tipping his hat, he walks back out of sight.

Someone would have to report on a crash that size. It was too big to ignore. I unfold the quartered paper and hungrily search line-by-line of each section and column. Most of the articles are completely unrelated nonsense. The impromptu probe leaves me with nothing, but just because there isn't anything in this particular days paper doesn't mean anything. If I remember right, it's been about a week. It could be in any number of issues over the last several days. While contemplating on exactly how I might get my hands on other papers, my eyes wander to the upper right corner of the page.

"Aw, what the hell?" I grumble, looking up to see the same young officer is now sitting in front of a desk sipping at an over-filled mug of coffee.

"Hey!" I call.

His hardens. "What now?"

"Where'd you get this, the National Archives?" I hold up the paper pointing to the date, "this paper is nearly twenty years old."

His thin lips become non-existent with his scowl. "You don't want it, smart-ass? Fine." He walks pointedly towards me, snatches the paper, and returns to his chair. Tossing it on the desk, he resumes the former position, now with his back to me.

I've met my limit. There's no way to find what I need when my access to information is so tightly controlled. I have to bite my tongue though. No need to further irritate my jailer.

A few minutes later, another man comes in. He's in plain, casual clothing so I can't tell if he is off duty or a detective, but I know he works here because he's wearing the standard issue black work shoes and carries himself with the same proud posture embraced by most peace officers. He walks past, completely ignoring me. I am nothing more than a fixture, a picture on the wall. I move closer to the bars hoping to catch a bit of conversation.

The plain-clothed man looks down at the uniformed officer. "Is that the paper, Rookie?"

"Yes, sir, but its yesterdays."

"I don't care." He plops into the empty chair behind the desk and takes up the remaining portion to read.

"Are you sure? It's not good enough for Princess over there." He points a thumb in my direction and they both turn.

"What are you looking at?" The rookie says, cocking his head to one side. The whites of his eyes glow flaxen under the old track lighting.

Shrinking away from the bars, I intend to make it to the edge of the bunk before sitting but miscalculate, finding the edge of a metal toilet at my back.

"If you puke you better make damn sure it's NOT on the floor!"

Without a mind to do anything else, I find my way to the bed and lie down.

They're messing with me. They've been acting funny since I got here, playing up the whole crazy thing because I have a concussion. That has to be it.

As soon as the two jokers leave the area, I'm up, searching. There's a man in an expensive suit pulling a wheely briefcase. As he makes his way up the corridor, I notice his crooked silk tie has a brown splatter down the front. He reeks of coffee and cologne.

"Excuse me." He doesn't look as he passes. "Excuse me, are you a lawyer?"

He stops and turns. "Yes, but I can't help you."

"Oh, I don't need an Attorney."

He looks at me over the rim of his large squared lenses, gesturing with the movement of his eyes at my surroundings. "No? Are you sure about that?"

I shake my head. "I just need to know today's date."

"The thirteenth."

Sometimes, it's really difficult to see things that are right in front of you, reason being that you can't imagine them ever happening; like, not seeing the forest because of all the trees in the way. It's too close, too 'in your face,' to make sense. In this case, there's a good reason for my blindness, because the reality is simply impossible.

"What month?" I ask.

He carefully examines me. "September."

My throat tightens. It makes no sense.

Then I get it. "They got to you, too, didn't they?"

His wide eyes turn doubtful. "Who are 'they'?"

"Who is the President?"

"Bill Clinton. Are you okay?" The lawyer sets down his load of files and moves out of sight.

In an instant there are people all around, hovering above me in a circle.

"What happened?" Someone asks.

"He asked me the date and when I told him, he started shaking."

Another voice breaks in; trying to explain something I can't understand.

This makes no sense. How can it be 1996?

Their voices blend together in a high-pitched racket.

I feel as if I'm floating. My heart is pounding. My lungs feel as if they've stopped working. I'm breathing, but find no relief. The room around me is all chaos. White noise. A nonsensical chorus pressing me toward a void.

I run to the edge and disappear into the bliss of unconsciousness.

# You Can't Make Me

If there's anything or anyone I trust in this life, it's me. Myself. My recollections of events that took place. I was there, not them.

In the immortal words of Tony Montana, "Who do I trust? I trust me."

Myself alone! Not some idiot in a lab coat and pocket protector with his five hundred dollar Xanax. I don't know what they're trying to do to me but I'm not going to let them.

_How did Houdini do it?_ I thrash inside the crusty denim overcoat. It smells like salty moth balls.

I don't know exactly when, but something pricked me. I woke up twisted inside this thing with my arms crossed and pulled behind my back. The only thing inside my new room, besides me and the four soft walls, is a mattress with no frame.

I am not crazy.

Everything else; that's the real nonsense. Not me.

How is everyone so easily convinced? Why do they blindly accept the information given to them? Doesn't anyone think for themselves anymore?

If a straightjacket is what I get for wanting to find the truth, then so be it. They can lock me up, but they can't make me believe.

It's impossible that every waking second I spent since the accident is a lie. It's got to be the meds they gave me. My head is spinning.

Ticking down a mental checklist, I start with the basest things I know to be undoubtedly true. Facts no side effects of medication can change: my name is Gerald Jasen Springer, the third. My mother never loved me. I am thirty-two years-old and unemployed. Abi hates me, Ahmed fired me. I slept in my car the night before my job interview. I was on the bus, listening to music. I felt the crazy man barrel over me as he chased the trucks' impact. The people wrenched from their seats into the air. I heard their screams. The scene plays out in my head as I recite the words to myself.

I know it happened, there is no doubt.

Why am I the only one who seems to know about it? Why am I the only one who's not burned beyond recognition, being identified by dental records? Is it possible I was thrown far enough from the wreck that I managed to avoid death or serious injury? Why doesn't anyone believe me? Considering the possibilities and the strange circumstances I've stumbled into leads to one defining question:

Who says I'm not? Maybe I do have a massive head injury and the pain is seeping into my consciousness.

This prospect incites more encouragement than any other possibility. It could explain my lack of clarity and the headaches. Everything feels like a dream, so maybe it is.

What if I'm in a coma?

I could be at death's door right now!

I've heard stories about people who lived through them. They were lucid the entire time, but couldn't connect their mind to their bodies. My experience, very clearly, is not lucid. I have no control over anything. That's nothing new. My whole life has been a series of one disaster leading to the next, so why should I expect my subconscious dream or possible projected reality to be any different?

* * *

In the brief instances when I can open my eyes, all I see are padded walls and hospital scrubs.

"Lobotomize me!" is what I try to yell, but it sounds like mush.

I spit at the technicians who've come back to medicate me. They say if I stop kicking, they'll stop drugging me but it's a lie. The order for sedation has been given and they will follow the doctor's orders.

"You're puppets!"

Comatose... that has to be it, the alternative is too ridiculous.

Everyone knows _Back to the Future_ was fiction. F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

There are no time machines.

There aren't even Delorean anymore!

# Losing Track

Today I'm feeling much better, spirits rising with each free step.

In retrospect, the first few days in the psychiatric ward weren't so bad since they kept me sedated. My recollections are blurry, but basically I lost it when I was talking to that lawyer and they shot me with some kind of tranquilizer. How long they kept me that way is still unclear because they drugged me every time I asked a question.

Eventually I stopped asking.

My natural distrust of authority wouldn't allow me to accept any information they gave. They locked me in a little room with no windows and kept me there until the psychiatrist was finished shrinking my head.

Once my will to fight was broken by exhaustion, I had to rethink my strategy. I determined that the best way to get what I needed was to do everything they told me. So I played along with all their requirements for counseling, forgot all about the minor details, like time and reason, as if the last seventeen years never happened.

I danced, like a little monkey to their Organ Grinder. I told them everything they wanted to hear to advance the course. It took some convincing on my part, but finally, when that doctor said there are no such things as smart cars or smart phones, and that despite a failed bombing attempt a few years ago, the World Trade Center towers are still intact, I told them it was all in my head. I made up the War on Terror, the nation's first black president, and the iPad. There are no full body scanners in international airports and Hillary Clinton is still just First Lady.

He says OJ is innocent until proven guilty and I'm the crazy one?

There's nothing like a forcible stay in a psychiatric hospital to make a guy appreciate the small things. Like shoes with actual laces and the air outside. It is fresh and cool, smelling of exhaust and hot dog water. The sidewalks outside the courthouse are crawling with people. The scents bring instant relief as I walk down the last set of steps, allowing myself, for the first time, to hope for normalcy.

I stare down at the release papers in my hand, listening to the careful instruction of Mr. Adams, my attorney. He took my case, pro bono, after he learned I was being held without bond and from what he says, clearly in need of medical attention.

I never should've left the hospital. I never would have, if I'd understood how bad my concussion was.

"Are you sure you don't need a ride?" Today, his suit is sharp, his tie is free from coffee dribbles, but the disheveled salt and pepper hair still hints at him dressing in a hurry.

"You've done enough, Mr. Adams."

"I don't mind—"

"You've already gotten me out of jail, bought me new clothes," I pull at the tie and dress pants. He starts to argue but I hold my hand up to stop him. "Besides, I'm not sure where I'm going to stay, yet. So, rain check on the ride?"

He nods, "Make sure you call my office as soon as you have an address. And, you'll call about the job?"

"First thing in the morning," I agree.

He's got a friend who may consider hiring me as a file clerk. I'm qualified in the sense that I know the alphabet. Mr. Adams thinks I have a screw loose, too, so he doesn't expect much. We shake hands and part ways.

The only person I'm sure I know drives away, leaving me to my own vices and though I'm very grateful for all he's done, I'm very glad to see it— _if_ , and that is a very big _if_ , everything is as they say, and the year has somehow miraculously transformed into 1996, which I'm still not entirely sure it has. I'm inclined to believe that this is all a very vivid figment of my overactive imagination.

Finally alone, amid the crowd on the sidewalk outside the courthouse adjacent to the police station, I crumple the paperwork that tells me to report back within ten days to give my current address once I find one and proof of employment or least proof of ability to obtain it. In my pocket is a little over three hundred dollars. That's all that is left after the new—I mean _counterfeit_ —bills were confiscated. I don't know why they let me keep some bills and not others. They all came from the same bank and none of them were counterfeit. My lawyer said the new bills were probably misprints, whatever that means. The charges for trying to run out on my cab fare were dropped at the suggestion of my attorney who argued I wasn't in the right frame of mind and incapable of running anywhere.

I've been waiting to see this city in the clear light of day for almost three weeks. Partly, because being out here means I am no longer in there, but mostly because I need to see for myself what I cannot believe.

Raising my eyes, I take in the sights of the cityscape and exhale in disappointment.

There's a hot dog cart on the corner. The surrounding buildings look similar, or the same. I never spent much time in this part of town so I can't be sure. I try for several minutes to draw on some familiarity, but honestly, how often does a person go to parts of town that their daily business doesn't take them to just to memorize the names or locations of stores and restaurants?

The only real differences I spot are in the cars. Even the nicest models are outdated, like the obsolete clothing and mushroom haircuts on some pedestrians. Across the street are large posters in the window of a nearby... Tower Music! That place has been out of business for years!

I've got no plans beyond getting a good look inside that store. Weaving through what I can only guess is lingering lunch traffic, I squeeze past several groups of people moving the opposite direction and step onto the black mat that opens the automatic door into a living relic.

Inside, everything is exactly the way I remember. Row after row of CD's in tall cardboard cases wrapped in cellophane and surrounded by the plastic caging of an ancient anti-theft system. To the left, a small section is dedicated to vinyl with a larger section for tapes and to the right a wall of merchandise. Band t-shirts, posters and huge displays of VHS tapes, and in the far back—the most impressive sight—a short counter holding an ancient beige computer. Its oversized and blocky with only a four inch screen on the monitor. Above it hangs a sign, _Concert Tickets_.

I want to laugh.

It brings back memories of a time when buying tickets for anything required actually leaving home. Getting good seats meant camping outside overnight to save your spot in line, impatiently waiting for eight a.m. when the tickets to whatever show you wanted to see more than anything went on sale. When I was about fourteen, I camped out for the first time for tickets to Lollapalooza. Green Day opened with an awesome set, but I was there to see the Beastie Boys and George Clinton. Nirvana was supposed to play that year, too. Everybody I knew was going, and it took a fair amount of convincing for my mother to allow it. It was my first concert and the best I've ever been to, next to the first time I saw Santana. I remember spending a lot of time out on the sidewalk, curled up in a sleeping bag for those tickets, too. It was pure, unadulterated fun. That used to be the only thing worth the time and trouble. Music, man. Not like now, when the only people who camp out are bunches of twenty-something's in parkas with folding chairs and their ten dollar espressos, anticipating the latest in telecommunications when all the next generation model will ever do is two more things than the device they already have. No, those times were different. It was a different era.

_Dookie_ , Green Day's very best work to date in my humble opinion, sets near the end of the isle under the Best-Seller placard. My eyes lock on it and I'm immediately sucked in. As soon as it's paid for I scrape off the thin plastic wrapper and look inside. It's so strange seeing the actual pictures, the smooth paper liners and lyrics. It makes me realize how much MP3's have really changed everything.

The 90's was a decade like no other; full of musical firsts, history making tragedies, the birth of the Grunge Era which brought about the death of hair bands, boy bands, and the like. Music so rich in potential. New Jack Swing, R&B, East Coast/West Coast rivalry; all of it happened back then.

The thought that then is now comes creeping in, but I refuse to think in those terms. The only way to reconcile what I know with being in this place is to separate it—to keep what's in front of me contained within the fantasy. I'll indulge it until I wake up. And until that happens, I'm going to make the best of my circumstances. Hopefully, I won't remember any of this.

I buy a few things, allowing myself to reminisce a while longer, but trying to keep an eye on the time. Fantasy or not, I still need to find a decent motel, preferably hooker-free, to stay in until I can get my bearings. Plus, my stomach is rumbling.

The distractions run rampant and before long I'm nearing starvation and nostalgia overload.

Outside, people pass the windows of the store making me wonder what else might be different. My allotted time us up plus thirty when at last, I start walking. Out on the street, the air is pleasant. Warm but not hot and the sun is shining. I glimpse the courthouse across the street and pick up the pace, anxious to get as far from there as possible.

Everything old seems new again, but some things never change. Honking horns remind me that most people are still terrible drivers and road rage, at least in downtown, seems to be operating at the usual level. In keeping myself occupied with the sights along the way to wherever, I notice a movie theater a few blocks down. The large marquee out front advertises _Fargo_ and _Romeo+Juliet_. At the entrance is a huge poster with the image of a young Samuel L. Jackson, advertising for _A Time To Kill_. Near that, another poster's encased in the Now Playing glass case— _Jerry Maguire_. Another poster with large red letters reads, " _Happy Gilmore... Coming Soon._ "

Much of the walk feels like a stroll down memory lane. At every payphone, every old restaurant, the fountains, the walk of fame, the absence of modern technology that disconnects us from each other is notable. People are engaged with one another, not hiding behind their Bluetooth's and laptops. Even the pagers necessitate a return phone call. One man carrying himself with a strong sense of confidence clutches a huge cellular phone inside a briefcase-size bag drawn over one shoulder. The receiver has a coiled cord and a retractable antenna.

Dirty looks still accompany a smoke on the sidewalk and it still doesn't bother me. A little further down is a news stand. I don't stop but take my time passing, looking at the headlines on the upcoming election. Bill Clinton is running for his second term and swathed in scandal. _The_ _Times_ headlines alert the world of a new threat: _Beware of Mad Cow Disease_. The Fugees are on the cover of several music magazines. Their version of 'Killing Me Softly' is number one. Pictures of The Spice Girls are everywhere, too. I keep walking, energized by the joy of freedom and coffee, breathing in the sights as I stroll from one milestone to the next.

Before long, the businesses become houses. The concrete turns to grassy knolls and cobblestone driveways between sprinklings of trees. The sidewalk ends and I step into spongy grass with an open view. There is no sign to mark my destination, but I don't need one. This is a park I used to visit on a regular basis, a place easily found without conscious effort. I walk towards the center to the giant sandbox filled with teeter-totters, monkey bars, a selection of multi-colored slides and several swing sets to choose from. The park is crowded; kids are everywhere playing games, yelling and laughing.

I make my way towards the tire swing but two young girls reach it before me. I swerve and make for the standard swings. Sitting on the highest black rubber strip coupled between thick metal chains, I commence. Starting slow and building, I pump my legs, going faster and higher, topping out when the chains straighten and jerk back. Eye level with the top bar. At the pinnacle, I start to level off, comfortably working in a rhythmic stride. Some of the kids below stare up and I wave. Relishing the pendulum of sensations; the extreme gravity in the down swing, propelled by forward motion, my weight shifting at the bottom, cool wind in the advance, pushing out, leaning back, and the split-second of zero gravity at the peak.

Shifting between gravity and weightlessness, air sweeps over me and I smile, genuinely, for the first time in a long time. The sky is blue, specked with white plumes that resemble cotton balls set on a glass tabletop.

There's a moderate level of comfort in knowing what to expect. Maybe that is why my subconscious chose this place instead of something more modern or dreamlike. Places like that, one never knows what could happen. Here, there will be nothing to worry about, at least for a while. In my world of predictability there are no limits. I can do anything.

The sun moves across the sky, casting long shadows over the playground equipment. Relaxing completely, letting the high sweeping motion slow, my shoes drag in the sand. It's not quiet, but it is peaceful. The dense groups of kids begin to wander and break apart, taking the bustle with them as they scatter.

I still need to find lodging for the night. I've been too wrapped inside my neurosis trying to associate this place in my past with my present and have forgotten about physical necessity. Dinner would be nice, too. Maybe sleep will help me fit the pieces together.

Preparing to leave, I am startled by the sound of screeching tires. Some stupid teenager is doing donuts in the back lot, hanging his head out the window and laughing.

"It was this year," I remember, sputtering to myself.

I wonder how I managed to make it through all this time missing the obvious. 1996 and every year after were marred by a single mistake so central to my disappointing makeup—I'm disgusted at the length of time it's taken me to realize.

Life as I knew it was changed forever that year. I've been wandering aimlessly to parts of the city that I have purposely avoided since and whenever possible. Yet, in my assumed state of repose, I happen to come upon the park I played in as a child? It can't be a coincidence. It must be one of those things that are so obvious that the subconscious doesn't even bother to take notice.

My concentration shifts, distracted by a high-pitched giggle. A resounding laughter that rings almost on cue. The sorrow in hearing it knocks me breathless because it's been nearly twenty years since I've heard that particular sound.

I turn, staring in the direction of the keen giggle and spot them a few feet away, at the end of a small yellow slide. Squatting near the bottom is a young girl in blue jeans with a little heart cut-outs at the bottoms and raven black hair. She can't be anymore than seventeen years old. In fact, I am sure she is exactly seventeen because I used to have a crush on her. I watch her make silly faces, wriggling her tongue and flapping her arms for the benefit of the little giggler that's posted at the top of the toddler-sized slide.

There's an audible crack in my chest. I swear I literally hear it break and feel it completely when I see the three-year-old smiling and covering her mouth. She shakes her head from side to side, refusing the pleas of her babysitter, the raven-haired girl, perched below.

"Come on, big girl! You can do it!" Her encouragement saturates the barren ground.

Carrie's sandy brown hair is cut in a straight line just below her shoulders. It swings as she shakes her head. It's a refusal if ever there was one.

Carrie comically thrusts out her bottom lip and crosses her arms. "No! I want to run! Run is fun!" Her flawlessly formed words chime like the sweetest music.

"You said you wanted to slide," complains Mary.

"Run!" She smiles hugely, revealing a row of perfectly square milk teeth. She always loved to run more than anything.

A knife-like knot twists in my stomach.

"But I am tired of running." Mary's complaint is given in such a bright tone it is hard to tell if she really means it. "Alright, we can run if you come down the slide like a big girl."

Carrie uncrosses her arms and leans back, lying down across the platform. In a flash, she flips onto her stomach and starts the descent, crawling backwards down the metal slide.

Laughing, Mary reasons, "I guess you are, technically, coming down the slide."

I chuckle with her.

Once Carrie's feet touch the sand, I watch my baby sister who has been dead for nearly two decades, push off the low end and stand up. She applauds her own achievement. Mary joins the clapping, cheering the three-year-olds bravery while Carrie grins from ear to ear.

They move from the sand into the grass and begin to run wildly through the field. Mary takes baby steps, pretending to cringe and run as fast as she can away from the toddler. Carrie tags her leg as Mary turns around, now in pursuit.

Elated and inconsolable, I'm spellbound watching her little legs wrapped in acid washed denim cutting through the turf. The same legs that used to climb onto the couch beside me when she'd beg me to reread her favorite story day after day. Without fail, as soon as I read the last line, she would turn back to the first page and plead with me to start again. At first, I did, without a second thought but I got older and selfish. Worries over girls and acne seemed more important. And those moments became more infrequent. By the end, I thought her a nuisance. She wouldn't let that stop her though. She was so cute, she had the book memorized. I remember her sitting on the sofa, crossing her tiny legs and reciting each line.

How could I have allowed myself to forget how wonderful, how perfect she was?

Buried memories continue to resurface tearing open the wounds that flash the damming details of that last morning. My indignant complaint over having to do anything for her. How our mother repaid my laziness with extra chores, cancelling my plans for hanging out with my friends. She made me cut the grass. I was feeling sorry for myself and wasn't watching as I should have been.

Carrie was my mother's favorite and the apple of my dad's eye. Her sudden death was the catalyst that launched our family into ruin and my life into the impoverished pit it is today. She was the heart of us all and I never knew it.

My reverie is broken by a wet drop, drumming against my forehead rolling through my eyebrows and down through my lashes. When I wipe it away, another hits, and then another. I peek up to the bright sky and curse as Mary sets Carrie on her hip, making for the shelter of a nearby tree.

A strong sense of something like desperation overwhelms me and I know I'm not ready for separation. I dart from my place through the sudden deluge to the dry patch beneath the same large tree. In the shelter of its branches, Mary places a small sweater over my little sister's bare arms. Carrie fidgets and throws her head back, preparing a wail. I plead with her not to cry, sure tears will sprout from my own eyes if she does but Mary flashes me a fierce look.

I remember myself and clamp my mouth shut.

It's not long before the sudden downpour is reduced to a sprinkle. The two girls sprint quickly away. I start to follow, but my beeline is interrupted by the return of that menacing glare from the babysitter. I would have expected her to be a little nicer, being that this is my dream, but Mary never liked me much to begin with. Beneath the tree, heart heavy, I look on as they get further away. Smaller and smaller.

Until I realize I know exactly where they are going.

# Memory Lane

I've walked up and down this end of the street several times and can't find a single spot to stand and discreetly watch.

The house that's directly across the road from my childhood home seems like the best option, but its vacant and my presence, like the former tenants, may raise suspicion. Though, at this point in time the house has been empty for a while.

The property used to belong to Mr. Smith. He never used his first name when he introduced himself. The running neighborhood joke was that Mister was his first name. He was a strange guy. My friends and I were convinced he was a secret government agent. He was single and lived alone in a three-bedroom house, which made him a source of gossip. His place looked exactly like the one I grew up in across the street, except the exterior color was different. Mine was white with blue trim and his was—is—two-tone brown. He lived in that place as long as I can remember, always alone. He barely spoke to anyone and nobody ever came to visit. Not even on Holidays. Every single time I saw him he was wearing a suit and tie, sunglasses—no matter how gloomy the sky was—and always carrying a beat up briefcase. He didn't have a car, so he walked everywhere though I never saw him out around town. He left the house every day at seven-thirty in the morning, even on Sundays.

Once, me and a couple friends followed him, even though it made us late for school. We saw him walk past several bus stops until he reached one over a mile away. About five minutes after he arrived, a plain white Sedan picked him up. We were worked up over that one the whole summer after eighth grade. Even after he moved, we still kept a close eye on his place.

I'm staring at his house, with the same row of shrubs in front. Since it's been vacant, they've grown up over the sides of the porch. The spot's not as inconspicuous as I would like but it does offer the clearest view. From my place on the porch I can look out at the large window of the home I grew up in. I wonder what the people inside are doing right now.

Off to one side of the driveway, separated from the house by a gated walkway that leads to the backyard, is the dilapidated out building. Technically, a detached garage, but we never used it as one. My dad disabled the rolling door in front because the perpendicular angle to the driveway made it difficult to get the cars in and out.

Staring at the bright blue and silver tarps spread out over the leaky roof, I recall how he and my mother used to fight over how much money he spent on home improvement stuff because he never finished any job he started. He owned nearly every power tool known to mankind.

Once upon a time Dad decided to take up painting. Since he went balls-out in all of his pursuits, he invested in hundreds of dollars worth of supplies in the beginning. During the first few months he was obsessed with that public access show, the one where the guy with the afro and beard teaches you how to paint. Dad actually got pretty good with landscapes. One day he ran out of canvas and started painting on circular saw blades. Soon enough, the paints dried up along with his passion and everything ended up inside the garage—storage space for old toys. I bet there were dozens of snowy country sides and spring colored blades scattered throughout when the bank seized the house.

My house. The only home my father ever owned. Not long after my sister's accident, Mom left and the loss of income forced us to move. Life happened in apartments after that. After a while, I forgot what it was like to have souvenirs and a yard.

The last house on the left side of the dead end street is set next to a giant fourteen foot cinderblock wall, a partition between the back yards of these last two houses on either side of my street and a shopping center where the empty field used to be. We used to ride our bikes through it, make ramps and stuff to jump over. It was a lot of fun. The city literally took paradise and put up a parking lot.

What was once a frequently used loop that served as a shortcut through the neighborhood is now a blind alley. It was supposed to be a good thing, supposed to improve property value, but my mother, who was a Realtor at the time, objected along with most residents in the subdivision. What we actually got were a lot of people using the cages around my mother's tomato plants as foot holds to climb the cinderblock wall in pursuit of discounts and the use of our driveway as the preferable spot for u-turns since the one and only sign posted by the city, about three blocks up the winding road, is currently obscured by a weeping willow tree that the same city has neglected to have trimmed.

After Carrie's accident, they put in speed bumps. I cringe at the reminder and look away from the white and blue aluminum siding.

An aged boat makes its way up the street. The sight has me caught in a fit of reluctant delight. From behind the shrubs, I watch the opposite driveway as it disappears beneath the body of my mother's black El Dorado. The engine sputters to a stop. Wearing the same dark business attire I remember so well—an essential part of my childhood memories—my mother hops out. Her straight sandy hair, cut in the same style as Carrie's, sways with the breeze.

I lean to one side, hoping to be obscured by enough of the foliage to escape the notice of eagle-eyed Mary as she accompanies my little sister down the front steps. Carrie runs straight to her mother, stretching her arms up over her head, lips forming her favorite word, _mommy_. I can't hear her angel voice, but I know what she wants. My mother lifts her from the ground, kissing both round cheeks in gratuitous welcome while Mary goes straight to the trunk to retrieve the grocery bags. They divvy up the spoils and walk inside, giggling together as they often did, and musing at Carrie's comic struggle with a multi-pack of paper towels.

When my family goes inside, the laughter disappears. It's replaced by the distinct feeling of a taut string pulling at my insides. The farther they go, the tighter the string pulls. Its coil cuts through my flesh until the urge to follow, to lay eyes on them one more time, is so strong I think it might turn me inside out.

But I've got to wait. The moment has to be just right or I might end up back in jail.

After what seems like hours, the babysitter finally leaves. I watch her wave goodbye from the doorway and march down the front steps. She adjusts her mini-backpack before starting down the street, passing two houses before turning at the first corner to head for home.

I bound from the stoop, following my hearts' string across the darkening road. Just as I step onto the sidewalk, a light comes on. Since missions of a spying nature are supposed to be covert, I jump into the thick row of Azaleas lining the front gate. From the safety of my cover I notice the thick beam of light is actually coming from a street lamp.

Once I'm sure all the leaves are out of my clothes and back pack, I make my silent way over the short front gate and into the side yard. The fig trees are young again, still planted in faded blue barrels beside the porch. In the deep evening shade, the white curtains in the window behind the trees help to make out the familiar shapes of the plump, purple fruit. Soft to the touch, they're very ripe. I pick some as I pass, following the long side of the house, stalking beneath the windows with open curtains.

Home was shaped like a giant rectangle and before long I'm at the back corner. Here everything is always dark no matter what time of day. What's left of the daylight is blocked by the long brick wall whose edge stands high above the fence line. But here in the back, the two enormous apple trees make the shade. The grass under them is so sparse that the slightest bit of rain turns the ground into mud.

As I'm slogging through the muck another light clicks on. This time it's inside. I duck beneath the high-framed window just as the curtains to my old bedroom are thrown open. A scraping plunk tells me the window has just been opened, too. Once the shadow moves from the sill, all I want to do is look inside. The idea has me practically panicking with curiosity.

A frenzy of wonder:

How much harm could one, quick look do? What if I see me—will I recognize me? What if I do? What if I don't?

Would I call the cops on me? Could I do that to myself? _Probably_. But maybe younger me would know who I am looking at.

The dubious deliberations are soon overruled by unbridled need and I slowly stretch up.

The first glimpse reveals nothing that makes me think there's an eminent threat, so I continue raising my head, straightening until I am completely upright and looking through my old bedroom window.

My so-called quick glance becomes a full-on gawk. And everything I ever thought I knew about myself is shattered.

They say—I have said it myself on several occasions—that _hindsight is 20/20_. But standing here, virtually face to face with my younger self, me at sixteen years old, all I can say is hindsight needs glasses.

My pride is crushed staring at this boy wearing baggy green pants with an oversized, bright blue Cross Colors hoodie. I, I mean him—he has a patch of acne across his forehead which could be easily hidden by his horrible hair if it weren't styled up into a short pomp. He stares into the mirror on top of the dresser practicing bad dance moves I haven't seen since the eighth grade. The whole scene is reminiscent of a poor imitation of a Vanilla Ice video.

Without thinking, my own hand comes up to feel the smooth skin of my forehead. Examining his ridiculous outfit all I can think is, I must not have discovered flannel yet. I try to imagine him, me, in something more contemporary and still look nothing like what I expected. I always thought I was a pretty good dancer but this kids' off-beat kicks, the thrusting and flailing around like he's being electrocuted—embarrassment turns my face red hot and I have to look away.

There's nothing else to do but chalk up the discrepancies to projected feelings of self-loathing and carry on. I didn't come here to pick myself apart; I came to see her.

At the next corner, lights from the neighboring shopping center parking lot pour over the wall just behind our fence, casting a brighter path to follow. I can see the unfinished tree house high in the giant maple in the far corner of the back yard. Not far from that is Carrie's metal swing set.

A thin beam of light stretches across the back porch. A beam that I'm ninety-nine percent sure it was not there a second ago. Instinctively I step to the base of the great tree, sinking into deeper shadow. My heart sputters and picks up as the beam grows wider, brighter, until it extends the length of the cement.

A dark figure emerges from the lighted doorway, driving me into a pile of weather-beaten two by fours hidden in the black beneath the shade tree. The tip of my shoe catches the corner of a short board and flips it. Noise rips through the quiet like thunder.

My mother is standing in the doorway. The line of her figure is traced in light as she steps onto the porch, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. My heart stops as she peers into the dark. Right. At. Me.

"Gerry?" She calls, "What are you doing?"

I need to run. Far, far away. But my feet won't budge.

She steps closer to the edge of the porch, calling out again, and my mind scrambles. What made me think I could do this? Good or bad, there's no way to explain.

I'm trying to calculate whether the wooden planks nailed to the tree trunk are strong enough to hold me, when I'm unnerved by the sound of another voice.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

The quality is rough and full of force, though still a murmur, and coming from a different direction. Off to one side. A long shape reaches out from the black and grabs the front of my shirt, twisting it around a clenched fist and jerking me from under the shade tree, into the mud-covered ground beneath the apple trees.

"Gerry, I know you're home. I see your car on the driveway!" My mother calls from the back porch.

"Shut up and play along." The hoarse whisper comes from above the fist in the same quiet reprimand. He moves away and speaks, this time in a soothing tone. "I'm right back here, honey." He steps over, toward the corner of the house. With the free hand, he waves one arm into the light. "I'm just talking with an old friend of mine. I'll be inside in a minute."

"Is he staying for dinner?" Her voice carries, sounding much closer than before.

He takes another step away, pressing himself against the corner of the house to peek around it. His hand, still crumpling my shirt, presses me against the outside wall, forcing me to hide behind him.

"I'll ask," there's a pause while they whisper. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in a long time and I didn't know he was coming." His voice pauses. "Okay, I will. What are we having?"

"Spaghetti."

I hear light footfalls as she walks away.

He relaxes against the side of the house, loosening his grip. When he turns, his face in the dim becomes visible from a back light that suddenly switches on. I look up at the lamp, deliberating on the small act of my mother turning on the outside light. It feels like a small thing, this little courtesy given to someone you share your life with, but it also feels kind of big. It's been so long since I've been in a room with my mother; I forget what she was like.

Everything in this place feels so real, I forget it isn't. That is, until something like looking into the face of the man beside me happens, then this place becomes so bizarre, I have to believe I'm dreaming to keep from losing my mind.

The image before me is like something out of an old memory I never knew I had. That is how I must treat it, like the living, breathing embodiment of the long forgotten moments only known to my subconscious mind. Like living déjà vu or walking inside a photograph. Because if I were to believe that I'm standing here, staring into the face of my aged father who is at this very moment, in his mid-forties, I would have to demand a straight jacket and check myself back into the loony bin.

"What are you doing here?" His voice is like his face, softer and younger.

"I don't know." I shake my head.

"How do I look?" He steps back, looking up into the light and spreading his arms.

My jaw goes slack. The bald head I'm so used to seeing is no longer thinned with age, but covered with thick, wavy, brown hair. There are only traces of gray around the temples. His shoulders are higher, younger, and upright with the vigor I remember. He looks strong. His skin is free of liver spots, bearing only laugh lines. His eyes, set beneath a neat brow, hold the same unyielding look they always did, except the expression appears more curious that heated.

I tug at my rumpled dress shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles his fist has left behind.

He waves me forward after a cautious look around. "Step into the light."

Obedience is automatic. I move just as if my father were really speaking to me. As I step into the lighted area he's designated, lifting my face the same way he did, my young father moves closer to inspect me.

"Well, damn! It really is you! Don't get upset, I remember what you said, but..." His brow creases.

"You know me?"

"Of course. Nothing could make me forget." A million questions spring up as he raises a pointed finger. "Now's not the time. Not with the family around."

It stands to reason that I would make some type of subconscious mental preparation to receive myself. _Doesn't it?_ I nod, "alright then. What now?"

He stares in puzzled meditation. After a moment, he slaps me on the shoulder. "Are you hungry?"

I'm overwhelmed by the very idea—a dinner invitation—but I'm also very hungry. I haven't had a bite since breakfast—bland prison food served to me in my holding cell before my hearing this morning.

I grin like an idiot, following him through the yard. Past the swing set, the small jogging trampoline I missed on my first inspection, and then up the steps to the white, aluminum paneled back door.

He pauses on the top step and looks back to me with wide, seemingly worried eyes. "He hasn't found us has he? Is that why you're here?"

"No," I answer, though I have no clue what he's talking about.

"They don't know. So keep quiet." He turns the doorknob and stops again. "And don't swear in front of the kids."

"Got it." My head shakes in anxious agreement.

An invitation to dinner.

The experience I was so desperately avoiding feels like an adventure now that he's here, leading the way. Beyond the doorway I'm facing is a completely different world. Outside, I am a spectator. In there, I'll be a participant.

Pausing on a deep breath, I shake off the strange feeling that I'm doing something wrong. And then step over the threshold.

# I Take It Back. This Is The Weirdest Day Of My Life So Far

Maybe it's a dream, but this is better than any I have ever had, heard of, or read about because I can reach out and touch it. Untainted. Cluttered and in all its former glory. Home—the way it would've stayed if I'd been a better brother.

My dads can-crusher is bolted to the studs of the unfinished wall, inside the laundry room he started building to make my mother happy. Directly below that sets the same cardboard box filled with crumpled cans crushed to one-eighth their size. While stepping around it, I look to the right and see the washer and dryer lining the back wall. A clothesline stretches across the room above the appliances. Several pairs of navy blue work pants and shirts—just like the ones my dad is wearing right now, standard uniform for a maintenance man—hang in wait to be put away.

My mother hated ironing but was meticulous about our clothes. Anything that might wrinkle, she'd promptly take from the dryer and hang it on the line. We, meaning my dad and me, were supposed to be responsible for taking the full hangers from here to the closet but over time the laundry area sort of became the closet. Today it looks neater than most days. She must have had a fit and straightened up recently.

Beyond the unfinished wall waits the kitchen, looking exactly like I remember. The left side of the long room is lined with the refrigerator, sink, dishwasher, and trash compactor. In the center lies the island my dad had custom built. He picked out the sand colored tiles; the special five-burner stove and even had a large, marble cutting board set into the adjacent countertop. Along the opposite wall is the second sink that works but is never used because my dad didn't have the pipes treated before he installed them so the water was no good. On the other side of that, is the tall double oven and snack cupboard. To my immediate left on the other side of the unfinished wall to the laundry room is the unfinished pantry. It's basically a wall frame with shelves slapped on it. It was meant to be enclosed, but right now the only door it has is leaning against it. That was supposed to be installed in the new half-bathroom down the hall but I don't recall if he ever finished that, either. The only part of this room that I don't remember is the bulky slew of fancy cabinetry that lines the uppermost sides, covering every inch of both walls, high up near the line of the ceiling and stretching from the kitchen to the formal dining room. All three rooms—laundry, kitchen, and dining—are bright and surprisingly clean despite the litter of construction materials.

This was my home, always clean and never tidy.

In the bright track lighting, I get the first clear look at my dad. Outside I saw the hair, but the finer details were muted. I couldn't see how thick and dark it is. Last time I saw him he had more hair in his nose than on his head. And the mustache, so thick it'd put _Tom Selleck_ to shame. It's been so long since I've seen him with it I forgot he ever had one. His eyes are not hard, but gentle, absent of the imbedded bitterness that's so much a part of him now. As he combs the thick mustache with his fingertips, I cover my mouth to keep from laughing.

The dinner table is set with mats and flatware, but no one is seated.

"Why are you here?" There's a strange glint in his eye.

"What do you mean?"

"I know you told me not to talk to you, but I'd like to know the purpose of your visit before I have to make you leave."

"Make me wha—"

"Daddy!" Carrie runs through the kitchen, bouncing with excitement as she stretches her arms towards the sky. "Up, up!" She squeaks.

"There's my sweet girl." His eyes crinkle as he grins, pronouncing the creases that are otherwise invisible. He scoops her up and holds her close to his chest. "Did you miss me today?" He asks in a funny voice.

"Uh-huh," she gives a brilliant smile.

The moment is so normal and sweet. She's so small, yet such a gigantic part of our lives.

"I'm here for a good reason, but I can't say."

A reason that has nothing to do with his rejection or the fact that he's holding my baby sister inches away. It's not because her bright blue eyes are staring, so piercing with their perfection that I almost can't stand it. The reason is that I literally cannot frame the words. How am I supposed to verbalize what it means if I succeed? Or, I can barely think it, if I fail? I can't put those words, with their heavy implications out into the universe. It would break me.

These miserable reflections are broken by the approach of feet. Preceding the appearance of two people: me—I mean my young counterpart, and Elijah, who I easily recognize though I haven't seen, much less thought of, in over ten years.

"Eli." I mumble then cough to cover the slip.

This is all so surreal. I want to back away from the weird sense that I'm staring at living mirror images. In here, I look much more like the kid I remember being. Still not an exact match though. My hair is big, but lying down now to cover the acne. The clothes are more like they should be; a red and gray flannel shirt, baggy jeans and black and white Converse. I remember picking out those sneakers. They cost fifty-three dollars after tax.

"Mom, can Eli stay—" his eyes fall onto the three of us. "Oh, I was looking for Mom."

"Hey, son." Dad leans down, setting Carrie on the floor. "This is an old friend of mine..." he hesitates and looks to me.

For a half-second, I don't get it. My younger self stands, waiting. Like a bolt of lightning, it hits and I could almost kick myself.

"My name is Jonas." I give the first name that pops into my head, minus the last, of course, since the album has been out for two years at this point in time and I, I mean _he_ , would recognize it for sure. I can hear the guitar riff in my head as I say the line.

We shake hands and he smirks. "Like the song?"

"Like the song."

"What's your last name?" He asks, looking intrigued.

A sweat breaks out over my lip and I give the second name to pop into my head. "Brothers?" _What the hell?_

He smiles, bemused, lifting one eyebrow the exact way that I do. I can tell he has something sarcastic to say but he just presses his lips together.

"Any relation to Joyce?" My dad asks. Eli chuckles and I roll my eyes. It's not exactly who I was thinking of, but considering the age I'm in, I get the outdated reference.

"As a matter of fact, she is my sisters, mothers, half-cousin, twice removed." My witty commentary is met with silence. The crickets outside are laughing though.

My younger self mercifully picks up the conversation, asking if his friend can stay for dinner. Dad agrees and leads on to the dining table.

I've always thought of myself as someone with a clear sense of identity. Maybe I lack direction but I definitely know who I am. This place—these people, this house—seems determined to throw everything out the window. I remember being... well not popular, but well-acquainted with a lot of people. My teen years were a barrage of late night band practices and smoking sessions with stolen cigarettes and basement parties with older friends under the guise of important school projects; next to zero family dinners. My mom was always working, and I was afraid my father would smell the smoke on my clothes. I remember making a point to avoid the assembly as often as possible. About once a month my participation was forced. Then I'd make a conscious effort to avoid eye contact.

Most of High School was a blur. Ninety-three through two-thousand was girls, music, and parties. So, I don't know what to make of this scene. The obvious level of comfort exuding from everyone suggests it's not a rarity. They're laughing together, unguardedly talking about school and work. I hear my younger self talking openly about a girl that was looking at him during lunch.

The longer I sit and listen to the jovial back and forth the more uncomfortable it is, because I can't explain my, better-than-first-glimpse-but-still-more-homely-than-I-remember teenage appearance. I have to remember this is a detached reality—a dream I've conjured and nothing more—so I shouldn't read into the disproportions.

There are some things though; things I never imagined could change even in a possibly medically induced coma. It's petty and shouldn't matter, but I keep getting distracted by my dad's nose. It's huge. At the very least, much bigger than I remember. Only I didn't notice at first because I was too busy staring at the giant mustache. The view from the side, as I sit at the dinner table, is astounding. I try not to stare but find myself, on several occasions, looking a little too long.

Even so, the extreme depth of this twisted reality doesn't truly hit until my mother walks in. I can't breathe when the woman that birthed, burped, fed, cleaned and potty-trained me feels a need to introduce herself. She taught me how to tie my shoes when I was five and doesn't know me. I feel it like a giant wave breaking, tossing me as it curls overhead. Crushing me with its embrace. I puzzle over the feeling of drowning while trying to find the breath to speak to her.

I haven't thought of her often, but when I did it was always with perfect clarity. Yet, none of what I have always known matches what I see. Time changes opinions like it changes the clock and my stock of retained knowledge. It paints my memories with the yellow of perception. I know this and am still surprised at how this simulation of my mother is so much kinder than any of my recollections.

After mom left, on the rare occasions when I would talk about her, Dad would get upset with me saying I never gave her enough credit, that she had much more beauty than I thought. I assumed he meant inward. But this... I don't know how to explain. My mother was a bit of a Plain Jane, or so I always thought. This dream-like version my mind has conjured is an incredible beauty. As fresh as the roses in the yard and she looks happy—the polar opposite of how I remember.

I'm captivated by the power of her presence, intently listening as she animatedly apologizes for her delay. She glides from room to room with a grace I do not recall ever having seen before. Her hands are soft and steady as they shuffle the delicate plates from the hutch to the table, followed by the embroidered napkins she used to bring out whenever we had company. She and my dad make easy conversation while he piles on the spaghetti and meatballs for each of us, passing the dishes around the table. My mother sets out garlic bread, a salad, and then pours drinks for everyone before taking her seat at the end, opposite my dad.

The wait to start while everyone is served proves difficult. I could easily devour everything on my plate and everyone else's, too. When I'm about to dig in the room falls silent. Everyone bows their heads and closes their eyes. My full fork freezes half way to my mouth. Another oddity I don't recall. Saying grace was limited to Thanksgiving the same way church was limited to Easter and Christmas.

My mothers' eyes are closed, her head lowered. The exhibition of humility irritates me.

Obviously, her desertion during my formative years didn't leave me with glowing recollections but I've tried not to indulge them. I don't want to be that person who blames all their problems on a screwed up family. In fact, I've done my best to ignore them completely. There is nothing to be gained by thinking about how my mother left us and never looked back, or how the only correspondence we ever had with her was a single letter from the institution. When she was supposed to have recovered from her nervous breakdown, instead of coming home she sent my dad divorce papers. She never showed up for my graduation or even called to congratulate me, and when we lost our home, she was nowhere to be found. When she left, it was over. She never looked back.

But that was years ago and I'm over it.

She talks, and I watch the glittering diamond of her wedding ring flaunt through the air. She wipes sauce from my sisters' mouth when it gets messy and cuts up her food with a tiny fork and knife. My subconscious regrets are what brought me here. There's no reason to be angry anymore. And I don't want to be, but the more this woman smiles and dotes over her happy little family, the more betrayed I feel.

It's not right.

I made a conscious decision to close that door. She's as dead to me as I am to her. Yet, here I sit, filled to capacity with spaghetti and bile as she brings out sherbet ice cream, bragging how she got it special for her only son because it's his favorite.

"Excuse me." I move a little too quickly and the back of my chair hits the wooden hutch that was a gift from my grandmother. I hope it's not scratched, but there is no way I am apologizing.

Out on the porch, I remind myself that none of this means anything more than it did an hour ago. Just because I've seen it doesn't mean I have to trust it. It's all so screwed up!

My dad is also much milder than I know him to be, but that's to be expected. At this point in time his life is intact. Still, knowing and seeing are two different mediums. It's difficult to digest his tolerant manner. A while ago, as I stuffed my face with homemade meatballs, I—er, the sixteen-year-old me—made a smart-ass remark about something stupid and my dad laughed. He _laughed_ at his joke!

I nearly choked. For as long as I can remember, he's been on my case; 'you'll never get anywhere if you don't take life seriously,' and, 'don't make jokes about serious things.' I played off the gagging as laughter, but it doesn't change the fact that tonight is by far the absolute weirdest night of my life. All things considered that is really saying something.

When the front door cracks open, only his face is visible in the dim. The living room lights have been shut off but there's enough light to catch the fair amount of surprise on his face when he sees me.

"Hold on a sec," he says and disappears. A minute later, the door swings open wide.

We sit on the folding chairs he's brought out, soaking up the night air and using the small, red ice chest he's had as long as I can remember to keep the beer cold. My dad used to do this same thing with his friends. Back when he used to have them.

My dad's an odd guy. He's likeable, but doesn't really care for people in general. Individually, he believes they're unique and intelligent but collectively—a bunch of stupid-asses he wants nothing to do with.

A nostalgic laugh escapes.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's easier to ignore the peculiarities in the dark, don't you think?"

"The alcohol helps." He reaches over, _clinking_ our aluminum cans together. "Speaking of strange, I gotta ask why you're here. I know you said you couldn't tell me but—" He stops as the creaking front door opens. Carrie toddles out dragging a blanket. "Hey, sweetheart. I thought mommy put you to bed?"

Carrie doesn't answer but starts climbing onto my lap. He moves to grab her, probably thinking she is mistaking me for him. I set my hands out and help my baby sister up onto my lap, taking the mangled fuzzy blanket to wrap around her shoulders. She sets her head against my chest and cuddles into the hollow my poor posture has created. Her hair is slightly damp, smelling of apples.

I inhale, knowing this is what I came for.

"Well, that's a first!" The gesture of passing his hand through his hair emphasizes the shock on his face. Carrie was always shy with strangers.

"I'm here to help." I don't say it, but I think he sees the small move that suggests it has something to do with her.

He nods, "Alright."

"Who told you about me?"

He chuckles humorlessly, adjusting himself in the chair like he's uncomfortable.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Nah, I just thought you of all people would know—I mean you are the one who brought us here in the first place."

The comment sounds like a confirmation of my dream theory. "Indulge me."

His crinkled brow accentuates the ironic chuckle. "Jonas. Did the time-warp warp your brain?" He pauses, expecting me to respond but I don't. "You found me the night I got into that accident." He waits, staring. "I've never seen anything like that and I hope to high heaven, I never have to again. You remember, don't you?"

"Of course," my throat feels dry, "but you didn't know my name."

I'm thankful for the blanket of dark. It's the only thing keeping him from noticing the blood leaving my face.

He leans forward. "Is she asleep?"

"I think so," I say, patting her head.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm gonna need you to leave as soon as possible."

"What?"

"If what you told me is still true, then you have to go." He stands taking Carrie from me. "We barely escaped last time."

"What are you talking about?"

He grows serious. "Wherever you are, there he is. Ring any bells?"

"But I've come to stop—"

"Don't tell me." He covers one ear with his free hand. "The less I know the better."

"You just literally asked."

"No specifics." Adjusting the sleeping girl in his arms, he turns to head indoors.

"So, that's it? Where the hell am I supposed to sleep tonight?"

He scoffs, walking inside.

# Fool's Gold

Air rushes in quickly as I yawn, fighting to stay awake while keeping watch.

I've kept my distance since the first night. I expected at some point I would have to deal with more surprises but my dad's reaction was confusing. He acted like he wanted me here but asked me to leave. Then, I thought he was angry. I expected him to let me rot on the porch all night because guilt trips never worked with him but I didn't care because I was pissed. Ten minutes later, he came out and sat in his chair as if nothing was wrong and started talking. Usually, I have to apologize before that happens.

It was the kind of casual, inconsequential conversation I remember overhearing when he spoke to acquaintances; the odd warmth of the early fall, the changes President Clinton is talking about with Health Insurance, the scandalous election, and the housing market. It was weird.

As we talked, I studied. I could see he wanted to ask me why I'm here and I really wanted to tell him, but didn't, reasoning, 'If he asks me outright, I'll explain.' I was worried of what he would think.

There could only be one of two outcomes. Either my veil would slip and I would have to explain the nightmare and he would hate me. Or I'd completely lose my mind. I suppose I'm better off leaving it alone. How would he take hearing that none of his reality is real? Besides, I'm here for me and Carrie.

I thought that because he came back to the porch meant he changed his mind and wanted me to stay. My mistake was assuming anything where he's concerned. I should have seen it coming. When I mentioned how tired I was, he gave me a pillow and a sleeping bag to take over to Mr. Smith's place. He said, "as long as it is safe," across the street would be the perfect place for me until I do what I came to do. It seemed like he was worried about offending me or something because he kept rambling on as we walked. He was overly helpful, digging up the 'For Sale' sign, and removing one of the small panes of glass from the back door to get inside. He even made a joke about searching for hidden microphones.

What bothers me more than the intrigue is that my father— the one constant in my tumultuous upbringing— is different and I can't relate or explain it. He's always been very direct, saying exactly what he thinks no matter how other people might take it, so I don't know what to make of this version. I'm not entirely sure he bought the 'I remember' routine, but he never said anything. The dad I know would call me out if he suspected a lie and has never been easy to lie to. This man was distant, helpful, and irritatingly polite.

I guess, even in my wildest imaginings my brain is still incapable of understanding my enigmatic father. His complexities have eluded me my entire life, so I don't know why I expected anything different here, but I did.

The past seven days have left me with little in the way of comfort or sleep. Last night was really difficult. Lying in the dark living room wide awake is the new norm. All I do is repeat every part of the first evening, going over every detail, obsessing, looking for significance in the insignificant. It's searching for reason in madness, which is useless because dreams don't have to make sense. That's what makes them dreams.

I yawn again; making a mental note to get the hedge clippers and take another trip down the block to make sure the street sign is visible. I trimmed it once, but Willows grow quickly. I have been outside every day this week watching my little sister play in the yard. I follow her everywhere she travels with Mary on foot, except for when she is with her mom, because I remember the day of the accident she wasn't there until after.

It must be subconscious or something because no matter how hard I try, I can't remember the exact date that she died. I mean, who wants to memorialize something like that? But I need to remember. I recall almost every detail of that day except which one it was. I know she didn't make it to her fourth birthday. She was wearing a little pink windbreaker with a hood that had white lining and purple pants. Her hair was down and there were smudges of peanut butter and jelly on her cheeks. She was playing with her ball and there were leaves in the air.

We buried her on the following Saturday. In the section directly across from the rose garden, seventh row back, two spaces from the end, near the cannon. The weather was inappropriately sunny and I broke into a sweat in my suit coat. Through the whole thing, I didn't cry a drop but did get sick when they sealed her casket.

I can remember all of that shit, right down to the stench of vomit that lingered on me the rest of the day but not the damned date.

I yawn again, letting my eyes stay closed a little longer. It's safe now, she's going inside with her brother. Mary hasn't been around to take her to the park in the afternoon like usual and I remember that she wasn't there on that day either so I've been trying to be extra vigilant. Anytime I'm inside or try occupying myself with an alternate activity I get this creepy feeling like I am missing something. So all I do—all I have done since I got here—is sit on Mr. Smiths porch and watch. Or sometimes for a change of pace, I sit on the curb to watch and wait. It's boring and when I get bored I get tired. These days, I'm always tired.

The sun's going down and Carrie's in for the night. I stand and stretch, popping my stiff back and cursing time for the premature aging. Like an old man, I hobble into the dark house.

Dinner is on my mind. I don't eat with them. The food's better, but I don't want to wear out my welcome. My mother extends an invitation nearly every time she sees me, but she still thinks I'm an old friend of her husband's. Honestly, I'm waiting for Dad to invite me.

Hopping off the porch, I start to go left up the winding road but then break right, instead. It's a solid half mile to get out of the subdivision then another couple of blocks to the nearest convenience store. Why go that way when I can jump over the wall at the end of the street and be there in less than five minutes?

Nearing the high gray barricade, I pass a few parked cars and try to think of what sort of places used to be inside the strip mall. Flush with the brick obstacle, I start to get a good idea of just how high fourteen feet really is. If I make a running start I'll probably just break something and there are no footholds out here. After a cautionary look around, I decide to head into my dad's backyard.

Behind the garage is a growing heap of junk that was "temporarily" stacked against the gate to make room for Carrie's swing set. The screws are starting to rust and the pile is still going strong, mysteriously getting bigger. A riding mower with no seat and a chainless chainsaw appeared just yesterday. Stacked precariously against the fence, it's the perfect spot to make my attempt. After checking and securing footholds, I make my ascent up the pile. At the top, it's an easy leap over to the small gap between our fence and the cinderblock barrier.

Sitting, I let my legs dangle over the side. Up here looks much higher than it did from the ground. Strategically placed specks of light illuminate the windows of skyscrapers off in the distance. With all the smog, they're the closest I'll get to seeing stars and it suits me fine. The sprawl and encompassing skyline is one of my favorite things about this city. There is always somewhere to go. Always something to do.

After a while, I'm feeling like Humpty Dumpty because it looks like the only way down the other side of the wall may be to fall. To avoid his same fate, I carefully make my way over to an abandoned shopping cart backed up to the base of the wall, probably for this very purpose. I scale down feet first—there isn't anyone around to impress—until my legs are completely free and the only thing keeping me on the wall are my weakening fingertips. My stomach rumbles and I let go. The second my feet hit the cart, the two wheels set on the black top of the parking lot swivel and roll. Before I can stop it, the bark flies up to meet me.

Story of my life.

There's a sandwich shop with band flyers and posters covering the windows between a set of small, printed menus. I don't recall ever eating there before, which is weird because I'm sure I would remember a place this trendy. It's lit by candle-like lamps set inside mason jars that hang from cords attached to the high ceiling. The floor is a black lacquer, the walls are dark red, splattered with what looks like flyers advertising shows for major bands before they hit it big. Moving in for a closer look, the collection is impressive. Guns N' Roses and Motley Crue are set beside each other in one large frame. My fingers sweep over the laminate, admiring the signatures of Axl and Slash.

"Can I help you?" A voice shouts from somewhere behind me.

"I'd like a turkey sub, no mayo."

"Anything to drink?"

"A can of Dr. Pepper. Hey, where do I sign up for the song contest?"

Turning, I am shocked to see Lisa.

"The original songs contest?" she asks as I approach the counter.

"Yeah," I hope for some spark of recognition but, of course, she doesn't know me.

I purposely befriended her because everyone at school was so weirded out by her. She was Goth before it was cool. Right now she looks exactly the way I remember. Blue penciled in eyebrows, long black hair shaved at the sides and ratted up into a bouffant streaked with green and yellow. Her thick, black eye makeup spikes down the sides of her nose over vampirical white skin. Her thigh high Doc Martens are visible from behind the counter. What I liked most about her was that she wasn't afraid to stand out. Most people prefer to hide their eccentricities whereas Lisa always wore them out for all to see. This girl, a piece of my personal history, stands behind the counter slapping together a sandwich for me and has no clue who she's with.

"Anything else?" She asks, expertly wrapping the food in parchment and setting it alongside the soda next to the register.

"Where'd you get all the flyers?"

"I didn't. They're the owners. You can ask him if you want but between you and me, he's sort of a dick."

"I feel you."

Her forehead wrinkles. "Ooh-kay."

"Are you always this busy?" The place is empty.

"Actually, this is normal for a Tuesday at this time. It gets crazy on the weekends, though."

"Do you work the weekends, too?"

"Yep," she pops the 'p' and shoves the food towards me.

"Who's playing?" I ask, entertained by her utter lack of enthusiasm.

"Whoever signs up." she says flatly, touching a stack of light blue paper. Crudely drawn flyers advertise the contest I asked about. It looks like it took about ten seconds to make, roughly drawn with a black marker.

"I see you've gone all out with advertising."

She smirks. "Spared no expense."

I take one off the top and look it over.

'OPPORTUNITY RECORDS presents UNIQUE SOUNDS ORIGINAL SONG CONTEST!

YOU could be part of MUSIC History!

OPEN AUDITIONS—FRIDAY! SATURDAY NIGHTCONTESTANTS PERFORM

GRAND PRIZE is $500 and a chance at a RECORDING CONTRACT!!'

"Snap. I'm so there."

She laughs a little too loud and way too long. Then, hands me my order.

"What's with the witchy cackle?"

"No offense, dude, but you're kind of old."

"Says who?"

"I mean old by comparison. To, like, everyone else on that list." She points to the wall behind me where there hangs a clipboard and a pen dangling from the end of a string. "They're all like a hundred years younger. No offense."

"You realize that saying 'no offense' doesn't override any of the offensive things you're saying, don't you?"

She shrugs. "You asked, dude."

I laugh, "I'm like a fine wine—I only get better."

"If you say so," she chuckles, setting a form on the counter in front of me, then starts speaking in a droning monotone. "You must be at least eighteen years old—which we both know isn't a problem. Fill out the top portion of the form. Be sure to put in a daytime phone number. Brian, the owner, will be calling everyone to attend auditions on Friday night. If he likes what he hears, you'll be asked to come back on Saturday night when the representatives from Opportunity Records will watch and judge all remaining participants. Be sure to keep the bottom portion with your entry number and bring it with you to the audition on Friday or you cannot participate. If it's lost, it will not be replaced. All music must be original and unpublished. Got it?"

"Wait a minute. The original song contest won't allow covers?" A giddy sort of excitement builds in my chest. This is an opportunity to do something different, even if it comes to nothing.

She smiles. "I hate to see old people get picked on."

"Don't worry about me. I've got thousands of original songs."

I shove the food inside my jacket pockets, slide the money towards her and make for the exit. At the glass door, I look back. "You just make sure your boots are tied nice and tight; because my song is gonna knock your little, cotton socks off."

I've spent the better part of my life living and breathing music. I'm not good at much of anything, but I'm a hell of a singer and a pretty decent guitarist. On top of that, I've got thousands of songs.

My brain is a vault of musical wealth that no one can tap, except me. The modern classics I'm thinking of haven't been written, recorded, or even thought of by the artists on my iPod, therefore by definition, they're all original. The car charger is in my back pack; all I have to do is use it. I can go through my lists of music and choose whichever song I like, go over the chords on my guitar—I don't have it with me but that's easily remedied with a trip to a second-hand store. The more I think of the possibilities, the more excited I get. Something positive to look forward to.

My dinner is gone by the time I get to the back lot. When I climbed down the wall the first time—fell more like—I noticed a wooden plank lying in the bark. Taking it from its resting place at the base of the wall, I prop it up like a ramp and use it to hike up top. Before climbing down the other side, I take up the board and set it in the space between the fence and the wall, for next time.

Again, I take a minute to sit and stare at the city lights. They're oddly peaceful.

I can't believe I just bumped into Lisa. I don't remember that lounge being there. It doesn't seem like the type of place a teenager ought to be working. I remember her working at a novelty shop in the mall. That place wouldn't allow her trademark makeup and made her wear a really terrible wig. I remember clearly, because I stopped by once after I bought a football jersey at the store downstairs. That was the first time I saw her true face. She still had the pale complexion, but the distracting eyeliner was gone. That was the first time I noticed her green eyes.

We had a unique friendship. It opened my eyes to the world beyond my own door. It was brief, but impactful. Through our conversations, I think I learned more about the hardships of life than through any first-hand experience, up to that point anyways. She had a really screwed up family but she was a fighter. The craziness in her life served to make me grateful for my own moderately unbalanced upbringing. I never understood how big her problems were until years later. That may have something to do with the fact that I never wanted to. Not consciously, of course, but I think I somehow knew that knowing precisely what she was going through meant reacting and I wasn't ready for that. Now I can look back and see exactly what I didn't want to know. She dealt with the kind of problems a girl might drop hints about but would never explain, at least not to someone like me. Someone who never asked.

I think it was senior year when her mom threw her dad out. She was overjoyed. Not long after that, she moved to Nebraska to live with her grandparents. I was sad but mostly for me, because she was the only one who understood. The only one who still treated me normal after Carrie and my mom were gone. For a time, she was my only friend in the world.

I have thought about her from time to time since then and always wished I had taken the time to thank her. But, like my musical aspirations, the years passed and life got in the way. It just didn't seem so important anymore. I keep up with her in my own way. I 'like' her comments on Facebook sometimes.

# The Road To Hell

Maneuvering down the junk pile, I'm sure to go as quiet as possible. My dad might consider it overstepping to come and go as I please through his private property.

I'm used to insecurity. I deal with it like everything else, but it isn't normal to feel so detached from my own father. I accept that there are parts of him I will never understand, but he has always understood me, pursued me, and called me. I've never been able to keep a secret from him. With one look, he knows exactly what I'm thinking. Sometimes he knows what I'm going to do before I do. It's an instinctive ability to cut through my bull. We've always been very close, like two sides of the same coin but here he feels like a stranger. I don't know what to make of this soft spoken, even keeled man; so tolerant and gentle, so unlike the grumpy old buzzard I am accustomed to. I wonder if this counter-creation ever loses his temper.

My ambiguity grows as I pass beneath the bright windows on my way to the front yard. The murmuring of many voices carries through the glass panes. Some laugh loudly while others yell annoying chants. What could be happening on a Tuesday night that has the driveway and curb packed with cars, and me without an invitation?

I scurry over the grass, making a beeline for an opening between two parked cars, rushing to get back to my silent sanctuary across the street. Half way through, a chilling sense of dread stops me. My muscles freeze, trapping my feet in the soft green carpet—the midpoint between the two yards, Dads' and the adjoining neighbors.

My placement, paired with the positioning of the tree is making my heart beat too fast. I glance between the two several times before I realize why. I'm standing in the same spot where she landed. The place where Dad and I planted a rose bush before we moved.

Grief wells up as I reach down, brushing the turf with my fingers. It's cold. There is no ghostly power in the ordinary grass, it's a place where someone might sit and enjoy a picnic on a sunny day. Right here, between my shoes she laid unnaturally crumpled, her jacket torn. The very spot where she cried out for someone who wasn't there.

The images and helpless feelings overwhelm me. My stomach heaves and I bound away from the grave spot troubled by the touch of anything but the cement driveway. In the last stride I leap too quickly and land off-balance, hitting one of the cars with my hip. It hurts, but I hold the yelp alongside the lump in my throat.

Part of that day is suddenly clearer. It was late morning or early afternoon and it had to be Saturday or Sunday, definitely not a weekday or I would have been in school. The minute details piece together but the exact day still remains a mystery.

I'm cursed.

I hate this lawn, this house, and everything it represents. The way it seeps into my consciousness every time I try to think of something positive. Whenever I hear tires on the road or see the falling leaves blowing in the wind I want to run away. My eyes squeeze shut, telling myself to remember: this place isn't what it seems.

Darkness surrounds me. I feel it coating me like a heavy blanket as the steady noise from inside the house trails into odd silence.

Something is off.

Sifting through the shadows, I don't see anything, but somehow know that something is out there. I sense it lurking beyond the edges of the deeper shadows and wait, hoping the sense will dissipate. Instead it grows, securing my gut-feeling that I am not alone out here.

A muffled roar tears through the quiet and I jump, twisting toward the source of the noise with my fist cocked. The roar is laughter coming from inside. It highlights the contradiction: the lively fun I've been excluded from and my dead memories.

There's nothing to see, though. I lower my fist. "Relax, G." I tell myself, "Nothing bad ever happened at night." Not to me at least, but still I can't shake the feeling.

"Hey, I was just coming to get you." Bare feet followed by shorts, then a parka emerge from the shaded porch. My young father.

"What's up?" I ask, impressed by my natural tone.

"Nothing special. I got a couple of friends over watching Baseball." He combs his fingertips through the thick moustache. "Something wrong, Jonas?"

"No, I'm fine." I say, decidedly relieved to see him.

He's quietly thinking. "It must seem unkind to ask so much and give so little."

"Doesn't bother me at all; I blame society."

"Can I ask you something?"

Not liking the way he ignores my derision, I nod and he hesitates.

"Y-you don't have to tell me."

"I'll tell you anything you want."

"Why—no, that's not what I want to say. I mean, when I saw you the first time—it had to be fifteen years ago—how did you get younger?"

"Younger?" I repeat the word making sure I heard him right. He nods to confirm. "Uh, good genes," I respond satirically planning to follow with the more appropriate reaction of, 'what the hell are you talking about?' but he just nods again, seemingly content to accept the sarcasm.

"Come in, have some food." He waves at me as he heads back up the steps.

I follow behind him, thinking. "There's something I need to ask you."

"Shoot," A belch sounds with the word.

"Can I borrow your car tonight?"

"The wife's got it. Hers needs a tune-up."

The answer is no—case closed. Clearly, he doesn't trust me. "Why don't you trust me?"

When he responds, his unreadable expression irritates me to no end. "I don't loan my car to anyone." It's monotone, complimenting his flaccid posture as he leans back.

I don't know how to interpret this lukewarm manner.

"Why not?" I'm irritable, leaning forward, using a tone not normally let loose around my dad unless I'm looking for a reaction.

He stands still, quietly thinking. "I don't know you well enough."

"What? Da-Gerry, I know it feels that way, but—look, I just need to go pick up something. It's too big to carry and too far to walk. And do not even suggest a bus or taxis, both of those are out of the question."

He shifts his weight, taking the last step up to the porch. Not like he's leaving, only mindlessly moving as he thinks.

Like I always do when I get angry, I go for the throat. Or in this case, the guilt. "I came here to help you. Again. And this is the thanks I get? I only need to make one trip. Does it have a working cigarette lighter?" I see the objection in his face and shut it down. "Not to smoke. I have some electronics with me and I need the lighter for charging them. That's all."

"What kind of electronics can charge on a cigarette lighter? Will they help you do what you came for?" His face holds a poorly veiled dread mingled with curiosity.

"Why don't you ask me? You're dying to, I can tell." Allusions are good. I'm not above using any opening he offers. I need a distraction from all this gloom in the worst way. Besides, there's nothing wrong with helping myself when it helps us all.

"You specifically told me not to have anything to do with you. Why would I loan you my car? Is this a test?"

"You know, I'm thoroughly confused about the nature of this entire experience. It's making me crazy! You say you know who I am, that we met before—which obviously we have but not in the way that you think—and yet you treat me like a stranger! You make reference to my 'purpose' like you'll die from curiosity, but won't let me tell you! Can't we just be done with the pretenses and move forward with the basic agreement that we know one another, we can trust each other, and if you want to know something you can ask and I will tell you?" The glut of my aggravation collides with the clamors from the party inside. My rant goes unnoticed.

"I asked when you first came. You wouldn't tell." He insists, crossing his arms, but his tone is as relaxed as ever. The only real frustration I've heard from him came out the night he found me.

"I said I couldn't—could not, as in I was incapable of putting it into words at that moment."

His brow furrows, "Then why were you so adamant before?"

"'Before', when?"

"The first time I saw you."

I'm not sure if he means the first night I got here when he found me in the back yard, or if he is referring to the mysterious meeting that never happened. Or if my subconscious has somehow caused him to know what I know—in which case he could be talking about anything. This is hopeless!

"It's like the epistemic argument of the chicken and the egg. I suppose next you'll want to know 'Who's on first.'"

"That makes no sense." His forehead wrinkles.

If he were threatening me, like my dad would, then at least I would have something to work with. "Believe me, the feeling is mutual. So, can I use your car or not?" He gives nothing, so he gets nothing.

"Alright, but only if it's safe," he consents, "and you need to—"

"I know the rules: no smoking, no cruising, no speeding, and replace any gas I use."

He looks upset when I hold my hand out for the keys. _Finally_.

"As demanding as you are, you better fill it up." He smiles and pushes through the front door.

_Great_. I'm back to square one.

Inside is a real party. At least five of his friends are gathered around the TV, on the couches and the floor. Everyone is laughing and talking over one another. The coffee table is covered with bowls of chips, dips, and snacks. From the pile of empty cans lying around I guess it's been going on a while.

In the formal dining area is me—the younger one —looking pleasantly normal surrounded by friends.

Gerry carries on with the formalities, introducing me as a distant cousin in town for the night. I shake hands with his best friend, Ron, the neighbor, Reynold, who brought his friend whose name I don't catch and the next two introduce themselves while making for the door. Salutations followed by farewells—they disappear before I'm even invited to sit.

"So where were you, Jonas? I went by earlier to invite you for dinner." Dad tosses the parka behind the couch before sitting down in his chair and picks up an open beer.

"Well, you should have told me you were planning something." I scan the surfaces of the room but see no keys.

"Have you eaten?" His eyes wander to the television.

"I had a sandwich."

"There's stuff for making nachos in the kitchen. The cheese is in the Crockpot."

"Might as well," apparently, I've got nothing else to do.

The island counter top is covered with pots of food and bags of half empty nacho chips. The cheese is still hot so I slosh it on. The meat is pulled pork, something I used to eat a lot of growing up. My dad didn't have a wide range of ability in the kitchen, but the few things he knew how to make, he made very well. I pile that on, too and follow with a little bit of everything else; refried beans, shredded cheese, olives, sour cream, and salsa. By the time I'm finished building it's hard to believe the plate was meant for one person. I stay in the kitchen, shoveling the food down to a less noticeable size while debating with myself on where to sit.

The couch was roomy enough and I could probably sit there and be comfortably ignored for a while but I really don't want to be around that version of my dad. His friends aren't that intriguing, either, and I'm tired of eating off my lap.

In the dining room, younger me and all my friends are having a good time. They're talking energetically about something that happened in drama class. It's the most interesting place of the two, but the only open spot is right next to myself—little G I'll call him—and that doesn't sound very appealing, either.

I try to block out the obvious analytical questions about what it means that I don't want to spend time with myself, refusing to acknowledge the deep-seeded psychological problems that it must indicate are lurking beneath the surface of my projected world and make towards a chair that opens when Eli leaves for the toilet.

I plop down in his spot in between Lisa and Wheezy. Actually, his name was Mike, but we called him Wheezy because of the Asthma. The conversation stops with the intrusion of my presence.

"I'm gone as soon as I finish eating." I wave, vaguely encouraging them to carry on and keep my eyes on my plate.

"Who's he?" Wheezy asks little G.

"Haven't you heard? He's gonna be a huge star." Lisa answers, telling everyone how I signed up for the song contest.

"How did you get here so fast?"

"I was closing when you walked in, didn't you notice the outside lights were off?"

"He's my dad's friend. His name is Jonas." Little G sings the last part, just like the song, and plays air guitar.

I start to laugh but food catches in my throat. Before I can choke, I grab a cup from the table and take a drink, washing down the clump of meat. After, I laugh without reserve. "You know, that never gets old."

"You're welcome." Lisa snarls, snatching the half empty cup. "Ew!" She sets it back on the table, "Backwash."

"I was choking." I explain, and then pout, "Sorry. Next time, I promise to just go quietly. Forgive me?"

"Only if you get me another one."

"Why do you forgive him and not me?" Wheezy chimes in from behind my head.

I lean back to watch, reveling in the memories of days gone by, almost missing my other moronic friends.

"He was choking," she touches my shoulder. "What's your excuse?"

"You thought it was funny!" Wheezy points in accusation, "I saw you laughing!"

Lisa stands, pushing her chair back with her knees, "I didn't say it wasn't funny, but I needed a decent grade and you screwed up the scene."

"What did he do?" I ask.

She smirks, "He was supposed to be a blind guy that needed help finding his way around an apartment building."

Wheezy cuts in, "I forgot my lines. I thought I did a pretty good job adlibbing." He and little G start laughing again. Their faces turn red as Lisa tosses her cup in the garbage and takes another from a stack on the kitchen counter.

"What did you do?"

Little G concentrates on gathering himself to answer. "He threw himself on the ground—" he takes deep breath, stifles a chuckle and says, "and said, 'help! I've fallen and I can't get up!'"

Everyone erupts laughing and holding their sides, except me and Lisa. I think its lame and she's annoyed.

"Like the old lady in the commercial." She explains, sitting down and sets a can of soda in front of me.

"Thanks," I nod. "What did Mr. Miller do?" After I say it, I realize, I shouldn't know the drama teacher's name.

Her face scrunches in confusion. "Who's Mr. Miller?"

"Doesn't every school have at least one teacher named Miller? What's that?"

When she crinkled her forehead, the black that covers most of the hollow beneath her eyes flashed under the track lighting. There's a puffy spot coated in layers of makeup beneath her ratted bouffant hair.

"What happened to your eye?"

She turns, suddenly interested in the empty kitchen. "Nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing." I know she has need for discretion where this topic is concerned, and it's nothing new to see her hiding bruises, but I am livid.

Suddenly, she's on her feet, heading for the door.

I turn towards me—the clueless idiot who's paying more attention to his moronic cohorts than her. Eli is there, too, he must have come back some time ago and I neglected to notice.

My food is nearly gone anyway, so I toss the plate into the trash compactor. On my way to the door, Dad leans forward, threatening to get up as he asks if I am leaving. I shake my head, indicating a negative and place two fingers across my lips. He leans back lazily in the recliner, engrossed in his ball game.

On the front porch now, I light up, wondering over his sudden interest and find a spot to sit in the dark where I can think. Half way through the second drag, Lisa's silhouette appears in the middle the driveway.

"Sorry," she says, "I totally spaced."

Just as I'm about to answer, she shifts and I see that she is not as close to me as I thought. She's on the other side of the gate and isn't facing me at all. I creep towards the entrance to see what I can see.

"That's a lie, Lisa! You always do this and I am sick of it! We're leaving." The voice comes from a tall man. By his domineering posture, I guess he is her father. He slaps his hand against her shoulder, "I said move!"

"Why are you doing this?" Her shamed whisper is barely audible.

He grabs her roughly by the arm and yanks towards the curb and Lisa gives a pained cry.

"What do you think you are doing?" I step over the short gate into view, tripping the motion detector on the outside light.

"Who the hell are you?" he scowls.

"The guy whose gonna level you if you don't remove your hands and leave."

"Jonas, its okay—"

"No, it isn't." I step between them, breaking his hold on her to get in his face. "Leave," I command, enjoying the flashes of anger and confusion in his eyes.

"Lisa, who is this guy?" He tries to step around. I mirror the move, blocking him. "Dude, get out of my face. This is between me and her!"

"Jonas," Her hand is on my arm.

"Lisa, I got this, go inside and enjoy the party."

"You have no idea what you got." His hot breath stinks of liquor and pork rinds.

"Was it you that gave her the black eye? You like picking on girls, do you?" I wave my fingers, inviting.

It all happens very fast. As I'm talking, he swings. I go low and to the right, throwing my weight into a nice kidney shot. Then, it's a quick left hook—my fist goes up and into his abdomen as hard as it can. I feel him stagger back as he tries to grab me, so I shove and hit him in the face in one fluid motion. He flies back, stumbling into a turn. I set off after him. I'm three, maybe four steps into a sprint when his leg flies out from under him. His big dirty boot catches me square in the chest. I look up from the pavement, gasping as he stands over me. There's an opening, so I take it, giving a hard kick just as he makes contact with my eye. He falls down holding himself and cursing. Lisa's screaming.

He groans, "That's a low blow!"

My bottom lip starts to swell. He must have hit me there, too. I work my way up, standing and staggering, trying to catch my breath while . . . whoever this guy is, rolls around on the ground.

"You—" _pant_ , "touch her again—" _pant_! I need to quit smoking. Resting my hands on my knees, I think I feel my chest clicking.

What was I going to say? Next time I really will kick his ass as opposed to barely winning? "To hell with you," is all I've got the breath for.

Lisa crouches beside him. "Dylan, are you okay?" She pulls up the bottom of his shirt and uses it to wipe his bloody nose.

I stretch slowly, testing my back. "You're worried about him? Did you see how hard he kicked me? I'm still recovering from a concussion, you know."

"No one asked for your help!" She screams. "Come on, Dylan. Let's go home."

Something clicks. "Dylan?"

"What?" he answers, groaning as he gets to his feet, "He's not your boyfriend is he?" he asks his sister, softly.

"He's Gerry's dads' friend. I just met him an hour ago," she explains.

"Aw, shit. I thought you were—"

"Mind your own business, prick!" He yells, wild-eyed again.

Suddenly, it's obvious how young he is. Lisa's holding his arms, assisting his walk to the car. Dylan glares at me, ordering Lisa to get in first. "Better watch your back!" he threatens, before getting into the drivers' side.

Looking down at my scraped knuckles, I feel my eye swelling shut. My bottom lip feels like it might pop and there's the distinct taste of blood in my mouth. After their car is gone, I wait and listen. None of the conversation streaming out the front window indicates anyone inside heard the scuffle.

No way am I going back in looking like this. Instead, I open the door to my dad's shack of a garage and search the refrigerator. I take the ice trays inside the freezer compartment and the case of beer on the bottom shelf and hobble back to the empty house across the street. My goal is to reach a drunken stupor before the adrenaline wears off and the pain really kicks in.

# Here's Hoping

The sun is high when I finally crawl out from the sleeping bag and head straight for the bathroom where the smell from last night still lingers. I got sick and my aim was off. Deciding another time is the best time to clean; I leave the mess and head for the kitchen. On the counter sets a canister of cleanser next to a note and a bottle of pain pills.

Jonas— We need to talk. These are for the pain. —Gerry

"Sure we do," I say to the paper, "you first, Dad."

I take my pills and a used Big Gulp cup filled with water, and head to the front porch to take my usual place as lookout. It is a weekday but I don't want to take any chances. No one's outside but my mom's car is on the driveway. That probably means Carrie is home, too.

What's left of the case of beer is on the bottom step surrounded by crumpled, empty cans. I reach inside the box and grab the last beer, still icy from the chilled night air, and take turns pressing it to my eye and bottom lip. The swelling in both has gone down a lot more than I thought it would by now but the black and purple bruises are ugly. I can't blink or complain without hurting. If I keep my mouth and eye shut I should be fine. My back and chest are stiff. Sitting up makes me feel sick, so I rest my head against the railing.

For all the hours I spent lying down, I should have slept like a baby. But, no, my rest was stolen by strange, vivid dreams. Well, one dream. About the accident.

I kept seeing the creepy bald guy. I know that no one is supposed to speak ill of the dead, but he kept looking at me with these black, hollow eyes like he wanted me dead, too. The kind of creepy death glare you see in the mug shots of serial killers; pure evil.

My hand was stuck inside that strap again and I knew exactly what was going to happen but wasn't concerned until I felt the malevolence of his stare. Then, an extreme urgency overcame me and I knew I had to get free, but couldn't. I kept seeing everything just as it happened and was helpless to stop it. The diesel was barreling towards us as the electric bus lost power and slowed. The traffic and interior lights went out. Everyone around me was frozen and hollow—shadows looming in the background. For some reason they didn't seem important—not when compared with what was unfolding. Somehow, what the bald man was doing, they way he stood, holding something I couldn't see was more important than any of our lives. His existence, terrible as it was, superseded all of ours.

The stranger with his burly beard and dead eyes kept trying to shove me out of the way like before, only he was not trying to help me. It was more like he was enjoying my pain, which felt incredibly real. Every time I cried out he would release a devilish laugh. Then the walls of the bus started to bend. The strap broke and as I fell, the air bent into waves, distorting everything like images in a funhouse mirror. I hit my head on something as the stranger turned and held out his hands to greet the diesel.

Then, my mind inserted something that hadn't happened before: the truck imploded. I mean, the fuel in the truck spilled and ignited, but it didn't erupt into a massive ball of fire. There were no flames, but the strength of them seemed to drift into the bald man's body. Like he was absorbing it. At the same time, everyone around us disappeared into the spreading plumes of blue that flowed like a fog. Between the patches, the scene looked like the reflection of a cracked mirror. There were jagged parts and doubles of people in the background. The creepy bald man was destroying everything and getting off on it. And all I could do was watch.

I woke with a start several times but with all the alcohol in my system, I kept falling back into the nightmare.

As the throbbing in my face and head dissipates, sleep wants to come. I fight it, concentrating on the sounds. The birds in the trees and the warmth of the late morning sun on me. I hear several sets of footsteps but they are too far off or have the wrong tone to be those of my mother or little Carrie so I keep my eyes closed. The relaxation deepens as the muscles in my back and shoulders loosen. The pain medicine is kicking in.

"Do you always sleep outside?" Lisa's voice shatters the quiet and I am shocked that her tone sounds so inviting. I thought she would never speak to me again after last night.

To avoid seeming anxious or grateful, I decide to keep my eyes closed. "Only when the weather is nice."

She doesn't respond. After a minute, I wonder if she was just passing by—which would be difficult on a dead end street—but I sense her presence. Remaining nonchalant, I ask, "Why aren't you in school?"

When my eyes open, she's standing in front of me on the path. I sit up.

"I ditched." Her arms are crossed over a plaid grandma dress as she stares down.

"Why?"

"Because I felt like it."

"That's as good a reason as any." I pat the step next to me and scoot to one side. "What's on your mind?"

She shrugs, "making sure you're alright," Sitting a step below me, she keeps herself pressed against the opposite railing.

"How does he look?"

"Better than you," she smirks.

"Yeah, but you can't see injured pride."

"I was wondering . . ." Propped against her bent knees, staring down at the large buckles on her shoes, she starts and stops.

"You were wondering . . ." I urge after a moment of concentrated silence.

"Why did you do that, last night?"

"I thought you could use some help."

"And you feel it's your duty to protect innocent girls from their mean older brothers?"

"I forgot you had a brother. I thought he was your dad. How tall is he?"

"Who told you I had a brother?"

I keep forgetting I'm not supposed to know anything about her. "Little Gerry."

"What else did 'little Gerry' tell you?" she repeats the term with condescension.

"Nothing," I shake my head.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" My voice shoots up an octave and I make a show of clearing my throat.

"I gotta jam." Her tone mocks mine as she stands and starts down the path towards the sidewalk.

"See you Friday."

She stops and turns, exaggerating the movement to amplify her displeasure. "Dylan is pretty pissed, so you might want to rethink this whole contest deal. He picks me up from work at night."

"I am not hiding from that little punk."

"He usually makes good on his threats."

I lean back to illustrate my indifference. "You would know. How's your eye?"

"I should ask you the same thing." Her glare shifts to the empty street.

"Is he the one who did it?"

Nothing. In her silence, I have my answer.

"He's a piece of shit."

"I came to warn you, but you know what? I hope you show up on Friday night. I can't wait to see Dylan kick your ass!" She storms off.

"Sounds like fun. I'll see you there." I yell in a kindly tone. I don't remember her being so touchy.

She walks up the street, around the curve and out of my view. I consider following, and even take a few steps after her, but Carrie is at home and I can't risk it. I'm not wearing shoes anyway.

Slowly I stroll—inching along the sidewalk at a snails' pace—back to the porch and settle in. The neighborhood is oddly quiet for this time of day. Usually there's someone out with their dog or power walking behind a baby stroller but now there's nothing and no one. No cars in any of the other driveways along the winding road.

Silence screams in the stillness, a constant ringing in my ears.

I want to talk to my real dad. I wonder how he's coping. What, with his only son being in a coma and all. I wonder how long the doctor will wait before he starts pressuring to unplug me. I wonder how long I've been here. The days outside cannot be as long as they seem in this place.

I miss mind-numbing television and the brilliant distractions of the internet.

And Abi. Her absence is a constant pain in my chest. She's going to be a pain in my ass when I wake up. I think she might feel sorry enough for me to take me back, but I can't screw up again.

If not for the minor setback of major head trauma with possibility of life support, I'd probably be having lunch with her at the restaurant. I've been thinking about her a lot. Too much, actually.

With nothing around to distract me, all I can do is think of what I did wrong and the way she looked when she kicked me out. How she cried when she said everything could have been different, if only I were honest. I don't know why I wasn't. All I really did was something stupid and that's not news to her. She's been well acquainted with my stupidity for some time. I don't know why I'm always trying to hide things from her.

I never wanted to be so disconnected. But bad habits are hard to break. It makes me wonder when the curtains that shut out the world were drawn. Probably the same time my spiral of self-loathing began. A solid reason why I've landed in this place.

The pressure of stretching my arms makes my face ache. I walk inside the empty house and into the master bathroom, the clean one. I flip the light on and, though I know what to expect, I'm caught off-guard once more by the mirrors' image.

Touching the edges around my eye, I carefully check for tenderness along my cheekbone and the side of my nose. My lip is still sensitive so I have to be careful when I talk. That shouldn't be a problem. There's no one to talk to. On the upside, neither feels as bad as they look but both look really bad. Hopefully, the swelling will be gone by Friday.

The contest is a welcome distraction. It's only a few days away—I should be preparing. In the living room, I take up the wadded sleeping bag from the corner and roll it up tight before stuffing it inside the empty coat closet. After, I strap on my backpack and head across the road.

My mother's locked car is on the driveway. I hike up the steps and give a quick knock. The doorbell offers a better chance at being heard but Carrie might be napping.

Mom answers, carefully opening the squeaky door in a way that makes me think I was right not to ring the bell. She's in acid washed jeans and a stained t-shirt instead of the usual dressy lady-suit she wears for work. Wisps of loose hair have fallen from her traditional up-do. They quiver in the light breeze and I wonder how it's possible that my little sister who looks so much like me can, at the same time, look so much like her mother. Her eyes carefully inspect every inch of my face.

"Day off, huh?"

"Hi, Jonas. I haven't seen much of you lately. I was beginning to wonder if your vacation was over."

You and me both, I think.

"What brings you by? Gerry's at work but I'll be glad to help if I can." She leans against the door frame. Pinned to her small lobes are the pearl earrings my dad gave her one year for their anniversary.

"Do you happen to have a lighter?" I brandish a cigarette.

"No, no one here smokes. And neither should you." Her mock-scolding tone is about as commanding as puppy dog. She smiles and sets her hands on her hips.

"Aw, well, thanks anyway." I shrug, backing away from the door.

"What happened to you?"

"Oh, this?" I point at my face. She nods. "It was an accident."

"A car accident?"

"I look that bad? No, I accidentally hit a guy's fist with my face." I guess old Gerry didn't tell her anything about this, either. "Oddly enough, it happened more than once." I plunk my hands together in demonstration.

"Are you alright?" She covers her mouth, as if wounded by this information. It's only a courtesy, but it's still nice.

"I'm fine. Do you have a lighter in your car? Otherwise, I'll have to walk to the nearest store for a light. Well, I've got to walk anyway, but I'd rather have a smoke on the way instead of waiting until I get there. Have to feed the beast, you know." I'm gushing like a moron.

"Sure, go ahead and help yourself." She waves towards the car.

"Thanks very much." Halfway down the steps, I stop. "Is it open or do I need a key?"

"Oh yeah, hold on."

A second later she's back, holding a mass of key chains. It's another one of those details about her that have faded. There must be a ten to one, key to key chain ratio. She has tiny metal frames holding little pictures of her family, pink fuzzy dice, and mini Troll dolls hanging from tiny chains. One of the largest is shaped like the Empire State building. It's ringed next to a small plaque that reads 'I love my Caddy'. There is a total of three keys; house, car, and office.

I hold out my hand but she doesn't seem to notice.

"Come on," She passes by, waving for me to follow.

"Have you been to New York before?" My eyes search the area.

"We used to live there. I thought Gerry said that was where you two met. Crosby Street? Apartment over the bakery?"

"It is!" _Crap_. "I didn't realize you were from there, too. I only lived there a short time. What was the name of those bread things they used to make, not bagels, but uh . . ." I was hoping she'd hand me the keys, but nothing is ever as simple as I hope. I spot a distraction near the edge of yard where the lawn meets the driveway.

"I don't know, a Bialy?"

"Bialy, that's it! Man, I loved those things. You can't get'em around here."

She nods with a smile. "I grew up in the Village, lived in the city until I got married, then we came to this place."

A small puddle still lingers on the edge of the driveway, leftovers from the morning sprinklers. Outside the short gate I discreetly drop the cigarette and wait. When the cars lock clicks open, I make my complaint known.

"Aw, no!"

"What is it?"

"Oh, nothing," Very dramatic-like, I lift the wet filter. The tobacco paper breaks in half. I catch the end with my other hand and stare pathetically. "Shoot."

She turns to face me, keys in hand.

"I guess I'll have to get another." I take off my back pack and set it on one raised knee, clumsily searching the numerous outside pockets.

"You know, I just realized that I don't know anything about you, Jonas."

"What do you want to know?"

"What do you do for a living?" She asks while I make a show of slowly plundering my backpack.

"I am a musician," I smile. "I know they're in here somewhere." I look decidedly into each outside compartment for the pack of cigarettes.

"Have I ever heard anything you made?"

"Not yet."

"Well, keep trying."

I kneel down, setting the backpack on the cement to perform a seemingly more in-depth search.

"I believe if a person is meant to do something, they will succeed because it's fate."

"Do you believe I'm fated to find what I'm searching for?"

"Yes. And it isn't cigarettes."

I frown, "Aw, nuts!" She chuckles. She looks nice when she smiles. "Oh, I was meaning to tell you, I heard there's a really bad flu going around, particularly hard on young kids. So you should probably consider keeping Carrie inside the house as much as possible."

"She's napping. I should check on her." She starts towards the house but stops. "I'll leave the car unlocked for you. Lock it up when you're done?"

"Sure, thank you." Mention the munchkin and she goes running. As she should.

She nods. "Bye, Gerry, um, Jonas." She sets a hand on my shoulder and gives a reassuring pat. "Jonas is a nice name, but you feel like a Gerry. It's strange but, it feels like we've met before." She muses for a moment then shrugs, "Must have been in another life. Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?"

I clear my throat. "That would be nice, but I can't."

"Well, it is short notice. I thought, since you've been here for a while, that you might be leaving soon. I don't want you leaving with the impression that I am not hospitable."

"I would never think that." My eyes can't release the empty view of the pavement. For some reason, I never want to look at her again.

"Some other night, then?"

"Absolutely. I'll talk to Gerry." I know he's not going to want me around his family and for the first time, I'm glad.

"Well, goodbye." I wave and she walks inside the gate.

"Bye, Mom," I mumble, waiting for the resentment to dissipate, but it doesn't.

Once the distinct resonance of the squeaky front door sounds, I'm moving.

Older cars are the best kind and my mother's El Dorado is no exception. My dad, as part of their arrangement, has taken much better care of it than he has the house. Mom took over that since Dad never saw fit to finish anything he started. She must have really laid down the law, because the car is immaculate. I would expect to find it half washed and painted or something but that is not the case. The peanut butter toned interior still looks brand new. It's clean as a whistle inside and out.

When the lighter pops out, I take it and light up, being careful to keep the smoke outside the car while I connect the charger cord to my iPod. I leave it concealed inside the backpack laying on the front seat and shut the door very slowly, careful not to make a sound. Any noise might remind her to check up on me. I'd like to be able to charge my phone, too, but that will probably have to wait. I know it won't work, but I'd like to be able to play some video games.

I'm still waiting for my dad to lend me the car so I can find a pawn shop. I have to prepare for this show. All I need is an acoustic guitar. An electric is appealing, but requires too many components and I sound best unplugged anyway. It would make things a lot easier if I could recall all the chords for the songs I'm considering. It seems like years since I listened to any music.

There are hundreds of things I wish I could remember more clearly: first and foremost, the day of the accident, secondly, my music, and thirdly, the finer details of my mother—her personality and character. I thought, at first, I was better off, but it would be nice to have those memories to look back on sometimes. I may not be entirely healed from the concussion, though the doctor who saw me last said the worst was behind me, but lately I'm beginning to wonder if that's true.

Smaller recollections are easy to overlook but it can't be normal to blank on the milestones. I would like to fault last nights' brawl for the lapse but dates are not the only things I'm forgetting. I can't remember my sixteenth birthday, or any of the preceding ones for that matter. I can't recall the address of my first apartment where I lived for over five years.

Truthfully, it's starting to worry me. I've been trying not to think about the missing pieces for fear it might mean more than I'm not ready to deal with. I'm hoping that the forgotten parts, after they disappear in this place, find a way back into the conscious world. Then, when I wake up there I'll be able remember everything.

I have too much going on in here to lend time to thinking about that stuff, though. My main focus has to be winning this contest and saving Carrie. On the off-chance that this whole thing is more than just a dream, I would really like to make everyone's future better.

# Me And A Shadow

Right about the time my iPod's done charging, a series of voices echo up the street. I can tell right away who they belong to.

One is my young counter-part, the other my best friend, Elijah, and another old high school buddy I haven't seen in years, Trey . . . something. We called him Double Dragon.

The state took Trey away from his mom when he was just a baby. I think she was using and he was born addicted. Newborn withdrawals behind him, the doctors said he would be fine and the state placed him into foster care until his mom completed her treatment requirements to get him back. She never did and he was eventually adopted by a very nice couple, Simone and David Johnson. Johnson! That was his last name. We nicknamed him Double Dragon because of the chronic halitosis.

"Nah, homie, that ain't how it went down."

I can't help but roll my eyes at Trey's forced ethnicity. We should've called him White Chocolate.

"Think what you want, Trey, I was there. I saw him try to run."

"Did he, Eli? You was there, too."

Elijah throws his palms out, a plea for peace. "I am not involving myself in this. I would never want Dylan to think I'm spreading rumors about him getting beat up and running away from some dude old enough to be his dad."

They all laugh.

"I heard he runs from his dad, too." Little Gerry chimes.

"Day-am!" Trey covers his mouth, "like that?" and turns his focus back to Eli, whose face is turned down to hide a smirk.

Eli shakes his head. "All I know is I did not see Dylan get clocked and make a run for it. I did see him give in a nice kick to the dude's chest, though."

"Dylan deserves everything he got and more. He's always pushing people around. It's nice to see him get his for once." Little G says.

The car is secured and I'm half way across the street, heading back to my post before they notice. They carry on, cracking more jokes at Dylan's expense in hushed voices; each one contributing some cut to his intelligence, laughing quietly as if someone may overhear and report back. From the porch, I see them glancing curiously and look away.

A second later, little G nods his head, mumbling, "I know, but he did."

Trey's face lights up. "Hey!" He calls to me, "You're supposed to be the winner? I saw Dylan this morning. You're the one lookin' all jacked up!"

There's nothing to gain. It's pubescent to brag. I know this. Besides, I barely won and Dylan is just a kid—a monstrously tall child. It is difficult not to grin, though. My face may be bruised, but it seems I've saved more of it than their little friend has.

"Hey!" Trey calls again as the company makes their way towards the front steps. "You know he's coming back, right?"

Now I remember why I quit hanging around him. "You're a talkative little guy, aren't you?"

"You 'at the top of his list now!"

"I don't care." Sitting on the front steps across the road, I think I've have had all the advice I can take today.

"Don't get mad at me. I'm just tryin'a to help your old, wrinkly ass get a head start. Give you time to get your walker and get up outta here!"

I'm ready to respond until he makes the remark about the walker and the imagery it creates. I want to laugh, but keep a straight face. "You're a regular comedian."

"I'll be here all week!" He waves as if he's finished performing and makes his exit into the house behind his friends.

A second later little G comes out, takes a quick look at his mom's car and runs back inside.

"I locked it, mom." I say to the wind.

Removing my iPod from my backpack, I start my search by flipping through the varied lists of music. Right away, rap is eliminated as a possibility. Eminem had the 'white rapper' thing on lock. Besides, I'm more of a singer/songwriter type. Scrolling through the menu, I jot down several possibilities in the notepad I got from my forced time with the chief headshrinker and begin to pick apart song chords, trying to deconstruct each song without compromising the integrity of the melody. Some of my choices won't breakdown the way I want and must be replaced with other selections. The process is tedious and frustrating.

It's too bad I can't take a trip down to San Diego. Rap Core is about to blow up down there. _Linkin Park_ , _P.O.D._ will be hitting it big in another year. _System Of A Down_ will, too, but I'm not sure where they're from. After I help Carrie, I'll have to work on making my way down south.

Distractions aren't hard to find, only to overlook. Little G and his friends have emerged from the house across the way. They are being noisy, but that's not the distracting part. They are playing basketball and Eli, the trusted scorekeeper, is cheating. The funny thing; he isn't even trying to hide it. The other two just pay so little attention that he gets away with it. After the first round, he tells them he's won and they believe him, no questions asked! I don't remember being so gullible.

Finally, I've got my list narrowed down to five possibilities—all potential number ones as far as I'm concerned. They're all in my key, culturally relevant and break down well on acoustic.

"We better get busy," Eli persists, passing the basketball to little G, distracting me again.

G catches it and Trey starts laying on the 'charm'. "Fag, I don't swing that way."

Little G smirks at Eli. "All that cheating must be very tiring."

Eli gives his best evil laugh, "Mwa-ha-ha! You make it too easy and I don't cheat. I win."

They continue tossing the ball, heading back through the gate.

"Hey, Gerry!" I call. The proper name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. "Got a second?" I wave him over. The yelling makes my mouth hurt.

He tosses the ball back to Eli, who barely catches it before walking inside with Trey. With a light jog, he leaps from the street to the lawn. He looks and sounds laid back as his eyes rake over every inch of my bruised face. "What's up?"

"Where's your dad?"

He shrugs, "Probably working late."

"He's supposed to lend me his car."

"That's probably why he's not here."

"Probably. Hey, I'm going to call you 'G' from now on. Okay?"

"That's cool," he says, sounding nonchalant.

"What are you guys doing tonight?"

"Rehearsing for the talent show."

"Really?"

His hands reach sheepishly into his pockets. "Yeah, it's kind of geeky. I'm thinking of quitting."

"Nah, you don't want to start that habit. Are you playing music, or what are you doing?"

"It's a comedy skit—Vanilla Ice meets Bobby Brown in a dance battle."

"Who's playing Bobby Brown?" I bet I can guess.

"Trey is gonna wear this huge wig and we have this whole dance thing choreographed. We've been working on it for a while."

"Sounds interesting." Actually, it sounds idiotic. "Whatever you do, don't let him paint his face." That knucklehead is probably planning to do just that.

"Eli's the DJ. It's supposed to be funny." He shrugs.

"Good luck with that."

"You should come. It's Friday night in the High School Auditorium."

"You need security?" The jab makes him smile. "Thanks for the invite. If I'm not busy, I'll definitely check it out." We've spoken here and there but this is the first conversation. It is very nice of me to invite myself.

"Are you working or something?"

"I'm performing in the song contest at that club." I point behind him towards the wall. "The Brick Lounge."

"Oh yeah, Lisa mentioned that. Well, good luck!" He turns to leave.

"G?"

He stops. "Yeah?"

"I hear there's a really bad flu going around that's especially hard on little kids. Tell your mom so she'll keep Carrie inside."

"Okay," he starts to trot off again.

"One more thing."

He stops again, "Yeah?" and turns around.

"I have a feeling my ride is gonna flake. Do you know where I can find a reasonably priced acoustic guitar within walking distance?"

He shrugs. "You can borrow mine if you want. My dad won't care."

Of course! "Are you sure?"

"It's cool. Hold up, I'll go get it."

Watching him jog across the street, I think about how good it feels to be charitable.

"I am awesome."

Not a minute passes before he's walking back carrying my beat up, second-hand acoustic. A total beginner's guitar my dad gave me when I was younger. They don't make them like that anymore and there's probably a good reason. It does appear to be in better condition than the version I used to play. Minus a few dents and scratches that I probably haven't inflicted yet, it looks exactly like I remember.

"Here you go." He holds out the guitar by the neck, showcasing a longstanding dustcoat.

"Thanks." The strings look brittle. They may break before I get a chance to tune them.

"How well do you play?" The doubt in his voice is sufficient enough to warrant a demonstration.

"Time to get schooled," I say, setting the strap around my neck. After some tuning issues are dealt with, I begin to strum, starting simple to test the strings.

"Nice." G compliments.

Encouraged, I break into a simplified version of Dirty Diana, showing off just a little.

He bobs his head, enjoying the rhythm. "Is that the song you're gonna play?"

I chuckle. "I wish. No, that was the late-great Michael Jackson." The smile sends a shooting pain deep into my jaw. My gums ache.

"Oh, I don't listen to any of that old stuff."

"Old? It was released . . ." I pause, trying to count in my head. "Nine years ago. No, the album was seven; the single was six years ago." It was the fifth single released in spring of '88. It's tragic that I know that and not the day I'm dreading.

"The _Thriller_ album? More like twenty," he rolls his eyes.

"No, the _Bad_ album," I argue. "How can you not know this? The man is a living legend."

" _Was_ , dude—Michael Jackson is dead and I don't think he made any bad albums."

"I know." The response is natural because it is true—where I come from. To him, it shouldn't be. Not yet. "Wait. He . . . died how?"

He rolls his eyes. "I don't know, he got burned or something. I was really little when it happened so I don't know. Go to the library, look it up in the encyclopedia."

Burned? He was burned while filming a commercial back in the eighties, but everyone knows he recovered and came back with, arguably, some of his best stuff. I can't begin to fathom what this means to the world of music. He was such a tremendous influence on so many people.

The shifting breeze amplifies the feeling of sweat building on my forehead and temples. It's all these odd, little discrepancies that keep catching me off guard. So many things that I'm sure about are not what they should be. Why are the absolutes so chaotic? If I created this place it should make sense to me. Shouldn't it?

"Jonas, are you okay? The part of your face that isn't purple looks green."

"I'm fine," I say, knowing all I can do in the moment is shut it off. Change my mind and keep going. "Can I ask one more thing?"

"Whatever's clever." Little G crosses his arms, taking on a pose that reeks of impatience. I've monopolized enough of his time and he wants to go. I should say, 'never mind' and let him get back to his rehearsal, but there is something else bothering me.

"What's the story with your friend, Lisa?"

"My girlfriend? Why?"

_She's his girlfriend?_ Strange how some regrets surface and change things that were, and other things I'm sure could never change simply do and for no apparent reason. My subconscious is turning out to be a treacherous place.

"Does her brother always act that way?" I don't remember him being such a dick, but then I hardly ever had to deal with him. Strangely enough, I can't remember why that is.

"Yeah, he's a prick for sure. He was only being like that 'cause he thought they were alone."

"What happened after they left?"

"What's the matter, the memory a little fuzzy?" Eyes squint slightly as he asks, teasing.

"That's an understatement."

"Well, he won't come back here if that's what you mean."

"Was your dad upset?"

"About the fight? Probably. He doesn't approve of 'physical confrontation,'" he moves his hands in the air, making quotes around the words and repeating in a tone that mocks the giver. "He knows how Dylan is already. They had it out before and he's not allowed around here. So you don't need to worry about him—"

"I'm not worried about him." The need of insistence is incredibly annoying.

"I know," he responds in a tone a little too high-pitched to be convincing.

"Do you really think I care what that pissant does?"

"Anyways, he's gone after this weekend. He starts Job Corp on Monday."

"You think I'm afraid of him, don't you?"

His eyes widen with false innocence. "No. Not at all."

"Look, I am the one who—"

"Hey Gerry Springer, your show's on!" Treys voice carries across the street. I can see his mealy face peaking between the curtains of the living room window.

We both cringe at the sound of the name being called.

"See ya." Little G spins and starts across the street.

"Don't forget to tell your mom what I said about Carrie!" I want the advice repeated by someone other than me—the more people that duplicate the warning, the better.

He raises one hand in a short wave acknowledging he's heard as he sprints away. Alone again, I make my way inside, pull the wadded sleeping bag from the closet, and set it on the floor in the well-lit kitchen.

Once I'm comfortable, I pick up the guitar and start noodling. My fingers slide over the chords, strumming mindfully on the old strings. The ease of playing loosens the constant tension in my body.

Another day is gone, marking nearly three weeks I have been in this house. Almost two months since I woke up in this strange place. The long days are difficult but the nights are hardest. Not only because I am lonely and running out of money—which are two problems I will have to face at some point if I don't wake up—but also because I can't shake this building anxiety. It's not just that I don't feel at home in this house, or that I spend so much time with nothing to do but think.

I can't stand the idea that Carrie's future, real or imagined, depends upon me. I am forced into waiting for something I need to avoid. The definitive success or failure of everything I hope for hinges on one moment. One split-second decision if my memory doesn't provide any forewarning. I don't doubt my ability to prevent the accident so much as I doubt myself.

I am capable, but will I succeed?

I keep from wondering how it will play out. I have some idea of what the death day looks like, but there are so many parts missing. I'm not sure if I'll see or understand before it happens. Will the setting spark a memory? What if I can't remember and I miss everything? I can't live through the experience again if she doesn't.

I've trimmed the weeping willow vines away from the sign up the block, I watch Carrie whenever she's outside, and I have tried to get my mother to keep her indoors. I've done everything I can think of to keep the situation from happening short of telling my dad outright and he wouldn't believe me if I did. Still, the efforts seem insufficient.

Anxiety bites at my fingernails while I contemplate the worst. What if I can't stop it? What if I save her and everything goes the way I want it to? What then? Will I wake up? What if nothing happens? What happens then? Will I live out the rest of my life in this in-between place?

Outside, the night grows darker. So do my thoughts. I worry about my dad—my real dad back home. He's probably losing his mind with worry. What has been happening with him since the accident? He's probably lost his room, been forced into a substandard state facility that reeks of infection and stale urine. He has no place to go and no one to protect him. I'm his only family and a shitty son because I promised him I'd be back for the box he wanted me to have. I let myself hide, too afraid to face his disappointment. Jeanine left me that message telling me I needed to see him and I still didn't go. I thought I had all the time in the world to squeeze in a visit. Now I'm unstuck in this place, seemingly trapped inside my own subconscious—or worse, truly here in this isolated, hope-to-be-forgotten space in time. Whether I succeed in saving Carrie or not, there is no promise of home to be found.

It doesn't help that one song has been spinning through my head all day. I have loved it since I watched Donnie Darko. Now the constant loop has me kind of hating it. Still, I run through the first verse and chorus of _Mad World_ , hoping that playing it will help me forget it and curb the creeping anxiety in the process.

I can't believe how much I miss my crappy life.

The feeling of concealed eyes watching returns and I stop strumming. Back to my feet, I lean over the sink and stare out the kitchen window. The night has turned completely black.

A thud sounds from behind me. I turn toward the dark living room, guitar in hand. My fingers clench the wooden neck, ready to swing. "Who's there?"

"It's just me!" My dad's voice rings through the dark. "Don't beat me up!" he chuckles. His feet, followed by his legs, then torso, enter the lighted kitchen. He isn't empty handed. "You look awful." His eyes bulge as he flings a huge pizza box and a six pack of soda over the bare countertop.

"I don't know." I tease, touching my face. "I think the black and blue really make my eyes pop." The wit and feminine intonation are completely wasted. Abi would think it's funny.

He shakes his head. "I brought dinner." He points to the heap on the counter, "I should have brought plates."

"Don't trip, pizza was meant to be finger food."

He looks at the floor around his feet and shrugs. I smile in favor of a smart-ass remark, unsure if he's being serious.

"I thought you weren't going to show tonight." Opening the box, steam rises off the extra large masterpiece. I inhale as much of the cheesy goodness as my lungs can handle. "Pepperoni is my favorite."

"It's Gerry's favorite, too. How's the face?"

"Manageable." My mouth is full, which makes the word sound garbled, but he doesn't ask me to repeat myself.

He stuffs his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a wrinkled bag. "This is for you."

Taking the brown paper, I unroll the top and reach inside. "Whisky," I set the flask on the counter.

"For the hangover; one shot plus one pain reliever equals cured—so long as it's only one of each." He smiles weakly and starts to fidget.

"Pull up a space and eat."

At my invitation, he takes off his jacket and lays it across the floor to sit. "I always liked this house." He looks around. "The dining room is bigger."

Absence of clutter will make any room look larger, I want to say, but nothing comes out. I can't think of anything else to say, so the silence grows until there's nothing but awkwardness between us. One of us really should say something, and since I'm the one who's been waiting for him, I attempt to glaze the weirdness with menial comments between bites, jabbering about the weather and upcoming Halloween. He doesn't hear me, though. He's too wrapped up in his own thoughts to consider mine. Despite my efforts to ease the tension, his fidgeting increases.

"What is it about me that makes you so nervous?" I offer the bottle of whisky with the question.

He takes it, pours nearly half into his soda then takes a long drink from the flask before handing it back. "Thanks."

"Thirsty?" I mumble and set it on the floor between us.

The silence stretches, again. I finish off my second slice and start the third before he's touched his first. He's just sitting there, sipping his drink, leaving me no choice but to ask again.

"What is wrong?"

His complexion washes white all of a sudden. He tips the soda, noisily chugging. Nodding towards the guitar, he finally speaks. "How long have you played?"

So, he's pissed little G lent it to me. Why doesn't he just say so?

"Off and on for about twelve years. Do you mind?" I ask, trying not to sound bitter. "I wasn't going to take it but he said you wouldn't care."

Silence.

I am feeling more than edgy now. It's only been about ten minutes and he's polished off most of the bottle he supposedly brought for me. If he spews, I've got nothing to clean it up with. A dirty bathroom is one thing, but I am not spending the night in a house that smells like puke.

"Just tell him I said, 'thanks but no thanks'. You can take it back, no hard feelings."

"Jonas, I think . . . I wonder if I was wrong." His hands reach up to clasp the sides of his face like he's trying to keep his head from falling to pieces.

"Wrong about what?"

"Everything," he mumbles, then goes into a one-sided discussion about some souvenirs his father left him, and then quickly changes the subject. "How can you believe in someone that won't answer?" He asks me, like I'm not only supposed to understand this riddle, but also enlighten him.

"That depends," I say, trying to avoid a committing to an explanation.

"I don't understand," he slurs.

"Neither do I." Why do even my imagined conversations with him have to be so stressful and ominous?

"What did we do to deserve this burden?" He asks and starts talking under his breath as if I'm not even here. Sadly, the longer I sit and listen to him, the more familiar this type of conversation becomes. My father never had a drinking problem, but when he drank, he was consumed by problems that he refused to explain. And I know that it is my duty to sit here until he's done.

After several more minutes of confused murmuring, he raises his head, looking around with glossy eyes. I don't know what he sees but whatever it is, he is not comforted. The anxious curiosity I saw in him on the first night is back. Now amplified and contorting his features.

I've had about all I can take of this. "You know, I hate the melodramatic bullshit. If you've got something to say, say it. Or let me put you out of your misery."

I see no immediate objection. He doesn't lean away or back-peddle, and obviously he doesn't get angry. No, he's mild, bearing only a hint of the internal struggle that just moments ago seemed to be tearing him apart. In a strange way, the lack of opposition helps.

"I will tell you whatever you want to know."

He looks me in the eye. "How did you get here?"

Should I be surprised by his isolating approach? I expected he would want to know my real name. "A bus accident, downtown. We were hit by a diesel truck."

He scoffs and crosses his arms like he's irritated.

"Alright, now we're getting somewhere!"

He glares at me, all drunk and stubborn and finally familiar. I feel right at home.

"My name is—"

"No! The less I know, the better, remember? Wherever you are, so is he." It's a phrase he used once before. His pasty face begins to show color. I am not sure if it's the alcohol or genuine alarm, but a whimper escapes him.

"Maybe that is true for you, but not for me."

"Don't fool yourself, Jonas, none of us are impervious. But still, I'm glad I didn't send you away. It helps a little knowing you're close." He covers his face with his palm, taking out the stress on his forehead. The motion is tainted with a not-so-subtle weave.

"You should have something to eat before that whisky gets the better of you." I reach for the pizza box still on the counter and pull it down to set on the faded green and gold linoleum. "I'm not used to hosting." I say, explaining away the lack of courtesy.

He reaches across his chest, pulling a wad of napkins from the pocket of his navy work shirt. "I forgot about these." The flimsy paper drops before I get to it. It breaks apart, tumbling to the floor on both sides of his lap.

"Gerry, are you alright?"

He shakes his head. A wail sounds as he clumsily climbs to his feet. Once again, he's talking to himself, voice steadily rising. "You can't make me!" He staggers in the direction of the door. Half way there he's freezes, almost as if he's forgotten where he was going. Looking down at me he asks, "Why are you so calm? He can't find us Jonas!"

"Calm down," I plead. "Who is 'he'? There's no one here but you and me."

It seems whatever incident that made my dad such a piss-poor drunk in his past, this present and present-future, has already taken place. Some people use alcohol as a crutch, others, as a mask. For my dad it's always been a shovel. He'd try to bury the vague pieces of anonymous trauma beneath the foggy layers of inebriation only to find afterward that the reverse was true. I think, maybe, during his youth he was a victim of a crime and never dealt with it. As the years passed, he learned to deal, but not well. Inevitably, a day would come when he was having trouble with whatever the problem was and he would drink. The alcohol, meant to bury the pain, would only dredge it up.

I am filled with sympathetic embarrassment. My father never liked me to him this way, but his inability to cope caused me some trauma of my own. There were a few times I found him crying in his underwear next to a half empty bottle of scotch inside my bedroom at three in the morning. (There's an image for the headshrinker.) He would wake me up, blubbering his way through some story he was sure would change my life but could never manage to finish. I would spend hours trying to guess what it was, like when this thing he couldn't speak of happened to him, but never got near the mark. Eventually, my curiosity surrendered to his stubbornness and I quit asking.

"Do you know where he is?" His voice bears an edge of desperation I find unsettling.

In all the times I recall seeing my father caught up in a daze of suspicion, distrust of the world around him—worried over things that were or weren't happening—never once, did he seem incapable to me. Not even on the nights he was barely hanging on. I was never afraid of what came next because he was there. He may have been scared but he never seemed powerless.

I shake my head. "Maybe if you explain a little more I could help."

"Have you seen _him_?"

There's a depressing weight in the question—as if everything hinges on my choice of words.

"No." I answer and his countenance lightens immediately. So I add, "And I don't think I will." I have no idea who he's talking about so it's no trouble to lie. I doubt this version of my father could spot my tells anyway.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely."

Seeming mollified, my father's posture returns to the more relaxed state. He resumes his stagger for the front door. "We have to do it. Don't you think so?"

There's something in the way he asks odd questions and releases meaningless bits of information that makes me want to scream. This guy is drunk and a pushover and not real. I'd be a fool not to make the most of this opportunity. To iron out the details of my chaotic creation.

"Tell me about our first meeting," I demand.

He stops, swaying as he studies me. "You're not you, are you?"

"Humor me," I say, reaching around and shutting the door behind him.

"Okay." He blinks several times, his forehead creases, he clears his throat—it's as if these little rituals will draw out the words.

"If you remember, my son was still a baby. Maybe two years old. I was out in front of the building, looking for a park to place the car. Then . . . _WHAM_!" He throws the fist of one hand into his other palm. "The top of the car was gone. He was standing over me with his black heart." Welled tears spill down his red cheeks. "He was gonna smash me. My family. We didn't do anything!" He shakes his fist in the air.

"Who?"

"The Keeper. He called me a thief! But I didn't take'm! I left'm in the dirt! I don't want any part of this!"

More confusing nonsense is my reward for probing. I guess I am either crazy or have one hell of an imagination. I shake my head. This version of dear old Dad is falling apart and I can't subject him to anymore humiliation.

"Do you need help getting home?"

He shakes his head. "Don't let it happen again, Jonas."

"I won't."

"Don't let it pass to him."

"You shouldn't drink on an empty stomach."

"I never drink on an empty stomach, gives me gas."

"I know." We both give a little chuckle—me, at the memories of being gassed out of endless rooms and him . . . well, he probably laughs because he doesn't know what else to do.

I walk back to the dining room and grab the slice of pizza he left on a napkin and bring it to him. "Can I ask you something?"

"I don't want to talk about—" He pauses, choosing to work on the half-chewed bite in his mouth. "Talk about you-know-who."

"Since when are you such a light-weight? Honestly, I've seen first timers handle their liquor better."

"I had a few after works with a friend of mine, before . . ." He waves and then staggers out the door.

I watch him swerve down the path to the sidewalk, then across the road. When the porch light turns on, I know he's made it inside, welcomed by people who care about him, will clean up after him, and make sure he gets to bed alright.

# Learning By Repetition

I am playing _The Reason_.

The notes and composition are well within my ability. The lyrical content is just as relevant today as twenty years from now. And it sounds great unplugged.

So now, what would have been an original by _Hoobastank_ will forever be known as the break-out, genius work of one G Springer. I'm still working on my stage name.

It's Abi's all-time favorite song. Anytime she hears it, she stops what she's doing and turns up the volume. I can almost see her now, in front of the stereo in her living room, shushing me as she rolls the sound dial all the way up to sing along. She drags out the notes longer than they're meant to be, clutches her chest and closes her eyes. That image of her and the melody have been looping through my head. The song, like the girl, sticks.

The guitar is perfectly tuned, equipped with the new strings I found inside the junk drawer in my dad's cluttered kitchen. I've worked on my transitions all morning and have them down to a science. The melody is bright and in perfect pitch. All that's left to do is wait.

The phone call telling me what time to show for the trial performance came early—minutes after sneaking inside the house.

Lazily sprawled on my dad's puffy arm chair, I strum to pass the time. The house is empty and should be for a few more hours since little G's talent show starts soon. My fingers work silkily across the new strings, stretching and fine-tuning while running through finger exercises to loosen up. I'm humming—it's good practice for breathing techniques. Some of the parts carry long notes and I don't want to sound winded—and warming up my throat since I'm supposed to be there in thirty minutes.

I've spent the majority of the last few hours eating leftovers that I'm sure won't be missed and watching old westerns my dad has on the giant laser disc player, which never did catch on. Now that I have my song down, the last thing to do is drink a cup of hot tea with honey and lemon. It's good for the throat. The water is heating in the microwave.

When the timer goes off I'm in the middle of a really good rhythm and don't want to stop. A few more runs through the chorus before I have to leave.

They've got no idea what they are about to witness! I cheer for myself, imaging the forthcoming accolades of the live audience when I finish. Every performer needs to have a convincing humility when they bow, so I work on that. Looking into the oval mirror on the opposite wall of the living room, I stand with my hand humbly clutched to my chest, thanking my audience and blowing kisses to screaming girls.

Inside the kitchen, my tea is really dark. I was a little long winded with my Grammy acceptance speech. _It doesn't matter_ , I tell myself, it's for my throat not my palate, and gulp it down. The lukewarm temperature and bitter taste is a sure sign. I let it steep too long.

Taking one last look around, I check to make sure I have everything I'll need: guitar, strap, extra picks, and lyrics with notes. I'd love another set of strings but I was lucky to find the one. The new ones have stretched a little more so I fine tune them before throwing everything inside of little G's gig bag and head for the back yard.

The sun is setting as I rest my things against the porch railing, then shut the aluminum door and lock it from the inside before heading to my old room. In there, I climb back out the window, replace the loose screen, and traipse through the mud beneath the apple trees to make it back around the side of the house and to the back porch where I left my things.

My family might be back before me so I couldn't leave any traces of entry or exit. They may not care if I was here, but I didn't have the presence of mind to inform my dad when I saw him last. Even if I remembered to tell him I would pop over, he lacked the presence of mind to respond. I figured it was best for everyone if I just kept my visit secret.

With the guitar bag strapped firmly to my back, I begin my ascent up the pile of rusting metal, then over the tall brick wall into the parking lot of the shopping center, on my way to fame and fortune.

Up high on the wall, the dimming cityscape of a Los Angeles is laid out before me. The pink-orange backdrop never fails to impress. Out there, somewhere, is the person with the power to take me and my life to the next level. I can make up for my wasted youth by creating a better future, or if nothing else, greatly improve the quality of this vivid dreamland. Either one is better than sitting around, passing the time in meaningless increments with nothing to look forward to except the inevitable poverty and insanity.

My next attempt on the theme of improvement—I'd like to continue the conversation with my dad, find out what he meant by "keeper." I haven't had a chance to sit down with him since the other night. I think he's embarrassed over how he handled himself. He should know that he doesn't have to put on a show for me. I can see why he would feel that way. Exposing vulnerability isn't easy, even with family.

Walking down the wooden plank propped against the other side of the cinderblock wall, I notice the lot is darker than usual. The lights over the parking area haven't turned on yet. Walking towards the back corner the shopping center, I notice a crunching sound with each footfall and look down. Tiny bits of glass are sprinkled over the blacktop. The way the grey fragments spin and flip on the asphalt reminds me of the broken street lamp outside Abi's house.

Coming along the back of the building, just before I turn the corner, something hits me. Hard. I can't see what it is, but it feels rock solid. In the same moment the buildings leap away, leaving only dark sky in front of me.

I'm flat on my back. On top of the guitar. The edges of it press into my bones. A throbbing fire comes on like a ripple in a pond, starting mild and warm, growing in potency until it feels as pure as scorching flames. It's more than pain, its agony and spreading between my shoulder blades, screaming up through my head.

I reach around, trying to turn, to get up, as red drips from the side of my face. There's a loud snapping sound, then a portion of the plank I used to walk down the wall clatters to the ground beside to me.

"I'm surprised you showed."

I can't look up to see him but I don't have to. I know what Dylans' voice sounds like. I also know he's holding the other end of the board. From the looks of the piece beside me, he's got the bigger part. I wonder if it broke across my back. The incredible stinging makes me think it's a definite possibility.

"I'm surprised you didn't show sooner." I say, forcing myself up onto unsteady legs.

There's a swift blur and I'm face up again, thanks to a wicked kick. The taste of denim mixes with blood.

"Chicken shit," I spit. Just inside my periphery are three bodies. Dylan and his two friends.

"Aw, don't be upset. They're only here to watch." One side of his mouth curls up.

I roll again, remove the constricting straps of the guitar bag and get back to my feet as fast as I can, talking to buy time. "Good. I want witnesses that my killing you is self-defense." I make eye contact with each one, trying to determine their level of commitment. Their eyes are flat like their faces and I can't read them.

In third grade, me and a couple other kids were being bullied by this one who was at least twice the size any of us. One day, I drew enough courage to complain about him to my dad. He told me exactly what I feared: I had to fight back. I told him that I couldn't, the kid was huge, if he could just see him he'd know that I would get beat up more for fighting back. Right now, his response echoes in my head, reminding me of the lesson. _"There's no shame in losing, son, unless you never tried to win."_

Dylan laughs, strolling closer and I brace myself.

I don't need to be psychic to know what's going to happen and I have no illusions about my capabilities. Dylan means to return the shame he felt when I beat him up in front of his little sister. Once he feels he's redeemed himself, he and his friends will leave. So, as the other two rush from both sides to hold my arms, the fists start flying. I wiggle out of my jacket, kick, bite and punch, do everything I can think of to cause as much pain as I can in the shortest amount of time.

Maybe I should just take it. Maybe it would be over faster. If not for my stubborn pride. I can't let this little wannabe street punk use his friends to beat the life out of me and get away with it. Even if I deserve it. It's not in me.

They pull from all sides, trying to knock me down. I plant my feet apart and heave. I don't know who, but one of them flies out and away. The second, a blond kid, tall and scrawny with freckles, moves into the opening. Dylan steps back, almost like he wants to see whats gonna happen. I work my foot behind the blond kids' leg and shove. While he teeters, I yank his shirt up over his head and hit him until he falls down. When he lands, I plant one good kick to make sure he stays there, and step over him with Dylan locked in my sights.

He steps closer, looking all smug.

I don't feel anything, but the pale world quivers.

I should've gone for the board when I had the chance. As I drag up from the ground, someone shoves and I fall to one side, unable to get my hands beneath me like I want. The gravelly pavement of the parking lot burrows into my exposed skin as the three idiots start kicking me. I can't get up, but keep swinging, landing most of my blows on legs and shoes.

Time is an odd thing. It stretches for the underdog, but also feels like it speeds up. Soon, my arms can't extend. My eyes can't lend one more second to their glaring hatred. Whatever thrill lies in the uneven pairing has to wear off soon—maybe sooner if I'd just stay down, but I am the master at making things difficult.

Tiny rocks grind into my ear and side while they kick and spit, cursing me, my mother, my existence. I think they hit me with the board again. Or a sledgehammer. Their shoes are soft at least, canvas high tops and runners. They cackle and grunt, enjoying my pain as I falter, helplessly curling in a fetal position as a final means of protecting my head and vital organs.

There's no one around to help in the dark, empty lot. Only one car: a dirty Jeep Cherokee. I peek between my forearms covering my head and concentrate on it, committing to memory all the little details. It's gray, maybe blue. There are hand prints in the glass next to a makeshift 'wash me' plea scraped into the crust covering a back window.

Combat boots run into my line of sight. They aren't Lisa's, though I'm sure she's around here somewhere enjoying the show like she promised. These boots aren't shiny. The tops are obscured by a long coat. The hem of it swings in the breeze when the boots lunge. One of the kids, the blond one, sprints away and doesn't look back. The tapering blows stop as three more sets of feet block my view of the Jeep. Two sets of sneakers running away. A pair of combat boots keeping pace behind them. The man is in a trench coat. He catches Dylan by the shirt collar. The other kid, whose face I never saw, doesn't even slow down.

I work out of my curled position, ignoring the aching and the limp, energized at the chance of payback. I head towards the brawl that's moved near the Jeep.

The man yells something and Dylan is squirming, trying to get away. I grip a wad of his hair and slam it into the cars' back window. It cracks into a star. Dylan falls to the ground. The blood in his hair makes me feel a little better, but I kick him once for good measure before stepping back to look around. There's no traffic, no witnesses, no lights, or cars, only the echo of sirens in the distance.

"We have to leave." The man says.

Adrenaline pumps through me as I run. I don't need a shopping cart or a board, just one, flying leap. I go from lot to the side of the wall, landing three steps along the bricks before reaching the top and pull my body up. When I look back to check, the dude's already on top of the wall about four feet away. He scrambles down just as quickly with impressive agility for a person of his solid build.

Not one to be outdone, I stroll heel-to-toe across the top of the wall to the end of my dad's garage and step off, aiming to land in the thin strip of spongy grass in front. It's not until after my knee jams into the socket of my good eye that I think it might have been a better idea to shimmy down the trellis.

Still, I pop up as if nothing happened. My neck responds with a jolting stab of pain.

"Nice landing." His accent is unlike any I've ever heard so I can't tell if he's joking. Instead of guessing, I pretend not to notice. "Here," he takes the misshapen guitar bag from his shoulder and holds it out. "This is yours."

I cringe at the sound of splintered wood. "Thanks for helping back there."

He shrugs, stroking a wild beard and looking away into the dark. "Where are we?"

"I'm staying over there." I point across the street to the empty house with the 'For Sale' sign leaning against the side of the porch. "Come on, I've got something for that." I point to his bleeding hand. He looks surprised, as if he hadn't noticed the cut.

Walking towards the porch there are a sharp pains in my ankle and ribs, strong enough to make me wince with each step and breath. It's nothing compared to the pounding in my head.

"Have you got a name?" I think my ears are clogged because my voice sounds like it's coming through a broken speaker.

"Daemon," he answers, grunting as he limps alongside.

"I'm Gerry," I answer.

There are no handshakes or meaningless pleasantries. Traditional formalities don't intermingle with blood. I walk through the back door of the lonely house and into the kitchen, flipping on the light on my way to the sink.

A steady trickle flows down my ear. Knowing it's blood makes my stomach want to a roll but I force myself to swallow. Closing my eyes, I concentrate on disconnecting myself from the pain, from the fight, from everything. No one else is going to do this for me and I have to get cleaned up. After, I can collapse—so long as I stay awake for the next few hours. The papers I got when they released me from the hospital say you're not supposed to fall asleep after a head injury and I surely have another one of those.

Standing over the sink, I notice Daemon is still waiting outside the doorway on the back porch.

"What are you, a vampire?" I ask, turning on the water.

He looks in curiously from outside. "What?"

"Are you waiting for an invitation? Come inside."

He walks in while I count the lumps on my skull. There are three sizeable welts and two relatively small compared to the one enormous goose egg. "Ouch," I mumble, though the hurt screams at the slightest touch. My fingers come away red.

Daemon notices the pizza.

"Help yourself." I invite, leaning over to stick my head beneath the stream of cool water.

Lumps are a good sign, I tell myself. A hard blow that doesn't swell is a sure sign of concussion. So are nausea and dizziness. I'm determined not to experience any of them.

The water runs red. I stay under until it runs clean against the porcelain sink. A pile of napkins serves as a towel to blot myself dry. It hurts no matter how soft I dab.

I hope I don't need stitches because I'm not going to the doctor. I can't afford it and they may want to report the incident. I probably have a warrant, too, because I never checked-in with my lawyer or probation officer. That first night out, I was hoping to wake up in the right place.

"Do you want any of this?" Daemon asks, sounding like he's got a mouthful of food.

"No."

"Who were those guys?"

"Nobody important."

"What did you do to them?"

After wiping my head with the last few napkins, one comes away red. I press the wad of wet paper back to the main lump. He really helped me out, so I guess he's entitled to an explanation.

Tuning to answer, I get my first real look at him. What I notice right off is the oversized beanie and then the familiar dark eyes set against pale skin. "It's you. You were on the bus."

Perception is a strange thing. Circumstances make it change like the numbers on a clock. The man before me—though I'm sure he's the same man from the bus: the one who haunted my dream, scared the living hell out of me the last time I saw him, the same one who shoved me so hard he dislocated my shoulder—he's not the same man whose probably just saved my life. This man looks different. Still tall and commanding, but no longer threatening. Maybe it's because the tattoo that lines the slope of his forehead (giving the appearance of a permanent scowl) is hidden beneath his slouchy hat.

"The bus that crashed?"

"Yes!" I grip my temple. The reverb kills.

"I thought I was crazy. No one knew about this." He sets the pizza on the counter, wiping his hands on his faded black trench coat. "Why does no one miss all of those people?"

"You know as much as me—probably more. I don't remember much of what happened. I woke up in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder and a concussion." I throw that tidbit out, in case he feels like explaining.

He leans against the counter, shaking his head, staring into nothing. For a split second, I can't be sure but I think I see a flicker of something in his stare. Maybe, fear?

With his unusual accent he asks, "Where do you think we are?"

The bottle of pain killers is on the counter. I take a few and offer him some. He refuses, raising a covered hand. The napkin he's using is smeared with orange grease. Moving it reveals a long scrape on top of a bruise.

"It stopped bleeding. Well?" He urges.

"I have no idea. This place is like a dream. Everything is the same but not at all like I remember. Like it isn't real, you know?"

"Yes, it is very strange. My friends are younger."

"Mine, too. I keep wondering if I'm lying somewhere in a hospital, plugged into life support. Is it possible we're the only survivors?" A massive wave of fatigue hits me and suddenly I can't stand up anymore. I lean against the kitchen wall and let my legs slide away, relaxing into a comfortable heap on the linoleum.

"Maybe we are both dead, already." Daemon counters, shoving a short yellow jar into my face. "Take this balm. Wipe it on the cuts on your head, hands, and your stomach, and your face . . ." The sound of his voice trails off as he stares, curious again. "You look different."

"Everyone does." I look at the short yellow jar. The label's printed in a foreign language. There's a crude picture of a wasp with an oversized stinger next to a rattlesnake. "What's this?"

"It is made from the venom of bees and snakes. It is very effective."

My hands tremble as I take the container.

Daemon smiles, revealing gray teeth. "I thought those men were going to kill you."

"Boys. They were boys. And so did I."

The gooey stuff in the jar looks and feels like soft bees wax. The smell reminds me of the flowers in Abi's window box. The scent helps clear my head.

"Use it everywhere and you will be better in the morning."

I still can't place his accent. It's like nothing I've ever heard. His pronunciations are clear, but halting. There are no sounds spilling between words, no _s_ carried from 'use' to 'it'. It's as if he's working very hard to be understood.

"How did you spot me?" I ask while carefully scraping the jelly onto the fiery lumps on my head.

As Daemon answers, I close my eyes and imagine him dressed in various forms of stereotypical garb from every region around the world that I can think of, trying to place his unique enunciations.

"I was walking through the alley when I saw you fighting. You have a death wish. Or why start a fight with three men?" When he says three, it sounds like tree.

"Only boys," I correct, "huge, idiotic kids. And they started it. I was only hoping to finish."

The balm stings for a second before numbing everything it touches. "This stuff is amazing," I say, slathering it on my forehead and old black eye. "Does it work on sprains?" It does nothing for the headache, but I barely feel the throbbing cuts on my head. I rub the soft wax on my ankle and then lift my shirt to check my ribs. My whole side is scraped, painted in purple and black.

"Yes, use it everywhere. Why would a grown man fight with children?"

"I got into it with the tall kid a few days ago. It was a misunderstanding, and he was pissed because he lost."

"The tall one?" Good question considering everyone is short compared to him.

"The one who hit me with the board."

Daemon laughs a little too raucously. "He hit you with a board!"

"You missed that, did you? Luckily, it was only the neck of the guitar that broke." I point towards the crumpled instrument still hidden in its case on the floor.

"Yes, very lucky. Where was your destination?"

"The Brick Lounge. They have live music on the weekends."

"You are a musician, then."

I nod, wiping down the last few spots on my neck and back. "Where are you from, Daemon?"

"That is hard to say. My ancestors came from what you call Turkey before migrating to regions of the Southern Americas."

"You didn't grow up in L.A." He's so light complected I find it hard to believe he could have any relations in any of those regions.

"Don't you know? No one in Los Angeles is from Los Angeles."

Like a ton of bricks or a wall—the wave of drowsiness I'm swimming in crests, pulling me down. Combined with the fatigue, I don't stand a chance. I'm barely able to keep my eyes open now that the pain is fading.

"Tell me where you are from, Gerry Springer."

"L.A." I mumble, fighting to stay awake.

There's a rustle as he stands upright. "I will be back tomorrow. Then we will find a way home. After you have rested."

"Okay," I try to enunciate, but it's just not worth the trouble.

After the kitchen door closes, I start crawling. On the way towards my makeshift bed in the living room it occurs to me that this sudden bout of lethargy could be the sign of a serious head injury and I know that I really should care about it, but am incapable.

Come death or hell, I'm going to sleep.

When the smooth nylon of the sleeping bag is beneath me, I collapse.

Fragments seep into my subconscious, gaining color and structure as I drift into the deep.

# Lamentations

It's a lush field with waist-high grass, bordered by encroaching forest. Beyond the immense tree tops, white capped mountains reach high into the horizon.

The open sky overhead is amazing: a black velvet expanse specked with a billion points of brilliant light, shining down on me. I marvel at the simple glory and wonder at the distant reaches beyond comprehension.

From the edge of the burgeoning tree line a boy runs into view. He's thin, wearing animal skin pants and a wide, beaded plate over his chest. The ornament displaces as he moves, showing the plate is too large for his frame. Moonbeams leach the color from his skin, but not his hair, which hangs down in a dark curtain.

I want to move his direction but something I can't see keeps my feet stuck.

Closer and to my right, I spot another man. He's hunkered down with his back to me. A laundry basket rests at his feet. I watch him rise—lifting a rumpled white cloth to a long clothesline that appears near his head. As the man stretches the sheet towards the line, the cloth transforms. The fabric he was holding has morphed into a large, metal ring. He magically hangs the circle on the line and turns around.

I lose my breath at the sight of my dad.

When I call out his name, a rumbling wind begins to blow. My father cups his hand behind one ear. I call out again, "Dad! Dad, what are you doing here?" But the wind howls, stealing the sound away. I'm worried, yelling as loud as I can but nothing I say is reaching him over the gusting wind that's rapidly gaining strength.

The boy is still a ways off and I don't know why, but I know I can't move from my spot until he arrives, so I stay focused on my dad.

Dad's got an odd smile as he takes another cloth from the basket at his feet and morphs it to another ring and hangs it on the clothesline, essentially hooking it in place alongside the others. I'm mesmerized by the instantaneous, magical way the objects change from one form to another. The enchanting metal circles attach to the never-ending rope extending north and south as far as the eye can see. Dad points at the circles, speaking words of explanation that make no sound above the roaring wind.

"I don't understand," I complain, trying to move closer, but the boy is moving too slowly.

As my anger builds, so does the noise. I thought it was the wind, but it sounds more like an outboard motor. I look around the open field for a body of water, where I might find a boat but there's nothing besides my father and me and the boy slowly closing the distance. My dad keeps working, hanging the rings on the rope, pointing and giving silent instructions with a great, ridiculous grin.

When the boy finally nears me, I can move. He follows as I make my way to Dad. But when I reach the laundry line full of metal rings, he isn't there.

I turn to the pale boy. He's very young, maybe nine or ten years old. He looks around, wild and anxious, raising a knife to my chest.

The rip of the engine becomes deafening, blistering in my ears at the same time the native boy screams a hellish sound and thrashes at me with the knife.

 

Suddenly wide awake, the glare of morning sun greets me through the windows of the barren living room. The choppy whirring sound that woke me is blaring from outside. I must've slept like a rock for the night to pass so quickly.

Someone's running a lawnmower.

My muscles register and dismiss the aching from the previous nights' brawl as I fly from the carpet to the porch to stare across the street. I've not slept past sunrise since I got here and now the treacherous orb is high in the sky.

Taking in the scene laid before me I soak up the sights and sounds . . . and the smell of freshly cut grass. All of it floods my mind and triggers a memory of that one horrible day in October. The day that changed everything.

Carrie was three and a half. My mother's car was parked on the driveway. She was in the shower, getting ready to meet a potential buyer of a house she was hoping to sell. She was going to use the commission to take us on vacation. The grass on the other side of the driveway had already been cut and I was starting on the piece that stretched between the two houses, the one the neighbor and I took turns cutting. That week was my turn. The night wind shook the leaves from the trees and I had to rake them into piles before cutting because the mower blade was old and dull. The grass was wet with morning dew that stuck the leaves to everything. On the grassy patch between the sidewalk and the curb sat my little sister. Next to her was the purple and pink splattered bouncy ball she'd been playing with. I looked at her as she sat in a pile of damp leaves beneath the tree, tossing and scattering what I'd just finished raking into the wind. She giggled, watching the breeze take them away. I was angry. I didn't want to watch her or cut the grass. I wanted to hang out with my friends.

* * *

Carrie's hair is fixed in a high pony tail with a purple ribbon. She's smiling, tossing the leaves while little G angrily forces the dull mower through the wet grass.

My stomach wrenches. Today is the day and the moment is right now.

I leap from the porch, barrel down the path and into the curved road.

I have to get her away from the tree, take her inside the house. She can't be out here. The second my feet hit the pavement in the middle of the street, the pick-up truck appears with two people inside. The passengers' expression changes, her lips moving in what I guess are words of warning.

One second there's nothing but the clear street, blue sky and Carrie's smile. The next, screeching tires. I brace for impact but the man behind the wheel swerves.

She flies with the leaves from her spot beneath the balding tree. There's a sickening sound of metal objecting as it wraps around the trunk.

Little G releases the mowers handle, cutting off the deafening engine. Just like the first time, he didn't see anything but the aftermath. He looks around. Bewilderment deforms him as he makes the painful connections: where she should be, where she is now, the way she was and the way she is. The truck. The broken tree. The shock as he understands that she is broken, too.

He chokes her name and runs inside.

My mother crashes from the house and down the steps. She's hysterical, screaming and falling when she sees.

Noise is everywhere. Crying, doors opening, closing, people mumbling. Little G stands alone, unsure what to do. Maybe it's his marked loneliness that helps or her little face staring blankly up from the soft grass.

"Call 911, NOW!" I point to Little G and he disappears.

I kneel beside her, push her mother away to give me room. Her fists crash against me as I lean down, looking and listening for signs of life. I'm not sure how to perform CPR but trying is better than watching. I tilt her head back, straightening the airway to listen.

"G!" I call. He reappears beside me with a cordless handset at his ear. "Get her! I can't hear anything!" He takes his mother by the arm and yanks her across the grass.

Once again, I attempt to listen.

Nothing.

"Come on, Carrie!"

I'm unsure of the count but I know what to do. I re-tilt her head, lean in, and force air from my lungs into hers.

Give breath.

Once, twice, three times.

Compressions. One hand because she's so small.

One, two, three.

Breath.

Once, twice, three times . . .

Listen. One forced rush of air grants me a grain of hope and I sit up to look at her. She whimpers and draws a breath on her own.

Relief washes over me. Until I remember.

And then I want to puke.

"Mommy," my sister screams.

"Carrie?" Her mother whispers back.

A blink. A whisper. And one, final wail.

That's all there is. Nothing more than her little face smeared with red dirt. Her twitching legs fall into repose as death relaxes her. The bright eyes hollow out and nothing is left.

Nothing, save the rancid emptiness trailing her departure, and her tiny palm in mine.

Then, that's taken, too as a team of paramedics swoop in. "Start compressions."

Their hands fly as if there's still time. One plunges a needle into my sisters' tiny chest. More words and commands sail through the vacant air.

The voices outside my floating world are no more than white noise. People lucky enough not to know me.

Someone pulls me back and I can't do anything but go along and stare. I had my chance. What did I do? How did this happen again?

My mother's curled on the driveway with wet hair, in her bathrobe, holding her screams inside as she looks on, dying to know what will happen. There's still a bit of hope in her face. That was their last breath and she doesn't even know it. I want to grab her, shake her out of her stupid daydream where the only thing she has to do is love the dead.

But I know better. I read the end of this story and nothing changes. "I told you to keep her inside!"

Then, there's the brown truck. The broken windshield concealing a hunched driver.

I swear there is an audible crack. I actually hear it with my ears. A last bough from the crumbling tree, maybe. Or my psyche. A shift in gravity. It's like the truck has become a powerful magnet and I'm helplessly pulled to it. The closer I get, the more ire consumes me. The shadow of her image from five minutes ago perched beneath the tree waiting for deliverance blocks out everything. Nothing remains. _After_ is just meaningless, pointless bits of nonsense.

There's no justice for the weak in this world. There is never any justice.

The drivers' side door won't open but the passengers' does. A medic pushes me out of the way, but I grab and shove, reach around her, and pull at the woman in the passenger seat. I yank and yank again until both obstructions are out of my way. They fight at me, but it's not enough.

My fingers coil around the throat of the driver that reeks of sweat and alcohol. I feel his pulse beneath my palms and press harder.

The window on the driver's door breaks. Arms stretch across me from in front and behind, forcing me to release his throat. I fight at everyone, especially him, until my arms are squeezed behind me and my strength gives way to the gaping pit of pain. I fall to the ground and go limp, telling them I'm fine so they'll leave me be.

I don't want to see it, but can't stop myself from looking because the merciless curb isn't high enough to block my view. Past the edge of what's left of the pile of leaves, a small, white shoe quavers as the paramedics continue working.

Her mother bawls on the gray driveway, convulsing in dramatic sobs for the entire neighborhood. Pitiful stares. The only quiet is drowning in the eyes of her son. The child she's forgotten. He's already blaming himself. _Me._

More sirens blare—more emergency vehicles arriving too late.

I twist away from the ground where I've been left like a rabid animal. Slippery and fast, down the block, in a full run before anyone notices. My feet cannot take me far or fast enough from this nightmare. I don't know where I'm going.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

Up and around the corner. Into a random alley between some houses. Cutting across adjacent yards. I climb over numerous fences until a familiar house stops me. I'm back inside my own yard, not understanding how I managed to run away and come back. A convoluted circle. With the help of a low branch on one of the apple trees, I get over the six-foot fence, desperate to hide.

Clinging to the old ladder boards, I climb inside the unfinished tree house. Behind a row of propped up, rotting planks, I sink. Hopelessly buoyant in the pooling sorrow.

Was success ever an option? Somewhere in my mind I must have known that I would fail. Why else would I choose this place, of all places?

Wake up!

I couldn't speak the words to the ones who had the ability to help. My shame was too precious to share with anyone who didn't see it right off and I've always denied it to the ones who do.

Why can't I wake up?

I have heard that you can't change the past, but that isn't what I was trying to do. I wanted to save it. I only ever wanted her to live and be happy. Have a chance to grow up and experience life. So many times, I've pleaded with Heaven for a chance to go back, knowing what I know now, swearing to change everything. This was my chance and I blew it. I blew it.

I allowed myself to wonder who she would become. Who she would look like. I wondered if she'd marry young or wait until after college. She might have had children. I would have been an Uncle. Our family would have stayed intact. I would be different. I would be better. I got so carried away with all my imagined success I forgot to remember how useless I am. Whatever you call the opposite of the Midas touch that is what I've got. Everything I touch turns to shit.

Here is the end of that imagined life. The death of every hope for the betterment of hers and mine. There's nothing left in this world for me. My past is unchanged, my future sucks. The present is lost.

The page will turn now to the beginning of a new chapter all about how I'm supposed to live the rest of my life knowing I've done it twice. Both directly and indirectly I have killed my little sister.

I clench my eyes tight, commanding my subconscious to soak in every ounce of pain, praying for the answer that will end this nightmare.

# Remains

Sifting the ashes. This is what I'm working on as the knob of the front door slowly turns from the inside, peeking out on the front yard that's been cordoned off with yellow tape.

She isn't out there. An ambulance took her away several hours ago. Police followed the second ambulance with the driver to the hospital, but there are still a few uniforms out front scattered amongst the nosey neighbors. Across the street at Mr. Smith's house, they're waiting for me.

I slipped inside my dad's place—I don't know why—and no one noticed. I guess I figured it was a safe place to sit and listen. I heard my young counterpart tell a cop that he saw me storm up the road after I strangled the driver. He told them everything—my name, where I was staying, about the fight with Dylan—everything they wanted to know and more.

I really hate myself.

At least I slept with my clothes on. My iPod and phone are in the other house, along with my only other set of clothes, probably confiscated as evidence by now. The scant bit of cash I have left in the world is in my pocket.

The place is probably being dusted for prints as we speak. Of course, they'll have a matching set at the precinct. They will know exactly who I am. I'm sure no time will be wasted informing the grieving family of the trouble I had before I showed up in their back yard. They may be returning from the hospital soon, so I have to work fast.

Before my mother decided she would be better off without us she had a nervous breakdown. She went into a treatment facility somewhere in Arizona and I remember that her writing case was one of the few things she took with her. While she was there she managed to write at least one letter.

It's still here, up on the high shelf over the VCR. I open the elegant wooden box filled with pale colored stationary and take out the matching pen. A piece of light pink paper with cheerful butterflies should suffice.

Folded onto the sofa, I lean over the coffee table anxious to deliver the message I have no idea how to phrase. What life-changing words might suffice? I've purposely avoided thinking about things like this. To shoot the verbal arrow straight through her depressed heart requires eloquence, poignancy, and sincerity. I've never been good at any of those things and don't see how I could start now. Angry, selfish, useless—that's me on a daily basis. It might be easier if I weren't on the verge of throttling her for what she's about to do.

"That's it," I lean down and scribble the words:

_Whatever you are thinking of doing,_ _DON'T_ _do it. They need you. So stay._

Maybe less is more?

Setting the folded note back into the box, I find a paper wedged against the inside. A picture slips out when I pull. A photo of the three of us; me, my mom, and my sister staring at a silly face my dad was making when he took this picture. It was the day he finished the swing set. Practically a monumental occasion. Carrie is sitting on her new swing with that huge grin of hers, the one that showed all her teeth, top and bottom. Right behind, with an outstretched hand is her mother, ever faithful, looking down lovingly at the embodiment of her heart and soul. I stand behind them both—the only one who isn't smiling. My throat and chest swell at the idea of putting the picture back. The letter gets dropped in the box. The picture goes in my pocket.

Inside my dad's room, I plan to leave a messy scrawl of a note that looks like it was written in a hurry. Something to help him get on his way and hopefully keep what remains of the family intact. I know what I'm going to write. He's gave me the idea with all his allusions to a nameless threat.

He's already here. I've done all I can to help. Go back to the place I met you before. I'll find you there again if I need to – G

"That ought to do the trick," I say, adding a slight crumple to the lined notebook paper before dropping it into the top dresser drawer.

He will see it soon enough and they will leave this place. Whoever _he_ is, he scares the piss out of this version of my dad. I have no doubt he'll pack up and leave. The distance from this place should help my mother cope.

Inside little G's closet, I dig around until another backpack surfaces and empty it out, then fill it with a few changes of clothes from my dad's dresser—a couple of plain t-shirts, a pair of socks and a pair of pants even though they look too big.

I upset a few sofa cushions and toss some laundry around for good measure, making sure the largest mess is inside my parents' bedroom. When the coast is clear enough, I slip out the back door, leaving it slightly open. If I remember correctly, my dad was the first one home that day and this act, aimed at raising his level of suspicion, should be enough to put the fear into him.

Up and over the wall I climb, land inside the back lot that sparked the flame which lit the fuse that destroyed everything.

# Angel Of Death

On a hunch that he wouldn't be able to find his way through the subdivision, I decided to wait in the lot. It's late in the afternoon by the time Daemon shows up. I've been hiding near the dumpster behind the liquor store for nearly two hours.

"You look better today," he notes, flipping a coin in the air as he walks, wearing the same dirty trench coat. "I thought we were meeting at your home."

I shrug, indifferent. "I thought you'd come earlier."

"Are you ready to go back?"

I can't take another minute of this farce. "If you know they way, then let's get out of here."

"I think I have a way." He waves for me to follow.

We walk around, towards the front on the far side of the strip mall and come out at a busy intersection.

"What's your plan?"

"That," he points towards a used car lot across the street.

"The crosswalk is over there." I start off towards the corner but notice he's not following.

"Not the place. The cars," he says. "Trucks would be better," He's mumbling and I can't quite make out the words.

"I don't follow."

"We came here by accident, yes?"

"Literally. Yes."

"Is it not reasonable to think that the door leading inside must also lead outside?" His odd lilt stresses each syllable. I think I hear traces of African inflections at first, but by the end of his question, it's gone.

I look to the car lot and back to him. "Wait, you want to steal a car and wreck it?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"I have tons of better ideas. Therapy: there's one!"

"That will not wake us."

"Neither will committing suicide. There has to be another way."

"Then find one." He challenges.

I think for a minute. "The trouble is, you don't know if you have the right answer until after you test it and this," I point at the shining cars across the road, "there's no 'after' if we're wrong."

"Of course there is," he scoffs, adjusting his slouchy beanie. "Look, up there."

I turn to see where he's pointing. It's a slope near a freeway overpass.

"Let us go there to see what we see. It is better to do something than nothing."

"Yeah, walking helps me think," and I definitely do not need to be spotted on a street corner in broad day light with this weird cat. Though his appearance blends seamlessly into modern day Los Angeles, here he sticks out like a sore thumb. A bald, tattooed, thumb with giant plugs in his ears. People probably think he's a flasher with that trench coat. All you can see beneath it are bare calves and combat boots.

"Start thinking, Gerry." He walks briskly.

"I am, Daemon." He picks up on the patronizing and glares. "Give me time." I clarify, trying to keep up.

Not to imply that there wouldn't be a measure of justice in my dying right now. At this point, all there is for me is death and jail.

"It does not have to be like before, only enough to take us from this. I have no one here. Do you?"

"No, nothing."

"If you have nothing then what is there to lose?"

"Nothing but everything." I say quietly.

"Are you afraid?"

"I don't know about where you come from, but in my culture dying is something that us reasonable people are afraid of."

"Fear should never keep a man from doing what he must do." He walks ahead at a quick pace. "Are you not a man, Gerry?"

That kind of question should piss me off. It deserves a response. One that I'm in no condition to give. Besides, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of me—that's what my dad would say. _People's opinions don't matter. It's what you think about yourself that makes the difference._ Right now, I think I deserve every criticism the people have to offer and then some, so I keep my mouth shut.

Ahead is an access road with an embankment that leads up to the overpass. I walk past him, heading for the area we agreed on, and then reconsider. Something about him makes me think it might be better to keep him in my sights. I slow a little to walk shoulder to shoulder. Almost. When we start climbing, I try to keep up but his legs are longer than mine. He leads the way up the man-made hill, clomping over the tangled roots and shrubs.

"What exactly are you planning to do? Do you even know how to hot wire a car? You have to consider other people, too. You can't just plow into somebody." Images of Carrie fill my mind. I swallow back the bike and keep walking.

By the time we're half way up, I'm panting and he's a good yard ahead. He's twice my size, wearing a heavy jacket, and hasn't even broken a sweat.

"Two moving objects create a greater impact, which means more energy."

"Don't get me wrong," I huff, "it's not like I'm chicken or anything, but 'impact'?" I'm way too uncomfortable with that word. "If our lives were in danger—if we had no choice, that would be different. But we only get one life. Why waste it?"

"Did you wake up when they were beating you?" He stretches his leg up over a mess of tumbleweeds.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I ask, walking around the obstruction.

"Sometimes fear will wake you from a dream, but this is not an ordinary dream."

He's at the top of the ridge, on the narrow dirt path that connects the embankment to the strip of road that leads to the overpass. I crawl up to the top, avoiding the offer of his hand even though my legs are burning from the steep climb.

"I'm only saying that the ends should justify the means. Creating a crash isn't hit, miss, and try again. It's do and die."

He shakes his head. "I did not say anything about creating accidents. How could I when I do not even have a car? I only suggest we come up here to hope for better ideas."

I relax a little, content that he's supposing rather than making plans. We step onto the thin strip of cement meant to be a pedestrian walkway to cross over the freeway. "You know, in a few years this whole thing will be enclosed. Some guy jumps off the side on Christmas Eve and ends up in pieces down there." Shuddering, I remember. That night I was on my way to Dad's house when I drove past a shoe that still had a leg in it.

"Where were you going?" he asks, staring out at the traffic below.

"When?"

"That day on the city bus."

"To see my dad." Not exactly true, but he doesn't need to know all my business.

"Tell me about him. Do you miss him?"

"Of course," More than anything.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" I see him staring into the distance, interested in something far off.

I try to follow with my eyes and clear my throat. "Only child," The words catch in my throat and I clear it. "What about you?"

His stare intensifies. "Who were those people across your street?"

The crumpled, teary faces of my mother and younger-self flash before me. My dad. Carrie. "I have no idea."

"It is difficult being alone all the time."

"Who says I'm alone?"

"There!" He points down to the freeway, suddenly excited. "This way," he presses me towards the center of the overpass, pushing and pointing. "Do you see that truck down there—the large one with the red letters on the side?" I look down, scanning the distance. "It is exactly straight ahead." He points again about a half-mile out.

"What about it?" The wind from the cars whips at our backs. "I'm not jumping in front of that thing." I caution.

"That would be very stupid," he grins, taps my shoulder, pointing back to the truck. "Look closely, what does it say on the side?"

"I don't know. It's too far out."

"I know a man who works for a lumber yard outside the city. He's supposed to be driving through today. I have looked for him a long time. Please, tell me what the driver looks like. If it is him, he will help us."

I crouch down hanging tight to the railing. "He's your friend, why don't you do it?"

"I am afraid of heights, please." He turns his back to the traffic below, watching the cars behind us.

I roll my eyes, staring at the low approaching vehicle. So much for his manly-man talk. "Alright, what am I looking for?"

"Tell me the moment you can clearly see his face and describe it."

The lanes are moving steadily as various vehicles of all shapes and sizes travel down the long road. Traffic slows as it always does on the LA freeway. The diesel rolls closer and I squint, concentrating on the approaching windshield. The wind from speeding traffic rushes below and behind, spraying dirt and fumes all over us.

"Can you clearly see him?"

"There's a glare. Wait! He's we—"

I'm trying to tell him the guy is wearing sunglasses, a Cardinals cap, and a plaid shirt. I think he might have brown hair. But I don't get it out.

A slam from behind has me listing forward, slowly at first, then picking up speed as I tilt further out into the open air. The iron guardrail proves too short for my abrupt momentum. Over the side I go, heading straight for the road below. I can only watch the broken concrete of the everyday artery rush at me.

In an instant, it disappears beneath a blur. There's a great resounding thud as I smack into . . . fabric. It's taught, cradling me long enough to be thankful that I'm not road kill before the tearing sound. I roll into the second part of the fall, ineptly flopping into the lumber truck. The highest planks wobble with my impact. My teeth crunch together. Half the poorly stacked boards tumble to the floor of the half empty trailer with me. A few pieces fall onto the road. Horns honk in reaction.

Landing close beside, nearly on top of me, is Daemon and more wood. He catches himself on his feet and falls back to his butt, laughing.

Laughing!

Once I'm sure nothing is broken, I reach over, take him by the shirt collar and shove. "What the hell was that?!"

"I jumped, too!" He shakes with laughter. Thankfully, the wind speed leaves the sound of his cackle behind us.

"Jumped? You could have killed us both!" I've miraculously managed to survive two deadly accidents, two fist-fights—one in the last twenty four hours which left me bruised and beaten with a board, kicked, concussed and almost killed. Even cats only get nine lives. "I didn't jump!"

This truck has to stop some time and when it does, I'm gone. I have no idea what I was thinking. Whatever reason I had for wasting time with this shit-house nut doesn't seem good enough anymore.

"So, what now?"

"It is a matter of time." He grins, removing the loose knit beanie. The giant, crudely tattooed snake head that covers his scalp has bright red eyes.

A strong feeling stretches over me—like the kind that comes after eating a questionable oyster. There's dread and regret, some stomach churning nausea and intentions to vomit in the nearest trash receptacle. Yeah, I'm experiencing something very close to that right now.

This guy, I don't know if he's simply too strange for me to relate to, or if he's plain bad news. Considering he just pushed me from an overpass into the back of a moving diesel, I'm leaning towards the latter. As we whiz down the freeway, illegal passengers in the back of a giant and thankfully nearly empty wood-framed truck that smells like it was recently used to haul cattle, Daemon grins. Something about it makes me sick to my stomach.

"Having fun?" I ask, as he rubs his bald head, relishing the feeling of the wind.

He ignores me and digs around in his bag. I adjust the straps of mine, making sure they're nice and tight in case we slow down enough for me to jump. He's pretty big but I'm sure I can outrun him if I need to. _See that, G?_ I ask myself. My instincts say I need to run—run and expect Daemon to give chase. That, in and of itself, is unsettling and I'm pissed for not having thought it before.

Purposely picking at stray slivers of wood intermingled with bits of bark clinging to my sweatshirt I pretend not to notice what he's doing. Shifting my gaze straight ahead over the high top of the truck cab, I stay focused on his form in the corner of my eye. Daemon pulls out a pair of goggles and slips them on. Then he takes out a bike helmet, placing it over his tattooed head and shoves in a mouth guard.

"What's with the get up?"

He stands, holding onto a post on the side of the trailer and leans towards me, yelling. "No sense in taking unnecessary risks, is there Gerry?"

I wasn't really comfortable with my situation to start with, but by the end of this one bland sentence, several other things are bothering me. The one I notice first—his accent is gone. Not flattened but completely gone, like it was never there to begin with. Second, his vague choice of words and monotone imply a warning. Then, there are his eyes. The shift in them is subtle but they're definitely different. They've changed from friend to foe with a twitch.

"No reason whatsoever." I answer with the same vague tone. Yep. Definitely in for trouble.

The veiled threat settles in my stomach like the unseen eyes that watched me. Then and now, I feel like I'm missing something important. Like a lightning bolt it hits and I can't believe I didn't pick up on it before. The other night, when I was half-conscious, he said my full name. When we made our introductions, I said, 'my name is Gerry,' and later, he addressed me by my first and last.

The first time I saw him, I knew. Why did I change my mind? Daemon is the Terrorist and I am an idiot.

He swings his leg out beyond the taught tarp wall of the trailer that keeps us corralled.

"What are you doing?" I yell into the whipping wind.

He looks in my direction and waves in a gesture that instructs me to follow. I shake my head. If he wants to be smeared along the interstate he's welcome to it, but there's nothing that says I have to go with him. Maybe he'll do us both a favor and get killed.

As I'm hoping for a stroke of luck, Daemon disappears with a leap... I must be seeing things.

I have to be seeing things because there is no way in the natural world that I just saw Daemon jump from the trailer to the top of the diesel, against the speeding wind. I'm sure my concussion is making me think he climbed up and down the wall just as easily as he slinks across the outside of the speeding trucks' cab.

I make my way to the edge of the trailer to the spot where he disappeared and peer over the side as half of Daemon, who's perched on the top of the truck cab, disappears as he bends down the side over the drivers' door.

"What are you doing?"

The question is stolen by the speeding wind so I don't wait for an answer, but inch my way further over to see for myself being careful to keep my hands clenched onto the poled corner of the container while stepping up on one of the crossbeams. The freezing airstream is like blades of ice cutting my face as I lean out to watch what the lunatic is doing.

The drivers' door to the truck is flapping in the wind and Daemon has his head stuck inside. I think he's messing with the driver.

My suspicions are confirmed with a quick swerve followed by a plaid blur floating past. Horns honk and cars veer off as I gasp, shocked at the unnatural sight of a human body bouncing along the road in our wake. That evil laugh howls like the wind in my ears. Daemon's not there on top of the cab anymore and the trucks engine roars. The new driver is pushing faster.

I have to make a choice. Stay and die, jump and die, or crawl into the cab and hope to talk Daemon out of doing what he's intending and possibly still die. It seems the lesser of the two evils is to get out of the open space. Inside I'll have a seatbelt. And if I fall on the way . . . well, I am dead no matter what happens, aren't I?

I swallow the abhorrence, ignoring the screaming juxtaposition which clearly shows I'm willing to risk a child's innocent life before my own pride and the lives of countless others so I can cling to the slim hope of going home.

_It isn't real,_ I tell myself. Awake, asleep, or dead. Fear doesn't matter because it isn't real. This place isn't real.

The bitter airstream has my hands tingling. Soon, they may not be able to hold anything. On the other side of my corner post there's nothing between me and the cab. The far corner that would put me closest to the passenger side is blocked by one of the three solid sides of the trailer. I climb to the middle, navigating my way over the tarp that broke my fall. Luckily, the corners are still tied down. At the front, I use the space between wooden crossbeams as footholds.

Lines of evening commuters surround us on both sides, obvious shock on their faces. I'm dazed by the speeding asphalt in the grand canyon-like gap between the trailer and the cab. Its five feet if it's an inch—and he jumped. Jumped!

With eyes firmly closed to avoid further nausea and nerves tightly wound, I work my way down the outside, onto the giant trailer hitch mounted on a greasy plate littered with coiled cords and cables. The full force of the wind is metered here, but it's still strong and cold, still pressing me back as I shove forward. One hand stays glued to the outer railing while the other gropes for the long silver handle mounted on the back corner of the cab. Extending my arms as far as I can, my fingertips brush the plated metal but cannot grip it. The truck sways, forcing me back to the trailer.

Craning my neck, I can barely make out the path ahead through watering, icy eyes. Goggles. He had goggles with him. The road appears straight for the next mile or so. I shouldn't have to worry about falling off the side. At least, not until I actually get to it.

When I extend both arms out once more, the frame of the cab is just outside my reach, only an inch or two. Carefully avoiding the larger patches of grease, I take one more step towards the mounted handle and gather courage.

_Nothing to it_ , I coach myself. And then lunge.

For one split-second, I'm flying.

The metal handle is icy-cold and fits wonderfully inside my grasp—I almost want to kiss it. I'm at the corner of the cab now, looking out at the world zipping by and knowing I'm crazy. Absolutely crazy. There's no other explanation for why I'm doing this.

Concentrating on the bumps of grated metal beneath the slicked soles of my sneakers, I feel my way along the outside heading for the passenger door. Clinging to the ledge, I extend myself as far as I can without compromising my footing and touch the door handle. As luck would have it, it doesn't budge. I reach higher and knock on the glass. The force of cold and impact feels like knives in my knuckles. I close my eyes against the wind and pain.

After a moment of focused concentration, I think I hear something. A sound like a high keening cry or a whistle. Squinting now, I can just make out the flashing red and blue lights that match the resonant blare of sirens. It's a cacophony of police cars and fire trucks weaving through traffic behind and beside us. Ones on the opposite side of the road kick up a line of clouds, swerving into the dirt divider.

I lock eyes with a man driving the nearest black and white. His stern visage gives a command to cease and desist. I shoot back a questioning look.

What does he think I'm doing out here?

Refocusing, I stretch up again, trying to knock on the glass but can't feel my fingers and don't know if I should trust the nothingness they find. I decide to press my luck and take small steps along the outer footboard, ignoring the whooping sirens warning my every move. A large fuel tank extends along the low side of the truck, so if I slip I can try to fall there. If not, I guess the cop gets the pleasure of running me over. He can tell everybody how he 'got one.'

A clear cackle floats from inside and I know the maniac has rolled the window down. It's a relief and a nightmare. Yes! I can get inside! But how the hell am I supposed to do that?

I inch closer to the edge of the small footboard and see that just below the door is a set of steps. Almost there. I work my way down only to find the steps are too low to help at getting inside. My terrified reflection in the warped rearview mirror makes me wish I had the courage to jump. The defiant thought gives me an idea and I reach for the arm of the mirror. Using the forked mount, I lift off the steps and scramble up the door towards the open window.

From there the encouragement of Daemon's heckles are hard to miss.

"Head first is dead first! Woo!"

_Prick_.

With one arm planted firmly inside, I go for the second, grabbing a handle below the front seat for leverage. My head inches in as my arms are ready to give out. My knees press against the outside, losing ground and gaining hope. In a half second, I'll either fall out or in. Then, my blind foot locks on the wheel well. One more push and my bruised ribs scream. The window sill disappears and I fall into the truck. Still alive.

"What took you so long?" Daemon shrieks, sounding cheerful as ever. Bright and sunny as a Sunday in May.

I'm going to punch him.

Twisted on the floor, I lay gasping, taking an account of my limbs. Righting myself proves to be no easy task, the space is cramped and I'm still rigid from the cold. Plus, the lunatic is laughing at every move I make.

He pumps a fist I the air. "That makes two you owe me!"

"Are you schizophrenic?"

He holds up my backpack. I yank it from him and sit down to buckle up.

"Don't do that," he commands all traces of humor gone. I'm about to tell him where he can shove his instruction, but he's not buckled up either.

He points out the windshield and I feel the drag of the truck speeding up again. My pleas are high-pitched as he yanks the wheel to the left, trading the smooth road for the dirt divider. I rebound from every surface inside the cab until we're back on the pavement heading into oncoming traffic.

Daemon pulls down the goggles that rest against his stupid bike helmet.

There are only a few horns as people in compact cars and minivans swerve apart on both sides. Most of them probably can't believe what they are seeing.

"Lean into it!" His command sounds made-up. So ludicrous that I can't even imagine it came from a legitimate language.

"What?"

He smiling, looking dreadful and ridiculous. "You're gonna see your dad!"

"What?"

It happens quickly, but plays in slow motion.

Daemon stomps on the gas pedal. The truck engine sputters in delayed obedience. The police cars and emergency trucks are still chasing us, but their flashing lights, all at once, cut out. Their sirens fall silent, too.

I know what's coming and right before my eyes, which are glued open, I see it taking shape in the form of a Greyhound Bus. Silhouettes of passengers line the rows but I can't make out their faces. I'm glad for this small mercy. The bus drivers' mouth forms an 'O' when he sees us coming. He swerves, and so does Daemon.

"Lean forward!"

My eyes clench shut. My hands fly out, the instinct to protect myself from another inescapable collision.

But there's nothing.

Everywhere, inside, outside, a vivid blue fog envelops us and shatters; bursting into a spectrum of bright colors that cover everything in a burst of radiant light that flashes on and off before I can wince or take in details.

And then everything is different, but... similar.

Hot air whips over my entire body. The truck is gone. We're still moving, there's still a road, but we aren't inside the diesel anymore. The area looks the same, minus the police cars, the giant bus, the dim sky and cold air. Everything that was there just a second ago has changed and I'm locked in free-fall.

The dirt and gravel greet me with a smacking kiss and a rumbling hug as my body tumbles like a wet rag. Skidding onto the emergency shoulder I'm curled in a tight ball. The dirt scrapes through my jeans and into my knees, into my hair and elbows, my hip.

Like the wooden matchstick grinding across a sulfur strip, I'm breaking and going up in flames. Old wounds are scoured open as I flip and slide, fighting to stay locked in my huddle. A clump of dirt hidden in dead grass in gathered at the base of a pole. My body wraps around it all, ending my helpless reeling.

I'm literally wrapped around a pole. And sick. So sick I'm barely able to open my mouth to let the vomit out. Crumpled and heaving, I hear another groan followed by a spraying splash. It's coming from somewhere nearby. I allow one last heave before falling back to rest, waiting for the nausea to ebb. In between groups of traffic, I take in deep, concentrated breaths, trying to avoid sucking up the heavy exhaust.

Every inch of me is on fire. The unmistakable heat of summer burns what's left of my skin. Still, after all that, one thing is standing out in my mind. Daemon's words: _Lean forward. Don't buckle. You're going to see your dad_.

The truck disappeared just like the bus and the possibility is exciting enough that I force my eyes open. The bright sun is blinding. I roll to one side using my battered hands to lift from the dirt and calling out to the passing cars for help.

My calls are interrupted by a distinct sound.

A _click_ that sounds from behind me and digs into the back of my head.

My calls cease. Intuitively, I raise my shredded arms out slowly.

"What are you doing?" Daemon asks.

"Putting my hands over my head."

He laughs and the sound makes what's left of my skin crawl. "Did I tell you to do that?"

"No." I say and change directions to lower them.

"Stop moving!"

I freeze.

"You think you are so smart," he snickers.

The barrel jams harder into my head and I shrink away, shaking.

"So afraid of what you do not understand."

"What am I supposed to understand?"

"Quiet!"

The tip of his boot lands between my shoulder blades, forcing me back to the ground to lie in my vomit. With my cheeks pressed to the unforgiving road, I watch the line of traffic passing, willing someone to have the courage to stop. The cars are newer—smoother lines and rounded edges. The drivers slow a little, just long enough to decide to keep going. Several more come and go, holding out their phones for pictures.

Forgive me for not smiling.

"Understand this: I don't want to hurt you."

"What? Why are you doing this?"

He snickers. "I am here for my Threestone. Can you take me to my rocks?"

"What?"

"We are the same color, see?"

"What? What rocks?" He's talking in monotone the way an inexperienced news anchor reads cue cards or a bad actor reads a script, and pressing his foot harder into my back. Even if there was no gun involved, if I weren't feeling so feeble, so filled with dread, and was standing upright, I don't think I'd understand this exchange.

"That means nothing to you, does it?"

"What?"

"I bet you've never seen anyone like me before, have you? Tell me, Gerry, do you think I am a god?"

"What?" I'm like a robot, I can't stop repeating myself.

"How do you like your god now?"

The question is totally misdirected. What could a guy like me possibly know about God? I'm the one with a gun to my head. I've got no control whatsoever. His hubris has me righteously pissed, though.

The anger helps form a sequence in my mind. A plan of sorts: throw my weight into a roll, grab his leg, and make him fall. At the very least, that should give me enough time to get the gun or run.

On the count of three...

I have the whole sequence laid out in my mind but there's this tremendous noise. It's so loud it makes me lose focus, confuses me. Colors shoot across my vision and then I realize it's not colors. It's one color. Red.

Daemon pulled the trigger.

It's really loud but other than that, doesn't feel as bad as I expect. I imagined it happening to someone else of course, never me. But I've always thought, 'what horrible pain it must be', but it's not. It's messy. There is _a lot_ of blood. I hear it pouring from me, tinkling on the ground like water. My ear drum hurts more than the bullet. All in all, I suppose it is preferable to other methods of execution. Like being stretched on a rack or disemboweled.

As much as I'm bleeding, I'll go quickly.

Dying is nothing like they show in the movies. I'm afraid and there's no highlight reel. My life doesn't flash before my eyes; it's only fleeting opinions of things I've done that occur and fly away.

My dad. Abi.

And my mother. So weird that she's the one here with me holding my hand. She's bright and beautiful, the only source of light in the dim world. She's not looking at me, but down at an open book and I realize that she's reading to me.

Beyond the deafening resonance of the gun, her voice rings clear and sweet. _"Do not rejoice over me, my enemy; when I fall, I will rise. When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me."_

# PART III

# Increments

In video games, there are an unlimited number of lives. If we happen to blow ourselves up or get shot one too many times, all we have to do is start over.

In movies and television the heroes eagerly fight against impossible odds. Putting everything on the line and enthusiastically run towards death, yet still manage to escape it. Watching feels exciting and climactic.

It's a load of bull.

The reality is, most of us choose to live as if we're unaffected by the certainty of death until the dark day dawns and we, utterly unprepared, take a final breath. And we are all of us, absolutely and inconsolably terrified. Death. No more than the ending of a chapter. The closing of a book after the final words are read. The End. And to those of us who have yet to face it, endings are frightening.

Some say dying is like being reborn and others say it's eternally peaceful if you know the right people. Maybe it's all of the above. No one can know for sure because no one ever comes back with evidence. Well, one guy did but most people didn't believe him.

I think the experience is different for everyone and not nearly as difficult as it looks from the outside. What comes after is up for debate. I venture nothing. Ergo, death equals nothing.

I am nothing.

I am a pit. Empty and black. There is naught to hope for; nothing to fear, and the journey here was just as easy as falling asleep. A simple drift passed the fear, a drop into an ultra-relaxed state and then... zilch.

Knowing this first-hand makes it easier to think of her. Yes, in those final moments, she was scared and in pain but then the mantle of death came comforting with its' warm blanket and rocked her to sleep. I wonder if she felt the same sweeping current. The heavy, floating sensation.

Without eyes, I search, wondering about the stories of loved ones on the other side.

Faint echoes and movement abound but I can't place them. On the fringes, the very edges of my nonexistence, cold seeps in. It's small and creeping.

A searing heat scorches like an iron brand and I'm pulled from the bliss of nothing into agony. I want to scream but can't find my mouth. Obscurity lifts, but only for a second, and I have eyes, but they can't focus. My fingers are back, but useless. I cringe and grasp, shattering inside.

And then . . . light, illuminating a thick fog I didn't know was there. It wraps around me, sheltering and comforting all that I am. I sink into it, letting the pain disappear, knowing this is where I will stay: floating over the deep abyss, relishing the haze and consolation.

* * *

My throat is dry.

A weight settles on my chest with the realization that I still have a throat. So, I still have a body.

I need to swallow but something's in the way. It won't let me close my mouth. My throat screams for relief from the dry, raw itch. I cough, only to find that it's the worst thing I could've done. An intense ripping barrels through my chest and up into my throat. The pain helps to find my eyes. They fly open, only to be assaulted by the light. I shut them tight, feeling instant hot tears.

I can't breathe! Something is gagging me. My lungs want to explode like my burning chest. My head feels like it already has.

"Shh. Calm down. You're hurting yourself." Her soothing voice is followed by a cool touch to my shoulder. At once the blockage disappears taken and the pain dissipates.

I float away.

* * *

Over the next . . . I don't know how long, I wake several times but not long enough to learn where I am. I assume it's a hospital. They keep calling me 'sir' but I can't stay awake long enough to correct them.

One day I just wake up. But nothing makes sense so I let myself fall back to sleep. This happens a few times actually. More and more frequently, until I finally feel coherent, like I can think and listen to the voices around me.

A strange sense of déjà vu comes over me as I wait for information to be passed between the voices. I hope it stays in my brain long enough for me to understand.

There isn't much to learn. They talk to me in soothing tones, informing of what they're doing, like cleaning my wounds, changing my sheets, and things like that. They use the same tones the nurses at the retirement home use with the patients who are completely immobilized. They speak kindly, not expecting an answer.

It's when they talk amongst themselves, assuming I'm still a blank slate, that I learn the most. They use strange expressions I don't know what to make of, like edema and intracranial. Electrical burns sound a little familiar, though. The only one I have no problem understanding is road rash. I can feel that. They also mention something about potential memory loss but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. It's irritating having people talk about me like I'm not here, expecting me to abide quietly with unanswered questions. I have heard them say, 'he's lucky to be alive' several times to one another. I don't know about the luck part, but I am alive.

Time stretches on as I go in and out of conscious contemplation. Nothing changes, at least not anything that I can reckon. Laying here with my lead-like arms and worthless legs, there's nothing to gauge the passage of time, no recurring noises to mark the minutes. No ticking or beeping, or music, or even television. Most of the time I hear voices and sense the touch as someone lifts my wrist or moves something that's draped over me. When I can bear the pain enough to open my eyes all I see is the uniformly textured underside of gauze. My eyes have been taped over. Then, they put me back to sleep because I hurt everywhere.

I'm having trouble placing events and numbers. Here in my dark little world, when there's no one to listen to, I play games to keep busy until the next medication dose sends me back to dream land. I don't know when it started but it helps. The last time I played counting I lost track. It was weird, one minute I was going along nicely and without even the excuse of distraction, I simply lost count. On top of that I can't remember where, either, maybe somewhere in the twenties.

The next time I wake up, my eyes are no longer covered. Finally. I can check out my surroundings. The room is poorly lit. There's no window. The oversized hospital door is half open, just outside of it lays the empty hall. My eyes still hurt, but nothing compared to the way they did before. Either I've just been dosed with pain killers or I'm improving.

Checking myself out, I notice some pretty gnarly scabs on my arms and my hands look red and dry. The skin around my knuckles and wrists is shiny and cracked. Down below everything checks out, but my knee hurts. My feet are fine, except I feel my toenails are getting too long. Other than that, everything appears to be in working order.

In the back of my mind, pieces of memory try to surface, but I shove them down, willing myself to maintain the disconnection. Whatever brought me to this place, I have to get some distance before I go back and deal.

I set my mind on a search for the remote control. It takes some digging, but finally, I find it just above my elbow on the end of a hanging cord. With effort, I eventually punch the power button and the wall-mounted flat screen turns on. The technology is comforting.

The divine sound of a local news program fills my room. The volume is too high, distorting the sound that blares from the little speaker attached to the corded remote. The light from the screen hurts and I don't want to lift my head to look, so I lower the volume and listen to the gossip show talk about the disappearance of an actor who was drinking on the beach and got swept out to sea. The Coast Guard already found him alive, earlier this morning. It's not really interesting but at least I know its morning. The sounds of normalcy are soothing and soon I'm drifting off.

* * *

"You're awake," a soft voice observes.

I hunt for the source until my half-blind gaze falls upon a round-faced woman with a dark complexion and deep brown eyes.

"How are you feeling?"

My responding shrug hurts.

"Is your throat still hurting?"

I risk a slight nod to the affirmative. That hurts, too. A lot.

She nods. "It's a small esophageal tear, but it's already on the mend. You'll be able to talk without pain, soon. Lunch is on the way up. The doctor has ordered a liquid diet—don't look so sad! It's only for today, if you keep it down. A cup of broth here and there. When your body can handle it, we move onto something more substantial."

_Broth?_ I'm starving!

Her eyes are wide with sympathy as she tries to give encouragement. "Before you know it, you'll be putting down real, rib-sticking food. The hospital kitchen actually puts out a decent baked chicken." She's talking, looking at me and through my chart in intervals. "Your color looks good today. How are your eyes?"

I hesitate.

"On a scale of one to five, one being no pain and five being excruciating, show me, on your hands, how they feel."

I hold up three fingers and put down one, then set it back up, going back and forth between two and three, messing around.

"Two and a half." She smirks, writing into my chart.

I wave and she looks up, "Yes?"

I point to that tag pinned to her lab coat.

She smiles. "My name is Chelsea. I'm the PA for this ward. Is there anything else you'd like to ask?"

I give a stiff nod, touch my throat, my head, my arms, and then throw up my hands, questioning, hoping she gets the gist. All the movement is exhausting.

"Are you asking for your prognosis—answer with one finger if that's true—or are you asking me what happened?—show me two fingers if that's true."

I raise three fingers.

"Sir, can you tell me your name?"

The pain in my neck and head is sharp as I slightly nod. All the conversation is draining. She hands me a pen and a notepad. I set it across my stomach and scribble my name.

She looks sideways at the paper while I write, and makes notes of her own in my chart.

"What's your date of birth?"

I write that down, too, then, with a giant question mark, I write, 'WELL?' next to it.

"Mr. Springer, I'll tell the doctor you're awake, inform him of what we have discussed and when he comes in, he can tell you everything you want to know."

"WHEN," I scribble.

"I know you are frustrated, this must all be very confusing, but you have to understand, we just want to give you the best possible care."

"Why?" I write.

She sighs, growing weary-eyed. "The doctor wants to be the one to discuss your condition."

I whimper, frustrated and tired. The small vibration of sound makes the deep ache in my throat spike.

She speaks low. "Mr. Springer, you went missing three weeks ago and now that you've confirmed to me that you are who we thought you were, there's a protocol to follow and no one wants to compromise your well-being. For now, you need to rest. You're safe here." She pats the back of my hand.

I hold her arm, drawing her attention to the next jotted question, suppressing a potentially painful yawn. "When?"

"When what?" she asks, staring at the paper.

I have to think for a moment and then quickly write. "How long here?"

"Amazingly, it's only been eight days," she says softly.

I keep scribbling. "Call my dad?"

"Of course," she smirks, "but it might be better if I have someone do that for you."

I jot the name of the retirement home, following with the street address because I can't remember the phone number.

"Alright, Mr. Springer, try to get some rest. Lunch will be up shortly." She walks out, closing the door behind her.

The only sound is the low mumbling from the television. I want to stretch but can tell by the stiffness in my muscles that I'll be sorry if I try.

I'm restless, worried and wondering how Dad's been doing and how so much unmarked time has passed me by. My mind wanders to places I've been and what I've been doing. I make the conscious effort to stop, choosing instead to focus on the here and now. The frustrating limitation with communication is a great place to start. I don't understand why she won't simply tell me what I want to know.

Though the interaction was brief, I have hit the proverbial brick wall. Sleep takes me before the commercial breaks over.

* * *

I'm in the middle of a vast field. It's dark and lush, smelling of iodine. At the edge lies a tall line of trees. I watch, waiting. A boy in animal skin pants approaches. On top of his head, covering a curtain of crow black hair is an amazing head dress, colorful and large, adorned with long spiking feathers pointing in every direction like a crown. It reminds me of the Aztec murals painted around downtown. The boy is very young and looks pale in the bright moonlight. I watch as he walks closer and notice he is looking to my right. I risk turning away and see my dad. He's close, but I can't touch him. He's motioning like he's trying to tell me something.

"I don't understand," I say and start walking towards him for a closer look.

As I approach, the boy jumps between us, slashing the air with an ancient knife. I jump forward, hitting the ground where my dad was standing but now there's only dirt and gravel. Where the boy stood, there's now a daunting figure whose features are hidden by a long, mangled beard. He's holding something in his hands. Though I cannot see what it is, I'm afraid of what he can do with it. He stares down at me with a sickening grin, speaking words that don't make sense.

His voice bleeds corruption. The tortured cries of thousands ring in unison from between his lips and the sound makes me sick to my stomach.

* * *

Starting awake, I am coated in sweat, clutching the railing of my hospital bed.

"Keep still, I'm almost done." The voice comes from a man standing on the other side of the railing.

My hands feel stiff when I release the metal that's been in my grasp long enough to be warmed by it. I watch the color slowly return to my scraped knuckles.

The man's close proximity and the slight pressure on my head, tells me he's checking out the wound there. A sudden pinch makes me flinch.

"Still tender," he mumbles. I feel something cold and wet. "That should take care of it."

"How's it look, Doc?" My voice sounds strange and rough.

He nods appreciatively. "I'm Dr. Bailey. It's nice to finally speak with you, Mr. Springer. The swelling is noticeably reduced. Your color is normal, and I just removed the last staple. No disco dancing for you yet, but you're on your way." He backs away and I start to roll to a sitting position. "No, use this," he touches the controls on the side of the bed. "No unnecessary movement." He has a full head of well-trimmed gray hair.

Coughing to clear my dry throat makes me wince. When the pain subsides, I ask, "Can I see it?"

"Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it." His forehead wrinkles.

"It's bad?" The vibration of sound hurts.

He moves to the end of the bed and I notice he's holding something: a small kidney shaped dish with scissors and strings piled on top of a mess of gauze. He sets it on a tall metal table with wheels and removes his white rubber gloves, snapping them onto the top of the pile. On the nearby tray table, he opens a bag and takes out a hand mirror.

Looking back to me, he taps the mirrors edge on his palm. "With any head injury there can be a considerable amount of swelling, but it has been nine days, and you do look much better. However." He pauses, holding out the handle, mirror side down. "You will not look the way you expect."

"I'm scarred?"

"Not on your face. Do you remember what happened to you?"

"A bullet." I mumble, remembering the retreating footsteps and the smells of iron and exhaust.

He nods. "It entered at the back, on the right side of the skull and exited just behind the ear on the opposite side. You're very lucky, it barely missed the medulla." He points to his own head, demonstrating the angle with a fountain pen. "Did you get a look at the weapon?"

"No."

"Can you tell me how far away you were when you were shot?

"Maybe, point blank?"

"It appears to have been a small caliber. Again, very lucky for you. In answering your question, yes, you will probably always have the scars on each side. The entry and exit wounds are small and will be concealed when your hair grows back. What I meant to explain was that your body's response to the foreign object was significant edema, or swelling."

"I don't look the same?" I need a direct answer.

"Yes and no. Though we have done all we can, you still have a ways to go before you look and feel normal again. You may experience trouble with depth perception, spatial relations, hearing loss, confusion, blurred vision, migraines, apnea, tinnitus; these are all possible side effects, but overall your prognosis is excellent." He smiles.

"So, I will get better?"

"Completely, barring any unforeseen complications."

"What about . . . time confusion? Is that a side effect?"

"What do you mean?" He rests his hip against my bed, folding his hands together to listen.

"What if—I mean, can it make time feel . . . different?" I whisper to curb the pain.

"Do you mean, affecting perception? Yes, it's possible. The brain is the body's clock and yours has undergone significant trauma. I want you to be as informed as possible before you look into that mirror. Finding ones appearance contrary to expectation is upsetting for most people and any undue stress can affect your rate of recovery. There's some literature on the bedside table for you to look through when you're ready. Do you wear glasses?"

I hand the mirror back to him. "No. And I'll wait."

He nods, taking the blue plastic handle and sets it on my tray table. "If you're feeling up to it, I have a few questions for you."

It's probably better to get this over with. "What's up, Doc?"

He takes out my chart and flips through several pages. "Have you ever been treated with radiation therapy drugs?"

"What would I need those for?"

"Have you ever been diagnosed with cancer or any cancer related illnesses?"

"No, why?"

He takes off his thin, black framed glasses and rubs the red spots on the bridge of his nose. "Mr. Springer, when you came to us, we drew your blood to run some routine tests. We found a very low presence of white cells which can suggest radiation therapy. Further testing showed that you had higher than normal levels of radiation in your system."

"In fact, if you would indulge me," he takes my hand. Pointing at the red blotches with his pen, he continues. "These spots; you had them all over when you were brought in. They were bright red with no traces of being caused by abrasion—like the ones on your knees and elbows and the side of your face—these appear to be electrical burns. The remains are still evident on the tops of your ears, the end of your nose, your cheeks, and digits." He sets my hand down beside me. "Aside from the signs of being beaten and thrown from a moving vehicle or dragged, I was hoping, since we couldn't find any traces of cancer, that you could tell me how you were exposed."

My heart is beating so fast, I'm tempted to check the monitor beside my bed for warning lights. "Exposed to what?"

"Radiation," he repeats that same damned word.

"I don't know."

"Can you tell me where you were before you came here?"

"I—I was downtown . . . on the city bus. I had a job interview."

He gives one, troubled sigh. "Thank you, Mr. Springer. Get some rest."

He sets my chart under his arm and starts for the door. I don't like the way his long lab coat swings out when he turns.

"Has anyone contacted my dad?" The racketing sounds pulsate, sending stabbing pains through my head and down to my chest.

"I'm not the one who makes the calls, but I'll look into it." He tips an invisible hat and walks out, closing the door behind him.

I turn the TV on and try to change the channel, but the button is broken. I'm stuck with a reality show with privileged people who complain about their pampered existence. During an Olive Garden commercial, my stomach growls, intensifying the hollow feeling inside.

On my tray table, next to the mirror is a brown plastic mug with a lid. I pull at the edge to roll it towards me and move the head of my bed all the way up, being careful not to make any unnecessary movement. I can see through the semi-transparent plastic lid enough to tell the inside is covered in condensation. By the feel of the cup, whatever was hot is now cold and it doesn't bother me at all. I'm disappointed it's not coffee, but a bland, brown broth. Still, the beef water is gone in two gulps. Frustrated with the paltry amount, I hit the lever on the edge of the table, lowering it to see what else might be laid out for me.

Jackpot! There's a cup of Tapioca pudding and a thick slice of soft, brown bread wrapped in cellophane. Eating hurts my throat but I don't care. Both are gone before I taste them.

A few minutes later, my stomach feels like a ball of lead. I ease the bed down to relieve the pressure and fall into dead sleep. It doesn't last long. I'm not sure if it's the sugar or nutrients, but my brain won't shut down long enough to let me rest. Righting the bed back to a half-sitting position, I reach for the hand mirror to take in the sight of my distorted reflection.

Maybe distorted isn't the right word because I do look like me, except my face is all bloated like my cheeks and eyes alone have gained five pounds. It might look exaggerated because my head has been shaved—poorly to boot! The bits of hair sticking out from under the edge of the bandages look much shorter than the rest—but I doubt it. I keep my hair short most of the time.

It's the eyes that are shocking. Aside from my ashen, puffy lids, the whites are colored with blotches of red and I have small, nearly transparent scabs on one cheek, the other is mangled with patches of dark, thick scabs that must have come from the road. My gums look awful, too. They're really red and tender.

The hamster wheel is turning. That feeling like this has happened before is back and I have to consider the possibility. There is only one way to know for sure. Very slowly, I lean down and to the side, reaching for the phonebook set on a small shelf under the bedside table. Immediate dizziness hits me and my head begins to throb.

Mission aborted.

I hit the call button. A second later a woman answers. I ask her to send in my nurse. My throat is feeling better, still scratchy, but a lot less pain. Instead of a nurse, I get Chelsea entering with a clip board in one hand and a banana in the other.

"How are we this lovely morning?"

"Morning?"

"Yes, sleepy head. I see you found your dinner and breakfast." She flips a lever near the foot of the tray table and slides it out if he way, making room for the conversation. "What do you need, dear?"

I look at her; so familiar and yet, not. "How long have you worked here?"

"I graduated College in ninety-two, came here for my internship and been here ever since."

"You're very good at your job."

"That's a sweet thing to say. Thank you." She waits. "Did you need anything else?"

"Oh, yes." I say, ineptly, "I wanted to know if you could dig out the phone book." I point at the low shelf below the bedside table. "I need to call my girlfriend."

"Don't you know her number?" She gives a playful look.

"I lost my phone and her number was in the contact list."

"Are you sure she's listed?"

"Pretty sure."

"I can call her for you." She offers.

"Not a good idea. The last time we talked I was . . . sort of an asshole. She'd hang up if a woman called on my behalf. You know how that goes."

"Alright, but make it fast. You need to rest." She gingerly places the heavy book on my lap and the fruit on the table. "Would you like me to dial for you?"

"I can do it, but thank you and I promise not to take long." I say, adding the most charming smile stiffness can afford.

Pointing to the banana on the table, she says, "That's for you," and walks out, leaving the door to my room wide open.

Hitting the right numbers proves difficult. Perhaps there was no ulterior motive in her offer to dial for me. I look at the page, recite the numbers to myself and still invert them. After the third try, frustration makes me grind my teeth together. The pressure hurts my jaw, head, and neck. After the next flubbed attempt, I take my temper out on the banana instead, smashing it to pudding in the peel. I take a deep breath, concentrating on each number, pressing one at a time. A few more tries and I finally get it right.

The line rings twice before a voice answers, "Golden Valley Retirement and Rehabilitation Center."

"Room 137, please," I speak low, noting the conveniently open door.

"Can you repeat that please, sir. I think there's a bad connection."

Clearing my throat, I say, "Is Jeanine available?"

"Who is calling?"

"Gerry Springer."

"One second, please, sir." There's an irritating hint of a chuckle before the click.

Top forty songs of Muzak from the eighties come on the line. I listen to the selections, inserting the lyrics I remember and wait.

It's probably better to talk to Jeanine first. She'll be able to tell me how the old man's been doing since I saw him last. It feels like years, another life, since he sat in his convenient chair, whirling around his room, screaming accusations about his missing box. I bet he's made himself sick with worry.

"Hello?"

"Jeanine?"

"No, sir, I am very sorry, she's actually not here today. Can I take a message?"

"Yeah," _Crap_. "Tell her Gerry's son called and to please call me back at this number . . ." I recite the number listed on the sticker of the phones cradle and ask her to mark the message urgent.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Connect me to room 137."

"Hold, please." There is a series of clicks as she connects the call.

It starts ringing while I wait on pins and needles. I hope the shock of my voice isn't too much for him.

Three, four, five, rings; I wait. Maybe he's on the toilet.

Nine, ten, eleven; I'm still waiting. Maybe he's sleeping. Maybe he's in the shower.

I check the clock over the open door. Not at this hour. They keep the residents on a tight schedule. He should be in his room.

He's got to be sleeping.

Fifteen, sixteen—damn!

# Ripple Effect

Having something to focus my energy on has really helped to improve my memory. It's either that, or all the steroids they've given me. Over the last twenty-four hours I've called my dad nearly every half hour. The ladies at the switch-board think I'm crazy. They've started cutting in after five rings. I would stop calling if he'd answer, but he doesn't. No one does.

I'm starting to get really worried. It's not like him. Dad has always leaned closer to anal when it comes to keeping in contact with me. He must not know what's going on, another reason why I'm worried. The fact that he wasn't here when I woke this morning is unsettling enough, but not being able to reach him at all is completely uncharacteristic. Typical behavior would be me having to tell him to leave. He's one of those parents that will call to give a report about the quality and color of the morning's bowel movement.

But the dementia... could he have forgotten me already?

Anxiety seems to be working wonders on my faculties. I feel stronger this morning. I have been out of bed several times, taking myself to the toilet and brushing my teeth. I even took a shower against the doctor's orders. Fine motor skills, like dialing and writing, are giving me the most trouble. Since I got out of the shower, I've been in bed practicing tying and untying the laces in my shoes. 'Repetition makes perfect', or so says the physical therapy pamphlet.

Right.

I'm determined to get out of here as soon as possible. The food is bad, the air is stuffy, the staff never knows what's going on, but mostly it's the bills I hate.

The shoe flies to the floor. Flustered and aggravated with the knots in my laces and fingers.

Why hasn't he called?

Chelsea appears from behind the door; opening it just enough to stick her head through. "Everything alright in here?"

"I dropped something. Has my dad called?" I ask, making sure to sound totally relaxed. When I express emotion they want to put me to sleep.

"Let me check," she says and disappears.

It's been ten days since they carted me in here and not one word from my father. He better have a really great reason for taking so long. Like locked in a catatonic state or dead, because those are the only reasons to excuse this unusual absentia. I don't understand why they didn't call him immediately after I was admitted. They could've had him come to verify who I was.

She appears in the doorway again, her demeanor no longer bearing the customary smirk. She leans into the room, holding the long door handle tight with one hand. "No calls for you yet, but I'm keeping my ears open." She spits the information and disappears.

"Thanks a lot." I mumble bitterly in the empty space.

Alone again, there is nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. I'm sick of trying to listen to TV. The cable is on the fritz and I can't get any real channels. There's no radio, either. I lean back, covering my bare feet with the thin hospital quilt and start to count the oblong tiles overhead. A quick glance at the clock—it's been twenty minutes since I called, ten more before I call back—and begin counting.

On my thirty-seventh tile, there's a dull rustling outside my closed door. In the small crack beneath it, the light moves as if someone is standing there. Expectation overflows as I hop out of bed. When I open the door, though, there's only the empty hall. I shove it closed and hear the crinkling noise again, coming from somewhere on the other side.

Opening the door once more, I step out, straining my stiff neck to look around. The noise of rustling paper sounds, again. This time it's coming from over my head. I turn back to face my room. Just above the doorway hangs a piece of paper. A small breeze from the AC jostles one corner of the page that reads: _Critical-No news_.

A wave of dizziness swallows me and I have to find my way back to bed on my hands and knees. In the interest of absolute secrecy, I remember to close the door behind me.

I've been too outgoing today, pushed myself too hard. As I lay back and wait for the vertigo to pass, I can't help but wonder what news it is that I'm not supposed to be told and just how critical it could be. Maybe, it's that I'm in critical condition and should not be told any news, whether good or bad. That would make sense considering they haven't answered a single question about anything going on outside this room and the reason why the police have yet to ask about the shooting. Maybe they think I'm in too delicate a state to be bothered. I'm going to let them think what they want. Or, maybe I am not as well as I want to think I am. I choose to fall asleep to avoid further speculation.

 

I find myself awake in the dark just before dawn, wondering how I missed the moment I woke.

_Nothing makes sense_ , I think, _he was on the bus with me_. I wasn't the only one who saw him. After, I woke in a place where no one knew about the accident. Here, they act like they know but won't talk to me about it.

I was shot. I remember it very clearly.

The weird part—the part that keeps eating away at me when I try not to think about it—is . . . if I see it, taste it and feel it, isn't that what makes something valid? If he was real enough to shoot me, then where the hell did I go? I mean, if it was all just a dream like I want to believe, then wouldn't he have to disappear with it? If Daemon wasn't there with me, then the whole incident played out in my head while I slept through surgery. If he was here to do what he did, then that means he was there, too.

It means that everything was real, because he was real.

That doesn't answer how I was missing for three weeks here or why he was there to help me when I needed it—and why go through so much trouble to wake me up or bring me back, only to leave me on the roadside to die? Help me so he could kill me? Only lunatics do things like that. There's no shortage of evidence in that department. I guess my first impression was accurate. Not that I can tell anyone. I'm playing this hand close to the vest, not risking another trip to the loony bin. Anyways, none of it explains why they haven't let me speak to my dad.

Something has happened to him.

I'm upright in half a heartbeat. Maybe he's been kicked out of the facility because I wasn't there to pay his bill. And now no one can find him and they don't want to tell me so they post a sign over my door as soon as they hear about it, so everyone who comes in and out will know not to mention the news to me. There's a sickening feeling in my stomach telling me I'm right.

They wouldn't throw an old guy out on his ear with no place to go, would they?

Slinking from the bed to the closet, I find my unwashed clothes folded inside a bag. A wide piece of paper tape marks where it has been sealed. Not that I want to open it, but if I did, there would be no way to do it without someone being able to tell. I don't like the feeling I get looking at them. I dig into the swiped knapsack I took from my old bedroom (another piece of evidence that speaks to the impossible reality) where I should still have one change of usable clothes and sit at the edge of the bed to slowly work on getting dressed. The outside of the backpack is dirty, splattered with small bits of blood and filth. Sometime after I fell into the floor of the speeding diesel truck that disappeared, I must have put it back on.

I feel okay for the moment but don't want to push my luck. I move slowly inside the sanctuary of my private room. It's a long way to my dad's and I'm going to need all my strength.

Trying my best to be stealth, I wrap the hospital gown around one of the pillows and set it under the covers. I don't really care if they notice I'm gone, but after finding my dad safe and sound I may need to come back without having to answer a bunch of questions.

The sun is rising behind the skyscrapers to the east when I step off the bus in front of the retirement home. The street is quiet and it is deathly hot already. I take off the flannel shirt that kept me warm in the icy bus and wrap it around my waist.

Walking through the large set of glass doors in front, I hope against hope that my dad is here. If he's not, then Jeanine should know where to find him. The muscles in my neck and back are rigid with stress. I tell myself it's nothing, that after what I've been through, I am only being paranoid and leave it at that.

A whirring comes from the main dining hall and I can tell by the smell that the carpet is being shampooed just like it always is on Saturday mornings. I take great comfort in this one, normal detail. The clock at the front desk reads thirteen minutes after seven and I'm pleased because it means Jeanine should be on the clock right now. The nurses here work twelve hour shifts, from seven to seven. Easy enough to remember. I head around the corner and down the long hallway towards my dad's room. A cleaning lady pushing a linen cart nearly hits me as she speeds out of the personnel closet. Thankfully, she sees me before I end up flattened on the shiny floor.

"Sorry," she says and turns the other way with bulging eyes.

Heading down to the last corridor, I pass the nurses' station. I don't see who I'm looking for anywhere, though, so I keep going. At the end of the passage is his doorway. I walk inside as fast as my tired legs can carry me.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim. When they do, I find the bed neatly made even though my dad should be just waking up.

"Gerry?" Jeanine stands in the doorway to his restroom.

"Where is he?" I ask while staring at her arms filled with new toiletries.

"What happened to you?" she gasps.

"I got a haircut."

Her eyes well up. My throat tightens.

"I was so worried. What happened? Where have you been?"

Both valid questions. Neither one will answer mine though, which at this point in time is paramount. "Where is he?"

She just stands there, staring at me like . . . like she's seen a ghost or something. When she drops the cargo between her feet I notice the walls of his room are terrifyingly bare of personal pictures. The afghan that used to stretch over the foot of his bed is missing. The shaving kit he kept on the dresser is gone and the floor beneath the raised bed is empty.

"We thought you were dead. The police came and Abi—she said they found your wallet on the bus."

"Jeanine. Where is he?"

The welled tears spill over, streaming down her auburn cheeks. "He's gone."

"Where did he go?" It's very hot in here. I can feel myself swooning.

"Come, sit down." Against my protests, she takes my arm and expertly guides me to the empty bed. "You look terrible. What is this on the back of your head?" I feel the pressure as she checks the bandage. "Oh that is ugly." She tsks, "You don't look in any condition for travel, what are you doing here?" She grabs my hand, reading the hospital ID band on my wrist and gasps my name. "Gerry!" And keeps talking.

Her concern is clear. I should be glad for it, but she won't stop. She just goes on and on about me, my health, my worries, like I'm the one everyone should be concerned about. I can't tell if it is because my dad is fine so there's no cause for concern, or if she's trying to get around telling me.

"STOP!" The volume is so loud I think I hear a pop. "I don't care what I look like! Stop talking unless you're going to tell me where my dad is!"

She sighs, patting my back. "I am sorry to have to tell you, Gerry, but your dad passed away in his sleep."

There's a piercing thump in the base of my skull—impulse reactions that catch me off guard. My throat throbs through my neck, up into my eyes and temples, carrying through every cell of my body. The air around me fills with the deafening gunshot.

"Shh," she soothes, "Take a deep breath." She stands, touching my head. "Oh, you're stitches. Let me get a clean bandage."

Through the pounding of the hammer against the anvil, I swear I can hear my father's voice, scratchy and fierce as he spoke to me that last day. In this very room. _"You know I am not going to be around forever, you should use this time wisely . . ."_

It hurts. And that's all there is. Like being torn in half would hurt or being shot does. Only this is worse because it pierces deeper than any bullet.

Jeanine says the funeral service was last weekend. He was laid to rest beside my sister.

I stood there in his bathroom completely oblivious and making promises I never meant to keep. I never listened. I didn't appreciate him and I never made him proud. He was my best friend. My entire family. I'll never see him again.

* * *

I'm in the back seat of a stupid taxi trying to hold my skull together.

Jeanine held onto Dad's things for me. Like me, he didn't have much in the way of material possessions. Nearly all of it fits into the sealed box I now have on my lap. The rest is in my backpack on the seat next to me.

After I gathered myself and rested a little, she told me what I wanted to know. It turns out my dad was right. He died on a Thursday nearly two weeks ago. The home arranged to have him laid to rest, according to his wishes. Since no family members were present, Jeanine stood up for him at the empty funeral service. The only people in attendance, aside from her, were Abi and my dad's one friend, Stuart. The fact that someone so large in presence and effect could disappear without leaving so much as a footprint is unbearable.

Jeanine said that my dad told her I was on vacation and nowhere near the bus accident. I nodded, saying I got off a few blocks before the wreck happened, but that was the extent of my details. I was there to listen, not to talk and she respected that. Dad told her I would come back and made her promise to give me my inheritance.

There's an envelope taped on top of the sealed box in my lap. It's addressed to me specifically but I can't read it. Not yet. She also paid for a cab to take me back to the hospital. I asked her to wait until after I left to call Abi. My throat hurts so badly there's no way I could tell her anything, but I need to see her.

The taxi driver drops me at the emergency room. I walk through without stopping. Every doorway I come to opens automatically. Inside my ward, the electronic doors swing open and staff rushes at me.

Once I'm back in bed, hooked up to another IV with a medicated drip, I let myself fall apart. Here, alone in my oblong room, I can grieve with the door closed.

When I wake, Abi's tired eyes are locked on me. She's sitting in a chair next to my bed. Her blond hair is pulled back into a messy knot. Her forehead creases with worry when I try to thank her and fail. It's very good to see her. She brought my laptop and guitar and tells me not to worry about anything. And I won't. There's nothing left worth worrying about and she promises to take care of the rest.

Countless hours of silence pass on my hard bed inside my bland room. I stare at the wall while Abi continues to hold my hand. She knows I hate being bothered when I'm upset and that's a big help when the Police finally decide to show up. She explains everything to them and I can tell she's gotten the information from Jeanine. I watch the two officers', a male and a female, nod and make notes in their little notebooks.

They question me about the radiation, but I have no idea where it came from. Any other answers that cannot be given in honesty aren't. There's no way to tell the truth without sounding crazy. I don't know why I still care, but there is something in the way they keep bringing up the name of the driver, Paula, that makes me think they already know the answer to their questions and are simply looking for verification.

I change the subject, trying to describe Daemon to the female, who mentioned she's also a sketch artist. But no matter how well I explain, she can't get the eyes right.

After a few days, their visits begin to taper and I can recover in peace. The doctor tells me I'm getting better and they move me into another room. The television in this one doesn't work at all. I lose the celebrity gossip channel but gain freedom. They let me walk around the ward and roll around outside for brief instances; always with a wheelchair, always accompanied by a nurse.

I am getting better. I can stand up without getting dizzy as long as I take my time. Everything is going the way it should and I need my dad more than ever. I need to see his face and talk to him, tell him what happened. He's the only person I could ever trust with the information. The only one who'd believe me.

On one particularly quiet morning, when the pain is too much to bear and Abi has gone home to change, I open the closet and take out the sealed box. My 'inheritance' he'd called it. The tape that closed the flaps has given up. It lies across the top, still closed but offering no resistance when I pull. Each flap of raised cardboard reveals a portion of a drawing that looks familiar. I take it out, briefly eyeing the other items on top. From what I can tell, most of the contents are not of any value to anyone but him. Mostly drawings and notebooks.

My room-phone rings several times but I won't answer. There are some things a man has to do alone.

The topmost page bears a penciled sketch that shows an empty parking lot. Well, nearly empty. There's only the back half of one car. The rest of the picture looks pretty bleak. Random and out of place, it seems—and an odd subject for an artist to choose. There's nothing in the portrait to signify meaning or show off skill. No colors, no landscape. It's mostly shaded, as if it's nighttime. Other than that, it doesn't look like anything special. Until I look into the bleak background. There is a large wall, brick it looks like, near the side of the car. I think I can make out the smeared word, 'Cherokee' on the corner above the cars bumper. On the back window, there is a subtle series of smudges. As I examine, I can see a great amount of detail in the shadows and the more I stare, the more confident I become that I've seen it before. Smudges in the penciled back window form a picture that almost look like a man's face and hands smeared against cracked glass.

Weird _._

The next thing I find are papers that have, what appears to be, math problems—page after stapled page of formulas and scribbled symbols. Still, others bear crude drawings of circles with lines drawn through them, almost like diagrams without a key to interpret. I set them aside and start to look for something more specific. Then I remember the letter still taped to the outside of the box.

Dads' script stares back at me and I have to set it down. It's not the same as the other papers. This one was intended for and specifically written to me. A number one is drawn on the envelope beneath my name, which I hadn't noticed before. He wanted me to read this first. Taking a deep breath, I draw courage.

The letter is bulky, composed of several pages like he took a lot of time to write it. Unfolding the papers, I wipe my eyes clear to start reading his oversized script:

Son,

I want you to know I'm not mad at you. I never was. There's a lot more to the situation than you'd believe which is why I never told you. Suffice it to say, everything you've been through to get to this place—this letter—it is all real and generations in the making.

I've often wished for the courage to prepare you for what you are about to face but never could bring myself to take hope from someone who naturally bears so little. I also want to tell you that I love you and being your father has been one of the greatest privileges afforded to me in this short life. You have never disappointed me and you never could, so long as you keep your final promise. I have paid the price for breaking mine and because of that, you must also. I was selfish and stupid, and I'm sorry for everything.

Inside this box, you will find my notes and drawings. Some may even look familiar to you. If I know you, it took about six months to open this envelope which means there's a lot you need to know and very little time to explain. Over the years, I've written down everything that's important. Make sure to read through every page and memorize each detail carefully because it's the only explanation you're going to get. If I tried to tell you outright what's going to happen it would defeat the purpose. So to avoid the time consuming questions, making you think I am crazier than you already think I am, I offer this metaphor to better explain your situation:

Pretend you have inherited a house. It's already furnished with every piece in place, but you have to change it completely without compromising the integrity of the structure. I've tried getting new furnishings, rearranged the existing, and repainted, so to speak, and it wasn't enough.

How you proceed from this moment on is very important. I believe the key lies in changing one decision within the others. I've made what adjustments I could, hoping to manipulate other events in the right way and because of that, I couldn't tell you anything.

What you choose next is entirely up to you but please—for all of our sakes—make the right choice. For the right reasons. Remember, if you want to be a better person, you start by acting like one.

— _Dad_

The moment I reach the end, I'm confused and have to go back to the first page. It makes no more sense the second time than it did the first, but I read it over and over again, in case I missed something.

Nope. Still confusing. Except for the last line about being a better person. My mother used to say that all the time. Every time my dad got down on himself for something he thought he did wrong, she'd tell him, "If you want to be a better person, you should start with acting like one." What a hypocrite.

Setting the letter aside, I opt to check the box for anything else that might clarify my fathers' final, uninformative, and perplexing farewell that is so very like my father. Any answers he's seen fit to give me have _always_ left me with more questions.

There's a large envelope folded in half and marked with a big, black number two. I take that out and tip the manila casement. Out spills several unlabeled compact discs. One is zipped inside a clear sandwich bag along with a piece of paper folded into quarters. Both disc and paper are marked with a number three.

Cautiously, I get out of bed and slowly walk to the alcove near the sink to retrieve my laptop from where Abi left it yesterday. The obsolete piece of junk takes at least ten minutes to boot up. When it's finally ready, I insert the disc and wait. No music applications open. But the black screen blurs for a second and then, a shape pulls away from the camera.

It's a hand, then an arm, and then . . . there he is! It's his face! My shocked choke echoes in the room. "I can't believe it," I whisper in fascination.

"Well believe it!" Dad responds as if he's heard me. I watch as he clears his throat and begins with his usual, stone visage. "I'm using Jeanine's computer to make this recording. Remember that—you'll need to get one more disc from her when this one's over."

He is sitting in his wheelchair, staring down. He lifts his hands to show them, palms out as he speaks. "I always thought I had strong hands. It used to be I could hold on to nearly anything. Keep it in my grasp as long as I wanted. But time, with its' many cruelties, has taught me that grasping is not enough. That these hands are useless when set beside themselves. You need more to hold onto," he folds them across his lap. "So to correct this vital error in judgment, I've sent a copy of my research including the maps you will need to an old friend that is well equipped to help you along on your journey."

Journey?

He leans into a close up, wearing a smirk. "I know you think I've lost my marbles, but you're going to have to trust me on this kid. Adding another variable into the equation can only work in your favor. So listen close: you remember your old friend from High School, Elijah . . . Crap, I forget the last name." He shakes his head. "I wrote it down somewhere. Anyways, it turns out he works at a University not far from where you are right now. You'll find him at the Cal-Tech campus in the Astrophysics Department.

"He's a brain, that one. I've read some of his work. Fascinating stuff. Not only has he got some really radical ideas, but he's in prime position to give you what you need as well as incentive to put some of his theories to the test. So, you go see him."

He starts to get up, then pauses as if he's having second thoughts, and settles back into his wheelchair. He takes a deep breath looking directly into the camera, somber once more.

"It feels wrong to do things this way. I know, you're upset and you don't understand any of this, but I have to warn you, it's got to get worse, much worse, before it can get better.

"When you left here that last day without the box, I knew it would be the last time we saw each other. And . . . the reason I knew was—" he cuts off, shakes his head.

"No," I complain, "say it!"

He fidgets. "Just know that I'm trying to do the right thing by us both." His voice rises as he speaks. "So when I tell you to go see Jeanine and ask her for the disc in her computer, I'm only telling you to go because I _know_ that once you learn how this all ends, it'll motivate you to do what needs to be done. I know it!" He pulls back from the rant to clear his throat.

After a moment, he continues, now subdued. "I was hard on you growing up, I know that. There were times where I shoved when I should have hugged. I know that what I'm asking of you now means exchanging everything you want for something no man should have to take on alone. I've been through it. I know better than anyone how brutal it must seem. I hate that I'm doing this to you." He sighs and closes his eyes.

One aged hand rubs over his temple. "I am going against my better judgment and giving you the choice I never had. If you decide to watch the next disc—the one from Jeanine's computer—you should know that what's on it will change everything for you. If you don't watch it, then your life can stay the way it is. You stay where you are. It's up to you. Either way, you have to get the disc from her laptop, because it is imperative that no one else ever sees it. Ever. I mean that, Gerry. Nobody."

After long minutes spent looking down at his hands, Dad looks back at the camera, the ghost of a smile haunting features. "You will succeed where I failed. I know you will. And you can look at the paper, now." He reaches towards the camera and the screen goes back to the menu.

On the sheet beside me, I take up the quartered page and open it.

" _The sooner the better!"_ It reads in sloppy letters written by his hand as one final command. Below in a slightly neater script is the information:

Elijah Thacker, Assistant Professor in Astrophysics— Cal-Tech University, Cahill building, California Street, Pasadena.

The paper folds back on its' own when I release it.

Time seems to freeze while I search for meaning. It seems like whatever Dad's alluding to is a big deal, but I don't understand why he wouldn't just tell me outright what he wants me to do. Why leave me a choice and not offer enough information to make it? I hate puzzles.

Going over everything again, comprehension proves impossible. The more I try to figure it out, the more confused I get by my father's last wishes and his dubious send-off. Knowing there's only one place where any understanding may begin to take shape, I have to consider getting there. It's going to take some doing.

"Why didn't you answer the phone?"

Abis' voice pulls me back to my room. She's holding a greasy bag from my favorite fast food restaurant. Sauntering towards me, her eyes sweep over the pile of papers and the box. "You finally opened it. That's good, I'm glad." She sets the bag on my tray table with an inappropriate grin.

"What?" I ask.

"Nothing," she smiles, biting her lip.

I know the look. She gets it whenever she's trying to keep from spilling what she considers a juicy secret or trying to surprise me. Since she knows I don't care, nor want anything to do with any of her so-called friends, and taking into consideration my current circumstances, I can only assume her current appearance of concealed joy is from the latter.

"What is it?" I ask, indulging her. Though I really don't feel like being surprised, I love her smile. I don't get to see it often enough these days.

"Another time, maybe?" Her eyebrows rise sympathetically.

How is that I have lied to her so convincingly in the past, and yet right now when I really do want to do this small thing for her, that she can call me out so easily? "I know you're trying to help and I appreciate it, I really do, but Ab, I don't want to be cheered up right now."

She presses a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Are you sure? Because you have no idea what you're asking me."

"If you really want to help me feel better, you could find a way to get me out of here. I have to go somewhere."

Her big blue eyes widen with mirth. "Are you allowed—because I will take you everywhere." Her consent sounds like a warning.

"I can leave whenever I want. Besides, the doctor says I'll be released in a few days."

Abi giggles, excitedly bouncing on the end of my bed and clapping her hands like a preschooler about to wet herself. "This is awesome. Yes! Let's go!"

Her grin is back, bigger and brighter than I've seen in a long time. It almost makes me smile. "What is going on with you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She walks to my closet.

I stuff my computer into my backpack, then stuff the pages back into the box and set them together on my bed.

Abi slaps a peck on my cheek before scooping everything into her arms. "Meet me downstairs in ten minutes at the main entrance."

"You know it." I lean down, placing a soft kiss at the corner of her mouth. She has a beautiful mouth.

"Ten minutes."

There's a mix of voices going back and forth once she passes into the corridor. The interfering nurses are wondering what she's doing with my things. I hear her say she's tired of seeing the clutter in my room.

After dressing, I sit back on my bed and press the call button.

"Yes?" A squeaky voice comes through the mounted speaker on the railing.

"I want to go for a walk. Can someone get my nurse, please?"

"I'll pass it along." The intercom static cuts off.

About five minutes later a nurse's aide I've never seen before comes through the open door pushing an empty wheel chair. I know it is hospital policy, but it really gets on my nerves.

When I ask where my nurse is, she says, "I'm supposed to take you for a walk," in a quiet voice.

With exaggerated slowness, I get in and slump low into the chair, hanging to one side. "I want to go out to the lobby and visit with my girlfriend. This room stinks."

"Not feeling well today?"

"I'm fine; it's just stuffy in here."

# No Kiss, Just Goodbye

Since the day Daemon tried to kill me I've had a continual headache. The pain ranges from moderately tolerable to piercingly unbearable. The effects on my vision force me to spend large amounts of time with my eyes closed. As a result, I'm able to recognize the voices of people I don't normally spend time with. While being wheeled down the hall, I hear a few murmurs and know right away, I don't want to be noticed and so slump further into my wheelchair.

Part of the penalty for being bed ridden and depressed is spending a lot of time ignoring the conversations of people around you. This exercise in practice has made me aware of the trivial nature of the limited number of people in my life and my immediate surroundings. For instance, in all the time I've known Abi, I never noticed the way she is constantly touching or flipping her hair. And my Doctor picks his nose when he thinks no one's looking.

As we roll a little further down the hall, I've got my eyes stuck to the floor as we pass two pairs of shoes in a familiar style: the standard police issue, plain, black, and shiny. I notice right away a third pair in the group and know the owner has never been in my ward before. The third pair of shoes are very large with thick, black rubber soles. The tops are a combination of woven denim and brushed suede. Military-style waffle stompers.

Once we're well past the visiting feet, I strain to look back and confirm my suspicion. The police have come back to question me. It's infuriating. Sure, I'm lying about what I know, but memory loss is a documented side effect of my condition, verified by at least two physicians. Yet, here they come back to bother me again. Only this time, they've brought a friend.

What do they think I'm hiding?

The third is a stalwart man with a short, neat, flat top, wearing a khaki suit. The three stop at the nurse's station and Flat Top flips open a small wallet to flash his badge. In the same moment a voice announces, "Homeland Security." A squeaky tone follows, indicating significant surprise.

The lady cop behind him turns in my direction as we pass around the corner.

"Can you speed it up?" I beg, leaning forward, reaching to press the call button for the elevator. The light doesn't even come on. "Why don't we try another set today?" I point around the next corner.

"That's the maternity ward, we can't go that way." She keeps her hands firmly on the handles of my chair, facing the bank of elevators.

"This is bullshit." If I get up and walk myself out of here, she might get loud and I don't need any more attention right now. So I wait, quietly counting the seconds and running out of patience. I'm about to jump up and run by the time the bell _dings_ , signaling the elevator doors. I wheel myself into the empty car, relieved and aggravated with her. Through the reflective walls I watch her pushing her thin, bleached hair to one side, attempting to hide her troubled expression as she presses the button for the lobby.

"My girlfriend says the meds make me grumpy." It's easy to be cordial after the door's shut.

Once we exit on the ground floor, the aide guides me through the network of halls and corridors until we finally come up the back of the main lobby.

Wheeling towards the entrance, I catch sight of a familiar silver BMW 5-series parked in the patient pick-up zone directly outside the glass double-doors.

Sparkling clean and purring. Abi is in the drivers' seat.

"I can't believe it!" I urge my helper to move faster. "She fixed my car!"

The automatic doors open wide and fresh air rushes in, washing the stench of rubbing alcohol and iodine from my nostrils. The bright sun burns my eyes but it can't erase my smile.

Abi leans over, opening the passenger door. "Surprise!"

There's a jerk as my chair abruptly stops. I turn back toward the aide who's got her hands latched onto my chair.

"Don't worry." I direct and excitedly hop up from the wheelchair. "Tell them I'll be back in a few hours."

She doesn't respond, but just watches, mouth agape as I turn back to Abi. "How did you do this? I can't believe you! You're amazing!"

Inside, the leather seats have been oiled. It smells of fries and strawberry air freshener. I plop into the ergonomically perfect bucket seat and shut the door.

"Don't you want to drive?" Abi's grinning from ear to ear.

"I told you, I don't feel like being cheered up. Now you'll have to pay the consequences."

I open the glove box and search for sun glasses. The only pair inside are hers but they fit and I don't care what they look like.

"Do your eyes hurt?"

"Yeah," I point towards the road, "let's make like a tree and leave."

She giggles. "Whatever you say, Master."

"That's Mister Master to you, Slave."

I lean the seat back and try not to think about how tired and confused I feel. Instead, I focus on the smooth pull as we take off. The car drives and sounds perfect. Music comes on, playing at just the right volume as we glide through the busy streets.

The wonderful smell of fries wafts from the greasy bag on the console, reminding me that I'm hungry. I reach inside and start munching on my lukewarm lunch. The burgers' bun is soggy but it tastes so good. When I'm finished eating, I turn to Abi who's been chattering nonstop since we left and realize I haven't heard a word.

"Thank you, Abi."

She proudly thrusts her shoulders back. "You are very welcome."

"No, I really mean it. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." My perpetually empty chest is feeling not-so-empty as I watch her drive my car.

The car slows to stop at a large intersection. "I know you want to drive."

"Yeah," I say, coaxed to a smile by the light in her face.

"Fire Drill!" Abi throws the car into park and her door flies open. She darts out onto the jammed boulevard, running around the back of the car.

I maneuver into the drivers' seat as Abi climbs into the passenger's side, laughing. When the light turns green, we take off. I change lanes and take the first ramp onto the crowded freeway.

"I thought we were going to my place?" She asks with a deceptively sweet look that matches her tone.

"We are, but I need to make a stop first."

She takes my free hand between hers and presses my palm to her cheek. "I missed you, G."

Her skin is soft and warm, like her heart. I let myself wallow in how much I've missed her. How thankful I am for everything she's done for me. My throat fills with apologies. All the ones she's missed over the course of our relationship. A _sorry_ for everything I ever did to hurt her, for every lie and half-truth. For every thought I had that wasn't about her, every action I took that gave her less than she deserved. Now would be the perfect time to say how often I thought of her while I was away, how I put serious thought into how much I want to marry her. For the right reasons. And how painfully aware I am that she deserves someone better.

I finally know what I want for my life: to see her smile, to go back to school and study sound engineering, to take care of her. I want for us to be together, to have our own family. But buried deep in my gut is the distinct mystery of my fathers' final request and the sense that fate has other plans and until I know what those plans are, I have to be fair to her.

"I miss you too, Abi."

She looks out the window. "Where are we going?"

"I have to pick up something my dad left at The Home."

Traffic is heavy and I don't mind. I need to think. It's been so long since I've been behind the wheel, I forgot how driving soothes me, helping me do just that.

The guy back at the hospital with the bland suit and flat top was from DHS. There is only one reason the Department of Homeland Security would be involved. My dad said whatever is on the last disc in Jeanines' laptop will change my life. That probably means that whatever I am caught up in must be too big for local law enforcement to handle. But how would they know about it? I still don't understand why or how I am connected to any of this. I still don't know where I went or how I got there. All I know is that I don't know anything.

Her lips touch my neck.

'Generations in the making,' Dad wrote. I want to know what that means and what DHS knows and what they want from me. The bits of this fractal fit together, I know it, but every piece so far seems arbitrary. I'm missing the links that hold the parts together.

There are thousands of accidents each year, in America alone. If time travel were triggered by such a common occurrence, it wouldn't be random. I can't imagine how someone could orchestrate such an event. What does Daemon have to do with it and why did he try to kill me? How did Elijah get mixed up in this puzzle? What was my dad hiding and did he leave me enough evidence to clear my name without further involvement?

It would be a mistake to underestimate the motivation and capability of Homeland Security. Honestly, the possibilities scare the crap out of me. As a general rule, I don't trust anyone in a position of authority, especially the federal government. Any group with clout like that sees the world differently than the individual. They only respond to situations that protect their existing power, or situations that will provide them with more of the same, and therefore cannot be trusted. I refuse to cooperate with an entity having the right to lock me up without cause and ask questions when they get around to it.

"G?" Abi sets a hand on my face, trying to turn my attention.

"I'm driving, Ab."

"We're going half a mile an hour. I can walk faster than this." She presses against me, trying again to take my focus off the road.

"Abi, please!" The rebuke comes out louder than I intend.

She backs into her seat. "What's wrong?"

"For one, you are trying to force me to turn my head and it hurts. So don't do it. For another, I've got a lot on my mind, and third I am _not_ risking an accident."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," I sigh.

"Does it have anything to do with where you were for three weeks?"

"I don't know," is the most honest answer I can give. If things are as serious as they seem, I should tread carefully.

She folds her arms and stares out the window, resolved to sulk.

The parking lot is nearly empty when I pull in, making it easy to find a space in the shade. The clicking of Abis' assumption catches my attention. The seatbelt she's just released retracts. Her hand is on the door handle.

"Ab, could you wait here?" I ask, shutting off the engine. "It will only take a second."

Before she can answer, I'm out of the car and on my way inside.

I hope Jeanine is working today. I haven't talked to her since she gave me the box. I wonder momentarily if I should have called in favor of simply appearing but rationalize that it doesn't matter now, because I'm walking through the front door.

Putting the need for urgency aside—I'm anxious to learn as much as possible about whatever my dad wants me to know—I'm not in the mood for a stroll down memory lane. At the reception desk, I ask for Jeanine. The woman behind the high counter picks up a phone and a few minutes later the person I need is walking quickly up the main corridor.

She smiles when she sees me. "I didn't expect you today!" She walks straight over, scooping me into a maternal hug. "You look so much better."

"I should have called."

"Yes, but I know you're busy. Healing takes a lot of concentration." She touches my hair. "It's growing back in nicely."

"Thank you," I blush, automatically touching the bandages covering my healing head wounds.

"How is everything going?" She asks, showing a genuine concern in her bright brown eyes. I can tell she is truly happy to see I'm better.

"Can we talk for a minute? Outside?"

She turns to the reception desk. "Give me two minutes, and don't you dare tell Annette."

We walk together out the revolving door and into the heat.

"Do you need help, G?" She asks intuitively as we walk.

"I need to ask you something and I don't know if anyone else should hear."

"Alright."

"You let my dad to use your personal computer?"

"My laptop, that's right. He used it to play Solitaire."

"Would you mind if I took a look at it?"

She stares, questioning with her eyes, but relents. "Alright. I don't know what good it'll do you. It hasn't worked in a while."

I set my hand on her shoulder. "I think he may have left some information for me."

"Like what?"

"Not sure, that's why I need to see the computer."

"He always was a little strange that way, huh?"

I agree with a nod and follow her through the parking lot until she stops at the back end of a white Subaru.

"I'm glad you came by, even if it is just for the computer." She takes a small set of keys from her pocket and opens the trunk. "You look good. A little pale, but healthy."

"Thanks," I smile. "Abi's taken good care of me. She's over there," I point to my car.

Jeanine opens a red and white box deep in the back of her trunk and takes out a large laptop. "You tell her I would like to see her again someday. I have to get back inside before the boss knows I'm gone. Here you go."

When I take the laptop, she pecks my cheek and chuckles. "It makes me happy to see you two together."

"Thank you for taking such good care of him." I say, bringing it in for a parting hug.

"You can shut it up when you're done and you better call me. Soon." She commands on her way back inside.

"Sure thing!" I give the same parting promise I always have, imagining how she's rolling eyes.

I set the computer back into the open trunk and press the power button. Nothing. The giant notebook is much older than mine. It probably died of old age. I do a quick check, find the battery is not properly attached, correct the problem, and flip it back around and try the power button again—still nothing. Next, I check the box. No power cord. I think for a second, staring at the frustrating monitor. She's not expecting me to take it with me. Futilely, I press the button over the disc tray. It makes is a sound like a spring popping and the dish flies open, spitting out a blank DVD just like the other ones Dad left me. I snatch up the disc, place the computer back into the box, and close the trunk of Jeanine's car.

Back in my car, Abi is sitting resentfully in the passenger seat. I make out her quiet glare through the window. She hates feeling excluded and I am in the habit of pushing her away. As I make my way towards her I feel the disc in my hand and am anxious to see what's on it. My dad said no one else was to see it. He made it sound like the contents are the most important thing in the world. Then, I look again to her pouting lips and hurt feelings. There's no way to do this with her around and I know she won't want to let me out of her sight. I can't blame her.

She starts in as soon as I turn the key. "She was pretty. Who is she?"

"My dad's nurse, Jeanine. You remember her, don't you? You two met at the funeral."

"Is she the same one who called to tell me you were back?"

"I must be well enough to argue," I mumble under the music.

"You came here to see her before you even thought of me?"

Though I saw it coming a mile away, hearing the insinuation infuriates me. "I came to see my dad, Abi." I'm an asshole, taking all my frustration out on her. "Who else would I pay a visit? You broke up with me, remember? What else was I supposed to do?"

"Because you lied! Again!" She retorts at full volume.

Between my ears, the pain ignites as I pull out of the parking lot. "Well, I am _so_ sorry if wanting to see my elderly father before you, my _ex_ -girlfriend, offended you." I say the words calmly to avoid adding to the ache and it emphasizes the sarcasm nicely. "Is that what you want to hear?"

She gets in my face. "I want to know what happened!"

"I don't know what happened!" I slam on the brakes. When I look at her, I can tell she doesn't believe me. "Fine! Here's the truth: I spent three weeks shacked with my dad's middle-aged nurse. After the fun was gone, I shot myself to keep you from finding out. Is that good enough for you? Are you happy?"

Cars behind are honking and she starts crying in that way that she has—the one that stabs and twists—so I apologize, but she ignores me. I try to comfort her, but she minimizes everything, and only makes me feel worse.

"Ab, please don't be like that." Pulling over to the side of the road, I reach for her. "I'm just—this is all too much and I can't talk about it. Not yet. Please, I need you to understand." I'm addressing her back because she refuses to turn around.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't have asked." She sniffs. Abi the martyr.

"You are so frustrating." My head starts to seriously hurt. I reach behind my neck, trying to stop the internal slicing. "Ow! Mother—"

"What's wrong?" Her hands fly to me, patting, searching for a place to comfort.

I take measured breaths, forcing myself to relax. If I can calm down, the pain will dissipate.

"I'm sorry, G. I saw her put her arms around you and kiss you and I thought—"

"I know what you thought and I'm sick of dealing with it. Yes, I've lied, but I would never cheat. You should know that. Now nothing is the way it was before and I don't have it in me to constantly worry about your feelings. I'm sorry if that makes me an asshole."

Abi's arms are crossed, her eyes shrunken in fury, her lips pouting.

I sigh, out of patience. "I'm dropping drop you off at home. I have things to take care of and I'd rather do them alone."

"Is she going with you?"

"I just said, 'I want to be alone.' What is so difficult to understand?"

She turns away again, and this time I don't offer comfort.

We don't speak until we're on her street. She starts gathering my things to take with her.

"Leave that," I say when she grabs my backpack. "I want all of it with me."

Her eyes tighten. "Are you coming back?"

"You're the only person who can tolerate me for an extended period of time. Where else could I possibly go?"

She gives a slight smile, trying to seem relaxed though I know her too well to believe it. "That's true. You are very irritating." Something outside catches her attention. She points out the windshield. "What's going on up there?"

Half way up the road is a caravan of uniform SUV's surrounding some unlucky person's house. I take my foot off the gas. Its Abi's duplex. Her front door is wide open.

Shit.

I turn at the next corner, two blocks away, hating what I have to do.

"What are you doing?" Abi asks.

"Dropping you off."

"G? You do know this isn't my street, don't you?"

"Abi, those cars are surrounding your duplex."

She gasps, holding a hand to her chest. "I bet it's my neighbor! I've had my suspicions about that guy for a long time. You know he has pot plants on his back patio? I don't care if its semi-legal, I don't think a person should be allowed to grow it wherever they want. Come on," she pats my leg, now cheerful and giddy. "Let's go be nosey."

"Abi, you have to walk from here." I rub the back of my head, pressing the tape of the bandages against my skin.

"Why?"

I'm sighing, trying to think of a way to break it to her. "No one has ever been so good to me, Abi. I really do appreciate everything you've ever done and I don't want to fight with you."

She leans back in her seat. "It has been a bad couple of months and a worse couple of weeks. I haven't been very much help. I think of you as such a strong person because you take everything so quietly, but I know this has to be so hard on you."

"It's either be quiet or scream." My fingers work at a small tear in the cover over the steering wheel.

"I don't know anybody who could go through what you have and still function. First, you're missing for three weeks and can't remember anything, then some maniac tries to kill you and your dad dies the same day he hears the news. You don't even get to see him. It's more than any person should—"

"What did you say?"

"What?" She stills, touching her fingers to her mouth as if she's afraid she's said something wrong.

"Repeat what you just said about my dad."

She hesitates. "Um, well I was saying how the news of losing his only son must have been devastating."

"No, the part about the same day," I press.

"Well, if the dates you gave me are right," Digging into her purse, Abi pulls a small calendar from her wallet. Opening it to this month, she points. "See, I circled the day Jeanine called and the day you told me you were admitted to the emergency room." Then she pushes my arm aside and opens the console. "I kept this, it's from his memorial service. I was going to give it to you."

She takes out a creased paper and places it in my hand. I unfold it to see a rare photograph of my father printed on a pale yellow paper. He's standing in the recreation center next to his only friend, Stuart. I can tell it's an older picture by the slightly larger amount of hair on the sides of his head. They're both wearing Hawaiian shirts.

"Look," she points at the print beneath the photo. A set of dates: the first signifying his birth, the second, the date of his death.

"When I came back from the service, I put your car in the shop. I couldn't let it go; it was all I had left." Her voice trembles. The tears disappear in rapid blinks and she sniffs. "I am going to order something special for dinner. You'll be back by then?"

I touch her face, falling a little harder at her willingness to compromise. "Your biggest complaint has always been I'm not honest with you. I'm working on it, Abi, I swear I am. I love you more for trying to give me the space I need right now, even when it hurts you. But this—me being gone and coming back, acting like I don't want to be around you—it isn't what it looks like."

Her eyes delve into mine, searching for a lie. They won't find one.

"You have to go, now. Alone."

Her eyes glisten, again. "Are you seriously asking me to trust you?"

"I want that, yes, but I know better. I have no idea what I'm caught up in or why but I do know that telling you anything means putting you at risk and I won't do that." She has to be able to look those government agents in the eyes and tell them she knows nothing.

"You're protecting me? From what?" A profound sense of shock sharpens her words, cutting me deep.

"I'm sorry, Ab. But I have to leave. Right now."

She breaks the gaze. "It didn't take long for me to fall back into this old habit, did it?"

I don't like the undertone.

"You know, the one where I _do_ everything, _give_ everything, and you take and take-off?"

That emptiness has settled back into my chest. "This isn't what I want, Abi. Please, don't break-up with me."

"Don't worry, G. I'm going to give you what you want. I'll walk home from here. You can keep your car and your secrets. But when you get back, I need answers; real ones with lots of details. Or we're over for good." She opens the door and in one sniffle she's gone.

# Valley Of Shadow

I can't make the car move fast enough. Weaving through the traffic, I have no idea where I'm going, but know I need to get there. Fast.

This cannot be coincidence. The SUV's have to have something to do with the crew-cut at the hospital. I gave them my apartment address, but the nurse's aid knew who I was with when I left. Had I known I'd be sent for, I wouldn't have been so free with information. They must have gone to Abi's straight from the hospital.

My mind races trying to process the bits of information and keep to the speed limit.

They weren't following me from the hospital, but decided at some point that I'm important enough to go after. Or maybe they weren't expecting me to run. Why start searching Abi's place, though? If they thought I'd show up there, why not wait until I arrived? Whatever they're looking for must be something they don't trust me to hand over.

They're after the wrong guy, though. I'm not the one that made the time travel possible. I don't know what did that. The questions and phenomena race through my head creating more confusion, because I'm nobody. I know nothing. One thing is clear: I have to be careful. Think in terms of necessity and concentrate on one problem at a time.

I think of the box my dad left me and the disc from Jeanines computer. I haven't even watched whatever is on it and my life has already changed. The very next thing on my list, right after keeping my freedom, is the DVD. Maybe whatever information it holds will provide some answers, help me decide what to do next.

The area I'm driving through is crowded with groups of pedestrians, slowing the flow of traffic. Outside my window is a crowded park. The perfect place to blend in with its large, open fields full of picnickers scattered between clusters of colorful decorations, balloons, and bouncy castles that mark children's birthday parties.

Parking in the first available space, the sun is hot and bright. Not ideal conditions for viewing on an electronic screen. Even if I closed the sunroof, the residual light will be too much. When the road is clear, I pull away from the curb and start making the rounds, searching for a spot in the shade. After circling the long block several times, I get lucky. An ice cream truck moves from a spot beneath a sprawling Oak. I zoom into the space, cutting off a Honda and ignore the blaring horn and finger perching in the window.

Once the computer's ready to go, I set the large shade in place to block the light from the windshield and close the sunroof. Removing the recorded DVD from over the visor, I place the disc into the tray and close it.

Exactly like before, I wait with baited breath as the screen turns from black to the same dim scene inside my father's room. Or nearly the same; the shot is wider so his bed and the far wall are visible with a clear view of the door that leads out to the hall rather than the simple, close shot of him like the previous video. He's sitting in his wheelchair again, with his hands folded in his lap. I notice right away he's dressed up in a clean white shirt and a clip-on bowtie I gave him when the arthritis got bad. Over that, he's wearing his favorite sweater vest. He combs what remains of his hair on one side with his fingers, then clears his throat.

"Is this thing on? I hope so, because I'm not doing this twice." A dark smirk appears and fades. "Well, Gerry, it's Thursday. The day you come back and I . . . go away."

My dad raises one hand, rubbing it across the back of his head. At that moment, I'm doing the same thing.

He apologizes and I wish he could hear mine. His voice quivers. "I want you to know that I'm not afraid. Maybe I should be, but I know you can set things right. Whatever sounds reasonable to the rest of us, you do the opposite so that will help. Even if you're mad at me for what I'm about to do, you have to know, there is no other choice. I like to think of it as hedging my bets. Sacrifice with purpose."

He hobbles over to his bed and I notice the marked wrinkles in his dressy trousers. They gather again as lies down. He fidgets, resting his arms in different spots before crossing them over his chest and clasping his hands. The positioning is curious—as if he's waiting for the casket.

"I love you, son. If you don't want to see this, you'd better stop the tape now."

Once satisfied, he's very still. So am I. Is he so attuned to the presence of the Angel of Death that he knows the second his soul is required?

He jumps when Jeanine enters, holding a covered tray. He tells her he's not hungry, so she leaves his lunch on the bedside table as he _shoos_ her out the door. "Make sure you tell her I said 'thank you.'"

Alone once again, he assumes the former pose and begins to hum. The resonance rises as he begins to sing. _Amazing Grace_ , his favorite church song.

If I were the type of person with any sort of religion, I'd be losing it about half way through the second chorus, as his bedroom door opens again.

In one split-second, all the scattered pieces and circumstances find their common thread. The one piece that connects the twisted chain of events. A seeming coincidence which reveals there never was one. Everything I've experienced has been a result of purposeful placing of carefully set pieces by a masterful player. Moves carried out by one man, a lunatic, who for his own twisted reasons has targeted me and my family.

"Nahuiollin, I've been waiting for you." My dad's still lying down with arms now folded neatly over his chest.

Nahuiollin?

The bearded menace slithers like a snake to his bedside, hissing. "Where are they?"

"You'll never find them."

"Liar!" He spits, following with curses and a flow of words in a foreign language. His dirty hands grip around my dad's neck. "Where are they?"

"Stop!" I'm banging on the screen as if it's a window I can crawl through to save him.

I can't take my eyes off Daemon's hands wrapped around my fathers' neck. He bares his teeth, relishing the brutality, forcing his grasp tighter and tighter. Constricting, shaking, and squeezing the life from him. My father doesn't even seem to care. In fact, he seems determined to take the appointment lying down.

But then, Dad starts to squirm as his complexion changes.

I hear myself begging and can't stop.

Not until his legs do.

Not until he goes still. Too still.

Daemon pulls up the sheet. Neatly tucks it over his shoulders. Shuts out the lights and leaves.

All that's left is a dark room.

No love.

No hope.

No breath.

No meaning to any of it.

With my sister... I was reliving what already happened. It was tragic and I'll always hate myself for it. But there was some consolation in that tragedy; knowing that I had not, at the very least, made things worse. I witnessed the way things were. My failure to change the past simply cemented my suspicion that her death was and is completely my fault. I have felt the loss for decades and continue trying to cope with it.

But this, this is my _dad_. The weight is so profound it takes time to make sense. And when it does, it just feels worse.

I look to the monitor, staring into the darkened room until Jeanine walks in and sees my dad with his eyes closed and walks towards her computer. The screen goes black.

The man left lying so still and alone, raised me all by himself. After Mom left, there were days he couldn't get out of bed. He started drinking and eventually lost his job. We lost our home. Then, one day he woke up, dried out, and devoted himself to taking care of me.

All the times I got into trouble, the nights when I stayed out past curfew, got caught with a girl in my room or ditching school, or when I lied about my grades, he never made me feel like any of my offenses were unforgiveable. I could confess, accept my punishment and things would go on as if nothing happened. He never treated me differently or judged me. I trusted him. He was my best friend. I told him everything that happened that morning with my sister. He said that I should forgive myself.

How can all that turn into this? How can someone do _that_ and just leave like this was no earth shattering event? As if my father's years on this earth meant nothing? Like his life and its' ending weren't important? How can _Jeanine_ see him afterward and not somehow know?

Just when I think there's nothing left to take, I lose everything: my mind, my ability to reason, all sense of control.

The paradigm within me shifts.

And there is no black or white anymore.

The only thing I see—the only thing that makes sense—is red.

* * *

Alone against the wall inside the parks' restroom, unaware of how or when I moved to this place—I'm waiting for reason to be restored, for the world to make sense again, but the answers won't find me here.

The sky is dark now and so am I.

It's like having an out of body experience as I move toward my BMW. The car I spent countless hours pining over, worrying about how I was going to fix it. Looking at the outside, I know that only a few hours ago I would have cared about the chips and indentions my foot made on the fender. I notice, but find nothing upsetting about the navigation screen I broke with my laptop. Before I watched that video, this car was the thing I cared most for in this world. But now, everything is different. There's only one thing on my mind.

A led light blinks from my phone on the passenger seat. The caller ID shows Abi's smiling face. A small part of me knows I should talk to her. But the detached part of me that's in control right now starts the car, sets a foot on the gas and tosses the phone into the street.

Nothing is left of what used to be. There is no turning back now and nothing to go back to. No more apartment, no job, and no friends. No more girlfriend. No family. None of that matters, now anyways. She can't help me. I can't help myself. There's only one place I can go—the one spot on the planet where I have no known connections and no one would ever think to look for me—the first place I should've went because my dad asked me to. He asked me to, posthaste. I have no idea what my father wants me to do once I get there, but he never would have asked if there wasn't a purpose. Whatever his rationale, I know it will help me get to Daemon and most importantly, make him suffer.

# Reunion

The night sky is dulled by artificial lights burning within the sprawling city around me. It obscures the stars overhead. There are no heavens above the City of Angels.

It takes every ounce of concentration—every muscle in my body is rigid, working at capacity—to keep from jerking the wheel towards the nearest freeway on ramp. It isn't hard to find the way from L.A. to Pasadena, but it takes time when you have to avoid the major streets. I'm keeping to the smallest roads. Even with that, there's still many to cross with lighted intersections and traffic cameras and I need to stay off the grid.

Why?

I'm driving to Cal-Tech in the middle of the night to find someone I haven't seen or spoken to since High School. It's the next logical step, isn't it? More like, the only thing I can think of. Even if Eli remembers me, I don't know how I'm supposed to make him believe me. I am the one who travelled back in time and I can barely believe it myself.

My dad said he sent him copies of the things he left for me. Maybe Eli's read everything and I won't have to explain. I hope so; otherwise it's going to be awkward starting that conversation. The only information to go on is his work address, so when I get to the campus I have to hope to recognize him. In the interest of anonymity, it would be best not to involve anyone else. I don't care about getting caught, but I can't risk it. At this point, I have nothing left to lose except my chance at finding Daemon. What happens after he's dead is of little consequence.

_Why did he do it?_ The only person my dad ever hurt was himself and even if that weren't the case, I can't think of anything my dad might've done to— Boiling fury blankets every cell in my body, wraps them tight, and crushes me from the inside out. The moon and stars, the air I breathe: all are consumed. My fingers twitch, clenching tighter to the steering wheel, wishing it were Daemons neck in my grasp.

I bet he thinks he's gotten away with it. He probably thinks we're both dead. I can't wait to see the look on his face when he finds out he's wrong. Then he will know there are no lengths I won't go to. Nothing out of line or reach. No amount of his misery will be enough to satisfy the call for his blood. I'll hunt him to the ends of the earth, through time and space. I'll take everything and everyone he's ever cared about and crush it before I kill him. It is a tremendous debt I owe and I won't stop until it's paid back with interest.

Why?

The inevitable question whispers constantly without reply. My dad was the one with all the answers. As usual, he's left me guessing. Everything I've learned has only led to more questions.

"Nahuiollin, I've been waiting for you." Dad said.

What does that mean? Normal people don't wait around to be murdered. And why did he call him by a different name? Sure, my dad was suffering from early onset dementia but to go from that to this . . . There's got to be a reasonable explanation. He wasn't crazy; he just didn't leave me with enough information to understand his reasoning. But I know the way he thinks.

My dad always was a man of action. So what have his actions told me? That . . . maybe he expected it to happen?

He knew his killer by name. He told me when it would happen. He never said how, but if he knew when and who, then he had to have known why. Why he neglected to leave that tidbit of information for me, I can only hope to discover. If a single grain of rationale existed in his forethought—obviously it did because Dad recorded everything—then, within this mystery I might have something to grasp at, to help get my bearings. As of now, though, there's only mystery and confusion.

I have to know why. I have to find out what my father was thinking—what he hoped to gain by waiting around to be murdered. Death is a result, not an answer.

Turning from a two-lane residential street, my headlights reflect off a long, white car with black doors parked in the shadows of the ally I'm cutting through. Panic sharpens my senses. My mind races and my heart is pumping fast and loud. My foot wants to plunge on the gas pedal and for one, brief second I wonder if all of this will end in another car accident. And should I survive, does Homeland Security practice torture on American citizens? How much could I possibly take before telling them everything and losing the only chance at tracking down the man who pretended to be my friend and then tried to kill me and murdered my father?

The lights continue sweeping over the top of the car revealing a plain, smooth roof where the red and blue flashing lights should be mounted. The black door panels are plain. No shield or slogan. It's one of those used cars people buy at auctions and not the real thing.

My hands tremble on the steering wheel, welcoming this reprieve in my flight from justice. When the opportunity is afforded, I've got to take the time and chart a proper course of action. Should I actually see the flashing lights I dread, I have to have contingencies in place. But first, I have to get to Eli.

There was no coercion involved that I saw. Dad just laid there and let it happen. The images burned into my brain are torturous enough to distract me from the urge to hit the main roads.

If the government didn't know what sort of car I was driving, then I might be comfortable with taking the path most travelled, but I can't take any chances. I have to play it smart. Get there in one piece first, then, follow the next step laid out for me.

The night has gone on for days.

Finally, I hit California Street. The Cahill Building is somewhere along this road. A few years ago, there was an article on the internet all about this place. It's a very expensive research facility, or a lab or something, dedicated solely to the studies of Astrophysics and Astronomy. Whatever this place might have to do with me remains to be seen. Eli is supposed to have 'some interesting theories' that will help me on my 'journey'—whatever that means. So long as it leads to me Daemon, I don't really care.

When the tell-tale architecture of the Cahill Center comes into view, I pull over and shut off the engine. The street is empty. I don't like feeling so vulnerable in the open but the gates to the parking lots are locked and the campus is closed.

I'm a bit tired but can't risk sleeping in the car. The last thing I need is to wake up to a flashlight in the face.

I stare out the window into the gray and notice, for the first time, my heart hurts more than my head.

A few short months ago my life was completely different. I was happy. Well, not happy but definitely better off. I was employed. I had a family. A loyal girlfriend.

Memories flicker through my mind; the ominous message Dad shared, the way I held his head in the crook of my arm, the empty gaze when his mind took him to places I couldn't follow. I should've gone back to visit like I promised. I never should've gotten on that bus. In one fell swoop, I lost everything. I have no illusions about the way things were: I hated my life. But my lack of contentment renders that life no less valuable to me. At least then, it was mine. I had a semblance of surety and cause for expectation. I had hope.

My hands brush mournfully across the dashboard. I was one paycheck away from getting her fixed. Now she's running like new and I can't keep her. I shouldn't have broken my computer. This empty time should've been spent searching through the other discs my dad left. I want to read some of the papers in the box but it's still dark out and I can't risk drawing attention to myself by using the cabin light.

Planning seems to be my only option, which may serve me well since I usually don't and following the usual path has gotten me nothing but misery. Crossing my arms over my chest, I set my mind to devise a brilliant plan.

* * *

A muted thud startles me. My eyes shoot open as I realize that I am waking up.

I fell asleep?

I fell asleep!

The sky is bright. The sidewalks on either side of the street are pulsing with bodies. Students of all shapes and sizes are moving, talking, and carrying book bags—on their way to places I know nothing about. An endless line of cars are locked in stop and go traffic. Irritable drivers wait as everyone rushes for the limited parking in controlled lots.

I'm mentally scolding myself for the slip up while getting out of the car and covertly looking around for anyone that might be watching me. The things I can't afford to lose are coming with me. Backpack, the box my dad left me and the disc from my broken laptop—that's about it. _That's just depressing_ , I think, shaking my head.

I'm about twenty paces from the car when a black and white cruiser appears a few blocks up the road. My instinct is to run, but that would obviously draw attention. What I need to do is blend in—to be a needle in the haystack. Just walk along with the rest of the student body crawling like ants over the roadway. Stressing at a leisurely pace, I pretend to study a pile of papers from my box, making sure to tuck my head far down. My stiff neck wails.

At the corner, waiting for the walk signal to change, I risk a glance. The police car is long past mine now, sitting at the red light of the next intersection. A mass of students are crossing the street, so I know he'll be there a while, but slink deeper into the crowd waiting to cross with me to be safe. The green walking signal blinks and the crowd disperses like someone's just fired a starter pistol. They take off uniformly, in the same direction, just as I bend down to make like I'm tying my shoe. I'm wondering if leaving my car in plain sight is the wisest idea. But parking in one of the student lots is my only other option and I don't have student ID or a permit sticker. I don't need to start a paper trail with a parking ticket.

By the time the walk signal blinks red, another group of students is already gathering around me at the corner. I stand and press the giant round button. While I linger, the light down the road turns green and the cop car takes off. Finally, I can breathe again.

The sign in front of the Cahill building says it is closed for another hour. I start to wander, hoping to find who I need. Considering all the people and sheer size of the campus, the odds are not looking very favorable but I manage to find the student lounge and buy breakfast.

During my second cup of coffee, an idea hit me. The best way to find Professor Eli may be simpler than I thought.

As soon as I find the library, I walk in like I own the place, smiling confidently at anyone who looks at me funny. In less than five minutes, I have the time and location his first class, by way of the student directory _._ Cahill Building—just like Dad said. At ten a.m. he's assisting another Professor in a lecture on Black Holes.

I make my way back towards the street, walking around the massive sports complex to cut through the back lot and avoid the street. On the way, I search the back entrances used by staff, but none of the doors open from the outside.

This box is getting heavier by the minute and the sun is beating me down. The tender new skin on my wounds burns in the direct sunlight.

The main entrance is still locked. While waiting, I sit on top of my box and go through my back pack. I find an old hat crumpled on the bottom beneath another stack of papers so I take it out and try to smooth out the bill, not caring that the cap itself is full of creases. Once my head's covered, I relax and sip the last of my coffee in the hot morning air and wait for my old friend.

Eli and I met back in seventh grade through a mutual friend. We used to hang out all the time, but after the accident a distance appeared and I barely noticed. The last time I saw him was graduation. I walked toward him, aiming to congratulate him, but he walked by like I wasn't there. I thought maybe he hadn't heard me call his name and let it go, assuming I'd see him around eventually. _Eventually_ took a lot longer than I thought it would.

When the doors open, me and about ten other students fall in. Most head to the same spot. The course description said this class was an elective, but by the time the professor waltzes in, the room is full. After taking roll, a hair past ten, a thin guy with dark hair and a short, neat beard enters from the side through a door I hadn't noticed behind the unrolled projection screen. The professor looks momentarily in his direction and nods, acknowledging his arrival.

It's Eli—taller, thinner, and hairier but no other changes in appearance. He sits at the smaller desk near the right side of the amphitheater style room, shuffling papers and pressing the button that changes the pictures in the slide show as the professor drones on for what seems like an eternity about things everyone else is captivated by and I couldn't understand even if I cared enough to try. Half of the language is scientific terminology and diagrams that don't make sense. I try to pay attention, but it's all droning nonsense. Like C-SPAN set in outer space, the topic wants to put me right to sleep. They may as well be speaking an alien language for all I draw from the lecture.

The dark beneath my sealed lids turns a lighter shade of black when the lights come on. I'm glad to see the clock has struck twelve and the class is dismissed. As the students pass out of the room, they make a line towards Eli's desk, setting papers in a pile in front of him on the way out. When the room is empty I approach, pausing to wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans.

Eli, seated at the desk, abruptly rises. Gathering the pile of papers, he stuffs them against his chest and heads for the door that sticks out behind the drop-down screen.

"Excuse me, are you Professor Eli Thacker?"

He turns with one hand on the door. "Assistant Professor and that depends whose asking."

"It's me, G. We went to High School together?"

He looks on with no notable change in expression.

"Shared a locker sophomore year?" I say, hinting. "I came by to talk to you."

"About what?" I cannot tell if he's curios or irritated.

"You don't remember me, do you?"

"On the contrary, I remember you very well. I'd shake your hand, but . . ." he shrugs and a few papers shift and fall to the floor.

"I'd get those for you, but..." I shrug, staring at the box in my arms.

"Are you a student here?"

There's no way to work up to what I have to say, I just have to get it out. "No, I'm not—"

"I have another class." He opens the door. "So if you want to talk you have to walk."

Through the door, I trail into the white hallway, waiting for him to take a breath and hoping for an easy opening into the topic I need to discuss.

"I wish I would have known you were coming. I have a full schedule today and tomorrow. Did you enjoy the lecture? I didn't know you were interested in Cosmology. How have you been? Are you married? Have you talked to any of the old crew lately? I went to the ten year reunion. Were you there, because I didn't see you?"

I can't think of any appropriate responses, so I say the first thing on my mind. "Did you have a chance to look at the package?"

He stops short, turning to stare at me with wide eyes.

"The one my dad sent. Have you looked through it?"

His eyes tighten. "Tell me exactly why you're here, G."

Here's my opening. My tongue feels like sandpaper, so dry. "Because, I-I travelled through time." There. I said it.

"Yeah, I've never heard that before." The sarcasm is hard to miss. "What do you know about that package?"

I set my box down and take out a crude, pencil drawing of three ovals touching end to end, each shape with a different picture in the center. "Did it have anything like this inside?" I ask, showing him the paper.

He looks curiously at the picture.

"Were there any discs in it?" I ask.

"No, what I've seen so far are only equations."

"What kind of equations?" I place the drawing back in my box and take a crumpled sheet filled with numbers and letters. "Do they look like these?"

He snatches the paper from my hand and starts scanning. "This is different." He looks at his watch, "and I'm running behind."

"Can we talk after class?"

His eyes are back on the paper, following each line carefully. His forehead creases and he mumbles. "How is that possible?"

"What?"

"It appears . . . it looks like a portion of another equation. I was looking at something similar the other day . . . but I don't understand these variables."

He looks me in the eye. "Since you showed up unannounced, I'm going to assume you need something. I don't mind helping out a friend, G, but I have another class and I cannot be late." He returns the paper and starts walking down the long corridor. Passing an open doorway he points. "Feel free to wait inside my office. I will be back in about ninety minutes."

Eli turns down the corridor and disappears, leaving me alone in the hall. _That was anticlimactic_ , I think, walking into his cramped office and setting my box on the floor.

* * *

The clock says it's been two hours. He said ninety minutes.

Two. Hours.

Sitting on an overstuffed chair inside his office—I don't know if the size of this room technically qualifies as an office. It's smaller than the walk-in closet in my one bedroom apartment. I fidget, fighting the urge to fall back to sleep. At first, I was hopeful but the stuffy air in this micro space has sucked the optimism right out. It looks even smaller because of the white eraser-board that covers the only long wall from ceiling to floor. It's covered with numbers and doodles. The top of his desk is worse than the floor of my car—piled high with papers, drawings, and more papers.

Poking around inside his desk, I believe I've found Nerd-vana. Endless amounts of protractors, gel pens and pencils of all colors, pocket protectors, gloves, and goggles. In one of the bottom drawers beneath a giant magnifying glass is a half empty bag of stale cheese puffs and a few pieces of chocolate-flavored bubble gum.

"Ugh," I retch, spitting the gum into the trash. The partially chewed lump falls on top of a pile of crumpled papers near the rim and slides onto the floor leaving a trail of tinted spit. My tongue feels dry and shriveled, scraping against my teeth. There's a sharp twinge in my glands as my mouth waters. My spit looks unnaturally brown; stained by the dye in gum. I swipe a tissue from the box on of the shelves and use it to clean inside my mouth. Then another. And another. I make a mental note never to ask Eli for gum. Disgusting.

Just as I finish clearing the taste from my mouth, Eli strolls in. He's brought a thick green folder with the words, 'Property of GVRRC' printed on the front. He looks at the trash can, then at me, and smiles.

"Did you enjoy the putty?"

I wipe the top of my tongue again and toss the last tissue away. "I thought it was gum."

He chuckles, "tastes like liver doesn't it?"

"Is it poisonous?"

"No, but it'll give you the runs if you chewed it for too long. It's something I've been working on for my cat."

"For your cat?"

"He gets constipated sometimes and it is difficult to give him the enemas. Then, having to explain to people why he's walking funny: it's a hassle." He shrugs, deadpan.

My stomach heaves and he cracks a smile.

"Asshole."

He chuckles. "That's what you get for eating things you find in a scientist's desk."

Eli holds up the green file, "This is everything he sent me," and then tosses it onto the overstuffed chair and leans against the desk, cracking his knuckles. "What can I do you for?"

Ignoring the taste of liver flavored kitty laxative, I square my shoulders and look him straight in the eye. This is it. "Do you remember that girl, Lisa? We used to hang around with her."

"Green-haired Lisa? Yeah, I remember her." He crosses his arms, stuffing his palms beneath each elbow. The pose makes me think of _Mary Catherine Gallagher_.

I shove the silly image from my mind and focus. "Well, I saw her two weeks ago."

"Really? How is she?"

"Hey, can I ask you something?" I ask, trying to figure out a way to make the jump.

He nods.

"That lecture, well, it got me thinking. D-do you think time travel is possible?"

His face lights and he shifts forward. "Of course, I mean, we haven't figured it out yet, but the mechanics are all there."

"What does a person like me need to—not theoretically, but literally—travel back through time to, say... 1996?"

His brow creases. "One way might entail an indestructible amount of mass in the form of a sphere large enough to avoid collapsing and creating a black hole. Once you've got that, then all you have to do is figure out how to manipulate spacetime." He grins. "Simple."

I have no idea what he just said. "Is that the only way?"

"Theoretically, there are several ways: a wormhole, for instance. Passing through the curves of spacetime in a line the way a worm eats through an apple. Travelling faster than the speed of light-"

"What if you're inside a car?"

He shakes his head, "No, _Back To The Future_ was not very accurate. It was a great movie, though. Why so curious?"

Nerves bead up in the space over my top lip. I pretend the sweat represents all my anxiety. Using the back of my hand, I wipe it away, and then scrape the remnants on my pants. _Just say it._ "I've done it. Twice. Well, once, but it was round-twip—I mean, a round-trip."

He laughs, looking down and shaking his head. "That's good. You caught me off-guard."

"Eli," I step forward, "I'm not joking."

"G, I take my work very seriously. If you—"

"That's why I came to you. My dad left me—" taking the file from the chair, I open the folder and begin flipping through the pages—"all of this nonsense. You're the only other person he trusted and I need to know why. He said you would help me."

He stares back and I sigh, defeated by the unreadable look. "Please, I've got nothing else to go on and no way to compensate you, but I can't do this by myself. It's all Greek!"

His eyes have moved from me to the pages. "What are you trying to do?"

"And I need a DVD player."

He takes the folder from me and steps away. At the eraser board, he picks a small blank spot and starts writing.

"It's not Greek, it's Quantum Physics."

My desperation is sickening. I would never help someone as pathetic me. The puffy chair provides a place to sit and wait for rejection while he keeps his back to me, working on the board, erasing and writing, re-writing, and eventually, making noises like he's playing a contact sport. Every sound makes me wonder, but I stay quiet, unsure if the din hints at a positive or negative.

After what seems like eternity, he finally turns around. "Sorry about that. I forgot you were here."

He already forgot me. "Great."

"This equation is complex, to say the least. I'd like to take this to one of the Professors—"

"No one can know about this!" I jump out of the chair and snatch the folder.

He scoffs. "I can't work on the equation unless I know the origins. It wouldn't be right. Whoever wrote it should get credit."

He hasn't even agreed and he's already making demands.

"No. Eli, you have no idea what you're talking about." I grab at the papers in my box. "This information, these 'grand equations' are mine. My inheritance from my father. He didn't want anyone else to see them."

He nods. "I am sorry to hear about your dad, G. He was a good man."

"Thank you." The words sound empty but I appreciate his acknowledgement.

"I thought this was why you came; if not to understand the equations, then what?"

"Because I need your help."

"With what, exactly?" There's a genuine interest in his expression.

"You better sit down," I maneuver to the front of his desk and urge him to sit in the chair. "And keep an open mind because it's ... complicated."

He checks his watch and nods his consent. I jump right in, telling him everything that happened from the day the bus crashed, up until I woke in the hospital the second time. His position is firm, listening intently, asking detailed questions about my health, the dates, and cause of the first accident. I describe—in superfluous detail, the parts he shows the most interest in—the blue fog, the colors and lines I saw, how sick I felt after, and everything I can remember about Daemon. My only omissions are the DHS and my sister. I have to leave her out. I can't say her name, yet.

He doesn't express his opinion until I finish, even then, he only asks permission to look through my papers. The moment I consent he plunges in, removing the contents piece by piece, sorting the pages and notebooks into separate stacks. When he grabs the large manila envelope, the DVDs fall out.

"Home movies?" He picks up the discs one by one, placing each into my idle hands.

"I've only seen two."

"Did you learn anything?"

"Depends on how you look at it."

"He left you directions?" He's holding the folded paper with his name and address.

"Yes," I take the page and shove it back into the giant manila envelope. The next disc, marked with a number four still lies undisturbed inside the sandwich bag my dad put it in. I hold it out for Eli to see. "Is there a private place where I can watch this?"

He glances up from his fastidious sorting. "We should wait until we get to my house. If everything is as you say, suppression must supersede curiosity." He anxiously checks his watch again. "Is there anywhere you need to be in the next few hours? If so, you should cancel."

"No one will be missing me anytime soon."

"Good," he stands up, "help me put these back." As I take the first stack from the floor, he reminds me of something else I omitted. "You can follow me to my house. It's not far."

A very strong wooziness sets in and my eyes want to roll into the back of my head.

"G," his hands sets on my shoulder.

I blink quickly and take a deep, cleansing breath. The feeling goes away as quickly as it came. "I'm fine—just got up too fast." I answer, "Actually, I have to drop my car at a repair shop. Could you follow me there?"

"No problem," he stuffs the last stack into the box and gives it over.

# The Last Piece

It's as if I'm lost in a cold, blank space drifting toward the only source of light. The sun: the center of my universe, but I can't harness the heat because my atmosphere has been destroyed.

I should've come by bus. Shuddering at that thought, I still can't seem to stop my feet from moving forward. On I trod like an idiot towards my car. I am an idiot, because if the cops spot me or my car . . . And what if they put it together—somehow find out that I went to Eli? I don't know how they'd possibly make the leap from one to the other since I haven't seen him in years, but I can't risk it. It's stupid to get back into my car and stupid not to.

Maybe I shouldn't drag Eli into this but I need his help. My father sent me to him; that has to mean something. Like any order from my dad, there's a probably a purpose I can't conceive of—like having me trim the hair in his ears and nose the last time I saw him. Or making me watch the video . . . Images of the last disc razor through my mind and the deep cuts they leave behind throb.

My pulse pounds stronger with each step I make toward my once coveted silver BMW that seems no more than nuisance now. It looks the same as when I left, but isn't that what they'd want me to think if they are, in fact, watching me at this very moment?

The sidewalks are bustling with the noisy student body and I have never felt more exposed and alone. Echoes of people chattering, footsteps popping, music leaking from the windows of passing cars—the noises blend together in a buzz inside my head, converging in electric panic.

Students head in various directions, more away from the buildings instead of towards them. I take my time strolling along the sidewalk as if I haven't got a care in the world, trying to spot anyone that might be looking a little too long. The campus is crawling with people, though, and it's hard to tell.

On my way here I passed a rundown shop that had dozens of smashed up foreign cars parked out front. That is my destination. Most of the abandoned cars were German which makes it the perfect place for my BMW.

From the corner down the block, I press the button to unlock the door. The car whistles, the lights flicker. No notable changes in anyone's behavior, except one girl who looks as she walks past the chirping car. The lack of reaction from bystanders feels like an opening. I run at the window of what may be my only opportunity. The closer I get to the car door, the further I am from caring if anyone notices.

In the rearview mirror, I spot Eli's beard inside a green Jetta that's just rolling from the lot behind the Cahill Center and pull out in front of him to take the lead. Hitting every side street I crossed last night, I have to retrace my turns to find the repair shop I passed.

In the gravel lot, a red and white 'closed' sign dangles from the window of the shop but the tall chain link fence is unlocked. I hop out and quickly open the gate. Rolling through the enclosure I park as far from the street as possible, in between two old Volkswagen Beetles.

When Eli catches up, he parks just outside the fence at the front of the shop and waits while I grab all I can. The two boxes of keepsakes I packed when I thought I was moving in with Abi are the first things I grab. She must not have noticed them pushed against the very back of the trunk when she took my stuff out the car. Good thing, too. Otherwise the only photograph I have of my dad would've been confiscated. Once it's emptied of all personal items, I whisper an apology to my old friend.

Eli watches me close the gate from where he's leaning on the hood of his car. He teases me for getting lost and I play along to avoid having to explain my evasion tactics. Shoving my things into the backseat of Eli's Jetta, I can't take my eyes off the lonely sight I'm leaving behind. It's stupid. It's just a car. But it's breaking my heart.

Glacial air whistles from the vents on the dash, keeping my eyes dry. I concentrate on the floor in front of the passenger seat to keep my gaze averted from the depressing sight of my abandoned beauty, but the acute sting only grows with the distance as we drive off.

My car was the last piece. The defining part of a life I thought I hated and desperately miss.

# The Accident Experiment

The little green Jetta rolls to a stop in front of Elijah's house, only a few blocks from the University in a cul-de-sac on a small street. Somber, he shuts off the engine and sighs.

"Something is bothering me."

I shrug. "Shoot."

"I need to know what type of problems I may be facing, should I choose to help you."

I cling tighter to my box. "You haven't decided?"

"I'm trying to remain objective. I have a career to think about and goals that require a great deal of time and focus; things I can't simply walk away from."

"I would never ask you to—"

"Please." Eli waves a hand at me. "I _want_ to believe you, G." His eyes widen. "Believe me, it's every nerd's dream to realize the premise he's been chasing might actually be provable. I want to study the equations and I want to help you figure out what happened."

He sighs again. "I deserve to know how much trouble you're in—the implications I might be drawn into if everything is as you say."

"It is," I assert.

Eli nods, as if this is acceptable, but his face blank expression says it's not enough. "Then someone else has to know."

"I haven't told anyone."

"You conned me into helping you dump your vehicle. That repair shop wasn't even open and the car keys are still in your pocket."

Eli looks out the windshield as his palms trace the curve of the steering wheel. "G, Scientists work their entire lives never encountering the kind of possibilities which seem to have fallen into your lap. You must be aware of the danger that puts you in. I don't know whether it has occurred to you or not, but secrets of this magnitude only stay that way because the people who find out about them end up dead."

When I try to respond, he shakes his head and continues. "Do you understand the amount of energy it takes to open a wormhole? The radiation they emit? It would raise the Terror Threat Level."

He's almost panting, turning in his seat to face me head on. "If I stick my neck out for you, I need to know what I'm up against. I deserve to know that what you're telling me the absolute and complete truth so that I may, in turn, make an informed decision."

My hand rakes through my hair, mindlessly mindful of the still healing wound on the back. "I was hoping to get indoors before..." My explanation trails off, realizing as I hear myself, how stupid it sounds.

Gritting my teeth, I know I have to say it. So I do. "The day I left the hospital, Homeland Security came looking for me. They were searching my girlfriend's house when I went to drop her off."

He nods, quietly mumbling, "That makes sense. Does she know you came to see me?"

"I didn't know where I was going when I left her. I have no idea what the Feds were looking for or why they're suddenly interested in me but I swear I haven't done anything wrong."

"Then why are you running?" He asks, "If you don't know anything there's nothing to hide."

I take a deep breath, hoping to loosen the knot in my throat. It only gets tighter. I can't believe I am going to say it out loud. "My dad didn't die in his sleep."

"What?"

"The man who shot me, he left me on the roadside. He must have known where to find my dad, too, because he killed him." His eyes grow wide and I can see the obvious question forming. "My dad knew he was coming. He recorded the whole thing and left me the disc to prove it."

His face crumples. "But—why would he do that?"

"I don't know Eli, but if I stick around to talk to DHS, they aren't going to believe anything I say and it's going to cost me time I can't afford to lose. I have to find Daemon before he goes somewhere I can't follow."

"How do you know he hasn't already?"

"He asked me and my dad about some diamonds or something. If he wants to find them, he isn't going to leave right away." Actually, the idea never occurred to me until I said it just now, but it makes perfect sense.

Eli's quiet, thinking again.

"Does that answer your question?"

"I won't help you get revenge."

"That's not what this is about."

He looks at me sideways.

"Alright, it's not the only reason. My dad told me I _have_ to stop him and I don't know if I can do it alone."

"It's a big ask, Gerry."

"Just give me twenty-four hours. One day for you to look at everything," I say, nudging the box in my lap, "and if you're not convinced, you don't have to do anything. I'll disappear. You can live with that, can't you?"

He answers by opening the car door. "Let's go in before someone sees you."

The established neighborhood where Eli lives holds an assortment of houses: large and small, one and two stories, split-level, Spanish, Contemporary and Dutch styles. Eli's looks like it was built in the fifties, well-kept and nestled between two similar looking box-type homes. The front yards are small and green, surrounded by white picket fences. Long, twisting tree branches interwoven with broad leafed vines form an arch over his driveway, which stretches all the way to the backyard, ending in a detached garage. The house is yellow with little white, folding shudders over each window. It's a page from a storybook.

"Nice place," I say, admiring the smooth, wooden floor of the living room.

The late afternoon sun streams through the sheer curtains, casting its relaxing glow about the room. The walls are sprinkled with framed satellite images of outer space and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"Thanks," he walks into the hall with my box.

The peaceful atmosphere seeps in. I can relax with a few walls between me and the outside.

When he reappears, I ask, "How much does a place like this cost?"

His arms are empty now. He's closing the shudders on the way to the kitchen. "Your things are in my office. And I have no idea." His hands move excitedly as he talks, waving for me to follow. "I was on the housing program waiting list for two years before I got in here. Most of the people in this neighborhood are Grad students like me, who work at the University through an Assistantship." He takes a pitcher from the counter and starts filling it with ice. "I spend most of my time buried in research and schoolwork."

"Where is your constipated cat?"

He smirks. "I hate cats."

I nod. It figures. "What did I eat?"

"Liver flavored gag gum." The chuckle that follows this revelation reinforces my earlier suspicion.

"You couldn't get anyone else to eat it, could you?"

"No. You were the first. You know, I wanted to ask you about that Daemon character. How does he fit into this equation?"

"Wish I knew . . . I never saw him before that day on the bus."

He responds with more questions but the point of his interrogation escapes me. My energy and focus have dwindled and it is a struggle to stay awake. Suddenly, I'm so tired I can barely stay on my feet.

"When was the last time you slept? You're pale."

I nod.

"There's a DVD player in the living room. I'll bring you an iced coffee."

"Make it a double."

I take the first spot on the couch, telling myself, I'm just going to rest my eyes for a second.

* * *

Pressure, almost a nudge—no, a rattle.

The rattling sensation creeps into my consciousness, interrupting my nap and I'm immediately irritated. But when my eyes open, they find the room is very dim. Only a nightlight in the hallway carries into the living room where I am sprawled across the couch.

A dark figure near me whispers. "G, wake up. We're leaving now. The car's already loaded." It's Eli, leaning over me and shaking my shoulder.

Stretching, I feel a little stiff. "Where we going?"

"A town called Ivanhoe." He answers sounding further away. The front door swings open. All is black outside, save a few streetlights.

"What time is it?"

"Two-thirty-seven," he answers, shoving two cups at me. "Hold these."

"In the morning?" I slept through the entire afternoon and most of the night?

He takes up a bag from the floor and sets it across his shoulder. "I took the liberty of looking at that disc you wanted to watch. It was directions."

I stop at the doorway. "Directions to where?"

He passes by, looking cautiously out into the night. "To Ivanhoe, well a farm up there." While on the steps he pauses to whisper. "Are you familiar with the area?"

"I've never heard of it."

Eli resumes walking and I follow, listening. "It's about four hours north. The directions seem intentionally vague and I want to be up there by first light to maximize our search time. I cleared my calendar today, but I can't miss more than a day or two or I'll never catch up."

"Who are we searching for?"

"Not a 'who' Gerry," he slides into the driver's seat and unlocks the passenger door.

The car purrs to life and the second my door closes, we take off.

"What made you decide to help?"

"It's worth the risk. Oh, and I watched the other DVD you mentioned."

"Which 'other' DVD?"

"The one with your dad and Daemon. He didn't deserve that." At least he has the courtesy to look ashamed.

"Why? Nobody asked you—"

"You said I should look through everything. Believe me, I did not want to watch, but it was the only way I could get a look at him and hear Daemons' voice, see if I could pinpoint his language. Sorry if I overstepped."

"No skin off my nose." I mumble sourly, "I didn't know you were into snuff."

Ignoring the jab, he hands me several sheets of paper. "There's a flashlight in the glove box. You can use it to read the directions. His inflections sounded familiar, but weren't pronounced enough for me to make out the origins."

"I don't want to talk about him."

The flashlight is compact and powerful. There's no map in the short, nondescript type. The thin lines at the borders of the page are crooked and shaded. It looks like a printed picture of a typed sheet of paper. A copy of a copy?

"Where did you get this?"

"I told you, from the disc marked with the number four. That's the one you wanted to watch wasn't it? It had these directions so I printed them."

"There wasn't a video?"

"There were only three picture files. Why?"

"I assumed they would all be the same." I mutter.

"What?" He rolls his window up and repeats, "I didn't hear you, what did you say?"

"Where do you think he got these?"

"The pictures look like he used a typewriter to type out the directions, and then took a picture of the page and burned it to a disc. The directions are precise, to a certain point."

"Wouldn't it be easier to paste the directions into a word document?" Dad wasn't the most coordinated person 'because of the rheumatism,' as he would say, but if he could figure out how to work the webcam on Jeanine's computer, I'm sure he knew how to copy and paste documents. "Why do it this way?"

"He was being smart. Everything on a computer that's connected to the internet; emails, texting, tweets, all of it is read by the browser and search engines. The DHS might have monitored the IP addresses he had access to."

"No, they wouldn't."

"How do you know?" He looks away from the road just long enough to give me a stern look. One that says, confess or else.

I'm in no position to compromise. "Because they never entered the picture until after I came back and even then, they were slow to respond, like whatever they're after led them to me."

"So . . . not something you did. Are you sure the information your dad left you wasn't compromised?"

"Pretty sure. The box was sealed and set inside the closet in my room. No one touched it."

"What else would they want, though? It isn't conceivable that your dad could be in possession of information this significant and have it go unnoticed."

"He called it my 'legacy.' He said that I'm 'in the middle of everything' and that, if he explained anything to me, it would 'defeat the purpose.'"

"What's 'the purpose'?"

"I don't know. Why are those equations so significant?"

"Because they appear to explain a theory I've been developing since I was in eighth grade."

Confusion seems inevitable, just as 'why' always leads to 'because'. The reasons repeat, twisting my mind in circles.

After a fixed moment of silence, Eli bursts. "He was a maintenance man for crying out loud!" I give him a hard look and he apologizes.

From then on, the ride is quiet. The only sound is air rushing through the half open windows. The freeway slips between the high hills as we travel north out of Los Angeles. I sip my coffee and when that's gone, I turn on the radio. Eli keeps his eyes focused on the road and thinks a lot. I can tell, because he doesn't hear when I ask to take the next exit for a bathroom break.

"I'll hold it," I say, as we pass the off-ramp.

Despite his superior judgmentalism, I'm glad my dad sent me to Eli. Already, his involvement has proved advantageous; I never could have risked this trip inside my car. He's smart, too. With his brain and my determination Daemon can't get away.

When the sun begins to light the horizon, we're well past Bakersfield. The land is flat in both directions, sprinkled with patches of green among the dry brown of late summer. The space between the towns grows wider and each municipality smaller. By sunrise, we're off the main highways, sticking to numbered roads. Eagerness grows as the roads shrink, curving up and around groups of farms. Four lanes become two. The yellow dividing line that marks the separation between us and oncoming traffic is worn away on the overused, crumbling pavement.

As we pass a particularly attractive orchard speckled with the deep red fruits, I roll my window all the way down to take in the fresh country air.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Eli finally breaks his silence.

Ignoring him, I stick my head out the window wanting the cool morning air wake me up. Midway through my first gulp of air, I'm gagging at the rank taste in my mouth. Eli's laughing as I take a surprised look around us. On my side of the car, there's a pomegranate grove—on his side, a dairy.

Retching, I hit the switch to close the window.

"Don't!" Eli squeaks through a laugh and overrides my controls with the ones drivers' side. "You'll trap the stink inside." We're both consumed with disgust as he rolls down both windows all the way down.

A minute later, the stench is gone, the lesson is learned, and we're focused on the task before us.

"We're looking for road number three-oh-eight."

We're very close to a line of hills that stretch out behind the innumerable groves, growing to long-standing mountains in the distance. The patches of clouds overheard cast a shadow on some of them, making the more distant colors seem black and gray against the glowing blue sky.

"There it is!" I point up to the bent road, straightening before us.

Up ahead, off to one side, a peninsula stretches between the seas of tree groves. In between the branches are fading numbers on a bright green sign identifying it as the road we need. We turn into the lane and Eli tosses the stapled pages back to me.

"Read the directions."

I peruse the type print and start reading verbatim. ". . . Road three-oh-eight, okay. 'Drive a block or two, when the road forks, stay right. After about three miles you will come upon an unmarked, private road to the left. Take it. Go down another half mile and park the car. You walk from there.'"

I look at the region we're in. There doesn't appear to be any rough areas or ravines, only rolling hills filled with trees and vineyards.

"Where is he taking us?" I shake my head.

"What's next? Keep reading." He's glancing between the road and the odometer.

I look back down at the paper and find the line I left off. "'Walk in a straight north-easterly direction over the lowest end of the nearest hill past the tree line. At the summit, you'll see where you are going. When you get there, in the middle you'll see a fire-pit. Remove the stone bottom and dig until you hit a metal plate. Beneath the plate is my final contribution to your ruin. If you want to turn back, do it now—if you don't, then you must promise to guard them with your life.'"

"This just keeps getting better." Eli says.

"What the hell does that mean? The middle of _what_?"

The car slows.

Eli asks, "Does this look like a private road to you?" He's staring at the only roadway we've passed by since we took this turn.

A white painted sign with the word 'private' staked near the mouth of the small dirt path labeling the road. In the distance that's visible between the patches of trees, a palatial home is nestled between two low hillsides.

"That has to be it." I tell him. "There's no other road to take."

There are a lot of bumps and though we're going slowly the tires kick up the dry, loose dirt leaving puffs of brown in our wake. We roll up the windows and keep going.

Eli keeps his eyes shifting from the odometer to the road.

"Half a mile?" I ask, noting the sparkle of concealed excitement in his face.

"Yes," he parks in a shaded spot between two rows of short bulky orange trees. The boughs are a bit taller than the rest but still low enough to scrape the roof. "Now we walk."

"North-east," I recite, hopping out.

Eli grabs the shoulder bag. "I've got a shovel and a compass." Pausing to think, he taps his forehead. "The hats!"

He pops the trunk and disappears under the lid only to reappear wearing a faded baseball cap. "Here," he says, handing me an old cowboy hat with sweat stains around the brim. "You'll need this to keep the sun off your scalp."

"Thanks." I say.

We start through the trees on a precise course, cutting in a diagonal through the rows. My eyes are straight ahead; focused on the low, green hill looming in the distance, scarcely discernible from the bright green leaves of the orchard. After a while, I notice Eli's not beside me. I glance back to find my trekking companion playing on his smart phone.

"What are you doing?"

"It's a compass." He says, moving to let me see the computer generated scope as he catches up.

"Didn't know there was an app for that. Pick up the pace, it's getting hot."

The closer we get to the edge of the trees, the warmer it feels. The high humidity makes the temperature feel all the more suffocating. We've only gone about a quarter mile and my shirt is already sticking to me. Eli's fanning himself.

"You should put your hat on, G. This is a Mediterranean climate. It's only going to get warmer."

"I will," I say, keeping it tight in my hand.

We reach the bottom of the low hill, scale a short wire fence and start climbing the next. The slope is steep but the grass is spongy. As we ascend, the hot air becomes stifling. A few feet from us, in nearly every direction cows are grazing.

"Good beef cattle," Eli remarks.

"How do you know?"

"They're all black. Dairy cows are spotted."

"They teach you that in Quantum farming?"

He chuckles, "Remember, my mom used to make me visit my uncle in Montana every summer? I had to help him on his ranch. Oh, I hated it."

"Yeah, you came back to school with a mean farmers-tan every fall."

He shakes his head. "We should probably try to keep it down."

I agree, a restrained tone is appropriate considering our mission is supposed to stealthy and we're trespassing.

My legs are long past burning when we reach the plateau on the low end of the mound. For miles and miles, stretching out on every side, there's more hills lined with grapes and citrus groves seeming to extend all the way to the feet of the high mountain range in the distance. Only a few small houses and zigzagging dirt roads are visible in between.

"I think Death Valley is on the other side of those mountains." I say, taking in the glorious vista.

"That has to be it." Eli nudging my arm with his elbow. "Look."

My gaze drops to the hill nearest ours and immediately locks on a lifeless piece of pasture. It's out of place, covered in dead grass and standing like a lonely lump amid the surrounding green.

I check the directions again and remark, "Hard to say, since he neglected to mention what we're looking for. Do you see a fire pit in the middle?"

"Look at the base." Eli notes, his voice sounding a little too breathy. He's captivated, pointing towards the bottom of the small hill. "It's green around the bottom, but as the elevation increases so does the discoloration."

The hillside has been painted in varying shades of sunburned hay. The center appears to be nothing but black dirt which spreads out to patches of brown, dead grass and weeds, which fade into yellow in the lowland. The circular shades of damage are odd, like Mother Nature made a dartboard.

"It could have caught on fire." It's a terrible guess, but considering the round pile of rocks right in the center of the dead spot, easily visible amongst the decomposed plant life, it's still a possibility.

"No," he disagrees, "fire turns everything black. I have seen fungus that creates circular patterns in the soil, though. I've never seen one grow with such precision. The circles are perfect."

We continue downhill, tramping on towards the goal while Eli carries on.

"Look how defined the shapes are."

"What?" I ask, reluctantly placing the soiled hat on my head.

"The pattern is almost like crop circles." Eli throws his arm out in front of me.

I stop and ask in a whisper when I see and hear nothing. "What? What is it?"

"Do you feel that?" He asks with a puzzled look.

I'm starting to get irritated. "Feel what?"

"The air is cooler."

"Yeah, so?"

"Don't you find that unusual?"

I shake my head. "No, we're going downhill." I start walking again and I do notice a slight change in temperature, but I'm not excited like he is.

"We are in full sun, moving towards dry vegetation. There's no marked breeze, so the temperature should be slightly increasing."

"Or decreasing because the elevation is lower," I reason.

"Do you know anything about the planet you live on?" He shakes his head.

The brown grass crunches as we make our way toward a pile of rocks marking the middle. The weeds are small and stubborn, offering little resistance as we trudge over the only green left inside this lifeless area. Soon, that is behind us, leaving only a patch of dirt. At the center, the dirt is like sand, sprinkled with broken bits of straw that were once grass. Further inspection reveals the stones of the fire pit are already loosened from the mortar. Any concern I had about digging through the bottom is gone. I ask Eli for the shovel and he gives me a garden trowel. I have to laugh at the dumb luck.

"If this mortar wasn't crumbling, we'd be screwed."

Eli doesn't notice, still lost in his observations. "You notice how there aren't any cattle grazing over here? The soil has probably been polluted. Animals can sense those things."

"I thought cows were stupid." I say, testing the strength of the trowel with my hands.

"They are, but they also sense things that we cannot." He kneels next to me. "Should we take turns?"

"Nope. You drove, I'll dig."

He stands up. "That's probably a good idea. One of us should keep an eye out. I notice there are no birds over this way, either. I wonder if it's coincidence."

"There aren't any trees over here, either." I grunt, thrusting the trowel past the last bit of broken rock and into the dirt below. The next shovel full breaks up a large sandy clod. I remove the rest with my hands then take up the trowel. Another shovel full, then another and another; the end of the tool strikes against something.

"The metal plate." I announce.

Eli bends down again. "I don't see anyone, but we're set low on the hillside. If someone comes, they'll be on top of us before we see them."

I dig faster, tracing the edges of the metal plate with the tool. Eli uses his hands. Gripping clumps of dirt to remove them, he deduces the density of the soil is the reason for the lack of growth. In a few minutes, the dirt is cleared. As we start to lift the heavy plate, it breaks into several pieces. Eli is fascinated, once again, and I jab at the pieces, breaking them apart with the tapered end of the hand shovel. Directly beneath the pieces, I find a dirty, rectangular box. The shards might cut me if I try to pull them out by hand so I keep scraping. When the hole is cleared of sharp debris, I reach inside. The metal box is rusted, covered with dozens of small cracks that crumble when I lift it.

"How long as this been here?"

"A really long time?" Eli shrugs.

"You think so, Sherlock?"

Beneath the fragments is a bulky, black shape. After clearing away more brittle metal shards, I reach down and touch it.

"Its rubber," I say, lifting the mass from the ground. The material is thick and stretched tightly around lumpy contents. Right away, I notice how light it is for its size.

"Here," I hold the bundle up for him to take. "I'll cover the hole."

Eli takes the pack, making the same observation. "If it weren't for the distended shape, I'd think the bag was empty."

The loose dirt plumes in a low cloud as I quickly work the shrapnel and stone back into a semblance of what it was before. I pack it down; stomping a few times, then kick a few more rocks back in place.

"Good enough." The moment I speak, my voice is not the only one to be heard.

Eli, whose been bent over the rubber bag, trying to work the zipper open, suddenly straightens. "Let's go."

On the low ground, in between the mounds, we scurry away like rats in a sinking ship. I follow Eli's lead to the next lowest peak in the opposite direction of the approaching voices. Once we're over the small hillock, we should be able to make a bee line for the car. Out of breath and sweating, we make it to the bottom of the next low mound and start hiking up the side. At the top, we have to stop and look around. Most of the moving figures are cattle and the ones that aren't, are too far away to see our faces.

"Damn," The wooded area where the car is parked is within sight, but still very far off.

It looks as though the road we came in on was a midpoint between two enormous orchards. The green paint makes Eli's car nearly impossible to spot. If not for a small beam of light reflecting off a window, it would take hours to locate.

In the long distance between us and our getaway are broad pastures sprinkled with cows, a couple of transformers, and part of a citrus grove full of low broad trees shaped like giant shrubs. The spaces between the rows are narrow but passable. The obstructed views inside might make it tricky to stay on the right path towards the car.

"We've come farther than I thought," Eli huffs, resting his palms on his knees.

"You should have used your compass." I say as we start down the hillside which is much faster and easier than going up.

"I lost reception."

"How far would you say the car is?" I pant, wiping the sweat from my face with my shirt.

"From the bottom of the hill; no more than a mile." He takes the pouch from his bag again and resumes his fight with the zipper.

"Here, let me try." I hold my hand out.

"The dirt's clumped between the tines." He complains.

Rubber bag in hand, I start by blowing at the dirt in strong bursts. Once I'm nice and light-headed, the zipper launches back but catches on another dirt clod. I clean it off and try again, inching the tiny teeth open.

"Look at that," Eli directs, yanking my arm with disruptive enthusiasm.

When I look, there's nothing unusual except that we're in the middle of the open field. "Half way, already." I mutter.

"No, G, look at the cows."

"The cows are walking, big deal." A quick glance up to mollify him, then it's back to work finding out what my dad has left for me. The zipper opens halfway then suddenly snaps backwards.

"G, they're running."

Reaching inside the bag, my fingers touch something cold. It's not a diamond, but a deep, red rock; a perfectly smooth oval. It feels solid, but is feather-light. I turn it over in my hand and notice a tracing of three circles connected by three lines to form a triangle.

"What has them spooked?"

"Would you stop it with the cows, already? Look at this." I thrust the red stone into his hand and take out the next. It's the same as the first, smooth and oval, and extremely lightweight, but it's black like polished volcanic rock.

"It looks almost like red jasper but with crystalline qualities. It's so smooth, like someone shaped and polished it." Eli mumbles about the first. "It's really beautiful."

I hand him the second obsidian stone and reach inside the rubber pouch for the last one. It, too, is lightweight and shaped in a perfect oval and the exact same size as the others, only this one's flawless white.

"The markings are different." Eli comments, pointing, "See, the red has the triangle. The black has a sort of a spiral shape, look." He sets the rock into the light and moves it slightly to accentuate the fine lines carved into the surface. "What does that one have?" He gestures towards my hand.

I look over the white rock and see the light catch on a rounded shape carved into the center. "It's a lazy eight." I answer, feeling stupid because I recognize the symbol and can't remember what it's called.

He squints, leaning in. "Ah, the figure for infinity. In science, it's known as the singularity. A term which, loosely translated means, 'I don't know.'"

As we take our time examining the strange rocks, I can't help but recall Daemon's words, asking for 'his three stones.' I thought he meant jewels or something of value. This is just three rocks—nice ones that are neat to look at—but they're essentially paper weights.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" I ask, fisting the white rock and squeezing.

Eli is still inspecting. "They don't have a speck of dirt on them."

"It's cold."

"You're right. Body heat should warm them somewhat." He holds the black rock tighter in his grasp. "It feels like sticking your hand in a snow bank."

"Weird," I say. Okay, so they're weird, neat paperweights. "What are they for?"

"The black and white remind me of Urim and Thummim, the stones in the Breastplate of Judgment in the Old Testament." His brow furrows as he sinks deep into thought.

At some point, we must've stopped walking because we're still very near the middle of the field. "We've been exposed too long."

We start walking, again, double quick.

"Put them away, in case someone sees us in the trees."

"Guard them with my life." I say, repeating my fathers' ominous directive and to shake open the bag with my free hand.

When I was younger, I went to see this movie about people who chased tornadoes. The special effects were mesmerizing. I thought that the horrible crashing sounds the twisters made must have been an exaggeration to make people feel like they were inside the storm when they watched. Then, one of the characters in the film said that the sound of a tornado was one of the most terrifying sounds they'd ever heard. I have to disagree. There's a sound worse than that right now in this field: the sound of heavy hooves crashing against the ground, slowly dissipating as the remaining cows run away from us at full speed. It's the sound of a crushing sense of helplessness as I realize the cows _do_ know something I don't. And even worse, I'm about to find out what it is.

The hard way.

The rocks in our hands start to spark with light from the inside. The white and red grow bright, glowing like flames. The light turns to heat in my palm and I drop them. Eli tosses the third like a hot potato.

I don't know if it's the anxiety of the moment or my head injury, or my eyes simply seeing things that aren't there, but the rocks don't fall. They float together, swaying slowly down like feathers in a gentle breeze. In the green grass, they land in a petal configuration, each one touching the other two.

In the same instant, a nearby transformer that's been steadily buzzing with electricity makes a terrible cracking sound. An arm of lightening thrashes out into the open space and disappears into the glowing stones at our feet.

A breath later, everything changes.

The air in front of us breaks apart. It sounds weird, but there's no other way to describe a break. I've never thought of the air as something that was capable of breaking like a solid, but it does. The air _fractures_ right there in the middle of the field.

A breach that was not there a second ago opens up before us like a doorway as a line appears beyond it. Like a hallway, it begins where we stand and stretches up into the clouds. It's a whirlwind-like form, only longer and higher, building from the ground up.

On the outside this passage is a fierce cyclone of blue smoke and cloud. The azure haze angrily bends up into the sky, peeling away the layers of time and space in a blur. Fiery and fierce, it scorches the air and the tops of the trees. Branches wither like blades of grass and fly into the whirlwind. Outside, the heat shrivels everything, but for some reason we are safe, enclosed within a bubble that emanates from the stones themselves. I see the wind and the heat, but don't feel it. Everything outside our protected area is blown back, burned up, but not us. In here all is peaceful. In here, a rainbow wheel of unknown colors swirls inside the cyclone, marking the passage away from here into another time.

Our world shrinks in the presence of this magnificent power. Three stones. A tunnel calling my name.

I answer the beckoning with a single step. Suction will do the rest, I know it will. I feel the pull.

I hope the landing isn't as rough this time.

The azure fog swirls. The interior colors blend together.

Leaning forward, I think of Daemon; where he is, how I'm going to find him, and what I'm going to do in that glorious moment.

# Time Travel 101

A jerk hauls me back as the violent funnel cloud begins to shrink. Quickly as it appeared so it disappears, and everything is quiet. Not the peaceful serenity that one expects to find out the in the country. No, this quiet is not normal. There are no more animals or bird calls inside the vast field. No chirping insects. Nothing.

All of nature is awestruck and scared shitless.

"That was the most terrible thing I have ever seen." Eli mumbles.

"It was beautiful." I manage to speak, "So beautiful."

Shaking off the shock, I force myself to look around. We are completely alone, which is good, but our position in the wide open field leaves us exposed in a very vulnerable moment. We're standing in the wake of that enormous inferno of a spectacle that has so inexplicably come and gone with no way to explain how or what to anyone.

" _That_ is what you saw?" Eli, who's been standing beside me equally dumbfounded, is now howling. " _That_ —that thing?!"

In the distance a clamor is rising. It's the chaotic sounds of frightened people who've just witnessed something they don't understand.

"Shut up and run!" Eli instructs even though he is the only one talking. He picks up the stones and franticly tosses them at me. "Put'em away! Hurry!" He cries, but all I notice is how cool they feel, though just a moment ago, they were blazing.

_What did you do?_ I think as my hands shake and fumble, trying to force the dull, cold stones back into the rubber bag as we run, flat out, towards the tree line. The massive weight of nausea comes on but I ignore it, pushing myself to hold down the vomit. Everyone within fifty miles had to have seen that thing and everyone on that farm probably saw us.

"Hustle!" I yell to Eli, gaining on his heels.

Suddenly, he comes to a dead-stop. "Wait!"

Skidding to a halt, I spin back to face him. "What?"

He's talking too fast, barely understandable. I think the gist of his incoherent rant is that he wants me to wait here while he goes to get the car. I'm not going to argue, the nausea makes me agree.

Now seven rows away, I lean over, willing my stomach not to purge while he starts the car. Once it kicks over, he waves me in. I run as fast as I can and jump in the passenger side.

" _That_ is what you did! _Twice_?! You said it was a car accident!" He's screaming again and my head is pounding.

"I've never seen it from the outside, I didn't know." The violence of it was muted by the internal beauty of the blue fog and colorful array. Both incidents were followed with a serious head injury, so I thought I was crazy, that I imagined the whole thing.

Sinking far down into the bucket seat, I'm practically lying on the floorboards to avoid being seen, though I'm sure none of the bumpkins out here care who I am at the moment. Eli's started barreling down the dirt road. I remind him to go slow, and tell him that he stinks at maintaining composure. "You'll draw attention."

The car swerves and we barely miss a tree. I scream at him to calm down and force him to pull over. My offer to drive is quickly refused.

"There are too many people around for you to risk being seen." Eli reasons and I can't argue. He's right.

Pickup trucks and vans are parked along both sides of the outer rim of the orchards now—people holding ladders and long sticks, truck-mounted port-a-potty's and dozens of faces running to and from the area we've just come from. Fear and chaos play in the expressions of everyone we pass by, now keeping strictly to the speed limit.

Still, he's panicked. "It burned everything. It destroyed that pasture. I never thought that—"

"You thought I was lying?" I ask, crawling from the front into the back seat.

"You never said it was so huge. Hundreds of feet high. I-I should have known, been better prepared. That thing almost sucked you inside!"

"I had a limited visibility at the time." I grunt, rolling into the backseat as he takes the corner onto the paved road a little too fast. The back end of the car swings around with a screech.

"We're supposed to blend in." I yell, pulling my face out of the back seat cushion.

"What are you doing?" Eli snaps, as if he's just realized I'm not beside him.

I look up from the floor in back. "Think. I'm hiding."

He nods. "Yeah, good idea. There's a latch in front of the seat that pops the seatback open to access the trunk."

I raise my head again. "What?"

"There's a fire truck." Sirens begin to wail and Elis' eyes pop wide open. "Four . . . five, six cop cars behind it." I hear the gravel beneath the wheels and realize he's pulling over.

"What are you doing?"

"Letting them pass before they flash their lights at me."

I'm completely ham-fisted, yet manage to pop the seatback open, slide into the trunk, and barely raise the padded door just before the emergency vehicles pass.

The drag of the car tells me we've taken off again.

"We have to get back to my house." The motor roars.

"Whatever you do, don't get a ticket." The velour seat slips from my hand, plunking into the down position.

"Shoot!" he pounds the steering wheel.

"What now?" I snap from my little window. The dark walls of a Volkswagen keep me blinded to everything but the back of his head and the rearview mirror

"I need to stop for gas."

"I hate being stuck down here." I poke my head out into the back seat. "Remember, if you look panicked, they'll remember your face and you don't want to be remembered."

"I feel sick. Do you?" His bloodshot eyes stare through the rearview mirror.

"Yes," the topic reminds me it's safe to rest, now. I let my head fall.

"Hawking's radiation," he muses. Then his lips form a hard line. " _Brilliant._ " Only he sounds like he doesn't think it's brilliant at all. "We have to get some fluid, get the emissions out faster."

At the station, Eli fills up on gas and Gatorade. He makes me drink two containers of the stuff and soon the nausea begins to fade. The ride is longer on the way back because of traffic and we have to keep stopping to piss.

I want to sleep to pass the time but after what I've seen, I may never sleep again. Plus, Eli won't shut up. Every time I'm close to dozing, he starts spouting nonsense I can't understand.

"Turn on the radio." I suggest, "Maybe there's something about . . . that." I have no idea what to call the thing.

It's past seven when we finally arrive at his house. My sickness is gone, but Eli's complexion is pasty and he's missed at least one nights' rest. He parks inside the garage and asks me to use the side door while he unloads the car.

Inside the kitchen, I sit at the dining table and wait. I have no idea what to make of all this. I have to go through the box and find out what I can about the morphing crystal stones. The way they glowed before that bolt of lightning hit was like nothing I've ever seen. Almost like the rocks drew the power to them.

"G, we have to talk." He says scraping a chair along the floor to sit.

"Yeah, we do." I know from his expression, what he's going to say. "It's okay, I understand." I push away from the table. "You don't want to help. That's fine. I appreciate everything you've done, Eli. And I can't ask for anything—"

"That's not it." he exclaims, "Why would you think that? No, I could never consider going back now," he pauses, pulling at his beard, smoothing it down with his fingertips. "I need to ask you some questions to reconcile some of the dissimilarities you described during your time in 1996."

"Oh, okay" I sit back down.

"Was there something you wanted to discuss first?"

I shake my head. "It can wait."

He sets both his hands on the tabletop. "You said Lisa's brother was still around?"

"Yes."

"And, your dad—he looked different?" His voice lowers, adding weight to the question.

"Yes, but it was in my head. The concussion screwed me up, so I can't be sure about anything."

"G, if you were really there—and I believe you were—you could not have imagined the discrepancies."

Sweat on my forehead is forming into droplets that run down the sides of my face. He must not have left the air conditioner on.

Eli rubs his temples. "I don't know how to tell you this G, so I am simply going to say it. I don't think you travelled through time."

My answering scoff is all I can manage.

"I thought from the beginning you were mistaken. I mean, it is impossible to travel into the past, the future is more likely and that is a one-way trip. Even _if_ you were miraculously transported back, you wouldn't be able to intermingle or alter anything. It would be like watching an old TV show and based on the information you provided, what we learned from our experience today, I believe that what you did—where you went—was actually a parallel universe."

"No, you're wrong."

"Think, G. Everyone you met and interacted with, they are all real people living inside a world that is almost exactly like our own, except that, if I am correct, their awareness of time is different. That is why it was 1996 and not 2012 even though you woke up here and travelled there in a matter of seconds."

"If it wasn't time travel, then how can it be a different year?"

His brow furrows, probably to concentrate on dumbing-down the technical lingo so I can understand. "I believe the answer is because there are numerous universes, each operating within its' own time loop. Time works like a circle, it's eternal; there's no beginning or end.

"The Mayans developed their calendar based on this very concept. When the Aztecs conquered them, they saw the wisdom in the model and began utilizing the calendar themselves."

"Aztecs were savages."

"And ingenious. Here, let me show you what I mean."

He takes a paper from a notebook sitting on the countertop and a compass from a drawer. Uber-nerdy. Setting the page blank side up on the table between us, Eli starts drawing. First, a large circle and within that, another slightly smaller circle, and within that, he makes another even smaller and continuing on until there are five circles, resembling a bulls-eye. Or the Aztec calendar he mentioned. Or the dying circles in the hills where we found the stones.

"Think of the outermost circle as the crown of numbers on a clock." He points to the middle, marking it with a dot, "Here, in the center, the clocks' hands would be mounted. Contained inside this infinitesimal center point is a timekeeper, so to speak."

"What's the time keeper?"

"Call it a singularity." He mumbles, marking lines at various angles down the center. They cut the shapes in half, then in halves again. When the portions are shaved into twelve, he draws numbers on the outermost ring, completing his rudimentary clock.

"Now, each clock operates in increments of chronological time, right?"

"I guess."

"Sixty seconds to one minute, sixty minutes to one hour—"

"And twenty-four hours in a day, I get it." I'm growing impatient with the preschool teacher routine.

He points to the first inner circle and the second, "each one of these lines, these circles, represents another dimension, a time loop, a parallel universe separate from ours. The hands of the clock move, measuring each increment individually. Depending on their placement in correlation to the singularity, the larger or smaller the increments become." He looks at me and slides the drawing over. "Do you understand?"

"What does it mean?" I ask and wish my dad were here.

"It means that time is relative, that each dimension works within its' own increment size, therefore, a different relative measurement of time, which leads to different years within each dimension."

I want to think about this for a second. It feels meaningful and profound, but my mind is too much like scrambled eggs to even consider the ramifications if this concept. Even if it were true, Eli has no way of proving it.

"How can you possibly know any of this?"

"G, I am more qualified than—"

"I was the one who went through that thing. What makes you so sure it wasn't time travel?"

He crosses his arms. "In the world you and I grew up in Dylan never lived with Lisa. He only came to visit her on holidays."

My lips lock together.

"Do you happen to have anything in your possession that you picked up while you were there? Change from a store, something of that nature?"

I reach into my pants pocket and slap the change I've been carrying onto the table. "I don't know if any of it came from there."

Eli slides the pile over and begins his examination—first the coins and then the bills. After a minute or so, he takes out his own wallet and removes a five dollar bill. He sets it beside the one I gave him and compares the two.

After a long stare, he finally says, "It's missing."

"What's missing?" I lean forward.

"'In God We Trust' is missing."

He takes the coins from the table, looks at both sides and then slides them back to me one at a time. When he's done with that, he goes back to the bills. I look closely at each one. The President's faces and pictures look the same but the phrase isn't there.

"I'm not so sure it's on our money."

"Why are you so stubborn? You know it is." Eli brings out other bills from his wallet.

"Yeah, but the police told me my money was counterfeit. That doesn't mean anything."

"So, you're arguing that men who are sworn to uphold the law, arrest you for passing counterfeit bills then release you without confiscating them?"

He isn't going to convince me of anything. "I was there. I saw what happened. I did what I could to change the past and it didn't work, because like you said, I _couldn't_ change it."

"It was the past only in the broad sense. It was not _your_ past, G. It was their present."

"That's a cool theory," I slide the picture back at him.

"Yes, it is. Your experience and those equations your dad gave you confirm its' validity. G, I know you want me to be wrong—I would love to be wrong—but believe me, I have spent my entire academic career working on this."

"You. Are. Wrong."

He sighs. "Agree to disagree, for now?"

"I'll pretend you never brought it up."

"Motion officially tabled. Now for the second major issue: your inheritance."

My hands automatically move to cover the rubber bag sitting in my lap.

"Judging by what you and I saw, and by the electrical meter on the side of my house, I believe it is safe to assume that these rocks absorb energy. We need to wrap them in thicker rubber."

I ascend with a nod, noticing Eli is still very tense.

He clears his throat. "I have gone over and over this in my head, the whole way back, and I think we have a larger problem than keeping these rocks from discovery."

I lean forward. "What's that?"

"As fascinating and as exciting as all of this is . . . We are not meant to pass through to other places in the multiverse, G. Crossing over, it has consequences."

"Of course it does." I sigh; waiting for the explanation I know is coming.

"It's like punching holes in the ozone, only on a much larger scale."

"That can't be good."

His face is grave as he explains. "It is most certainly not good. Setting aside the lives of the people that might be affected, and ignoring all major health and environmental risks—opening the passage way between universes could be like knocking down a wall without bothering to check whether it's load-bearing. It is, at the very least, irresponsible and very likely to weaken the walls that separate us."

My jaw clenches tighter, making my head hurt more. "Is that what Daemon has been doing?"

"I'll have to do some calculations and run some tests to be sure, but yes, it appears that way."

"Can they be repaired? How bad would it be if it got too many holes?"

"Potentially catastrophic, but I-I can't configure scenarios until I know more about these stones."

"Eli, he didn't use _these_ rocks to cross over," I raise my hand, holding up the bag for him to see. "And this is the only way he could be crossing from one time to another. Right?" The thought sickens me and pulls down the corners of his mouth.

As pasty as Eli is, his face manages to wash whiter. Even his lips lose their color. "Oh my God . . . there's more than one set."

The hairs on the back of my neck prickle upright as understanding sinks in. "There has to be. And Daemon wants these, too. He asked me and my dad where they were." I didn't understand it at the time, but now it makes perfect sense.

"Then, it doesn't matter if we agree on whether or not it's time travel, does it?" It's like the truck and the bus colliding all over again. One big worry is erased by another, larger and more deadly.

"Is this what my dad wants me to do? To choose to find Daemon, to stop him?"

Eli is looking at me, but I can tell by the blank terror he's barely concealing that he's not seeing me. The light in his dark eyes flickers as he's thinking, probably calculating the odds of what neither of us wants to say.

I'll bite. "You said each universe is the same?"

Eli shakes his head in disbelief. "Each one could possess the same three stones." He looks like an apparition when he adds, "in theory."

"It doesn't make sense." I scratch my head. "If Daemon already has his own, then why would he need more? Is it just greed? What could he gain by collecting them?"

The more questions I ask, the whiter and quieter Eli gets. He doesn't answer right away. He just sits there, aging in grave silence before my eyes. Considering the possibilities and penalties, maybe.

He inhales, shaking his head. "God wouldn't allow man to harness that kind of power."

Immediately, I'm shaken by the image of my little sister tossing a fistful of leaves. "The world's full of death and malice and I've never seen God intervene."

The creases on his forehead grow deeper as he looks down at his folded hands set across the table. "What are the options?"

"My dad told me I have to stop him. That I could do it, and that you would help me. Eli, you were there, you saw. Everything in the path of that tornado-thing caught fire."

His eyes are different when he looks up. "G, I have asked you for absolute honesty, but I haven't been forthcoming."

Curve ball.

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means there are things I haven't told you about what I know and how I know it." He uncrosses his arms.

"Go ahead."

"I spoke to your dad. About a month ago, I was . . . out and ran into him. He recognized me and we got to talking about my work. He didn't send me a package, he handed me information and asked me help you. He said if I did, he would forgive me."

His explanation sounds odd and ominous—exactly like my dad. "Forgive you for what?"

"We'll get to that later." He clears his throat. "First, I need you to tell me everything you remember about your time there, every single detail about this Daemon character and everyone else."

"I already did."

His eyes grow darker. He's got some color back in his cheeks. "You and I both know you left some things out. Exposure to radiation can cause a lapse in memory and you've been exposed three times, now. If you are going to follow Daemon, it is absolutely vital that we consider every possible risk and prepare accordingly."

"Other than the fact that he's comfortable with creating chaos and mass killings of innocent bystanders, I can't think of anything." My shoulders rise and fall in feeble reply, not sure what to make of the turn this conversation is taking.

"He helped you, though. First, on the bus, then in the fight. He was there both times you crossed over. He must have needed you for something otherwise he would have killed you right away. When you spoke, did he ask you any questions? What kind of conversation did you have?"

Holding up a hand, I ask for a moment to think. It takes some time to get back into that mindset. I've been working so hard to shut it off, to forget about what happened there.

Now I let the walls come down, let the memories run freely through my mind. The bus accident, the hospital, the police station, the record store, finding my home, meeting my younger self and my dad. Recall his unnamed fears and the fight with Dylan that led to my getting jumped in the alley. Daemon arrived just in time. At a moment when I'd been beaten down enough to need help. I wanted to fold, cash in my chips and go home. I could barely walk, but still had some wits about me.

"The first night. He used my last name when I only gave him my first."

"So, he knew you. The day you left with him, what did you two talk about?"

My heart wrenches. "That was a bad day." My nose begins to run as I clear the lump of regret from my throat.

"I remember, G. You tried to stop it from happening again, didn't you? Tried to help Carrie?"

I nod, throat full, eyes welling. My sister. _My baby sister._

"It's not your fault, G. Someone stole the street sign."

I try to let that sink in, but then realize that it makes no difference. "Nothing will ever make me feel better about what happened."

It takes some time to regain focus. When I do, Eli's face is sympathetic. "G. The smallest detail could be the most important."

The table is slick beneath my sweating palms. I press my hands back and forth over the smooth surface, searching for a way out.

My dad used to say, there are some obstacles you can climb over, others you can go around, and even some you can dig beneath. Then, there are some times when the only way around is straight through the middle. Right now feels like a 'some time.'

"Alright, but I'm only going to say this once, so you better take good notes."

I take in a deep breath and begin my tale again, giving every long boring moment and ever gory detail.

By then end, Eli is thoughtful. Resolute.

"I promise to do everything I can to help you stop him, G, as long as you promise not to make this about anything other than gathering the duplicate sets of stones before this Daemon character does."

I agree, grateful to get such a strong response from someone so mild.

"We'll have to prepare, of course. You never know what type of world you might be stepping into."

I nod my head in agreement, glad that my dad had the foresight to send me to Eli.

My father's voice echoes in my head: from our last conversation, when he looked into my eyes as if he could see my very soul and spoke his assurance like a curse. _"You. Will. Be. Alright."_

Taking a deep breath, I let that fire, that rare faith he had in me expand until it fills my chest. Whatever mistakes I've made will have to wait. It's what comes next that matters now.

Whatever times or worlds I step into, I have to believe that I can succeed. I will be alright because I've got my father's belief in me, his notes and instructions, and the help that he sent me to find. I've got my inheritance, these three amazing stones that can somehow absorb energy and use it to open wormholes into the past—or other worlds if Eli is right.

It's all so strange. I've literally lost everything in the past two months: my job, my girl, my home, my dad, my sister, and occasionally my mind. Now, I'm sitting here, facing the strangest, most deadly giant of a problem anyone's ever encountered . . . So why is it, that for the first time in my life, I feel like I could accomplish anything?

# The End

# of Book One

FORCE

Book Two:

The Threestone Trilogy

#  A.R. RIVERA
**Force** :

[fawrs, fohrs] Noun.

Physical power or strength possessed by a living being.

Strength or power exerted upon an object; physical coercion; violence: _energy, power, intensity_.

Having the power to influence, affect, or control; efficacious power: _Law_ , unlawful violence threatened or committed against a persons or property.

Persuasive power to convince.

Mental or moral strength.

**Forced, forcing:** Verb (used as object):

To compel, constrain, or oblige (oneself or someone) to do something.

To drive or propel against resistance; to bring about effect by _force_.

To obtain or draw forth by or as if by _force_.

To extort.

*Dictionary.com*

All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful;

All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.

— _I Corinthians 10:23_

##  Preamble

WHOSE TO SAY WHERE a story really begins? Is it when a door opens or when a character makes an entrance?

All stories begin with action and actions begin in the mind—just like the door that had to be thought of before it could be carved, fitted and hung on a frame to open in the perceived beginning. It has to be there for someone to walk through. Then the lines are spoken and gesticulations made. Action is executed, inspiring reaction.

Thought is the doorway and by virtue of its' existence, action becomes unavoidable.

So, where did my part in this twisted tale begin? That's easy; it was the same place as yours—before we existed, before conception, before your mom met your dad. Before, even, they were born. As my dearly departed Grandmother used to say whenever she referenced an occasion that took place before my time, "When you were still a twinkle in God's eye..."

You have to know that all of this was predestined, predetermined, orchestrated and carried out by your forefathers and left for you to pick up and carry on to the finish.

The stones are your baton, your legacy, Gerry. You were made for this.

##

##

##

##  Postcards From The End

Traveling messes with my head. Some days my brain feels like a scrambled egg, but today it's clear.

Remembering the past is important when wanting to avoid repeating mistakes. This notebook is to help you, my only son, keep track of things that are too important to forget. Don't be a dumbass. Use it. Write it all down and when it's all used up, get another one and use that, too.

The following is a brief history of our ancestry, passed from the mouth of the first finder to the ear of his only child where it was carried on by his eldest who shared the knowledge with his heir, and so on. The stones and their secrets have been passed down in this manner within our family ever since. No other proof of the first finding exists outside of memory and though my goal is to keep you from making the same mistakes I made, I would not leave you ignorant of your destiny. Well, not completely.

So here goes:

The three stones are actually three parts of one, (I can't explain it any better than that, so don't ask) and as such, their formal name is Threestone. It's no exaggeration to they are all-powerful and utterly inseparable. Three ovals: one white, one black, one red. Identical in shape, size, and quality; appearing as either mineral or crystal, most times it's a strange meld of both. Aside from color, the only other distinguishing features are the faint symbols carved into the tops of each. What they do is unimaginable.

An indefinite number of generations have passed since the discovery of the ancient stones. If I recall correctly, they were first unearthed by an archaeologist on an expedition in South America, during or before the American war with Mexico. Doesn't sound like it was that long ago, does it? But it was.

There was this group, comprised of graduate students and experienced archeologists. They risked life and limb in hopes of finding proof of an ancient Southern tribe known as the Suma, believed to be descendants of the Sumerians. To this day, little is known about the day-to-day life of the nomadic tribe. How and when they migrated to this continent is also unknown.

I was told Hieroglyphs discovered in some cave in the Middle East depicted what experts believed to be three men guarding an albino child. Up to that point, most illustrations depicting children were that of young Royals or the telling of a sweeping tragedy. No weeping women or thrones marked those pictured walls though. Historically, glyphs did not portray that type of abnormality so the discovery was thought unusual and intriguing. Experts that studied the hieroglyphs said they told a story of three families who defied a Kingdom to protect the albino infant. The men and their families were banished as betrayers. It was believed by some—and I am not sure why—that a handful of the banished tribesmen managed to make it to the southern shores of the Americas.

It was this mystery that drove the troupe into a mass of dense forest, compact greenery which bordered an odd circle which appeared to have been painted in varying shades of brown. (Sound familiar?) The curious research team followed the trail of dead flora to a rock wall. Along the brittle barrier, they found a low cave where the fertile soil beneath their trampling feet turned to sand. It was in this place the stones were first unearthed.

The expedition leader was fascinated by the unassuming strength and beauty of the rocks that stood out amongst the other delicate relics they discovered within that cave. The stones qualities resembled that of crystal but bore no reflection against the light of a lamp. In fact, the characteristics could not be classified by any mineral ever studied. In a moment of weakness, the principal father to our great catastrophe became consumed with greed over the potential of this discovery and thrust the rocks into his pocket, never reporting the finding to his peers.

The night before the group was to leave the dig site, our ancestor sat near the campfire, feeling colder than usual. He wondered to other members of the party if he might have contracted something in the dank cave. Nearing the flames for warmth, the fire waned, appearing to bend nearer to the breast of his jacket—the pocket that held the stones. When one fellow asked after the strange phenomenon, our forebear excused himself.

That same night a lightning storm broke out across the steppe. As the other workers scrambled to protect the artifacts, our ancestor ran away, screaming that he was being chased by lightning. They said his hair stood on end as bolts struck near his feet.

I recall this part of an old newspaper clipping perfectly, for it happened to me once:

"'We were all asleep until we heard the rain." A fellow lineman relayed the accounting, "We had to ensure the artifacts would remain dry in the deluge. The smallest measure of damp could reduce them to ruin and months of toil would come to naught.

"I stopped when I heard the shouts. I have never seen anything like it! The bolts of lightning were hitting the ground all around him, barely missing his heels as he ran. I'd run too if the lightning were chasing me like that. Then, a cyclone swallowed him.'"

I realize I've sent you off with little more than a "because I said so." It's not my intention to make this necessary evil any more difficult than it has to be.

As you know, I am consumed with regrets. You see, because of my father's rigorous training I thought was prepared for any eventuality. When the unexpected arose, I had no idea how to react because I wasn't trained for surprises. My father spent his life preparing me for what I had to do. He was a careful man. He was also convinced he could save the world. If he could just train me hard enough, make me smart enough, I could accomplish what he could not.

Power does that to people, makes them think they're able to perform the work of God. It's nothing more than hubris—which, as I look at the page, I see is only three letters away from human.

But when surprise-push came to unexpected-shove, I had nothing in my arsenal.

Remember this, son: Knowledge does not make wisdom. All my training had trained me not to think, but to react. And in the end, I reacted badly.

I'm still not sure that this is the right direction to take, so I'll have to be vague. If you're meant to understand, you will. If not, then I guess this whole process will just continue as it always has.

So here's my shortlist of absolutes:

1. Stay away from Nahuiollin. Period.

2. Always go back and check. In your travels, you'll meet people. Those people's lives could be shifted in an entirely different direction because of their interactions with you, so always go back and check.

3. I don't know if you ever remember your dreams, but if you do, pay attention. They may mean something.

Book II

##

##

##  In the Interest of Full Disclosure

THERE ARE SOME TRUTHS a person knows without having to be told. Like, you'll burn your eyes if you stare at the sun too long. Or, men really do cry when no one's looking. And no matter how many crayons you eat, you won't shit rainbows.

Recognizing these simple facts forces me to acknowledge another, deeper, yet equally obvious matter—it's a truth buried within the most basic levels of my subconscious. A blind certainty screaming in the deepest hours of the night, forcing me awake when all I want to do is rest.

The truth is... this quest is doomed to fail.

The truth is that all the positivity I was reveling in just a week ago is gone—that all that spin I placed on my ability to follow the path my father laid out for me was bullshit. The painful, bloody truth is that I've had it all ass-backwards because I don't understand anything.

I don't know what I was thinking. Actually, I do—I was thinking of how good it would feel to kill Daemon. But to do that, I have to find him and to be able to find him I have to know where to look; a place to start, and that starting point is knowing something useful about him.

What do I know about Daemon besides the fact that he tried to kill me and succeeded in killing my father?—absolutely nothing.

Nada. Zero. Zilch. I couldn't be more clueless if I were Cher Horowitz from the movie _Clueless_.

I don't know where those three stones came from or how they do what they do. All I know is that my father wanted me to use them to stop Daemon. It was his dying wish, and the task feels impossible because I can't stop what I can't find. And then... the stones themselves are dangerous.

Using three mysterious and powerful rocks to travel through the ether could destroy the very fabric of the universe, or so big-brained Elijah says. He's been studying the stones for days and is still just as confounded as ever. I mean, if someone as smart as Eli can't figure them out, then there's no reason to think that I can.

I'm going to fail.

The cruel thought hit with the force of a knockout blow and my body sinks further into the cushions of Elijah's crappy sofa. It's a putrid, limey green.

During that last conversation with my father at the retirement home, he was trying to tell me something important. Sure his methods were convoluted, but that was always his way. Dad knew when he was going to die and told me so. He knew how—hell, he dressed up for the occasion. He didn't even fight and now I'll never know why.

Slumping over the arm of the couch, atop the clean sheet and soft blanket, I think my father's last message is finally taking shape.

He was saying goodbye. In a way that would force me to do what he wanted _._ My having a choice in the matter was an illusion because I'd just found out he was dead. He was so spirited the last time I'd seen him, and then he was gone. And he left me these recorded messages. I missed him and there was no way I wasn't going to watch that last disc, no matter how he tried to warn me. So, he didn't leave me any choice, did he?

A lifetime of secrecy made me too curious and now I can't unsee his murder. It plays on a loop inside my mind: that bastard hunched over my fathers' stiff body. Like a nightmare, every time I close my eyes it's there.

He left me here to chase his monster. But that last morning with him, I knew nothing. I was so used to his nagging; I ignored my fathers' directions unless they came with a rap to the head. That morning as he told me he was going to die. I was so wrapped up in my own shallow problems that the obvious questions never occurred to me.

I'll never know how he knew, or why he was compelled to lie down and wait to be murdered. He might have told me what he hoped to accomplish if I'd only had the sense to ask.

"No matter where you go or what you do, for the rest of your life, you will remember this conversation..." His parting words resonate in the night.

I answered this rare vulnerability with sarcasm, screwing myself into wasting those final moments. Knowing makes it more difficult because that part of my life is gone forever. I'll never get him back.

The heavy feeling compresses like a vise, squeezing my chest until every breath is a labor.

Yes, the flaw is in my thinking. I don't pay attention when I should. Abi always said I never listen.

If I paid more attention to what people say, I might have caught Daemon's slip that day—not the one about knowing my last name before I gave it. No, I mean when he asked about my family and friends across the street.

I never mentioned anything about them and he wasn't around when we spoke so he had to have known beforehand. He must have spied on me.

A whole week went by after Elijah and I came back from our trip to the farmed hills of Ivanhoe where my dad buried the stones. It took seven consecutive days for me to piece together how Daemon slipped up.

Pathetic.

When Eli and I sat at the dining table discussing the beauty and terror of that mysterious blue, fiery, tornado-like gateway, he asked more specific questions about the conversations Daemon and I had. I told him everything about the memory loss which contributed to my belief that I wasn't really there and trying to save my little sister, how I let selfish ambition get in the way of what truly mattered.

Eli tried to feed me some crap about how I was only reacting the way any normal person would and how the accident would have happened no matter if I was there or not. His forehead creased as he explained. "Our dimensions exist in parallels, G. Therefore, when one is so similar to the other, the events that take place in the first are that much more likely to occur in the second."

I may not have a Ph.D. in Physics and Cosmology like he does, but I know when I'm being patronized. Eli's as smart as they come and he has helped me more than I can say, but he doesn't know everything.

Membranes, parallel universes, time variants, strings and bubble wrap theory. Einstein's theory of everything. All of it is theoretical bullshit.

Nonsense.

It was time travel to the past no matter what he says. That's why I couldn't stop Carrie's accident. Because it already happened. By his own admission, Eli confirmed that the past cannot be changed. And since I did all I could to save my sister and still failed I need to believe the whole scenario was a rerun. The idea of it repeating—what that means—it churns my stomach.

Still, on the off-chance that Eli is somewhat right about any of these 'universal truths,' as he calls them, I can't let my guard down. All that's left to do is keep my promise and move forward.

I'll use the three stones to take me back to what we're calling World Two—like it's a game of Mario Brothers—where the year is still 1996.

I know it's the past, but if my time there was in another plane, I have to hedge my bets and get to my alternate family. To make sure they're safe. Because if Daemon is out to get me and everyone like me, then that means I single-handedly sought out and destroyed an entire family by leading him to them. And there's no way I'm taking the risk of them being stalked and killed because they showed some human decency and looked out for me.

They've already paid for that mistake.

I will make the rocks take me back to before the accident happened. If I got one chance to change Carrie's accident, why not one more? If I still can't change what happened, then I will know for sure that it is _my_ past. But if I do stop the accident then... any world where my little sister gets to grow up will be an amazing place.

I watched the last two DVD's my dad left me. There was no information about why Daemon would want to harm him, or them, or me. But he does and has. And since I'm working with such decisively limited information, I have to cover all the bases. I'm not letting that snake hurt another person I care about.

If Daemon would go through the trouble of helping me simply to retain the pleasure of killing me himself, then I can't afford to underestimate him again.

That, of course, is another reason to go back—or over. To draw on what may be my only opportunity to find him. I would never have been in the position to harm anyone if he hadn't dragged me into his mess. Here I am no job, no car, no home, no family, and no freedom. All I've got in this world are three rocks and the promise to defend them with my life.

Daemon wants them so badly he'd kill anyone who gets in his way—helpless elderly men, women, and children. I can still see the sickening appreciation on his face as he drove headlong into a bus full of people. The way he chased the impact of the first accident—what kind of psychopath does that?

My father gave his life for those rocks. He gave his life so that Daemon wouldn't get them.

Daemon wants me dead, and he wants those stones bad enough to kill for them. I'm betting that all I have to do is show my face. If he's hunting my other family in 1996, my being there should be enough to draw him out into the open where I can waste him.

##

##

## Scream To Breathe

Elijah Thacker was just an old buddy from High School. I'd almost forgotten he existed until my dad sent me to him. Since then, he's become a great help. My only help, really.

He's been using some of the lab equipment at Cal-Tech University, where he works, to run air quality tests, checking for unusual levels of radiation or "diverse frequencies in atomic energy"—whatever the hell that means. He says there aren't any new reports of sudden electrical storms—which is what the local media called the first accident that sent me to 1996.

The news reports declared the diesel fuel truck had been struck by lightning during a freak electrical storm. This supposed storm knocked out the power for three square miles. So when the traffic lights went out, the diesel truck hit the city bus that me, and about fifty other people were riding in. The impact set us all ablaze, they said.

The truth, though, is that the energy flowing through that intersection was miraculously absorbed—and according to Eli—amplified or changed into something he called dark energy that opened a wormhole to another dimension (or took us back in time).

If the stones need energy to start with, maybe that means they don't produce it on their own.

The Fresno news station that reported on our accidental experiment in Ivanhoe called it "a freak tornado." _Freak_ is right, but I've never heard of a tornado roaming the hills. And this particular funnel cloud didn't come from the sky. It was composed of blue smoke and fire. It grew from the ground up, not the other way around. _Tornado_ it was not though I see why everyone would think that. The symbolic cone shape means tornado.

Educated Eli called that thing was a phenomenon. A vortex. A gateway that moved yet remained stationary. It pushed away everything that wasn't nailed down and set fire to everything that was.

It's still a little tough to believe that I rode that thing round-trip. The aftermath of the first ride, though, it changed my life; left me devastated.

Eli found aerial photos of the first bus accident on the internet. The burning gateway left a trail of fire the way a slug leaves a trail of slime. That tornado-like bridge absorbed all that energy and left its' mark in the form of a crater in the concrete intersection; a genuine crater that sunk the entire juncture. Eli said it took the city weeks to fix it. The diesel that nearly ran me down, it didn't explode. Well, it went "boom" but, it _imploded_. The long diesel tank on the back was crumpled to nearly half its size as if the metal were tin foil stomped by a giant shoe.

The two remaining pieces of the bus were separate but mostly intact and most of the passengers were alright. Physically, at least. Eli said there was no mention of radiation poisoning in any of the information he came across but he's sure that everyone was exposed.

He read that the police found my wallet at the scene just like Abi said, but eyewitnesses reported they saw me and a bearded man burned to a crisp—vaporized to a powder that blew away with the breeze.

Outright lies. I don't understand how a nation of free and, for the most part, intelligent people can be spoon-fed lies by the media and not a single witness raises the alarm?

And if I'm supposed to be dead, then how come they've got Homeland Security looking for me?

Any member of the public that's half-way paying attention should realize it makes no sense.

At least the event hasn't happened again. Not since I got back, anyway. We hope that means that no other gateways have been triggered, because if they haven't, then Daemon is still here and if he is, then he's not hunting my family in 1996.

I hope that he's close by, that he knows where I am and he's waiting to take another crack at me. I can't wait to get my hands around _his_ neck and watch the light drift from _his_ eyes. I'm already in hell I may as well make one, final societal contribution by getting rid of him. It may not change anything but it'll make me feel better knowing he's dead. My sister, father, and countless others aren't breathing because of Daemon. Why should he be allowed the luxury of another breath?

Eli thinks I should begin with gathering the duplicate stones because Daemon is trying to collect them. Wherever the stones are, he's most likely to turn up. Possessing the thing he wants most also increases the odds of him finding me, so, of course, I'm all for it.

Not that revenge is my only incentive. Part of me wants to ensure the stability of the timeline, or known and unknown dimensions, too, but I'd be lying if I said retribution wasn't the primary motivating factor. I may not know exactly what I'm doing, but my father believed I could do it. His faith in me is going to have to be enough.

" _What would you do if you weren't scared?"_ My dad often asked the question. Whether I was playing monopoly or football—that was the one question that determined my next move.

That line alone was what made me quit school to pursue music. Maybe that didn't turn out so well, but Dad was right. I would have regretted never trying.

Eli has been searching for the origins of the stones, for any history related to the relics but he hasn't found anything outside of the papers my father left. I don't think he expects to, either. As he said, secrets of this magnitude are kept by dead men.

Another source of frustration—I'm stuck here, doing nothing while potentially everything is on the line. If Eli's right, every single dimension, or timeline or whatever, could be on the verge of collapse because of these rocks. Daemon's unmarked use is wreaking havoc on the "fragile balance of the universe," and I can't help search for possible solutions because I can't leave this house.

Half of the free world has seen my face on the news. According to The Department of Homeland Security, in cooperation with Interpol, the FBI, and Los Angeles County Sheriffs and LAPD, I am, not one of, but _the_ most wanted man on the planet.

They've made finding me priority one. Called me a hostile, domestic terrorist. They say I'm a member of a sleeper cell embedded within the United States that's found its way into the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. Border Patrol's on high alert. House to house searches are being conducted in my old neighborhood. Anyone unlucky enough to resemble me is getting pulled over and searched.

I can't go in the back yard. I'm not allowed to talk unless absolutely necessary. When I do, I have to whisper unless the television is on—which isn't often because the residual noise makes it hard for Eli to concentrate.

I'm not allowed to speak at full volume or walk around in the daytime. I have to crawl through the house in the dark and duck under the window sills.

I can't fart unless Eli's home to take the blame.

Inside one of my dad's notebooks, he wrote that I should sharpen my survival skills. I'm already somewhat knowledgeable in the art of roughing it, so I'm not sure why. Maybe he knew I'd need the distraction.

It's nice, though, remembering how Dad and I used to go camping for a few weeks every summer. Once we camped for the whole summer. Dad said we weren't technically homeless, only filling the gap between apartments. At the time, he was looking for work and put me in charge of cooking. I learned a lot about how to find edible plants and a half dozen uses for an empty can.

Since it helps to pass the time, I've read about thirty different ways to build a shelter and assemble a tent. The problem is I can't actually build one or practice setting up the one Eli has because—again—I'm not allowed outside. Same goes for starting fires (even though I am taking matches). Today I spent a few hours with a length of rope working on different types of knots. I make a mean noose.

My feet kick at the wadded blanket.

I can't keep losing sleep; I'm leaving in a few hours. I need to shelve these frustrations, to file them away with my other, less virtuous inclinations until I find a way to deal without drinking.

I lay my head against the unforgiving arm, stretching my stiff back and legs. Finally, the pain in my stomach is beginning to ebb. Now, if I could only do something about my chest and head, maybe I could manage some rest.

How long has it been since I stood in the small bathroom talking with my father? I was gone for three weeks—even though I marked two months in 1996. When I got back, I spent almost two weeks recovering from that nifty gunshot and then everything with my dad happened, and me cutting from the hospital, ditching my car, and sacrificing Abi. Any calendar would argue that it's only been forty-five days, but it feels like years.

"If I knew you were just going to brood, I would have stayed up with you." Eli's whisper carries across the hardwood, echoing though he's speaking softly.

"Sure you would've," I whisper back, sitting up again.

He sits on the far end of the sofa with arms folded over his chest, tucking in his hands. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be." Which means, not at all but what have I got to lose?

"Are you sure you want to go alone?"

"What good would it do if we both disappear? And let's face it; Homeland Security would take the threat of interplanetary destruction a lot more serious if it came from a credible source."

"Interdimensional," he corrects.

"Right here, with all your resources is where you will make the difference."

Eli nods, and though he has asked me about coming along several times, he doesn't look disappointed when I refuse.

"We should go over the plan one more time."

"If I haven't learned by the fiftieth run-through, I never will."

"Knowledge is your first line of defense, remember?" He asks, repeating my dad's words. "Now, tomorrow, as soon as you get to World Two, what are you going to do?"

"Measure the time differential."

"Good. Then, what?"

"Stash the stones somewhere isolated." Can't risk them being on me if something happens.

"Next?"

"I find my fam-" I stop and start again, "I find the family over there and see them to a secure location."

"How?" He leans forward.

"Escort them to a place of their choosing and keeping an eye out for possible danger."

"It is imperative that _they_ choose the location. What do you do if you see Daemon?"

This is the part I strongly disagree with but give the answer he expects to save myself the trouble sitting through another lecture on the virtues of forgiveness and the seeing the bigger picture.

"I see everyone to safety, first. If he's still around, I kick his ass, take what he's got and leave him there. Alive."

He nods. "Now, tell me what you're actually going to do."

"Kill him in the most painful way I can think of, maybe use my bare hands. Take the stones and leave his carcass to rot in the street."

"More honest than I expected." He muses. "But you know, you might consider—"

"Everyone is safe as long as Daemon is engaged with me. He started all of this. It stops when he does."

"And you're just the one to stop him? The judge and jury?"

"Damn right," I assert.

"You are over simplifying—"

"And you're complicating it," My protest comes out at normal volume. Compared to the sound of our practiced whispers, it sounds like yelling. I take a deep breath and temper my tone.

"One thing at a time. I'm either making sure the family is safe or taking care of Daemon. In this case, they're the same because when he's dead, there's no reason to gather any more rocks, either. They can stay buried. When he's gone, so are my problems."

"What about the safety word? We haven't chosen one yet."

"'Frustrating' is the perfect word."

Eli's dark beard and mustache cage his wry smile. "It has to be unusual, something you or I would never come up with on our own for the best odds."

His faces lights and he lunges, disappearing into the black hall and leaving me alone to stare at the empty living room. A second later, he's back with a pad of paper and pen.

"I opened the dictionary and jotted down the first word I saw. _Macaroni_ is the safe word. Memorize it."

He stretches out his hand, offering me the pad and pen. "If there's anything you want to say to anyone, I'll see that the letters get delivered. You know, in case...."

"In case I don't come back."

The possibility should scare me, but I don't care about anything right now.

"Here's a flashlight." Eli holds a small led light fit for a key ring. "I'll be back in a minute." He drops everything on the cushion beside me and walks down the narrow hall to his office.

The safe word stares up at me from the first page.

Macaroni.

##

##

##  Burning Bridges Is My Specialty

The air inside Eli's detached garage is stifling. I've been suffocating in here since before sunup, trying to stay busy but unable to focus on anything besides the mystery of Daemon and what I learned about him before the shot heard around the world.

It's like he was chasing the impact of both accidents. Maybe he was after the energy created from his own chaos. He jumped towards the front of that diesel when it smashed into the bus we were on. The second time around, he leaned into the collision with the passenger bus and wouldn't let me buckle up. Reactions opposite of what they should be.

Inside the truck, after he tossed the driver out onto the high-speed roadway and took over, and right before the maniac dove headlong into a greyhound full of unlucky passengers, he mentioned my dad. At that moment, I thought we were both dead and there was nothing I wanted more than to see him and know he was alright.

"It makes no damn sense," I mutter.

"What?" Eli asks, careful to keep his voice low.

"I wish you'd open the door," I whisper to Eli as we work. "I can't think when it's this hot."

The electricity thrumming throughout Los Angeles is practically limitless. The fuel that opened the funnel cloud in the small town of Ivanhoe was drawn from an electric transformer. That's proof that accidents aren't the only way to gather power. But Daemon is harnessing the energy from his chaos. _Sadistic bastard._

Sweat drips onto the concrete floor as I squeeze the two sides of taut fabric together trying to help Eli close the heavy duty zipper on my hiker's backpack.

"You're looking at about a hundred pounds, give or take." He grunts, forcing the last few metal teeth together.

"Oh hell no, that's way too much." I release the sides, letting the bag gape open.

"That's the overall weight of the backpack and radiation suit combined." His sweeping gesture calls my attention to the charcoal-gray rubber suit draped across a nearby shelf.

We've spent the last two hours repacking the bag, trying to make everything I might need in any given environment accessible at a moments' notice. The weight of all this shit escaped me.

"Why do I need a gas mask?" I point at the wide nozzle of the black mask attached to the hooded suit.

"You never know what type of world you'll be heading into."

"I know exactly where I'm going."

Elijah's face takes on a frustrated scowl—a look that's become more common the past few days. "You cannot be certain the stones will take you to World Two and I refuse to assist if you won't take precautions."

The recurring, idle threat grates my raw nerves.

"At least compromise on the food supply."

"A week," he offers.

"Two days," I counter.

"Ten days," he crosses his arms.

"The tent," I growl, scanning the garage for something to hit him with.

When Eli shakes his head his dark hair flops over into his eyes. "Unpacking anything is a waste of time at this point. You better get into your suit."

"I thought I was putting it on when we get there?" I complain. "I'll suffocate."

He wags his head a little and ignores me. "It was not my intention to have you take this particular suit but the one I ordered hasn't arrived yet. I borrowed this from the University lab. It's thicker than the one I bought, but I'll replace this one with the other when it comes. In any case, it's a better quality than I could afford and better to err on the side of caution."

To save the trouble of finding a place to dump the body, I give in and get inside the hot, bulky rubber bag of a body suit.

The list of things he's stuffed inside my backpack has steadily grown since he decided to create one. What started out as a simple first-aid kit has become a set of topographical and street maps, food rations, rope, tent, compass, and a box of Band-Aids. Then, things like night vision specs, radiation suit, space blanket, non-aerosol bug spray, and multi-purpose pan began crossing his mind. He printed out an itemized inventory.

I don't know what his deal is. From what he's making me take, you'd think I was going to climb Everest.

"They were motels in 1996," I mumble.

Eli's also having me bring back soil and water samples because he has a compulsive need to turn every aspect of this pursuit into a damned discovery expedition.

It's difficult to find the nerve to complain, though, when the only thing he wants in return for his risk and expense is for me to stay alive long enough to bring him information.

We are heading outside the city, away from all man-made energy sources to open the gateway. To do that, Eli has constructed these ingenious cartons he's calling 'boom-packs.' Well, they're more like envelopes. The outer casing is thin, clear plastic about the size of a pack of gum. Inside, he's placed three thin vials—two are full of some kind of clear liquid, the third is slightly yellow—each one is a different chemical that I can't remember the name of. The inner vials are made up of super-thin, breakable glass.

All I do is gently crunch the casing and toss the packet. As long as the stones are out, they absorb the energy from the explosion and trigger the gateway.

But first, we must go north. South is only beaches and more cities until you get to Mexico. Border security has tripled since they've started searching for me.

I pull the tapered neck of the suit up around my shoulders and slide my arms inside. The material that looks so much like rubber feels different and I want to know, "what's this made of?"

Eli turns from the empty wall he's been staring at. "A meld of several materials coated with Demron."

"Demron?"

His forehead creases like he's distracted. "Protection against alpha and beta radiation, gamma radiation—it is your basic nuclear emissions shield."

"Oh," I'd ask for something more specific if I thought I could understand the answer. He's been so anal about every little detail.

"You haven't said much regarding your expectations for this trip."

"I trust you'll tell me what I need to know." Eli has read through most of the papers from the box my dad left. Every time I've walked through a gateway, I was confused afterward, so I'm depending on him and his sharp memory.

Adjusting the shoulders of the bodysuit, I seal the zipper and then slip the rubber pouch that holds the three stones into a concealed pocket sewn into the lining on the right side of my chest. Next, I slide my shoes into the galosh-like boots and follow Eli's instructions to attach them to the suit.

I feel like a giant, sweaty ball sac. I'll be lucky to fit in the car at all, much less the backseat.

"G, how do you plan to manipulate the wormholes' destination? I haven't come across any instructions in the papers from your father."

Attaching the gloves proves easier than it looks. For practice sake, I slip them on and pull closed the straps that hide the zippers. I thought the bulk of the material might make it difficult to perform fine motor movements but the grip pattern covering the outer gloves works really well.

Now my hands are sweating, like my feet.

"Well?" Eli demands.

"It will go wherever I want it to." I'm careful to keep my eyes on my gloved fingers so I don't have to see the look on his face. Doesn't stop my ears from hearing his scoff.

"Unless you've run diagnostics I don't know about, how can you be certain?"

"The explanation's a bit fuzzy." I don't know how to make clear the connection I feel. "But my destination is not a problem."

When Eli and I were walking through that pasture adjacent the orchards in Ivanhoe and those scattered cows were running, I wanted to run with them. But then I saw the unyielding power of the fiery blue funnel and all my fears disappeared. I was safe inside the eye, swathed in an encompassing calm, completely separate from the storm. The bubble seemed impenetrable. Eli was right beside me but I don't think he felt it.

He was afraid, and I was at home.

"When you saw that wormhole-vortex open, what was running through your mind?"

"It was beautiful... and mesmerizing. It was so tall and... and there were all these colors I've never seen before. It scared the hell out of me, too, but the scientist in me wanted a way to record the event; visually and atmospherically. I wanted to document the phenomenon, to replay and study every aspect."

"Did you think of jumping inside?"

Eli's mouth flies open. No sound for a second. Then he scoffs. "The constructed inconsistency of the multidimensional loop theory produces a huge improbability factor. With each dimension working on its own clock, time is different in each world, G. That means any place the gateway leads to will be in different evolutionary stages. Some ancient, some futuristic, most may not be capable of supporting human life whether in past or future bands. Simply jumping in, unprepared, is tantamount to suicide." He belts a high-pitched chuckle. "No, I absolutely never considered _jumping_ inside."

"By your calculated analysis, you considered it too risky." Now I know. All the times he asked to come with me, he hoped I'd refuse him, maybe even counted on it.

"'Risky' is a severe understatement."

"Here's what I thought: that it was deadly for sure, but it wasn't dangerous, Eli. Not to me. The firestorm kept to the exterior. Inside with the stones, it was all calm."

His eyes miraculously open wider; he looks half crazed-half terrified.

"You've made your position clear and I am taking precautions, so you won't feel responsible."

"I agreed to help; that mean I'm accountable."

"My dad is the one who told me to go, Eli. I'd do it with or without your help. These stones are my inheritance. I have a... connection to them."

Now his eyes are shrinking. His arms are crossing. "Could you explain how you intend to get to World Two?"

"The key to my destination is all up here." One finger taps my temple. "I can't explain it because I barely understand it myself, but I know I am the only one who can do this. I can make the stones take me wherever I want because... well, because it's my destiny."

Eli's expression gains some color as an awkward grin plants itself in his sticky mug and grows to full-blown amusement. "Let me see if I understand. Are you saying you share and extrasensory connection with rocks?"

"Shut up." I take up the heavy backpack and pop the trunk.

"You sounded all weepy for a second."

"You're a dick."

"'It is my destiny.'"

His terrible impression makes me laugh. I'm being serious—this whole situation is deadly serious—which is why it feels good to laugh. It reminds me of why I liked hanging around with him in High School. When things got too heavy, serious Eli would do what he could to lighten the mood.

A quick and deadly sound from outside suddenly rips through the stuffy garage, stopping my heart and our reprieve: the plucky sound of a knock.

We both freeze, waiting for an indication of who might be dropping by at the butt-crack of dawn. After a minute, another knock sounds. This time, the sound is much louder. Closer.

"Hide." Eli commands with a controlled wave and speaks again in an upbeat tone, "Hey, let me call you back. I think someone's outside."

He nods when I gesture towards the open trunk and I can only be thankful that he's so quick with an explanation for the low conversation.

With all the cautious speed I can muster, I lift my overloaded bag and move it to one side of the space while Eli makes for the side door to the garage, rather than lifting the rolling door which is where the knock came from.

As he passes, I see a cell phone is in his hand; more evidence to back up his 'it was only a phone call' ruse. It should work so long as no one's looking too close.

Sliding over the fabric of the back seat while wearing the heavy protective gear isn't as smooth as I hoped—it sticks to everything. I pull the release lever near the headrest to open the trunk from the inside, intending to crawl into the trunk from the back seat and prop up the entry way. Opening and closing the trunk would be too loud.

Sliding in and over, I scoot alongside my pack and take a deep breath.

The irony is inescapable; I am on the brink of the extraordinary, swallowing my fears and striking out to slay the giant of my life's most unexpected journey... stuffed into the trunk of Eli's green Jetta in a mock rubber suit to hide from whoever the hell is knocking.

Outside, there are two voices going back and forth. They sound masculine and far off, maybe near the back door.

In my imagination, Eli's talking with his neighbor. I've heard about him but we've never been introduced, for obvious reasons. In my imagination, he's Costanza-like; short, stalky and miserable with signs of male pattern baldness. What hair he's got is brown. He's early-fifties, wearing his soon-to-be ex-wife's terrycloth bathrobe. I imagine she left him for a man she worked with and when she packed her things, she forgot to take the robe that was left hanging behind the bathroom door. Bald Neighbor has been depressed with missing her and decided to put it on. I imagine he's very lonely, staying up 'til the wee hours cyber-stalking his love on Facebook. She'll never take him back, though. Not even if his new memberships to the gym and the hair club result in a horses' mane and iron abs.

And why should she, I bet that the soon-to-be Ex never cared what her husband looked like? No, her issues were with heaps of little things. He never called when he was going to be late and was constantly forgetting to perform tasks she specifically asked; like picking up the dry cleaning and taking out the trash. Even after she wrote notes and called to remind him.

Maybe all of that has culminated into this moment—Baldy knocking on the door—because he hasn't really tried to change. I mean, it is obscenely early yet he is at Eli's back door begging for enough grounds to brew a pot of coffee because he forgot to pick it up while he was out yesterday.

At least, that's how I imagine the visitation is going. I have to think it's nothing because if it's something our plan is shot to shit. Eli is screwed, too, being an accomplice.

The day I showed up in Eli's classroom, when he left me in his office at the university, I rifled through his papers to pass the time. There were dozens of research reports and documents riddled with scientific terminology. One paper caught my eye because the expressions in the title aren't usually found side by side. At least, I never thought of putting the terms 'Time Travel and the Bible' together.

I don't know why that's coming back to me right now. Seriously, whoever thinks about the Bible anymore?

I guess it's because Elijah is such an oddball. With his math, he's created this strange little world full of possibility, which is the essence of theoretical physics, I guess. As far as I understand his line of thinking, it seems that if the numbers add up, anything is possible.

It must be nice believing in the impossible, possessing that kind of unbreakable hope in something greater. But reality and ideology are two different things. Reality is far more unsettling.

It's freaking hot in here. Whatever Eli is doing is taking forever and this Demron bag feels like a sauna suit. I'm moist in places only a shower should touch and as distracting as that is, I can't help wondering where my journey will end.

A rocking motion signals someone getting inside the car. No one speaks, but music comes on. A girl's chanting a pop tune about no regrets and taking chances. I lower the seatback just enough to catch Eli's nervous reflection in the rearview. He glances at me through the mirror and shakes his head infinitesimally.

That's all the signal I need.

The seat back goes up to rest in a closed position without snapping shut. I start fumbling around the dark space. I'm just beginning my journey and I can't imagine where it's going to take me after World Two—1996. Before I leave, though, there's one stop I need to make in case I don't get another chance. Carrying a hundred-plus pound bag on my back, my journey may end before it starts. I've got to be able to move.

The rumble of the garage door sounds and the car rolls back.

I reach into my bulky duffel bag, feeling around. The tent goes first. It's too heavy and I don't need it. When it flips from the bag, I hear what sounds like paper crumpling and decide I need to turn on the small light on the opposite side of the trunk.

The bulk of the backpack blocks most of the light so I pat the bottom of the trunk around my bag to make sure nothing I need has escaped. The pages at the bottom of the bag are copies from one of my dad's journals. Eli recommended I read them when I get the chance.

The car pulls to one side in a turn, pressing me against my bag as I zip it back up and ready myself for what has to happen.

Peeking out from behind the seatback, I see Elijah's hand on the car stereo. The music's volume doubles. Eli adjusts the mirror until I can only see the reflection of his mouth, forming the word "floor."

This is nothing like we planned. I was supposed to ride back here, just like this, but we were going to review our plan on the way out of the city. He's a plan-junkie. Something is wrong.

Who was it that knocked on the garage? What was that conversation about?

While lowering the seat back all the way, I search for signs of disapproval. Finding none, I shove my backpack out through the hole from the trunk and slide it onto the bench of the adjoining seat and then pull myself into the backseat of Eli's car, making sure to stay below the line of the windows.

Eli clears his throat. When I check in the mirror, he repeats the silent word, "floor _._ " When I look down, I see it. On the rubber mat in front of me is a small, black box like the kind used to hold index cards. When I open the lid, the inside is a sectioned block of dense foam. Lifting the top section, I find the boom packs. It looks like he's giving me three. One for leaving, one for coming back, and an extra in case I foul up.

Leaving the box on the floor, I carefully slip the three small packets into the hidden pocket of my radiation suit with the stones. No chance of them going off in there. The rocks suck up any and all energy within their perimeter. Eli was going to test them before I left, to see if he could get a more accurate range. Somehow, _about_ eleven yards isn't good enough.

Staying as low as possible, I slip the suits hood up over my head, then my shoulders into the straps of the backpack.

When the car stops at a traffic light, I have to veer further away from the plan, in order to protect my co-conspirator whose risked everything but won't be coming with me.

Eli doesn't see me sliding up just behind him until he checks his rearview mirror again. Then his eyes go wide.

"Sorry," is all I say and I mean it. I don't want to hurt him, but this has to look real.

One shot to his temple. Eli's head rockets to one side, smacks the window, and his foot relaxes. I pull the emergency brake and fly from the back of the compact car.

The lanes of traffic are congested with early morning commuters and their horns. I head for a grouping of trees on the opposite side of the road. Crossing the third lane, several car lengths back, I spot a black SUV with all four doors swinging wide open.

A man with a familiar crew cut hops from the drivers' side. He's stalwart, jumping over and around surrounding cars, making his way towards me and gaining fast.

Tires screech as two more men in suits appear in the roadway.

My backpack is strapped to both shoulders, but not buckled around my waist. Every kick in my stride jerks the eighty-pound burden up and down.

The trees that block the roadside from the adjacent property loom closer. In between the low branches, I think I see something but my momentum's too strong. My body slams into a high chain-link fence as I fight my way through the drooping branches.

My boots can't fit inside the wire fence and I am so screwed.

When I turn my head to get a better idea of my position, I'm already surrounded by four... five, no, six different suits. All bearing arms, all pointing at me. They see the chain-link fence and think I've got nowhere to go.

They're waiting, thinking I have no other option.

The stretched black pouch falls from my pocket when I open it. Voices call out my full name, screaming their demands.

"Gerald Jasen Springer! Freeze! Hands in the air!"

One man assures me any sudden move will be taken as a threat. Another assures me that they have no problem opening fire.

The stones are more beautiful than I remember. Not quite mineral, not quite crystal but something in between. Maybe a weird combination of the two or some new element. One black, one white, and one red. I hold the small ovals in one palm and place the charge in the other before slowly obeying the command to turn and face the men surrounding me.

"I'm not a terrorist," I call out, staring into their grim faces. My radiation mask muffles the sound.

"Drop it!" The familiar man with a crew cut says and I remember that I saw him in the corridor of the hospital. He's the closest to me and probably the agent in charge.

"I haven't done anything." I insist and lightly squeeze the plastic envelope, breaking the delicate glass the exact way Eli told me. On one end so the chemicals mix slowly.

"Drop it!" Crew Cut repeats.

This makes me smile because that's what I was planning to do. The non-threatening square falls between me and the semi-circle of suits.

It's crazy how much the mind can absorb in a single second. The slender carton of nitroglycerin explodes the moment it kisses the roadside. DHS agents dive left and right in tandem and cover their faces. The instantaneous, violent grace of the blue funnel appears before me, opening like a window and stretching up into the clouds. A long, bending hall that takes only one step to walk through.

The calming bubble envelopes me and I feel at home.

The heat of the stones is barely felt through my gloves. They glow and burn from inside my hand, protecting me from the hail of bullets as I step through the fire and into the rainbow wheel of the wormhole.
Part 4

##

##

## World Two

ELI SAID TO PAY attention and I did.

Crossing over is like opening a door. The violent conduit disrupts the plane I'm on the same way a door swings back into a room; creating a single-sided breach. Once I cross the threshold, there's only uninterrupted calm and I am standing in the same spot but not the same place.

The trees behind me are still there, only smaller, younger. Saplings. The fence, once concealed by branches, is now visible. Green slats run through the chain link obstructing public view of the private resting places on the other side.

The zipper on the rubber bag draws closed just as overwhelming nausea engorges my throat. I double over, gripping the pain in my stomach as the crisp world blurs. Spit glands work overtime as I flip the hood back to draw breath. The air's cold and inviting.

I forgot to close the seal on my hood before activating the gateway and I feel sick, maybe from radiation. Guess I'll find out the next time I brush my teeth.

From the roadside, the lazy sun looks like its marking late afternoon. I don't know why I feel like I'm forgetting something.

There's something about being nauseous that makes me want to curl into a ball and die. It's the worst kind of sick. It sucks the joy out of everything because you can't get past the overwhelming feeling that what's inside is going to make its' way outside at any moment.

My stomach rolls, amplifying the disgusting feeling. I can pretty well tolerate any type of cold symptom: sinus pain, congestion, headaches, fever, chills, whatever. But the flu, I hate. Because every time I get sick, I puke and I hate puking more than anything. I especially hate that I could have prevented this if I'd just sealed my damned hood. There's no point in wearing this rubber blanket if I'm not taking the time to seal it up.

But I wasn't thinking beyond leaving evidence to convince DHS that Eli wasn't my willing accomplice. The only things that came to mind were hitting him and making a break for it. It probably didn't work. They had to have already suspected he was helping me; otherwise, they wouldn't have been tailing him.

He better not puss out. I'm counting on him.

It's time to stop second guessing and focus on the objectives: not puking and finding Daemon.

Murderous thoughts paint visions in my head—I close my eyes to better enjoy the show. I imagine myself shooting him—what it would feel—as my gloved hand grazes the skin grown over the hole that Daemon's bullet left behind. A gun would do nicely. It would have to bigger than the one he used. I'll leave him at least three new holes.

My images are interrupted by the memory of Eli's petulant instruction. _"Mark the time differential!"_

I roll up onto folded legs, open my backpack and search for the stopwatch. I'm supposed to make notes on the gap between seconds the moment I get to the new place. Shit. Less than five minutes into my mission and I'm already screwing up.

The watch isn't in the place I left it and I don't want to dig. It's probably too late, anyway. I crawl towards the long shadows of the young trees, locked in a roll of dry heaves and collapse.

* * *

Twenty minutes... maybe. It feels like twenty minutes have passed but the sky says it's been less and I feel much better.

I've got to do it or I'll never hear the end of it.

I move just enough to get a peek down the street at a traffic light. When the green changes to red, I count and keep going until it changes back to green. It isn't as accurate as the stopwatch, but it'll have to do. After counting to nearly three-hundred, the light finally changes.

Once my bulky suit is off and folded, I set it inside the bag and find there's barely enough room. Makes me glad I went with my gut and left some stuff behind.

My everyday runners fit easily between the chain-links of the fence. It's a quick climb over. Inside the gated cemetery, out of the view of the nosey passers-by, I can gather my thoughts. I pick a spot in the fading sun noting that the biting wind is really picking up.

In the notebook I've sworn to keep, I jot a brief apology for forgetting to mark the time differential but add that at home, the traffic light at this particular intersection has never stayed red past... I can't remember, but I'll count it out when I get back.

Eli mentioned something about this place. About comparing the amount of time I was gone to the passage of time here. He used a ratio. My fingers acknowledge the numbers before I consciously think them. Seven-point-six to... I don't know. My head's fuzzy.

A penetrating gust sweeps across the naked grass. My attention's drawn to a rustling tree branch waving over a row of trimmed brown hedges that outline a large section of plots. In the center, sets the familiar mausoleum. The entrance is marked by a dry fountain and saintly statues. Large thorns encase the damp remains of rose bushes.

Turning, I find the expected flag flying at full mast over the old cannon. The war memorial at this cemetery has a small plaque mounted on the side of the canon that glistens in the afternoon sun. Behind that, a marble bench curves around the flagpole. The sides are adorned with plaques bearing the names of fallen soldiers.

Carrie was buried near here, so, of course, I have to search for the mound or new sod that marks all fresh graves. The cemetery is neat and clean, despite the fall leaves littering the 'Garden of Remembrance.'

A narrow lane for funeral processions separates each section of green. As I cross from one to the next, there are clumps of wet dirt spoiling the grass around row three. Some clumps are large enough have freshly stomped waffle patterns in them. There's no mound in sight, but a green canopy is sitting near the seventh row in back, two spaces from the end near the cannon. Her spot.

My pace quickens.

Eager and awful, my mind produces a perfect picture of her gravestone, though I haven't seen it for years. It was the usual marble, adorned with two angels holding her framed picture. Below, it had her name, Carrie Allison Springer, and then the phrase, 'She sleeps with Angels.'

Clusters of scattered soil stick to the soles of my shoes as I cross between the rows of markers. The sickening feeling grows as I close in on my little sisters' fresh grave. So fresh that, the headstone has yet to be placed on her plot. My vision locks on a wooden dowel sticking up out of the ground. At the top, a small, white ribbon bears the printed name of this one forgotten soul... _Henry Gale_.

Wait a second.

Recounting the rows of headstones, I double-check the line of the cannon and the rose garden. Is it possible I've been wrong all this time? No, I recall the spot. If anything, it's the wrong cemetery. All of them look the same. Grass, headstones, and a flag; most have memorial cannons, too. If the brain fog would lift, I'd be able to tell if this is the right place or not. Probably not, as this is the only fresh grave at the moment.

I won't let myself hope. The wreck happened the same way as before so the same result follows. Unless I'm actually in the right place at a different time, say before her accident? But that doesn't make sense because Henry Gale is in her spot.

Choosing to live with that unknown, I make for the easiest way out of the cemetery, through the back. Climbing a few stone walls, I cut through one gated community after another, then another couple of alleys and come out about a half mile away from the entrance to my old subdivision. To be sure, I pull out a city map and a sweatshirt.

The winding road leading to my childhood home doesn't take long to find, only to reach. Along the way, the scenery is confusing. House after house is decorated with lights. It's dark out, but I know it wasn't even Halloween when I left. I spent about three weeks at home in 2012, while back here, in 1996, Mrs. Gluckman has already put out the Hanukkah lights.

That can't be right. Better find a newspaper.

Memory Lane is quiet. The brown house where I slept for almost a month, across from my childhood home, is still empty. A bleak 'For Sale' sign swings in the sharp breeze.

Neglected grass crunches underfoot as I swerve to avoid that spot in the front yard, the spot where she landed. Crossing the corner of the driveway, I open the front gate and notice that the yard stays black. _Odd_. I'm on the front porch realizing the motion activated light out front never turned on.

Actually, there are no lights on anywhere. No cars on the driveway. The rising wind and cold keeps me from settling in to wait for someone to return. I grab the fake rock with the spare key hidden inside the fig tree planter beside the front porch.

A howl-like squeeeeaak marks the front door opening. I reach for the wall switch and flip it up. Nothing. Dropping my bag to the floor, I wade through the black, aiming for the sofa since I still remember where that is. The plush velveteen material presses against my cheek.

Christmas lights. It would have to be well past Halloween, near Thanksgiving at least, for Christmas lights to be out.

When the tunnel opened, I was thinking of this place. Under all that satisfaction at outsmarting those agents, I was remembering, and I wished to come back to the last morning. About an hour before I realized the day. Her death day. But part of me was thinking of her funeral, too. Maybe because I was on the road that I thought ran alongside her cemetery.

Memories came in flashes as I stepped through the gateway. I saw her simple shroud and the flowers in her hands as she laid low in the small church. Pink ribbons wrapped around pigtails. When I kissed her goodbye, the silken material brushed my cheek. I hadn't thought of that moment in years and just when I needed to ponder her beaming grin as she played with Mary in the park, that miserable moment marched in and took over.

Concentration is the key. I must focus harder next time.

* * *

There is no electricity which means no coffee.

It's morning and I'm staring blankly into my parents' barren dining room. My grandmother's hutch is there, but the fancy dishes are gone. The cupboards are also empty, like the bedrooms.

I don't know what to do next.

The Christmas lights don't make sense. Neither do the uncollected newspapers rolled up on the front porch—nine in total—and the mailbox is stuffed. The most recent date on the newspaper is December 14th. The postmarks on the corners of their envelopes stretch back to the second.

I grab a pen from the coffee table and jot numbers in the margin of the newsprint. From the time of the first bus accident to the day I was shot on the side of the highway—it was three weeks. I was at home less than a month recovering, grieving and then preparing to leave.

If Eli is right and I have not traveled back in time, if I'm somehow inside another world and its forty-eight days after my sister's death, then Halloween, her funeral, and Thanksgiving have already passed. Still doesn't explain Carrie's missing grave, though, unless I really was in the wrong cemetery.

Inside my parents' room, the closets are bare. There are a few broken hangers and a garment bag with a moth-eaten brown suit I don't recognize. My old room has no tapes or CD's and the stereo is gone. Last time I came through this room, everything but the stereo was coated in dust. The bathroom is empty, save a half bar of crusty soap resting on the corner of the shower. Carries bed, like the other three, hasn't been made. Brightly colored cartoon horses cover her rumpled bed sheets that lay tossed in a pile on the floor. Her overstuffed chest of toys is in the corner and all of her clothes are gone. The way I remember it, my mother never touched Carrie's things. She shut her bedroom door and went off to have her nervous breakdown. My dad and I had to clean it out when the bank seized the house. Carrie's bed had been made by me that last morning.

Back at the dining table, I sift through the mail. There was one envelope in particular that just seemed out of place.

The Department of Motor Vehicles seal decorates the left-hand corner of the envelope I'm tearing open.

Inside, I find my—well, younger me—little G's first drivers' license. The picture is straight-up awful. I've never been accused of being photogenic either, but his teeth look way too big. I remember right before the heavily perfumed woman behind the DMV counter took my picture, I sneezed. She must have felt bad because she took a second one. My eyes were closed for that one, too, but there was no way she was going to take a third and I didn't have horse teeth like little G.

I touch the plastic card, run my fingers over the smooth front and try to think. No struggling-for-independence teenager of the nineties would leave his first license behind. Having it was the ultimate thrill, a mark of passage into adulthood. Why would it be here if he's not? This crappy picture isn't a good reason.

The dishes in the sink reek of rot.

"Where did you go?" I ask the empty house, trying to imagine what state this family was in when they took off. Without more clues, all I can do is sit on the small couch and think.

Part of me worried that, despite Eli's assurance to the contrary, Daemon might have beaten me here, but the lack of mess and personal items, well it just looks like they left in a hurry.

Last time I was here, the house was empty, too. Everyone was gone at the hospital, making burial arrangements for Carrie when I left my mother a note inside her writing case. It was the one thing I knew she'd take to the loony bin. But that writing case is still on the high shelf over the incomplete set of Funk and Wagnall Encyclopedias. We had A through K and P.

Gripping the smooth, dark box, the lid slides back easily to reveal the note I left for her, that she apparently never found. This plucks at me, prickles the skin on my arms.

Reopening my note, I read through the short plea and one, very significant detail surfaces over the fog in my brain: this was not the only note I left that day.

My father used to keep important papers next to his underwear so back inside my parents' room so I pull out each dresser drawer. Most are empty.

Damn.

Checking every panel, scouring every surface for a clue. When the bottom drawer comes up empty, I'm out of ideas and patience. The drawer sails into the stripped bed and bounces, smacking the drywall. I stare at the v-shaped dent and think.

Everything but the shooting is still fuzzy. I wrote something about going somewhere. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was leaving a note that might send my father to some place I've never been. A place he was sure I'd been once before.

Where was it he thought he knew me from?

Out back, all the switches inside the fuse box are in the 'on' position, but the main power's been shut off. I flip it up and walk back into a lighted house. While waiting for the heater to warm me up, I bundle up in my sweatshirt and try to piece together the last hours I spent here.

Outside the living room window, a small bird sits alone on a wire, singing and ruffling his feathers. No flock in sight. Just him, in the dead of winter.

More out of habit than anything, I take my smoke on the driveway, staring at the high brick wall that marks the end of the dead end street.

The time I spent here was precious and tragic. Is it possible that the time I spent with them altered their future? Has everything gone all "Doc Brown" and there's some strange alternate timeline or has my little sisters' final resting place simply changed?

My dad could've decided to have her moved when we moved. Maybe. But that doesn't explain the house full of furniture. When we left, it was a full year later. And we put everything in storage—minus the crap in the garage.

My mother's writing box is still here. Does that mean she isn't a deserter? Did she change her mind and take everyone with her instead?

Seeming so devoted and demure, my mother called me by my proper name the last time we spoke. I was standing very near the place I am now, on the driveway. We talked as she held her giant key ring.

Bits of conversation dribble back as I stomp out my cigarette.

My mother looked puzzled when I asked about her 'I love New York' key chain.

"Isn't that where you two met... Crosby Street, the apartment over the bakery?"

That's it.

The note I left for my dad.

I told him to go back to the place where he was before.

"New York."

#

##

##

## Other Means Of Travel

Inside the protective night, I move through the parking lot, searching for the most common car in an unremarkable color. Near the entrance to the theater, several groups of teens are chattering and having fun. As they pass, I notice another group getting out of a beige sedan only a few spaces from another of similar make and model.

I stop and light up. Smoking. Waiting.

In the mid-nineties security cameras in mall parking lots were not as common they'd become in the years following 9/11. Even the lots that had them didn't have high-definition. So all I have to do is wear winter gloves and a baseball cap, which don't stand out in this weather anyways. Once the lot clears, I'm golden.

With a screwdriver from my pocket, I make my way over to the furthest lot corner of the lot, just inside the parking structure, and get to work on the first license plate. It comes off quickly and I'm on my way to the second car of similar make and model, three rows away. The second plate sticks a little and I have to stop and pretend to search for my keys while another group of people passes. After the coast is clear, I get back to work.

The plates are exchanged in no time. Next step, I cough and simultaneously jam the screwdriver into the drivers' side door lock. The lock sticks, so I jam the thing in there a few more times until the lock pops open and I climb inside. The ignition proves less trying since all I have to do is pop off the cover of the steering column to cross a few wires. The Honda's got just over a half tank of gas when I hit the freeway.

This is how it goes.

Changing cars when I need to, exchanging plates with other vehicles of similar models and color. I don't know how effective the method is against getting caught, only that I was never caught when I used to do things like this for fun. My first and only year of College was pretty wild.

A couple times I have to make major changes. At a gas station in Oklahoma, as one guy goes inside to pay for the gas he's just pumped, I jump in his car. A few miles outside of town, I get nervous and ditch the truck. It's only a few hours of walking until I come upon a bar with a row of motorcycles. I find the biggest, baddest looking bike and take the one parked next to it after switching the plates.

The trip is exhausting and disgustingly long, driving day after day, but Eli's maps come in handy more than once.

* * *

One morning, as dawn breaks, I'm looking upon a familiar skyline—the one I have ever and never seen.

New York City.

On the other side of the bridge, the crowded streets are congested. Far worse than any LA traffic. The sun is blocked by tall buildings; the streets are noisy and confusing, bustling with pedestrians and taxis. People of every kind are yelling or jogging, walking, working, and eating.

I pull to the side of the road to buy a local map and start searching. Once I find Crosby Street, which is semi-residential, and start looking for an apartment over a bakery. Shouldn't be difficult, but it is. There's more than one section to Crosby.

After only an hour in the city, I am at a loss. I have never seen so many apartments so tightly packed and nearly everyone has some sort of business operating on the ground floor. Dry cleaning shops, bakeries, delis, barbers, and tailors... I'm in way over my head.

I have searched nearly every building, asked everyone I came across. Other tenants and managers, rude strangers. I've called out their names. All for nothing.

I have no idea how or where to continue. I know my mother said New York City, but seem to remember something about a village, too. As far as I can tell, though, I'm in lower Manhattan.

Grumbling gasps catch my attention.

Several people look towards me and I turn around as a shrill cry, unmistakably a woman's, sails through the crowded street. A man with a hot dog cart collapses his giant yellow umbrella and starts wheeling away. Several people rush from a doughnut shop out into the street and I know that is the place that the scream came from.

I have to fight my way through a group of people standing near the doorway watching to get inside the tiny shop.

Inside I find a man, tall and menacing, in a trench coat. His back's to me as he looks down at someone crouching in a corner beneath a small table. I think I recognize the sneakers and waste no time grabbing the nearest chair. The back of it is shaped like a raised doughnut with pink frosting and sprinkles. I send it crashing down and as soon as the man hits the ground; I realize he isn't Daemon. He's got no beard, and he's old. He isn't wearing any clothes under his trench coat. And the boy hiding under the table isn't little G. He isn't a boy, either, but a woman with short hair whose traumatized because she's just been flashed by a flabby stranger.

As people gather to congratulate and chastise me, sirens begin to wail.

When I turn to search for a way out the back he's suddenly, inexplicably, there. My own Methuselah is speaking to me.

"Jonas, come with me."

This version of my father is so like and unlike my own dearly departed, with the same frame and renewed vigor—the man that baffled and frustrated me to near frenzy with his passivity.

The relief in finding him is overwhelming. Like a spark in my chest that grows warm with joy. But it's short-lived. Drowned out by more sirens, which must be out front by now because it's all anyone can hear. My younger father, his eyes wide with worry, pulls me into the nearest hallway and points up a nearby stairwell. I follow lightly with a spring in each gait. A contrast to his notably grave stride.

Once we reach the landing, he sets a hand on my shoulder. "Is everything alright? I didn't expect to see you so soon."

It is _so_ good to see him. His arms rest at his sides while mine give a crushing embrace.

"This is... new."

I hear his discomfort and hold my laugh. He's so much the same and yet not—my familial stranger. Holding him is a double-edged sword. It helps fill the void and eases a little pain. Even if he's not my dad, even if the embrace wasn't uncomfortable for him I have to let go.

"Jonas, let go."

What really hurts is listening.

"Where is he?" His brow is furrowed. The old, bushy mustache is no more than a shadow, a pause between shavings.

I don't know exactly how I know, but I can tell by the look, Daemon is the nameless fear he referred to in our previous conversations. He had called him something else. Said he tried to kill him before we met. Daemon tried to kill me, too. Then, succeeded with my father, his future self, or counterpart if Eli is right.

The present fear in his face is easy to read as he makes no attempt to hide it when I answer.

"I lost track of him and came here to make sure you're all safe."

He nods, turning to lead me up the next flight of stairs. At the next landing, he hooks left down a narrow passageway. We pass one door marked in some type of Hindi script and enter the second.

It's an empty room with an open window. My forty-ish father climbs through the open window and out onto a fire escape, bidding me to follow.

Across the alley is a nondescript brick building that looks exactly like the one we're in. There's another fire escape zigzagging up the side. Windows with people in them stare out in various directions. Laundry sets in windows to dry even though there's ice on the sidewalks.

If not for dumb luck I never would have found this place.

"Where is everyone?" I ask.

He gives direction with his eyes. "What I've got left is down at the end of the hall."

_Carrie_. The loss feels like yesterday.

"I'm so sorry about what happened."

He draws his hand from his hip pocket and sets it over mine. "You did what you could. Now, I need you to do one more thing."

Money. It's a big wad of cash held together by a rubber band. It was in his hand, but now it's resting in mine. "What's this?"

My fathers' eyes are dull, his tone somber. "I need you to take them away. Would you, Jonas? Hide them where he can't find'em."

"What? You want me to take your family? Why?"

"Because he's here, Jonas."

"In what universe is abandoning them a good idea?"

"Listen to me. I saw him in the city this morning. It's only a matter of time. He always finds me."

"Gerry, there are millions of people in New York, how could he possibly know where to find you? I'm the one who sent you here and I barely could."

The air is heavy, quiet despite the noise of the city.

He gives a sorrowful grin. "When he's come for me, I—"

"That's why I'm here." I toss the wad of money back at him. "I'm not going to let him anywhere near you or them."

He shoves the roll back at me, pleading. "No. I can't keep running."

I press the roll of cash back, again. "What makes you think he'll stop with just you?"

"He won't. That's why you have to take them. Put them somewhere that he can't find them!"

I shake my head. "That's not going to happen and you're wasting time arguing. You have no idea what you're up against!"

My father squares his shoulders. "Why do you think I walked away? Because everyone who's taken this cross has ended up dead. That's the way it is for all of us. I accept that, but there's nothing that says I have to play by his rules."

As my sentient father speaks, a spot catches my eye. A twinkle or fleck of yellow. A ray of sunshine or a splotch of bright paint between the dull red bricks across the alley, but it's out of place. Too deep in the shadows between buildings.

Instantly the splotch transforms from a speck to a fiery sheet that engulfs the corner of the building. A billow of black smoke sweeps up into the sky as Gerry and I stare.

In three heartbeats, the corner of the parallel building bursts away. A massive wind shoots chunks of the outer wall onto the street below. The sound is a wallop to my ear drums, the hot wind blasts us back through the window. Somehow, I keep my eyes on Gerry. He hits the ground, facedown, in the empty room, but I keep going, tumbling all the way into the hall.

The sound doesn't stop. It makes the entire building shake. I work up onto my feet, calling out for Gerry. Alarms are blaring, people are screaming, and the man I once thought of as my younger father is still lying face down. He's just a few feet away, but I can tell he can't move. His head is twisted too far to one side. With him lying on his stomach, I shouldn't be able to see this much of his face. Still, his eyes are closed, and that gives me hope because I know from experience that when a person dies their eyes don't close. They just relax and stay half-open like Death is trying to play some sick joke.

I'm moving, touching his neck, checking for breath. His side and back are covered in bits of brick and drywall but none of it looks to have even torn his clothes.

I call out, yelling for my younger self. I don't know where anyone is. I can't tell which way the stairs are. When little G appears, so scared and small, he's talking and I can't hear a thing. How can I hear the ring of sirens in the street and not the sound of his voice less than a foot away?

"Take him inside!"

Little G's lips are still moving.

"I can't hear you!" I point out the window. "There was an explosion!" I say, grabbing his arms while little G grabs his father's legs.

Another _boom_ racks the building across the street and the blowback knocks us both off our feet.

Alarm bells halt as the building groans. The lights go out, and pieces of what I guess are the walls or ceiling form dust around us. The lights flash back on, and bits of plaster and debris cover everything like fresh snow. Even the people running past us to get to the stairwell.

It's like damned war-zone.

It takes too long to get them both inside what looks like a one room apartment on the opposite side of the building. We set him down behind the door and I check Dad over once more. In the crease of his elbow, I think I feel a pulse.

"He's going to be fine." I lie, checking my backpack. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Do _not_ open this door for anyone, no matter what! If anyone tries to break-in, hide!"

With that, I am back out in the hallway, guessing right at the direction of the stairs. The donut shop I came through on my way in has lost its glass storefront and half the dining area. There are a few people hiding under tables near the back.

Out on the street, its chaos. People are running in every direction. Some carrying large TV sets, some with no more than tear-stained faces. Others are holding themselves and crying while more people are staring. Passers-by are shouting for the people inside to come out. One woman is helping a man bandage his head with her shirt sleeves.

A crowd is gathered on the road in front of the building across the alley, where the explosions are coming from. It's a mix of uniformed police, firemen, and concerned citizens—some with injuries. They seem to be coordinating, trying to figure a way to get to the people trapped on the higher floors inside the building while others run out from the one I've just left.

Fire trucks are arriving. Men in bright yellow and orange jackets extend hoses, spraying at the blaze but it doesn't look like its helping. There are also cops trying to clear the perimeter, grabbing and ordering everyone that's in the way to clear a path.

_Absolute chaos_ , I think and then understand smacks me over the head: it's because Gerry was right. Daemon is here.

The adrenaline of this revelation clears my head and I survey my surroundings with renewed focus. Watching flames lick up the side of the building and inexplicably halt at the top corner of the roof near the back of the building.

I fight my way through the heat of the alley to find a better spot to check out this anomaly. Maneuvering around a stinking dumpster, I cover my face with my sleeve and look up. Directly overhead, the uncharacteristic blunt edge of a grouping of flames catches my eye.

It's as if the fires pressing against an invisible wall. Just above the stunted end of the flames stands a dark figure with outstretched arms. He's about seven stories up, shrouded in smoke and ash, but I can tell who it is. His tattooed head and shaggy beard are unmistakable.

I curse his name.

The figure sails from the edge of the rooftop into the air and floats down with the ashes. Unhurried and light among the bedlam he's fashioned.

I shouldn't be surprised by his ability to do impossible things. I've seen it before, but damn, what a party trick. He's practically flying.

But I won't gape. I won't give him the satisfaction.

When he hits he hits the ground I'll be in perfect attack position.

A screeching sound shoots up from the alley behind me. When it gets too loud to ignore, I risk a quick glance back and find that long metal dumpster screeching towards me. Swinging to one side, I should miss it completely, but the damned thing turns to widen its' path like its' possessed and out to get me.

What the hell?

I jump back and over, veering behind an old wooden electric pole. The metal dumpster hits the post and bounces back.

Looking back to Daemon, I find him ten yards down the alleyway. His feet are planted far apart. His black trench coat swings in the hot wind coming off the blaze. The sound of sirens and cries cannot drown out his evil cackle.

He raises one arm, his hand half open as if clutching an invisible object. I notice a shadow over my head as his raised hand forms a fist.

And then I hear it: the loud crackle of protesting metal. Like a car accident. The shadow that fell upon me shifts and I look up to find the dumpster hovering over my head.

I'm hearing it break, watching it crumple like a toy car under an elephant. The mass shoots to one side, ramming into the side of the burning building, sending bits of brick into the alleyway and then shoots back, straight at me.

I jump away, but the wooden electric pole I was hiding behind is cracked in two. Live wires spark and trickle to the ground amid the rubble as what's left of the dumpster smashes down, nearly on top of me. I roll away, tucking my knees to my chest.

This is crazy. He can levitate and throw massive metal objects?

Scrambling back to my feet, I find Daemon turned away and tilting into a full run.

I'm on him in before he makes the end of the block.

Stretching for his coat tails, the filthy material slips through my fingers before I can grasp it and the distance between us grows.

"Daemon!"

His kicks are high and quick; a blur breaking into the roadway in between alleys.

When he hits the middle of the three-lane road, Daemon turns his head, staring into oncoming traffic. More horns sound off as his right arm shoots out. His open palm slams down, flattening the front end of a taxicab just before it hits him as if he's protected by some invisible wall. The front end of the cab folds like a lawn chair. The windshield bursts. The top half of the driver flops out.

Daemon stops his running and turns back staring unconcerned, with dead eyes while the rest of the roadway becomes a parking lot. People are jumping from their cars and shouting, some angry, others afraid, but he doesn't see any of it. He's watching me. I realize I'm standing still, too, watching.

What the hell is wrong with me? He's there for the taking: the nemesis to my superhero. I came here to kill him yet, I can't find the balls to close the deal.

A motorcycle cop appears just behind the crashed taxi. The cop steps off his bike just as Daemon reaches out the same hand. It's clutching air again, and the motorcycle lifts off the ground as if it's following Daemons' direction. He's the conductor of orchestral chaos, lifting the bike ten feet high without touching it. The cop isn't moving but has an idle hand resting on his holstered gun while his mouth gapes in blundering surprise.

"Shoot him!" I scream as Daemon swings his hand forward, launching the motorcycle forward in a mirrored move. It rips toward the mouth of the alley. Right. At. Me.

I jump away, landing a shoulder roll and come up on my knees, still on the sidewalk. Every person in the vicinity has got their mouth hanging open now. Some are releasing screams but most are shocking into silence.

Daemon has already twisted into a run, heading into the next alley before I make it into the crowded street, but I catch up in a heartbeat because screw him. He's going down, even if I have to go with him.

It's hard to catch my breath. I haven't quit smoking and it's going to cost me. Ignoring the pains in my side and chest, I push myself to move faster down the next alley, knocking past more trash cans and hopping fences. The sounds of sirens and the stench of rubber dissipates as we leave the burning neighborhood.

Building after building flies past. I can't close the gap and Daemon's showing no sign of wear. It doesn't matter how far or fast he runs, I've found him and he won't get away.

Up ahead, the alley ends. Daemon turns his head, I guess to gauge my distance.

I push harder. Breathe deeper. Move faster. My side aches.

Suddenly, he cuts into a doorway. I slow but not enough to make the turn without hitting the frame. My good shoulder stings.

Inside, the small building looks like another enclosed apartment complex. I come around the corner in time to see the hem of Daemon's jacket slink past a second tight corner.

No, it's a stairwell.

My legs are burning as I tromp upward, following the shadowy figure as it cackles.

Asshole.

Round about the seventh flight, the spiral ends in a doorway. I shove through it and find myself on a flat rooftop.

The sudden bright of the unencumbered sky blinds me. Fighting not to blink, I make out the sounds of feet slapping and charge towards them.

There's a network of air ducts, tubing, and air conditioning units to maneuver around. I come around one particularly large component and stumble upon a brawl.

The sight of a guy in jeans stops me. He's not Daemon, but I do catch his trench coat flapping in the breeze.

It's Daemon and another guy. They're... fighting.

That isn't the right word. A fight implies some level of opposition. From what I can tell, the poor jeans-wearing bastard he's got in his charge doesn't stand a chance.

Daemon is no more than five feet away. He has a short, fat knife in one hand and the guy's throat in the other. He's shoving him against the side of a bulky air conditioning unit. The guy's young, maybe twenty. His feet are wiggling as he begs. A few feet past them, a young girl is covering her mouth with her hands.

I've arrived just in time to understand that Daemon is stabbing the boy. I don't see the blade, only the end of the handle as Daemon punches it into the guy's chest. Three times.

The man falls on a pile of torn wrapping paper. Below his elbow is a crushed party hat.

I've seen a thousand things worse than this on television. I just saw a guy in a taxi eat glass for breakfast. But this... this is something else. This is a genuine murder. Up close and personal. And disgusting.

Even though I know too well that Daemon is a murderer, it's still surreal when he turns to face me. I watched the video of him choking my father but am still stunned at the brutality; his disgusting satisfaction. The same look I saw when he wrapped his filthy fingers around my dad's neck.

"Where are my stones?" He hisses.

I don't know what's wrong. I've thought almost constantly about this moment, pursued it across time and space and when Daemon turns to me, all I see are the red eyes of the snake tattoo on his scalp. They're staring at me, burning into me, like the eyes of an evil painting. They don't move but they see. They calculate everything.

My skin is crawling from his sickening grin. It's probably the same look he had when he shot me. I might know for sure if he hadn't done it in the back.

"You're a coward." Daemon says, slowly stalking towards me.

My arsenal's not what I hoped it might be. Apparently no one stashes guns in their cars. The only weapons I have are the charges Eli made and the stones. I had to bring those, in case he got away.

Inside my mind, I picture the fear I'm feeling is black liquid, pouring into an empty bottle. I picture myself tossing it away, leaving only the rage.

Good.

"That's big talk from someone who constantly attacks people who can't fight back. Have you ever fought on an even playing field?" His gaze shifts to the guy who's become a listless, bloody pile. "I bet you gave him a chance to leave quietly."

"Is this even enough?" He takes off his trench coat with a challenge, tossing it behind him. That bloody knife lands on top.

_Assume nothing_ , I think, reminding myself how I underestimated him before. It doesn't matter what happens, so long as he stops breathing first.

He comes in fast. Not as fast as I remember, but still pretty quick. I veer to one side and strike. As I lean into the follow through, he delivers a hammer to my face. His knee. My nose explodes. I shake off the sting and ignore the dribble to catch him with a wicked headbutt. His head swings up and back, accentuating a new slice over his eye.

I gave too much credit. Without some kind of advantage, he can barely hold his own. I know he can't hold mine.

A shot to his gut, another to the jaw. I grab his shoulder, planning to knee him in the stomach, but he twists away, leaving me with part of his shirt collar in my hand. Daemon's wobbling now, staggering back and away. I notice for the first time, a mark on his shoulder, pink and puffy, like a burn scar.

I'm on him, watching every flick of his eyes. They stray towards the knife resting on the ground. He shifts, ready to go for it and I dart, grabbing him from behind.

But then his feet fly over his head and, suddenly, I'm on my back several feet away, fighting to take back to the breath that's been knocked out of me.

The young girl that I saw when I first got to the rooftop, she was dazed, watching her friend bleed out. But not anymore. Now she's screaming. Maybe she finally understands what she saw. Real trauma takes time to soak in, I guess.

When I move my hand from my blistering side, it's red. The bastard stabbed me. The cut looks small. It's not bleeding much and doesn't hurt enough to concern me right away. If anything, it means I need to work faster. Daemons standing beside me, just out of reach. There's nothing in his hands except his jacket as he gently takes it up and puts it on.

Standing takes concentration. Going over the rapid sequence in my mind, I know he made it to the knife and used it. I'm grateful it's short. But how did he get up so fast?

I don't see him move this time but go down again. The outside of my knee starts pulsing.

Daemon moves away with that same, twisted smirk. "You're wasting your time. You cannot kill me."

As I get back to my feet, he stretches his arms out the same way as before, when he sailed from the top of the building down into the alley.

"Get back here. I'm not finished with you!" Keeping most of my weight off the one knee, I head towards him.

Daemon winks at me. He _fucking_ winks, raising a small black and blue bag. "Maybe you are not finished, but I am. I have what I came for."

I recognize the little pouch because Eli made it. He cut the pieces for the new rubber casement from his own diving suit and I spent hours hand-stitching and double-gluing the seams. The original rubber pouch for the stones was old and cracking.

Now he's got it. Daemon's got _my_ stones. The rocks he came for. The ones he killed my father to get.

Panicked, I rush at him, but Daemon is way ahead of me. He steps off the ledge before I get anywhere near him.

##

##

## All In a Daze Work

A massive blue funnel stretches up from the ground. It's at least five times the size of the one in Ivanhoe. As it materializes, stretching up to the clouds with its blazing heat and wind, snaking gracefully between the buildings, coating the bricks in heat and soot, I'm mesmerized.

The firm lines of the buildings beyond it bend from the heat. The mouth of the burning cone doesn't face the ground like it did in Ivanhoe. It faces upward like it's waiting for Daemon who's still drifting in free-fall.

You're _going to jump off a building?_ I ask myself, taking in the scene and trying to recall how many flights of stairs I climbed chasing Daemon. Couldn't have been any more than seven or eight stories. That's survivable. Right?

"Sack up," I tell myself and take a gulp of air. "He's got your stones, not your balls."

Daemon blurs into the rainbow interior of the gateway. And I leap, just like he did, only less dramatic. I dive headlong after him rather than placing my arms out at each side like a moron.

After I've flung myself into the scorching storm, as I'm sailing through the blazing wind, that's the moment I realize how stupid this is.

The rocks are what protected me from the gateway. I'm not in their protective bubble. I'm outside the funnel, contorted by the violent blue fog that burns and pushes me back from the upturned opening instead of suctioning me inside.

I'm not falling, but twisting and thrashing through the wind, making for the window that hovers high above the ground. Moving my arms and legs like I'm swimming against a current.

Hope rises as the rainbow wheel looms closer. _I'm going to make it!_

I'm screaming on the inside as I fly through the mouth of the vortex just as it starts shrinking. My skin feels too thin, but the rainbow wheel inside the tunnel is beautiful as ever.

And then it's gone. I'm surrounded by darkness, folding into a forgiving surface that feels moist and smells of wet earth. I splatter like a pile of laundry hitting the end of the chute.

There's no sound except the shuffling of feet as I get up.  
My eyes adjust quickly and I don't feel sick. This is good, makes it easier to keep pace with Daemon. And I do keep the pace right behind him, kicking my legs high.

Reaching for the tails of that damn jacket, I'm glad he's still wearing it. I'm about to close-in on the fabric, about to feel it sweeping against my fingertips... and then the telltale blue fog appears again, with the crashing sound of the gateway opening.

The rainbow wheel illuminates the night ahead. I leap inside right after Daemon.

The next world is bright. Warm rays of sun are blinding. I shade my eyes and keep kicking, noticing that everything looks normal, older than the 1990's, but normal.

My legs are stiffening from all the running while Daemon's stride is still vigorous and quick. When I trip over a surprised kid on a huge skateboard and fall a half-block behind while getting up, I know that without a huge stroke of luck there's a good chance he'll get away.

A black Saab pulls up to the curb just ahead of me. A woman wearing a wide-collared power suit hops out of the drivers' seat and casually walks around the other side of her idling car to pop a stack of mail into blue drop-off box on the curb.

My father used to say that luck is there for those that need it. He also used to say that success was for those who recognize opportunities. The empty Saab looks like both to me.

The engine purrs, smoothly shifting into fourth as I hit the intersection, taking my chances at the red light. I can see Daemon up ahead; hard not to notice a huge bald guy with a snake head tattooed on his bare scalp. He's still on the move but looks to have slowed a little, assuming that he's lost his tail.

He spots me at the perfect moment. Right as he comes up to the next intersection, when there's a break in foot traffic on the sidewalk. I see the way his eyes widen when the Saab jumps the curb.

The victorious _thunk_ of the tires hitting their target is short-lived. I don't know how, but instead of thrashing over him, Daemon somehow ends up on top of the hood. His big ugly beard blocks my view of the road as I veer off the sidewalk and back into traffic, nicking at least one other car.

A few screams. More horns. And a black stare from the man that killed my father. I make sure to look him directly into those beads of emptiness as I make for the side of the nearest building and give my parting words.

"See you in hell."

He glances behind him, sees he wall he's about to munch, then turns back to say something that sounds like he's asking if I can swim. But that can't be right. I mean, I can swim, but what does water have to do with—

A huge vortex opens and I'm going too fast. It's all there: the bustling city, then rainbow colors, the heat, and blue fog.

In a heartbeat it's gone, replaced by water. Lots of water. Everywhere. Gushing in through the doors and windows.

Shit.

The car is completely submerged and filling fast. I take a deep breath and brace myself, trying to think through the surprised panic.

It's just water. Rushing into the car through open half-open windows. It's filling with bubbling cold and Daemon is gone. Through the windshield, I make out his wavy form getting smaller and higher as the car sinks and he swims away.

Shit-shit, shit.

Think, G.

When ships go down, they say that the survivors in life rafts have to row away from the sinking ship so they won't get pulled down by the suction of the water rushing into the ship. I have to wait for the car to fill before swimming away.

The car is already full as I have the thought. I'm not buckled in and so float hastily out the open window. Start kicking my way towards the surface, following the air bubbles from the sunken car.

Breaking the surface, I pull in a ragged breath and rub the sting of saltwater from my eyes.

_That was crazy,_ I think, thankful for the air, and then take a look around.

Only water. Everywhere. In every direction.

"What the hell?"

Swimming in a circle, I search the glittering surface of the water until I spot a dark line in the distance. Shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine, I'm able to tell that it's more than a dark line—it's land. And it's hella far away. If I pace myself, though, maybe I can make it.

But where's Daemon?

I don't spot him or anyone else. No ships or boats. There's barely any movement on the water at all, but if Daemon is still alive and wants to stay that way, he'll be swimming for land, too.

Self-recriminations run through my head in the form of my father's weathered voice. _Seriously, G? This is where you end up—in freaking Water World?_

It's ridiculous. I knew that killing Daemon would be difficult, but if this is any indication of what I'm up against, then I am ill-prepared. He's faster and a hell of a lot better at using those stones than I am.

Quietly making for the distant shore, I'm careful not to make too much noise. Sharks are attracted by splashing, learned that on Discovery Channel.

Where's Kevin Costner when you need him?

The water is clean, bright blue, and still as a millpond, save the intermittent splashing I spot, maybe a hundred yards ahead. It's tough to gauge distance over water.

After examining a while, I'm sure it's Daemon. The black tent of his trench coat blankets the surrounding water. His position is my new target.

Grab the stones. Drown him. Or choke him out and then take the stones. Yeah; surprise sneak attack and then I take every set of stones he's got.

Of course, since we're in the open freaking ocean with nowhere to hide, my advantage depends on stealth. There's nothing between us but water and I can't hold my breath long enough to swim underwater the whole way. So I go under just enough to keep the sound of my strokes muted. Once I get close enough to reach him in one breath, I'll come up behind him and... figure something out.

It's slow-going. Proper revenge takes patience, but my muscles are feeling the burn.

Daemon is either oblivious or pretending to be. Does he think I'm dead? Is that why when I get close enough I can hear him singing?

Just as I'm about to take a deep breath and submerge myself for attack, a dark shape under my feet stops me. Puzzling, I begin to wonder just how deep this water is. I can't see the bottom, but I could have sworn that it wasn't black down there.

I've never had a heart attack before, but the way my chest feels—like someone has replaced my heart with a block of ice—I'm thinking I may be having one as the dark beneath me becomes a mass. A huge blob-like shape with eyes. I start swimming back, frantic, needing to get as far as possible from the thing. Its smooth, like a wall shooting up out of the water beneath Daemon. Like a submarine breaking the surface, only it has a mouth and my mortal enemy disappears inside it.

A long gray blade slices through the water, too close to my shoulder, and I realize it isn't a blade, but an enormous fin. The submarine-sized thing is actually a giant fish. Some kind of whale, I think, but I see no dorsal fin.

The giant creature breaches and falls sideways back into the water. I brace myself and roll with the gigantic waves, trying to keep my eyes on the bright sky to avoid confusion about which way is up.

Luckily, I manage to break the surface again.

No Daemon. A minute ago, he was ten feet away and now he's gone.

Swallowed whole by a giant meat-eating whale?

Yes! Ha! I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

Hah-ha!

Good-fucking-riddance, you prick!

Ah, what a life. What a way to go.

Eaten alive. I hope that fish chokes on him.

That was a pleasure to watch. I honestly wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it for myself.

My body feels alive with elation and I resume swimming for the shore and start planning what to do next.

Once I get to land, I'll find a way to get to — Shit.

That Jurassic fish _ate_ Daemon... and he has the stones. The sea monster ate the three stones I need to get out of here!

Right about the time I'm ready to have another heart attack, a geyser bursts up from under me. I'm suddenly out of the water, flying.

From my quick aerial view, I spot the gigantic shape of the missile-like monster fish and the formation of a long cylinder of blue fog shooting through the hole where the creature's eye used to be.

A gateway?

The water where I make my landing is markedly warmer than it was when I was hurled out only a moment ago. It's the heat of the vortex.

It can open under water?

Daemon has opened a wormhole and is skewering the fish with it. The creature writhes before going still and I seize the opportunity to make for the boiled corpse, feeling the heat of the water rising all around me. My skin is going red, but I don't care. I've got to make the vortex or I'm stuck here.

Using a giant tailfin, and ignoring the briny stench, I maneuver up onto the creatures' body, slippery and scratchy at once, crawling my way towards the funnel cloud stretching up into the sky. I watch Daemon sail from the hole in the fish's head. He's curled in a ball, encased in light.

I jump after him. Clutching the coattails of his soaked trench coat, I feel nothing but the burn of pure relief.

##

##

##  The Wheels in My Mind Go Flat

Quick as it opened, the gateway closes.

Disappears, leaving me and my target to fend for ourselves once more. Only this time, we're not in some ancient world covered in water. It looks like we're back in New York, maybe near Manhattan, on top of another building—like we're back where we started.

Taking the time to look around, I notice right away how sick I feel and exhausted. I collapse onto my knees and spot the black smoke of a fire a few blocks to the south.

Suddenly, I'm flat on my back and my face is stinging like it's been set on fire. Daemon's mealy face blocks out the sun.

"You will not follow this time."

Somehow, I find the strength to kick his feet out from underneath him. He lands on his back with one arm stretched out. The ridge of his palm chops across my throat. A crushed windpipe might be the worst feeling in the world.

While I gag and struggle to breathe, Daemon lifts me from the rooftop and plops my stomach over his shoulder, like I'm a sack of flour. I notice he's walking towards the edge and it's all I can do to grab a fistful of his shirt. The material tears as he tosses me like a rag-doll.

Air rushes past. The buildings blur. I'm sailing at an angle, falling towards the concrete side of an adjacent garage.

Shifting my weight—which is really just panicked flailing—I manage to direct my path toward a red canopy jutting from the side of the gray building I'll be scraping down the side of if the heavens don't open and produce a miracle in the next two seconds.

I cover my eyes.

The awning, in all its' mercy, catches me. The angle of the landing pitches me into a roll that sends me up the slope of the huge sunshade. Gravity takes it from there, makes sure I go back down again. It feels like I hit a trampoline as I'm bounced back up only to slam down in the same spot. The second time I hit, the fabric tears. Ripping straight through, I land on another red canopy a story lower.

This one's got no bounce. I fall straight through and keep going. Down, grasping at the passing metal of the next three canopies, but my fingers can't grip anything. Am I slowing down? I can't tell by the hard landing, but must be since it doesn't tear, but sends me rolling down the slope.

My face hits something and the ungodly crunch of my jaw makes me want to wail.

My teeth. My tongue.

Fresh screams, shrill and close.

Is it me?

I'd bolt upright if I could move.

Taking a quick stock of all body parts—my mouth is still closed. So no, I'm not screaming. I can't move my tongue. I don't want to try.

There's a piece of torn beige material hanging over my head. And the noise is coming from an elderly couple. They're panicking, pushing on the door locks of a car; their car, which I have just fallen into.

The old man sees me sprawled over the back seat and then scrambles out, shouting for his wife to hurry as he drags her from the passenger side.

I take another moment to check myself over. My mouth hurts. My throat as a painful notch and I taste blood. My back aches. One of my knees feels like it might be broken but I can still move it. Oh, then there's a small wound in my side and the fact that I am soaking wet with sea water and cold.

After a few deep breaths to make sure I haven't broken any ribs, I sit up. Just in time to see a long funnel cloud formed of blue fog dissipate and fade up into the sky.

Daemon's gone. He kicked me in the face and threw me off a building and then left. Inside my hand, I've still got a piece of his shirt. _Bastard_.

Opening my palm, I find the white material is gray with dirt, wrapped around a metal charm in the concave shape of three conjoined circles. There's no color, but it's easy to make the connection.

I roll over the seatback and get behind the vacated wheel. Lucky for me, I fell into a convertible with a full tank of gas.

That solves one part of my most immediate problem.

The next is finding out what year it is.

The car shudders when it takes off. I drive slowly, partly due to traffic and partly because I'm searching for a newsstand.

When I find one, I yell out the window to the vendor, asking him to pass me today's local paper and then toss him a dollar bill I found in the ashtray. People who don't smoke tend to use the car ashtrays as change purses.

The headline splashed across the front page reads, "Thomas 'Tip' O'Neal, longest serving Speaker of the House Representatives, dies at 84."

The date is December 19th, 1996. The same day? Is it possible?

Did he bring me back to World Two?

Remembering the view from the parking garage, I take the next left, heading in the direction of the pluming smoke I saw in the distance.

During my first trip to World Two, the passive version of my father and I had a conversation. It was the night he came to me, drunk and scared, babbling through restrained tears about the most important thing in the world. I remember him insisting that he wasn't a thief, that he didn't want any part of _this_ and more specifically, he used the precise phrase: " _I left'em in the dirt_." I can still hear the slur.

There's only one place he could have meant. If Daemon dropped me back into this world, he must have assumed the stones I carried came from this place.

That would explain why he thought I couldn't follow if he left without me. His starting that fire next to my alternate father's building and opening a gigantic vortex could be the reason every traffic light between here and Manhattan seems to be knocked out.

What was gridlock before I jumped is now plain madness in every direction. If Daemons original accident sent me back to an alternate reality in 1996 and called for a massive cover-up, then triggering two inside New York City has created complete bedlam.

I take to the crowded sidewalks, screaming for everyone to get out of my way, telling all who dare criticize that I'm with the FBI. The fear set loose by what everyone just witnessed is much larger to them than I am and no one can second-guess me.

What is it about fear that perpetuates such blind trust in authority?

Back on Crosby Street now, the entire block has been taped off. Uniforms are everywhere. Not as many as there were when I left, but still plenty. Most were probably called away to determine the nature of the 'freak storm' that sucked the electrical power right off the grid and disappeared. Twice.

Sirens are passing in both directions. Many people out on the streets are heading indoors. I'm down the block, waiting, hoping for a chance to get back into the building where I left my frightened sixteen-year-old alternate and his injured father without being noticed.

The denim around my sore knee has tightened from swelling. I'm already limping and need to hurry inside before I can't walk on it. In the meantime, I check under my shirt. The blood around the superficial wound was washed away. The cut itself looks like it's staying closed.

An ambulance crosses into the road from the alley and stops in front of the donut shop where I stopped a flasher that looked too much like Daemon from behind. Medics rush inside. A few minutes later, as I hobble up the sidewalk, they come out with someone on a gurney.

Trailing behind, between two medics, I recognize little G and my heart hits my knees. This is exactly what I didn't want. How am I supposed to get to him? More importantly, where is his father? A tall woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail wraps a blanket around him and another kid.

A small girl.

Her hair's been cut short, but it's her! My baby sister. Perfectly alive and wailing!

"Carrie!"

I maneuver closer. She's crying, reaching for the blanket-clad gurney. When she tugs at the gray cover, an arm falls out. My moment of elation is lost in a sea of shit because I know that hand.

"What happened?" They're wheeling him into the back of an ambulance that's going to take hours to get to a hospital even if they don't obey traffic laws.

Little G's face is smashed into a glare that makes no sense. His arms push and at me. "Stay away from us!"

Ponytail asks who I am, and he answers with lies. "I've never seen him before in my life."

I'm choking, pleading with them to let me help. They shouldn't be alone. "Where's your mother?" Carrie is here, so Mom should be, too.

The medic grabs my arm. "If you're not a relative, I can't tell you anything. And the kid says he doesn't know you."

"He knows me. I'm family—his fathers' cousin. He's just scared."

Her eyes grow sympathetic. "He told us his mother left the house early yesterday morning and never came back. We left the address and phone number she'll need to pick them up. That's all I can tell you."

I watch little G climb into the back of the ambulance and sit next to the gurney. "I'll stay with you until she comes. I'll keep you safe."

As I make the promise I realize it's a lie.

There was something else his dad told me the first night he found me creeping through the back yard. He felt it was important enough to reiterate during our last conversation.

" _Wherever you are, there he is."_ He said it twice; sober both times.

I reach for Carrie's small arm as little G lifts her into the back of the ambulance. My fingertips barely catch the fresh ends of her silky brown hair.

"You don't help." Little G says and twists to sit with his back to me, stretching his little sister across his lap. He pats her back, quieting her sobs.

The double-doors of the ambulance shut me out, but little glorious Carrie looks out through the glass. I send a small wave. She gives one back as the ambulance pulls away, lights and sirens blaring.

The less I know about where they're going the better. Right?

And Carrie is okay. My God, she is okay. They'll still have their mother. I hope. She's probably just... stuck in traffic. She'll find them at the hospital and they'll all be alright. Together.

I have to believe that because if Daemon truly is wherever _I_ am, then that means they are safest far, far away from me. It also means I should have no trouble finding him again.

I'll hold onto that.

My backpack is still sitting on the floor of the tiny kitchen. Inside is the wad of money my dad—no, _his_ dad, little G's dad—was trying to give me.

I dig out a paper bag from the trash and find a sharpie on top of the fridge. The money goes into the bag. I write 'Mom' in big, block letters and set it on the counter beside the note the paramedics left. When she comes in, she'll see the message. She'll pick them up and they'll be alright.

Standing in the apartment doorway, the outside sky is visible through the enormous hole in the side of the hallway. It's getting dark out.

I head back into the small bedroom of the micro-apartment and open the closet. There isn't much in there, except empty hangers and clothes that look like they belonged to G's dad. No women's clothes. No lady's shoes or jacket. No trace of a purse.

Anger churns my stomach.

No wonder he begged me to take them. But why didn't he just say that she left? Was he ashamed or something—because he shouldn't be? It's eye-opening, actually, because I've blamed myself for my sister dying and was sure that was the reason why my mother left. I just knew it was the grief that proved too much for her. But in this plane, Carrie is alive and that woman still left. She left them both.

I grab both the roll of cash and my backpack, limping-a-hustle back down to the car.

##

##

## Going Back To Cali

Regret is my closest companion during the long trip back.

Going West doesn't take as long as it did to go East. I don't have to steal as much as I did on the way to New York. I still have to change cars now and then, but there's enough money to buy gas and a little food. I try to time my need to stop near state boundary lines. Once I'm over into the next state, I find another car to switch plates with.

It's hard not to think of those two kids all alone, abandoned by their mother. But my thoughts keep going back to little G's dad. He was alive when I left. I shouldn't have left.

The image of that giant fish swallowing Daemon whole fills my mind, quickly followed by the image of the vortex opening from inside the creature's body. I push them both away, replacing the thoughts with wonder; if it was my order for little G to stay where he was that did his father in.

I was working with what little information I could garner at the scene. I'm no medic, but I saw no blood, felt no lumps on his head. His neck had definitely been twisted some, but he had a strong pulse. He was breathing. What else was I supposed to do? I did what I knew would keep them safe— I went after Daemon.

I shouldn't have listened to little G. He's an angry kid who knows nothing about the toils of life. I'm the adult; I should have made them come with me.

Daemon is only after them because of me and my dad. The only solution that makes sense is to leave them be for now while I take care of Daemon. Once he's dead, I can go back for them. Take them some place safe. Eli will help. Abi might, too. If she'll even speak to me.

I shake away the thoughts to focus on driving, counting the mile markers on the roadside. But soon, my head is right back there, replaying the events.

He's dead. Again. What does that mean?

The most obvious interpretation is that Eli was right about the 'this-is-not-time-travel' thing. This is not my past, it's someone else's present. I've never been so happy to be wrong. I saved Carrie. Saved _her_ and... left him for dead.

Who would I if I'd lost my dad instead of my mom? How will little G manage losing both? Will he blame me? I blamed my mother for years and it never helped. Still, truth is difficult to accept in the best of times. Maybe it's better to let him think what he wants for now. To cope.

The thoughts are too much. I've been through too much to think about anything so I push it all away and let my mind go blank, concentrating on the road. On finding Daemon again.

One thing that's been bothering me is how my dad called Daemon by another name. His alternate also called him a Keeper. How is it that this one guy has so many names? Is he such a prolific, pretentious piece of shit that he requires a specific moniker for each victim? He does seem to think very highly of himself. I'll be taking that ego down a few notches when I catch up with him.

* * *

I crossed the border into California at the butt-crack of dawn.

Six hours later, I'm well into central valley, very close to finding the farming town of Ivanhoe.

All I can remember about the directions Eli and I followed to get the first set of stones my dad left—the scenery and Road 308. Of course, I'm in another dimension so there's no telling. I just have to follow my instincts.

Luckily, almost everything in this dimension has been the same, and that gives me hope.

It's a relief that Ivanhoe is pretty much identical. Some of the orchards are smaller or grow different types of trees, but the smelly dairy farm is there and a little ways past it, the road I need.

The leaves have fallen from most of the trees. Only the citrus groves are flourishing. Half of the orange groves are being harvested by huge machines that shake the trees to make them drop their fruit into waiting crates on a long conveyor.

I pass through the damp, dirt roads with little notice from anyone on my way to the spot where Eli and I stopped before. This time, I park a little closer to the edge of the field, near the wire fence that corrals the cattle that are nowhere in sight.

The grass on the rolling hills is sparse with patches of green and brown everywhere. The distant mountains stretch up for miles into the cloudy sky. At the summit of the low end of the first hill, there's no missing the circular brown markings and the old stone fire pit in the center.

Eli was right. The soil in this part of the hill is diseased and has been for some time. The dirt is cold and hard, but it doesn't take long to get to the old metal box or the rubber bag inside. I guess neither version of my dad was ever concerned with originality.

Soon after, I'm near the small transformer. There isn't a cow in sight when I stop to slip into my radiation suit—strap on my boots and hood with mask, before slipping into the gloves.

The two nitroglycerin charges are enough to get me to wherever Daemon has gone and back but if I use one, I'd only have one left and that makes me uncomfortable.

As soon as I get to wherever he is, I need to find a weapon of some kind. He's much stronger and faster than I anticipated and I can't chance him getting away again. I need to be smart and stealthy. To catch him unaware, though, it'll be a challenge. He's so eager, so bloodthirsty—exactly why I have to master these stones and catch him off guard.

I unzip the bag and take out the stones. They are beautiful and I'm pissed that I've only got the one set. I cannot believe I was stupid enough to take them with me when I went after him. They are what he wants—how could I _not_ consider losing them a possibility? I won't make that mistake again.

These exquisite rocks, three of the same suit in different colors, are an exact match to the previous. The odd crystal quality, unnaturally cold, the strange light shining from within: they're stunning and slightly larger than my previous set. The first set of three fit easily into one open palm. These three require both hands to hold. I wonder briefly what Elijah would make of this fact and am sure he'd ask a million annoying questions that neither one of us could answer.

As I step nearer the transformer in the large field, the stones glisten. I'm transfixed as an arm of lightning whips out from the wires above, reaching for the rocks. They glow as if filled with infinite fire and float in their triad over my hands. They're probably burning, too, but I can't the feel heat.

The gateway appears before me and stretches into heaven. The doorway opens to a room filled with more light and color than I remember.

Crossing the threshold is easy. A step is all it takes.

##

##

##  The One Doing The Screwing

On the other side of the doorway, the landscape looks eerily familiar. Way too much like the plane I just left.

Row after row of citrus trees cover the nearby rolling hills. No machinery in between rows. No farm hands or even ripe oranges for them to pluck. I'm in the open field, still standing near the large transformer, only now the power lines that crossed it just a moment ago are broken.

I look to the three stones sitting in my hands. They aren't glowing anymore. In fact, they seem to have dimmed completely.

From a distance comes the sound. The voice of a man, laughing or cackling. Its high-pitched, but I know it's a man because I recognize that amusement.

Turning, I find Elijah running down the hillside behind me, gaining speed as he goes, stumbling a little when his gait hits the swell of flat land.

The moment I flip my hood back, I'm bombarded with Eli's excitement.

"G! He was right! He said you'd come back to this very spot! I couldn't be sure, but I took a gamble, and I got it! I recorded everything!" He's practically shouting, touching both his hands to my shoulders.

"That's great, Eli." I agree. "Now, just tell me what the hell you're talking about so the next time I say it, I'll actually mean it."

Eli shakes his head as if he remembers that I haven't been looking over his shoulder the whole time and steps to one side waving his hand. A gesture that bids me to walk with him. We fall into step, heading the direction Eli has just come from.

"Your dad gave me instructions. He said that you might come back this way, and you did."

My dad irritated me with how he always seemed to know things he shouldn't, so why not where I might turn up? I nod, appreciating his willingness to wait so diligently on such an unsure scenario.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I mutter, stuffing the stones back into the crusty pouch and tucking it away.

"The suit held up, then?"

"Yes."

"You've been gone five weeks. How was World Two?"

"Five? I counted three. Three and a half tops."

His bushy eyebrows draw together. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. But—" my scrambled brain flashes to the other planes I passed through chasing Daemon. "I found Daemon. He left Two, I followed. He kept opening portals. I went through three with him. Saw some..." I shake my head, recalling the giant fish. It looked very near the eel-like pictures I've seen of the Lochness monster. "Some crazy things before we ended up back where we started. I followed the family all the way to New York. Came back; it took about three weeks."

"You catch him?"

I shake my head, embarrassed by my stupidity. The artlessness of the whole adventure. "I was useless. He got the drop on me. Not just metaphorically."

When Eli asks, I explain it all.

He shrugs as if this is what he expected as if my failure means nothing. "You'll get him next time. Did you write everything down?"

"Yeah." I made good use of my downtime. Writing everything that's happened and trying to process while I waited for just the right moment to hop into an empty car.

"Were you able to collect samples?"

"Some newspapers."

A half-smile appears and blows away with the breeze. "You'll be pleased to know that I've translated some of the hieroglyphs copied from your father's papers. The stones actually have a name."

"Really?"

He nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"Well? Spit it out."

He holds up one index finger and freezes as if listening. "We have to talk fast. There's so much to catch up on." He starts walking again. "It's a strange word. I'm not sure of the pronunciation, but it sounds like a Latin derivative. Tres, like three, and unus, meaning one. But the order of the glyphs tells they're one word. Drawn in the singular every time as if the three stones are one entity. Tresunus: Threestone."

"Three stones? Derivative, indeed."

"No, Threestone, one word, singular."

"Threestone," I say, thinking that I like the name even though it's weird.

"I tried marking your time differential, but the watch wasn't working. I counted the timing on the nearest traffic light."

Eli tilts his head to one side. "Unless you have an audio recording of yourself counting I probably won't be able to use the information with any accuracy."

"When faced with the unexpected, the ability to improvise is your best tool." Something my dad used to say whenever he fouled up.

The first time I remember him using it on me was when we were camping and I dropped the matches in a puddle. We had to build a fire with nothing but two sticks and determination.

We hit the top of the hillock and Eli veers right, heading for a small white building. That pulls me up short.

Eli notices I've stopped and turns back to give me a studious once-over. "G, what's wrong?"

My gaze is stuck on the painted wooden building that I am positive was not there when I was here with my childhood best friend only a month or so ago. Sure, the amount of time is relative, but as Eli reiterated at least a thousand times as we bickered over supplies: one can never be too careful.

"What's the safe-word?"

Eli's eyes dark brows pull together again. "Macaroni."

It's enough solace to start walking again.

Inside, the building is much smaller than it looked. It's more of a hut than a house. A ready-made tool shed with a partitioned toilet, a small sink, and no kitchen. A single room stacked high with blinking electronics, a few printers, and a single hot plate off in the far corner beside a folding bed. The walls are coated with maps, charts, and graphs.

"Nice digs," I say, not meaning a single syllable because this place is obviously a shit hole. "I might know where you can find a refrigerator box if you're thinking of adding on."

"What it looks like doesn't matter." Eli stretches his arms out over the clutter, nearly touching two walls at the same time. "It's what we learn that's important."

His eyes go down to a ream of paper. "I've been cataloguing dissimilarities for the past few weeks, but there weren't any variations. Until seven minutes ago." He leans down and plucks up the topmost sheet of paper from the stack as the printer above it shoots out another sheet. His eyes practically glow as they consume the page of information.

Unzipping the thick Demron suit, I ask Elijah "Is there a place I can put this so it's not in the way?"

When Eli looks up at me, his brows are pulling together again. "You can't stay, G."

"Not for long, I know. I've had walk-in closets with more space."

Eli's shaking his head so fast it looks more like a twitch or a tick than a refusal. "No. I have to report these changes right away."

My suits already zipped back up. "Report?" He's the one who told me that only dead men keep secrets of this magnitude. We keep the stones secret or we end up dead. Now he's reporting to someone?

I've got my backpack strapped back on and I'm staring at Elijah as he grows progressively nervous.

"Who did you tell?"

Eli takes a deep breath. When he exhales, his shoulders drop. "You know who."

I can actually feel my blood pressure rising. My arms and back tighten.

"They threatened to throw my father in jail. He's nearly seventy years old, G. It'd kill him."

"Who are you reporting to?" I ask, as if I don't already know.

Eli tosses his hands up and out. "You're going to make me say it?"

"Yes."

"The federal government, specifically Homeland Security."

My groan is more of a whiney gagging sound.

"They arrested me, G. Held me for weeks. No access to council. Not a single phone call! They didn't ask me a single question. They already knew about Entanglement and the threat of too many wormholes. They demanded that I do as I'm told. They wouldn't let me sleep until I agreed. When they finally let me go, my house had been ransacked. They took everything. All my research, your father's papers—"

"What!"

"They already knew everything! They've been waiting for you to come back. They're probably on the way right now, if they're not already here."

I'm out the door of the little hut, pushing past fidgety Eli, walking back towards the transformer.

But then I remember the broken electric cables. No energy—no gateway. I don't know how to use the stones as well as Daemon, and so I turn back around, removing the pouch with the stones from my breast pocket as I go.

"Not here. Please." Eli holds up both hands, begging. "My equipment, the sensors; you'll destroy them and then they'll know for sure that you were here. Don't give them what they want, G."

"You've already done that." I push past him, ignoring his pleading. "You screwed us both!"

"I had to make them think I would help! This lab, the information I'm getting is to help me protect you."

"DHS? Seriously?" I want to pull my hair out. "I should punch you again."

Instead, I toss my backpack to the ground and open it. "Here," I say, tossing out my notes on the time I spent travelling and marking the time differential.

Looking my old friend in the eye, seeing his pain and that fear I recognize so well... it's tough because I understand all of it. If our positions were reversed, I might have done the same.

"I get why you're working with them, all right. I hate it, but I understand."

Eli visibly relaxes. "It couldn't be avoided."

Raking my hand through my hair, I concede. "You have to protect yourself first. You're no good to me in prison." Shaking my head, I can hardly believe what I'm saying. "Do what you have to do, Eli."

He nods. "Okay."

"So will I."

"Understood."

"I found Carrie on the other side. She's alive." I don't know what makes me say it; I guess I just need to tell someone.

Eli's face breaks into a full-on grin that disappears when I unzip the pouch with the stones. "G, don't."

"I left you behind and that left you no choice."

"No." He shakes his head and begins backing away from the rocks that captivate and terrify him. "I had two horrible choices. I chose the lesser evil. But I made my own choice, G."

"And because of that choice, I've got to save myself."

Eli nods like he wants to hate me, but can hardly blame me. I know the feeling. "You focus on Daemon. Stop him and you save us all."

I strap my hood back on and step closer to the small hut. In no time at all the energy from Eli's lab is inside the rocks and the funnel of blue flames and fog appears, starting at the Threestone in my palm and growing; gushing up into the clouds.

When the gateway opens I walk through, not knowing what kind of world I'll end up in, and hoping it's nothing like this one.

##

##

## World Six

It's blinding white and freezing cold.

The wind in this plane cuts like a razor. Even with my hood locked down and my eyes clamped shut, the wind filters through my mask and makes them water.

I'm clenching my teeth at the leaden sickness spreading through me. It's inconsistent, this nauseous side-effect.

My arms hang heavy around my chest as I grip the Threestone. My fingers feel too large. A bitterness bites at their tips and I clutch the precious rocks tighter, worried I may drop them. The cold burns hotter where the stones touch my suit and I can't move. Not until the confusion and queasiness ebbs.

Trying to gather my scattered thoughts, I force my lids to loosen and work on relaxing my eyes. Testing the light, I pry them open slowly to find a vast world, divided into two colors. Everything above me is open, endless blue. Not a cloud in sight. Down below, where I am entrenched freezing wind and ice, is also wide open. There is nothing but snow for miles in every direction.

I feel sick, but sitting still is death in temperatures like these. I have to move. Placing the stones back in their rubber pouch, I stow them away in my bag instead of my pocket. They leach the energy from everything and there are no power lines to be seen, so there's no use having them at hand, letting them steal what little warmth I've got.

For the first time since I left my home world, I'm glad I listened to Eli. The binoculars he packed me come in handy when I need to decide on a direction. No sense in walking at all if I'm only heading into tundra.

I search each barren drift for signs of life, but the only thing I find is the frigid light and burning wind that freezes and stings my cheeks the second I lift the hood of my suit. It's breathtaking how the air stabs my throat like a thousand ice picks. It'll freeze my lungs. I close my mouth and replace the hood, beyond thankful for the bulky suit.

I did this. I sent myself here when I opened the gateway. Like a moron, I was thinking how I wanted the next plane to be nothing like the last. And it isn't. At all.

Way to go, G.

With the binoculars pressed to the clear screen of my masked hood, I can barely see. Far off, there are traces of what look like they might be very tall trees. I don't know what else to do so I start walking towards them. The sun's position says it is mid-afternoon.

The thick rubber of my radiation suit has long since lost its battle against the cold. The snow is thick—mostly hard but there are patches where I suddenly sink knee-deep. I have to lift my legs up high to climb out and mow through.

With so much cold all around and my lack of proper clothing under this suit I've been shivering since I landed. I changed into California winter wear at the last gas station: a tee shirt under a flannel, and a pair of jeans with hiking boots. No hat under this face mask. No gloves or scarf. My hands ache and my fingers don't want to move. My breath is what's providing the meager amount of heat I'm retaining in here.

Still, it's not long before my heavy pack becomes heavier. My stride slows, becoming rigid; muscles stiffening from the chill.

The threat of frostbite and hypothermia forces me to get creative.

Not that I completely trust my concept of time, but I don't think it's been more than two hours since I set out, yet the sun has already moved the length of my thumb to my elbow. Too fast.

I stop in an area where the snow is compact enough that I can walk across it, but not so icy that I can't work with it. The drifts have been here for a long time and judging by the landscape it won't be thawing any time soon.

It isn't snowing right now, but it's damn windy and there's nothing to see except the open expanse of frozen blue sky. Either there is nothing out there or the reflection off the snow is hiding it. But I have moved enough to tell that the trees I thought I saw before are actually buildings.

Checking the distance between me and the smudge man-made structures on the horizon, I'm sure the distance between me and shelter is too great to cover before the fast moving sun sets. Before the waning temperature drops further. And there are no trees in sight. No vegetation to provide shelter from the weather. My only choice is to dig.

The short shovel strapped to my backpack is sturdy. It becomes my new best friend as it chips away at the thick drifts and breaks up bits of compact snow. I toss the chunks into a pile and _whomp_ on them with the back of the shovel, and keep doing this over and over, keeping warm while forming a small semicircular mound that eventually becomes a wall. But as the mass grows, so does my shadow. Longer than me, it stretches a vast distance as the sun moves into oblivion.

I've got no roof. But I am surrounded by the sturdy ring-like hedge that's just high enough to provide some relief from the blistering wind and help me maintain my body temperature. As long as it doesn't blow too hard, or start snowing, I should be alright.

I work into the night until I've built up enough cover to nearly enclose my makeshift igloo. It's small, almost too small for a fire. The moment I remember that I've got no fuel for one, I don't feel bad about sealing the hole in the top. My shovel doubles as a support beam for the first part of the night until an arctic blast blows it down on my head.

I kick the chunks of cold away and stay huddled in my shiny, space blankets that crinkle like plastic packaging in the wind. The noise is irritating but helpful I rock myself, humming with the rumpled noise to keep awake.

* * *

At some point during my thirteenth run-through 99 Bottles, I must have fallen asleep. One second, I was huddled in my plastic blanket, rocking to the rhythm, and the next, silver streaks were building on the black horizon.

I don't remember waking or feel like I slept. I'm very tired, though. During the night, I tucked my arms up into the body of my suit for heat, but my fingers are still tingling and I can't feel my feet. Takes work to ignore the rigidity in my muscles, sore from being tensed up in constant shivers.

The whipping wind that kicked up last night has settled though. Dawn is bright and nearly still. No bird calls or scurrying animals greet the white desert.

Its work to ignore the rigidity in my muscles, sore from being tensed with cold all night. But I start out with the sun at my back. Since the wind settled, I don't need the binoculars to make out the buildings I spotted yesterday.

* * *

After a while, I notice a small shape in the distance, one that I'm sure wasn't there a few minutes ago. I stop and use the binoculars to watch.

Looks like it could be a person, but it's hard to tell. The shape is very near white and it's hard to see into the binoculars through my mask. I'm too far off. But if it is a person and not some strange, evolved polar bear, that means people live here.

People mean survival.

Transportation.

Electricity.

Heat!

I start towards the shape, checking the binoculars as the gap between the object and me closes. Soon, I'm positive it is another person, tromping on foot like me and pick up the pace.

Still, I'm nervous because I have no idea if this person is a friend or not. Are they going to help or hinder?

From within shouting distance, I can tell that the person is shorter than me, but still, there's no indication of who might be out here in this ice world or why. Whoever it is, is too tightly wrapped in layers of material to tell age or gender. There are only two dark eyes behind a clear visor that peeks between strips of fabric.

The figure stops but I step closer. It holds out a hand, bidding me to keep my distance and I grow more anxious. Resources in this plane are obviously finite. What if they won't spare any to help a stranger?

A muffled voice floats on the mild breeze. I can't make out the words, but the tone rises to a slightly higher pitch before it stops, so I assume it's a question. I shake my head vigorously and respond in a raised voice from within my hooded mask.

"I'm lost. I need help."

At that, the bundled figure turns and begins heading back the way it came. There's no gesture or sign that I should follow but I've got nowhere else to go. I need warmth. And information.

From now on, no more random thoughts before triggering the gateway—I will think clearly and concisely about where I want to go and why before unleashing the stones.

I follow the cloaked figure, straining to keep from falling behind, until it stops, suddenly stooping toward the edge of a snowbank that our path has traced.

That same, small voice mumbles as an outstretched hand digs into a mound of snow.

"What?" I ask, just as a blur whips out and smashes my shoulder and jaw.

"I said, 'lower your head.'" The short laugh that follows is definitely feminine.

The Demron bag Eli gave me proves its worth once more, as I barely feel a sting, though the force felt strong enough to do serious damage. I get up, shaking off the flakey white, and examine the round hatch door jutting from the snowbank.

The girl that opened it is gone. Snowy foot prints tell she's already climbed inside. I lean forward to see the light fabric of her hood lowered in the tunnel below.

Metal rungs form a ladder set into a concrete wall on one side of the tunnel. I decide it's probably better to follow Alice down the rabbit hole than to sit up here, nursing hypothermia.

The single shaft of light from the world above ends at a floor that's as white as the snow outside. The girl presses a button on the wall and the hatch over my head closes.

We are standing side by side in an underground tunnel, in complete dark.

A long second passes before lights power on with a low _whirring_. That's long enough for me to wonder who I'm standing next to or if I can trust her. And what the hell am I supposed to do next?

The underground corridor she's led me to is all white, lined with domed lighting that dots the ceiling.

The girl begins unwrapping her headscarf and so I take off my hood and mask. The air in here is still cold, but it doesn't bite when I take a deep breath. The cold walls and floor remind me of County Hospital, but it doesn't reek of sickness. It smells odd though. Like old blankets in a forgotten deep freezer.

The cloaked figures' head emerges from beneath the rumpled material. Light brown hair, straight and dirty. Pools of oil have gathered around her temples near her brown eyes. The girl is plain and very young.

"I'm Enanda," she says, through thin lips, bowing at the neck.

I'm at a loss and simply mimic her move, bowing my own head and saying, "It's nice to meet you."

She bows again, lower this time, but I'm tired and nearly frozen to death. "I was lost up there. Thank you."

"I received the message that you were delayed, but the thermal sensors picked up your location. I went above, in case you needed help to find us." Her voice, though soft, echoes in the long, narrow chamber.

Keeping my face from showing my surprise—I mean obviously she is mistaken about who I am and I'm just desperate enough to play along—but that doesn't mean that the next person will be as misinformed as...

"What was your name?"

"Enanda." She repeats.

"Enanda, are you the only one here?"

"The others are at their stations. My father and brother have gone hunting. We can wait for them if you prefer, but you must be tired. I've arranged quarters for you." One of her arms flows from her side, stretching down the long hallway to point at some place beyond. She follows it, walking.

I trail her again, trying to remember if I introduced myself and wondering which of the doorways might lead to the kitchen or the nearest fire.

The floor is hard and smooth, so easy to glide across. It makes my legs feel like rubber.

"Here," she stops, touching the middle of a door with an odd, over-sized handle.

"What's that?" I ask, pointing at indentions on the squared handle.

"You've never seen a Biolock?" Hesitating, she takes my hand, removes my glove, and shows me how to place each of my fingers into the fitted depressions.

I do as she instructs and hold my fingertips in place until I hear a beep. Then, watch as she follows suit.

"Now, only you and I may access this door."

I feel the traces of life coming back into me and yawn. My ears ache as they warm to room temperature.

She presses a small black dot, flush with the surface of the white door and a panel that wasn't there suddenly appears on the surface of the door—a rectangle. I slide from my chest level to eye-level. A tiny, oblong green laser-light shoots out, spanning the width of my face. Before I have a chance to flinch, the light and the panel sink back into the door as if they were never there. The squared knob turns by itself. The door pops open, revealing an empty room.

Enanda holds out her hand in invitation.

I step in and look around, noting the inside of the door has no knob or handle.

"Don't get me wrong," I fight to keep the yawn inside as I speak. "I'm very glad you came to find me, but—" The warmth of my breath makes my lips burn. "Um, how do I get out?"

She chuckles. "It's only locked from the outside. In here," she steps into the plain room, "we don't need it. Anyone inside may open the door."

I think over that for a moment, somewhat mollified, but still not sure why she's saying 'we.'

Enanda's eyes grow large. "What's your name? Do they give you names?"

"They?"

"The Council."

I shake my head, confused. "People call me G."

She smiles very wide, showing gray teeth.

My answering smile is tentative. Brief and wildly uncomfortable inside this little cell, but I ignore it because I'm too tired. But looking around the modest room that has only a single chair and one small cot without a pillow, I have to wonder why I'm standing inside a room with this strange young girl. And the no inner-door-knob-thing is bizarre. Am I just going to trust that she's telling me the truth?

"Do you have hot water," I ask, feeling the chill in my exposed hand creeping into the rest of me, bone deep.

She nods and turns to leave but stops in the open doorway. "Of course. Take rest and I will bring Virilustea. I make it better than most."

I have no idea what she just said and don't care. I don't care about anything except collapsing onto the cot.

##

##

## Strange Day

Every inch of skin feels like it's burning as my body reaches normal core temperature. I can't stop shivering.

I've also got this feeling... it reminds me of the night in World Two, as I stood on my alternate father's driveway peering into the dark. I feel like I'm being watched.

Cracking open one eye, I learn that I'm right. Enanda is sitting at the foot of the bed holding a large flask and a small cup. The tattered off-white robes she wore before are now gone. She's in a simple woolen frock that covers her from neck to ankle. She's young with small almond-shaped eyes. And too thin—I can see every tendon in her cupped hand.

Instincts tell me to shoot upright, take a defensive position, but thinking and doing are two different things.

"You're still cold" She looks down in a way that makes me think her cheeks are going to flush pink but they don't.

"You are more handsome than I expected."

The air in the room feels a lot warmer. I take off my second glove and slowly sit up. Enanda hands me a metallic mug. I thank her and inhale the steam rising from the top. It fills my nose and lungs with its' warm, earth-like scent.

"If you wish to wait, my father and brother will be back soon." Her small voice trails off before she clears her throat. "Do you like Virilustea? It is my mother's recipe."

"I'm sure it's good," I lie. The tea looks... thick and—is that a hair floating on top of the chunky green and brown foam? "Thank you."

She's just sitting there, staring at me, engrossed in something behind me, maybe. I turn back to see, but there's only the plain wall.

Her studious gaze was awkward after two heartbeats. Now it's downright rude. Not that I'm in a position to say anything. So I palm the warm mug, wanting to absorb the heat and toss the contents but I have no idea what to say to this attentive girl. I force myself to take a sip. Impossibly, it tastes worse than it looks.

My body tries to reject it and anything else that may come up after. I lock my lips together— _Dear God_ —I need water. Better yet: liquor. Anything to get rid of the bitter, stringy, disgusting "tea" that tastes like it was brewed from fertilized lawn clippings. The bottom of my boot probably tastes better.

Against all odds, I gulp what's in my mouth and set the cup on the chair near the bedside. Her brows knit together.

"I'm gonna let that cool."

She lets out a long breath as if she's been holding it. "I'm nervous." She shakes her head and looks to the floor.

"You don't need to entertain me."

"If it's allowed, I want to... I mean I'd rather try before my father and brother return." She says, and her face flushes beet-red.

"Try what?"

Still staring at the floor, she mumbles. "The Council's permit allows one attempt at fertilization. The decree expires soon, but if you'd rather wait for the tea to take full effect I understand." She blushes again. "My window for ovulation is—"

"You're what?"

She covers her face with both hands. "The Multiplier says I'm peaking." Every inch of her exposed skin washes bright red.

Ovulation? Fertilization? "Wait— _Multiplier?_ How old are you?" And what the hell does she think is happening here?

My bowels want to empty onto the floor when I think of all she's said to me. Her dad and brother aren't here and I am a stranger, a man in a locked room with his little girl.

Enanda squares her shoulders. "I am perfect breeding age."

Oh hell no. "Open the door."

She said only she or I could open it and it and that cannot be good, considering I am not whoever the hell she was expecting.

Enanda looks confused.

"Open the door."

Her face falls.

"It's too warm in here." It's not; I'm still shivering but grab my collar and tug.

She looks back to the floor and stands, opening to the door by placing the palm of her hand over a small panel where the knob should be.

"I offended you."

"No, no, but I don't need your dad to get the wrong idea and boot me back out into the cold."

Her face relaxes. Almost smiling she says, "You should finish your tea. It's best when it's hot." With that, the girl steps out into the white hall and heads left.

Obviously, because Enanda thinks I'm someone I'm not, she took me in, but that doesn't render the act any less of a kindness. She saved my life. So I grab the cup and fight down three large gulps before setting it back on the chair. The bottom is lined with loose brown things that look like tobacco and twig fragments.

All this weirdness has chased away the need for sleep, so I unzip my backpack and start taking inventory, something it was too cold to do outside.

The first thing I notice is the dark plastic bag filled with a handful of oranges I picked before I left World Two. They were going to be a sample from another dimension for Eli, but I didn't pull them out with the notes I took. When I was out trudging through the snow, I searched for them, but the cold made my eyes water, and it was so dark, I couldn't find them. Now they're frozen solid. Now is not the time for eating, but I'd try if I thought I could the globes down without choking. That damned tea has upset my stomach, anyways.

I toss the bag aside and dig out my extra pairs of socks. I've got this feeling like I should clear out of here as soon as possible and that means I need to bundle up.

After making sure the hallway is still clear, I press the door closed and remove the rest of my suit. The air in the room is actually a little more chilled than I expect, but I can't take off the attached boots without removing the whole suit.

I wonder how close I am to the buildings I saw and what type of people might live there if any. If it's big or small, busy or sleeping, and most importantly how I'll get there.

I'm closer to feeling warm than I have been since arriving; bundled up in three layers of clothes underneath my radiation suit.

Just as I slip my zipper all the way up and press the sticky material together to seal it, the door opens.

It's Enanda.

I'm thanking her for the kindness and leading up to inquiring on transportation when a man steps in the way. He sets himself between us, blocking her from my view. His hair is long and messy, dull and stringy, just like hers, only he looks much older. His mouth is turned down in a grimace. He's holding something long and metallic, and it's pointed right at me.

My mouth goes dry.

Enanda covers her gaping gob, sucking in a shocked breath. She whispers, "Father, he drunk the tea."

The man's eyes shift to the empty cup as I reluctantly raise my hands, trying to think this through. "She told me to."

"Who are you?"

"G—I'm G. I met your daughter up there." I point towards the blanketing snow that covers the frozen world above.

The man's eyes darken, slightly shifting towards Enanda. His index finger twitches over a lever on the handle of his bulky, odd weapon and his voice is deadly. "You. Went. Outside. After I told you _not_ to?"

Her eyes drop. Then, she's gone from my view and replaced by a boy whose face looks just as young and frail. He has to be a relative—her brother, I guess.

He eyes me, mumbling something too low to understand. But his dad gets it, and judging by the shock and anger on his face, I'm guessing it's not good news. For either of us.

His eyes dart back to me. "Who sent you?"

This is bad. "Why does someone have to be 'sent'? Can't a guy get lost in the snow without everyone assuming he—"

"Who are your people?"

I shake my head, not knowing what to answer. Odds of me making it out alive are dwindling.

The small voice of Enanda rips into the small room stuffed with tension. "He's the Seed Bearer, father. He told me so."

The father cocks his head. "The Seed Bearer. Is that who you are?"

"Um," I search the room for a possible weapon, but it's the lucky plastic bag resting on top of my pack that I find. "Sort of."

"You are lying. I can always tell."

I shake my head. "Yes, I brought you seeds."

"Then why did the High Council send word that the Seed Bearer has fallen ill and won't be coming until next month?" He raises the wide metallic gun.

My hands stretch out as if trying to block up the barrel, wanting to protect my chest from his cannon. The stones are in the breast pocket of my suit, concealed within their rubber bag. I don't know if they can save me from there.

"You've got ten seconds to explain." He says and starts counting. "Ten, nine—"

"Inside the dark bag, right over there," I point. "The small one on top."

He gives a commanding nod and the boy behind him steps over, cautiously making his way to my backpack on the chair in the opposite corner. He carefully pokes the bag of oranges as if he's afraid it'll bite.

"Open it and you'll see. I've brought seeds." I've never been so thankful for frozen oranges.

The boy pokes at the bag a few more times before finally deciding it's safe to handle. As he's thoughtfully checking the contents, I decide now might be a good time to mention it was not my intention to stay.

"I was headed west when my equipment failed. I got lost and would've frozen if she hadn't found me."

The father looks to his puzzled son, silently holding my bag. "Well? What's in there?" He asks, removing a hand to gesture for the boy to toss him the bag.

"Frozen, colored balls."

"They're oranges." I clarify.

Two sets of eyes dart back and forth from father to son, stranger to captor.

"You know, fruit? Oranges. From orange trees? They froze up there, but they've got seeds inside, and the fruit is edible." Looking at the two faces, I see nothing but confusion. "The seeds sprout and grow into bushy trees that produce more fruit with more seeds inside... which means more trees and more food."

Enanda steps inside as her father snatches the bag from Junior. She keeps her eyes fixed on me looking just as confused as the others. "But you said—"

"I bear seeds for growing food." I clear my throat, trying to sound authoritative. "All they need is dirt, sunlight, and water."

"Arlen, run a perimeter check." The father says with one hand on his gun, the other on the plastic bag and both eyes watching me. His expression is blank. "If he's telling the truth, we'll have no trouble locating his transport."

He looks down at the chair, staring into the empty mug. "That tea's going to start working soon, Seed Bearer."

I don't feel the butt of the rifle whip against my head. The room just disappears.

##

##

## Bearers Burden

The light in my face makes it impossible to see any details of the room.

I've been laid out on my back and strapped to a table. The only sound is the _whoosh_ of controlled air. And me, grunting as I fight the restraints.

Suddenly something in the wall near the corner moves. Only it's not the wall, but a person moving past the cracked wall.

_This can't be good_ , I think, watching as the dark figure steps into the light that's shining in my face. The person looks down at me, casting a deep shadow so I can't make out the face, but a scratchy voice fills my ears.

"Where did you come from?"

My legs are tied together, but I thrash and struggle, hoping to loosen the bands. Whatever binds them is very strong.

"There was no breach in our perimeter. No abandoned transport. So, how did get here? Who sent you?"

I can tell by the force in his voice that he's someone who's used to having people obey, no questions asked. My response—my spitting in his face—is sufficient to say that I'm not one who conforms.

It's kind of disgusting that my mucus hitting his eye doesn't faze him. He swipes away as he talks, continuingly looking down and keeping my blind to the identity of my company.

"You're human, yet have no inhibitors, so you aren't one of us. And no modifications—no tracker—so you aren't one of them, either."

I'm seriously considering spitting at him again, but then he shoots to the left side of the table and starts unfastening the strap on my forearm. It's the young man, the one who looks like Enanda. 'Arlen,' is what the man called him. "If you want my help, I need to know whose side you're on."

This throws me and I swallow down the loogey. "Mine."

"You told Enanda you were a Bearer, but the High Counsel has never heard of you. They've ordered us to hand you over. But you also brought us seeds. No one out here has seeds."

His hands have stopped moving. I'm still tied up. "I don't like authority, especially when that authority beats and ties me up for no damn reason."

"Whose side are you on?" His hands are holding onto my restraints, waiting for me to give the right answer.

Seems to me the right answer is to offer aid for aid, even if they've already taken my only bargaining chip. My stomach aches as I think, _authority. Speak with authority._

"I don't know anything about inhibitors or modifications. Obviously, I'm not from around here and take no sides. I was lost up there and came across your sister. She offered help, I took it and repaid ten times over. If you let go, you can keep the oranges."

"Where did you come from?" Arlen asks again.

"From very far away, from another group of people in another plane."

"Another plain?" He gasps. "How many are there?"

"Too many."

Arlen is quiet for a moment, his hands stay stuck on the wide band over my forearm and wrist. "What are they like?"

I consider for a moment how to describe the people in my world, how they would seem to the people over here: self-seeking and entitled, yet gullible and still occasionally heroic. "How do you mean, in what way?"

"There were rumors about other plains and people... but the ones we've sent searching never come back. Some say because the lands beyond are so beautiful that the travelers can't bring themselves to leave." He pauses and then looks me in the eye. "You have trees there?"

I nod. "Yes."

"How many?"

"Thousands."

Arlen draws his hands back, repeating the word like it's made of gold. "Thousands of ball fruit."

"They're called oranges." I correct, and add, "We have different types of trees that grow different fruits; like apples and pears, nuts, too."

"What is _nuts_?"

It's freaking miraculous that I manage to stave off the laughing fit. " _A_ nut is a little crunchy, brown thing. It grows on trees inside a hard shell."

Arlen's hand goes to his mouth. "Your people grow trees? And food?"

"We call them Farmers."

"Will your Farmers help us?"

I shake my head because he's asking for the most basic thing and I don't have an answer. "I don't know." Arlen must understand because his shoulders sink. So I add, "I'll ask. It's not a crime to ask for help."

More quickly than I expect, Arlen loosens the restraints on my arms. I sit up and find that it doesn't matter if I'm free because the room is spinning.

"Slowly. You are weary."

My throat swells as pieces of recycled bark and twig force their way out. Arlen jumps back from the spray, smiling. I gag and let it go. After my stomach has wholly ejected Enanda's concoction, I rub my aching head and look down at the mess I've made, noticing most of my stomach pain has gone south. The throbbing pain grows the longer I sit up.

I'm still in my rubber suit, I remember, thankful. That tea looks no worse for wear.

Groping for my front pocket, I feel the lump of the Threestone, but it's another, unexpected lump that stops me cold. Down between my legs where the abdominal pain is worst... is a tent. A raging, painful, hard-on.

Arlen's eyes follow mine. He looks on sympathetic. "It's the Virilustea. It should wear off soon."

After wiping my mouth on my sleeve, another light comes on and I can tell that I'm not in a small room like I thought. It's an alcove adjacent to a much larger area. Everything is new concrete mingled with old, cracked brick. The light is soft, unlike the painful rod between my legs. The air feels warm though I'm still bundled up in four layers of clothes so who the hell knows. I might actually be comfortable if I didn't have nature's Viagra coursing through me for subversive purposes. The image of Enanda's flushed cheeks as she passed me the Virilustea makes me shudder. I loosen the bands on my legs and let my feet dangle from the side of the table I was strapped to.

"While you were out, we took code samples. Our Multiplier says you have the cleanest DNA he's ever seen."

"Of course you did." Freedom has revived my penchant for sarcasm. "No one needs to ask _me_ before doing anything to my person. What the hell is a multiplier?"

The last word is drowned out by a loud rumble. The walls don't appear to move, but I feel them shaking. The noise is encompassing. Consuming, it drills into my head with the force of a jackhammer. My temples drum like a marching band is using my skull for practice sessions. I rub each side, trying to counter the pressure of the vibrating room.

When the sound stops, I ask, "What was that?"

Arlen has washed white, moving to the wall he presses another strange lock—a Biolock—on a closed door. "They're back."

I take my free hand and press it to my chest, double-checking that the stones are still there. "What was that noise?"

The door behind him changes from brick to metal and slides open like a pocket door. Arlen steps to my bedside and hands me my backpack, explaining. "A sonic cannon; their favorite weapon."

"Who are they?"

"The Breeders." He mutters bitterly and all I can think is, 'like the band?'

But this is no time for dumb questions as Arlen helps me from the table and I swear all the blood in my body rushes to my cock like it's trying to morph into a giant third leg. Sounds awesome, I know, but it's not. It fucking hurts.

I'm limping as Arlen leads out a door and down a long corridor. We pass several passage ways with stairwells leading down.

"Where are we going?" I need to get back to the surface. I need to get the hell out of here.

Arlen doesn't answer. Maybe because it's too noisy. We hustle down the corridor and into another. I find my strength, keeping one hand pressed to the heavy pain in my groin.

Arlen starts talking as other greasy-haired people file into the hall in front and behind us. Most are in white armored suits that remind me of police riot gear. The shapes are all round and smooth like storm troopers, but not as cool. I'm too shocked to take in anything that Arlen is saying, but that doesn't stop me from asking questions about what kind of place he lives in.

"The war started about a hundred years ago." He pauses at a cement portico that looks down into a vast room filled with groups of tables and chairs. People down there are moving like ants. "The survivors were stuck underground for years, waiting for the dust to settle. When there's no sun to count the time who can keep track?"

Arlen goes down the steps on our right, leading through the room labeled 'Community' and relaying the state of the icy world I've stepped into. He isn't sure how the war started or why, but from the sound of it, it was global and all-out nuclear. Nations destroyed one another and then fought over remaining resources.

As Arlen describes the war that ended all wars, he leads. I follow, listening closely and realizing for the very first time—the place I'm standing in is not my America. It's a nameless refuge in an ice desert remotely ruled by an eight member council and populated by people whose DNA is so broken down, they implant everyone with inhibitors to stop the symptoms of mental disease, then modify their behavior and sometimes their biology to make them capable of reproduction.

There's nothing normal left. It's a continent covered in ice, scarred land burning through an endless nuclear winter.

"Most of us were modeled here. Except my father. As a youth, he came from the Breeders but was labeled an Outlier and expelled from the last city. A Mole found him in the snow and brought him here. He was too young for interrogation. They say he had an honest face. But I think they let him in because he was healthy, and this outpost was depleted by disease at the time. And my father had knowledge they found helpful."

Another boom shakes the walls and Arlen pushes me into a crouch beside him. His worn shirt is missing a sleeve and his bicep is near the same size as my wrist.

"Brace for sonic blast!" Someone yells and everyone around us stoops, too, leaning into the shaky walls. When the trembling stops, I follow Arlen through another portico, to the base of a staircase, listening as he talks. It's like he doesn't even care about the sonic blasting, or maybe he just needs the distraction. I know I do.

So I keep listening as he talks of the Outliers—these underground people who are also called Moles—most recent efforts to repopulate, hence the High Councils call for Seed Bearers. People with the least modified, most usable DNA.

Usually, people are cloned because in the time Arlen has been alive—twenty years, he says, but he looks fifteen at most—only a handful people have been found capable of old-fashioned reproduction; his sister, Enanda, being one of them.

That makes my stomach turn to ash. The throbbing ache between my legs shrivels at the thought.

She's a child.

Arlen tells dark tales of environmental engineering experiments that poisoned and killed many people. But he says the Breeders have perfected climate control with MoGen; the nickname of a massive atmospheric generator that's used to keep the controlled cities and farmlands snow free and sunny while Outlier camps, like this one, are deemed unfit. Some members of the population are considered unfit for survival and cast out of MoGen territories. Most freeze to death before they find help.

"The ones that make it here usually end up dead, too." Arlen whispers. "We die fighting."

"Fighting what?" I ask, as Arlen reaches the top of the next set of steps and throws open a hatch.

When I step through, I find that we are outside. The daylight is offensive, reflecting off the crystal white snow, blinding me. I strap on my hood and secure it in place to keep the sudden cold from stealing my breath.

Arlen pats a white wall of snow the bare skin of his arm is already red. "Stay behind this blind until it's safe to depart. Get word to your farmers as fast as you can."

Just past the edge of the wall meant to hide us, white oval shapes hover over the icy terrain, reflecting the rising sun. I hear the _whir_ of their engines. Areas hit with the sonic waves are easy to spot. It looks like someone has taken a giant shovel and pounded down the snow. They're a hundred yards or so off, and I wonder about the tunnels that were directly beneath the charges.

How can Arlen, who looks more boy than man, be so calm?

And I don't know what it is that wells on the inside of me—definitely not the Virilustea. Probably pity peppered with insanity—but I turn back to look him straight in the eye.

"I'm going to help you fight." I declare, and for some damned reason, I mean it.

Arlen's smile is no better than his sisters—gray teeth too big for his malnourished face. He reaches behind his back and pulls off a strap from around his shoulder. At the end of his strap is an oblong looking barrel, an odd-shaped shotgun with a wide stock.

"It's not the most accurate, you know because the barrel was warped and we had to cut—"

"It'll do." I take the gun and set the strap on my shoulder.

The snow beneath our feet begins to shake. We both peak around the edge of our enclosure to watch a grouping of hovercrafts shooting lights into the snow. The ground beneath them grumbles and breaks apart, collapsing in patches.

"You've got to evacuate. Now." When he doesn't respond I turn around, finding only the sealed hatch door beside me. He's gone back down. I pull at the lever on the edge of the door, but it won't budge.

Alone in the snow, clutching the pouch with the stones, I feel a little like Gollum, always wanting to touch the _Precious_. I could take them out right now. Let them suck the energy from this place and I'd be home in less than a minute. In a warm place with trees and sunlight, where there aren't any people living like gophers, breeding like rats, and hoping for the strength of numbers to turn the war-tide in their favor.

And if I did that, then what? Their back-up generator switches on? These people probably don't have a back-up anything. Absorbing their power is the same as killing them myself. That makes me no better than the guys in the hovercrafts, blasting their walls with sonic waves.

Stepping out from behind the snow wall, I break into a run.

##

##

##  Here I Come To Save The Day

When I was seven or so I went through this phase where I was always watching old cartoons. Black and white _Mighty Mouse_ cartoons, specifically.

There was a little _Felix the Cat_ in there, too, but Mighty Mouse was my favorite. I would get up extra early on Saturday mornings hoping to catch them. Everyone else in my kindergarten class was into _Transformers_ , or _Tom and Jerry_ , but not me. Mighty Mouse was my guy; way better than Jerry, the typical cartoon mouse, or _Speedy Gonzales_ , whose adventures were always the same. Jerry wanted to kill Tom the cat, and he never succeeded. Speedy only wanted cheese and no one could stop him from taking it because he was too fast. But Mighty Mouse was a hero; a tiny little mouse with super strength and the ability to fly. He did for others, defended others who couldn't do for themselves.

Running across the slick terrain I relate to that cartoon mouse. In a very real way, I am small and vulnerable to this unknown enemy. But in another, surreal way, nothing is what it seems.

Because the guys in those hovercrafts don't know what's about to hit them. They don't know the power I have or what I can do with it.

The three stones gently glow. I thrust my hands towards the set of hovercraft and rejoice when their engines sputter. They must be electric. The stones absorb the lights beneath them, the ones sending the sonic blasts into the tunnels. As I get closer, the crafts' steady positions falter. The contour of the ship reminds me of a warped rim on a truck tire. Both machines drop onto the ice craters formed by the blasts, like bottle caps at a picnic. Bent and useless.

I look up, expecting a pointed cloud that leads to a vortex or wormhole. But the sky is empty, the day blindingly clear.

More rumbles ring from beneath my feet. A strange shaking, and then these booming sounds that start in my boots and shoot all the way up my spine, into my teeth. There's nothing to do but scurry back from the crater as the ground surrounding the downed hovercrafts cracks and breaks.

The tunnels. The people.

Turning on my heel, I follow the shallow footprints in the snow back to the blind I came from. The wall of snow that hid the tunnel entrance is still standing though there's a large crack running along the bottom.

"Arlen!" I call out, pushing and pulling at the edge of the round hatch, but it won't budge. There's no hinges to shoot at. No Biolock appearing on the surface.

All those people. Arlen and his father. Enanda. The nameless ones that passed me in the corridors. How will they get out?

"Arlen!" Hunched over, I'm pounding on the hatch.

I can't open it.

Then I remember the clumsy-looking gun and take to my feet. Stepping back, I point the wide barrel of the weapon at the locked door. Drawing a deep breath, I let it out and listen for voices over the intermittent rumble that can only be a cave-in down below. Hearing nothing but my own labored breathing, I pull the trigger.

Like being kicked by a steroidal mule, my head jerks back, hits the edge of snow wall—hard. It's a glancing blow and I keep going. The freezing ground slams my shoulders as momentum takes my feet up and over my head. Splayed like a jellyfish just outside the blind is how it ends. I'm on my side, nose bleeding, facing the sun. My shoulder throbs. My head... for one fleeting moment, I see the rings of Saturn.

The ground is still shaking.

The visor on my hood is covered in white powder. I scrape it away and scramble upright. Coming around the blind, I can tell that the hatch door's been blown open. My breath catches at the long, rumble fighting its way up from inside the chute, from the bowels of the underground city.

Dust clouds fill the shaft. Flipping my hood up, I hold my breath and listen.

That sound. That same dull sound is closer, reverberating through the vertical tunnel. My legs shake inside my boots. Small bits of ice break from the grounds' surface, flicking up as if they're too excited to stay still. The odor rising from the shaft smells bad, like burning oil and shit. I step back, feeling the trembles reach my chest.

Tracing the vibrations with my eyes is compulsory as the ground shakes with greater force. The ice all around me cracks into fist-sized chunks and I stumble back out of the blind.

Over in the crater, a scraping screech catches my attention. It's coming from the hovercrafts. One of the engines is whirring back to life. The far craft teeters as it tries to take off, cracking more chunks from the ice when it smashes down again. There's a half-dozen people scrambling around the wreckage inside the craters when plates of ice shattered by the sonic cannons begin completely breaking apart, falling away, exposing deep crevices, like dead pixels on a digital screen. There is nothing below. Black steam rises from the open seams and the muffled rumbling I have felt more than heard isn't muffled anymore.

The enemy survivors seem to panic and I can only stare at their suits. All smooth white, with a single neon orange stripe down the arms and legs. Some are shouting instructions to get clear of the danger zone. Others are looking at me and reaching for their weapons. I raise mine but don't need to shoot.

The disaster unfolds too quickly. The deep sound of thunder down below crescendos and all hell breaks loose.

First, a steaming geyser shoots massive chunks of ice and debris into the air. Then, water. It shoots up at least a hundred feet, spraying the snowy landscape and freezing again in seconds. The men that have been trying to climb out of the pit freeze, as if that will save them, as if the sinking ground beneath them is attracted to movement.

The loud shaking stops and it scares me enough to run.

Fractured soil falls away, beginning at the crater and then rippling out in every direction at once.

Flames. A damned inferno erupts behind me. Blistering wind throws me forward. My mask and chest slam against the ice. The pain in my nose makes my eyes water and I can't see. Doesn't matter though. Propelled by the blast, I roll up onto my feet without pause and keep booking it.

And I keep running, never slowing or looking back until the heat is gone and the sounds disappear. Until the frozen air has almost frozen my lungs and I can't take another step.

When I do take time to look back, there's nothing left. I mean, there was nothing to see before, but now, there's no invisible blind that hid a hatch in the flat expanse of white ground. There's truly nothing. No hatch, no crater of wreckage. No crater at all—just blank space and a pyre of black smoke rising from the bowels of hell, into the morning sky.

And me.

I'm still here.

I have hardly any food. A few protein bars and some water. Arlen's people took the fruit I picked and now they're all dead.

I glance at the sky, feeling every shade of wrong and sarcastic.

"You've got a terrible sense of humor."

My steps are muffled clicks in the compact snow as I plod toward the city that Arlen talked about and trying not to remember the sound of his voice or the underground tunnels filled with genetically deficient bottom-dwellers that will never again see the light of day.

My eyes stay locked on the snowy ground as I go, looking up just enough to gauge direction and keep on target for the buildings in the distance.

There's no way I will make it by nightfall, but I don't care.

##

##

##  Modes Of Transportation

In all the travelling through the multiple dimensions, flying off buildings and flinging out of cars, shooting and being shot, surviving accidents only to inexplicably time-jump into an alternate reality where I arrive at the exact moment everything is destroyed—in all of that, the one thing that has my head twisted, the one thing that has captured my attention and won't release it, is the weird round thing that's appeared a hundred yards away and is now bulleting toward me.

In this blank landscape, there's literally nowhere to hide. What can I do but stand here, waiting? The strange vehicle reminds me of the hovercraft in the way it floats but is utterly different in appearance. It's a flying ball shooting across the icy surface until it halts less than five feet away.

It's the strangest mode of transportation I've ever seen, second only to the blue fiery gateway that the Threestone opens.

This round ship looks like a giant snowball, but as I look closer, I see it's not white. Its metal and reflecting the snow. The sphere is formed from tiny triangular pieces of shining metal, knit together.

I pay close attention as the shape of a door forms in the curved side—just like the Biolock—and slides open. Like something out of _Star_ _Trek_.

A man steps out. Two feet set apart; the legs wrapped in white solid material, the thin torso, boxy chest, and then the face. That face.

It's him.

The man emerging from this weird, circular transporter looks like my father. Not exactly, but stunningly close to my dad when he was in his thirties. I have to close my eyes, shake my head, and count to three. Check and then check again to make sure I'm not dreaming.

When I open my eyes, I find myself flanked by two other men in gray jumpsuits and helmets. One of them twists my arm behind my back while the second unfastens my hood and flips it back. Glacial air blasts my face and it hurts to breathe. I can't stop myself from being shoved forward, towards the opening of the circular ship.

"Into the Orb." An even voice from behind me says. It sounds male. "Now."

My eyes are glued to the officer standing by the doorway. His answering stare is cold. Emotionless, as if he's never seen me before. Guess he doesn't own a mirror

"Confiscate his belongings." The man says. "Destroy the weapon." With that, he turns and walks into the Orb.

The inside is nothing like the spaceships I've seen on TV. There are no walls filled with flashing buttons, no enormous window that doubles as a screen for communication. No control panels anywhere. Just hard, white benches that rise up out of the floor a few feet behind a single chair facing, what I guess is the front of the spherical transport. There's the man again, sitting down, facing the lone control panel, that's no more than a rectangular keypad set above a joystick under a portal-like windshield.

One of guards strips the backpack from my shoulders. I make a stink of it like there's something important in there. They ignore my ranting and force me into a spot on the hard bench using smooth, synchronized actions—moving in perfect unison as if they do this a hundred times a day.

To keep up appearances, I decide to let the first guard hold me down, but make a big show of it by first smacking the front of his helmet. It's not hard enough to knock his head back, but my cold hand stings. All the while I'm rambling about violations of privacy while the other helmet-clad guard removes and analyzes everything inside my bag, asking stupid questions.

"What is the purpose of this device?" The second guard asks while holding up my small soup pot.

"For hitting yourself over the head. Go on, give it a try."

The cabin space of this transporter is small. When the man occupying the pilots' chair turns around, our knees almost touch.

The two guards drop what they're doing, straighten and salute. This odd, circular craft—this Orb—that literally looks like a giant bouncy ball is being operated by a guy with another version of my father's face.

Staring at him sends me back to that bathroom where I was standing behind his wheelchair with that stupid shaver in my hand. I took every moment with him for granted. Except a span of about five seconds after he told me he was going to die and right before I realized I couldn't handle it and shut down. I wanted nothing to do with his secrets and predictions.

The memory pulses as I watch the man reclaim his seat in the single chair and remove one of his two white gloves. I'm sure he's going to say something smarmy when he addresses me, at least remark that we look like we could be related, but he's all business.

"Alien, I am your captain and pilot. You are my prisoner. You will obey my orders at all times. If you struggle, the lieutenant will shoot you. If you—" He stops and touches a hand to his ear, scowling.

He remains silent, tilting his head as if listening and staring at the guard seated directly across from me. The one holding my backpack makes an odd squeaking sound, not quite like he's clearing his throat. Then all three of the soldiers nod.

The pilot doesn't bother with finishing his instructions as he turns away and punches a series of buttons on the panel in front. The entry of the space craft closes; the panel disappearing like no door was ever there.

Another punch into the keypad and a band reaches out from the wall behind me, coming around my shoulder and passing across my chest to lock into the wall behind my other shoulder, securing me in place. The guard holding me lets go and I adjust myself, feeling the shape of the stones gouging into my chest.

The Commandant then presses his flat hand onto the keypad in front of him and the Orb shoots forward. I wouldn't even know we were travelling if not for the snow blowing past the front window. There's no sound of an engine or rumbling, nothing to show that we're actually moving.

"Where are you taking me?" I ask and get the answer I expect: nothing.

I keep watching as the pilot punches one code after another into the panel on at the front of the ship, trying to memorize them. Some have two digits, others have three. The commander and the guard across from me exchange words in voices too low for me to catch, even though I'm so close, I should catch every word.

I look at the guy nearest me. "What did you say?"

"Doyen wants to see him." The man repeats in monotone. Or maybe his dark helmet makes it sound that way. Then he leans forward and touches the top of the pocket on the front of my suit. I flinch as far back as the vise around my chest allows.

"Are you malformed, Alien?" His obscured face seems to examine me. "Your symmetry construction does not suggest biological defects."

The guard moves one gloved hand in the air between us and the band over my chest glides down, exposing the stones to inspection. I try twist away, but he's got my pocket open and the rubber pouch in his hand before I can stop him.

"The weight and shape do not match any known weapons. What is the purpose of this?"

The other guard is turned in my direction, watching me struggle against the restraints. "Don't open that." It's the fastest way to get them to do just that.

It's a gamble. We'll probably crash, but my only advantage is the element of surprise.

The commander is out of his pilot chair—a man, very near mirror-image of my patriarch—he's tilting his head with extreme interest while the snow outside keeps blurring.

"We are immune to human disease." The men all speak—three voices in unison, all perfectly matched monotones from three different mouths.

"I'm begging you, please don't." I brace myself as he rips back the zipper.

The lights go out. A loud whirring noise sounds through the cabin, pitching higher and higher until it sputters out. The Orb jumps and shudders like we've hit something.

A body flies through the cabin—crashing and bouncing against every surface. It could be anyone of them. I'm glad I'm strapped to the bench.

The Orb keeps bouncing and soon my belt snaps. Then I'm flying too. For a second before something bangs into my shoulder and side of my head.

##

##

##  Definitely Not In Kansas Anymore

My ears are ringing.

It takes a few breaths to get my bearings. I manage to roll onto my back and find that I'm looking at open sky. Noisy wind cuts across my face like sharp icy blades.

My right leg feels numb.

Off to one side, pieces of metal debris are scattered over the snow. On the other side, it looks as though I'm still inside the ship; half in, half out.

Taking in a deep breath, I hold it and close my eyes to listen. Picking up no other noise, beside the glacial winds, I call out. My voice sounds far away. It takes everything I have to get myself up onto my elbows.

A long piece of white metal strains over one leg. I work my fingers beneath the heavy edge and lift. I still have to wiggle out from underneath the large hunk of debris. As I raise up just enough to turn over, my neck and back wash suddenly warm, and though I relish the heat, I don't want it or the pain waiting to pounce. On hands and knees, I crawl out onto the snow and search for the three stones that I'm counting on saving me. And then for my father's alternate—or at least a man who looks like him.

Nothing but broken bits of Orb.

I've got to move slowly, inspect myself for signs of internal injuries, and because it's freakishly cold, But I finally make it to my feet. Once I'm standing, I get my first good look around.

Huge chunks of jagged metal and bits of broken wiring litter the crash site. What's left of the Orb is comparable to a torn tennis ball. Bits of the ship are everywhere. I move away, unsure if there's any potential for another explosion.

I find my mysterious rocks only a few feet away, suspended in triad just above the snow. Right beside them, their pouch. I don't know how it's possible that they aren't forever lost in this mess.

I scoop up the rubber casement and give myself a second to stare, to run my fingers through the space between the Threestone and ground. The mysterious, beautiful stones remain stationary and I feel like I'm being examined even though I'm the one staring. It's as if they're trying to send a message. But that's stupid because rocks can't think or talk.

That's when I notice the pristine snow. Aside from the obvious markings of the accident, there's no disruption to the barren land, no sign that a vortex opened. Nothing is melted or blown around like a giant funnel cloud of blue smoke and fire appeared and then disappeared. Not a flake out of place.

For the second time in less than an hour, the stones have taken in energy but no gateway was triggered.

"Is this normal?" I ask the rocks because who else is there?

These people must operate on limited resources... maybe the stones didn't get enough power to open a wormhole.

Taking them into my hand, they're so light and wondrous.

I'm trying to hurry, but it takes a very long time to find my backpack—which survived intact. Mostly. I give myself fifteen minutes to gather what I can from the wreck. That plan turns directly to shit when I find my three travelling companions.

The guards were not human. They're machines. Mechanized people—I mean robots, or androids or something.

With the two guards, it's easy to tell at first glance. One of them lost his helmet and the spot where his head should be is nothing more than lights, circuit boards, and wires. The second guard has a huge piece of pipe-like metal planted through the face mask of his gray helmet. Inside it looks the same as the first.

It's the third body that throws me—the pilot-slash-commander that looks so much like my dad. I find him fifty yards back from where the main portion of the Orb landed. He is alone, face down in the snow. He isn't breathing, so I turn him over just in time to catch sparks flying from his nostrils. A red-hot ember lands on my chest and flickers out.

I fall back, knocked on my ass from the shock. Seeing the flesh scraped away on the side of his face, the way it ripples in the strengthening wind looking more like play-doh than flesh. Beneath it, where there should be bone and sinew, there is only metal.

Holding the stones inside their pouch, I mumble. "Where to?"

My sights land on the skyline of that city that is now much closer than it was before those robots showed up and forced me into their ship (that's not something I ever thought I'd say). But the buildings are in plain view now. It's also the only place in sight; the singular sanctuary from this ice desert.

I don't know what to think about any of this. Robots and ball-like ships. War and destruction. Death is all around me. I'm not going to think about what's happened. I am going to focus on getting into that city where Arlen told me the Breeders live.

In this barren landscape, whatever circumstances await me in there, they have to be better than freezing to death.

##

##

##  Click Your Heels Together Three Times

The snow is compact until a half-mile from the city. Then, the deep drifts soften and turn to slush. It's like walking through freezing quick sand. I'm huffing long before I get close enough to make out details of the buildings—which are enormous. Like high-rise apartment buildings. Really shitty ones.

Los Angeles has its' share of Projects. They've all got that distinct plainness, a bland uniformity that tells they are low-income, no matter how new or old. These apartments are eerily similar, only much taller than the ones I'm used to.

The slush gives way to mud and there's a notable change rise in temperature. As I near the border of the city, the mud dries. The air feels much warmer and heavier as if there's more oxygen in the atmosphere, but I still don't see any vegetation.

Before I reach the boundary—which is a high cement-type wall—I've already flipped open my hood and am halfway to regretting the layers of clothes.

Searching the area for cameras yields nothing. I'm not sure what a camera would look like in this place, so I look for anything, a small box, a panel or floating device strapped to a post, but still find nothing. They probably have a thousand Biolocks hiding in this thing.

No signs of surveillance, but there are plenty of warning signs—big, red squares—that use pictures instead of words. I'm not familiar with their weapons or forms of punishment, but judging by the depiction of crude human forms suffering at the hand of a giant bolt of electricity, I don't want to get caught breaching this barrier.

Without a soul in sight and no visible surveillance, I drop my pack and change out of the extra layers of clothes. After everything is repacked, I take up the backpack pause to listen for the telltale hum of electricity. Hearing nothing, I begin searching for signs of buried wires, a hatch, or trap doors in the dirt. But the only markers I find are footprints—mine. Not a single green shoot or even a rock. Without vegetation, it's not tough to guess why there are no signs of birds or animals.

I take up a chunk of dried mud and heave it at the wall. It crashes into the side, crumbling. I take up another chunk and aim at the air just above the wall. It doesn't seem like the hunk of dirt hits anything, but it erupts into green flames that turn it to ash.

Great.

* * *

After changing out of the radiation suit and spending the better part of an hour searching and learning as much as I can, I am sure the wall itself is not electrified. It's the air above I need to worry about. Shouldn't be a problem since I've got the stones. The problem is finding my way over the wall. It's too smooth for traction, too high to climb, and there's not a single tree or shopping basket, or board in sight. Only cold earth and distant billows of snow.

I think of the stones—the way they waited, floating after the Orb crashed. Maybe they were trying to tell me something.

Before I think it through, I've got the pouch in my hand. I'm stripping the rubber case away and holding them up to the wall in front of me. I have no idea what I'm hoping they'll do, I'm just waiting for the stones to work their magic.

And waiting.

And waiting some more.

I shake my head, wondering if I should give a command. Clearing my throat, I whisper, "Threestone, would you take me up to the top of the wall and safely get me through the green fire? And if it's not too much trouble, could you get me down the other side, too? Unnoticed?"

Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I'm talking to rocks.

The black stone begins to glow, then the red, and then the white. I make a mental note to write it down for Eli. I've only ever seen them light up simultaneously.

There is nothing to see only the sense of that familiar bubble, the one that protects me from the destruction of the gateway. I feel it close around me and then my feet leave the ground. Soon, I'm level with the top of the wall, then above it. Green fire shoots from I don't know where, but it fizzles and disappears. I keep going, keep floating down the other inside.

My boots gingerly touch down on thick green grass. Fervent gratitude comes on so strong, it's nearly as shocking as the floating trip over the wall. I kiss each rock and shove them back in their pouch for safe keeping. Then stuff the pouch into my pocket.

Turning away from the outer wall to get my first look around, my shoulder smacks against another wall. I'm like a little kid made to stand in a giant corner. This second wall is not part of the high perimeter barrier, but serves more like a divider in a tray of ice cubes—like the walls they build around swanky suburbs to keep out the riffraff—except this wall is smaller and solid—and very strange, It's constructed of a hard, translucent material. It's clear like glass but feels like metal against my knuckles. Sounds like it, too.

On the opposite side of the clear barrier are row after row of those project-type apartments I saw from my first day in this plane. They're dilapidated, set along filthy streets. There are people up and down the sidewalks in front of them, all dressed in bland jumpsuits. Like a band of khaki clad auto mechanics.

As I stare, a little boy toddles past. He looks at the wall and beats at it with a tiny hand. I crouch down to his eye-level. The boy grins when I wave at him. A man, his father I assume, runs up behind the toddler and takes him away.

"Recall that they can't see us." The voice shocks me into an about-face. The source is a woman with her arms folded across her chest.

She stares politely from five feet away while I measure her and the situation. Dark brown hair. Triangular face. Pretty and older than me; probably mid-forties. A little chunky compared with very clear, blue eyes.

We are standing to one side of strip of lawn that runs along both walls and merges where the stones dropped me. It's an apex of green, here, at the corner of where the two walls meet. Nearest to us lies the beginning of a long row of weird, rounded houses set alongside a uniform row of shade trees. Behind this woman is an open lawn and a tree-lined sidewalk that runs parallel to the clear wall.

I adjust my backpack. "Yeah, I... recall."

She steps from the sidewalk, crossing the lawn towards me. "Are you recently transferred? I have never seen you before."

"Yes," that sounds like the perfect explanation for my unexplained presence.

"What ward do you come from?"

"Mother, leave that man alone." A man lurches from the other side of a row of neat shrubbery and marches up to take the woman by the elbow. I can't help noticing the way his eyes widen and then shrink when he looks at me, or how he looks older than I do, yet just addressed this woman as 'mother.'

"You should not make contact with strangers. Come home, now."

"She's fine," I say, "we were just talking."

"That's kind of you." He says but clearly doesn't think I'm kind at all as he disappears back behind that ridiculously straight line of hedges, tugging his mother behind him. They're both wearing smooth, clean clothes in pale green, with bright green bands around both wrists.

Walking out of the knoll, I take in the suburban-type place the stones have brought me. This part of the city is the opposite of the one on the other side of the transparent wall. Aside from the all-gray color scheme they share, and rounded corners on every building, this place looks exactly like a suburb with lots of grass and trees, and clean air and sidewalks. On the other side of the clear wall, there's a noticeable layer of grime over everything.

None of what I'm seeing blocks out the conversation that the mother and son are having as he drags her towards the door of the nearest gray house.

I can't understand all of what's being said, but the son's tone is gruff. The old woman stops in front of a tall doorway surrounded by pylon-like hedges and flags me with a frantic wave. When I nod, she jerks her elbow from the clamping companion.

"Young man, you must join us for dinner."

I've been trying not to think about food until I got to a place where I could find some. Just hearing the word _dinner_ makes my stomach shout.

Behind her in the doorway, her irritated off-spring is speaking to someone I can't see.

"Ignore him." The woman directs. "This is my domicile. You are my guest." She crosses the yard to loop her arm through mine. I let her because I'm hungry.

She's smiling, adding, "I don't like even numbers at the table. It's bad luck."

"No, it isn't." The man in the doorway says as we pass through.

"Leave your mother alone, Alfaeus." A younger woman in a smooth pastel green jumpsuit swats at him. "She requires respect."

Alfaeus turns to me—"You are welcome to stay, of course,"—and disappears down a long passage.

"See?" His supposed mother grabs my arm again, this time on the other side, leading me through a very light, sparsely furnished entry, into a great room with vine plants crawling up the walls and thin gold-colored furniture that looks like it's formed from painted toothpicks.

"Young people make wonderful company when they aren't your relations." She chuckles. "My name is Citrina."

She waits expectantly for me to act normal and introduce myself.

Once I do, we exchange a chest level handshake. Citrina leads me to a large dining area. From the number of rounded doorways on every wall, I'd guess that this dining room is centrally located in the middle of the house.

Against the far wall, starting in the corner, there is a tall flowering plant with pink buds, then a closed archway. A small table on the other side, with what looks like a pitcher, and then another archway. It's the same thing along the other three walls. There's one corner-less doorway that leads in from the kitchen and three others that open up from dark halls. Like connecting tubes in a hamster cage, this room is the bubble. Every wall is pristinely white and smooth. The floors look hard and shiny yet give a little with each step, like a carpet.

I stand with Citrina while the dining room fills. She introduces me to everyone as they walk in. It can't be customary for people to pause and stare when introduced, but they do. Pause. And then stare at me. Or do a double-take. But then they smile and sit. There are seven seats filled, myself included.

Geode, a man who looks about my age, but swears he's ninety-five. He has light brown eyes and skin. His wife, Amethyst, is a pretty brunette with a permeating grin. She brags that she's over one hundred when I make a fuss over Geode's age. The two are very talkative. They've been married ever since they can remember. And each seems genuinely pleased with the other, despite the fact they were assigned to one another, not traditionally chosen as most units are.

"Assigned? Really?"

I use more enthusiasm than necessary, taking a note from my old man. He told me once that if you want to ply someone for information, you'd better do it with as much kindness and enthusiasm as you can muster, or the person being plied will get suspicious. It seemed like a dumb thing to say to a thirteen-year-old, but it comes in handy.

Feigning interest, I let whomever do the talking and redirect any questions with tones that imply curiosity, rather than saying what I really want, which is "please explain because you are too weird for me to relate."

Also, it's peculiar that everyone at this table is wearing green clothes and a bright green band around each wrist—everyone except the bright-eyed woman serving us all dinner. She's wearing blue.

"Oh, yes. We were matched perfectly." Amethyst says.

"That doesn't happen very often," I say.

She smiles widely. "No. It does not."

"And what about you two?" I turn to the other couple at the table. Quartz and Ore. I was introduced to them over the first course which was a thick, green soup. I and everyone else ate except Quartz. She's very lean; probably dieting.

"I am displaced," Quartz folds her hands in her lap.

"That must be something." I'm trying to sound intrigued but, it's difficult, not knowing if this 'displacement' is good or bad. Her tone was too even to guess.

Ore speaks up. "It has been six years."

"Six years and seventeen days." Quartz reiterates.

I nod my head.

Citrina, the kind woman who invited me joins in. "What was it like?"

Her son, Alfaeus, rolls his eyes when Quartz begins to explain. He's a forty-five-year-old brat that acts like a fifteen year-old entitled brat.

"I recall the feeling my strength drained away. My hands," she holds up her right, "they were so weak. I miss the connection to that body, but I do not miss the fallibility. I prefer this perfected state. Still, I must remind myself that my essence belongs here, now, in this biosynthetic vessel."

Wholly crap. Is she saying what I think she's saying? It would explain the flawless skin and perfect posture. But how is that even possible?

"It was compiled just for you at great expense," Ore says.

"What about you? What is your assignment?"

I don't like Alfaeus. He's smirking, thinking he's caught me off guard with his question. And he has.

I hesitate, thinking.

"I know what he does," Citrina announces. "He is a Youngling Guide." Her eyes pan the table. "I saw him looking through the Palisade at the offspring."

"Is that right?" Geode asks, his brown eyes shine as he takes a bite from a new plate set before him. It's piled high with an assortment of brightly colored foods I can't identify because they're all square with rounded corners. "Are you a Guide?"

"Go on," Citrina insists, "tell them, I am correct."

Alfaeus rolls his whole head this time. "Mother. There is no way you can know a man's contribution cycle by looking at him, especially when he lacks appropriate sorting bonds." He raises one hand and points at his green wristband.

"She's right." I say, "How did you know?"

"The way you looked at the child in the Squalid."

"What way was that?"

Citrina leans forward. "As one who would make a Youngling Guide."

"It's awful, living the way they are, like the ancients." Amethyst shakes her head.

"Forced to raise their own children—can you imagine," Geode agrees.

"Your contribution cycle must be draining." Amethyst shakes her head.

"The little boy looked happy," I say.

"Of course he did, he's never known anything other than Squalid living." Geode continues but is interrupted by Alfaeus.

"Yes, and I blame parentage. It's not natural." Alfaeus whips his head from Geode, to glare at Citrina. "Isn't that right, Mother?"

The blue-clad server has been standing off to one side since dinner began. She's served and poured our drinks, cleared the dishes from the first two courses, and now strides through the dining area holding another impossible amount of plates.

She announces the main course is some kind of chicken I've never heard of and I'm afraid to ask questions. So I just watch as she bows low and passes plates.

Her arms extend to unnatural lengths like growing boughs on a sapling—bendy, but strong. Her blue uniform shirt is plain, but low cut. Alfaeus grins for the first time, staring at the voluptuous server beside him. She has a subtle blue light rimming the pupils of her eyes. For a second it flickers and then I know it's more than a reflection of the lighted dinner setting, its electricity.

They've got a robot maid, I realize and am surprised by the pang of jealousy I feel. I mean, this is my second encounter with androids today and the first was not a pleasant experience, but I was weaned on _The Jetsons_. What kid in his right mind didn't want a robot-maid like Rosie? Still, seeing that ambition in practice is strange. Like science fiction turned reality.

The part that ruins it for me is the way Alfaeus watches the feminine machine with a gaze that makes me feel like I'm trespassing.

Freaky Weirdo.

I scoot my chair further from his.

* * *

By the time dinner is over I'm nauseated. I could've eaten a lot more, but the food tasted weird. Everything looked weird and the textures were distinctly gelatinous.

No matter which fare I tried, every one of them, whether water, dessert, or protein in the main course, they all left an aftertaste of something I can't describe.

So when the robotic maid, with her corn-silk braid and glowing eyes, approaches one last time to offer coffee and sugar cake, I refuse. She complies, but cites that I've not eaten enough to sustain me, that a lack of appetite is symptomatic of illness and that I should summon a Healer if I'm unwell.

Everyone looks wide-eyed at her suggestion. So I do, too. Pretend that I'm shocked and then lie.

"I take my larger meals earlier in the day and eat lighter in the evening." Everyone looks at me like I'm the freaky weirdo which is my cue to leave.

"I've got work in the morning." I don't wait for acknowledgement, but stand and wave, thanking them all for the hospitality and offering to see myself out.

Citrina still follows, probably making sure I find the right archway.

"Thank you again for inviting me."

She smiles, eyes full of kindness. "I've never met a citizen as thankful. We simply upheld Doyen's Law of Reciprocity."

"Doyen." My ears prick up at the word and I want to ask what it means, but the doorway between us closes before I can.

The sky outside is dark though the lamps keep nearly every inch well-lit. No one roaming the night or walking a dog. I suddenly wonder if there's a curfew and wish I had thought to check.

Curious and lacking options, I head for the see-through wall that Citrina called a _Palisade_. Seems no one over there is out either. The street lights are much dimmer, though, so I can barely see beyond the corner of the closest apartment building.

I touch the pouch in my pocket and wonder, "Can you take me over there?"

##  Adventures in Baby-sitting

The little boy that toddled towards the Palisade earlier was not looking at me. I thought he was, but from where I am now, inside the Squalid, I understand that the little boy didn't even know I was there. Like Citrina said, he couldn't see me.

The translucent wall is not only a separator. It's also a creepy one-way mirror. The little boy was waving at his own reflection.

So people living on the nicer side can look through the Palisade, see the filth and be thankful they aren't living in an area that I've just discovered reeks of raw sewage and burnt oil. While, on this side, when you look at the Palisade, all you see is your own filth and what's behind you. They can't see the new rooftops next door and compare them to these shitty overhangs. No clean sidewalks to look at and complain about your own dirt lane.

It's also much darker over here. Even the night sky above the scant lights seems denser than it was just fifty feet away.

With my sleeve pressed to my nose, I stick to the path of least resistance, winding around the corner of the first building. The lawn is littered with refuse. Once I'm in front of the building, I spot the source of sour air. It's a massive pile of garbage blocking the roadway.

The trash heap wasn't there when I first saw this place so I have to wonder where it came from. Stumbling past a particularly rancid patch of rancid air, my dinner starts gurgling.

What the hell kind of place is this? They haven't discovered trash cans? It's like the street is one big landfill. I have to squeeze between the side of the building and the garbage pile just to avoid wading through the muck.

Coming around the other side of the heap, I stop dead in my tracks, spotting something that does not belong in the reeking rot. It's a set of apple cheeks and big brown eyes set close together. A small boy. He can't be more than two or three, yet he's standing out here all alone, naked, and knee deep in filth.

It's the combination of waste and innocence that gets my hands acting independently. Before I think of what I'm doing, the boy is in my arms. He's trembling; obviously scared silly, probably because he's being handled by a stranger. He's isn't making any noise and there are no tears on his cheeks, either but the crumpled expression says he's crying.

He smells bad. Really bad. Like the putrefaction I've just pulled him from. Like he's never had a real bath. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to know he'll catch something touching this all this trash. From the looks of this boney little guy, he's sick already. So small, too thin, and bare-assed; not even a diaper. His little feet are black with muck and though the night air is warm enough for shorts, his bare legs feel cold. His stomach is small and tight as he holds a cry.

"We'll find your mommy and everything will be alright." Nobody's out on the dark street, though.

With the little guy resting uncomfortably under my arm, I take him with me up the nearest walkway of the closest apartment where there's a wide doorway. No knob, of course.

So I knock.

When no one answers, I knock again and wait.

"Where's your house?" I softly ask. "Do you know where do you live?"

Five minutes pass as I linger, knocking and hollering, waiting for someone to hear or walk out of the building, but the door stays shut. The building stays quiet. The boy won't talk.

So then I'm searching for anything that looks like it might function as an intercom, but there's nothing. No Biolock, no panel, not even any numbers to tell the address. These are the most simply designed apartments I have ever seen. As if they were made for function only. Not aesthetically pleasing. No patios or balconies. No decorative lines or carvings. No molding around the high windows. There are lines that look like eaves every few stories, but it's hard to tell in the dark. The building is a big box with smooth corners and a single common doorway that's locked. I can't even find the stairs to get up to the next level of apartments.

No one is answering any of the doors I try, so then I start knocking on the small windows that have lights inside. They're too high for me to look through and no one looks to see what the ruckus is.

Six buildings later, I'm no closer to finding out who this little guy belongs to and resort to yelling for anyone to, "please help!"

My calls go unanswered.

The way it's supposed to go is like this: you see a kid toddling down by the road and you stare a lot longer than normal because you're waiting for the cursory adult to appear. You know, the one with the worried look that washes to instant relief the moment they see what you see—i.e. the missing toddler. But that isn't happening here.

I ask my little companion, again, to show me where he lives, but he stays quiet with his dirty index finger hooked in his mouth. I can't tell if he's scared or just ignoring me because he won't look me in the face.

I'm about to try the next complex when I notice a bright light down the road. It looks like a headlamp from a motorcycle and it's only a block or two away. I make my way toward it, adjusting the small boy and trying to balance my backpack at the same time. Both of them endure the jostle in silence.

Once I'm at the side of the road skirting the edge of the trash heap, the moving light stops. That's when I notice something strange about this light. There's a bluish hue to it, like most LED lights, but this one has an odd motion within the radiance. Most headlamps cast a ray that shoots onto the ground in front of whatever you're driving, but this one's broad and bright, like a spotlight or heat lamp.

It starts moving again, getting closer. As it approaches, the casting light widens until there is no more beam, just illumination that's too intense to see anything beyond it and I still can't tell what kind of vehicle it's coming from. It could be a round transporter ball like I was in earlier. It could be an actual motorcycle or some android with a flashlight for a face.

"Hey," I yell towards the light, "I found a little boy!"

A loud humming begins as the light burns from blue to yellow to white. Higher, brighter and louder. The boy covers his ears and smashes his eyes shut and I take a leap back.

The night explodes in a flash of blinding purple light.

When my eyes stop hurting enough to open, I have to wait to for the spots blurring my vision to fade. When they do, I find the street is clear. No more trash. The entire road is spotless as if all that garbage was never there. And whatever thing it was that zapped away the trash is also gone.

The rancid scent still lingers.

I look down, checking the boy in my grasp, knowing that something very bad would have happened to him if I hadn't been here. Hatred for the person who left him out here takes root and I glare back at the empty windows and closed doors of the nearby apartments.

There's no frantic mother or father. It's as if he was left out here on purpose. As if whoever he belongs to doesn't want him back.

Shit. Just... shit.

"Guess you'll be sticking with me for a while."

His lips jut out as he blows a raspberry. Carrie comes to mind just then, and I remember; when talking to kids, the simpler the better.

"Go bye-bye?"

"Bah," he attempts in a soft voice.

"Up," I point at the top of the Palisade wall.

Wriggling the stones from their pouch is tough with only one hand. I try to put my little friend down to take them out, but he won't let me. Each time I lower him, he hikes his feet up, clinging like a little monkey.

Being so small and attracted to shiny objects, the boy reaches for the stones. I pull them back and shake my head.

"No."

It's too dark to be sure, but I think his apple cheeks split into a grin.

"No," I repeat. "These are mine." _No. Mine_. Dad used to say those were my favorite words.

I shift the kid into a stiff cradle, away from the rocks. His small eyes stay locked on the stones as I raise them. "Take us both. Please. Please, take us out of here."

And then, that feeling of an enormous, grasping bubble gently plucks us from the ground. The ride is smooth and short, and I'm not the only one smiling when we touch down on the other, cleaner, brighter side. My little friends mouth is dropped open, half covered by dirty fingers.

I take them from his face and get my first real look at him.

It's obvious there's something wrong with him—developmentally and physically. His small eyes are unevenly set. Not so much that he looks mongoloid, but enough to ensure that this abandoned boy has Down Syndrome. His hair is very thin, his head unnaturally slender at the top. His arms are short, his shoulders and ears set lower than they should on his frail form.

"Well, then, let's get you cleaned up." I don't sound upset, which is good and a miracle.

Using one of my tee shirts to wipe his grimy fingers, I can't help noticing the way the kid—I've got to get this squirts name, or give him one—continues to gape at our surroundings. I take a quick look around to check no one else is watching.

"Never been on this side before?"

He responds with the same wide-eyed silence. His little fingers scrape over the fluffy grass. He marvels while I think of my next move.

I need information about this place. Something like a map. More immediately, we need somewhere to sleep. I wonder if my dinner companions would help, but the earlier conversation at Citrina's left me with the distinct impression that no one on this side of the wall knows what to do with a kid, either.

There are two protein bars inside my emergency food kit. When the little guy sees one, his eyes practically pop out. He swipes with an uncoordinated hand, putting all his weight behind it. He misses his target and falls over. I wrangle the wrapper back and break off a bite for him.

"Take it easy, Rocky." The nickname seems fitting. Besides, everyone I've met over here is named after some kind of mineral.

Using an alcohol wipe from the first-aid kit, I wipe Rocky's hands and mouth before giving him another taste the faux chocolate and peanut butter protein bar. He fights me because he wants more. I can't get it into his mouth fast enough.

He has a mouthful of teeth, so I let him feed himself the second half while I continue wiping. When that's gone, he wants the next but his tight little belly has become a paunch. I hide the food and bring out another alcohol wipe and my canteen. The boy draws a long drink.

He looks happy to have his face clean. He's relaxed and grinning, making little noises occupying himself while I use the remaining water to wet one of my other tee shirts and keep wiping him down.

He doesn't fight anymore. Not even when I have to scrub the dried bits of grime from under his arms. Once most of the filth is gone, I use my last spare shirt to cover his nakedness.

"It's bigger than you, but it'll do," I say, tugging on the soft cotton swallowing him.

Warm and full, Rocky closes his eyes. After he's still, I tie off the end of the tee shirt so he can't trip over it.

##

##

##  Ninety-Nine Problems But a Kid Ain't One

I'm barely surviving.

I have nowhere to sleep and extremely limited supplies. I'm in a strange plane, in the last city filled with potential enemies surrounded by an ice desert. Now, I've got to worry about a half-starved, disabled orphan.

On top of that, there is the ongoing danger of Daemon. Every minute he spends breathing is a minute too long. He's aiding the threat of interdimensional collapse with his unchecked use of the stones. Every time he opens a gateway it weakens the wall that separates one universe from another.

Eli compared it to holes in the ozone; punch too many and were all done for. The whole debacle is confusing. What would a hole in the wall between two planes look like? What are the signs? All I know is that it spells death. His pallor was gray as he explained. "It could mean extinction of all life in the known and unknown universes."

Everything. Gone.

My imagination is in full sprint as the laundry list of problems grows.

Eli wasn't even sure the Demron suit would protect me, but it was the best he could do. What are the long term effects of radiation exposure besides cancer and death? Brain damage? Infertility? Will all my teeth fall out? Am I forgetting anything? Because when I'm stressed I forget stuff.

Rather than farming another ulcer, I have to consider the only logical solution to the most immediate problem.

I don't have time to babysit—I have to track Daemon, who I've already lost once. I can't have a kid tagging along for the ride. I destroyed my alternate family by trying to help them. I can justify helping Rocky. I can't leave him alone, but I can't take him with me.

So that's what I have to do: find a safe place for Rocky. Get out of this city and cross over again. Searching for the Threestone in the outer landscape would mean a major archeological dig—an impossible expedition in this tundra—and if there are no stones to worry about in this dimension, then there's no reason to delay chasing Daemon.

Rocky is knocked out. I watch his eyes move under the lids, wondering what he's dreaming about. He doesn't start and barely moves when I lift him from the ground to carry him toward the main archway of Citrina's house. She seemed like a nice enough lady. She'll see that he finds someone to care for him.

"Alien."

In the grass knoll, half way to the stone path that leads to Citrina's porch, I stop dead in my tracks. Because it's the same voice, the one from the pilot android I left dead in the snow.

"We have orders to take you to Doyen."

'We' has me looking up. There are two shapes in the shadow under a nearby tree. One of them steps forward, and it is another android soldier with the same gray riot gear-like suit and helmet with opaque visor covering the nonexistent face.

"Who is Doyen?"

The second form steps forward; the android that looks exactly like the pilot from the Orb. Like my father. He answers, "Doyen is Highest Counselor and Savior of Neutopia."

I kind of love that these droids are so free with information. Adjusting Rocky, I pull him closer to my chest and ask, "What is Neutopia?"

"We are standing in it. The last city."

"What if I don't want to meet your High Counselor?"

The android commander steps closer, touting a stiff posture. "Your desire to come willingly was not a matter of import. Doyen makes the orders and we all obey."

"What if I said, 'you'll have to kill me first'?"

The droid with the helmet gives off a series of beeps and then the droid in charge speaks again.

"Either condition is acceptable. Doyen did not specify. You must bring the infant."

"Will he—will the infant be safe?" I ask, gesturing to Rocky.

"He is most safe with Doyen."

It's not like I can fight them off or even set Rocky down fast enough to make a run for it. I'm wearing my heavy backpack and stashed the pouch with the stones inside when I was cleaning the kid. There's no way I'd make it.

"I guess I'll go with you, then, seeing as I don't feel like dying right now."

"Yes, Doyen is generous."

The sarcasm in my tone was as clear as the night sky, but apparently, the robots can't compute.

"He sounds like an asshole," I want to respond, but instead follow in between the two droids as they lead me to climb inside the waiting Orb because they're each holding a baton.

This Orb is not like the last, on the inside at least. Outside, it's the same mish-mash of reflective metal triangles pieced together to form a ten foot tall, floating bouncy ball of a spaceship. Inside, though, it's not white. It's furnished with the same benches and single chair, only everything is charcoal gray. And the front half of the vehicle looks like it's made of glass. It's transparent. I mean, I can see the outlines of wires, circuits and junction boxes, but I can also see the ground underneath them and the grass off to one side, and the houses on the other side of that.

The engine must be whisper quiet because I don't hear anything as the outside of the Orb begins spinning and we take off.

So far, this world gets a ten out of ten on the suck-o-meter. I may not be strapped in on this trip, but I've got this feeling in my gut that my shitty situation from five minutes ago was the best part of this expedition.

The droids haven't taken my pack or tried to search me. All they've really said is that we have to go with them. But something isn't right.

"Is this a newer model?" I ask, ignoring the dread in my gut. If these guards will talk, I may as well see what I can find out.

The android that looks like my father is sitting in the pilots' chair. He turns his head around—just his head. His shoulders are unnaturally stationary—to face me. "Modify. The topic of your question is unclear."

Without rolling my eyes like I want to, I clarify. "I was referring to this mode of transportation. This spherical craft. Is this the newest model?"

With his head still turned toward me at that neck breaking angle, the man-faced, robotic imposter answers. "This is the only model." Then he spins his head back towards the front.

I got a response. So... these robots follow orders. Maybe they weren't ordered to be tight-lipped?

"But I was in another one, once before, as I'm sure you know, and it was white, not black, and it wasn't transparent."

"These vessels are designed to adapt to individual environments as a safeguard against Mole attacks."

Moles: Arlen's people who were forced to live underground because the climate is too harsh to survive, not beady-eyed, furry creatures that don't like the light. They were attacking one another—Outliers, or Moles, versus Breeders—long before I got here.

I look out the side of the Orb and watch the world go by. The distant night sky is like black velvet. But here, inside this pocket of protection against the nuclear cold, there is light. And trees. Grass and warmth.

Arlen said they use an atmospheric generator to keep the cold out and grow plants. I wonder why this is only area where it's used; probably because they are fighting over resources—for control over the atmospheric generators that produce the resources which sustain life.

This plane must lie on a slope because my circumstances keep rolling downhill. Rocky is sleeping soundly though and I wish I felt half as peaceful.

We've entered another part of Neutopia. Composed of exceptionally clean buildings, around ten stories, showing no lights or windows, which makes me think they aren't used as apartments. Each building is illuminated though I can't see any streetlights.

Then, we turn a corner and suddenly there is nothing but lights.

The Orb follows the roadway, turning at a corner with a tall building, and then the lights are there—blinding, bright and unwelcome. Even turned down the radiance is intense. Squinting, I can clearly make out the images reflecting off the Orbs interior surfaces. Rampant, rapid, hyper-colors blinking images; as if someone has turned up the contrast on every electronic billboard in Times Square. Only this is one billboard coating the entire side of the building we're passing.

Tucking my head down, I check Rocky. He's still sleeping on my lap. How can he sleep through this? Sure, it's only light, but its high-noon bright.

The driver snaps his head around to look at me. The move is unnaturally swift, a glaring reminder that he isn't human. "The ads will cease upon departing the merchant boundary."

It gets worse before it gets better. As the Orb drifts down the street, more buildings light up. On both sides of the road, now, more and more ads for god-knows-what pop on like a strobe, disorienting me. The colors make me feel like I'm sitting stationary and falling at the same time. I want to puke.

As promised, the light of the ads begins to taper. Soon, there aren't any more. Behind us, the same buildings that were burning bright are now dark.

On both sides of the road, running along the curb of the sidewalks, small blue lights are glowing. Just like the crazy advertisements on the buildings, these come on as we approach and shut off once we pass. What's weird, though, is that there's no break in the pattern of the lights: no more corners. No side streets or alleys. Just the one, long road we're rolling over.

The lone roadway is fixed with more plain buildings. These are much shorter than those in the previous area—the tallest being a mere five stories high. Following the road with my eye, I see that it leads to a lone building a mile or so ahead. It's much taller and thinner than any other in sight, even from here. It's pointed like a needle. A light at the spire shoots up into the night sky.

"What is that?" I mutter softly—knowing that this has got to be where they're taking us.

"Lanthium Tower—our destination."

I've got a bad, bad feeling and reflexively pull the boy into my chest. "Why are you taking us there?"

"Doyen's orders."

Not good.

These droids have shown little hostility though that doesn't mean much. I should take full advantage and get all the information I can. Knowledge is the first line of defense, after all.

"What will this Doyen do with Rocky?"

The driver who looks way too much like my father turns again, giving that unsettling reminder that he is an android. "What is 'Rocky'?"

I gesture to the kid I'm holding. " _This_ is Rocky."

The droids eyes flood with unnatural light for a second and then go dim. "'Rocky,' is a human infant. Male. Found insufficient for processing and tagged _Refuse_."

"Refuse? Like garbage?"

The second droid, the one that's been sitting just behind me like a piece of furniture this entire time, chooses this moment to respond in a human-like voice rather than a series of beeps and surprises the shit out of me.

"Tagged Refuse: marked for disposal. You should not possess refuse. It is unhealthy."

After my heart rate slows down, I ask, "Why was he 'tagged refuse?'"

"He does not meet the required measure of intelligence or development. Doyen will see that he is properly replaced."

"Bull shit." I challenge. This Doyen will have to go through me first.

The droid beside me answers. " _Bull_ : a male bovine, of the genus _Bos_ , having sexual organs intact for reproduction purposes. _Shit_ : feces, excrement. The act of defecating. Slang term, garbage. Vulgarity."

"Yes," I say slowly, with pronounced sarcasm, "Now you've got it." It's like talking to a dictionary.

The droids voice is monotone though he asks a question. " _Got it_?"

"I'm the bull and you two are shit."

"Incorrect." The android driver responds, this time swiveling his head back around in a complete one-eighty. "We are the tactical duo sent to carry out Doyen's orders. You are not a bull, but a human male and trespasser. Lacking enhancements." His eyes glow, shooting a light out like a laser beam that sweeps over me.

"What are you doing?"

"Your sexual organs are fully functional and intact. Sperm count is ideal for breeding. You will be of use as a Breeder."

Drawing my knees together, I shift Rocky to cover my lap. "Keep your scanners off my junk."

"Communication is insufficient. Explain." The helmet-droid says.

"My explanations are going straight to Doyen. You two are idiots."

"Idiot; utter fool or selfish—"

"Shut up," I growl.

Neither droid responds.

Rocky remains knocked out as the towering building looms closer, the glow taking on a bluish hue as we near it.

Soon, we're heading straight for a smooth, gray wall. But before I can get too nervous a tall black line appears and quickly widens into a square, a doorway opening. We're heading into the building; an area similar to a parking garage. The low ceiling glows like the road outside, illuminating the immediate area and going dark once we pass by like the lights are on a sensor, only without visible lighting fixtures. It looks as if the light is coming from the material of the building though it looks like bare concrete.

The top of the Orb transporter peels open like a can of sardines. Looking up, I'm stuck speechless as a clear tube appears overhead.

I don't like the look of it at all. Racing to my feet, me and Rocky step far over to one side and watch the droid with the helmet get sucked up into the tube.

"What the hell?" I mumble, looking down at Rocky, wondering how he could sleep through all of this and double-checking that he's still breathing.

"This way." The android driver says, standing near the open doorway of the craft. "Doyen is waiting."

This must be what walking the plank feels like, I think. Or the way a lamb feels the week before Passover. I don't know anything about these people or their ways of dealing with 'aliens,' beyond dumping them outside the perimeter of the atmospheric generator, leaving them to freeze.

And it's not like I can run or fight my way out when I'm physically inferior and carrying a toddler.

Just outside the Orb, I find the parking garage looks more like a house of pods, with dozens of Orb vehicles sitting in groups of three or four, each one attached to a post by way of a hose, like some sort of charging station.

It's quiet enough to hear the echoes of my footsteps as I follow the leader of the tactical trio sent to bring me in.

I've thought of whipping out the stones more than a few times, but can't bring myself to do it. Not while I'm holding Rocky.

Besides, Eli said I shouldn't be triggering gateways haphazardly. The way he explained it was by comparing the way astronauts use existing holes in the ozone— "windows"—to travel through rather than making new ones. He said keeping the number of places limited will limit the number of weak spots created by crossing over. I don't know if he's right, but I don't want to find out the hard way.

The network of halls we pass through makes me think that this place is constructed like a honeycomb. There are small, hexagonal shaped inlets throughout the corridors. Pretty much at every turn and I've lost track of the number of turns we've taken.

It doesn't help that every hallway looks the same. There are no maps or pictures or labels of any kind to differentiate one passage from another. I guess if you're a robot with a calculator for a brain, you don't need them.

"Is Doyen like you?"

"Insufficient. Explain."

Sighing, I ask again, "Is Doyen android or human?"

"I am artifice and Doyen is organic."

"And he's your boss?"

"Yes."

"Who is Doyen's boss?"

"He holds supreme authority."

"So he's the leader?"

"Yes."

"What does he want with me?"

Finally, we've stop to panel in a wall. The droid presses an ungloved hand to it, which strikes me as odd. Does he have a microchip in his hand or did his maker give him fingerprints?

A bright light flashes, like someone's taking a picture of his open palm, and then a doorway appears in the plain wall. The door slides open, just like in _Star_ _Trek_.

I don't think I'll ever get used to that.

"Step inside." The droid says.

I look into the small, gray box of a room on the other side of the door that looks exactly like the rest of the building.

"What will happen?"

"You will travel up to see Doyen."

"This is an elevator?"

"Yes."

He used the singular description 'you' rather than 'we,' so I have to ask, "Where will you go?"

"To the dormitory."

"And what will you do there?"

"Await new orders."

Since my first meeting in the snow with synthetic life forms I've tried not to think of the how peculiar it is that this android looks—not exactly like, but very close to—my father in his mid-thirties. But I've also been thinking about the letters my dad left me. The one that came taped to the box he left me mentioned how I am "in the middle of everything."

My father left the stones for me to find. To stop Daemon. But he was not the first of my family to find them. The fact that I'm interacting with an artificial being that looks like a blood relative cannot be mere coincidence.

"Are you like, one of the people that's been displaced?

The droids paternal face is washed blank though he tilts his head _._ It's weird talking to someone who doesn't blink.

"All commanding officers were bio-synthetically produced from one human male." Righting his head, the bot squares his wide shoulders. "You must go. Doyen is waiting."

With that, he shoves me and Rocky into the tiny room. I trip forward and spin back around just in time to watch the door panel sink back into place. I don't feel any movement, but my ears pop and Rocky startles awake with a low-pitched cry. His voice cracks and it's as if I can feel his dry throat.

Slipping my pack from my shoulders, I set it on the floor and squat with the sniffling kid to conduct a one-armed search for my water bottle. There isn't much left inside so it's quickly drained and Rocky resumes his lament—which grows from a whimper to a wail.

"Shh... it's alright, I've got you." I soothe. Rocky stops long enough to look up at me with wounded puppy-dog eyes.

"I've got you," I repeat. "I've got you."

Repeating the phrase seems to calm him. Plus, I can't think of anything else to say. I'm no good with kids, but I remember how I used to rock Carrie and toss that into the mix. Melding the _I've-got-you's_ with a rocking motion.

The boy's crying shudders to a halt. He wraps both of his short, string-bean arms around me and tucks his head into the crook of my neck as if ensuring that I won't get away.

I pat his back.

The door of the gray elevator reappears and peels wide open.

On the other side lies a large room unlike the rest of the building. For one, its carpeted, not blank cement like the halls I walked through. The rug is bright crimson red. The walls are pale, with opulent fixtures. Gilt-framed paintings of rolling hills and wildflowers, red farmhouses and spotted cows. Elaborate golden sconces illuminate the wall space in between. The furnishings are mismatched, looking more like those inside Citrina's house. Thin pieces of metal framed chairs and a single sofa covered in plain white material that reminds me of a doctor's office.

There isn't a person or android in sight when I step into the room. The shaft that brought us here closes and disappears, leaving a blank space in the wall behind me.

There's a wide window stretching along the furthest wall. Noting the sound of Rocky's congested breathing has tapered, I assume he's fallen back to sleep. Approaching the glass, looking down at a sprawling city reminds me of my home—it's a bird's-eye view of Los Angeles in blackout. At this height, I estimate we're on the top floor of the building, just below the spire.

"It's a beautiful view."

The source of the voice comes from a man standing behind me on the other side of the vast room. He's a few inches taller than me and twice my width, wearing a long roman-inspired robe of palest blue. He has waist length brown hair drawn back into a long braid. He's clean shaven and smiling.

"I see you brought the boy. How generous." His hands rest at his rounded middle while his eyes grope my face.

Keeping a tight grip on the boy hanging sleepily around my neck, I straighten. "Are you the one I'm here to see?"

"I am Doyen. You may lay him down." Doyen's sweeping gesture plumes across the room—aiming at that uncomfortable looking rectangle that's either an odd-shaped sofa or a weird couch, on the other side of the long room.

"He's fine right here. Thanks."

The man gives a little bow to his head, keeping his distance. I notice, though, he doesn't take his eyes off me.

"Why am I here?"

Doyen has a round face with dark, deeply set eyes and a long nose. "Curious, aren't you?" He says as if measuring me.

"Yes. I've broken no laws." Though I'm sure it's a lie, I sound confident.

"You have, though." Doyen shifts his weight. "But we will get to that later. Right now, I require your cooperation in surrendering that boy." He raises an arm, pointing sausage fingers at Rocky.

My hold tightens reflexively. Protectively.

"You will get him back. You have my word."

Just then, another robed figure enters the room from a doorway I can't see. It's a woman in a white cloak. She's older looking with gray streaking her neat black hair. She's got pale skin, a soft face and unnaturally bright eyes that accompany electronic life.

"Another android?"

Doyen nods. "I use them in the most important societal roles: as peace-keepers and caregivers."

Giving the droid beside him another once-over, I have to ask, "Which is this one?"

Doyen's mouth quirks to one side. "Answer him, Amora."

"I am a caregiver." The female droid takes a step toward me, her eyes emitting a golden glow that sweeps from Rocky's feet to his head, smoothly covering the length of his body for a full five seconds before dimming.

"Oral health compromised. Malnourished. Dehydrated. Under developed. In need of care." The sound of Amora's voice is soft and nurturing. It's the way a mother speaks her child's name. There's a whispered sweetness to it. She also keeps walking towards me.

When her hands come up, I step back.

She halts and looks back to Doyen. "Insubordinate response."

Doyen stays put, looking at me, but addressing his android helper. "It's alright, Amora. This man is not from Neutopia. He doesn't understand our ways."

"Yes." I agree. "I find it difficult to trust people I don't know."

Amora turns back to me. "I am artifice, containing more medical data than any single human. I am programmed to restore health."

"Set up an area in the open where our guest can watch."

The moment Doyen gives the command, Amora gets to work. Well, she puts me to work. "Set the child over there." She points at the same plain padded bench set against one wall. "On his back. Try not to disturb him; it will be more efficient if he remains at rest during processing."

"What are you going to do?"

"Inject Refuse with a supplement to cultivate his brain growth and body responses. Then, begin the method of rehydration. Refuse will feel much better by morning."

"Stop calling him that. His name is Rocky."

Though I don't like the title, I understand that his needs are beyond my capacity. His little belly looks too round for his tiny frame and it feels hard. So I do as Doyen says and let Amora help him.

##

##

##  Insert Sarcastic Commentary Anywhere

Like a sentry I watch Amora, the humanoid, work on Rocky. Her touch is gentle, her demeanor warm—and yet this whole scenario is counter-intuitive. I shouldn't let anyone from this plane near him.

But this robotic being (formed in a lab or assembly line, and running on electricity) possesses a presence soothing enough to calm Rocky when the pinch of a needle wakes him. She is soulless yet more compassionate than most of the humans I've come across.

I wonder what year it is and—if this world is so far into the future that they use machines to care for people—then why haven't they invented a better delivery system than a needle?

"She will restore him to maximum health." Doyen informs from his place standing against the wall behind me.

I've got nothing to add. I'm not comfortable here in this vast room at the top of this tower, sitting with strangers as we hover above a dark city.

"Doyen... I am curious."

"You are curious," he repeats.

"Why did you call me here?" I've got other questions swimming in my head, but this one surfaces first.

"To speak with you."

Yeah, that's not ominous at all. Neither is the fact that he hasn't asked my name. He uses android robots that look like my dad to bring me here and doesn't ask who I am.

"Well, I'm here. Speak."

The room spins. Suddenly I'm facing Doyen and it's hard to breathe.

His hand is wrapped around my throat as he towers over me, teeth bared. "Remember this: _I_ brought you here. _I_ could have you shot. _I_ answered your stupid questions, arranged care for that useless infant when I should drown you both." His dark gaze shrinks. "I do not take orders and rarely tolerate requests. You will watch how you speak in my presence or I will remove your tongue myself."

I'm released with a shove that sends me falling on my ass.

Doyen is eerily calm as he slides a palm down each side of his broad gut and smiles. "Now. Where were we?" He smooth's the ruffled tendrils of his hair back into place. "Oh, yes—fate, yours and this little one." He pauses and looks down to where he dropped me. "You may rise."

The arrogance stings. Getting to my feet, I stand taller than before.

Considering the unmarked path we traveled to the elevator—and knowing that I don't have the handprint that will open any of the hidden locks or doorways—adds to the tension of the one thought looping through my mind. _We've got to get out._

"You promised to give him back." I remind Doyen.

"You must keep your promise, first."

"I haven't made any promises."

"No? Well, you will. After all, I have what you want."

My gaze drifts to Rocky, laying there all helpless.

Doyen's barrel chest expands on a deep breath. He grins like the cat that ate the canary. "First, you will swear to leave this plane as you found it. That means you must retrieve your contributions from the Moles, or Outliers as they prefer to call themselves, and then you will disappear from this world and never return."

There are about a hundred things wrong with what he's just said. First, how does he know I'm from another plane?

What the hell contributions did I make to anybody? And how can he know about my time with the Outlier's and not know they're gone? Wasn't it his robo-army that killed them?

"I don't understand."

Doyen sighs heavily. "Let's not waste time with games. We both know you are not a resident of this world. You come from another place where life is very different and you think you know how to fix us. Let me assure you, Traveler, you do not."

He turns away from me, casually looping the area as he continues. "Tomorrow, I will see that you are transported to the Outlier camp where you will take back the goods you gave them by whatever means necessary."

"I didn't give them anything."

"No? So they aren't replicating the produce you carried?"

"Produce?" I ask, more to myself than Doyen. Just as I say it, I remember the oranges that Arlen found. He had no idea what they were.

"Yes." Doyen asserts, as if can read my mind.

None of my interactions with the Outliers matter now that they're all dead. Is this a test or does he really want me to steal food from a starving group of people?

"I never gave them anything." It's not a lie. They took what they wanted under threat of violence.

Doyen repeats his circuit of the room, ending the march at a desk in the corner. He leans over it, bracing himself on weighted knuckles. "Destroy their stores and you may leave in peace. In return, I will care for the boy you call Rocky. If he is important to you, I will care for him as if he were my own child."

He doesn't believe me. Not that I care. I've still got the stones inside my backpack. I can use them to leave anytime I want. There's a certain security in that. All they need is a little more energy to trigger a gateway.

Still, something tells me to tread carefully. The term, _know thy enemy_ , comes to mind and I don't know this guy from Adam.

"I thought you said I could take Rocky when I go."

Doyen's eyes brighten. He almost smiles as he cocks his head to one side. "The boy belongs among his people, in the world where he was born."

"I'm supposed to _trust_ you to keep up your end when the system you govern was the one that labeled him garbage? That might be commonplace in Neutopia, but where I'm from, Doyen, we don't toss away people with trash no matter what their problems are."

"Your society sounds idealistic."

"Can we compromise?"

"What do you want?"

"Taking Rocky with me... well, it's risky. If I leave him, I have to be able to come back to check on him."

Doyen looks at his feet, his braid falling from behind his back, over his shoulder; long brown hair reaches further than his fingertips. When he looks up at me again, his gaze is dark.

"That is the problem, Traveler. You already have."

##

##

## Clear As Mud

Clearing my throat, I aim to ask the obvious follow-up with complete confidence— _I did what?_ —But when it comes out all that surety is diluted with shock.

"Come again?"

Doyen straightens from his pose over the simple metallic desk, opting instead to sit in the thin chair behind it. "I have made this deal before, with you."

Understanding washes over me and I shake my head. "Not with me."

Doyen corrects himself. "A copy of you, then."

That sense in my gut—the one that makes me want to drop-kick a fool and then bolt—has grown into full-blown alarm bells. It makes total sense, now: this meeting, the lack of introduction, the faces of his guards.

"I take it the arrangement didn't work out... for him."

"He was a traitor. He suffered the fate of all traitors." Doyen swipes a thumb across his throat in a cutting gesture. "His deception was particularly painful for me. That is why his image was immortalized in the faces of my peacekeeping soldiers. To remind me that trust is earned."

Amora, the android assigned to care for Rocky, appears in front of the desk where Doyen is seated. She waits for him to look at her. When he does, she bows low and speaks. "I've done all I can."

"Will the boy recover?"

"I calculate a 99.3 percent certainty the child will make a complete physical recovery and a 71.5 percent chance of increase to his full mental faculties, if his therapy is on-going."

"Thank you, Amora. From now on, this child—"

"Rocky," I remind him.

Doyen doesn't acknowledge my interruption, except to address the patient by name. "The boy, Rocky, will be your only patient. You are his personal healer, so keep him on monitor in case he needs you."

The droid straightens and shows herself out of the long room, by way of a corner on the opposite end.

My mind is racing, picking through the facts and trying to sort out what they mean. Another version of my father was here. And Doyen killed him for welching on a deal.

Now here I stand, wondering if I'm supposed to be impressed that he's assigned Amora to care for the kid that would've been vaporized if I hadn't found him.

I'm talking to this virtual stranger that doesn't know anything about me, not even my name, and he's got me under threat of violence if I don't take a valuable food source away from a group of dead people and then leave, without taking the defenseless kid I've virtually laid at his feet.

How is it that I'm constantly falling ass-backwards into trouble without even trying? See the kid. Help the kid. That is the logical—the human—thing to do. Right? Now I'm supposed to leave the kid at the mercy of a man who's said he has no problem killing me—who's already killed a version of my father. Leave the kid with the man who regularly kills children because their biology doesn't meet some arbitrary standard. Like killing unworthy masses is as common as Tuesday morning.

I understand why Rocky should stay, and objecting to Doyen's demands when I'm in his world, on his turf where he makes all the rules would be stupid. Besides, Eli asked me to remain as uninvolved as possible. Yet, he was happy about my saving Carrie. She was just a defenseless kid. Like Rocky.

What am I supposed to do? If I say the wrong thing, make the wrong choice, I end up dead, too.

No one would ever know what happened. I just wouldn't come home.

Eli would wait a year before delivering my letter to Abi and that would be that.

I notice Doyen watching me and make the only choice that makes sense. "With all due respect, I assurance that Rocky will live a long and happy life."

Doyen sighs, leaning back in his chair. Surprisingly, the stick-type furniture doesn't break under his plump form. "You cannot trust me to keep my word, so you ask for evidence that I am trustworthy." He presses a finger over his lips and thinks.

"Tomorrow, Traveler, you have the full day to explore Neutopia. One day with all my services at your disposal. You will see what I do for these people and why. If you are as enlightened as you think you are, then you will understand. Doing as I command will be much easier for you."

The illusion of choice is better than no choice at all, I guess. I accept his term for the time being and am dismissed by Doyen without another word.

Literally, he just walks out of the room like he was the only one in it, leaving me and Rocky alone in the pinnacle of this tower overlooking a sleeping city. I follow after him but find no doorway or portal, just a blank space in a wall.

Freaking Biolock.

I rub my open hand along the entire surface of the empty space, hoping a keypad will pop out, but nothing does.

After some searching, I find a wall of small cupboards. Inside is a single gray robe and two bags of clear liquid, labeled 'hydration.'

Breaking the seal on one of them proves that its water—which I guzzle down quickly and then save the second for Rocky, just in case.

As I sit beside the small boy, I find that the bench-like bed is softer than it looks and the surface is warm to touch. It isn't long before my eyes are drooping and though I want to keep watch, I crash and burn.

## Oh The Irony

In the light of day, the plain buildings of this strange city called Neutopia are moving with people of every color—normal and unnatural. Honest to God, there are people with purple, pink, and even green skin, along with the obligatory black, white, and brown. Every race and every color.

I've been out of that tower no less than an hour and I'm still having trouble determining the defining feature that sets the unnaturally colored people apart from the normal ones.

Turning to the human-like android that's escorting me on this walk through insanity, I ask the burning question. "Why aren't the popsicle people intermingling with the regular people?"

The droid actually looks shocked. "Popsicle: a brand of brightly colored frozen desserts composed of —"

"I know what a Popsicle is. I don't need explanations for terms I understand. Please, just... never mind."

To his credit, the droid shuts up.

"Now, where can I find a cup of coffee?"

"Coffee is not allocated at this location."

We're standing in the middle of a park-like complex that adjoins several apartment buildings.

"Obviously." I roll my eyes. "There isn't a barista in sight. At what location might we find this allocation?"

The whole speaking literal thing is damned tiring. I'd love to rip his head off right now. I can't deal with stupidity before a caffeine fix.

The droid recites the name of some street, or possibly a business and directs me to follow him, which I do.

It's just me and the droid right now. Rocky was moved to a more suitable recovery area earlier this morning. I wasn't entirely comfortable with Amora taking him anywhere, but she showed me the way and granted me access.

I learned how to make the doorways appear. Apparently, it will only work if you're in their system. I'm not—or I wasn't—and so I couldn't get any exits to reveal themselves. I let Amora prick my finger and a few minutes later, all kinds of doorways appeared as I made my way out of the pinnacle apartment.

The android version of my patriarch is called Origin Two-One-Seven. He—or it—was allocated to be my guide through today's tour of the inter-workings of Neutopia—the tour that's supposed to make me more comfortable stealing a non-existent yet invaluable food source from dead people and leaving Rocky in the care of the man that's ordering me to do it.

Scrambling up the street beside 217—who must moonlight as an Olympic sprinter by the pace he's keeping—I gather enough breath to ask him to slow down.

"Where's the fire?"

Origin 217 comes to a sudden halt.

As I catch my breath, the droids eyes begin to bulge. My mind flashes to my father's face as Daemon strangled him; the horrible way his eyes protruded. Shaking off the images, I force myself to focus on the robot beside me, watching as the widened, bulging, eyes fill with inhuman light.

A second later, they shrink back to normal size and dim. 217 speaks. "My sensors do not detect any unapproved fires in this vicinity."

"Geez, is that what the freaky eye-thing was about? Your model is way too dramatic. You might want to tell your designers to cool it on the literality's with the next batch."

The droid stares coldly and I can tell that it isn't computing.

"I'll explain. 'Where's the fire?' is a very old expression. It asks a variety of things, mostly meaning, 'where are you going in such a hurry?' In this case, I used the expression to convey my dislike for the pace you set. As in, 'why are you walking so fast that the human you're supposed to be escorting can barely keep up?'"

I wait a beat and then repeat the phrase. "Where's the fire?"

The android responds. "A phrase defined as curiosity for one's unknown or unnecessary haste."

I nod. "Now, can we continue at a more human pace? I am supposed to be exploring after all."

Origin 217 agrees, in the form of allowing me to set our pace and stopping whenever I do, and making no more stupid assumptions. He keeps his commentary limited to directions.

It feels like I'm never going to get the coffee I'm feening for.

We've gone about ten blocks already and my nose finds nothing to make me think we're anywhere near a coffee house.

"Where I'm from, there are coffee shops on every corner."

No response.

Not many other people around, either. I mean, there's a lot more than I saw last night, but nowhere near as many as LA at any given time of day.

"Why is everyone dressed the same?" Sure, everybody looks like they've been dropped in different vats of Easter egg dye, but they're all wearing the same blue jumpsuits. Male and female. And I haven't seen a child since leaving Rocky.

"It is reporting hour. All citizens are responsible for reporting to their stations in a timely manner to account their contributions."

"Contributions to what?"

"The social order."

"What do they contribute?"

"Their time is contributed in a form of service, for which they are granted tributes."

"You mean like a job? Are they on their way to work?"

"Some say 'work,' others call it what it is."

"And this work they do, what is it called?"

"The Contribution Cycle."

"So... they all have jobs. That's good. Do they all have the same job?"

"No."

"What type of job does he have?" I point to a random guy walking up ahead of us. He's got short black hair and purple skin peeking from the obligatory blue jumpsuit.

"Electrician."

Pointing to another, I ask the same question.

"Supply clerk."

"What does she do?"

"Jacking Technician."

It all sounded pretty normal until now. "'Jacking?' Is that, like, a sex thing?"

The droid doesn't miss a step. In fact, he nudges my arm, a very human way of alerting me that we should turn a corner. We don't need to wait to cross the street. There aren't any cars or bikes. No lighted intersections or walk signals even though everyone is walking.

My computing companion answers, "Not 'like a sex thing.' Sex is not a thing, but an unlawful act. Jacking is a term to describe recreational affixing of human minds to—"

"Hold the phone." I stop walking. "Sex is against the law?"

The droid stares at me. "Confusion. Are you requesting a communication device?"

"No." I roll my eyes. Again. "Another expression. Please answer my question: is having sex against the law?" That would explain the lack of children... But even the Outliers had procreation pretty heavily regulated. They went through a council to get approval.

"No."

"When you corrected me you called it an unlawful act."

"The act of intercourse is permitted for procreation."

"When is it unlawful?"

"The act of intercourse is illegal when committed without proper requests and permissions."

"Why should a person need public permission to do something private?"

"Doyen cannot allow the population to increase faster than the technology that stabilizes this habitat."

"Oh." I nod, understanding. The world is one giant freezer compartment with no defrost in sight. It would be reckless to let people make babies whenever they wanted.

Maybe that's why there were so many pets roaming around outside Citrina's house. No one could have kids unless they were permitted.

"But what about Rocky?"

"What is _Rocky_?"

"The human child Doyen is caring for. He lived in the Squalid. The people on that side had many children."

"Humans of the Squalid possess the genetic material considered clean enough for breeding."

"Okay," that makes some sense. "But, what makes a person's DNA dirty?"

I'd like to pay attention—I really would—but the droid goes into some long-winded, intricate, explanation that starts with evolution and then moves into some BS about environmental impact, and so I lose interest pretty quickly.

The weird-ass city of Neutopia looks as if it was designed on grid paper. Every new block is nearly the same as the last. Each section having only four buildings. As I ask more questions of my patriarchal humanoid tour guide, Origin 217, I'm told that one building on each block houses the people who work within the other three buildings. I can't tell one from the other because the four buildings on each block match the other three—an appalling marketing point for sure.

Whose got two thumbs and doesn't want to eat and sleep where he works? This guy.

Neutopia is a highly structured environment that uses location as well as color-coded clothing to tell one class of worker from the next.

In the very center of the city, surrounding Doyen's pinnacle is the place where all the care providers live and work. It's where Rocky is; where all the hospitals and clinics are. Persons residing in that area wear white robes and since most caregivers are androids, not many real people live there who aren't plugged into an outlet at night.

The next neighborhood over, the one with all the plain buildings and giant lighted billboards, is the entertainment district. Everyone who lives there wears blue and works in some kind of occupation where they service others: everything from retail and catering to plumbers and electricians.

Then there's Enforcement, the area we're currently walking through. All peacekeepers are androids and the higher in rank they are the more human they appear to be. This was done on purpose, my guide tells me, to ensure that people trust and respect their leadership. This android must be a high-ranking officer because if he didn't look so much like my father, it'd be tough to tell him apart from regular people.

All citizens in the district for Enforcement, like peacekeepers and soldiers, wear gray jumpsuits unless they're working outside the city where they dress to match the environment. In the snow they wear white, just like the group that attacked the Outlier camp.

Something about that really bothers me. Neutopia is supposed to be the last city. So the hovercraft had to have been sent by Doyen, yet he doesn't seem to know what happened out there. But he knew about me and my interactions with the Outliers.

The next neighborhood we pass through is the farming district. This is the place where every human residing within Neutopia comes to pick up the goods to feed their household, at their assigned time.

"They have to come every day? Why not once a week?" Seems like an awful lot of trouble.

"Doyens directive. He is generous and wise. He feeds all people every day."

There's no inflection given to the praise which tells me it's part of his programming.

"Where do they keep the coffee?" I ask for the fiftieth time, but my question goes unanswered because it's drowned out by a scream.

A woman dressed in the obligatory brown jumpsuit that tells she lives in this farming district is standing in front of a vegetable cart. A pile of tomatoes rocks and splatters to the ground as a man, dressed in the same color-coded jumpsuit, standing on the other side of the pushcart jostles it. I guess trying to knock it over as he stuffs a tomato into his mouth. When she screams, the man turns to run.

He's stealing?

Origin Two-One-Seven bolts toward the pair inhumanly fast. His voice booms through the square we've just entered like he's shouting through a megaphone and the woman stops shouting. The man who was attempting to escape is now stopped about ten feet from where he started.

Just then, I spot another cart stacked with small glass vials. Each vial contains a black liquid that gives off the most erotic and unmistakable smell. _Coffee._ Even though what's happening in the square has captured the attention of everyone in the vicinity, it can't hold mine.

"I'd like one, please," I say to the vendor, but she isn't paying attention. Everybody is watching the skirmish. So I help myself to two vials and then follow my wayward peacekeeping android as he investigates the tomato incident.

The woman answers 217's questions in a quiet voice. She's upset that her daily gifting of goods is now damaged by the man's theft and expects the android to compensate her. She's cute, even in her baggy brown jumpsuit. She looks younger than me but her hands have large dark calluses all over the knuckles.

The most fascinating part of the scene is the man who ate the one tomato. Because he isn't moving. At all.

His feet are planted far apart and half-sunk into the concrete covering the square. His arms are stuck swinging wide as if someone pressed pause in the middle of a movie. Even the tomato juice splattering down his chin has stopped.

I step closer, still more than an arm's length away, but close enough to notice the man's eyes are moving. In fact, they're wild with fear.

When 217 steps in to warn me off, I interrupt his orders with a question. "What's wrong with him?"

"His actions have triggered the suspension method."

"What is a suspension method?"

"A tool developed for use on criminals who feel their needs supersede everyone else's."

I swear the android gives the man a death glare as he raises his voice for the crowd to hear. "We are all equal."

Slowly, 217 turns his head, measuring the watching citizens. "No one is permitted to take more than what they provide for others. The system only works if Doyen is obeyed. You must give to get. Give to live."

As he says this, he takes a gray baton from a holster on his waist. Pressing a button along the side of the baton produces a white stick, three feet long.

Origin 217 continues addressing the crowd. "You will all learn from his mistake."

Turning back to the man kept in his frozen state, he raises the long baton. And I am sure he's going to beat him to death and start to wonder if I stepped in, would I be able to stop him? The guy didn't rob bank, he ate a tomato. The thief is rail-thin, too, like he desperately needed the food.

But there isn't any beating. In fact, the droid doesn't even swing the baton. He touches the tip of it to man's back and it's like he's pressed play. The man is suddenly moving, dropping down to the ground. He doesn't attempt to run but instead cowers in fear in front of the droid and me.

I give him a look that asks, 'when the hell did I become part of this regime?'

Well, I am wearing the white jumpsuit Amora ordered me to put on this morning. She wanted me to shower and then change, but I just changed because I couldn't figure out how to work the shower.

Two more droids appear from beyond the crowds—the lower ranking kind in helmets. They sweep the man from his crouched pose, walking him into an Orb transport parked nearby.

I choose this moment to hold up the two vials of black liquid I lifted off the distracted worker at the coffee cart. "I think you'd better pay for these so I don't end up like that tomato swiper."

This is where a human would laugh, scoff, or roll his eyes. But I'm not talking to a human. So I get nothing. The law-abiding citizens of Neutopia, however, get a blanket announcement.

"This man is a personal guest of Doyen. He will take whatever he needs from whoever he chooses."

_All are equal_ , my ass. Taking in the murmurs of the crowd, I know that no one is happy about this announcement of my superior status, but no one questions it.

Going back to the coffee cart, I ask for three more vials of coffee. After the woman operating the stand shows me which vials contain the strongest brews, I ensure her that today will be my only visit and then apologize if my habit causes her any hardship.

Her eyes go wide, but she just nods.

I could do without most things in this place, specifically all things Doyen, but I need my coffee.

* * *

This is so embarrassing. The noises my body is making are unlike any I've ever heard before.

Staring up at the back of Origin 217, I try once more to make awkward conversation over the sounds of the emergency evacuation of my bowels.

I've never regretted ingesting caffeine, never in my life. Until right now. I don't think I've ever ingested so much at once.

Thinking of the farmer in the marketplace, I ask, "How does Doyen deal with criminals?"

217 starts to turn and I throw a hand up to block his mug. "No! Stay facing the other direction."

"Contradiction: I am programmed to make eye contact with the humans addressing me." Thankfully, he doesn't turn around.

"I'm ordering you not to look at me while I'm...." Shitting my guts out.

"Defecating." 217 finishes for me and I'm torn between laughing and wanting to kick his ass.

"Doyen deals with all criminals in whichever way he sees fit."

Origin 217 insisted on escorting me into the bathroom, saying he was instructed not to let me out of his sight. I'm sure he's only facing the opposite direction to pacify my human emotions and I'm sure the fact that he is doing so also means that he literally has eyes in the back of his head.

"Is there is no such thing as privacy anymore?"

"We are all the same. We have nothing to hide."

"My wanting privacy doesn't mean I have something to hide. It means—in this instance—that I'd like to retain some dignity."

I shake my head, feeling my guts gurgle and clench. Sweat breaks out all over and I brace myself for the onslaught of shredding abdominal pain signaling another wave to this never-ending squirt-fest.

"Could you at least move towards the doorway? I'm sure your secret robot eyes can still spot me from a few more feet away."

I can't believe this place. It's the ultimate in simplicity: no partitions in the public bathroom—just a row of small, simple toilets and a single wash basin.

Origin 217 responds with five long strides that take him straight to the blank opening of the restroom area.

Good-god, the coffee in this place is strong.

Much more of this mass departure and I'll be slipping inside out.

"What does your law say about how Doyen should punish that man from the market?" I ask to cover the telltale sound of my upset stomach.

"Doyen's choices are his to make. He is wise and generous. He takes orders from no one."

"Does Doyen program you to say all that nice stuff about him?"

I get no answer to that question.

Thankfully, my guts go silent too.

* * *

It's a long walk back to the innermost part of Neutopia. Origin 217 answers most of my questions, all the ones that aren't related to the character of Doyen.

But that gets me thinking about Citrina and her family. One of them mentioned Doyen and the tone of the aside made me think that he wasn't well liked.

"I've heard humans use the word 'displaced.' What does that mean?"

"When a human's body has past usefulness due to aging or disease, but the mind remains intact, they become available for Displacement—a procedure that removes the essence of that human to a more suitable container."

"What is a human being's _essence_?"

"The mind, the will, and all connected emotions."

"They're replaced into android bodies?"

"Yes."

That explains why Quartz looked so young.

The people of that outer district wore muted greens and gathered for family dinners where everyone talked about the burden of parentage, getting too old to live inside their bodies and the strange benefit of being displaced.

"That neighborhood beside the Squalid, who lives over there?"

It was the outermost community, the first one I stumbled upon when I got over the perimeter fence. The people weren't dressed in brown jumpsuits, like the farmers.

"That section is for select citizens."

"Why or how do they get selected?"

"Every human born in Neutopia undergoes intelligence testing. Only the most intelligent citizens live in Green. Humans that contribute as record keepers, educators and historians are placed there."

"Green is the color code of their contribution?"

"Yes."

Heading back into the blue section of Neutopia, the entertainment and service district, we come across a flashing billboard on the side of a building that advertises a _Jacking Depot_. I remember 217 using the phrase earlier and ask him what it means.

"The Jacking Depot is a place where patrons gather to conjoin their human minds with others."

"Come again?"

Origin 217 pauses as if he's stuck. I fight not to roll my eyes and repeat my question in plain terms. "Could you explain that again? I didn't understand."

"Transmitting cerebral signals allows humans to engage in communal thoughts and fantasies. It is compared to hijacking another human's brain. One may stand and observe or actively participate to create new realities within each other's mind."

"That sounds... weird."

"It is most common. The most popular form of entertainment, using an increasing margin of the participant's recreational hours."

As we pass the Jacking Depot, it doesn't look like much, but it's crowded. The Depot is a large room, lined wall to wall with benches. Every bench is filled with people, sitting quietly and wearing visors that cover their eyes.

"Would you like to participate?" Origin 217 wants to know.

"I'd like to know more about it."

The androids dark eyes brighten with electricity for a scant second before responding. "You must have a connection unit and data storage installed to participate."

Images from the _Matrix_ and hard-wired humans used as batteries flash through my mind and I shake my head. "I'll pass. Just take me back to Doyen."

This place is infected with useless rules and weird people with even weirder habits. I've seen enough and am beyond ready to get the hell out of here.

##

##

##  When In Doubt Kick'em In The Nuts

I've been here too long. Three days and nights long.

I'm ready—anxious even, to say goodbye to Doyen and his weird world, though leaving Rocky behind is still up for consideration no matter what Doyen thinks.

He's so small and needy... and what the hell would I do with a kid on my hip? I've already helped him as much as I can. It's time to let go. But Doyen's world is twisted and I don't know if I can trust him. Does Rocky belong here?

I'm pretty sure Eli would have a conniption at the mere mention of bringing another human being, let alone a tiny child, into this mess we're up to our necks in. He'd go on and on about the ramifications...

Taking Rocky across town has completely altered his life. I'm in no position to take on the responsibility of caring for another person when I can barely take care of myself, but leaving him here... well that's not something I'm sure I can do.

Contemplating this, I stare out the long window at the daytime view of Neutopia. The edges of the city are bordered by pristine white, accentuating the belief that this town is the last. There's a harrowing thought.

Is it possible to go from billions to thousands? I consider the possibility of the rumors that Arlen mentioned in our only conversation; whispers of other groups of people living happily above ground in a warm nameless land. It was real to him; he believed I was one of them.

It's sad to think that the last bits of such a complex species are gathered in this one place, depending on technology to keep them alive.

Arlen and his people were ended by the sonic cannon blasting from those unexplained hovercrafts. I can't help thinking it's no coincidence that Doyen seems blind to the annihilation of the Mole people, or that I haven't seen a hovercraft since arriving in this city. The androids here use Orbs. So Neutopia can't be the last city. The world is too big; there were too many people to end up with so few.

"How did the world come to this?" I wonder aloud and then sense that uneasy presence that means Doyen is nearby, the precursor that means I'll find him standing somewhere behind me the moment I turn around.

When I turn to find him smiling with a ready answer, I know he's been here for some time. Watching me watch his city.

"Tell me about when you are from and I will enlighten you."

He's also alluded to knowing I'm from another plane. Now he's alluding to my time loop. What else does he know?

I respond, shifting my eyes back to the window. "It was 2012 when I left."

"My friend, you and your ideologies are nothing more than artifacts."

"Is that right?" I think he just called me ancient.

Turning back to Doyen, I find he's moved to sit across the room on the undersized sofa. The way he's staring at me makes my palms slick with sweat.

"A history lesson for you. Let's see... Oh, yes. During the 20th century, the populace was bombarded with choices. This was all planned, of course. There were leaders who sought to take advantage of the citizen's preoccupation with... what is the old phrase? A dog and pony show?"

Doyen explains that the previous world system had been at a breaking point for decades. "Kingdoms overrun with greed and corruption, but the people took no notice. They fought with one another and soon forgot about important matters; like the state of their leadership and the health of the planet."

"Factions formed and rose against dissidents. War and pollution ran rampant. The world was polluted and Mother Nature could not course correct. Armies dropped giant bombs. Many millions died from the fallout, billions more from famine and disease.

"All the while, greed flourished as it always does under selfish rule, and resources were hoarded." Doyen sets his hands together below his chin, palm to palm—his light expression contrasting the dark tale.

"Then what happened?"

"There was no place habitable above ground. Even the hidden caves in mountainsides were polluted by the hostile air. No sun shone through the layers of dust.

"Some men chased the stars in search of another home but the smart ones went underground." His dark eyes tighten slightly. "We are survivors. We adapted to the changes as they came. We worked while the planet was in its' heated cycle, knowing that one day, a winter would come. When it did, the atmospheric generator was ready."

He waves his hand, gesturing out the window. "When the air was deemed safe for breathing, we began rebuilding and fine-tuning our societies and bloodlines."

He finishes with a _look at us now_ puff of his chest as if he's done all the work himself. The hubris is nauseating.

"What year is it?"

"Three-thousand-eleven."

I nod because what is there to say to the fact that I am in a world that's nine hundred and ninety-nine years ahead of my own?

Wouldn't it be something, though, if I got here through time travel? But no, finding my little sister alive in World Two proved that Eli had been right all along. Besides, I would hate to think that the future of my planet is as bleak as this one has been in the past.

"Doyen, may I ask something of a more... personal nature?"

The way he nods his head, granting me permission; it rubs like sandpaper over raw nerves. Even if this asshole hadn't threatened Rocky and choked me into obedience, I'd be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in Doyen. There is something about him—a type of darkness—that's unsettling.

"How do you know about my..." I gesture to the great beyond with wide sweeping moves, "the travelling, and me moving through the multi-verse?"

Doyen's demeanor casts an unreadable feeling, his face a deafening blank as he stands up and wipes one hand over his round stomach as if making sure it's still there. His long ponytail sweeps side to side as he waddles away, waving a hand over his shoulder.

My blasé order to follow.

The blank wall that conceals the elevator to the pinnacle penthouse apartment reveals itself and opens as Doyen approaches. He doesn't have to wait or even slow his gait, the entry just knows he's coming and obeys on approach.

I follow and listen as Doyen leads the way down into the unknown bowels of the building, the intestinal maze in the middle of the structure.

"I do not come from here," Doyen says and for some reason, I'm positive that he's telling the truth.

"When you say, 'here'..."

"I was not born on this plane, but brought here."

"From where?"

"From my home."

Well, that's informative.

Reigning in the curiosity, I try a different tack. "When?"

"I was a young boy. Ten, maybe twelve years."

"What about your family?"

Doyen gives a sidelong glance as we turn another corner to walk down another unmarked hallway. "I was a disobedient child—always in trouble with my mother and running from my father."

To a point, I relate and tell him so. He keeps going as if I haven't spoken.

"My family lived a primitive existence. They were very religious. My father was akin to the mayor—a trusted leader of our community. We had many rules, but the most important rule was, never let a stranger pass through our land. If we found them, we were to kill them."

"Brutal."

"Yes, it was a vicious life that never suited me."

Doyen stops at a blank wall. One that looks like it should hold a hidden doorway, but nothing appears as we approach. Doyen doesn't fret though; he turns to me and keeps talking.

"We were close to the harvest feast when I went into the woods to hunt for the first time, as was the custom of all men in my village. Only the women and children stayed."

Doyen pauses. "My first time out and I came upon a stranger."

I guess that this is where he expects me to show interest so I gasp; just enough to say I am sufficiently enthralled. "What did you do?"

"I knew what I was supposed to do, but was afraid, so I hid."

"You were just a kid."

Doyen nods at my justification, adding, "Yes, only a small boy, too afraid of what his father would do. Though our laws were severe for a reason."

What reason could that possibly be, I wonder, and let the man that requires my full attention to think he has it.

"If anyone my in tribe had come across that man, they would have killed him instantly. But I followed him and waited for another to find him."

"So, you didn't care if he lived or not, you just didn't want to be the one to kill him?"

"As I watched the stranger march through the forest, I heard him talking to himself. Words of chastisement and grief. I understood many of the same things he felt. He was already grown and I was a young boy, a native of that place. Still, we shared something."

"You did?"

"You see, my tribesmen were unusual people. One's like me, who bore the light skin. That was the reason I didn't want to be the one to kill the man because his skin was like mine, and I had never seen another pale one outside my kinsmen."

Doyen's from a light-complected tribe of heathens. "Neat," I mutter because I can't come up with anything else.

Doyen eats up the comment, trying to take my pretend interest to the next level when he yanks one side of his robe off his shoulder to reveal a group of crude dots tattooed on his deltoid. They're set very close together to form lines, which makeup a rudimentary tree. The kind of tree a preschooler who's into stick figures might draw.

  "It is the Tresunus." He offers, with too much excitement.

"It's... really something," I say, matching his excited tone and hoping it doesn't sound as irritating as it feels because I know I've heard that word before.

"It is the mark of my people. We are—or we were—the Keepers. My father was named Guardian to the Sacred Powers."

Doyen looks to the blank wall in front of us. The doorway hiding inside quickly fades into visibility and slides open.

That mark. There's something familiar there, too.

The room on the other side is completely white with dozens of bright lights set into the low ceiling shining down on the white, shiny floor. There's not a spot of furniture, save two delicate looking chairs across the room.

My hand forms a visor above my brow to shield some of the light and hopefully keep me from going blind as we pass through the doorway.

"Have you nothing to say?"

My eyes water. "I'm not sure what you mean, Doyen."

"What do you think of my history?"

"I don't know enough about your history to form an opinion. I mean, was the stranger one of your relatives?"

For some reason, he smiles widely before answering. "No, we were not related."

"Oh. Well, then, I think it's weird."

The story's pointless. He's left more than a few things out, like how he got here, or how he used to know another version of me or my father and decided after some mysterious betrayal to model a line of androids after him.

Doyen bursts with a wild laugh, touching a hand to his waist and bending into it.

I take this opportunity to roll my eyes.

Once his laughter dies down, Doyen bids me to follow him to a set of chairs on the other side of the intensely bright room.

Remembering my manners, I wait for him to sit and then do likewise, wondering if he'll go on explaining his convoluted story about this stranger that looked like him, that he wanted to die, but didn't want to kill, but not caring because what I'd really like to do right now is hit him with the pair of thin metal chairs.

I don't like this guy. I don't like his look or his hair, or the sound of his stupid voice. I don't get why he's so sure that he's better than me.

Doyen has terrible instincts. He mistakes my silence for interest as he continues telling how he secretly watched the man at length. It was nothing for the young boy to go into the woods to hunt and stay gone for days at a time, as his father would not permit him to come back empty-handed. He stayed high up in the canopy so the stranger couldn't hear him padding through the forest behind him.

Doyen describes the man as nothing remarkable. Except for his strange white skin, the stranger looked nothing like Doyen's family. He was almost the opposite. He was tall and thin with brown hair and eyes.

He seemed very clumsy to young Doyen who watched the man slip on wet leaves and fall over broken limbs. It took the man all day to catch one fish. Sometimes he covered his mouth to keep from laughing at the stranger who seemed to have never set foot in a forest in all his life.

In the days he kept watch, the man had done only one thing right, and that was that he stayed hidden from the other tribesmen, whether by instinct or dumb luck, Doyen was not sure.

On the fourth day, the man spotted Doyen's father. He had enough sense to stay hidden in the trees as he observed his father performing the harvest ritual.

It was then that the little boy climbed down from the tree to come face to face with the stranger.

"The man spoke to me, and though I could not understand his words he was pleasant enough that I was not afraid."

He keeps going on and on and I don't care. It's like this whole story has been contrived to distract me. But from what?

"My father was finishing the ritual. Rain was coming in..."

His eyes have this far-away look like he's reliving the experience. I take a deep breath and widen my drooping eyes.

"...Under penalty of death, I showed him the secret path. I revealed the drawings my mother carved on the walls of our temple that told the story of our ancestors and the purpose of our strength."

He goes quiet and I'm not sure what to think. I wait for him to say something else and when he doesn't, I figure this is my only chance to bring the matter back around to where it started.

"How did you get here?"

"That same stranger. He brought me here."

"How?" I ask only to be ignored.

"My fathers' position was one that required accountability. When he learned what I had done, he alerted the other tribesmen. The elders took council and decided my family should pay for my crime."

His eyes, holding that faraway look, gloss with wet. "Their punishment was death."

"Harsh."

"To die is not harsh; it is what is natural and expected of us all. We are born and we must die. There is no shame in that. What they did to me was harsh."

"What did they do to you?"

"I was forced to live. I watched my mother, father, and brother tried to breathe with their throats sliced open."

Holy Mother Teresa.

"I was banished for betraying our secrets."

"But, you were just a kid."

"A foolish child."

Is it terrible that, after hearing his story, I'm still wondering how he got here?

"Weeks later, as I wandered the same places where I saw the strange man, I found him again. That day, he brought me to this place."

Doyen stands up and gestures across the white room washed even whiter with the sunlight. A white panel I hadn't noticed is jutting from the floor. He speaks a word I can't understand and the panel recedes, exposing the wall behind it and my eyes want to pop from their head when I see a set of three beautiful stones—one white, one red, one black—affixed to a golden plate hanging within a depressed frame.

"You recognize them," Doyen assumes, spreading both arms wide like a savior on a cross.

Or... a bearded man floating down from the roof of a burning building.

That's it. I know it. The reason I hate him is not only because he is an undeserving, self-serving, sadistic asshole, but because he is Daemon. He is another version of the man that killed my father. Of the man that tried to kill me more than once.

I check myself, determined not to give anything away. Suppressing my extreme desire to dart across the room and take the stones mounted there.

Doyen looks like that is exactly what he expects, which makes me think I don't have a chance in hell of succeeding.

I've got to play this smart.

I've got to play dumb.

"Should I?"

His serious face cracks with the hint of a smile. He crosses his arms over his considerable waist. "You are a Traveler."

"I admitted that much yesterday."

"Yes, you did. Was that before or after you agreed not to waste my time with lies?"

"Before," I answer defiantly.

Doyen stares quietly. Dangerously.

"I have trusted you enough to reveal my secret. It is your turn now."

"My turn for what?"

"To return to the Outlier camp and destroy the goods you left."

I shrug. "I've already done that."

"When?"

"The day your guards in the Orb found me in the Green district."

He shakes his head.

"It's true," I say, not wanting to use what happened for my benefit, but thinking that in this instance, Arlen wouldn't mind.

I explain the whole scenario. What I saw and heard, how I got out right before the entire thing collapsed, even how I'm sure that I was the one that led the Neutopian guards to them. "One of your patrol squads must have found my footprints in the snow."

All through this explanation, my hands are burning, staring at Doyen's serious face, watching him measure every word. My blood is heating, because the more I watch the way Doyens dark eyes flicker, the easier it is to imagine what he would look like fifty pounds lighter and bald, with a giant black snake head tattooed on his clean scalp.

This whole time, I couldn't put my finger on it. Couldn't understand why I hated him, but now it's so clear that I can't believe it took me this long to see this whole time I have been standing with and talking to an alternate version of that traitorous snake.

An alternate version of Daemon that said he killed an alternate version of me though the droids look more like my father. Either or, it doesn't make a difference. He is an alternate version of the man that used me to track down my own dad. Another version of a man that almost drowned me and my murdered my alternate father in World Two before he tried to take what remained of my alternate family.

Doyen—Daemon—sits here on his throne, his pinnacle at the top of the world, and dictates that people be regarded as refuse, as trash, if they don't meet his standards. People— _children_ —like Rocky.

How many lives has he destroyed? How many more will he offload into the cold, leave to suffer and die alone in the streets?

The first question, I can't answer. But the second? Oh, that's an easy one. The answer is none. Zero.

Drawing in a slow, deep breath, I force myself to relax. To smile, even though my hands twitch. Imaging Doyen bleeding out on the city street helps.

"If you are lying..." He warns.

I hold my hands out, palms open. "I've got nothing to hide."

He nods and then gestures towards the door across the room. "You will come with me, then, to check out your story."

"Lead the way, your Highness."

By the sound Doyen makes as he passes in front of me to lead the way out, I can tell he likes the title. He likes thinking he's higher and mightier than everyone else.

I'm not proud of what I'm doing, but it's got to be done. Not proud of the way my fists come up and bash into the back of Doyens head. A quick one-two and he's stunned enough to go down, landing on his stomach in the open doorway. I've never hit a guy who wasn't looking before. It's one of those unwritten rules, like "Never shoot a man in the back." Because if he's not facing you, he's not fighting, he's leaving.

But I tell myself that rule doesn't apply here. In this context, my only chance to win is to catch Doyen unawares—when he's not prepared to fight back because if he gets that chance, I'll lose. He's twice my size, and he's the ultimate authority in this place. Picking a fight with him is win or die so I have to take advantage.

Next, I'm digging my knee into his back, making him squirm, shoving his face into the floor to muffle his call for help. Just until I've got his long braid in my grasp. Then, I release just enough pressure to let him lift his head. Quickly swaddling his neck with the shock of waist length hair, my knee comes back down, smashing his face into the cement floor.

Again, and again.

All the while, pulling his hair tighter around his neck, watching the skin go red, blotching, washing purple.

When he relaxes under me I jump up and come down with one foot, thrusting all my weight onto the column of his neck. Once, twice, and then I hear the telltale _crack_ that tells me he's done.

It feels weird and alien, far-fetched like it's not real. It's like I'm not inside my own body, but standing across the room, watching someone else, some stranger, from the outside efficiently overtake and kill. And I want to know who this person is.

One pause after that last kick, and I notice how quiet the room is. The next moment I'm double-checking to make sure he's dead and then leaping from one task to the next, thinking. _Hide the body._

It's this odd, disconnected feeling that keeps me going in the right direction, the one that's going to get me the hell out of here.

Hide this.

He's lying over the threshold of the open doorway, half way between the empty gray hall and the white room with a set of three stones mounted on a hidden panel.

Hide this.

Jumping across the room, I grab the rubber pouch I've had shoved down my pants all day and open it just enough to quickly shove the Threestone from the golden plate on the wall inside with the set I've got. They're smaller than the first pair, yet feel heavy by comparison.

Get out.

Should I open the gateway here? I'm not sure if doing it while I'm so high up off the ground is the wisest idea. What if there's no skyscraper right here in the next world?

Get out of here.

With an ankle in each hand, it takes every ounce of my strength to pull heavyset Doyen back through the doorway and into the white room. The door starts to close on its own the moment he clears it and I have to drop him, leap onto his torso, and then hop across his shoulder to make it through before I'm shut inside with him.

Inside the long gray hallway, I take the first left turn, and then the next two rights only to be stopped at a dead end. It's a maze of a building and just as I think of turning around, a doorway bleeds into the blank wall before me. The Biolock appears, too, and the doorway slides opens once I set my hand to it.

"The invisible elevator," I mutter, passing through the endless network of empty halls that seem to lead nowhere. The elevator is the only way back up to the pinnacle apartment and the only way down to the ground floor.

Passing through another Biolock, I run smack into Origin 217. I can tell it's him by the orange stripe running down the sleeve of his gray jumpsuit. He doesn't speak as his eyes light up, scanning me, reading my vitals.

"Increased heart rate. Rapid breathing. Perspiration. Anxiety. Worry. You are distressed."

I start to shake my head, but change my mind and stuff my red hands behind my back. "Doyen ordered me to return to the Outlier camp like we agreed yesterday, but my backpack with my supplies is inside the apartment and I can't find the elevator."

Can he tell I'm lying? Does he know what I did?

"Come with me, Alien," Origin 217 speaks in monotone.

It's a gamble for sure, but I fall in line because that's what an innocent man would do. He wouldn't scramble around like a crazy person, making a show of his need for a clean getaway. But he might be anxious to obey the supreme leader who promised to let him go in peace if he obeyed one, final order.

Origin 217 points at the next corner. My nerves rear up, wondering if he's leading me into some kind of trap because I honest-to-god don't remember ever seeing this hallway before. But when I come around the corner, I see the empty alcove. The elevator-like door appears when Origin 217 sets his hand on the wall.

He waits until I am inside, acting as if he's going to leave me to fend for myself.

"I won't be able to get back down if you don't come with me."

He steps into the elevator beside me and I have got to stop sweating. "Do you know where Doyen is?"

"Doyen is his own master, he goes where he wills."

Here is where I make my mark; either keep it together or lose my shit. Calm down. Deep breath, breathe in the calm... exhale.

As I concentrate on bringing my heart rate under control, reminding myself that this droid only knows what he is told, the door to the elevator opens. The sight of the high-rise apartment makes me feel better.

I'm half-way gone.

Grabbing my pack from the corner where I left it this morning, my mind clears enough to ask one important question. Turning towards the familial android, I address him.

"Origin 217."

He stands at attention.

"What are your exact orders concerning me and my presence in this city?"

"My primary objective is to watch over you and answer your questions until you pass safely out of the boundaries of Neutopia."

"Am I allowed to visit the infant I call Rocky?"

"No."

My stomach drops. "What if I wished to take him with me?"

"Then I must arrest you. Doyen ordered the infant to remain apart from you and Doyen must be obeyed."

Tightening the straps of the backpack in place I feel a small rush of sadness. "Is Rocky safer here?"

"Yes." Origin 217 pulls no punches.

"Why?"

"Weather in the outlands is not considered survivable for vulnerable human infants."

I nod, conceding. "Give me time to change my clothes and then we'll go. Doyen must be obeyed."

After I've gotten into my Demron suit, the trip down to ground level takes only a few seconds.

The moment I clear the building and am out on the street, I turn towards the robot that looks like my father, knowing I've got to get my ass moving before someone finds Doyen.

Origin 217 watches as I flop the hood of my suit over my head, fasten it closed, and then pull the rubber pouch from the hidden pocket over my chest. I want to think he's looking on curiously, but remind myself that that's not possible.

The second I snap back the zipper before I even get a chance to grab onto either set of Threestone, the funnel cloud shoots up into the sky, tossing me back with the force. From the ground, I watch the cloudless sky above open up. The air seems to tear, disappearing into cloud just before the burst of flames and blue fog.

The heat is amazing, warping the concrete road just outside the invisible field that encompasses me. The ground suddenly slants and I fall on my knees. The rainbow wheel in the vortex calls to me as I get back to my feet.

My mind flashes with anger, thinking of my father lying prostrate in his bed. The moment his bedroom door opened and that wiry beard poked inside.

I know exactly where I'm aiming: into a world where I can catch the one Dad called Nahuiollin and make him pay.
Part 5

##

##

## World Eight

VOMIT TRICKLES DOWN MY neck.

I couldn't get the hood off in time. Chunks have pooled in the tiny holes of my mask and knowing it's there makes me want to puke all over again.

I have to focus on something else and so force myself to look past the remnants of my lunch to examine the odd grass. It's putrescent, yes, but tremendously vivid. Almost... like its glowing green.

But my eyes don't ache.

What does that mean?

I was tightly sealed inside the radiation suit this time. Maybe it's more than just radiation that makes me sick. I hunch, examining the constitution of the glade I'm in, wondering. If each dimension is like Eli says—a closed loop running on its' own clock—maybe the nausea comes from me.

Like some people get carsick on road trips, maybe I'm time sick.

The stench is too much. I have to get out of this rubber puke bag.

As I stand to take in a fresh, deep breath, the view knocks the wind from me. No more gray concrete like the last place, no empty ice desert. It's not a simple country landscape like the world I'm from, either.

This plane isn't showing off the usual spring. I mean, it looks like spring time, but so much more than that. I'm looking a living breathing season whose colors make my jaw fall off the hinges.

I've never been the outdoorsy nature-loving type, but can appreciate the occasional sunset. This place... any description on its quality would be inadequate. No superlatives will do it justice.

I've stepped into a work of art. It's all picturesque grassy field sprinkled with gigantic trees. The view is breathtaking. As if I have, somehow, stepped inside the living work of a master painter; the Sistine Chapel's got nothing on this.

The glade where I stand is the stuff of sonnets. The colors are... poetry. If it were possible to take every shade of green and compare them by degrees of their own purity, the grass would be the warmest emerald ever perceived. If there were a word that meant truest green that would be the name of the multidimensional spectrum of hues that runs through a single blade of grass, forming the most absolute color that ever existed.

Until I mark the next one.

The loitering trees ahead and behind me are flourishing, beauteous works of genius. Their colors are magnificent, vibrant, absolute impressions of individual shades, melded to sparkle as one. The cloudy skies overhead sing and breathe beauty. Every leaf is greenest green, each branch and bit of bark is made of the purest, richest browns. Every blade of grass, speck of dirt, the sweet-smelling rainbow blossoms, all are beyond compare.

Even to use the word _paradisiacal_ , which seems appropriate in reference to places like Hawaii, is insufficient.

There are no suitable descriptions because nothing that I know of can compare. I'm awestruck, weak in my knees, wowed into a stupor at the glory of mother-nature in her unspoiled wonder.

"Wow." The most understated expression of a lifetime. I wish I had a camera because I'll never be able to explain this. How can anyone understand the things they cannot perceive? Without a picture, I have no ability to educate them.

Trying to focus—staring and walking—there isn't another soul in sight, save the infrequent passing of a bird or two. No car or house, no ramshackle laboratory, no concrete surrounded by massive snow banks, no orchard or road. Not even animals. The land looks untouched by modern man.

While I'm covered in reeking vomit.

The repercussions of landing in an uncivilized world are hard to ignore. Right now, though, it can't detract from the radiant view as I search for signs of water to wash myself. By my reckoning, the suns position places the time around noon. The sunny weather and immense greenery give indication that the season is a glorious spring. The approximate year is indeterminable as there are no technological or electrical devices in sight and no people to help mark the century. If Eli's variant time loop theory holds true, I could be anywhere—a futuristic forest reserve among the earth's last bit of vegetation or about to cross paths with Cro-Magnon man.

The nearest spots of white are small blossoms in the grass. The vast mountains, once lost to me in Ice World, are once more lining the distant horizon, the peaks wear with white toupees.

Pleasant weather and extensive vegetation argue against the after-effects of global warming. The gargantuan flora makes me wonder if there's a possibility of stumbling upon a dinosaur. As much as I enjoyed the Jurassic movies, I have to hope not.

Enormous, awe-inspiring Oaks, Redwoods, and Sequoia branches hang far above my reach, bringing to mind how when I was a kid, my dad would take me camping in the forest reserves of Kings Canyon. The woods were filled with giant trees, still not as large as these. These trees are huge and look hundreds of years old. The trunks of these trees are too impossibly wide to fathom a climb, even after I've slipped into my hiking boots.

I'm heading towards the eastern hills, keeping my eyes peeled along the way. Insect wings click from the grass, wind rustles through the high trees like music. The air is so warm.

When I reach the high point on the nearest hillock, I take my time searching the stunning vista for answers but am distracted by the sprawling scenery. In every direction, in the awe-inspiring high and lowlands, there's no sign of civilization. No electrical towers or phone lines jutting above the tree line. No roadways, paved or otherwise; it's all grass and trees, hill and stream—none bearing the structured line of farms. Scanning the lowlands, I spot the trace of a creek bed twisting through the crease of a low hillside and make that my destination.

No sign of any form of transportation.

_Great_. Daemon's on the other side of the country with an unknown amount of time ahead of me. How will I find him now? I assumed wherever the gateway led would be somewhat modernized.

By the time I reach the stream the drying vomit is re-hydrating with sweat. I take off everything and lie down in the cool water that's so blue, the color holds to shallow puddle in the palms of my hands.

Too bad Eli didn't pack me shampoo. I'll have to enter the next world smelling like a bulimic's restroom.

I also have to walk back to the same spot to keep from poking unnecessary holes in the inter-dimensional walls, according to Eli. I might be in the right dimension, but I'm on the wrong end of the country. I've got to travel to another dimension, preferably near my own timeline, and then get back across the country and then come back to this place—if it's the place that Daemon jumped to. Go back and over to move forward.

After clearing out the visible puke particles from the radiation suit and mask, I shake off the excess water and make my way back to the place where the gateway opened. It still stinks so I rub loose pine needles inside the hood before getting back inside, prepping for the next jump.

Stowing my things inside my pack, I come across a straggling box labeled _Samples_ and get excited. I thought I'd dumped them all by his lab in that ramshackle laboratory. Eli is going to flip when he sees the colors in... World Six.

There are four small vials inside the box. I crack open the first one and scoop up a bit of topsoil, then dig deeper—with my hands because I don't know what happened to my shovel—for darker dirt. Turning the vial upside down, I press it into the soil, hoping for a sterile sample, then seal the tubes and label both accordingly. Next, I get some of the emerald grass and rich tree bark, trying to follow Eli's remembered instructions to the letter.

I bet he could learn a lot about this place if he had a water sample.

Walking in this place is refreshing and getting a last peek at that crystal blue water is strong motivation. The weather is so pleasant, I don't think twice over trudging back to the stream. I make sure to go up higher than where I was before to get the best possible sample. After, I take another long drink and a leak before heading back to my original position.

After everything is neatly packed up inside my bag and I'm firmly sealed inside my smelly protective gear, I mark my position from the side and front, lining up my arrival point by the dried vomit on the grass. Once I achieve the exact position, I hold the pouch with the stones in one hand and a Boom Pack in the other, giving it a gentle squeeze.

The delicate glass breaks. Pale liquids begin mixing. I toss the Boom Pack and wait for my ride home.

##

##

## Observations

Nothing.

I tossed the Boom Pack and nothing.

I'm still standing here in the middle of the field smelling like a goat in my puke suit. Waiting... for nothing.

Maybe the charge landed too close? There are two sets of stones in there. The radius for energy absorption should be... I shake my head because I don't know. When I left Ice World I didn't even have to remove the rocks from their bag, they just went off the second I pulled the zipper open. But, before I got Doyen's set, the one I picked up in World Two was exposed to energy several times before reacting. So I just don't know; does that make for a bigger or smaller radius for absorption?

Opening the pouch, I pour the stones out into my hand for a closer look.

What the hell!

There are only three rocks: one white, one red, one black. One set of Threestone. They are slightly larger than the set my father left me—which means they're the set I picked up in World Two.

So, the smaller stones I took from Doyen are gone.

Just, shit-shit. Shit!

Searching the ground, I check every step between here and the stream. Closely. Carefully.

Twice. And still find nothing.

Maybe the Boom Pack didn't go off because I tossed them near the set of stones I dropped.

Warily, I creep towards the nitroglycerin pack lying dormant on the ground, stones out ahead of me as insurance. It's easy to see that the chemicals are mixed and there's nothing around them save rocks and twigs, the obligatory pine needles.

I can just see the lost set of stones lying in the streets of Neutopia surrounded by piles of unresponsive androids and want to kick myself for the stupidity. I fell and didn't once think to check that I still had the stones.

Taking up the tiny chemical pouch, I pinch it once more for good measure then fling it further out, waiting for the boom.

The chemicals inside the envelope are supposed to be volatile. Maybe the ground is too soft. The first pack I used fell on a paved road and went off without a hitch.

I make my way around the immediate area trying to find the hardest surface. There's a group of rocks near the base of one of the great trees. I throw the packet on it and come up empty.

Slamming it against the trunk doesn't work, either. It smacks impotently against the wood and smacks onto the rocks below.

The shrill ring of disappointment is the only sound.

Is it possible that travelling through the gateways damaged the cartridges? They didn't get wet, but maybe the cold damaged them? Or, what if, there's something about this place that changes the chemicals?

Did Eli even test the Boom Packs? Maybe he knew it was possible that one could fail, and that's why he gave me three. I can't imagine he has much experience in producing pocket-size bombs.

Yeah, there was probably a dud.

That one had to be the dud.

My last explosive pack—very likely my only hope of getting out of this place and back to a modern society where things like soap and indoor plumbing are commonplace—is now in my hand. I'm not going to think about what it means if it doesn't work because it will.

It will.

With hood tightly refastened, holding the lone set of stones against me, I use my free hand to crush the delicate glass vials in the enclosed envelope. The liquid mixes. I toss it far and fast. It hits a large rock and bounces onto soft grass.

There's no one to hit or yell at.

I punch at the air and scream at Eli, anyway. This is all his fault.

Resisting the urge to wear myself out, I change out of my radiation suit and back into hiking boots, then head south. If any city exists in this plane, it should be Los Angeles.

Coming across the lower part of the stream, I decide to follow it since it bends in the right direction. If there are any campers, they'll likely be near a water source no matter the decade.

Singing to pass the time, playing a little air guitar when the song calls for it. It's difficult to stay upset when my surroundings are so utterly song worthy, but I manage.

It's not long before my throat is aching and the sun is still mid-sky. Shadows on the ground are fat and short pointing to a minimal passage of time though my feet feel like I've been walking for hours.

After stopping for a drink I take out my notebook. Eli will want to know everything and I have a few things to tell him. I make some notes referencing the time differential, explaining that there is no way to measure it.

I lost a second set of stones after killing a man to get them.

Screw you and your damn time differential. I'm stuck here, you idiot! Your boom-packs don't work. I'm stuck here until I find an alternate energy source.

Why couldn't you give me something solar powered? The sun is everywhere.

My only constant.

After soaking my feet, I start walking again, keeping inside the cool water until my toes tingle. The sun is still high. It's moved some, but not as much as it should. It's like the land of endless days.

After another long stretch of tall, grassy knolls and pathless trudging, I stop to rest beneath the edge of a striking Oak grove. Scribbling my thoughts, I speak the words as I write.

No doubt, it's been hours since I arrived, but the sun says it's nowhere near evening. It's too quiet. The birds fly way up high and those are the only other life I've seen. No squirrels or other forest animals like I'd expect being so deep in wooded areas. I've walked for miles. My feet hurt too much to keep going today. Right now, I could really use that tent.

Don't say it. I know, you tried to tell me.

I've set the stones in the sun to catch the heat. This pair, like the first, stays locked together in a petal formation. I tested by lowering them to the ground and holding only the white rock. The red and black remained tight against it, held by some force that keeps the three connected like a single entity. Easy to see how they got the unified title of Threestone.

Too bad the sets don't stay together so easily.

I can't believe I lost them.

A breeze kicks up, calling attention to the water on my cheek. My fingers rub at it, realizing its tears. Two deep breaths, a cough to clear my throat, and that's that.

Solar power will have to do for now. My rumbling stomach presents the most immediate worry. But also has to wait until I know what's what.

Down on my knees, I unzip my backpack and get to work.

With everything sprawled out on the ground, I can finally take inventory. The last plane was, first, too cold and then too crowded.

There's two types of rope, three days' worth of food if I stretch it, a pair of space blankets, a rain poncho, toothbrush, dirty socks, night-vision goggles that don't work, a soup pot, cup of dry beans, first-aid kit, an empty water bladder, non-aerosol bug spray, a small handsaw, matches, lighter, pocket knife and three cigarettes. There's also a folder with the copied pages of my dad's journal, but that will have to wait.

After making camp, I can eat and if I'm not too tired, do some reading.

To cook, I'll need hot water.

For hot water and light, I need fire.

Top of the list: gathering wood.

In ninth grade, I read a book about a boy trapped in the Alaskan wilderness. He had a hatchet. I've got a flimsy, six-inch saw and a knife that has a corkscrew for opening bottles of wine. It also has a plastic toothpick and a tiny pair of scissors. What do the Swiss think people do on camping trips?

I spread out my stuff at the edge of the tree line, under the shade of a grouping of enormous trees because there's a wide rock, relatively flat, that will be serving as my evening chair. By the looks of the sun, evening is still hours away but I need to hustle if I'm going to have some semblance of shelter before night falls.

The sky is barely cloudy, which means night could be cool, but I'm not worried about that. It's the sprinkling of darker clouds that worry me. If they gather, I might get stuck in a downpour.

Leaving the stones to rest in the sun-drenched meadow, I trek into the denser parts of the forest and the place comes to life. Choruses of birds whistle in the thick canopy, insects chirp, bugs fly. I see one small, fluorescent green snake slinking up a white tree trunk. Fat, fluffy rodents bound away from my heavy steps in every direction.

About fifty yards in, I come upon a large, dead tree, covered in moss and brightly colored insects. Even the bugs are something to look at. The moss is a vibrant green carpet.

It takes some time, but I manage to work off a good-sized branch near the top of the fallen giant. The main branch will provide firewood while the long twigs will help build a lean-to. The wood is dry enough for burning. I lug the branch back to camp and spend too long breaking it up and tossing the useable pieces into the campfire until the pile looks large enough to last through the night.

Semi-sheered branches are layered over the high side of a large rock. Underneath them is just enough space for me to crawl inside and sleep on a small patch of soft grass.

It must have taken a solid hour to hike to and from the stream both times. Since then, I've walked until my feet hurt, rested and started again. I've made camp, chopped wood, built a shelter and a fire. The sun has moved only a few feet in all that time. The sky looks to be about 4 o'clock, but my stomach says its way past dinner time.

I'm not going to think about stretching time or the frozen sun. It's worse than waiting for my water to boil—which feels like hours passing as I wait, impatiently poking the campfire.

When the sun finally starts to set, the colors are indescribable. The air everywhere glows in radiant hues of red, blue, orange and purple, painting the treetops and mountainsides in sweeping strokes of glory.

It's beautiful and depressing, this superbly tinted canvas marking the end of the worlds' longest day, which inevitably leads to what is going to be the longest night of my pitiable life. I lay a few more large chunks of wood on the fire before curling up with my crinkly space blanket and close my eyes.

* * *

Rest comes and goes before the night is through. I woke, stirred the fire, and set another log on. The woodpile is disappearing faster than the dark, and according to the moon, it's still a few of hours until dawn.

The woods behind me are deathly quiet. The crackle of the fire is my only company. That and the stones. They're set near the flames, eating the warmth. When I move them back, the blazing limbs bend the same way they did on the rooftop in New York; stretching towards the cold rocks. I set them further and further back until the flames snap back to normal and mark the distance. Nineteen long steps.

I take out my notebook and make notes describing what I see. It's fascinating and should have me distracted, but World Two is weighing heavily on my mind.

I hope Carrie and little G are okay.

And I'm still wondering exactly what it was that killed little G's dad. The blast from the neighboring building was strong, but I didn't see anything hit him. We were both thrown back, but I was the one who hit the wall. He fell on top of me. There was no visible blood. He was breathing when I left. I should have stayed with him.

The fire is warm and my bed is stone cold. I've slept all I can, yet there's no trace of light on the horizon. Huddled inside my sweatshirt and space blanket, I'm glad for the warmth and wishing for something softer than the plastic inflate-o-pillow I found swimming in the bottom of my bag.

The fire is burning bright, but it doesn't matter. The journal pages Eli photocopied for me have all turned black—probably from the heat of the vortex. There are no distractions now, nothing to detract from this depressing mess.

I wonder what Abi's doing. Does she miss me?

She's probably angry with me for leaving her like I did. But if she really thinks about it, maybe she'll understand why. I had to. If I took her with me, we'd both be in trouble. She'd be stuck here with me—which, actually sounds pretty great, but I couldn't risk her life like that. It would drive me crazy not being able to protect her.

Eli is consumed with work, no doubt. In the time since we reconnected, he's talked of nothing but science and theory; his words too big, his concepts too large, for the common mind.

Sometimes, while listening to his attempted explanations, I imagined him sounding like Morgan Freeman. The science shows he narrates always seem to make sense. Eli could learn a few things from him. He once spent half the night trying to pound out some explanation about some relationship between wormholes and entanglement, how they're impacted by dark matter, but it all went way over my head. I didn't understand the language enough to grasp what he was saying because Eli's primary tongue is mathematics.

My basic understanding of everything he tried to teach me in the short time we spent preparing me for this long, slow death was this: anything and everything is possible in the world of quantum physics, even and especially, the capabilities of my inheritance, the Threestone.

He'd unintentionally bored me for hours. Every time I sighed, he'd apologize in his circle-talk.

"I do not possess the skill to explain these formulations."

Or, he'd say, "There's no legitimate language to answer your questions, G. I'd have to show you by formula."

The fact that someone _that_ intelligent lacks the language to explain anything is just sad.

He did manage to explain how he came up with his closed loop, multi-verse-slash-time relativism theory. I can't remember the name... 'Thacker's Timely Theorem,' or something stupid like that, but the idea was kind of ingenious. Beautifully simple and still too complex to fully explain.

Eli started by saying he was not like other kids. I can attest to that. He was always reading books or writing them. Always talking about scientists no one else had ever heard of and questioning parts of the world that most people take for granted. Like, why is the sky blue? What makes the earth stay fixed on its' axis? Hell if I know. But Eli wouldn't only ask the questions, he'd search for the answers.

One day, while he was out to dinner with his parents—they were at some Mexican restaurant—and Eli was staring at the Aztec calendar on the wall near their table. It was manmade and round. For some reason, he began comparing the loops found in nature. The round sun and round planets that orbit in an oval pattern, the natural circles that exist within each—every planet rotating on its' own axis within the larger circular orbits. The gravitational pull that holds our round moon and the subsequent cycle of high and low tides.

He thought of the morning—how every day starts with the sun rising in the east and ends with it setting in the west. And every season that comes and goes only to come back again. He connected that back to the layered circles of the Aztec calendar and then back to everything in existence: the shapes and patterns within all natural life that operate in closed loops until he had the revelation: time worked the same way.

Then there's the endless number of dimensions that theoretical physicists accept as truth because of some sub-atomic particles that have the ability to be in more than one place at any given time. _Bi-location!_ It's called bi-location, I recall, and pat myself on the back.

All the technical parts of Eli's theories are as good as nonsense to me, but being here, stuck in this place that looks and feels so slow and surreal, it's a giant slap of reality.

Pow!

Right in the face.

##

##

## Cobwebs

When things go wrong in my life, they go really, really wrong.

Like the day Carrie died. She didn't just die, she died way too young, and in front of me, right after I'd argued with my mother over watching her while I did my chores. I was selfish and paid for it with half of my family. Carrie went that same morning, lying on the patch of grass I was cutting. Our mother stayed on, dead inside, until she left my dad and me.

Then, he was killed. The last thing I said to him was a lie. _Come back for the box_ , he'd said. I promised I would. Then... I just forgot.

When I first started working at Aamhed's store, a woman came in to buy a bottle of cough syrup. I didn't really pay attention, except to notice that she was short with noticeably gray hair and apple-shaped in the wrong way.

I was behind the counter watching the rainstorm splatter the parking lot. The dirty water was splashing up onto the concrete step out front. I was thinking that customers would track the muck inside and I didn't want to mop again.

When the round woman came to the counter to pay, I never looked up. Never made eye-contact or even thought about it as I scanned the single bottle of cough syrup. She paid in cash and didn't reply when I asked if she wanted a bag.

The non-answer grabbed my attention. I only caught a glimpse of her face as she snatched the bottle of cough medicine and turned towards the door. Her cheeks were pale, slightly wrinkled, and drenched with obvious tears. Her expression held nothing. Not a puckered cry-face or even a frown; just a deep, expressionless gloom. I never saw a set of eyes so helpless, so miserably empty in all my life. And she was still carrying on with mundane errands. I wondered, briefly, what the medicine was for but as the day progressed I forgot about her altogether.

Here, in the long depressing night, I clearly see that woman's blank face and wonder where she is, if she's better now or worse.

I wish I could apologize for treating her the way she felt: invisible. Because I know what it feels like to be forgotten. I'm the invisible one in this empty place.

I never used to understand people whose moods were determined by the weather. Specifically, those prone to depression in the winter. Not until now. I don't think it's the time of year that depresses them. It's the lack of light. Dark is great if you need to hide, but when you need to see, your blind.

With the fire at my back, I decide all of this ruminating is useless.

Closing my eyes, I pray for a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

I'm standing in a lush field with waist-high grass bordered by encroaching forest. Everything is painted in vivid emerald green.

Beyond the immense tree tops, glowing white capped mountains reach high into the horizon. The open sky overhead is amazing: a black velvet expanse specked with a billion points of brilliant light, shining down on me. I marvel at the simple glory and wonder at the distant reaches beyond comprehension.

From the edge of the burgeoning tree line a boy runs into view. He's small and thin, wearing animal skin pants and a wide, beaded plate over his chest. The ornament jumps as he moves, showing the native jewelry is too large for his frame. Moonbeams leach the color from his skin, but not his hair, which hangs down over his shoulders like a dark curtain.

I want to move his direction but something I can't see keeps my feet stuck.

Closer and to my right, I spot another man; his skin leached of color, too. He's shirtless and hunkered in a squat with his back to me. A laundry basket rests at his feet. I watch him lift a rumpled white cloth to a long clothesline that appears near his head. As the man stretches the sheet towards the line, the cloth transforms. The fabric he's holding morphs into a large, metal ring. He magically hangs the circle on the line and turns around.

My breath falters. It's him—my dad.

When I call his name, my father cups his hand behind one ear. I call out again, "Dad! Dad, what are you doing here?" But a great wind blows, stealing the sound away. I'm worried he'll disappear before I tell him what I know and start yelling as loud as I can.

He still cups his aged hand behind his ear like nothing I say is reaching him over the gusting wind that's gaining strength.

The boy is still a ways off and I don't know why, but I know I can't move from my spot until he arrives so I wait, focused on my dad.

Dad's got an odd smile as he takes another cloth from the basket at his feet and morphs it to another ring and hangs it on the clothesline, essentially hooking it in place alongside the others. I'm mesmerized by the instantaneous, magical way the objects change from one form to another. The enchanting metal circles attach to the never-ending rope extending north and south as far as the eye can see. Dad points at the circles, speaking words of explanation that make no sound above the roaring wind.

"I don't understand," I complain, wanting to move closer, but the boy is moving too slowly.

As my anger builds, so does the noise. I thought it was the wind, but it sounds more like thunder. I look around the open field for clouds in the breathtaking sky, but find neither one. The sky is still there, but it's dull now. No clouds, no jeweled stars. When I look behind me, the mountains are gray. The forest is covered in dust, the trees turning black, as if consumed by invisible fire.

There's nothing else to see besides my father and me and the boy slowly closing the distance. My dad keeps working, hanging the rings on the rope, pointing as if giving instructions with a great, ridiculous grin.

When the boy finally nears me, I can move. He follows as I make my way to Dad. But when I reach the laundry line full of metal rings, he isn't there.

I turn to the pale boy. He's very young, maybe nine or ten years old. He looks around, wild and anxious, raising a knife to my chest.

Thunder becomes deafening, blistering my ears at the same time the native boy screams a hellish sound and thrashes at me with the knife.

##

##

## Super Slow-Mo

I'm inches from insanity by the time the sun finally decides to rise.

Time here definitely runs long. Way too long. Yesterday feels like last week and there's a days' worth of stubble on my jaw.

The last, small log goes on the fire for a long overdue breakfast. I scribble a bit on my notepad while waiting for the water to boil.

Day 2: It's pretty here, but not enough to make me want to stay any longer than I have to.

Breakfast is a single packet of oatmeal I found swimming around in one of the outside pockets the bottom of my pack. The peaches and cream flavor tastes like childhood. They used to put more inside the pouches though.

After packing up camp, I take the time to stamp out the fire and cover the ashes with dirt. Then, tear down my shelter and scatter the branches enough so that anyone who might pass through won't be able to tell I was here—not that I've seen any signs of people.

Heading south, my path runs along the widening stream.

Noon feels like evening and that makes me want to scream.

By the time the sun reads roughly one o'clock, I could easily drop into a heap for the next twelve hours. The expression brings images of Doyen; the way he looked as I leapt from the white room. And so I keep pushing.

Besides, I'm going to have to adjust to the time difference, if that's possible.

##

##

##  Three Days and Counting

Day 3: This place sucks, Eli. So do you and your Boom Packs.

I've rationed what little food I had, but the days are so damn long. I'll need to find an alternate source. Today. I've come across patches of berries here and there but protein is what I need to keep going.

I put the stones in their pouch. They don't seem to absorb much energy just resting in the sun and I noticed that there are no animals or birds around when they're out. It might just be coincidence, but then again, the cows in Ivanhoe ran from them.

Resting on the bank of the stream that's grown to a wide river, I notice the sun, how it feels like it's burning my skin. Strange. Not that a white boy like me could get sunburned, but that it's the first time in three days that I've felt the heat. The air feels nearly the same as yesterday, the only difference today is that for the first time since I got here, I've put away the Threestone.

_Fascinating_. The word makes me think of Doctor Spock, which makes think of Eli.

Testing this latest theory, I pop the stones from their rubber storage and set them beside me. Water birds a few dozen feet from shore suddenly take flight. Tiny blue beetles scamper away through the carpet of grass where I set them and there is no doubt it's the presence of the stones that drives them off.

After a moment, I feel a difference. The air's a bit colder as if I've moved from open sun to shade.

In my notebook, I write:

Animals, birds, and bugs don't like them. Flames draw towards them. I think they absorb UV rays because I've been in the open sun for days and haven't gotten burned.

Curious now, I dig out a mesh bag that holds my inflatable pillow, dump it onto the ground, and then set the red and black stones inside the bag. Pulling the drawstring nice and tight, I leave the white rock on the ground and lift the bag. The white stone lifts from the grass only a second behind the red and black. I swing the bag from side to side and watch the white stone follow in delayed dance.

"Amazing," I say and am shocked by the sound of my voice. It's the first one I've heard in days.

I carry the bag to the riverbank and plunk it down in about two feet of water. The white stone follows as if it's inside with its counter-pieces. I draw the wet bag up and sway it back and forth, leading the rock parade in a figure eight. The three stones stay in lock-step.

Back on the bright green grass, it's time to test the limits. Holding the white rock in my hand, I toss the mesh bag holding the red and black rocks a few yards away. The bag doesn't fall. It floats. And there's a definite pulling sensation in the palm of my hand, where the white rock is. It's soft at first, but then my arm jerks out. I hold fast but the pulling gets stronger, extending my arm as the mesh bag with the other two stones holds place, waiting for their partner. I open my hand and watch the white stone zip away. Once united, the three stones gently sink to the ground.

Cool.

Around nine, I went through a phase where I wanted to be a magician. There was this juggling trick I practiced over and over, but never could get right. I was supposed to toss the three balls and make them disappear one at a time.

"Here we go." I start tossing the stones in the air. True to form, they move slow and in unison, making the juggling act an immediate success. I toss them farther into the air, faster, higher.

"Now that I've got that down," I start kicking my legs and break into a song about how awesome I am as a professional juggler and part-time gigolo.

Each stone cools my hand, so smooth and graceful. Each toss goes a little higher, a litter farther. The rocks could probably do this bit on their own.

"I call manager!" It's a silly thing, dancing, talking to inanimate objects, but days of constant boredom will do that to a person. "I'll be taking 15 percent off the top, in addition to my 33 percent cut for being the face of this road-show."

My foot catches on a tree root cloaked in a patch of grass. Momentum knocks me on my ass and I start to laugh.

Until I hear the _plunk_.

The white stone is in my hand. But the red and black...

I feel the pull and tighten my grip, clutching the rock firm between both hands. The sheer force of the Threestone needing to unite pulls me onto my knees. Unrelenting in its quest, the white stone drags me down the riverbank. My jeans scrape through the mud. Edging towards the water, fighting to stay on land, I stare down into the wide crystal stream and see the sandy bottom but not the rocks.

The waters' cold and refreshing but I don't want to dive-in head first. Just as I'm taking in a final breath, ready to give into the iron will of the stones, a spray erupts from the surface of the river. A fountain showering my face with mist that flashes me with fresh panic. It reminds me that I have no idea what age I'm in, and that huge sea monster thing that ate Daemon. The spray isn't nearly as big and I'm not in open water. But still...

As the mist fades, the two other stones are there, risen from the depths of wherever the river tried to take them.

Right in front of me, magically hovering, their synchronized gaze boring into me like mismatched eyes. It makes me think there's nothing more important or worthwhile than spending every minute I can learning about the capabilities of these wondrous rocks. I peer into each one, the blood red, perfect white and tempting black, wanting to unlock every secret.

Opening my hands, the red and black take their place beside the white; all three sit safely in my grasp.

I fall back onto the riverbank, swollen with relief.

* * *

I've been idle too long, but the day doesn't show it. With the stones out, secured inside the mesh bag secured to the belt of my pants, I keep trekking alongside the river, skipping regular rocks across the water. Soon, the pebbles at the water's edge disappear, replaced by boulders and I have to veer away from the river to keep a steady pace. The water's running fast now. I wish I had the skill to build a raft out of twigs like one of those reality show outdoorsman.

Since the rocky beach has forced me to walk through the trees, I start picking up usable dry wood for tonight's fire. Before long, I'm exhausted and my arms are full. I wasted too much energy messing around and now, will pay the lazy price.

I don't why I'm so worried about time. I've got nowhere to be. And I figure that since this place is so slow, not much time is passing in my world. But I'm often wrong and something inside eggs me on.

The longer I spend tracing the shore of this water way, the more sure I feel that there is no city waiting beyond the hills to the south. Still, I need to see with my own eyes. But the distance is discouraging. I've never spent so much time walking. Even early settlers had horses.

I've got two feet, am low on food, and carry less ambition than ever.

My dad used to say, 'be a doer, not just a thinker.' The fact that I'm thinking about those words means it's time to stop thinking about my problems and get on with solving them.

Inside the woods, I find several young trees. I pick the tallest, thinnest one trying to grow under the shade of a cluster of giant sequoias. Survival of the fittest. It's long, flexible, and suits my needs.

I make camp early and set my mind to catching dinner. About fifty yards downstream there's a group of rocks that stretch out into the water around a fallen tree; the group sits stationary in the running river. The tree probably fell over and was swept downstream until it got stuck in a shallow spot. That's my goal.

Leaving the stones to catch the sunlight, it's an easy climb from one flat boulder to another while searching for the sparkle of fish to go all _Castaway_ on. Once my stick is sharpened to a fine point, I take teetering steps out onto the large rocks, slick in the riverbed, and search. The only spear I ever threw was machine-made, with a metal arrowhead. It shot straight, though my toss was unskilled. I missed the target by a mile.

But a guy's got to eat.

A swirl of several fish float past, I follow with my eyes, then slowly wade into the shallows and wait. The water's frostier than it looks and I'm shivering before long—nearly stiff by the time another group swims past.

My first few shots only scare the fish so I climb back onto the rocks to let the sun warm me.

In the time it takes to dry my jeans, the fish forget about my shadow up on the rocks and start moving again. Carefully, slowly, I crawl towards the edge where a cluster of large steelhead has gathered. The fish can't be more than five feet away. I'm not sure if that's close enough.

My stomach rumbles. I toss my crude weapon and all the fish scatter. All but one.

Dinner is a huge rainbow trout that tastes like the water it came from. Juicy and delicious because the river's so clean.

With a full belly, I've nothing to do but drive myself crazy with thoughts of things I can't change. What I would give for a deflated volleyball-friend right now.

After the grandiose sunset, it's time to make up for the wasted daylight.

A fiery torch lights my path as clusters of cloud obscure an otherwise bright moon. Brilliant specks of light trickle through clouds moved by roaring wind that doesn't touch me. Through bending trees, I plod, pushing as far as my legs will carry me. Without fear.

The stones, with all their quiet strength, will protect me. I know this, I do, but I don't know how. The knowledge is just there, and it's part of me now.

##

##

## Straight Trippin'

The days don't feel so stretched which makes me think I'm acclimating to the time segments of this plane.

I don't like it one bit.

What I need is a mass of energy. More concentrated than simple sunlight provides if I'm ever to find my way home.

I miss modern day Los Angeles; the trash covered sidewalks, graffiti coated park benches and the smelly bums that sleep on them. I miss air pollution—the sweet stench of exhaust and smog hanging in the sky, yellowing day and night, blocking out the stars.

I miss everything about home. Abi and Dad. Even Eli. Mostly, though, at this very moment, what I mainly miss is toilet paper.

It's an innovation that's always been there—like indoor plumbing, shingles on a roof, and remote controls—so much a part of daily life that the thought of _not_ having it never crossed my mind. Until I landed here. Here I don't even have a toilet to rest on while I ponder. Instead, I hover over a hole in the ground and feel like crying.

Don't even get me started on soap. I've been keeping my nose tipped into the wind for a reason.

_Energy... power..._ Modern infrastructure facilitates the uses of water, wind, and solar power. But I'm short on technological advancement and have no idea the amount of energy it's going to take to leave this place.

How did Daemon do it? When I chased him through that water world, he activated the stones. He opened a vortex from inside the body of a fish that swallowed him. I didn't see the things whole body, I suppose it could've been some kind of electric eel.

Eli thinks the stones work as amplifiers, but how much power do they need to start with? More than the energy it takes to run a hovercraft, but less than the power grid of three square miles in New York City?

A small transformer in Ivanhoe was enough. An accident on the freeway was enough.

What I've got is sunlight and a river. There's some wind, but even if it were a hurricane, would that be enough?

I think of Hoover Dam, how the power it generates lights Las Vegas. And that gives me a new objective: find a waterfall.

Taking out the maps I've got, there's one for California that marks the waterways and topography. I compare that with the route I've travelled along the river the last few days to locate my approximate position based on where I started and the course that the river in this world follows. The path of the waterway melds almost exactly with the line on the map.

Yesterday, I passed an area where two forks of water came together. I've gone another five to seven miles since then.

As I study the grade of land in my area and up ahead, hope rises. If I'm right—which depends on how much the waterways were affected by modern engineering and how similar this world it to mine—then, this river should lead to some white water in another couple miles.

I'll worry about how to gather power after I find the source.

I'm feeling hopeful for the first time since I got here but still, must take time to catch a fish for lunch and rest up. There's plenty of daylight left and I know I'll need all my strength to focus on a way to harness the waters power. Maybe I'll get lucky and all I'll have to do is stand there.

Threestone don't fail me now.

* * *

The ground is graded slightly down. About an hour into the second leg of my hike, the shoreline levels off and nearly disappears. The forest has grown thicker, steadily encroaching on the waters' edge, eating my sandy path and any hope of keeping my feet dry. The surface of the water is choppy and it's moving much faster. Flora at the edge of the burgeoning tree line thickens.

I whistle a tune, skirting around, working through the thinner patches of foliage. When I come across a thicket of ripening blackberries, I pick my way through, coming out the other end with a satisfied belly and purple fingers.

Up ahead, another tree has fallen victim to the river, blocking the thin stretch of beach. The top extends half-way across the water. The pointed top's being thrashed by water. The girth of the trunk is fifteen feet is it's an inch. Enormous.

I want to find the spot of the break on the trunk to count the rings and get an idea of the trees age, but as I get closer to the base, I see it won't be so easy to read. There's a mass of roots several yards into the forest. It's not broken but uprooted. The knotted circuit looks like a giant ball of yarn that's seen too many cats.

I stare at both ends of the obstacle. I can't swim into the river to go around and I'd have to trudge pretty far into the forest to get past the other end. Fastest way is over the top. I walk towards the center where the trunk is wide but dry, where there are no branches to inhibit my progress.

With a solid foothold, I push off the sandy dirt. "Alley-oop!"

Stretching up the round log, fingers first, I'm searching for something to grab. My hand traces a thick patch of moss. Digging in, I feel the base of a small branch and use it to pull myself up. As I do, the stubby branch gives.

I pull up double-quick and find myself nose to nose with two black eyes. Below them, a thick, hairy snout, teeth, and one shaggy stalk of a leg.

My hand is not grasping a stubby branch but a very large claw. One of four that's attached to an unfriendly looking bear. Just behind him, down on the rocky shore, is a second, standing on two back legs. Staring up at me with hungry eyes.

"Shit." That's what the bear smells like.

Wilderness safety tips ramble through my mind:

Don't look animals in the eye. _Too late._

Don't run. I think I've shit myself.

Lie on the ground, in a fetal position. _I'm not on the ground._

My nerves ball up when the giant paw of the huge bear—I'm still touching!—flinches. The other paw digs into the dead tree we share and chips away a chunk of wood without effort.

My hand acts of its' own accord and retracts. A half-inch into recoil, I'm suddenly flat on my back, looking up at the giant brown bear gracefully climbing down my side of the trunk.

All I know to do means nothing because more than anything, I don't want to be eaten.

Pulling tight the straps of my pack, I roll up to my feet and hustle into the woods. Fast as I can, I'm weaving through the trees, trying to take the path of least resistance, but every bit of ground is covered in viney plants conspiring against me. An eyelet on my wet hiking boot catches on the denim of the opposite leg. I feel the quick jerk and tear. Normally, it wouldn't be enough to make me fall but nothing about what's happening right now is normal.

Heavy footfalls and that shit smell hover all around as I shift onto my back and feel for the mesh bag still tied at my waist. The moment the stones are in my grasp my company appears. Two big brown bears closing the distance. One is noticeably smaller than the other, but they're both huge.

_Sack up_ , I tell myself and raise the mesh bag with the Threestone. Yelling, kicking, trying to be loud and fierce. But my throat is so dry. I sound like Pee-Wee Herman doing Karate.

Back to my feet, I make an infinitesimal move forward and scream again, "Ha! Ha!"

The bears are staring at me and I can't tell if they're genuinely confused or mentally divvying up body parts. Either way, they're not moving forward. So I thrust the stones at their furry faces, hanging tightly to the strings of the mesh bag, making sure to stay far back, hoping the _smell of fear_ is no more real than Sasquatch.

The big bear takes a small step back. Not like he's leaving, more like he's wondering why his dinner is talking back.

On the right, a breath-halting three steps away, a large flat rock juts from the ground. With my eyes glued to the bears, I leap up on the rock, hoping to look bigger. Trying for _menacing_ , I mimic a roar while leaning and stretching out my arms. Bears have a thing about size, don't they?

Big bear saunters closer, dark eyes locked on me. Smaller-but-still-big-bear follows.

I look to the stones floating inside the mesh bag and cry out. "Help!" All my posturing did was draw the bears in.

The raised bag sways back and forth. The bears aren't really interested, but it takes their eyes off me.

Actually, I don't think I'm moving it. I am shaking though.

As I contemplate this turn of luck, or temporary distraction, Teddy One and Two turn aside and stroll past me into the woods.

My glare stays locked on them, heart pounding out relief until I hear a feral growl—not a sound that belongs to a bear. It's the echoing threat of a mountain lion bouncing from every tree and I can't tell if the animal is close or not. I'm not sticking around to find out.

The once tranquil woodland is suddenly alive with predators. I break back through the tree line at the riverbed at full speed.

The thin strip of shore is thinner than I'm prepared for. The rock and sand offer no purchase and I tumble into the water, ass over end. While taking a moment to be thankful that I wasn't eaten alive I realize I'm floating away from shore; grasping at the branches of the fallen tree as I'm sucked into the rushing water.

My mind swirls like the river, remedies flowing in and out before I can take hold. But then the water slows and so do my nerves. Well, it's not the river itself that slows, at least not the whole thing. It's the water in my immediate proximity.

The current still carries me from dry land, away from the giant fallen tree where I met the bears and toward the unknown, though the water surrounding me feels as calm as a swimming pool. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I'm moving, yet not moved.

Grasping the mesh bag holding my precious Threestone, I kiss each one, overflowing with awe.

##

##

## Carry Me

I hear it before I see it.

At first, I'm not sure where the roaring wind is coming from, and then realize the breezy hum isn't wind at all. It's water. Noisy, bubbling, rushing water.

Looking downriver, I can't see any waterfall; I can only tell that in about two hundred yards, this wide and rowdy river disappears.

I swim for the rocky bank of the raging waters, the waters calming as the stones absorb the energy. Still, it'll be a miracle if I manage to make it to the edge of a group of boulders resting in the waterway. The water rushes and swirls outside the reach of the stones. It's too strong to swim through. I'm striving, but make little headway.

It's weird because I should be very scared that I'm floating towards the mouth of what looks like a huge waterfall. The water surrounding me bares no teeth though. Its' growl is a thundering rumble, but it's not chasing me anywhere. It's carrying me. We're moving together.

I'm gliding through the powerful waterway that's absent of mans' consumerist footprint—all to Mother Nature's benefit and probably my own detriment.

Yet, I'm hardly afraid. I'm barely trying to swim for shore.

At the very edge where the sharp drop will force me down, a vast landscape stretches out before me. The view ahead is amazing. Wind washes the damp air, spreading vapors into a breathtaking array of colors that stream across the sky above the plunge.

The falls are massive, consuming, and glorious. Water passes over the edge and pours down into magnificent arcs that bleed into the falls and feed a wide pool below. The wet surrounding the stones moves quickly, but not violently.

As I near the edge of the waterfall, all fear leaves me. It's replaced with awe as the raging rapids slow their speed until the falling water tapers to the force of a pouring faucet.

The wondrous thing is: I'm not falling.

I don't even feel the strength of the water beating against me. Looking all around, I'm trying to take it all in; the majesty and mystery of the power-hungry rocks in my hand. I'm clinging to the three stones as they pilot the waters, somehow weakening gravity and slowing the rushing water. They are absorbing the power of the water and keeping me from being hurled off the cliff.

Like the water within the grasp of the stones—I'm floating. Flying the same way Daemon did from the edge of the building in New York.

Almost as exciting as my leisurely plummet is the sprawling vista. Dense forest lines each side of the river beyond the falls, thinning to grasslands as the banks give way to land. The forest, full of bubbling and pointed tree tops, is split by the snake-like line of the uneven banks below.

In all the beauty, one spot of sadness I must acknowledge is that there is no city in sight. No sign of people.

But on the right side of the river below is a familiar sight surrounded by dense trees. A globular space, painted in varying shades of brownest brown melded into one another, form a smooth, unnaturally circular patch of dead and dying vegetation.

Mother Nature doesn't make bulls-eyes.

My landing in the pool below the drop is clumsy, but easy considering it should have killed me.

Once I'm on shore, I change into a set of dry clothes and spread the wet ones over a grouping of stones in the sun. I was planning to find a way back up the falls to take another ride down—that was just too amazing to for one go-round, but I'll have to put it off for now.

Another set of stones may be within my reach and that increases my chances of running into Daemon.

So after I slip into a dry set of clothes I dig out my binoculars and a length of rope.

* * *

I've climbed a few trees, gone up as high as I could, only to discover I'm in a part of the valley that's too low to see the rings of brown I spotted from the tip of the falls.

Down here, the land is rough, full of overgrown rocks and tall grasses which make progress difficult. The center of the dead spot ran alongside a slope of rock or hillside. It was hard to tell how high it might be since I was moving when I noticed and the slope was the same shade of brown as the nearby ring. But I did note that the base of the slope eased into a rock wall set low, like a hillock. There was also a darker shadow that looked like it might be an opening. The line of it looked smooth and deliberate like it was carved. And if it was, I need to be double-careful.

It's been a long, exciting day. I'm utterly drained, trying to make camp about two-hundred yards back from the waterfall in a small clearing filled with dandelion weeds. The air is thick with their bitter smell and lit with their brightest yellow.

After the heart-stopping sunset, purple darkness falls, bringing the first cloudless night.

Every other evening, I looked up at the deep clouds and thanked them for keeping the air warm. I am dangerously close to settling into a routine. Day after day, its wake-up, get water, eat, pack-up, and move on. And every day, I feel a little more uneasy. Tonight, the sky is more beautiful than anything I've ever seen and I'm freezing my balls off. I can't take my eyes off it and I barely care. I'll make sure to die with my eyes open so as not to miss the glorious sheet of sparkling diamonds stretched over velvet. Prisms of reflected light make each star twinkle with streaks of pink, blue, and green. I've never seen a night sky with actual color.

Laying an extra log on the fire, I bundle up close to the fire and gaze into the glorious night.

##

##

## Keep On Keepin' On

Dawn is disguised by a hovering fog that dampens everything.

It's late when I wake and the fire is low. I work at it until it's blazing and warm myself before going to fetch water. Tired of fish and berries, my last ration of beans makes breakfast.

It's getting harder not to think about how long I've been here; how much longer I might have to stay. I can't let myself sit for too long or the bad thoughts try to overtake me.

Today is day nine and I'm no closer to finding the other set of stones or my way home. I've tried to soak more energy from the waterfall, but there's no guarantee how long it'll take, or if it will ever be enough for the stones to amplify.

I feel the claws of depression trying to take hold and beat them back with thoughts of Abi. I imagine her face—how she'll look when I get back, how surprised and happy she'll be when I show up at her door with flowers. I've never given her a bouquet. I've picked some and bought her one or two roses, but never an actual bouquet.

I wonder, would she believe me if I told her everything?

My hope is that two sets of stones are better than one—assuming, of course, that there is a duplicate set in this plane. I can't imagine those dead rings in the forest were made by anything other than the Threestone.

I've chased that damned dead patch for days, but can't get to it. I've tried several times to get over into the area where the green flows into brown, but keep running into impassable obstacles. High, spiny shrubs, rock walls that seem to grow from the forest floor, deep ravines with thickets of thorny briars.

Yesterday, I gave up on a head-on approach and hiked down river. Camp is on the opposite side. The forest I've explored on the same side as the rings I can't get to is too damned dense to make camp. The tangled brambles grow along the forest edge that traces the bank of the pool below the falls. It took an entire day to get past them. I had to find and cut long branches to lay them on top, walk across, and take them up again. About fifty feet in, I came to a ravine that I couldn't find my way around and the poles I cut to get over the brambles were too thin to support my weight.

I wish I'd packed a machete.

It's a trek downstream until the waterway thins and slows. I'm hoping to keep my feet dry today. Following a bend in the river, I come upon a makeshift bridge in the form of a beaver damn. The beavers don't appreciate the intrusion and my feet still get wet. I take the time to change into a pair of dry socks before heading back down stream to get the poles I cut for the next patch of briars.

Once they're laid, I charge into the woodland.

My fishing spear doubles as a walking stick to help fight through broad patches of undergrowth. Some trees are so tightly packed it makes me feel claustrophobic. Parts of this place look like a damned Hawaiian jungle.

As I struggle through twisted greenery, dashing through the less dense patches—they're small but are more frequent the further in I go—I hear a dull echo reeling through the trees. It's not a creaking like the trees make when the wind blows. It's rhythmic.

Excitement makes me clumsy. It takes longer than it should to slip the length of rope through the handle of the mesh bag after slipping the Threestone into their rubber pouch and then dropping them inside. Once the mesh bag is secured shut, the rope goes through the straps of my backpack, then looped through once more and knotted. On the opposite end of the rope, I tie a short stick. Next, I climb up a dead tree that's fallen between two enormous pines. It's wedged in the perfect spot that makes an easy climb to a high spot near a huge, adjacent pine.

Once I'm as high as I can safely get on the rotting log, I toss the rope up and over until it catches on a high branch of the nearest Sequoia. Using the rope like a pulley, I hoist my gear up and out of sight before tying off the end and hiding it among the foliage.

Climbing back down, I begin my search for the source of the odd noise I heard.

The closer I get, the more the ruckus sounds like clanging metal. Hastily, I mark my tracks on the trees with the Swiss Army knife to ensure I find my way back to where I stowed my gear.

When the noise suddenly stops I keep going, even though fear ripples through me. Whatever it was that made the odd noises had to be close.

Suddenly, the trees break apart and I find myself in a vast field of waist high grass, eyeballing graded ground that has two clear, continuous lines running through it. Tire tracks?

I follow the lines up the slope and then stop.

A good distance away is a dip in the hillside. In the small slope, there sets an old covered wagon. The kind they used in old-ass TV shows starring Michael Landon. Strapped to the front of the pioneer-like wagon is a team of horses. One solid brown, the other splotched with white. They're struggling; neighing and kicking like they're scared.

Waving my arms and calling out, I fight my way through the damp grass toward the path laid by the wagon. A man's voice answers though it's too far off to understand.

Hope propels me forward.

Life is full of unexpected moments. Situations that no one can prepare for—like the bus accident, finding myself in another version of 1996, losing my dad, and chasing Daemon—because there's no way to prepare for the impossible.

Without warning, the wagon goes airborne—first the top, then the whole wagon—shoots straight into the air. The horses' eyes are saucer-wide as they struggle against the reigns. But they can't run.

My feet aren't moving, either. I'm glued in place, hands clutching at the tall stalks of grass at my waist.

A chilling moment passes as the canvas rides the wind and the wooden wagon breaks apart. The boxed bottom smashes down, splintering into pieces. The blast sends the horses into frenzy. They break from their yokes and disappear into the forest, lost.

All the while, I'm wondering what the hell is happening. There was no sound, no one else around, no movement or explosion—nothing to explain what caused... whatever that was.

The crashing sounds settle, but then there are voices rising in the shocked air. One clearly sounds like someone in pain. It sends my stilled feet running again. The second comes through clearly. It's rough, guttural, casting a broken cadence.

I dive off the path made by the horse-drawn wagon and into the high grass. And wait.

The field echoes deathly quiet.

"The thing I fear most is, not knowing." Eli once said as he stood in his office, slumping over his desk. "Were anything to happen to you, G, I'd never know. You simply wouldn't come back and I'd be left to wonder if it was something I did or didn't do."

We were arguing over what supplies I should take. I was convinced I only needed money and the Boom Packs. He wanted me to rethink my choices.

I should've asked for invisibility spray. Surely, in a world where simple rocks can open wormholes into other dimensions, invisibility spray shouldn't be so tough to find.

I want to get close enough to see if anyone was in that wagon. Maybe the sounds I heard were someone groaning. And I want to see the thing responsible for this soundless explosion without the risk of being affected by it.

The screams start as I crawl towards the security of the trees. Once I'm back in the denser areas and sure I can't be spotted, I'm running.

Back at the spot where I left my supplies, I climb up as high as I can, use the dangling rope to help balance as I stretch up for the higher branches.

From this vantage point another, larger steppe is visible. But the tree line blocks all traces of the grassland and the wagon.

I scan the forest near to where the horses disappeared but see nothing. What I do find is a nasty-looking cluster of dark gray clouds a few miles out. _A_ _storm_. Maybe there'll be lightning.

My new objective.

I spy the direction of the wind, watching for trace movements to guess the clouds path.

Trudging as quick and quiet as I can, it isn't long before I reach another impassable point of undergrowth that reminds me why I had to leave the protection of the trees to begin with.

The stones are inside the mesh bag, tied around my belt, hanging at my waist. Having them out might be a risk, but so is packing them away.

The bottoms of the stalks are wet. Before long, everything from the knees down is itchy and cold. The promising cloud bank hangs over the far steppe, looming like a dark promise.

Lightning would do it. I'd be home in a heartbeat.

Though I intended to avoid the open, the terrain makes me swerve around spiny plants and thorny thickets. Before long the trees at my right are too far away. I'm slowly heading toward the spot of the overturned wagon. I get low and cling to clumps of tall grass to help belly crawl up the slope. I stop several times to listen. Hearing nothing, I move a little more and then wait again, listening.

It isn't long before I come upon the wreck. A quick post-mortem at the scene reveals the wagon wood is splintered away from the boxed bottom. One wheel eerily squeaks in the gusting wind. I focus further up the steppe, searching for a sign of what might have caused this. Was there an earthquake or volcanic eruption? IED?

Surely, I would know by now if there are dinosaurs in this place. A giant turd or footprints would give it away, but the only prints I spot belong to horses.

_Covered wagons and dinosaurs aren't a probable grouping_ , I imagine Eli saying. But, he also said the other worlds could be very different from ours. And considering the things I've seen; I believe more than ever that anything is possible.

The storm clouds are closing in. I stop and watch them for a moment as they drift in tufted billows, spreading and retracting with the wind. The fanning plumes are small, but violent—a luminous black against radiant blue.

I hold the stones out in front to ensure that if anything happens, if anyone tries to come at me, they'll meet the stones first. They are my only means of protection. I should've packed a crossbow. In an ancient place like this, they're practically useless unless electricity is involved.

_No, that's wrong_ , I think. They've protected me; been there for me when no one else was and saved my life more times than I can count. I make a silent apology to my rocks, knowing they've brought me this far and they'll take me further.

It's awkward; hiking through the grassy plain, trying to see past the tops of the stalks while still keeping below the grass line. My foot hits something and my eyes fall. The air races from my lungs as my gaze lands on a human leg. The unmoving flesh is flanked by an adjacent buttock.

Shock jolts me to one side. Losing my balance, my elbow smacks on a length of straight dark hair.

My whole body springs away, each muscle retracting from the tainted ground. In one, fluid move I'm back on my feet, crouching, gasping, trying not to make a sound while I shake the feel of plague and rotting carcass from my skin.

Of course, the man—and I can tell it's a man by the broad, exposed shoulders, despite the long, neat braid that extends down his back—doesn't look like he's been here long enough to rot.

But as I stare, from a safe distance, something seems... odd.

The hand-sewn leather pants covering the lower half of the body indicate some type of Native American, but his skin color is all wrong. Indigenous tribes of North America have always had darker complexions. Then again, I'm no authority on native culture.

What I know comes mostly from John Wayne movies and glancing at history lessons as we were unceremoniously taught about the first Thanksgiving in elementary school. The body is white. Not chalky, like the blood has settled or been drained, just eerily white. And the disassociation throws me.

There's a tattoo on the body's shoulder. Most of its guarded by the grass line, but the top of the figure forms and X, or something like it.

Other than that, I don't see any marks. No gashes or cuts. No injuries at all, actually. When I work up the nerve to check, he still feels warm. But there's no rise of his rib cage and the hand I set near his sidled nostrils reveal no shift of air. He's stock-still. I search for a pulse, but it's hard to tell with his head turned to one side. The half of his face I can see is sallow, dark circles around the eye and white lips. With my foot, I push at the shoulder until he shifts onto his back.

Wide golden bracelets cover each forearm. Heavy golden rings crudely jut through the flesh of his nose and ears.

There are no visible wounds on this side either. No blood on the head or grass. A long leather sheath sets at his waist, tied by a leather string. It's empty. No weapon. Keeping my distance, I watch for the telltale rise and fall of his chest. But there's nothing. So, he either holds the world record for longest breath ever held or he's dead.

Since no _Guinness_ reps are present, and the pale of his skin could match any fluorescent bulb, I have to assume he's a goner.

Toeing one of the wide bracelets on the man's forearm, I notice shallow indentions in the metal. There are three on each broad bracelet, each touching the other two in a familiar triad. Lightly carved into the bottom of each golden indention is a symbol. One shows a triangle, another, a spiral, and the third, a lazy eight. Sign of infinity.

Eli called it the Singularity.

In the movie _Castaway_ , Tom Hanks took a dead man's shoes and who could judge him? He was in dire need. I've stripped a dead man of his treasure because it bears the same symbols as the Threestone and that has to mean something.

Everyone deserves some dignity, even in death. As I'm wondering how long it'll take to dig a hole for the man, a glance up at the sky stops me. The clouds are no bigger than they were ten minutes ago. Matter of fact, they're smaller; moving the wrong direction.

Giving a cross sign over my chest, I mumble, "Sorry, but my ride is leaving," and then shoot up the hill with hopes of thunder and lightning swirling in my head.

At the top of the steppe, I come out of the trees and my heart pounds wildly as I take in the sights.

Off in the distance, within a mesh of dark cloud lies a single pointed plume of white among the dark. The shape of it snakes down from the sky, reaching for the earth. Just below the accumulating funnel, resting at the crest of another hilltop within the small valley is a large square, out of place in this natural world. Manmade from some kind of beige stone, it looks like one of those half pyramids they've got in Egypt, a ziggurat. And dancing on top of it is another native.

He is clearly alive and, from this distance, he appears to be alone and dressed similar to the dead man. He's got the same porcelain white complexion, and he's half-naked. Jumping and shaking as he shouts at the sky, gesturing toward the budding cone shape in the dark clouds. Light glimmers from the large plates of gold covering his forearms. He also wears a headdress of bright pluming feathers, shooting color in every direction which gives him a look of importance. It makes me think of the mural of Montezuma in downtown LA.

Aztec? Mayan?

To avoid discovery I slink back into the trees. Of course, now, I've blocked my view of the approaching storm and the native. There's a wide rock jutting from in between trees near the edge of the hillside, I post myself behind it and peak around the mossy side. Watching, I think I understand the convulsing motions. It looks like he's doing some kind of ritual or dance.

I've never asked any Native Americans but have readily assumed a rain dance was done whenever rain was needed. The vegetation in this place is lush. Half the time, humidity has me sweating in my sleep. So, what is he doing?

I hunker down, making myself more comfortable to watch.

Another figure appears low on the far hillside and climbs up to the steps at the side of the stone foundation.

A little boy.

When the dancing chief sees him on the flat top he halts.

I reach into my pack for the binoculars.

The young native is dressed in the same type of animal skin pants with no shirt. He has long, crow black hair that touches his shoulder. There is no braid, headdress, or gold on the boy. He smiles up at the leader, who answers with unheard words and large hand motions. The boys' lips move. The man who I've decided is the tribes' chief makes more large motions, as if he's describing something.

That covered wagons sudden take off, perhaps?

The boys smile disappears as he hangs his head and walks back the way he came, down the set of steps built into the side of the ziggurat and disappearing into the trees. Chief goes right back into his dance, this time accompanying his fancy footwork with loud, hooting noises that sound like an odd combination of joy and wailing.

The day wears on while I watch. These are the first live people I've seen since I got here and since I don't want to end up like the man in the wagon, I need to know more about them.

The storm clouds begin to spread—louder, closer, and much, much, darker. The funnel cloud stays oddly light against the dark and doesn't move from its position over the chief, but lightening is looking more promising and so are my chances of missing out on it. The lowland in this area is wide open and the Native has the high ground.

My legs have started cramping. When I move to stretch, very near deciding whether to stay put and watch or make a break for the nearest clouds, I hear it.

A distinct snapping noise that jolts me, kicks my senses onto high alert.

The Indian is still on the ziggurat on the hill, his rain dance going strong—must be dancing for monsoons. But there are others. I want to hightail it.

Realistically, it isn't smart to run unless you know what you're running from. Besides, where can I go? There's no place to hide when you're homeless and in unfamiliar territory. Up a tree is my only hope and anything I come across here can most certainly run and climb faster than me.

So I do the only thing I can; grab the stones and listen.

##

##

## Natives

The boy is young—like still in the single digits young.

He's got no shirt, only pants that look like something you'd see in a Frontier museum display. There's a plate-like necklace around his neck—large, decorated with tiny turquoise tiles that form a round, grimacing face. His large dark eyes, stare with awe, gliding over my clothes and gear, stopping on my face.

Suddenly his jaw slackens and he lunges for the ground, hiding his face in the grass over bent knees. I watch the boy's slight frame tremble as he bows in the dirt.

As an American, I know very little about early indigenous tribes. As a Californian, I know more about Aztecs than Pilgrims and Cinco de Mayo than Thanksgiving. There's Mayan and Aztec art displayed all over southern California. Calendars featuring Montezuma in his giant headdress are free at most Carnecerias. I've been to cultural events on city diversity days. I know Aztecs and Mayans were a dark, mysterious people with distinct features. I know they believed Cortes was a savior because of his light complexion.

And it's weird because, though I've never laid eyes on anyone like this boy, something about him feels familiar. The dead man, the chief, this kid: their clothes and hair remind me of those cultural awareness days but their skin is way too light for Aztecs or Native Indians. They're bleach-white, like albinos but with black hair.

Why is he bowing?

"You think I'm a god?" I look to my hand. "Well, we're near the same color."

Finally, he lifts his head, timid, like he's not sure if he should. I place one hand up, palm out. "I don't want to hurt you." As I say it, my other hand involuntarily raises the stones.

His gaze shifts, watching them. I don't like the look in his eyes and draw the bag behind me. He raises one boney finger, pointing and starts... well, talking I guess, but I can't understand a word of his choppy, guttural cadence. The language is like nothing Spanish.

The boy rises up on both knees and tosses the large plate-necklace, spinning it from his chest to his back. His fingers then clutch at a long, black thread beneath his throat. He pulls at it until it snaps and raises his open palm towards me.

When I hesitate, he speaks what sounds like a single halting word, _trade-yous_ —maybe two short ones, spoken quickly. Who the hell can tell?

I give a patronizing sort of grin and nod. "My rocks?" Going by his gesture and the rings I saw back in the forest, I think he recognizes the stones.

He bows down again, not so low this time, holding out his hand with the black thread in it.

I cautiously lean in to look and nearly shit my pants. Excitement ripples through me at the sight of three smooth discs, no larger than nickels, hanging from the black leather strap—one white, one red, and one black.

He does know. And I bet he knows where and how to get to them.

Taking in his demeanor and posture, and how he crept up in silence, I start to think... he had the drop on me. He had a chance to run and tell, or attack. But he didn't. The way he's holding out the necklace, it looks like an offering.

"Can you take me to these three stones?" I finger the round shapes floating in the mesh bag.

He tosses a cautionary look in the direction of the Chief still over on the hill and then slinks away.

I stay put not sure if I should trust him.

A few yards away the boy looks back and talks in his halting way, moving his hands together in circles.

I decide that he's too small to present a real threat and follow after him.

He takes me down the other side of the hill and back to more familiar territory. We pass a few trees that I've marked as I searched for a way through the denser forest, trying to get near the open area where I saw the brown rings—the Threestone mark on Mother Nature.

We're taking the same path I've trodden through several times already, swerving just out of sight of the broken wagon and into a dense part of forest. Amazingly there's little resistance from the path we follow. It's a worn trail nearly obscured by needles and underbrush; one that I never would've found unless I'd been shown.

I look back to the darkening clouds in the distance and wonder if I'm making the right choice. I haven't seen any flashes in the sky which makes me think that maybe it's okay to follow, but the further this boy leads me away from the approaching storm, the more I doubt.

It's like I'm Marty-freaking-McFly and the stones are my flux capacitor. Harnessing lightning is my only chance of getting home. What if I see the sudden flashes of light? Will there be more than one and if there is, could I cross the distance in time?

Then again, this journey is supposed to be about finding the duplicate stones. This kid's the first living person I've interacted with. He immediately indicated that he knows what I seek. I don't sense a threat from him, but this whole situation exposes a nagging feeling like I'm not supposed to be here. But I am here, so I'm not sure what to do about it.

When you don't know what to do, the best course of action is to do nothing so I simply keep following—sticking to the path of my small leader, clinging to hope, hoping against another regrettable decision.

The trees become denser as the path curves west. The canopy grows thicker, blocking out the sun and the undergrowth thins. There are only shadow and trees when we come upon another small hillock.

We mount the graded ground, heading for a thick wall of spiny plants that look familiar. They've stopped my advancing on more than one occasion. I want to complain but stay quiet, watching and following the light-skinned native boy with mismatched black hair leading up the hillside toward a blind opening in the briars that I can't even see until he disappears.

I stop, simultaneously awed and irritated; awed that I came so close on my own and frustrated that I came this close and still didn't find a way through the briars blocking my path to the place I saw from the top of the waterfall.

Where I saw the marking of the Threestone.

Passing through the spiny line of shrubbery, I continue following the boy up the hill. The view from the top reveals we're heading toward another long, narrow field filled with waist-high grass, only this bit isn't thick and green, it's thin and golden brown—wheat stalks.

Along the hilltops surrounding this small valley, the forest wall picks up where the spiny shrubs leave off. Except on the opposite end of the field where there's a high rock wall. Along the top of that, the line of trees seems to grow at a slant. Starting small on the left side, getting taller and older as they stretch upon the high wall, but the protective circumference looks natural, not like they've been planted, but like they've sprung up from a split in the earth to defend this small valley.

The boy's been periodically looking back at me, making sure I'm keeping up. As far as I'm concerned he could go a lot faster. I'd have made a comment if he could understand me.

Oddly, the storm clouds don't look any further though we spent at least half an hour heading away from them. They're growing—huge and dark—comforting me. I smell rain on the chill blasts of wind. The air is so charged I can almost hear the thunder rumbling. Perfect conditions for lightning.

As we trek, I hear the rippling river. Grasshoppers jump away from us with clicking wings. Through the dale we plod, heading to wherever he's leading.

I look out over the high grass and find a dark spot—looks like an opening—in the rock wall.

_A cave?_ I wonder and keep my eye on it as a point of interest.

There's a steep hillside that forms the furthest wall of this little valley which closes off any exit from that direction. The only entry into this area seems to be the invisible opening in the spiny bushes we passed through.

I may be following this kid, but it doesn't mean I trust him, or that whoever we might come upon will trust me. He has to belong to somebody and I have to find the duplicate set of stones before Daemon does.

Just then, the black opening of the cave fills with color. My young guide halts, thrusting a hand back that pulls me down into the shroud of golden grass. He speaks in low garbles that I can only guess are a warning against being spotted by whoever's up ahead.

I wonder what it is that this young boy feels he needs to protect me from as I watch him slightly turn back and cross his lips with two fingers. A universal sign—be still, stay quiet.

He launches into a run. I have to guess his direction as the grass is too tall to follow with my eyes. After a moment I hear voices. One sounds like the boy, the other sounds older and possibly feminine.

The grass is waist high with tips nearly the same color as my hair. Both dance in the gentle breeze as I peer between stalks, watching the boy and a woman. A dark woman with auburn skin and crow black hair. Her beaded dress, high cheekbones and almond eyes tell she is some type of Native American. When the two meet she turns to run her palm over the boys head, revealing another member of her company. A little brown baby. Every edge of his little form is round in the way only a baby can be. He's got straight black hair, blunted to reveal his huge eyes that look aimlessly around the field until his keen gaze catches me spying.

I hold my breath when the little one raises a hand and shakes it as if waving at me.

Two striking shades of skin—the pale native boy and the dark woman with her baby—the three stride along the border of the field together. Shrinking into the distance, slipping through the invisible line in the foliage.

He's left me. Alone.

I make a metal note to remember the spot where they disappeared and then take in my surroundings, waiting a little longer, wondering if the boy will come back and what I should do in the meantime.

The clouds rest in layers across the sky. Hues of grayest gray inlaid with white and blue. To the East, the black plumes I've watched suddenly burst with brilliant shocks of flecked light sending my nerves into a dance of their own and I know I need to find the duplicate stones ASAP and get the hell out of here before the lightning passes.

The slope of the rock ledge near the small cave where the woman emerged has that same shape I spotted from the falls. The picture of landscape is fresh in my mind. The rock ledge was to the right of the brown circles I'm seeking.

Feet in motion, I wonder about the cave entrance; if they live inside there or if it's just another passage leading to another meadow—one that might hold a certain pattern of dead flora. My boots cut through the high wheat, closing in on the opening in the rock wall.

Inside its dark, smelling of damp and dirt. The rock floor runs smooth underfoot, though. My fingers slide the length of the wall as I wander out of daylight and into shadow.

The cavern is long and winding, taking what remains of the daylight. It's a few more steps before I realize I should be blind in this darkness. It's a dank cavern, there's no electricity or torches.

But I can see. The rough wall to my right is carved with strange shapes. Some are circles, others are faces. One of them looks like an angry face sitting below a bare tree.

The idea of taking a paper tracing of the grooves hits me, but bounces away as I'm hopelessly distracted by the floor in front of me: it's come alive with a gentle light from a beam that traces back to the Threestone. Moving with me as I shift my feet, I wonder how the rocks cinched at my waist have managed to give me light in the dark when in the light of day they absorb everything, not even casting a reflection.

I whisper my thanks to them, awed, wondering, _what are these things?_ How can something so fantastic come from stone, or crystal, if that's what they are? What kind of force resides inside them that they know I need light, and just give it?

Following the rough stone wall around another bend, I catch a fleck of light up ahead and find myself asking, "Can you take me to the other set of stones?"

The light guiding my feet rises up from the floor—floating like a phantasm—it's not a beam, it doesn't hit the nearest object and stop. It floats and then... changes. It transforms into a burning ball, swirling, glowing brighter like the worlds' tiniest sun, moving as if it's breathing. The flaming glow swishes to and fro before darting away.

I jump after it, holding my breath and understanding better than ever why Daemon wants all these rocks so badly.

Without a doubt that these rocks are a gift. So mysterious and magical.

They lie still, yet keep me safe. They bring me light and take me places I could never imagine.

The Threestone are my wonderful prize; _my_ inheritance, a gift from my father.

Such a high price he paid for them. For me.

Bouncing off rough walls in hot pursuit of the globular light, his final instruction rings more potent than ever.

Protect them at all costs.

##

##

##  Look, Everybody, I'm Indiana Jones

The stone corridor abruptly ends.

I pass a sharp corner and emerge from the cave in time to see the flaming ball of light dissipate. Like a fire, that's run out of oxygen. A sparkler sputtering out.

And I'm here.

Staring at the sight I've been chasing since I first glimpsed it days ago from the edge of the waterfall.

Three large rings in varying shades of purest brown color the dead and dying flora beneath my boots. The land seems naked. Not a tree or shrub has survived the rapture of the stones. In the very center of the rings, sets a finely carved stone table. No, a concave seat, like an altar. And on the altar that's surrounded by death lie three lovely, lively rocks.

One white, one red, and one black.

They offer no reflection, yet shimmer in the dim light.

Calling to me.

But it can't be this easy.

I circle the open meadow with my eyes. It, too, is surrounded by high rock walls—an inescapable bowl of dirt on a mountainous place setting. There's one way in and one way out. I'm standing in front of it.

Thunder crackles, bouncing in echoes across the arena-like meadow. Center stage, my new stones wait. Advancing quickly, I take up the bag at my waist, thanking my three stones for guidance, hoping I'll get the same help finding my way out and to the nearest bolt of lightning.

I untie the top of the bag, mindful, but trying to hurry. Once my feet cross the innermost ring, the one that's nothing but sand-like dirt, the ornate altar holding the second set of stones shifts. Rumbles actually, as the three unique rocks it holds rise from the surface in a petal formation.

So does the set from my bag.

The drumming in my chest is all I hear, that and distant rain.

My stones rise up through the mouth of my bag in their own three prong arrangement. The two sets, holding a ten foot gap, float in synchronized moves as if greeting one another.

All at once, a burst of lights shoots from my stones to the set over the altar.

And then, there's only one. One set of stones hovering in front of me, glowing brightly.

"What the—" They vanished. The second set. Is. Gone. Just like the stones I took from Ice World.

I'm searching the stone altar, checking the ground between us; trying to be sure I really saw what I think I did when the altar—which really looks more like an expensive bird bath—lurches up, as if the ground below it is suddenly angry. The floating stones take a gentle seat on the dirt between my feet as the ornately carved altar falls to one side, cracking right down the middle, and then inexplicably crumbles to nothing. As if it was hit with an invisible laser. A laser that turns everything to dust.

The sky rumbles again. Louder, now, and the clouds hang thick overhead making the wide meadow feel claustrophobic.

No time to waste, I take up the stones, along with bit of dust from the broken altar—Eli will love it—and head back to the cave. There's another simple looking bare tree carved into the rocks near the cave entrance. It's either that or an upside down peace symbol, minus the outer circle. But I've got no time to examine or trace it because thunder has started rumbling and it's too close to risk staying any longer.

I fumble my way through the dark corridor. Scramble, actually. Nervously commanding the stones to light my path like they did before but they aren't listening. The cave stays pitch black. I make double sure the bag of tightly cinched at my waist and use my hands to feel along the wall, hoping there aren't any passages off the main one I'm travelling along.

There's this urgency crawling up my spine, a feeling like I'm running out of time. I can't get lost. I'll miss the lightning.

Suddenly, as if the stones can hear my thoughts, a light appears and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Until I realize the light's actually a torch.

Around the bend up the passageway.

In someone else's hand.

The torch appears, then the hand bearing it. That quickly becomes an arm, which leads to a shoulder, and right over the shoulder is a small withered face with wide eyes. The shriveled mouth below widens. Out comes that same harsh, guttural tongue.

I shove past the old, pale man, noting that even in this dim light his silvery hair is the darkest thing about him, besides his black eyes.

The thin hall behind him has been lit by a series of torches. I follow the line out of the cave and break into the field of wheat.

The clouds have opened up. Rain water pours over the brown field, relaxing the wheat stalks.

Without pause, I search for the opening the boy and woman took. The blur of rain blinds me to the exact spot. I head straight across the wheat field, retracing the path the boy used when he led me here. All the while, the halting shouts of the old man behind me are gaining strength and I'm grateful for the heavy rain that dilutes his call.

The thick forest gives shelter from the deluge. When it thins out, I climb the hillside, passing again the upturned wagon, and head for the top of the same steppe where I find the dancing Chieftain, still hard at work on the ziggurat.

The storm clouds are concentrated there, rumbling their satisfaction down on him. But the cone-shaped cloud is gone. There's a large bonfire now, burning in a large bowl and that same urgent feeling beckoning me forward, begging me to keep moving.

My stomach aches with the feeling that I'm running out of time.

The oddity of a raging fire in the rain doesn't stop me. I stray toward the far tree line and run down into the valley between us.

Get there. Don't stop. Don't think about what happens next, just go.

I don't know why all I know is that I have to get to the fire.

Down the sloping hillside, gaining speed, I'm practically floating down the next hillside, running at the rumbling thunder and rain.

Black billows of cloud roll overhead, stirring violence as I get closer.

Thunder claps.

The rain soaks my head.

I throw my hood on and raise the stones up high.

And just like I knew it would, the sky flashes a brilliant white.

The funnel appears. The rainbow is all around me.

I'm out of here.

##

##

##  Eighty-Eight Miles Per Hour

Another forest. Not so dense, though. The grass is golf course short. Manicured.

The sun beats down, bright and powerful from mid-sky. I raise a hand to shade my eyes, but the glare dissipates too quickly for the move to make a difference. Streaks zip across the horizon.

In the time it takes me to put the stones away, the sun has dimmed. Not obscured by clouds, but actually set.

Sunset in less than a minute?

The moon has appeared. It darts across the sky. Stars wheel overhead.

And... daybreak?

There's a city in the distance. Tall, round buildings casting long shadows that shrink until they disappear in what looks like high noon, and then reappear on the other side. Pale colors wash them out as they disappear in a brief night.

I can hear Eli's nagging voice in my head, _Mark the time differential_.

I set my pack on the ground to dig out my notebook and describe the fast-paced world, with days that abruptly end and begin. During the next sunrise, I begin a count that makes it all the way to seventy-three before the sun sets again and then write it all down for him—which takes a few days because the spans of light are so brief. It would be sinful not to mention how I have also just leapt from a world that felt unbearably slow when I first arrived, and must somehow throw off my count, but even so, the days are fast.

When I bend to set my notes in the bag, it's covered in green vines. I yank my bag up, breaking the strands of greenery, and stamp my feet, which are also wrapped in sudden overgrowth.

After securing my pack, I take out my stones and start walking towards the distant city. I need to keep away from it, but at the same time, I've got to get power.

Wait, G.

Day. Night.

You're forgetting what you came for.

Day and night come and go.

I turn back and run toward the spot where the cave was in the last world. The trees are different—there's hardly any. No grassy steppe, either. Only rolling hills covered in uniform stalks of dull blades of grass that move choppily in the intermittent breeze.

I keep my steps quick and high. Green leaves fade to orange and brown, then thrust to the ground. At the hilltop, the place near where that chief was dancing around a fire in the rain, the tell-tale rings are barely visible.

I pause my hunt, waiting, once again, for the sun to rise. When it does, I see the round markings and charge forward.

A loud sound like a whip cracking, it's quick and high-pitched, _booms_ through the open field. I look up and spot more streaks. There's a line of some type of craft flying in formation—the blur of them carry a constant shape and they're too big to be birds— and they're heading south.

Quick, successive pops ring out like firecrackers, but I don't pay attention, making for the faded rings in the dirt.

It's pretty quick work, only five or six days of digging until the next set of stones float up from a crumbled rubber bag setting on top of an old stone plate under three feet of loose sand. I don't see the sets of stones dancing like the other set did, they're just absorbed by mine and I still don't know if it's a good or bad thing. I mean, the stones seem so powerful, they must know what they're doing, right?

I set them back into the mesh bag at my waistband and head back towards the city down in the valley that is now flickering with fire. The tall, cylindrical buildings I saw only a moment ago are gone. The distant skyline is shrouded in black and yellow smoke.

Round shapes zip through the land below. I think they're vehicles, forming lines set side by side. Rows of what look like armed forces readying for invasion. More streaks fill the sky, but this time, I hear them loud and clear. Popping sounds go off again and the thick walls of the distant city puff out smoke like an old man's pipe.

Suddenly a blinding light cancels the sky. I feel myself scream, clutching the stones to my chest as I'm tossed by a wall of great heated wind.

#

# One + Nine = Confused

The rainbow wheel that took me from wherever the hell that was has disappeared.

Dulled green paints the leaves of short, stout trees. It smells of... citrus, I think, judging by the smell and tiny green footballs growing between slender spikes on the branches of the surrounding trees.

All one pale shade of green over limp, brown dirt.

My hands follow my eyes to a plump round orange a few trees away. I'm biting into it the moment it's plucked.

Real food.

The rind is thin and delicious and bitter with sweet flesh.

After the first is gone I pluck another, then another. Soon, my stomach aches with fullness and the extra space in my backpack is filled with the plain, delectable fruit.

Row after row, each straight as an arrow, stretches as far as the eye can see and I'm so happy I could die right here. I'm in an orchard.

Orchards mean farms, which need farmers.

Familiar mountains at my left tell me the way out is to the right. I follow the shallow ditch between rows of trees, spotting a harvester up ahead. The truck is tall and wide, with a mechanical arm that stretches out to shake the orange tree until the fruits fall into the catch-bin.

Spotting the mechanical harvester makes me smile, my pace quicken.

That smile grows when my boots hit the plain grey sidewalk. My hiking boots, petals on the flowering weeds, ranch-style houses, and the faded blue sky, every bit of this dull place is tinged with hope.

My head feels funny. Thoughts fragmented like they don't want to connect. I can't think of what to do next so I keep walking, watching the cars barrel past. There are street signs and people, but I can't find my bearings.

I'm in some type of suburb, though I'm not sure where. I think I'm in the right plane. I hope.

Everything feels... too fast.

My feet ache. The forgotten feeling of fullness energizes me, but I need to lie down. I stop and stretch out on a covered bus bench to rest.

I haven't rested on anything above ground in... I don't know how long because I can't count the stretched days.

My eyes take on a will of their own as my body relaxes in the peaceful drone of passing cars. Sounds of the twentieth-first century. I'm so excited, it's made me sick to my stomach. Either that or the oranges were just sprayed with pesticide.

Still, my eyes close.

There's a dog at my feet. He's cute, for a mutt. Staring back at his wide brown eyes and caramel fur, I pet his head and wait for the scrambled thoughts swirling in my head to stop. Hoping they'll stop.

The dog is mostly still, but when he moves, it's twitchy. Like the incremental jerks of the automatic doors at the hospital on World Two.

1996.

His tail is long, blurring as it wags. He whined when I first saw him. Now, he stares up at me with rapidly blinking eyes, letting off short, abrupt barks. He's an odd looking guy—I like him. He's energetic, barrel-chested, and his markings remind me of a dog I used to have. It's the white diamond on his chest.

His name was Sonny and I found him in a public bathroom at a rest stop outside LA. He was riddled with parasites and covered in mange. Abi fell in love with him. We took him to the vet, but it was too late. She named him after he died.

I sit up to stare as the dogs tongue laps my hand. After a moment of impatient wriggling, he calms, resigning himself to wait with his snout resting over my knee.

Cars pass in sporadic blurs. The choking exhaust is comforting. I close my eyes and rest my head in my hands.

I never really had pets when I was a kid. My mom was allergic to cats and she didn't like dogs. She said they were dirty. I probably spent a third of my formative years begging for a dog, bringing home strays she wouldn't consider. Once Carrie came along, the need for something small to love and care for was sated.

I pet the dogs' neck, fiddling with his nylon collar.

_Bear_ is printed above a street address.

He jerks away from me, excitedly hopping backward, dipping back legs into the gutter. A passing car honks. When I say his name, his ears shoot up, his tail wags furiously. A street sign down the road reads _Azalea_ , which happens to be same name as on Bears' tag. It's one of those bigger signs to foretell the street at the next intersection.

I grab Bear by the collar and start up the road. His pace pulls at me, his legs blur as he prances. I work on not tripping as cars pass in streaks—blink several times, command my eyes to catch-up, working to get my legs to do the same.

I don't understand how people can just let their dogs wander around. Especially near a busy road like this one. Its four lanes across with a concrete divider in the center.

Bear and I wait for the walk signal, which blinks in dull fluorescent capitals like its yelling at me.

WALK! WALK! WALK!

Across the road and down we stroll. I keep my hand on Bear, adjusting my backpack when it falls to one side. As we veer away from the busy road, the residential neighborhood takes on a quieter feel. The yards are all the same size, some with fences and some without. Some have manicured grass and others not so much. Most of them have chain-link fences outside rows of trees and flowering plants bordered by decorative rocks.

Only some of the houses have numbers on them. The street seems calm enough, so I let Bear loose and follow his lead.

He crosses the street and shoots into a long, unfenced yard. The house behind it is warm brown stucco with black trim. Three large pine trees trace the fence line of a neighboring yard. Below them is an area of large river rocks.

Bear sits on the front porch, facing the front door of natural wood color with a large oval of stained glass in the center.

I guess he's found his home.

A large, white paneled van streaks by as I try to catch my breath. It's only six blocks from the bench, but with this dog pulling me I feel like I ran the whole way.

I walk up the grey cement path and around the side to the tall wooden gate that leads to an enclosed back yard. It's locked from the inside. There's no car in the driveway, either, so I resign myself to waiting and take a spot in the shade of the cool porch.

Bear's determined. He whines and scratches at the front door like a boy whose just come off a long road trip and has to piss.

His wide dog-eyes stare at me, desperate.

"You haven't got the key?"

He whines again, stretching a paw towards the knob like he wishes he had opposable thumbs.

"You're smart." I raise my hand to demonstrate. "But it's locked," I explain and turn the handle that gives no resistance.

Bear jumps at the opportunity, pressing the door open with his weight.

He disappears.

"This better be your house," I warn, turning to work onto my knees.

The floor of the entry way is glossy, off-white tile with dark grout lines. The floorboards are white and the wall over them is white, mottled over in forest green.

Nice.

I'm in need of a phone but have no plans to cross the threshold.

I thought if I waited for whoever lives here to show up, that they might be nice enough to let me use the phone. But I only expected that, if they were Bears' owners. And if they were kind enough to let a scraggly stranger use their phone, I assumed they'd bring a Cordless phone out to the porch.

I certainly wasn't planning on doing what I find myself doing—stepping onto the shiny tile and into a small house with a two-tone brown and green color scheme.

I don't' know how many steps it takes from the wide door to the wall of a short hall that crosses the entry. But I'm inside, staring. Feeling like it took only one step to get from another plane to this darkened hallway.

I am constantly puzzled by the things I find myself confronting. Like, inside this strange house, where the front door opens into a small green entry that leads to a long hallway. There hangs a cluster of pictures. They are large and small, all in plain black frames that decorate the opposing coffee colored wall. Inside each picture frame is a beautiful blond woman in various locations.

In the largest one, centered among the cluster of photos, she is the most stunning creature I've ever seen her—wrapped in white, gauzy lace. The long blond hair she usually wears straight and ties back for work is down, flowing in waves around her face. Her full red lips are stretched into a brilliant smile. The man beside her is wearing a classic black tux. They're standing beneath a flowering archway holding hands. And aside from the deliriously happy grin on the groom's face, he looks almost exactly like me.

It's the weirdest, strangest thing that I never could have known—much less believed. I never would, if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes—that this small house tucked away in an unnamed town really _is_ Bears house. But what really blows my scattered mind is that, according to the framed photos along the wall, this house belongs to Bear, Abi, and me.

#

# Another Life

A version of me that looks a little more like my father in his thirties—maybe the version that was the inspired design for Doyen's androids. But what are these photos doing here?

The only thing that could pull my attention from the images on wall appears at the end of the hallway. Abi. I hear her gasping breath and turn to look.

Her hair is different—a little shorter and darker, with cascading waves instead of the usual straight locks. It looks really good—brings out the gold flecks in her bright eyes. She's wearing a loose fitting t-shirt and tight jeans.

I hear her breath again as she drops the laundry basket, and then she blurs. I feel her hot tears on my neck and know by the sound, they're happy tears. She was worried. Either that or she knows that I'm not the one she's been waiting for.

When her lips mold to mine, I don't even care that I'm covered in sweat and an overgrown beard that I know she hates. It's too late when our mouths collide.

Her skin is soft. She smells like honeysuckle, tastes like mint.

This isn't where I thought I'd land. But I can't deny that thoughts of this moment have been weaving through every thought these last weeks. Every day I've spent away from her made me want her more.

Maybe that's why the stones have brought me to a dimension like mine, but better. In this one, I did the right thing and stayed with Abi. I know I'm not her husband, but I've always wanted her to be my wife.

So, when she leads down the hall into the room she appeared from, I don't hesitate.

She moves in that way of hers, that familiar and unknowable way. This is how it's always been with her. I know her, yet there's so much more.

"Let's clean you up."

She moves quickly, grabbing my hand to lead through the doorway, into a blur of a room, past a bed, and into the bathroom. There, I'm standing long enough to focus on a marble vanity and the gorilla peeking back from the mirror. Before I'm able to think of sitting, I am. And Abi's talking but I can't understand her. The words pour out too fast.

I watch her arms fly, feel the mist and her fingers in my hair.

Everything is coming at once—her voice, the lights, the fan, that dog—each claw scratching the tile floor. His whine and barking—

"Abi," raising both hands, I plead. "I need a minute."

Using my chin as a handle, she adjusts my head. When our eyes meet, peace sails through me. She takes my raised hands and sets one on either side of her face. I hold her and feel the calm wash through me.

She smiles gently and shoos the dog away. Quickly she turns back to me and orders, "Strip."

The window's open. Sounds of passing cars seem to blare. The exhaust fan raises a racket. Mist of running water fogs the mirror in no time at all.

Try as I might to make a move, Abi remains too quick and fully clothed. From outside the shower, she scrubs my back and shampoos my hair. She tosses benign instructions in between observations. Her words are low and quick.

"The body wash is on the shelf behind you."

"We'll have you clean in no time,"

"I'll make you something to eat."

"—Must have been near water."

It's basically all a blur until she takes her clothes off and finally stills. Her long, slender neck leads to that sweet collar bone and bare shoulders. Her breasts are perky and pink.

I'm speechless, elated and utterly disappointed as she says, "Take it easy Romeo. I'm only helping you clean up. At this rate, the fish will die before you're done."

And way too soon, I'm back on the chair at her vanity, wrapped in the softest purple terrycloth in the world.

Her index finger and thumb are tucked through a pair of scissors. "If I mess up, we'll go to the Barber."

Her reflection in the long bathroom mirror stares at mine. And though her words sound like a warning, she smiles.

I smile, too, staring at her pink cotton panties and plain white t-shirt.

She takes a shock of hair, combs it out and starts to cut. Around the pencil-like comb in her mouth she asks, "What was it like?"

She stops snipping when our eyes meet.

My hand reaches back, grasps the flesh of her calf. Her skin is silky smooth. "Lonely."

"Future or past?" She starts snipping again.

"Pre-industrial revolution."

"What year?"

I shake my head and she stops me with two hands on either side of my face. "You want me to use the clippers?"

"Sorry." I still myself and continue. "I saw four other people. Three were Natives. White skin, black hair. One was dead when I found him."

Her hands freeze. "Did you meet the boy? The one from your dreams?"

"How do you know about that?"

"Baby, you tell me your dreams so I can repeat them to you. You know, because of the travelling." She combs through the last section of hair, stroking up to cut. "Do we need to go through this again?"

I don't think she realizes... or maybe I haven't actually said aloud, _Abi, this isn't my house._ My lips press together at the thought of her reaction.

There's a worried look on her face. "You've been gone too long. That place made you slow. Your reactions are delayed by a solid twenty-three seconds."

I shake my head as she removes the towel from my shoulders and moves to sit nearby. "No, you're talking a mile a minute."

"I am speaking slowly. Where did Bear find you?"

"Bus stop." I relay, trying to pay close attention to the sound of my voice.

She shakes her head, mumbling something I don't catch.

I stand from the wrought iron chair. "Do you mind?" I ask, gesturing at the toilet she's sitting on.

She leaps up and swipes the iron stool in one motion, gone from the bathroom so fast, I'm not sure if she's angry or if I really am as slow as she says.

Placing myself atop the smooth porcelain ring, I feel like I can finally relax. Like, I'm home. And then my eyes fall onto the white roll of heaven sitting in the wall dispenser.

Suddenly, I can't control myself. Just like a little girl that's found her favorite lost dolly, I am overjoyed, bawling at the sight of my dear long-lost friend, toilet paper.

#

#  Steaming Pile Of Awesome

I don't know how long I slept, but it feels like my eyes have just barely closed when Abi wakes me with a hot mug of coffee and her warm smile.

Seeing her this way, so alive with obvious joy, I moan—half in longing and half in frustration for not getting the oh-by-the-way-I'm-not-your-husband-but-don't-be-mad conversation out in the open.

"Abi."

"What's up?" She's sinking onto the bed, maneuvering over a pile of pillows while balancing her coffee. When she turns to face me, her eyes are all dreamy-looking.

"Why did you marry me?"

The gleaming light in her face fades. She clears her throat. "Don't pretend that you're _him_."

"You knew?"

"You think I don't know my own husband? You guys look alike, but you're far from identical."

She's smiling as she asks the rhetorical question but there's a well of sadness beneath the surface. As many times as I've disappointed my own version of Abi, identifying her disappointment comes easy.

"I figured you out." She sighs and sips her coffee. "Now, brass tax. What can we learn from each other? Oh, you may find it interesting that you've been asleep for twenty-two hours."

"Twenty-two?" I set my coffee mug on the nightstand and stare at it debating on whether to get up or not. I fell asleep in the underpants she gave me.

_It's not anything she hasn't seen before_. I decide, and get up like there was never any question. "No way it was that long."

"Way." She disputes. And I'm sure we've moved onto other topics, but then she starts rambling.

"It was weird; Bear is trained not to leave the yard, but he ran off the same way he does when—" She cuts out. Takes a deep breath. "He can sense when the gateway opens.

"At first, I thought you know, the way you walked right in—I mean, what else was I supposed to think? I assumed you were mine and I kissed you." A palm rests fretfully over her forehead. "I've never met another one before."

She hops from the bed and looks on while I stuff myself into pants. Her pencil brow is furrowed.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine." She stomps her foot, though, so I know it's a lie.

"You can talk to me, you know."

Tears well in her eyes as she watches me throw on a tee shirt. The stink of sweat is gone, replaced with flowery laundry detergent.

"I'll make breakfast if you're hungry."

"It's not like we're strangers, Ab. Just say what's on your mind."

The well spring overflows. Tears cascade down her pink cheeks. "I really thought... that _he_ was back."

"He's a lucky bastard. I wish I was him."

She crumples into a heap on the bed. I want to comfort her, but, the air feels... uncomfortable. I shouldn't have said that.

"Where I'm from... in my life, I was too stupid to keep you."

A woeful moan sounds through the covers she's got her face buried in.

"It's not like you cheated, Ab."

She barks a short laugh. "Nope, it's not cheating if you think you're kissing your husband." She pulls her head back to glower. "Why didn't you stop me?"

I don't know if it's her devastated look or my guilty conscience, but I do the exact thing I shouldn't. I answer honestly.

"Because I love you, Ab, in every life and every world."

She hangs her head, again. Her shoulders shake.

"I was just trying to keep your dog from being run over. I wasn't expecting to find the one person I wanted to see more than anyone, and when I did, I wanted you. More than I wanted to do the right thing. If my keeping quiet bothers you so much, I'll explain it to your husband, personally."

I don't think I'd be angry with myself, but then, that really depends on how I—well, _he_ —might look at the situation. I try to imagine how I'd feel if I were the one to come home and find my Abi with— Nope. Can't see it.

It was only a kiss. Well, I also saw her naked. But she was only helping me shower because I was too warped to do it myself.

No amount of reasoning is going to make it better. So when Abi moves to the bathroom to gather herself, I move as fast as my time-warped brain will allow. Getting dressed and loaded down with my gear, snatching a cup of coffee and a bagel from a box on the counter near a fruit basket.

Stepping out onto the porch, I hear her, call my name.

"G, wait!"

She pulls me back inside. All I can do is stare at her beautiful eyes. They're still wet, but this time from the shower. She opens her mouth and shuts it. Her full lips pucker in concentration.

"Remember to stay away from other bearers." Her brow furrows as if she's surprised herself.

I'm surprised period. "Come again?"

Shaking her head, she answers. "It's creates a... sort of struggle."

"How?"

She blinks and shakes her head. "One set of stones is always more powerful than the other and the stronger stones absorb the weaker ones if they get too close."

Does having the weaker Threestone mean you're going to lose them? I think of my fight with Daemon on the roof top in Manhattan. He seemed much stronger and moved way too fast for me to keep up.

Is that why? Because the set of stones I carried wasn't as strong as the set he had?

"Okay . . ." the acknowledgment draws out while I think. "How am I supposed to beat Daemon?"

Abi gives the cutest whisper of a gasp and bites her bottom lip, then runs a hand through her wet hair, tugging it back from her face. Her skin looks so soft. She's always looks so beautiful in the morning.

"You better come back inside. We have a lot to talk about."

#

# Schooling Me

The day has zoomed by.

We couldn't have been talking for more than a few hours, but the sun is disappearing on the horizon when Abi opens the curtain over the back door to release Bear into the yard.

I've learned more in talking with her than in all the time spent using the Threestone.

"They're weird, right?" She says for the tenth time and it's still adorable, the way she crinkles her nose.

I nod, stretching, and add, "For sure."

"Have you noticed any changes in your appearance since you started using them?" She asks, sitting back down beside me on the cream-colored, overstuffed couch scattered with bright green pillows.

I watch her tuck her hands between her bent knees. She's tilting towards me and I automatically lean in, closing the gap between our shoulders as I answer.

"Changes, like what?"

"Well, like, did you get a sunburn when you were living outside in that ancient world?"

I shake my head. "Not once. And I noticed the air felt cooler, too, when the stones were out."

Abi nods knowingly. "My G says they absorb everything. He says having them exposed to the sunlight means they're absorbing all of that heat and energy. He says it's like sitting in a dark room without windows even though you're outdoors. Lack of sunlight produces vitamin D deficiencies. It also makes your hair darker and your skin more pale."

"Reduces your risk of skin cancer to nil."

She chuckles and shakes her head.

"Anything else I should know?" I ask.

Abi's small smile fades. "Tons, but I don't know if I should share." She shrugs. "No one ever told me what not to say if I ran into an alternate version of my husband."

"Is it really all that difficult?" I ask, finding that I've moved. We're not just grazing our shoulders now and again. We are sitting close together, like two people who are genuinely attracted to each other.

"What?" Abi looks up and her face is so beautifully close that I can't recall what I was going to say.

"I don't know." I shake my head, silently apologizing for the mental gap. "How long has he been gone?"

"He was supposed to be back in three weeks. Six weeks I could understand, you know, with time being relative. But it's been seven months. Without a word."

"He probably just lost track of time. You know, the longer you're in a plane, the more accustomed you become."

She nods. "I know. But seven months? Well, he did pop-in unexpectedly a few weeks after he left. But he only talked to Eli and left again. So, technically, it's less. But it's not like him."

"Where did he go?"

She pats my knee and slips from the couch. "Come on, I'll show you."

I follow Abi down the toast-colored hallway. The color makes me think of skim milk in coffee. Abi faces a door directly across from her bedroom and walks in.

The room is small and set up like an office, only there's no desk. There's a bare mattress on rails in one corner and thick wood blinds covering a small window. The walls of the room are bare as well, the color matching the light almond tones of the living room and her bedroom.

One wall has a cork board bolted onto it. The board is covered with pieces of paper; drawings of things I recognize as being from my father's box. Diagrams and hand-scrawled notes make up a rough timeline with explanations of planes this version of me has visited. Some of the descriptions are the very same I've used to describe my own adventures.

Ice World—Doyen is an asshole.

World Two—Daemon got away.

Native World—found the boy from my dream.

The lettering is all capitals as if these small things are very important. His writing looks very close to mine, except he uses pointed W's, whereas mine have always been round.

There's a picture I remember finding in the box my father left me. One of a dirty Jeep parked in an empty lot beside a brick wall. I remember finding it that day in the hospital and recognizing it as the very same car that was parked in the lot that night Daemon found me. A strange clue in the cyclical mystery my life has become. My fingers brush the edge of the identically penciled portrait. I left mine with Eli and he lost it.

"I guess in this world, Eli's place wasn't ransacked by Homeland Security."

"Oh no, it was." Abi's standing beside me, watching closely as I survey her husband's workspace.

"You're working with Eli, too?"

"Yes."

"Then how do you have this? Wasn't it inside the box I left with Eli?"

She shakes her head. "Whatever _he_ left with Eli was taken, but it wasn't much. He left the important stuff with me."

"Because he can trust you to keep his secrets."

She smiles wistfully, muttering, "We trust each other implicitly." Raising a pointed finger at the notes on Ice World, Abi dictates, "This is where he went. He was planning to work with some people he knows over there. He had a plan to take out that Doyen guy."

"Doyen is an asshole," I repeat, pointing at the words written on the page. "Well, he _was_. I killed him."

Abi's forehead wrinkles. "You did?"

"Yeah." I nod and begin explaining how I decided on the fly to make the kill. "I lost my shit, you know? Grabbed him when his back was turned... and didn't let go."

She gasps and grips her hands together.

"I know it sounds bad, but—"

"He was another version of Daemon." She says.

Now I'm the one who's surprised. "How did you know?"

"G told me."

"Oh. Of course, he did."

"He was there once before and had some kind of run-in with him and barely escaped. He was returning to kill him... but you said you've already done it? How can that be?"

"It's probably not the same plane," I answer, thinking of Doyens smug face when he divulged the reason he built the android commanders with a face eerily similar to mine. He used the face of a man who betrayed him and the man—maybe _my_ alternate—paid with his life.

"No, probably not," Abi says, sawing her bottom lip with her teeth.

"I was in that icy plane for three days, until... you know. Then, after, I jumped without thinking and ended up in that slow-moving native plane until a thunder storm sent me here."

I wait for her to say something, to acknowledge that she's listening but she seems lost. So I keep talking.

"What was your husband's plan, exactly?"

"The same as yours, I suppose."

That doesn't mean much. "Humor me."

"To kill Daemon, of course, and every version of him that exists to prevent them from gathering the stones."

I've been to how many worlds now? Daemon's had a head start in every one of them.

How many planes can there possibly be? Eli thinks there are at least eleven, but says, theoretically, there could be thousands.

"What happens if he gathers them all?" This was the question that turned Eli ghost-white.

"He doesn't need them all."

"What do you mean? If not the stones, what does Daemon need?"

She sighs in a way that makes me think she's tired of talking. "To die, G. Daemon and all his alternates need to die."

Taking in the weight of her statement, I think on what I set out to do in the beginning of this journey. I started with the intention of catching and killing the man that murdered my father. Having that murder on the mind made it easier to attack Doyen the moment I realized who he was. I couldn't fathom walking away from a man that bragged about killing my alternate, possibly the only version of me that got anything right where Abi was concerned.

So, I know why Daemon needs to die. It was the same reason Doyen needed to die. Inside and out, the man was evil. The one thing I'm not convinced of forms my next question.

"Why?"

Her eyes widen. "What do you mean, 'why'?"

"I know why I want to kill the version of Daemon that I'm after. He murdered my father in cold blood and shot me. Hell, he might even be the same version that me, myself, and I are after." There's too many _he's_ and _him's_ —it's confusing. "What I want to know is why you want him dead. Can you tell me, specifically, what did he do to your husband?"

Abi's stunned expression is usually accompanied by a covering of her mouth with her palm, but this version squares her shoulders. Shifting from indignant to shocked in a flash.

"He killed your father? How? When? What year was it?"

"Twenty-twelve. Strangulation. Dad knew he was—"

A loud knock at the door halts my explanation.

Abi shakes her head. Seeming flustered, she looks out the window of the office and remarks how quickly the dark has moved in, and then mutters "What time is it?" on her way out of the room.

She stalks willfully to the front door and opens it. I start to follow after her, curious to know who's calling and if they're the reason she's suddenly confused. But then I remind myself that this isn't my house. She isn't my girl, and whoever is knocking is none of my business. And I'm not supposed to be here so I shouldn't be seen by anyone.

But thoughts of Daemon and the phrase, _'wherever you are, there he is,'_ rankles at my brain and I putter down the hallway after her. But it's too late because Abi's not by the front door anymore.

She's standing outside on the porch. The door is closed, but the large oval of stained glass in the center of the ornate entrance reveals two figures. One is Abi and the other... is a man.

I step into the entryway, hugging the wall to listen.

"I don't know what to do," she says.

"Let me talk to him." The other voice says. It's a man, but that's all I can be sure of as the voices are mostly muffled.

A few unintelligible exchanges later, the front door opens.

Abi walks in alone. She's rubbing her hands down her jeans, straining to make eye contact as she closes the door behind her. From what I can tell, the man is still standing on the front porch.

"What's wrong?"

"He wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know if it's a good idea, but—" The door swings open as she finishes. "He'll do what he wants."

A man walks in. He's nearly my height and hunched, stalwart yet somewhat decrepit as he ambles into the dim entryway. Abi follows as I take a step back into the hall. The entry isn't big enough for more than one person when there's a door swinging.

Abi flips a switch in the hallway and bright illuminates our forms.

All three of us: me, Abi-two, and yet another version of my living, breathing father.

"I lost track of time, so dinner's not ready... but I'll throw some sandwiches together," Abi says and then disappears from beside me.

"You're alive," I mutter and the steely gaze of this third version of my dad softens.

He tilts his head. "I thought I'd know what to say but—damn it all—you look so much like him."

"Strong genes." I nod, knowingly, making light of this interaction because that's the only way to take it; with salt and light because it will end badly.

It always ends badly.

My own father never was a man to hedge when he wanted to know something, so it's no surprise when his alternate dives right into the hard stuff.

"I'm glad to see that you're okay, but I've got to ask. My daughter-in-law tells me that your own father was killed seven years ago?"

He's built just like my father. The ever-present wrinkles that make him look irritated even when he smiles, the receding hairline, but his hair is still there. All salt and pepper that makes him look ten years younger.

He doesn't seem to be suffering from the same ailments as my father, either. His hands don't tremble without permission and I saw no limp when he walked inside.

"No." I shake my head, swallowing hard. "In my world, the year was twenty-twelve, but it's only been a few months since."

There are no enlarged knuckles and crooked fingers. No liver spots on his face.

His mention of time has me wondering.

"Is it twenty-eighteen in this plane?" I have to ask because in all the talking I've done with Abi-two, we hadn't gotten around to her timeline.

This healthy version of my father nods. His arm stretches out. He rests a hand to my shoulder and bids me to sit with him at the dining table, where he promises we will eat and talk to our hearts content.

#

#  Much Easier Than it Looks

Since the day I was involved in that bus accident the one thing I have wanted more than anything was to sit down and talk to my father about all the crazy shit I've gone through.

"But I never got the chance. Daemon took that away from me." I admit, feeling a little sheepish as I bare my soul before two veritable strangers who are absolutely familiar.

"He took a lot of things away from a lot of people." Gerry, my alternate father, agrees as his fingers steeple over his plate that now holds only bread crumbs and a crumpled napkin.

I continue telling of my journey in World Two. What I did, where I went, how I interacted with Daemon. How I am still mystified as to why he would help me win that fight only to try and kill me after.

"He needed you to get back to your home world where he knew he could find another version of your father."

"You think I led him there? I didn't have the stones. How could I manipulate something that I didn't even know existed?"

He nods his head and grips his chin with one hand, contemplating. "How do you travel from one plane to another?"

I can't bring myself to finish the turkey sandwich Abi made and drop it onto my plate, nearly scoffing. "The same way you did, the same way your son does; with the Threestone."

"When you open a gateway, are you prepared for what you'll find on the other side?"

Shrugging, I answer, "As much as I can be."

"And how do you know that you're prepared?"

"Because I'm thinking of my destination." As I hear myself say the words, it's like someone's lit a match inside my head. A tiny flame flickers with understanding.

"And when you were with Daemon in that first accident, what were you thinking about?"

"That I didn't want to die like my little sister."

Gerry's eyes gloss over at the mention of her and that is enough to tell me that she's dead in this dimension, too. "And where did you end up?" He asks, and clears his throat.

"In a plane where the year was the same as the year she died."

He nods, hammering his point home. "Exactly. I bet you were thinking of your dad when Daemon took you home, weren't you?"

My answer is a strangled positive.

"So you've known without ever having to be told that the stones will take you wherever you want to go."

"I guess." Another strangled affirmative.

"His dying had nothing to do with you. But you need to understand that the Threestone are absolutely loyal to the Bearer. And Daemon had his own a set of stones. It was his will that they take you where you wanted to go."

All I can do is nod, recalling that bastard saying, "think of your Dad."

"At the same time," Gerry continues, "they're also held in subjection by other, more powerful sets. So whoever holds the strongest set holds all the power, and Daemon is one greedy son of a bitch."

Scrubbing my hands down my face, I look at the man across the table from me and find myself repeating a question that Eli once posed. "But why? Why would God, or the Universe, allow it? What is the purpose of this power floating around for anyone to find?" It can't be as simple as Daemons greed and my need for revenge.

Gerry's face floods with irritation. "Didn't your father explain anything about your legacy?"

For some reason, I find this funny—hilarious, actually—because my dad made a point to leave me in the dark. "Confusion was my father's weapon of choice and he fought to the very end."

Gerry groans, running his fingers through what's left of his hair.

Well, join the club.

"Let me get this straight: your father, my alternate, left you nothing but a clueless scientist with a map to the Threestone and never told you what they do or where they came from?"

"He said I was to protect them with my life, and that's about it."

Abi stalks over from the kitchen with a carafe of coffee and three mugs. She huffs out, "I'm sorry, but that's just stupid," and plops the mugs onto the small round dining table.

"I'd say 'irresponsible.'" Gerry shakes his head. "Why would he do that? Knowledge is the first line of defense. He's left you defenseless."

Hearing him use the same phrase as my father pricks a warm feeling in my chest. However, his admonishment of the man makes my temper flare. "He had his reasons. And considering who he had to work with," I point at myself. "He did the best he could."

It was no secret what the old man thought of me and my choices. I was a constant disappointment and not even the saintly reverence of the dead can make me forget that.

"I was immature and he couldn't trust me," I explain. "You know, I'm not even sure how much he knew about the stones. Maybe he didn't have any mystical wisdom to share."

Gerry's angry face ripples into a grimace. He leans forward, reminding me how much I do not miss my father's volcanic temperament. But unlike my father, when Gerry speaks he doesn't raise his voice.

Very controlled, he states, "If your father ever possessed the Threestone, then he knew _all_ about them."

Abi, who's been listening, clears her throat. When we both look to her, she folds a hand under her chin and tilts her head, looking at Gerry. I recognize this coaxing and know she's about to ask him for something.

"Maybe you should tell him." She emphasizes _should_ , as if it's a reference to an earlier conversation; probably the secretive one on the front porch.

Gerry shakes his head as I wonder aloud.

"Tell me what?"

Abi keeps staring and Gerry reaffirms his answer. "No."

I know I'm being ignored when I repeat my question and neither one averts their gaze from the other.

"Why not?" Abi inquires of her father-in-law. "I thought you said we could help him."

"Giving people what they want isn't helpful—neither is giving them what they need." Gerry draws a long breath as Abi continues.

"You and your riddles. What does that even mean?"

"It means I might not be doing him any favors by giving away hard-won information. Maybe he'd fare better by finding out for himself. If that's the case, then it means I need to trust the choices of my alternate."

Abi's pencil brows draw together. Her hair swings as she looks between my confused face, and my alternate father's stony expression. "Then why...? Gah! I don't understand you Springer men one bit. You say you're going to help but you don't _do_ anything."

"Abi," Gerry says her name softly and she stops. "He knew his boy. He made his choice not to burden his son with his past and even though I don't agree, I must respect that choice."

"Okay," I say, feeling more confused, but still relaxing because this alternate father seems to understand something I'm only just beginning to realize. "He didn't want me to repeat his mistakes."

My father wanted to keep me from making his same choices. So he kept them from me. Knowing me as he did, he must have known that I would have too much time to think about them, and possibly resent him and the repercussions.

"But that doesn't mean we can't offer guidance, though," Gerry adds. "Does it?"

Abi's features darken. The corners of her pink-glossed lips curve up into a smile.

#

#  A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma Smothered in Horseshit

"I don't know." I shake my head at Abi's question.

After the weird discussion that ultimately amounted to nothing—just like most interactions with all versions of my father—he left. After that, Abi decided the best thing she could do for me was to jog my memory. To entice my Swiss cheese brain into connecting the proverbial dots. To hopefully keep me from losing years of valuable time trying to solve the problem her and her husband have already found the answer to, she said.

I already know the answer they've come up with. They want to kill every version of Daemon that exists in every dimension. Not that I object to the idea, I just don't see how killing every one of him is going to change anything for me, or how increased inter-dimensional travel is going to help anyone. It's the opposite of the deal I made with Eli.

But Abi insists that I am wrong, and since my entire relationship with my own Abi has always enforced my innate wrongness, I've agreed to keep an open mind.

A big part of the picture she's painting is embedded in my interactions with Daemon and the places I've travelled. So I'm letting her walk me through my memories of the man that started this whole thing.

"Close your eyes. Think really hard." She whispers. "You're in Manhattan, back on that rooftop. He's there with you . . ."

I'm lying on her couch. She's got her knees pressed to the carpet beside me, leaning in close as I visualize the fight I had with the demon back in World Two.

"Do you see him?"

"Yes."

"Picture every detail you can remember." She instructs.

In my mind's eye, the cityscape unfolds all around me. I'm on my knees, hunching over, thankful to be alive, staring at the puddle my clothes are making on the roof of the high-rise parking garage. The wormhole from Water World has just closed and I'm soaking wet.

"Are there clouds in the sky?"

I recall the dark and distant billows when I looked around. "A pillar of smoke. From the apartment building he set on fire."

"Good. That's very good. Now, tell me what happened next."

"He kicked me onto my back," I remember the taste of blood and the sting of his boot.

"Tell me what he's wearing."

"Same dirty trench coat as always." _He swam in that thing?_

"Underneath that—what kind of shirt?"

I can't picture it. "I don't know."

"What happened next?"

"Daemon spoke." The words jump out at me and I repeat them before she asks. "He said, 'you won't follow me this time.'"

I feel Abi's hand gripping my shoulder. "Good." She tries to sound relaxed, but it's not soothing at all. "Then what?"

"He threw me off the roof."

Her lets out a breath. "No. something else happened in between."

I shake my head. "That was it."

"You just let him toss you off a building? You were a limp noodle—you didn't grab at him or try to stop him?"

"I grabbed him," I recall. "I grabbed his shirt. It was dirty." I remember now, can see my finger clutching at it. "I ripped it."

"Good," Abi says again. "That's good, you remember. Now, instead of remembering the fall, I want you to focus on what's in your hand. Can you do that?"

My mind plays through falling, the wind and the bouncing from an awning or two, then landing in the backseat of that convertible. It wasn't until after I realized I was okay that that I took stock of the scrap of cotton in my grip.

"There was a small piece of metal, like I stole the charm from a necklace when I ripped his shirt."

"Think really hard, now, G, and tell me what it looks like."

With eyes shut tight, I imagine the pilfered trinket. "It was bare metal. Three small discs connected—"

"Yes!" Abi interrupts. "Yes, it was. Does it remind you of something you might have seen somewhere else... on someone else, perhaps?"

The question jolts my brain. The words come rushing out my mouth before the thoughts finish forming. "The native boy showed me a similar charm."

Opening my eyes to find Abi looking down with a grave expression. "Very good, G. That's very good. Now let's move forward.

"Close your eyes and tell me about the cave you walked through just before you found the next Threestone."

Talk about anticlimactic. I thought I made a breakthrough, but apparently, it was just an exercise to get me to the next question. You have to learn one in order to count to two, I guess.

Relaxing back into the over-stuffed sofa, I listen to the sound of Abi's voice and let it carry me through the memory. She and I talked enough about where I've been that she has no trouble leading me back to that open field, encroached by rocks and trees, where I was left to linger when the young native boy was called away by his mother.

"You're staring at the entrance of the dark cave."

My mind fills with the details. I speak them to her. Describe the sway of the trees, the storm growing in the distance, and my nerves after observing there was no visible way out of the enclosure I'd been left in.

"When you walked into the cave, what did you see?"

"Light," I tell her. "The Threestone were lighting my path."

"Did you get a look around? See any rooms?"

"No," I mutter, recalling the way the stones lit up my path and took off. I describe this to her and she doesn't sound a bit surprised.

"After your stones joined with the next set, what did you do?"

"I walked back through the cave and had to push past an old man that showed up. He tried to block the exit. I got back to the field and found my way out." I had a lightning bolt to catch.

"No." Abi disagrees and I open my eyes.

"What do you mean, 'no'? I was there. I know what happened."

"Think, G. Slow down and picture it. Now, you've got the newest set of stones, and you're walking back to the cave. What do you see?"

Lying back on the couch, I close my eyes and concentrate.

"Oh." The word drags out as I recall the odd carving I forgot to mention. "There was a stick-looking figure of a tree. A bare tree carved into the outer wall of the cave. I didn't see it until I turned to walk back inside."

"Yes, that's what I was hoping for. It's not a tree. It's the mark of the Suma."

Opening my eyes, I interlock my fingers over my stomach and stare at the ceiling. "What's a Suma? And what does any of this have to do with Daemon?"

"You want to know who Daemon is?"

Turning quickly to my side, I am smack-dab in her face when I answer. "You know I do." Because if I know who he is or where he comes from, then I can hunt him down.

"You've never heard of a tribe called the Suma? Everything that Eli has learned about them tells me they were brutal."

I latch onto the one word. "Were?"

"They existed in a comparatively slower plane and are extinct in ours, as far as Eli knows. But their symbols are very important to you and your legacy. So, do yourself a favor and try to recall where else you saw that symbol, the one that looked like a tree."

I shake my head and return to my former position, lying back as directed.

"Now, tell me more about Doyen." She commands and my head goes into overdrive.

Flashes of time spent in that icy plane dance beneath my eyelids. I see the black smoke rising into the sky. The blank landscape. The cold, empty feeling.

Floating over the outer wall. Finding Rocky. The android assigned to guard and guide me through the city, Origin Two-One-Seven.

Doyen's wide waist line and long robe, his smooth round chin that I had never seen before because the version of him that I knew kept it covered by a long, scraggly beard. Then there was the long hair, neatly kept back in a long braid so I couldn't see the snakehead tattooed beneath it—if it was there.

Everything about him seemed the opposite of my nemesis. Except both men shared deeply set eyes, that cruel sneer, and a taste for blood.

That last day, as I stood beside him, pretending to listen as he blathered on about his family problems and following a stranger into the forest.

Shit.

I'm upright on the couch, clutching Abi's hand, muttering the word Eli taught me. It was the same word Doyen used when he pointed to the pink scar on his shoulder. _"It is the mark of my people,"_ Doyen had explained excitedly. _"It is the Tresunus."_

"It was his home?" I ask.

She nods but answers with a question. "Now that you know he has the mark, how many versions of Daemon have you come across?"

I want to answer her, but my mind is flying a mile a minute. Filling with more and more questions.

I'm relatively the same in every universe, right? I mean, I've only run into one other version of myself so far and he was a sixteen year-old moron, but I still recognized myself. I've seen three versions of my father and could pick him out in a crowd without a wink.

"How can Daemon be so different?" I ask. "He was fat and hairy." He was power-hungry, though. Just like Daemon, the false friend and surprise murderer.

"G, you've seen three versions of Daemon."

"Doyen-Daemon and Daemon-Daemon."

"You're forgetting the native boy, G."

"No. That wasn't Daemon. He may have been from the same tribe, but that wasn't him. I would have known."

"Your father never mentioned the name Nahuiollin?"

"Only once, in passing," I answer, flinching at the remembered images of the video from Jeanine's computer, the one wherein my father addressed the man I know as Daemon as Nahuiollin.

"When you opened the gateway, to cross over into that ancient plane, what did you ask the stones to do?"

"I needed to get away." I'd just committed the ultimate crime and it was only a matter of time before I was found out. There was no time to get to Rocky and I was angry. Angry that the right thing to do was to leave him behind. "I asked the stones to take me to the one my father called Nahuiollin."

And I landed in that ancient landscape and met a young native who showed me the path to the stones.

"Have the stones ever taken you to a place that you didn't ask to go?"

"No."

"So... then you agree? That the Suma boy was Daemon?"

Sighing, I give a reluctant nod.

She sighs too. "Good, G. That's good you agree. So, you must also agree that he has to die next."

#

#  It Starts With M and Rhymes With Turder

_Generations in the making_ , my father wrote in his final letter to me. I read that and struggled with the meaning like I did with every other clue he gave. He very rarely explained himself, and when he did, the answer he offered only brought more questions.

As I listen to Abi explain how my brief interaction with that native boy altered the course of my existence all I can think about is my father's letter.

He told me to go through that box. To read every page. And I foisted the responsibility onto Eli while I practiced my survival skills, which ended up coming in handy on more than one occasion.

My father often spoke about feelings of regret. He wanted to make sure that I lived my life with as few as possible. Will I regret doing as Abi insists? Or will my regrets come about because listening to her was a mistake?

"Every version of Daemon must die." She repeats. When I answer nothing, she goes with her justification.

I'm staring at her, seeing her lips move and hearing her words, and straining to understand her. She's not making any sense.

". . . The reason he tried to kill you. It's why he murdered your father."

Shaking my head, I ask her to go back and repeat that last bit.

"God knows how many versions of Daemon are already doing the same thing. Every version of all you Springer men is in danger because he is out to slaughter your lineage. The same way his line was ended, he wants yours to be, too." She's breathing hard, talking excitedly and shaking her little fist at me. "Listen to me, G. That man is dangerous. He will stop at nothing until he's wiped you, your father, and all your alternates off the face of the earth."

I can't help myself. "Shouldn't it be _faces_ and _earths_?"

Abi huffs a frustrated sound. "No, it should be knees in balls."

She's funny. If we weren't in the middle of talking about what we're talking about I'd laugh my ass off.

"My father left me a letter." I offer this serious story instead of the planned sarcasm. "In it, he compared his situation to inheriting a house. He said he had to change the house completely without compromising the integrity of the structure. He said that he failed and that now the metaphorical house was my problem."

"Huh." Abi crosses her arms, thinking. "What if Daemon is the fortified structure in this metaphor?"

"Then I can't huff and puff and blow the house down."

"Maybe your father was the one who couldn't."

"Geez. Enough with that already." Back on my feet, I walk over to the dark curtain that guards the back door. Shoving it aside, I notice the first colors of dawn on the horizon. "I'm going to do what I set out to do, which is finding the man that killed my father. Anything more... I have to think about."

Turning, I give her a moment to survey me. My Abi always said that I have the 'scariest angry-face.' I hardly ever reached that fuming phase, but when I did she'd drop whatever we were doing and leave me the hell alone before I said something we'd both regret. Not the most mature way to handle my temper, but it worked for us.

So here, in this dimly lit living room with Abi-Two, I stare at her and say nothing, giving her the time to take in my disposition. The heated skin and wild eyes.

Then, the most frustrating thing in the world happens. Abi doesn't walk away. She glares back at me and sets a hand on each of her hips. "Don't pull that shit with me, G. I don't take that 'run away' face from my husband and I'm not about to take it from you."

When I don't relent, she scoffs. "Grab your things. It's time for your Abi to get you back."

Only a few minutes later, the sun is well on its way up and I'm weighted down with my gear and a fresh water bladder.

My mini-fit has passed and I'm back to feeling grateful—even though this has been the strangest, most mind-bending visit so far.

With both hands holding tight the straps of my backpack, I rest my lips on her forehead. "Thank you, Ab."

She smiles weakly.

"You know you're too good for either of us, don't you?"

She nods and gives a quiet, "Hell-yeah, I do."

"Any advice on where I should do this?"

Her thin smile broadens, the remnants of her irritation with me float away. "My G likes to use the alley behind the Sherriff station."

I like the way she emphasizes the possession. "Sounds perfect. But, I'll need directions."

I have nothing but the utmost respect for law enforcement. If that respect were mutual, maybe the idea of using their stomping ground to open a wormhole would be less appealing.

"What's funny?" Abi glances from the drivers' seat.

"Nothing." I'm smiling because she is.

On the way to this unknown Sherriff station, I switch between the view of her flawless profile and the brown and green landscape of a small town called Westlake. Abi says she and G decided to move up here a few years after they were married.

I told Abi that I wanted to walk, but she insisted that the Sherriff station was too far and grabbed the keys to her truck. I shouldn't have listened. Being here, so close to her and not having her, yet being the one she wants most is torture.

"How many sets do you have so far?"

A tension sets into my chest and shoulders. "Not enough."

She shakes her head. "You have a lot to learn."

"Teach me, Yoda." I joke, pulling at a lock of hair like it's my string to her puppet. But then I remember the things she's taught me so far and regret my request.

She keeps her gaze on the narrow roadway. "I get the feeling you're one of those who prefers to learn from his own mistakes rather than someone else's."

"That such a bad thing?"

Her brow furrows as she stares ahead. "Not always, but in this case it is, G." She lets the address hang there. "What other kinds of worlds have you seen?"

"A place far in the future where the sun moved so fast it was no more than a burning blur. Another that has dinosaur-like things swimming in the water. I wasn't there for long, thankfully. Then another plane where it had to be the eighties, but I was in too much of a hurry to check the date."

The truck slows as we pull into the parking lot of a convenience store. "G, listen to me." She turns, setting one hand over the top of the steering wheel, the other on my knee. "The odds are against you. He is way ahead of you. He's been doing this longer, his stones are stronger, and he's a lot faster than you are."

"Is this, like, your twisted version of a pep-talk? Because I got to say, I'm disappointed with you, Abi-Two."

One eyebrow lifts at the nickname, sharpening the stare she's giving. "You have to play it smart. Get focused. Go back to your home dimension and learn all you can. Find out how Daemon carries his stones. Oh, and did you know they can hold charges?"

This juicy tidbit makes me lean forward. "Yes, I've seen them do it, I just can't control it."

"My G was totally shocked when he found that out."

"How did he make them do it?"

"I don't know, but he's talked a lot about learning to concentrate. Focus your thinking and I'm sure, they'll teach you."

I almost laugh. It sounds ludicrous. If recent experience has taught me anything, it's to put no limitations on the Threestone, but I can't bring myself to actually say it out loud. "I'll keep that in mind."

She offers an arms-only hug, which I take and reciprocate. "It was nice meeting you." She doesn't laugh as I intend. "Abi," her name is a whisper as she pulls back.

"You guys are two different people. I shouldn't be so sensitive." Her eyes shimmer with tears she won't allow to fall.

"He's got to be the better one if he got you."

"I've been meaning to ask..." She pauses.

"Yeah?"

"Is _she_... like me?"

I nod, affirming. "My Abi is very much like you. Too good for me and she knows it. Hey, can I ask you a question?"

There's a heat in her gaze when it meets mine. "Travel-related."

"What do the lines mean?"

Abi's eyes widen and I know she's confused even before she asks, "What lines?"

"Around the gateway. They're not always there, but sometimes there are lines, almost like cracks in a windshield. They were around the funnel in New York and the one I used to come here."

"On this side?" She adjusts herself in her seat.

"I only see them on the way in. I thought it was a fluke, but both times the gateway was huge."

She covers her mouth with her hands.

"Has G ever mentioned seeing them?" It's weird how I can just talk to her, ask her things about the travelling and tunnels that no one else on the planet is supposed to know. And be so casual even when asking about a different version of myself.

"No, but when G gets back, I'll ask him. He's probably some place that's slower like you were."

I nod in agreement even though I'm half-convinced she's saying this to avoid considering alternatives. But then I never told her about Doyen's androids. And really, there isn't anything to tell beyond my own suspicions.

"How many more of us, well _me_ , are there?"

"You're the first I've seen." She says and I recall her saying this once already.

We're sitting in the parking lot of a gas station near the Sherriff station, talking ourselves into awkward repetition.

"You said Eli is helping you, too?"

"Yes, I mentioned him." Looking out the window at the little hut where the station clerk stands staring at us, I tell her "You'd make an excellent travelling companion. You're very well informed."

"G, you need to tell Eli everything. You limit his ability to help when you hold back."

She notices my hand lingering on the door handle.

"Don't let anybody see you in the alley. Get close enough to absorb the power without getting caught on the cameras."

"Thanks, Ab." I take the cue and hop out of her truck.

"Hey," She calls and I look back.

"She's tougher than you think, you know. You can trust _her_."

"I'll remember that," I say, hoping it's true.

I give my last farewell to Bear in the truck bed. He wags and whines as I pet his head and thank him for the hospitality.

At the edge of the parking lot, I go against instinct and turn to catch one last glimpse of what might have been, but they're already gone.

The back of the Sherriff station is two or three blocks down. I move slowly, keeping an eye on the lamp posts and corners of buildings, searching for cameras.

The sides of the alley are lined with overflowing, stinking dumpsters that remind me too much of my trip to New York. I keep to the middle of the lane until a garbage truck turns into the alley ahead and stops, blocking me.

The mucky green mechanical arm reaches out and grips one of the cans. I work behind a dumpster and pop out on the backside of the truck. As I cross the alley, the high-pitched screech of a back-up beeper wails its' warning. I must be suffering residual effects from that ancient world, because before I know it, I'm somehow pinioned between the back bumper of the truck and a boxy metal dumpster. I yell my displeasure and bang on the side of the smelly truck. Instead of the truck moving forward, it lurched further back. The sudden pinch on my torso surprises me. The minute space is too tight to yell again.

The mechanical arm of the garbage truck is hovering over my head. I'm staring at it, wondering at the idiocy of this driver when a set of prongs set close together at the bottom of the truck shift up, pointing at my waist, making me yelp. The prongs shift again, pressing closer to me. Scraping, and pushing deeper. Plunging deep inside until I feel a painful, unnatural snap. Like something breaking.

I wail. What the hell is happening?

Then there's another _pop_ and I can't breathe.

My cries are garbled by the deep, dark red running down my lips from the truck skewering my midsection.

The last thing I see as the dull metal stake rips into me is the bald-headed driver with a scraggly beard.

I try to say his name, but haven't got breath.

# Part 6

#

#  I'm Like a Bird The World Is My Toilet

I'm dumbfounded staring at the smooth, unpeirced skin of my stomach.

It felt so real but there isn't a mark on me.

My Demron suit is scraped around the midsection and back but isn't punctured either. The truck gored me, didn't it? Was I dreaming? How else could I be skewered by a garbage truck in an alley and wake up in another plane?

Speaking of, I better get a look around.

Traffic on the road beside me is at a standstill.

I recognize the bustling roadway, of course. It's the same one I stood on when those DHS agents chased from my home world. This confuses me even more because not only should I be dead, but Abi-Two's town was a small community called Woodlake, which lies east of rinky-dink Ivanhoe, near the foot of the Sierras.

It makes no sense because most of the time I spent in that slow, ancient world, before I met the boy Abi-Two is convinced was a young Daemon, I was walking south. How did I end up northeast of where I started? And even better, how did I die and still make it back, alive in L.A.?

Is there some sort of tectonic shift differential—like the time differential—that Eli's unaware of? How else did I survive and wake up in another plane so far from where I should be? Either the stones have brought me here or I've lost all sense of direction. Or both.

Six lanes of traffic stretch for miles in what I want to call the North and South bound lanes. Drivers stare at computer screens in all shapes and sizes. A few have gone old school reading books or magazines, but everybody is occupying themselves during the traffic jam.

A little round face pops up in the window of an idling minivan a few car lengths ahead. I wave and he stares for a minute before shooting his sippee cup at the glass.

The fence behind me is the same chain link masked by tall, unkempt trees. Between the drooping branches, I spot the telltale indentions of name plates and headstones in the crisp grass.

It feels like a life time since I saw this road, walked its' pavement. It may well have been another life.

I don't remember any gateway opening. I don't think home even entered my mind. Maybe the truck backing into me triggered the stones protective instincts. I clutch the rubber pouch filled with three mysterious rocks and wonder if my instincts are correct—that I really am back in my own dimension—I feel like I am. All instincts tell me that I am.

My little peak beneath the zipper sends idling engines into an uproar that quiets the second my bag is closed again. It makes me smile.

I don't know or why, but I'm damn glad to be home.

On the other side of the fence, the cemetery grass is wet. The air is as clean as it ever gets in the fall.

I make my way towards the cannon. Carrie's marker is there, laden with fresh wild flowers. The familiar ache from that far away day in October brings my whispered apology. Not just for the accident, but for not appreciating her. I try to take comfort in knowing that even though I didn't save her, I saved someone like her. I pray that it means something.

Dad's right beside her and the sight of his simple headstone brings me to my knees.

I lay my palm on the white, marble rectangle that bears only his initials and the year he died. There's no photograph like my sisters headstone. No cherubs or poetry for the old man. Just a simple white marker so that anyone who bothers looking—mourners or stray teenagers with nothing better to do than hang out in a cemetery and get high—will know that someone is resting here.

I sit between them for a moment, leaning on Carrie's arched stone, and think, _I'll wait for the sickness to fade._ But it's not there.

I don't feel like puking. I'm not dizzy or chased by that fog that's always on my brain after a breach. In fact, I feel fine.

I wonder what it means and realize I'll never get any answers if I don't get to Eli.

The streets on the other side of the cemetery are exactly as they should be—alive and noisy, reeking of wonderful exhaust and profanity. Everyone is busy and no one wants to be bothered. The clouds lazily hanging overhead are that dull haze, a smear of blue coated in yellow smog.

And even though the swarms of people are comfortably ignoring me, I have to be careful. When I left there was a neon sign hanging over my head, pointing with a gigantic cartoony finger— _Look! A domestic terrorist!_

I wonder how long it's been since I left; if they're still running my picture on the nightly news, and take minute to dig out my baseball cap.

Eli's neighborhood is quiet. Hardly any cars on the road and not a single black SUV parked anywhere. Of the few compact cars that pass, the drivers are keeping their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel at ten and two, exactly like they're supposed to—stuffy, cultured people with popped collars and designer educations obeying all traffic laws.

Other than the fact that I'm at the top of America's Most Wanted list, I'm not sure why I feel so self-conscious. Abi-Two cleaned up my hair and beard so I don't stand out. Maybe it's because I don't like the looks of the people in the cars. They look like the kind of jerks I would've teased in high school—the type of assholes I've spent most of my adult life working for.

Eli should fit that category, but he doesn't. Our reunion might have revolved around the three rocks but beyond that necessary partnership, there's friendship. He's got this rocket ship high IQ, but he doesn't make me feel stupid. I do that on my own.

I've only been outside Eli's house three times, only one of those times took place in the day. Staring into passing yards, I recall the time I spent there. How I hated it, I felt like a prisoner, trying to prepare for something I was sure I'd never live through and grieving for my dad. Neither chore is finished yet, but worlds later, I've seen and done so many things, and now I'm heading up his street.

Every day since that first accident I've struggled with why. And there are millions—why me, why now, why here? Why do the Threestone exist? Why did Damon kill my father? Why did he try to kill me? Why does Abi-Two think I need to knock off every version of him?

Is that what it's going to take to stop him? And if it is, how do I find him again?

And what is so special about my alternate that he got Abi to marry _him_?

I have to pause on the last question.

I know the answer. It's because of how stupid I was and how bad I treated her. I asked her to marry me so I could have a place to stay. She said yes, and twelve hours later she'd figured me out. I spent the next night in my car, parked in front of her house, pretending like I didn't care.

_That's what it is right there_ , I think with sudden and perfect clarity. Her issues _are_ my problem. My problem has always been lying to her. Repeatedly. My intention was never to fool or trick her, though I did plenty of that towards the end. My motives were deeper; probably rooted in the dysfunctional estrangement from my mother. Lying was protection from the hurt that I knew Abi would ultimately inflict. Lying kept her at a distance.

She's the greatest thing that has ever happened to me and I'm an idiot. I always pushed her away and then regretted it later on. The more I wanted to be with her, the further she went. And then I blamed her.

I've had a lot of girlfriends. Actually, _girlfriend_ is a loose interpretation. Most were just girls I spent time with, ones that never really stuck. Abi is singular. There's something about the way she pushes her hair back from her face, how she smiles to herself when she doesn't know I'm looking. The way she tries to hide her habit of popping her knuckles. That silly grin whenever she has something to tell me. The way that she knows exactly what I need without having to ask.

I never give her enough credit. All she ever wanted from me was honesty. And for some reason, that is the one hurdle I could never clear. Because of it, she won't allow herself to trust me and I can't blame her. She's stuck by me through so much, has always been willing to help me, to help my dad. She burrowed her way inside and it's taken me going through all of this shit to realize how badly I screwed us up.

There hasn't been a car on the street in what feels like 10 minutes, then again, it seems the sun has moved from mid-sky to dusk in the time it's taken me to go five miles, so what the hell do I know about measuring time.

As I reflected my way through the neighborhood, I searched each window I came across. As well as I could, without raising suspicion. I mean, I don't want to look like a stalker or some sort of weirdo creeper. So, I had to look around without really looking like I was. But from what I could tell, everybody was busy or gone.

I stop at the edge of the white picket fence surrounding Eli's house. Climbing ivy on the trellis is overgrown. Yellow roses along the fence line look immaculate in full bloom. The grass is green, not as green as it could be, but it still looks nice. Excitement pushes me through the gate, over the grass, across the cobblestone path that divides the lawn, and onto the front porch.

#

# Maca-freaking-roni!

Before I knock on the front door, it opens. Filling the wide doorway is the scraggly, astonished physicist in residence. My good friend and partner in all things Threestone.

Elijah Thacker stands there gaping for a solid five seconds while I take in his appearance. He's changed, not too much, but enough for me to think twice. His dark brown, collar length hair has been trimmed much shorter. It's shaved on the sides. The top is longer and slicked back. His beard that he was keeping neatly trimmed when I left just a few months ago is now much longer. And his mustache—dear God, it's pointed and curled on the ends—like he's styling his facial hair.

His lips curve a little, but his suddenly white pallor makes the expression seem forced. He whispers my name. "G?" and then looks around the street before pulling me inside.

No sooner does the door close behind me than Eli has latched onto me, hugging me in an uncomfortable embrace. It's tight—too tight as his lanky arms actually lift me from the floor and the bellowing sound of his laughter fills the room. Tight enough to find the weird ponytail, bun-thingy hanging on the back of his head.

"It's really you! I can't believe it!"

"I haven't been gone long enough to allow this," I say and push away. I'm chuckling, too, of course. Not only because the man-bun he's rocking looks ridiculous, but because it feels like I've been gone a lifetime and it's really good to see him.

"I was wondering about you. Do you know how long you've been gone?"

"A few months, I guess." I'm shrugging pointing to his head. "Whoever told you that hipster hair looks good was lying." His beard is pretty cool, but the waxed-up western frontiersman mustache ruins it.

"It's been longer. Much longer." Eli's wearing a huge smile as he covers his chin with one hand and wipes it down the length of his beard, smoothing it.

"No way." I shake my head. "Six months tops."

All of a sudden I notice how different he seems. Not just the hair, but the posture. The girth he's gained around his stomach and the lines sprouting around his eyes. He's gotten older.

Eli sobers as he counts the time I was gone. "One thousand, two hundred and ninety-six days."

"How long is that?" I have to ask because even trying to do the math makes my brain feel numb.

"You've been gone for three and a half years, G."

It's weird, isn't it? The way a person can say the most unbelievable thing and yet there's no room to doubt their word because the weight of the message settles in your gut in a way that confirms it. That's how it is right now, hearing what Eli's saying. I don't like it. I don't want to hear it. It is impossible. But I know it's true.

I make myself at home on the tattered green couch in his living room, holding my head in my hands, as he goes on explaining what life was like after I disappeared into a blue funnel cloud in the middle of Sepulveda Boulevard.

"Those Homeland Security agents took me into custody. Said I wasn't under arrest so I didn't need a lawyer, but they wouldn't let me leave either." He pauses, sitting in the arm chair that matches the sofa. "It was a nightmare. They didn't let me sleep or make a phone call."

When he trails off, I look up to find him staring at me with a look I can only describe as sorrowful.

"They held me for almost two weeks, trying to force me to cooperate."

I nod my head, recalling how he mentioned something like that when I saw him in Ivanhoe.

"When I didn't, they went after my parents."

Hold on a second. "You didn't cooperate?"

Eli shakes his hipster head, smoothing the front of his button down shirt. "No. As a result, my Mom and Dad's store was audited. Suddenly my father, who worked for the IRS for thirty-five years, has no idea of some long-standing tax law? And they're in major debt to the IRS?"

"Unbelievable."

"Unjust." Eli elaborates. "The bastards shut'em down." He shakes his head, and I remind myself that Eli's parents owned a greeting card store somewhere in Tujunga.

"Of course, that meant no more income, no more private insurance either." His gaze is lost in the air between us, filled with sad disgust. "My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer less than a month later. My Dad was worried sick."

"I'm really sorry to hear—"

"I don't have any idea what you've been through, but I was followed for months after that. There was a car parked outside my house every day."

Eli's eyes come back to me. He looks angrier than I've ever seen him. "My mother is dead. My father is all alone. And here you are, in 2016."

"I saw you a few weeks ago in Ivanhoe," I argue, but he doesn't hear me. He just keeps dragging out whatever point he's trying to make, which seems contradictory when I think about it.

"I expected three months. Possibly six if there were complications. After a year I stopped waiting and started assuming the worst."

"You thought I was dead." I guess.

"Of course I did. The more time passed, the more sure I was." He sighs, seeming drained now of his former anger.

"But I saw you just a few weeks ago in Ivanhoe," I repeat and when Eli's expression takes on obvious puzzlement, I revise. "Didn't I?"

"No, you didn't." His spine goes ramrod straight. "What was our safety word?"

"Macaroni. You picked at random from the dictionary."

"Did you ask me for the safety word in Ivanhoe?" His tone slips up an octave with the question.

"Yes," I say, feeling uncomfortable. "I'm not an idiot."

Eli slowly nods his head, considering this information. Then tilts his head to one side before saying, "Perhaps we should have gone with a random pairing of words, more a verbal combination lock, if you will."

"Are you trying to tell me that the _you_ I spoke to in Ivanhoe wasn't actually you?" Just hearing myself ask the question makes me reconsider this interaction. "Oh my God, it wasn't you. I bet you aren't even you."

Jumping from the couch, I start for the door. "Your hair should have tipped me off. _My_ friend Elijah would be pestering about the samples I brought. He'd be drilling me for information."

As is say it, I remember that I gave my samples to that other version of Eli—the one who admitted to being a traitor and working with DHS. And then I also remember that I never opened a gateway to get here. I was skewered and just woke up here. One hand automatically checks my stomach as I consider the possibilities.

Here could still be there. Couldn't it? No, Abi-Two said it was 2018 there. This Eli said it's 2016. But I left a plane where it was 2012. Geez, how many versions of my father thought they were doing something original when they enlisted Eli to help?

Eli tries to stop me from heading out by throwing himself in front of the door frame, but I pass him without a hiccup. The door opens inward and he slides along.

"G, wait."

"This isn't my home," I say and reach for the pouch with the stones the second I hit the porch. Realizing there are people in the neighboring houses, I twist towards the driveway and follow it into the backyard.

"G, you can't do that here!" Eli hollers behind me.

I'm already in front of his garage and point at it. "I'll do it in the garage."

"Not in there, you'll burn the place down."

Ignoring him, I walk through the side door into his detached garage and find it's empty. Well, there's no car at least.

"No green Jetta." Another point of proof that I am not in the right plane.

"My wife drove it to the store."

I turn around, surprised. "You're married?"

"Don't sound so shocked."

"When?"

"June of twenty-fifteen. Last year."

The rubber pouch is in my hands. I swing the small bag by the corner, trying to taunt him. "What's wrong with her that she married you?"

"Nothing that I know of," Eli says, crossing his arms and standing feet parted. It's then I notice that he's wearing khaki colored jeans and flip flops. He's a full-on hipster douche. "She's going to be upset if she comes home with a trunk full of groceries and finds her house without electricity."

"Ooh," I laugh even though it doesn't feel funny. "Somebody is totally whipped."

Just as Eli squares his shoulders—I assume to launch his retort—the big garage door starts rolling up. On the other side, revealed slowly a few inches at a time, is Eli's same green Jetta. As the door rolls up, and the driver takes in the sight of us standing inside the parking space, she honks. Eli and me both back up, while the overhead light kicked on by the garage door reflects over the windshield, preventing me from making out the face of the Jetta's driver, Eli's mysterious wife.

The compact car rolls to a stop and the engine cuts out. The garage door rolls back down, shutting the three of us in. And the woman in the car has yet to emerge, until Eli steps over to the drivers' door and opens it.

Then the interior light switches on.

I see long, blond hair. Gorgeous almond eyes that I absolutely fall into. And those unforgettable pink lips as my girlfriend—my Abi?—steps out of the car.

I'm staring at her. Lost. Speechless. I've spent months missing her, thinking about her, and she's still angry with me.

She's glaring between me and Eli as he speaks quietly in her ear. She nods her head and closes the car door. I watch her walk in skin tight pants and a modest pink tank top to the opposite side of the car. Her flip flops match the pair that Eli the douche is wearing as he follows after her, still talking too low for me to hear.

I assume he's apologizing for my being here.

"Hey, Ab." I manage to say before she stalks out of the garage without acknowledging me. "You look good."

She stops in front of the door that leads to the backyard and speaks from over her shoulder. "Yeah... I'm glad you're not dead."

She disappears from the garage with Eli on her heels.

The second they're gone, I've got the stones out and I'm telling them, "Take me to my home, please, to the plane where I came from."

Nothing happens.

No flickering lights.

No sounds of electricity crackling.

No swirls of blue fog that catches everything on fire.

Not even a single colorful wheel locked inside a miraculous bubble.

All that happens is... nothing.

"Well?" I say to the stones and wait some more.

"Aw, geez." I throw the set back into their pouch and rub at the ache forming behind my eye. "What am I supposed to think?"

The last version of my dad that I came across said that the stones are absolutely loyal to the one that keeps them. If he's right, then I must be stuck here for a reason. But what is that reason? Is it because that gorgeous glaring blond that just passed by really is _my_ Abi or are the Threestone just being stubborn?

"Have it your way," I mumble, stuffing the pouch with the stones into my pants.

Just as I'm wondering what to do next, or how to handle this situation—because, let's face it, it's a mind job—Eli slinks back into the garage like a dog with his tail between his legs.

"I wanted to tell you..." he starts but trails off.

"But you just didn't know how to tell me you're screwing my girl. Right? I'm sure it didn't really seem to matter, though, because I was dead anyways. Right?"

He doesn't respond.

I keep going.

"I bet you told yourself I'd be happy for you, didn't you?"

Eli has yet to answer.

"So, should I be happy, Eli? Do you want me to be grateful that you were taking care of _my_ girlfriend?"

Eli shrugs, looking at me in a way that measures me. The thoughtfulness chaps my ass.

He is an asshole.

"Man, you are a piece of work. I'm out there risking my life and you're over here, what? Taking advantage of my girlfriend?"

"Ex-girlfriend," Eli says as if to correct me.

My fists clench.

"We may have been on and off sometimes, but Abi was never an _ex_ -girlfriend."

He goes quiet again, looking at his weird toes that are too skinny to be considered attractive.

"And where in the hell did you get those flip-flops?"

Eli's head jerks up. "Abi bought them for me."

That makes me laugh. "Geez, did she tell you to grow out your hair, too? Because that's just as ridiculous."

"We thought you were dead." Eli's hands slice through the air. "Okay? You were gone. Vanished. Do you know how shitty I felt? I sent you away, G. I was responsible."

"How did you two meet, anyway?"

"I took her the letter." He sighs. "As we agreed I would in the event that you didn't come back."

The letter? Oh, the letter I wrote in case I never saw her again.

"How long was I gone before you decided to put the moves on my fiancée?"

Eli scoffs. "You were never engaged."

The skin of my face washes with heat. Seething fury. "So, you took her the letter, and what? You two bonded over sorrows, did you?"

Eli brushes both hands down his beard to smooth it. "That's enough."

"Are you sure?" I ask, glaring. "Because I just got started."

"I refuse to play this game. I don't need to justify my feelings to you or explain my relationship with _my_ _wife_."

I step in close, invading in his space. "Aren't you worried you're giving yourself too much credit?"

"I knew you'd be upset." Eli shakes his head. "I promised her I wouldn't fight with you."

I nod and inch in just a bit closer to really get in his face, and speak softly. "You can't even imagine the shit I had to go through to get back here. Do you know I killed a man, with my bare hands? I was as close to him as I am to you."

I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I was just saying it to rile him, but I'm the one getting stirred up seeing Eli's eyes widen. "All I needed from him was a set of stones. You, Eli, were supposed to be my friend. I trusted you with everything, and you slept with my fiancée."

"Ex-girlfriend." He grinds the word out between clenched teeth.

One swing is all it will take. One and done. If it were anybody else, I wouldn't hesitate. But since I'm still not sure about which plane I'm on or why, I probably shouldn't burn the bridge until I'm sure I don't need it.

"It doesn't matter what she was. She was mine and you broke the code."

Then again, fire is fun to watch.

"If you hurt him, I swear on my life, I'll never speak to you again."

The moment my hand snaps back, I hear her voice.

Turning to face the topic of conversation standing in the doorway, my breath wants to catch at the way her eyes meet mine. She's just so beautiful.

She averts her eyes to Elijah and her face softens. "Food's ready." With that, she turns and walks back into the house.

Eli walks past me without the gloating look I expect. In fact, he seems very sad. "You're welcome to stay if you're hungry."

"I'm _welcome_ to stay?" I ask, mimicking his tone. "I better be, after all, the shit I've been through, you should be rolling out the damn-red carpet!" He ignores me and keeps on walking. I'm mocking an empty garage.

This is what I get for doing the right thing.

This can't be _my_ Abi.

I mean, sure she looks like mine, but . . .

"Eli, did you ever say the safety word?" I can't remember. I truly can't remember anything at all and have no idea if it's the inter-dimensional travel or just plain shock settling in.

"Yes, we did." He answers. "I asked you, remember?"

"Macaroni," I repeat with a sigh and try to pretend that the way Abi leans towards Eli when she talks to him isn't annoying.

But it really only takes a few sentences. She's telling him about something that happened in the grocery store parking lot when I toss my fork onto the plate that's still piled with the potato salad and chicken sandwich she made. The sound echoes loud in the small space.

They both look at me from across the small dining room table.

"Let's see some daylight between you two." I gesture at the miniscule gap between the two nauseating people.

Abi huffs and sets a hand on Eli's thigh. "It's been four years, G. Get over it."

I'm out of my seat, leaning over the table and pointing an accusing finger when her eyes meet mine. And my mind washes blank.

"I'll get over it when I'm damn well ready." It's a lame comeback, but it's all I've got.

Eli stands up. "Let's all calm down."

Abi tucks her hair behind her ears and rolls her eyes at the man she's supposedly in love with when he isn't looking and I want to crack a smile. Of course, Abi notices and stands up. Back to ignoring me, she addresses only Eli. "You've got a lot of work, so I'm going to go lie down and leave you to it."

As she turns away, her gaze skates over me. "No fighting." She orders and passes out of the small kitchen and into the back of the house.

We both watch her go.

"Did you see that? She couldn't take her eyes off me."

If the jab bothers Eli, he isn't showing it. Matter of fact, he dips his head to hide a smile. "She's right, you know. We have a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time."

That grabs my attention. I've been travelling for months. "Anxious to get me away from the misses?" I'm not stupid. I know why he doesn't want me to stick around.

"Actually, it's the other way around," Eli says, waving for me to follow him to the living room where we'll and have a little tete a tete like a couple of old ladies at high tea.

"Ouch."

Eli chooses the easy chair at the far end of the room so naturally, I choose the seat furthest from him.

He leans forward, wiping his palms on his pants. "That was harsh. I shouldn't have—"

"It's... whatever." I shrug, telling myself that this place probably isn't even my home so I shouldn't let it get to me.

"I know this is a lot to take in and it can't be easy."

"That's your sympathy talking." I give a cutting look. "All you've got is what you think this feels like. You don't _know_ jack-shit."

Eli concedes with more of a sway than a nod. His eyes remain averted as he says, "I need you to know that I never meant for things to work out this way. I really, truly believed and would have bet my life savings on your being gone forever."

Then he looks at me, his face totally open, letting me see that he's telling the gods-honest truth. "I'm sorry you're hurting, G."

A lump notches my throat and I'm so fucking angry at him, but then... what did I expect? I, of all people, know how easy it is to fall in love with Abi Winston. I've done it nearly every day since we met. But I can't say any of this to Eli. Because screw that, he's not getting off the hook that easy.

I cough to clear the phlegm from my throat and deflect. "No hurt feelings over here, Nancy."

Eli stands from his chair and walks out with that clicky-clacky sound that only flip-flops can make muttering about coming right back. I stare at my pile of stuff sitting in the corner waiting for me until he returns with a folded sheet and blanket.

"I'm exhausted." He says, offering up the bedding. "We'll have to talk shop tomorrow."

I nod to agree, but then blurt, "I never asked the stones to bring me here."

When Eli just stares at me, waiting for more information I begin explaining the odd method of travel—because I thought I was dying—but it took me from the plane with Abi Two, to here, where my possible girlfriend has inexplicably moved on with the only other person that knows about the stones.

And the stones... I start going in to all of the things I've learned about the Threestone, and then am carried away when learning it must have been another version of Eli that gave me their proper name because this Elijah swears it wasn't him that I spoke to on that hilltop shack in Ivanhoe.

And what the stones do in a storm, how they slowed the waterfall and my descent.

They can hold charges. One pair absorbs another pair.

And I can't forget about how I sometimes see these weird lines when the gateway is triggered because Abi-Two told me to mention it

And then of course, how I met Doyen and why I killed him.

"Does she know?" I'm in the middle of telling how I decided to attack a man when the thought occurs to me and I have to know. "Have you told Abi about the Threestone?"

Eli gives a slight nod that I find infuriating. "Of course." He says.

"Why would you do that? What the hell were you thinking? You've put her in danger, now, too, Eli."

"I _had_ to tell her."

"What if something happens to her because you couldn't keep your mouth shut? Are you prepared for that?" It's a crushing possibility. One I can't even begin to—

"We're getting off track, here.' He says. "So you came across two other versions of your father, one of me, and one of Abi. Then how does this Doyen fit into the equation? "

I nod, relenting to his logic. The topic is too dark.

I think I could handle just about anything. I mean, of all the things I've seen and gone through up to this point—even Abi and Eli hooking up—I think I'm handling the trauma pretty well if shoving it back into the furthest recesses of my mind counts as handling.

But even the smallest possibility that something could happen to Abi... that Daemon could find her.

Dammit, that's the very reason I let her go and he's pulled her right back into the fray!

"Three versions of Daemon," I say, pulling my mind back once more from that very dark place. "I met three completely different versions of Daemon." I begin explaining the different ages and ways we crossed paths, and then lead into the conversation and reasoning of Abi-Two and her espoused version of me.

Of course. The only way I end up with her is in another universe.

Ultimately leading into the problem du jour. "Is she right?" I ask and wait for him to answer, but he just sits there. Thinking.

"I don't mind getting my hands dirty. Hell, they're already filthy. But I really don't want to... hurt a kid."

Eli has been listening closely this entire time. He's nodded along and asked questions, even dug out a pen and paper to make notes, but right now, his face is awash with confusion.

"You've considered it?"

It's a simple question. Only three words, but they're overflowing with scorn and incredulity. They fill me with shame as I nod my head and explain.

"Well, the only evidence I have that this boy is a young version of Daemon is the logic of Abi-Two. And her logic seemed pretty sound. She matched the Tresunus symbol and the necklace to the boy I met in the woods in that slow plane. So yes, I have actually considered going back there and killing him before he grows up and kills me, and thousands of other people that may get in his way."

We've both been sitting down up to this point. Before I even finish my last sentence, Eli is jumping from his chair. "You can't do that."

"But he's _Daemon_."

"G . . ." He's quiet for a moment. Thinking again. "This boy you met, you say he's another version of the same man that killed your father."

"He is!"

"I believe you, it's just that—why would you think it's okay to even consider harming an innocent?"

"Because this so-called innocent will grow up to be a mass murderer."

Eli is shaking his head vigorously, speaking emphatically, and slicing one hand into the other palm. "General deterrence is one thing, but you cannot punish a person for something that they haven't done—for something they may never do. It's wrong!"

"I'm not doing anything at this point," I argue. "I'm asking you, Eli, because I have limited time and options when it comes to stopping Daemon."

"The lines you describe near the vortex concern me."

"Exactly, so this is something I have to consider, knowing who he is."

Eli scoffs and throws his hands into the air. "Who _he_ is? What about you, you hypocrite? Have you ever considered that your father bears some blame in all of this?"

This guy is pushing his luck. "You keep your mouth shut about my dad."

Eli's eyes widen. It's not until he takes few paces back that I realize I've jumped into his face. "All I'm saying is that if he took something from someone and that action caused this Nahuiollin, as your father called him, to lose his entire family—"

"What are you talking about?" I practically shout. I hate it when he speaks in riddles.

"I'm connecting the dots, G. You said Doyen was another version of Daemon, right?"

"Yes, him and the little native kid."

"And Doyen told you his story of how a stranger caused his entire family to be killed just before he showed you a set of stones." He pauses letting my mind soak in the information. "Doyen also said he was forced to watch them die and was left alive as punishment."

"Okay . . ." I say, drawing the word out.

"He then said the stranger returned and took him to the plane where you found him.

"Your father spoke about cyclical mistakes and ripples in ponds. He told me that he couldn't tell you anything because he feared you'd make the same mistakes he did."

"You are confusing the hell out of me. Just get to the damn point."

"The alternate Abi asked you about the young boy, right?"

"Yes," I say.

"Okay. So you've connected the boy to Doyen. Here's my theory: you've already repeated the one mistake that ensures this problem with Daemon won't end with you."

"What the hell makes you think that?" I'm genuinely offended. I haven't told anybody anything about these stones.

"Because you went after the one your father called Nahuiollin and that was the one person he specifically asked you to 'stay the hell away from.'"

"No, he didn't." I'm the one shaking my head now.

"He wrote it in his journal, G. The one I copied for you."

I'm still shaking my head. "I never got to read any of that. The pages got all discolored after my first crossing."

Eli is pulling at the rubber band in his hair. "Well, it's lost then. I made you that copy and then had to burn the rest." He says as his dark brown hair falls down to just below his shoulders like a stupid hipster.

"What do you mean, you _burned_ it?"

"I had to. To keep your secret, G. To protect you and the existence of the stones at all costs; it was one of the contingencies your father created, that if I felt any heat, I was to burn all traces of that paperwork and the equations." A pained look crosses his face. He scratches his scalp and then tucks the locks back up into another terrible man-bun as he talks.

"That day you left, I managed to drive away before they could arrest me. I drove straight to Ivanhoe with your father's box in my trunk and buried it there in the hill where we first found them."

He sighs. "It was a good thing I did, too, because I was taken in for question the moment I got back. They held me for two days an let me go. I came home to find my house had been ransacked."

"Bastards," I mutter and he agrees.

"It's a pity, too—because those equations could have really helped us." He shakes his head again and looks down. They were watching me for a several weeks. The first time I noticed there was no tail on me, I drove back out to those hills and barbecued everything.

"But the point I'm trying to make here is if you'd been able to read even the first entry, you would have learned a brief history of how the stones were first discovered, and then your father said you were to stay far away from Nahuiollin." He holds up a finger. "Wait here. I'm going to check on Abi."

"No, no, no. You need to stay here and finish your point." I insist.

Eli gives a heavy sigh and sits back down in the chair facing the sofa. Looking up at me, he suggests I sit as well. Once I do, he begins feeding the information I've given him back to me in a way that nauseates me.

I hate it when he's so clearly right.

"You've gone after Daemon, just like your father asked you to." He nods, folding his hands. "But I don't think that was the right move. You see, he let you watch what Daemon did to fuel you for the fight, but you were misdirected by that one, tiny mention of Daemons given name."

Nahuiollin, I have been waiting for you. Some of my father's last words spring to mind.

He mentioned him once, in that final, all-important and defining interaction. "If my father had never said the name, I never would have gone looking for him."

"You never would have been in danger of repeating his biggest mistake."

"What mistake? Hunting down the man that killed him? That's what he asked me to do. To find him and stop him."

"Yes, he did. And he was right to send you after Daemon. He's got to be stopped. But Nahuiollin, he's still just a kid."

"I watched that last DVD. I heard my father apologize to Nahuiollin." I say, and hear the voice of my father saying, "Sacrifice with purpose."

I'm not intending to say them out loud, but there they are. Haunting the very air I breathe are the same words my father used that day, though I still have no idea what he hoped to gain by laying down and dying at Daemon's hand. "What does it mean?"

"I think your father was trying to make up for what he did to his own version of Nahuiollin, without realizing that that little boy was long gone the moment he watched his family die for his mistakes."

This is something I can understand completely. It was just a few short months ago that I saw my own father's murder via video and I will never go back to who I was before that moment. I can't.

I saw something traumatizing, but as an adult with a fully formed brain. If the one my father called Nahuiollin had anything in common with Doyen, then he was a little know-nothing boy when he watched his family be slaughtered by people in his own tribe. Maybe people he'd known his whole life.

"What happens inside a kids mind after something like that?" Eli asks, but I think he's speaking more to himself than me.

"If I've already remade my father's biggest mistake, what's next? Do I leave that boy there all alone? Won't that be worse for him in the long run?"

Eli blinks. "Probably, but—not to sound too callous—but at least he will be there without access to stones and isn't that the very best place he could be?"

"Wait." I hold up a hand because what Elijah has just said reveals an entirely new path that my father might have chosen. "Are you saying that my father went back to check on the kid?"

"I believe he and many other versions of him did, yes. It's the human thing to do—to have compassion. It's also the only way for three different versions of the same man to end up in different planes. Also, one of the directives in your father's journal was, 'Always go back and check.' Another was, 'stay the hell away from Nahuiollin.'"

Damn, I should have read the journals when I had the chance. "So, let's say my dad went back, realized his mistake and tried to make it up to the kid who helped him find the stones."

Eli brushes his hand down his beard. "Doyen told you he was removed from his world by an alternate and then that man 'paid the price.'"

I sit back to think this over.

"So, you're saying that my father's interaction with that younger version of Daemon made him the way he is now?"

"In essence, yes. I mean, a person always chooses their path, but their choices are heavily influenced by the environment. Their social location and culture."

"Like, nature versus nurture?"

Eli is nodding. "I believe we influence our society just as much as it influences us."

"So... according to Daemon, my father was the villain?" I ask, tasting the words tainted with disbelief.

Eli is staring stone-faced as he answers. "I cannot say for certain, but it's highly probable."

#

#

#  And Then There Were Two

At what point does a person's mind just stop accepting new information?

For me, I think it first happened when I watched that last video of my dad. I'm pretty sure it happened again the second I saw Abi inside Eli's garage. During both of those incidents, my brain refused to assign cells for storage or analyzing anything.

It might've happened a third time when Eli and I heard a loud thud in the middle of the night. It was around two and we were still up, discussing the probable causes of my father's greatest regrets when we heard it. Of course, we both jumped to investigate.

I searched around the back of the house while Eli checked the bedroom and his office. When I found nothing and turned back to go inside, I passed by the bedroom window and heard the two of them talking.

Abi sounded upset. She'd dropped something from the shelf in her closet—that was the noise—and Eli was offering to help her pick it up. She refused, telling him it was her mess. I heard the strain in her tone and wondered what she was trying to hide, but I don't think Eli did because he walked out after that.

I hurried to the back door and let myself inside. Eli was already in the kitchen looking drained. After that, he and I agreed to call it a night. He was tired and I was tired of talking.

I had way too much thinking to do to even consider sleeping, though. I started wishing that Eli hadn't listened to my father and destroyed his journals the moment DHS seemed interested in him. I wished that I had done as my dad asked and read through every page.

At some point, I fell asleep thinking about Dad, but dreamt of Abi, in between dreams of little motherless children wandering through heavy traffic.

I woke up late, to the sound of Abi on the phone with one of her friends.

Since I'm not supposed to be seen or heard, for obvious reasons, and currently persona non grata with the lady of the house, I try and make myself scarce and go in search of Elijah.

But after checking every room and the empty garage, I determine that he's not home and so make myself comfortable at the kitchen table where Abi has a basket of clothes that she's folding as she studiously ignores me and yaps on speakerphone with her cousin Angie.

"That's the world we live in." Angie's irritating voice echoes through the kitchen. "We are a society of people that treat each other badly, and in turn, we learn to treat ourselves badly."

Abi's folding a pair of jeans with too much effort as she huffs. "Screw society and screw anybody who's ever treated me like I'm _less than_." With that, she cuts a look at me.

I smile and put my feet up on the table, knocking over one of her laundry piles.

Angie laughs. "Yeah, we deserve better than the status quo."

Abi huffs and glares at me. "I've got to go, Ang. There's a dog trying to shit on my lawn."

Angie gives a quick chuckle and a "Toodles." and then the line clicks.

Abi immediately grabs my sock feet and tosses them to the floor. "Screw you, too, G. We eat here."

I let my feet fall to the ground and take in her ruffled appearance, making sure to stay calm and keep myself from thinking about how beautiful she always looks in the morning. She's righteously pissed and completely adorable to boot.

"You know, I think it says a lot about our relationship that you can still get this upset with me."

"Ha! As if we have a relationship." She pulls at her hair and spins towards the kitchen. "Why are you still here, anyways?"

"I've run out of other people to annoy," I say, obviously joking, but then want to cringe because I don't have anyone else.

Shit, I don't even have Abi anymore.

She's standing in front of the fridge when she looks at me with a meld of rage and pity. "I suppose you're hungry."

I shake my head.

"Good luck with that." She huffs and walks out of the kitchen. A moment after she's out of sight a door slams in the back of the house.

The silence left behind gives me plenty of room to think about what just happened. Once I do start going through her phone conversation and the way she's looked at me from the moment I got here, it doesn't calm me down. It actually pisses me off.

I'm at her bedroom door without realizing I even entered the hallway.

She answers my knock, staring with a surprised look.

"You didn't think I'd come back for you?"

Her jaw slackens just enough for her bottom lip to quiver. She squares her shoulders and orders me to "Go away, G."

"I did," I say, leaning into the doorway, filling her room with my fury before I've even stepped inside. "And I didn't think about you once."

The moment I say it, Abi's eyes go glossy and I wish to take it back.

"That makes two of us."

She's always been right there with me, ready to trade insult for insult whenever I indulge that dark impulse. A cutting practice that always left us both in pieces.

"It'll be easier, this time, you know, since you're screwing my best friend."

She crosses her arms. "That's good because I live to make things easier for you."

That bite of sarcasm makes me smile.

"You're an asshole."

I nod, "No question. But I'm not leaving until you tell me where Eli went."

Abi offers the ghost of a smile and annunciates slowly. "You know that place where people go every day to perform tasks and get paid for their time? It's called work and Eli does it every day."

"Why are you being such a bitch to me? You've got Eli, now. He follows you around like a puppy."

Her cheeks wash bright red at the mention of his name. "He never calls me names or lies to me. He treats me better than you ever did."

"I'm sure he does. But then again, he doesn't know you like I do."

Abi's sharp intake of breath says I've hit a nerve. "Why are you here, G, huh? Tell me, why wait four years to come back here?"

"You know why!" I point. "I have no place else to go. This was supposed to be my safe place and you've fucking invaded it the way you always invade every part of my life."

"You are so full of shit! Do you know what I went through? Do you even care?" The tears in her eyes begin to fall and she wipes them away. "You left me on the side of the road!"

"I explained this to you. It was for your own good!"

"My own good was walking into a shit-storm?"

"Oh, poor Abi." The sarcasm in my tone is obvious. "Compared to what's happened to me that sounds like summer camp."

"This isn't about you, G. You don't get to tell me how you feel anymore because you walked away. This about me, because I need some damn closure."

And I swear as Abi stresses her need to end thing between us once and for all I know in that moment, without one iota of doubt that I have been wrong all along. That this plane I woke up in yesterday afternoon really is my home. That this is gorgeous, fractured woman before me is my Abi, whom I've longed to reunite with since we parted.

It's going to scar, I think, as I set my hands on my hips and make a big deal of looking patient. "Go on, then. Get your precious closure."

She takes a deep breath. "The only reason I didn't go to jail was because I had the foresight to call my Dads lawyer who made me wait for him to show up before I walked in the door.

"You never called, you never wrote, you vanished and left me all alone when I needed you!"

"Well I needed you too, Abi—needed you to be safe."

She starts to argue but I hold up a hand and keep talking. "You don't want explanations, I know. But seeing as you're still _so_ upset with me, maybe you need one."

Her consent is sitting on a padded bench at the end of her bed. She holds a throw pillow in her lap and stares at me with a look that says she'd rather boil my bunny.

"You're upset because I'm an asshole. I'm sorry for what I said, okay? I thought about you every day I was gone."

"I don't care."

I have to sigh at that. She's right. "I didn't hold up my end. I get it. But what you don't seem to get is that day I left you, I went straight to the nearest park to watch the disc my dad left for me."

"The one you got from Jeanine?"

"Yes, and do you know what was on there?"

She shakes her head.

"Elijah never told you?" I prod, because if she knows about the stones, why doesn't she know about this?

"No."

How do I explain?

I don't want to. I want to keep her in the dark, away from the light that the stones have placed upon me. To keep her hidden.

I'm just about to lie. To scrub the whole idea of telling her anything more, when I remember what Abi-Two said. That _my_ Abi is stronger than I think, and that I should give her more credit.

I want to be able to trust Abi with this. I do. But it's dangerous to know, to even be in close proximity to me.

" _Knowledge is the first line of defense."_ My dad's voice echoes in my head and I make up my mind.

"Suffice it to say the contents of that disc proved that my father didn't die in his sleep."

Her reaction is not as strong as I expect. She simply acknowledges with a stiff nod and a curt, "Eli said he was killed."

"Strangled. The disc was a recording of the whole thing." I elaborate, and she flinches.

"I thought he meant some kind of negligence by staff at the retirement home."

"Eli told you about the stones?"

"Yes." She squeezes the pillow tighter.

"The man that killed my dad was named Daemon."

At the mention of his name, Abi's complexion pales and I know she's heard of him.

"Daemon was looking for my dad because he knew he had the stones. When my dad refused to give them up, he killed him."

Abi is stunned for a minute, staring into space as she utters acknowledging words. "That makes sense; why you went after him."

Suddenly, her eyes are on me and the look in them is pure fire. "That's really terrible and all, but you didn't know any of this when you ditched me on the side of the road."

"No, I didn't, but I knew that I was in deep shit with no way out, and DHS was after me, Ab. I don't have the luxury of a family lawyer. But you have to believe me, when I left that day I thought I was coming back. It was always my plan to come back for you."

She huffs and the softness in her disappears with an eye-roll.

"You know those agents would've used you to get to me. I had to make them think I didn't care about you."

"Well, you did a bang-up job. You convinced them and me." At that, she stands up and tosses the pillow to her bed and disappears into her bathroom.

Yelling through the closed door, I hear, "Get out, G."

I'm not sure if she means leave just the room or the whole house entirely but beat a hasty retreat at the sound of a shower turning on.

I feel better. Unburdened like a weight has lifted off my back.

Maybe I should've been honest from the beginning. If I had, maybe things would have turned out different. Maybe she would be my helper instead of my Ex.

Surely she never would have ended up with Eli. He's not a bad guy. I know he's not. If I'm being completely honest, he's probably better for her than I ever could be.

It's just... she's _my_ Abi. She's not supposed to be his.

I think about these things while stirring my coffee.

Half way down my second cup, she's back in the kitchen, pulling out a chair on the other side of the table. Her long blond hair is pulled up in that messy knot that she makes look elegant without trying. Her face is free of makeup and she's wearing a baggy t-shirt and skinny jeans. She acknowledges me with the smallest smile and grabs my coffee cup to take a sip.

I watch her there, sitting, sipping and thinking for a long while. And for a small moment, I'm sure that Eli has it all wrong, that time travel really is possible because we've gone back to a place where we can sit together in relaxed silence, having our silent conversations. Her taking my coffee is like sign language. It's a symbol that means she forgives me, or she's trying to.

I set my hand over her wrist to grab her attention. When she looks at me, I look to my hand on her and leave it there for just a few more seconds. It's my way of saying thank you.

Then Abi rolls her eyes, like, 'whatever.' Like it's not a big deal, even though it is.

And when she gets up to put the mug in the sink, I follow her because, dammit, I have to. When she turns around, there's this surprised look on her face. Probably because I'm charging forward, lips first. They land, full force, exploding on impact.

Her arms enfold me, fingers pressing into me. She whispers my name and it's easy to hear the shock as she drags me from the kitchen.

The impassioned moment stretches as Abi continues to lead me through the living room. My hands wander from her pink lips to her jaw, her delicate neck. I trace the line of her collarbone with my fingertips, feeling that familiar tremble. The one that says she wants me. She keeps pulling, leading across the room. I hoped she was aiming for the couch, but we end up against the wall near the hallway.

She repeats my name with the longing whisper of a lover, dripping with urgency. My hands find her narrow waist to trace the line of her hips. When I look in her face, I don't see the soft gaze I expect. I mean, it's there, but veiled in some other emotion I can't make sense of.

Is she afraid? Have I misread the signals?

My hands find both answers on the plane that was her flat stomach. Only it's not flat anymore. It's bulky, feels like a firm paunch.

Abi, do you have something to tell me?

That's exactly what I should say, but the look in her face... it's growing into something familiar. I know the look—the guilt—I see it every time I look in the mirror.

A shadow stirs in my periphery.

My gaze goes left to find Eli's frozen in the mouth of the hall, his jaw hanging open. I step back and release Abi. She scurries away, passing Eli without looking at him, and shuts herself inside her room.

Eli gives me a big, brown-eyed look, rich with malcontent.

When I go to say something—I'm not sure what; either an apology or a victory lap—I'm cut short as Eli gives an exaggerated shake of his head and presses an extended finger over his lips.

That fact that he's ignoring what's just happened makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

"Hey, _Eugene_." He says and my brows furrow. "I wasn't expecting you to stop by so soon."

Eli gives a hand signal—drawing circles in the air with his index finger in a gesture that says, 'play along.'

"Yeah... I, uh, I mentioned it." I say, guessing that this is the right response. He nods again, cuing me to play along, so I add, "At the office."

"Oh, that's right." He says, raising both hands in confusion and looking back at Abi who's no longer hiding in her bedroom but standing stock-still, staring at her husband.

"Come on," Eli turns toward her, waving for me to follow, "the CD's on my desk."

His eyes dart to Abi. He tells her. "We're out of milk."

She gasps, tears filling her eyes.

It's a complete overreaction to an insignificant matter, but I'm sure she's reacting to the adultery, not the milk situation.

She reaches one hand around Eli's neck. When he doesn't respond to the attempted embrace, she asks the weirdest question. "Do I _need_ to pick it up right now or can it wait until morning?"

"Right now, please," Eli tells her and I hear a quiver in his voice.

Abi darts past me to the corner of the living room. She grabs my backpack and brings it to me. I take it and try to catch her at the same time. She shakes me off and walks away.

"She'll be fine." Eli mutters, watching her take up her purse.

Abi seems to collect herself when she sees how he's watching her. As if drawing strength from Eli's appraisal, she nods once more and then slips quietly out the door.

In my mind, I'm screaming apologies. I've completely screwed up what they have going here and as much as I don't like it, I can't be the reason they fall apart.

And what's up with all the hush-hush covert ops?

Then it hits me.

Homeland Security was looking for me when I left. Eli told me he wasn't working with them but does that mean they aren't watching him?

I strolled in like I owned the place.

I don't know how long I've been gone but my day count is sixty-seven. Most of them were marked in Ice World because the days were so short, but then I spent the most time in World Two, where it was 1996, and then the second most in that unsettled, semi-ancient plane where I met Nahuiollin.

But DHS... they found me right before I was supposed to leave this plane. I set off that first boom-pack to go to World Two after running from Eli's Jetta. Yeah, I punched him first, hoping to make it look like he wasn't cooperating, but he was my last known contact. And DHS doesn't mess around.

Eli walks into his office and plugs in a boom box in the far corner. He turns to me, announcing, "I thought I'd let you listen to a few tracks first, see if you like it enough to keep it."

I nod, but he rolls his hands at me again. _Play along!_

"Sure," I say with as much cheer as I can muster considering I've just destroyed his marriage and possibly his life. I sound pretty natural and add, "Turn it up."

The volume knob twists to the highest setting and Avenged Sevenfold is blaring through the house, stinging my unprepared ears, but I don't cover them. Partly because this is a good song, but mostly because Elijah's striding towards me.

He moves in and whispers, "I cannot believe you! I should hand you right over."

"It was my fault. I misread the signals."

His fist collides with my shoulder. It hurts, but I can't move away or I wouldn't be able to hear him say, "My _wife_ doesn't send signals to anyone but me."

"Sorry," I say again and then rub the Charlie horse from my arm and keep listening as the information comes flooding out.

"An agent showed up in my office today. I haven't seen hide or hair of DHS for over two years, and suddenly, the day after you come back, they come looking."

"It can't be coincidence," I say and we both back up to look at one another.

He motions to me that he wants to say something and I lend an ear.

"We're still being watched, it's the only reasonable conclusion. I don't know if they're listening, but I'm not taking chances."

"How long do I—"

He cuts me off.

"I have to tell you... I lied to you, G."

A pause, waiting while I try to interpret what's happening here as Eli goes on, confessing.

"When they arrested me, I cracked."

I'm the one punching his shoulder, now because I should have known.

"They threatened me and my family. My brother's research funding was yanked. My mom lost her practice. They were going to arrest my dad for something they said he did back in 1963. He's nearly seventy years-old, it would've killed him." His voice is tight and so, so calm as he explains that he had no choice but to betray me. "I had to give them what they wanted."

"What did they want?" I don't know why I'm asking when I already know the answer. That whole story about how he destroyed my dad's journals before they got them, it never really measured up with the Eli that I know.

"Your father's papers."

"I understand," I tell him, because I do. You have to do what needs to be done to protect the people you care about. Right?

But I'm not losing a wink of sleep over what happened with Abi.

"No, you don't." Eli disagrees.

He then steps back, walks over to his desk, and reaches underneath the collar of his shirt. There's a long silver chain around his neck. On the end hangs a key. He makes a show of it, holding it out for me to see before he unlocks the bottom drawer of his desk. When he walks back over, he's holding a locked metal box. The chain and attached key sit on top. "I kept this from them," he yells through the music. "To make things easy for you."

I set my backpack down and gesture that I, too, have some things to give, but he shakes his head, refusing.

Bastard.

I open my bag, toss the metal box inside, set the keyed necklace around my neck and tuck it in. Then, set my pack back on my shoulders.

That's when I see it—across the room, on a shelf overloaded with books and frames—there's a portrait. A woman standing alone in a frilly, pale dress. She's holding a bouquet of red and white roses.

I push past him and tear it from the shelf. It's so wrong. He's the one who lied to me and cut a deal with the enemy, he stole my girl and now he's the one who gets to keep her?

Eli's behind me, trying to take the frame back. I can't hear whatever bullshit he's trying to feed me and I'm glad. My clenched knuckles fly at his face but he swerves. I follow with a heavy hook that misses, too, but manage to get one knee into his stomach. I take a fistful of his button up shirt and scream into his ear.

"You told her what you wanted to, to get closer, didn't you?"

His gaping eyes amazingly widen. "You were supposed to come back. I waited a year without word! I took her the letter like we planned. She was heart-broken. She needed a friend."

The strength leaves me. "I never should've come to you."

He shakes his head, yelling, "We're wasting time. They could be here any second."

As if on cue, the room is suddenly, deathly dark.

And quiet.

"Run," Eli whispers over the shuffle of his feet as he feels his way across the room. "Run, G. Now."

The lone window in his office opens to the back yard. Eli's silhouette is stretched across, holding back the split curtains and I can't tell if he's facing me or the window because there's no daylight out there.

"What happened to the sun?" It can't be past two o'clock.

Eli's talking, still trying to tell me there's nothing left for me here and that I have to go and never look back.

My Abi—she's married to this geeky, wannabe-hipster, nerd-that-can't-tell-a-joke-to-save-his-life. I'm supposed to leave her here because that's what _he_ wants?

And like the thunder bolt that hit me on the steppe, I understand. "Where did you send her?"

"What?" Eli's shadow shifts.

"Why did you send Abi for milk?"

His shadowy head seems to shake like he's trying to concentrate. "To get her away."

"Away, where?"

"Just gone."

"Why? What's happening?"

Eli yells my name. "G! You're wasting time. They're out there and you are—" He halts and sniffs. "Do you smell smoke?"

I don't. Until he asks. "Oh, shit." The lack of sun makes sense now.

We're both at the door of his office, feeling the air around it, searching for the telling heat. It's too dark to see and I feel that heat coming from the walls, taste the choking smoke.

We crouch down and suddenly the dark room is alive with a dancing orange glow streaming from the open window. The hot door is forgotten.

"She's gone? For sure?" I ask. Eli nods and then I can focus.

We take to our knees and head for the window that's disappearing behind the building smoke.

I hear Eli coughing, tugging my leg, "My work. It's in the safe."

"It's gone." I reach back and pull him by his collar. "You're leaving first!" Idiot's life is in jeopardy and he's worried about math problems?

I push Eli out ahead of me. He hits his head on the garden wall that I didn't realize was so close and grunts. While I wait for him to make his way out, I grab my backpack. The stones are in there and they know how to put out a fire.

As I feel my way through the bag, I get to thinking how this whole scenario feels off. Since when does DHS burn people out? They're more likely to stage a hostage situation with megaphones and news cameras—to make sure the whole world knows they've caught their bad guy. Or better yet, wait for Eli to deliver me, before convicting me in the court of public opinion.

I tuck the pouch in my waist before standing to peek out the window. Flickering flames on both sides of the glass. So much smoke it looks like night outside.

Minutes ago there was nothing, now the blaze is spread across the perimeter of the yard. Through the building smoke, I'm able to make out patches of the line of shrubs under the window. I hear the crackle of burning wood, creaking as it shrivels in the heat.

After one more check that there's no one hiding in the shadows, I toss my bag to the ground and crawl out behind it.

The wind shifts, blinding me with choking black smoke. But I keep moving until I'm back on my feet and my pack is secured.

With a sleeve, I cover my nose and head towards the detached garage that I know I'll run into if I can get beyond the low garden wall and the invasive smoke.

Inside Eli's garage, one light over the utility sink is already turned on. The air is hot but mostly clear, with the exception of a gray layer hovering near the crossbeams.

The howl of fire trucks screams from every direction. Their red patterned lights splash over the cracks between the rolling door and outside. I shut the side door behind me and call out for Eli in the brief break between wails.

Right as I start to wonder if he came this way, I hear him answer. Barely. The sound is weak and I can't tell where it's coming from. I stop and listen, calling him again.

"Tools." I hear him say and turn to make my way to the front end of his car where there's a cluster of garden tools hanging on the wall. The moment I clear the front end I see Eli lying on the floor half covered by his compact car. His legs are the only visible part of him.

He's not stuck under the wheels, so I ask, "What the hell are you doing down there?" And then follow with, "If your car is here, how did Abi drive away?"

"Neighbor." Eli mutters and the word sounds labored. When I take a closer look I find that surrounding Eli's form are small puddles of red. The red is smeared over the white swooshes on the sides of his shoes. I follow, with my eyes, the trail of splatters, to where it starts—about six feet away at the side door I passed through.

"Help me up." His voice is shaking.

Trying to pull from a standing position is useless so I get down on my knees and yank on his legs until I see his belt. It's like he isn't putting forth any effort at all, so I use his belt like a handle to pull him the rest of the way out.

Once his head clears the front bumper, I see a teardrop-shaped piece of splintered wood glued to the back of his shirt, right between the shoulder blades. He cries out when I touch it and turn him onto his side.

I've seen too much. I don't need to see my friend with a hole in his chest. Eli's wet, red hands cover the wound. His skin's whiter than his shirt was five minutes ago, and taking on a shade of sickly green.

"Tell me what to do."

His lips move. I lean in closer to hear the faint whisper, but it's too low.

"What?" I say and when he doesn't reply I turn to look at him.

Holding Eli's hands over his chest, I feel like puking and running. "Who did this?"

This isn't the first time I've watched a person die, it's not even the first time I looked them in the eye as it happened. I pray it's the last time I have to see that light drift out.

Getting to my feet feels wrong. Leaving him here feels wrong. Still, I look down at my friend and say my goodbyes, garbled with every apology I can think of and promises that I will make sure Abi is okay.

On my way out, three quarters of the way up the door—about chest height—a small teardrop-shaped hole in the wood of the door. As if I need the assurance, I slip the bloody puzzle piece that's still in my hand back into place, knowing that whoever shot Eli was outside when they fired, and for some reason didn't shoot until he entered the garage. My eyes drift back to the light over the utility sink and then the shape of my shadow on the door.

Setting fires reeks of Daemon.

I snap off the light over the sink and stand on the hood of Eli's car to unscrew the light inside the garage door opener, and then hit the button to lift the large garage door and wipe my prints off the button, the hood of the car, and door. Then exit the side, staying low and moving quickly. I need the paramedics to find Eli but I can't be here when they do.

I have to find her and tell her about Eli.

The driveway and entire block out front, to the left and right, are covered with fire, ambulance, and police units. Sirens wail from their parked cars as I pass through the smoke in the back yard. I hear firefighters inside the house, breaking things and shouting.

Climbing the back gate, I land in the alley and break into a run.

It isn't long before I'm out of the smoke and under a nearby tree where the afternoon sun betrays my red hands and jeans.

I've got to find a place a change.

#

# My Dearest Abigail

Can someone please explain to me what the hell just happened?

It seems I'm asking myself this question too often these days and it's not getting any easier to answer.

At first, I wanted to believe that I wasn't in my home world. Even when Eli said 'macaroni,' the safety-word that was supposed to identify him as the one among a potential many, I'd already heard it from another version of him and the phrase was instantly devalued.

It was Abi that convinced me I was in the right place. The truth was in her small smiles and the way she wore her hair but mostly embedded in the way she seemed to loathe me.

Now, standing inside this grimy gas station bathroom trying to scrub the blood from my clothes, I want to think that what's happened to Eli wasn't my fault. But that isn't true either. He was in this mess because I asked him to help and now he's dead because he said 'yes.'

I don't know when or where I changed. I just did. Maybe my mind is on overload. I've seen too much. Done too much. How is a person supposed to cope, to go through life day to day, breathing, being, and knowing how they've damaged so many people? Innumerable people.

Take Abi for instance. I traveled for sixty-seven days. We were together for over five hundred. And in that time we probably had about two-hundred fights. Most of them were my fault, admittedly, but still. All it took for her to go off with someone else was sixty-seven days.

Sixty-seven days pass. I come back and she's with someone else for nearly three years? Married? But not married to just anyone, no, because that would be too simple. No, my Abi is with the one person I counted as friend.

But in the end, he wasn't even that, was he? He was just another person looking out for number one and he was afraid to die. In my mind, I see the panic in Eli's last gaze and a shiver runs through me.

And back to Abi. What am I going to do about Abi?

I can't get her out of my system any more than I can wash the blood from my jeans.

I understand that for her, our time apart was much longer. I imagine her sixty-seven days—or three years—ago, sitting there in her duplex apartment, watching it be picked apart by those vultures from DHS after I left her on the side of the road.

She waited.

And I never called.

One year later, a geeky, little nerdy Physicist came to her door with a letter. My heart in a letter, my final goodbye. It's not like I expected her to spend her life pining but, I never expected she'd move on with the guy who brought her the letter.

So, I was gone for nearly four years and she was lonely. Still, doesn't explain Eli.

And now he's gone. They're both gone.

I'm not sure when I accepted them as a couple, but somewhere between kissing her again and finding Eli dying on the floor of his garage, I must have. Because all I can think about right now is making sure that Abi is safe.

When I leave the gas station bathroom dressed in the only set of clothes I have because the others were inside the dryer, I have to hold my bag in front of me to keep most of the blood from being seen by the other pedestrians.

I'm six blocks or so away, on the other side of the freeway and can still hear sirens. It makes me want to open a wormhole, but I don't want to do that if I can avoid it. I don't want to leave her alone again. I just have to figure out how to face her, and not just in the metaphorical, better-sack-up sense, but in the most realistic way.

I know exactly where Abi would go when she's out of options. She'd go home, to her mother's house. But before I head over, there are a few problems to consider. First, I can't risk leading Daemon to her. Second, I am supposed to be dead. And third, Abi's mother always hated me. So I can only approach her if she's alone. There will be plenty of time for planning during the long walk to her mother's house.

It's been seven days, here in my home world. It's been longer for me because I went to World Two.

I found Abi at her mom's place, but couldn't get anywhere near her. There were always at least three people in the house, and as far as I could tell, she was never alone for any length of time.

After watching for several hours, one of the paid security guards on her parent's property spotted me and I had to run.

I kept going until well after nightfall until I found myself outside LA. Then, without even a second thought, I knew what I had to do and where I wanted to go.

My feet were covered in blisters, but I walked a little further and found an isolated place to cross. A rest area near I-5. When I arrived on the other side, I found the nearest pawn shop and sold one of the gold bracelets I got off the dead Native.

It got me enough cash to stay for eleven days at the Holiday Inn. I booked a room by the pool, where the crowded spring breakers kept the parties going most of the night. There was enough noise so I didn't have to think.

I had to get some distance from what happened. I had to.

But I couldn't stay away, not when there's so much left to say. So this morning, when I got up, I picked apart a blueberry muffin with my coffee and decided today was the day. I walked over to the World Two police station and used the Threestone to suck up all the energy on the grid to open a gateway.

I've come back to see her, to find out how she's doing.

From outside, the giant white and brick three-story, colonial looks empty. California Palms line the horse shoe driveway set between sections of neatly trimmed grass and squared hedges.

In all the time I've known Abi, I've only been inside her parents' house twice. Only once was I permitted upstairs.

It's a huge risk. But I need to see her, so I have to do this.

The window I plan on climbing through is the second from the left on the second floor. This point of entry should get me closest to, if not inside, her childhood bedroom. Trouble is I can't remember exactly which window it is.

I know Abi's still here. Not only because this secluded compound is where Eli sent her, but because this place has always been her retreat—the place she goes to relax and recharge. It's the place she used to come to whenever we had a big fight. Each time we broke up, I'd come here to find her and apologize.

I'm sure what happened has broken her. And if she wanted me to track her down, she'd be here.

It's been tough, thinking about Eli.

Elijah Thacker. The guy who used to tell me silly things like, 'in all your _getting_ , get understanding.' The guy who couldn't remember if he locked the car when he left the driveway could reach into the furthest cosmos and pluck knowledge like low hanging fruit. I barely reconnected with him. Nothing went the way it was supposed to, and now... he's gone. He lied to me. Betrayed my father's legacy, and horned in on my relationship with the one girl that mattered and then he died.

It's all wrong. Everything has gone wrong. I don't pretend to possess a mental capacity anywhere near Eli's, but it seems to me that the Universe owes me something.

The vast, powerful heavens, with all the checks and balances—the unyielding sun that gives us daylight and the moon with its' reflections each night. The planets largest bodies of water, the very ones that make life on earth possible are kept in check by that same moon.

Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall—each taking place in their appointed time in an endless, repeating cycle.

Now, everyone I care about is either gone or dead.

Yeah, Universe owes me big time. I'm hoping it will repay me with the grace to get Abi back.

After watching the house for nearly an hour, trying to determine how many people are in and around the two-acre compound, I strike gold.

An older woman in a wide brimmed hat emerges from the front door, and is escorted to the carport where she's chauffeured away in a stretched, pearl white Benz. The Winston's are as Old Money as it gets in LA. It's _Spelling_ money with _Marshall_ respect, courtesy Big Tobacco, though not one of them smokes.

Abi's mother has just left the building.

I wait another ten minutes in case they've forgotten something or are just making a quick trip. When the road leading up the house stays quiet, I sneak through the hedges that line the road leading to the driveway.

Most homes in this area have security gates out front. This one does, too, but... apparently, they never change the passcode, because when I punch it into digital panel, no alarms blare and the gate swings open.

Moving as fast as I can, I creep across the open lawn to a side door near the carports and spot a mounted security camera pointing its eye at the entry.

"Shit," I mumble, making my way to the back area where I plan to climb up to the second story. But that plan goes to shit when I see that they've remodeled—actually, removed the posts and balcony that used to wrap around the second floor.

Every point of entry is either locked or has an obvious camera.

I've got to go through the front if I'm to see her and considering I've been openly creeping around out here and have yet to be arrested, I take that as a sign that it's safe to knock.

The doorbell chimes in a short melody. It's one of the odd things about this house. Abi's mother thinks having an old-fashioned doorbell gives the place character. A small distinction known only to those allowed on the threshold of the prestigious Winston family.

A very old woman with white hair and olive skin answers the door. She's wearing a pastel track suit and a belt with a half dozen pouches—a cell phone, pepper spray, and several round housings for retractable leashes in assorted colors peek out from the tops. One hand holds the backside of the door and the other hangs onto a small, long-haired pooch.

Her eyes bulge and I take a step back, having no idea what to say.

"Mrs. Thacker has been expecting you."

The sound of Abi's married name pushes me another step back.

The over-sized door swings wide. The little dog in her arms shifts and growls. The woman shushes him with a short hiss and sets him on the floor. He scampers off in one direction as I'm led through the foyer, into the parlor, and told to wait.

The furnishings are deep red and gold, accented with dark, polished wood. Tiffany lamps on ornate tables surround a plush sofa. I find my seat, an out of place chesterfield lining the opposite wall. It offers the best view of the door. Swatches and fabric samples cover the center table.

All these months, I've missed her. I'd planned a whole speech, but giving any part of it here would be wrong. Still, right now, I can't think of anything else but those carefully mapped words.

I feel a tightening in my chest and shove my fists into my eyes. It's like a recurring nightmare. If only the shock could wake me.

"I broke up with you the day before you went missing."

Uncovering my eyes, I find Abi standing between me and the swatch covered coffee table. So close and, by the set of her mouth, I can tell she remains utterly inaccessible.

"I remember." The sparkle in her eyes is gone. Completely. Looking into her dull blue orbs, it's like looking into deep space. There's beauty, but none of it is for me.

She crosses her arms. "Best thing I ever did."

"Probably," I don't want to see her contempt. Feeling it is enough. "But you did take me back."

"I felt sorry for you. There's a difference." She says, stepping back to sit on one of the chairs.

I want to disagree because that's just not true. Then, considering everything she's going through, I'll give her that one.

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this." She mumbles. "I wasn't supposed to end up alone."

"You aren't alone."

She doesn't respond but keeps going. "We had plans. We were going buy a bigger place. We put it off, though. That was a mistake."

I draw a deep breath and lock my eyes on her, sitting there in her skinny jeans and loose t-shirt. Her eyes are glossy with unshed tears, her mouth drawn down into a frown.

"Ab, I-"

She bolts up from the chair to thrust a finger in my face. "Don't you dare apologize!" One angry swipe across my cheek solidifies her sentiment. As if there could be any doubt. "I'm a widow because of you! There aren't enough _sorry's_ in the world to make up for what you took!"

The fact that she's justified and completely right about all of this escapes me. The best I can do is fall into old habits.

"I tried Abi. It was too late when I found him. I didn't see anybody in the area and I came here as soon as I could. I wanted to protect you from all of this."

"You should have stayed gone. You never should have come back!"

The sound of paper crinkling draws my eyes from my feet.

Abi's got a folded paper in her hand. An envelope that she rips in half and in half again. And again.

I recognize the scrawl on the outside. "Is that my letter for you?" It sure as hell looks like the goodbye letter I left; the one Eli delivered—the paper traitor that sparked the beginning of their relationship.

"I want you to know that I _never_ read it." When I look from the bits of paper on the floor to her, her smooth features are twisted in rage. "I bet you want to know why."

"I poured my heart into that letter. You really never read it?" She can't have kept it all this time and not opened it.

"You know, G, you're really good at starting things," Abi says and offers a cruel smile. "It's finishing that you've always had trouble with. Or so I thought." She wipes her eyes, strolling casually around the room, stepping on the bits of fallen paper. "Do you happen to remember the opening line of your letter?"

"I, uh...something like, ' _if you're reading this_ —"

"No, no," She wags a finger at me. "That was the _second_ line. I want the very first one." She starts circling me again and I cannot understand what's happening.

I must look as confused as I feel because she goes on. "It was, ' _My dearest Abigail_."

She stops and stares at me and I swear I feel her frigid gaze slicing into my flesh. "Do you remember when you first asked me out?"

"At work."

She nods. "What line did you use on me?"

I don't get where this is going, but there's no way she can fault me for my creative pick-up line. "I said that I really liked your ass." I want to smile at the memory of her standing in her work uniform beside the crane machine that was filled with stuffed characters from one of those Shrek movies. Abi was holding the talking donkey she'd just won.

"And then you asked me out." She adds.

"You said 'yes.' I must've done something right."

"We talked all through our first date. Do you remember?"

"Of course," I say. "I took you to Knott's Berry Farm."

"What was I wearing?"

"Blue jeans, yellow Chuck Taylors, and a green Sound Garden t-shirt."

Her chin trembles. "When is my birthday?"

"May 20th."

"Where was I born?"

I have to think about it. Did we ever talk about that?

"Abi, what are you trying to prove with all of this?"

"The first night we talked, after you asked me out, I made fun of your name. Remember?"

I try and recall. Some vague memory of her mock-asking if my life was anything like the Jerry Springer talk show pops up. "Sort of."

"Well, I felt bad after. I could tell that I hit a nerve, so I told you how I had no right to tease because I was named for the city I was born in."

She's been standing in front of through these last few rounds of questions. Now, she begins to circle again. "Which brings us back to your shitty letter."

Okay, now I'm pissed. "Do you know how long that took to write? How scared I was that you'd actually _have_ to read it?"

She's behind me. "Maybe you should have addressed it to the right person."

I whip around to face her.

She crosses her arms. "That first night when I explained about my name, you were too busy staring at my boobs to remember that I preferred Abi over my full name, _Abilene_. As in, a city in Texas. _Not_ _Abigail_."

Not Abigail? My first immediate reaction is to question the universe I'm in. But then I have no doubt that I'm in the right place this time. I asked to come here. And then my mind races over those far away memories of our early days while she makes silent circles around the parlor room, letting me absorb this massive oversight—another major error that I was never aware I made.

In typical Abi fashion, when I mention that she could have corrected me at any point, she gets more angry.

"You told me one time while I was distracted and never brought it up again. All your mail was addressed to Abi. A-B-I. How was I supposed to know? Should I have gone through your wallet?"

The last trip around, she stops in front of me, stares directly into my face, dead eyes glossy. "I wish I never met you."

She aims to hurt me and hits the bulls-eye. "I've heard that before."

"Breaking up with you was the smartest move I ever made."

"What else is new?" I challenge, pounding my chest, inviting the next round.

She shoots again, with bigger ammunition aiming right for my heart. "I hate you."

I stagger back, stunned to see how much she means it. "Abi..."

"Say that name one more time, and I'll call Homeland Security myself."

When is it going to stop hurting? Not today obviously because Abi wants to make this occasion as painful for me as it is for her. It's God-awful knowing I've pushed her so far. Still, there's this part of me that can't believe she'd be so harsh.

I step in, reacting to the pain. "Call _yourself_? What, is the maid off duty?"

She swoops in, taking another swing at me. I aim to block her, but don't move in time. Her fist collides with my ear. I go low, take her by the elbow and twist her around. She tries to get away, but I wrap both my arms around her, hugging her arms to her sides and her back to my chest. I've got her upper body locked in a vise.

"Calm down."

She stomps my foot in response. "Shut up."

I groan and Abi shifts forward. I can tell she's trying to kick me in the balls.

"Don't," I warn.

"I'm not listening to you anymore!" She screams, tossing her head back to butt me across the nose. The first and last thing I notice is her hair radiates the strong scent of apples. After she makes a landing, I can't smell a thing.

Gripping her tighter, ignoring the pain of what feels like two broken toes and a gushing nose, I force myself to focus solely on her. Her frame is rigid. I move closer, keep my knees together, and tilt my head away from hers, trying to cover all the bases, though my nose is dripping. With my mouth dangerously close to her ear, I confess.

"I came to apologize and give my condolences, but I won't if you don't want me to."

She bends away, arching her shoulders. Through her pain, I can just make out her sentiment. "I... hate you."

"I know."

She bursts into tears, sagging into me.

"No matter how much you may hate me, you should know that I was with him, and his thoughts were with you."

She wails and it breaks me, but I think she deserves to know. "You were the best thing that ever happened to m— to Eli. He wanted you to know that he loves you."

Incredibly, the volume of her sorrow increases.

My throat strangles shut. After two deep breaths, it's working well enough to offer the selfish truth. "You're the only girl I ever loved and ... Eli was my only friend."

She wails, jerking her arms to loosen my grasp. I let her go. Abi tosses herself onto the nearest surface—the coffee table. She looks so small, so helpless.

I stand and wait. For what, I don't know.

Her face is buried in her hands until she peeks through her fingers and sees me. In a single moment, she evolves from awash-with-tears to raging-hell-fire. She's back on her feet, cursing like I've never heard before, throwing her hands up into the air. She wheels around and kicks the coffee table over, then lambastes me with a shot to my shoulder and another to my face. I keep standing there, letting her scream at me. She needs this, and God knows I deserve it.

But when she goes to smack me a third time I grab her wrist.

She keeps repeating herself. "I hate you, G." "Everything is your fault!" "Leave me alone." "You ruined my life!"

"My baby will grow up without a Daddy."

It's the last one that really does me in because I remember feeling the small swell of her stomach when we kissed.

Then, everything happened so fast, the moment was forgotten.

Now I know... this really is over.

Not just because she hates me, but also because I think a part of Abi has always hated me, and part of me was always drawn by that. Even though that more about my fucked-up head than it does her, I have to be honest. The exclamation point marking the end of our relationship is placed right after that fact that Abi is having Eli's baby.

Abi is folded over, holding herself and bawling. I've never seen her in so much pain.

She loved Eli enough to have his baby—something I can't say she ever would have done for me.

As I turn to respect her wishes and leave, she says my name and I freeze.

#

# It's Not Alright

Pain and anger go hand in hand with me. They always have. When something pains me, I get angry.

Right now I'm fucking furious.

She described a bearded man in a trench coat. "He was bald... with dark tattoos on his head. I saw him jogging in the bike lane just around the corner from the house."

She thinks she saw Daemon. She thought she should tell me now since she never plans on seeing me again.

It confirms what I suspected.

And after everything that's happened to her, to me, my father, and now Eli... I' find myself in that too familiar place where I have no choice. There is but one path and I have to do what needs to be done.

My Dad used to say that the hard choice is usually the right one. Well, I don't think there is anything easy about what has to happen next.

I have made the hard choice. All I have to do now is carry it out.

But first, I'll need some supplies.

I walked down the busy street that ran along the edge of the orange grove and remembered very clearly the confusion and sense of haste I felt last time I was in this plane as I was dragged by a dog that thought he knew me.

World Ten, I remind myself as I wait for a break in traffic to cross the road.

There's no sign of the big brown dog that met me last time—Bear, his name was Bear—but I find the stucco house with the big trees lining the front yard without any trouble.

And knock.

The second Abi-Two opens her front door; the constant ache in my chest lessens. Because I can tell right away that she knows I'm not her long-gone, probably-dead husband and there's nary a trace of disappointment to be found when she makes the connection. She still smiles widely, hugs me tight, and invites me inside.

All I have to say is, "I need your help," and in under a minute, I've got an icy glass of fresh lemonade and her undivided attention.

The only way I know to begin is at the beginning, and start with when she dropped me off me at the gas station. She's shocked at how I arrived in my home plane, uninjured. She's never heard anything from her G that indicated the stones have healing abilities but the prospect excites her. She thinks I probably didn't die, but called out to the Threestone for help before I passed out—which seems likely.

She's also confounded as to how any version of Daemon got so close to her without at least hearing about it through Eli. "I'll have to call him." She mutters, pressing two fingertips to her bottom lip in deep thought. She looks up to find me watching her and pauses.

"Are you sure the version of Daemon driving the garbage truck was the same one that killed your father?"

"I don't know." Who the hell could take the time to examine him close enough when they're being skewered?

Moving on with my tale, Abi becomes fascinated when I get the part about what was happening in my home plane, about how long I'd been gone. When I tell her about my Abi and Eli she visibly shudders.

"You must've done a number on her."

"I did," I admit.

"Still." She shakes that gorgeous head of hers. "It was wrong. I don't understand how that Eli could go from mad scientist to home wrecker. The Eli that I know would never do that. You didn't deserve it, either."

I almost smile at the way she automatically defends me. Even if she's wrong, it's nice to feel supported.

She cringes visibly when I tell how Eli vehemently disapproved of her reasoning to kill all versions of Daemon, but seems much more interested when I get to the part of what happened in Eli's office.

"What's on it?" She asks, as I remove the flash drive from the middle of the roll that is my Demron suit, where I stashed it.

"I don't know."

Her pencil thin brows draw up. "You haven't looked?"

"I don't have a computer anymore." I don't have anything anymore. The sentiment is punctuated by the sight of Abi-Two freeing her long—but still shorter than the original versions—hair and tousling in a way that begs, 'eat your heart out.'

Unaware of my stray thoughts, she snatches the flash drive from the table, promising we'll plug it into her computer and see what we find, but urges me to first finish telling her why I've come.

"He's dead," I announce.

Abi-Two stills. "Who?"

"Elijah... he was shot."

Abi gasps and covers her mouth. "What happened?"

My teeth audibly grind out the name. "Daemon." That constant thorn in my side, the bane of my existence since our paths crossed that day on the city bus.

Of course, I have to explain everything; every explicit, painful detail, right down the nonsensical fitting of the wooden chip back into the garage door. And my subsequent visit turned confrontation with my Abi.

When I finally finish, she's shaking her head, a pained look on her face. "You have the worst luck of anyone I know."

"Getting screwed left and right," I confirm.

After a moment of silence, Abi begins to speak slowly. "So, Daemon sets his house on fire... and then waits for you to come outside?"

"That's my guess."

"You didn't see anybody?"

"Not a soul. The smoke was too thick. There could have been a dozen people standing a yard away and I wouldn't have known."

"Hmm... Maybe that's why."

"Why what?"

"Why was Eli the one who was shot and not you?"

"He already shot me. I didn't die. I figured he was just being Daemon. I've seen him purposely target innocent bystanders just to see my reaction."

"I've never heard of him purposely harming anyone, besides other Bearers. No one else is a threat to him so it doesn't make sense."

"Abi, he's a lunatic. He doesn't need a reason to hurt anyone; it's what he does."

"Yes, I know. But it doesn't jive with what I know of the other versions of Daemon. He's creepy and dangerous for sure but I saw him once inside a feed store a few miles from here. He looked me square in the eye and I could tell he knew who I was, but he kept walking. I told G about it. He would've told me if I were in danger."

"What do you think it means?"

"I'm not sure it means anything. Or it could mean that your particular nemesis is just worse than the others. But, it also could mean that if someone could see well enough through all that smoke to get off one clean shot, then he knew who he was shooting."

"What do you mean by 'someone'?"

"Someone other than Daemon."

I'm freaking confused. "There is no other threat besides Daemon and his unchecked use of the Threestone. He is the reason that your husband is gone. The reason my dad is dead."

"I know that." She agrees, and I check my tone.

"He is the only problem in this equation and the very reason I've come back here. I'm taking your advice and going after him. In every age and plane, But to do that, I need all the help I can get. So, have any ideas?"

Abi's hard expression softens. Her lip gives the slightest curl as she answers. "Tons."

#

# Killing With Kindness

The gateway opens with that big, fiery flourish while Abi-Two watches. I thank her with an unplanned peck on the cheek after she hugs me tight and yells, "Be careful," over the roaring wind. Right before I let myself be taken into the glorious wheel of colors inside the cyclonic vortex, I catch her wiping her eyes and yell my promise to return.

"We need to know what's on that flash drive, ASAP." We plugged it into her computer, but couldn't read anything. So, either the files weren't compatible, were destroyed when I crossed over, or were all encoded for safety reasons. In any case, Abi-Two is taking it to Elijah, who I've decided to just call Number Two, to see if he can figure anything out.

With a wave, she disappears into unnamed colors.

On the other side, there is no more citrus orchard. No more noise of tractors or cars. No more rumble of crop dusting airplanes. It's eerily quiet.

The forest is even greener than I remember—purest, brightest green hovering as a canopy over the rich brown and gold of the ancient forest floor I now find myself in.

I'm getting a good look at the dirt as I hold my stomach, bending into the retching that feels like my stomach is trying to turn itself inside-out.

I don't want to puke.

My body needs to keep everything it's got inside, in case I don't get the chance to hunt for food, or if my travels take me away from the river.

My stomach settles and I hear the strangest sound. Like a low E in click form, the noise is deep and short. When my eyes follow the noise to the source, I freeze.

A black panther. It's huge. Maybe fifteen feet away and to my left. Just beneath the two glassy eyes that watch me with great curiosity, I see a mangle of pink and white flesh caught in its' mouth. The great jungle cat is hunching over its' latest kill, which looks like it used to be some kind of deer.

I'm frozen. My knees planted on the ground as I stare back at the gigantic feline as he surveys me and slowly chews. That low popping sound emanating from his jowls.

"Nice kitty," I whisper as the creature twitches his tail like a whip in the air behind him. My heart is pounding. I don't think I can outrun this thing even if I'm from a faster moving plane.

Once the feral feline swallows the flesh in his mouth, he leans down, never taking his eyes off me, and bites deep into the fleshy neck of his kill. Then he saunters back a few paces, dragging the carcass he's working on along with him. Once there are a few more trees between us, the huge cat and his quarry turn and disappear into the forest.

I release the breath I've been holding and thank the Threestone for whatever signal they're emitting that makes all other life forms so averse to their presence.

In under a minute, I'm picking through the flora as quietly as I can, which is damn near silent with the new boots I got at the Army Surplus store. Abi-Two drove me after I told her what I intended to do. Exactly like she said, she had a ton of ideas, and now I've got a ton of new gear.

Most of its camouflage and none of it requires a battery. So there's no chance of it not working on this plane.

Abi-Two thought that might be why the Boom Packs didn't work last time I was here. The time variation between this ancient plane and mine was too vast, effectively nullifying the volatility of the chemicals when they mixed together. She said I might as well have been tossing water balloons.

This time, I'm ready for whatever comes at me. I've got my camouflage clothes and boots, a hunting knife, a just-in-case 9mm—loaded, and I checked my conscience at the door.

I've put enough thought into it, and I can't think about it anymore. I've got to do what I've got to do to make this right. My dad already tried letting Daemon murder him and that didn't stop him, so there's nothing left to do... but I still wish there was another way. Damn it!

Stop thinking.

Walk _._

Abi-Two's instructions echo in my mind as I plod.

We sat on the wooden dining chairs, consuming caffeine and planning.

"You'll be at a disadvantage in their territory." She tucked a golden lock of hair behind her ear and locked me into those baby-blues. "They might be looking for you. Your best bet is to find Nahuiollin. If his circumstances are anything like Doyen's were, he should be in exile. Avoid the tribe completely. If they find you, you die."

"You give the best pep-talks." I joked.

She carried on completely serious, save the small smile that flashed for the briefest moment. "Watch the natives if you can. Just to get an idea of the general areas they occupy."

"How do I watch them and not be seen?"

"You hide. Really, really well."

Carefully watching the trees, I stop at the thick trunk of one of the highest and start setting up. From my backpack, I retrieve the climbing spikes and strap one to each boot and leg. Nice and tight just like the instructional videos said to do on the webpage that Abi-Two made me watch. She also helped me knot the lanyard to wrap around the trunk because I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to remember the smaller details after travelling. The way it messes with me, I feel mentally handicapped until my mind adjusts to the timeline.

It takes a few tries, leaning against the steel rope lanyard that's wrapped around the trunk. Testing the spikes as I shove them into the bark, making sure they're in deep enough to put my weight on, I lean in, and flick the lanyard up the tree, just the way I practiced with Abi. And then take a few steps up the trunk, leaning against the harness at my waist. The couplings are noisy and the sound of the metal spikes pushing into the tree bark seems to echo through the forest. So once I'm sure I can handle it, I move faster and keep a sharp eye out for movement among the trees.

Even with my newfound hyperawareness, I don't see the black snake slinking down the trunk until it's nearly on top of me. My first instinct is to jump away and—I'll never openly admit to this, but—scream like a banshee because I hate snakes.

But I can't do that. I'm too high up. I'll break my neck or my leg and then I'm easy prey for whoever stumbles across me first. With my luck, it'd probably be the panther.

If the Threestone weren't buried in my backpack, I'd use them to repel the snake, but there's no way to get to them without compromising my stability.

All of this runs through my mind in seconds, and then the snake is eye level with me.

Biting down on my lip, I move as fast as I can, reaching from the outside to grab the serpent by the head. The moment I have him, I realize he's not as small as he looks. Sure he's thin, but he's really long. As I peel him away from the tree, the underside of his belly is orange.

The snake doesn't seem to mind my handling him, but I mind, even if I am wearing gloves.

His long body peels away from the trunk overhead, but his tail is wrapped around a branch three feet overhead. Now, what? I can't throw it down, anchored like it is.

But maybe I can move it away.

A branch from a nearby tree is not quite close enough. I can't flick the lanyard to adjust it with just one hand. So, I take another step up the trunk, lean out against the harness, and reach for the branch of the other tree. It's only an inch away, so I calmly rest the snakes head on a leaf leading up to the branch and wait, slightly loosening my grip.

The snake begins to slither up the leaf. And as much as I don't want to hold the thing, I don't want to let go and give him the chance to turn around and bite me.

But I have to. I'm not up to where I need yet. And even though I'm camouflaged, I'm still human-shaped and exposed much more than I'm comfortable with.

So I let go.

Of the snake, that is.

And he goes on his way, unwinding his tail from the tree we shared and disappearing in the canopy.

I should have kept the stones out like I did last time.

Continuing my anxious climb up the tree, my mind is going crazy.

Scrambled thoughts come and go. Images of a dream I had of my father flashes into my mind for no reason. And then as I stomp the spikes on the insides of my boots into the tree bark my thoughts drift to bigger problems, which ultimately lead to the bigger question.

Am I doing the right thing?

Dad told me once that I do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Is it possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons? Or is it true what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?

I've never been one to associate marginal behavior with divinity, but the reality of such innate human extremes—how we can give so much love and yet hate so passionately in the end; be so good and yet still evil at the same time—it begs the question: where do we start?

Are people born _bad_ or do they become that way? Is the black of a person's heart inherent or a learned behavior?

It seems silly to equate the term 'evil' with someone too young to know right from left, but we've all heard both 'youth' and 'violence' used in news stories—jury trials for fifth grade kids who killed someone for sport.

When does this darkness take hold, and does the kid notice as it happens or does he wake up one day wondering where the good went?

One thing I know for certain is that Daemon is pure evil. A black seed that grows the type of weed that must be cut out before it has a chance to take root.

And that's where my thinking is interrupted, because I've finally maneuvered my way up high enough to find the line of the river, and even better—I can see the waterfall. It's close enough that I don't need my binoculars to find the plumes of water misting at the edge.

With the quick of an anxious rabbit and the stealth of a bull in a china shop, I make my way back down to the forest floor.

It's imperative that I hit my target before night falls, and even though I know it's not likely that will happen, I make a point to hustle in putting my gear away and setting out in the right direction because it takes longer to get through the forest when you're trying not to leave a trail.

By my count, I reach the raging river in little less than two hours and park me ass behind a thicket to watch before I step out into the open.

After carefully listening for what feels like forever, I decide the rushing water is too noisy to catch the snap of a twig underfoot and so my best bet for not being spotted by dangerous natives is to work as quickly as possible.

Crawling to the edge of the river, I make my way to the very edge of the falls and climb up onto a boulder that seems to be sitting on top of the world. I don't' need the rocks additional height as much as the open position to find what I'm looking for.

With binoculars in hand, I keep myself plastered to the top of the rock that rests on the cliff's edge and look out over the breathtaking valley that the opens up below. Everywhere, greenest green. Emerald forest and hills. In the area where I remember seeing the ziggurat with the dancing chieftain in the huge headdress, I am able to make out the sharp edges of what might be a stone formation.

It was from the height of these falls that first I spotted the telltale rings of dead flora that led me to the area where I met the boy that took me to the Threestone. I remember it was on the left side of the river, and so that's where I look next.

But where the greenest green hills opened to grassy knolls and a stone jutting as from the edge of a mountain, I find nothing but black. The place where I spotted the yellow and brown rings in the earth has been colored black.

The shock of this makes me stop and look around the immediate area to make sure I'm still alone. Seeing nothing and no one, I adjust the power of the binoculars to get a better look.

Sure enough, the entire area—where I walked through the forest and followed the boy that took me to an open wheat field and a cave that led to the altar where there rested another set of stones—all of it is gone. Nothing is left but charred black tree trunks.

Adjusting the zoom on the binoculars one more time to get a better look makes my breath catch because what I thought was a small grouping of burned out trees is not that at all. Its bodies; four, charred to black human shapes clustered together. Black gaping mouths rest open, screaming the agony of their fate long after they've gone. The forms rest against posts that I assume they were once tied to, though there's no sign of rope, just like there's no sign of life.

_That's enough_ , I tell myself and put the binoculars down to rub the horror from my eyes.

Four bodies. But who were they? Could it be Nahuiollin and his family? I begin counting the people I saw on my last visit and comparing it with the story that Doyen relayed.

There were the two dead men in the field, but why would someone burn dead bodies in a standing position? If they're already dead, a pile would make more sense.

The dancing Chieftain was the first person I saw alive. Then the boy, Nahuiollin. Then, his mother with the baby. That's four already. According to Doyen, his family had their throats cut. Even his younger brother.

But none of the bodies down there looked that small... unless it was so small that I missed it.

Shaking my head, I climb down from the rock. I'm not looking again.

Hell no. I've seen enough.

At the foot of the high boulder, I turn to head back into the trees. My mind is on my next move. I have to find another high tree and build a blind where I can sit and wait. So I don't see the startled face of the small boy standing in front of me until I almost smack into him.

It's odd, but the first thing that occurs to me isn't to hurt him, even though that's what I'm here to do. It's how small he is. How helpless he seems, out here all alone.

I don't know how many days it's been since he last saw me but I know without a doubt that he's been trudging through the burned field, probably mourning his family. I think that he must have touched them, too, as his bare feet, his hands and face are caked with evidence.

I wonder what I must look like to him covered in dull hues that would've blended me seamlessly into the trees back home, but here, where the colors are so vibrant, they probably seem ridiculous.

His face is ashen, his eyes wide. But his nostrils are flaring and I can't tell if it's fear or anger he feels when he looks at me.

What does he see? A threat? A friendly face or bad omen?

All my questions are answered when the small, pale, native boy I believe is another version of Daemon rushes at me with his arms out wide. His teeth bared, eyes a flame of rage.

"Hey-hey!" I set a hand to his chest to keep him away and back-up.

He doesn't stop but claws my hand away. That guttural language he spoke once before to me sounds even harsher as he screams unintelligibly, coming at me faster.

My backpack smacks against the boulder. My boots sink into the mud. I try to turn away from the boy, but on my left is nothing but air, and to my right is the edge of the raging riverbank.

He's gone ape shit. Thrashing at me, screaming, scratching my face, pulling my hair, tearing at my arms—ripping my shirtsleeves—when he can't get to my face.

I'm holding him at arms-length, trying to get it through his skull that I mean him no harm. But he can't understand me any better than I understand him.

Finally, I shout. "Hey!"

The boy freezes for a second and I take him by both the arms, lift him off the ground just enough to toss him up the bank to give myself room to move before I fall into the river.

Taking three long strides up the bank, I catch the kid by the arm as he's trying to get up and shove him back down again.

"Stop fighting," I command. "You can't win." I step alongside his boney frame as he claws at the dirt, wailing like a banshee. "I'm bigger and stronger. I don't want to hurt you."

The boy, Nahuiollin, suddenly pops to his feet and gives me the freakiest black stare. Seriously, I've seen less threatening glares on serial killers.

So I tack on, "But I will if I have to."

As I say the last part, he swings. I actually take the time to grumble before I duck so the boys' hand clips my jaw. Almost instantly, by the feel of the blow, I know he didn't just punch or scratch me.

Sure enough, when I pull my hand away, it's covered in red and that damned kid is holding a strange looking dagger.

"You little shit," I maneuver away from the weapon he's got perched and ready to strike again.

The blade is not quite as thin as an icepick and curves at the tip. The handle is off-white like it's made of bone or antler. It's been carved to resemble a coiled snake. And, damn, is it sharp.

"Put it down," I order, motioning with one hand and holding my jaw with the other.

Nahuiollin mutters something that I have to guess is his refusal because it sounds full of malice and he keeps the knife in his white-knuckled grip.

He mirrors my steps. When I go left, so does he, when I go back, he moves in. When I step closer to him, he thrashes at me. I jump wide and grab the hand holding the knife just as my other forearm begins to pulse.

"Are you trying to make me kill you?" I ask, ignoring the cold pain and deep red patch growing on my sleeve. Instinctively, I wiggle my fingers to check they're still working. Which, they are but it fucking hurts.

When the boy spits at me, I set my foot just behind his and shove him to the ground. As he topples over, I twist the knife from his hand.

He looks up from the ground, his eyes wide again like when he first spotted me. And now I know the fear on his face was not fear of me, it was fear of not having his weapon ready.

"You're not getting it back."

Just as I'm pocketing his blade, he bum rushes me. The little shit's head jams into my stomach, his arms wrap around my hips and I've got no resistance—no choice but to topple like Saddam's statue. I wasn't ready for the sudden charge and go down onto my backpack. Thankfully, I keep my feet on the ground and bend at the knee to help keep some control over which direction my weight falls. So when Nahuiollin jumps onto my chest and tries to stick his thumbs into my eyes, I shove my ass onto the ground and he falls backward.

What I hadn't counted on was the knife falling from my shirt pocket onto the boy's chest. He grabs the handle.

At the same moment, I feel the deep sting plunging into my side.

I twist his wrist and roll away, keeping the knife with me, protecting the wound.

_Can I breathe?_ I take a cursory breath and can tell my lungs are still working, but shit! The pain... it's bad. That's the third time.

Rather than getting up, I let loose a wail and go still, keeping my hand around the knife's handle.

Instead of the kid coming around to my front to check if I'm dead like I hope, I feel the little shit kick my leg. Then he's meddling around with my backpack. Is he trying to rifle through my things?

Slowly, and oh so painfully, I slip the knife from the flesh of my side, just above my hip. Both hands are slick with blood and I can only hope to hold onto the thing as I quickly maneuver, sliding out from under the boy who is far more deadly than I thought he would be.

As I charge at the little tyrant in the making, I hear my father's voice, reminding me that assuming is the quickest way to make an ass of myself.

I've caught the boy by surprise, I can tell. He drops the length of rope he took from my pack, looking genuinely afraid when he backs away and falls on his ass. I land on top of him, pinning his arms down with my knees and cursing.

"Is this what you want?" I set the blade to his throat.

He doesn't respond the way I expect.

I expect more of a fight, not for him to raise his chin and expose more tender flesh. Defiant, daring me to slice and dice.

Examining the tight set of his jaw and the blank look in his eyes, any doubts I had about killing him dissolve. "There isn't any hope for you."

"You _want_ to die." I say, staring into those black eyes that are such a contrast against his pale white skin.

He doesn't kick. He doesn't struggle, or even flinch as I say, "You asked for this." And push the blade into the skin of his throat, straight across his windpipe.

# The End... of Book Two

REACTION

Book Three:

The Threestone

Trilogy

By AR Rivera

**re·ac·tion** [r - k sh n]  
Noun

A response to stimulus. The state resulting from such a response.

A reverse or opposing action.

A tendency to revert to a former state.

_Chemistry_ A change or transformation in which a substance decomposes, combines with other substances, or interchanges constituents with other substances.

_Physics_ A nuclear reaction.

_Physics_ An equal and opposite force exerted by a body against the force acting upon it.

*Webster's Dictionary
"... Whoever falls on that stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder."

—Luke 20:18

PART SEVEN

1 The Curse of Righteousness

WITH THE KNIFE I took from Nahuiollin pressed into his throat, I wonder, _is this murder?_

Anger is a familiar emotion. One I've come to depend on during my travels for the drive and intractability it provides. In this life there is no other choice but to push forward.

Rage is what brought my hands to the pencil-thin neck of this dangerous native boy who's already stabbed me several times. Sure, I came back here to kill him, but I changed my mind.

Then he attacked me.

I've spent half my life pissed at the world and still never felt this... _intense_. It's hatred for the monster he will become. It's fury, in my face. It's all I see.

I've overpowered him and I'm close, so close. One swipe is all it would take. A small motion, practically effortless, that would change everything for the better. But to let the rage move the blade from right to left would drive me from the edge of my own value system.

The ragged sound of Nahuiollin's breath slows. Beneath my choking grip, the boys' muscles relax. He tilts his head back, baring his throat, as if to say, "You've won."

What is wrong with this kid?

If I follow through with Abi-Two's plan, there will be no going back for me. I may be able to kill what he will become, but the cost is giving way who I am.

I returned to this ancient plane and saw what happened after I took the duplicate stones from the stone altar. Since I left, there has been fire and chaos and death.

Wasn't that what Doyen said had happened to him? That he led the light-skinned stranger to the stones. He showed mercy to a man he didn't know and was exiled for it. But he wasn't the only one to pay the cost. His whole family was killed while he was forced to watch.

Is that what happened to Nahuiollin? Are those figures in the burnt field the remains of his family?

He showed me where the stones were and I took them, because that was the whole reason for being here in the first place. That, and to answer my fathers' murder; committed by the one he called Nahuiollin.

I came back to prevent this kid from becoming like Daemon; to kill this version of him before he goes postal on me like his counterpart did to me and my father. But he's not even old enough to sprout pit-hair.

Droplets of blood from the slice on my cheek dot his face. And something about it fixes me. Settles the confusion.

Nahuiollin is crumpled like foil under my grip. He seems too small, and undeserving of the universal wrath I came to deliver.

No matter who Abi-Two says he will become, right now, Nahuiollin isn't the monster. He's not the one who killed my father, my best friend, Eli, any of those people in the bus, or the driver of the diesel truck. He isn't the one who shot, stabbed, or threw me from a rooftop. He's not a man at all, but a lost, scared kid.

My entire life I've been driven from one decision to the next, most times feeling like the choices were made for me. But I have to stop doing that. It gets me nowhere.

And Nahuiollin shouldn't be punished for things he hasn't done yet. Things he may never do.

"Mercy," I tell him. "You remember this _mercy_."

Careful to keep the long blade pressed to his throat, I release my grip of his hair and go for the rope in my backpack. The motion makes me light-headed.

Nahuiollin doesn't struggle. He doesn't kick or try to roll away when I work the loop around his knees even though I'm sure he sees my hands shaking. It's weird that he doesn't fight when I wrap the other end over his wrists, then his shoulders, and around his neck in a shitty hog-tie.

The warm forest air is freezing but I can't get enough of it into my lungs no matter how deeply I breathe. And then I realize I'm in way less pain than I was a few minutes ago.

Days spent camping with my father hang on the edge of my memory. He used to lecture me about knowing what to do if I was bitten by a snake; how to recognize the symptoms.

My eyes blur, like they're crossing.

Nahuiollin's no longer a threat, but it may not matter anymore. We're in the middle of a forest in an ancient plane and I'm bleeding. There's a feeling in my gut shouting at me to hustle, that I'm in real trouble.

Still, I make myself relax—for just a few seconds—before forcing myself to get up and take stock of my wounds. The cut across my cheek is still wet. It's bleeding a lot but doesn't sting when I touch it. My arms are too heavy when I roll up the sleeve of my shirt. Clumsy fingers struggle with shredded fabric. The slice to my forearm is superficial, but there are white traces of tendon under the red.

The nail of my thumb looks blue and... shit I'm so dizzy.

Lifting my shirt to check the most serious wound; the spot where that little-shit stabbed me. It looks deep and my jeans are dripping with dark red blood.

Tracing my hand over the fabric, Nahuiollin shouts again in that guttural language that sounds like he's got too much spit in his mouth. Doesn't sound Latin-based. If it were, I might understand a little. But there's only the sentiment of anger.

"Feeling's mutual," I flash a look to let him know he needs to shut it.

Nahuiollin's wearing such a grueling, satisfied smile. It only confirms my suspicion: I am in deep shit. Not only am I bleeding like I got my first period, but can barely feel my arms. He stabbed me low on my side, nowhere near my lungs, yet I can't catch a breath.

Going back to the knife, I take stock of the long, slightly bent blade, and carved handle made to look like a coiled snake.

It takes all my focus and every ounce of will to grab at the pouch of stones and beg them to, "Save me. Take us both. Please. Find help."

Before I finish asking, we're taken up in the blue funnel cloud—the burning gateway that washes my vision with glorious, unknown colors.

2 Swift Kick in the Marbles

I can't remember a damn thing. Not a single second since asking the stones to save me.

Most people—if they woke in a blinding-white room, wearing only a hospital gown, and while trying to innocently scratch their face, were to find that both of their arms have been strapped to the bed—would freak out. But this isn't my first rodeo. Actually, it's not even the second time this has happened to me.

Nope. I'd be as cool as a cucumber if that were the only weird part of this scenario.

What's got me kicking and screaming is that the only thing inside this room is me and the bed I'm strapped to. The walls are plain white. No windows and one white panel the size of a door. I'm assuming it's a door even though there's no knob.

There are no heart rate monitors or IV poles. Not a single roll-away tray table with food waiting on it. No stench of antiseptic. No rocking chair or television set. No intercom for me to call a nurse. There is track lighting, though.

Maybe I'm not in a hospital. But that makes no sense because that is what I told the stones to do. Isn't it? To save me, to get me some place with antivenin at the ready.

I think... I remember thinking of Abi. But she'd rather let me die—and enjoy watching.

Then... I can't remember a damn thing.

Now, it's just me in here and there isn't a single murderous, little native boy tied-up anywhere. No clothes or backpack full of supplies, and most importantly: no Threestone.

"Let me out!"

I must have passed-out before we got to the other side of the gateway, and then that little shit probably found a way out of the rope and ran off with my stones.

"Untie me! Now!"

I've got to find him. I've got to get the stones back before he figures out how to use them.

Searching for some kind of information I spot, there, in the center of the room, a small dome in the ceiling; the kind that houses a security camera.

I curse at whoever's watching and try to think of my next move.

Once when I was on a camping trip with my Dad—I must have been about thirteen—we were sitting around the fire like we always did. I'd watch the flames consume the wood while Dad rattled out his tall tales about giants or warriors.

This one night, he told me a story about a three-legged donkey that fell into an empty well. The farmer had no way of getting him out, so he started to bury him down there. As he shoveled, the farmer noticed that when the dirt fell on the donkey, he shook it off and stomped his three feet, packing the dirt underneath him. The farmer kept shoveling until the hole was shallow enough for the donkey to walk out.

I'm feeling like that jack ass right now. This room is my empty well. I can't get out. Hell, I can barely move. I can't just wait for them to bury me, either.

The straps are wide, made of white leather, and buckled around my wrists. Tight. My ankles are also bound, but the straps around them have longer tethers that reach the corner of the bed frame.

With my hands firmly planted at each side, I grab hold of the frame under the mattress and kick my legs in unison, as high and fast as I can. The bedframe rattles and the thin blanket covering me flops around. It's one of those hospital-type beds with the metal railings.

I'm hoping that my stones took me to a world where the hospital beds have locked wheels under rickety legs.

Keeping my grip tight on the frame, I kick over and over, using all the momentum. The bed jumps and wobbles. So I keep going, shaking the frame as hard as I can. The bed shakes—the judders growing. I feel the feet skip over the floor and move faster. Kick harder, until air whizzes into my ear and the shiny white tile hits me in the face.

I'm on the floor, breathing hard and nearly laughing, with the mattress resting over my back. But the damned bedrails are still holding. I'm stuck.

The floor is cold against my left side. I can't draw my feet up to push off the ground enough to see. Both my arms are pulled at odd angles. The left is tucked under and behind me while the right yanks at the railing, trying to pry it from the frame.

Suddenly, there's a woman's voice. Clear as day. It sounds sweet, almost soothing, as it directs me to quit fighting, but when I raise my head, there's no one.

The female voice orders again, "Stop struggling, Mr. Springer." And then I know it's coming from a speaker that I can't see.

"Let me go."

A noise like scraping metal tells that the door is opening. Squirming now, I try to hoist my shoulders higher off the floor, but a sudden pain in my side makes me jump. The thin mattress works its way from behind me and folds over me.

All four restraints still miserably intact.

On the other side of the pillow that's blocking most of my view is a big pair of boots with thick, black soles. A mix of brushed Suede and woven denim. Military issue waffle stompers.

"What is wrong with you?" It's a man's voice.

"My face itches."

He harrumphs. "Yeah. Stitches are like that. Manage a scratch yet?"

_Stitches_ , of course. "Still working on it."

"They sent me to tell you that if you pop any, you're out of luck. Doc's gone for the day."

The silence that follows is long and uncomfortable. It makes my ears itch, like this guy, whoever he is, is somehow talking about me without my hearing it.

"They saved your life, you know," he adds. Another uncomfortable stretch of silence.

"You're welcome, asshole." With that, the military boots turn and walk out.

Even though I've got more questions than ever, I'm not about to ask. Something about that particular pair of shoes makes me think I don't want to hear anything he's got to say.

That might have been my only chance at getting answers, though. And I blew it. Of course—that's about as new as Tuesday. I always screw up everything.

The squeak of the door closing makes my chest tighten.

I shake my head and the pillow falls to one side. Grabbing the corner with my mouth, I pull it close enough to quell the temptation of smashing my head into the tiles. Another concussion will get me nowhere.

I need to focus on my next move.

But there isn't one; not that I can see anyway. I can't get out of here on my own. I don't know who put me here. I don't even know where _here_ is.

I am at the cusp of a dark descent into that familiar spiral of shame and regret when the door screeches open again.

Looking up, I'm sure I must be seeing things because there is no damned way _that_ prick is walking towards me.

It's the same tool in a suit that I barely missed when me and Abi ditched the hospital. The same douche leading the troupe of agents that chased me from Elijah's Jetta.

It's Crew-Cut, the Homeland Security agent that's been chasing me since before I was aware of what I'd gotten myself into.

Damn. I am so screwed.

3 This Isn't a Competition

There's a strong pain in both my heels as a man dressed like an orderly helps me to my feet. Feels like I haven't used them in months.

It makes me wonder, "How long have I been here?"

Crew-Cut watches. Hears me ask the question and repeat it when, neither he nor the orderly responds.

Anger comes on quick, shifting the silence from awkward to rage-filled.

When the orderly turns to set my bed upright, I notice he's got a small pack held by nylon laces on his back. Reminds me of the flimsy gym bag I had in high school. I can tell from the shape that there are clothes inside.

He shifts the mattress back in place. Without bothering to put the sheets back on, he swings the small sack from his shoulders onto the bed and turns to face me. Suddenly there are two hands on my hospital gown. The thin material rips and hits the floor.

I'm stark naked, screaming, "What the f—"

"Get dressed," the orderly shouts, pointing at the small bag on the bed.

I'd like strangle him with the strings from that bag.

I used to have nightmares about standing in a school hallway, naked and scared. But this real-life scenario is so far from that childhood incubus. There's no humiliation, only a deep desire to make him suffer as my eyes scan my arms, noting the long slash from Nahuiollin's knife is stitched and clean. There are also bruises growing on both my wrists and another patch of stitches on my side, surrounded by bright pink skin.

Knowing the men's intention is to bring me to heel, to humiliate me into obedience, makes me defiant. I'm no one's lap dog.

"And if I don't?"

Crew-Cut is standing behind me. I hear but don't turn when he offers, "You can walk around naked."

The orderly repeats the command. "Get dressed!"

"What do you want from me?"

"You'll get answers after you're dressed."

And then the two men stand there, watching, determinately waiting.

I wish for a nasty fart to clear the room.

* * *

When the dark cloth is yanked from my eyes, I haven't got a clue where we are but know it's approximately three-hundred and twenty-seven steps from the place where they grabbed me. We took a right and three lefts to get here. The floor was smooth and cold most of the way. This room has a rug.

The room is dark compared to the last. Still, my eyes burn from the sudden light. The moment I got my legs in my jeans, it went black. They came at me, put a bag on my head, zipped my hands behind my back and shoved me here.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when they do I can tell I'm in an office. Wood paneled walls and lamps with red shades. My bare toes grab at the plush carpet beneath them.

The chair they force me into is plush leather, deep red with carved wooden trim. I sit still while Crew-Cut squats beside me. My aim is to knee him in the face, but the one dressed like an orderly grabs my hair, pulls my head back, and warns me not try anything stupid.

I reckon stupidity is subjective and spit in his face, managing to crack off half a laugh at the loogey hanging from his nose before my mouth fills with a foreign substance. My stomach lurches as I realize he's spit back at me.

Before I'm done hacking up the spittle, each of my ankles get strapped to chair legs. The wound on my side screams as Crew-Cut shoves me forward to get at my hands still bound behind my back. The tie around them disappears. Before I can fight, though, there's a man on each side, each holding one of my arms.

"Don't try it," Orderly warns, as my hands form into fists. His nose is still wet.

I pause for a second, thinking through the nausea. What's my next move? If I did get a shot on him, it'd probably be just the one. Then he'd fire back and... Would it be worth it?

My left hand is in another zip-tie which is attached to a metal loop on the side of the plush chair. The right is zipped up and anchored down just as quickly. One moment of hesitation and I'm defenseless.

"Eat shit." I say.

"Sleep with your eyes open." He warns before being dismissed by Crew-Cut.

I spit on the floor beside the chair, glad to see him go.

"Where am I?"

"A few miles outside Colorado Springs."

That shuts me up. How the _hell_ did I get here? My head whips around to face Crew-cut. "What am I doing here? Why are you holding me?"

"I can't give you any answers, Mr. Springer." He gives a quick nod and walks out.

* * *

Singing "Ninety-nine bottles" is a terrible way to pass the time.

What I should be doing is formulating a plan, but there's still that pesky problem of being short on information and what I've gleaned so far is depressing.

I'm being held in Colorado?

I asked the stones to save me and they brought me to Crew-Cut: to Homeland Security. To the very people I have been purposely avoiding since before I even knew the stones existed. What does that mean?

I'm down to thirty-three bottles before the door opens again. A man not much older than me walks in. He's wearing a gray polo shirt with the official DHS seal embroidered in the left side of his chest; a small wreath, stars, and a shield identifying him as one of _them_.

Around his neck he wears a leather lanyard holding an identification badge. It says he is Marshall Stevens, Intelligence Coordinator Omega, A-2. There's a red bar just above his name.

He sits in the chair behind the desk without looking at me and opens a few drawers like he's searching for something. Clearing his throat, he speaks.

"Good morning, Mr. Springer."

Now I know its morning. "It's not so good from where I'm sitting."

"We have a few things to get through today and are pressed for time, as usual. We appreciate your full cooperation in the matters before us."

"Is that what you call this, Marshall," my hands pull on the restraints, " _Cooperation_?"

He looks up, setting a pair of bifocals on his nose.

I give my best fake smile. "Sorry, can't help. I'm a bit tied up at the moment."

"You came to us, Mr. Springer."

I'm shaking my head. "No, I asked to be saved and ended up here." I'm already regretting that decision.

"Asked?" He queries. And I immediately regret opening my fat mouth.

His eyes take on a strange light, magnified by the cut of his lenses. "Whom did you ask?" When I don't answer, he continues. "By my count, we've always had to catch you. You came to us this time. Very near death, so obviously your landing on our doorstep was a conscious choice. You may have changed your mind since then, but we'll change it back."

Nonsense. It's bullshit-nonsense—every word further convincing me he's not as informed as he'd like me to think he is.

Of course it wasn't conscious, but I don't want to tell him that. "You know, for someone asking questions, you sure seem to know a lot about me."

He leans forward, folding his hands over the stack of papers and staring me straight in the eye. "We'll get to that, Mr. Springer. First, I need an answer: whom did you ask to bring you here?"

Again, I say nothing.

"Going by the wash of confusion I'm reading on your face, I'm thinking that you are ignorant of exactly where we are."

No-duh, shit-stain. "Just outside Colorado Springs."

He tilts his head in understanding. "Agent Davis would tell you that much."

"Agent Davis? I've been calling him Crew-Cut."

"It seems he left out some important details regarding this location. We're in an underground military installation, just outside Colorado Springs."

I figured as much, but I'm not telling him that.

"You see, the reason I need an answer from you about who led you here, is because no one is allowed in this place unless they are assigned here. And the privilege of that prestigious assignment only comes with proper security clearance."

He pauses, possibly waiting for me to say something more.

"You have not been granted clearance Mr. Springer. So, who did you ask to bring you here?"

He's greeted by silence.

"As I thought," he stands, pressing a button on the phone to speak. "Have Davis notify the team. We're gonna need the Helmet."

"You gonna to force me to play football now, too?"

"No, Mr. Springer. We're going to make you talk."

4 This is Absolutely a Competition and I'm Losing

I don't hear the door open. My only clue that someone else has entered the room is when everything goes black again. They've shoved another sack over my head.

Instinct has me fighting the feel of iron-like arms removing my hands and feet from the ties on the chair. Kicking and punching: well, attempting anyways. It's only a second or two before I feel the sharp pinch in my shoulder. My minds' eye conjures the image of a needle.

A moment passes and suddenly, it's like the world has gone thin. Stretched. The distance between my limbs and my brain becomes this vast expanse that my will can't cross.

Threestone, where are you?

Then, the voices start.

"We're on our way to E-3. Alpha-1 in tow."

Why did You leave me here?

"Subject is sedated."

"Should we really be doing this?"

"Following orders?"

Static fills my brain.

"You are going to be okay, G. Just tell them what happened. That's all you have to do."

I'm sure I recognize the voices.

"Are you sure he's okay?"

My brain conjures images of stick figure people standing over me, strapping me to a board. I can't fight. Can't see. Only hear. So I listen.

"It's mostly sodium thiopental. It's harmless."

"Doesn't make it right." The voice is soft... like a fuzzy pink teddy bear.

"Sometimes doing the right thing feels wrong." That one has an edge to it.

There's the gentle breeze of movement. The voices ricochet.

I imagine a group of children sitting at the edge of an old well, leaning over it, yelling. They laugh when the echoes come back to them.

"He's already talking. This may work faster than we hoped."

I feel like I'm floating. I know I'm not in a good place, but can't remember why it's bad—can't find the energy to care.

A light comes on, and I blink to find a stretched man hovering overhead. He's staring at me. Looks like someone I've seen before. Maybe that uptight guy... stick up his ass.

Emptiness takes over as I remember something is missing.

_Gone_.

Spaghetti fingers weave through my hair. There's pressure on my head and more voices. Different ones that I don't know from Eve.

"Mr. Springer, we are going to ask you some questions. The sooner you tell us what we need to know, the sooner this will all be over."

It takes no effort at all to speak, but the rest of my body is out to lunch.

I want to know where my inheritance went. "Where are they?" My father trusted me. I can't lose them.

It seems like hours pass before anyone answers. Why can't I see them?

A blurred figure appears beside the stringy man and his ugly mug. The face is covered by a doctor mask and cap. "How did you get here, Mr. Springer?"

How did I get here? That's one long-ass story. I'm not sure where it started but I know that my father left me a box of papers. There was math on the pages. Equations.

I trusted Eli to search through it, to glean the pertinent information, because he was always so much smarter than me and a much faster reader, and I figured he'd be able to find what I needed to know about the stones.

But that was wrong. It was my responsibility to learn it, for myself. To find out if this adventure was about more than just protecting my inheritance.

The stones hold so much power, can harness such unimaginable forces. It's hard to really relate things that I've learned about them because putting it into words sounds crazy. But they are a part of me and I am a part of them.

In World Two, I found out that my little sister—well, her alternate—wasn't dead. Because I saved her.

In Ice World, I met people who had seen all the technology a human race could create. Doyen said they destroyed their planet with it. How can humans be so smart and so stupid at the same time? Then, I killed him...

I got stuck in that Native World, where it was like traveling back in time. It was filled with the richest, brightest colors I've ever seen. I found of a tribe of natives Eli called the _Suma_. Usually, and historically, tribes within the region were rich in melanin. But the people I found; their skin was as white as the snow plains I trekked in Ice World.

I came across the boy with a necklace that held three button-like charms—one white, one red, one black—with three beautiful symbols carved into them. He took me to a hidden field where I found my way to a set of stones sitting on an altar, like they worshipped them.

The body I stumbled across in the grassy plain had golden bracelets that covered his forearms. On the tops of those bracelets were three indentions with symbols like the stones.

I watched a tribal chieftain dance on a hilltop, trying to coax a funnel cloud to the ground.

When the lightning reached out for my Threestone, I remember wanting to get as far from that place as possible. And I did.

I ended up in another plane where each day passed in a minute. I hiked to a dead patch and found another set of stones. When I returned to the spot I landed in, I watched a distant city turned to rubble by flying objects that moved too fast to see while vines grew around my feet and legs. I didn't see the big bomb dropping, either. Just the white flash and unbearable heat.

In the next world, I thought I was home. I walked along paved roads and kicked man-made pebbles. There were irrigated fields and street lights. I was elated watching cars pass me by.

I looked at the blue skies and thanked the stars that I was able to make it back.

That's where I first saw Abi-Two, who told me that the stones could hold a charge. I remember thinking, 'that's a trick I need to learn.' But I didn't have to. The stones just started doing it on their own, like an unasked favor.

They always do things for me. I just have to ask.

I wonder what she's doing right now. Does she know I failed? Does she hate me like _my_ Abi?

Part of me longs to go back there. Longs to be able to just reach out and touch her. But she's so far from me and it's all my fault. I lied to her repeatedly and she moved on with her life while I was gone.

She had no reason to trust I'd be back and no desire to wait. When she smiled at me and said those three earth-shattering words "I hate you"... my heart was already broken, but she proved it could shatter more than once.

It's over for good this time.

But the stones are always with me. Through it all I've had them.

That's what is wrong with this place! The stones... If the stones were here, it would be okay.

"You'll get them back just as soon as we know you're willing to cooperate."

I don't know why that's funny but it is. _Hilarious_. I'm shaking with laughter. These people don't give. Only take and tell lies.

"No one is lying to you, Mr. Springer."

"That's enough," the stringy man says. "Who did you ask to bring you here? Who are you working with?"

That guy's a moron. If he knew anything he'd know the stones take me wherever I want. Most of the time. They always save me. But it doesn't matter now because they're gone.

That kid, too. He's gone. I don't think I was supposed to lose him. The memory jolts me.

"He took them!" I had them. He stabbed me and took them.

A memory from some faraway place, like a lasso, it pulls me closer, and I know... like it's happened before. I was fighting that boy. But he was a man. There was a crash, and... I saw Carrie. Abi said he stole my wallet.

"Mr. Springer..."

Oh, God. I wish they'd stop calling me that. Mr. Springer was my _dad_. Not me. But I lost him, too.

Then, Eli.

And Abi...God, I miss them.

The voices are mumbling around me.

The static begins to fade, not much, but enough for me to understand that they somehow read my mind; because they're talking about Eli and the Threestone. And my dad.

"This doesn't exactly inspire loyalty."

The stringy man is looking at someone I can't see. "A few more minutes."

A voice mumbles back at him. _Wah-wha-wah_ , like a dying trumpet, or the grown-ups in those _Peanuts_ cartoons.

"We need the truth, Mr. Springer."

_The truth?_ Boy, are they asking the wrong guy.

The truth has eluded me since the very beginning. My father made no secret of his intention to keep me in the dark. He was evasive when asked about his choices, his scars, and any part of his life before I was born. He kept it all from me, he said, because he grew up "knowing everything" and still screwed up.

The static keeps lifting and I'm lost in the word: _truth_.

Because the truth is that I'm the screw-up. I still created the monster and didn't have the balls to undo it. But now I think I know something... I think my father was wrong.

Because the things he kept from me were the very things I needed to know to stop Daemon. To stop myself from creating another one of him.

In that final video, my father addressed his murderer by name. I thought he did it on purpose, so I followed that name. He shouldn't have called him Nahuiollin. He should have told me what it meant to follow him, instead of just telling me not to.

If he'd only told me _why_. If he'd just said that by following that name, that I'd be turning an innocent little boy into a power-hungry, murderous monster, then I never would have interfered.

But now it's too late. It's half-past too-late. Because I created the monster—my own personal Frankenstein—and then I lost him. And he took my stones with him.

5 A Little Clarity Goes a Long Way

Fog hangs thick as consciousness persists. I remember... Crew-Cut telling me I was in Colorado.

A bland face flashes in memory. A man in a grey polo smirking. _"Agent Davis would tell you that much."_

" _Tell Davis to notify the team..."_

_The Helmet_.

My hands shake as I take stock of my limbs, wondering if they're still in working order, which they are.

The sound of a knock makes my head feel as if it's splitting in half. It's followed by an unexpected voice.

"May I come in?" He leans into the open door frame I hadn't noticed in the wall behind me. I hadn't even thought of looking for a door, much less expected to find one standing wide open.

The shocking concept of an open door pales in comparison to staring into the eyes of the guy who was my only ally. The same man I watched I die just a few days ago; shot dead by Daemon for being in my general vicinity.

I still feel the blood on my hands.

My smart-ass high school buddy turned brilliant physicist, Elijah Thacker, is standing in the doorway to this shithole. I don't know whether to punch or hug him.

Before I can decide, Eli gulps and extends a hand. "I'm Eli. We met once before, in Ivanhoe, but I don't know if you remember me. Do you remember me?"

Why is he here?

"Of course." The vibration of my voice makes me cringe. I grip my head in my hands and curse.

When I open my eyes, he's gone. The doorway is still there, still wide open, but I'm alone. Clamping my eyes shut, I'm sure I must be seeing things.

There's no relief from this headache as I try to think. Moving makes it worse, but I have to get out of here—wherever _here_ is. The moment I get to my feet, I notice I'm only wearing jeans. No shirt or shoes.

There's a bulky trunk on the floor at the end of the bunk. Leaning over the lid, I hear his voice again.

"Here," Eli says.

My neck snaps around to the open doorway and sure enough—he's there. Eli. Not the original, but pretty damned close. He's got the same short, neat beard. Dark brown hair cut above his collar, but long enough on the sides to push behind the ears. He looks older than my dead friend by about five years.

Eli stretches out his hand again, this time with two white pills resting on his palm.

When I hesitate, he adds. "It's for the headache."

I watch him, unsure how to respond.

"I was supposed to bring them. I don't know why I forgot. I get nervous making introductions." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

"Introductions." I've known him most of my life—well another version of him.

Eli shakes his head. "When we met in Ivanhoe... I played along. I gave you the safety word but... you still thought I was from your universe."

"Macaroni," I recall, remembering how surprised I was to see the man who I thought was my best friend in those hills. My friend Elijah had picked the safety-word at random from a massive dictionary he kept in his office. Random was supposed to be safer than consciously choosing.

"Not so safe, after all, I guess. I should have used a two-word phrase."

"Is anything?" I question, "Safe, I mean?"

The ghost of a smile he's been wearing disappears. He presses his open hand closer to me, stepping further into the small room. "You should take these. That headache won't go away anytime soon and there's work to do."

I stare at the offered relief. My gut says he wouldn't hurt me, but then again, he's here.

"Why are you working for them?"

He sighs. "I know this is tough to grasp, but G, there is so much you don't know about what's happening—about what has to happen—we all need you at your best. And we're short on time."

With every word my head pounds, its tough keeping my eyes open.

"Need _me_? What the hell for?" I ask, and then snatch the pills from his hand, quickly swallowing them down. I've never had a headache like this—not even after being shot. Eating strange pills is a gamble I don't mind taking.

"I haven't got the stones or the kid, Eli. I went back to that ancient plane and tried to do what Abi-Two wanted, but... Then I—I don't know. I jumped. I'm here, he's not and the stones are gone."

As I say it, I hear the quiver in my voice. Screw the headache being bad—it's the heartache that will kill me. I lost the most powerful, most beautiful thing anyone has ever known. And failed my father.

A thought occurs to me... "What year is it?"

"2018."

I throw up my hands and plop back down on the small bed. "This is Abi-Two's world, isn't it?" Dammit. Did I think of her before I jumped into the gateway?

"How did you meet her?" Eli crosses his arms.

If it were anyone else asking, I'd probably tell them where to stick their curiosity: in a very specific, very dark place. But I don't mind telling him.

"Her dog found me." I recall, feeling wistful and nauseated with the memory. "I walked into her house and she thought I was her husband." She wanted me to be her husband because he'd been gone for six months.

"Sounds like the same plane to me."

The G from this plane is gone. He married Abi-Two and took off without her.

"If G-Two is still gone, then there are no Threestone in this universe and you don't need my help with anything."

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I stare at the floor and wait for the pain pills to kick in.

Eli says my name. When I look up at him, he isn't fidgeting or pale like I expect. But, of course, he isn't my friend Eli. Technically, he's the third version of him I've come across, but he's the second version of him as an adult.

Eli-Two's cheeks are burning red. That ghosted grin he seems to wear most of the time is back and he's saying, "That is not entirely accurate."

6 Getting Boned

The pain killers don't start working until after Eli reveals the cache of clothes inside the trunk. By the time the pain begins to ebb, I'm dressed in a crappy green t-shirt with the Homeland Security logo on my chest, my own jeans, and a pair of badass, thick-soled Doc Martens.

I lace up the new boots, listening to Eli as he fills in the blanks following my arrival.

Apparently, the native boy, Nahuiollin, did make it here with me. The security guards at the tunnel entrance found him beside me, still hog-tied. Eli isn't sure where the boy is being held, but he knows he's here.

"Can I see him?"

"Probably not. They don't like sharing information that isn't considered pertinent to our objective, but I've been assured that he's being treated well."

Doubt has me biting the inside of one cheek. It strikes me as odd because, if he's being treated by the people on this base, why mention the quality of that treatment? Doesn't sit well.

"Where did they find us?"

"Tunnel entrance, receiving dock inside the main gate. You both appeared there, out of thin air."

"I was out of it, I don't remember anything."

"Well, your timing couldn't have been better. We were unloading medical supplies, double-checking the vials of antivenin, immunoglobulin. There are all kinds of snakes around the area, and every once in a while one finds its way inside."

"You were there?"

"Yes. I work with the medical team when things get slow in A-Unit."

Eli goes on relaying the details; how I was minutes from death and Nahuiollin was fighting mad. Two guards loaded him onto a Jeep that took him wherever he ended up.

Three nurses plus Eli worked on me. They found the knife in my hand and put it together pretty quickly that the blade might have been laced with snake venom. They got the antivenin into my system ASAP. An actual doctor arrived just as one of the nurses was stitching my wounds.

My headache is nearly gone when I step out of the room and into a corridor lined with closed, unmarked doors. Eli steps out and the door slides shut behind us. The click of an automatic lock makes me shudder.

"The best part," Eli says, "is that the stones are here, in this very facility."

He sounds really excited, but I'm skeptical. I mean, since when does the government not take any and all power available to it and then some? But it's also hard not to believe my duplicate childhood friend when he swears on his life that the stones are here, close by, under the tightest security, guarded twenty-four-seven.

I guess the hardest part is, believing that they—the Department of Homeland Security—have the Threestone and want to give them back to me.

I don't like that he uses the word _give_. Like they're so magnanimous to _give_ me what's already mine. Assholes.

"Stopping Daemon is A-1 team's main objective. To do that, we must enable you to not only catch him, but also ensure that your Threestone are more powerful than his, so you can take his away."

"Sounds too good to be true."

"Well, it's the truth." He takes something from his pocket and hands it to me. It's a laminated card and lanyard.

"This is your ID badge. You need to wear it at all times."

My eyes run over the card, taking in the photo. It looks like me but, my jaw looks weird. Too small or something. "I don't recall having my picture taken."

"You didn't." Eli winks.

There's a red bar across the top of the badge just above my full name, G. J. Springer III, which is followed by the title _Project Coordinator, Omega A-1._

The badge hanging around Eli's neck has nearly the same title, only his says _Omega A-1 Lead Project Coordinator_.

I follow Eli as he explains that the badge will get me into any one of the locations in this facility that has been allocated for use on Omega project.

"Stopping Daemon is our project?"

Eli shrugs, nonchalant, muttering, "That and saving the world."

The hallway ends at a wide door. We step out into an open area that looks like a narrow road, which leads to a fork in two underground roadways. One veers right, we take the one to the left. I don't ask many questions, awestruck by the intimidating mass of this military installation. It's like an underground city. We walk down the expansive stone and concrete corridors, talking. They're wide enough that a tank could roll through easy. Steel mesh and huge anchor bolts are fastened to the high ceilings peppering rock with metal and emphasizing the _force_ in the reinforced structure.

"Where are we, Eli?"

"NORAD," he answers.

I turn to look at him. " _The_ NORAD? Under the mountain? I thought they dealt with military air defense? Aren't you helping Homeland Security?" He looks at me funny and I shrug. "What? I've seen Independence Day."

He chuckles. "In that movie, they were in New Mexico, you know, Area 51, aliens. I don't know how things work where you come from, but here, Homeland Security is the premiere agency at all levels of government. They're top-dog, answer to no one, so to speak."

It's doubtful I can believe anything Eli says about this new found support system. My natural instinct as a member of Generation X is to damn The Man. But he says they want to help me? Maybe that's a good thing, but the news sends a bolt of dread up my spine.

Even so, it's good to have time with this version of my friend; makes the vacancy of Elijah's sudden death a little easier.

At every junction we pass, there are huge steel doors—like the ones banks use to seal their vaults, only ten times bigger—tucked into the walls.

"I take it you haven't made up your mind to let us help you."

"It's all a little too unbelievable." The pain, dull and lumbering through my head, reminds me of the type of people he's in bed with; what they're capable of.

"What the hell did they do to me?"

"They needed to make sure you were telling the truth."

"Truth? About what?"

"Your relationship to the stones."

"My what?"

"Is it true what you told them, about the way you communicate with them? Can you really just _ask_ and receive?"

I don't care for the direction this conversation is taking. He isn't the man my father sent me to for help. "Isn't it that way for all Threestone Bearers?"

"Not by far." Eli's eyes widen. He pauses in his walking along the side of the massive corridor. "In my experience, controlling the stones takes a tremendous amount of training and learning to focus, which another Bearer I've come across has had a difficult time with, because of the scrambled thoughts and time sickness."

I nod, but wonder what it means. 'Another Bearer,' G-Two, has trouble manipulating the stones?

"G, if what you told Stevens is true; you're a natural with the Threestone. The most natural Bearer we've come across." He starts walking again. I follow.

"I can't remember what I told Stevens. What the hell did he do to me? And how many other Bearers have you come across?"

"Just the one, you know, Abi's husband—who still hasn't returned—but we're veering from the point."

I stop walking. "And that point is?"

He turns to face me. "That this whole debacle is bigger than which side we do or don't choose. There are no more sides, G. Sides don't matter."

"Do enlighten me, then."

His features darken. His mouth is a thin line as he breaks down the bigger picture. "The only thing that matters right now is that you pledge your loyalty to the cause."

I have to stop myself from laughing. "So it _is_ all about choosing sides."

He shakes his head vigorously. "No, no. It's about _survival_."

"Survival?" I ask, and then am assaulted by the memory of sitting at the table with my friend Eli in his little yellow kitchen.

We'd just come back from our trip to Ivanhoe, where we'd followed the map to the place where my father buried the stones. His face was pale as he said, _"crossing over has consequences... it's like punching holes in the ozone layer, only on a much bigger scale."_

"Crossing over has consequences," I repeat. My friend was terrified of the implications.

Eli gives a nod of agreement. "So you understand, then, that we have to pool all resources. You have to let us help you stop Daemon."

I'm the one nodding now, looking at the smooth gray walkway.

"Okay. Good. The first step in that direction is making the ones who have the Threestone a little more comfortable with giving them back to you."

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"By doing everything they ask you to do while you're here."

It's more than a little tough to swallow. But, bullshit or no, those stones are mine. If they're here, then I'm doing what I have to do to get them back and getting the hell out.

"Do I, like, cut my finger and sign the pledge of loyalty with blood?"

Eli clears his throat. "The project is top-secret. None of us have signed anything."

"They must have promised you something for your help, how do you know they'll keep up their end without a contract?"

He shrugs, as if there's no reason to be concerned. "Right now, it's a simple gentlemen's agreement."

"Just so you know; where a 'gentlemen's agreement' is concerned, the little guy always gets boned."

7 Someone Please Gouge My Eyes Out

Here is something I can't quite wrap my head around: what the hell am I still doing here?

Scratch that. I know why I'm here, it's because I didn't have a choice. Eli had just told me I should do whatever I was asked to gain 'The Man's' trust. The moment I agreed, he mentioned a big meeting we were supposed to attend. And since I can't leave without the Threestone, I came.

But the longer I'm forced to sit in this conference room and listen to that dickhead, Marshall Stevens, the more I'd like to grab the pointer in his hand and beat him with it before jamming it into my ear. It's been thirty minutes since he started his power-point presentation on the dangers of getting lost inside the hollow mountain. With no end in sight.

I look around the large conference room at the mostly empty table and wonder why they chose this location if it was only going to be three people: me, Eli, and Mr. Helmet-giving Presenter. The table is at least fifteen feet long, made of black marble and metal. There are nearly thirty empty chairs surrounding it.

The wall on the North end of the room is covered in three rows of built-in screens, though they're all turned off at the moment. On the Eastern wall there's a large digital clock, flashing five different times and dates. The one that gives our time is marked with a red ring. On the South wall, behind me, there's a gigantic flat screen flashing weather information from around the world.

Finally, the projector mounted in the ceiling shuts off and the screen begins to roll up. When the lights click on, I'm already out of my chair.

"At-ten-tion!" A voice calls from the doorway.

Eli jumps to his feet and slaps a hand to his forehead. At the front of the room, Marshall Stevens is also standing at attention, his stiff hand cutting his brow.

Both of the men have their eyes glued to the door. I turn as well, to find a man in dark-blue uniform standing against the wall just inside the door. He's wearing a beret with the DHS shield on it, saluting a line of people entering the room. Six men and one woman, all in perfectly pressed uniforms, with left shoulders holding row after row of colorful ribbons and medals.

I find myself saluting as they walk to the front of the room. Marshall Stevens scrambles out of their way, coming to stand near myself and Eli. The troupe makes a cutting turn to face us.

"At ease." The man at the front of the line says. He's older—probably late-fifties—and thin with neat white hair and a trim mustache. His voice is stern, his back ramrod straight.

At his command, the two men beside me widen their stance and set their hands behind their backs. Unsure what to do, I mimic the pose.

"Doctor Thacker, make the introductions."

"Yes, sir." Eli responds, and takes a step closer to me speaking low. "You're going to meet the leaders of Omega. They're some of the highest ranking officers in the military." He nudges my elbow, hinting I should follow as he walks across the long room.

We stand in front of the first man on the left. He's wearing a sharp Navy suit with gold stripes down the legs and a big white cap that's a contrast to his dark skin. "This is Admiral James Buchanan of the U.S. Navy.

Buchanan offers his hand. I wipe my palm on my jeans before taking it. He gives one stiff shake. "Good to have you here."

I nod, "Good to be here."

I follow Eli's lead as he steps in front of the next man, who he introduces as Fleet Admiral Joseph Harding of the U.S. Coast Guard. Next, we stand in front of the only woman in the room. She's tanned and a little plain. Also looks like she wants to kick my ass for what I'm thinking. Her name is Elizabeth Greene. She's a commissioned officer—whatever that means—in the Air Force and I'm told she's also an Admiral.

I can't help it, I'm trying to charm away the piercing glare she's wearing when I say "I hear there aren't many women in the Air Force."

The woman's posture impossibly straightens. "There are even fewer civilians."

I blink; not quite sure why she hates me so much already.

Eli is looking at me. His face washed with nerves. "I apologize, Admiral Greene. I misspoke. G, Admiral Greene is the _Fleet_ Admiral to the United States Air Force."

"Oh," that makes sense. She's not one of a handful of female officers; she is _the_ commanding officer who happens to be female. "I meant no disrespect, Ma'am."

Admiral Greene keeps glaring as we move down the line.

I'm standing a little straighter myself now, half-wondering what kind of shit I've stepped in.

The next guy is with NASA. And the one after him is with the FBI. The two simply nod when introduced and I forget their names immediately.

When we finally come to the last man in line, the one with the white spikey hair, thin mustache and booming voice, Eli introduces Erin Jacoby, "Five-star General of the United States Army."

As General Jacoby shakes my hand, he looks at Eli. "Has Springer been briefed?"

"Yes, sir," Eli responds.

He gives a curt nod. "Let's get down to business."

"Yes, sir."

When we turn to head back to our seats, there are more people filing into the room. At least a dozen more officers in different camo uniforms and half as many people in regular clothes holding binders.

A man in plain clothes begins handing out sheets of paper. I put my hand out but he passes me by without so much as an 'excuse me.' Then, I notice he's doing the same thing to everyone else in plain clothes. Only officers are getting the information.

Leaning over to Eli, I ask "What is that?" pointing at the pages we're not privy to.

He shakes his head, "They use lists for the lesser things, to relay the non-privileged information to their units."

A different guy comes by, placing cups and pitchers of water in a line down the table. When he rounds the far end of the table, I notice a familiar face.

"Crew-Cut," I mutter, wondering why he's isn't in uniform like the last time I saw him.

When I turn to ask Eli about him, he's standing up, talking to a small group of people carrying red binders. They pass them off to him. He takes his seat again, organizing the stack.

When the digital clock reads 1700, the wide double doors to the office are closed. The lights are dimmed, and another slide show begins.

I'm groaning internally as General Jacoby says the meeting is going to cover the ultra-boring topic of emergency preparedness. I try to pay attention though, because I'm sure it's supposed to be important, but then he hands off the meeting to that freaking guy, Marshall Stevens.

Fifteen extremely long minutes later, the lights are back on and the door to the conference room is opened once more.

I'm ready to give a standing ovation because I am just that happy to finally be dismissed. I go to stand up, but Eli stops me with a whispered, "Not yet."

About three-quarters of the officers and half of the plain clothed people stand. As they file out, I notice all of the people who got a piece of paper are scrambling out of the room. Once they're gone, the conference room holds only twelve people, including myself, Eli, freaking Marshall Stevens, all those Admirals, and Crew-Cut, or Agent Davis, and the two people who gave Eli their binders.

I wonder what's in those things and make a mental note to ask him once we're done here.

The door closes again and General Jacoby presses a button on the wall. As he stands at the lectern, the screen drops back down behind him and I'd rather gouge my eyes out than sit through another PowerPoint.

He addresses the room with his booming voice. "Those of you left in this room are here because you are direct contributing members of Alpha team. I know many of you are aware of the nature of Project Omega, but most of you have not been briefed on the details.

"Let me begin by saying that Omega is complicated, so this briefing requires patience. We are in the midst of what is, without question, the most deadly enemy our world has ever faced. You all have my deepest gratitude for your contributions.

"Doctor Elijah Thacker is a _Nobel Prize_ winning Physicist and Cosmologist. He's come across some vital information he's going to share with us. Be patient with him, pay attention." He turns to walk away from the lectern then pauses.

What the hell is Elijah going to say?

Clearing his throat, General Jacoby adds, "Soldiers, Scientists, and Civilians, I'll say this one last time: Doctor Thacker's information is sensitive and requires the utmost discretion. You need to talk about it, talk to God or fellow team-mates. Everyone else is off-limits."

He scans each face in the conference room. I do, too, noting everyone's grave expressions. The phrase 'shit-bomb' pops into my head.

"We _will_ keep that which is secure intact. Casualties are inevitable, but let's keep them to a minimum by keeping our mouths shut." With that, General Jacoby sits down.

The lights dim as Eli takes the lectern. The screen behind him is black. "Good evening, everyone, I know you are all going to have a lot of questions, so I'll start with the facts: it is a fact that other dimensions exist."

Well damn, he's diving right in.

"We know that our plane of existence, our universe is merely one among, potentially, thousands of others."

A picture appears on the screen. A graphic illustration similar to one I've seen before. It's a series of circles, in varying sizes laid on top of one another, like a bulls-eye.

"We also have definitive proof that time itself is a closed loop. Each universe has its' own unique time loop, or signature as some call it." The pile of circles on the screen begins spinning.

"Therefore, even though each universe has sixty-seconds per minute, sixty-minutes per hour, and twenty-four hours per day, the individual increments of each second are not the same size as our own. Therefore, time within each universe is relative." Lines appear over the spinning circles on screen, slicing them into twelve sections, creating a rudimentary clock.

The slide display is the focus of everyone's attention. And I realize where I saw this image before; in Eli's kitchen. When he described his theory about time relativity. What did he call it? Something complicated... Thacker's Theorem for... _shit_ I can't remember.

"We also, more recently, came to understand that certain people among us have discovered a force of energy which enables certain persons to travel between these dimensions. Today, we are here to talk about the ramifications of interdimensional travel."

" _People" among us?_

Pointing to the screen, another picture appears, from deep space. It looks like a butterfly, or two galaxies kissing one another. It's breathtaking.

Eli's voice takes on the bold tenor of a Professor. "This is a Hubble photograph of the Butterfly Nebula taken eleven years ago. This beauty right here was the result of a dying star. It's located within the Scorpio constellation, approximately three-thousand-eight-hundred light years away."

There's a soft click and the picture switches to a mostly black screen. The only spots of color are blurred streaks. "This photo was received by NASA just a few years ago, of the same area."

He pauses, leaving me to wonder what exactly this means, because there is no trace of the constellation.

"Myself, along with other, more notable Cosmologists, have long believed that the Dark Energy within our universe holds the secrets of our cosmos. As of thirty-seven days ago, we have confirmation that we were not only right, but we can prove it, thanks to Mr. Springer." He gestures in my direction, but doesn't slow down.

The slide changes once more. This time we're looking at a glorious sea of stars and galaxies sparkling in deep space.

"This is space as we have always known it. A universe in expansion—as evidenced by the redshifts in the stars and planets—that pale reddish hue told us that objects were moving away. Expanding the space between galaxies."

The slide changes to a similar photo. More stars at a closer angle. The pale pinkish hue that surrounded them is gone.

Eli combs his fingers over his neat beard, and looking down at an open binder on the lectern, delivers the blow. "Approximately seventy years ago, as you all know, the redshifts disappeared."

Another slide, and as I look at it I'm leaning forward.

"Sixty-three years ago, the blueshifts became visible."

"What does that mean?" Marshall Stevens asks with a half-raised hand.

"Mr. Stevens, it means we discovered that the stars changed direction. Instead of moving away from us in expansion, they were contracting, moving closer."

"What does that have to do with the Dark Energy you mentioned?" Admiral Greene asks.

"Admiral Greene, the level of Dark Energy within the universe is what determined the rate of expansion. Some five billion years or so ago, that Energy reached its' tipping point, which forced the constant expansion of the cosmos to halt and reverse. But with our planet being so far away from all of it, we weren't able to see any of this happening until about seventy years ago. This information has always been available to the public.

"What has not been made public is the reason for this meeting. The purpose for Omega project. That reason is that the contraction is accelerating. Exponentially."

Accelerating?

The room bustles with sounds of whispers and people moving in their chairs.

"When are the planets going to be affected?" I hadn't noticed the screens along the North wall filled with the faces of people listening via satellite.

Eli turns to the screen where a beautiful African-American woman with tight dreadlocks pinned on top of her head is waiting for his response.

"Doctor Harris, I can't give an _exact_ time."

"What is the rate of acceleration? You do have some idea or you wouldn't have called this meeting," she counters.

Eli looks down, seeming to go over his notes (now I know what's in the binders). He looks really nervous. "Yes, I do, Doctor Harris. The team here has measured our vitiate window. We think about ten to twenty years."

The room takes a collective gasp.

General Jacoby booms, "Is that closer to ten or twenty?"

At the same time, the remarkably calm Doctor Harris asks, "And that's the time frame from the onset of global distress?"

"Yes, Doctor Harris." Eli answers before turning to the General. "The rate is hard is to track, sir. At first, the reversal looked slow enough that we wouldn't be affected for billions of years, but we've observed rapid, exponential acceleration and we don't know why."

"For your particular position in the multiverse?" Doctor Harris presses.

Eli takes a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and sets them on his nose, answering, "Yes, Doctor Harris, as we can only perform our calculations from the room we are in, so to speak. But I have arranged for everyone involved to receive copies of the data sets we were given. As Physics is generally the same in each universe, each team may conduct its' own research using the variables of their individual boundaries. Your window will most likely come up different from ours, as the small amount of mapping we've been able to do so far leads us to believe this is an isolated incident."

"What does the next step look like?" Admiral Harding asks.

Marshall offers his follow-up, "What exactly does 'global distress' mean?"

Eli's sweating. Mumbling and trying to answer questions, but no one will shut up long enough to listen.

"Hey!" I stand, waving my arms. The room of impatient assholes immediately quiets and I feel my face getting hot. Instead of pleading with them all to listen, I look to Eli, gesture for him to continue, and sit down.

He clears his throat. "I understand you all want answers, but if you'll just hold your questions, I promise most of them will be answered during the presentation."

8 Truth and Consequences

Eli-Two was right.

Most everyone's questions were answered. General Jacoby was told it might be closer to twenty years before the earth starts to experience 'global distress.'

Marshall's answer as to what that looks like is _heat_. Lots of heat—enough to make what's left of the polar ice caps melt, to make the moon draw closer, causing the tides to rise. The ocean will heat up until it gets too warm to support life. Fresh water sources will evaporate. Trees, animals, insects, plants and birds will die. The wind will stop blowing.

Life on earth comes to a screeching, boiling halt.

Doctor Harris got what she needed, too, which was some super top-secret equation to perform whatever calculations she and the other people on the screens needed to be satisfied. And Eli assured everyone that all of his information suggests that this 'crunch' is an isolated incident.

Admiral Harding's question about what the next step looks like, well, that's where me and my Threestone come in. I'm to start training immediately.

Eli-Two never mentioned the stones by name or referred to them at all. He just said that he and his team are working as quickly as they can to find out why space here is shrinking, to do what they can to stop and reverse it.

He did, however, refer to the people on the screens, saying they are doing what they can from their own dimensions. I was surprised by this, but he did start off by reminding everyone that we live in a multiverse.

I'm glad that no one outside of Omega team knows about the stones or what they can do. I'm glad the presentation is over, and conference room is empty, yet I can't seem to make myself move. I wanted to get out so badly, but now I'm stuck sitting here thinking about what Eli said.

About the fate of the planet.

Forget global annihilation. It's universal; a theory called 'the _Big Crunch_ ,' because space itself is shrinking, drawing everything closer and closer until everything within the universe is smashed into a tiny ball that eventually explodes. And they don't really know that it's an isolated incident. They just _think_ it might be. They need other planes to perform the calculations before they can say what they "know."

They do know that the _Crunch_ should take billions of years. It's been happening for mere decades and for some reason it's sped up.

Here's what I know: this is happening because of Daemon. He's breaking down the delicate membranes that separate each universe, wreaking havoc to collect duplicate stones.

My version of Eli told me that he believed they use Dark Energy. And according to Eli-Two the majority of matter within the universe is Dark.

The part that bothers me the most about all of this is the government's response. Their big plan is to keep the accelerated _Crunch_ a secret as long as possible, and then run away. The government's brilliant idea is to choose the _most_ _deserving_ _people_ and launch them into another dimension.

These are the kind of people who want to help me; people who judge that one life is less or more valuable based on some arbitrary system that means nothing to anyone but them.

And then there's still the nagging issue of Nahuiollin. I need to find out where he is.

After the presentation, Eli came to sit back down beside me while General Jacoby reminded everyone of the importance of carrying on with their duty, which sounded a lot like pretending that nothing is wrong while they prepare.

Then he dismissed us. The other Admirals are taking the pertinent information to whomever they've tasked to help me do my job, while simultaneously gathering supplies for the ones who will be chosen to leave the universe.

My stomach is churning.

After everyone left, Eli asked how I was feeling. When I didn't answer, he tried to cheer me up by telling me that the Threestone are officially considered a new element—a measurable form of Dark Energy, he said, "A solid form that interacts with regular matter here on earth." I guess its usual form is more like a gas.

According to Eli-Two, Dark Matter and Dark Energy are everywhere; that they are known to interact with the force of gravity, but in such small ways that we don't normally notice.

I don't know anything about Dark Energy, but I know that when the stones are interacting with whatever matter that's surrounding them, there is no way to miss it.

My beautiful, dangerous Threestone.

9 Making the Best of a Pile of Crap

"Mr. Springer, Dr. Thacker is waiting on you."

Looking up from the concrete floor of the conference room, I find Crew-Cut peeking in the doorway and am immediately on my feet. If I can help make any of this mess right, I owe it to everyone to try.

Passing Crew-Cut on the way out, I take a gander at his clearance badge, anxious to find out what he plays in all this. I could ask, but that would require speaking to him.

Department of Homeland Security, Special Agent Arthur Davis. _Assistant Project Coordinator, Omega A-1_.

Great. He's supposed to be assisting me. Well, I'm going to give him shit for that name.

"He's in the lab." Agent _Arthur_ Davis says, and I follow mutely behind.

My father always said that knowledge is the first line of defense, and it's the one thing I've struggled with most. But for all the millions of things I don't know, there is one thing I know better than anyone. That Daemon must be stopped. Maybe not every version of him like Abi-Two said, but definitely the one who killed my father. Because he's evil, and no one who holds that much hatred should ever be allowed to have power over anyone.

Daemon is gathering stones from every dimension he visits. And every time he stumbles on a new set, the one retaining the most energy absorbs the weaker stones. The two meld into one even stronger, more powerful Threestone.

I still can't figure out why. Why is he gathering the sets? What does he want, beyond violence and death?

" _Why?"_ It's always the most important question. It's also the one that usually goes unanswered.

Billions of people, just in this dimension, will die because Daemon is gathering them. In my mind, I know the two are connected, but exactly how is unclear.

Crew-Cut, I mean _Arthur_ , leads us out of the building where the conference room is located, and through a large open area where we pass the ends of a series of long, three story buildings. I spot signs with arrows for a hospital, a store, and even a restaurant.

I'm in awe at the construction. We're inside a mountain, walking through a virtual city. There are bright lamps hanging down from the rafters, mimicking sunlight. Huge pipes running along the cave walls.

"We're in building E." Crew-Cut says, pointing to another building about fifty yards up the paved road ahead. It is one of the only single story buildings and looks small, but as we get closer, I can see that it's a long narrow structure like all the others.

"So your name is Arthur." It's not a question, but he takes it like one.

"It's Art, after my great-grand-dad who died in World War Two. But everyone calls me Davis."

And that is it for me. I walk faster, leaving him behind.

The door to E-building requires a key card to enter. Remembering what Eli said about my badge, I take it from around my neck and swipe it through the machine. The door clicks open. I pass through, hoping to leave _Davis_ behind. True to annoying form, though, he catches the door before it closes.

I walk straight down the main hall, passing a windowed room with vending machines and three small couches. I hear voices and keep going straight.

After passing several more doors, the hall hooks left. There's only one doorway, which opens into a large room where I find Eli and the other two people I saw him talking with at the meeting. Their backs are to me.

He's talking, gesturing at a large translucent screen peppered with what looks like equations and data sets. The screen's half the size of the wall and almost as tall. There are a few tables covered with equipment and wires. A bunch of tech I've never seen before. I couldn't guess what any of it does, even if I wanted to.

"That has to be it. There is no other possibility that comes close."

One of the guys standing next to him touches the screen and the point of contact glows green and get larger, like zooming in for a close-up of some part of an equation. "But that's not what this looks like. This looks like—"

"He's here." Davis interrupts, cutting passed me and walking to the small group of people.

They all turn. Eli smiles. "Good. Now we can ask him."

"Ask me what?"

"What we are seeing in this equation, it means going back in time is possible, right?"

"What equation?"

Everyone is just standing there looking at me like I've got three heads. I shake my one and only, remembering that I've got a bone to pick. "Eli, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. This way," he walks into a tiny room just off the side of the main room and shuts the door. "You remember the equation, right? It was one of the files recovered from the flash drive you left with Abi."

He sits on the edge of a small wooden desk and I plop into the chair in front of him.

"Eli, my friend, well, he never got to tell me what was on that thing. He handed it over and... then he died."

Eli's forehead wrinkles like a stack of bleachers. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I don't want to talk about that. I want to know why you told General Jacoby that I'd been briefed when I wasn't." I felt like an idiot.

He tilts his head to one side. "I apologize, G, if there was a miscommunication, but I thought you knew."

"Knew that the world was ending?"

"Yes. I mean, didn't you?"

"I knew of a possibility, not a fact."

"But you were the one who gave Abi the flash drive. She handed it off to me. We decrypted it and... your friend was a genius. Did he have help with this? I've never seen such an elegant equation. It's beautiful. We've learned so much about what to expect and what we can do to counteract."

I think about that for a minute; mull over our conversation before the meeting. I'd mentioned consequences and so did he. "The equation came from my father. I don't know where he got it. What were you asking me about out there?"

"If you aren't aware of the contents of the flash drive, then I'm sure your answer won't help, but, basically we were arguing about whether or not the master equation is the answer to time travel."

That peaks my interest. "Master equation? For what?"

"That's just it. It's difficult to decipher. But I think it's telling us how to travel into the past."

"I thought that was impossible." Eli said it was impossible.

"Well, in theory, anything is possible. Even time travel. Einstein's theory of relativity states time travel to the future is possible. String theory—"

"You didn't ask me about the future, you asked about the past. Why?"

He shakes his head, seeming sheepish all of a sudden. "I'm working on a theory, about Daemon."

I lean closer.

"I have always been bothered by the fact that he's travelling from one dimension to the next without any seeming purpose."

"Me, too. Eli and I could never figure out what he wants."

"And he's so careless about it," Eli-Two adds. "I've seen other versions of him. My friend, G, came across a few. He always brought them back and questioned them. None would talk, of course. But it didn't really niggle at me until Abi told me about the version you've been chasing."

"He's evil." I say, feeling it in my bones. "I know why he hated my father. The same reason that native boy, Nahuiollin, hates me. My stealing the stones got his family killed." He was all alone out there in the woods, covered in the ash of his dead relatives. Living as an outcast, looking for me.

A shiver runs up my spine.

"But what your particular Daemon is doing, it goes beyond a need for vengeance." Eli's fingers comb his beard.

"He's not mine. And that dudes not right in the head."

"I think he's trying to go back in time."

There is something to his words, the way they're strung together. And I don't know how, but I know that I know, that I _know_ he's onto something.

"That's why he doesn't care about how many people he kills or the damage he causes—"

"Because if he _can_ go back, he can stop himself from helping you. Or stop the first of your ancestors from finding the initial set of stones."

"Explain to me how it's possible," I say. "Use small words."

Eli's ghost of a grin emerges. "Think of it this way: there is no equation that says travelling back in time is impossible. According to String Theory, all you need is a universe that spins, rather than expands, and enough energy to leave it, and travel around the outside."

"But that's impossible." How can a person travel outside their universe? Oh, wait...

"No," Eli-Two shakes his head, "it's not. He just needs the energy, more than we could ever harness on this earth."

"How..." I'm lost. I don't even know what to ask.

"When a star dies, sometimes it just fizzles out. But, if it's a very large star, as it dies there's a super-nova explosion—a massive release of energy—and what's left over after, becomes a black hole."

"A black hole," I repeat.

"Yes, I think your Daemon's biggest problem is—"

"He's not an astronaut."

He acknowledges with a small nod. "Even if he was, we don't possess the technology to make a journey twenty-four thousand light-years away to the nearest black hole. And he doesn't need to. Daemon only needs a dying star big enough to become one."

"Would a collapsing universe work?"

10 In Need Of Assurance

_Daemon is an asshole_. That's the understatement of the century. Does he really want to kill us all just so he can go back in time?

The five of us are sitting in the break room, scattered across the three couches, stuffing our faces with pizza. It's really good, and gluten-free. I don't know what the hell gluten is and I don't care. Been too long since I tasted mozzarella cheese and spicy pepperoni.

But all I can think about is the objective—wonder what Daemon is doing and when I'm going to get the Threestone back so I can hunt the bastard.

And I gotta do something about that kid, too.

Eli and the other two nerds, Tako and Shifty (I forget their real names), are talking about a scientific theory of something I can't understand. Davis is sitting alone, like me, on his own couch. His spikey brown hair sticks straight up without gel.

Tako is hella smart with a sharp tongue, so I decided to call him Tako after this one Japanese knife that's used to slice sushi. Also, he's Japanese, which might be why I thought of the sushi knife in the first place.

Shifty's in the Big Brain club, too (obviously). I think he's from somewhere in the Middle East. It's tough to say, as his accent is all-American. His most notable characteristic is the lazy eye. The right one. And I'm never sure where he's looking so it's tough to know who he's talking to. I think he likes it that way, because when we were introduced, I asked which eye I should look at when I talk to him. Eli thought I was being rude, but I figured it was less rude to ask him directly than to get the info off someone else behind his back.

Shifty wasn't offended, I don't think. He threw his head back and practically shouted like a King giving a decree. "Ye shall not gaze upon me, nave. Not without the Royal consent."

Yeah, he's been to one-too-many Renaissance fairs.

Setting my empty plate down on the cushion beside me, I ask the room, "When do I start training, and for how long?"

Eli, Shifty, and Tako flash looks at me, and swing their collective gaze to Davis.

He gets up from the couch, taking his plate and mine to the sink area in the corner. "Tomorrow morning." Davis says. "Zero-six-hundred."

Shit.

* * *

I'm up well before Davis comes to get me. I couldn't sleep.

The moment the clock on the wall over my bed hits five a.m., he peeps his mug through my doorway. Needless to say, he's surprised to find me ready and waiting.

"Take me to the stones. I'm not cooperating until I know for sure you have them."

"That's fair." He looks me up and down. "Tuck in your shirt."

We walk along the narrow roadways between buildings, my shirt still un-tucked. Davis cuts through what looks like an alley and I follow. Traversing the narrow path, I look down to find the nearest buildings are sitting on top of gigantic metal coils. Coming out on the other side, I notice that all of the buildings are sitting on large steel springs. I've spent so much time looking up at the empty mountain, I didn't notice what was at my feet.

We stop at a small unmarked door. Davis swipes his badge and it opens. We enter a short narrow hall. It's short, with walls of cut stone ending at the base of a ladder.

He starts climbing without a word and I'm irritated because now my only view is of his ass. Once we get about thirty feet up, there's a landing. Davis hops off the ladder and starts talking to a guy who, I guess, is a guard. He's dark complected with a stout build and a French accent.

As I hop off the ladder onto the landing, Davis is saying "the F-N-G wants to see the summit."

The guards eyes light up but he holds his serious expression. I get the feeling he's letting us pass and quickly hop back on the ladder.

I hear Davis chuckle at something the guard says but don't catch it. Let them make fun of me. I don't care because I know who's getting the last laugh.

The tunnel stretches on for what seems like forever and I have no idea how far we're climbing. It must be far away from all the electrical lines so the stones can't steal the energy from this place. But I can't remember how far the stones reach anymore. I measured the field of suction the first time I was in that ancient plane, but I gathered a few more sets since then. And each time the Threestone absorb another set, they get more powerful, so who knows how far we're climbing.

And I'm anxious. I want to hold the Threestone in my hands and feel their soothing presence. The cool weight of them.

With Davis on the ladder below, the thought occurs to me that this might be some kind of ambush. I'm all alone with a guy I don't know and can't trust. My only run-in with his counterpart ended in a hail of bullets.

At the next landing, I hop off the ladder, even though there is no guard. My hands are already aching, but I stay on alert because _why isn't there another guard here_? Just then, I notice there is no doorway on this landing like there was on the last one.

Davis hops off the ladder. "What's the matter? Tired already?"

"No." My chest puffs out even though it's a lie.

"Good," Davis pops back on the ladder, "We got a long way to go."

I wait a few seconds and then hop back on the rungs, noting Davis has picked up the pace. My arms and legs burn trying to keep up with him.

He yells down at me like a drill sergeant every time I fall more than three rungs behind. "Keep up!" "Don't slow down!" Sometimes he insults me, but that kind of shit has never worked on me. You have to care what someone thinks in order for their insults to work.

I'm ninety-nine percent sure that when _Miley Cyrus_ sang about _The Climb_ , it was metaphorical. Still, the song is stuck on replay in my mind while I make the endless ascension. Up rung after rung, climbing the endless, dark tunnel where my only view is Davis' undercarriage.

I pretend it's just me, in the dark, with my determination.

Well over an hour into the ascent, I am breathing heavy and coated in sweat. My hair and face are soaked with it. It's gotten in my eyes, but I can't wipe it away. Can't afford to have my hands slip. Can't afford the time it takes to wipe my hands on my pants. I clamp my eyes shut and shake my head, feeling the drench splatter. My hands are on fire. Every slap against the rung has me convinced the fresh blisters are popping.

The moment I think I can't take anymore, Davis stops.

_Finally_. I'm trying not to vomit.

Another landing appears at the top of the dim chute. There's no guard up here either. Davis offers a hand to help me off the ladder but pride won't let me take it.

I have no idea how long we've been climbing. Feels like half the day. I collapse in the concrete alcove, my hands cracked and bleeding.

To his credit, Davis doesn't say a thing. He leans over, resting his hands on his knees.

After some time passes—not nearly enough—Davis straightens and motions that I should follow him through the door.

He swipes his ID badge, but the small light on the lock blinks red. It doesn't work. "Okay," he mutters.

"We better not have climbed this whole way for nothing."

He bids me to try mine, so I take the lanyard from around my neck and swipe it through the slot on the lock. After a moment the blinking red light turns to solid green, and I can breathe again.

The bright open sky is shocking. Judging by the suns position, it's got to be near noon. The mountaintop is vast yet still dwarfed by the massive ranges to the North and East. Cities nestled among nearby hills spread onto the flats beyond the horizon.

The sunshine's warm. I let it soak into me, breathing in the peace, before realizing that, not only is the summit quiet, but it holds that telling type of silence. Suspicion returns and I check out our immediate surroundings.

Davis is holding a hand to his forehead, approaching a group of seven soldiers in camo-brown and green uniforms, gathered under the boughs of one of the few trees large enough to offer real shade. The group stands off to the left side of the door we came through. They're standing at attention; rifles rested against shoulders. It's anyone's guess as to who is saluting who.

"At ease," Davis says, flashing his ID badge, but the men still seem uneasy until he calls me over, asking me to show my ID as well. Then, the group visibly relaxes.

One of the soldiers grabs a radio on his shoulder and walks away from us, like he's making an important call. After a minute, he comes back, giving Davis the all-clear.

"We'll only be a few minutes." Davis says and raises his hands, submitting to a search. Seeing my confusion, he advises me to do the same.

"Why?"

"They'll search us on the way out, too. General Jacoby's orders."

"Fine." I should be glad they're taking precautions, right? Maybe I will be once I've seen for myself that the stones are actually here.

After we're patted down and made to take our boots off to check for who-the-hell-knows-what, we are finally given the green light to make our way up a curving path that wraps around the small clearing half-way up the mountainside. It bends behind a wall that I hadn't noticed because it's covered in greenery. Very well camouflaged.

The lack of chirping birds is comforting. Animals and birds don't like the stones.

Davis and his explanations are even a little reassuring. "They don't know what they're guarding."

"How is that possible?" The stones have to be in an isolated spot if this mountain is to maintain power. But how can a group be watching something so important and not know it?

We head around the other side of the wall and through a gate of sorts that's been cut through a mangled wall of briars. On the other side is another small clearing. Inside the clearing, standing along the edges are three more soldiers, armed to the teeth. None of them watch us, but keep their backs to us, facing the vista with watchful eyes.

The clearing is fitted with four columns. Large and round, they're about ten feet tall, supporting a sheet of what looks like flora, but as I get closer I see the flowers aren't real. Plastic plants affixed to a thick camo-green and brown sheet of canvas.

In the very center of the clearing, hidden from above by the fake foliage is a tall triangular shape, it appears to be made of hard plastic and about the size of a port-a-potty; tall enough to stand up in, maybe wide enough for two people. The peak reaches just above the canopy. It's also painted in camo-colors, blending into the rest of the mountain. The door is fixed with a large black lock that opens by key card.

I swipe my ID, but the light blinks red.

"I have to swipe mine first. Then you do yours." Davis says.

I know that it's supposed to be a security measure, but it pisses me off. As if he has a claim on my inheritance.

"Just like the lock to get up here." He adds, as if that will make it alright.

Stepping aside, I give him enough room to swipe his card. The light blinks red and then I swipe mine. It goes green and the door pops open. At the same moment, the men guarding the clearing cock their guns.

Davis stands back from the door like he knows that's what I was going to tell him.

_Guard them your life_ , my father wrote, and that is what I intend to do.

I could take them right now and disappear, armed guards or no. I remember the times Daemon stabbed and shot me, the way the stones carried me over that waterfall and protected me from a shower of bullets. And when I was gored by that garbage truck ... I died, I know I did. Then, I woke up in another plane without a scratch.

If there weren't billions of people depending on me I would leave and never look back.

I tell myself that if the stones are here, as promised, then I will follow through with the plans Eli-Two and the Omega team has laid out for me. And if they're not... well, then I can't leave anyway.

Davis stays behind me as I open the door to the pyramid-like box. Inside, resting on a stone pedestal above a pool of water washed in bright sunlight, are three perfect ovals that changed my life: my Threestone.

The glaring white rock with the lazy eight carved into the top. The shining black stone, identical in size and shape, with the endless spiral symbol resting on the surface. Finally, the deep-red stone with the triangle connecting three small circles.

Energy dances like light inside them. Taking up each one, I feel the unusual cold comfort, as if the rocks have been inside a snowbank. There's not a trace of warmth in the pyramid or the stones even though they've been resting in the sunlight.

Holding them to my chest, I thank whoever is responsible for this mercy.

I hear myself laughing and do it some more, because I'm whole again. I didn't realize how empty I was, so hopeless without them, until just now, when I touched them. Like being baptized or reborn, I am washed with unreasonable joy because these are my Threestone.

Or are they?

Looking closely at all three of them resting comfortably in one palm... something is off.

11 Of Course Size Matters

The size is different.

Wracking my brain, I try to remember the first set of stones I dug up with Eli in the hills of Ivanhoe, California. Eli measured them and I recall them being just small enough that I could balance the whole set on one hand. Daemon stole them from me in World Two. I was stuck and had to make my way from New York all the way back to Ivanhoe in that plane to dig up the second set. I remember they were slightly larger. I had to hold them with two hands.

And as I gathered more sets, I think there might have been a change in size, but...

Any specific memory comes up fuzzy. But I can fold my hand around this set.

And the weight of this set... they're heavier. The three inseparable stones hold less weight than is reasonable for solid matter, but they've always been feather-light. That was one of the first things I noticed about them. I remember wondering if they were made of Styrofoam or something because the weight was unequal to the size. But compared to the memory, these rocks may as well be lead balls.

There's a joke in there somewhere, but as I move my hands from my chest to place them back on their platform, all I can think is that these three rocks are real the real deal. And they're not mine.

"It makes no sense," I find myself saying to Davis after locking the stones back inside the pyramid.

"Something wrong?" He's got a 9mm in his hand.

"The—they're different."

Davis takes two steps and he's speaking into my ear. "I need details."

I take in his rigid posture, the deeply set scowl on his face, the gun in his hand pointing at the ground, and the faces of the guards who are no longer facing the summit, but looking directly at us.

"I need to see Eli." I remember I'm not supposed to mention anything about the stones. These men have no idea what they're guarding.

Davis backs up and gives a stiff nod. "Let's go."

I groan, not looking forward to the climb down, but follow him out of the clearing, down the path, around the wall, and back into the first clearing we came through where the first seven guards commence with searching us. We both pull out our pockets and shove out of boots.

I'm the first one with my boots back on, so I head for the door we came through.

Davis calls to me, "Hey, Springer!" I stop and look back to find he's walking the opposite direction. "We're taking the elevator. It's faster."

Stalking towards him, I yell, "There's an elevator?"

Davis shrugs. "There are three. We're not Neanderthals."

Once inside the steel box, after the outer doors close and we're shooting down, I give a little laugh.

I'm not sure why.

12 If It Ain't Broke Fix It Anyway

E-Building, like all the others in this place, is long and narrow, like the manufactured home I grew up in. We enter from the opposite end and have to walk through halls I haven't seen to get to the ones I have.

It's quiet. The lab, or main office, is one of the last rooms we stumble upon. And no one is in there. No Eli and his troop of brainiacs solving intergalactic equations.

Davis grabs a phone from one of the desks and buzzes a few other offices, trying to find someone to pick-up while I keep heading through the main corridor to the other end of the building, because I've got a feeling everyone is in the break room.

From what I have been told, no one leaves this place during the day. Omega team members are discouraged from interactions with people outside the team. That way, the integrity of the project cannot be called into question. So when anyone wants to get away from the lab, they go for the break room. There's a Ping-Pong table in there, and a TV with a DVD player, a stereo, and the vending machines take plug-nickels that they keep in a bowl on the counter for anyone to take as many as they want.

Through the glass wall of the break room I count four people. Tako and Shifty are at the Ping-Pong table arguing over a shot, whether or not the ball hit the line and should be counted as a point.

Eli is sitting at one of the round tables in front of the vending machines. Across from him sits a woman. I don't know who she is, but she has to have clearance or she wouldn't be here. Maybe Admiral Greene? Her back is facing me, but when I walk into the break room she turns her head, while mine suddenly twists with warmth at her familiar face.

"Abi." My mouth feels numb. She looks amazing.

"Hey, Stranger." Her teeth bite into her bottom lip, but she smiles and jumps to her feet.

My arms have a mind of their own, opening for her before I think about it. We hug. Tight. And I realize how much I've missed her. I never want to let go.

"Your hair is different." The words fall on her neck.

I feel her shrug like it's nothing, but she looks so different without those long blond locks that fall down her back. This new look is punk-rock and feminine; sheared short on the sides and long on top. She looks great and I tell her so.

"It's so good to see you," She releases me and steps back. Her gaze is glossy.

"It's better seeing you." Abi, in any form, has always been easy on the eyes, even more so with her new haircut. And what she's wearing—tight black ribbed tank top tucked into camo cargo pants. She's got a thick band wrapped around her upper arm. Looks like a cell phone holder or something. She's a badass, this girl.

_Yowza_ , I think, feeling the blood rush from my head to my pants.

"How long have you been here? No one mentioned you'd be working with us."

Her left hand tugs at her right like she's nervous. "I got word you were cooperating yesterday."

God, I'm glad she's here. As demonstration, I step in and give her another hug. "Thank you for coming. I could use your help." Abi knows as well as I do how tough it is being a Bearer.

"It didn't go so well with the kid, huh?"

_Ouch_. "No, not really," I shake my head.

She sets her hands on her hips. "After _all_ my coaching?" For a moment, I'm sure she's being critical, but then her smile gives away the ruse.

"I'm hopeless."

She chuckles, "Yeah, me too."

Eli stands to leave, but I tell him I need to talk to him about something important. He nods and asks me to follow him back to the lab.

When he starts to ask Abi to wait for us, I interrupt.

"Actually, she might be able to help."

My eyes drop to her chest—which I respectfully ignore—opting to check out her ID badge hanging at the end of a red lanyard. Her position as Consulting Coordinator gives her A-3 level clearance. "What does A-3 mean, actually?"

"I get to give advice about the things I already know but am not allowed to receive any new information."

My brow furrows. That makes no sense. We have to ask her for advice, how's she supposed to give it without all the information? "Is there a map of your brain somewhere around here? I don't want to break any rules."

She's got the nicest smile.

Eli cuts in, "We can talk in here, actually." He waves towards the round table he and Abi were occupying.

I look around to find the room is empty. I hadn't noticed anyone leaving. "Where did Tako and Shifty go?" I thought they were still playing Ping-Pong.

Abi belts out a laugh. "Who?"

Eli rolls his eyes. "Their names are Peters and Nyguen."

"Or... Thing-one and Thing-two," I toss back.

While they try making up lame nick-names for me, I walk over to the sink to wash my hands before grabbing breakfast from the vending machine.

But the lack of pain has me looking at my hands. As the water runs over them, flecks of flesh from the broken blisters are falling into the sink. The skin beneath them is soft, pink, and new.

They're joking about calling me G-spot from now on—which is more complimentary than insulting—but I don't tell them that.

"The stones, Eli. Davis took me up to see them, and look." I show Abi and Eli my palms.

"Congratulations?" Abi asks, while Eli looks on quizzically.

"We used the ladder." Davis says, walking into the break room. "Hey Mrs. S," he nods once to Abi.

"Hey Davis," Abi nods back, adding, "Are the elevators out?"

To Abi, he answers, "All in perfect working order." To me, Davis says, "I didn't miss anything, did I? Aside from the reunion."

I don't like his tone, or the way he looks between me and Abi-Two. Before I say anything, Abi beats me to it.

"Knock it off," She glares at him and I want to smile.

So I do, and then continue with what I was saying, not caring if I'm breaking protocol. "My hands were covered in blisters, but I held the stones, and now they're gone."

Eli gets to his feet for a closer look. He lifts Davis' blistered hands next to mine, comparing our palms. Mine are clean and pink. His are callused, dirt-lined, and covered with blisters from grabbing the rungs.

Abi, notably shorter than the two men, peeks between their shoulders.

"Have you ever seen this before?" Davis asks.

Eli shakes his head.

Pushing them apart, Abi observes, "The stones have brought you back to life before. It stands to reason they'd simply heal you."

"True." I say, thinking of my original question, "But what about shrinkage?" An old episode of Seinfeld comes to mind when I hear myself.

Abi's got a new smirk, and I know she knows what I'm thinking when she mock-shouts, "I was in the pool!"

And we both laugh. Apparently, it's an inside joke, as we are the only two who get it.

"Am I missing something? I don't get it." Eli asks.

Davis comforts him, "I don't either, but it's not important."

Snapping back to the seriousness of the situation, I reiterate, "the stones were definitely real, but they're smaller. I don't think they're mine."

Eli is nodding, holding out a hand to stop me from continuing. "They are yours, G, I promise."

"Shrinkage is normal." Abi adds with a poorly concealed grin.

"They shrink?" Davis asks.

"' _Like a frightened turtle_ ,'" Abi quotes a line from the show with a terrible _Seinfeld_ impression.

And I should keel over with how hard I'm laughing.

Davis clears his throat. My God, he walked right into that one and has no idea, which makes it funnier in my book, but his glare has a point—it's business time.

"Google it, and you'll see why we're laughing." I tell Davis.

"It's the one where they visit the Hamptons." Abi is wiping her eyes. Her remaining smile is huge though I can tell she's trying to get serious, too.

Eli is looking at the wall behind me, seeming in deep thought. "It's my understanding that they often vary in size. A set gets slightly-to-moderately smaller and heavier when joined with another set or after absorbing a significant amount of energy."

"But my set has gotten smaller since the last time I touched them, and they've just been sitting in that pyramid up there."

"There's a reason for that, G. The pyramids in Egypt were like ancient batteries. The tunnels at the top let the sunlight in. They were built over aquifers. Mass amounts of energy are created when sunlight hits water. That container was designed in the same way, for the same purpose."

"Oh," Davis mutters, drawing out the word.

My brow furrows. "You're saying that pyramid the stones are in is like a... Threestone charger?"

"Precisely."

13 Event Horizon

The white tiles climb from the floor all the way up the walls of the shower and onto the ceiling. My thoughts drift to Abi as the cool water pours over me. It's a nice distraction from how much every muscle in my body hurts.

I've been training for twenty-eight days now and it's been nothing less than grueling physical torture. Through it all, I couldn't even muster the strength to conjure the proper amount of hatred for Sergeant Pike, the man assigned to train Davis and me. I don't know why I ever agreed to go through with the boot camp-style training.

_But I finished,_ I think and almost smile. There were times I wanted to give up, times I was sure there was no way I could swallow the pain and keep going, but I did. Because Sergeant Pike kept telling me to quit and I don't take orders from assholes.

Today was brutal. Pike made us suffer more than usual by busting into our rooms four hours early, at two a.m., and he ran us twice as hard—up and down the mountain. Twice. Davis was puking half-way up the second time. So was I, but at least I was smart enough not to eat breakfast.

My arms painfully lift, fingers swirling through my buzzed hair, washing the away the dirt from the last day of training. My muscles are stiff and burn when I move. Thank God it's a short walk to my bunk from here. If it were in another building I don't think I'd make it.

I got my hair buzzed-off last night. Its cut in that familiar military style for every private, only I got to choose a number-two guard on the clippers. I hadn't planned on cutting it, it just made sense. No more hair in my eyes; one less thing to worry about.

Tomorrow, I'm to report to the medical unit for my last physical. They've had me and Davis on this special diet. We can only eat and drink what they give us. Well, we can drink as much water and sports drinks as we want. They've been giving us some kind of super-vitamin supplements that give me tons of energy and make my head a lot less foggy. We also get injections twice a day, to help us build muscle faster.

It's not steroids, I asked. It's close, though—we're taking growth hormone. I've put on twenty-one pounds of muscle in the last month. Crazy, I know. But I feel great, in the best physical shape of my life.

The best part is, I leave in two days.

The shitty part is that I've got a babysitter. It will be me, my Threestone, and Agent Arthur Davis heading after Daemon. My instincts tell me not to trust Davis. We've been training together for a month now, and for some reason I can't put my finger on, I can't warm up to him.

Bonus: I'm going to enjoy ditching him the first chance I get.

Between now and then, I plan to rest and snoop as much as possible because finding out where they're keeping Nahuiollin is my top priority.

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, drying the stubble on my head and finding myself drawn to the new size and definition of my arms and back. Since training started I've barely had time to shower, let alone look at myself in the mirror.

I've got the V—I always wanted the V-shape, but was never disciplined enough. Damn, I'm transformed.

Turning around, the light catches on something in my hair. Lint from the towel, I assume, but when I wipe it away, it's still there. I turn on the second light over the sink and pull at the tiny bit of white.

A little prick of pain on my temple has me taking a closer look.

"Oh, hell no," I mumble, staring at a small grouping of silver hairs. Hell no! I'm not getting gray hair. Turning my head, I find a second patch of the damned things on the other side, like a matching set. There's got to be fifty of them!

Searching under the sink, I need a hand-held mirror but there isn't one so I get real close to the mirror and squint, trying to determine if the hairs are actually gray or a shitty reflection from the bathroom tiles. That's when I notice a network of new lines around my eyes.

It's the lighting in this bathroom. It's too dim to see.

Holding the towel tight around my waist, I make my way from the communal bathroom to my room to get dressed. I need better light. And a second opinion.

Stalking down the halls of E-building, I am fully dressed and anxious. I shouldn't be. It's nothing but that bastard, Time, taking its' toll. Here's the thing: I'm only thirty-two. I wasn't planning on going gray until at least fifty-five.

* * *

Everyone is congregated in the lab. Eli is staring at the giant translucent screen, tapping away at something and rattling off numbers to Shifty, who's punching them into some kind of program on a different computer. Davis is looking over his shoulder.

I'm not the only one who's transformed this past month. Davis is nearly twice the size he was when I met him. He gives the nod when I walk in. I nod back, but head straight for Abi-Two.

She's sitting at a desk with Tako. The two are mumbling about the Fifth Dimension, which only Tako seems to think is relevant to Omega Team's mission.

I pause mid-stride, wondering what it would mean for me if he's right and the Threestone really do have a "connection to a higher plane."

But that's cut short by the look of concern on Abi's face. She's listening to Tako read something off a notepad on the table in front of him.

And suddenly I realize I can't remember the last time I saw her smile. Maybe it's nothing but she hasn't seemed happy since that first day she was here. That was a month ago.

I've thought of her practically non-stop but was always training with Davis and Sergeant Pike. I haven't had time to talk with her, to see how she's faring. Even though all of us are housed in the same building, we've barely said more than 'hi.'

I tap her shoulder. Her skin is like silk.

She turns to look up at me, not wearing a speck of makeup, and her eyes light up, making me think I'm reading too much into things.

"Hey, you got a haircut." Her eyes scrape my face, dropping down to my physique and linger there. I love it.

"I did. I was wondering, do you have a minute?"

Abi turns back to Tako saying, "I'll be right back."

She stands up and asks "What's up?"

I look around the open room and decide to pull her out into the hall. From out there, I look through the door into the lab and decide that we don't have enough privacy.

"Break room," I say and we head that direction.

As soon as we walk in, Abi shuts the door and turns to me. "What's wrong?"

"I might have a massive problem."

That look of concern comes back. Abi holds her hands together in front of her and steps very close. "Tell me."

"Not only is the world ending, but I think I'm getting _gray_ hair."

She doesn't get it. The line on her forehead gets deeper. "What?"

My finger points at each temple in turn, and I make my voice as frantic sounding as I can, because this is a ridiculous question. I also feel ridiculous about how very serious this is to me. "Would you take a look? I can't tell if they're blond or turning white."

She laughs. "Oh my God, I thought you were serious." Setting a hand on my shoulder, she looks in my eyes.

Her touch relaxes me. "It's not all that dire, but could you check for me?"

"Oh vanity of vanities," she smiles.

I look to one side, showing her my temple. Her fingers comb through my hair. Goose pimples run down my neck and arms. Her breath hitches when I turn back to look her in the eyes. Those baby blues so close, I can see every golden fleck and every lash.

Then her arms are wrapped around my waist. My hands are holding her face. And I know this is wrong. But it feels so right, with my lips grazing the column of her neck. She smells amazing and she's saying my name, and 'please,' and 'more,' and grabbing at my hair.

Just when I am sure that I have to pump the brakes, her lips crash down on mine. The temperature in the room rises as fire explodes through my body. A rush of adrenaline has me lifting her from the ground. Abi wraps her legs around my waist.

"Take me to your room." She whispers in my ear, scraping her teeth across my earlobe. "Now."

There's got to be a hundred reasons why we shouldn't do this. But I can't name a single one when she's this close. The way her skin feels so damned soft. Her body pressing against mine... All I'm thinking is "She wants this." And that's the only thing that matters.

Of course, it takes forever to get from E-building to our assigned rooms in Mallory Hall. But the whole way, Abi is finding small ways to touch me as we walk, mostly tugging on my hand and making fun of me, calling me 'old man' and running her fingers over my hair.

I want to throw her over my shoulder and run all the way there, but force myself to keep a steady pace because she needs time to think this through. That and my muscles are so sore. But I don't want her to regret this. I mean, I'd understand it if she did, but it would still hurt like hell.

When we enter Mallory Hall, which is really a glorified meeting hall with offices turned to bedrooms, Abi grabs my hand and presses it to her body.

Regrets or not, she's asking for it.

So I grab her by the waist and toss her over my shoulder. She squeals and laughs, smacking my ass as I run to my room and lock us inside. I toss her onto the bed and crawl up her body as she lifts her shirt and kicks off her shoes and pants. I kiss every inch of bare skin along the way. When Abi's done with her clothes, she starts on mine and I'm going crazy from her smell and the hungry look she's giving.

"Abi," Her body is beautiful. A perfect privilege, so of course I feel the need to risk spoiling this. "I'm in love with... her."

Her eyes go dewy. Stretching her neck up, she kisses me full on the mouth. "I'm in love with him."

Of course she is, he's her husband after all. For a moment, I wonder if I should mention what I learned from Doyen, back in Ice World, how the androids looked like the man in her wedding photos. But she shifts her weight to roll me onto my back.

"I need you." She confesses.

Still, I grab her waist. "Wait..."

She freezes, mouth all pouty and wet eyes. I don't like it. So I say the most inappropriate, stupid thing that I know for sure will break the tension. "I was kind of hoping for a blow job."

Abi belts out a monstrous laugh that cuts off with a shift of my hips.

14 The Reason

"Something is going on with you. What is it?"

Dumb question. The world is ending, so that's enough right there, but she's also concerned about her husband, my counterpart to this universe. She hasn't heard from him in nearly a year. But Eli's the one who told me, she hasn't brought him up at all. But, now that I think about it, it's odd that I'd expect her to since we've spent the last twenty-four hours in my room, only leaving the bed when we absolutely have to.

"I don't want to talk. I want to enjoy my time with you." She pops a grape into her delectable mouth and chews.

"We should at least go over how we've had all this _awesome_ marathon sex without any protection."

She pops another grape into her mouth and wiggles her shoulders like, "Oh well."

It makes me smile. But it shouldn't. "Are you on something? Because I'm as fertile as a turtle, baby."

My mind flashes with a picture of _my_ Abi and her belly, swollen with Eli's child—my girl and my only friend.

I shake it off.

She sighs heavily. "Yes. I'm on _something_."

"Are my petty family planning questions bothering you?" I reach for a water bottle lying on the floor.

"Yes, actually. They are. I think I like you better with your mouth shut."

I sit up, tossing off the sheet and reaching for my clothes. "Well excuse me. I'm so sorry for not wanting a baby."

Abi folds up, bearing her breasts as the sheet falls at her waist. My face is stinging by the time I realize she's slapped me. "Get out."

My temper flares. I was already leaving, but knowing that she wants me gone makes me sit back on the bed. "This is my room."

Her cheeks wash with red, her small hands ball into fists as she fights her way out of the sheet. When she presses her hair back from her face, I see her eyes are glossy. It makes me feel like a giant greasy turd. Still my hands itch, watching her curves bounce around.

I _knew_ it. I knew she'd regret this.

Standing from the bed, I grab my shirt and shoes. "Take your time. I got a list of shit to do before I leave tonight, anyway."

* * *

"Long time no see." Davis says when I enter the lab. "Work up a thirst?"

Everyone on Omega team probably knows about our little tryst. Might have something to do with Davis spotting Abi coming out of my room in the middle of the night, wearing only my t-shirt. But he doesn't have to make a thing of it just because I'm downing my second sports drink.

The question isn't worth an answer, still I flip him off. He gives half a smirk and turns back to what he was doing.

I went by the Medical building to get my shots for the day before coming here. The energy bump helps me focus. We're leaving in t-minus twelve hours. But the only thing I'm focusing on is that damned argument.

Why did I have to get so mad? She was probably joking anyway. And I overreacted. She probably said shit like that all the time to her husband and he probably laughed it off. He probably wasn't an extreme screw-up like yours-truly, and he wouldn't be so sensitive.

"What's on the agenda?" I look to Davis, as he's the only other person in the lab. "Where is Eli?"

His eyes are glued to the page of a yellow legal pad. "We've got a meeting in thirty to go over everything one last time. Ngyuen went to get our suits. Eli went to get a drink." His head snaps up. "You just come from the break room?"

I nod. "He wasn't there."

Before either of us can think about where Eli went, he strolls in with two sweaty cans of soda. Trailing behind him is Abi-Two.

She stops in the doorway, her eyes immediately finding mine. She doesn't step inside, but beckons me with a wave.

"I shouldn't have kicked you out," She kneads the fingers of one hand with the other.

"It was my fault. You know, I'm not the smartest guy," I confess, "And I'm okay with that, but I just—"

"No, no. What you said, about..." her voice lowers to a whisper even though we're alone in the hallway. "... about not wanting a _family,_ it hit a nerve."

She pauses, takes a deep breath, and I'm sure that's all she's going to say on the subject. But it isn't.

"I never wanted kids. Not at first. But after we were married a while it seemed like the next natural step."

"It is for most," I add, wanting to make her feel better, but her fingers are still twisting in tense knots.

"But he was dead-set against it. And I understood that. Only, these last months, since he's been gone," she swallows hard, "I find myself wishing things were different. That I didn't bend so easily on the issue." She throws her shaking hands up. "But that's stupid, right? The world is ending and I'm sleeping with you and wishing I'd had kids. Why? So I could watch them die, too?"

Wrapping my arms around her, I cradle her head against my chest. She's shaking so hard, I'm sure she's crying but there's not a sound to back it up.

As far as I'm concerned, her husband is an even bigger idiot than I am. I admired him for having his shit together, for being smart enough to marry Abi. But he still left her behind, and he didn't want to have kids with her.

If she were mine, we would make a gaggle of babies and jump through as many universes as we needed to until we found the one that would last—where she and I would stay and raise our family.

Is there a universe in existence where Abi and I get a happy ending?

15 For Glory and Iron Roses

The sound of someone clearing their throat startles me. My hands leap from around Abi's back. She jumps away from me.

Eli is looking between us. "Can we talk, in my office?"

"Sure," I say.

At the same time, Abi asks, "Why?"

Her face is dry, but her mascara is smeared under one eye.

Eli leans closer to her and cocks his head in my direction. "You know why."

And I know this is going to be uncomfortable.

We walk back through the lab and into his office. He closes the door and takes a seat at the desk. Abi sits in the one chair and I stand in the narrow space between her seat and the wall.

Eli starts, staring only at me. "It's not really my business what you two do, but her husband is my best friend."

"Leave him alone. It was a one-time thing," Abi explains.

Inside, I'm smiling, but outwardly, my ears are getting hot. _'One-time?'_ My vision dances with the memory of us repeating this 'one-time' over the past day.

"You got the first part right. It is none of your business," I add. "I wasn't aware you were the nosey-type."

Eli's standing, looking down at Abi now, the only one sitting. "He asked me to look out for you and I wouldn't be doing my job, as his best friend, and best man at your wedding, if I didn't remind you that he left to protect us. How could you do this to him?"

Abi huffs and gets to her feet and points an accusing finger at Eli.

"You've answered your own question. I did this because _he_ left." With that, she scrambles past me, pushing me aside to wrestle the door open.

She's gone.

And I'm here. In awkward silence.

I tuck a hand under each arm, the way my friend Elijah always did. "That went well, don't you think?"

He shakes his head. "Dammit, G. Look—"

"No, you look—I love her. In every universe. End of story."

"She's married." He leans over the desk, clenching his fists on two stacks of papers.

Eli's attitude softens my anger. "I get it. I'll try to keep my distance." I won't, but he's being a good friend and I have to I respect that.

"Did she tell you what we talked about last time I came through? About my trip to Ice World?"

"She told me you killed the Doyen, Daemon's counterpart. So what?"

"Well, for her sake, I left a large chunk of that story out. I never told her about the androids."

Eli-Two's eyebrows rise nearly to his hairline. He combs his beard with fingertips, listening, as I explain.

"Doyen had an army of androids that he used for different things; mostly public service stuff, like cops and doctors, and shit. Most of them looked like machines, you know? They were built like humans, but had these helmets for heads, that protected their gears. But the ones that interacted with the population, they were very realistic. The ones he kept closest to him, you couldn't tell them apart from real people, except for one defining feature..."

"What was it?"

"They all looked exactly like her husband."

His brow furrows.

"Doyen told me that he wasn't born in that plane, that he was taken there by a man. The androids were built to look exactly like that man, whom he later killed, to serve as a reminder to the people of the Neutopia, so they'd never be able to forget what happened to those who betrayed Doyen."

Eli's shaking his head. "What are you saying? Is he dead?"

"I don't know, Eli." Honestly, I don't. "I never met the guy. All I know is that when I walked into Abi-Two's house that day, and I saw those pictures on her walls—the groom in her wedding photo looked _exactly_ like Doyen's androids."

He drops in his chair, resting a hand under his short, neat beard. He shakes his head. "Nothing is certain."

A knock sounds on the door; Davis opens it before Eli answers. "It's time."

Eli clears his throat and answers Davis. "Be right out."

To me, he points. "Remember there are strict rules about fraternization. And don't tell anyone else about this. Higher-Ups have to be told, but I'll be the one to tell them."

When I consent, he adds, "This may change a few things."

16 Riddles and Chance

Davis is clicking his pen. He's three seats down from me at the long table in the giant conference room and I can still hear the _click-click-click._

It's bugging the shit out of me.

Only members of team Alpha, working on Omega Project are present. Minus the Admirals, of course. But General Jacoby is here since he runs this base.

Eli is running the meeting. He stands at the front of the room droning on about the "theme-based mini-satellites" Davis and I will be taking with us. Whatever world we land in, we are to launch a series of mini satellites (or M-sat), confined in a tube that's no longer than my hand, from a specially designed launcher we'll also be carrying.

"Each unit weighs less than one pound. The launcher itself is just under three. M-sats use thermal and radiant energy. After launching, it takes about seven minutes to penetrate the atmosphere, where the unit opens and the satellites disperse."

General Jacoby is sitting at the far end of the table. He clears his throat. "And who collects the data?"

"It will be gathered by our Pillars and passed along to us for assessment." With this, he points to the screens on the wall just behind the other side of the long table. Bands along the bottom of each monitor are labeled P-1 through P-6. I guess the 'P' stands for Pillar.

The screens are alive, filled with an odd set of faces. Inside each one, a person sits on a chair, facing the camera. Each has an earpiece. Some of the finer features on their faces are distorted when they move, and the picture is a little fuzzy, but every few seconds, it's gets crystal clear.

I recognize the beautiful black woman, Doctor Harris, from our last meeting in this room. She was adamant that she needed more information from Eli. The other screens are filled with men. White skin, dark brown-almost-black hair. Two of them have short neat beards and hair just long enough to tuck behind their ears. One looks significantly older with thinning hair on top of his head. Still, he's got eerily familiar eyes. Another has a giant honking nose and long hair pulled back in one of those stupid hipster man-buns. _Just like my dead friend._

General Jacoby addresses Eli, "Doctor Thacker," and four of the five men on the screens respond.

Two of them shoot off in unison, "Yes, General Jacoby?"

The two youngest looking ones are less formal. "I'm here, sir." "Yes, General?"

Eli-Two, at the front of the room, stifles a chuckle. "I believe he was addressing me, gentlemen. Remember, your assigned numbers to avoid further confusion."

Keeping track of the conversation after that is useless. I can't believe what I'm seeing. They're _all_ Eli's, or versions of him communicating from other universes.

* * *

As Eli and me are walking back to the lab, I discover that while I was spacing out (and trying to keep my mind off my inevitable departure from yet another Abi), it was decided that Davis and me should find out what happened to my alternate: Abi's husband. Once we know, we are to retrieve his stones, if Daemon doesn't have them already.

"No wonder she wasn't at the meeting." I'd looked for her on the way, wanting to make sure she knew about it, but was told she didn't have the A-1 clearance needed to attend.

"Yeah," Eli says, but he's not paying attention.

"So, that was weird, huh," I ask, "meeting all those other versions of yourself?"

"The lives not lived," he says.

"I don't think I'll ever get used to it."

"It really blew my wad the first time."

"Uh, I think you mean it blew your _mind_?"

He shakes his head. "No, Science is the sexiest thing in existence. She's my lady love."

I put some space between us as we walk the grounds toward E-building. "Science is a female?"

"The things we love most are often hailed as the beloved female."

_That's true_ , I think. All of us men, with our _female_ cars and lady _nations_. _Mother_ Earth. "But we still leave them out of the most important meetings."

He stops walking. "G, it's the best way to keep her safe."

I stop a few paces ahead and turn around. "Wait, you're the reason Abi wasn't allowed into the meeting?" I point an accusing finger at the acting leader of Omega Project. "Are you the reason she's stuck at A-3 clearance as a Consultant?"

"I was lucky to get her on the team at all. She's not a Bearer or a Scientist. Besides, it's easier to protect her this way." He repeats it like a mantra.

"Are you sure you don't mean it's easier to hold her back? Scientist or not, she knows more about what it means to be a Bearer than you do." She knows more than me.

"I know you've developed feelings for her, but they're clouding your judgment."

"Of course they are," I agree, "but that doesn't mean I'm over-estimating her value as a member of this team."

"I made a promise to my best friend that I wouldn't let anything happen to her."

"Well that makes it all better, then, doesn't it?" My sarcasm is thick. "Keeping secrets is no kind of protection. Knowledge is the best defense, remember?"

Eli is holding out a hand, slicing through the air as he talks at me. "I brought her here for you. I put her on the team. I kept my mouth shut about you sleeping with her. What more do you want me to do?"

My chest is heaving, taking quick, deep breaths. I'm flooded with adrenaline. Making a point to calm myself, I think about what triggered my temper.

Truth is, I've got a hair-pin trigger. It's this whole place and the processes: the training and special diet, the shots, the meetings, and lack of sunlight. I've been stifled and irritated for weeks inside this cave. The daily bursts of outdoor exercise aren't enough. I need the stones in my hands. I need freedom. I need to get out of here.

But it's gonna hurt leaving Abi.

"All I'm saying is she has a right to be involved in the decisions that affect her."

Looking at Eli, I take in his hunched posture, the way he's looking down and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"You're worried about what we'll find, aren't you?"

He nods, "Among other things."

"You think he's dead, don't you?" I ask the question, though it's a given. How could he possibly be alive?

A wisp of white jumps into my peripheral vision. It's Abi wearing a white tank top and green jeans. Looks like she's just come from around the side of the building.

"How loud were we talking?" I ask Eli, keeping my voice low. Inside this cavernous mountain the voices carry further, and whispers seem to echo.

Abi sets a hand on my shoulder and answers, "Oh, I heard everything."

Eli looks up with wide eyes.

But Abi is smiling as she crosses her arms, so I know she's bullshitting, even before she says "I heard all about how you got your first period, Eli, and I want you to know, it's a natural bodily function."

"Ouch," I say, not finding the dig particularly funny. But I do like how different these two are together. There is no way this woman would betray her husband with the likes of this Eli. Not like _my_ Abi did. Of course she did betray him, with me... but that's different. And it's not like we're in a relationship or anything.

Eli walks up the path, irritated, and lets himself into E-Building. "G, come on, we gotta get you fitted into your suit."

T-minus three hours until the jump.

Abi nudges me with her elbow and whispers, "I _need_ to talk to you."

Without looking at her, I wave to Eli. "Two-minutes."

Once the door clicks, Abi urges me to follow her around the side of the building, where a bench sits inside a grouping of fake plants in big pots. She sits on the bench and pats the spot beside her. I do as she asks.

"This last month, when you were training, what did they teach you?"

It's sweet that she's curious. "Basic Combat Training."

"Oh," she nods to herself, but her forehead is creased.

"Why?"

"What type of stuff is that?"

"Tactical training exercises; a lot of running and some hand to hand combat. We covered basic repelling, a little boxing, and a lot of reading about what we're supposed to do."

Her look of concern grows. "What about firearms?"

I shake my head. "No, we're chasing a man with another set of stones, so guns won't do any good." Of course, I'm just repeating Davis. I asked him the same question in my first week of training. Daemon isn't the only danger out there.

She huffs, as if this is absurd.

"What do you know?"

"Davis has a gun."

"I know, I've seen it. You know he's a career military man, right? He probably sleeps with it under his pillow. And he's not taking it with him."

"You're not concerned that he has one and you don't?"

I shake my head and lie. "No."

She bites her bottom lip and crosses her arms. "You're very different from him."

"Your husband?"

"Yes."

"I hope that's a good thing."

Her eyes are cloudy as she stares at me, which makes me think she isn't seeing me at all. "You're funnier than he is. You smile more. Not so angry at the world."

I want to put my arm around her, but Eli's reminder about fraternizing comes to mind. I pause, but then decide—screw it; I'm leaving in a few hours—and set my arm across her shoulders. "Sounds like a compliment."

Her eyes clear with a blink. She checks her watch. "It's nearly fourteen hundred; we better get you in there."

She starts to get up, but I grab her arm. "Actually, I need to ask you something." My voice drops to a whisper. "It's about the kid, Nahuiollin."

One brow rises with intrigue. "Shoot."

I look directly into her eyes that are spearing me with their focus. "Can you find him for me?"

17 Ironic Twists and a Conscience That Won't Quit

Most days I try not to think about how ironic my life has become, but as I watch Abi consider my question and wait for her response, it's impossible to miss. The only person I can half-way trust with this little plan to check on Nahuiollin's well-being is the very same person who once talked me into to killing him.

"Please," I beg.

Her brow furrows. "Why?"

Why: a perfectly reasonable question. "To clear my conscience. I brought him here. I need to see for myself that he's okay before I leave."

What I don't say is how I can't stop seeing those burned bodies in the field or the look in the kids' eyes when he stopped fighting and bared his throat to the knife. I don't tell her how, in my first conversation with Eli-Two, he clearly insinuated that he's interacted with other versions of Daemon, in a way that made me think they were brought here by her husband, to this very facility, or that all of this has been eating away at me for the past month.

"Please, Abi, I never have a free minute to look, and I can't ask anyone else. I'm not expecting you to visit him or anything. I just need to know where he is, and that I'm not leaving him worse off than where I found him."

Her eyes soften, the edges of her mouth curve down again. "I don't understand why you care." She runs a hand over her hair. "But I don't like how jaded this makes me feel, either."

She nods infinitesimally. "I'll see what I can do. But if I don't walk into the lab with you, someone might get suspicious. I'll make an appearance and slip away."

"Good idea. Everyone's distracted with it being so close to the jump."

* * *

The lab is crawling with activity. Everyone is scrambling around like there's a fox in the hen house.

"It's about time!" I shout, and everyone stops what they're doing to look at me. "Why are you stopping?" I clap my hands at Shifty, Tako, Eli, and Davis. "Let's move, people!"

Abi is behind me trying not to grin and I find myself torn between my attachment to her and my obligations to everyone else on the planet.

_You're projecting_ , I tell myself. The feelings I have for my own Abi have bled onto her. I expected that. But I didn't think they'd be so hard to ignore.

The best thing I can do, for us both, is to walk away. She deserves more than overflowing feelings. She deserves to find out what happened to her husband. And even though I'm pretty sure I know his fate, I'll do my best to find out for sure.

I walk across the room where Davis is holding up a long piece of black material.

"What's that?"

He presses the material against my chest and says, "Your suit."

It feels like a strange meld of rubber and denim. The surface is plain, but there's a colorful patch on the right, an American flag. On the left shoulder, the DHS shield embroidered in black and gold.

I lift the suit to examine it more closely. "This is... way too small." Like a child's jumpsuit.

Davis is hunched over a box, from which he pulls an identical suit, equally lame and tiny. "Apparently one size fits all."

"These aren't going to fit." I squawk at Eli, who's just coming out of his office with two bulky loops, that I think are supposed to be belts.

"Put them on," He commands.

"Yes, sir." Davis shrugs, walks into Eli's office and shuts himself in.

_Kiss ass_.

I've never been in any of the other offices before. I pick the one right next to Eli's. Walk in and close the door. Kicking off my shoes, I spot a small picture frame on the desk. Two men, nearly identical, stand next to each other, a curvy woman dressed like _Wonder Woman_ stands between them. Her arms stretched over the shoulders. A wall with the black and gold logo of _Comic-Con_ stands in the background.

A lopsided stare gives away which one of the brown-skinned men is Shifty, and which is his twin brother.

The suit fabric stretches impressively far and barely thins out. I pull it up and over my legs and then start on the top. As soon as I get my arms in the long sleeves, the raucous sounds of laughter burst from the other side of the door. I open it to find Davis in his suit with his hands set on his hips with his chest puffed up, and chin pushed out. He's got the dumbest look on his face as he mumbles, "I am _Batman_."

If the suit and Davis himself were much cooler I might half-way agree that maybe he slightly resembles a broke and half-retarded guy pretending to be a super hero.

"Do you have minute?" Abi nudges my elbow.

I nod and step back into Shifty's office. Abi closes the door.

She looks at the floor while I wait for her to speak. Finally looking up, she clears her throat. "I'm going to do what you asked, but... would you help me find _him_?"

I don't have to ask who she's referring to. The predictable pain in my chest makes me feel ridiculous.

"Eli didn't tell you." Of course he didn't. He probably won't.

"Tell me what?" She's clasping her hands together. One of them forms into a fist.

"I don't think I'm supposed to say, but..." She has a right to know. "It's already been decided, finding him is first on our agenda."

Her eyes shrink and then widen. "Since when?"

"Since this afternoon's meeting."

She nods, her shoulders dropping as she steps very close. "You know I trust you, right?"

I nod.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes," without question.

"It seems like I'm using you—"

"Happy to oblige," I say, smiling widely.

She looks down, trying to hide a smile. Then, her eyes are back on me. Very seriously, almost apologetically, she says, "But I don't mean to."

Resting my hands on her shoulders, I stare into her baby blues. "I don't feel used, and you're one's second choice, Ab."

Her cheeks go pink, but her mouth inverts as if the corners are weighted with lead. "I'll see what I can find."

"Thank you."

She slips out the door and leaves unnoticed.

Time trickles as we prepare our gear. Eli hands out the belts as he explains the need of these dumbass body suits. "You are to wear these at all times. They are flame retardant, heat resistant, waterproof radiation shields. They're made of the most advanced materials. They won't rip, tear, or wear out. They also change color to match whatever environment you're in."

Glancing between the white painted walls of the lab and my black body suit that makes me look way too much like one of the Fantastic Four, I have to scoff.

"Outdoor environs, G. You need sunlight," he corrects.

"These belts have a geo tracking system linked to the receivers on your suit. Press the button here, to activate, and once more to deactivate. Do not power them on if you're within proximity to the stones. Keep them on long enough to get the information you need and shut 'em down. No need to waste batteries."

"What does it do, the Geo-whatever?" I ask.

"The geo-tracking system performs radial scans of the environment for a distance up to twenty-five square miles if the area is flat. If you're on the water, it will find land. If you're on land, it will find water."

We listen as Eli explains how the pouches on the belts also hold our daily shots, and our medical kits are equipped with knives, scissors and other tools. We're also getting an emergency stash of cash that my alternate has collected from other universes.

"Why don't we have weapons?" I ask, even though Davis has his hand up.

"We're not at war, G." Eli shakes his head. "The only person, or persons as the case may be, that you two are authorized to detain is Daemon and his counterparts. Remember, this is a covert operation. Avoiding all levels of law enforcement is vital."

Detain? Did I hear that right? I should ask, but then he'll elaborate. And if I get a clear order, well then I might actually have to follow it—according to the oath I took anyway. To obey my leaders and follow orders, and all that crap.

Davis interjects. Guess he got tired of waiting to be called on. "We are able to use deadly force, though?"

"Only if necessary." General Jacoby says, sauntering into the lab. All of us civilians stand at attention and salute.

"At ease." He waves a hand. "Otherwise, you return the prisoners here for interrogation."

That sinking feeling anchors to my gut as General Jacoby continues. "Between now and your departure time, gentlemen, I suggest you say your farewell's." He salutes Davis and me. "See you up-top." We salute him and he walks out.

Davis sighs. "I better make a few phone calls."

18 What the Hell is Wrong With People?

I'm pacing the floor in my room.

These things are happening because of choices I've made.

Just like the death of my father sealed a chapter of my life, what I do next will determine where I go next, to some degree.

The problem is, I have no idea how I'm going to check on the kid. If Abi doesn't come through... am I supposed to just leave him here?

I don't like feeling caught in the middle: stuck between my loyalties to the universal cause and knowing that the situation with that violent little native is completely my fault.

Vague plans form in my head as I yank my sleeve to check the pink line on my forearm: the place where Nahuiollin sliced me. The shallow wound on my cheek has healed and disappeared, but this one and the one on my side were much deeper. I don't feel them—there's no more healing itch or stiffness.

There's a light knock on my door. I open it to find a pale-faced Abi-Two. She's wringing her hands as I step aside and invite her in.

With the door closed, I turn to her and ask, "Did you find him?"

She sniffs. "Yes."

"How—where?"

"I knew I should be covert, but there's no time. So I asked Stevens."

The name makes he want to hurl. "Marshall Sevens?"

"I ran into him out in the quad." She points at me. "Don't give me that look. You're leaving in a few hours. What am I supposed to do, conduct a door-to-door search in the mountain?"

I don't know what look she's talking about. "Stevens. Mister Welcome Wagon?" The first guy to question me, the one who had me drugged until my I couldn't see straight because I refused to talk.

"Yes," She answers, "He's a jerk, but he's also got a little crush on me. I knew where they kept the others, when _my_ G brought them back for interrogation but it's not the same place they're holding Nahuiollin, so it's that good I asked."

"A little harmless flirting, Mrs. S?" The way she said ' _my_ G' is irritating.

She gives a quick grin, _pftt's_ , and sets a hand on her sumptuous hip. "What can I say? I read the situation and used the tool I knew would work the fastest."

My interest is piqued. "What tool was that?"

"I made a date with him." Her face sours.

So does mine.

"G, they've got him locked up in a cell near H-Building. There's two guards assigned to him."

"Armed?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know. One's in front of the building, and the other, I assume, is inside."

"Did you see him?"

She shakes her head again. "I passed by, then came straight here."

"You're sure there's only two?"

"That's what Stevens told me."

"Are they armed?"

Her worried eyes widen. "I don't know. Why say it like that? ' _Only_ two'?"

Because there are nearly a dozen guys with rifles guarding the stones—getting past them would be the real challenge, making two guards and a kid seem insignificant. "Two is not a problem. Unless they're armed."

"What are you going to do, just waltz in there and demand to see him?" Her tone is incredulous, but it gives me something to work with.

Flipping open my footlocker, I grab the map I got from that first meeting—the one Stevens held about the importance of not getting lost inside the mountain—and slap it down onto my bed. It's got every building and emergency escape route. "Show me where he is."

She points to a blank spot just behind the hospital. "There."

Pushing past her, I open the door, "Let's go."

* * *

The walkways inside this city are never too busy on a Saturday. A lot of the people assigned here like to get off base for the weekend, to grab some sunshine while they can.

H-Building is not far from Mallory Hall. We walk slowly, feigning leisure. Talking in hushed voices, because I'm still dressed in my military issue unitard and it looks out of place in here. But it's pretty comfortable. I've got my small backpack with the gear I need for the trip, and my utility belt. I'm ready to take off.

"I've got to see how things are going for the kid." I tell Abi. She wants to know the plan, but I'm winging it here. I have no idea what I'm doing because, as usual, I don't have enough information to formulate anything concrete.

I'm hoping the guards are cooperative... or stupid, easily distracted, or very small. Any one will do. All three would be perfect. Otherwise, I'm putting a shit-ton of faith in the training I've gotten over the past month, without the usual advantage of holding the stones.

We take the path curving around the back of H-Building. The map says nothing is there, but my eyes see the structure as soon as we pass the back of the small hospital. It's a little hut-like front, a façade really, that melds into the wall of the mountain. Its plain, painted to match the brown and gray stone; doesn't stick out at all. And it's not labeled.

As we get closer, I ask Abi to stay behind. She slows making a wide gap between us and strays just enough from the path to make it seem like she's turned away.

There is one guard, leaning against a wooden post. His uniform identifies him as a private and as I move in, I can see that he is tall and thin. Looks very young, too. He's smoking a cigarette, which surprises me because I haven't seen any one smoking in here. I assumed it was against the rules.

"Hey, can I bum a smoke?"

The private gives me a once over, obviously not sure what to make of my attire.

"Sure," he says, after eyeing the ID badge on my lanyard before taking a soft blue pack from his shirt pocket and passing it to me.

I wonder if he's heard of Omega Project. If he has, he knows enough not to say anything. Popping a cigarette from the pack, I use the generic book of matches tucked into the cellophane wrapper to light up.

"It's been months since I had one." My lungs fill with nicotine and smoke. I manage not to cough and hand the pack back to him, feeling myself relax despite the stress of the situation.

"I can't quit either," the private remarks. Looking just passed me, his eyes go wide.

I turn to see what he's looking at, even though I've got a pretty good idea about what I'm going to find.

_Of course_ , I think, and feel a twinge of jealousy as Abi jogs up the path, her tank top pulled very, very low. And she's... not wearing a bra?

Both me and the guard are having trouble keeping our eyes in our heads when she hops up the two steps of the small portico and asks the guard if the little shack behind him has a bathroom she can use.

"It's an emergency." She smiles seductively and shifts her weight like she's really got to go.

"Sorry, Ma'am, you'll have to go over to H-Building. I'm under orders not to let anyone in without security clearance." The guard never makes eye contact—his gaze comfortably glued to her chest.

I roll my eyes and hit him in the back head with my elbow. He falls forward, of course, nose diving into Abi's cleavage like he planned the whole thing.

I snatch him up, pulling him over to a chair on the corner of the porch while Abi yanks the name badge clipped to the pocket of his uniform.

I check the young guard's rifle, removing the ammunition, and set the gun back in place. He looks like a guy who's peacefully sleeping on the job.

She looks around to be sure no one is looking then swipes it through the lock. The green light blinks. "We're in."

The door opens into a small front office that's too shallow to serve an actual purpose. The edge of the door frame nearly touches the opposite wall. We walk in, close it behind us, and Abi swipes the ID card through the next door lock on the other side of the tiny room. It pops open; we walk through, both of us on high alert, into a long hallway cut from stone, dimly lit by small sconces set along one wall.

"It stinks in here." She covers her nose with a hand.

"Where's the other guard?" My voice echoes off the walls.

"Stevens could have been wrong," she whispers.

The air is stale. As we move down the long hallway, I find it eerie that there are no doors or passages leading off this corridor. We walk about ten feet, single file because the passageway funnels, getting more narrow as we walk before taking a sharp turn to the left, and then slanting down at a steep angle.

Abi is in front—why the hell did I let her go first? She stops and spreads her hands out, touching both sides of the narrow passage. Gently, I lift her arm and squeeze around her. She scoffs, obviously affronted.

"What are you doing—I can take care of myself." She whispers.

"If something happens, I need to be up front." I whisper back.

"If something happens it's because the guard back there woke up and raised the alarm." She counters.

"Then you'll get to defend yourself, won't you?" I'm done wasting time and signal for her to hang back or follow if she wants. She huffs, but follows close at my back.

As we inch down the graded hallway, the air grows thick with the ammonia-scent of urine. I cover my nose and step carefully, quietly. The deeper we go, the worse it smells, and the thicker the air gets.

Muffled noises drift from wherever this tunnel is taking us.

Abi tugs my arm. I look at her and she's signaling like she wants to go back. _Good thing I'm in front_ , I think, and her eyes narrow like she's reading my thoughts.

An odd noise catches my attention. Sounds like splashing. And shuffling feet. Picking up the pace, Abi keeps on my heels as the curving passage opens into a small, dim room that reeks like a dirty barn. Across the small area, there's a row of long metal bars jutting from ceiling to floor. Leaning up against them on the other side, is one man. In his hand, he holds a lock of dark hair.

I can't understand what I'm seeing. But I know that the gurgling sound is coming from that cell. I step into the room, as the guard has his back to me and the stench, unbelievably, grows.

I've got my elbow guarding my nose and mouth, creeping closer. From the corner of my eye, I spot Abi, her face tucked into her palm. Her eyes wide with shock. Looking back at the cage, now only an arms-length away, I finally understand what's happening when I see four small limbs grasping at the arm of the guard.

The guard lifts his arm, dragging Nahuiollin's gasping face from a tall metal tub filled with what has to urine.

It's like we're working in tandem, Abi and me, thinking the same thoughts, because neither of us speaks. It only takes a look between us and I feint to my right, taking myself out of the guards view as he swivels with the slackened form of Nahuiollin, still gasping and hanging by his hair, dragging him across the floor of the cell towards a chair with metal restraints attached to the arms.

Abi lunges to the left, swiping the ID Badge through the door lock on the steel cage.

The door squeaks, the guard looks at her. She screams, "Stevens—what are you doing?"

Stevens doesn't answer, but stares seemingly shocked.

I want to pounce, but watch, waiting for just the right moment, concealing myself between two tall cabinets fixed to the stone wall behind me.

Stevens shakes his head and then starts cursing. He flings Nahuiollin across the space of the cell so that the kid hits his head on the steel drum he was just drowning in. He falls limply onto the stone floor and doesn't move. Next Stevens is reaching out, roughly taking Abi by the arm and shoving her from the mouth of the cage. She stumbles back, tripping over her own feet. He follows her out, slamming the metal door behind him.

Before he can grab her again, I come at him, silent and swift, swooping down. My knee hits his back at the same time my fist nails is temple. He falls forward and I'm on him, snatching his arms and twisting them behind his back. He howls, bleeding from the side of his face where he smacked the stone floor.

Searching his pockets, I come up with only his ID badge.

Abi finds a pair of zip-ties—or had them on her, I'm not sure—but she hands them to me. Stevens is ranting, cursing us both, telling us how much trouble we're in for interfering with a prisoner interrogation.

The moment I take my knee from his back, he tries to turn over. Abi kicks him in his side. And she's a little thing, but it looks like it hurts. He stops swearing and focuses on trying to breathe.

Working in unison, as if we've planned the whole thing, Abi swipes the ID badge through the lock once more, opening the cell door. I warn her as she approaches Nahuiollin, reminding her that, though he is a just a kid, he's still dangerous.

She ignores me, rolling the child over enough so that she can see his face. His lip is bleeding. One side of his face and most of his exposed arms are peppered with small cuts and purple bruises.

"What is wrong with these people?" Her voice cracks. She covers her face again and it's not because of the stink. A sob escapes her lips as she lifts the little boy soaked in urine and blood from the ground and carries him out.

Once she's past the threshold of the cell, I drag Stevens into it. He's fighting and cursing as I lift him—his tied feet and hands awkwardly flail—just enough so that he tips, head first, into the tub of urine. With that, he's locked inside and we are on our way out.

Let that fucker drown.

19 Not-So-Great Escape

Abi is moving as fast as she can back up the narrow corridor, and of course I'm stuck behind her. And since she's carrying Nahuiollin, cradling him like a baby, I can't squeeze past her.

When we come back out in the fake front office, the guard is standing there, looking bewildered and pointing his rifle at us. Now she lets me move in front of her.

"What are you doing?" I ask, sounding all kinds of incredulous. It's easy since I've got his ammo in the pouch on my belt.

The guard shakes his head, almost like he has no idea.

"Do you know who you're pointing that gun at?" I point to my name badge and quote my position and security clearance. "We're with DHS." It sounds like a threat, because they are the most powerful government agency in this plane. "Lower your weapon, soldier, or I will do it for you."

The guy looks lost for a moment, but does as he's told.

"When that lazy son-of-bitch Stevens gets back, you tell him I was here—doing his job for him." Not sure why I say it, but it might buy us some time if he thinks Stevens is gone, or that he answers to me.

Without another word, the three of us swing past him, out the front door. By my count, we've got a little less than an hour to get up the mountain for the jump.

"Where are we taking him?" Abi asks.

And I cut across the path, entering H-building, the small hospital. Utilizing this new sense of authority, I call to the first nurse I see and order her to "Clean him up. Dress his wounds. Sedate him, too. We need him ready to move out in two minutes."

The nurse, a chubby woman whose last name is Bravern, calls to one other nurse and the two get to work right away.

"What are you going to do?" Abi asks.

I shake my head. "I can't leave him here."

She looks down at her hands and steps over to a sink in the corner of the small hospital hallway. "Take him back...?" She lets the sentence hang.

"We're getting ahead of ourselves." Stepping over to speak low, I continue, "We have to get him out of here first. I don't have the stones, I don't even know if I can get to them, now." The full weight of all that just happened hits me. "Shit," What if I can't get them back?

Abi does and about-face and disappears down the hallway. I want to call to her, to ask what she's doing, but I don't want to draw more attention to us. That guard could sound the alarm any second. He could be walking down that dank corridor right this second. What will they do?

Probably shoot us.

Looking back at the table where Nahuiollin is laid out, my chest aches. I should have left him where he was. Who knows what kind of multidimensional ramifications I'm causing by taking him from where he belongs?

_Focus, G,_ I remind myself, and start barking at the undeserving nurses. "Move it, ladies. I've got a schedule."

Abi comes back with a rolling laundry basket and every cheesy prison break scene I've ever watched comes to mind.

"What?" She questions. "There are no kids in this place."

"Thank you, Ab. I'll take him from here. You've done too much already."

She slides the basket towards me with too much gusto and I know I'm screwing up again. "What'd I say?"

Her mouth hardens to a thin line. She turns to walk away. I catch her elbow and bring her back to me, wrapping myself around her.

"I don't know what I said to get you so mad, but I didn't mean it. I'm sorry. I need your help, so please, stay. In return, I promise to never thank you for anything ever again."

She gives small nod and a fake smile that tears at my resolve. "Come on, that was funny."

She turns back to me, rolling her eyes ... and I think I get what's bugging her. She's expecting me to leave her behind. She wants to walk away before I tell her to go. She doesn't like the leaving nonsense, but is so used to it, of course that's why she's irritated. I've never been the kind of guy that meets a girl's expectations. Why break the habit now?

Turning back to the small room where the nurses are working on Nahuiollin, I think about our next step.

The good thing about this place is, despite its gigantic size, it doesn't take long to get from one building from the next.

We're jogging, pushing this little birdie in a basket. I made a little nest for him in there on the dirty linens and covered him up. He's zonked out. For now.

The nearest elevator is shut down—blocked off with red tape and a sign that says it's out of service. We divert our path, heading for the next nearest silo. When we get to that one and find that it's not in service either, I get suspicious and start thinking.

We've just kidnapped a military prisoner—a kid from another dimension—but haven't heard an alarm. We haven't spotted any closed circuit cameras either. There are a few people milling around but not a single one has looked at us twice, even though I'm wearing this weird-ass jumpsuit.

Everything and everyone is very calm. No cause for suspicion, right?

But we have to get up to the top of this mountain. I'm supposed to meet my team, get the Threestone, and depart from this plane of existence. And all of the elevators are out at the same time?

"Come on," I say while stripping the brightly colored tape from the of the elevator door. It's the same one Davis and I used once before.

Abi uncovers the cart. I help her get Nahuiollin into a comfortable position. She opts to hold him, hugging him like a little monkey facing her. His thin legs drape around her waist and small arms wrap around her neck.

I swipe my ID, and press the button. The elevator doors smoothly shut and I know it was all a diversion—I don't know what purpose it served, but like everything else in this facility, the tape was a prop. A lie. The smooth shift of gravity giving way to engineering takes us towards the top of the mountain. To my Threestone.

In the quiet of the confined space, I hear Nahuiollin whimper and worry that he's waking too soon.

"You're safe," Abi mumbles. "It's okay, I've got you."

It doesn't take long—these things move fast—before I feel the elevator slow down. Shoving Abi and the boy behind me, I prepare for whatever's waiting for us. My gut tells me it could get really ugly really fast.

The metal doors slide open and we're faced with a barrage of shouts from a wall of bodies grouped just outside the door. I sense more than feel Abi curling behind me.

Through the bombardment, among the guards with their rifles trained on me, I make out the angry faces of Davis, Eli—though he looks mostly disappointed—and General Jacoby himself.

I keep my hands in plain sight and step out when ordered. In the evening light, I count seven men in camo green uniforms with rifles and Nine's aimed at us. Abi follows my lead, clinging to Nahuiollin, trying to keep her body out of the guards' lines of sight while small red laser lights move over my chest and face.

Jacoby fires off a command and the back four guards drop their weapons. He walks closer to stand just behind the three men still aiming at us. He's radiating tension.

"This is a supreme fuck-up, Springer! Why are you breaking protocol at zero-hour?"

I start to answer but he shouts louder. "When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you!" He swivels, facing a repentant looking Eli. "Goddam it, Thacker! Your civilians don't listen!"

Glaring at the guard closest to me, he orders, "Kravitz, the minute this show is over, you are to dispatch this little band of traitors with extreme prejudice. Understood?"

20 Edge of the Universe

"Yes, sir, my pleasure, sir!"

My stomach drops as Kravitz responds, proudly slicing his hand to his brow in salute to General Jacoby. I recognize him. Only the last time we met, he was pushing me around, dressed like an orderly.

"Some kind of support system you're offering." My signature sarcasm is directed at the general and rewarded with Kravitz's fist to my jaw.

"You can't do that!" Abi shouts from my shadow.

Eli is folding his hands, pleading for something from Jacoby while I'm punched and cuffed. The taste of blood fills my mouth. The general has turned his back to us. He's walking away, taking the back row of guards with him. There's too much commotion—too many voices for me to hear what Eli's saying.

This can't happen. _Threestone_...

A pair of hands bites down on my shoulders, lifting me from the ground. The cuffs are tight. I kept my hands fisted and loosen them now, hoping to relieve some of the pressure of the cuffs. It doesn't work.

An opportunity arises as one guard with his gun still trained on me relents, at Kravitz's order, and holsters his weapon. Kravitz is standing behind me, holding my cuffs. He's too far back for a head-butt. So I swing my leg out and kick him in what I hope is the side of his knee.

At the same moment, another heavy blow nails the side of my face. I feel the heat and pain right away. It drops me to my knees.

Abi is screaming. I snap out of my daze to find her bent backward by another guard. He's twisting her arms behind her while she stares down at a half-starved, limp Nahuiollin at her feet. To my surprise, she's not fighting or telling anyone how wrong they are for what they're doing. She's not even resisting.

Her face is pale in the evening light as she begs to be cuffed with her arms in front of her so she can hold the boy. That's all.

"He's practically dead already," She reasons. Tears streaking down her cheeks reflect the light of sunset. "He shouldn't die alone."

The guard answers, "We all die alone. And he reeks of piss," but cuffs her hands over her stomach. She begs permission to carry Nahuiollin. It's granted, but Assholes One and Two won't help her. They watch and snicker as she struggles to get a hold of him with bound wrists.

Eli suddenly reappears. His white button-up shirt is ripped around the collar and he's got a red welt under one eye. Under the glare of the two guards, he helps Abi to her feet and lifts a whimpering Nahuiollin into the circle of her arms. He whispers something to her, and it seems to calm her down.

Then he turns to me, shaking his head with a pained expression. He walks away without a word, leaving the three of us in the hands of two armed guards that shove and poke at us, barking orders for us to follow the path away from the elevator shaft, through the meadow, and around the high wall of shrubs and trees.

Dark is moving in quickly, but there's still enough light in the western sky to see the columns and canopy in the next clearing.

With my tongue feeling my swollen cheek, I count seven figures standing around the small pyramid.

I've got to do something, but what?

Kravitz orders us to kneel under the edge of the canopy, facing the pyramid. I look at Abi, expecting to find her crying, but she's not. She's pissed.

I have no idea what to do or say to her, but when she glances my way, I mouth the words, "I'm sorry." She shakes her head, as if to say, "Don't be," and my breath catches in my throat as the barrel of a gun poises itself at the back of her head. She turns, looks at it, and her eyes widen, not with fear, but rage.

I saw that look directed at me earlier this morning when she laid on my bed, popping grapes into her mouth and shrugging. She got angry with me so quickly, and now, she's writing off the gun pointing at her head with the same nonchalance. Crazy-ass woman—doesn't she care that we're about to die?

Then, it hits me: she knew this would happen. She's spent more time with these people than I have and she knew exactly what she was getting into when I asked her for help. I watch her as she nuzzles the smelly little boy closer to her chest. Running her lips over his filthy, matted hair—a childless mother and motherless child. She's trying to comfort him.

"Congratulations, Davis." General Jacoby is under the canopy, only a few feet away. He slaps Davis on the back.

"Thank you, sir. I won't let you down." Davis has a smug smile when he looks over at me. I shoot a withering glare, wishing I was like Darth Vader and could choke him with my mind.

They're sending _him._ Without me.

This is what Jacoby meant when he said, 'the show,'—he's having Davis take my place, and plans to kill me, Abi, and Nahuiollin.

Kravitz rips the ID Badge from around my neck and passes it to some go-between guard who hands it off to Davis.

Those are my stones—my legacy. He has no idea what he's doing. He can't use them. He can't!

I hear the beep of the lock and look back to Abi. She's looking directly at me. Her face now, finally, taking on a worried expression. She's mouthing something to me. I shake my head, because night is closing in and I can't make it out.

The door of the pyramid opens. I hear the trickling sounds of water. It's no more than ten feet away, but might as well be a million miles.

Abi whispers my name. "... Call them."

Looking back at her, I'm barely forming the word, "What?" as the butt of the handgun that's been pointed at her crashes down on her temple. She falls to one side, taking Nahuiollin with her.

I call her name and fight against the hands on my shoulders, keeping me glued in place, ignoring the threats from Kravitz.

This can't be happening. Not to her.

_The Threestone are mine_. As I think it, I remember sitting at Abi-Two's kitchen table while her father-in-law explained to me that the stones are absolutely loyal to the Bearer.

"Call them, G!" Abi wails.

I look back to the pyramid, at the scattering group of people on the hilltop. The four guards have moved back into position, giving a wide berth to Davis and Jacoby who are gazing at the three small stones like they've fallen in love. Eli stands near them, and he's still pleading; still being ignored.

And I form the word, "Threestone."

Davis hoots as the stones begin to glow.

"Threestone," I call again, with the slightest breath of a whisper, knowing they don't need ears to hear me. "Please, help me." In my mind, I'm begging for them to burn Davis and Jacoby to a crisp.

But they don't.

They never do what I expect. The stones constantly save me, sure, but they also bring me to a place like this. They didn't stop Daemon from hitting me with that garbage truck. They let me die, only to raise me up after. They didn't keep me from falling into the river, or going over an enormous waterfall, but they slowed my descent. Yes, Tako is right. The rocks have a mind of their own. They let me fail, let me learn, but ensure I live to fight another day.

What will they do now?

_Please don't let them take you. Don't let them kill us_.

The stones ignite with that special light I've only ever seen come from inside of them.

Davis yelps, cursing and snatching his hand away. Guess no one warned him about the heat.

The stones don't drop. They never do. They float in triad between an awestruck Jacoby and Davis.

"General, they're unstable," Eli is saying, "Uncontrollable," His eyes are also fixed on the stones.

"Come to me," I whisper so softly, pleading, "Get me out of these handcuffs."

The stones flutter, moving in in their unique way, wheeling around one another and glowing in bright white-blue light. They move across the meadow, flitting in different directions like a group of fireflies, like they did in the cave.

Bright and getting brighter, the stones spin faster and faster until their individual lights blend into one. And all of us inside the field are staring at a glorious wheel of light.

Then, it disappears.

21 It Is What It Is and Ain't What It Ain't

The bright glow is gone but the rocks are still here.

I feel them. It takes a moment, as my eyes adjust, to understand that the Threestone has moved, undetected, through the meadow. They are in front of me, now, floating in their beautiful triad.

The small clearing at the top of this mountain erupts with noise. Orders being shouted and bodies scrambling.

"Free my hands?" I whisper.

Suddenly, I'm dragged to my feet. The second I'm able to stand, my left foot kicks out behind me. I know by the sound that I've nailed Kravitz. The pressure of his gun in my back disappears. Using all my momentum, I swing around to face him and simultaneously reach for the stones.

I feel the cool of them in my hand and am gifted with a surge of clarity—a certainty that the stones could never be taken by anyone else—my alternate's father, Abi's father-in-law said something that only another Bearer with stones more powerful than mine could take them.

Kravitz has staggered back, but regains his balance in two steps. Then he's coming at me, his weapon pointed at my face.

From the corner of my eye, I note that Abi is sitting up again. Her eyes wide. Her expression unreadable.

My hands are suddenly at my sides. The pressure of the cuffs is still there, but the chain between them is broken.

The look on Kravitz' face, when he realizes I'm free, is priceless. His eyebrows climb his forehead, his mouth forms an O. Moving as fast as my training taught me, I grab and twist the gun from his grip. He steps back, now unarmed.

The click behind me stops me in my tracks. I might not die, but getting shot really hurts. I begin slowly raising my hands as a distraction, and kick backward and bend forward at the same time. The blare of the gun firing rattles but doesn't stop me. It's loud.

I see, but can't hear Abi's yelp. She staring at something just above my head

My arm shoots up as I swing around in a squat position and take hold of the arm of the guard with the gun. Pulling it down and twisting, I smash my elbow down onto his outstretched arm. The gratifying crack and pained wail has the guard on his knees.

I feel ten feet tall, getting to my feet, and looking around the dark clearing. The guard, the one who was standing behind Abi, is whimpering, crawling away with his broken arm pulled to his chest. A quick glance behind me and I notice Kravitz slumped on the ground with a hole in his forehead.

I've got the stones and two loaded 9mms.

Abi is still on the ground, holding Nahuiollin, who I now notice, is wide awake and clinging to her, completely terrified.

There are four red dots swirling on my chest.

The clearing is quiet again, save the sound of footsteps. The dots on my chest scatter to Abi's face and Nahuiollin's back as General Jacoby steps in front of me.

"Bold move," I offer.

He holds his hand out and I really want to smash my knee into his authoritative face.

Looking to Abi and then back at the asshole that's running this operation into the ground, I figure I'm going to have to spell it out. "You can't take them from me."

As evidence, I hold out my hand, bearing the stones in my open palm and inviting him to try.

Of course he snatches them and turns on his heel. The guards waste no time training their rifles back on me. What they fail to see is something I am only just beginning to understand. That it doesn't matter how far they physically take them from me. They can never take them away.

When the general's about ten feet off, I reach my hand out, calling to the stones. "Come back."

Quick as lightning, the stones break from his closed fist.

Jacoby is dumbfounded, staring at his empty hand. He looks back at me, only to find the rocks are floating in triad in front of my chest.

Looking down at Abi, I ask, "Ready to go?"

Her shocked expression washes away. She nods, her cuffed hands clinging to the boy as she tries to get to her feet. Nahuiollin must understand, because he scrambles from her chest and onto her back like the little clingy monkey he is.

Gazing back at Jacoby, who looks furious, I inform him, "We're leaving."

Abi takes her damn time getting up, but when she does, she's at my side, holding my hand. I notice her hands are free; her cuffs lay open in the dirt. She must've gotten a key off Kravitz. One by one, she unlocks the broken cuffs on my wrists.

"Thank you," I mutter, and she smiles.

"Now's not the time for jokes."

Eli jumps out from under the canopy, raising his hand. "Wait for me—I'm coming too."

Jacoby's face goes blank. "Thacker, stand down."

Eli stands on my other side and looks back. "Sucks being ignored, doesn't it, General?"

"The mission." Jacoby's face reddens with fury.

"It didn't have to come to this—" Eli starts, but is interrupted by Abi.

"We'll keep up our end. We'll find Daemon and stop him."

"The fate of the universe is more important than what you want, General." Eli says, and then calls out, "Davis! Get over here."

I'm about to object, but when Davis appears, Eli says, "Give me that medical kit. Matter of fact, I'll need your suit and the bag, too."

Davis's confused face falls. He looks to General Jacoby for inspiration.

"Do as you're told, Soldier." Jacoby orders, "Now."

With that, I take my gloves from the pouch on my belt. Slipping them over my hands, I look to Abi. "We'll pick-up something for you along the way."

She adjusts the frightened boy clinging to her back. "I'm not worried," she says, though her eyes tell a different story.

Eli takes the gear Davis tosses him, including his shoes, since they're attached to the suit. He crumples them into a ball and tucks it under his arm. Looking to me he nods, signaling he's ready. Then pauses.

"You sure you know what you're doing?"

"It's the only thing I know for sure." Piloting the Threestone is what I do best.

Looking at the beautiful rocks in my hand, I silently ask them to get us out of here—to take us to a place where we can all find what we need.

I need Daemon. Nahuiollin needs a home. We can figure out the rest along the way.

A web of lightning cracks across the night sky, the sound resonating deep in my bones. The funnel cloud appears first on the mountaintop, spraying its' biting heat and wind as it stretches into the night, lighting up the dark.

I watch it stretch up into the heavens, watch it paint the nocturnal clouds with chaos and beauty. The blue fog is swirling, and beneath it, blue flames. The wheel of glorious colors stands before us.

Clinging to Abi's hand, I take a step forward.
PART EIGHT

22 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

IT'S DARK OUT, IN this new world. Decidedly colder, too. Not that I have time to get a good look around before the time sickness gets me.

I feel the smooth concrete under my knees as I bend, hacking into some kind of plant. My sounds of sickness aren't the only ones and I wonder if I should have been more specific with the stones.

I wanted a place where we could all get what we needed, but this plane is very dark and I can't get my bearings. But there's some comfort to be had—we're in a plane with concrete sidewalks.

"W-what the hell?" Abi sputters.

Wiping my mouth, I look up to see her bent forward, just like me. She's pale, sitting next to Nahuiollin who's holding his stomach, dry-heaving. But her eyes are not on him. She's staring at something behind us.

Following her gaze, I spot a pile of tanned flesh. A man, on all fours, vomiting into a short line of shrubs on the other side of the sidewalk.

I'm on my feet before realizing I've moved. "Davis?"

His head turns, his eyes wide when he sees me standing over him.

"What are you doing here?" Eli comes into view beside me.

Davis clears his throat. The stench of vomit carries on the cold breeze. "Following orders." Slowly, he gets to his feet, wearing only a pair of boxer briefs.

Abi curses. I hear her getting to her feet. I should help her, but can't take my eyes off Davis—who was content to take my place on this mission. A mission he never would have been a part of is it wasn't for me. Yet he was going to leave me behind. He was willing to let us die.

It's like my body has a mind of its' own. My fist comes down fast, sharp, hitting Davis between the eyes. His head snaps back and forward. He stumbles, but makes no move to defend himself.

He presses a hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. After a minute, he straightens. His eyes are tight, focused solely on me. "That was for free."

" _That_ was because you deserved it. You were going to let us die!" It's Abi shouting at him.

Eli clasps his hand on her shoulder. "Keep it down."

"What are your orders?" I demand.

"Same as always," he says, slowly passing his hand over his forehead where a happy lump is forming.

"That's not an explanation," Abi muses.

"General Jacoby said to shadow you. I'm a soldier, I follow my orders."

Eli huffs, indignant. "Repeat to us, word-for-word, your objective on this mission. Not the one you're supposed to tell us. We want the _real_ one."

"Full disclosure," I echo. "Or we're leaving your ass behind." He'll be deserted either way, but it might be nice to get some information beforehand.

"He's not going to tell us the truth." Eli mutters to me.

Abi rubs Nahuiollin's back. She takes a step behind me and begins talking to Eli about giving the kid a vitamin shot.

While those two work on Shorty, I take a step forward, feeling the rocks inside my hand. Davis watches as I tuck them into the zipper pocket concealed in the chest of my suit.

And even though I'm not making a big deal of it, I do notice the way the streetlights along the lane are not flickering. Davis's greedy gaze has all my attention.

"You can't take them from me."

Davis nods at the reiteration.

"And you can't kill me. So what is your real objective?"

Davis' face hardens. "I don't like you, Springer. If it were up to me, you'd have been dispatched the second you landed in our custody."

"I would have come back." I smile, I can't help myself. "And I don't associate with child abusers."

"I _never_ touched him." Davis' chest puffs out. He's very bold for standing there in his underwear in the middle of a suburban street at God-only-knows what hour of the night.

Nahuiollin is whimpering, and from the sounds of Abi's voice, she's comforting him after the bite of the needle.

"You knew what they were doing to him. You knew where he was and you did nothing. You're no better than Stevens."

"I followed my orders. Not that a civilian would understand anything about what a soldier does."

Crossing my arms over my chest, I aim to look as nonchalant as possible, though I really want to hit him in the face again. Hard. "Interesting that you'd circle back to that, because we're still waiting for an answer."

Eli is back standing beside me, talking low. "We've wasted enough time here. We've got to get the M-Sat's up and figure out what to do with the kid."

He's right. We've got a multiverse to map.

"Bye," Abi waves to Davis with a wicked grin on her face.

Davis stands there, watching us walk away.

Once we're out of earshot, Eli mutters, "Wish I had a way to mark the time differential."

I have to laugh. Not only because I spent weeks listening to my friend nag about how important it was supposed to be, but because there was no way for me to do it and get a reliable reading.

Also, I'm relieved... and grateful that we _finally_ got away from that mountain. All of us. I've never had a companion before—never wanted one, either. Now I've got more than I can handle.

It's more comforting that I expected it to be. Maybe because I've seen what happens when people get left behind.

Much as they might care that you're gone, their lives don't stop. They can't endlessly wait for your journey to take you across their path again. And if you do manage to catch-up, all you find is pain for the things you missed.

Abi must notice my mood because she shoots me a sweet smile.

I offer to help carry the kid as we make our way down the sidewalk of this small suburban area, but she just looks at me like I've lost my marbles.

"What?"

"That's not a good idea." She whispers, as if Nahuiollin can understand us.

"Come on. Just because I tried kill him? That was all your idea, as I recall." When she blanches, I add, "Besides, I don't think he's holding a grudge."

I wave at Nahuiollin, who whimpers, and stares back wide-eyed nestling tighter into Abi's neck. Yeah, he doesn't like me. "Point taken."

"He's following us," Eli mumbles when we near the corner.

"Of course he is. But he can't do too much in just his underwear."

"Where are we going?" Abi asks.

"I don't know," Eli is looking back into the dark and rifling through the belt from Davis's suit. "What if he tries something?"

"I'll protect you." I've got two guns, after all.

He seems amused as he pauses to dig out one of the pods that hold a cluster of mini satellites. "This seems like as good a place as any." We're standing in a break between the trees planted along the lane.

Halting beside him, I dig into my backpack and remove the hand-held launcher. Eli takes it, loads the pod into the barrel and sets the charge before placing the launcher on the ground in the street and scurries back up onto the sidewalk.

The launcher bangs into the night, like a gunshot, making my ears ring. The pod disappears like a bullet.

At the sound, Nahuiollin jumps and squeezes Abi' neck. She tries to comfort him and starts walking again.

A small light on the launcher flashes once, and then Eli picks it up to store back inside my bag.

The quiet neighborhood stirs as a few people look out their windows, but we've stepped back into shadows between street lights and driveways, under the shade of large trees that line this section of the road.

"Where are we going?" Abi asks again. Her eyes are on the street sign at the corner.

Shining a small flash light on the perpendicular stack of green signs, I see we are at the corners of Budd and Memory Street.

23 The Motherless Child

"From Cheyenne Mountain to Los Angeles?" Eli murmurs to no one in particular.

I answer anyways. "They can take us wherever, even other places within a plane."

Flicking the flashlight off, I wonder if it's possible that we're in World Two, the first plane I travelled to. Could it be the same plane where I saw my alternate little sister, Carrie, who'd been dead for almost twenty years?

Gesturing for everyone to follow, I make the turn onto Memory Street.

"I didn't know that," Eli muses.

"I wonder what year it is," Abi mumbles.

"I have some idea," Eli whispers. "We grew up around here. This is G's old street. I used to live a few blocks back that way."

"That tells me nothing," Abi grumbles, keeping her voice low.

"Mid-nineties," My tone is also measured, and I guess we've all decided that we need to be quiet from now on since we've attracted some unwanted attention. Freaking Davis is following us. He's not even trying to hide it.

"Late nineties," I correct, the moment we clear the last curve in the road.

My childhood home rests, dark, against the starry sky up at the end of the dead-end street. The house looks nearly the same as I left it, except for the 'Foreclosure' sign spiked into the lawn. The road and driveway are empty. There is no rose bush planted in the middle of the yard—the one Dad and me planted after Carrie was killed by that drunk driver—which gives me hope that this is the same world I left just a few short months ago.

"Looks unoccupied," Eli observes.

"Let's go inside," Abi's whines. "He's getting heavy."

"And he needs a bath." Eli frowns.

"We all do."

Watching Abi's form as she hunches and struggles to readjust the small child has my heart filling with a familiar feeling. She has done a one-eighty over the past few hours. We all stink because we brought him with us. Well, I don't because the kid won't let me near him, but this is all so ironic. Before Abi met him, she'd wanted him dead.

Still, when I asked for help, she didn't hesitate. She said she didn't like how jaded she'd become, and she meant it. When she saw what Nahuiollin was going through, she jumped in to stop it without a second thought.

The spare key is still tucked inside the fig tree planter, hidden in the fake rock. Eli plucks a few of the fruit as I walk inside.

The house is empty. My alternate family had bolted when they heard Daemon was in town. The last time I was here, the house was full of stuff. Food, dishes and old mail.

It's been cleaned out for the most part. The furniture and leftover clothes are gone. The constant construction materials that marked the time I spent in this house are also gone. The work is still half-done.

Checking the fuse box outback, I find that the electricity has been shut-off. The pilot light on the hot water heater is out, too. Taking a match from my survival kit, I turn the small knob until it clicks and hope it lights.

It does. At least we'll get a warm soak.

Marching in the back door, I'm sure to lock it, not allowing my mind to get stuck on the space where the washer and dryer used to be because I don't want to think about my mother right now.

Abi's in the kitchen, just closing the cabinet under the sink. "The bathroom has a roll of toilet paper and I found dish soap." She holds up a bottle of green liquid soap like a trophy.

"It'll work."

Eli is wadding up Davis's jumpsuit, folding it under his head as he lies on the living room floor. "This carpet is old."

I camp by the front window to keep watch. The house is pitch-black, making it easy to look out and remain unseen through the painted aluminum blinds.

Whispers and movement from the back of the house echo over the sound of running water. Abi is washing Nahuiollin and humming. A minute of absolute quiet settles over the house, and then she calls for Eli. He groans, but gets up and walks the thirty paces to find out what she wants.

Outside, there is no sign of Davis. I know he knows where we are, but I don't know what he plans to do next—if he's an immediate threat or not. It's best to assume that he is, I decide, but I'm not sure what kind.

I mean, what can he do? I pilot these stones. There are three of us, one of him, and he's outmatched and shoeless. But he's a Marine—and that keeps me wary.

When Eli makes it back up the hallway, he's got a little stranger in tow. Nahuiollin's hair is dripping wet. His thin frame is drowning in an oversized white tee shirt. Again, I wonder how old he is because I've seen seven-year-olds with more height.

"I loaned him my undershirt," Eli keeps his hand on Shorty's back, steering him to the corner furthest from me. It's hard to miss the way Nahuiollin won't take his eyes off me.

I wait for him to look away before turning back to the window. "We've got to do something with him."

"Yes, we do," Eli agrees, "Sooner rather than later." I hear the shift of material and know that he's settling back down on the carpet.

"Any suggestions?"

He sighs. "None that are going to make him happy."

Noting the harsh of Eli's voice I glance back. "What does that mean?" And back to the window.

"He's an orphan and an alien. He knows nothing about the culture, doesn't speak the language. Can you think of any suitable place for a kid in his position?"

After a long blink, I answer, "No." A sigh, "But he can learn to fit in, can't he?"

"I'm no psychologist, but I did take a few years of Sociology. I know that, to the trained observer, he's going to seem like he was raised by wolves."

Reflecting on the environment Nahuiollin grew up in and the circumstances where I found him the second time, I can agree, "Astute observation."

"There's also a strong possibility that he's passed the age of assimilation. His language skills may improve, but adaptability? In this environment, at his age—it's highly unlikely, even with intense therapy. Who's going to adopt a wild boy?"

"Barney Rubble," I quip, even though now is not the time for jokes.

In the corner, Nahuiollin's eyes are slowly closing.

"G, I can't think of a scenario that lands him in a happy home. He'll end up in an institution, unless we take him back where he came from."

"He can't go back there," I say, and delve quickly into why when Eli asks. "You know why; because I took the stones from his plane and he became an outcast because of it. Taking him back there is nothing short of a death sentence."

"You know what my friend did when he found him the first time?"

The street remains empty—no sign of Davis. Eli's question has me looking straight at him. I have a pretty good idea what my alternate did, but ask anyway.

"He knew what he was looking for," Eli's voice is mournful as he lies on his back staring at the ceiling. "He said he was doing the kid a favor."

"By killing him?"

Turning his head, Eli looks at Nahuiollin nestled in the corner. "I supported his decision, and now I don't know how to feel about that."

Looking back to the window, I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I'm sure my alternate thought he was doing the right thing. I was never sure but I stopped myself because I knew that if I went through with it, I was no better than Daemon.

My vision washes with images of a man that looks like me, but with a slightly softer jawline, crouching over the frame of a small boy in a field of tall brown grass. His eyes are violent as he raises a knife.

"War is ugly," Eli interrupts my errant thoughts, drawing me back.

"I thought we weren't at war."

"Conflict, war; who can tell the difference anymore? The real problem is that the bad guy isn't who we thought he was."

_Our villain is also our victim_.

Staring back out the window, I focus on the shadows.

After a stretch of silence, Eli reminds me that we haven't settled the matter of what to do with Shorty. "Maybe he'd prefer some place familiar."

"Maybe he'd be better off in an orphanage in a place where there's food, education, and basic psychiatric care."

Eli sighs heavily. "We can figure it out in the morning."

"I've got first watch. I'll wake you in a few hours."

Eli agrees and then rolls over.

He's snoring by the time Abi emerges from the hallway. Wearing only her underwear. The moonlight hits her bare skin, making it glow.

She whispers, "I had to wash my clothes. They're drying in the bathroom." She talks as she tiptoes closer to Eli. Standing over him, she reaches down and slowly slips the folded suit out from under his sleeping head.

She prowls closer to me, keeping her head lower than the window. It's one of the sexiest things I've ever seen.

Sitting beside me, Abi makes no move to get dressed, opting to rest the folded suit on her lap and leaning her back against the wall beside me.

It's really hard not to stare at her black lacey bra. It's a miracle I manage.

After a long silence, she tilts her head close to mine, asking, "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" I whisper back. She's so close and she smells so good.

"It seemed very easy for you to call the stones and to make them bring us here. My father-in-law always said it took huge amounts of concentration, but you... you make it look so easy. How do you do that?"

"It is easy for me, Ab. The stones..." I pause, not sure if I should say.

"That stones, what?" She rolls her hand in a gesture to continue and then places her warm palm on my leg.

Her eyes... I can barely see them, but can tell they're watching me. I feel the heat rolling off them and into me.

"I am connected to the stones in a way I don't understand. I'm empty when I don't have them, whole when I do. Communicating with them is the only thing I'm good at."

She shakes her head. "That's not true. I can think of a few other things you're very good at." Her hand skims up my leg to my stomach, and wraps around my waist. She leans closer, until our noses are touching. "Can I kiss you?"

My answer is predictable: gently closing the gap between our mouths. She drives me crazy. She's not mine, but I'll give her anything. She can do and take whatever she wants.

Her lips are tentative, her tongue soft and slow. She pulls back and whispers in my ear, "Not here," and then looks out at the sleeping forms in the living room.

Not two seconds later, we're in the back of the house, inside my old bedroom.

"Should we be watching for Davis?" I say to her back, as she closes the door.

"He's worried he'll miss the train out of here. But I don't think he's anything to be concerned about." She turns to me, dropping the folded suit, her gaze burning into me with the fire of a thousand suns.

"Come over here," Her hands move behind her back. The lacy bra drops to the floor.

And then she's caught up in my arms, my hands, my mouth. The bursting heat between us is overwhelming.

She lifts a bare leg and slips it into the thick stretchy material of the bodysuit. After drawing the stretchy material over her shoulders, she zips the side of suit up.

"That will keep you warm."

Her eyes smile at me, but her feet take her to the opposite corner in the living room, where she lays beside the small boy curled up in a little ball. She drapes one arm over his body and kisses his head. He doesn't stir, lost in deep sleep.

Taking my place back in front of the window, I find myself jealous of an orphan.

24 It's Like I'm Constantly Giving Away Children

Eli never took his turn on watch last night. I was too restless, unsure what to do about Nahuiollin and Davis, so I let him sleep. No sense in both of us being zombies. And I have my vitamin shots to energize me.

Of course, there was no sign of Davis at all since we got into the house. I know he's close by, but have no idea where. Nahuiollin didn't wake up once.

At dawn, I wake the house. Not long after, the four of us leave the sad, empty home the way we found it, minus some fruit from the apple and fig trees.

For the first time, we step out into the daylight in our camouflage suits and the sunlight turns them from black to gray and green. It's really cool, and we talk about it a little, but my conversation is stilted and awkward. I'm trying to avoid the elephant that is our objective. Even though, Abi's been more practical than I assumed she would be about the whole issue.

When Eli broached the subject of leaving Nahuiollin behind, Abi agreed that it was in the boy's best interest, as well as ours, to find a safe place for him to stay.

Neither Eli nor I mentioned the conversation we had last night. Abi's so optimistic about where Nahuiollin will end up. I can't squash her hope.

She's still wearing Davis' suit. The clingy fabric suits her figure. She's carrying his backpack, too, and the belt, which hangs loose over her hips.

She catches me pretending like I'm not eyeing her and shakes her head, gesturing to our matching attire. "We make quite the pair."

Nahuiollin is walking today, his calloused feet not bothered by the occasional pebble or twig in the sidewalk. But he refuses to let Abi out of his sight—has one hand on her at all times as if he's worried she'll disappear.

Watching it is kind of cute... but really sad.

"I have a cousin who's a minister." Eli's offer sounds like a question.

"In this decade?" Abi asks, as Nahuiollin snatches a second apple.

She's been holding the fruit in front of him, saying the name in a way that asks him to repeat it. He doesn't. He snatches it from her hand the moment she looks away and takes a huge bite, the juices spilling down his pointed chin.

"Oh, yeah," Eli looks down the road, "no, he's my age. But his dad ran the church before him. We could go by there and check it out."

Abi bites her lip, thinking.

"How far is it?" I wonder, "Because all this walking is getting old. Fast."

As if he agrees, Nahuiollin jumps onto Eli's back. Abi covers her mouth, gasping a laugh as Eli shoves forward, nearly falling. He catches himself, though, and I lend a hand to help steady him. Nahuiollin doesn't flinch at my proximity, but lets out a quick ruffle of laughter that reminds me of a _Disney_ movie I once saw about a little boy living in the jungle with a big blue bear. Except this little jungle boy couldn't get a tan to save his life.

Eli grunts, adjusting Nahuiollin's grip around his throat before answering. "Down by the Pine Meadow Apartments."

"That's a few miles." I recall, and pick up the pace.

When we make it to the church over on Acre's Avenue, the apartment building is nowhere in sight. There's just a massive empty lot where it used to be, or should have been. I can't decide which. The tall windows on the small church are boarded up and the front door is chained shut.

"Great. Now what?" Abi leans down to put Nahuiollin on his feet, and then sits in the shade of the building.

Irritation prickles my scalp. "Okay, so maybe we aren't in World Two."

Eli leans against a spot of red graffiti the on door of the church. "We don't have time for this, G. I thought you knew where we were."

"I thought I did, too." Shrugging, I say the thing I'm thinking. "We could still be. I never came down this way when I was here before."

"Whatever we do, we have to do it fast." Abi adds, "Time is different in all these planes. We could be running out the clock on our own world and not even know it."

"Well, excuse me," Eli sulks. "I've never tried to ditch an unsuspecting child before. Apparently, I'm no good at it."

"Open to suggestions," I say.

Abi chuckles humorlessly, "First time for everything."

Eli's combing his fingers over his beard. "Is anyone else concerned that we haven't seen Davis today?"

"No," Abi and me answer in unison. Nahuiollin looks at her, his lips quirked.

"One thing at a time." Scraping my fingers through my hair, I start thinking.

"There's a _Boys and Girls Club_ a half-mile or so that way," Eli points West.

Abi groans. "More walking? My feet are killing me, and I'm thirsty."

I don't particularly want to walk any further right now either. "That's hella far away."

"It's not as if we can just leave him somewhere." Eli's obviously frustrated when he glares at Abi.

"No one is suggesting that, Elijah," She bites back.

"Simmer down, children." I say, spreading my hands between them. "If we put our heads together, I'm sure we can come up with something."

"There's a Fire Station a few blocks up the road." Eli points. "They're supposed to be Havens for abandoned children. But they'll want us to talk to the police."

The sight of the tall brick building with the long yellow truck out front gives me hope. And we start formulating a plan.

Well, it's not so much a plan as a chicken-shit scheme that's going to leave all of us feeling like a bunch of assholes. But, if all goes accordingly, it should work.

Quickly.

25 Mountains, Molehills and Questions Up the Wazoo

"We need to get out of here." Abi wipes at her eyes for the tenth time in the past thirty seconds.

I have no doubt that what she just did was the hardest thing she's ever done.

"My sentiment exactly," Eli's shoes have held his attention since we ditched a screaming Nahuiollin at the Fire Station.

Jogging faster, I want to put as much distance as possible between us and what just happened. I swear, I've never heard a human make sounds like that. The way he screamed when Abi tore away from him will be with me for a while. Hurting someone, even if you don't like them, never feels good.

I'm guessing we've run for nearly a mile.

Eli slows—him being the only one that didn't spend his time inside the mountain doing fitness training—forcing us to stop to let him catch his breath.

"The look in his eyes..." Abi whispers, "This was the best thing for him, right?"

"He doesn't understand is all." My comfort means little to her in the moment, I can tell by the way she rolls her shoulder, shrugging off the remark. "But he will. One day, he will get it."

"Or, he won't and he'll grow up to be another bitter, hateful version of Daemon." She grits her teeth. "Instead of only hating you, he'll hate me, too."

"What's done is done." Eli slices his hand through the air, the way he seems to do whenever his feathers get ruffled. "We need to go back to the road we were on last night and cross over."

"That's a long ways away." But as reluctant as I am to make the trek, I remember very well the importance of not making any more unnecessary holes in the walls that separate the universes.

When I first began my journey, my friend, Elijah, tried to explain Entanglement and how important it was, but in my quest to kill Daemon as quickly and painfully as possible, I didn't pay much attention. Sort of my M.O. "We better keep moving."

"The exercise will do us good." Abi sniffs, her wounded gaze turning steely. "And I've got a husband to track down."

Ignoring the way the comment stabs like a knife— _she's not mine to lose_ —I lead the three of us into a sprint, pausing only for traffic lights the rest of the way back.

The miles disappear. Eli's face is red and he's grabbing his side by the time we're back at the same spot in the sidewalk where we appeared last night. The space is marked by puddles of dried vomit and the nuisance of Agent Arthur Davis.

The moment we come around the corner of the lightly trafficked street, we spot him.

"Look," Abi elbows my side.

"Of course," Eli hisses.

Davis is relaxing in the shade of a tree, wearing markedly more clothes than he was last night. He's got a bright red pair of baggy Cross-Color jeans and a huge black and yellow hoody. His bare feet are dirty. In the daylight, the red streaks on his ears, nose, and hands remind me of the radiation burns I used to get. That was before I had my own set of stones, though.

"Nice outfit," Abi teases.

"The laundry mat is twenty-four hours." Davis stands, his eyes wary as he shoves his hands into the pocket of his short-sleeve sweatshirt. "And I could say the same to you."

"It looks better on me," She answers, spreading her arms to display the bodysuit that was made for our unwanted—unwelcome—company. It does look better on her. Accentuates every hill and valley of my teammate and temptress.

"Where's the kid?"

"Like you care," Eli hisses, sounding more winded than threatening. "He's not coming with us and neither are you."

Davis's pointed glare flattens. He looks at Eli, but addresses me. "You know, Springer, I'm not the only one in this group that knew the kid was being held for interrogation. Thatcher, here, was given all the transcripts from those sessions. He was our interpreter."

Abi gasps, "What?" The single is word laced with pain.

Eli jerks back as if he's been slapped. "Interpreter is a stretch. I analyzed a couple of drawings."

Abi's just put on the performance of her life—pretending to have found Nahuiollin wandering the streets while she was on her way to perform at a child's birthday party (there was no other way to explain the odd outfits, so she claimed we were entertainers). As proof, I stood a ways off, but in view of the Firemen, wearing my matching jumpsuit. We'd made like we had a car parked down the road, so when they asked for ID, we pretended it was in the car, and then took off before they could call the police.

She'd just stopped crying and now hot tears are fighting their way out again. Eli turns to her, forgetting the threat of Davis, and leaving me no choice but to step between them to offer cover.

"That's a purposeful misrepresentation of the truth, Abi."

She clamps her bottom lip between her teeth and shuts her eyes.

"I had no idea where he was or what they were doing to him. None. If I had a clue—" he cuts off and throws his hands up. "... I was asked to look at a few drawings he made because I studied the Suma's hieroglyphics, that's all, I swear."

Abi crosses her arms and holds herself, saying nothing.

"He's got no reason to lie, Abi, but Davis does."

" _He_ is lying." Davis spits back, but it seems the words are more heated than he is.

I look Davis square in the eyes, trying to measure this person that I once thought was... well, not a friend—never a friend—but at least on the same side.

What did they promise him? What are his orders, and will he follow them? He's said as much. He's a soldier and takes great pride in that.

Normally, I'd give credit where it's due. I've always held massive respect for soldiers. They're the ones that put themselves on the line so others don't have to. There's nobility in that. But I've also never been on the wrong end of that devotion.

If I ask him about any of this, he won't answer. Truthfully, even if he did, I wouldn't trust it.

"You're lying," I surmise, keeping my eyes on Davis. "Trying to weaken the group— to make us doubt each other so you can force your way back in."

"It won't work," Eli says.

"No, it won't," Abi agrees.

Davis returns our glares. "Are we going to fight about this?"

He's not referring to the accusations, now. He's watching the stones in my hand as I remove them from my pocket; coveting their beauty. And he's referring to how he's planning on jumping with us whether he's welcome or not.

"Maybe not," I'm thinking aloud, wondering, "If there was a way that you could prove your loyalty to the mission itself and not your commanding officer—then we might let you tag along."

"We would?" Eli asks.

"I've got years of tactical training. I did three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. You need me," Davis counters.

"I need _loyalty_."

"Then you've got it." Davis affirms. "I don't want the universe die any more than you do."

"But do you understand that I'm the _only_ one who can harness the power of the Threestone?"

"After what I saw on the mountain; yes, it's abundantly clear."

That will have to do for now. The kind of mission we're on, we really do need all the help we can get.

Stepping back, I raise my hand and send a silent prayer to the stones that hold my universe.

It's a beautiful sight: the bluest-blue funnel cloud, shooting blue and orange flames as it grows under a cloudless sky. I don't even have to absorb any energy for them. It's like they're making it on their own now.

People are staring at the anomaly, feeling the heat and wind of the tornado-like gateway, and cowering back into their houses to observe through a window. Maybe it's careless to open a wormhole in free view of the public, but I don't care.

"We're all going to throw up again aren't we?" Abi mutters in my ear as we huddle close together.

"Probably."

And I wonder if she feels it, too; the protective bubble that only the Threestone can generate.

It's a comforting way to pass from one plane to the next. Even if we don't know exactly what lies ahead, the stones will protect us from most of it. Because I am the Bearer and it is my will.

A single step takes us into the wormhole; the stunning cosmic tunnel that connects two distant places.

26 Nuclear Winter Wonderland

Distant alabaster plains conceal what's left of the outside world. Our suits have washed to shades of green as we stand apart from it, here, in this last city. The atmospheric generator within the walls of Neutopia is still going strong.

Visions from my last visit here fog my brain. I can't help seeing a half-starved kid named Arlen sinking into a black pit of smoke. The memory winds a familiar knot in my stomach.

"What place is this?" Abi whispers, taking in the view.

"It's... is this Ice World?"

"Yes," I answer Davis, and then look to Abi. "Didn't you say this was where G-Two went?"

Abi acknowledges with a nod, but says nothing. Her eyes, all of their eyes, are taking in the surroundings. The rounded houses and the high wall that tells we are at the very edge of the community.

It's curious that the stones would drop us off right here, in the same spot I came over the wall once before, as if they're determined to remind me of the mystery that plagued my last visit.

I never did find out who killed the Moles—no, the Outliers. Arlen said they called themselves Outliers. Doyen called them Moles.

Choosing to ignore the many questions my group must have about the Palisade—the thirty-foot wall that looks like glass, and the dilapidated apartments on the other side—I lead them across the grass and onto the sidewalk.

There are several brown dogs running around in the cool midday sun. Eli calls to one, making a clicking noise in his throat. When the dog approaches, wagging his tail and slobbering, Davis leans down to pet it. Eli steps back from the intrusion and sidles up to Abi, who's still wide-eyed, looking at the futuristic suburb.

"Should we be standing around in broad daylight?"

Her question is directed at Eli, but I answer. "Trust me, Ab, if this is the same plane I was in once before, then whoever's in charge already knows we're here."

Eli is looking around for surveillance cameras, I assume, but then he asks, "Do you think whatever shield that keeps the cold out would be damaged if we launched an M-sat?"

I shrug. "They use an atmospheric generator. You're the scientist, you tell me."

"I'm glad we didn't puke this time." Davis struts over in his baggy clothes. "But I'm definitely scatter-brained."

Eli is digging in his backpack for the launcher.

"If you plan on getting those off the ground, you better hurry. They'll be sending someone to pick us up soon."

Eli freezes, "How do you know that?"

Abi washes whiter than the snow covering the plains outside. "Are we in danger?"

Davis keeps quiet, his eyes turning to slits as he scrutinizes our surroundings.

"I don't know if we're in immediate danger, I'm basing my assumptions on what happened last time I was here, but," Sighing, I give the shitty reminder that places us all in absolute danger. "If you recall, I killed Doyen."

"I forgot," Abi gasps. "You think this is the same place?"

Eli's moving as fast as he can, now, placing the loaded launcher on the ground about five feet away and firing the M-sat into orbit.

The nearest dogs yelp and scatter.

"Listen, Abi." I wait until her stunned gaze moves from the noisy launcher to lock with mine, ignoring the sound of doors opening; a few curious Neutopians wanting to know the source of the racket. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. But, whatever happens—whatever we find out—you need to be prepared."

With that, I have everyone's attention. So I address the group. "We are roughly one thousand years in the future. They use androids as public servants, so fighting them is not a good idea. Neither is running." My mind flashes to the thief that my android guide, Origin Two-One-Seven, caught stealing a tomato. He was caught using something called the Suspension Method. He was frozen in his tracks.

I'm looking at Davis, specifically. "You don't want to know what they do to lawbreakers who try to run."

Then move my attention back to Abi. The unmistakable low hum of an Orb transporter has me rushing the words out. "It's a long story. No time to tell it, but the androids look like me."

Everyone's eyes widen, whether it's from my words or from the shock of seeing the large ball, called an Orb, sitting in the road a few feet off, I'm not sure.

"Make no sudden moves. Do exactly as they tell you. Don't use expression, sayings, or sarcasm. Actually, let me do the talking." With one last look at the group, I ensure them, "I got this."

And then turn to face the three androids stepping out of the Orb.

27 The Trouble With Three's

Just like I knew they would, the androids wearing white jumpsuits with a single orange stripe down one side, place us under arrest for trespassing.

And just like last time, there are three. One that looks uncomfortably similar to the way my Dad looked in his thirties, and then two wearing helmets.

To my relief, they don't search us, but are not gentle at all when they pull us inside the Orb and shove us onto hard benches. We're restrained with solid bands that grow out from the side wall of the Orb. With our hands stuck at our sides, and a strap around our chests, we keep quiet and immobilized. For most of the ride.

Until Davis takes it upon himself to open his fat mouth. "Where are you taking us?"

I glare at him. Noting that Abi and Eli are dumbstruck, staring at the android in charge—the driver is the only one high-ranking enough to appear human. The other two wear helmets to hide the fact that they don't have faces.

To my great satisfaction and curious disappointment, Davis gets no response. In fact the droids haven't said anything to us since telling us we were under arrest.

The only sound in the Orb is the low hum of electricity and the occasional beeping noises coming from one of the helmeted androids.

Eli finally looks away from the driver and gazes out the translucent side at the passing city.

We go through most every district; the one where everybody wears green jumpsuits looks the same as last time. The brown district, where the farmers live and work, also seems very much the same. At first.

When we pass through the market area, there are crowds of lost people in all colors of jumpsuits and not a single food cart. None that I see, anyway.

The blue district is the largest one. I think it was used for sales and entertainment. It's where we see the largest groups of people. Most are gathered in a massive line that stretches for blocks, leading to the doorway of a building labeled 'Jacking Depot.'

The Orb slows down for foot-traffic. A siren-like whoop cuts through the air and multi-colored people in different color jumpers clear the roadway.

When I was here before my android guide, Origin Two-One-Seven, had told me Jacking was the most popular form of entertainment. He said it was a way for humans to connect their minds. It reminded me of the _Matrix_. I guess it's not surprising that a make-believe world in a computer simulation would hold the most fans.

People in every age and culture gravitate toward the things that make them forget about their problems.

Not long after we pass the borders of the blue district, the tallest tower in the last city appears.

"Excuse me," I call toward the front of the Orb. "Can you tell me where we are being taken?"

The droid driver that looks like a younger version of my father moves his head in the most unnerving one-hundred and eighty degree turn to look at me before he speaks. "No, sir, I am not permitted to give that information."

Davis quietly huffs, peeved that I got an answer when he didn't. And it called me 'sir.'

Remembering that sarcasm is not programmable, I aim speak as plainly as possible. "Can you tell me where you usually take people in our same situation?"

"Matters of public safety are handled by the Doyen."

Doyen is alive.

So this isn't the same Ice World. Or... _shit_! I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Here I've been bragging how the Threestone won't let me stay dead. Wouldn't they do the same for Doyen? And I brought us all right to him.

28 This Day Just Keeps Getting Better

Sometimes, I can be a real jackass-moron.

How could I think—why did I assume?

The Orb zips further into the middle district. Everyone here works in public service which means the majority of the figures outside the Orb are androids in white jumpsuits with a single orange stripe down one side.

The main roadway stretches straight before us and I remember very clearly the way I felt the last time I made this trip. I'd held the mentally handicapped boy I rescued from certain death on the other side of the Palisade. It was in the area they call the Squalid. He couldn't talk, but looked around two or three. After the way he swung for my protein bar, I nick-named him Rocky. I had no idea what we were in for.

Now, I'm back in this place, knowing so much more about what I am up against, yet still facing the same uncertainty.

My gaze drifts to Abi. She's still staring at the driver, her eyes unreadable, but that plump bottom lip gives the slightest quiver.

Eli seems to be studying everything, but the androids.

As the Orb approaches the end of the road, the side of... what was it called? It's the tallest tower with a weird name I don't remember. But the road ahead abruptly ends at the base.

The Orb doesn't slow, and Abi gives the smallest nervous squeak. It looks like we're going to crash into the wall, but the side of the tower splits open at the last second.

And then we are zipping through an area that looks like a parking garage. There are a couple of Orb-transporters parked in rows. One of them is broken near the front; smashed into an oval.

After rolling to a stop, the low hum of the Orb cuts off and we are ordered out. The bindings retreat back into wall, freeing us.

I look at my group—frustrated Davis, nervous Eli, and stoic Abi—and decide that we need to leave. But as I reach for the pocket on my chest, I am shoved forward. A droid wearing a helmet grips each of my arms and ties my hands behind my back. Another droid takes Davis in his grip. The leader, the one that looks like my father, has already subdued Eli and Abi. He leads them out, keeping his robo-hands on their captive wrists.

It's in this way that we're led towards a plain gray doorway that appears in front of the humanoid in front of this troupe. We are all shoved through into a long, well-lit corridor that seems to lead nowhere. The seven of us stand on a hard gray floor between high cement walls. The corridor is long, but oddly, not that long either. It stretches about ten to fifteen feet. And there are no other doors.

My heart is beating in my ears. "It's okay," I hear myself saying, though I'm not sure if it's for me or the group.

The droid behind me presses his gloved hand to a panel on the wall and a doorway appears. _It's a Biolock_ , I think, as Davis and me are shoved through the opening.

I fall to one side. The doorway that shuts before I can get to my feet. We're drowning in complete black.

Davis utters something I don't understand.

It's another breath before a small canned light in the low ceiling flicks to life.

We are in a small room surrounded by glass. Just Davis and me. With our hands tied behind our backs.

Neither of us says anything, because just beyond the three glass walls of this room that can't be any more than four feet by four feet, there is nothing but black.

The only sound is that of my pulse. It's rapid, anxious. And I know I've got to get us out of here, a.s.a.p. But I won't leave without Abi. Or Eli.

"What now?" Davis whispers.

"Shhh—they're listening."

It seems to take hours but is probably more like a few moment before another light comes on. Just beyond the glass wall to our left.

And I can breathe again, seeing Abi and Eli just on the other side.

The only lights in this place are the ones over our heads. The cell's we're in are empty, too. Just three glass walls sectioned to cubes by cement floors and ceiling.

"We're at their mercy; you have to get us out of here." Davis whispers through gritted teeth.

"You think?"

I can't reach the stones in my pocket, but that isn't the problem. It's the clear wall dividing me and Davis from Eli and Abi.

Looking over at the next cell, they're both staring back at me. Abi is no longer stoic and Eli looks like he's talking.

I shake my head, wishing I could cup my ear—the universal sign to speak up. But then he looks like he's shouting. And Abi's lips are moving, but I can't read them. They're moving too fast.

No, she's talking to Eli. His head turns to her and his face pales.

"We can't hear them," Davis whispers.

I'm about to snap at him, say something sarcastic, like "no shit, Sherlock," but then, I don't think he means it like they're not talking loud enough. I think he means that these cells are soundproof.

And I don't give a shit about barriers. I'm calling to the stones in my pocket, praying for them to take down the walls between us, even though I have never seen them do anything like that. I'm begging them to open up the space between us, to open a wormhole and get us the hell out of here.

But, at the exact moment I make the prayer, the door to the adjoining cell opens. The two of them must hear it, and turn around. Abi's eyes go wide as an arm cloaked in light gray reaches out, gripping her by the back of the neck. The hand is bare, with pale skin, but that doesn't tell me if it's human or not. If it's Doyen or not.

Eli shouts something as he's taken from the room by another hand—wearing a dark gray glove—and I'm sure it belongs to a droid with a helmet.

"No!"

That's my brilliant reaction; shouting a two-letter word, repeating it over and over while kicking at the clear wall.

Long after their cell goes black.

30 Killing in The Name Of

"What will they do to them?"

Davis and his stupid questions. Never mind the fact that he's stealing my line.

"I don't know." I can't even let myself think about it. It's hard enough dealing with the damage I've caused to my people: my sister, Eli, my dad. If I end up responsible for one more death... there's absolutely no way I could live with myself if something happened to _her._

"What's next, Boss?" Davis again, interrupting my self-loathing.

Sighing, I decide to share my revelation with him. I might be in charge, but between the two of us, he's the better tactician. And knowledge is the first and best defense.

"Last time I was in this plane, I killed Doyen."

Davis, whose been hunching against the opposite glass wall, straightens. "You killed one of their doyens? Do they have many?"

He's looking down at me, since I'm folded on the floor, tired from my objections against the clear wall. I don't know what these things are made of, but they're not glass. There's not a scratch on the thing.

My ears perk up. " _One_ of their Doyen's?"

He slides down the wall, taking a seat opposite me, looking so stupid and out-of-place in that bright and baggy ninety's gear. "Well, I assume they have more than one, if they're using that label."

"Label?" I ask, and wonder if I ever talked to Davis about my dealings with Doyen. "He was named Doyen."

"Doyen of what?" Davis tilts his head like he's trying to understand.

"What do you mean 'of what'? His name was Doyen." It's a trivial line of thought that keeps my head in the game. I can't crumple in a heap like I want to—or can't stay that way.

"A _doyen_ , as I understand the title, is a leader of some kind. Someone who has mastered an art or craft; they're considered the most prominent, most educated person in their field."

"It's a title." Was it an android that first gave me his name, or was it using the word like an address and I mistook it for a name?

"Whatever." Time to move on to my revelation. In a hushed voice, I say, "You know what I carry and what it does."

Davis mouths the questioning word "gun?"

I shake my head.

After a moment, his face lights. He nods.

Then, without getting specific I remind him of what happened on the mountaintop before we left, how the stones might let me die, but...

"You'd come back."

"Who's to say the same thing didn't happen to that guy?"

His questioning face slackens. But only for a moment.

"Leverage." Davis mumbles, but only to meter his tone. "If he came back, our friends are leverage."

"They probably heard and saw everything since we got to this plane." I add.

The door to our cell slides open. The hallway in the other side is filled with the figure of a man cloaked in a light gray tunic and baggy black pants tucked inside high black boots.

Davis and me wrestle ourselves from the floor as fast as we can.

The man is much thinner than me—looks older, too, but only because of the wide gray patches at his temples. His hair seems too gray for his young face. He's also my same height, pale-faced with salty brown hair kept in the same style I used to keep mine before cutting it last week.

I want to think he's another android commander, but one of his dark eyes is covered by a thick black band that hugs his head, like a bulky eye patch. But the portion that covers his eye has a lens like a camera. I've never seen an android with an injury.

Two androids in dark gray jumpsuits and helmets flank him.

The man flexes each of hands and then balls them into fists to set on his hips. A distinctly human action—droids don't fidget. Then there's the three red lines marring his soft jawline that makes him look more like his mother than his father. Those fresh scratches seal my certainty; this man is not a machine.

"Oh shit," Davis mutters and nudges my shoulder with his own.

It's got to be _him_ : Doyen's model for the androids.

31 Ready to Drop a Deuce

Not a word is spoken.

Apparently he told his machines what to do with us before he opened the door. Because the man that looks like a younger version of my father steps aside and the two androids move forward, grabbing us one at a time.

They aren't gentle about it, either.

Davis starts to speak, but I glare, reminding him to shut his trap. Better to say nothing and let events play out. So when we do make a move—like leave this place in a fiery blaze of glory—we've got a better chance of surprising them.

But I won't do that until we find Abi and Eli.

We're taken to the blunt end of the corridor where a doorway appears and slides open. Then, led through a network of hallways that all look the same, until we're stopped in front of another blank wall at the end of a plain octagonal area.

My android escort presses his gloved hand to a square in the middle of the wall. Another Biolock. The door appears and then slides away. Davis and I are shoved inside the box, with the door sealed too quickly. The pull of being suddenly lifted clues me in; we're inside an elevator.

The last time I made this trip, I was holding a sleeping boy, on my way to Doyen's—or _the_ doyen's—pinnacle apartment overlooking all of Neutopia.

"I think that was him," Davis mumbles.

Wallowing in irritation at his incessant need to declare every thought he has, I glare and remain silent.

"The original Springer—you know, Abi's husband. Shit, you got us here fast." He smiles, for some reason.

" _Fast_ is relative."

"He didn't say anything, though. Do you think he recognized me?"

For some reason, I want to laugh. I don't, of course, because none of this is funny.

The doorway in front of us opens. I step out before Davis, hit with that familiar dread at the sight of the deep red carpet and gilt-frame paintings over plain white walls, interspersed with elaborately carved sconces that illuminate every inch of the large penthouse apartment.

Thin-framed metal furnishings are sprinkled throughout the long room. The same desk and weird white couch.

Davis heads straight for the far wall—the one with the massive window that looks down on the city and icy landscape.

The main room is L-shaped, I walk around the only corner to see who else might be here—like Abi and Eli—but instead find a line of people standing in the open space. It stops me short. There's a shit-ton of stiff bodies. Androids: a few with helmets, but mostly ones that look like my dad.

Their heads are drooped, but when I stoop to see a face, the eyes are open. They're turned off.

There are also some that look like women. Like Amora, the older-looking one that called herself a _Healer_. Briefly, I wonder if she healed Rocky, and that, if this is the same plane, I want to try to find him. Just to see how he's faring.

The male droids are wearing the familiar white uniforms. The lady-bots are all wearing long white robes.

Walking along the back of the creepy grouping, I spot one feminine form that sticks out. Not only because it's shorter than the rest of the group, but also because it's not wearing white. It's hardly wearing anything at all.

Sleeveless black material is bunched over one shoulder of the bot. The other shoulder is bare. The material pools around the waist of the very-womanlike figure, exposing one, very large, anatomically correct breast. There's a tight green mini-skirt leading to long feminine legs. Very long blond hair is pulled back in a high ponytail.

"We need a plan," Davis announces, walking around the corner. "What the hell?"

"My sentiment exactly." Why are these here? Origin Two-One-Seven told me there were charging stations in the basement level adjacent to the parking area where they keep the Orbs.

Davis strides over to where I am, looking at the grouping of robots. "I can't find the door. Do you have a plan or do we wait until they come for us?"

Realizing this droid looks uncomfortably close to Abi, I turn to Davis, hiding it with my body. "There are doors, but you can't make them appear unless you're DNA is in their system. I might be able to reveal one if we didn't have these." Turning my head, I gesture to the cuffs keeping my hands behind my back.

This pleases Davis. He asks me to turn around so that he can search for a pair of scissors in one of the small pouches on my belt.

Of course, he has to use his mouth as he fumbles around the bottom of my back.

"They haven't searched us. Last time I was here, that was the first thing they did. Are you sure that's her husband?"

The movement of his face on my back stops. "Looked like him."

Sarcastic, I add, "I look like him."

"You have a wider jaw." He goes back to trying to remove the scissors from their tight pocket with his teeth. I feel him tugging at the back of my belt and shake my head, grateful that no one is here to witness this.

"Davis, you dog. I can't leave you alone for five minutes."

My head snaps towards the voice. It belongs to _him_. And the smirk on his face is so familiar, I want to puke.

It probably looks pretty funny, me pressing my back against Davis's mouth, but it's not. Not right now.

I dart forward while Davis straightens.

"Springer," Davis nods and I think his cheeks are pink.

"I hate to break up ... whatever's going on between you two, but—"

"Reaching for scissors." Davis shrugs, his face and neck splotching with color. "He's not my type."

"Where are Eli and Abi?"

The man with one eye, the one who looks so much like my younger father, raises his hands, showing his empty palms. I notice, on the inside of one there is a dark line. Like a scribble or something.

"They're safe, in my quarters."

"Are you gonna untie us?" Davis asks, his appearance slightly less piqued.

The man, my alternate, pulls a white baton from a holster on his hip. I'm wary as he instructs us to turn around, but Davis complies immediately. I watch the man point the baton at a red dot on the cuffs around Davis's wrists. It releases, dropping to the floor. Then, I turn, feeling my own fall off a moment later.

I remain quiet after the initial "thank you," opting to blend into the background while Davis asks the man for a closer look at the mark on his palm.

From the bit of conversation, I gather that this mark was drawn by his wife and tattooed onto his palm—to serve as some sort of marker of proof that he is, indeed, her long lost husband.

There are no introductions. No need for them really. I know this man's face as well as my own. So, taking a seat on one of the armchairs in a sitting area against the wall, I settle in to listen as the two men play catch-up.

I'm glad for her. Really. She's got to be thrilled.

Her relief is a pain in my chest. I rub at it.

_I'm happy she's happy_. If I keep telling myself that, then maybe I'll start to believe it.

32 Not a Pissing Contest

They seem to know each other well, Davis and G-Two. I listen to them reminisce about training together and the times they shared ideas about how to catch other versions of Daemon.

Thank God, it doesn't take long for Davis to ask the question that's been burning a hole in my head.

"How did you become the doyen?"

G-Two shrugs but stands very tall. I recognize the pride he's trying to play-off. "I was with the tertiary group of inhabitants dug-in about eleven clicks outside Neutopia. Do you remember them from my reports?"

Davis nods. "The ones that helped you before?"

"Yes, in exchange for some fruits I picked from another plane. While I was gone, they were replicating trees. Since my last attempt to get to Doyen nearly killed me, I jumped. Went back home to recover. By the time I came back, they had hundreds of them. They'd also gone to war with another faction of Outliers—called'em... _Moles_ , because they spent all their time underground—they were fighting over some genetic coding that allowed them to reproduce.

"I needed the Agrarian tech to upload the mods into the Neutopian mainframe, to disable the guards. And they needed me to organize their invasion. It was win-win. I helped them take-out the Moles, they helped me get to Doyen."

Images of the crashing hovercrafts flood my vision. The earth shaking from blasts of the sonic cannons. The craters.

All those people. Arlen and his family. There were hundreds of families with children in that bunker. And every one of them died in that attack.

And _he_ planned it. He killed them.

Fire breaks out deep in my bones. I swear the marrow must be pure fury. Yet, instead of the rage pushing me to respond with force, it helps clear my head. Makes me, oddly, calm. And cautious.

So it's no problem hiding it when G-Two turns to face me. Complete detached stoicism greets my alternate.

"But when I got into the city, the doyen was already dead. He'd been that way for hours by the time I moved in. One of the guards that we reprogrammed said it was done by a man whose genetic coding bore a striking similarity to mine."

Leaning back into the chair, I tilt my head. "How'd you lose the eye?" If it was as easy as he pretends, why is he wearing an eye patch? Why are there fresh scratches on his cheek? And what does it say about me that I can look at another version of myself and hold such deep disgust? No affinity whatsoever.

"Orb accident, the day before yesterday. The mods we uploaded for the androids affected more of the network than we thought. Causes a glitch in the system from time to time." His hand adjusts the black band over his eye. "They're building me a new one."

"And you're the new doyen."

"It's all part of the reprogramming," He shrugs again.

"How long have you been here?" Davis asks, taking the other chair in the small sitting area.

G-Two takes the last open seat on what looks like a small table.

"A few months."

"Try a year," I correct. What could he possibly be doing that has taken him so long? I did the hard part for him.

For the first time since we met, G-Two's eyes—eye—drops to the floor. For a half-second, I see that familiar regret swallowing him. Then it's gone.

"These people need a leader. I didn't realize—they have no sense of self, not a speck of independence or ambition. They're lost without someone telling them what to do."

_Shit bag_.

"Thank you for your part in all this, and for bringing her here."

"Not a problem." I wave, pushing back the gratitude. I did _not_ do any of this for him. "Speaking of, are we going to be seeing them again before we move out?"

He nods and the black band around his head wobbles a little. He readjusts it.

"Can I get some different clothes? And some shoes?" Davis asks, and not even that can make me laugh. "Actually, I'd like my gear and suit back."

If looks could kill, Davis would be dead ten times over. I know the suit was his, but it's been repurposed.

He stares back at me, puzzled. "What? It's my suit."

33 What'chya Gonna Do?

It's like no one understands the meaning of loyalty. I wish I had a gigantic dictionary so I could read Davis the definition and then beat him unconscious with it.

Eli, Davis, and me are sitting inside the doyen's pinnacle apartment, staring at plates that are supposed to hold our dinner. Abi and her husband have, understandably, opted to dine separately.

"I don't see why we have to leave so soon, that's all I'm saying." Davis leans over his plate, poking a gelatinous square of protein with a fork.

"He does have a point," Eli concedes. "You can't be certain how much time has passed in our own plane."

"Every minute counts," I add. "Or do I need to remind you that we're supposed to be chasing someone?" Without looking, I pick up a brown glob and put it in my mouth. It looks like cat food and tastes slightly similar to beef. "And I'm supposed to be your superior—or have you forgotten that, too?"

Eli nods his head. "You aren't earning points for arguing."

Davis gives his answer after spitting out a green glob. "Aye-aye, Captain. The sooner we find a plane with a _McDonald's_ , the better."

* * *

I'm alone in my assigned cabin, hating that I ever asked the stones to bring us to this plane. I'm so damned tired and can't sleep.

I hate this place, with all its' inconvenient truths and high tech lies. Hate the feel of the soft cotton robe. I should have kept my suit on.

The last thing I expected was to find him alive. Doyen thought he killed him. Hell, maybe he did.

"Knock, knock," Abi calls from the open doorway and some of the tension in my shoulders releases.

But then a knot forms in my stomach when I take in the droopy corners of her eyes. She's wearing a drab floor length robe to match her demeanor. A thin sash ties at her waist.

Waving her in, I say, "I wasn't expecting any visitors."

She freezes mid-step. "I can come back tomorrow."

"No, no, it's fine. Company is a good distraction."

My quarters are a decent size, on the same floor as the doyen's apartment, only not so lavish. The decorator was obsessed with white and gray. It's a very minimalist motif with a wide white bed, a thin white desk and small, round stick-table with two thin chairs to match. The walls and floor are all somber ash, like Abi's robe. Choosing a seat at the table, I motion for her to join me.

"What's on your mind?"

It's no mystery that she's stewing over something. Her forehead is creased and she's biting her bottom lip. When she sits, one of her knees starts bouncing.

Shaking her head, and looking down at her folded hands on the white tabletop, Abi sighs. "This place is really weird."

"Yeah, it is."

She looks up. "You don't like it, either?"

"The only reason I'm still here is because it might be my last chance to rest for a while." I wonder if she can tell that I'm too pissed to sleep.

And the idea of leaving her here with him— _ugh_.

Knife, meet Chest.

Her gaze quickly sweeps down my face and glues itself back on her hands. "I imagine you're excited to be on your way."

"Nothing about the situation excites me."

"What is it, then?"

"Oh no, I'm not the one that wanted to come here. You wanted to find him. And now you have, so tell me, why aren't _you_ off having your reunion celebration?"

Her shoulders drop. She lays her head on her hands, staring at the table. "We had a fight."

Can't lie, I'm kind of glad. "What about?"

A moment passes and I'm sure she's not going to answer. But then she rolls her head to one side, resting her cheek on the table. "A lot of things."

I lean forward. "Care to specify?"

"What would _your_ Abi do if you suddenly offered her everything she'd been asking for; stability, a family, a new home?"

"I'm pretty sure she'd slap me and kick me out."

That grabs her attention.

"That's what she did when I proposed."

Abi-Two sits up and looks at me. Her eyes are watery. "Why did she do that?"

"Because some part of her always resented me."

"Why?"

"Because I never really let her in, and I left her behind one too many times." So, she moved on, with my best friend.

She nods.

"Is that why you're upset?" I ask, dying to know and mulling over the situation. "He's finally in a position to give you everything." Over dinner, Eli mentioned that G-Two's planning on giving me his stones. If he does that, then he's stuck here for the duration.

And so is she.

Abi shakes her head. "I need to apologize to you."

"Because you want to feel better by saying it, or because you think I want to hear it?"

Her eyes meet mine, all wide and blue and sincere. "Both, I guess. You know, I thought he was dead. I never would have started up with you if I thought ..."

I'm shaking my head now. "Abi, believe me. I knew what I was getting into. Just... don't be sorry. I don't want to be one of your regrets. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore. He's alive. And we're out of here tomorrow. He never has to know."

"You're leaving tomorrow? All of you?"

"Eli's invited if he changes his mind. But it's Davis and me from here on out."

Her eyes that were glossy are suddenly brimming. She stands up. "I have to go."

"You know, if you hate it here so much, you could come with me."

She pauses in the doorway. And then she's gone.

Bone tired, I lie down on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

I shouldn't have said that.

She's just reunited with her husband. He's offering her the one thing she wants more than anything: kids. She may not like it here, but she'll take it. So no, it was not smart to invite her.

Damn _him_.

Damn _her_. Abi-Two is the most frustrating woman in the world.

But it's good that she's her own person—not a carbon copy of my Abi. Maybe they've got near identical packaging, but this one's got more gumption. At first, I was attracted to the package, I admit, but I love who she is inside; that independent spirit and no nonsense attitude. She's too good to be sidled with the likes G-Two.

She doesn't take anyone's shit, either. She's not the type of woman who would ever allow herself to fall for her husband's best friend. I really love that about her.

I've fallen in love with her—obviously. Such a bad idea, but I can't change how I feel. I know this just as well as I know I'm not going to sleep tonight.

Again.

34 In The Light of Day

"I need a favor."

I'm standing with G-Two, who's standing next to Abi-Two, who's holding his hand and looking near me but not at me, as I address my alternate.

She's staring at the wall just above my head and hasn't spoken a word beyond the initial, "Good morning."

I'm dressed in my black suit, wearing my belt, holding my gear, and feeling a small sense of comfort from the stones, concealed in my pocket, knowing I'll have another set soon.

She's wearing another ridiculous robe. The collar is high, the sleeves long. The length carries down to the floor. The only part of her that's visible are the face and hands.

G-Two drags his gaze away from his wife and locks it on me. "Anything you need, Brother."

The attempt at comradery grates my nerves.

I explain my situation, the last time I was here, and my connection to the abandoned infant I found wandering the filthy streets of the Squalid. "I'd like to find him, see how he's doing."

He nods his head, seeming to understand. "You want my help to locate him."

I don't want anything from the bastard. "I want your permission to let me locate him. You're a busy guy and I know my way around. I remember that he was assigned a droid called Amora. She was his healer."

G-Two's eyes narrow. "You're sure he was genetically deficient?"

"Yes, but Doyen agreed to care for him in exchange for my leaving."

"But you killed Doyen." He runs a hand through his hair.

"Yes, then I took his stones and left. You invaded a little while later, though, so it doesn't really matter."

"Yes, but the kid was verifiably deficient?"

"What difference does it make?"

"Well, I haven't been the doyen very long. The Palisade is still up and they're still replicating. The system modifications simply shifted loyalty from one person to the next."

Abi releases her husband's hand. "What are you leaving out?"

G-Two looks worried as his gaze shifts from me to her. Geez, did I look that stupid standing next to my own Abi?

Davis and Eli walk in, oblivious. The two are discussing our departure time. Davis is wearing a white jumpsuit just like the android guards. It fits him kind of snug around the shoulders, and when I look, I think I catch him picking a wedgy.

"Hey, Abi, do you have my suit?"

Abi tosses a quick look over her shoulder and says, "You're not getting it back." Turning to her husband, she prods, "G, you were saying?"

Her husband sighs, rubbing both hands through his hair and down his face. Addressing me and the rest of the room, he asks for a moment alone with his wife.

The painful knot that's occupied my chest since we arrived moves to my stomach. This was my conversation, my question that he's avoiding.

Davis is wearing a scowl, working his jaw like he wants to say something. Eli jabs his side and looks at me, saying "Let's hunt down some coffee."

He turns back the way he came, going back around the corner of the long room, past the cluster of dead androids, and uses the Biolock to open the door. Me and Davis follow without a word.

"Origin Three-One-Five," Eli addresses the humanoid standing guard outside the door to the main apartment. "We would like to drink some coffee. Could you get some and bring it to us in my quarters?"

It is irritating seeing that man's face everywhere I go.

"I am not permitted to leave this post. Doyen's orders."

"Assign another guard to fulfill the request." I say, sounding more peeved than I mean to.

"Yes, sir." The humanoid replies.

While he uses his wireless com-system to communicate with his peers, I turn to my company. "Be careful, they brew it really strong here." I learned that the hard way.

Moments later, the three of us are faced with another duplicate of Abi's husband. Eli repeats his request and motions for us to follow him into his temporary quarters.

When I don't move, Eli asks, "You don't want any?"

Embarrassing memories of my last trip want to color my cheeks. "I'll get some in the next plane. There's something I need to look into before we leave."

When they're out of earshot, I ask the android, Origin 3-1-5, for a favor. "Can you tell me where to find the Healer called Amora?"

His electric eyes flicker. "Retrieving data... Amora was replaced, Sir."

"Replaced? In what way?"

"Her duties as a human healer were reassigned to a newer model preceding the update."

"Please explain." This could be a problem. Only for me, I'm sure.

"Amora was an obsolete model. Her system was not compatible with the newest updates. She was replaced and has been recycled."

My mind conjures images of what that looked like. Amora the android was so attentive to Rocky. Did she freeze up, glitch-out? Or did she fight for the infant like a human mother would and had to be forcibly turned off and never rebooted?

"These 'obsolete models,' were there many of them?"

"Thirty-seven, Sir."

"And they've all been replaced and recycled?"

"Yes, Sir."

"This update, how long ago did it occur?"

"Ninety-three days, seven hours, and seventeen minutes ago, Sir."

As if I needed another reason to hate my alternate. Is this what he's talking to Abi about right now?

"What happened to the humans she cared for?"

"They were reassigned to other Healers."

"What if one of the humans that Amora was assigned to care for was genetically deficient?"

"Genetically deficient humans are euthanized."

My stomach drops. "Is that procedure?"

"Genetically deficient humans are a waste of finite resources. They cannot contribute to society. They are refuse."

Just like that—he says it. _Human garbage_.

"That can't be right. Before the update, Amora was assigned by the former doyen to care for a human infant called Rocky. He was genetically deficient, but he was not refuse. What did her replacement do with him?"

The droid looks on with a twitchy blank stare. "Searching the database ... human infant labeled _Rocky_ not found."

Incensed, I spin on my heel and shoot back through the door into the apartment.

That's when I hear them arguing, and freeze.

"I can't stand it." Abi's voice is shrill. "I know I have no right to criticize, but how could you—"

"Damn right you don't." G-Two interrupts. His voice low and menacing. "You agreed with me, and—what? You're suddenly not okay with it because now you know what it looked like? I followed through, for you. For _us_. And you're acting like-like—what? I, somehow, betrayed you?"

Abi sobs and my instinct is to run in there. But it's not my place.

Turning, I step back outside the doorway. G-Two is yelling, "You can't look at me now? Screw this. I don't need _your_ judgment."

The door slides shut behind me. I walk to the other end of the hall, heading for Eli's quarters.

The apartment door reopens before I get there.

And then I'm watching my alternate charge down the corridor. He passes, motioning for me to follow.

So I do, but only because Abi will need some time to herself.

"I have an offer I'd like you to consider." G-Two says, not slowing his pace. But it's easy to keep up.

"What kind of offer?"

He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. "You know, I don't understand her sometimes." When I don't respond, he goes on, "I've included her in all my choices since the beginning and now she wants to hate me for carrying them out? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?"

"You don't want me involved in your marriage, you'll end up divorced."

He sighs. "I take it you have the same problem."

"I was never married." His step falters for a second. "I screwed it up before we got that far."

G-Two leads through winding halls and corridors, down the elevator and onto another floor that I recognize as the hospital area where Rocky was kept when I last saw him.

"Look," he finally says, as we round a corner into a long white corridor. "I'm sure you've guessed that the boy you're searching for is no longer with us."

He stops and turns to face me. "I'm sorry about that. I really am. It was out of my control. Had I known maybe I could have done something. But you have to understand, this plane has extremely limited resources."

My hands ball into fists. "You're advocating—"

"Not at all," he raises a hand. "I'm simply saying, that's the way things are. I am changing them, but it takes time."

He steps slowly forward, gesturing to a wall of windows. I follow his hands and look through the glass. On the other side, is a long room filled with about twenty tiny beds. About half of them are filled with tiny, wailing babies.

"It's a nursery."

"Yes, Captain Obvious. Propagated humans, perfectly healthy courtesy my own clean DNA."

My gaze becomes a gawk as I stare at the mass of wiggling offspring.

"You have a _soft spot_ for children and I wondered if, maybe, you'd like one of these. You don't have to keep chasing Daemon. The galaxies will survive. You can take one to a plane of your choosing and raise him, or her, as your own. Teach him, and let him finish the job you started."

I don't even know what to say to that.

"Why would I... want that?" Does he understand anything about being a Bearer?

G-Two shrugs. "It's a way to continue your bloodline."

I shake my head. "It's a really, _really_ weird thing to offer. 'Here, have a stranger's baby to replace the one we accidentally killed.' Thanks, but no thanks."

He doesn't get pissed like I expect. He chuckles and tilts his head. "That's not why I offered, but I get your point."

"Then why did you offer?"

"You and me: we know this is a war where there can only be one winner. If you fail, you must have an heir for your stones."

"It's quitting and I've quit enough to last a lifetime."

He huffs, irritated, I'm sure, by how close my words are to accusing him.

"It's your loss." At that he turns to head back the way we came.

An absolute head-case.

"I don't see it that way." I say, following behind him.

My father wrote about his regrets in his last letter to me. He hated that he couldn't finish what he started with Daemon. Now, my alternate is trying to persuade me to do the same thing.

It makes no sense, though, if the stones always bring their Bearer back to life, what's the need for an heir? The only thing that might stop me is old age, but I've got a while to figure that out.

35 The Nature of War

We're gathered back inside the pinnacle apartment, standing around a table. All of us, getting what information and supplies we can before our final departure.

Abi is standing next to her husband, looking considerably less gloomy than I expected. In fact, she's almost cheerful. She's quiet, though, hence the 'almost.' Happy Abi is talkative.

G-Two has a series of maps, small pages no bigger than a comic book. He points at each one, naming the cities and time periods within the plane that each map represents. Suspected locations, mostly in New York and Los Angeles, where we can begin hunting Daemon.

"These are the planes we talked about before, Eli."

"I remember," Eli nods. "We have the same ones."

"We do?"

Eli looks at me. "They're programmed into the geo-location system in your suit."

"Don't depend on technology." G-Two stabs a finger into the desk. "Take these with you. Memorize them." He places the folded maps into a clear plastic bag and hands them to me.

"He can direct the stones to take us where we need to be." Eli's chin goes up as he says this. Like he's proud of me, or something.

G-Two pauses. "Really?"

I nod, "Yeah." Apparently, not every version of me can so keenly navigate the stones. I've heard it hinted at several times, but the angry look on G-Two's face confirms that I'm better than he is.

"Davis will be taking my suit, since I don't need it." He picks up a large piece of black material that I assume is the suit and passes it to Davis, who anxiously stomps out of the room to change.

"Are you sure about staying here?" Eli asks, looking genuinely concerned for his friend.

G-Two stares back. "Are you sure about leaving?"

"Absolutely," Eli responds.

"Well, then, that makes three of you." One of his arms goes around Abi's waist.

I concentrate on stowing the maps in my backpack.

Davis reappears, looking pleased in his new black suit.

"Okay." G-Two claps his hands. "I'll go get what you need, and meet you downstairs."

He disappears with Abi, leaving me, Eli, and Davis to find our own way out of Lanthium tower. We end up asking Origin 3-1-5 to show us the fastest way out to the front of the building.

The street is quiet. The roads notably empty, which is to be expected, I guess. It's well past reporting hour for everyone's contribution cycle ... or day jobs.

I wonder aloud, "He's really going to _give_ me his Threestone?"

"He says he is." Davis answers.

"He will," Eli assures. "He's got a lot of work he wants to do here. And if he changes his mind, and wants to leave, he has a map to where he can send a crew to dig out the Threestone in this plane." He's wearing a white jumpsuit that obviously came from the same line made for the Neutopian guards. He's also got a messenger-type bag crossing one shoulder, and one of those batons that the guards use.

Mine and Davis' suits are the same color as the concrete roadway. Davis is wearing his own utility belt and backpack once again, but he's scowling.

Another set of stones... buried deep in the ice and snow, somewhere out there. It would take a considerable amount of work to get to them.

I can't imagine giving up my Threestone. Not for anything.

Waiting, we use the time to ponder about the next plane.

I end up pulling the paper maps back out of my bag. The map on top shows a suburb of Los Angeles called, _Eagle Rock_. A rough neighborhood, even in the late eighties, which is the time period we're heading for.

"I think we should check for a set of stones in that plane, you know, in Ivanhoe. This version of Daemon we're chasing doesn't know where my father kept his stones. So there's a chance they're still buried. We'll check there then make our way to possible locations."

"I don't like the idea of travelling so great a distance from where we land within the plane," Eli says.

"Well suck it up," Davis admonishes. "We have to do what we have to do."

"I didn't say I wasn't going, I said I didn't like it."

Raising my hands between them, I say, "Simmer down, children. Davis, don't be a dick. And Eli, it's not so bad. We'll be in a plane with modern transportation."

"Aw, look who's becoming a responsible adult." Turning, I see Abi walking up behind us. The smirk says she's teasing.

It makes me want to beg her to reconsider coming with us.

Her husband is straggling behind. In his left hand, he carries a lumpy black pouch.

From about ten feet away, he tosses it to me. And before I even catch it, I feel the stones in the pocket of my suit moving around. I catch the pouch with one hand and then unzip the breast pocket with my own Threestone.

The triad leaps out, hovering in their magical way about a foot in front of me. The rubber pouch in my hand tears at the seams, melting and shrinking away, revealing a slightly larger set of the Threestone: the white, the black, and the red ovals. Gorgeous. Glorious. It warms me to know that my stones, being smaller and heavier, are the superior set.

There are several gasps as the two sets of glowing rocks begin to dance in greeting. And then one pair disappears; absorbed in an instant by the stronger set.

One pair remains. I hold out my hand and the Threestone sets itself in my palm.

"Time to go."

Turning, I find myself in Abi-Two's embrace. It's unexpected, but welcome. Over the top of her head, I catch a glimpse of her husband. He looks away, scowling as he says his own goodbye's to Eli and Davis.

"This is not goodbye," she whispers.

But I know it is. Humoring her, I answer with a gruff, "Guess I'll see you around."

The wormhole opens, building from my hand to the sky. Davis, anxious as ever, takes a step forward, and then he's gone.

The idiot never learns. If you're not in the stones protective bubble, you're going to get radiation burns.

Eli is smarter, sticking close to my shoulder. As the bubble encompasses us, the wind disappears.

Looking back at Abi, I see she's crying and my heart my heart aches for her.

Staring back with a strange look on her face, Abi fidgets, shifts her weight from one foot to the other. When both of her hands close into fists, I'm sure she's up to something.

G-Two's eyes widen as his wife shoves away from him, and leaps toward me.

Reaching out—of course I catch her. I'll always catch her.

The three of us disappear in the blue fog before G-Two steadies himself.

I win.

36Winning And Losing Are Often The Same Thing

My shoulder rubs against Abi's, both of us retching from the sickness of travelling. Vomit that looks exactly like the goo she ate for breakfast comes up, spilling down the front of her long robe-like dress.

I do my best to hold her hair back as she finishes coughing and spitting. _Romantic_.

The moment she's done wiping her mouth on her long sleeve, I take her face in my hands. Asking the question du jour, "Why did you do that?"

She just shakes her head.

"Davis?" Eli calls.

He's a few feet from us, standing up and bending down, looking at a green clump that I realize is Davis, in his suit.

My suit has washed green to match the field we're in.

Eli sets a hand on Davis's shoulder and shakes him.

Abi stands up first, but stays where she is.

Davis isn't responding as I make my make my way over. "He's probably just sick."

"He jumped too soon." Eli yells, turning Davis into his back. "G, help me."

Stooping over, I straighten Davis' neck—spotting the telltale red streaks on his nose and ears—then, press my head to his chest and listen. Eli fumbles in my backpack for the emergency medical kit.

"I don't hear anything." Pressing two fingers to Davis's carotid artery, I count to ten. Twice. Waiting to feel something. "No pulse."

Eli's readjusting his head, placing a clear mask over the middle of Davis's sunken face.

"This is not good, Eli."

"We've got this." He attaches a small bag to one end and squeezes twice. "Davis, you asshole, come back here!"

I move forward with the compressions. Eli gives breaths. I pump his heart. Eli pumps his lungs.

Then we stop and listen. Nothing.

And repeat the process. Two more times.

Then we switch places. I squeeze the mask to force air into Davis's lungs. Eli gives chest compressions.

And we keep going. Fighting for him. But it's a losing battle. Because no matter how many times we stop and check, there are no signs of life.

The hills of Ivanhoe surround us in deadly quiet. Abi stalks in circles, holding herself and biting a thumbnail.

Eli curses, raking his hands down his face. His eyes are red. "Why did he do that? Why didn't he wait?"

Both are good questions, but Davis is the only one with the answers.

"He probably forgot."

"We trained for this. He's a soldier. He knew better!"

"Not to sound like an asshole, but we can't stay here." Abi says, and I realize she's standing right next to me.

Eli is folded down on his knees beside Davis. I'm in the same pose on the other side, looking up at her.

"We can't leave him here," Eli says what I'm thinking.

"Then we better find a place to put him. Fast." Abi points at Eli, "You know these lands are patrolled. If not by DHS, then the farmers. We don't need to be caught with him. Like this."

"We should call someone," Eli reasons, and my heart sinks.

"We can't." Abi argues.

Eli shakes his head, staring at Davis's lifeless form.

"She's right, Eli. How pissed would Davis be if, after sacrificing his life to help us, if we didn't push forward with the objective?"

A cloud of dust billows up over the nearest hillside. We pause to look at it, then decide without saying anything that it's better to leave him under the shade of a nearby tree.

Once we get him propped up, Eli takes his utility belt and backpack.

Abi pulls her long dress up over her head. My heart stops, because—what is she doing?—but then it kicks up again when I see the black jumpsuit underneath. Davis's jumpsuit. After a minute in the sun, it washes green to blend in with the trees.

I wonder how long she's been wearing it and if she kept the huge dress on to hide it.

She turns the light fabric inside out and drapes it over what's left of Davis. Kneeling beside him, she hugs his shoulders and whispers, "I'm sorry" before placing a farewell kiss on his head.

Eli mumbles something to himself as he stands by, watching. He makes the sign of the cross over his chest and then over Davis's forehead.

I have to walk away. I didn't care for the man, but he could take a punch. He was my teammate, an ingrate, and never got to prove the loyalty he pledged. I never wanted him to come along, but I didn't want him to end up this way. And I don't like leaving him like this.

The mix of emotion leaves me speechless.

Venturing further into the trees, we hear sounds of men in the field we've just come from.

"They'll find him." Eli whispers, and I don't know if he thinks it a good or bad thing.

To me, it's bad. It's too soon.

We start jogging through the straight rows of trees, heading away from the noise. The land slopes up. We follow it, even though I can't see what we're heading for until we reach the top of the orchard covered hill.

I stop at the edge of the tree line, in shock.

Staring down at the valley below us, at the green pasture peppered with cows. Dark shapes tipped on their sides' dot the field. Black and white freckles lying too still for too long.

The longer I look, the more I understand the that the cows are dead.

They're everywhere, all along the valley floor. A few are left standing at the base of the next hill, but they're walking away, _mooing_ at the danger. But the green hillside they're climbing up, it's the one that should be painted in different shades of brown. I spot the stone circle that identifies the fire pit where the stones would be buried, but there are no visual signs—no rings of yellow and brown. No dead vegetation—to indicate that the stones were ever buried there.

_Okay, Threestone, you've got to lead us to them_.

Gesturing for Eli and Abi to have a look, I shove Eli behind me, wanting to make sure no one spots him in his glaring white jumpsuit. At least it's not the one with the reflective orange stripe down the side.

"The herd," Abi gasps at the sight. "Do you think the stones are there?"

I shake my head.

"What is going on?" Eli whispers.

"Don't know, but we're not sticking around to find out."

There are a few men walking among the bodies of the cows. The ruckus we heard behind us was the sound of ranch hands answering whatever call the farmer put out. The shallow valley between slopes fills with men and women, all searching the cows for answers.

Edges of the valley floor become peppered with trucks and people. One man yells through the field that he's called 9-1-1, and no one is allowed to leave. Rumbles of a possible quarantine begin and the ranch hands are closer than I like.

Wordless, we creep back into the trees and circle around the line of the orchard until we're closer to a group of parked vehicles. I'm thinking of diving for one when I feel a poke on my shoulder.

It's Abi, and she's pointing behind us, up one of the rows of trees. And there's a white pickup. The engine is running and the drivers' door is wide open.

We head that way, being careful as we cross between rows of trees and listening for sounds of others in the immediate area.

Abi skulks inside the truck cab, taking the drivers' seat even though I wanted to drive. Eli lies down in the truck bed and starts to cover himself. I grab the hairy blanket that reeks of dog, whispering that he should just close his eyes.

"Play dead, it's a believable motive for driving away." The words taste bitter on my tongue, considering. But he doesn't argue.

The second I get inside the cab and shut the door, Abi puts the truck in reverse and starts backing out of the orchard.

Slipping down as far as I can, I'm thinking it's better if we're not seen together. If someone does spot us stealing the truck, they'll be looking for one or two people. Not three.

The further we get, the better I feel.

We make it out to the main road without a problem, hearing sirens in the distance.

Abi shakes her head, "Never ceases to amaze me."

Seems safe enough to sit up in the seat, so I do, and check the glove box as I ask, "What does?"

Abi doesn't take her eyes off the road as she answers. "If you or Eli were driving, we would have been stopped, but no, since I'm driving—a poor defenseless woman—we're good."

Spotting a set of tools, and a couple packs of smokes, I think _jackpot_ , but stifle a laugh at Abi's criticism. "You're complaining that we didn't get stopped?"

"Observing." She shifts the truck into high gear as we merge onto the freeway.

"'If you want something done well, get a woman to do it.' That's what my mom used to say." I'm making it up, but am awarded a smile.

Ivanhoe is even smaller, barely a speck, so we're in the adjacent town in no time. I ask her to pull over in the first shopping center we find. There, we begin our search of the parking lot for another white pick-up truck to swap plates with. Apparently, these trucks are popular because we find five of them right way.

Stealing a page from Davis' handbook, we make a quick stop at a Laundromat across the street from the mini-mall, so Eli can get something to wear that doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. That takes nearly an hour because we have to wait for someone to walk in, wash their clothes, and then wait for them to leave while their clothes dry.

When it finally does happen, most of what we find are women's clothes. Which does not please Abi, at all. She stands in front of an open dryer, frowning.

"Everything has shoulder pads." She manages to find a few things she can use, though. Finally, Eli scores a few pairs of jeans and work shirts.

Eli reminds us that we need to launch an M-Sat. We choose a deserted stretch of road between towns. After, we hop back into the pickup, all three of us shoulder to shoulder in the cab, with Abi driving.

Then, less one companion, we are on our way to find Daemon.

We make little conversation; no one wants to talk about anything. Especially about what happened right before and immediately after the jump.

* * *

We spend the entire day and most of the night looking for signs of Daemon and come up empty. I've asked the stones repeatedly to show us where he is and still get nothing. I'm beginning to doubt that Daemon is in the vicinity.

"What kind of signs are we looking for anyway?" Abi asks, leaning against the side of the truck we're about to ditch on an access road running parallel to I-5.

"The kind we won't find in this plane." Eli answers, while closing his bag.

My hands rake down my face, rubbing my eyes. It's been two full days without sleep and no rest in the near future, either. "We're looking for violence and destruction."

"What do you mean, Eli?" Abi asks.

"If there is some kind of disaster anywhere in the area, how are we going to hear about it? The only form of mass communication in this plane, at the present time, is media. Evening news programs. There are no minute-to-minute social media updates from eyewitnesses."

"True," I say. It's the year of my birth. The year _Metallica_ released _Ride the Lightning_.

Abi's forehead creases. "I didn't think about that. So, what do we do, then?"

I look up to find both of them staring at me. With a heavy sigh, I concede, "We move on. If there are any stones in this plane, they aren't on this side of the country."

"Which means New York," Abi surmises.

I nod, and Eli straightens from whatever the hell he's still doing, fiddling with his shoulder bag. "We should find a place to sleep for tonight and be on our way in the morning."

_Great_. The East coast has never held much attraction for me. With my experiences there, it's not surprising. Yet, it seems like I'll be heading there again tomorrow.

The truck is the most logical place to sleep, but we've been driving all day and it's surely been reported stolen by now. I can change the license plates, but not the serial number. And we can't risk drawing attention to ourselves.

Guess that means we're walking until we find a place to sleep.

37 Short People in Tall Circumstances

Eli really is the smartest among us. He's the only one to remember the emergency cash inside a hidden panel at the bottom of the medical kits.

"Now I feel even worse about robbing the Laundromat," Abi mutters sulkily.

Each one of us had one: me, Davis, and my alternate. We took Davis's kit, and have plenty of money to rent a room at a motel a few miles up the road. The three of us choose to stay in the same room, even though it's cramped, and the guy behind the desk in the office is giving us a weird look. He's hesitant, making a point to say that he doesn't rent to unmarried couples.

None of us are wearing rings.

Abi, with her futuristic punk rock hair pulled up in a braid that reveals the shaved sides of her head, asks the man's name.

He swallows. "Larson, Gabe Larson."

She offers a sweet smile and assures the nosey manager man that there will be no hanky-panky. "You see, we're related." She places a hand on my chest, "This is my brother, Gerry, and our cousin, Elijah. We're heading to a family reunion near the Oregon coast. So we'll just need the room for one night and be gone early in the morning."

That seems to ease his conscience as he hands her the room-key and an apology. "Sorry, Miss, if I offended you. But you can't be too careful these days. All kind of weirdoes come through here. Why, just this afternoon I was asked if we rent rooms by the _hour_."

Abi shakes her head, and as we turn to walk out she mutters something under her breath that I don't care to catch.

We have to put quarters in the phone inside the room to order dinner: double pepperoni pizza from a local chain store, and a six-pack of soda. They guarantee delivery in thirty minutes and make good on the promise. In less than an hour, we're stuffed and lazy because, let's face it: even bad pizza is still pretty good.

The room has two full-size beds. Eli claimed one the moment we walked in. There was no way I'd sleep next to him, which is why I choose now to sprawl across Abi's bed.

Once she's out of the shower, I almost do the chivalrous thing and offer to take the floor, but then change my mind and close my eyes.

When she recommends I sleep on the floor, I remind her that she's a feminist, and should therefore offer to take the floor herself.

She punches me in the shoulder. "I don't see you hopping into bed with Eli."

Eli's eyes widen. "Leave me out of this."

"Permission granted," I tell Eli and then roll over to sit up and look at Abi. "I'll sleep on top of the covers, okay?"

She's dressed in an oversized tee shirt, fresh from a shower with wet golden tendrils and no makeup. _Gorgeous_. She crosses her arms and raises one eyebrow.

Leaning in, I quietly whisper in her ear. "Don't act like you've never been in my bed before."

"This is _my_ bed," she counters.

"I'm not going to touch you, Ab. No matter how sexy you look, because I understand." Pulling away, I notice her flushed cheeks and almost regret the promise.

Tucking into a feathery pillow, I turn away from her. Because I really do understand what she's going through. It's been a rough day. We lost a companion. And she also gave away any chance she might have had with the man she once promised her life to.

I can't let myself think that she did it for me. But part of my really hopes she did.

Eli shuts out the lights, but the television stays on, tuned to a cable news station as I dip into asleep.

* * *

Stars; billions of colored points of light race through the endless black sky overhead.

I hear a laugh that sounds like mine, but my lips aren't moving. Then the sound changes, becomes like wind rushing over violent water.

But there is no water in the wide field of tall grass where I'm standing. There are no trees or buildings; nothing but grassland and clusters of burning stars in the night.

I look at my hands and find they are huge, bigger than my whole body. In each of my massive palms there is a mark. On my left, a black oval. In my right, a white one.

Where's the red? I wonder and feel myself panic, but then find a cool shape in my mouth. Feeling it with my tongue, I know it's the red stone.

Words, like feathers, drift through the air around me. The wind that sounds like a great river blows harder, tickling my nose. I want to scratch it but my fingers are too big. I want to take the stone from my mouth, but can't do that either, not even when the stones begin to glow bright and burn me.

Spreading out my arms, lifting my giant hands, I scream.

* * *

A sneeze wakes me.

I'm drenched in sweat, covered with a pastel comforter. Turning over, light from the muted TV flickers across the quiet room. A reel of President Reagan being taken to the ground by Secret Service plays and I recognize the scene from the history books. It's a narrative on the three year anniversary since the assignation attempt.

I might want to watch it if Abi's side of the bed wasn't empty. And Eli's, too.

Jumping up, I follow the sound of low voices to the bathroom door. A line of light leaps out from the small opening. I lean against the frame and listen—because what the hell? Are they in there together?

"—not asking you unveil the secrets of the universe. It's a simple question: _why_?" Eli is asking. After a beat of silence he continues. "Did you do it for _him_?"

"Of course you would think that. As if every choice I make is about the man I'm with."

"So, you are with him?"

"Not that it's your business, but no."

"Then, help me understand. Because from where I'm standing it looks like you left your husband of five years for his alternate, as a matter of convenience."

"You... asshole!" She shouts, but her voice cracks. "Where do you get off sticking your nose into my life—into my relationships? I don't owe you anything."

"You owe your husband an explanation. Maybe we should send you back there so you can give it to him."

If I wasn't already awake, I would be now. And I can't listen to this anymore. Eli feels like he's doing the right thing for his friend, but Abi is hurting. And his mention of sending her back—as if he has the power to do it—well I don't like it. Don't like what the thought does to my chest.

I knock on the bathroom door and say her name. With the pressure of the knock, the door pushes open. Eli is sitting on the edge of the tub wearing a tee shirt and baggy boxers. Abi is standing at the sink, swathed in stolen cotton. The short sleeves reach her forearms, the hem hits her mid-thigh.

"I'm stepping out for a smoke. Care to join me?"

She glares at Eli as she stomps out.

We stand in the quiet, open corridor at the backside of the motel and share a cigarette. Abi takes all of two hits.

Staring out at the parking lot, she folds her arms across her chest. "I'm not here because of you."

"Didn't say you were."

"But you're thinking it."

I shake my head. "No, I wasn't."

She cocks her hip and turns to me. "Oh, no? Why do you think I left him?"

"I'd be lying if I said I'm not curious, but it's none of my business. Why you left isn't as important to me as the fact that you're here now."

Her eyes soften. "I changed, that's why I left. He changed, too, but it was because of me." She sighs heavily and flops her hair to one side. "You were riddled with guilt over Nahuiollin. That's why I wanted to help. When you saw what was happening, you didn't waver. You sacrificed everything to save him."

"So did you."

"We both cried when we left him at the fire house."

Nahuiollin's scream echoes in my mind at the mention.

"I have allergies," I lie. I wasn't crying, though. "There was something in my eye."

She gifts me with a fleeting smile. One hand grasps at her forehead. "It makes me sick to my stomach that I ever thought—that I ever asked you to—" She shakes her head, swallowing hard.

"My husband is a decisive man. Once his mind is made up, there's no diverting him. It's always been a trait I admired."

"Don't compare me to him."

"Nothing good ever comes from comparing people, I know that." She looks to the sky. "My God, how well I know that. I hate that I'm doing it. I can't blame him for the choices he made when I was right there encouraging them."

Her chin quivers. "When I saw that little boy, I changed. And he didn't. It's not his fault, but I can't be with him anymore."

Now is about the moment when I really want to say something clever or stupid and make her laugh. But nothing comes to mind.

"You've already made the hard choice, Ab. The next part is just walking it out." Stepping back to the door to our room, I let her know "I'm around if you stumble."

In the morning, when I wake, we're both sleeping on top of the blankets and Abi's arms are wrapped around me.

Eli is also standing over us, staring.

38 Violence and Destruction

It's the way he looks that has me rocketing from the bed: he's fully dressed, standing over me with his brows drawn together, shoulders tight, and mouth half-open. He doesn't look angry.

"What is it?" I'm already throwing my suit on.

"A series of fires were spotted all over New York City throughout the night. They say its arson."

Abi scoots to the opposite side of the bed. "Sound like what we're looking for?"

"Yes," I answer.

At the same time, Eli says, "Could be."

We're dressed and packed in less than ten minutes. In another five, we're checked out and walking the access road along the highway just south of LA-proper.

We've got to get to New York as soon as possible and are debating exactly how to do it.

"Flying is the fastest way," Abi agrees with me.

"We can't risk flying with those things." Eli shakes his head. "The affect they have on gravity is too unpredictable. We'll run out of gas, or crash or something."

"True," I concede.

"Looks like we're taking the train," Abi points up the road ahead at an _Amtrak_ station.

I'm not happy about it. At all. I don't like discussing every single move we make and fucking debating. It takes too long. Trains take too long.

But doing things my own way has yet to pay off.

* * *

The streamline silver boxcar reeks of baby formula and broken dreams. We've spent three long, frustrating days inside it. We've kept to ourselves. Me, by riding with my eyes closed to avoid interactions, and I don't know about the others.

The waiting to arrive is killing me.

We step off the train, impatient and stiff from the long journey. Throngs of people press through the corridors of the station, scurrying like roaches after the light flicks on each time the loudspeaker booms to announce departures and arrivals. We fight our ways past happy reunions and wet goodbyes.

Grand Central Station is much more grand than I expected. Walkways on the upper levels are guarded by brass railings. High stained glass windows splash color wheels across the glossy wooden floors, which is surprising because in every movie and TV show shot in this place the floor always looked like cement tiles.

We head straight for a row of payphones and each in turn, begin searching the map sections in the backs of the phone books, tearing out the pages with the information we need.

On the ride over, there was a lot of time to plan. The maps will help us locate the fires and the apartment over the bakery on Crosby Street. That's the first stop. We find my alternate family and get them out of Daemon's path.

If we don't find them there, then we have to search Greenwich Village—wherever the hell that is. I remember my mother saying something about living there before moving to the Crosby Street apartment.

It takes an L-train and a taxi to get into Lower Manhattan. Marveling from the backseat of the cab (the eighties are a trip), Abi remarks she's never seen so many big hairstyles and shoulder pads crammed so close together.

Sardine apartment buildings packed practically on top of each other. Stories upon stories reaching into the sky. In the windows there are people smack in the middle of their lives. I wonder what type of worries they have, whether they think their lives are good or bad.

"Here it is—Crosby Street," the Cabbie holds out his hand. I check the meter but Eli pays him. We pile out into the noisy street. There's no sound in the world like the streets of New York. It's an energetic bustle; a constant hum of traffic and sirens.

Passing through the door of a donut shop called _The Bakery_ , I snatch a 'help wanted' flyer taped on the inside pane and pass it to Eli.

"You never know, it might come in handy," I tell him, when he gives me a puzzled look.

The dining area is packed. Three lines stretch from the storefront to the counter. As I watch, I see they're moving pretty quickly. There's lots of noise; orders being shouted and numbers being called. People talking together at tables arranged the same way I remember, siting on chairs with backs that look like sprinkled donuts. We bypass them all on our way to the back stairwell.

The corridor is narrow. My shoulders brush against the walls as I take two steps at a time. Abi and Eli keep up without a problem. At the third floor landing, I find my way to the familiar door and stop to look out the window on the opposite side that leads to the fire escape. My last trip here, I was out there with my alternate father. The talk was interrupted by an explosion that hasn't happened yet.

The green carpet covering the corridor is different. My feet are probably in the very spot where he fell, in another universe. Another life.

"You okay?" Abi touches my arm.

"Yeah," I nod, stepping to one side of the apartment door to knock.

I don't even have to ask. I know the answer the second the little Asian boy answers the door that my alternate family isn't here. The furniture in the tiny living room is different. A smell of Ginger and Garlic wafts out into the hall.

After a quick apology to the little guy holding the doorknob, we head back downstairs, knowing our work is cut out for us if we're going to find them. We've got to get to them before Daemon does.

We take a seat at a small table in the back corner that's just become available. Abi uses a napkin from a nearby dispenser to wipe away the donut crumbs and coffee dribbles.

Eli lays out the maps we ripped from the phone books in a way that connects the roads at the edges. He marks the areas where the fires were reported and starts asking questions: what do they have in common, is there a correlation?

Seeing it laid-out like this, I can say, yes there is definitely is a pattern. Each of the fires—one at a place called _Irving Plaza_ , another at an art museum, another at a historic theater, one in the middle of _Washington Square Park_ —they're all just outside the area of the map that's labeled _Greenwich Village_.

I explain everything I see, and about how my mother's alternate in World Two mentioned she was from 'the village.' "And they're all very close to where we are now."

Sirens ring out in the distance, punctuating the evidence.

Without a second thought, Eli drops the flimsy help wanted sign on the empty seat and we're out the door.

It's roughly twelve blocks if we cut through the park. Easy enough to walk.

39 Two Too Many

The sidewalks are congested. The three of us weave through shoulders, passing mostly men and women in business attire.

The weather is pleasant, but I'm too warm in the clothes over my suit. Occasionally, I find myself patting the pocket holding the stones to make sure they're still there.

_We've got to find him_.

I'm leading the charge, with Abi and Eli walking a step behind when we pass a man with a small dog on a leash and a woman with a stroller. They're stopped in the middle of the wide sidewalk, arguing. I don't even have to hear the harsh exchange to know what they're fighting about. One of the wheels on the woman's stroller is caked in crap.

Abi chuckles when we pass. "I like New York."

"Great city," Eli agrees.

I'm the only one with my head in the game. But then again, what can I expect? They aren't Bearers, they don't know. Sure, they've counted the cost but from a distance. They've only heard what Daemon can do; they've never had the misfortune of seeing him in action.

_Threestone, guide me to him_.

We'll find him soon, I can feel it. There's a tacit buzzing deep in my bones: a profound sense of certainty that a gateway was opened here, or is opening somewhere close by.

My pace slows as we cross the park. "I think we should separate."

Abi's forehead creases. "Is that a good idea?"

"I don't know if the protection of the stones extends to you guys."

"He's right," Eli concedes.

"But—"

"Daemon kills anyone close to me, Abi." I interrupt her objection. "He shot me, murdered my father, and killed my best friend. I've seen him gut a man because he wanted to scare me. The only reason he didn't get to my ex-girlfriend was because Eli had the foresight to send her away."

The three of us stop walking near a weird looking, post-modern fountain. "He's close by—I can feel it—and he can't know you two are with me."

"So, what—we're supposed to wait here?"

"Yes," Eli answers for me, but his eyes are locked on the lopsided fountain and a high pillar standing behind it. "Or designate a meeting place and time. If he's worried about us, we'll only distract him."

"Meet us at _The Bakery_ , on Crosby tonight at seven?" Abi asks, wide-eyed when she notices the lopsided pillar and fountain. They both look unfinished.

"We'll use our time to look into those reports of arson." Eli says, "Visit each site, see what we can find out."

"Sounds good." Taking my pack from my shoulders, I hand it to Abi. "The guns are in here, if you need them."

She nods her head, her blue eyes glued to the bag.

"I'll be back." I say, and then start walking before I change my mind.

Abi grabs my arm, pulling me back into an unexpected hug. "Don't be late."

"Don't tell me what to do."

This time, she's grinning when I turn away.

40 Fear + Faith =?

On the other side of the park, I keep going straight with no particular destination in mind.

Even though I've got an eye out for anyone who looks like Daemon, I'm preoccupied with thoughts about my companions. Something that Eli said about he and Abi distracting me.

There's no doubt about that—they are distractions. Taking their input, talking through decisions slows me down, but that's counterbalanced by the help they offer.

Can I keep them out of danger by distancing myself? Am I more of a selfish prick because I'd rather risk having them here than do this alone?

Maybe there was some wisdom to General Jacoby insisting that I have a partner in this venture. I mean, yeah—the buddy system, right? Who hasn't heard that two heads are better than one? So three heads have to be better than that. The more heads, the more brains. The more help, the better chance of success.

Something else is nagging at me, too.

_Davis_. The way we found him. He jumped only a few seconds ahead of us, but when we found him lying in the field... something wasn't right.

I didn't notice at the time, I was too busy trying to save him, but I've gone over and over the scenario in my mind. When I touched him, he was cold. Not icebox level, but too cool to be alive. It was almost as if he'd been dead long before we got there.

And all that dead cattle. What happened in that field before we got there?

Passing an alleyway, I decide to turn into it. It stinks, but the dumpsters lining the side of one building are empty and it's way less crowded than the sidewalk.

Leaning against a building, I unbutton my shirt, and reach inside, unzipping the hidden breast pocket and begging the Threestone not to suck up the energy around us.

I just want to look at them, to hold them for a little while, and appreciate their simple beauty.

They rest sweetly in my palm, the three ovals: one white, one red, one black. The symbols carved into the tops, barely visible. So amazing.

And then my chest feels tight. My throat clogs with shit I can't hold in. I've been holding it in for a very long time. Maybe my whole life.

My knees bend, my back slips down the rough side of the building. Gripping the cool rocks to my chest, I let myself slip into the sadness, the fear.

My God, the fears: that something will happen to either one of my Abi's, to another one of my friends, to another version of my father. It makes me want to pick up and run, to never look back.

But to where? No universe can be left out of this mess because if each one holds a set of stones, then each one is in danger. Daemon will cross every universal barrier. He'll weaken all those walls, increasing the risks of quantum entanglement until the dimensions are drawn together.

Eli-Two said that right now, it's only a possibility, but my friend Elijah was very worried it was already a reality. From the outset he was fascinated with the equation my father sent him. And Eli-Two thinks it's pointing to a way to use the Threestone to travel through time.

But isn't that the one thing we are never supposed to do? If you have to destroy everything that ever existed just to go back into the past, is it worth it? I mean, you can't change it.

Eli said the past can't be changed.

My life changed when I lost my father. Realizing he'd been murdered—it changed everything. Before I knew what really happened to him, I could have walked away, remained blissful in my ignorance. If only I hadn't watched that last disc.

There was a tender rasp in his voice as he folded his hands in his lap. He gave me the choice: _'Watch it or don't watch it_ , he'd said, _'it's up to you. But either way you have to get the DVD._ '

Maybe I should have grabbed the disc from Jeanine's computer and broke it in half. Would the world be a safer place if I didn't have knowledge of the Threestone?

They are so _powerful_. Three inseparable rocks with the ability to open wormholes from one universe to the next, powerful enough to protect me from gunfire, and bring me back to life. If these stones have any limitations, I haven't found them yet.

The only way to know would be to test them. From the outset, my friend Eli begged for me to let him test the Threestone. He said they were too powerful and unpredictable and that I should be cautious.

Clutching the stones in my hand, their cold makes me shiver but I won't let them go. They make me stronger. Sure, I'm sitting on my ass in a filthy alley, having a mini-breakdown, but I'm also more capable of handling what lies ahead and it's only because of the strength of the Threestone.

It's the weirdest, most natural feeling in the world to love this thing that I don't understand; whatever entity that resides within the stones. I love what they do and the light they give. I'd die for it. Over and over again.

I also hate the greed that Daemon has for them. I hate the chaos and violence he creates in hunting them.

The stones make it all possible, but they are not culpable. The way their power is used depends on the heart of the one who holds them. The same way that a bomb, in and of itself is not evil, but what a person chooses to do with it is. Protect or kill.

And no matter what doors I walk through, no matter what I have to do or suffer, I know without a doubt that I would do it all over again for these three glorious rocks.

Which means I have to take the risk of facing Daemon. No matter how unsure I feel about the confrontation. The only way to know if my Threestone are stronger than his is to face him. To fight him and find out.

"Don't let him take you away," I whisper to the stones.

Something from deep inside softly answers that I am the one who makes that choice and no one else.

The revelation is calming. I take a deep breath, let it out. And finally feel like moving forward.

I guess, sometimes you have to stop in uncomfortable places to find peace.

41 Its Scientific; Not so Terrific

There's an ache between my shoulder blades. I've got to find a better place to carry the stones. They must weigh five pounds now, which makes no sense because they're smaller than I've ever seen them: smaller than golf balls, but bigger than grand-daddy marbles.

It's weird how the more power they have, the smaller and heavier they get.

Turning to head back to the street, something in the air catches my eye. About five feet away, on the other side of the alley, there's a large crack in the side of an apartment building. A snaking fissure that I'm almost positive wasn't there a few seconds ago.

But something is wrong with it. The fracture, looks like its moving. Bending to one side as I tilt my head. A few unsure steps toward this anomaly and I'm blinking, not sure if it's my eyes or if what I'm seeing is actually happening.

It appears as though there's a large crack in the air near the building, not on the structure itself. It reminds me of the way the air seemed to tear the first time I saw the gateway open up in Ivanhoe.

Locked in place, I can only watch it creep along, growing, forming a web of cracks as if the air is made of glass and someone's just thrown a rock.

An odd odor, like burning oil and salt hits me. And then smoke—it's gray with a tint of blue— is seeping through the cracks. There is a low hissing sound.

Suddenly, a loud _pop_ rings through the air and something in the street on the other side of the broken air fog flies out.

Fire billows high into the alley behind me. I spin to look but find nothing. Well, a hole in the ground—perfectly round—and I know that a manhole cover is missing. And inside the hole, a fire is raging.

Turning back to the fog, I find that the mouth of the alley leading to the street is covered in a smoky blanket. And there are no more sounds. No more honking horns from passing cars, no more lively city-noise. It's deathly quiet. Not even a crackle from the blaze behind me.

Looking down at the stones in my palm, I didn't ask them to trigger a gateway. And this is not anything like the gateways I've seen. It's not a cone-shape—it doesn't look like a tornado formed of blue smoke and flame. It's a wall of broken air masked in thick fog.

Riddled with a sick curiosity, I clutch the stones to my chest and step forward.

42 Going Back is Moving Forward

It's dark, but looks like I'm still in Manhattan, which is good. Not many people can see me hunched over, puking. And there are people, a lot of them, walking and driving, riding bikes.

In a small patch of grass, I lean against a tree and wait for the dizziness to ebb. Of course, I've got some kind of shit on my pant-leg. Guess I won't be resting my head between my knees.

Traffic is heavy. The cars are mostly small and boxy.

The stones go back into my jumpsuit, resting against the right side of my chest.

A newspaper stand on the other side of the road is my target. Weaving in between waiting cars trapped in bumper-to-bumper traffic, a few Cabbies honk and swear as I pass; convinced I'll make them miss the light. I slam my fist on the hood of one guys' taxi and tell him exactly where he can put his fare.

The newsstand is full of magazines with unremarkable faces and big hair. I stare down at one of the evening editions of the _New York Times_. The date in the corner reads, September 9, 1985.

Men in suits walk beside women wearing long flowing skirts and huge shoulder pads. The heat in this plane—it's like walking into a sauna. I don't know where to go and start walking.

The nearest sign reads, _Paris Street_. The cross-street is a letter, _C Street_. There's a little rundown café on one corner and a little brown building in between bigger buildings with a neon sign flashing _Monty's Tavern_. It looks kind of janky, like the kind of place that's used to people washing out shitty clothes in the bathroom sink.

After I'm as clean as I can get outside a shower, I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering where all this gray hair is coming from. The light patches at my temples are more silver than a few weeks ago. My eyes look sunken and tired.

I've gained ten years in two weeks. Older and no wiser.

It was stupid walking into the fog. It's what, almost a year later in this plane? And what the hell made that fog appear anyway? I need to get back to Eli and Abi.

A man emerges from the stall behind me. I turn the water back on. He passes the sinks on his way to the door without washing his hands. He swings the door open, but before it closes there's a sound of distinct commotion.

Hundreds of high-pitched _pings_ , like... like glass breaking. A woman screams. It drives me out of the bathroom, through the door of the tavern, and out to the street.

This is what being a Bearer does; it makes you run towards the shit that everybody else runs from. Makes you walk through mysterious walls of fog for no reason at all.

Outside, there's more noise, a loud banging and people yelling. I recognize the clamor. It's a type of chaos, that once you've heard it, you never forget. It's fear.

Following the noise takes me around the next corner onto C Street, to the four way intersection. The traffic lights are blinking red in both directions and all four lanes are at a complete standstill. But no one's honking.

Slowing my pace, the muscles in my shoulders loosen as I finger the shape of the stones through my clothes.

There's one car sitting in the middle of the intersection. An old, white Cadillac. I recognize the leafy wreath surrounding the crest on the hood. I don't know what causes me to look at this particular car. I'm drawn to it, for some reason.

Something shifts in the air; like a pitch in energy. It whistles in my ears, but it's so low and the pitch so high, that I can tell no one else hears it. Then, I get a feeling like there's a reason I'm here, in this particular place and time. Keeping to the shadows on the sidewalk, I plant my feet and wait.

A figure in a dark trench coat appears from the opposite corner of the intersection. One moment there's nothing, and the next, a bald man with a long, gangly beard is standing there. I watch him search the rows of cars.

He jumps, and in a flash, lands on top of the white Cadillac. A baby starts crying.

There's another man on the corner beside me, a gardener. He's using a leaf blower mounted like a backpack, and on the ground behind him is a small cart filled with tools. Without bothering to ask permission, I dig through his cart and choose a pair of garden shears.

Stalking towards Daemon, I make a straight line to keep myself out of his sightline. He's got no idea I'm here. I don't know what he's doing here, or if his stones are stronger than mine. But I think the Threestone have brought me to this place. Rather, brought me to him.

I take a good look around noting that there are no police. No one but lame onlookers gaping as the scene unfolds. Does everyone know how dangerous he is? Is that why they haven't gotten out of their cars, brandishing that distinct New York attitude?

Creeping up behind him, he's distracted shoving his fist through the Caddy's windshield. The driver jumps away, folding over the seat-back, landing in the back passenger seat.

As I get closer the crying gets louder. Daemon pulls his hand out of the windshield and rather than chipping away at the breaking glass, he grips the metal frame around the window, peeling back the front corner of the Caddy's roof.

I hadn't noticed it was a convertible. It isn't until I hear the sounds of protesting metal that I realize, it isn't. He's ripping the roof off the car.

Jumping forward, I've got the long handles of the shears pointed out in both hands. As soon as my thighs touch the cool metal of the Caddy's front end, I plunge the pointed shears into the high middle of the trench coat.

He falls forward in a heap. There's a disgusting gurgling sound as his body jerks.

None of it seems real.

Daemon slumps onto the broken windshield, and slides down the hood until he hits the ground and falls backward. He lands face up, with the shears gouging deeper into his back.

His beard is long and scraggly; the point of the shears poking through the winding hairs. His skin is pale. His bald head covered with a dark tattoo of a snakehead. I know that the rest of the tattoo—the body of the snake—wraps around his entire torso, as if he's caught in its' deadly constrictive hold. Just like the handle on the knife Nahuiollin had. The large bones-plugs in Daemon's ears give a shudder.

Under the flickering street lamp, I watch his pupils dilate, see his mouth fall open and his chest depress.

_He's dead._ Daemon is dead.

The man who killed my father is dead. I chased after him and lost everything because of him, and now he's dead.

I should feel happy. But... I don't feel anything.

I have to catch my breath.

Daemon is dead.

But for how long? If he's like me, there's no telling.

Quickly, I pat him down, looking for the stones. His pockets are empty. Ripping off his boots, I find nothing but his bare, dirty feet. On the front of his trench coat, there's an inside pocket. Nothing. But there's a lump inside the material. Ripping at the lining, I find what I am looking for; a thick rubber pouch, housing three perfect stones.

Three very small and very heavy stones.

The first set of stones I recovered from Ivanhoe, those three rocks could barely rest on one hand. After Damon took them from me in World Two, I had to go back and find a second pair. They were bigger and lighter. I remember I had to use both hands to hold the three together. And I assumed that since they were larger they were also more powerful. But, where the Threestone are concerned, the smaller the better. Great things come in tiny packages.

When the stones I carry joined with the set I took from that ancient altar, the new conjoined set looked smaller. And it took less energy to get a reaction from them. I didn't have to sidle up to energy sources. The capacity of their reach had increased when they shrank.

The set from Daemons jacket pocket is small, barely larger than the grand-daddy marbles I used to play with as a kid. But there are no cat eyes or swirlies in these glassy stones. There is one perfect red, one perfect black, and one perfect white. They bear the same symbols, the swirling circle, the triangle, and the infinity symbol, but they aren't ovals.

They're round.

In fact this is the first set I've seen that has any sort of variation from the other sets—other than size. These are the smallest, most perfect spheres I've ever seen. The three inseparable rocks hover together in petal formation.

I shove the rocks back into the pouch sewn into Daemons jacket and rip it from the lining. The container he keeps them in is good enough for me. The pouch goes into my back pocket before turning to the white Cadillac.

"Time to go!" I shout, at the man inside the car. If Daemon wanted him dead, he's got to get as far from him as possible.

Moving closer, I can't see the man's face, but can tell he's obviously shaken. He's clutching a howling wad of blankets to his chest and staring at me with a very odd look, like... maybe he doesn't know I'm trying to help. He did just watch me kill a guy.

"I'm not going to hurt you." I say it slowly, holding out my hands so he can see my open palms. Problem is, they're covered in blood. "I'm trying to protect you."

I ask for his name, but he hesitates. Says nothing.

"My friends call me G. Why was that man trying to kill you?"

As I step closer to the side of the broken car, the man seems to unfreeze. He scrambles towards the door, but has trouble getting it open. He lets go of the handle and lifts the lock before crawling out.

When he steps into the moonlight, I see the bundle of blankets against his chest is moving. The squealing baby swaddled inside a large blanket. The humid September air is too warm for a blanky. Must have been using it to hide the kid.

The man's face is familiar even though it's young and paled with uncertainty. He runs a hand through his thick, wavy brown hair. And just before he speaks, he steps closer and locks eyes with me.

"My name is Gerry," he says his voice quavering a little, but behind the fear is determination, a protective instinct. A father protecting his child.

He is my father—his alternate—when he was about my age. And the child he's holding... it's got to be another version of me.

I take a few steps closer. "We've got to get you two out of here."

"I know," My alternate dad shakes head. "I don't know how he found me."

"Doesn't matter. We have to leave. Now."

I don't know what it is about this situation, but it feels familiar. Like déjà vu or something.

But I've never been to this dimension. I've never looked at myself as a little baby being coddled by my alternate dad who is much younger than I've ever seen him. And yet, we look so much alike. I never realized it. Maybe because we really never had a lot of pictures. At least, not from this time period.

"You're a good looking guy," he says chuckling to himself. So, this version is also a laid-back guy. My old man would never make jokes after what just happened.

And something else strikes me. Something that should have hit me the second that it happened but for whatever reason, it didn't.

The intersection is way too quiet. There's a dead body on the road; people should be freaking out.

Matter of fact, I don't hear car engines puttering away. No anxious pedestrians, no impatient traffic. No sirens.

I look back to the man on the ground and shove him a little with my foot. His flesh wobbles in response. Still dead.

The silence is eerie. The gardener on the corner is gone. His cart of equipment is still there, spilled on the ground.

I look at each of the stopped cars. Why isn't anyone moving?

And then I see the expression on my alternate dads face and I can tell he's already realized what I've just discovered: that we are the only people standing out here in the humid night. That we are the only ones talking. That we are the only three people in the vicinity that are still alive.

Is this the same thing that happened to Davis and all those cows in Ivanhoe?

43 Stick and Move

Sirens wail in the distance. And even though it's bad, really, really bad, at least I know that there is life outside this dead crossing.

And the baby is crying again, so that's good. Right?

"Let's move," I gesture for my company to follow.

This makes no sense. Eli-Two said that life is a different kind of energy. Yet, the street lights are on; the businesses on the block still have electricity. No wormholes were opened, but everyone out in the street within view of this intersection looks dead.

We cut into the nearest alley. I look behind us at the white Cadillac. But the body that was lying in front of it is gone.

Shit. Shit, shit!

"Run," I whisper.

Feeling the back pocket of my jeans, I keep pace with this version of my father. The thick rubber pouch is still there. I can tell by the weight of it that the stones are in there.

Everything is going wrong. One minute, I'm alone in a stinking alley, then a bathroom, and the next I'm-I'm... I don't even know what the hell I'm doing.

_Priorities_ , G, I tell myself, think in terms of necessity. One move at a time.

Pushing the other two Gerry's ahead of me. I reinforce the need to leave. Quickly.

"My wife," he stutters and I groan. She's going to leave him in a few years anyway. He should save himself the trouble. For my future little sister's sake, I keep my mouth shut.

Seven blocks and thirty-five sirens later we arrive at the world's smallest apartment. Its half-way underground, like they're renting the bottom half of someone's basement.

We three G's march down a short set of stairs and nearly get stuck in the landing as Alter-Dad and I turn at the same time. I want him to bust into the apartment and pack a bag, but he stops at the locked door.

"I don't want my wife to see you. If she does, she'll know, and she'll worry."

"You can't be serious." This is a life and death situation and he's worried about appearances.

"We're not going through one of those tunnels, either. So, you just put that idea out of your head," he adjusts the cranky baby in his arms.

"What? How do you... _expect_... to get away? Alive?" My tone is halting. I'm furious.

"I've never seen that guy before in my life. I didn't take the rocks like he thinks. I left them—"

"You left them in the dirt. I know. But that doesn't matter to him. You have to take your family and get as far from here as possible. You can go to any world you want. You can make a life for yourselves. The kind you'd never have in this place."

His face hardens. "I appreciate you saving us, but I don't want anything more to do with those rocks. And I don't have the start-up capital. I just lost my car. I'll go to the bank in the morning and take out the savings. We'll stay at her mother's for a while."

"It's pathological, your level of stubbornness." Shaking my head, I know it's his life, not mine. He'll look after his family and if he's anything like my father, he'll succeed.

"Fine, you can stay in this dimension, but you have to get out of New York. Off the East coast."

From my pocket, I pull out what's left of my emergency cash. It's only a couple thousand, but it should help. When I show it to him, his eyes practically jump out of his face.

"Don't wait. Or you'll all be dead by morning. And take this. Get yourselves some plane tickets and head west. And this is very, _very_ important: stay hidden."

He looks confused, so I elaborate. "That guy who attacked you, he's dangerous, but especially deadly to you and your son. He doesn't care that you don't have the stones. He just wants you dead. So leave, now, and don't look back. Change your names, keep a low profile."

"You didn't kill him?"

I shake my head, "If you'd accepted your legacy, you'd know that a Bearer may die, but he never stays that way."

Did Daemon wake up somewhere else like I did after he killed me with a garbage truck, or did he come back here?

"He's drawn to the stones, or vice-versa. But he can _never_ have them. Understand? So stay clear of them, and anyone who looks like me. Got it?"

He nods, "Okay."

"I mean it. If you ever see this mug again," I trace a circle around my face with a pointed finger. "You take your family and run the other way. Because wherever I am, so is he." I turn to run back up the steps and stop. "Oh, and in a couple of years, you may hear about a start-up company called _Microsoft_. Invest everything you've got. You'll be glad you did."

He nods, a "Thank you," before turning back to the door.

I bolt like the devil down the street, looking out for Daemon.

Running the seven blocks to the C Street intersection, I almost pass it by. If it weren't for the blinking neon sign from Monty's Tavern, I would've kept going.

Because nothing looks like it did when I left a short while ago. It's all different, like nothing happened.

The street lights are on. Traffic is moving, pedestrians are strolling, and the gardener is working on the hedges over a small patch of grass. His tools are back inside the cart.

The white Cadillac with the dented front end and broken windshield is gone. The blood on the street has disappeared.

The dead people are alive again.

There's no sign that there was ever any trouble here.

None.

What the hell is going on?

Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I feel that same buzzing in the air. A slight pitch in pressure changing.

It's as if the universe is trying to answer my question... or just confuse me more. Because that smell is back, along with the cracked air and fog.

44 There And Back. Again.

When the fog clears, I'm greeted by broad daylight and the sweet scent of blooming trees drifting on hot wind.

I'm in familiar territory. Not completely familiar, as if I know every back road and tree grove, but familiar enough that I can definitively say I'm back in the Central Valley of California, on a two-lane road in the small farming town of Ivanhoe.

And without a gateway opening.

Ivanhoe looks the same in every civilized dimension I've been to. The orchards are all around me, but many of the houses I remember seeing further up the main road, are not. I can't tell what decade it is—maybe those houses haven't been built yet. The old, wooden power lines are a little straighter, but the dairy still reeks.

Road three-o-eight comes into view around the next curve in the road. The roadside is dirt with the occasional stray dog, so I cut into the pomegranate orchard, which takes me to the orange grove that leads to adjoining hills and pasture.

There isn't a farmer or a cow in sight but the fire pit is there and so are the telltale rings of brown that look like Mother Nature painted a bulls-eye in the grassy hillside.

Another set of Threestone are buried there. Running over, I use my hands to dig beneath the plate at the bottom of the fire pit and pull out the metal box I know I'll find. The box looks old, but it's not crumbling yet. The hinges are broken, though. Lifting he lid, I find a lumpy rubber pouch. Pick it up and take another look around before unzipping to release the stones. Once they're out in the open air, lying in my two palms, I feel a tug from inside the pocket of my jumpsuit.

And the smaller set I took from Daemon, I feel them from inside the back pocket of my jeans. The stones are moving and the thick pouch grows very warm.

Opening the pocket of my jumpsuit, I watch my set float up into the air in a triangle formation, as if calling the newest set to them. Instead of the sets greeting each other in a dance that ends with one being absorbed, the larger rocks I've just found float disjointedly from my palm.

The dim light within them flickers and disappears. The surfaces of the three new rocks crack. Crumble into the loose dirt. The pieces shrivel into ash that blows away on an unexpected icy breeze.

The sudden burst of cold in hot weather makes me look up. The light has changed, only there are no clouds in the sky.

I cram my rocks back into the pocket of my suit just as I hear cows _mooing_ from very close and turn.

Animals that weren't in the pasture a minute ago suddenly are, and now they're running away. Well, some are running away. Others drop to the ground in an all-too familiar way, falling dead under a grey sky.

Raising a hand over my eyes, I stand up and step back because the wind is like icy knives across my cheeks. And what I'm seeing and feeling isn't actually happening in front of me. The scenery, the grey sky and sharp wind blowing across an open pasture where the cows are running, it isn't here, in this plane.

High up in the sky, there is a dark line, drawn like the rough edge of a torn sheet of blue paper. Just above the tear, the sun is shining. The air hot and stagnant. Below it, grey clouds and wind are carrying dead leaves, scattering over black and white corpses.

The pouch in my jeans is burning hot. I brush my hand over the denim commanding the stones in the thick rubber pouch "Knock it off!"

The window fades and disappears.

I have to get back to Abi and Eli in New York. I'm glad I got another set of stones, but none of this should be happening.

Shutting my eyes tight, I take three deep breaths—in with the calm, out with the shrieking panic of watching the worlds fall apart.

After about ten seconds, I open them again, not because I'm ready, but because I feel another shift in that pressure that leaves a deep ringing in my ears.

The air goes from hot and humid, smelling like blossoms to that burning stench.

45 Sign of the Times

It's dark again. Nighttime. The noisy street is lined with three-story Brownstones. A few people are out, but the traffic is light.

There's blood and dirt everywhere. It's all over me; splattered on my shirt and jeans. My hands are covered. Passing under a streetlight highlights my filth. Heading for the nearest corner while searching for an alley to slip into, I find one half-way up the next block.

After a careful look around, I take out my Threestone and let them hover in front of me, asking them not to glow and to keep me and the other stones I took hidden as I strip out of my dirty clothes, leaving me in just my government issued jumpsuit.

I have no idea where I am and I've got nothing with me. No money, no M-sats to mark the shifting planes, and no idea what is happening.

Should I open a wormhole? Since I don't see any mysterious cracks in the air or alleyways filled with fog, triggering a gateway may be the only way back.

After taking a moment to survey my surroundings—making sure I'm alone and not being watched—I grab the stones from the air, and the thick rubber pouch from my jeans.

There's an unmistakable energy between the two sets, even though only one is exposed. In my head, I shout a command at the stones in the pouch. They better not absorb or open anything.

Keeping each in different hands, spread far apart, I beg my Threestone to take me back to the plane where I left Abi and Eli. Quietly.

I know I shouldn't be crossing over wherever, but I didn't know what would happen when I walked into that fog. And I sure as hell don't want to find out what happens if my set of stones gets absorbed by this stolen set. I think that means I lose them to Daemon, even if he's not around to accept.

The stones are absolutely loyal to the Bearer.

Apparently, my Threestone don't do quiet, because a funnel cloud forms, roaring with wind and heat. Lightning peels away from the electric poles, reaching for the stones.

Air shatters when the gateway opens. The protective bubble forms around me. The wheel of colors inside the funnel cloud calls to me. I beg the stones not to let anyone follow and step inside.

The other side is so bright. Daylight washes away the colors of the passage between planes. And, thankfully, I don't feel sick this time.

The air is cooler, much less humid, as I step out of the alley that reeks of burning shit and rubber and onto the sidewalk. Looking around, I spot the edge of the building where I first saw that the air was cracked. It's not anymore, but the structure is.

Walking around the front, it's unbelievable. The apartment building is at least seven stories high and slashed wide open. As if someone lopped off the whole front wall. It looks like a layered cake, with exposed floors, beams, and rooms with furniture. The sidewalk and half the street is taped-off with bright 'Caution' tape, orange cones, and guarded by police officers who warn everyone to keep a distance.

I'm gaping, but also trying to remain inconspicuous. Seeing as how I'm wearing this color-changing, body-hugging jumpsuit though... I slip off to the other side of the street and don't look back, headed for _Washington Square Park_.

The park is really crowded. There's a mass of people gathered, chanting and shouting in a central area. Some of them are holding signs. The crowd is facing a stage where a man with a shitty megaphone is preaching about the city's structural problems and out-of-control crime rates. He's rallying the crowd to demand that their government tell the citizens what's really going on.

I push my way between people until I get to the odd pillar-statue behind the crescent-shaped fountain—the things that I assumed were some kind of commentary-pieces of modern art. With everyone scattered around, I have to move close to get a better look.

The line that cuts the top of marble pillar behind the fountain is clean, as if cut by a laser. But the shapes and lines on the rest of the statue don't match. Everything else is ornate, embellished lines and rough edges that make the boot-shaped column look more broken than contemporary.

I have no idea how these things are made and I don't know anything about art—but this doesn't look artistic. After seeing that apartment building lopped and sectioned, the pillar-statue looks less like art and more like an accident.

A high-pitched whistle interrupts the congregation. Nervous voices go up as the whistle gains a buzz, which combines into a strange, deep hum. The sound gets bigger and louder, vibrating the air in the park.

There are too many trees, too near to where I'm standing to spot the source of the sound as the thrum rises in pitch and volume.

And then I recognize it: a jet engine.

Several people point into the tree line just as a massive shadow crawls over the crowd of protestors. Broken branches blow across the square, pushed on a great wind.

The plane is too low and pitched at a steep angle; the nose high, the tail dragging. It's so low I swear it's going to fall on us.

46 In Case of Flying Objects

Bad things tend to happen quickly. The span of a few seconds can mean decades of trauma.

My mind has to play catch-up.

The plane seemed to appear from nowhere. It was struggling to stay in flight as it passed over the park. A couple hundred of us got a close-up of the boom and crash.

Black smoke rises is thick billows from a massive fire. Wreckage spreads over the park. A wing torn to pieces, a set of burning wheels spinning near a stroller. The body of the plane fought its' way to the base of a tall building, one of New York's glass towers.

Sirens come almost immediately, matching the ringing in my ears. Black and whites hurdling over grassy knolls with lights flashing. Paramedic vans. Ambulances and fire trucks coming in droves.

Uniform officers are clearing the park of all uninjured parties. I am among them, of course. The stones protected me from the blowback that singed most of the people around me.

So many are panicked; running and screaming in all directions.

A few of us, though, we are standing still amid the chaos. Looking on in shock and regret, understanding that panic won't undo what just happened. Others cling to one another, hoping against hope that what is happening isn't real.

But I know better. I know that all we can do is walk away, because what's done is done. There is no going back.

47 Guess Whose Scarred For Life. Go on, Guess

It takes a while, but eventually, my cloudy mind clears enough to remember that we agreed to meet back at _The Bakery_ , and so I start heading that direction.

My mind replays the events of the last few hours and I can't shake the feeling that we're in a heap of trouble—apocalyptic trouble.

Of course it's hard to concentrate when the city is in such a panic. And every single person that passes on the sidewalk keeps gaping at me.

This damn suit sticks out like a sore thumb; all skin-tight and color-changing. It was green in the park, even after the fires turned everything black. Now, in the concrete jungle, it's shifting in shades of mottled gray to black every time I pass from direct sunlight into shade. I feel like a one-man carnie side-show.

My brain feels like mush, but the adrenaline is still pumping when I reach the donut shop. Inside, there are three lines, five to ten people deep guarding the counter. An older man behind the register calls out numbers and passes out pink boxes. The dining area is narrow, but long, curving around the corner of the small store.

I'm surveying the tables when something moves in the corner of my vision. When I turn to look, I notice that the lively sound of the diners has disappeared. And the movement I'm searching for, it's a napkin dispenser from the condiment station.

Only the small metal dispenser is not sitting on the high counter like the law of gravity demand—which is why everyone is staring. The napkin dispenser is floating.

I turn around and it moves. I step backward and it follows. When I step forward, it mirrors the motion as if pulled by some invisible string.

Lines of people are staring between me and this glitch in the matrix.

Time to go.

Heading for the door, I note a group of people on the street outside. Instead of staring at the column of rising smoke in the distance, they're looking through the glass storefront. Watching me and gaping at the shiny metal napkin holder that seems to follow as I change directions and head to the side door. But not before a basket of butter packets at the condiment station lifts and wobbles, then falls to the ground. The chalk-covered street sign that's propped near the entrance leaps up and falls over.

Pushing my way through the crowd on the sidewalk is easy. Most people back away as I move through, some push out into the road to avoid me.

The city is always noisy, but right now it's at fever-pitch. Sirens and hand-held radios blare amid the buzz of concerned citizens. A few tourists snap pictures of me.

It's amazing that I'm able to hear my name being called. Turning, I spot Eli hustling up the sidewalk towards me. It looks like he's just come from _The Bakery_. I motion for him to be discreet, and hope he gets that I want him to follow me to a place where it's less crowded.

He pauses, and then Abi is at his side. The two of them watch me for another long moment as I wind through four lanes of stalled traffic towards the nearest alley.

When I'm out of sight, I lean my forehead against the side of a building, hitting it a few times. Trying to catch my breath and my wits, but it's no use.

What the hell is happening?

Small pieces of garbage on the ground shake and then lift from the pavement. I step further into the alley, disturbed by a piece of discarded gum stretching away from the pavement.

I settle behind a wall of dumpsters because this city is filled with garbage. The garbage bags come alive, tumbling in their pile at my nearness.

"Stop. Stop it"

The stones have to be causing this. Eli said that Dark Energy interacts with gravity. And I've got two very powerful sets of Threestone. It's as if I've morphed into an anti-gravity contagion, infecting everything that weighs less than five pounds.

Abi and Eli barrel into the alley and stop when they see the black plastic bags tumbling as if they're holding small, angry animals.

"G, where have you been?" Abi asks, at the same time Eli wants to know, "What's happening?"

We step further into the backstreet, resting at a corner where two alleyways converge. I tell them the whole story about the cracking air, the fog and odor; running into another version of my alternate father, finally killing Daemon, taking his stones, winding up in Ivanhoe and finding another set of stones that turned to ash, then the weird window that opened up, and finally the plane crashing in the park.

I'm freaked out, so it only takes a minute to spill the details.

Worry mars Abi's face, but she still looks gorgeous wearing acid washed jeans and puffy white, high-top sneakers. The long top of her hair is brushed to one side. She's even got a little makeup on: pink lip gloss and mascara. I might be an indecent shit for noticing, but being near her calms me.

"You were gone for three days," she complains. "We were worried sick."

"I counted a few hours."

"You still have both sets of stones? They haven't joined?"

Shaking my head, I name my biggest fear. "His are stronger than mine. They're inside the pouch in the back of my belt."

Keeping my hand firmly on my own Threestone, concealed in the breast pocket of my suit, I turn around to show Eli the pocket where the other stones are, silently asking him to take them. "His are way smaller and heavier. They're not even ovals anymore. They're round."

"What do we do, Eli?" Abi asks, "Obviously, the stones are making all this stuff float and move." She looks over my head and points. "That awning is shaking."

"We have to keep the stones separated." Eli's says, stroking his fingers through his beard. He looks unhappy as he continues. "There have also been several incidents of unexplained phenomena over the past few days."

"Like?"

"On the news, two nights ago, NASA reported a satellite fell out of orbit," Abi tells me. "And there have been a few surprising meteor showers."

Eli clears his throat. "We've been looking into the fires—but they weren't arson. The fires all occurred around soft-spots."

"Soft spots... like a baby's head?"

Abi rolls her eyes and bites her lip.

I point at her. "My brain is fried, leave me alone."

"I didn't say anything." She answers wide-eyed, feigning innocence.

Eli continues. "They're weak points in the membranes that separate this plane from the next. Every location has the same kind of structural damage. Fires starting out of nowhere. Buildings sliced in two—one half missing. No rubble anywhere. The arch and fountain in the park—"

"How do we stop it?" I ask, stepping further into the adjoining alley and out from under the shaking awning. "Daemon is still out there, probably on his way to the next set of stones. I have to get them before he does."

"You can't keep both sets of stones with you, G. It's too risky."

Eli is pale and fidgety, shaking his head. "There is no stopping this anymore, G. It's already started. Every plane you faded into, this is the beginning of the end for the multiverse."

48 This Earth is a Tomb

Two very powerful sets of Threestone.

Separate, but still within close enough proximity to sense each other through time and space. They're ripping the multiverse apart to get to one another.

Imagine what would happen if they joined together.

I think the only thing holding them back might be the loyalty my stones hold for me. I asked them not to be absorbed. Maybe they're resisting.

Eli tried to explain the catastrophic consequences as I followed him and Abi to the crap-hole, ground-level room they rented, at a motel about ten blocks from the park.

Eli has the thick rubber pouch I stole from Daemon. He's got it inside his backpack, tucked into one of the shells that housed an M-sat, and then rolled in another layer of rubber that was once an inner tube from a motorcycle. It seems stupid that a simple layer of rubber could top but the stones, but objects stopped floating.

He's sitting at the round table inside the motel room that he and Abi rented while they were waiting for me. Did I mention it's a tiny little shit-box?

I'm standing as far from him as possible. Across the room, inside the bathroom, with the door open. Abi is sitting on the bed between us. Nothing is floating, but I can feel the rocks pulling at each other. It's giving me a headache.

"Think of each universe like a bubble. There might be thousands of them floating around. If two of them are drawn too close together, one or both of those bubbles is going to pop."

"So, the soft spots are a result of the bubble walls rubbing together?" Abi asks.

Eli nods. "Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. That's why the Washington Monument in the park is cut in half, because the other half is in another plane. I think the relative space between the stones has penetrated the membranes that hold this universe together."

"They're crashing," I mumble. "Will it stop when we leave, and take the stones with us?"

"It didn't stop while you were gone. It was happening before we got here, so probably not." Eli wipes his hands down his face. "I need help to figure this out. I need a lab, my notes, and my computer."

Leaning out the door of the bathroom, I offer, "Let's go, then. We'll get you to a place where you'll have all the help you need to figure this out." I have no idea where that might be, but I don't need to. The stones know, and they'll take us there.

We are out of the room and onto the street in no time, without bothering to check out.

Eli keeps saying, "We should consider going back to Ivanhoe before we cross," but the answer is no. We don't have time.

I have to ditch these extra stones, find Daemon before he tracks down my alternate father in 1985, or the Threestone he buried in the hills of Ivanhoe. The man has everything to lose. How long would it take Daemon to squeeze the stones' location out of him?

I lead them as close as I can to the alley where I walked through the cracks and fog, figuring it's safer to reuse the same spot than to make another hole in this Swiss cheese universe.

After sending a quick prayer request to the Threestone, I make sure that Eli and Abi are close by, even if the trash on the street and a poor alley cat start to float when I take out my rocks. It's more important that all of us are safe inside the bubble that the stones create.

When the gateway opens, it's there: a long blurred line with a dark slash down the center. It's just outside the opening of the rainbow funnel.

The air around us shatters and bends. Blue fog and flames swallow everything.

Eli and Abi finally get to see the cracks for themselves and I can tell from their expressions that they're terrified.

49 What Matters Most

I had absolutely no idea where the stones would take us so imagine my surprise when we come out on the other side of the gateway, barely sick at all, with Eli insisting that we're in front of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

All I see is a long parking lot at the edge of bland white buildings surrounded by groups of healthy green trees. The area is pretty big, like a college campus spread out over many acres.

"We should check-in at the main office," he mutters.

It takes a few minutes to find someone walking around who'll give us directions. Several people shake their head like they'd rather not get involved with three oddly dressed strangers lost inside this blank campus.

The directions we get lead us to a map that's posted on a billboard, the same kind they have on most college campuses. That leads us to a short, oblong building situated behind a horseshoe driveway.

We enter through an electric sliding door at the side of the building. I'm sure to keep me distance from Eli, not wanting a repeat of the gravitational jokes from the last plane.

Eli approaches a small window labeled 'Information,' while Abi and me linger near a stairwell at the end of the long corridor.

After a brief exchange, Eli motions to a set of chairs along one wall. I choose to remain standing while Abi walks back and forth between the two of us, passing messages.

"Eli knows someone who works here, a Doctor Harris. Ring any bells?"

Doctor Thalia Harris: the only time I saw her, she was on a lagging screen inside the main conference room at DHS headquarters, hidden inside Cheyenne Mountain.

I start explaining the interdimensional conference meeting to Abi and she nods, as if the news is hum-drum.

"You knew they were communicating with other dimensions, didn't you?"

She leans against the wall behind her, folding her arms. "I had a man on the inside, remember?"

I nod, not appreciating the reference.

The weird thing is, Abi and me have been more distant since she left her husband. We were closer, talked more, before she found him in Ice World. Maybe it was easier for her to pretend he was dead than to know that he'd chosen to stay in that plane without her.

"Are you alright?" She asks.

And I realize how selfish I'm being. "It's nothing important."

"None of those troubles are supposed to be important anymore, are they?" She sighs, "But everything still matters."

Footsteps echo down the stairwell behind us. Abi and I turn to find a tall, exotic-looking woman in a blue polo shirt tucked into dark blue slacks rushing down the stairs. Her hair is a mass of long, neat dreadlocks pinned behind her head and falling down her back. She wears wire-rimmed glasses and has a pen tucked behind one ear. She grants a glance at me then dips her head to Abi as she passes between us.

When she hits the bottom of the steps, her pace picks up until she reaches Eli, who's standing to greet her.

From this distance, I miss the exchange. But watch them shake hands. Eli gestures to Abi and then to me. Doctor Harris turns back to us and makes her way over.

Doctor Harris's badge bears her picture, and gives a physical description; including her age, which is a brag-worthy forty-seven when she doesn't look a day over thirty. There is no job title listed. Only a department, a confusing term: _Contingency Research_.

When she shakes my hand, I tell her there's no way she's anywhere near her forties. She blushes a little and thanks me, dipping her head again as she turns to greet Abi.

"Strong handshake," Dr. Harris remarks to Abi, and shuffles her feet.

"Yours too," Abi concedes.

Dr. Harris grants a bright smile that quickly fades. "Now, if you two don't mind stepping out for a few moments. I'd like you to wait in the quad. There's a table and benches. Some shade trees, in case it starts raining again."

Abi's brow furrows.

"We need to find a way to isolate the package Dr. Thacker is carrying. I'll come get you as soon as we're up and running."

"Sure, no problem," I say, liking her no nonsense way.

Abi just stands there, staring. I take her by the arm and sweep her beside me on our way out of the building.

"That was rude," she complains the moment the doors shut behind us.

We sit on one of the benches under a sprawling leafy tree about fifty yards from the building. The air is cool. It smells like rain but the ground is dry. Abi and I are dressed to match in our jumpsuits.

"Why were you flirting?" Abi's arms are folded and her face is pointed at the building so I can't read her expression.

"Are you serious?"

She looks at me and, yes, she is very serious.

"I wasn't flirting. I was stating a fact. There's a difference."

She huffs, and there goes my eye contact. "If you say so."

"Hey," I take her chin between two fingers forcing her to look at me. "Doesn't she look impressively young for her age?"

Abi nods, adding, "But you didn't have to say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like it meant something."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"You're a flirt." She looks back with hardening eyes and shrugs. "Not that it matters."

"If it's upsetting you, it matters."

"That's the thing, though. It shouldn't upset me. There are too many bigger and more important things happening. But I keep thinking about my feelings for—" She stops and bites her bottom lip.

"' _Feelings'_ for me?" I'd really like to torture her over the slip. Tease her and make her blush. Instead, I look at the building entrance, and go with something subtle. "I have feelings, too, Ab. This distance—I understand it, but it's driving me crazy."

She nods and looks away. "It drives me crazy worrying that something could happen to you."

"I've got the stones to protect me." What does she have beside her wits?

"And I have you?" She scoots closer, her hand falling beside mine.

I take it. And brush my lips across her knuckles. "You know you do."

"Not that I need your protection," she adds.

"But I may need yours."

She grins, "Ha. Prove it."

"Okay, how?"

"Don't leave me."

"Never," I promise.

50 Electromagnetic Thing-a-ma-jig

NASA's Contingency Research is not as impressive as it sounds. What the title boils down to is Dr. Harris and a grant that gave her this long, white room filled with computers, desks, and tables laden with wiry, prototype electronics for who-the-hell-knows-what.

She's understaffed and overlooked because her universe is perfectly healthy. It's still expanding and there are no soft-spots cropping up that she's aware of.

The room that serves as her research lab is cut in half by a long, thick wall. The top half is glass, for experimental observation. On the other side of the glass, are two smaller areas divided by a perpendicular wall, so that Abi and I can see into both areas from out here.

Eli and Dr. Harris are dressed in bright yellow suits with hoods. They're communicating via intercom, describing the contraption they've got constructed in one of the rooms.

The contraption is an electromagnetic thing-a-ma-jig; basically an elaborate box on top of a long table. The box is metal, coated in orange material on the outside. Inside there are three metal-like pillars leaning towards one another to form an open pyramid shape. In the middle of the pillars rests a metallic ball, a little bigger than a softball. Inside the ball, Eli puts Daemon's Threestone, still folded inside their rubber pouch.

Dr. Harris and Eli are hovering over the box on the other side of the glass talking quickly, using technical terms that go way over my head, making adjustments to some instrument attached to the outside of the box.

After some time Dr. Harris tells Eli something. He says, "Okay," and seals the ball with the stones inside. He places it on the platform that connects the three pillars, and then backs away from the box. She flips a switch on the far wall.

A soft buzzing noise fills the lab. The three pillars close around the ball, locking it inside the triangular contraption. When the tips of the pillars touch, the ball begins to float.

Abi gasps, covering her mouth as the air around the ball seems to bend and sway. There are no cracks and no blue fog, but the shape of the ball shifts, bending with the air around it.

"What's it doing?" I yell at the glass.

"It's creating a spatial wormhole." Eli explains, his voice coming clear through the intercom.

"Essentially, it scrambles the electromagnetic signals the Threestone emits, hopefully making them difficult to locate," Dr. Harris answers.

"Can this stop them from messing with gravity and forming weak spots?" Abi asks, sounding almost incredulous.

"It should block their ability to absorb power," Eli replies.

"How?" The question rings in stereo.

"It sends the stones electromagnetic signature to another location, hopefully disrupting communication, and by separating the signal from the object, we hope to stop, or at least inhibit absorption," Dr. Harris explains.

"Like a cloaking device?" I ask, thinking of _Captain Kirk_ and the _Enterprise._

"Something like that," Eli sounds pleased.

Dr. Harris and Eli walk out of the sealed area through the door to the adjoining room. There they remove their radiation suits and gloves.

When they walk back into the area where Abi and I have been watching and waiting, I ask, "Do you have more of these contraptions?"

Dr. Harris straightens a few pieces of her hair and snatches a clipboard from a desk. "Not at this location, but there are other devices being built in participating planes."

Abi slips into a chair by the door while I ponder the possibilities of being able to contain the Threestone. I assumed they were all-powerful. They feel like this eternal entity, this force that controls the mysteries of the cosmos. But what if they aren't? What if they are just rocks composed of a rare matter that attracts Dark Energy?

The thought saddens me.

But if they are, then... I can take Daemon's stones and not worry about him coming for them. If they are, then I don't have to hide mine from him, because even if he manages to get his hands on another set, they won't be as strong as the one sitting inside that machine—that electromagnetic-spatial-wormhole-generator.

It means I could get all of the Threestone from every dimension and stash them away where he could never find them. There's a lot of hope in that. Maybe all the hope in the world.

For some reason, the thought of the Threestone being anything less than what I've always assumed they were feels like a boulder being laid on my chest.

And it doesn't even matter because I don't get to choose what the stones are, I can only choose what they are to me. Just like I may not be able to save the planes that are already colliding, but I might be able to stop the collapse from spreading.

"We have a real chance to stop all this, don't we?" I ask, looking at Abi.

Her faraway expression snaps back from wherever she's been. "Then we better get moving."

51 Play It Again

_Go back and check._ This phrase has been looping through my thoughts since the last time I left World Two. Finally, I'm back to do just that.

Abi and me have already been to the plane where it was 1985, where I last saw Daemon. I couldn't find my alternate father there, but that's a good thing. The less interaction with him the better. Plus, if I can't find them, then maybe Daemon can't either.

The thing that's been bugging me is the missing stones. They should have been buried in the hills of Ivanhoe, but they weren't. I could tell they had been—those telltale rings of death in the vegetation were there. But the stones were long gone. And I'm ninety-nine percent sure it was not the same plane I accidentally visited, either. In the plane where I found a set, it was spring. The season there was late fall. And the orchards were different. The electric transformer near the edge of the field wasn't there, either.

So now, we're left to wonder where the Threestone went and with who.

Knowing there's a strong possibility that my alternate father didn't suddenly change his mind and take up his legacy, has me seriously worried that Daemon found them.

I've already seen him in the area surrounding Ivanhoe. It was in Abi-Two's world. She'd just dropped me off so I could jump home, and Daemon found me; skewered me with that lifting fork on the front of a garbage truck.

"Stop worrying," Abi pokes me in the ribs with her elbow and warmth pushes through me. "What's done is done. We modify our plan and push forward."

She's right. I know she's right.

Reaching across her lap, I take her hand. "I hope this works." We don't have time to mess around. We have to find Daemon and figure out a way to stop him for good. Maybe we could put him in his own electromagnetic chamber.

The taxi pulls over and I swing the door open. I'm getting out here, on Crosby Street, but she's on her way to the Child Services office in lower Manhattan. I need to find what's left of my alternate family in this plane, to know that little G and Carrie are alright.

She plants a kiss on my cheek. "I'll see you in a few hours." After I shut the taxi's door, she adds, "No accidental jumping without me." She looks like she's kidding but we both know she's not.

"Never again," I agree with a wink and steal a quick kiss, my lips burning from the contact.

I don't want to be that shitty guy that compares one woman to another but it's never been like this with anyone else. Not even with the only other women I ever loved. I've never felt so much comfort and fire all at once.

She grasps my hand resting on the open window and the touch burns. Every time, I'm scorched. Caught in her inferno. And there is nothing—nothing—I would not do for this woman, just to be near her. To keep burning this way.

Things have been so easy between us—the distance gone— since Eli decided to stay behind with Dr. Harris and help her compile the feedback from the M-sats we've been launching.

When he first told us his plan, I was pissed. Abi was ambiguous, telling me that we couldn't make him do anything he didn't want to do. She was right, of course. And now that he's in a safe plane where he can contribute and coordinate with other planes, I think he made the right call.

I watch her cab pull away before turning to face _The Bakery_ , which is crowded with the lunch rush.

Pushing my way to the crowded counter, I snatch a ticket from the red machine. An old man behind the glass display case filled with sweets and sandwiches starts yelling out for order number seventy-two. I've got 101.

Here's something I have learned about New York living: if you don't know what you want when you reach the counter, you're getting skipped.

So I'm ready to order when my numbers called ten minutes later. And it's filled in less than thirty seconds. The old geezer that called my number passes a white paper bag with my bialy and a paper cup over the high counter.

He eyes me. "You look familiar. I never forget a face."

"I'm looking for work." I point to the sign taped to the counter top. "Got any?"

The man shakes his head. "Job was filled this morning." He nods towards a gangly brunette carrying a precariously stacked tray of cups and saucers. "My granddaughter decided she wants some independence."

I shake my head. "Kids today—in such a hurry to grow up." I take up my things, sensing the impatience of the growing line. When I push the money across the counter, he pushes it back.

"It's on the house."

I give my thanks and take a donut shaped chair in the corner at the storefront window to watch the world go by. Taking my time eating, I get several refills on the coffee because the cups are small and even enjoy a smoke.

"Name's Joe McAvoy," His voice breaks the hypnotic hold cast by the never-ending line of street traffic.

"Jonas Springer," I respond, smashing the butt of the cigarette in the orange ashtray to take his outstretched hand. He has a firm shake and thick calluses.

"Where are your people from, Jonas?" He's wearing a bleach-white, grease-stained t-shirt and white half-apron over acid washed jeans.

"California."

Filling the empty chair across from me, he smirks. "La-La Land," and wipes his hand on the long towel draped over one shoulder. "Ever meet anybody famous?"

"Once, when I was in a taco shop, I ran into the guy that played Vigo the Carpathian from _Ghostbusters_ _Two_."

It's true. I did. Dude was hella tall, and his voice was a spooky baritone. But I can't remember what year the movie came out. I'm pretty sure it was well before 1998.

If Joe's impressed, he's hiding it really well.

I watch him look around at the dwindling lunch traffic.

"Never heard of it." He knocks the table with his knuckles as he gets up. "Good luck with your job hunt."

"You said I look familiar; I was here once, last year. Came to visit my brother in his apartment on the third floor."

He turns back from his retreat, "Yeah?"

I've piqued his interest and seize the opportunity. "It was the day that fire broke out in the building behind this one."

I point in the general direction of the apartments where I first saw Daemon levitate.

"Terrorist bombing," The corners of his eyes pull down. "One of my tenants was killed in the blast."

"Yeah, that was my brother. I was with him when it happened."

He shakes his head. "I'm real sorry about that."

"I'm looking for his family. My niece, nephew and sister-in-law. Did they leave a phone number or forwarding address?"

Joe's eyes tighten. "If they're your family, why don't you know where they are?"

"Fair question, Mr. McAvoy." I look him straight in the eye. "The answer is not something I'm comfortable sharing with a stranger."

The creases in his forehead grow deeper. Rough knuckles scratch as his chin covered in salt and pepper stubble. "Well, I won't say what I know unless you tell me."

I pause before shrugging, as if relenting. "I got arrested," I begin, explaining the story I concocted on the ride over.

The way I figure it's really not a lie. I've been arrested in this plane, only it happened in Los Angeles. And if someone were to have me take a DNA test, it would prove we're related. Might even say little G and me are twins.

I carefully lay out the story, pieces of the last day I spent in this place, how I ran for help and came across the guy that I suspected set the building on fire.

"I chased him. Almost caught him, too, but... they said I was hit by a taxi. I don't remember it. The next thing I know, I'm waking up in in an ambulance, in handcuffs. They thought I was the guy. But I was cleared of all charges, I swear. There were other witnesses that saw the guy."

"No one else had the guts to chase him?"

"Guess not," I shrug.

Talking about what happened last time I was in this plane—even when it's in fabricated pieces—gets me riled. I don't have to fake anything. I'll never forget the blank look on my alternate fathers face as he sprawled on the floor, little G cradling his head. His mother was already gone and he lost his father that day. I was there, saw it all and couldn't stop it.

"Well, I wish I could help," Joe shakes his head with eyes softer than a moment ago. "After that day, nobody came back to the apartment. Not the wife or the kids. There were clothes in the closets and food in the fridge. I waited as long as I could, but I had to clean it out."

I nod, accepting that this lead is a dead end.

"I'll ask around. Come by next week, maybe I'll know something."

My tone sounds brittle when I thank him for the kindness. I don't have a week. Still, I smile, walk out, and hail a cab.

_This isn't good_ , I think, remembering the paramedic with the ponytail, how little G told her that his mother had left the day before and hadn't returned. She said they left a note for her in the house. But Joe said she never came back.

I remember the sweaty wad of money and feel the heavy sadness. My alternate father and me were standing on the fire escape. He was afraid, begging me to take the kids far away, and shoved a wad of cash at me.

Then the blast... Daemon killed him and orphaned his children.

52 Pushing Forward

I'm forgetting things again. I'm still taking my daily injections, but the memory is going.

It's nothing major, just little things, like the last time I ate and my mother's face. I can't remember what color her eyes were. Last time I was in New York, I didn't even consider waiting for her to come back. Even if I'd thought of it, I wouldn't have. I had to leave. But it's weird that I didn't think about it.

The Department of Human Services looks more like a Wall Street bank than a tax-payer funded government facility. But it doesn't run like one.

Abi is waiting on the sidewalk out front when I climb out of the cab. She looks nice, all prim and proper in her brown pin-stripe pants with a thick belt around her waist, and a tight burgundy top. Her fingers play with one large hoop earring. She really likes the look of late nineties. The long top of her hair falls in waves around her face, which is free of makeup, except for the pink lipstick she's wearing.

"I'm getting stonewalled," she says.

"Hello to you, too."

She gently smiles when I put my arm around her. "They won't give me any information unless I have ID."

"I thought you had your license with you?"

"G, it's 1998; my drivers' license says I'm twelve years-old."

Oh yeah. "Okay... let me try. This is a man's world, after all."

She punches me in the shoulder and steps back. "I'll be in the coffee shop across the street. If I get tired of waiting, which I will, I'll catch a movie and meet you back at the motel."

"The _Beastie Boys_ are playing Madison Square Garden tomorrow night. Want to go?"

She laughs and steps into the crosswalk. "Hell yes, but I want good seats. No tickets in the nosebleeds."

"It's the Garden. All the seats are good!" I holler as she walks across the street shaking her head.

Once she saunters into the café across the road, I turn back to the sleek building.

According to the information on the plate glass entry, Child Services has only been open for a few hours but it's busy as hell. I take a spot at the end of the information line and wait.

Forty minutes.

Only to be passed a stack of papers to fill out in triplicate and be sent to another window with a line a mile long.

I take the ridiculous pile of paperwork from a tray that's passed through a hole in three-inch glass.

"Can't you at least pretend to be concerned about global warming?" I raise the packet, "This makes you part of the problem."

I wait in line and try to fill out the papers with a dull half-pencil. But I don't have most of the information they want. I know the two previous addresses, but for the rest I have to get creative.

The line moves slowly. One person at a time, it dwindles in front and grows in back.

I take a step forward. One down, thirty-seven more to go.

I hope Abi enjoys her movie.

The line curves around corners and past trash cans, but goes nowhere near a drinking fountain.

Once I'm convinced I'll die of dehydration waiting to be helped, it's my turn.

The woman behind the bullet-proof glass at window three is cute. Tiny, shapely, dark complected with light brown eyes and glossy lips. She's wearing a bright red sweater and a smile.

When I step to the counter she asks for my paperwork, all business. I hand it over, and as she looks through, she checks off a list of items that are missing and then asks for identification.

I pretend I've forgotten my wallet, but that earns me no sympathy. In fact, she gets irritated. "I cannot process any requests or hand out information unless you have identification proving you are a family member."

My next move is stupid. A stupid idea that might be brilliant. But I'm desperate to get beyond the glass and so, I act like she's in the wrong. "I don't want to find anybody. I'm trying to get a damn job application."

The state worker is utterly confused when I change tacks, but wastes no time informing me that I am in the wrong line.

I pretend to be flabbergasted, not angry, but surprised, voicing my complaint in a mild tone. "I waited at the first window for nearly an hour so they could tell me to fill out this mountain of papers and move to this line to get my application. I've been in this line for," I check my nonexistent watch, "fifty-seven minutes. And now that I'm finally here, you're telling me, I didn't need to fill out anything? That I've been waiting for nothing?"

At this point, my only hope is getting into the back and poking around.

She smiles sweetly. "The security desk at the front of the building gives out applications. Sorry, sir, but your lost time is not my problem. Next!"

"Thanks for nothing."

At the security desk, which is really just a glorified podium with a shelf, I ask the double-wide security guard for an application and a tour of the facility for which I'm pretending to apply. He hands me a two-page application and informs me, "We don't do tours."

"Of course," That would make things too easy. "Why would you?"

The air is frigid, though the sun is shining. I walk across the street, checking the coffee shop for Abi. She's not there, so I move down the crowded block, against traffic, wondering what our next move is going to be.

I thought for sure we'd find something, but short of hiring a private investigator—which is out of the question due to time constraints—I'm out of ideas.

I don't like the uncertainty this leaves me with. I have no idea where little G and Carrie are or what happened to their mother. I don't know if Daemon found another set of stones. I don't even know which movie Abi ran off to see.

I don't feel like going back to the motel yet.

This is my umpteenth trip trouncing around New York and I still haven't seen much of it. Touching the Threestone nestled inside my jumpsuit, under my clothes, I decide to take the opportunity to do some sightseeing.

53 When Jackasses Fly

The Empire State Building is exactly 1,453-feet, 9-inches high. One hundred and two floors possessing 6,500 windows and seventy-three elevators. Or so say the tourist pamphlets.

I don't have to look at the pamphlets to know that the architecture is amazing. The mega-high ceiling inside the main entrance hall is illuminated with afternoon sun reflecting off passing cars. Its' golden glow colors tourist groups and marble floors. A bronze seal and picture of the landmark itself are embossed on a large wall behind the Information desk that sits at the end of a velvet rope chain.

Damn, it's nice in here. Everything is so shiny.

I listen to the tour guide talk about historic suicides on the way up to the eighty-sixth floor observation deck. There, I almost buy another ticket to get up to the one-hundred-second floor, pinnacle observatory, but decide to wait. I'd like to share that with Abi.

A blast of wind shocks me when the outer doors split open. I step out onto the observation deck and try to catch my breath. The view is so clear. Small dark clouds scattered like freckles on a blue face. It's all endless sky kissing the tips of buildings, encompassed by ribbons of sparkling water and more buildings. So many buildings. I see the bridge that leaves Manhattan, and the World Trade Center towers that might fall in a few years, if this plane goes the same direction as my own.

Turning from there, I walk to the opposite side, and pop a quarter into one of the viewing machines that's just opened. It takes a second to adjust so I can clearly see, but when I do, it's amazing. People that looked like ants are now much larger, shuffling in and out of buildings. Women standing outside a Montessori school are greeted by kids and backpacks. Some walk off in groups while others are loaded onto a short blue and yellow bus.

Down on the street, when the bus pulls away from the curb into traffic, I see a boy that looks like my younger self, but it's not him.

From inside the figure-eight viewing screen, I watch the slumping boy as he pushes his hands into his pockets. His brown hair is a little too long. One hand presses it up and back so it can flop back down into his eyes. Then, that same hand reaches for another, smaller hand.

The small hand belongs to a small, dark-haired girl with a cartoon pink backpack.

I watch the pair walk hand-in-hand, towards the street corner. As they wait for the light to change, I carefully, slowly nudge the viewer. The vision shakes. Seconds on the timed viewing machine tick away. I steady the clunky machine and strain to watch the people on the street below as they move out of range.

My clock runs out. The viewer shuts off.

Time to get back to the motel and meet Abi.

It'll take, probably, half an hour to get back down onto the street. The elevators have a line waiting to go up and down. The stairs would take even longer and I really don't feel like waiting. The constant congestion of the city makes me impatient.

Casting my gaze across the wide view, I think of Daemon descending from the corner of that apartment building. He floated from the roof, through fire and ash, and landed on the street. When I was trapped in that ancient world, I floated off the edge of the waterfall. I wanted to go back up and try it again, but couldn't find a path.

The glass and metal enclosure that surrounds the observation deck is high and tilted in.

I take a quick look around, dig out the stones from the pocket of my jumpsuit, and stuff them into my jeans. Then, stepping up onto one of the benches, I notice a few people stare at me, but no one says what they're thinking and I'm glad.

I know, it's crazy, but really don't care.

When most of the crowd gets bored and looks away, I stretch a step up onto the top of the viewer and use it to grab the high bars behind it. As I do, there's commotion and feet shuffling. Quickly, I pull myself up and over the pointed bars and slide my feet down to the concrete ledge outside the barrier.

The wind is amazing. Icy cold and strong.

People are yelling, begging, "Don't do it!" "Don't jump!" But I block them out.

I think of my little sister and her brother, torn about whether or not finding them is still a good idea. Because nothing I really want ever works out.

But with the stones, it's a different story.

The stones absorb any type of energy. Not just water power or heat, wind and sun, but also friction. Friction is energy. An object about to fall is filled with potential energy. Isn't that what they taught us in school?

A heavy-set security guard fumbles towards me, pleading with me not to jump.

"I'm not suicidal. I'm base jumping," I answer, remembering a news story about a guy who did it once in the early 2000's. He was at the top of the building though. I'm sixteen floors below where he was. Tapping my small black backpack, I try to reassure the guard. "I've got a parachute."

The wind is cutting and strong. But I think of the stones sitting inside the pocket of my jeans. Calling to them, I lean out, with eyes tightly shut and using all my strength, I push off the ledge.

Within the first second, I'm convinced I've made a huge mistake. My stomach curls and curdles. But then, the wind begins to drag.

When I open my eyes, the stones are resting in the air before me, glowing with comfort, hovering in their petal formation. I take them in my hand, holding on tight. Sure that, in this moment, I am invincible.

The earth below swells closer. Dots of people rush around. Cars stop in the street. Pedestrians stop and look up. I'm too high up to hear, too high up to care.

With arms spread wide, I lean to one side, shifting my weight, and my route leads left. For fun, I shift my weight back to the other side. And veer right. For kicks and curiosity, I straighten my legs, point my toes, and stretch my arms to a point over my head, like _Superman_. And shoot straight out.

No one hears the laughing but me. Gripping the Threestone, the warmth of thankfulness fills me. It's exhilarating, because they really are all-powerful.

Here's the glitch with flying: it's not really flying unless you've got wings. And I'm not a bird, so all I'm really just falling with style. There isn't much to do except go with the flow of the wind. And I do. For blocks and blocks.

Losing altitude, sticking the landing becomes an issue. Judging by the panicked expressions from every face that looks up to watch, I'm pretty sure there's no way to go explain this. Yeah, the chance for subtlety is long gone.

Since there's an audience, I opt for the dramatic. Pretending like I really am _Superman_ , I work to position myself to float down with one pointed boot. I manage to get myself perpendicular to the approaching pavement, but then realize that won't work. My speed has dwindled significantly but not enough for a gentle landing. So I've got to land in a run or eat concrete.

Just like an airplane. Nose up, wheels first.

When my foot touches down, I'm unprepared for the speed and roll my ankle. Momentum spins me and I fall. Ass first, back second, and head third. Like a ragdoll, I roll from cement to grass. One knee steams into a fresh pile of crap. I know it because the smell hits me, hard. Finally, I come to a stop, dizzied, breathless, brown smears down the side of my pants.

That... was... _awesome_!

First thing, I tuck the stones back into my suit pocket. And when I sit up, I'm surrounded by people. They're pointing and asking questions. One woman with a small girl on her hip wonders if I'm a crook with an invisible parachute. One guy is sure that I'm an alien walking among earthlings.

"Sure," I chortle, "I'm an alien that always seems to find and hit the dog shit."

An older woman with pointed glasses and a cream-colored sweater pales and hobbles away.

"That was insane!"

"You can fly?" Someone else asks.

When I get to my feet, the crowd understandably backs away. But instead of finding the street, I meet a sea of blue. The crowd hasn't parted for me, but for a troop of Policemen. Looks like a few were having lunch at a hotdog cart across the street. Others arrive in patrol cars with lights and sirens. All drawn by a man they watched fall from the sky. Slowly, and without a parachute.

They're each in threatening posture, even the ones with napkins still tucked into their collars. Wary eyes watch my every move.

The foremost officer holds out his hands, a move meant to say they come in peace. "We need to talk about how you did that."

"Why? Is this a no-fly zone?"

The cop tries to laugh.

"Look, Officer, it's a science experiment. The winds were too high and I missed my drop zone." I sigh, gesturing towards my shirt. "I have a permit. I can show you."

The cop nods his permission for me to make the reach. The moment I unzip the pocket of my suit, even before the stones are in my hand, the sirens fall silent. The flashing red and blue lights go out. Lights at the nearby intersection disappear. And I wish that the stones could stop time; that I could make everything around me freeze.

Time doesn't freeze, but the cops are distracted by the sudden power-outage that causes brakes to screech and metal to crunch in the nearby intersection.

It's just a split-second that the cops closest to me look away, but it's enough time for me turn tail and run.

54 Choose in Haste Regret in Leisure

_My ankle hurts_ , I think, as I run through an alley and hop a fence. It's not enough pain to slow me, just enough to get my attention.

With my backpack in one hand, I use the other to slip my shirt off and toss it in an open trash bin as I pass. Two blocks later, I round a corner and cut left into a small shop. I wave to a startled older woman between racks of lacy underthings before sprinting out the door on the opposite side. When I come out, I'm on another street, running full tilt by the time I hit the sidewalk.

The streets are crowded, lots of cars and even more people. I slow my pace, wanting to blend in. A cop on horseback eyes me a little too long, and I step into another clothing store on the corner. A minute later, I'm tripping out onto the next street without my pants. They were a little big and easily slid off. Now, I'm wearing only my jumpsuit and backpack.

The sirens are further now but I still hear them. A man in a _Giants_ cap gets in my way. I check him with my shoulder and take the hat, slipping it on my head and running down the block before crossing the street into the next alleyway.

When I come out the other end, I don't see any cops, but there is a taxi waiting at the curb. A fat man in a brown suit is trying to climb out. I pull him out of the way and climb inside.

The cabbie starts yelling something in what sounds like Farsi. A quick check of the meter tells me the man didn't get the chance to pay his fare. I toss him a ten, and then offer to double the fare if he can get me to my motel in under ten minutes.

He pulls away from the curb with a jerk and at least three honking horns. I sink low into the seat, rubbing my ankle and trying to catch my breath.

Stupid, stupid. Fun, but stupid.

* * *

Seventeen minutes later, I pay the driver with exact change, but leave him a tip. "It's not considered 'running a red light' if the car's already in the intersection when it changes."

The motel is small but nicer than the other's we've stayed in. The carpets are newer and the sheets aren't stained. It's next door to a decent Mexican-slash-Asian fusion restaurant that makes the lobby smell of Sriracha and cilantro.

The motel consists of two squat buildings with open corridors. Our room is in the second building, on the third floor, facing the pool. When I walk in, my gaze falls immediately to the unmade bed. But instead of feeling the warmth of Abi's presence, a streak of cold runs down my spine. Hairs on my neck and arms stand in warning.

A warning, because the brown striped pants and a wide belt she was wearing are lying across the comforter. Her strappy sandals are by the door. But I don't see her backpack and for some reason, that really bothers me.

"Abi," I call.

Silence.

Walking further into the room, I check the closet—nothing but empty hangers and a plastic laundry bag.

Her backpack was on the bed when we left this morning. She doesn't take her bag around the city like I do. Mine is the "go" bag. In case of emergency, we have everything we need to leave at a moment's notice: vitamin shots, M-Sat's and launcher, medical kit, cash, and one of the two guns with spare ammo.

After a quick look into the bathroom, I exhale and decide that there's no cause for concern. Just because she isn't in the room doesn't mean anything. She probably went down the hall to get some ice. Or next door to get dinner.

Only, why would she take her backpack and leave her shoes? And the ice bucket is sitting on the table in front of the window.

The curtains are drawn all the way open, filling the room with shimmering light reflecting off the pool. But I'm sure they were shut this morning when we left. Walking towards the table, I try to imagine what actions she took that would leave the room looking this way. Abi came in. Took off her shoes. Went to change her clothes—and opened the curtains?

Turning, I stand between the foot of the bed and the table when I spot the one small object that gives cause to every alarm bell ringing in my head.

It's the key card: Abi's key to the room is lying on the coverlet beside her pants.

55 The Anchor Or The Noose

I nearly froze to death the first time I visited the bitter plains of Ice World. But have never felt as cold as I do inside this room. The chilled feeling works through me from the inside out.

Outside the room, I'm running through the corridors yelling for her. Down on the sidewalk in front of the motel, I'm screaming her name.

The day manager in the office hasn't seen her since we checked-in yesterday. She's not in the restaurant next door or the one across the street. The hostess is sure no one fitting Abi's description has come by.

I take a deep breath and force myself to consider the fact that I'm overreacting because of all the crap that's happened.

A more likely, more realistic scenario is: Abi was in the room _before_ the movie, not after. She changed into something more comfortable, and took her bag for safety reasons. She knows I'd want her safe; armed and prepared. And she simply forgot her key. She has another pair of shoes. Hi-top sneakers she usually wears.

I haven't seen or heard of any crazy violence breaking out, and Daemon has no idea where we are. He's been to this plane already. He's got no reason to come back.

So Abi's fine. She's fine, she just forgot her key.

56 The Hardest Place

I'm creeped the hell out even though nothing looks amiss.

On the way back to the room, I take time to examine my surroundings. Everything is normal. No mysterious fires, no dead bodies, no broken windows or signs that anything is wrong.

Still, I can't shake this feeling in my stomach; my fingers absently trace the shape of the stones through my suit. And by the time I am two doors down, I think I know what's bothering me.

The door to our room is standing wide open. I don't remember closing it, but am sure I did. The motel room doors are heavy but don't have that spring-action that makes them slam shut the second you let go.

Slowly approaching the frame, I peek inside, relieved to find Abi is there. The moment I meet the threshold, I spot her and am flooded with relief. For a half-second, but then I really look at her.

She's standing in the middle of the entry, wearing only a shirt and underwear. She's still wearing the same burgundy spandex top from this morning, no pants. One sleeve is pushed up and her hair is a matted mess.

The alarm bells are ringing again, only this time it's because her eyes are so wide, her breathing so quick and labored.

When Abi sees me standing outside the door frame, the look in her eyes goes from worry to outright panic. She drops her gaze, ever so slightly. And that's just enough for me to spot the bright red dot crawling across her temple.

Her hand pushes away from her body, closer to me. At the same time, her lips pucker, as if to shush me without a sound.

That gesture brings understanding to the entire scene. She's not alone. I'm meant to think she is, but she's not. And it's not the kind of company that you don't want to get caught with. It's the kind of company you don't want to find you.

"Daemon?" I ask, lips only, no sound.

She blinks once and stands there, staring. I think, for the slightest moment, that her eyes veer to my left, to her side of the doorway. But I can't be sure because my mind is going a million miles a second.

How much noise did I make on the way up here? Was I careful? Who the hell knows, I wasn't concerned about anything except finding her. And now here she is, in front of me looking all scuffed and panicked with a laser scope on her head. I should have checked the shower. Why didn't I check the shower?

I've only been standing here a second but it feels like way too long.

I head-in, hard and fast. Jumping through the entry and kicking the open door back against the wall as hard as I can. There are three thumps between the door and the wall before it bounces back to me. I kick it back again as a familiar hand gun lifts, shakily trying to reach past the wooden barrier.

Abi says something, but I don't make it out. She's a blur in my periphery leaping away and landing on the bed.

I kick the door a third time and hear the _thud_ I've been waiting for. The sound of Daemon falling down. The smooth black Glock and attached laser scope fall out from behind the door.

At first I'm a little wary of how easy it was to knock him out, but then why shouldn't it be? I took his stones and hid them. If he has the missing set from Ivanhoe in the plane where I left him, then they're much weaker than mine. That means I'm stronger and faster.

Snatching the gun from the floor, I check that the safety is on and hold it out for Abi. The whole time, never taking my eyes off of Daemon's tattooed head flaccid against the blue carpet.

Abi curses. I feel the weight of the weapon disappear from my hand at the same moment the wood door sails back at me.

Daemon has jumped to his feet and he's charging. I jump away from the swinging door, overestimating the space between me and the edge of the bed. The door slams closed. I lose my balance and fall on my back, on top the bed. I'm trying to use the momentum to pop back up, but Daemon doesn't miss a beat. He leaps on top of me, his legs squeezing my shoulders.

One by one, his fists hammer at my face while I work to free my arms. My legs come up behind him. One knee into his back, and then another.

Finally I get an arm free. The other follows soon after. And I'm blocking him, moving so much faster than he is. Block and punch. Over and over.

Abi's screaming, "Get up!" and "Get out of the way!"

Two more hits and Daemon goes down, falls to the floor. I'm on top of him, now, wheeling one shot after another. And then I'm standing; kicking at the roots of his beard and chest as he rolls away.

He knocks into the table. The lamp goes down. He grabs it, hurls it at my head and then kicks the table over. I duck, but the lamp flies through the curtains and out the window.

Abi is still yelling, jumping back as Daemon keeps half-rolling, half-crawling in the only direction he can go: away from me. He starts to slink under the corner of the bed as Abi nears the open closet.

I stomp down on Daemon's calf, but not hard enough. He wiggles free and disappears, hiding under the bed like the coward he is.

"Get out," I whisper to Abi.

She's got the gun trained at the side of the bed nearest her. She nods her head and watches the floor at her feet.

Leaping up onto the bed, I guess she figures it's safer than trying to navigate around the broken glass without shoes, and risking Daemon grabbing her ankles. Honestly, I don't really know what she's thinking, because before I have a chance to ask, the whole bed frame flips sideways.

Abi and the gun go flying. In different directions.

Daemon is comes up behind the separated pieces of the bed while Abi launches directly at me. She knocks her head on the ceiling, comes back down. We crash into the table and fall to the floor.

Abi jumps off of me as fast as she can, but Daemon is already holding the gun and he's got it pointed at my chest.

"You can't kill me," I remind him. But then realize it's not actually true. He can kill me, but he can't make me stay dead.

His response is to shoot. The loud _bang_ of the Glock is followed by a massive swell of pain in my thigh. In the same second I feel a bite in my arm. Abi leaps at him, grabs his beard and swings all her weight in a downward thrust.

I have no idea what she's trying to do. It knocks Daemon off-balance, but he's a big guy and doesn't fall. Instead, he grabs Abi around the waist and uses her momentum in a counter-move that leaves her stranded at his side when she tries to move away.

Daemon uses both hands to spin her, yank her into his chest, trapping her back against his stomach and both of her wrists under one of his arms. With his other hand, he swings the Glock from me to her.

I freeze.

His low, hiss is followed by a bloody pile of spit on the carpet. "Where are they?"

Abi squirms and curses. The carpet around me runs red as Daemon presses the gun barrel into her temple and assures her that he has no problem putting her out of her misery.

She stops squirming, her big blue eyes falling on me.

Daemon repeats his question. "Where are they?"

The natural inclination is to tell him he can go screw himself because he just fucking shot me. Twice. But Abi...

"I don't have them."

Daemon's eyes flicker. "I know. I cannot sense them. Where are they?"

Barely able to stand, I shake my head. My left arm and leg have holes in them. My good hand clutches at the stones in the pocket of my jumpsuit.

Abi stomps on Daemon's foot and tries to wiggle away. His grip only tightens. He uses the gun barrel to lift her stubborn chin so she's looking at me when he tells her, "These are steel-toe boots."

Daemon glares back at me. "I could get them myself, you know. Tear through space and time."

_Bull. Shit._ "Why don't you, then?"

He smirks, as if the answer is obvious—maybe it is—and speaks slowly, emphasizing each word. "It would be fun to hunt them myself. Kill whoever is guarding them... but, then I would miss the pleasure of your fear. The terror in your eyes when I do this," He presses the Glock into Abi's cheek. She tilts her head away. He pushes until her eyes water.

And like a big pussy, I'm watching. Doing nothing but bleeding.

"She's not a Bearer. This is our fight. Let her go."

Daemon laughs. _Laughs_. Arrogant prick shakes his head as if all of this is so amusing. "You are too predictable, Gerry."

"And you always prey on the smallest, most vulnerable person."

Even through the worry, I spot the flare of indignation in Abi's eyes. But the facts are that she is smaller in stature and can only die once because she's not a Bearer.

"A useful technique I learned from a thief. It is cruel, but effective."

_Of course._ This is all about his need to get back at me, even though he struck first.

The ring of sirens in the distance fills the room with urgency.

Scoffing, I ask, "What am I supposed to do? I don't have them. I can't get to them."

Daemon's light skin washes red. His deeply set eyes tighten. "You will bring them to me or I will shoot her in the face while you watch. Then I will finish you, take your stones, and make my own way to the ones I seek."

My brain stopped working at the end of his first sentence, "I won't leave her—"

"You _will_ go, alone." He takes the gun from Abi's face and raises it to me. "Now."

Abi's eyes are overflowing.

The sirens keep getting closer.

"Go, G. Leave this place. Heal yourself and end this." I sense her double meaning and shake my head, because I can't quite fathom what she's saying.

The stones I left with Eli are more powerful than mine. If I bring them back to Daemon, he takes mine and this is over. Me, the travelling, the multiverse; it's all over. Daemon wins.

If I leave here, heal myself and forget about her—which is exactly what I think she's telling me to do—then I'm breaking my promise. The very one she reiterated this morning.

" _Don't leave me behind."_

Daemon shifts the Glock to aim at Abi. "Listen to the woman. She doesn't want to die."

Sirens and lights fill the parking lot. We're out of time. "If you hurt her—"

"Come back with my rocks and I won't."

Turning, I limp to the door, open it and hustle down the corridor towards the nearest corner. The second I am out of sight, I take the stones from my suit and ask them to open a gateway.

57 Unravel Me

There is nothing curious about being healed when I come out the other side. I expected it and am too dazed to care.

This plane is dark. I have no idea of where I am, but know it's not Langley. Looks like sometime in the twentieth century. The buildings look small compared to the First City, but are modern enough. Awnings covered with bird shit and a few scattered cars. There's a late night pharmacy and a gas station, also some kind of business complex across the road. I keep to my side.

The wind is cold and strong, whipping through the holes in my suit as I walk the deserted street. A line of cars are parked along the curb in front of a lone building on the next block.

Instead of passing the glass door entrance, I pull it open and tromp inside. If only to get out of the blustering wind.

Inside, is a well-lit foyer. A thin golden carpet covers the floor between me and another set of doors on the far side of a small lobby. A plain wooden table sits as the centerpiece in the entry. It's covered with stacks of pamphlets on Recovery, 12-step programs, and lists of AA groups all around the area. But there's no city named and I don't recognize the street names.

When I open the second set of doors, there is a long, plain room covered in the same golden carpet sprinkled with rows of chairs. There is one man with short, dark hair and tanned skin standing at a podium in the front of the room, addressing the crowd.

He's talking softly, holding a coin-like thing in one hand. As he lists his faults and sins against his family, he doesn't look out at the audience. He talks as if he's alone, rather than in a room full of people. "This chip marks thirty days since I quit drinking. It's not much, but it's more than I had thirty-one days ago."

The crowd of people remain seated, clapping as he walks to an open chair.

Another man takes his place. He's short, stalky, and older than me—already losing his dark hair. The man adjusts his square glasses and looks out at the crowd. His gaze skims passed me then comes back for a second perusal.

Until now, I've been leaning against the door. Feeling lost, I slink into the nearest chair and rest my head in my hands.

"My name is Christian King and I'm an alcoholic."

"Welcome, Chris," the crowd responds in unison.

"I used to be a Priest. I quit the Church when they told me I had to stop drinking. And still, most of you call me Father Chris."

There's a round of metered applause.

"It's been six years since my last confession—I mean, my last drink," A few laughs. "But seriously, I came here tonight because... well, because I'm a wind bag without a pulpit."

The chuckles spike and dissipate.

"Seriously though, I had an epiphany this morning, and thought it was worth sharing." He takes a deep breath. "As you all know, I've had my faith tested many times. I've assumed it was because I'm so weak—"

"You're strong, Father Chris!" Someone up front interrupts. A few more people join in with encouragements.

The long pause that follows has me pulling my face from my palms to watch the man standing at the podium.

His face is serious, sweeping his eyes over the crowd. "Remember, though, the ones who seem the strongest are often the same ones that feel weakness more keenly."

One person claps starts to clap, but changes their mind.

"We come here to find the strength to stay sober."

"Preach it, Preacher." Someone shouts, and Father Chris combs a hand over his thinning hair. He locks eyes with someone in the front.

"Not everyone believes in God the way I do, I know that, but don't tune me out or you'll miss the point.

"I was at the doctor yesterday. My annual check-up. I was looking through the magazines. Picked up one with an article about hurricanes and the power of wind."

He scans over the audience faces. "I find it ironic that our human nature desires power when our human condition is so weak and fallible. But we strive for it. Fight and kill for it. And when we get it..."

"Why do we want it, then?" a feminine voice chimes in.

"That's a great question, Mary. Why?" he asks the room.

"Because it's out there, in society," It's a man this time. "If we don't take it, someone else will."

"Yeah, and then they lord it over you," another man agrees. Several people nod in agreement.

"But why is power so important? Does having it mean we can use it the right way?" Father Chris's question stretches across the room. "What is the _right_ way?"

No one answers.

Father Chris moves on. "Power doesn't mean anything if you've got no strength to back it up."

"Aren't they the same thing?"

"No, power is your ability to influence others. But strength is formed in moments of resistance. It's your backbone. Your strength of will."

Father Chris keeps scanning the room. For a moment, his eyes find mine, and then drift away.

He sighs, taps the podium with one hand as he leans into it; a man seeking support from an old friend. "We addicts, we don't understand where our strength lies."

There are a few rumbles and whispers as the crowd waits for him to elaborate.

"We're all here because we've succumbed to weakness. Some with drink, others with drugs, sex, porn, and what-have-you. But we also, hopefully, have found some _strength_ in our suffering."

The clapping dissipates.

"Think on that for a minute."

After a moment of concentrated silence, he moves on. "My epiphany came when I got to thinking about how God is like the wind. None of us have ever seen the wind, but we know it's real. We've felt it. We've seen it move the leaves in the trees.

"What if human beings, created in the image of God, are also a little bit like the wind?

"It's important, because every emotional environment within our lives—our work places, our classrooms, and our homes—are directly correlated to the character of the one in charge of those environments."

He taps the podium. "When your boss is stressed out, so are you. When your spouse is anxious or upset, that impacts your well-being. Your emotional state changes... Just like wind changes. Directions and circumstances.

"If it gets to blowing hard enough, wind can shatter windows, topple buildings, uproot trees. I read that article in the magazine at the Doctor's office and learned that wind is the reason we have waves in the ocean. Did you know that? Water is the most powerful force in nature, but it is driven by the _wind_."

Father Chris pauses, letting the imagery sink in as he walks the small stage beside the podium.

"Now, I said all of that so that I can leave you with this: we need to stop accepting weaknesses as just that—weakness. We have to learn to see our short-comings for what they really are: strength in disguise. Strength waiting to be discovered.

"If we can learn to absolve ourselves of our destructive nature, we might just be able to harness it—to use it, so that the rock that almost drowned us might become the very foundation where we begin rebuilding our lives. Because in life, you either build on the rocks, or you get crushed by them. We either use our weakness, or let it continue to use us."

Father Chris shakes his head. "I'm sorry I went over my time, but I really wanted to share that."

He nods and steps away from the podium, disappearing into the crowd.

And I think I understand.

58 A Little Light

The Threestone are my burden. My weakness and greatest strength. So, either I use them or they use me. The question is: which one will it be?

I have been trying to manipulate these rocks since I found them, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes if the reverse were true.

Because I took the stones from the dirt. And so did Daemon. I took a set from the stone altar in that slow, ancient world. He took several sets from me. Then I took from him, too.

I've always assumed that _I_ chose my destiny, that I was the one who chose to take the burden of the Threestone, but they're supposed to be impossible to take from a Bearer.

And then there are the words my father said to Daemon, on that last DVD. Daemon wanted to know where the rocks were. My father told him, _"They aren't yours anymore."_ Anymore.

Unless he used a stronger set to absorb them and take possession Daemon would never get them back.

But the first man in my lineage to find the Threestone, he didn't have any authority or power, yet he was able to possess them.

The only plausible explanation then, is that the Threestone really are an entity of some kind, and the stones have some power in choosing who keeps them. Not me. Not Daemon. All of those exchanges happened only because the stones allowed them to.

If the first of my line was chosen, then so was my dad. So was I. But chosen for _what_?

My mind flashes from images of my father being strangled by Daemon, to ones of Abi, terrified and waiting for me.

Leaping from the seat, I run through the door of the small church before the meeting is over. Out on the street, around the corner, I stop in a space between street lights and take out the Threestone; the rocks that have had me mesmerized from the first time I saw them.

I love these rocks. It feels odd to think it, but whether that makes sense or not doesn't matter. They're part of me, and I'm a part of them. If they really are calling the shots, then I have to assume they know what they're doing.

Even the fact that I'm in this plane has to be because the stones brought me. I didn't ask to come. I thought I was headed to Langley.

Before asking the Threestone to open another gateway, I look at them. Make myself appreciate what they are and what they've done. Then, I do something I never thought of, I ask them to help me take the next step. Whatever that means and wherever it leads. No matter how much it costs.

If something happens to Abi, I won't be able to forgive myself, and if another universe crashes and dies because of a choice I make, I won't be able to deal with that either. So, I ask the stones to make the choice for me. I ask them to absolve me, to open a gateway into the next plane. I want them to take me to the very spot I am supposed to be in.

Then, wherever I end up, I'll know what comes next. I'll do what I can and trust that it's enough. To hope it's enough to save the one I love.

It feels cowardly, relinquishing control like this. But the truth is, if the stones are anything close to what they seem then I never had it to begin with. I only thought I did.

When I think about it— _really_ think about it—submitting to the power of the stones is more than just difficult, it's also really gratifying.

59 The Beginning of the End

Unnamed colors of the gateway dissipate as I step out to find myself inside a wide corridor. There are no lights on, but I don't need them to recognize this bland, familiar hallway.

On the doorway in front of me is a sign that reads: _NASA Contingency Research Laboratory_.

I can tell by the lack of light from the high window at the end of the hallway that it's late in this plane.

The building is closed. The lab door is locked.

I set the stones inside the pocket on my utility belt and kick at the door frame. It pops open with two, solid kicks just above the knob.

The lights inside the lab are on a sensor. As soon as there's movement, the main lights turn on.

Bypassing the tables full of weird looking metal contraptions—mystery projects in development or more of those electromagnetic wormhole generators—I head for the door to one side of the glass partition. When it won't open, I kick it. When kicking it doesn't work, I grab the fire extinguisher from a cabinet in the wall and slam it through the glass at the top of the door. Reaching through the glass, I unlock the knob from the inside. At the second doorway, it's the old same song; smash the glass and unlock it from the inside.

Then, before me, set on top of a long table, is the metal box that houses the triangular machine. It's still spinning the ball that's holding Daemon's stones. I step over to a high switch on the wall—the one I saw Dr. Harris flip to turn the machine one—and press it down.

Immediately, the smeared air around the ball becomes clearer. The ball begins to slow. The hum of the machine dies down.

Finally, when the ball stops spinning, the three prongs supporting it open up. The ball drops into my waiting hands. I stuff the whole thing into my backpack and make my way back out of the lab.

Passing a table, I pick up a pen and sheet of paper. Scribbling a note to Eli, I let him know what's happening to Abi and why I have to take the stones.

I'm sorry, but there's no other way.

Back in the hallway, I close the broken door to the lab and open the gateway, asking the stones to take me where they will.

60 High-Time For Change

As I hoped and feared, the stones take me back to the motel in New York City.

It's dark here, too, but this town never sleeps. The streets are a little lazy, but there's still traffic and lots of neon signs in nearby shops bragging that they're still open. I can't guess the hour, only that it must be very late. Or early.

The motel is sleeping mostly; only a few rooms with lamplight halos stretching over curtains. The office is closed and the corridor leading up to the room where I last saw Abi is unremarkable.

The room we shared is exactly how I expect to find it: cordoned off with police tape. The broken window has been boarded up. And no one is inside.

Hustling back to the street, I cross over to the opposite side where there's a small newspaper stand. It's not open yet, but a small stack of newspapers lie bundled on the sidewalk just behind it. There's enough light to read the date in the corner of the page; it's Thursday. I left on Monday. I was gone a few hours at most and three days have passed.

With nowhere to look and nothing to do, I start down the street—hyperaware of my surroundings. Daemon had three days to plan his trap.

Rows of houses and apartments, and small businesses pass under the moon while I do my best to formulate a way to get Abi away from Daemon. Without giving him the stones.

It isn't long before the first notes of dawn are playing across the dark sky. I stop at a chain store to buy an overpriced coffee.

Waiting for him to find me is the worst. It's all I can do not to jump out of my skin at every move on the road. Every person is a potential threat.

The city wakes before the sun rises. The noise level triples with cars, horns, garbage trucks, walkers, cyclists, joggers, families walking teams of dogs, and thousands of people strutting down the road.

A man at the counter behind me complains about the TV reception. I keep my eyes on the street.

The television mounted on the wall of the café is suddenly very loud. I turn to the noise, but can't say anything—I'm shocked at the news stories playing over the flickering screen.

The phrase, 'global disaster' flits across the top of the screen, all capital letters. The news anchor is going on about a meteor shower over Japan last night. They run a few eye witness videos, obtained by a local station and some pictures of lights in the midnight sky. On top of that, the ticker at the bottom of the screen tells of an earthquake in the ocean—estimated an 8.9 on the Richter scale—which has spawned a tsunami, now heading for Thailand. But the biggest, most important story that has every employee in the shop gathered in front of the TV is the next one they run. About the high-tides.

The news anchor, dressed in a sharp blue suit, disappears as an animated picture covers the screen. The anchor narrates, telling viewers that the moon has drawn dangerously close over the past few months. While scientists are baffled, everyone along the east and west coast is advised to stay off the beaches in light of the impending storm.

That story alone is enough to clear half the coffee shop. So only a few people hear the irritating beep that signals a warning from of the _National Weather Service._

A category-four hurricane, _Hilda_ they're calling it, is expected to rip through the eastern seaboard. All coastal cities from Portland to Atlantic City should take immediate precautions against flooding. They name the cities expected to get hit the hardest—the ones that should begin emergency evacuation procedures. There are at least a dozen names on the list. Long Island and New York are the ones that make me cringe.

"That was supposed to make landfall down near the Carolinas." Someone behind me says.

"Shhh!"

I've seen enough.

On the street, the commotion I saw before looks less like people anxious to start their day and more like worried families trying to leave the city.

When I step outside, most of the other patrons file out behind me. There are so many people. More motorcycles and cars than I have ever seen are clogging the road. No one notices me or my weird jumpsuit. They push past, shoving my shoulders and swearing.

Then, the sense that I'm alone, slipping under the radar, disappears. It's subtle; barely noticeable within this shift of the city's boiling temperament. But I sense it and look around to see who might be watching.

Directly across the street from the café is a blank building—looks like some kind of business, but there aren't any signs to indicate what kind—it's five-stories high. For some reason, my gaze is drawn to the rooftop, where I spot a lone figure. Thin and blonde, with waving arms.

_Abi_. I don't need to dig out my binoculars to verify, because I'd know her anywhere. It looks like her mouth is moving, too, but the distance and noise blocks her calls.

In my mind, she's been tied-up and gagged inside some dank, rat-infested basement. But no, she's there, on the roof of a building. With her arms free, trying to flag me down.

_Is she alone?_ As I ask myself the question, the cold feeling creeps up my spine and I know she's not trying to flag me. She's trying to warn me.

Three steps backward have me standing back inside the café. No one is at the counter, so I hunker down behind it. Out of sight.

Daemon is close. He senses the stones and he's coming for them.

61 Satellites and Airplanes

I need to know where he is, but can't let him get close.

Abi's stuck on that rooftop. I need to get her and make sure she's okay. That's probably what Daemon wants, though. He's probably counting on me to go charging up there.

But if it's a trap, and he is up there waiting for me, then Abi would know it. And she wouldn't wave. Would she?

What would make him leave her up there alone?

The woman who served my coffee comes out from a back area. She whips past with a set of keys in her hands, unaware that I'm hiding near the register as she scans the empty dining area.

I hear the _clink_ of the door locking and her footsteps as they move closer. In a crouch, I slink from the area behind the register to the other side of another section of counter, hoping she won't spot me.

Her footsteps carry down the short hallway and disappear.

That's when I start laying out my terms to the Threestone.

If this is the way it has to be, I've got no problem confronting him. But don't let him take You.

And don't let him hurt anybody. Especially Abi. Please.

After a deep breath, I make myself focus.

Stealth, I need stealth.

Peeking around the side of the counter, I watch people hurrying by the plate glass store front; men and women, children. Daemon.

Daemon slithers past the main door of the café and pauses. He tries the door. When it doesn't open, he draws both hands to his face and cups them around his eyes to block the morning glare, and look through.

Did he see me in here? Was he watching since before I spotted Abi?

I draw back from my position and start crawling. The mouth of the hallway is just a few feet away. Most of the view is blocked by the counter, so I should be able to pass undetected and sneak out the back.

Just as I'm about to crawl into the corridor, the manager reappears. I see her feet—one with a sock and the other one with only red toenail polish. She screams.

The sound has me leaping up, shoving her aside, and running down the hall. When I spot the back door, I hear glass breaking up front. But I'm out the back of the shop and into the alley in no time.

Daemon's not far, I can feel him. Also, the manager is screaming.

Looking right, I consider trying to lose him in the crowd on the sidewalk, but it's so packed it'll only slow me down. So I cut left, passing several groups of people who've got the same idea as me.

When I pass the third building, I've come far enough to see the dead end around the next corner and jump a reach for the ladder to the nearest fire escape.

When I'm half way to the roof, Daemon appears on the street below; his bald head reflecting the morning light, his trench coat swinging in the breeze of his gait.

"Give them to me!"

I feel the metal ball inside my backpack jump and start climbing faster. When I reach the roof, Daemon is just starting up the fire escape.

I cut back to the right, running across the roof, leaping when I hit the edge, begging the stones to take me over the wide gap. After landing on the next rooftop, and then the next, I reach the last structure at the corner.

Without slowing, I jump, dropping gracefully into the street and keeping to the spaces under the awnings as I fight my way through the packed sidewalk, heading over to the building where Abi waits.

A loud crashing sound rings from up ahead. Heads of hair become faces as a mass of people turn around at the same time. Fear: it's the general consensus rippling through the throng.

It's contagious. A woman sees a man running her direction and turns, fighting her way into a sprint before she even knows why. Another person sees her running, and does the same. The scenario repeats a hundred times over in a matter of seconds.

The crowd morphs into a mob. People jumping from their cars, a few men fight policemen for their horses as a motorcycle rips through the multitudes.

Everyone is suddenly rushing the same direction. Back the way I came. Rather than fighting the wall of people, I jump onto a bus bench and climb up onto the overhang to find what we're all supposed to be so afraid of.

There's a plume of smoke rising just up the block. My hands grope for the stones in the pocket of my suit, begging them to clear a path.

While waiting for one to reveal itself, I spot a pair of bright red eyes on top of a bald head weaving through the crowd behind me. _Daemon_. He's not moving very fast, but he's moving. While I'm standing still.

I lunge for the nearest surface, which happens to be a man's shoulder. Then another shoulder and an open umbrella.

"Sorry," I say, with each step, as I hoof-it over the rushing crowd. Another foot lands on top of a cart piled high with suitcases. And then a teenager. The next, I don't care, because I'm finally making haste.

When space is sufficient, I hop down and start climbing over the abandoned cars, jumping between them and the desperate people scattered in between.

When I reach the source of the smoke in the road, the pyre is smaller than I imagined. Still about the size of a car, but it takes a second to understand the shape of whatever it was. It looks like a heap of scrap metal, except for the NASA logo blazing on one side. Then I notice the broken concave plate glued to the asphalt. A downed satellite.

As I'm staring at the pile, I'm still moving because I've got to stay ahead of Daemon.

Someone screams. Another yells, "Look out!"

Dozens of people duck, but I look up.

A fiery black and white shape is zipping across the sky between shiny buildings. I can tell by trajectory it's going to fall nearby.

I'm running again, over a few more cars, crossing the street, ducking through a broken lobby door, and leaping up flight after flight of stairs.

The building suddenly shakes. I miss a step and fall to my knees. Chips of sheetrock pepper the air. A new crack forms in the wall of the stairwell. I keep going, over a landing, through another set of doors and one more flight of stairs. A short hallway and one more door.

Then—finally—I'm on the roof of the building, searching for Abi.

Shouting her name, I hunt the billows of smoke that block my view of the street. It looks like the Cessna airplane hit the corner of the building, ripping it to pieces. Bits of the plane are everywhere. Part of one wing and the fuselage are burning.

"Abi!" I call and wait. Then call again and wait.

Over and over, I do this, sifting through the smoke and ash in each part of the roof. Did she see it coming? Did she run?

There's a sitting area near the back of roof, surrounded by potted trees. Breaking through the green makeshift barrier, I find her shifting uncomfortably between bands of passing smoke.

She's on the ground, leaning against the side of a small table. Wearing the same dark clothes as when I last saw her. Why didn't she answer me? Why is she squirming like that?

I call her name again, but she doesn't turn.

Falling to my knees beside her, I scoop her up. "I found you."

She's crying, shaking and sobbing.

"You're okay. You're safe. I'm here."

Her clothes are soaking wet. Pulling back, I see that she's bleeding. Her side and shoulder along with my hands and chest are stamped with red and scorched black.

_No_.

"G," She whimpers, her head tucked down, looking at the wide chunk of shrapnel sticking out from her waist. Her words come out fast and garbled. "Hel- I can't see it. I seal but can't see."

Moving around to her other side, I touch her hair. There's no blood in her hair, so I touch that, tipping her head up, for a closer examination of her shoulder and side. But when I turn her head, the entire right side of her face is swollen and red, covered in blisters.

"There's nothing to see, Ab." I say, trying to distract her, to sound calm.

The first-aid training I got from DHS floats through my head and I remember that she needs to remain calm. If she goes into shock she could die.

Taking the stones from my jumpsuit, I hold them near her face and ask them to do their magic healing thing. Over and over again, I trace a line with the stones across her body, touching where I can and pulling back around the cuts. But nothing happens. Nothing changes.

_Dammit_ , she looks like the plane tried to land on her.

Abi squirms and says something I can't understand. Her face seems to swell even more and the blood from the wound on her side isn't slowing. And I didn't notice at first, but she's clearly got a broken leg.

"Let's get you out of here."

When I lift the stones to trigger a gateway, Abi's hand locks over my arm. She shakes her head. Swollen blistered lips form her plea, "I. want... to stay... with-you."

"Okay, Ab. But first, we need to get you to a doctor."

She whimpers and takes a long blink. A bright red line falls from the corner of her mouth, matching the tears spilling from one eye. When she looks at me again, I see the pain and hear her pleading. "Don't leave me."

"Never," I promise, "Never again," and trigger the gateway, begging the stones to take us directly to the doorstep of the people that will save her.

The funnel cloud jumps to life, stretching into the great beyond. Tearing the chunk of metal from her abdomen, I lift my girl and carry her through.

In one step, we reach the other side of the portal.

Over here, the night is cool and dark. Red and white lights flash from a sign at the entrance of a hospital emergency room. She's limp in my arms when we come through the electric double-doors.

62 A Happy Ending? What's That?

I'm folding my arms, holding a paper cup full of shitty coffee, and playing the game, like I'm supposed to.

Gesturing to my form-fitting bodysuit and matching sneakers, I start the story again. "I was out for a late night run. I heard a loud noise, but didn't see anything until I jogged around the corner."

Pause for emphasis. Try not to see what she looked like on that rooftop when I blink.

"I found her like that, on the side of the road. I thought she'd been run over or something. I have no idea what happened and she was too unconscious to tell me."

"But you two know each other?" The cop asks.

He doubts me. Of course he does. I've got no proof to back up anything I'm saying. He's a well-trained bullshit detector and I am in it up to my eyeballs.

Looking at his freckled face, red hair and small eyes, I wonder how badly he was teased as a child and if that's what led to him becoming a cop. Freckly red-headed kids are cute, but they're always targets.

"Yes. She's my wife."

It's been seventeen hours and I still have no idea what year it is. At first, I didn't care. I was too worried about Abi. But she's going to be okay. Probably scarred and in need of several months of rehab and recovery, but she's going to live and that's all the matters.

Now that inevitable situations and questions have had time to develop, I'm thinking I need to know what year it is. I'm pretty sure it's early into the new millennium, so I'm trying to keep as close to the truth as possible, for Abi's sake.

"How long have you been married?"

I sigh, "Five years, I think. Give or take. Look, Officer, can I please get back to my wife? I have no idea what kind of trauma she's been through. I don't want her to wake up and freak out when she can't find me."

His posture relaxes. This is the second time he's attempted to talk to me and I've tried to seem accommodating, but have zero patience for this time-consuming activity.

I need to focus on Abi.

63 My Dearest Abilene

It's July 1st, 2020.

We've been here for two days and in that time Abi's had three separate surgeries. The doctors induced a coma to control the swelling on her brain.

I think we are in Abi-Two's home world because one of the nurses found her ID in her pants and the years lined up. He informed me of his discovery and I acted like I was glad.

Then, without my permission, he dug through the hospital records until he came up with her medical history. I assume he's gone down her 'in case of emergency' contact list, because later in the day, her parents show up.

Her snobby mother and shitty father waste no time getting in my face. Neither looks close enough to notice that I'm not her husband. They just yell and blame me for everything, for her disappearing and not calling, for her injuries. For all the injustices they can think of.

And I take it, fully and willingly. She never should have been in a position to get hurt.

G-Two's dad shows up right when the hospital room starts to settle down, catching me off-guard with his sharp eyes and vigor.

He shakes his gray head, recognizing me right away. But he acts like I'm his son. So I act like he's my father, and hug him hard.

* * *

Abi's mother wants some time to be alone with her daughter, so I agree to go to the ICU waiting room. My alternate father follows suit.

"What was she doing with you?" G-Two's dad asks without judgment. Or he's being passive-aggressive and I'm too preoccupied to notice.

We're the only people inside this waiting area in the middle of the night, so I open the flood gates and tell him everything that's happened from the moment I left this plane to pursue Daemon, to the moment he walked through the door of her hospital room and I saw his face fall with recognition.

When I'm finished, he sighs and says nothing.

A few minutes pass before he shakes his head, rises from his chair and takes to pacing.

I wait in guilty silence. My head knows he's not my father. I can't make my heart understand.

When he's about to wear a hole in the carpet, he finally stops and turns to look down at me.

"I am going to say this one time, and then you're leaving."

Looking up at him, I adjust myself in the hard seat, reading his thoughts before he speaks them.

"You're an _idiot_ to travel with her." He wipes his hands through his thinning hair, his pale face washed red with anger. "It's bad enough I couldn't stop my son from getting married, but then you hand her over to that demon!"

He starts pacing again. "What were you thinking, trying to build a relationship with her in the middle of all of this shit? No. Uh-uh. You're leaving. Today."

I stand up. "I can't, I promised her—"

"This is bigger than your promises! Do you understand me?" He seems to have grown since I stood up.

I look to the floor like it's the most interesting thing in the world. I don't want to hear this. He's right, but I can't hear it.

He grips the material of my suit, twisting it in his hand. "You course-correct. Go back there without her so Daemon knows you're travelling alone. You face him and finish this mess before he does it for you. Do you understand me, boy?"

The words "Yes, sir," slip out before I can stop them. And I hate myself a little more because I knew from the outset that having company was a bad idea. But, I hate feeling so alone all the time. And then, I was too selfish to consider going on without her after she chose me.

I knew what was right and still did the wrong thing. Now Abi is paying the price.

"You're wasting time and probably killing this universe even faster with the two sets of stones."

That drags me out of the dark. My spine straightens because I was so concerned about Abi that I hadn't even thought of that.

"I'm an _idiot_."

G-Two's father is nodding his head. "Jumping from one plane to the next—for what? To look into the past? 'Go back and check' my ass. You're wasting time and people are _dying_ , G." He looks me in the eye. "The human race is an endangered species in some planes. You are the only one with the power to stop it and you're sitting here like her life is the only one that matters."

Wiping my sweaty palms on my pants, I start to apologize, but then my alternate father stops me with "Do something about it, son. She will understand."

I nod, knowing that after what's happened, Abi wouldn't want me to sit around waiting when I could be helping people. "Tell her I'm sorry."

"I will. You go get the bastard and don't look back."

There's an awkward hug between us as I thank him for the wisdom and head out.

It takes a monumental effort to turn the opposite way down the hall. Her room gets further with every step. My mind conjures a million reasons to stay until she wakes up.

All of them are valid. Abi would hate me sneaking off like this. But I tell myself that it's not the end for us so there's no need for a parting conversation. It'd be a monologue anyway, with that breathing tube down her throat.

That tube is there because of me, though. She's here because she's close to me.

On the hospital rooftop, I'm ready to do what Abi-Two's father in-law says I should do. Because he's right: I was so caught up in her that I wasn't thinking about the bigger picture.

I know exactly where to go and what to do next. I'm the only one the stones will protect. And I can't move forward when I'm constantly looking back.

So I think of her smile. Of the way she kissed me that first night inside the mountain. How brave she was, staring down the barrel of a gun to protect a little boy she'd just met. That's how I'll think of her, strong and brave. Always.

And I imagine all of those feelings and moments are tucked inside a room, and slam the door shut.

64 But-But it Was Right Here

Holding the Threestone out in front of me, I ask them to take me back to World Two.

They glow from within, but there is no burning heat emanating from them. They don't float, but still lay there as a ribbon of blue smoke and fog build in a swirl. It climbs into the air, but doesn't touch the sky, catch on fire, and then open a rainbow wormhole. It remains a ribbon, tracing a large circle, like a picture window in the air.

I watch, not understanding what's happening when the window fills with fog. The air inside it cracks and breaks apart like a mirror and I'm reminded of the window in Ivanhoe, the one that showed me dead, empty fields.

The air shatters to reveal nothing on the other side. I'm literally looking into nothing. A vacuum, a blank canvas that (I think) once held space. There are no more stars. It's as if the vacuum is bragging about holding everything and revealing nothing. A vast valley, heavy with the absence of everything.

The fog disappears and so does my confusing glimpse into whatever that was.

The stones lay in my palm, quiet and unassuming. I watch them, wondering if they need more energy. But I haven't concealed them in a rubber pouch since I took them back from General Jacoby. I haven't needed to. They don't steal energy like they did before. Or maybe they do, at lower levels.

Still, this blank window is confusing.

Holding the stones out again, I ask them to take me back to the New York where I killed Daemon and stole his stones.

The Threestone light up again. No floating. No burning my palm. And no gateway. The fog and smoke build in a thin, shaky line that traces another circle in the air before me. Then, the air shatters and breaks away revealing the same dense nothingness.

It's so hot out here. The air is thick with summer heat, even though the wind is blowing.

Irritated, I give the stones a little shake to get their attention. "Are you doing this on purpose? Are you trying to tell me Daemon isn't in those other worlds? Or that I'm making a mistake?"

Of course they don't answer. And, of course, I'm making a mistake. Forgetting something vital.

So I ask the Threestone to take me to Eli-Two because I should return the set in my backpack to the lab.

* * *

It's already summer-time here at the Langley Research Center in Virginia.

I'm standing under a tree, watching Eli and Doctor Harris, who are sitting at a crowded outdoor table in a large shaded area happily conversing with a group of people about whatever the hell scientists joke about.

Eli lifts his head, laughing at something and I wave, trying to catch his eye. His face straightens. He taps Dr. Harris on the shoulder and whispers something to her. She nods her head and the two of them get up from the table and walk right over to me

Eli pulls me into a quick hug, slaps my back, and then dives into questions about what's happened since I left the note about Daemon having Abi.

I tell about the downed satellite, the chaotic weather, and the crash when Abi got hurt, and that I took her home.

"She's with her family. She'll make a full recovery." Maybe she'll even forgive me.

Opening my backpack, I pull out the metal ball I took from the wormhole machine. "I'm going after Daemon now, but I needed to bring these back first, for safe keeping."

Eli takes the ball and rolls it in his hands before offering it to Dr. Harris. "Check that, for me?"

Her whole face lights up. "I usually hate being wrong. I was sure we lost them." Then her expression dims as she takes the ball and lifts it up and down a few times.

Eli watches her, asking, "It's off, isn't it?"

"Off what?"

Dr. Harris nods and looks at me. "Did you open this?"

"I don't know how."

Eli suggests I take a few steps back as Dr. Harris fiddles with the ball. But before I can get far, it pops open.

Eli removes the rubber pouch and shows it to me. "It's empty."

"What?" I'm back beside them, taking the limp rubber pouch and checking it myself.

It is empty.

"That's impossible. He never touched me, never even got within fifty feet."

Eli's rubbing his temples. "Why would he need to when all he had to do was _call_ them?"

Leaning against the nearest tree trunk, I cover my face with my hands. "Two steps forward and five leaps back."

Dr. Harris clears her throat. "Sometimes I hate being right."

"Eli... I—" I don't know what to say except for, "I'm sorry."

Oh jeez. I could kick my own ass right now. Stupid, stupid, stupid. First Abi, then the windows of nothing, and now this. Slipping down the tree trunk, I fall on my ass and stay there.

My hand immediately finds the stones in my suit and cradles them. Apologizing for being a clueless dick.

"Hey," Eli sets a hand on my shoulder. "It was an accident."

"You can get them back," Dr. Harris adds. "All you have to do is catch him off-guard, like last time."

"And strand him in a plane where there aren't any more stones to find," Eli adds.

Their encouragement sounds very much like the plan me and Abi concocted a few days ago.

"A sneak-attack is the only one that's worked so far," she'd said. And I agreed, but she was supposed to be there, helping. She was going to create a distraction and bait Daemon. Now she's lying in a hospital bed.

My eyes feel hot, the backs of them trying to fill. The voice of my father bids me to " _Suck it up,"_ because no one ever said this was easy. In fact, I was guaranteed it would be impossible.

Then, I remember that I'm used to doing things the hard way and force myself to stand. "Guess I better get going, then."

At the request of Dr. Harris, I allow her and her flourishing _Contingency Research_ team to observe the phenomena of the gateway.

I figure it would be cool to share this small part of my travels with other people. So, instead of sneaking off to some obscure corner I wait for her and Eli-Two to call the rest of the group from their sitting area. I don't know how much they've been told about the Threestone, but the new group of scientists are mystified when he orders them to, "leave any and all electronic devices one the tables for the time being."

Eli gives the group a brief explanation of what they're about to see, calling it a weather experiment. But the way everyone gasps with excitement makes me think he's using coded language.

Dr. Harris recommends they keep a minimum distance of fifty yards, which sparks a squabble over proper distance and radiation protection that goes on for at least ten minutes.

I'm thoroughly irritated by the time it's all settled and Eli finally gives me the nod.

Three colored rocks turn from merely striking, to outright amazing as they glow bright in my palm. The gateway spins into existence; all blue fog and fire. Right there in the quad, with a dozen Bill Nye wannabe's watching, I disappear into the burning cyclone.

It's kind of gratifying the way their faces light—like they've reached _Nerdvana_.

65 Sometimes You Just Gotta Go For It

When I come out on the other side of the gateway, I have no idea what city I'm in.

It's obviously a metropolis, but the wind is too strong and hot. Its day-time but the sky is covered in thick dark clouds. And it's raining heavily. Sideways.

My feet are wet up to the ankles. The sidewalks are flooded.

Gripping the stones in one hand, I ask them to cover me, to get me out of this storm and help me find Daemon. I asked the stones to take me wherever he is, so he's got to be around here somewhere.

The wind stops. Well, it keeps blowing everywhere else, just not in the space immediately around me. Studying the invisible calm, I reach my hand out and feel the hard, hot wind at me fingertips. It's like being under water and breaching the surface. There's no barrier, you're just suddenly out and you detect it by the feel of the elements. The wind and air.

Wiping the water from my face, shaking it from my hair, I take a good look at the cityscape.

Sleek glass towers jutting into the sky. The streets are flooded. There are a lot of people on this wide concrete area between skyscrapers—all on billboards, and mostly in their underwear. The figures stretch five-stories high. Jumbotrons with ads for Broadway shows and department stores flicker in the high winds, their mounted frames shaken by the storm. Mirrored glass and stone buildings behind giant golden arches loom heavily overhead. Paper and trash bags fly on the wind.

This has to be New York.

Moving further into the open, I step over a short wall of sandbags and down into the street, surprised that the water nearly hits my knees.

Cars are stopped in the middle of a six-lane road that intersects West 46th Street. The lights at the intersection are still working, but not all the cars move on green. Some don't have people inside.

Amazingly, there are individuals trying to walk in this storm. They're barely standing in the high winds, moving from parking meter to lamp post, to street sign, hanging on for dear life. Three people are huddled in a small rowboat, paddling quickly down the watery throughway, using the oars to push around stalled cars.

It's the kind of shot you see on the news when reporters are talking about a big storm. They always show the ones who get creative.

I'm so amused by this little scene, this small moment of normalcy among the strange, that I almost miss the figure up the street. The figure that isn't running, isn't being blown around or fighting the wind. It's a calm figure in a faded black trench coat, strolling down the middle of the flooded road.

The sound of his unfettered whistling carries on the wind and I don't have to be able to see him clearly through the blurry rain to know that it's Daemon.

And if I see him, then he already sees me.

There's a question I've been considering since I learned I could lose my Threestone if I get too close to him: How am I supposed to fight a person I can't get close to?

As if the universe is determined to answer, a nearby car jostles in the rising water. The back end of a compact Toyota lifts and is carried sideways before coming to rest a few feet away.

I think of the first time I found Daemon, back in World Two, when he was floating from the corner of a building. He used his power over the stones to lift a dumpster over my head.

He also threw a motorcycle at me and crushed a car with the palm of his hand.

If he can do it, so can I. Right?

66 Burning Bridges and Everything Else

With the Threestone tucked firmly into the zipped pocket of my jumpsuit, I beg them to help me. And reach my empty hand towards the Toyota that's trying to blow away.

Imagining my hand gripping the cars bumper, I raise my arm. The car shudders, creaks. Then the bumper leaps off and goes flying down the street. It lands on one end, like a spear, only a few feet from Daemon.

He smiles. That fucker _smiles_! And leans into a run, heading straight for me.

I've got no choice but to run, to keep the distance between us as wide as I can.

Come on, Threestone. If you need more power, take it.

A buzzing noise, barely discernible over the sound of the storm, hums around me and the electronic screens surrounding the plaza flicker out.

An electric cable overhead breaks. Sparks bounce out, dancing into a fizzle. The lights in the windows of the high-rise buildings disappear. Heat emanates from the pocket on my chest and makes me smile.

I love these rocks.

Up ahead, a little ways past the people in the rowboat, is an empty compact car in the middle of the road, half-filled with water. Locking my gaze on it, I reach my hand out, just like before, imagining my grip is large enough to lock around the cabin. The car wobbles.

With a quick turn to one side, I get closer to the car, stomping through the water and stealing a look back. Without effort, the car lifts, swoops over my head and smashes down behind me.

Daemon hoots.

The ground slops up ahead. The water shallows, letting me move faster.

I grab another empty car, a small Italian contraption I've never heard of, and toss it over my head and behind me. It smashes in the path between us.

Daemon has to run around it if he wants to keep pace. As he does, I toss three more, in a row. Then two more, side-by-side. The noise is amazing. The sight unimaginable: sparks and crunching metal. I wish I could stop and stare. Appreciate the awesome.

With every block I cover, the lights in the buildings and the street cut out. I throw everything I can at him, trying to slow him down.

Parking meters ripped from the concrete. More cars and taxi's, a bus bench, but he keeps on coming, using his Threestone to push the cars out of his way as he runs straight ahead.

I beg the stones to widen the gap between us, and then push myself to move faster, cutting into an alley when the road begins to slope down and the water gets too high.

I've got to lose him long enough to get a drop on him.

Coming out on another block, I still sense him behind me, though it's hard to see through the storm.

The _storm_. Of course!

Running up a fire escape, I ask the stones to take the energy from the wind and rain, from the dark clouds overhead. To drain the storm of its power and absorb everything they can from everywhere around us.

By the time I hit the roof, the blankets of clouds are dissipating, the wind is slowing, and the downpour is slowed to drizzle.

This apartment building is too tall to climb quickly, so I stop at about the tenth floor and throw every can and dumpster inside the alley at Daemon. One at a time, so he's pelted. He can't stop what he can't see.

He lifts his arms and blocks them like a boxer deflecting a glancing blow. This slows him, but minimally. And I keep climbing.

Instead of continuing up the fire escape, I break a window in one of the apartments and start to climb through.

Daemon stops in the alleyway, watching my B&E. He cackles. And instead of following me up the fire escape, he moves to the middle of the alley and smacks his hand down on the pavement.

A deep rumble melds with the sound of a woman screaming. When I bust through a closed door and into a ridiculously small living room, I find her, standing on a small white couch with a white hairy thing tucked under her elbow.

"Where's the front door?" I ask, realizing she's holding a dog.

It starts barking.

I spot the front door from across the living room. At the same moment a man with a bat appears in the hallway, behind me. He's cursing, making the obligatory threats.

"Sorry." I yell on my way out and slam the door behind me.

The man with his bat follows me into the long hallway. I stop long just enough to let Dude know that he doesn't want to pick a fight with me.

He pauses when I turn to face him.

With a wave of my hand, I have the bat, and the man is standing there, stunned. I advise him to go back into his apartment, as I'm the least dangerous thing in his vicinity at the moment.

He wastes no time cutting back to his door, freeing me to hustle down the nearest stairwell.

When I get back down to the road, Daemon is easy to spot. He's out in the open, hunkered down, pounding the asphalt with a fist. He punches it, jogs down a few feet, and then bends to hit it again. I watch him do this, over and over, wondering what the hell he's doing.

When he gets to the corner of the next building, I get an idea.

Stepping back into the lobby, I keep close to the doorway, not wanting to lose track of Daemon. Taking the bat in one hand, I set the thick end on the ground, put my foot in the center and lift the narrow handle until the wood splinters and breaks.

The larger piece has the sharpest point. I take that with me back to the doorway and carefully scan the street.

He's nowhere to be found, so I leave my cover to follow the wide walkway along the edge of the building. That leads to yet another alley. Glued to the side of the building, I peer around the corner to find Daemon still punching the pavement.

What is he doing?

I study his pattern of movements for a second. He bends, hits the asphalt, makes a splash, then stands, runs a few feet, and repeats the process.

There's a rumble in the quarter behind me and I wonder if the subway runs beneath these streets.

_No matter_ , I tell myself. I've got one shot, and as I pull my arm back like the hammer on a trigger, I ask the stones to make it count.

When Daemon straightens from his hunch, I put everything I have into thrusting the broken bat forward. It flies out, arching like a javelin, and hits the target; Daemon's chest.

He falls down, limp. Not a single twitch when he hits the ground.

I count to five, slowly, in my head. When he doesn't get up, I break into celebration.

67 A Whisper of Caution

The street shakes again but it's very faint. So low, I'm not concerned. I might not even notice it if the lanes weren't flooded. The water picks up the slightest vibration and makes it seem it's bigger than it is.

Besides, I've got problems; how to extract the stones from this temporary carcass without losing mine. There's a time limit. Daemon's down, but he won't stay that way.

Then there's the issue having two very powerful sets of Threestone in close proximity. His have probably absorbed at least one more set since he got them back. And mine—since the last time the two sets were in the same vicinity—have absorbed another set and more recently sucked the life out of a major storm.

The last time the two Threestone were near each other, I walked into a parallel dimension without opening a wormhole.

I've got to take Daemons Threestone, find some rubber to wrap them in if they're not covered, and move him to a place where I can kill him again the moment he wakes up. Not necessarily in that order.

Can I risk getting near him while holding my own Threestone?

People are starting to come outside now, milling around, searching for hope in the wake of the storm. From the corner of the alley, I turn to find about a dozen people. Most in rain boots and ponchos.

That rumble starts again. The vibration lasts longer this time. It's stronger, too, reminding me of Ice World. My wet feet shake with the asphalt.

A group of guys gather in front of an Indian restaurant across the street. One of them stands suspiciously in the middle of the group, half-hidden. The sound of breaking glass is followed by the pungent smell of Curry.

So the looting portion of this disaster is starting.

But I haven't got time to be concerned about that. Turning back to the alley, I approach the still form of my nemesis with speed and stealth. But then, someone else is there.

A person in a brown rain coat and hood is kneeling beside him. They're patting his chest and then his waist. When the hands move to search his trench coat, I call out.

"Hey! Get away from him!"

As I get closer, the rumble jumps to a growl. Windows on the surrounding buildings burst. The cement under my feet jumps as if to attack, and then slides away, taking me with it.

The phrase, "That's odd," forms in my head, because for the smallest moment, I'm airborne, before being slammed onto my back.

My head hits the ground, hard. My vision blurs and, through the mist of cold and wobbling, I notice something is weighing me down and moving me at the same time.

Water pours from the edge of the sidewalk that is, suddenly several feet above my head.

Sky disappears as the tall apartment building next to me, leans in like it wants a closer look.

Reaching my arms over my head, I take a deep breath.

More glass breaking. Screams.

"It's a sinkhole," some genius yells.

'Sinkhole' sounds right, because I was on the sidewalk, and now there's so much muddy water raining down, I'll be buried gone in two heartbeats.

Some of the slab of concrete underneath me is still intact, but it's sliding every which way. I climb high enough to grab a set of pipes crossing from somewhere above. I think they were water pipes, but who the hell knows? They've managed to stay intact, and that's all that matters.

The apartment building is leaning more than Pisa; coming down as if to fold in half. Then, it makes the worst, loudest noise. Like a groan, only high and low-pitched at once—a scream and a groan—followed with a _boom_ that sends more glass and bricks raining down.

Water pours faster and faster; filling the new hole, gushing up all around me. I cling to the group of pipes, my feet dangling over a muddy chasm.

And everything else is coming down: asphalt, concrete, sewer pipes, cars, street signs, a body in a yellow poncho, and parking meters.

The building seems alive as it twists and bows. Water gushes from below as I bring my feet up, clinging to the pipes. An ocean of water shoots up and out, pushing me along with it.

Thick, dark mud bursts from a drain near my head and I lose my grip on the pipes.

The apartments—the whole building—is shooting into the hole. I'm thrown up and out with the gushing water, flung back onto the hard street.

The air tastes like rust. Mud feels like sandpaper over my gritty teeth.

I want to open my eyes, but my eyeballs feel like someone's poured sand into them, too. After a quick, useless rub, I force them open because the sound of rushing water is still too close.

One side of the street and the alley where I was standing are gone. The other side is still there, but barely. The buildings that lined the alley, even the ground where Daemon was laid out, are gone. Literally gone; replaced with angry, muddy water.

It looks like a war-zone. Like a bomb was dropped.

There's a massive hole, squared to match the shape of the sunken complex. Two buildings and all the people inside them are gone.

68 Trying To Reason With Fire

Devastation with a few dozen smacks to the pavement— demolition planned by Daemon.

Body parts I never knew could hurt are aching. With a dirty hand pressed to my chest, I limp away from the scene. I need to feel the stones, to know that they're with me.

Daemon's body and his Threestone are gone. I need to get away and clean up. To rest, recalibrate before he comes back. I don't know if this plane can handle anymore of Daemon's plans. Right now, I'm not so sure I could either.

After a few blocks, the sirens dissipate. The neighborhood looks better, too. Still very wet, but intact. I turn a few corners, searching for the right kind of place to stop.

After a few more blocks, there's a five-way intersection. On the southeast side there's a small market and gas station crammed between traffic lights.

Stalled cars are everywhere. People are out on the sidewalks waiting for shops to open or breaking into them. The water on this end of the street is shallow. There are even a few dry spots.

A dark-skinned man in a turban is locking up the cage doors over the storefront at the gas station when I come up the lot behind him.

"Please, do you have a bathroom I can use?" I'm caked in mud from head to toe.

He looks at me, wide-eyed, and then sighs. "This way," he says and walks around the far corner of the mini-mart.

Rather than showing me to a bathroom, he leads me to a hose bib on the outside of the store. There's no hose, just the threaded faucet.

He bends down, turns the butterfly handle and says, "You are welcome to wash yourself here."

"Thank you," I say, and mean every syllable.

Leaning my head under the gushing stream of warm water, I'm reminded of the night that I first met Daemon. After I got into that fight with Dylan.

Daemon was standing in the kitchen, enjoying a slice of pizza while I put my head under the faucet to rinse the blood from my hair.

The memory comes so clear and sharp; it's as if I'm back there. But then I open my eyes, and there's no sink beneath me. No red water. Just black asphalt and mud.

I'm most concerned with getting the caking dirt off my face and out of my eyes. Once I can blink without scraping my eyeballs, I lean back and put my hands under the stream.

Then, I rinse my small drawstring backpack. Through all that shit, it stayed on. Of course it's filled with mud. And I've lost the launcher, so tossing the M-Sat's away is no loss. My medical kit is cracked, but intact. The remaining vitamin shots are dirty, but still good. Next, I rinse my jumpsuit, clearing the mud from the hole in my leg, and then give myself a vitamin shot. It's been days since I had one. The cash is wet, but I don't think that matters.

The man in the turban stands there watching all of this. He doesn't say a single word or ask any questions. When I'm done, he offers a stack of brown paper towels; the folded kind, like an accordion.

I thank him for the kindness, and ask if he might have any inner tubes for bicycles inside his store.

He places a hand on one hip. His slacks whip in the dewy breeze. "What size?"

"Doesn't matter."

His dark brow furrows. His black eyes examine me. "What is it for?"

"I need it to wrap something." Normally, I'd tell him it was none of his business, but I need help. Taking the folded stack of wet money from my backpack, I tell the man, "I'll pay whatever you want. But I need them right now. It's an emergency."

He says something in his native language and walks around the back corner of the store, waving at me to follow. The back lot of the gas station-slash-mini-mart is small and plain. Painted brick with only one door. There's a yellow cab parked in the middle of a narrow path. It's blocking the door. The man doesn't make for the door, but pops open the trunk of the taxi and digs around.

When he turns back to me, he's holding a set of ten-speed size inner tubes. "Forty for the pair."

I was only planning for one, but what the hell? I hand him five wet twenties, figuring I can always repurpose the second as a noose.

The man bows before getting into his taxi and driving away.

As I walk down the road wrapping my Threestone inside the thin strips of rubber, I get to thinking ... This whole situation is hopelessly ironic.

In trying to ensure that I don't lose the stones to Daemon, I let him get away. That can't happen again, which leaves me with two probable scenarios:

First, I could hide the stones somewhere, but end up losing them if he gets too close. Second, I do everything I can to guarantee that my Threestone are as powerful as they can possibly be, and take my chances.

Come hell, high water, or universal destruction, this chase is going to end when the Threestone unite. And when that happens, only one of us can be left standing.

69 Smoke and Mirrors, Fire and Ash

One second, there's no fog. The next, I'm surrounded by it.

And when I come out the other side, for the very first time, it's still there. The fog and cracking air is visible in both planes.

On this side, there's no major metropolis. It looks like the outskirts of a desert town. Staring at the cracked atmosphere, holding my nose against the stench of burning shit and oil, I notice a police car parked on the side of the two-lane road.

The cop is wearing mirrored aviator glasses and staring at me. On the other side of his car, a field of yellow hay and railroad tracks.

The air is hot and dry; the sun beats down on the cracked dirt where I'm standing. Water dripping from my hair and suit sizzles when it hits the ground.

My stomach turns as I step further into this new world. Nearly every plane I've set foot in since leaving the mountain in Colorado has felt like its near boiling point.

And then the strangest of the strange happens: the cop car sitting on the side of the road multiplies. Not like, another car rolls up. That would be the opposite of weird.

This is weird because one second there's a single black and white with one cop inside. Three steps later, there are two identical cars, each with a single cop with short, light hair and mirrored sunglasses, head canted in my direction.

I take a step back, watching them watch me. And each one stares, moving their heads slightly back to keep an eye on me. At the same time. The exact same move. Like double reflections in a funhouse mirror.

Clutching the folded rubber mass in in my hands, I ask, "Threestone, what is going on?"

A zap of electricity hits my brain and I see things that I can't explain: a vision of Daemon running. His eyes are all white, like he's blind.

He doesn't know where I am. Not yet. But he's searching every plane.

I see the stones' energy pulsing through time and space, as if it were waves crashing across the ether. In some places the waves are small, in others they're concentrated. The waves around Daemon are high and strong, but he uses the stones like a shield, pushing everything away until the worlds he's travelled through drown and die in this refracted energy. Like a plant that gets too much light because it's sitting between mirrors. The rays of energy bounce around, breaking down everything they touch.

This plane is done for. The heat and energy of the stones are killing it.

Unwrapping the rubber from around the Threestone, I lift the rocks into the air over my head and ask them to take all the energy the air and light have to offer. All of the heat, all of the electricity and anything else they can use.

I need them to charge quickly. Gluttonously. Because Daemon is coming.

In my mind's eye, I see the air bending before him, as if he's a bullet, firing after me. It won't be long before he finds his target and we have got to be ready.

The stones are getting heavier and look smaller.

Lit from the inside out, the three rocks emit a golden glow absent of heat. Or, this plane is so hot I can't tell.

I'm sweating like a pig, gripping the stones in one hand as I strip my backpack from my shoulders and toss it. Its unnecessary weight and nothing in there can help me now.

70 Pages Turn, Memories Burn

The air is thick with a heaviness I haven't felt before. It hurls me forward.

As I run, the stones do what they need to do; keep charging. Licks of lightning reach out, kissing the glorious rocks that stay hovering over my palm. Street lights and electric cars, air conditioners; they're all shut off before I get to them.

Another wall of fog appears. I run through without slowing.

The world passes like a page in a book. It's thin, but with so much depth. Rich, golden brown fields lay nearly empty, save a small wooden house and a man standing beside a horse.

Then the page is turned, and I am in another plane. No fog or wormhole this time, just an abrupt change in scenery. The world is thick with trees and melting snow.

And then it's gone, replaced by another plane, in another world, in another twenty-first century city painted pink with the shades of evening. Or sunset. I'm not sure because I don't know what coast this is.

That thick feeling hangs all around, either chasing or waiting for me, I'm not sure.

So the moment I hit the next sprawling city, I'm clutching the stones in one hand. People are all around, inside cars and on sidewalks, but none of them are moving. None of them are standing. And I know the same thing that happened in Ivanhoe, and in that intersection in New York has happened here, too.

Pushing myself to move faster, I need to find a way to slow Daemon down. Reaching with my free hand, I imagine that it's strong enough to lift an SUV that's rolled into an electric pole. It's twenty feet or so away and lifts from the ground without a problem. I command it to stay there and work on lifting another car right beside it.

When I get out of range, the cars drop and I don't know if they land on Daemon or not because I can't risk looking back. I haven't seen him yet, but sense he's close. Too close.

The world quickly ends, shifting to another city where the streets and cars have been long abandoned. The air smells strongly of brine. As I run and stare up at the sky scrapers, trying to decide if this in New York or not, the wind picks up. Well, it sounds like wind, but I don't feel it blowing.

As I jump between a pair of rusty motor bikes, a group of little black spots catches my eye. They're moving. Then there's another group behind that one, and then a wide group of spots. And soon there seem to be thousands of little black dots running up the road. Little, squeaking black dots hopping and scurrying. As they close in, I realize that the dots are actually rats. Thousands of rats, stretching out in a wide, thick line, rushing towards me.

And the roaring sound of wind is not actually wind—but water. A wall of water pushing through the city, engulfing everything in its path. Tilted skyscrapers huddle together as the water slaps the surfaces, throwing cars, statues, uprooting smaller buildings.

Me and the rats can't get away fast enough. We can't get away at all. The water is a hundred feet high if it's an inch.

And Daemon is still coming. Turning back will only bring me closer to a different kind of cataclysm.

So I keep going forward, remembering how the stones carried me over the falls and have always kept me safe.

I meet the wall of water with a prayer on my lips.

71 Living in an R.E.M Song

If I were to step back and look at this situation with any type of logic, I'd be spending my last seconds bent over to kiss my ass goodbye.

But this isn't a logical situation. There is no reason to these rocks—not any that I can see, anyway. All it seems to take is a measure of faith. The stones have come through before and they'll do it again because they chose me for this.

So I don't let myself pick apart the details of how I jump from the top of an abandoned bus, holding onto nothing but the Threestone. If I considered how big the leap is, I'd fall.

Just where my right foot is going to penetrate the wall of water, something solid sticks out from the dark, foamy surface. My foot hits it, kicks off and the momentum takes me higher. My left foot lands on something else. A tree trunk I think. And I move up.

My weight falls just an inch ahead of the impact. Each foot miraculously finding a place to push off and climb higher.

Even when I reach the top of the tidal wave, more solid masses find their way to me, forming a path and a platform to surf as the water carries me.

When the waters begin to slow, because the stones are suctioning energy, I jump from the soggy surface onto a rooftop at the tip of a triangular skyscraper that I'm sure I've seen in pictures of Times Square.

* * *

Water is supposed to be cleansing, but it's not.

Dead fish and bodies litter the swirling sea where the remnants of buildings stand like islands.

Everything in the wake of the tidal wave is broken, dirty rubble. All of the landmarks that people have spent centuries creating are reduced to broken dreams in empty caverns.

Watching the waters dissipate, I know this is it. That sinking feeling is everywhere and running isn't the answer. There are other worlds, but each and every one of them is pulled into disaster because Daemon is at my heels, sweeping through every plane like the Angel of Death.

I make sure to keep the stones in my locked fist, in case I feel them pull.

In the distance, between the concrete islands, a lone figure makes his presence known. A whirlpool forms from nowhere, pushing the water away instead of sucking it in. And in the middle of the space, is Daemon. He's waving his arms in the air as the waters around him dance and recede.

The vortex moves as Daemon walks. Like a child sitting in the middle of a merry-go-round, he is centered while everything pushes back and away.

He moves closer, and I know when he sees me because the roof starts to shake. A long crack at the edge of the building edges closer to me, drawing its' line between my feet.

I ask the stones to hold me up when the building falls.

Daemon keeps closing the gap. Just before I lose sight of him under the height of my nest, the concrete roof gives way. I go down with everything else, only slower than the concrete and plaster, watching the floors open before me as the building splits like a book opening. I slip my foot onto a broken metal beam and walk it like a plank until it meets a busted window at the front of the building.

Grabbing hold of a pair of scissors sticking from the wall, I make my way over the shards where the glass used to be. With one foot perched on the ledge, I leap out. Kicking away, and pushing as far as I can from the crumbling building. The rubble sends billows of mud into the air and I can't see where I'm going. Yet, I know that wherever I land, Daemon will be too close.

Strangely, I'm not afraid. But grief overwhelms me as I picture the face of my father. And Carrie. Even my mom, the last time I saw her. I've got none of them anymore. No substitutes or alternates. It's just me and the Threestone facing down the demon.

My father told me to protect them with my life and that is all that's left. I hope it's enough. That _I'm_ enough.

I don't want to lose the stones to Daemon, but everyone has told me that he's way ahead of me, that he's been gathering sets longer than I have. And the set I took was so much smaller and heavier than mine.

Both sets of stones are too powerful. The thick feeling in the air is telling me they're in such close proximity that all forms of energy within their reach are being quickly devoured.

When I hit the ground, the world is different. I fall onto dry asphalt in yet another plane that I did not intend to cross into.

This one feels like an oven, swathed in the black of night and briefly lit by burning streams in the sky. Is that a meteor shower?

People are screaming. Running for cover. It sounds like a war zone, but there are no soldiers or tanks. No rockets, but it looks like the sky is falling.

Something shoots at me from one side. I can't tell what it is, but it leaves me on my back, struggling to breathe.

Pain boils over my left side, gathering in my hip. I've been hit with something. Hard. A long metal post with a parking meter at one end falls beside me with an ear-splitting clang.

The roadway sizzles from the water on my suit. And my hand clutches at the air.

The air. At nothing.

All that peace I had is smothered in choking fear. It rears up and crashes through me as I make out the form of Daemon standing above me.

The Threestone have left me.

_They're gone_.

Rubble jumps with each smoking light falling from the sky, putting an end to the world around us.

I want to get up. I need to get up, but every time I move my leg all I get is screeching pain. Not an inch of cooperation. My hip is broken, it has to be. Pain shoots down my leg and up my back when I move.

Daemon watches me struggle, his face cloaked in shadow like some villain in a _Marvel_ movie. His left leg kicks out and I'm airborne.

He's got my stones, my last set. Maybe _the_ last set. I didn't see them join together, but I know they've joined his because I don't feel them with me.

The two sets would become much smaller and heavier. Like my hopes.

Their radius for absorbing energy will be massive.

As I fly through the air, down the broken road, passing the mayhem the Threestone are creating, I spot a few plants, as yet undisturbed by the amazing heat and chaos. But they're wilting. Fading and dying like all of us. Like the worlds.

Anger burns through me as I curl into a ball. I barely feel the broken aluminum post enter my right side and try to keep rolling, to use my momentum to absorb some impact, but the metal piece is too long. I have to throw my arms out to lift myself over the protruding end, to keep it from stabbing deeper. It doesn't work.

Once, when I was very small, I was involved in a fender bender while my mom was driving. I remember being at the hospital, holding onto my side. The doctor worried the seatbelt had damaged my liver. In the end, it was a little bruised, but I healed.

This damned sign post sticking out of my side has to be three feet long. First, my leg, and now this.

I let myself give-up and feel the pain of defeat for just a moment. That's long enough to decide I don't like it.

With every ounce of strength I can muster, I tell myself there is no pain. The pain doesn't matter.

And clench my jaw... _one_.

Close my eyes... _two_.

Take a deep breath... _three_!

One swift tug and the metal clatters to the ground.

Oh, the searing pain, the dark red blood. It oozes between my fingers, sounds like water hitting the asphalt.

Rolling over, I use the sign post to get to my feet. Pain doesn't matter, nothing matters but getting those rocks away from that wannabe super villain.

It takes everything in me not to shout bloody murder with each step.

Daemon must be assuming I'm done because he's turned his back to me. This is my fuel; his stupidity.

Blood is dripping from somewhere on my head. It oozes into my eyes. I can barely see. That, plus the bleeding side and my leg, it's safe to assume I'm very close to the separation of spirit from body. But I've got to try.

In the night sky, just over Daemon's head is the center of a formation of cloud so massive, and such a violent blue, that the curling clouds promise to rip the stratosphere.

My wet hands press the metal post that speared me, my crutch, as I hobble closer.

The forming winds swirl, their blistering breeze sucking the life and even the color from everything like the brush strokes of a painter working in reverse. It's as if the wind is turning the whole world dust.

Up ahead, Daemon is in the middle of the road, using the stones to clear a path. The concentrated wind he forces pushes the rubble of buildings and small fires back into heaps.

The buildings closest to him seem to wobble, cracks forming at the corners. Pieces break off. Red bricks melt into gray dirt.

There is a gigantic Christmas tree sitting in front of a majestic white building. The lights decorating it have gone out, so has every other light.

The only illumination visible on this blackest night comes from the lightening in the swirl of forming clouds. The burning pieces of crumbling earth twist to form a collective path that's suctioned up into the sky.

There is one source of light left on the ground and it's streaming from the Threestone hovering in Daemons hand.

I'm broken, leeched of strength and ability while that demon laughs, shoving passed crumbling cars and people, heading towards the center of the crater he's making. It's growing wider with the massive funnel forming over his head.

But the thought that keeps me going, keeps me reaching, limping and crawling ever closer is that he's done, too.

The only difference is, he doesn't know it. I'm on the outside looking in, so I can see the bigger picture. But Daemon is in the middle of it. He doesn't know.

This vortex is the embodiment of annihilation itself. The lightening flickers in wide bands spreading over the sky like a web. At the center of the gateway, where the rainbow of swirling colors should be, it's all black.

A dark, deadly eye in the sky.

At the edge of the crater are heaps of what's left: city-goers and cars. Bicycles with dusted riders. There's a wilted bus turned on one side. The wheels are spinning but the driver and all the passengers are gone; their bodies and the metal fading to dust in their seats, before my eyes.

I can just make out what's left of a family in a minivan, buried in burning rubble. The driver, a woman, died with her eyes open and I can't help but remember a little boy on the bus that first day I saw Daemon, the way his mother held him close.

The fear in that face burrows into my brain, taking its' place beside the other ghosts I carry. My reminders.

Daemon centers himself beneath the cone of clouds and opens his hands. The glowing Threestone beams into the darkness as hot rain starts to fall, giving off the acrid stench of burning flesh.

The sound of rushing water comes like thunder. Behind me, six or seven blocks down the road, I see what looks like a flash flood. Not high, thankfully. But dangerous.

The water rushes in, barely knee deep but strong enough to sweep my good leg out from under me. I yelp like a wounded animal. Water washes passed, but then stops. As if it's hit something.

Gritting my teeth, ignoring the pain, I crawl through the hot black water, until I reach to the edge of the crater where Daemon is standing, dancing under the light of the slow-forming funnel.

It's as if there's a wall that the water cannot breach. It's the edge of the barrier made by the stones. The air is thick as I step through the space, past the line of debris, leaving the water in my wake and feeling stronger with every step. The closer I get to the stones, the stronger I feel. Maybe it's because the spectacular stones are circling around one another in that way that they do.

Daemon remains agape beneath them, laughing as they rise into the air, and seem to split.

Suddenly there aren't only three, but nine, dancing in the same spinning and slicing pattern. Nine breaks into twenty-seven and then twenty-seven triples again. The number of dancing lights—of Threestone—keeps multiplying, growing brighter and multiplying until the numbers are too great and the light unbearable.

My good leg wants to give out. I lean further onto my make-shift cane and keep hobbling, an inch at a time.

Daemon jumps and shouts. It's the end of the world and he's dancing.

The lights bursting from the stones are the only colors left. Their cadence speeds up, the twirling becoming more radiant. Like a burst of sunlight. The speed of the stones blurs the numbers until they are a single bright streak of three colors.

The wind outside the bubble kicks up colossal gusts that throw rocks and break down walls. A massive squall blows over the metal cars and steel buildings, pushing all of it around, shaking it. The shapes begin to break down with the colors until all of it disappears. All that's left is sand.

And when it looks like the stones have destroyed everything outside the bubble, the perimeter of the field springs a leak. Like magnets for all things living and dead; the piles of sand are suctioned towards the lightning orb of the united Threestone.

Daemon, full of excitement, leaps into the air. I can tell he thought he'd be coming back down. But as the sand and water flies past me, a thick ribbon hits him, pushes him higher. Another ream breaks over him, shooting around both sides and twisting. He's carried closer to the flaming ball of lights that the stones have become.

Daemon yells, screams actually, and flies closer to the sphere of destruction. He puts a hand in front of his face, trying to block the light.

The next thing... it takes a second to understand.

As his outstretched hand floats closer to the burning ball that is turning everything to ash, Daemon changes.

More dirt and balls of floating water flies at the glowing orb—like a sun rising at midnight. Daemon's mouth drops open. His eyes widen, that hateful smirk disappears.

I think he's going to scream again, but he doesn't. He withers—thins like paper, aging decades in a second.

As if he were made of dust, his form loses color and separates into a billion tiny fragments that's carried up into the storm.

The second I understand that he's finally, _finally_ dead, I want to celebrate, but this bit of good comes with a shitload of bad.

It starts as another line in the air, but it's the longest crack in the world's last mirror. Actually, _crack_ is an understatement, it's a huge split. The kind that shatters the walls between dimensions, universes, and everything else inside them.

The earth groans with a great vibration. A final wail from within Mother Earth, signaling her time has come.

I strip my jumpsuit from my shoulders and scream with every wretched move, begging the stones to stop what they're doing. To please, _please_ , stop all of this.

They're too powerful and completely out of my control.

Maybe that preacher was right. I only thought I was using the Threestone, but it was the Threestone using me all along.

The ground and everything touching it breaks into ruins, bleached of color. And then washed to dirt, then sand, and finally, ashes.

The world is ash, being pulled at the giant sun-like orb with its thousands of tiny rings flitting seamlessly together. Directly over the suctioning sun, the crack grows. The funnel in the sky opens, like curtains drawn in the dead of night. But backwards. The light and heat is being let out, not taken in.

My whole life, I have wanted to believe in something greater than this physical world, and because I have known the stones, I know that there is more. Only, I'm not ready to find out what the _more_ is.

I don't want to die.

Everything I've ever done crashes together at once. Each moment, each step. I'm no longer in them, but a bystander, watching and weighing my life. Every action and reaction.

I'm a baby walking on soft legs, looking into my mother's face as she grins and cheers me on. When I fall, she picks me up and kisses my cheek.

I'm five years old, waking from a bad dream and sneaking into my parent's room. She's there again, holding my head, kissing my face.

I'm seven and squealing for my father, my eyes filled with tears as I grip my broken arm. When he appears from the front door, the mere sight of him calms me.

The voice of a preacher in the AA meeting plays over the images. _"None of us have ever seen the wind, but we know it's real._ "

I'm a witness in that ghetto beyond the Palisade, watching myself take up the little starving boy I thought I was saving. But all I gave was one more moment and a piece of bread.

In that ancient world, I met Nahuiollin; so young and vulnerable. He showed mercy and I betrayed him. I wasn't the one who slit his mother's throat or lit his father and baby brother on fire, but I set all of it in motion when I took the stones.

Daemon, his alternate, murdered my father as retribution, the one who was on the bus that landed me in 1996; he was my father's creation.

And my father held back this information, trying to keep me from becoming what I became anyway: a failure.

As much as he tried to tell me, as much as he tried to show and teach me, I made those choices again and paved the way for destruction.

I made Daemon. I made the worlds end.

If only my father had told me the one thing, the singular truth that mattered more than any other, then maybe I wouldn't have wasted my time repeating his mistakes just as he repeated those of his father.

Spoiled opportunities at such a hefty price.

Would I have taken his advice, if he'd given it? I might have recognized the wisdom if he'd simply said, "You don't use the Threestone, G. The Threestone use you."

Now that I know this, I have to do something about it.

With arms spread wide, I parachute towards the whizzing, whirling shape that is too powerful for its size. Cradling the blazing light against my markedly older chest, I tuck it under my dusty chin and hang on.

Praying, _please, please, please...._

PART NINE

72 Before

All things pass. They come and then go away.

People are born, and in the moment that they are granted life—before which, there is no mode of consciousness to refute this gift—there dwells the understanding that the opposite will also, one day, follow.

All of us who are appointed to live are also, by virtue, appointed to die.

All we can do is pray that the two moments are not too tightly allotted: the grace of life and nature of death.

Yet, in this _before_ —before life and death—time begins and ends in the same moment.

Grace and Nature meet. And part ways.

Never ask "Why?" Asking is too easy and the question is unanswerable to the linear mind.

There is no absolute explanation for "why." There is only vast space where trillions live and breathe and choose.

Each choice forms a path. Paths where "why" and "because" are one and the same. These paths intersect, because everything that rises must converge.

Conversions and intersections force conflict. So there is no life without death, no progress without conflict.

But before all of that, there is nothing. And in this nothingness there is everything we need to _do_ and to _be_.

We are birthed from chaos and clouded gas, and yet nothing is random.

72 During

As if some silent command has been spoken—light is born.

Small and far, and greater than anything ever imagined. Light gives birth to color and what was _before_ is now, no more. There is only the wash of amazing, opulent, transcendent hues skirting the fingers that form it.

The light spins and fades only to glow again, burning brighter, getting bigger, leaning closer. Duplicating.

In darkness, near and far, fires form. Blazing circles bend and glow. They cool, establishing solids amid the liquid light. Light brings water and life. So much depth and yet no depth at all as it floats on a current of the broken skies that pass like mirrors of a cold memory.

Pages and pages of lights dancing in perfect synchronized turmoil. As if stars are drawn from books and freedom. Galaxies and pages filled to overflowing—each possessing depths greater than I could imagine. Each appears flat to my deficient senses.

My page draws closer, mirroring the other pages in harmony. A ballet among forming galaxies.

The light reaches further. Particles in the atmosphere glow iridescent.

My eyes, though they see, have no flesh. And rather than being rendered blind by the radiance, they are enhanced.

Within the mirror of my heavens, specks of matter—planets—drift in new ether. Specks or tiny universes: all obey the same laws. All formed in the same mysterious, unknown womb. Hydrogen and oxygen. Atoms, neutrons, electrons. They circle one another. Around and around. Attracted at base levels.

Magnets. Holding onto hope for that dear, sweet grace of life.

They grow—magnificent. Caressing me only to speed away, though there is nothing left of what was. No flesh to brush or touch.

Yet here I am: insignificant and irreplaceable; floating inside paths that have never been seen. Never known. But I have seen and I do know.

Space was thought to be a vast nothingness. Dark matters and energies, but there is so much before me and not much behind.

Here, in the middle of moments, there are none. There aren't words.

Clouds form overhead—glorious plumes guarding the light. The wind is still here. It carries an idyllic sweetness.

So vast and blank and still. Teeming with potential life. It's nothing like the stillness I've known. That was no more than the absence of motion. Of life.

No, this is different. Deeper. Tranquil.

This abundant stillness is part of me. Flowing through me, soaking every bone, to the marrow. I am washed so completely by this wholeness, this connection to everything that ever was or will be, that I can't remember what it was like living before it. _Living_. _Is that what I thought it was?_

This is nothing like that. This is being dipped into the warmest, sweetest water. The swirling, still air is light and warmth. A pleasant breath on my face. Longing to know more, I breathe it in.

A pointed line of light beams from overhead; a new beacon calling to me.

73 The Fifth Dimension

The very first dawn breaks, as knowledge spreads through my being.

Dim memories appear. Tightly wound by a time I don't remember. They unfold, opening like a scroll. Spreading over and into me. I feel the impoverished joy and pain of each one. And embrace them.

Memories so clear and yet fogged in the distance of time and space. Breathtaking, life-giving moments. Some sweet and gentle, others indescribably powerful. All meaningful.

Decorations for my soul, the wonder pushes through me. Tangible but untouchable beams of warmth break away, paving a path back into a newly sewn sky and filling the space with marvelous rays of indescribable _glory_.

Glory: indescribable but in need of description.

My mind associates the air with the presence of gold, if you could see through it. The splendor is like diamonds, if you could breathe them in. The light is alive.

The light seeps from three small seeds: one white, one red, and one black.

* * *

Dust for my bones gathers together.

But the air... so sweet, it swirls around, yet all is still. And I'm hopelessly distracted by the way that _Everything_ is a contradiction.

I am old and young. In a body without flesh, feeling a depth of existence that sits in the fullness of a world swathed in empty space.

Fresh muscles and sinew wind around my bones, wrapping tight my beating heart as small stones shoot from inside the light. Like seeds taking root in the flesh of my remade hands.

The purest white plants itself inside my right palm. And because of the white, I recognize the black standing alone in my left. It does not wait for permission, but digs painfully into the flesh of my palm.

It is the red stone that hypnotizes me. The red dances before me, kisses my face. My lips part, willing, gasping for breath. The need to breathe is replaced by the solidity of peace.

Love in it its truest form. Unselfish, patient, kind—all of the things I am not. Still, the strength of it pushes through my lips and down my throat, choking me with hope. Turning my stomach and illuminating _my_ purpose.

White is driven by red: a bleeding sacrifice made to propel all that is good. And just as a beginning promises an end, because there is white there must also be black. Sacrifice balances everything out, binds us together. The power of it increases as I ponder my choices. The stones carry me low, just above the murk and verdant life teeming in the new, living light.

My foot touches down as my heart lifts in a glorious melody I have never known until this moment.

I'm filled with want. I want the light that is Love and Air, and the source of all Good, Joy, Peace, and Beauty to carry me away from these planes; to tear me from the pages which fall together, forging the great book of a wondrous multiverse.

So modest and complex. So resolute and delicate.

Nothing in the cynical world matters. Not the seas that I once thought so perfect. Not the skies that dim the bright of the heavens.

But people below the heavens are crying out. Something is out of place. Their cries bind me to my own flesh and pull me to earth. My only comfort is lifting my head towards paradise. Seeing its' jubilation. The power of it has spread to every part of me, destroyed and remade me.

In the moment before being suctioned away, I'm truly home. I am whole; the way I was meant to be, the way we are all meant to be in the place we all are meant to go. There, the mysteries of life and love are gone. They are pure and true, laid out before me. I have seen my destiny.

A peace speaks into my heart, nudges my sour stomach, giving direction without words. My sight drifts towards the impious scene below. The life once lived.

It's a rotting sack of flesh. A hollow cage undeserving of the splendor dancing just beyond its pitiful fingers. I love this hideous imperfection even though I don't want to. Impatient, it calls to me.

Before I'm ready, a great wind blows, grinding me down into that decrepit shell.

74 Paying Pipers And Other Nonsense

Rotten.

Feeble.

I'm too frail to stand for more than ten minutes at a time. So, I'm sitting down.

I'm back in my wheelchair, inside a hospice restroom that smells of rubbing alcohol and broken dreams.

My God, am I wearing a diaper?

My tired eyes take time to focus. When they do, all I see is disappointment. The walls are colorless. There is one withered hand before me, a white blotch in the center of the palm. The rest of the hand is noticeably pale, yellowed, marred by brown dots. Liver spots.

I take my time, staring at my withered hand that is holding the damned nose-hair trimmer. This moment is so familiar... but the perception is off. _Wrong_.

I'm so old.

The sensation of blood draining from my head is also familiar. It happens when I realize where I am—when I am— and it's too much.

The shock makes me forget about the trimmer. Forget to hold it. The shaver slips from my grasp.

My lost eyes find their home in a familiar face. The face of my boy.

_Me_. Well, another, younger version of me. One I was offered and took with pleasure. But that was another world, another life, before I realized how stupid it was. I thought I was taking my only chance to have an heir, but what I was really doing was giving up.

"I've got it," young, pliable skin guards the hand reaching for the hair trimmer that's fallen into my lap.

Reliving this precious moment, lost so long ago, should make me happy, but the heat of anger wells within me. Why give it back only to tear it away again?

"No, I've got it! You'll bleed me dry!" I snap. And the grief in his face washes away.

"Sorry." The man I call my son draws his hands back, palms out, like he's begging for mercy.

Resigned to repeat my fate, I raise the trimmer to my nose but my unreliable fingers shake. "You gonna help or not?"

"Yes, sir," my boy answers. When he steps to the back of my chair, I lean into him, let him cradle my head.

He finishes clearing the wiry hair from my nose and turns my head to start on my ears.

I know what's coming. He's going to see the concave scar and then he'll ask about where it came from.

My throat tightens at the thought of that horrible day, just one among many. So many moments folded into others. So many paths. So many choices made and remade.

So many times they collectively changed everything.

I hear him drag in a quick breath and stop him. "Don't ask." There's no trace of emotion in my voice, in fact I sound angry.

But I've missed him, and I don't want to leave things this way. Not this time.

"I know I don't tell you enough, but you're a real good kid." My veins pulse with the knowledge of the truth I've come to know since the last time we had this conversation.

"You'll be okay, Gerry. I know it."

His face seems to freeze, though his eyes grow wide with solemnity. "You will, too."

I take hold of his chin, making sure not to squeeze too tight this time. "Listen to me, kiddo. Hear what I say: you will be alright."

I'll make sure of it.

He stands there, quiet and thoughtful, soaking up the words and having trouble making sense of them. "I don't like you talking about dying."

"Dying is the only part of life that we can actually plan for. Nothing else is certain. Or so they tell me," I clear the growing lump from my throat, trying to stall, hoping the right words come.

So much has to happen—but then again... maybe not. "You're going to miss your bus." I point towards the clock.

"Oh snap." A new trouble creases his forehead when he looks at the clock. "Bye, Dad." He shakes my hand and turns to leave.

"Son?"

He turns back in the doorway, waiting. He really is a good-looking kid. With so much potential. "Yeah, Dad?"

"Keep your eyes peeled. There's been a string of robberies in convenience stores, lately."

"I haven't heard anything," he questions without questioning.

"Don't go chewing the fat with any flirty girls in bikini tops that may come by the store this afternoon. She'll be a distraction. So if you see any, you call Ahmed. Have him escort her to aisle one."

His face scrunches with the same look of confused concentration he's had since he was a baby. His bottom lip juts out as he thinks. "Is this one of your hunches?"

I shake my head. "Let's call it second-sight."

75 Small Moves Big Change

All things that begin must come to an end. That doesn't have to be a bad thing. If there were no endings, we'd never get the chance of a new start. And we could all use a new start now and again.

Then, there is the matter at hand: Death is still coming for me, but not for a few more weeks. That leaves some time to plan things out.

I'm alone in my geriatric room, holding the box I packed to give to my boy, trying to come up with the purpose of returning to this particular moment.

And I wonder why... _why_ should I have to wait? Why not meet him half-way?

With only a few words, I redirected my boy's path—took him off the bus next week.

And I know now what I'm supposed to do. It comes to me so clearly, I know it's been there all along, under the surface, waiting for me to stop thinking and have a little faith.

After setting the box down on my bed, I wheel over to the night stand and grab the phone book. It takes some time for my enlarged knuckles to turn the yellow pages, but eventually, I manage to find the address and phone number I'm looking for.

She picks up on the first ring; her voice a pleasant whisper in the riot of a repeating nightmare.

"Hello?"

"Abi, I need a favor."

76 Last Chapter

I'm sweating like a rabid pig in this blasted jacket.

My hip pops, loud, as I wrangle with the short set of steps.

I flash my senior pass to Paula, keeping my head down as I press into the packed-out, bendy bus. I can't look at her and do what needs to be done.

A young girl starts to get up to give me her seat. I wave her off and tap the man who's taken up residence at the center post, my preferred spot.

"Do you mind?" I ask and he relents, taking up the same high, uncomfortable strap I held the last time I was on this bus. "Thanks."

He nods and turns to look out the window.

They say, 'fear the man with nothing to lose.' Today, that man is me. I've tried everything else, paid the highest price. And after all of that, the only thing that has changed is everything.

It's given me hope. So much hope.

Because the stones have never, _never_ done what they did on that last trip to Paradise. They absorbed everything else, but never me. They never gave me new flesh or sank into it. They only ever passed me from one realm to the next.

So this time around I'm being proactive. Preemptive. For better or worse I'm taking control of my destiny—meeting it head-on rather than waiting for it to come to me. And if I'm doing it right, saving everyone else from the monster I created.

A few stops later, I see the woman and the little boy. Here, I make my move, walking up to the front of the bus.

Once I'm at Paula's side, I pretend to misstep and catch myself on the large mirror that lets her keep watch on the crowd. It juts to one side, blocking her view and, hopefully, keeping anyone back there from seeing what I'm doing.

As soon as the last passenger boards and pushes past, I twist to face Paula head-on.

"Paula, don't scream." I open my rain coat and her curly hair wrenches into tighter coils. "Tell them all to get off the bus, right now." My voice is low, commanding, "Keep them calm and don't scream."

I really hope she doesn't scream.

She surprises me by stretching towards the intercom mic. "Attention passengers," her voice quivers, "We are experiencing severe mechanical issues. On the advice of my supervisors, all passengers must immediately exit through the back doors of the bus."

I press the lever nearest me to open the back doors as she repeats the instructions over and over. People complain and ask about other buses and alternate routes. Her eyes well, taking up the mic again, she pleads for everyone to exit as soon as possible, promising another bus is coming along any moment.

It would be easier to wait until after Daemon gets on to clear the bus, but I don't want anyone near him. The more people, the bigger the risk. This fight is between him and me. I started it and now I have to finish it without anyone else getting hurt.

It takes less time than I thought it would for everyone to disembark. Then again, I'm not so reliable when it comes to measuring time.

Once the bus is emptied of everyone but us, I explain that I will let her off, unharmed, after one more stop.

Paula takes a gulp of air, whimpering softly as she pulls away from the curb.

"I really am sorry, Paula."

"Then stop this," she says, her glance catching on the phone in my hand.

"When I hit the call button, it'll go off, but you'll be long gone before that happens. Okay?"

It's a lie, but what does she know? All she sees are blocks taped to a vest on my chest. It looks enough like the bombs on TV shows to scare the crud out of her and that's all I need. Her fear and desire to get the hell away from me.

There is no detonator. The real threat is in my pocket. All I have to do is point and squeeze the trigger.

As the bus slows, I spot his wiry bread and ready myself.

He's alone, curbside at the post marking the stop.

"I'll open this door. You go out the back."

My knees try to buckle as she swerves a little too fast towards the curb. I hang tighter to the post behind her seat and dig my cane into the no-slip floor.

Paula doesn't seem to notice. Her eyes grow wide when she spots Daemon. She slips quickly from her seat and lunges for the back door, prying it open with anxious fingers.

I set my free hand in my pocket, gripping the cool steel, and take a quick look around at the surrounding intersection.

When the front door swings open, Daemon's eyes meet mine and shrink. I feel his repellant hatred clawing at me as he draws his boots up the steps.

That sickly white skin, dirty and scarred. His bald head covered by the exaggerated snake form, whose eyes are bright red on his scalp. The black ink stretches down his neck, in between his shoulder blades, wrapping around his body just like the carved counterpart on the knife he carried as a boy. He's wearing long combat-style boots, cut-off shorts and suspenders. There's a rubber backpack hanging over one shoulder. His signature trench coat will be inside.

Daemon sneers, not caring that I'm pointing a gun at his face.

"Give me the bag." The lights inside the bus are still on. "Your stones are concealed. This bullet can kill you." He'll die, but won't stay that way.

Daemon doesn't flinch as he takes the bag from his shoulder and tosses it at my feet. "I will take them back. You cannot hide them from me."

He's right. If he doesn't know where the other sets are, he will soon, and then what?

In the middle of my planned confrontation, the haunting question resurfaces. The one question that's occupied my mind since I plotted this little meeting—is this _right_? This seems like the only way to stop him, but, do the ends justify the means?

"I don't want to hurt you. I want this to stop." I feel the bus shift slightly and watch Daemon's gaze move to a spot behind me.

Right on time. "Abi."

"I'm here." I feel her hand on my shoulder. She gasps, "What's happening?"

Answering her, I keep my eyes on Daemon. "Get the bag at my feet. There's a note inside my pocket."

Feeling the fabric of my coat shift, I know she's doing what she's told. "It's an address." To the home of Elijah Thacker, he'll know what to do.

I hear the rubber backpack slide across the hard floor before she picks it up. "Anything else?"

"Remember, you promised not to tell Gerry."

"Are you sure you can handle this?" What other woman in the world would do what she's doing? None. Only her.

"Go Ab, hurry." I say, and stiffen as Daemon watches her walk out.

Even though I know she's special to him, for the kindness she showed, I still worry that he'll hurt her.

But, as my mother used to say, 'if you want something done right....'

This woman, Abilene Winston, is absolutely right. Strong, smart, and sensible. The only reason she was ever hurt was because of me. So, I'm taking all versions of myself out of her equation.

Abi will take the stones to the one person with knowledge enough to properly hide them, and with enough self-control not to use them. And the two will fall in love. They'll have babies together. Live life the way it should be. With hope and happiness.

It'll hurt my boy, but he's got to know that loving someone does not mean they're good for you.

"She's dead." Daemon's words fall flat but menacing. "You are all dead."

"Nahuiollin..."

His back stiffens, chest rising at the sound. The name his father gave him, the one he gave me that day in the forest, right before he led me to the stones.

"I am sorry for what I did to you and your family. I didn't know all this would happen. I didn't know that I was the reason you became—"

"I am the Serpent of Revenge. I am your worst nightmare."

"No, you are wrong. We both are. Since the very beginning, everything we've ever tried to do was _wrong_." Taking a deep breath, I finish, "I have done something new. I need to show you what it is."

All of life is reflected in this mess between us. And just like life, there has only ever been three choices to make. Three simple questions with not-so-easy answers. One: am I going to do what's right even when it's hard? Two: can I make the sacrifice when the time comes? Three: or will I choose to live for myself?

One white. One red. And one black.

"You see, Nahuiollin, I have learned that this is not about you or me. It has always been about the stones."

He scoffs.

"We cannot _use_ the Threestone. It is the Threestone that uses _us_."

For just a second, his anger seems to disappear.

"Do you understand?"

My gun hand waivers in speaking the revelation. Daemon's answering punch comes before I can stop it. My anxious finger pulls back on the trigger.

He stops, falls back. A red hole marring the middle of his forehead.

Finally, I've done the thing I couldn't do when he was younger. When he was innocent. In my ignorance, I created this snake and he was justified to blame me. For a while.

But now, Daemon is grown. He is a man who knows right from wrong, a man capable of making an informed decision. He knows the catastrophe using the stones will bring and instead of abstaining, he lusts for it. He wants that power all for himself. He's made his choice. He's chosen wrong over and over again.

Any hesitation I might have had is gone. My boy will be okay. I'll end this once and for all. Maybe even see my wife again, and my girl...

Their faces flash before me—Daemon won't be able to hurt them anymore. The young man on the roof top, the bus passengers, and countless others he sucked the life from. Yes, this sacrifice is for them.

The small caliber pistol drops to the floor of the bus. I spread my arms, examining the white and black marks in my hands. Pressing both palms to my aching stomach, I ask them to take us to where this all began.

To where the ending begins.

77 A Higher Road

The lush forest is thick all around us. Greenest-green melded with the yellows of early fall. Verdant earth is soft under my shoes.

Bird calls echo back and forth. Insect wings click.

My hands... they're new again. The skin, without liver spots, pink and firm. Folding them to fists, I feel my strength return and know I'm young again. Again.

But, so is he. Daemon's long, hairy face has been replaced with the round façade of a little, pale boy. One I'm not sure I ever I liked. His head is covered in long, straight locks of crow-black hair stretching down over his shoulders.

The boy is staring. His smile showing two large front teeth.

Nahuiollin is small and thin, wearing animal skin pants and no shirt. The large black snake tattoo that was coiled around his midsection is gone, replaced with skin too light for his native blood—the sign of his people, the protectors of the Threestone.

His young face shows clear surprise at what's just happened. He stares up at me. "How have you brought me here?" His tone is unnaturally high—prepubescent.

My hip doesn't hurt when I turn to face him, but my stomach still burns. Oh, I am alive with forgotten vigor.

Lifting my hands, I reveal the indelible marks the stones left on me. "I cannot stop all that has happened because of our first meeting, but I can give you the chance to make another choice. Choose another path and your life will be different."

Nahuiollin looks around the forest that burns with more glorious color than any plane I have ever visited.

Does he know what this means? Does he realize where and when he is? Does he understand now, that all this fighting and hatred was for nothing, that it was me who started him on his path, so I was, always, the only one who could change it? Because I didn't know any of it, not until now.

"I can't change everything in the past, but I can stop certain events. Like right now. I can let you choose, one more time. Let me pass through your land or stop me like you were supposed to."

Somewhere in the ether, in another never-ending loop the skewed timeline will continue the same as it always has. But here, in this plane I choose to give what grace I have to this boy. To give him another chance.

Sensing what his choice will be, I drop to my knees. "I never meant to hurt you. Or your family."

Nahuiollin hesitates. His eyes grow glossy as he reaches for the carved handle tucked at his waist.

With both hands behind my back, I look up at the trees; examine the way the leaves overlap in the thick canopy. Listen to the songs of birds calling, knowing that the warm sun is shining up there, even though I can't see it from down here.

The boy utters one word. It sounds harsh, but something in me understands it's an apology for the quick work that follows. One wound, very deep, across my throat. Thanks to the venom of the blade it's nearly painless.

With that, Nahuiollin disappears into the forest, leaving me to the will of Fate.

Even though he's gone from sight, I still see him. Watch him run back to his village. He finds his father and tells what he's done. He will be rewarded. Revered.

Lying among the dry needles and fallen leaves, there's no doubt that this was the right choice. The hardest ones often are.

The boy had to obey his father. That one moment, seeming so insignificant, was the one moment that changed the fate of the collective worlds.

He had to come back here to find forgiveness. And I had to bring him here to find peace. Now, whatever comes next is okay because I'm part of something greater than this place; greater than this plane. Greater than the time loop we were stuck inside, greater than this temporary death.

Whether I wake-up in the bed at my old apartment or if I never wake again—I'm ready. I know where I'm going. I've been there before.
Epilogue

She was stepping onto the sidewalk of the next block when she heard it. The _Boom!_ Abi wanted to turn towards the bus and look, but stopped herself. Froze, mid-spin.

A shiver of fear rushed through her, mingled with the strangest sense of awe. She clutched the mysterious box tighter to her chest and focused on the road ahead just like she'd been instructed.

He'd made her promise. He'd made her _promise._

She said she wouldn't look back. And Abilene Winston always kept her promises—a trait that was to be admired.

_I must look strange_ , she thought, _to everyone else_. Other people could not stop gaping at the aftermath. Abi imagined bits of shrapnel puffing through the air like bits of paper near a fan. The scene—whatever it looked like—had everyone taking out their cell phones. Some called for help but most people were recording. Some were narrating.

"It sounded like a bomb but looked like a tornado!"

"That was and explosion!"

While strangers gathered closer, Abi jogged away.

Mr. Springer had always intrigued her. He had this knowing way about him that, oddly, put her at ease.

She bit her lip. She'd liked his scrutiny and now he was gone. _Gone_.

G was going to be so upset when he found out and she couldn't be there when he did. She'd promised that, too.

_Why?_ She asked herself.

Mr. Springer told her she couldn't let herself get sucked into that relationship again. No matter how much she loved G and his suction. She knew that, together they were toxic. He wasn't good for her and she often resented how lopsided their relationship had become.

Abi was a compulsive giver and G, he was a taker. And she couldn't trust him. G's own father had reiterated all of that. It wasn't anything she didn't already know.

Still, it was endearing, the way he'd always looked out for her. Kind of a weird thing for a woman to do—to get so attached to her boyfriend's dad, but Mr. Springer loved her.

Abi knew it. She'd felt it in her bones every time he looked at her. And she'd never known her own father, so there was that natural void waiting to be filled.

Mr. Winston wasn't dead. In fact he was still married to Abi's mother. She saw him once a month when he came by her apartment to collect the months' receipts and dispense with the obligatory disparagements.

There were two things Abi Winston knew about her father: that he valued quarterly profits above everything, and because she did not, she was not deserving of his affection. He was a very critical man to everyone who did not think like he did and that was just one more reason why Abi was crying, why she'd miss Mr. Springer more than she had a right to.

Because when the only thing a person ever does is point at your flaws, it can be tough to stick around them long enough to get to know them and Mr. Springer was never critical with Abi.

_A big softy_ , she thought.

She felt stupid and greedy. _So selfish_ , she thought.

He'd asked her to help him out of a jam. Of course she said, "Yes." When he made her swear on the lives of her future children not to look back, to "keep moving forward no matter what," she'd thought it was strange. But Mr. Springer was a strange man.

He always built her up when she needed it. Somehow he always knew when she needed it, and she wanted to do the same for him.

Now he was gone.

Abi had to stop crying. She had another very important promise to keep. The most important one: she'd promised to find a particular man; the one that the mysterious box was for. She had to do it right away. After that, she'd go home and bawl herself into dehydration. But first thing's first.

Abi walked two more blocks before coming across the high-rise parking garage where she'd left her car. Inside the elevator, she glanced down at the name and address taped to the top of the package and wondered.

She had no idea who Elijah Thacker was but hoped he was worth the trouble Mr. Springer had gone through—that she was going through—to bring him this package. And she didn't want questions. The task was hard enough, and God knows Abi was short on answers.

The End

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#  About The Author

A .R. Rivera is a firm believer in the run-on sentence, and is well-known for her deep devotion to the use of commas. And she loves starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions. She blogs at authorarrivera.com, tweets as @girlnxtdr2u, and has a facebook page that's just begging for more likes.

She's currently back at school, working on a BA in English to become a better writer.

