Strangers and Shadows (35 page)

The lapse in memory carried a significant lesson.  Desmond was grateful to have learned it without dire consequences, this time, at least.

Outside the window, he could see the Seventh’s soldiers moving through the mostly empty streets.  Here and there, some of his people were being chased down by armed men.  They turned, some making motions with their hands, only to realize as Desmond had, that the intended effects were not forthcoming.  With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Desmond watched as the group of people surrendered, unable to do anything else.

This was the lesson Desmond had learned.  Without their abilities, his people were blind.  To forget that for even a moment could be disastrous.  They would have to adapt quickly if they were to have any chance of mounting a resistance.

A flash of light turned Desmond’s attention from the window, where he found his daughter and her companion, Jack Spade.  “Of course,” Desmond muttered.  There was a sense of resignation to his voice.  He could tell it was going to be one of those days, when nothing was easy.

“Why the long face, Dad?” Celia asked.

“No matter, dear.  I had hoped to send word to you before you tried to come home, but I take it my message did not find you in time.”  Celia gave a quick shake of her head and Desmond continued.  “You’re probably noticing something different about the place right around now.”  He waited a moment for realization to dawn on her.  When he saw she had grasped it, he went on. 
“In your absence, your Mother has invaded our world.  I had thought her content with imposing her will on the Seventh, but, apparently, her ambition has no bounds.

Celia paused and reflected on the circumstances she now faced.  She didn’t know how to feel about her mother.  It was one thing to be estranged from her, but, now, her mother’s actions put her firmly in the role of enemy.  The shock of being without her abilities had her wired enough, but to realize her mother was behind all of this was actually hurtful.

A tear spilled down her cheek.  “Well, she’s made her decision then,” Celia said, more to herself then anyone else.  She had been a grown woman for decades now, but some wounds never fully heal, no matter how old they are.

Jack put a caring hand on her shoulder, but she quickly shrugged it off.  

“Now’s not the time,” she snapped.  Jack pulled his hand back, as if she had been a snake about to strike him.  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she apologized.  “I didn’t mean to be like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said, instantly regretting the last few
moments
of his life.

Desmond stood, watching the two of them interact.  He was mildly amused with the pairing.  It reminded him a little of himself and Julia, back in the beginning, anyway, before all of this.

“So... What’s going on here, then?” Jack asked.

Celia answered first.  “Our abilities are gone.  No doubt being jammed, much like they were back in the Third.  Apparently, we have my bitch of a mother to thank for it.  That army outside is hers.  The question I’d like to know is why?  What does she gain by invading the Sixth?”

“So you guys can’t do your magic trick thingy anymore?” Jack smiled.

“Nice to see you can still make jokes at a time like this, Jack.” 
Celia punched him in the arm
.  H
ard.

“Son of a bitch!” Jack smarted, rubbing his hand over his arm.  He’d forgotten how strong she was.

“And for my next magic trick thingy…” Celia said, eyeing his body for a good place to land another blow.

“Alright!  I get it!”  Jack raised his hands in mock surrender.  “You can still hurt me without your abilities.”  He backed out of reach.  “Where does that leave us?”

Celia turned to face Desmond.  “Dad?”

Desmond stood silently for a moment before replying.  “An excellent question, Jack.  It leaves us here…” he motioned with his hands, “stranded in this Verse.  At least for a while.  I have Celia’s uncle working on a solution, but that may take some time.  In the meantime—”

“What about this?”  Jack asked, holding up his left hand and twisting it.  Around his wrist he wore a jump watch.

“Ahh, yes,” Desmond breathed.  “That is excellent.  I hadn’t thought of that.  Then again, I wasn’t planning on either of you being here.”  He held his hand out, gesturing for the watch.  Jack slipped it off and placed it in Desmond’s waiting palm.  Desmond gave it a quick once over, noting a few scratches in the otherwise shiny metal, and nodded his approval.  “With this, at least you two can get out of the Sixth, and maybe help Wizard, should he need it.”

“What about you?  What will you be doing?”  Jack asked.  “Wouldn’t it be better if you came with us?”

“He can’t come, Jack.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true.”  Desmond said, not sure why he was contradicting his daughter.

Celia shot her father an icy look, followed by a quick smile.  “He can’t come if both of us go.”  She turned and looked for Desmond’s approval.  “There… Is that entirely true?”

Desmond laughed.  “Sorry, Celia, I’m not sure why I said that.”  He faced the window, looking at the city spread out before them.  “What my dearest daughter says
,
is true, Jack.  The watch can only open a portal for two, at best.  Any more and the wormhole might collapse before we all cross through.”

Celia winced.  “It’s not a pretty sight.  Sometimes body parts are left behind, cleanly cut, blood oozing everywhere.  Sometimes nothing at all is left behind, but nothing will show up on the other side either.”

“Jesus, is it safe to use these things at all?”  Jack was beginning to have serious doubts about traveling back and forth between the Verses.  Had he already cheated death before, and not known how close a call it might have been?

“Relax, Jack, it’s perfectly safe,” Desmond reassured him.  “Provided that you don’t exceed the safety parameters of two people.”

“Yeah, I remember when they were testing these things… I was just a little girl.  We were visiting Uncle Wizard while Mom was attending some state meeting, when the news came in over the
n
et
s
.  Before Uncle Wizard could shut it off, they’d shown a video of the test run.”

“If I recall correctly, you had nightmares for months after that,” Desmond said.

“
Ugh
, yeah.  It was terrible.”  Celia remembered the horrible dreams that started after that news cast.  She would wake in the middle of the night and run into her parents’ room, bawling her eyes out.  Her dad would always be sitting up in bed, already waiting for her, the psychic distress she was under alerting him before her little legs could physically carry her down the hall into his room.  Mom would wake up a second later, full of concern and comfort.

Remembering the way her mother used to be made Celia sad.  How far apart they had grown since those childhood days, so many years ago.

Jack snapped her out of the daydream, quite literally, his fingers popping repeatedly in front of her face.  “Hello, Earth to Celia… You in there?”

“Yes.  Sorry.  Got caught up for a moment there.”  She shivered.

“Wait, why don’t we just make two trips?” Jack asked.  “I could jump out with Celia, and then come back and jump out with you.”

“That would
probably
work, sure, but I need to be here,
anyway,
organizing a resistance, and gathering any intelligence on this invasion that I can,” Desmond replied.  “Most of my people haven’t had any experience with the Seventh or any of their technological ways.  I can’t just leave them here to deal with this on their own.”

“Alright, sounds good.  You wanna tell us what the plan is?  How do you and the old man expect to win this thing?” Jack asked.

“Wizard will fill you in.  It’s best if he tells you, just in case you’re captured before you reach him, you’ll have no knowledge of it.”

Celia and her father said their goodbyes as Jack watched.  Single tears ran down their cheeks as they hugged.  They kissed each other on the cheeks, embraced once more and parted without speaking.  Desmond turned to him.  “Take care of each other, Jack.”

He shook Desmond’s hand.
 
“You have my word.”

Desmond nodded his appreciation, his cheek still wet.  “You two should go now.”

Wordlessly, Celia walked over to where Jack stood and slipped her arm through his.  She entered their destination into the watch on Jack’s wrist and opened a gate into the MultiVerse.

“I love you, darling,” Desmond told his daughter.

Jack and Celia stepped into the gate, and with a flash of light, they were away.

Gollum In The Gears

Julia woke up in a sweat.  In her dream, the darkness had been about to swallow her.  It had sharp pointy teeth.  It was the darkness she had unleashed on the Fourth.

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs.  Sweat trickled down her chest as she looked over at Dorian asleep next to her in bed.  His naked torso protruded from the sheet.  He looked peaceful, and Julia hoped that his dreams were more serene than hers.

They had gone at it all night, both of them taking a perverse pleasure in the ways they were using Ava’s body.  Of particular delight to Julia was how she could feel Ava squirm inside her head.  Part of the young woman was horrified by the rape of her body and the other part was ashamed at how much she was turned on by it. 
Besides,
Julia thought,
it wasn’t as if they were hurting her body. 
Indeed, what Dorian had done to them was quite the opposite.  

Julia slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom.  When she turned on the light, she jumped as she saw Ava’s body looking back at her in the mirror. 
You’d think I’d be used to that by now,
she mused. 
What the—? 
Blood was welling up at the corner of her eyes like tears.  She wiped it away, smearing it across her temples and down her cheeks.  She made a note to mention it to Dr. Mesham, the supervisor for the body transfer portion of the Mother Brain Project.  This was the second time in three days that it had happened.  She wondered if it was cause for concern or just something that happened when you stole someone’s body.  Her newly cloned body wouldn’t be ready for another few days.  She would just have to deal with it until then.

She stepped into the shower, hoping the heat would help her relax and get back to sleep.  A dreamless sleep.

When Julia awoke the next morning, the sun was shining brightly through the large bay windows.  The bed beside her was empty, but she could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen.

Dorian poked his head in.  “Morning, love.”  His devilish grin was one to the things she loved the most about him.  It actually made him resemble Desmond a bit. 
Best not tell him that,
Julia thought.  Dorian, for all his better parts, had always been a bit jealous of her husband.  Something to do with the telekinesis, if she were to wager a guess.  Then again, some men just couldn’t stand to think of someone being with a woman before them.

“I trust you slept well?”

“The second time, yes,” she answered.  “It happened again though… the blood thing.”

Concern crossed his face.  “You’ve got to get that checked out, Julia.”  He knew better than to push her too hard.  If Julia thought anyone was trying to tell her what to do she would pretty much do the opposite, just out of spite.  The only person who had ever been able to get away with that had been her husband, and that had been a very long time ago. 

“I plan on it,” she said as she instructed her nanites to make an appointment with Dr. Mesham for this afternoon.  “Any new news of the invasion?”

“Nothing since last night.”  

Good,
Julia thought.  She was looking forward to a day where things just went right for a change.  Not that events hadn’t been going her way lately, but with Ava’s body acting up and without a skin of her own, she had been a little frayed at the ends.

Julia began dressing for the day. 
What does one wear to the doctor’s office these days?
  She smiled inwardly at her own little joke.  The term doctor hadn’t been used in a medical context for years now, ever since the nanites had virtually eradicated all disease and sickness.  “Doctors” were now merely scientists with degrees.  Such was their resemblance that they were often referred to as body mechanix, or among the youth culture as BMx’s, though they often dealt more with the mechanics of the nanites rather than the physical body.

She settled on something casual, but not too informal.  “Dorian?” she called into the next room.
 
“What are your plans for the day?”

He popped his head back in. 
“Communications picked up some weird chatter last night, so I’m heading in to check it out.”

“Weird chatter?” 
What on earth was he talking about?

“Yes, an encrypted conversation was picked up on the scanners.”

“An encrypted comm qualifies as weird these days?” she asked.  “We send thousands of them everyday.”  In fact, every comm was encrypted to some degree or another.  So much so, that to refer to one as encrypted meant that it was government or military in origin.  “Well, what did the analysts uncover?”