The Discovery' (Alternate Dimensions Book 4) Read online

  Claiming his mouth once more, I pulled us toward the flat surface of the bed. Perhaps it was improper, to find comfort like this in a situation where people’s lives were in the balance. But in Janix’s arms, I didn’t care.

  And it was in Janix’s arms that I fell to the bed.

  Chapter Eight: The Line Between Revenge and Redemption

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

  I looked up from the washing machine I was loading to see a small, volley ball-sized black cloud hovering by the stairs.

  “Invading my dreams again, are you?”

  “Yes. Did you think you were rid of me?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped back, setting the laundry basket to the side and putting my hands on my hips. “You’re like a cockroach. Capable of surviving even a nuclear holocaust.” I looked at its diminutive size. “But not without losing considerable mass, it seems.”

  “Yes, your precious Angel delivered me quite the blow. But was it worth it? Losing one of your greatest resources just to pinch off a good chunk of me?”

  “I suppose only time will tell. Now, do you have a purpose for this nattering or are you just so weakened from Angel’s little nip that you can’t infiltrate reality anymore and have to resort to dreams again?”

  “I come to you with an offering of peace,” he said. “And it’s only available one time, and one time only.”

  “You’re not going to offer me another ride home, are you? Because you can remember how that went last time.”

  It darkened before expanding slightly. “Yes, that is what we are offering. However, we understand there needs to be more at the table.

  “No matter how at home you might feel here, and no matter how your and Jyra’s little hearts may bleed for each other, you must eventually return home to earth. And you’ll be so alone there, won’t you?”

  It circled me and I could tell that it was thoroughly enjoying each and every one of its malice-layered words. “You’ve been so spoiled by all this company. With the worship that all of them seem to lavish on you. I don’t think you’ll be able to survive all of that being taken away. It would crack you, little Andi, and I’m offering you a way out.”

  “Oh, yeah? And do tell, what is your ever so magnanimous offer?”

  “Each dimension may have its own set of rules, but I have learned how to manipulate them in certain ways. Should you go home, and leave this universe for me to finish my plans, I will send each and every one of your friends with you. I’ll give them viable bodies and identities. You can all live together in a happy little utopia.

  “That is what you want, isn’t it, Andi? A happy little family that you never got as a poor little child?”

  I wanted to tell it exactly where to stick its offer, but the honeyed words pricked at something deep within me. Would it be so wrong to settle for a happy ending?

  Of course, it would.

  “Do you really think you can buy me off? After everything we’ve been through?”

  “Can you honestly say that you aren’t tempted at all?”

  I was done. These cat and mouse games didn’t sit well with me, especially with Angel’s passing so recent in my memory. So I strode forward, and thrust my hands into the dark, swirling ball of matter.

  It both burned and froze at the same time, eating away at my skin like acid. But I didn’t let up. I squeezed, and squeezed, digging my fingers in like I was going to rip it apart.“I’m going to make you regret ever showing even a fragment of yourself to me,” I snarled, digging my fingers right down into its core.

  An unearthly scream spiked through my dream, and the walls began to crumble around us. “You really think you can bully me?” I yelled over it. “I’ve hunted you across the ends of the universe. I’ve beaten you at every turn. And I’m going to bring down such a revenge on you, you’re going to end up wishing that you never crossed over the trans-dimensional barrier. Do you understand?!”

  “I will destroy you!” it squealed at me.

  “Not if I destroy you first!”

  And with that, I bent down and ripped my teeth into the darkness. Once more, it consumed my enemy bit by bit while it fought to get out of my grip.

  It did not go down easy, or nice. Even though this was a dream, I could feel it clawing up out of my stomach and throat. But I kept it down. I clamped down everything I had in me onto its wiggling, swirling form.

  The whole moment seemed to end just as soon as it started, and I was standing in a fragmented version of my apartment’s laundry mat. I looked around, panting heavily, before the floor suddenly dropped out from under me and I was falling down through nothingness.

  I landed in on solid floor somehow in a standing position. There was no shock to my knees, and for a moment I didn’t even register that I had stopped moving.

  But… something was wrong.

  My body felt… off. Too big, disconnected. I looked down at my hands only to realize that I had five of them, all with varying numbers of fingers that ended in vicious looking claws.

  I was a kodadt.

  Geez, we were going to relive all of our greatest hits together, weren’t we?

  Well, if I was going to be stuck in the body of a murderous monster, I might as well look around, right? I supposed I wasn’t actually inhabiting the body of the mutated beast like I had before, but rather reliving a dream or memory of my enemy’s. But that distinction didn’t seem to matter all that much.

  I lifted what felt like a massive head and let my eyes rotate around the room. Rabid kodadt vision was strange, with quite a different perception of colors and a weird sort of bifurcation from either side of their head. After a few seconds of scanning, I realized that was because the eyes on either side of its skull moved independently of each other.

  That was a headache waiting to happen.

  Yet I managed to get the hang of it and took in my surroundings.

  I was in some sort of ship hold, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of kodadt. Everywhere I looked was tattered skin, blood stained fur, teeth and claws. That didn’t bode well.

  I shuffled forward, struggling to get my uneven number of legs where I wanted to go.

  The fragment of Genesis still churned in my middle. I wasn’t sure the ramifications of devouring it for a second time in a dream, but I was hoping that it wouldn’t cross over too much into the real world. I didn’t want to become more murderous space cloud than I was Andi.

  I continued to move forward, despite my complex thoughts. I wasn’t quite sure why I was walking the direction I was, other than a gut feeling that seemed to be compelling me forward.

  The kodadt around me didn’t seem bothered by my steady push to the front. I didn’t know if that was because they were just fragments of dreams or because they had some ingrained instinct not to give two flying flips about each other. Only food. It was always about feeding and spreading their sickness.

  Finally, I reached the front, where the wall of the hold was comprised of the same window-like material that Angel’s funeral had. Once more, I was looking out at the beauty and terror that was space. It really was something, wasn’t in? Back in my time space was still a great mystery being actively explored. It was a bit mind boggling to think that even after thousands more years and incomprehensible technological advances, it was still mostly as unknown entity.

  Except… this part didn’t seem unknown. Something in my view was pricking at recognition at the back of my head. Why did this feel like someplace I had already been?

  I looked to each of the celestial bodies, wracking my brain to get at that niggling feeling of familiarity.

  And then it clicked.

  I reared backwards and the movement sent me flying out of my hi-jacked body. I went through the hold, then through the nothingness, before I plopped right back into my body in my bed.

  I sat up with a jolt, fully intent on letting out a shout to awaken my friends. But instead, a torrent of black, gooey liquid forced its way out of my mouth, s
plattering down onto the blanket and Janix’s arm that had been wrapped around me.

  Of course, that woke him up, and I commended him that his first words concern for me rather than a disgusted exclamation.

  “Andi! Are you all right? What’s going on?!”

  I couldn’t answer him. My body was still heaving violently. It was almost as bad as the very first time I had ingested Genesis.

  “Here, let me get you to the bathroom. Come on.”

  He helped me up and practically carried me to the shower, turning the water on so it could spray over me. After what seemed like forever, I caught my breath and looked to him with wide eyes.

  “He knows where Jyra’s lab is,” I wheezed, voice practically raw from the abuse my throat had taken. “And he’s going to attack it with a whole horde of kodadt.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded blearily. “I saw it myself. Tell everyone to assemble at the Captain’s quarters and set the fastest speed we can for those coordinates. This fight isn’t over yet.”

  * * *

  “So, this ship, what did it look like?”

  “Full of kodadt.”

  Arq gave me a patient look and I almost sank into the couch I was huddled on. We were in Angel’s quarters yet again. Except they were Arq’s quarters now, I supposed.

  “I meant model, type, structure. Was it a carrier? A transport? A warship?”

  “I dunno. It was full of kodadt and had a wall of windows at the front of the holding area. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “A clear-fiber front? That’s interesting.”

  “Doesn’t really sound like an attack vessel,” Viys’k said from where she was perched on the arm of the couch.

  “Why would it need an attack vessel when it’s got your dimension’s most powerful weapon inside?”

  “Point taken.”

  “We’ve already alerted the lab. They’re gathering all their supplies for an evacuation. About half of the subjects have already left in Bajol’s transport and are hiding out on the dark side of a nearby moon, but half still remain there. Do you have any idea on when this ship is arriving? Or if it has already?”

  “When I was seeing through the kodadt’s eyes, they were already there. Maybe fifteen minutes away at max. But if the lab’s scanners aren’t picking up on anything, I’m not sure if I saw what Genesis was planning to happen, or if he made it up entirely.”

  “Can it do that?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  “I think we do need to prepare for the possibility that it wanted you to see this and we are walking into a trap.”

  “That’s definitely an option,” I admitted. “It’s hard to tell if the whole thing was orchestrated by a desperate enemy or if it was real. Not that anything is real in that strange dream-vision-whatever realm.” I thought back to when that shadowy monster had chased me through the memories of my childhood hospital. “It certainly feels like it at the time, though.”

  The five of us nodded in varying degrees of understanding and a silence filled the room as we contemplated exactly what the best step was. Obviously, we had to go save Bajol and the others, but we had to do it knowing that it was most likely a trap and figure out a way not to have our asses handed to us on a dark cloud platter.

  “So… what’s with the eating it thing? That’s twice now.”

  I shrugged, feeling my cheeks colors a bit. “I dunno. An unchecked oral fixation?”

  “It’s most likely a primitive reflex,” Jyra answered like it was the most common thing in the world. “In the early days of all our species the only weapons we had were our fists, our teeth and our feet. When put into a position where neither punching or kicking is liable to do anything, the adrenaline soaked part of the brain reaches out for its last recourse.

  “Also, you do have an oral fixation.” She smiled lightly at that. “Your court-ordered therapist told you that on your second meeting.”

  “You remember that?” I said, more than a bit mystified.

  “Of course. I remember everything.” Her tone softened and I saw the slightest crinkle at the edge of her large eyes. “I forgot you once. I’ll never let that happen again. Not a single detail.”

  Janix let out a whistle. “And I thought I was the one who was great at romantic speeches.”

  “What do you mean roman—”

  “Anyways,” I interrupted. “What’s the ETA on our arrival?”

  “Only an hour. We were already fairly close from when we jettisoned Bajol yesterday and we set a course as soon as Janix hailed us on the comms.”

  “Then we’ve got an hour to suit up then.”

  “Suit up? What makes you think you’re going planet side?”

  “That’s simple,” I said with a smile. “If Genesis shows itself, I’m going to finish what Angel started.”

  Chapter Nine: That Surprise in the Middle

  “I had a dream of telling the future once,” Jyra said.

  “What now?” I asked dumbly, looking up from where I had been buckling the heavy duty, commando boots that Arq had graciously provided me.

  “Your dream you had, back about what happened on the facility. I had one like that too.”

  “You did? What happened?”

  “It’s hard to say. My dream was not so much the event, as it was the aftermath. I was in some sort of populated area. I could see store signs, and lifts and stairs. But everything was covered in blood and viscera. As far as the eye could see, there were the dead and dying. It was hell, if such a place exists. Someone grabbed me, they said something to me that I can never quite remember, but I knew it was important. Then something lunged out at me from the darkness, and it ends.”

  “What did it mean? Did it help save you like ours did?”

  “No,” she answered, eyes unreadable. “Because it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “That’s a bit ominous, don’t you think?”

  “I do not mean to be, but I cannot help that it is. It is Genesis’ final plan, I know it. The one that will push us over the edge into complete chaos, and it frustrates me that I cannot figure out exactly what it is.”

  I chewed the side of my cheek, thinking. “Yeah, that’s a real humdinger. Was there one particular species throughout the victims?”

  She shook her head. “No, I thought I could surmise which planet it was on from that, but the population was fairly even with a slight lean toward human. Granted, I can’t mathematically quantify it considering it’s a dream. I must rely on my memory and we both know how… ephemeral such a thing can be.”

  I finished putting on my supplies and stood. I put a hand on her shoulder, unsure if this was a good time for a hug or not, and patted it awkwardly. “Don’t worry, Jyra. We will win this.”

  She smiled, and it was such a genuine grin that I had to take a solid second to appreciate it. I was taken right back to when we were young and she used to read to me and I would just stare at her in utter wonder.

  She caught my stare, and returned it, but her smile began to fade and her eyebrows took on that knitted shape they did when she was thinking. “What is the relationship between you and Janix?”

  Hooboy. “Whoa, right out of left field with that one, aren’t you?”

  “I am on a ship, not a field.”

  “Yes, yes you absolutely are.” Oh, man. What did I say? Of course, I was going to tell her the truth, but why did that make my heart race? “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I am considering something,” she said flatly. “And it’s never even been on my radar before and yet here it is. I’m gathering information to further explore my hypothesis, so I need to know. You two are close, and you came together to that meeting so late at night. He reacted awkwardly to our kiss – which was most unplanned and I am still not certain why that happened – but is otherwise very friendly. I am not the best at social cues, but I think he might have flirted with me yesterday?”

  Each word she said had me balancing between deflating i
nto an embarrassed puddle and outright laughing. I shouldn’t be laughing, this certainly wasn’t a laughing matter, but I hadn’t been informed that my life was about to switch genres again from high-flying sci-fi adventures to some sort of love triangle rom-com shenanigans.

  “Janix and I are seeing each other,” I answered. “And he probably was flirting with you.”

  She tilted her head, for all the world looking like a very curious owl. “And is that normal?”

  “Well, I don’t really know for around these parts. Back home, no, not really. Do you know much about Mooreerie culture?”

  “Yes. Four sexes, with the lodee being the only child barer of the four. Right now, they currently have a movement going on for lodee rights considering they are often forced into being nothing but progeny cookers—”

  “Do you mean baby ovens?”

  “Same thing. They are often forced into being progeny cookers and are largely discriminated against in the workforce. Lodee are also not allowed to join the military until they are able to receive a diagnosis by a government accredited doctor that they should not have any more children.”

  “Geez, I didn’t know any of that, but I more meant their relationship culture.”

  “Ah. Mooreerie often form lifelong mates, although they have several different arrangements. The most common is a cluster around a lodee, but there—” She stopped short and then looked at me. “He is polyamorous.”

  “Yup. Apparently so.”

  She was quiet a moment and I could almost see all the words adding up in her head. “Are you?”

  “I… don’t know. I never thought about it until he brought it up.”

  “Why did he bring it up?”

  And here’s where it would get super awkward. “Because... he thinks that we should date.”

  And in true Jyra fashion, she didn’t even blink. “Should we?”

  “I don’t know?” I answered, felling completely put on the spot. I had been prepping myself for a final fight with the enemy, not a… whatever the hell this was.