The Return (Alternate Dimensions Book 5) Page 4

  “No. I knew it could never grow enough in this world. Our layer of dimension could heal it somewhat overtime, but never have it grow like it did in its original home.”

  “Sounds like a lose-lose situation.”

  “It was. But, as life often does, it found a way eventually. It knew that it itself could not live, but it could create something anew. And so, it broke itself into two distinct fragments, then scattered hundreds of copies of those pieces throughout space and time.”

  “That seems… counterintuitive for someone who needed to get bigger.”

  “It would if there was any possibility that it could grow here. But it couldn’t do that on its own. Whatever circumstances that allowed it to thrive on its own side of the void are absent on ours. So, it needed our help.

  “Those bits of it, scattered through time and space, would eventually manifest themselves within lifeforms, resulting in the birth of a child. From this side of the void, and yet not. We are those creations. Children of the Light, I like to call us. We are not Strangers, we do not belong, and yet we are.”

  “You keep saying ‘we’. How many of us are there?”

  “It is impossible to tell. As far as I can tell, not every dimension has a Child of Light born into it. But we always seek each other out. Much like you and Jyra.”

  “You mentioned two distinct fragments.” I repeated, already losing my oath to stop parroting what other people said back to them as a question. “Am I to take it that you mean…”

  “Yes. We are all either Andis, or Jyras.” She sat back and took a breath while I stared at her incredulously. “Of course, the names are often different, and not all of us have been born yet, but we are inherently the same within. Copy after copy of the same two souls, the same two minds.”

  “So I’m some sort of… of… goddamn clone?” I felt all my sense of identity start to slip. I had always thought I was fairly original, unique. And now I was founding out I wasn’t one of a kind at all, but one of a few thousand instead.

  I was suddenly standing up, my tolerance about to hit zero. “What’s the point of all that? Why go through all the trouble of creating all these copies? Did it want a hit show on reality TV or something? One thousand kids and counting?”

  “No, not at all!” She held up her hands, a signal begging for peace. Reluctantly, I sat back onto the couch to hear what else she could possibly say. “The reason it created us is because it knew Genesis would resurface again and begin its destruction once more. We are meant to defeat, and devour it throughout every single dimension that it dared to touch until nothing is left. Then, and only then, will the light within us find enough power to not only return home, but to awaken its slumbering half on the other side of the void.”

  I groaned, putting my head in my hands. “This is all so unbelievable and convoluted. I’m just a girl who’s still in college, and you’re trying to tell me that I’m some sort of clone-battery meant to recharge some intergalactic being that the other intergalactic being that’s trying to kill me is scared of?”

  “Slightly run on concept, but in short, yes.”

  Nope, I was mad again and on my feet. What was the point in anything if my destiny was prewritten before I was even born? I wasn’t even human, or a sentient being, I was some sort of cosmic-sperm that had wiggled its way into my mother without concent.

  “So what now then,” I asked, voice laced with poison. “Since you’re this dimensions Jyra, what are we supposed to do? Team up and take the bad guy down? Ditch the other Jyra and tell her to suck an egg?”

  But the woman refused to be riled up. She just shook her head gently and regarded me with those same large, round eyes. “No, I am not from this dimension at all. In fact, as far as I could tell, this reality never had a Jyra. That is most likely why you and her were able to form such a strong, cross-rift relationship as children.”

  “So, if you’re not from here, where are you from?”

  “Someplace not too dissimilar from this. A little more advanced, by fifty years or so. Our Great Choice was a world leader who staged a coup to lead the world back into fascism and total war.”

  “Sounds thrilling. So why’d you come here?”

  “We lost.” She said it so simply, but I could hear the weight of so many decisions behind her tone. “The only reason I’m here is because Anya -sorry, that’s my version of Andi- managed to create a wormhole that pierced a dimensional wall and sent me through it.”

  “And where’s your Anya?”

  “Dead.” That startled me, and I stared at her with wide eyes. “She was run through in front of my very eyes. The wormhole didn’t close right away, allowing me to watch her die.” She sighed and took a moment to dab at her eyes. “It was… difficult. I was lost for a very long time, and I fell into habits that were unhealthy to say the least.

  “I spent almost all days sleeping, trying to find answers as I drifted through hours and hours of dreams. I found many, and that is how I began to piece together the same story I just told you.

  “It was then that I knew that I had to do. I had to chronicle every story I saw so that other Children of Light who might follow after me would have the answers I spent so much time looking for. I would work as a guide, helping those lost on their path.”

  “Well, good for you then!” I growled. “Glad you found peace in the revelation that we’re just copies and have no purpose other than to make sure some giant night light phone home. But I’m not!”

  “Andi, don’t you see it’s so much more than that? We’re not just batteries, or clones, or copies. We are children that were created to defeat an enemy that threatens to destroy us all.”

  “Yeah, because we invaded its home!” I snapped back. “We’re the fleas in this situation, forcibly invading another creature’s home that was just milling about, minding its own business.”

  “While our origins might be less than immaculate, Genesis could have chosen to live in peace with us. Instead, it chose to destroy everything in its path. Unfortunately, peace cannot be had and this is the path we must walk.”

  “If you say so.” I collapsed against the back of the couch, trying to digest everything that had been revealed to me. It all just seemed so… impossible. “I don’t get it though. You’ve handed me all this knowledge because you say that I need to understand the whole story and why things are how they are, but it’s left me feeling more confused than when I started. None of this is going to help me get back to Jyra, and it making the whole ‘we must beat Genesis’ thing as pretty pointless.”

  “But is it not pointless. We were created to bring peace to these dimensions to save the ones we love. By knowing the true history of us, you can unlock all of our incredibly potential. We are beings that aren’t supposed to exist! We are a celebration of how life persists, even from its darkest moments.”

  “I get it. I do. We’re like, the chosen ones. And as much as I appreciate the backstory, I really just want to get to Jyra.”

  “Of course.” She said with a smile. “It is in your nature. Once one of our kind finds another, it is not often that we want to part.”

  “If that’s so, then why don’t I feel that way towards you?”

  “Because I’m not your Jyra. If you and her were together, you would no doubt feel some sort of camaraderie with me. But right now everything in you is screaming for your scientist, isn’t it? Like nothing could possibly be right when you are apart.”

  “Are those feelings even real though? Or they some sort of compulsion of my borked physiology? Do I even really love her?!” My hand went to my mouth in surprise. I hadn’t been meaning to say the L word, after all, it was far too soon. And yet there it was.

  “Your feelings for each other are genuine.” The woman said smoothly. “Not every Jyra and every Andi feels romantically for each other. Sometimes we are the best of friends. Sometimes we are sisters, or brothers. Sometimes we are a parent and a child. And sometimes, as in your case, we are alone.

  ‘The
light is not meant to be alone. It abhors it. And that is why we are drawn to each other. What we feel when we do meet is entirely up to us. The reason it split itself into two distinct fragments was to make sure that we would never be lonely and always have a companion as we hunt down and defeat Genesis, not some diabolical urge to reproduce.

  “Yeah, that’s only slightly less unsettling when you say it like that.”

  She shrugged. “Over the centuries I have been alive, I have found that it is better to state things as they are.” She stood, and offered a hand to me. “Now, shall I send you to her so you can save her dimension once and for all?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Not only can I do that, but I can teach you how to.”

  I jumped to my feet, the anger and frustration taking a backseat to the sudden rush of hope. “Then by all means, let’s find a backdoor.”

  “Please, take me to dinner first.”

  I didn’t get it as we shook, but when she began to walk away, realization dawned on me. “Did you just-”

  “This way,” She interrupted. “We have much to do.”

  Chapter Four: One Way Ticket to Doomsday

  I followed her down into a flight of stairs into what looked like a nicely finished basement. But instead of storage, or things of that nature, it was set up remarkably similar to Jyra’s lab. However, instead of copious amounts of sci-fi drenched equipment, there was charts, books, graphs and incense.

  “This is nice.” I said. “Less portal-y than I was expecting, but nice.”

  The corner of her mouth when up in a subtle smirk. “The walls are lined with a sound system that will be useful to our purposes.”

  “Which is cross dimensional travel?”

  “Which is cross dimensional travel.” She answered.

  “If you’re able to do this, why stay here? Why not hop around the universes and see things first hand?”

  “I do not need to be present to see what is and what has been.” She answered. “But I never said that I do not travel myself.” She smiled and lovingly ran her hand across the bindings. “The books need someone to distribute them, after all.”

  We reached a safe at the back where she quickly punched in a code. “This journey will not be easy. Technically, you are dead, and traveling while dead is quite different than traveling while alive.”

  “What do you mean, I’m dead? I feel pretty alive. I peed this morning and everything.”

  “That’s because you’re much more than your physical form now. I do not know how, but the energy you devoured from Genesis leant you much of its properties. As your body there gave out, and the light went to return your soul to your own dimension, it triggered some sort of regeneration mechanism that created you a new body.”

  “It did a terrible job because I was actually dead when they found me.”

  “Of course. You must realize that, although whatever part of Genesis that has integrated into your DNA is powerful, it’s not that familiar with human anatomy. It needed to interact with other humans and see how their systems functioned before it could heal you completely.”

  “So I’m basically immortal?”

  “Hardly.” She handed me some sort of techno-gizmo that looked startlingly like one of those mechanical shaking weights that were layered with innuendo. “You’ll notice that all of those lovely, jack-in-the-box abilities that you had before are now gone. Side effect of the power within you using up so much of itself to make sure you stayed intact.”

  “That explains why I haven’t been able to punch through any walls or have the urge to uncontrollably puke up black sludge.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That side effect is particularly unpleasant, isn’t it? I remember when Anya was going through the same thing.”

  “Your Andi devoured Genesis too?”

  “Yes. But not quite as literally as you. But she was able to convince Genesis that she had fallen for its honey lies. She opened herself up for full possession to be his avatar into the light. Instead, she absorbed what he did place in her, and used it to defeat him in the end.”

  “And you were comfortable with that?”

  “Of course not. But I wasn’t a prominent part of Anya’s decision-making process at the beginning of her journey. It wasn’t until after we exposed their second in command for an illegal sex slave ring that she started trusting me. Granted, her tendency for self-sacrifice continued considering how she gave her life to save my own when the battle was won.” I opened my mouth to offer condolences again, but she was already moving on. “Come. Sit down here on the carpet.”

  I did as she said and she arranged herself across from me, holding an almost identical gizmo in her hands.

  “Now, I need you to close your eyes and picture Jyra. Reach out for that pull you can feel within yourself. Grasp it with all your might.”

  I let my eyelids drop and pictured the half-kin. Of course the first thing that came to mind was the last moment I had seen her. She had been so scared, tears in the corner of her impossibly large eyes and the tip of her nose turning red. I hated seeing her like that and felt the urgent need to make it better.

  I reached my mind out for her, searching for that tug I felt at my heart. I made my thoughts hone in on each and every detail I could remember of her. The smooth, aquiline features of her face. The gentle dappling of seirr and human skin color that spanned across her. The way the light would catch in her eyes when she was solving a particularly challenging puzzle.

  “Perfect,” Guinevere murmured. “In a minute I’m going to ask you to depress the button at the top of your dematerializer. But first, I need to make sure we’re at the correct frequency.”

  She hit something else and I felt the speakers around me began to vibrate. I couldn’t hear any music -only a faint buzz- but I could feel that something was happening.

  “You’ve broken through the wall before, so you know how difficult it can be. Be prepared for it to be worse than it’s ever been.”

  “Why’s that, am I just lucky?”

  “Remember that whole being dead thing we just talked about? That dimension won’t want to let you in. You’ll be ripping a hole that it put so much effort into sewing up.”

  “How rude. Explain to me how we’re not the bad guys again?”

  “Bad and good are ephemeral and hard to grasp. We’re all just people trying to survive.”

  I didn’t have a comeback for that, and I forced my mind to go back to focusing solely on Jyra. I could practically see her in my mind’s eye, sitting in a lab as she poured her everything into defeating Genesis.

  “Are you ready?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Then press the button. You’ll feel a strong shock, and if we’re lucky, you’ll be on your way.”

  “And if we’re not lucky?”

  “Your body will turn to ash and the light within you will return to the fabric of the universe in the hopes that the rest of us will someday defeat Genesis and generate enough power for the light to reassemble itself and return home.”

  “Right. Fingers crossed then.”

  “Take a deep breath.” I did. “And go.”

  My thumb moved to click the button, and then I was off.

  Electricity bit through me like lightning, and every cell of my body felt as it was being burned to a crisp. I screamed, but no sound came out. There was only the thrum of the speakers around us.

  And then, just as suddenly as it happened, I wasn’t there anymore. Instead I was being ripped across time and space, hurtling through the fabric of time like an unguided rocket. It was wrose than any other time. I was being stretched like putty and spun like a top through what was, what had been, and what could be. I saw flashes of colors, blips of fire and war, glances of happiness and laughter. My mind couldn’t comprehend the myriad of vignettes as I whipped through them, reducing itself to a panicked, fractured mush.

  Then I was hurtling towards something solid, my body reassembling itself
, only to smash into something solid.

  That was one hell of a ride.

  Pain filled my senses and that was the only thing I could make out as my mind tried to reassemble itself. However, despite the sludge that seemed to be clinging to all of my thoughts, I became acutely aware of the fact that I couldn’t breathe!

  I opened my mouth in a gasp only for it to fill with a warm, cloyingly perfumed liquid. I thrashed around, trying to decipher which way was up.

  My feet touched something hard, and solid, so I pushed off that, hurtling upwards as fast as I could. I broke through the surface and drew in wracking, greedy gulps of blessed air while wiping the liquid from my face. Almost immediately, alarmed cries sounded around me, but I couldn’t be bothered with them until my vision was clear.

  When I could see, I was in some sort of ornate circle of liquid. It looked like it might have once been water, but it was filled with so many sparkles and pleasantly smelling things that it was now some sort of beauty-soup. There were several naked people of differing species along the edges that looking at me in horror, and I didn’t quite know what to say.

  So, I figured I might as well go with the obvious.

  “Um,” I murmured slowly, taking the time to spit some of the nasty bath-water from my mouth. “Where am I?”

  That did not do anything to assuage anyone’s worry, and I heard calls for Councilmen as people scrambled out of my path. I never saw quite so many bare alien asses all at once, and I had to resist the urge to cover my eyes out of modesty. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time for delicate sensibilities when Councilmen were concerned. I was the most wanted woman in the galaxy, after all. And that required a certain amount of not getting caught by this dimension’s police force.

  I scrambled out of the pool along with the others, noticing I was still in my earth clothes, which were now weighed down with all the perfumed liquid. I was definitely going to have a massive headache and a glitter problem later. You’d think that this far in the future they would have figured out that the little sparkles were hell to get out of curly hair. Oh well, even technology had its limits.