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This is difficult for me to recount. I can still feel the coolness of my data-pad in my hands, still smell the bitter chemical scent that surrounded that needle. I think perhaps I shall rest – the medic says I should be getting more of that – and return tomorrow.

  If there is a tomorrow.

  I’ve learned not to take that for granted.

  I have journeyed far, and am weary,

  Dr. Jyra

  Mattin, Unknown

  Alright, I am feeling more rested and ready to tell you what happened next.

  Sometimes, I worry that I dreamed it all. That everything was some strange nightmare that I was trapped in.

  But sadly, it was reality.

  I awoke slowly, consciousness poking at me with increasing urgency until I slowly cracked open my eyes.

  I was someplace cold and dark. I couldn’t make out much in the dim light, but from what I could see, I was caged in by three blank, grey walls, with the fourth partition being entirely comprised of hard light. A force field. Something used on criminals and wild animals to keep them penned in for others’ safety.

  The thought of being confined in such a tiny prison shook me to my core, and the next thing I knew, I was on my feet, yelling as loudly as I could.

  “Hello! Hello! Is anyone there? There’s been a mistake!”

  There was the sound of a door somewhere outside of my visual range sliding open, and steps echoed through wherever I was. Closing my eyes, I listened carefully to the sounds, mapping out the shape of the room based upon their resonance. Goodness knows, if I had found the unique vibrational frequency of an invisible, alternate universe, I could find out the dimensions of my prison.

  “Good to see you’re conscious again, Dr. Jyra. You’ve been quite the busy girl.”

  “A busy scientist,” I hissed as the figure came into being. Unsurprisingly, it was one of our corporate babysitters. I wish I could say I was surprised, but there was always something inherently untrustworthy about someone who pursued science solely for monetary gain.

  “Of course. You mortals are always so fiercely proud of your accomplishments. It’s amusingly insignificant compared to the universe, but it means so much to you.”

  I looked up into the face of the human male, but it was easy to see that underneath the skin, he was anything but human. Violence and hatred roiled behind his eyes, and poison dripped from every word he spoke.

  “Deride me all you want, but you’re the one who’s been chasing me ever since I was a lowly intern to stop me from finding Andi!”

  I was entirely surprised when the man – instead of yelling – laughed uproariously in response. I stood there, feeling strangely embarrassed, until he calmed enough to debase me more.

  “You think all of this is about that little red-headed nuisance?” More laughter, and I felt myself flush. I didn’t like being laughed at. “You myopic, self-centered, idiotic, little girl. I could care less if you found your childhood crush. She’s as obnoxious as she is moronic, and utterly frivolous to all of this.”

  Suddenly, he was close, too close, his maniacal grin less than an inch from the transparent barrier between the two of us. “The only reason you even matter in the slightest is because we couldn’t have that little machine of yours ruining our plans. However, with a little tinkering, I think we can repurpose it to further our cause.”

  “We? Who is we? What are you? And what are you planning then? Why do you hate the Strangers so much?” I didn’t know where I found the courage to speak to this ancient creature in such a way, but I was angry. I hadn’t been so righteously angry in years.

  “Who are we? Who are we?” He took a step back and raised his arms in a grand gesture. “We are the original inhabitants of time! We existed long before the first of your kind rose from the primordial ooze and inflicted the universe with your physical forms and inferior presence. But we have remained. Watching, waiting, and feeding. We knew that with enough time and manipulation, all your precious dimensions would fall, and the universe would return to the chaos we once reigned over. And so, we have been quiet, but always there. We are the reason all of you species fear the dark. We are the violence that turns brother against brother, which grows as blood is spilled in hate. We are ancient and unstoppable.”

  I stood there quietly, absorbing everything he said. It was so impossible, but at the same time, entirely believable. At least, given what I had seen.

  The man was still looking at me expectantly. I knew he was looking for shock or awe. Some sort of affirmation of his greatness and how powerless I felt in his presence. I decided I did not want to comply.

  “That’s kind of a mouthful. Do you guys have a shorter name you like to go by? Like, Grumpy Clouds or something?”

  He definitely was not pleased, and he slapped at the force field separating us. “Be as snarky as you want. For now, you may be useful, so be grateful. The moment you become more wearisome than you’re worth, I’ll have no issue with scattering your atoms across the universe, like I have so many of your friends.”

  I knew I shouldn’t antagonize my captors. I knew, I knew, I knew! But I couldn’t help it. His arrogance and all the frustration he had already brought my short life made me want to prick as many holes in his ego as I could. “But if you’re so all powerful, why don’t you just destroy us already? Why all this need for subterfuge? Disguising yourself as one of us, stealing a ship to blow up my lab. Hell, even blowing up my first lab makes sense.

  “The only possible logical conclusion is that you’re not the big kid on the holo-block. There’s actually someone bigger and badder than you, and you’re trying to circumvent their trickery indirectly. Please, feel free to stop me if I’m wrong.”

  The man’s voice was dangerously low as he answered me, and chills rolled up my spine. “You think you’re so clever, but you know nothing.”

  But I couldn’t back down. As much as I was not one for confrontation, I knew that I had just entered a chess match where the stakes were the fate of every dimension in our multi-verse. “Then by all means, educate me.”

  We stood there in a deadlock before the man let out an irritated shout and slammed the barrier with his fists once again.

  I jumped back, startled, and he simply laughed as he dissolved then reformed back into that same shapeless, swirling, violent form. Although he no longer had a mouth, the booming mirth continued to fill the room, until the roiling mass swelled impossibly in size, then winked entirely out of existence.

  I stood there for a while, waiting for it to suddenly pop back with a ‘Boo!’ but nothing happened. When I was sure I was alone – or as sure as I could be, considering the circumstances – I set about thoroughly examining my cage.

  Upon further investigation, I found that, while the walls were indeed just thick metal with no wiring or mechanisms, the floor was an entirely different matter. I knew that there had to be a power source and motherboard for the forcefield somewhere, so I spent the next four hours with my ear to the cool foundation, tapping my nails across every inch of it until I found the right spot.

  My heart was hammering the entire time. What if I got caught? But the moments ticked by, and the dark being didn’t return. Neither did anyone appear to supply me with food or water. Hopefully, I would be out of the holding pen before that was an issue.

  Finally, just when it seemed like I was never going to find the panel, my fingernails hit a spot that responded entirely different from the rest of the floor.

  Bingo.

  Sitting back, I continued to tap around the location, mapping out the span of the control panel. When I had a fairly good idea of its layout, I reached back toward my hair that I kept in a professional bun at the back of my head. Carefully, I pulled one of my decorative pins out and flicked open the top.

  If there was one thing I had learned after years of being paranoid of a malevolent power stalking my every move, it was that you could never be over-equipped. So sure, creating an electrode emitter disguised as a hair ornament might have see
med a bit over the top, but look who won out in the end.

  It was me…just in case that didn’t come across.

  With a quick flick of my finger, I turned the small, spike-like device on. Taking a deep breath, I brought it pointy side down, right into the center of what I hoped was the control panel.

  Sparks flew, and my lungs filled with the acrid smell of electrical fire. Breathless, I looked back to the hard light barrier of my cell to see it blink a few times, then disappear entirely.

  I had done it!

  Jumping to my feet, I was out of there as fast as my unathletic, little legs would take me. I rocketed toward where I had heard my enemy enter from and barreled out into a long, nondescript hall.

  Great.

  I had managed to escape, but now I had no idea where I was and, in space, ships were just slightly larger prisons when you weren’t a consenting passenger.

  I forced myself to take several calming breaths, and listened. I had been doing a lot of that recently.

  I knew from research that docking bays were often held near engines, as any sort of radiation or explosive damage could be shunted out of that port rather than burn through the ship. So, closing my eyes, I searched for the all-too-familiar thrum of energy pouring through the ship.

  It was soft, but close. Leading me to believe the ship I was on was a small personnel carrier rather than some massive starship or station. Perhaps along the lines of a political transport?

  Either way, it didn’t matter. My eyes snapped open and I raced down the corridor. Somehow, I didn’t run into anyone. But perhaps that’s because there was no one to run into? Did that black mass need a crew at all?

  I didn’t have an answer, and I wasn’t overly concerned with finding one. When I reached the dock, I slid through the doors, unable to kill my momentum in time to make a grateful entrance. My stomach dropped when I saw no fighters or cargo busses in the bay. In fact, there was only a single shuttle.

  I didn’t have time to complain, however, because the empty pilot suits lined along the wall began to fill. Like something out of a horror sim, they inflated with the dark, angry energy and helped themselves off of their hooks.

  “You have got to be kidding me!”

  “Where are you going, Jyra?”

  I recognized the voice, although it was faded and garbled amongst the stumbling figures. I surmised that it was difficult to work as so many independent forms, and decided I did not want to stick around while the creature recalibrated. Sprinting forward, I jumped through the open door of the shuttle and slammed the button to close it.

  And it closed, but agonizingly slow. It would have been comical if it wasn’t for the fact that my life was on the line. But I didn’t have time to wait for it. Still breathing hard, I rushed to the front of the tiny craft and started booting it up.

  Thankfully, basic shuttle flight was taught to all inhabitants of space stations, as it was necessary in case of emergencies. After all, escape pods had auto-pilot, but auto-pilot was often not appropriate when a ship was exploding – or in the face of many volatile situations that would often require the use of one such shuttle or escape pod.

  The ship began to alight, and I buckled in. Meanwhile, I could see from the broad cockpit window that the forms were surrounding the ship.

  “Come on, come on…”

  As if in response, the little vessel blipped its readiness, and I punched the engines so hard that they owed me a slap or two once we docked.

  We rocketed into space and freedom.

  I let it just cruise forward, in disbelief that somehow that had actually worked, but I realized that I had to get back to the station. These beings were set on the destruction of our universes. And if they were somehow going to use my machine for their purposes, then I had to stop them. Even if it meant destroying exactly what I had spent so many years working on.

  Dread filling me, I put in the coordinates for the ship. As I did, the sensors behind me beeped. The ship I had just escaped had changed its trajectory in a direct collision course with my tiny ship.

  Well, two could play that game.

  Engaging the autopilot, I rushed to the back and opened the paneling on the wall. I wasn’t much of an expert in mechanical engineering, but I knew enough to disable the safety controls of a ship and hotwire the thrusters beyond their threshold. Sure, there was a chance that could end up leading to my fiery doom, but that was a risk I was willing to take.

  Thankfully, there was no explosion. Just a massive rattle that practically shook my teeth out of my gills, and the shuttle lurched forward, far beyond its normal capacity. I crawled back to the cockpit, the gravitational forces of our sudden acceleration making it impossible for me to stand, and buckled myself back in. I had maybe a five minute lead now, and I had to make sure I used it. According to the clock on the dashboard, it was only six hours since I had last snuck out of my room. I would have been proud of such a quick escape, but I didn’t have time. I would gloat after I defeated the creature stalking us.

  Decelerating to the dock was a bit trickier than I had anticipated, and I ended up bouncing the shuttle like a stone across the water until it slammed into the far wall. Instantly, fire and crash alarms went off, but I was already barreling through the doors.

  Thankfully – although they had taken my badge – I was able to use the genetic scanner to continue to bolt down the corridor. I heard others beginning to wake and the security bots deploy, but I couldn’t stop for anything.

  I would make it.

  I had to.

  My feet pounded down the halls that had once been so familiar until I reached the lab. It was just as I left it, but with my data-pad on the floor and an empty injector beside it. I would need to test that later to see what exactly they pumped into me, but I tucked that thought away and dove for my pad.

  I pulled up my interface once more, pulling up the override that I had programmed in case of emergency long ago. But my finger hovered above the button, unwilling to close that final gap.

  It was so funny, in a way, how years and years of work could be erased so easily. Just one little, teeny, tiny gap, and the machine that I had built would be no more.

  Just one…little…push.

  But that push meant I would never see Andi again. Or at least not for a long while. And I couldn’t help but feel that Andi – as the only other Stranger who had the ability to make contact outside of the meeting place – was incredibly vital to making sure we did away with this beast once and for all.

  “Screw it.”

  Resolve set now, I punched in the security codes to put my private system for the lab on lockdown. As the doors slid closed and reinforcement shielding shot up from the floor, I went into a whirlwind of movement.

  I booted up the machine, satisfaction flooding me as it began to hum with energy. I ran to the hard light panel and punched several codes in, praying with each one. And finally, I hooked up my neural transmitters and thought of my friend.

  Memories flashed through my mind, a kaleidoscope of nostalgia. It was an illogical, colorful waterfall of reminiscence, and as the machine whirred faster and faster, the recollections grew brighter and louder.

  I knew that someone was cutting through the door, and I could faintly hear my data-pad chirping that power to my alternate systems was almost gone. But it didn’t matter. I was close. So incredibly close.

  And then, finally, I saw her. She was holding her head in her hands in a tightly cramped room filled with strange and primitive decorations. Her hair was just as wild as ever, but she was so much bigger. And stronger. And…just more.

  My hand reached out to her, and somehow, she seemed to know. She lifted her head, and although her eyes widened in shock at the sight of me, she didn’t seem horrified.

  “Andi!” I called to her, unsure if she could hear me or not. The banging on the door was growing louder. They were almost through with their insipid laser cutter. “Please, Andi! I need your help!”

  It was impossible
that she could have heard me. And it was even more impossible that she could reach out and grab my extended hand.

  But she did.

  Her calloused, rough palm touched my smooth one, and I pulled as hard as I could.

  Everything happened at once. Reality seemed to warp and pop around us, violently bucking at the reaction to our touch. The door slammed to the ground, and suddenly both of us were being swarmed by personnel and security bots. I would have worried about how many of them were the dark clouds.

  “Andi,” I breathed, so utterly undone by the sight of my friend I had been searching for for over a decade.

  And then I was tackled to the floor. I tried to call out in warning, but I knew there wasn’t time. I had to create a distraction big enough to get Andi out of there.

  So, as history tends to repeat itself, I pressed that fateful button on my data-pad.

  An explosion rocked the ship, sending everyone in the room flying to the far wall. Heat engulfed me, and I slammed into the metal so hard my head spun.

  When it cleared, someone was clamping a hand over my mouth and pulling me far into the smoke.

  “Andi! Andi!”

  But the red head couldn’t hear me in the confusion, and I watched her disappear from my sight as I was pulled further and further away from the commotion.

  ***

  And that, my friend, is where my story ends. From there on, it’s Andi’s tale.

  And who knows? Perhaps, one day, you’ll be able to hear it.

  Closing this chapter of my life,

  Dr. Jyra

  ***THE END***

  See next page to continue the adventure!!

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