The girl stood in front of the door. Kel watched her for a long time, taking in her bare feet and blonde hair. Her white dress was delicate with just a touch of lace around the edges. It was crisp and looked new though she had to have been wearing it quite a while. And after running free through the woods, it was amazing the dress wasn’t torn or dirty. Kel blinked and narrowed her eyes at the girl. Her arms and legs were pristine, too.

Kel surveyed her own limbs. The scars from her encounters with thorns and stray branches were scattered over her skin. She hadn’t had those in the beginning. A couple of faint red lines grazed the back of her right hand, scratches fresh enough to have bits of the scabs still intact.

The girl’s gaze didn’t leave Kel the entire time. She barely even blinked. That was weird, too. When she did blink, it seemed almost conscious, like she was making an effort to do so.

They’d been in the room a while now, and Kel was getting antsy. What about Jax? She kicked herself for running off and leaving him to fend for himself. Worse still, if he’d managed to escape since she’d been here, he wouldn’t find her waiting for him at the exit. He’d have no idea where she went—or where to find her.

She frowned and cocked her head at the girl. “Maybe we should go back out there.”

The girl continued to stare.

Pushing up to her feet, Kel took a few steps toward the girl. “Maybe it’s safe to go back now.” She listened. “I don’t hear any buzzing.” Her frown deepened. “You know, I don’t think I heard any buzzing earlier, either—I mean, when I ran into you. What were you running from? Did you see anything?” Kel had assumed the electric waves were pursuing the girl. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen—or heard—any evidence that anything had been there.

No answer.

“Are you sure you were in trouble? I mean, did you see anything?” She took a few steps closer to the girl, gesturing to the door. “I think I’m going to check it out.”

The girl shook her head, spreading her arms wide. Blocking the doorway.

“You can stay here,” Kel said in her most calm voice. “You’ll be fine. I’ll just peek out there to see what’s up.”

The girl didn’t move.

Frustration built inside Kel, but before she could do anything, movement distracted her. The wall behind the girl was moving—changing, somehow. Kel’s eyes shot wide. She watched in disbelief as the gray rectangle of the door they’d entered through vanished, almost as if it were dissolving into the surface of the wall. One minute there was a door, the next it was just a blank wall, identical to all the others. The girl seemed unaware of what was happening.

“What—” Kel gestured wildly, hopping a few steps to the side to get a better view. “It’s gone!” Her heart pounded. She launched herself at the blank spot of wall, and the little girl sidestepped when Kel got close. Kel searched the wall with her palms, but even to her touch, it bore no trace of the door that had just been there.

She spun, scanning the room in one quick, rotating glance. Nothing else had changed. None of the other walls had doors—or any other opening. Not even an air vent. “We’re trapped!” Panic rose inside her chest. Her focus turned back to the girl. Hands spread wide, Kel lurched forward, toward the one who still hadn’t expressed a single concern since they’d entered the room.

When she was about a foot away, something strange happened. The girl’s skin turned grainy, speckled with tiny dots and hazy like she wasn’t quite in focus. Kel pulled up, eyes going wide. It wasn’t just the girl’s skin that was dissolving—it was her dress, her hair, her eyes. Kel didn’t have time to suspect her own vision before the girl’s form morphed further. Slowly, she separated into tiny particles. The mass faltered then changed completely. She was no longer a girl. It was no longer a she. It was a mass of particles that looked like a black cloud.

Kel knew only one emotion: fury. Hot rage seethed in her. She probably should’ve been afraid—terrified, even. But at that moment she was too angry to feel any other emotion. She lunged forward, hands outstretched, ready to tear the creature apart, not even stopping to consider whether or not it was possible. When she came down hard on her front foot, the smoke had already whirled up and away, out of Kel’s reach. She expected it to fight back, but instead, it took on a defensive posture. As before, it moved not as a natural substance but almost as a conscious being, arcing away from her grasp.

It swirled toward the wall and, particle by particle, dissolved through it until the entire creature was gone.

It must have been a full minute before Kel realized her mouth was hanging open. She clamped it shut and shook her head, trying to shrug off the eerie feeling. With an enormous sigh, she walked to the opposite wall, slid down onto her rear, and dropped her head into her hands.

 

 

~

 

 

All that he’d seen filled Jax’s mind like a boiling concoction. Still bound by the metal cuffs, he sat in the hard chair, trying to work out exactly what it all meant. The synchronicity of the scenes picked at his brain, but he still couldn’t figure out the deal with the senses. And he refused to believe he was on another planet. A streak of cold snaked down his spine, and he shivered.

“No.” The word slipped out like a breath, barely audible. “It can’t be true.” He shook his head, denial thick in his mind like sweet custard, much more palatable than the unsavory alternative. He turned his attention to the writhing mass of glowing waves that formed an arc around him like a school of electric eels. The spacing between them diminished as they intertwined and closed around him even tighter.

“It can’t be true!” he screamed, his voice rough from lack of use. “No. I won’t believe it until I see it.” He set his jaw and stared them down.

At his words, the ribbons flickered like static—together, all in sync as opposed to the random bursts earlier. Was it a response? An instant later, they separated into two clusters, leaving a wide pathway down the middle. One of the waves broke away from the others, hovering close in front of him in the center of the gap. A loud clink startled him. His restraints fell open, freeing his arms and legs.

He blinked and stared at the single ripple. It moved away from him, floating through the parted sea of waves.

Jax pulled himself to his feet. His legs felt numb. His right one was asleep. He half walked, half hobbled through the gap, shaking his leg as he went. He halted in front of the door where the lone ripple had stopped. An instant later, it vanished through the door.

He hesitated only an instant before grabbing the handle and wrenching the door open. In the next room, the one with the lockers, the ripple waited for him. At his appearance, it glided toward the other door, once again disappearing into the solid metal surface. He followed.

As they went on, his stomach tightened. He was being led—and followed. He whirled around. The rest of the waves were moving now, trailing behind him in a mass exodus. His heart pounded. He turned back to the open doorway. The single ripple awaited him in the corridor.

It wanted him to follow. Was this a trick? A plot to trap him? But he’d already been trapped, and they’d freed him. An unquenchable need to know the answer pulled on his insides. This thing was trying to show him something. He had to find out.

He stepped into the hall.

His guide floated through the air, and he followed. It hesitated anytime there was a fork in the path as if to make sure he went the right way. He glanced over his shoulder a few times, checking on the sea of waves that trailed behind. Having his back to that mass sent chills down his spine. But still, he followed.

The ripple led him into uncharted territory within the building. Instead of approaching the entrance, they seemed to be headed farther away from it. When they crossed a side passage, he wondered what would happen if he made a run for it. But he wasn’t the runner. Kel was. And he hadn’t been down that path before. He had no idea where it led.

They turned onto a corridor that was pitch black. Jax stopped. The lights from behind were still bright, but little illumination reached the hall ahead of him. Alarm pulsed through him with each heartbeat. He wondered what flaws of the electrical system were responsible for the outage—and realized the darkness might be by design. He shuddered.

The ripple eased a short way into the blackness and waited. Its faint glow cast strange blue highlights and shadows across the walls, doing nothing to help his nerves. He glanced over his shoulder once more. The horde still loomed behind him. He drew a shaky breath and stepped into the dark hall, wondering what fate awaited him.

His own personal glowworm chauffeur moved slower now. Jax was thankful that at least he didn’t have to hurry to keep up. His feet were just two murky black lumps beneath him. Once they entered the unlit area, he lost track of the rest of the population of waves. Either they were waiting back there or they were still trailing him but had doused their lights. Thinking about the latter possibility sent another tremor of cold chills through his body. He tried to focus on the single glow worm.

He lost track of time, but after what might have been ten minutes or thirty, the ripple stopped. Jax halted a few paces back. The wave moved to the right wall, lighting it with a faint blue glow. The surface wasn’t a normal wall like all the rest. There was a large picture window. Jax’s sense of direction told him this was the opposite side of the building from where they’d entered. If the cliff was on the east side of the building, he now faced west.

As he approached, the darkness through the window slowly differentiated from the darkness of the corridor. When he stepped up to the glass, his mouth dropped open. He put both hands flat against the cold surface, pulling his face in as close as possible. He didn’t stop until his nose was touching it, his raspy breath making condensation on the glass.

Outside, the sky was black. But not the blackness of night. There was no moon, no clouds—no anything except a sea of stars. This window allowed a view of the other side of the building. Beneath the pin-dotted sky lay only one thing: the dusty rust-colored surface of a flat, barren planet.

Jax doubled over and heaved, but nothing came out. He gasped several lungfuls of air and came back up. Pounding his fists on the glass, he willed the scene before him to dissolve into a vision, a dream, a nightmare. But he couldn’t blink it away. This wasn’t a vision. Alive and raging, his senses told him that this was most definitely real.

“No!” He spun back around to face Glowworm. “Take us back home! We don’t wanna be here. You got no right to mess with our lives! We aren’t your pets. We don’t exist for your sick enjoyment. Or whatever reason you brought us here. We’re real people with real lives!”

At his outburst, the corridor suddenly came to life. A loud buzzing noise surrounded him just as a hundred ripples lit up around him, their brightness illuminating the corridor.

They seemed to feed off his outburst. In response, they came at him swiftly this time, no more lazy floating. He stumbled backward, flailing his arms as a last desperate attempt to ward them off. They zoomed in, and before he knew it, he was getting stung by one after another of them. Current zapped through his body like he’d been Tasered.

Only one of the ripples refused to make contact. As Jax went down, his limbs twitched. His gaze fixed on what seemed to be the leader—Glowworm. There was one lingering question in his mind. A final plea for an answer.

Why?

 

 

~

 

 

It was a good hour or so later when Kel’s anger finally dwindled. Replacing it was a grim acceptance. Again, she was trapped. This time, alone.

Although there was no hope of escape—she had no idea how one could leave a room that had four solid walls but no door—fear wasn’t in the forefront of her mind. She’d seen so many odd things since she’d lost her memory, and this room wasn’t one of the worst. The thing she kept puzzling over was the fact that up until the point when she’d left Jax, neither of them had actually been harmed in this building. They’d been captured, yes, but whoever was behind this must want them for a reason. The elaborate structure of the building and the strangeness of its contents seemed to testify to that point. That fact gave her some hope. Could Jax still be alive? While Kel couldn’t prove the design of the place revolved around the two of them, a gut feeling made her wonder if it was true.

Kel made a fist and released it. She sat against the wall, shoulders sagging. She grabbed the journal and turned to the next entry.

 

February 14th

Today was the worst Valentine’s Day of my life. It was going to be the date to change everything—that’s what Noah said. I decided to give him a chance. I bought a new dress. He made reservations at an expensive restaurant. But the whole thing was too good to be true. He stood me up for work. Again. But you know what was different this time? He didn’t even buy me a gift.

Sure, he had plenty of excuses and apologies. Didn’t have time…blah blah blah. He’s always apologizing as if he’s trying to make me the bad guy by staying mad at him. But sorry isn’t enough. I need a change.

He’s married to his job. It would be all right if he were cheating on it with me, but no such luck. He’s Old Faithful when it comes to keeping up that relationship. Ours, however, apparently doesn’t matter anymore.

 

March 2nd

Work was agonizing today. Why is it so hard to let someone else be happy when you are miserable? Emily and her new boyfriend, Trevor, went away for the weekend. Their first date was on Valentine’s Day, and ever since then, their whole relationship has been just uber-romantic. It’s a bit more than I can stomach. And who am I to rain on her parade? I’m too depressed to even tell her that Noah and I have been sleeping in separate rooms.

 

March 23rd

Today turned out so much different than I thought it would.

It started out with Emily interrupting my work every few hours with a breakdown. Apparently, Trevor broke things off over the weekend, which meant that my main role at the office today was the comforter. I tried to convince her that she’s too good for him. In fact, I was just pointing out how she could have any other guy she wanted when who walked up at that very moment? Jaidev, of course. The one guy she never could get. He’d heard most of the conversation, and completely out of character he suggested that the three of us go out after work to help get her mind off Trevor.

The answer was a no-brainer for Em, and I was happy to appease as well (anything to shut down the water works), so we agreed to meet for dinner. But when I showed up at the restaurant, Jaidev was alone. After fifteen minutes of waiting on Em, we got a table. As soon as we sat down, I got a text from her saying that Trevor had called and apologized, and she was meeting him for dinner, so she wouldn’t be able to make it.

At first, I was worried dinner would be awkward without her. But it wasn’t. Jaidev just has one of those personalities that makes you feel comfortable. A meal and two glasses of wine later, I found myself sitting across the table from him, sharing a decadent chocolate dessert and pouring my heart out about my train wreck of a marriage.

I told him almost everything. Noah’s long work hours. My nights alone. The failed Valentine’s Day. Somehow I managed not to cry, thank God. You’d think all my complaining would annoy Jaidev, but instead, he was incredibly sympathetic. “You deserve better than that,” he said. “Someone who won’t neglect you. He’s not good enough for you.”

For one evening, I felt special again. After dinner, we went out for coffee and ended up talking for another hour. Now that I’m home I keep pacing, completely wired from the caffeine, caught between two conflicting emotions. The first one is a sinking feeling that Noah and I are through. The second is a surprising buoyancy that comes from having an amazing night, despite everything.

 

April 9th

Back together, Em and Trevor are as goo-goo over each other as they ever were. He comes to visit her at the lab at least once a day. They go out every night, and she spends every break she gets on the phone with him. The only thing that makes it more palatable is that I have Jaidev there.

The inside joke started with him sending me a text from across the room as a means of mocking Em’s constant communication with Trevor. From that, we somehow ended up texting each other back and forth throughout the day. Em is as clueless as ever. It’s our little secret.

I’m sure that Noah has no clue of the threat of any other man taking his place. Not that I’m going to go behind his back and not that Jaidev is even interested in me that way, but it’s at least nice to feel special again.

 

May 25th

Divorce. The word came up today for the first time. In one of the rare moments we both happened to be eating dinner at the same time, at the same table (Noah pizza pockets and me a salad from the café down the street), the state of our relationship came up. I mentioned his lack of nutritious dinner choice. He criticized my cooking (or lack thereof). And before I knew it, we were in a heated debate. The house feels huge when I’m alone, but it has become way too cramped when the two of us are in it together.

I don’t want to get a divorce. I want things to go back to normal. Back before our worlds shifted in different directions. But I’m a fool to hope that things will change. Seeing Noah every day is so hard. I’m so angry at him…at what he’s put me through. I just want to scream at him. Every time I look at him it feels like a razor is cutting my heart out one agonizing slice at a time.

 

June 4th

I can’t believe it. All this time and I never saw it. Never had a clue.

Word got out at the office that I’m getting a divorce. My guess is that Em spilled the beans. She never could keep a secret. But this afternoon, Jaidev pulled me aside. He told me he was sorry to hear it. But then he said that he wasn’t too sorry. As I stood there gaping, he confessed that he’s had a thing for me.

Can you believe it? It’s such a shock, I’m still not sure what to think. My response was not too nimble, as I just sputtered and choked on my words for about the next five minutes. He asked me out, and I managed to tell him I’d let him know. Apparently, he’s been into me for a while now but was just too shy to bring it up sooner, what with the carcass of my dying marriage stinking up my life.

 

Kel’s throat was rough when she tried to swallow. The pages of the journal shook in her hand.