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Sally
Sidera bolted the door by shoving an entire refrigerator in front of it. She threw it open with her good arm, grabbed an energy drink, and chugged, eyes locked intently on Nimien. A snap echoed behind me, James unholstering her new ray gun, standing between Zander and Blayde like she’d been guarding them her whole life.
“You’re sure?” asked Nimien. In an instant, he looked one-hundred-and-fifty years younger and ready for a fight.
“I know what my brother looks like,” Sidera snapped, “and I wasn’t too thrilled about decapitating him. I probably only saved us five minutes. Father, what do we do?”
“You tried talking to him? Asking what he wants?”
“No, I just walked up to the brother we’d been waiting centuries to return home and beheaded him for shits and giggles.” She crossed her arms over her chest, lefty lagging slightly. “Of course I did. And in return he ripped off my arm and told me I have daddy issues.”
“He’s coming here?” James tapped her finger against the barrel of her gun. “And you just trapped us inside?”
“What is it with you and traps?” growled Sidera. “I’m protecting us!”
Nimien rushed to one of the computers on the wall of the lab, brushed past me. He was fast, for a man of however many years, but I could see now he hadn’t been faking his frailty. His hips refused to unlock all the way, forcing him to limp quickly from post to post.
“Hold on,” Nimien ordered, rushing over to the computer monitor and pulling up a small black square on the screen, in which he typed quick commands. “There. I’ve launched the basic defensive protocols, and the rooms should be shuffling around right now. It’ll take him longer to find us that way.”
“But he will find us,” said James, glaring at Sidera, “and we’ll be stuck here when he does.”
I channeled my inner Blayde and grabbed Nimien by the collar of his coat. “Pull Zander and Blayde now. We have to leave.”
“I can’t just rip them out,” he said, grabbing my wrist with a strong by gnarly grip. “It could tear their minds apart. It’ll take a while for the program to wake them up safely.”
“How long?”
My head snapped to look at the ceiling as footsteps rushed past.
“About an hour.” Nimien swallowed loudly. “Give or take. We can’t take any risks with minds like theirs.”
“That’s an hour we don’t have,” I said, with a confidence I was faking through and through. Zander was counting on me to protect him, and I couldn’t take any risks, not if I wanted the man I loved back in one piece. “Start getting them out. Now. We’ll wait as long as we can before pulling the plug, but we can’t give them the whole hour.”
“So we make our stand here?” said James. “We can’t defend this position, it’s a single room, and there are four of us with two weapons between us.”
“We have no other choice,” I said. “Unless...Sidera, can you jump anywhere? Get us help? Reinforcements?”
“Some,” she said, nodding. “Take my axe. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She handed me her weapon, which was slimy with blood. I took it gingerly, letting go of Nimien just as she wrapped her arms around him, holding him close.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought he would change.”
“Please don’t kill him again,” he replied, squeezing her shoulders as she pulled away. “I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become. I’m sorry you have to go through this. Any of this.”
“I love you, Dad,” she said, wiping a solitary tear from her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
Sidera disappeared, and the room became silent again, except for the low hum of the now displaced fridge and the click-clack of the computer keys. Nimien’s hands flew over his keyboard, entering commands into the terminal faster than I could follow.
“There’s no way to pull them out sooner?” I asked, staring at the raised platform. Whatever was happening inside Zander’s mind, I hoped it was more pleasant than the absolute certainty we were going to be obliterated.
“Not unless you want to spend the next century teaching two immortals how to eat again,” he said, not taking his eyes from the screen. His gaze was so intense that tears were welling in his eyes. “If we take them out now, who knows what kind of lasting damage it will do. This will help.”
The sound of happy chirping birds filled the small lab. James frowned, looking up at the speakers in the ceiling.
“This is it?” She waved at the speakers. “This is how you’re bringing them out gently?”
“It’s the best I can do under the circumstances,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
James took a deep breath. “Can we get a visual on the rest of the house?”
“No,” Nimien replied. His eyes squeezed shut in frustration. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“What is?” I asked. I glanced up at James, who positioned herself between the siblings with her weapon poised on the door, ready for anyone to burst through. “Desmond thinking you’re a shitty father? Because you were.”
“Will you stop making assumptions about my life?” he spat, spittle covering me head to toe. Gone was the passive, apologetic old man. This was the Nimien I knew: assertive and furious. I knew he hadn’t changed. “I spent tens of thousands of years bettering myself. I won’t have you, of all people, judge me on my parenting.”
I was shaking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind,” he growled. “You’re too immature to understand anything. I’ve met future you, and she is a force to be reckoned with, but you have a long way to go before you become her. So go protect your precious Zander while I try to fix the only family I have.”
His words shouldn’t have hurt as much as they did, but they stabbed deep and they stabbed sharp. I found myself marching to the platform before I had even fully processed what he said, and even after I did I was still running on automatic.
“We need to mount a defense,” said James, as if she hadn’t heard a word of what had just gone down. “Anything that’s not bolted to the floor, place it in front of that door. If Desmond gets this far—”
“We’re screwed.” I needed to bring my mind back to this moment, but I couldn’t. It was as if my entire brain was trembling.
“I’m sorry,” muttered Nimien, eyes still riveted on his screen. “Universe, please forgive me. I’m so sorry.”
“Nimien?” I said, my voice barely a squeak. “Do you think...do you think the Dread is behind Desmond’s army?”
“Worse,” he said, turning to face us on the platform. “I’m so sorry, Sally. I’m so sorry to all of you. I think Desmond’s behind the Dread. That this really is a trap, but not one of my making, one of his. I shouldn’t have said any of that. It’s just... it’s just a lot.”
He sank to the floor.
Ah, screw it. I don’t know what’s going on in my brain anymore. I rushed off the platform and reached for him, pulling him to his feet. The tears were streaming down his face now, fat and juicy and fast, a man shattering before me.
“What the hell is going on?” asked James. “Desmond created the Dread? Why?”
“To get us here,” he said. “All of us. So he can kill all of us in one go. The siblings, you, my daughter, and me... the only immortals in the universe.”
My hands were still shaking, but so was Nimien. The two of us were vibrating like plucked strings on a guitar, though our only music was panic.
I was touching, helping, the man who had tried to trap me. Only now we were in a trap together.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No. How can anyone be sure of something this extreme?”
“But do you believe your son is capable of something so terrible?”
“How could anyone say something so terrible about one’s one child lightly?”
No clear answers, great. The chirping birds were getting louder, sweet chime music joining in their choir. A gentle wake-up alarm as the soundtrack of our last moments.
“Just give it to me straight, Nimien,” I said. “What is the Dread?”
“The end of the universe,” he said, his eyes gazing light-years away. “At least, of this one.”
I glanced up at James, who shrugged. No, I didn’t get it either.
“I could probably build an electrical trap,” he said, coming back to himself. “But my resources are limited if we want Zander and Blayde safe.”
“To rig the door?” I asked.
“It’s all I can think of,” he said. “There should be everything I need in the computers here. You pile what you can by the door. I need time, and so do they.”
Right, still no answers. Instead, I was left rushing around the lab to find anything not strapped down and toss it in front of the door while Nimien worked and James defended. All the wheelie chairs ended up in a pile, the cabinets and desks too.
All the while my mind spun along a racetrack. If this was a trap, then why? Everything did indeed seem to point to getting us here—the very reason none of us trusted Nimien in the first place. The perfect promise of answers for Zander and Blayde. Every clue leading us here. The Dread, the one problem large enough to be felt through the galaxy, enough for anyone to draw our attention to it, to demand our help. And the death of the Alliance president, putting Dany in the prime position to make us take on this case?
Even how we first met Desmond. The book about the very labyrinth we had been searching for—written and planted by him, of course. And the moment that had started it all: the woman catching fire in the grocery store. Enough to focus our attention on SHC and the Agency, another clue bringing us to 1657. Had all this been carefully conceived for us to find him, to have our confirmation the labyrinth existed, the place with the answers and promises we needed? If Sidera hadn’t shown up in Virginia when she did, Desmond’s plan must have involved him literally leading us into this trap like lambs to the slaughterhouse.
Only Sidera unwittingly brought us instead.
When Nimien manipulated the timeline, it had been subtle, artful. He had been proud of the small events he’d set into motion. The hot air balloon wasn’t him, in the end; it had been me. If Desmond was behind this, then every motion was clunky. Killing the Alliance president? Lighting people on fire? There was no artistry in his touch. Only horror.
“I need more wire,” said Nimien, pointing at the several cages behind the siblings’ platform. “The green lights mean that the software is using that specific piece,” he said, indicating flashing LEDs above the multitude of cables. “When it goes off, it’s safe for us to repurpose. Got that?”
“Yeah,” I replied, as he reached over and grabbed the jumble of wires from my hands. He dropped them on a pile next to the door and continued assembling his trap, ripping panels off the wall to reach the conduits behind. I ripped out any piece of equipment the software was finished with, running them over to Nimien’s side every few seconds.
If we expanded the parameters, integrated backwards... then what else had set this trap in motion? The Alliance needing our help, the promise of defense for my planet? The assassination of the president, who did that? Was that all part of this plan?
But to what end? That’s the part that still made no sense. As contrived as this plot was, clues like constellations that only lined up when you looked at them from a special angle, what did it all mean? Why had Desmond done all this, just to get the five of us in this room, the only immortals in the universe together for the first and last time?
Desmond wanted us dead because we were the only ones who could stop his plan.
There was hope.
With a roll like thunder, the door shuddered, the entire floor quaking. He was finally here.
Sidera appeared by our side, covered in more blood than before, thankfully with all limbs attached. She grunted as she raced to the platform, holding up James’s death ray from the labyrinth.
“I couldn’t hold him back any longer,” she said, “It’s showtime.”
Desmond—and his army by the sound of it—rammed the door again. Over and over, no pain to slow his attacks. I could swear I heard bones breaking, pure and vicious fury fighting for purchase.
We pushed back, James and I crying hot and terrified tears as the birds sang louder around us, as Sidera’s bloody hands slipped with every push. The pain of holding back an army was enough to rip through my muscles and mind.
“Just a tiny bit longer,” Nimien begged, laying the cables in a small circle on the floor next to the computer. He began ripping some of the rubber from the wires, exposing the metal beneath. Live wires. Enough to kill a human—or to put an immortal down for a few minutes.
I shoved my back against the barricade, putting every ounce of force I could muster into that door. My eyes were locked on the bodies of my friends lying prone in the middle of the room. We were the last line of defense. If we let anyone through, they could, and would, die. Actually die.
I couldn’t let that happen.
My skin broke under the pressure, hot blood running down my arms, making my hands slippery. The pain was unbearable, made worse by my numbness to everything else. I was crying, oh stars I was crying.
Don’t let him through. Don’t let them die.
Suddenly, the struggle stopped. The pressure was gone. The desks we so strongly held back stopped shaking, the door stopped creaking. I shuddered.
“He’s found another way in.” Sidera was shaking. “Which way is he—”
She had no time to finish her sentence. We were lifted off the ground, tossed into the metal ring as the door exploded. Desks and hardware flew everywhere, the air full of fire and shrapnel, blindingly bright and deafeningly loud. Nimien flew backward in the shockwave, but we were somehow safe, the trap not harming us, but stopping every piece of the flying wood and metal.
Dust filled the air, and I laughed, only to find I couldn’t hear a thing. The explosion must have made me deaf.
Except—the birds were still chirping. Ocean waves lapped at the edges of my hearing.
Oh, and I couldn’t move. Sidera, James, and I sat breathless and silent in the ring, completely and utterly trapped.
Shit—Nimien had planned this. This is what he had been doing the whole time we had been holding back the desks. Not creating a line of defense, but making... this.
As the dust settled, Desmond stepped into the room. A one-man army, it seemed. He was so imposing now that he wasn’t costumed as a man from my world. How could I ever have mistaken him for a Terran? If anything, he was the void between stars. The interstellar, no, intergalactic medium brought to life. Clothed in black robes which absorbed all light, he was a black hole in this universe.
And just to look even more douchy, he was wearing mirrored sunglasses that covered half his face.
He turned to look at the computer, and I held my breath. But it wasn’t what was behind the glasses that interested me. In their reflection, there was nothing but the empty corner of the room.
We were invisible to him.
His head now snapped to the other side of the room, where Zander and Blayde still lay in deep sleep upon their chairs. He took one step to them before Nimien’s hand shot up from the floor, grabbing his son’s ankle.
“Please,” he said. “It’s me you want. Leave them out of this.”
Nimien screamed. Desmond had lifted his foot, stomping on his hand like he was squashing a bug.
“I thought you would be proud of me,” he said, as Nimien writhed on the floor, clutching his shattered hand. “I’m accomplishing what you could never do. I thought you would help me.”
“I told you when you left,” said Nimien, trying to drag himself back to Desmond’s feet, but he was already striding to Zander and Blayd, “we are above murder! Above any of this! We are tied to the universe, and being its hitman is not our place.”
Desmond laughed. “Connected to the universe? You haven’t set foot in it in hundreds of years! I’m sorry, Father—wait, no I’m not. I’ve been wanting to do this my entire life. You can’t stop me now.”
“But you still can,” Nimien wheezed. He was struggling to speak, his mouth foaming with every word. “Come back to me, my boy.”
“I am not your boy,” Desmond growled, jumping to Nimien’s side in a blink of an eye. “You made that quite clear when you chased me out.”
“I never—” He coughed. “I never chased you out. You ran away. I wanted you home every day since. I tried—”
“Not enough. You never try hard enough. It was the same with mother, you—” Desmond walked to Blayde’s side, brushing her hair out of her face, grinning. “No. I will not speak of this now. Not when I’m so close.”
I couldn’t move. I wanted to burst to his side, destroy him where he stood. Zander and Blayde on a platter served right up for his taking.
“No, Desmond, stop.” Nimien reached for him, but he couldn’t reach the platform. “Please. This is not you.”
“You don’t know me,” said Desmond, “You haven’t known me in millennia.”
He grabbed the cables behind Blayde’s head and ripped.
The birds stopped chirping up above. Instead, an electrical whine filled the space, and Desmond laughed as he ripped the cords from Zander’s brain, making the sound increase in pitch. I screamed, so hard my throat was screaming with me, but no sound came out. There was only this terrible, unyielding whine.
I was helpless. Helpless as Nimien crawled to Desmond’s side, reaching his hand up, one last plea. Desmond scowled, swinging his foot at Nimien’s head, and when it collided—
Sparks flew.
Desmond disappeared as every light in the room went out at once.
The whine was replaced by a scream. My scream. Whatever forcefield had held us back had died as well and I shot forward like a bullet from a gun, rushing up the platform to Zander’s prone body.
Please, universe, if I can ask anything of you, I would give anything, just for this single thing. Just let him be alive.
“What did I miss?” Blayde muttered behind me, and James burst into tears.
I didn’t turn around. Zander still wasn’t moving. He looked like he was sleeping, and he —
Oh thank the stars, he had a pulse.
“What happened in there?” I asked, spinning to Blayde.
“We were in my head when you woke us.” She hoisted herself up a little higher with a grunt. “I just... I hope he got out.”
“You have to go,” Nimien said, his voice raspy. He was lying on the floor, breathless, a mess of wires in his hands. His shattered bones sent his fingers contorting in impossible directions.
“Father!” Sidera was instantly by his side. “What have you done?”
“I shattered him,” he said, laughing a laugh that brought up blood. “He’s currently atoms in the wind. Feel free to write a song about it. I’m dreadfully sorry, daughter, but I’m blowing up this world—if all goes well, I’m taking him with it.”
“You did what?” One hand gripped his, the other was on his chest, searching for his heart. Her eyes flew up to us. “You have to help him.”
“They can’t,” he said, “You have to run, daughter of mine. Run and don’t look back. Let this bubble pop.”
“No,” she begged. “Come outside. Come with me. You’ll be brand new again.”
He shook his head. “I can’t go through it all again, my dear. It’s my time. I have to end it, all of it.”
“No, Father,” she snapped. “You have to stay alive. I need you. The universe needs you.”
Zander still wasn’t moving. He was breathing, deep, full breaths, but he wasn’t moving. Blayde had woken up, so why hadn’t he?
“The universe hasn’t needed me in a long time,” said Nimien, laughing.
“But—”
“No,” he said, “Don’t. I can’t bear to see you cry. You know that. I want you to be happy, all right? It is possible to be happy in this universe. I promise you that.”
“What’s going on exactly?” asked Blayde. James helped her to her feet, and while she leaned on the agent, it was obvious she would have been fine on her own. “Did we miss the apocalypse?”
“Might as well have,” said James. “Desmond created the Dread. It was a trap all along, and Nimien—well, he just saved all of our lives.”
“Stop wasting time,” he snapped. “Daughter, help me up. I have to impart wisdom and knowledge before I’m cut off mid-sentence leaving you all waiting for more. Blayde, I’m sorry to say, but you’re going to be out of journals. I got really into bookbinding and kept giving them to you after your memory dumps, knowing they’d find their way back to the library, to me. Well, the cycle is broken now.”
Blayde frowned. “What...? Oh.”
I took Zander’s hand, squeezing it tight, barely holding it together as it remained limp in my grasp. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t focus on Nimien’s fancy and ill-deserved heroic death scene while Zander may not be coming back.
“Tell him if he jumps every six hours, he’ll never have to shave again,” said Nimien, and I realized with a jolt he was talking to me. “And the only thing I can give you—well, I can’t give it, you’ll have to go and get it yourself. You will find what has been troubling you if you search for the UPAF Wanderer. In the present, in your now.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, but then a ceiling tile fell from above, smacking James on the head, and Nimien started to laugh again. Sidera glared at us, holding him upright, but he reached for his computer, drawing up some emergency power from somewhere before typing somewhat less than wildly.
“I was wrong,” he said, turning back to Sidera. “All this time, the Dread was his making, but it was my idea. To destroy this universe, to shake it loose, quite literally. Destructive waves, opposite everything. There would be nothing left. There won’t be anything left. If I don’t burst this bubble soon, your brother will re-form and try again. You have to figure out what Desmond did and shut it off or your universe will suffer the same fate. And it doesn’t deserve any of this.”
“This is nonsense, Father,” she said. “Please, stop, you’re scaring me.”
The ceiling tiles all fell at once, crashing down on our heads. I threw myself over Zander to shield him from the debris. Nimien laughed again, hitting a key like a maestro finishing his sonata.
“It’s already started,” he said. “It will reach the fevered pitch soon. Now go. I’ll be fine, don’t you worry. I’ll see you on the other side.”
Tears ran down Sidera’s face, mingling with the blood there. Nimien collapsed, panting heavily.
“Go,” he insisted, “don’t make me tell you again. I failed one child. I won’t fail you both.”
I reached under Zander’s body, lifting him into my arms. They burned, as I’d forgotten again the open wounds left there. And Zander was heavy, dammit. Pure muscle.
He had to be alive. He just had to be.
“Run,” said Nimien. “The bubble is popping. Run, and don’t look back.”
He collapsed, exhaling his last breath—a last breath that became Zander’s first. Stirring in my arms, Zander blinked his eyes open, grinning like a kid on Christmas.
“I’m Canadian,” he said, before passing out in my arms.
