The idea that had struck her beside the crater housing the remains of her former employer had barely been a shadow of a thought then. These creatures had somehow procured the medallion, and the pale one had bonded with it, which should never have been able to happen. And so, as she had tracked down Virri, using her ship to follow the bonded medallion, she had completely misread the situation. A fatal misreading, to her employer, it had turned out.
A twinge of guilt struck her without warning. She had killed Uduta Virri. The administrator had not been a good soul. In fact, he had been reviled by even his own people. But he had given Angara a chance when no else would.
And she had killed him.
She punched the back of the observer’s chair in sudden frustration. The idiot! As much as she wanted to hate him for having brought this about, she knew it was her own fault. She had allowed him to wander off once again, knowing the kinds of places he went and the kinds of trouble he got himself into. How these Humans had ended up with the Skorahn would be an interesting story, but it would not matter in the end. She had been lazy, assuming the vehicle with the Skorahn had been Virri, and the other whatever local creatures had been giving him trouble. And now Virri was dead at her hands, and only a desperate ploy would allow her to keep her position now.
Looking down again, she shook her head. There was nothing so desperate as trusting a Human.
*****
Marcus came to his senses slowly. The first thing he was aware of was a lack of pain or discomfort. That was followed quickly, however, by the realization that he could not feel anything. His eyes popped open as fear bubbled up within him, only to find that he was staring up at a clear blue sky. Soft white clouds scudded past. Off to one side he could see the lacey tracery of tree branches arching up overhead. It was all very peaceful, and very confusing.
He nervously moved his head from side to side, fearing he was paralyzed and would find the attempt impossible. But his neck moved as it had always done, and he took in the area around him with growing confusion. He was in a small wooded clearing. As he looked around he became aware of the soft susurration of wind through the leaves of the trees overhead. In the distance was a murmur that might have been running water, as if from a brook or stream. It was lovely; and did nothing to dispel his confusion or growing concern.
He could not remember arriving here. He vaguely recalled Justin’s old beater Camry tearing down a wooded road, but could not remember where they had been or why he had been driving so fast. And with thoughts of the car, he wondered again why a wealthy young businessman like his friend would have such a wretched car. But that seemed like the least of his problems at the moment.
The feeling that he was being chased erupted in the back of his mind without warning and he leapt up from the soft grass, turning about, crouched down and ready to run, trying to look in every direction at once.
No one was there.
He forced his breathing back under control, stood up a little straighter. Whatever had been chasing him wasn’t chasing him anymore. He had gotten away. Or been caught … He looked around again at the trees all around him. Had he been caught and dragged out into the Connecticut woods?
The panic response was immediate, and he fell, as if trying to escape the trees all around him. The sky above seemed to grow darker, the clouds whisking up and away, and the shadows all around stretched down toward him, dark and menacing.
The air grew thick, and he sucked in great lungfuls, fighting against an ever-rising panic. What the hell…
“Hey!” The voice came from behind him, among the trees, and he turned around, almost losing his balance, to find a young man standing there. Part of his mind registered that the trees around the man were fading away, becoming more insubstantial as he tried to focus on them. But even as everything around the newcomer grew wispy and thin, the young man remained as solid as anything he had ever seen.
“You okay, buddy?” The man approached him, a look of honest concern on his face. A face that was oddly familiar.
Marcus stared at the man as he came closer. Dark hair in a sort of careless, flyaway cut, a strong jaw and straight, Roman nose, and very short mustache and goatee all combined in a look that he felt he should certainly recognize.
“Hey, man, you don’t look so good.” The man reached out with one hand to help to steady Marcus, but he shied away from the contact.
Which was when he realized that he still could not feel anything. He felt his eyes grow wide and he fell back against a tree. Except that there was no tree. There were no more trees. The darkness that had descended upon the two of them was now complete, and they stood in the middle of a vast, dark, empty space.
“What the hell is going on!” The words came out as a high-pitched plea that he was too nervous and confused to be embarrassed by.
The man held his arms out to his sides, hands open in a calming gesture. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s got to be wreaking havoc with your mind, bud. Don’t worry. It’s all okay.” He smiled a lopsided smile that, again, Marcus felt he should recognize but didn’t. “Well, I think it’s all going to be okay, anyway.”
Marcus calmed himself, took a deep breath, and straightened. Around him was nothing but darkness, but he seemed to be able to see the young man easily enough. “Who are you? Where am I?”
The man straightened also, and then nodded, his smile fading a little but still there at the edges of his mouth. “Yeah, those are both good questions. Where is a bit hard to tell.” He looked around, making a show of taking everything in. “If I had to guess, I’d say we were somewhere in a dark corner of your subconscious.”
The words meant nothing. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The man shrugged. “Just my best guess, man.” He walked around Marcus, giving him a critical once over. “I’d say you’ve got bigger problems, if you want my honest opinion.”
Marcus looked at him for a moment, and then shook his head. “What the hell is going on?”
The smile returned full force. “Not even remotely curious about my own identity?” The smile slipped as a look of rueful introspection swept briefly across the handsome face. “I can’t say I’m entirely thrilled with your lack of focus.”
Anger served to burn much of the confusion and fear away. Who the hell did this asshole think he was? “Okay then, who the hell are you?”
“Well, I’m not sure we have to get all pushy about it.” The man stepped back, assuming a very dramatic stance with one hand raised to the heavens. Looking upward with angelic innocence, he proclaimed, “I, good sir, am you.”
Marcus didn’t know what to say. It was insane. But then, he was surrounded by a reality that seemed unable to decide upon its exact shape, and someone had dragged him here … wherever here was … or he was hallucinating. That suddenly struck him as a far more likely possibility.
“You’re … me.” Now that the thought had been planted, the features seemed to fall into place. It wasn’t exactly the face he saw in the mirror every morning as he shaved around the carefully maintained look of careless grooming, but it was very close. A little younger, perhaps, maybe a little idealized. But it was there. As if he had a slightly younger, slightly better-looking brother, maybe.
The man’s smile widened into a full-blown grin. “Get it?”
Marcus sat down heavily. Instead of hitting the floor, or the ground, or whatever it was he was standing on, it seemed like he had landed on a chair or a bench. He still couldn’t feel anything, which was starting to concern him as well. His forearms came to rest on his knees, and he looked down to a ground that seemed like flat, unrelieved blackness.
Without looking up, Marcus muttered, “You’re me.”
“Well, parts of you, would be my best guess.” The voice lowered, and Marcus looked up to see his younger self lowering himself as if into a comfortable chair. There was no chair there, but the man floated on air just as if there was an invisible piece of furniture beneath him. “See, best I can figure t
hings out, you’ve retreated from a reality that suddenly got far, far too strange for your waking mind.” He jerked a thumb up, as if indicating the space above them or a wider world that existed somewhere beyond the bizarre here and now.
Marcus looked up, then back down to the now-familiar face. His mind felt like it had slowed down to an embarrassingly inadequate speed. “What?”
The man in the chair shrugged. “How much do you remember, from before you woke up here?”
Marcus closed his eyes and tried to remember. “We were in Justin’s car. We were being … chased?”
The man nodded. “You were! Good job! Anything else?”
A suspicion tickled the back of Marcus’s slow mind, and his eyes tightened. “If you’re me, shouldn’t you know all this?”
The man shook his head, waving the suggestion away with one casual hand. “Hardly. I’m the part of you that thinks without feeling, really. I don’t worry about fear, or excitement, or nerves. I just take everything in and try to make sense of it while you’re running around inside your own head, screaming to get out.”
Marcus shook his head. “So, you’re saying I’m insane?”
The answering shrug was less than comforting. “Hard to tell, really. You’re in shock, that’s for sure. And the shit that’s going down right now … well, if you weren’t in shock, you’d have every right to fear for your sanity, to be honest. And believe me, the idea that you might really be going crazy is not one that fills me with excitement either, old son.” The younger version of himself seemed to relax. “But if you remember about being chased and whatnot, the rest can’t be that far behind, and so I think we’re both going to be okay.”
“I still don’t understand exactly what’s happening here between you and me.” Marcus stared at the other face. There was something missing there, and he wasn’t sure he liked the cold edge in those eyes.
“Well, given that you weren’t exactly the most attentive student back in Psych class, I’m not sure either. I only know what you paid attention to. But if I had to guess, I’d say this is either you on the edge of a full psychotic break from the stresses you just experienced, or you’re processing the experiences while your body suffers whatever it is that its suffering at the moment.”
That brought Marcus up short. He had not thought through the implications of being trapped in this creation of his own mind, if that was in fact what was happening. He could not feel his body here. Did that mean that his body was somewhere else …? All of the other words he had just heard faded away.
“What’s happening to my body?”
The other version of himself shrugged. “Something pretty bad, to be honest.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head upward, then continued without turning around, eyes still shut. “A terrible fever.” He winced. “Damn, if you could move, I’d say you’d be breaking bones, convulsing.” The dark eyes opened again, lowering to look at him. “And there’s something very strange going on with our brain.” He smiled, and then gestured around them with both hands. “Stranger than this, I mean.”
Marcus stood, looking around as if he could find an escape. “What happened? Was it a car accident? Is Justin okay?”
The other man shook his head. “You really don’t remember anything else from tonight?” He rose also.
Marcus stared at him for a moment, and then forced his mind to calm down. “I remember the car. I remember an explosion, an accident? We were being chased, and there was an accident? I remember a woman …”
His alter-ego smiled widely at that. “Ah, so that’s what we latch onto? Well, that makes sense. She’s quite a looker. And just your type, too, except for the purple skin, pointy teeth, and all. Not to mention she doesn’t seem to be too big a fan of Humans.”
That brought him up short. “Purple skin?”
And it all came rushing back to him. The chase, the strange weapons, the medallion, the woman and her plane, no helicopter, no …
“Spaceship?”
The other man nodded. “Best guess I’ve got. Either that, or the most elaborate prank Justin’s every played on you. As best I can tell, you’ve just been abducted by a very attractive, if lavender-skinned and misanthropic, alien.”
The panic rose again, but this time arms as hard as iron clenched around his shoulders, and he was shaken into cold stillness. He opened his eyes and stared at identical eyes staring back at him, entirely devoid of compassion.
“You’re going to have to calm down, put a lot of what we think we knew behind us, and man up, Marcus. Clearly the world is not entirely as we understood it to be. You are going to have to remember who you are, and what you’re capable of, or we’re not going to get out of this in one piece. And if you don’t make it, I don’t make it. And I intend to make it.”
Marcus shook his head. “Aliens? Aliens?”
The younger face nodded. “Aliens, and lasers, and spaceships, apparently the whole nine yards.” The face came closer to his. “And you’re going to need to deal with it. Do you understand me?”
A disturbing calm swept up from the depths of his mind. It was too much to deal with. But he was going to have to deal with it. He didn’t have a choice. Well, not one he wanted to exercise, at any rate.
He nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll have to deal.”
The younger version of himself looked into his eyes one more time as if assuring himself of something, then stepped back. “Damn right. You have to remember who you are, Marcus. You’re up to this. We’re up to this.” He looked up, closed his eyes again, and then looked back down. “Whatever she was doing to you, it’s almost done. You remember, you’re not some lame-ass radio advertising salesman. You were more than that, you are more than that. You have to put all the issues with your family aside. You have Justin with you, and you need to watch out for him too. He’ll be watching out for you.”
Marcus nodded again. He felt calmer than he had since the parking lot of the casino, but owing that calm to this cold, distant part of himself, through this strange, shifting nightmare mirage, was hardly comforting. At the same time, however, it occurred to him that there was a lot in those cold eyes he remembered…
“What if I need—”
A white light blossomed above him, engulfing the darkness around them, and blotted away the world.
*****
Marcus heard a faint humming sound as if from a great distance. He was aware of a terrible, freezing cold, but only intellectually, as if it was happening to someone else. Somewhere nearby, something was humming with a low, continuous buzz. From beneath those sounds and impressions was another sound, a senseless murmuring that rose and fell like the artificial swells of a white noise machine set on ‘ocean surf’.
As he focused more on those sounds, a pattern of words began to emerge at the same time the cold became far more than intellectual and a blazing, burning pain blossomed in his head, just behind his eyes. With a gasp, he launched himself upright, hands moving to either side of his head as a grunt forced its way past gritted teeth.
A blanket slipped off his shoulders as he rose and he immediately felt the bite of an even colder chill. He was surrounded by soft, hanging tapestries whose designs were lost in low lighting and subtle needlework. He recognized it nevertheless.
He was in a spaceship. Looking around through clenched eyes as he pulled the blanket back up around him, he found Justin and the strange woman with the purple skin looking at him. His friend’s smile was back in full force despite the fact that he looked like he had been through a boxing match, a dark blanket wrapped tightly about himself. The woman looked at him with a blank expression for a moment, and then her own wide smile was back.
Her teeth came to small, fine points.
Her violet eyes were cruel.
“Welcome to the real world, Mr. Wells.” The words were clear, without a hint of accent.
His headache got much, much worse.
Chapter 5
Sitting in a chair that conformed itself entirely to h
is slightest shift in balance, wrapped in what had to be the warmest blanket he had ever held, and hands wrapped around a mug of something that was, although not coffee, close enough in the present circumstances to offer both warmth and comfort, Marcus Wells stared down into the dark liquid and tried to process what he had just been told.
“Nanites?” The word sounded strange in his own ears, and there was a faint buzzing deep in his inner ear that made him want to open his jaw to relieve the pressure.
“Nanites.” The woman nodded. He shook his head. She wasn’t ‘the woman’ anymore. She had introduced herself as Angara Ksaka, although he was still trying to wrap his mind around what she had done to his brain, and hadn’t listened too closely to the rest of what she was saying.
“You were under the care of the medical cists until the nanites completed their work. Tiny machines that have—”
“I get it.” He waved her off, his headache still nibbling at the edges of his thoughts. He didn’t even want to think of the word ‘cist’ right now. “And so now I understand every word you say? That seems a bit ridiculous.”
Justin’s smile was wide as he lounged on his own seat, apparently much more comfortable with the shifting furniture than Marcus was. “Any technology, advanced enough, will seem like magic to a—”
“Don’t quote Arthur C. Clarke to me, you God damned business major.” Marcus looked back to where Angara watched them both. He didn’t know why, but he felt like there was a bit less disdain in her voice, a slightly lower level of frustration and annoyance on her face, when she was speaking directly to Justin. “So, I can understand you now, is the thing?”
The woman shrugged, providing scant comfort. “The words will now be those you recognize, for the most part. And I will not have to access my own implants,” she tapped her temple, “for the words from your language. Concepts for which there is no parallel in your understanding will find the closest equivalents seamlessly, but there may be some physical discomfort.” She traced a vague line from her ear down her neck with one red fingernail.
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