by J. N. Chaney
Zedas takes several more rounds, one of them piercing the armor on his upper arm. He roars but doesn’t stop.
I rushed forward, determined to stop the Overlord troops in the doorway. It’s a natural choke point and the only tactical advantage we have. Part of my mind searches for a way to collapse the door or otherwise block it, but I don’t have explosives—and this room wasn’t dug by juveniles. Concrete and steel are meant to last.
Something punches me in the gut, and I feel a burning pain. Patty-pats squirms inside my jacket. I keep both hands on my weapons and shoot until I have to reload, then fall to my knees in agony. The cat screeches. I pull her out and see that she’s burned along one side.
I’m such an idiot. I should have given her to Garin or something. Which makes me wonder where the kid is.
There’s no time to look, and the pain in my torso is so bad I doubt that I could turn around anyway. I fumble my magazine and drop it. Zedas rushes in front of me, briefly protecting me from another Overlord charge bolt. I crawl after the magazine, grab it, fumble it again, and finally grip it firmly.
Sweat runs into my eyes. Blood runs down onto my legs. I don’t remember touching the wound, but I have blood on my hands as well. I slam the magazine in, activate the charge pistol, and open fire as two men rush past Zedas, who is busy fighting someone else.
The first shot is low, catching the man just below the belt. He crumples forward and plows his helmet into the ground. The second man dodges sideways, but my luck holds, and I anticipate the move almost perfectly. This round hits him under the chin, and he drops dead as his blood sprays into the air in a gory shower. Nice shot.
I think we’re winning until I look up and see an Overlord gun crew setting up a crew-served weapon in the doorway. Unable to stand, I shout at Zedas. “You can’t let them use that!”
Zedas charges forward, smashes one man aside with his flail, and runs a second through with his sword.
The Dogan moves with martial grace and deadly efficiency. Blood loss and pain cause me to hallucinate. Darkness pulses around the edge of my vision, and I don’t have much longer.
Zedas looks back, sees me, looks toward Shaina, and then puts away his weapons. With grim solemnity, he picks up the crew-served weapon and aims it into the hallway, where dozens of Overlords are rushing to reinforce their comrades.
He opens fire. I close my eyes at the carnage, but I can’t block out the screams of pain and fear. Time slows until I’m begging for it to stop, and it does. Complete silence holds the scene.
I feel for my wound, reassured that I haven’t passed out yet but definitely afraid I will never be able to stand up again. Zedas’s boots stopped right before me.
I look up and see that he’s still holding the big Overlord gun. Smoke crawls out of the barrel. There’s an expression on his face I don’t like.
“You became wounded,” Zedas says like it’s explaining something, not just to me, but to a tribunal. “I must protect you and the others at all costs.”
“Thank you, Zedas-Duryan.” I reach up with one hand, and he pulls me to my feet though I’m unable to stand fully erect. My head swims like I’m going to pass out.
“You will need medical attention, and so will Shaina. I will search the dead and find explosives to collapse the passage further back,” Zedas says.
He looks sad and ashamed.
“You can put down the gun now,” I say, suspecting that is the source of his misery.
He shakes his head. “What would be the point? I’ve already touched the vile weapon. For one such as me, an outcast son on a quest, resorting to Hadrian weapons is unforgivable.”
“Zedas…”
He walks back into the hallway, stepping over dead bodies and occasionally inspecting them for grenades.
“He’s really torn up about using the gun,” Shaina says. “Can you tie off this bandage? I wrapped it, but I have a bad angle.”
Lowering myself to the ground takes an eternity, but I’m eventually able to sit on my butt, pull her foot between my legs, and tie off the bandage. Neither of us look dignified, but what of it?
Garin holds the cat, but he’s looking toward the bodies. “That’s a lot of dead Overlords.”
“There’s going to be a lot more, kid,” Shaina says.
Garin looks to me for confirmation or denial. The best I can give him is a shake of my head, and I don’t even know what it means. Maybe I’m trying to tell him I want to be gone from this place.
Shaina removes my jacket and shirt, then wraps my torso. A charge burned all the way through my body but apparently missed my intestines. There’s a lot of muscle damage, and who knows what else. My concerns for Zedas, and anything at all, fade under the cloud of pain.
Garin and Shaina help me stand, and we hobble toward the gate. Zedas comes a short time later, quiet and grim. He motions for us to go through and squares his feet toward the door as he raises the chain gun.
“Don’t wait too long,” I say. “We won’t be able to come back for you.”
At first, I don’t think he’s going to speak. It worries me because I think he’s given up and will do something drastic. Perhaps he’s not going to blow the passage but stand here and fight off anyone else who comes this way until he dies.
“The explosion may blow me into the gate portal,” Zedas says. “I don’t know. This is very crude. I stacked everything I could in a pile and will use the gun on it until something happens.”
I touch his arm despite the pain it causes me to reach out. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
“If you insist, Doctor Hank Murphy. I will continue on the quest to regain my honor though it is now impossible,” he says.
Garin lets go of me, then approaches Zedas. He takes Patty-pats and puts her in a pouch hanging from Zedas’s belt. “I think she wants to stay with you. You have to come to the gate now because Patty-pats is counting on you.”
Zedas looks down at the cat. “You are a devious child.”
Garin shrugs. “I’ve been called worse. See you at Tamondran.”
With nothing left to say, Shaina and Garin help me limp through the gate after the others. Maybe I should’ve thought about it first because neither of my prior experiences in gate travel were particularly gentle. Going into it with a potentially fatal wound might not have been the best idea.
23
I will never get used to the misery of being taken apart and remade that comes with gate travel. Each time is worse than the one before. My friend Jack must be out of his mind to do it so frequently. What kind of lunatic would put himself through this?
Something is different this time. I’m blinded by fantastically colorful lights from start to finish, but it’s more than that. There is an order to the lights. Maybe that should be comforting, but it isn’t. Order makes this feel intentional, like everything about the Orphan Gates was planned, and we’re just chess pieces on a board.
My world is dark when I awaken on the cold rock surface beneath the Tamondran Mountains. I can’t see my own hand in front of my face, not that it matters.
“Garin?” I ask.
“I’m here, Mr. Murphy,” he says. “And so is Shaina. We’ve been waiting for Zedas and Patty-pats for a long time. Why do you get to sleep so much longer than the rest of us?”
I reach down to my abdomen, barely able to find it because my proprioception is wonky and my vision is on vacation. Twice I miss my body and touch the rock floor instead of my stomach. My loss of coordination is enhanced by the fact that my body is one mass of pain indistinguishable from any individual part. My ability to see returns slowly. Beads of color fill my vision like a disco movie from the seventies. The agony of being taken apart and rebuilt slowly recedes.
A deep breath calms my rampaging imagination—slowly bringing order to sight, sound, and touch. In a few more minutes, I might be able to feed myself or tie my own shoes if I had any.
“I checked your wound,” Shaina says. “The gate put it back together.
You won’t like the mark it left. It looks like a swirl of scar tissue.”
“Yeah, it’s really gross.” Garin paces back and forth, constantly looking toward the gate. “Shaina’s calf muscle is really disgusting too.”
Shaina snorts. “Says you, kid. Don’t come crying to me when you get shot in the calf and jump through an Orphan Gate while you’re still bleeding.”
“It is! You better wear long pants,” he says. “Or cover it with a big tattoo like Mr. Miller back at the village.”
They razz each other for several minutes. Gate healing is nothing new to me. When I came to the Goliath Sector, I had a maimed hand and was nearsighted. The first gate fixed those physical deficiencies. I sit up and sip a bottle of water. “Where did we get this?”
“There was a pallet of supplies,” Shaina says. “Generic stuff. Uniforms, some basic tools, but no footwear or weapons. Those things must have been at a premium when this place was looted. Looks like someone picked out the good stuff long before we showed up. The water was sealed, so I thought it was safe.”
I nod.
The Orphan Gate hums, glows bright, and finally disgorges one very familiar Dogan. He falls out, hugging himself, and lands on his side with his chin tucked to his chest. Gone is the big gun. I wonder if he tried to bring it, but it doesn’t matter either way. The Orphan Gate doesn’t reproduce items very well. Many things are lost in translation.
I beat the others to Zedas’s side, placing one hand on him to see if he’s okay but also to deflect a strike if he wakes up in a fighting mood. He opens his eyes and smiles, which surprises me. The Dogan I left behind at the blood gate had been in a dour mood.
“You made it,” I say.
“I am Zedas-Duryan. That’s what I do,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “I thought you were going to cut out on us and head off into the slave city to beat up on Overlords full time instead of following us through.”
“Was that an option?” he asks.
I shake my head in disbelief. “I’m just going to ask. What put you in such a good mood? I thought you were going to pout forever. Now you’ve got jokes.”
“I have never pouted,” he says. “But as you have noted, I am changed. Perhaps it was the gate travel, or maybe the weight of my family is gone. The impossibility of becoming legitimate is freeing.”
“I think I understand,” I say.
“I have broken too many rules during my quest,” he says. “My father will never accept me, and neither will my people. So now I just do what I want.”
“And what’s that, Zedas?” I ask.
He gives me a grin. “Fight the Overlords, for starters, and the Protheans. Then, I can dedicate more time to creating humorous phrases and going on adventures with the three of you.” He hands Patty-pats to Garin. “Or perhaps I should say the four of you.”
Shaina slaps her palm against Zedas’s palm, and they laugh.
“Fantastic,” I say. “I love it when a plan actually works. The blood gate sent us where we wanted to go. This is the gate under the waterfall, I’m sure of it. Don’t ask me why we came here instead of some other place.”
“What, you don’t know everything about the Orphan Gates? I’m terribly disappointed,” Shaina says.
“Let’s head to the surface and try to find somebody from the resistance.” I’m worried about our lack of weapons, food, water, and even the most basic gear—like boots. “I hope we’re not too late.”
No one complains about the lack of footwear. We’re lucky to have clothing that isn’t falling apart. The gates are inconsistent. I haven’t figured out why some items pass through, and others don’t.
My feet complain each time I step on a rock, but I get used to it—until I step on a sharper rock and curse.
“Grown-ups have wimpy feet,” Garin says, then dashes ahead with Patty-pats sprinting after him.
“I have no problems,” Zedas says, holding up one armored foot.
“Lucky you,” Shaina says.
“We don’t need foot armor,” I tell Zedas, then step on something that makes me curse.
He grinds out a laugh. “Clearly.”
The reason for our detour to the slave world hasn’t slipped my mind. We were blocked from entering the system. The planet may have been taken by Protheans, for all I know. “Shaina, take the lead and assume there are enemy forces out there. Tell Garin to get back here.”
She gives me a thumbs up and heads toward the first tunnel leading upward. “Glad to see we’re back to assuming the worst. Makes me feel prepared.”
I keep quiet during our hike out of the Orphan Gate cavern. Zedas and Garin laugh frequently at the cat’s antics. No one attacks. The ground doesn’t open up and swallow us. My feet grow used to being naked. It almost feels like we won.
But of course we haven’t. I have a feeling this is where things start to get really difficult.
Dawn in the Tamondran Valley is spectacular. Sunlight streams over the tops of mountains, and birds fly up from rivers and lakes. The forest hides its war scars beneath thick canopies of green. Flowered vines hang into rivers and streams.
I had expected nothing but scorched earth. Smoke rises in the distance. Ships streak across the sky and launch missiles and fire charge guns, but here the land looks untouched.
“Can you tell who those ships belong to?” I ask Shaina during our first break.
“No. They are Hadrian-built vessels, but does that mean they’re Overlord fighters or resistance fighters stolen from Overlords?” Shaina says.
“We’ll move carefully and keep to the forest as long as possible. Maybe there will be answers at the Tamondran base,” I say.
We hike as quickly as we can while remaining careful not to encounter enemies. I order frequent breaks for the sake of our feet but I also don’t want to exhaust our supply of water. We can’t be gulping it down until we find a river clear enough to refill our bottles.
Except for Zedas, we’re unarmed. I spend the next hour looking for clues but also taking time for self-reflection. What did the Orphan Gate do to me this time? What did it do to my friends?
My wound seems completely healed. I feel stronger than ever, and I wonder if that is the mutation forced upon me by this transit. Strength can’t be a weakness, I think, so I’ll take as much as the universe offers. As a kid, I always craved the more exotic superpowers—extra vision, invisibility, mind reading.
I review maps and notes that I created with other upgraded abilities and find no significant change. I remember everything immediately and with incredible clarity.
We stop for a break just short of a river. “Shaina, how are you feeling?”
“Pretty amazing, even with foot sores and an empty belly,” she says, sitting on a fallen tree with one leg hanging over a branch. “Invincible, actually. You?”
“About the same.”
“Are you wondering what changes we experienced this time?” she asks. “Maybe we all just got a double dose of feel-good juice. Zedas has been almost pleasant to be around since he came through.”
“You two get along fine,” I say. “Not like in the beginning.”
“Don’t remind me.” She stands and stretches. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Zedas, how are you feeling?” I ask.
“Taller,” he says.
“What?” I look him over from head to toe. Maybe he is taller. It’s hard to say.
“That is a Dogan phrase, roughly translated into your language. It means that I feel as good as possible,” he says. “Perhaps you should ask the child. It’s his first time coming through a gate.”
Garin doesn’t wait for the question. “I’m pretty spectacular too, but what’s new.”
I keep my suspicion that the kid has been through this gate before as a baby to myself. Now that I know at least one world that connects in this direction, I have new theories about Garin’s parents. They were probably escaped slaves. That would explain their desperation. Taking an infant through a gate
had to be a last-ditch option.
Patty-pats meows and wags her tail. Everyone laughs.
“Break’s over. Let’s move.” This time I lead the way.
We climb switchback trails for the rest of the day. Evidence of the worldwide conflict begins to show. We turn a corner and emerge from the lush forests into a charred wasteland that stretches for miles. It looks like a starship went down, or there was some sort of bombardment. Worse, with no foliage to keep the soil down, there’s been a massive mudslide ruining a river below.
“Why didn’t we see this from the waterfall?” Garin asks.
“Natural terrain hides things,” I say. “I’ve searched a lot of forgotten forests. Every journey was full of surprises.”
Garin edges forward, glancing downward at the mud-covered banks. The buried river cuts a sliver through the middle of the sludge, already striving to redesign its course to the sea.
Shaina pulls him back. “We need to find another way. This trail is too dangerous.”
“It looks fine now,” Garin argues.
She shakes her head. “No, it isn’t. Trust me.”
Garin looks to me for support.
“She’s right. If it rains, we could be swept away in the next mudslide. Pieces of the trail are gone entirely,” I say.
“I’m tired of all this walking,” Garin says. “It never used to take this long to get anywhere. My feet are killing me.”
“Who has the wimpy feet now?” I ask.
Garin gives me a look. “No need to be mean, Mr. Murphy.”
“We have been through much worse,” Zedas says. “Consider this a new challenge. Overcome it. Dominate. Gain honor. Laugh at fate like you are in fact the boss, Garin.”
The kid rolls his eyes and blows out a frustrated breath. “Whatever. Just tell me which way to go.”
We backtrack to a fork in the trail and take a steeper path that leads us to a different section of the mountain. By the time we reach the summit, it’s dark and growing cold.
