World Shift

by K. Gorman

  She jerked, eyes widening as it spread quickly. She stumbled back as it raced up to her shoulders and threaded up her skin, the deep breath in turning into a shocked, ragged gasp. “Marc, it’s happening again. The shift. It’s—”

  A roar of sound blindsided her. Her vision snapped, speckles of static like a television screen crackling across her mind. Reality wobbled around her. As she tripped and rebalanced, the rest of the world vanished, gone in a single sweep.

  When it reappeared again, it was loam, not tile, that greeted her fall.

  *

  She stumbled, catching herself on the rough, leaf-littered slope with an awkward pinwheel of her left arm. A tuft of dirt and leaves went skittering down ahead of her, one small stone launching itself off a bump before coming to a rest less than a meter away.

  Sol, she thought, bringing her gaze up to search her surroundings. What now?

  She stood in a clearing—machine-made, by the looks of it, though most of it had been retaken by tufts of thin, tall grass and a kind of dark-skinned plant that looked like a sibling of Nova’s infamous Ternic. A few scraggly trees, no more than a year or two old, also dotted the clearing, the land at their bases more prone to green growth. Other trees, these much larger and more mature than the skinny ones closer to her, packed together in a dense formation on three sides of her. Her angle on the ones downslope allowed her to see the thick, bushy canopy that stretched down and out from her in a bumpy, wild sea. Above, a sky of gray clouds was visible, plump and growing darker with the promise of rain. Where the slopes of two mountains converged in the distance, the scene had already slipped into a slate-gray blur.

  Humidity brushed her face. Already, she could feel her hair curling, stringing up. Sweat began to dampen the back of her shoulders. She turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The side of a boxy, tan-colored building reared into the sky at the top of the slope where the ruts and machine-tread tracks cut especially bold and deep into the rock-filled dirt. Its color, and the climate, reminded her of some of the offices they’d come across in Dr. Sasha’s pocket dimension.

  Definitely the Brazil compound, she thought, remembering the place from another of her dreams. Or at least, the place her subconscious had constructed to represent the Brazil compound, considering she’d never seen it. But… how? Was she dreaming? That last bit, in the car dealership—it had felt more like a shift event, same as the one that had taken her into the alternate restaurant that Tylanus had met with her in.

  Had Dr. Sasha recreated this? And had her dream-self somehow managed to be that accurate in its imagining of the Brazil compound.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” said a familiar, half-expected voice behind her.

  She turned to see Layla picking her way up the slope, in a spot where she had most certainly not been a second ago. The girl wore a pair of scraggly cut-off jeans, the kind that went past her knees and had loose threads from a rough, unfinished hem dangling and swaying as she walked, and an oversized white shirt with an eroded logo printed across its front. She held a small baseball cap in her hand, its brim straight. Karin caught a white flash of a team logo on its front. Her hair fell long and loose, half-straightened but full of kinks, partly bleached by a series of highlights.

  Seeing them, she got a sudden image of her and Nomiki when they were young, Nomiki sitting on a chair with her back turned to the morning sun, a coating of lemon pulp through her black-brown hair. They’d been trying to lighten it to match Karin’s dirty-blonde. Trying to look more like sisters.

  She coughed. A sick feeling followed it, giving her an uncomfortable, stubbly sensation through her stomach. A second sensation, this time pain, stabbed through her temple. She hissed, bending over, and hissed further as the pain appeared into her left elbow and wrist.

  Was this a dream? Had she fallen at the car dealership?

  After a few moments, the sensations ebbed. She gritted her teeth and forced herself past them. When she stood back up, straightening her spine, a different-colored piece of the forest to her right twigged her memory.

  The ruins.

  She snapped her head toward it. She’d been dreaming before when she’d seen them, but, like the rest of the place, they remained unchanged. Five slabs of rock sat hunched in a bumpy circle by the edge of the trees, one even with a tree growing on it. From this far away—she was farther up the slope than she had been the last time—she couldn’t make out the thick lines and carvings that marked their surfaces, but she well remembered them.

  A few loose sticks and leaves made a soft crunch as Layla pulled up in her peripheral vision, stopping just over a meter away. Reluctantly, Karin pulled her attention away from the ruins, her mind backtracking to the conversation.

  “What do you mean? I’ve been here before.”

  “I mean what I said. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  The words had a coldness to them, and a sense of unease rippled through her as she realized that Layla’s expression mirrored the tone. It wasn’t quite hostile—not yet, anyway—but she couldn’t help but notice the potential in it. In her other dreams, Layla had tended to greet her as an old friend, pleasant but peculiar, the odd, old wisdom of her Project Athena genetics showing in both her mannerism and turns of phrase.

  This time, the dead girl’s face was as passive as a stone’s. The light from the clouds gave her brown skin a gray cast, and the color reflected in her eyes. To Karin, it felt as though they stood on opposing edges of a great precipice, the shroud of death a deep, impassable ravine between them that Layla showed no intention of crossing. Or of letting Karin cross.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. “Why aren’t I supposed to be here?”

  “Because you’re not like us,” Layla said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  Karin frowned. “What do you mean, not like you? We’re both Project Eurynome.”

  Layla only shook her head. “You shouldn’t be here. Leave.”

  This time, the girl took a step forward, and there was no mistaking the hostility in her action.

  Karin stumbled back, seeing the change and recognizing the threat. Athena wasn’t just a goddess of wisdom; she was in the war pantheon, too. Adrenaline shot into her veins as she scrambled around the tuft of waist-high grass that blocked her path. Layla watched her go, the passive look never leaving her eyes.

  She’s like a robot, Karin thought, her brows drawing into a frown as she studied her former friend. What happened to her?

  Movement caught her attention behind her. Layla’s gaze shifted beyond her. Karin risked a look back.

  “I thought I told you not to interfere.” Tylanus strode out from between the ruins, his black eyes livid and his lips twisting into a snarl. “Do you want my mother to kill you?”

  She flinched back, reacting to his tone. But then, her own indignation—and anger—caught up with her. Ignoring Layla for the time, she turned toward Tylanus’ approach, her right hand rising from her side to jab a finger in his direction.

  “Okay, first of all, how in the fuck have I interfered since we last talked? If we did indeed talk. And second, why am I even talking to you, anyway? It’s not like either of you are actually here. I’m probably half-dead on the floor somewhere, probably also thanks to you.”

  That pain earlier had definitely felt like it had coincided with a fall. It hadn’t completely ebbed, either, the throb in her head in particular catching her attention.

  Gods, I probably hit it on the floor this time. It’s not like there’d been time for Marc to leap over the counter and catch her. The man might be athletically impressive, but no one was that good.

  Well, actually, Nomiki might be.

  Sometimes, it was difficult to be impressed with male heroics when she had a sister who embodied the term ‘godly badass.’

  If anything, her words only served to stoke Tylanus’ anger. His brow took a sharp furrow, little wrinkles forming around his eyes as he hissed out his next words, black eyes blaz
ing.

  “Don’t play stupid. You know what this is. We used to do this, back when Mom had us separated.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s just say my memory’s not so great since people like your mother began stealing it.” Her eyebrow twitched, but she tried to keep her expression steady. She didn’t like how he’d referred to Dr. Sasha as ‘Mom,’ the term seeming to imply a collective ownership. As if Dr. Sasha was Karin’s mom, too. “You also failed to mention that little tidbit last time, so I’m going to assume you’re bullshitting me here, too. Hells.”

  She made a tsk-ing sound with her tongue and teeth, then brandished her arms in his direction as she rolled her eyes. “Why am I even talking to you? I don’t have to do this. This is my dream, and I’m pretty fucking sick of my dreams being creepy and weird. If you all aren’t going to say anything relevant and important and not vague and cryptic, I think I’m just going to explore the forest and see how far my brain can hallucinate.”

  She made to leave. Actually, she suspected that her previous chat with Tylanus in the restaurant had not been a dream, but this place, with its location on her imagining of what a hillside next to the Brazilian compound looked like, triggered the difference for her. Not to mention she’d actually fallen this time, rather than been swept into an alternate world.

  As she picked her way down the slope, there was a small moment of silence behind her. She shifted her attention to her footing. No embarrassing, full-body tumbles in her dreams, please.

  But, before she’d gotten more than a few meters, a hand landed on her shoulder.

  A shock zapped through her system, every nerve reporting a thrill of power. Suddenly, she was aware of everything—the thick, humid air, the rugged wildness of the trees, the rich, semi-decayed smell of the soil and forest around her. Her light snapped up in defense as she whirled, forming gobs of sparkling energy in her palms as she lifted them, ready to lay down some of the moves Nomiki had been drilling into her.

  “Don’t fucking touch me.”

  She was embarrassed to hear the rawness in her voice, showing more than the anger she’d held, but his touch and the ensuing shock had triggered something old and hurt inside her.

  His hand snapped back, more from surprise at her reaction than the danger her raised hands presented. For the first time, the anger on his face faltered, tripping back.

  He took a step back, his brow furrowing.

  “This isn’t a dream,” he said, the confusion in his voice evident in his wavering, softening tone. “I’m as real as you are.”

  “No way. I definitely fell and hit my head,” she said, wincing as another throb came from the affected area. “I can feel that much, at least.”

  “Nevertheless, this isn’t a dream.”

  “Well, we aren’t in your world, either, not like last time.” As it became evident he wasn’t going to try to attack her—or touch her—again, something loosened inside her. The fear and panic that had gripped her pulled away from her muscles. She straightened, taking a moment to suck in a deep breath and reconsider the situation. “So this is at least similar to a dream. Are we in some other world of yours?”

  “No. We’re in a world of yours,” he said.

  She fixed him with a dull stare. “I don’t have worlds of my own. That’s your mother’s superpower, so I hear. I just make light.”

  “Everyone has worlds of their own. Most people just can’t access them.”

  “And we can?” She shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

  But then, most of what the Eurynome Project kids could do was impossible. She, Nomiki, and Layla were the most normal of the bunch. Bran had managed to revive things that hadn’t even been alive in the first place, like the taxidermied hawk from their classroom. The artificial structure inside it shouldn’t have been able to live and work like it did, but the bird had come alive. It had also outlived him. Even after Bran had vanished, she and Nomiki had seen it for years after, wheeling about the fields and forest and going about its business.

  Tylanus spoke again, his voice even more gentle than before. “You’re going to have to widen your idea of what is and what is not possible if you’re going to survive.”

  She stiffened. “Is that a threat to Marc?”

  There was a small silence. Then Tylanus gave a heavy breath, some of it catching in his teeth.

  “No, not a threat,” he said. “More a warning, I guess. You’re on the wrong side.”

  She re-crossed her arms across her chest. “You mean I’m not on the side that your mother is on.” She snorted. “You know, she isn’t even your mother. We don’t have those. We were all created in test tubes.”

  “Then I suppose that Enyo isn’t your sister,” he countered.

  Enyo. Nomiki’s project name. At first, she thought he’d meant it as a jab, but the tone seemed off. A second later, a lopsided smile tugged at his mouth.

  A joke?

  She didn’t think he’d be willing to make those with her. Then again, she didn’t know him very well.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll give you that. Your mother’s still fucking crazy.”

  He flinched, just a little, but she got the impression that he’d already known that about Dr. Sasha. Or had at least thought it. Probably not to the degree of ‘fucking crazy,’ but some of Dr. Sasha’s plans were pretty eyebrow-raising.

  The kids of the Eurynome Project hadn’t been completely brainwashed. In fact, most had grown a thick skin of hidden skepticism against the bullshit they’d been fed both in their lessons and during their treatment cycles, with the stories explaining the latter growing and changing with time. She’d worried that he’d been a little too isolated to get that way, too, but he didn’t come across as a socially stunted person. In fact, the opposite seemed true.

  “She’s not crazy.”

  At that, Karin laughed. “Dude, she’s trying to take over an entire race of beings through mass possession. Not to mention this whole mirror-world-replacement-thing you’ve got going on right now. How is any of this not crazy? Hells, how is this even possible?”

  “It’s possible for her. I will phase this world out, and our Nova will phase in.”

  “Right, right.” She shook her head, deciding to ignore that little mind fuckery for a moment—dimensional transitions, in any form, were not something she knew about. “And what about all the people who have vanished? What have you done with them?”

  “They’re fine. For now.” Tylanus straightened, narrowing his eyes as he shifted his gaze to the side, watching something in the trees. “They don’t matter, though. They’re not real.”

  She stopped. “Not real?”

  That flabbergasted her. She studied his face, looking for signs of his earlier joke, but found none.

  “Of course they’re real,” she said. “Who the fuck do you think terraformed the god damn system?”

  “Not as real as us, I mean,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

  The light seemed to be strengthening behind him, the threat of rain slipping away as the clouds above the hill lightened. With it, she felt something rise inside of her.

  Layla still stood up the slope, her face closed, eyes watchful. The hostility hadn’t quite vanished from her features, which made Karin uneasy. She watched the girl for a few seconds, then turned her attention back to Tylanus. With him upslope from her, and a rugged step in the soil putting her at a downward angle from him, his head stood in a near profile to the sky. The light cast over the smooth angles of his face, changing the tone of its color and highlighting his high, round cheekbones and the dark smudge of shadows that trailed under his hair. It was loose this time, the ends of it lifting and fluttering at any whisper of a breeze.

  “If you really believe that, then you’re either very stupid or you’ve been brainwashed.” Her voice was low and serious when she spoke, her gaze never leaving his face. “And I don’t think you’re very stupid.”

  “It’s what we were born to do,” he said. “She as Chaos, I as Tartar
us. Eos has nothing to do with this.”

  “Tartarus—is that your project?”

  And it made sense that Dr. Sasha was Chaos. They’d pegged her as some sort of creation-god, back when they’d been investigating her secret lab and had started to discover her pocket-dimension-creating abilities. But Tartarus? She’d thought it was a place, not a person.

  It is both, she thought, remembering some line in a reference. He is both.

  Okay, that explained his ability to wander between worlds and manage dimensions. It even explained his darkness abilities. Tartarus, if she remembered properly, was a dark place, something akin to the underworld that Hades ruled, except reserved for…

  She squinted, trying to remember. It had been reserved for the titans, hadn’t it? The gods and goddess beings that were more primal than the traditional Olympians she and Nomiki and Layla had been named after?

  “It’s like Ragnarok,” he offered, a shrugging gesture accompanying it—as if that would make it sound less-crazy. “We’re as inevitable as the fall of the sun and the rise of the moon.”

  Ah, yes, Ragnarok. When a couple of demon wolfdogs ate the sun and the moon and the entire Norse pantheon basically destroyed itself.

  Only one problem. It was, just like the rest of the myths, fictional.

  “Yeah, physics doesn’t really work like that,” she said. “And I don’t know about the others, but I know Nomiki and I never signed up to herald the apocalypse. Also, we’re not gods.”

  The sneer came back to his face. He jutted his chin outward, his lip curling as he turned the expression on her. “I don’t care what you think. Don’t interfere. Eos has nothing to do with it.”

  Okay, when she got back to a functional netlink, she was going to be doing a heck of a lot more database searching. Because she was pretty sure that Eos was, pantheonically-speaking, a daughter of Chaos.

  “Fuck you,” she said. “I’ll do whatever I fucking want.”

  “Don’t,” he warned. “We will destroy you. You and whatever puny device the humans have come up with.”

  By the sounds of it, that ‘puny device’ had put a resistance on whatever the hell was causing the event shifts. And I’m happy to be a part of that.