The Return (Alternate Dimensions Book 5)

by Blake B. Rivers

  Angel and Bajol would occasionally call me to the lab for tests, but otherwise I was left to my own devices.

  …which was surprisingly boring. Had I developed a hero complex? I need for the limelight? I was beginning to think so.

  Waiting, cloaked and still on the edge of our scanner range of the Quadric station, was grating my nerves. And yet, it wasn’t like I wanted Jyra to be right. Because even with all of our preparation, our plan still had a large chance for failure. So much so that we had a Plan A, which involved us stopping Genesis’ ship before it could crash into the station, and a Plan B, which was if Genesis managed to get his ship past everyone’s defenses and crash it like it wanted to. Although Plan B was less desirable, with heavy losses and civilian casualties, it was the one we were considering the most likely. As vigilant as we were, Genesis was flying in on a cloaked ship that could come from any direction. If that smug cloud was smart -which they were when they weren’t being arrogant about their assured victory- it wouldn’t kill his speed at all as it approached, which made it that much harder to intercept.

  Granted, all of this was moot if Jyra and Bajol didn’t figure out the cure. My blood and having all of the kodadt on board helped, as well as the long gap where I was gone. But every time they came close, something went wrong. Either the cure didn’t work, or it killed the cells that were infected, and that was the one thing Jyra was adamantly against.

  We all knew that, should we find the cure, there would be some infected souls who were too far gone to be cured, and would die if the bit of Genesis was taken out of them. But Jyra wanted that to be the exception, not the rule. After all, what was the point in saving the entire universe if you killed a tenth of it to do so? As long as we had time, she kept searching for a way to save the kodadt.

  After maybe a week or so of just moseying around, I finally had enough. Genesis had the cure, so what if I did a little digging to go and find it like it had rifled through my mind so many times? It thought I was dead, didn’t it? I should at least be able to use that to my advantage.

  But… what if I tipped my hand and revealed things that I didn’t want it to know? Like that being of light it wasn’t distracted on some cosmic journey and could return if Genesis drew much attention to itself. Or that we knew what its plan was. Or a lot of things really.

  On the other hand, what if it arrived and we hadn’t found the cure we needed yet? The way I saw it, the risk was worth the reward, and I’m sure hundreds of thousands of rabid kodadt would agree with me.

  And so, I made up my mind. Finding alone time wasn’t that hard. Jyra rarely left the lab, even sleeping and eating there, and Janix was working on modifying some weapons to stun rather than kill along with several other pirate-engineers. I waited until everyone went about their business before making my way to our room and setting the lock on the door. I was nervous as I laid myself out on my bed, but also determined.

  I hadn’t engaged with the enemy since my unfortunate death. Being sent to Earth had been such a strange lull away from its presence, I had almost forgotten what it was like to have the dark cloud hovering at the edges of my mind. I had almost forgotten what it was like to not be a regular, boring human.

  I would be lying if I said I didn’t desperately miss my abilities, even with their habit of exhausting me and forcing up a lot of black puke. It sucked to be weak, and flightless, and powerless. It sucked to be me.

  Maybe that was why I was taking this gamble. Maybe I was being selfish. But one way or the other, we were getting that damned cure.

  I let my eyes close and tried to slow my breathing. I was imagining that this had to be somewhat like finding Jyra. I just had to reach out and find that thin, feathery connection that linked us.

  Which also meant it might be able to find me. I knew I needed to take precautions, so I did my best to lock my thoughts away. Anything secret, anything important, was locked under a thick cloak of darkness; not to be seen, not to be heard.

  Once I was sure I was ready, I pressed deeper, traveling to the back recesses of my mind where all the bad things liked to lurk. I thought back to the first time I had met Genesis. How it has surrounding me, black, cloying and choking. I had been so sure that I was going to die.

  Then, when I had devoured it whole, the feeling of him moving through me, trying to break out of the prison my body encased him in. Now that I knew I was designed to absorb him, that whole interaction made a lot more sense. Had Genesis figured out that there was something different about me on a genetic level, or did it play off its trouble escaping as the result of my iron gut?

  It was impossible to say, but I didn’t need those answers to do what needed to be done. I just needed to focus on that presence that had haunted me from that moment forward. My mind locked around the sensation, and I wrapped myself around it. My concentration wanted to slip -long periods of intense fixation were never my strong suit- but I forced it to hold steady.

  I made sure I was absolutely locked onto that thread before I stretched my mind out, searching along the quicksilver length. It pulled me along, though planets and comets and wormholes, until I was somewhere that I wasn’t quite sure was a place or not.

  I floated above it, observing but unable to interact. If I wanted to effect the situation, to manipulate it to my will, I had the distinct impression that I needed to drop down into the sphere of… whatever it was below me.

  And so, I let myself fall.

  I landed in what I could best describe as abject weightlessness. It wasn’t like dying. No, that was a sensation all unto itself. It just something a bit like… nothing. No air, no wind, no pressure. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had landed at all. There was no point of reference of what was up, down or sideways.

  I couldn’t say how long I floated like that, experiencing what lurked in Genesis’ mind. It begat the question, did the monster sleep? Or was I just trolling through the subconscious of its dimension spanning mind? Was I even in Jura’s dimension still? Or had I traveled to a central hub where the rest of the dark entity waited and watched?

  I really needed to stop with the asking lists of questions that had no answers. It was a waste of time and just made me feel more stupid than I actually was.

  Shaking my head, I caught my slipping focus once more. If I was in Genesis’ dreams, or subconscious, or whatever, I needed to do what he did to mine. Manipulate it to show my worst fears. I still got goosebumps when I thought of how he had once chanced me through a hospital in the form of my step-father. That had put me on edge for days and revealed to it just what my weak points were. Surely, I could turn the tables and do the same to it. …or at least that was the hope.

  I rubbed my chin, trying to think of what would truly terrify the metaphysical creature. As far as I knew it didn’t fear anything.

  Except losing and the much more powerful light being that had first hijacked its home.

  That was it!

  I squinted at the darkness, trying to reach out and force it to take shape. Nothing much happened, save for inky blackness swirling around my hands. Alright, maybe it was more a mental thing.

  I closed my eyes, not that it made much of a difference in the pulsating nothingness, and build the scene I wanted. I started with a lab, shining and full of all the gadgets and gizmos. That took plenty of time on its own, but also… I had no way to measure said passage of time so it could have been less than a few seconds. Had Genesis had this much trouble forming my dreams? It made the creature that much less intimidating to think that he sad in the blank of my subconsciousness while he built the counters, chairs and phones that had populated that particular dream.

  Then I moved onto the people. As I worked, small flashes of data came to me. A face here. A shock of hair there. A long tail, a broad smile. It seemed the longer I churned through the environment around me, the more I understood it.

  As more and more images flashed, I worked faster. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would for me to stand back and look at
the scene that I had created. Fantastic.

  The only thing left was getting Genesis here.

  …how did I do that?

  Did I have to wait, or was this more a direct-action situation? I couldn’t exactly remember which it had been when I had been on the other receiving end of this kind of dream distortion. All I knew is that one moment I had been blissfully unconscious, the next I had been ‘waking up’ within the scene laid out for me.

  I looked around and I guessed that I was going to have to go with proactive. I was never much of one for sitting back and waiting to see what happened anyways. It took a moment, but I found that same sliver of a tie between our vastly dissimilar minds, then yanked it to myself as hard as I could.

  Nothing happened for several beats and I was ready to chalk this all up as a lost cause. At least it had occupied me for a short while. But then, just as I was ready to drift back up towards consciousness, something amazing happened.

  It started as just a little fleck of blackness in the center of the room. Then it grew, and grew until a human sized entity of jet black stood before me. A few moments later, it solidified into something that I would have never imagined.

  It was humanoid, for the most part. One head, two legs and all that. But other than that, it was completely foreign. Its skin was layered, not too dissimilar of an insect’s exoskeleton, colored in obsidians and scarlet reds. It had so many eyes on its head that every time I tried to count them, I lost count as they blinked. It had no mouth, that I could tell, but mandibles instead.

  And arms? It had six of them, of varying thickness and musculature. It had no hair, no clothing, and nothing else that could soften how utterly terrifying it looked.

  Was… was this it’s true form? Or just a form it favored? Either way, I was thoroughly infected with a major case of the heebie-jeebies complete with goosebumps. I shook it off, however, as I needed to maintain my cool. I couldn’t have the upper hand if I got all squirrely and squicked out.

  I was the one in the position of power here. I needed to act like it.

  As unsettling as it was, I forced myself to continue with the scenario. I let him putter around for a bit, watching as he moved around the laboratory. I wanted to see if he was buying the situation, and as far as I could tell, he seemed pretty enthralled.

  However, it begged the question of how many of my dreams Genesis had created. As far as I knew, it was just the ones that he terrorized me in, but judging from how easy it was for me to just hang in the fabric of the entity’s subconscious, the cloud could have been in any number of my nightmares or unsettling dreams.

  That was a sobering thought, but I pushed it to the back of my mind. I could worry about that later. It was time to get things really poppin.

  One of the laboratory heads let out a frustrated cry, slamming their hands on the table in front of them.

  “What is it?” Genesis asked, walking over to their side like a concerned superior. I loosened my grip on the scene slightly, allowing the pieces I had set into play to act like Genesis thought they should. It wasn’t quite like me moving each and every little variable like some sort of Claymation adventure. Instead it seemed a lot like setting a stage and an end goal, but letting all the little dream-actors get there however they saw fit.

  “I just, I’m at my wit’s end here. Every time we get close to finding the cure, something happens. It mutates, or the cells die, or the virus devours the chemical branches of our prototype and becomes stronger. Our system is spinning out of control and I don’t know if we’re going to win.”

  “I understand, Ch’valrak.” Genesis said, patting the alien’s shoulder. I was always a little bit vaguely impressed at his ability to act like a functional sentient being considering it had no body and a total hard on for the destruction of all life, and this was no exception. “We’re all stressed and running out of time. Feeling each and every second as it ticks away isn’t exactly the best for workplace morale.”

  “It’s just… when they took out the Quadric station, I was sure that was the end of it. Everything just seems so pointless now.”

  “Yes, that was a terrible blow. But we will regroup. If there’s a single thing that all of this has taught me, it’s that life will always find a way.”

  “You think that’s what primitive lifeforms of daltross thought before mass extinction wiped them all out?”

  “You have a point. Sometimes it doesn’t continue in the way we hope. But I do believe we can do this.”

  “Well I hope you have a brilliant idea because I’ve tried everything.”

  “I’m working on a few leads. I have a theory about kalium that I’m getting results on soon. As soon as I know, you’ll all know.”

  “I… I’m going to take a break. Clear my head and all.”

  “You know, I think that would be a good idea. How about I see you in the morning. The worlds aren’t ending tonight.”

  “That we know of.”

  Instead of walking off, the dream-scientist faded from existence. However, Genesis didn’t seem to act like that was unusual. Alright, the scene was set. Looked like it was time for me to do my thing.

  One by one all the scientist faded from the dream. At first Genesis didn’t notice, busying themselves with something or another. It took two or three disappearances for it to look up, and the expression on its face was unreadable. Mostly because I wasn’t used to seeming emotion played out over insect mandibles and dozens and dozens of eyes.

  That moment hung in the air for several beats, before it looked right back down again, fiddling with something else.

  So, I took away several more.

  “Hey, Walowikz, what were the results on your phenohydrate tests?” Of course, there was no answer. “Walowikz? What, are you stuck in a concentration loop again? Walowikz?”

  Finally it looked up again and noticed there was only a couple of its constituents left. “Wh-what’s going on here?”

  That’s when I stepped out of the nothingness that I was watching from.

  I could read the shock even on it’s strange, insectoid face. It made me feel fairly bad ass that my mere appearance could strike fear into a creature as old and powerful as Genesis. Granted, the gaping hole in my chest and blood pouring down my front probably helped.

  “Hello old friend.” I murmured.

  Okay, maybe I was hamming it up a bit, but what was the point of dying if you didn’t get to exploit some whacky hijinks from it?

  “Verdandi.” It gasped, scuttling backwards, its feet making a godawful sound across the floor. “But this is impossible! You’re dead.”

  “Yeah, and who’s fault was that now?”

  “This can’t be. This isn’t real.”

  I shrugged, tracing my finger along one of the lab tables as I slowly progressed forward. With as much concentration as I could spare without looking like I was actually trying to concentrate, I shifted my features into what I imagined what I would look if I was infected by the rabid kodadt plague. It was difficult considering I didn’t have a mirror, but I took it from the terrified jittering away that my illusion was effective.

  “Who can say what is real, and what isn’t? How many strange things have you swallowed up with that voracious hunger of yours? Things that couldn’t be explained, or never had a chance to before you devoured them whole?”

  “What do you want?” It hissed, still backing away. It was obviously headed somewhere, and I could only hope that it was exactly where I needed it to be.

  “What do any of us want? Life? Liberty? The pursuit of happiness?” It was absurdly fun to play this philosophical nightmare zombie. No wonder character actors loved being the bad guy. “Maybe I wanted to live, Genesis. But you took that away from me. So perhaps I should use this fortuitous return for revenge. What do you think? You’re so much weaker now; I bet I could eat you up in one gulp.”

  “You can make all the threats you want, but you’re not real. No matter what you do, in the end I’ll wake up, and you’ll be
dead.”

  “Perhaps. But don’t you worry about all that could be going on while you’re sleeping? How many little webs are you weaving across all the layers of dimensions, and how tangled might they become if I keep you here long enough?”

  “….are… are you actually alive?”

  I shrugged. “What do I know, I’m just a girl from Earth who hasn’t even finished college. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But the important thing is that you’re stuck in here with me.”

  It finally reached whatever it was backing towards, because one of its arms hastily punched something into a machine. I watched astutely, taking care to catch every button that it depressed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Finding an exit.” It answered simply.

  Before I could say anything else, a canister popped out of the bottom of the machine. With a bit of a flourish, the creature threw it at me, shattering the container and allowing the contents to spill over me.

  “W-what is this?” I cried, stumbling back and making smoke pour from my skin.

  “Remember how you wanted that precious cure so much?” It hissed, standing over me as I melted away. “Well now you have it.”

  Yes… yes I did.

  In a stunning display of histrionics, I let myself dissolve out of the dream, floating back into the nothingness that surrounded the little scene. Excitement was beginning to bubble up within me, but I had to keep cool. This could be a trick after all.

  But, if I had gotten away with it -which I was pretty sure I had- then I might have just sealed the coffin I was going to slam dunk Genesis into.

  Reaching back for the cord that tethered me to reality, I let myself get pulled back to my body.

  The return journey was harder than I had anticipated. I felt a bit like a rubber band that had been stretched for far too long and had lost its elasticity, leaving a skinny, brittle bit of latex. But I refused to let myself fall into the abyss nipping at my heels. I kept fighting, kept pulling at the strands connecting me to my mortal coil.