The Return (Alternate Dimensions Book 5)

by Blake B. Rivers

  Just when exhaustion began to seep in, and my mind felt like an impossible weight to carry, I saw a bastion of light above me. With the last of my energy, I surged towards it.

  It was a desperate fight to reach it, and for several moments I was sure that I wouldn’t make it, but finally my head breeched the surface and I was pouring back into my body.

  I couldn’t open my eyes at first, every part of my body feeling disconnected from my exhausted mind. I had probably spent too long in Genesis’ mind and this was the consequence of it all; this feeling of disconnection. Like I was locked inside of a meatsuit, unable to control it, rather than the organic machine that I spent all of my time in.

  I kept my panic down, however, and instead just kept my mind turned to what I could do. That was pretty much just breathing, so I made my inhales and exhales as long and even as I could.

  Minutes passed, and little by little my body started to fall in line. I was able to get my eyelids to flutter open, and then my neck to rotate my head to the side to look at the clock. Somehow, I had spent three hours traveling along the connection between the two of us and in its mind. That was a terrifying though on its own.

  Eventually I felt a sluggish sort of connection between all of my limbs and I tried sitting up. It took a bit more effort than I would like to admit, but I managed to get into an upright position without toppling onto the floor.

  My head rushed, forcing me to sit still a moment while I waited for it to calm down. Once I was sure that I wasn’t going to pass out from the feeling, I got to my feet.

  “Whoa…”

  I steadied myself, holding onto the nightstand for support. Cue several moments of waiting before I was finally able to stumble out of the door.

  The excitement was really pumping as realization began to set in about exactly what I had done. It didn’t take long for me to go from unsteady, zombie-walk, to urgent stroll, to outright jog as I made my way to the lab/medbay.

  The elevator ride was excruciating, each second ticking by in such a drawn-out way I was beginning to wonder if I was in a dream myself. Far too long after I entered, I was rushing out between the doors and onto the proper floor.

  I burst into the lab panting a bit heavier than I meant to, and I had to take a beat to rest with my hands on my knees. Not my most majestic moment, but I had forgotten about that whole brand-new body/ a month on bed-rest thing. Also, I didn’t have Genesis-born abilities to help me along anymore either. I really needed to fix that as soon as I could. Being just like everyone else sucked.

  “Andi, are you alright?” Jyra asked cautiously, rubbing her very red eyes.

  “I-I-I…” I stuttered, breath constricting tightly in my chest.

  “It’s alright,” Bajol comforted, leaving his station to cross over to me and pat my back. “Just breathe, okay? Give her a minute, Jyra, she’s- Oh. You need to use the drops again. You’ve got a serious case of eyestrain.”

  “Do I? I suppose it has been a while.” Somewhat dopily, she got up and stumbled over to the other side of the lab. If I didn’t know better, she was at that near-intoxicated level of overwork. She was pushing herself so hard, hopefully this would provide the break she obviously needed.

  My lungs began to figure themselves out, but I waited for Jyra to treat herself before straightening.

  “So, what was so important that you had to overexert yourself to get here?” Bajol asked teasingly.

  “Jyra, do you still have that machine thingy that replays memories?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was recovered from my lab before your… incident. Why?”

  “Because,” I answered, grin spreading across my face. “I just might have your cure.”

  Chapter Nine: An Injector in a Haystack Filled with Rattlesnakes

  “I’m not going to have a seizure like last time, am I?” I asked as Jyra finished buckling me in and placing the helmet on my head. While I probably should have asked the question before, I had found myself preoccupied with exactly how I had come by my miraculous knowledge.

  “Would it deter you for even a second if you were?”

  “No.”

  Her smile was small but I still caught it. “And no, you shouldn’t. We’re just replaying a very recent memory over and over again so you can transcribe it, not pulling out memories that you buried behind a wall for years.”

  “Alright, good. Because last time was not so fun. Worth it, mind you, because it led me to you, but not so fun.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be here the whole time. Are you ready?”

  I nodded and she crossed to the machine before flipping the switch.

  Just like she said, it was much easier than the last time. There was still a feeling of discomfort as my mind was prodded by something artificial, but I found myself slipping into the memory without much trouble.

  It wasn’t quite reliving the whole scene, like some sort of simulation, but more like watching a movie of what I had just lived through. It gave me the ability to still control my body separately from the experience, allowing me to write down things as I watched.

  In fact, it was almost boring compared to the last time I had been in this position. As I watched the same scene over and over and over again so I could describe in detail what Genesis had plugged into the synthesizer, it reminded me of times when I had been stuck on a boss with an unskippable cutscene in front of it.

  I think it was after the fourth time of watching that I started to mouth the words along with the dialogue, steadily growing more and more mocking with each time around. I lost count somewhere over ten, but by the time I was able to draw the last symbol, I was entirely unimpressed with how hokey my performance had been.

  “That’s it!” I said, setting my stylus onto the datapad. “I got it. I’m done.”

  Jyra’s cool hands brushed against my skin and soon I was freed from the helmet. I sat up, rubbing my head and eyes vigorously.

  “Geeze, remind me not to do that again.” I said, handing the datalog over to Jyra. “Does this help? It’s everything I could pick up on. What the symbols looked like, how long it held them, the order. I don’t know what matters and what doesn’t, but it’s the best I could do.”

  “Yeah, absolutely, I understand.”

  She practically yanked it from me, but I didn’t mind. She wanted this cure as much as I did, if not more so. After all, the kodadt plague had happened sometime just after we were parted, meaning she’d had to deal with almost fifteen years of the terror.

  The silence seemed to drag on and I lasted maybe ten seconds before the anticipation was too much. “Well? Is it useful?”

  She didn’t answer at first and I could tell that even level headed Bajol was getting antsy. “Well?”

  “I think… I think I understand now.” She said, looking up at me with wide, wide eyes. “There are a few things missing, some permutations I’ll have to run, but this is it! Everything we could possibly need to end this plague one and for all!” Her last sentence ended in an excited squeal and she threw her arms around me in a hug. “This is it, Andi! We’re going to do it! We’re going to beat that sonofabitch and absorb every last bit of it!”

  I laughed, a giddy sort of relief rushing through me. And this time, I was the one to pick someone up and swing them around. We whirled together, completely lost in the moment, until Bajol cleared his throat.

  “Oh, whoops.” I came back down to earth and set Jyra down only to pull the doctor into a hug just for him.

  “Much better,” He remarked, patting my back.

  When I broke away, I could feel a level of hope within me that I hadn’t had in goodness knows how long. We were going to make it!

  “So, who wants to break the news to everyone else?”

  Jyra caressed my cheek before giving it a little pat. “You’re the one who found this, why don’t you? Besides, we have to make sure we get this figured out. What you gave us was amazing, but there are still little variables that could be the difference between success and f
ailure.”

  “I understand,” I said with a nod. “And don’t let me stop you. I guess I have some very good news to deliver.”

  *

  Everyone had been a bit dubious when I had first told them of our discovery. Maybe they had thought I went crazy, maybe they thought I was just overly enthused with Jyra’s cure efforts, but after confirming with the scientists that I wasn’t blowing smoke up their butts, a manic sort of excitement settled over the ship.

  Our preparation turned from a futile funeral procession walking towards the inevitable, to a frantic rush towards and end that many of us had only dreamed of. In less than a week, Jyra and Bajol had come up with a line of vaccines to test on the samples they had gathered of the virus. Many had been thrown out in this stage, and several reworked, but only a few days later they had six different formulas that were ready to be tested on a live subject.

  Which was me, apparently.

  They debated bringing a rabid kodadt on board, but ultimately, we all decided that it was far too great a risk. Unfortunately, that meant I was the only one on board with a live version of the virus inside of me. Even the immune kodadt had dead strain floating around in their immune systems, which could compromise the integrity of the formula.

  And so, not for the first time, I found myself strapped to a table, waiting for a medical procedure that sounded quite uncomfortable. But hey, what could possibly go wrong with having multiple cures put into me that could potentially be lethal?

  Ugh, sarcasm was not as comforting in my own head as it was spoken aloud.

  “Are you sure you’re ready?” Janix asked, squeezing my hand.

  “Yup.” I said. “We’ve got a lot of samples to test and not a whole lot of time.”

  “Technically, we have no idea how much time we have.” Viys’k corrected from where she was sitting on a bed, eating an apple. “For all we know, Genesis could pop up in five minutes, or five weeks. It really just depends on its schedule and we have no idea what that is.”

  “Comforting,” I shot back. “Remind me to keep you around if I need a pep talk.”

  “My pleasure, it’s what I live for.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Janix said, gently pulling my face towards him. “She’s just cranky because she hasn’t gotten to steal anything in a few months.”

  “It goes against my nature.” She objected before taking another bite of her fruit.

  “You’ve got this,” The mooreerie continued. “We’re going to save the galaxy, and we can finally kick back and enjoy ourselves for once.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been able to do that since I was a child,” Jyra uttered quietly, putting more sensors on me. “That does sound lovely.”

  “Sure, maybe the three of us can go to some sort of beach, get our toes in the sand.”

  “I’m not fond of the texture of sand.” Jyra answered. “And it gets everywhere. I find it quite… discomforting.”

  “Alright, well somewhere else then. We’ll figure it out. Once we deal with this kodadt problem, and kill that cloudy douche, we’ll have all the time to think about what we want.”

  “Sounds good.” I took a deep breath and looked to Jyra. “We good?”

  “We are good. Preparing for test formula A,”

  “Preparing for test formula A,” Bajol repeated, starting up several machines that were monitoring about a bajillion of my body’s functions.

  Jyra approached me with an injector then lowered it to my arm. With very little fanfare, she pressed it to my skin and set it off.

  I heard the tell-tale sound of its subtle hiss and sat back, waiting for something to happen. And waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “Virus levels are the same within her blood.”

  “Alright. Let’s put her under twenty-four-hour watch before we rule out this sample. It could take a bit for this to get past her anti-bodies.”

  “Um, do I have to stay strapped to this table the entire time?”

  “Not the table, but you do need to stay connected to all our monitors.”

  “Great. So I’ve got a three foot leash for the foreseeable future?”

  “Seven feet, actually. We made sure that all the cords were long enough to allow you use of the bathroom.”

  “How thoughtful of you.” I said drily while Janix chuckled at the situation. “I sat up and arranged myself in a comfortable position. My arm hurt just a bit, but it wasn’t even near paper-cut level. “Well, since I’m going to be here a while, does anyone know how to play cards?”

  *

  Formula A was a failure. It sucked, and they waited as long as they could to make sure it completely cleared my system before trying Formula B.

  Which was also a failure.

  And it had been a bit of a tease at that. My virus levels had started dropping around the third hour and we had been sure it was the one. However, another hour later, my virus levels had risen to higher than they were before. That certainly wasn’t what one wanted when trying to cure a lethal disease, so we were forced to move on.

  It was hard not to be discouraged with each swing and a miss, but I told myself that there wasn’t an invisible countdown ticking ever closer to our showdown with Genesis.

  We had to have this cure. Otherwise we would be fighting off a shipload of rabid beasts and I didn’t have my same kodadt-slaying abilities like I used to. I didn’t even know how to fire a gun properly so I was next to useless.

  This was our ace in the hole, the trojan horse that would let us get behind enemy lines. But Viys’k was right, any moment could be the one that Genesis showed up, ready to rumble.

  “Testing Formula C.”

  “Testing Formula C,” Bajol parroted yet again as we started the whole process over again.

  We had much less of an audience than we had the first time. I guess after two misfires, their confidence had been shaken. But Viys’k, Janix, and Zik were there faithfully, waiting, and watching, and offering support through the whole experience.

  Just like every other time, Jyra pressed the injector to my arm and away it went.

  And just like every other time, nothing much happened.

  We all looked to the monitors, watching my levels to see if they moved at all. But everything pretty much stayed the same and I let out a long breath.

  “Give it time,” Jyra said, patting my arm. “These things are not always instantaneous.”

  “I know,” I admitted, resting my head against her chest. “I just was hoping it would.”

  “Put her on twenty-four-hour watch.” Jyra said yet again. If my arm wasn’t getting progressively sorer, I would have sworn this was a wicked case of de-ja-vu.

  Basically a routine now, Bajol and Jyra returned to their lab stations to work on things that were so far above my head they might as well been rocket science, and Zik returned to her duties for the kodadt survivors. That left my two original crewmates to occupy my time -which they were totally saints for doing.

  “So, you want to play another round of poker?” Janix asked, holding up the cards that he had procured from who knows where.

  “Sure,” I said, sitting up once more. “You ready to lose all yours snacks?”

  “Of course, as soon as Viys’k goes and get us said tasty morsels.”

  “Seriously?” The thief shot back. “When did I become your errand girl?”

  “Andi is sacrificing her body and health for the sake of all of us, and I need to stay here and support her. So that leaves you as the snack fetcher. Just basic logic, you know.”

  “Ugh, fine. I suppose that is literally the least I can do for Miss Medical Guinea Pig over there.” She jumped down from her perch and let her nail gently scratch my leg in a krelach sign of affection. “What’re you craving?”

  “Um, well you know I think I could go with-” I cut myself off abruptly, my eyes going wide as the worst stomach cramp I had ever experienced rocked my midsection.

  “Hello, yes? Are y
ou okay?”

  “I, uh-”

  Another painful squeeze and I doubled over, nearly toppling off of the bed I was on. “Oh God!” I managed to groan out.

  “What’s going on?” Jyra asked, returning from her normal station in the lab.

  “I don’t know!” Janix yelled, trying to hold me as I squirmed against the sudden abdominal assault. “She was fine and then she just freaked out.”

  “Her heartrate is going up fast,” Bajol said, running over to the injector station and quickly punching in a code. “Grabbing depressant now. This should help her relax.”

  “Wait!” Viys’k cried. “Look at the monitor!”

  Despite the pain, I managed to turn my head towards the bright screens. At first, I couldn’t make anything out over the agony going on in my midsection, but after a deep breath my eyes zeroed in on the diagram charting the virus levels in my blood. “They’re dropping!” I cried.

  But my celebration was short lived as another wave of torture rolled through me and I was throwing up violently.

  It was just like good old times as black vomit splattered across my front and onto my friends. If they had any thoughts about that, they were nice enough not to voice them, instead churning into a rush of activity while my virus levels continued to drop.

  But the pain in my middle was ramping up again, spreading out to my limbs and making them shake in a violent rush of agony.

  “Secure her arms and legs!” Bajol cried. “She’s seizing! If her heartrate climbs any higher I’m going to inject benzodiapine, cure be damned.”

  “No!” Jyra countered. “She’s stronger than you think. Just give her a few moments and she can beat this. I know she can!”

  I tried to say something, but my mouth was locked while my teeth chattered within. It was impossible to think, impossible to reason over the mind-consuming pain racking my system. I felt myself puke again, and it took all four of them to roll my writhing frame onto its side so I didn’t aspirate the inky blackness.

  The next few minutes sunk into a haze, and I could only hold on for the ride, comprehending less than a tenth of whatever was going on around me. But, just when I was sure I couldn’t take much more, the pain let up. Then the vomiting stopped. Slowly, I began to feel myself come down from the torturous trip, until finally I was laying still on my back in a pool of sweat.