Force

by A.R. Rivera

The One Doing The Screwing

  On the other side of the doorway, the landscape looks eerily familiar. Way too much like the plane I just left.

  Row after row of citrus trees cover the nearby rolling hills. No machinery in between rows. No farm hands or even ripe oranges for them to pluck. I’m in the open field, still standing near the large transformer, only now the power lines that crossed it just a moment ago are broken.

  I look to the three stones sitting in my hands. They aren’t glowing anymore. In fact, they seem to have dimmed completely.

  From a distance comes the sound. The voice of a man, laughing or cackling. Its high-pitched, but I know it’s a man because I recognize that amusement.

  Turning, I find Elijah running down the hillside behind me, gaining speed as he goes, stumbling a little when his gait hits the swell of flat land.

  The moment I flip my hood back, I’m bombarded with Eli’s excitement.

  “G! He was right! He said you’d come back to this very spot! I couldn’t be sure, but I took a gamble, and I got it! I recorded everything!” He’s practically shouting, touching both his hands to my shoulders.

  “That’s great, Eli.” I agree. “Now, just tell me what the hell you’re talking about so the next time I say it, I’ll actually mean it.”

  Eli shakes his head as if he remembers that I haven’t been looking over his shoulder the whole time and steps to one side waving his hand. A gesture that bids me to walk with him. We fall into step, heading the direction Eli has just come from.

  “Your dad gave me instructions. He said that you might come back this way, and you did.”

  My dad irritated me with how he always seemed to know things he shouldn’t, so why not where I might turn up? I nod, appreciating his willingness to wait so diligently on such an unsure scenario.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” I mutter, stuffing the stones back into the crusty pouch and tucking it away.

  “The suit held up, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been gone five weeks. How was World Two?”

  “Five? I counted three. Three and a half tops.”

  His bushy eyebrows draw together. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. But—” my scrambled brain flashes to the other planes I passed through chasing Daemon. “I found Daemon. He left Two, I followed. He kept opening portals. I went through three with him. Saw some...” I shake my head, recalling the giant fish. It looked very near the eel-like pictures I’ve seen of the Lochness monster. “Some crazy things before we ended up back where we started. I followed the family all the way to New York. Came back; it took about three weeks.”

  “You catch him?”

  I shake my head, embarrassed by my stupidity. The artlessness of the whole adventure. “I was useless. He got the drop on me. Not just metaphorically.”

  When Eli asks, I explain it all.

  He shrugs as if this is what he expected as if my failure means nothing. “You’ll get him next time. Did you write everything down?”

  “Yeah.” I made good use of my downtime. Writing everything that’s happened and trying to process while I waited for just the right moment to hop into an empty car.

  “Were you able to collect samples?”

  “Some newspapers.”

  A half-smile appears and blows away with the breeze. “You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve translated some of the hieroglyphs copied from your father’s papers. The stones actually have a name.”

  “Really?”

  He nods, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

  “Well? Spit it out.”

  He holds up one index finger and freezes as if listening. “We have to talk fast. There’s so much to catch up on.” He starts walking again. “It’s a strange word. I’m not sure of the pronunciation, but it sounds like a Latin derivative. Tres, like three, and unus, meaning one. But the order of the glyphs tells they’re one word. Drawn in the singular every time as if the three stones are one entity. Tresunus: Threestone.”

  “Three stones? Derivative, indeed.”

  “No, Threestone, one word, singular.”

  “Threestone,” I say, thinking that I like the name even though it’s weird.

  “I tried marking your time differential, but the watch wasn’t working. I counted the timing on the nearest traffic light.”

  Eli tilts his head to one side. “Unless you have an audio recording of yourself counting I probably won’t be able to use the information with any accuracy.”

  “When faced with the unexpected, the ability to improvise is your best tool.” Something my dad used to say whenever he fouled up.

  The first time I remember him using it on me was when we were camping and I dropped the matches in a puddle. We had to build a fire with nothing but two sticks and determination.

  We hit the top of the hillock and Eli veers right, heading for a small white building. That pulls me up short.

  Eli notices I’ve stopped and turns back to give me a studious once-over. “G, what’s wrong?”

  My gaze is stuck on the painted wooden building that I am positive was not there when I was here with my childhood best friend only a month or so ago. Sure, the amount of time is relative, but as Eli reiterated at least a thousand times as we bickered over supplies: one can never be too careful.

  “What’s the safe-word?”

  Eli’s eyes dark brows pull together again. “Macaroni.”

  It’s enough solace to start walking again.

  Inside, the building is much smaller than it looked. It’s more of a hut than a house. A ready-made tool shed with a partitioned toilet, a small sink, and no kitchen. A single room stacked high with blinking electronics, a few printers, and a single hot plate off in the far corner beside a folding bed. The walls are coated with maps, charts, and graphs.

  “Nice digs,” I say, not meaning a single syllable because this place is obviously a shit hole. “I might know where you can find a refrigerator box if you’re thinking of adding on.”

  “What it looks like doesn’t matter.” Eli stretches his arms out over the clutter, nearly touching two walls at the same time. “It’s what we learn that’s important.”

  His eyes go down to a ream of paper. “I’ve been cataloguing dissimilarities for the past few weeks, but there weren’t any variations. Until seven minutes ago.” He leans down and plucks up the topmost sheet of paper from the stack as the printer above it shoots out another sheet. His eyes practically glow as they consume the page of information.

  Unzipping the thick Demron suit, I ask Elijah “Is there a place I can put this so it’s not in the way?”

  When Eli looks up at me, his brows are pulling together again. “You can’t stay, G.”

  “Not for long, I know. I’ve had walk-in closets with more space.”

  Eli’s shaking his head so fast it looks more like a twitch or a tick than a refusal. “No. I have to report these changes right away.”

  My suits already zipped back up. “Report?” He’s the one who told me that only dead men keep secrets of this magnitude. We keep the stones secret or we end up dead. Now he’s reporting to someone?

  I’ve got my backpack strapped back on and I’m staring at Elijah as he grows progressively nervous.

  “Who did you tell?”

  Eli takes a deep breath. When he exhales, his shoulders drop. “You know who.”

  I can actually feel my blood pressure rising. My arms and back tighten.

  “They threatened to throw my father in jail. He’s nearly seventy years old, G. It’d kill him.”

  “Who are you reporting to?” I ask, as if I don’t already know.

  Eli tosses his hands up and out. “You’re going to make me say it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The federal government, specifically Homeland Security.”

  My groan is more of a whiney gagging sound.

  “They arrested me, G. Held me for weeks. No access to council. No
t a single phone call! They didn’t ask me a single question. They already knew about Entanglement and the threat of too many wormholes. They demanded that I do as I’m told. They wouldn’t let me sleep until I agreed. When they finally let me go, my house had been ransacked. They took everything. All my research, your father’s papers—”

  “What!”

  “They already knew everything! They’ve been waiting for you to come back. They’re probably on the way right now, if they’re not already here.”

  I’m out the door of the little hut, pushing past fidgety Eli, walking back towards the transformer.

  But then I remember the broken electric cables. No energy—no gateway. I don’t know how to use the stones as well as Daemon, and so I turn back around, removing the pouch with the stones from my breast pocket as I go.

  “Not here. Please.” Eli holds up both hands, begging. “My equipment, the sensors; you’ll destroy them and then they’ll know for sure that you were here. Don’t give them what they want, G.”

  “You’ve already done that.” I push past him, ignoring his pleading. “You screwed us both!”

  “I had to make them think I would help! This lab, the information I’m getting is to help me protect you.”

  “DHS? Seriously?” I want to pull my hair out. “I should punch you again.”

  Instead, I toss my backpack to the ground and open it. “Here,” I say, tossing out my notes on the time I spent travelling and marking the time differential.

  Looking my old friend in the eye, seeing his pain and that fear I recognize so well... it’s tough because I understand all of it. If our positions were reversed, I might have done the same.

  “I get why you’re working with them, all right. I hate it, but I understand.”

  Eli visibly relaxes. “It couldn’t be avoided.”

  Raking my hand through my hair, I concede. “You have to protect yourself first. You’re no good to me in prison.” Shaking my head, I can hardly believe what I’m saying. “Do what you have to do, Eli.”

  He nods. “Okay.”

  “So will I.”

  “Understood.”

  “I found Carrie on the other side. She’s alive.” I don’t know what makes me say it; I guess I just need to tell someone.

  Eli’s face breaks into a full-on grin that disappears when I unzip the pouch with the stones. “G, don’t.”

  “I left you behind and that left you no choice.”

  “No.” He shakes his head and begins backing away from the rocks that captivate and terrify him. “I had two horrible choices. I chose the lesser evil. But I made my own choice, G.”

  “And because of that choice, I’ve got to save myself.”

  Eli nods like he wants to hate me, but can hardly blame me. I know the feeling. “You focus on Daemon. Stop him and you save us all.”

  I strap my hood back on and step closer to the small hut. In no time at all the energy from Eli’s lab is inside the rocks and the funnel of blue flames and fog appears, starting at the Threestone in my palm and growing; gushing up into the clouds.

  When the gateway opens I walk through, not knowing what kind of world I’ll end up in, and hoping it’s nothing like this one.