The Riddle (Alternate Dimensions Book 2)

by Blake B. Rivers

  “Don't worry. I have a toy for this.”

  Angel patted around her belt before releasing one of the gadgets. Almost tenderly, she placed the metal, circular thing that she had revealed onto the door, then took a step back.

  “You guys might want to cover your ears,” she warned.

  Before anyone could object, a metal length slid out from the side of the circle and emitted a laser. As soon as the beam hit the surface of the door, it created a high-pitched squeal, painfully reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. Janix cursed and finally covered his ears like the rest of us.

  Utterly fascinated, I watched the tool continue to cut its path until it finished. It had formed a perfect circle, but that seemed to be about it. Angel let go of her ears and pressed a button on top of the device, and it released the door to fall into her gloved hand. Once it was put away, she flicked at the center of the circle, and it clattered to the floor.

  Reaching in, she grabbed the handle from the other side and gave it a jiggle. I expected her to turn it and we would be on our merry way, but quickly realized that didn't add up. If there was gonna be a lock on any side, it would be the civilian quarters, not the high security, super important, experimental side.

  At an utter loss of what she could be doing, I decided to stop guessing and just watch. It turned out that her hand that she had reached through the door with wasn't empty at all. In fact, neither of her hands were.

  One held a pen-like tube tipped with a conical drill bit looking thing. The other was similar, but without the pointed top. I was pretty enraptured by all this techno-spy stuff. Carefully, she placed the things on either side of the handle. There was a drilling sound, then a pup and a fizz, and what looked like lightning rippled through the pseudo glass.

  “That should do it,” Angel said, sounding pleased with herself before sliding the entrance open. “Man, it's like being a kid again.”

  I was about to joke about her having an unusual childhood, but I remembered that she had been born a slave with no rights, and kept my mouth shut before I could shove my foot into it.

  “Go right. Her station was at the end of the hall. The investigation unit probably stripped it down to the bones, so if you're in the emptiest room, you're probably in the right place.”

  As we walked through, expecting an attack or triggered alarm at any moment, I tried to envision the missing half-kin going about her daily life in this sprawling complex. Did she keep to herself? Or was she one of those hard-ass bosses that nobody liked?

  I couldn't imagine her being purposefully unpleasant, but I also couldn't picture her being comfortable with being in charge of the amount of people it had to take to run this place.

  I guess it was something that I would have to ask if we found her.

  When.

  When we found her.

  I was determined to get us all to the happy ending we had definitely earned by now.

  “Here we are,” I heard Angel murmur.

  I followed her into the door of the farthest room, and it was exactly like Zik had warned us. Everything looked like it had been confiscated or ripped away in a very strong, and very angry teenager's temper tantrum. The walls weren't so much walls as they were expanses of the inner workings of the ship. Wires, pipes, and all sorts of other future-gizmo-architecture things that I couldn't comprehend.

  “Wow, they really gave this the once over,” Janix murmured.

  “And a second-over, and a third,” I added, walking forward. I knew I should probably wait for Angel to thoroughly scan the room and give us the all clear, but I felt drawn inward, like a fish on a hook.

  I had never been here, so what I was feeling was impossible, but I couldn't ignore the distinct impression that the place was vaguely familiar. Maybe this was some sort of Stranger osmosis? Me feeling the echo of her presence or something and misinterpreting it? Who knew? It wasn't like this whole trans-dimensional travel and saving the world bit had a manual.

  Maybe that's something I could do if I survived this. How to Reality Hop for Morons. Yeah, that would be a real niche market there.

  Despite my internal monologue with myself, I continued my exploration of the room. The others were shuffling around as well, but they were most likely looking for possible alarms or dangers. It was pretty much assumed that I was going to be the one to find whatever possible secrets Jyra might have.

  I wasn't even sure what we were looking for. I mean, I knew that eventually we would move to the corridor that I had seen her carried down, but Zik was sure that the genius alien had hidden some sort of trove of information in her quarters. I had no idea how she thought that was possible, considering that the intergalactic space police had pretty much turned the place inside out.

  “Where are you, Jyra?” I murmured.

  There was a small whirring sound, but everyone jumped to attention. Suddenly, we were in formation again, everyone facing out with their guns drawn.

  “What?” Zik asked. “What's going on?”

  “The ship is reporting a very subtle energy output in your section of the station,” Bajol said over the comm. “Whatever you just did, I think it just woke something up.”

  “But I didn't do anything,” I countered. “I was just talking.”

  “What were you saying?”

  “Nothing important, just talking out loud, ya know. Wondering what Jyra could have possibly be hiding here.”

  “Another energy spike.”

  “This makes sense!” Zik said excitedly. “These past few months we've spent hundreds of hours trying to interpret and label every band of universal sound wave that we're currently able to observe and record with our level of technology.”

  “All right, dumb it down for the college girl here.”

  “We've been researching sound. I wasn't really clear on the why, but I mostly handled administration and duplicating experiment results. If Jyra would hide anything, it made sense that she would make finding it involve sound.”

  “Why would she be researching sound?” That seemed like more of a musician thing and less of a mad scientist bent on conquering the border between dimensions.

  “She said it was the key to finding and labeling layers of reality. Granted, I didn't really know what she meant until now. That's how she found you, you know. Somehow, she found a sample of what your universe sounded like from her memories and methodically went through every pop, snap, and burp to ever be emitted from space and found you.”

  That floored me, and I stared in wonder at the empty room around us. “She did all that just to find me?”

  “Apparently so. Whoever you are, you were incredibly important to her. More important than anything else in her life. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I realize now that everything–her schooling, her research, and this station–it was all to find you.

  “I hope you're worth it.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  There were so many question to ask. So many things that felt like they almost made sense but were teetering just beyond my comprehension. “So, what do I do?”

  “I dunno. Talk,” Janix offered.

  “I am talking. Nothing's happening.”

  “I have a theory,” Bajol said, just as calculated as ever. “Try her name again.”

  Well, I'd come up with worse plans. “Jyra.”

  “Confirmed. Another energy spike.”

  “Color me surprised,” Angel said.

  “Okay, so um…Jyra, Jyra, Jyra, Jyra.”

  “Seems to be leveling off. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that she had some sort of audio-phonic password. Jyra's part of it, but it's not the whole thing.”

  “All right, well, she was some sort of super nerd, right? Maybe an equation or something. I mean Jyra's smart, but that doesn't necessarily mean creative.”

  Bajol made a sound that was somewhere between 'hmm' and a 'huh.'

  “You want to come again with that?” I said.

  “Interesting. When other people say her name, there's
no spike. It only happens when you say it. It seems like she keyed whatever system she set up here to your specific frequency.”

  “But how could she possibly know that? We've never met before she was nabbed, and unless she remotely set this up in ten seconds, that's not possible.”

  “I do not have an answer for that currently, although I think we should be focusing on solving this riddle rather than asking why or how she put it there.”

  “Right. Priorities.”

  Angel let out an aggravated sigh, perching on the mangled, overturned bed-frame. “No problem, then. There's an infinite number of words in the universe, and we just need to guess the select few that will unlock whatever it is that's here. But we don't know what's here, or even how many words are in said password. Do I have an accurate picture of the situation?”

  “Shhh, for just a minute please,” I asked, massaging either side of my temples. “There has to be a reason she set this to only unlock with my voice. She knew something was coming for her. If I was being hunted, I would make sure my breadcrumbs would be found by who I wanted to find them. I would make it as obvious as I could. So...,” I took a deep breath and hoped I didn't end up looking like a tool. “Andi.”

  “Corresponding energy spike.”

  “Nothing's happening on our side.”

  “Then that must not be the full code.”

  “Goddamn it, Jyra. Why did you make this so complicated?”

  Janix laughed beside me before cutting himself off. “Sorry. It's just, you guys realize that we broke in without a hitch, broke about a dozen laws, but now we're all standing here because we're stuck by a glorified voice message. The irony is pretty striking.”

  “You're not wrong, but that's not very helpful.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, I'm just the muscle. My job isn't to solve the brain teasers.”

  I paced, wracking my brain. If she set this code, she would want me to find it. This was her back up, her plan D after A, B, and C failed.

  Zik's voice came over the speakers once more. “Jyra's whole life was dedicated to finding you. Maybe all she wants is a little confirmation.”

  That made sense. If I had spent years and millions of dollars, I would want someone to tell me that I had done a good job. But what had I done to earn such ardent admiration? I felt like that answer was just at the edge of my mind, hovering, waiting to be known, but held back by some wall that I couldn't scale.

  But that was a question for another day. Ceasing my pacing, I looked to the center of the room. I pictured Jyra there, wearing the same look of joy she had when she first laid eyes on me. She had looked so...happy. Like everything that she had been through was suddenly worth it.

  “Jyra,” I murmured, “it's Andi. You found me.”

  We didn't need a confirmation from Bajol this time because a soft whirring followed by a pleasant chorus of beeps sounded from below our feet. Looking down, I saw the surface begin to slowly glow until that light coalesced in the center. Rising and roiling like a swarm of fireflies, the luminary display spun upward until it settled into the form of the half-kin that I had only interacted with for ten minutes total, but felt a growing attachment to.

  “Andi, I am glad you are safe.”

  “Um, thanks. I uh–”

  “I imagine that you are trying to respond to me now, but it is unnecessary. You are not used to this technology, but this is a 3D recorded projection of me from the past. I'm hoping you never have to see this, but I cannot guarantee my safety. Granted, this could all be wasted effort. I don't even know if my machine works. But I believe, after all these years, I'm going to find you again, Andi. I'm going to keep my promise.”

  Promise? What promise? And again? What was she talking about?

  “As you have probably already experienced, there is something hunting me. Something terrible and remarkably persistent. Do you know it possessed a ship and tried to gun me down from outside my lab?” The recording let out a derisive scoff. “Our one constant advantage seems to be that it chronically underestimates us. Like I wouldn't have my own defense system in place.” Her large eyes blinked rapidly, and she shook her head. “Oh, dear, I'm getting side tracked. Even the thought of potentially speaking to you makes it hard to keep my thoughts in order. Keep to the script, Jyra.”

  “Geeze, Andi. What did you do to this girl?”

  “I dunno,” I said with a shrug. “I've never met her before.” But...I felt like I did. The more I looked at the holographic depiction in front of me, the more I recalled our few interactions, the more I felt like our lives had been intricately wound about each other.

  But that was impossible. How could I have such a strong connection to someone but not a single memory of them?

  “I will encrypt this to be only found by your dimension's frequency. Specifically, yours. Let's just hope I remembered it right.” She laughed nervously, and I swore she blushed. “I would say 'not like I could forget,' but that's exactly what I did for years. I'm sorry about that. I hope you forgive me when we're together again.

  “Oh! Right. If you're here, I'm either dead and you're trying to backtrack my steps to put together a complete picture, or I've been taken by the enemy. Either way, I didn't have a way to store everything here. Anything more complex than this, and I risked someone else finding this. And this is for you, Andi. Only you.”

  She lifted her hands, and a galaxy map opened between them, planets spinning, stars shining, even comets cutting through the landscape. “I have a hidden repository. One no one else knows about, not even my second in command. I hid everything there. Schematics to my machine, weapons I was developing. And what I believe is the Great Choice approaching us.” She dropped her hands, and the schematic faded, leaving only the recording of her looking at me with such a hopeful expression.

  I knew this wasn't really her. That it was just a series of ones and zeros with some light effects thrown in, but I couldn't help but feel like she was really looking at me. I don't think anyone had ever regarded me like she did. Like I was some wondrous thing that they had risked life and limb for, and that I was worth every second of it. It sent chills in waves down my spine, and my heart raced. Who the hell did this woman think I was? I was just some college girl in a dead-end job, who preferred electronic fantasy to reality.

  And yet, here I was, fighting to save another dimension. Maybe I should trust this genius' opinion more than my own.

  “And if I have been taken, I'm afraid it's your turn to do all the searching.” The projection smiled softly. “Find me, Andi. I believe in you.”

  The whirring stopped, and the image slowly faded until we were all standing in the dark again, only our shoulder lights to illuminate the ransacked room.

  “Well, that was a lot to unpack,” Janix said. “Did we get those coordinates?”

  Angel gave a sound to the affirmative. “It's on all of our feeds, and I scanned it, too, for extra measure. Let's get back to the ship and run it. We've been too lucky up to this point, and this is right about when–”

  “Sensors just went off,” Bajol said. “Some sort of celestial object broke free from the gravitational pull of its belt and is now free-floating through space.”

  “Weird, but not exactly lethal,” Viys'k said. “But we should hurry anyway.”

  “I've got no argument with that.”

  We regrouped in what was now our go-to formation and jogged back the way we had come. I had to admit, my cardio had significantly improved since coming to this new reality. I guess that whole ‘running for your life’ workout method was a good one.

  “The breakaway celestial object will be hitting above the main lab area. Damage will be minimal, or at least that is what these readings state so far. I will update you accordingly.”

  “Thanks. Keep us in the know.”

  “Does this mean we have time to check the way they took her? See if there are any clues where they might have headed? What's the point of finding her cache if it doesn't tell us where she is?”


  “I don't know if we should risk it. This has gone too smoothly for my taste.”

  “That's just because you're paranoid,” the captain-double said. “Why not compromise?”

  “All right,” Angel conceded. “Five minutes. Maybe we can find a security terminal I can hack.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it. Really.”

  “No problem. Anything for you and your mystery lover. I do love a good romance.”

  “I will reiterate, I don't even know her.”

  “Yeah, your mouth says that, but your eyes say something different. Either way, you tell us where to go. You were there.”

  “We have to get the main lab area where we started.”

  “Almost there.”

  Chapter Seven: Invasion of the Party Crashers

  We fell quiet as we moved as quickly as we could toward our origin point. Although we were jogging, it was a strange sort of demi-stride due to the lack of gravity. I personally wondered why they hadn't put some sort of magnetic contraption in the bottom of the shoe to help us cling to the floor, but maybe that was impossible due to reasons that went far above my head.

  When we reached the lab, I looked for that pile of rubble again. It made my stomach twist a little, but I shoved that down and stood right back where I had been. I could almost smell the smoke, and hear the same cries that I had that day. How long ago was it? I had spent quite a while in the med-bay of Angel's ship. Had it been a couple of weeks? Or a month?