by D. N. Leo
“Come here,” the creature croaked again.
“Right, so your English is equivalent to my French.” Arik moved a fraction of an inch forward. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Ciaran had stopped his movement on the ground. He was losing his patience. He wouldn’t take a chance of the creature shooting at Arik.
Arik said to Grace, “Honey, you’re going to be okay.”
She nodded.
He needed her to nod harder or do something to move her head away from the lizard’s.
“Is the package heavy? Why don’t you put it down, or maybe give it to me?” He inched another step forward, reaching his hands out as if to take the package. Grace bent over a bit, trying to give it to him. The creature yanked her back.
“Come closer!” the creature growled. It bared its teeth and poked one sharp fang into Grace’s neck. A small stream of blood seeped out.
“Okay, I’ll come closer.” He inched forward another step.
Arik felt a movement at his back. Dinah had ducked to the ground and pumped a needle out from between his legs, hitting Grace’s leg.
“Ouch!” Grace yelped and bent down to see what had hit her. As soon as her head moved away from the lizard, Ciaran fired a precise laser beam at its head. The lizard’s head was sheared off, and it exploded in midair. Its body slid down to the ground and in a flash melted into a puddle of worms.
“That was a damn good shot,” Arik said.
Grace stood up, mesmerized for a moment by the lizard’s brain matter raining down on her. Then she screamed.
“Will your needle put her to sleep? She’ll topple over the rail!” Arik said with concern.
“No, it was a placebo,” Dinah said.
Arik chuckled and turned toward Grace, who was still crying. “It’s okay, honey. We’ll clean you up,” he said as he approached her.
On the ground, Cooper charged toward Diana, Jenny, Madeline, and Ciaran, waving his hand frantically in the air and pointing at the tower.
From the tower, Dinah frowned at the scene below and engaged her wrist unit to Cooper’s. She looked at the screen. Signal jammed, it said.
“Cooper!” Dinah called out loud, but the distance was too far for her voice to travel. Arik turned and looked at her.
“What is it, Dinah?”
“I’m trying to call Cooper. But the signal jammed,” Dinah said. As Arik was looking at her, Dinah could see the expression on Grace’s face had changed.
“Let’s get down to the ground, Arik,” Dinah said and withdrew toward the door, which was located just a few steps behind her.
Arik shrugged. “Sure, wasn’t that the plan?” He turned to look at Grace, who now had a smile on her face.
Dinah gazed through the crowd and saw Cooper frantically explaining something to the group. She looked back at her wrist unit. The signal was still jammed.
35
“Are you sure?” Ciaran asked.
Cooper paced back and forth. “More than sure. Someone is jamming all the signals. I’ve tried to call her. I am one thousand percent sure that the guy got the real Grace. I know it was a small window in the back of the car, but trust me, that stunning woman was the real Grace. The thing up in the tower with Arik and Dinah is not.”
Ciaran tried his unit again. It was too late to run back to the tower to take care of the fake Grace. Arik was already standing next to her and was about to embrace her.
“What does it want?” asked Ciaran.
He saw Arik turn and look at him. He immediately waved his hand, gesturing him to get away from Grace. But Grace also saw the signal. She turned and looked at Arik.
Madeline concentrated. She had peeked into Dinah’s mind before. She could do it again. She channeled a message to her. Grace is a Xiilok creature.
Grace reached out, trying to grab Arik’s shirt and pull him back to her. Dinah pulled out her gun, but Arik was blocking her shot.
Arik pushed Grace away. Dinah ducked again but still couldn’t find a clear angle to shoot. The balcony was too narrow for Arik or her to do anything.
“Back out, Arik,” she said. She backed up and stood right in the doorway. Grace grabbed Arik. He pushed her away to free himself, and she dropped the package to the floor of the balcony so that she could grab him with both hands. Arik shoved her harder. Metal nails erupted through Grace’s fingertips and punctured his shoulders.
“Ouch,” he grunted.
“She’s fake! Throw her over the balcony, Arik!” Dinah shouted.
“What?”
While he was distracted, Grace slashed at his chest. Her long nails had grown out like blades. Arik wouldn’t throw a woman over the balcony. Dinah knew that. Even if he wanted to, Grace now had ten menacing nail blades that could slice through an artery in a second.
Grace’s eyes became bloodshot, and she stopped holding Arik.
“Oh no,” Dinah muttered.
It was too late for Arik to do anything.
Dinah leaped to the outside of the balcony, grabbing the rail with one hand. Dangling from the balcony of the tower, she now had a clear shot at Grace. Without hesitation, she pulled the gun Ciaran had given her and savaged that pretty head in one shot. Like the lizard’s, the head exploded. But unlike the lizard, the body didn’t instantly disintegrate into a puddle of worms. Instead, it stabbed its nails through the package, puncturing it with ten holes. Arik kicked the body. It tumbled over the rail and dropped to the ground below.
The holes in the package taunted him. This was how jumpers got killed. Dinah had told him they had been exposed to packages. The packages killed indiscriminately—both jumpers and ordinary people. But this package was meant for him.
Specifically.
The time travel had sent him everywhere. The songs had been sent to his head to drive him crazy and heat up his body, triggering the travel. Each time he traveled, a certain set of songs kept playing in his head, and it had nothing to do with his musical preferences as he had previously thought.
It was the frequency they were after.
Something or someone was tuning him like one tuned a radio.
And this package might be the last station.
It was too late. He couldn’t run away from it now. He could see the holes opening wider.
He couldn’t throw the package into the crowd below.
He had to get away from it. That way, they would miss their tuning station. It would be just a puff of powder on the dirty rooftop of an old building.
But there was only one way out of this. One way down.
Arik stood up.
He heard screams echoing up from the crowd below as if they knew his intention.
It was a long distance away, but he thought he saw his mother’s eyes looking up at him. She didn’t cry but looked at him with support. His mother always supported his decisions, no matter what they were.
He gazed in his mother’s direction a few seconds longer, then hurtled over the rail and freefell.
36
Dangling from the balcony, Dinah saw Arik leap over the rail and freefall from the roof of Carfax Tower. So much for Ciaran’s speech about how Arik should put a high value on his life. Dinah sighed, let go of the rail, and fell after him. She hoped the wings Ciaran had made for her worked.
When she had closed the distance with Arik, she flipped out her wings. The two gigantic and magnificent wings on her back spread out. She grabbed Arik before he hit the ground. He wrapped his arms around her waist. She flapped the wings, and they took off just before their bodies scraped the ground.
She flapped her wings once more, and they sailed off, carried by the wind. She had never loved winter breezes that much, but it now felt as if an ocean of cool energy was flowing into her body. She inhaled the fresh air, savored the warmth of Arik’s arms around her waist and the feel of his body pressed against hers.
She flapped once more, and they flew higher. She wanted it to last forever. She couldn’t remember the last time she had experienced such freedom.
&nbs
p; She grinned down at Arik. “Go for a ride?” She didn’t need an answer from him. Nobody in his right mind would say no to flying.
She flapped again and again.
“Thank you for saving me,” Arik said.
“Well, it’s only because you haven’t yet given me the answers I’m looking for about the apertures.”
“I’ll give them to you when we get down.”
“I’m sorry about Grace. I mean, not the fake one. The real one. But Cooper and I will find her for you.”
Arik sighed. “You don’t need to find her. She doesn’t belong to this world.”
“I know. She seems perfectly unreal.”
Arik shook his head. “I meant that the human Grace died five years ago. What you see now is a version of her. Like a projection of her ideal person, if that makes any sense.”
“I thought only Eudaiz had the technology to make a live, interactive profile.”
“Grace’s case isn’t a robotic profile. It’s the creation of a tribe in Xiilok. She wished for it. And she got her wish granted. It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
They heard a tear and then felt the impact of a sudden stop. They had flown straight into a tree. Dinah’s wings were caught among the tree branches. She tugged at her right wing. A thread at the edge of the wing broke, rolled back, and snapped at her wrist unit. It fell to the ground. She looked down, and the ground seemed quite a distance away. They were dangling from the top of a tree.
She tried to flap again, but the wings wouldn’t move. Arik’s arms were still wrapped around her waist, and his face rubbed against her breasts.
“Okay, you’ll have to jump down from here, Arik.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid of heights.”
“You just jumped out of the tallest tower in Oxford. This is only a low tree.”
“I didn’t have a choice before.”
“And you don’t have a choice now. My wrist unit is on the ground, and I’m stuck in the tree with you. We can’t call for rescue unless you get that wrist unit.”
“Why can’t we both jump down? As you said, it’s a low tree. Twisted ankles would be the worst case scenario, I’d guess.”
“These wings are built into my one and only jacket. If I slide out of them, I’ll be topless.”
“I see… I mean, I understand. But I can’t let you hang in the tree by yourself!”
“Oh no! No!” Dinah shouted down.
Arik looked down and saw a dog approaching the wrist unit on the ground. It sniffed at it. It might be his imagination, but this one looked a lot like the dog that had mistakenly accused him of carrying drugs at the French airport. But this dog was younger. It couldn’t be the same one.
“That dog hates me. It’s seeking revenge for his…his relative!” Arik said.
“What?”
Arik yelled down to the dog, “Hey, don’t swallow that. It’ll explode, and you’ll be nothing but meat.”
“You’re talking to a dog, Arik.”
“Yes, apparently. Someone has to, or it’ll swallow the one and only device that people can use to track us.”
“Just jump down and get it, will you?”
“I don’t like dogs.”
“Arik! You’re afraid of heights, and you don’t like dogs. Do you have any survival skills at all?”
“Yes, I understand Irish accents—or Iilos accents in your case. Does that count?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Not to you. To the dog. It ate my unit!”
37
In front of the tower, the police had arrived. There were no traces of the creature. Even the worm puddles where their bodies had dissolved had already been absorbed into the soil. The police set up quarantine barricades around the tower in a flash. An expert biohazard team was sent up to the roof but had apparently found nothing but an empty box and traces of a powder made from garden flowers.
Ciaran and his people left the scene quickly before the police had a chance to question them. He didn’t believe the earthly authorities would help in this case, nor did he believe he could help them.
Back at Arik’s place, they looked around, but Arik and Dinah were nowhere to be found.
“All right, I don’t know where they flew to. Dinah isn’t answering her wrist unit, so I’ll activate her rescue device,” Ciaran said. He turned on the device, and in a few minutes, they heard signals.
“Dinah,” Ciaran said.
“Oh, Ciaran! Yes, I can hear you. But I don’t know where from.”
“I just activated your rescue unit. It’s in the top button of your jacket. Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
Ciaran turned on the speaker so the others could hear. They heard a loud ruffling noise.
“Where are you?” Cooper asked.
“Top of the other hill. We’re stuck in a tree… I can’t find it… It flipped inside… Oh no, it’s sliding down.”
“I can see it,” said Arik.
“I can feel it. Get your face out of my breasts so I can slide my hand in… Oops! No…no! It’s going down… Ciaran, can you still hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Your rescue unit dropped inside my jacket, Ciaran. It’s sliding down… Hold on…” said Dinah.
“It slid in between her breasts and down,” said Arik.
“Stop peeking,” said Dinah.
“I’m not. They’re right in my face,” said Arik. “Stop wriggling, Dinah.”
“I’m trying to get the unit. If it drops, the dog will get it, too.”
“Ouch, you just kicked me,” said Arik. “All right, I think we’re going down now. Hold tight. Ouch, not there! That’s my injured shoulder,” said Arik.
Then they heard the loud noise of tearing fabric.
“Can I follow the signal to go rescue my partner?” Cooper asked.
“You certainly can,” Ciaran said and gave Cooper the device.
“It sounds like my brother got tangled up in some breasts. I’ll go along to rescue him, too,” Jenny said.
Diana shrugged out of her jacket. “With that much torn fabric, I guess you might need something for the little angel with wings who saved my son. So take this with you.”
Cooper checked the map again and pointed to the top of the hill. “They’re up there.” Jenny nodded and followed. The path was blocked by a large rock. Cooper jumped on top of it and reached his hand down to help Jenny up. She paused to look at his hand then smiled and accepted his offer.
“So you and Dinah come from another place, huh?”
“You make it sound like we’re from heaven or something. But we only come from another universe.”
“So is it a different world then?”
Cooper shrugged. “I’m not the best person to ask these kinds of questions. But I think that once you get out to the multiverse, things become a lot easier. They just make sense. If you’ve lived on Earth and in this world the whole time, then it’s hard to explain. I’m not saying which one is better. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t know jack.”
Jenny smiled and said nothing.
“So you teach martial arts like Diana. That’s very cool!”
She nodded. “I practice aikido. It’s a kind of martial arts for defense.”
“So you don’t attack at all? Wouldn’t it be better to just run fast?”
Jenny laughed. “What if you can’t run?”
Cooper shrugged. “I guess you’ve got a point.”
“What would you do if you were in danger and couldn’t run, Cooper?”
“I’d apply Cooper’s three-step rule. One, I’d talk my way out of it. Two, I’d really talk my way out of it. And three, I’d tell people I am talking my way out of the shit they’re creating for me. And they really shouldn’t want me to stop talking because outside the talking rules, I wouldn’t be too polite.”
Jenny smiled and said nothing. They headed up the hill, and in the distance, they could see Arik carrying Dinah d
own the hill.
Cooper rushed over and saw she was wearing Arik’s jacket. “She twisted her ankle,” Arik said.
38
Ciaran took Madeline to the back garden. The last few days had been hectic, and there were times when he had almost lost her. He needed reassurance that they were now safe and sound and could go back to Eudaiz to see their children. He rubbed his thumb over the dimple in Madeline’s left cheek. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For coming here with me.” He smiled and kissed her.
“I’m glad I had the chance to meet your best friend and see the two of you make up for the lost time. Arik is a treasure.”
He nodded.
“When we time traveled, Arik would’ve killed a man to stop the plague if I hadn’t talked him out of it. And today, he would have given up his life to prevent a toxic explosion. He has a big heart, Ciaran.”
“He’s a good man. But he didn’t jump to his death today, because if he had, he would have disappointed me a great deal.”
“What?”
“We signed him up for a position at Xiilok before we came to the tower. Arik received a gift from a tribe in Xiilok. He’s in possession of one of the most precious resources in the cosmos—the light. He hasn’t received any training yet, but my understanding is that he could be as light as the light.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply speaking, he could turn his body into a chosen property of the light. I don’t think he would let his body hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. ”
“Do you think he knows his abilities?”
Ciaran nodded. “He knows the gift he received and the responsibility that comes with it. He just didn’t want the responsibility before.”
“So you let Dinah think he’d jump to his death to protect strangers. Ciaran, she tried to rescue him with her angel wings!”
Ciaran chuckled. “There’s nothing wrong with believing in a fairy tale. As long as you don’t overdo it, it’s quite romantic, don’t you think?”
She kissed his cheek. “Charming!” she said.
