Adagio of Awakening (Song of the Multiverse Book 1)

by Brett Baker

  Lexi sprung forward suddenly, planting her lips on his. Surprised, Weill stood there for a moment, then he began to kiss her back.

  “Alexandra!” Watanabe shouted from behind them, just having walked up with Rin to find her in Weill’s embrace.

  Lexi pulled away with an impish grin as Watanabe grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her away from Weill. “Get upstairs now!”

  Everything had happened so fast, Weill stood there, his head still spinning as Watanabe glared at him for a brief moment, then turned on his heel and stalked off toward the loft. Rin stood there looking at Weill for a moment with wide eyes before she turned and wordlessly followed him.

  “What do you think you’re doing with that boy?” Watanabe began as he entered the living room, and found Lexi sitting pouting on the couch. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to save the world? You shouldn’t be allowing yourself to get distracted!”

  “And you can’t show up out of the blue and all of a sudden expect that you can be a parent!” Lexi shot back hotly. “It doesn’t work like that!”

  “That’s not fair and you know it!” Watanabe snapped back, his frustration boiling over. “And how does it work anyway? I would really like to know. I’m trying my best here, but it doesn’t seem like anything I do is ever good enough for you!”

  Rin stood there silently watching the two arguing again. It seemed like they had been doing so well since Watanabe had explained everything in Elysium, but now any goodwill between them was gone again. The reason seemed perfectly obvious to her. Lexi liked Weill. She was growing up and becoming a woman. But Watanabe had just returned to their lives. He still wanted daughters, and he wasn’t prepared to allow her grow up yet. His protective dad instincts were kicking in, even to the extreme of becoming overprotective, and Lexi’s rebellious streak was only agitating the situation, causing her to go behind his back and kiss Weill. Shaking her head, Rin decided she’d had enough for now. Wordlessly, she found the stairs up to the roof, and walked out to the edge of the building. She closed her eyes and listened again. The crescendo had died down, but had returned to another slow build toward yet another crescendo.

  Listening, she let her mind drift on the rising tide of notes as if her body was being carried away by a gently caressing sea, pulling her further and further away from the world she knew.

  But as her consciousness was swept off into horizons unknown by the music, there was something that kept sticking out in her mind like an anomaly she couldn’t quite explain.

  “…I believe Her Majesty would take great pleasure in meeting the both of you as well” Lord Morbane had said, his words still ringing in her memory, “as would Princess Milaina.”

  It was the second time they had been mistaken for their sisters – Watanabe’s daughters by Queen Milandra.

  “You must be shadows, other-dimensional duplicates” Lord Morbane concluded just moments before that. “Yes that would explain it!”

  They had already found another Watanabe, coexisting in the same timeline as the Watanabe that was their father. He had a job in the corporate sector. It looked pretty boring, but still…

  “The man you are seeing in that office is not me” Watanabe had explained that day when they had found the other Watanabe. “He shares my face, and my name, but he has made his own choices, and has lived a completely different life.”

  Was there another Lexi out there too? One that had killed another Rin? The whole idea that there could be duplicate versions of Rin and Lexi was just too weird to comprehend.

  What choices had they made that led them to that confrontation where another Lexi could ever kill another her?

  And what was the horde really doing here? So this Lord Morbane commanded a bunch of creatures? What did he really hope to achieve by destroying a dam?

  Was this devourer real; this creature that could supposedly eat planets and stars? If there was another Watanabe, and another Rin and another Lexi, was there another Devourer in their own universe lurking out there somewhere?

  She remembered as a little girl, being grossed out at one of those nature programs on the holoprojector, showing a bunch of piranha hungrily ripping and consuming at a downed seagull, and she wondered if the devourer eating planets might be something like that.

  Then suddenly, Rin realized something; something important. She remembered! She remembered everything! It seemed it had come back to her little by little, bit by bit, so gradually that she hadn’t even noticed, and she wondered if Lexi had regained her memories too.

  Feeling tired, Rin settled down, with her back leaning against the short wall that rose up from the edge of the building, and closed her heavy eyes as the music continued.

  And as sleep came and took her, she dreamt again. She saw a golden crown with 9 jewels in it, each jewel a different color. But from the black jewel, its darkness was spreading out beyond the jewel into the crown itself, like a creeping sickness or disease. And as its corruption spread she could hear voices crying out in anguish, then falling silent… as if they were perishing.

  Rin’s eyes shot open and suddenly her mind was filled with the realization that somehow Queen Milandra was growing more powerful by cannibalizing other realities. It was a course of action that threatened not only Rin’s native universe, but the continued existence of the multiverse itself.

  She had to be stopped… but how?.

  Then suddenly a loud noise jarred Rin back to reality. As her senses cleared, she realized the door leading back down into the safehouse had been slammed and she spotted Lexi marching angrily out onto the rooftop. Rin realized in that moment that there was no place she could go to escape. She felt like her sanctuary was being infringed upon, and that caused her ire with her sister to rise within her.

  “I understand he believes he had the best of intentions when he left” Lexi began angrily. “I get that he was good and noble trying to protect his family!”

  She came and slid down the wall next to Rin. “So why does it bother me so much when he tries to act like he’s our father?”

  Rin wanted to scream. She felt like Lexi was callously infringing upon her refuge. But she pushed those emotions down, just like she always did. “I don’t know. Why does it bother you so much?” she asked in a flat tone.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?” Lexis asked.

  Rin wordlessly shook her head.

  “It doesn’t bother you that he wasn’t around when we needed him? It doesn’t bother you that he thinks he can just waltz back into our lives and tell us what to do like he earned that right just by getting mom pregnant?”

  “I don’t think the same way you do, Lexi” Rin replied, her anger at Lexi fading as she listened to her twin sister’s frustration. “I’m willing to give him points for trying. It’s more than mom ever did.”

  “He said he’s doing everything he can, he said it’s never enough” Lexi went on. “He asked me when it will be enough, do you know what I told him? I told him it would never be enough, because he can never do enough to make up for running out on us, and he’ll probably just run out on us again when it gets too difficult. Why did I say that? Why am I still so angry with him?”

  Rin exhaled as she thought about Lexi’s question. “I think you realize the need to forgive him for leaving. I think you even want to, but you can’t yet. I think him leaving and us having to grow up without him hurt you, in fact, I know it did because it hurt me too. But you haven’t been able to reconcile yet how much it hurt you. You feel like forgiving him is unfair to you because you’re afraid that he will be off the hook, and you will still be hurt from him leaving.”

  “Wow” Lexi said, hearing the truth ringing in Rin’s words. “You’re right.”

  Rin nodded.

  “So what should I do?” Lexi asked.

  “What is there to do?” Rin asked, “other than say you’re sorry and move on…”

  “Do you think he will still be mad at me?” Lexi asked.

  “Watanabe’s not like mom” Rin replied
. “He gets impatient, frustrated, and upset with us, but he seems to genuinely care.”

  “Weill must completely think our family is a hot mess” Lexi sighed.

  “Our family is a hot mess” Rin replied. “Our father left us, our mom had to work to support us and she drank and abused us. She sent us away to boarding school when we got big enough to hit back. I would call that a hot mess… What’s his first name anyway?”

  “Dunno” Lexi replied.

  Rin laughed out loud. “You started this massive fight with Watanabe over a boy, and you don’t even know his first name.”

  Then Lexi couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “So how was the kiss?” Rin asked.

  “Amazing!” Lexi replied, suddenly becoming very animated. “I felt it in my whole body! Even my arms and legs were tingling!”

  “Whoa!” Rin replied.

  “I guess after all this bother I should probably find out his first name, huh?” Lexi asked.

  “You probably should” Rin replied. “Just don’t let Watanabe catch you kissing him again… or from the sound of it don’t let Chatham catch you either… in fact it might be best not to let anybody catch you.”

  “Except you?” Lexi asked. “I can always count on you.”

  “What are sisters for?” Rin replied with a smile.

  *******

  Watanabe sat in silence on the white leather couch, staring across the room, lost in thought when Chatham appeared.

  “Everything ok?” Chatham asked.

  “No” Watanabe replied. “Everything is not ok.”

  “Yeah” Chatham said as he leaned against the doorpost. “We could hear the argument downstairs.”

  “Don’t ever have kids” Watanabe said only half-jokingly. Chatham chuckled only half out of politeness.

  “Look” Chatham began, “I’m not up here to interfere in your family affairs. How you deal with your daughters is your business. I’m up here because Weill reported that while he was monitoring the fight, Lord Morbane ID’d you. It’s likely that Queen Milandra knows you’re here by now, and she will send some kind of response. What are you planning on doing about it?”

  “I’ve been running for so long I’ve clearly made a mess of things here because of it, and I question whether my daughters actually want me here” Watanabe replied. “But I can’t abandon them again. It was hard enough to live with the first time. I just don’t think I could do it again.”

  “Even if she sends the Devourer?” Chatham asked. “Even if it means the death of this whole universe?”

  Watanabe looked across at Chatham and furrowed his brow. “Would you have me run? Disappear into the myriad of shadow earths?”

  “Maybe” Chatham replied. “Run and live.”

  “And leave Lexi and Rin to die?”

  “We’re 9 people up against a horde of thousands.” Chatham replied. “Yeah, we gave them a good fight at the dam, but had it gone on, they would have overwhelmed us; you know it, I know it, that hordemaster knows it. We can’t stave off the apocalypse with a team this small. We can only hope to delay it. Your daughters seem like good kids, Watanabe, but as things stand right now, this Earth is doomed no matter what we do. Just think about that.”

  As Watanabe watched Chatham turn and head back downstairs, it became clear to him that Chatham, and perhaps everybody else on his team viewed this as a suicide mission. Had he been foolish to think that they could actually defeat the horde? Maybe he really should take Rin and Lexi and leave this reality? But there was one more person he had to consider as well.

  Standing up, Watanabe reached out with his mind and took hold of a location in the distance. Then his body dissolved away into golden energy, and suddenly, he was standing in a spot deep in the Schaumburg suburbs. Peering past trimmed juniper bushes and up into a house… his house, which he had purchased with his wife just before the twins were born. The lights were on, and clearly she was home. Watanabe wanted to step forward, go up and ring the door chime, and talk to her, but when he went to step forward, his feet wouldn’t move.

  And how could they? He’d never told her the truth. She had no way of knowing how or why. She just came home one day when the girls were still newborns, and found him with a few things packed, and ready to leave.

  “There are bad people after me” Watanabe remembered saying to her. “I have to go. Every second I stay is another second I put you and the girls in danger.”

  She wept, and screamed, and pounded on his chest with her fists, but in the end, none of it mattered. He knew that if he’d stayed, eventually one of Milandra’s people would find him, and then he would have to relive the horror of what happened to his original family again, and he just couldn’t do that.

  “Poor Cassandra” Watanabe whispered. “I’m sorry that I ruined everything. It would have been better for you if you had never met me.”

  The last thing Watanabe wanted to do was hurt her anymore. After a few long moments, Watanabe eventually conceded defeat, and teleported back to the safehouse without approaching her.

  He collapsed back onto the couch unsure what the best course of action was, and feeling more isolated and alone than ever. Could they leave this reality without Rin and Lexi’s mother? Would they ever forgive him if they did? Was leaving her here to face whatever retribution the Queen of Pandaemonium would bring against this world making things right for Cassandra? Wasn’t it no better than abandoning her?

  But wasn’t facing Lexi’s wrath hard enough by itself. Compounding that by stacking Cassandra’s wrath on top of it just might be making it more than he could bear.

  Watanabe slumped forward, frozen with indecision. Would Rin and Lexi even agree to go with him if he did decide to flee? Even with Cassandra in tow? And if they wouldn’t leave with him, how could he possibly keep them safe?

  VII

  Watanabe had come to a decision during the night. He got up earlier than anybody else. Left messages for Rin and Lexi that he had an errand to run, and he would be out, and left a message for Chatham to keep an eye on Lexi and Weill, then he headed out.

  He stood again across the street from his wife’s home, and he nodded to himself. This may be horrible, but it was something that very much had to be done. Stepping forward, he walked to the boundary of her front yard, and stopped just shy of the juniper bushes. “Knowing what kind of mood she’s in might go a long way to making this go more smoothly” he thought to himself.

  Watanabe reached out with his mind to get a read of the situation. Her mind was a quagmire of swirling half-formed thoughts. Closing his eyes, Watanabe peered into the house. He spotted her half dressed and wrapped in a blanket stumbling across the dining room and collapsing into a chair, pitching forward onto her arms which were splayed out on a table virtually covered in empty drinking glasses and half-empty bottles of liquor. She muttered something unintelligible, and then began to snore.

  “She’s drunk” Watanabe whispered. He walked up the path that cut through the yard, and approached the front door. There, he produced from his pockets a key – a key he’d been carrying all these long years with the hopes of one day being able to use it again, although he never imagined he would be using it under these circumstances

  Opening the door, Watanabe stepped inside to face his wife’s fury.

  “The target is inside” Garret said from his vantage point on the roof of a nearby house.

  “Any idea who lives here?” Thackeray asked.

  “Not a clue” Chatham replied.

  “You know it might not have been the best move to leave Blythe in charge” Hastings began. “Weill and that daughter of his might be playing hide the bratwurst right now for all we know.”

  Garret and Thackeray chuckled.

  “Stow it!” Chatham barked over the comm. “Stay focused on the mission!”

  “Yessir” the three Sergeants replied, falling silent.

  “Cassandra” Watanabe said gently as he stood over her snoring form. She did not reply, did not sti
r.

  “Cassandra” he said again, but still she didn’t wake.

  Reaching down, he put his arm around her shoulders, and put another under her legs, and lifted her up out of her chair.

  “Mmmmm” Cassandra groaned as Watanabe picked her up into his arms. “Kenji… is that you?” she whispered, still half asleep as he turned and walked her toward the bedroom.

  “Shhh! It’s me,” Watanabe whispered in reply. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he walked down the hall approaching the bedroom. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be alright.”

  *******

  Lexi awoke, got Watanabe’s message that he would be out for the morning, and found Rin still asleep. She got up, showered, got dressed, and brushed her teeth, then headed downstairs.

  She found the downstairs to be a far more lively place. Blythe sat in a leather chair watching a holoprogram, and cackling out loud every few minutes while Weill stood nearby taking inventory of the supplies. He stood at a shelf, counting off packages of emergency rations, and keeping track by entering the results into a holomenu, which hovered nearby. Lexi walked up behind the shelves, and from the other side, she peered through at him.

  “Good morning!” she said.

  “Morning” Weill replied.

  “What are you doing?” Lexi asked.

  “Inventory” Weill replied. “Punishment for kissing you last night.”

  “Oh” Lexi responded. “Sorry about that.”

  “Where are Chatham and the others?” Lexi asked.

  “They went back to Elysium to get more supplies” Weill replied. “Blythe over there is supposed to make sure we stay out of trouble.”

  Hearing her name, Blythe turned and looked at them with a shrug. “Eh. You’re both adults, or at least adultish. Not my business.” Then she turned back to watching her holoprogram and made a point of ignoring the both of them.

  “She seems different than the rest of you” Lexi observed. “You guys are all ‘sir yes sir’ and everything, but she clearly doesn’t care.”

  “A lot of demolitions officers are like that” Weill explained. “It might have something to do with the possibility of blowing yourself up at any moment, but I think the fact that she’s not from Eternal Earth has something to do with it too.”