Reverberations

by Aaron Frale

  One of the men said, “I’m in HR, and Steve is in Accounts Receivable.”

  “Is that right?”

  After another long and agonizing moment, the elevator dinged, and they were on the top floor. “It was nice meeting you. Have a good day,” DeAndre said and stepped off the lift.

  He trotted his way to the staircase and up to a door leading to the roof. He pushed it open and sauntered to the vent system where Hailey was just breaking through with the rest of the group.

  “Show off,” she said.

  DeAndre shrugged.

  Patel popped out and said, “No time for chatter; we only have two minutes before the barrier of this universe destabilizes.”

  “Relax,” Jon said as he climbed out of the vent. “We got this.”

  He went to the side of the roof, and the others followed. The entire city of New Orleans was spread around them. Some places, like the French Quarter, seemed untouched by time or whatever happened in this universe, but the downtown was totally unrecognizable. It was as crowded as New York and much more polluted. The air was thick, and there was a haze in either direction.

  A line was strung from the building they were on to another a few blocks away. It was the mall. Jon tugged the line and said, “There is a tuning spot near the Forever 21. They really have those in every universe, don’t they?”

  Cultists burst their way onto the roof of the building from the same door DeAndre had come through. They hopped onto the line one-by-one and slid down several stories past several blocks until they landed on the roof of a mall. Once everyone was safely on the roof, Jon pulled the crossbow bolt he had used to shoot the wire across, and a few cultists plunged to their deaths. They were lucky that Universe 67c had some lightweight line available, or else not even Jon could have made that shot.

  They all ran towards a staircase when Patel called out the time. They had thirty seconds left. Hailey and Jon led them through the mall, past confused onlookers, and security who decided to chase them until they got to the Forever 21. Magdalena was outside the store watching over it. She gave them the all-clear signal. John took them to a round rack packed with jeans. He stepped into the middle and disappeared. They all stepped inside and tuned one at a time.

  DeAndre was last. He was always last. Patel told them that they only had seconds left until it would go critical. Once she was safely through, he stepped into the rack and pulled out his TF3. He flipped through the dial until he heard the sound of Universe 42. He was about to hit tune when his body seized up.

  The security officer had hit him with a taser gun. His body shook, and his teeth clenched as he hit the floor. DeAndre was pissed that he was about to be taken out by a mall cop. Not that it mattered. This whole forsaken universe would get sucked into the void anyway.

  But it didn’t. Nothing happened. The cultists either stopped sending people or figured out a way to tune without punching holes in the barrier. Either way, the Tuners were in trouble.

  After he heard the racial epithet come from the mall cop's mouth, he knew he was in bigger trouble.

  2

  Jon was first to appear in the dressing room of a Lane Bryant. He stepped out and beelined for the front door. A woman browsing through the clearance rack scowled and pursed her lips. Then when Hailey appeared next, the frown turned to concern, and when the others piled out one by one, the worry evaporated into confusion.

  Hector stopped them before they could get two feet down the mall. Ernest, the chubby tech who always stood at the navigation station at HQ, jogged toward them holding two laptops with power cords dangling behind them.

  “DeAndre!” Hector was livid. “What the hell were you thinking! We don’t interfere in the affairs of other universes. Period. End of discussion. I should have— DeAndre?”

  The Tuners glanced back and forth, but he wasn’t among them. Patel became weak at the knees, and Meathook supported her. No one wanted to say it.

  “Come on,” Hector said. “Back to basecamp.”

  “Sir,” the tech said when he finally made it to the group. Hector pushed past him, and the guy persisted. “87c—sir. It’s still there. It didn’t destabilize.”

  Hector froze. Jon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Just to check, he popped his headphones in and listened to some real music. He was able to download Rashaun’s collection on his TF3. He flipped through the tuning dial until he got to 87c. It was faint but still there. He walked into the Lane Bryant, and the woman from earlier scowled at him. The noise got louder.

  Now that Jon had practice, tuning was easy for him. He was somewhat of a prodigy and could hear universes that others could not. Hector told him once that if the cultists hadn’t disrupted operations, they could have been using Jon to find new universes faster than they ever could in the past. Hector had sounded wistful as if he longed for the day when the Tuners could explore again. It was one of the few times that Hector wasn’t all business and yelling at them for not staying on task, which occurred way more now that they were displaced.

  Jon told the group, “It’s true. 87c is still ticking. Come on, Meathook and Hailey. Let’s go get our boy back.”

  “Stop right there,” Hector said, and they froze. “We have no way to tell how unstable it is. It could be hanging on a thread. The cultists could be waiting for us to come back and take us all out.”

  “But it’s DeAndre, bro!” Meathook said.

  “I’m not saying we won’t go for him,” Hector said. “But we got to give the membrane time to heal.”

  “They could be torturing him!” Jon yelled.

  “Something that could happen to any of us the moment we signed up. I’m not going to leave one of ours behind. I’m just saying we need to be strategic.”

  “But he couldn’t have gotten far—”

  “We wait, and that’s final!”

  Hailey caressed Jon’s back. “He does have a point—”

  Jon broke free from Hailey’s touch and stormed off down the mall.

  Hailey attempted to follow, but Meathook held her back. “Let it alone, bro. He’s been pissy since his dad got killed by the High Priest of the Flame.”

  Jon flipped off Meathook and continued to stomp away. The mall hadn’t changed much but seemed completely different. There were a few stores that had closed when people were afraid to go back, but eventually, the public forgot about the tragedy and returned. Life went back to normal, but it was far from it for Jon. All he had now was the memory of his parents. He couldn’t even go back to his house to get his stuff. Hector didn’t let him go to school, see his friends, or have anything to do with his old life.

  The only reason he got to see Rashaun was that their house became a temporary hospital in the aftermath of the fall of HQ. At first, Hector let Rashaun and the family in on the reality of their existence because he had no choice. After a while, he began to trust them, and Rashaun became the Tuners’ errand boy.

  For the most part, they were all stuck in a farmhouse out of town. But when there was an upcoming mission, Hector let those who would be needed for it stay in Rashaun’s basement only because he lived near the mall. Other than the missions, there was no sightseeing, social occasions, or anything that wasn’t keeping a low profile. Jon and Meathook had beaten almost every new release on the Xbox and unlocked every achievement on their favorite ones. Even though they were in a video game utopia, it didn’t stop them from being bored.

  They got money for the operation from a trust fund Duyi and Hector had set up in secret to make sure Jon would want for nothing. Luckily, it had been off the books, so Ludie wouldn’t know about it. The official retirement package from the Tuners would undoubtedly be watched, so they had to let it languish in probate while people who claimed to be Jon’s distant, greedy relatives came out of the woodwork to prove that he was dead. However, due to the lack of a body, the funds were a mess.

  The upside of donating his secret inheritance to get the Tuners back up and running was that Hector had a hard time saying no
to comfort requests like ordering pizza and making sure Rashaun could keep the games flowing in from Best Buy. Jon even went to bat for Patel when she wanted a bunch of stuff from JoAnn Fabrics so she could craft in her spare time.

  The problem was that spare time was all they had. While Hector and the few remaining techs tried to get the equipment working that they took from HQ during the evacuation, the Tuners did squat except for Patel. She was working on getting a barrier set up to prevent unauthorized tunes.

  Jon knew the generator that would cost DeAndre his life was for her project, but he couldn’t be sure. He would zone out when the group got too technical. Because Jon hadn’t inherited his dad’s love of engineering, he always checked out of the tech meetings. It wasn’t that he was terrible with technology. It was quite the opposite. He could fix just about anything. The key was that he didn’t enjoy working on engineering problems. The math and science part made his head swim, whereas working with his hands was never an issue.

  Jon also thought that they were moving too slowly. They would salvage a piece here. Raid a safehouse there. It felt like they were rebuilding HQ a bit at a time. He’d rather storm the castle and be done with them once and for all. Instead, he could only watch the Tuners rebuild incrementally. Jon was getting cabin fever. He would be out of his mind if it wasn’t for Hailey.

  She was the one good thing in his life, and they spent most of their days together. When Hector wasn’t looking, they’d spent the night too. Patel was all too eager to exchange roommates and slip into the boys’ room where she and DeAndre would be together. The pair had probably hooked with each other out of boredom over anything else. Sometimes it would take days for the techs to get something working so Patel could resume her work on the barrier. They were in a situation where everyone had to wait while one person did their job, and it had been that way for months.

  Meathook was the odd man out. He slept on the couch most nights because he often fell asleep in the middle of Mario Kart or some other game they would play as a group. Magdalena seemed to like Meathook in a sibling sort of way. She was like his kid sister.

  Jon felt sorry for the guy since all the girls his age were taken, but the heavy metaler didn’t seem to mind being single. Meathook never showed interest in girls or even talked about them. The guy was asexual for all Jon knew. Either way, Jon knew it would be Meathook and himself tonight. Hailey and Magdalena were going to be there for Patel.

  It was okay. Jon planned to skate tonight anyway. He needed something to keep his blood from boiling, and skating would do the trick. Ernest had built a halfpipe in one of the derelict cornfields since the spots in town were too crowded. Sometimes Rashaun would come. Though that happened less and less now that school was back in session, and the farm was an hour's drive from the city.

  Jon cursed under his breath. A cop had spotted him. The last thing he needed was being taken in for truancy. When they tuned, Hector or one of the techs was usually with them. The class on a field trip was enough, but with no adults to back him up, he had no excuse. The policeman walked towards him. Jon backed away and pretended to be engaged in something at the nearest store. It was Victoria’s Secret. No good.

  The officer picked up his pace, and Jon popped in his headphones. He planned to tune into a random universe and just pop back when he thought the coast was clear. He could hear Hector’s lecture about how dangerous it was to tune to an unknown world, but he didn’t have the choice. If the boy who went missing in a massacre randomly re-appeared, Ludie would find out.

  He found a corner of the store where the sound of another universe was loudest and was about to hit the button when a hooded figure appeared from a doorway leading to the back and dragged Jon through some double doors. The man pulled down his hood before Jon could draw his weapon. It was Azerius.

  “What the—” Jon said.

  “There is no time!” Azerius said and eyed the officer looking through the store.

  They dashed through boxes of bras, sweatshirts, and perfumes until they came to a door leading to the service corridors that snaked through the mall. They ran through a series of them and finally burst into the door of a shutdown ice cream shop. The big metal tubs that used to hold the sweet treat where stacked in the corner. Mixing machines were collecting dusk. A bag of chocolate chips had a white film over every piece.

  Azerius inspected the bag of gross chocolate and tossed it to the side.

  “What’s going on!” Jon demanded.

  “Not even a thank you,” a voice yelled from the dark. A person in androgynous post-apocalyptic clothing stepped out from the shadows and looked over Jon. “You’re scrawnier than I’d thought you’d be.”

  “What is happening? Who’s this chick!” Jon said.

  “First off,” the newcomer said. “I’m non-binary. And second, I can always cut your balls off so you can see what it feels like when some a-holes don’t use your preferred pronouns even though you just explained it to them. Use they, them, their when you refer to me. Got that?”

  “I—um,” Jon couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  She pulled out a knife and got it uncomfortably close to his crotch. “They, them, their, you got it?”

  “Got it.” Jon batted the weapon away and backed up. “Now get that thing away from me. You got a name I can call you?”

  “Alex,” they said. “It used to be Alexa, but some jerk in this world made a pretty freaking annoying cylinder that won’t shut up.”

  Alex eyed Azerius.

  The former cultist shrugged and said, “What! I like my echo.”

  “The music feature is pretty cool, but I like my sound system better. You got to know when you can jump to the next world. You can’t hear crap from that godforsaken contraption.”

  “You’re a Tuner?” Jon asked in awe.

  They laughed and put the knife away. They looked Jon in the eye and said, “Looks like Hector is keeping you all in the dark again. All that U-1 tech, and he is afraid of some bounty hunters spoiling his teen super force squad.”

  “Bounty hunters?” Jon contained his rage for now. Something Hailey was helping him with, but he would have a talk with Hector after this. They couldn’t do their job if they didn’t know the complete picture.

  “What? You think all universes are just little academies waiting to spit their young and brightest out to the loving arms of the Tuners? Oh no, my friend. Take my home, for instance. It’s more like what you’d call a Mad Max movie, then a Barbie dream home like your universe here. God, I love those movies, by the way.”

  “Mad Max?”

  “No! Screw my universe. Barbie, of course. I’d rather be a non-binary trying to grow up in a world that tries to make me a girl than killing a man at thirteen. Don’t think he didn’t deserve it. He tried to rape me and almost killed my sister, by the way. I’d rather live in a world where the only thing I had to worry about would be what people thought if I wore a suit to the prom.”

  “But you can tune. And obviously fight. Why wouldn’t Hector get you out of there?”

  “Some universes are too lawless to recruit from. He would be too scared we’d screw up his precious sense of order.”

  “Tell me about it!” Jon said and sat down at the metal table. He didn’t care what Hector thought. They needed people like her—they. The pronoun thing would take some getting used too. “So, are there more of you?”

  “Yeah, some; most are in hiding now. Ever since the cultists took over Tuner Central, they stopped dealing with us, even hunting us down. It’s like they want to be the only ones to tune in the multiverse.”

  “How many of you are out there?”

  “How should I know! I’m not their union leader. Look, those of us with the ability, but not selected for the hallowed halls of the Tuners, and are lucky enough to get ahold of some black market U-1 tech, use what few years we have to get as rich as possible, so we can retire in some universe that doesn’t suck. Which I think will be here. Burgers. What a genius invention!�
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  “I told you so!” Azerius said.

  Alex laughed and continued. “Look, most of us operate in a way that doesn’t ruffle Hector’s feathers. We aren’t selling plasma rifle designs to terror dictators or selling recruits to the cultists or anything. But it used to work that we could hunt down rogue cultists for the Priest of the Flame, and Hector would look the other way. Maybe we would even sneak a Harry Porter trading card to another verse and sell it as a limited-edition misprint. As long as we stayed below the radar, Hector left us alone. The Tuners were there to make sure one universe didn’t take over the others, not stop every opportunist from making a few harmless bucks.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m here.”

  “You’re going to join the fight?” Jon asked.

  “Screw that! I’m going to sell Hector an important piece of information.”

  “But every universe is at risk. The cultists don’t just want to rule the multiverse. They want to destroy it.”

  “Good luck destroying infinity,” Alex said. “Though if this place goes, I’ll be sad to see those Barbie movies go. I haven’t laughed my ass off in such a long time, but trust me. If I get wind of even so much as a cultist fart, I am gone to the next place.”

  “How do I know that the cultists aren’t paying you to kill Hector or something?”

  “Because he’d be dead. Looking into the eyes of a dying man isn’t my style. I’d stab you in the back and leave you in the dumpster. The fact that you’re alive means you’re more valuable to me in that state. Hector can pick the place and time if he is pissing in his boots about meeting me. This is business for me, and trust me, what I have is worth every penny.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Nope, for Hector only. This is business, pure and simple. I talk. He pays. You never see me again.”

  Jon thought about it for a moment. He supposed if the cultists were behind this, they would have popped a breach into this universe and been done with the whole Tuner mess. There was nothing to lose, and he held out hope that maybe the bounty hunter would join the fight even if they did have to pay them. The Tuners needed all the help they could get.