Reverberations

by Aaron Frale

  “Left?” Hector said. “By who?”

  The High Priest was pleased by Hector’s attention and said, “The ancient scrolls call them by many names, but you call them Universe One.”

  “So is that what this is? Some revenge plot. You are building an army to try and storm Universe One? We can’t even get there. They have cut themselves off.”

  “Oh no.” The High Priest laughed. “Universe One were just demons to scare children into obedience, at least when we still had children, before we discovered it was easier to just take them.”

  “Okay, so Universe One strands you; how’d you get out?”

  “My predecessor found this on a mad traveler who he had flayed alive after they tortured him for information.” The High Priest pulled out a worn and battered TF3. Hector recognized it at once. It was his brother Gabriel’s TF3. Gonzalez was scrawled on the back in his brother’s handwriting. Hector hadn’t sent his brothers to a void universe. They went to the cultists’ homeworld.

  Either way, the past was immutable and unchangeable, and he couldn’t live in it anymore; at least that’s what he tried to tell himself. Even though he knew the facts of the situation and couldn’t change them, it was hard not to feel responsible for the cultist problem. Millions of people dead, children stolen from their families, countless lives ruined because of his pride. If Hector hadn’t screwed up with his brothers—

  The High Priest interrupted the downward spiral of thoughts. “You see, when my predecessor found that the multiverse was not a myth but a reality, he sought to squelch the knowledge for fear that it would upend our society that was already on a knife’s edge toward oblivion. He had me hide the object away. But the years made him paranoid. He thought it would bring the demons of fire and a harbinger of the end of days. He bid me to throw this object into the pit of the Flame, but I saw an opportunity where he only saw death. I decided it was time for me to take power. I was right to take power. Our ranks have swelled, we are taking our place as rightful rulers. Universe One can stay in hiding, for if they ever do surface, we will have legions, and humanity will walk the Path of the Flame.”

  Hector couldn’t talk. The blood had drained out of his face, and he felt weak at the knees. Usually, Hector buried his emotions deep and carried on because that’s what people needed him to do. He was the Director of the Tuners, the one person who couldn’t crack, but it was all too much. The more he tried to pull himself out of the mire, the deeper he sank.

  The priest kept talking, but Hector was no longer listening. “To get back to your original question. Why don’t I just kill you? It’s because I owe you so much. You see, I was the one who tortured Gabriel at the behest of my Holy One. I was the one who put it all together and paved the way forward for the glorious empire you now see before you. I was—”

  Hector couldn’t take it anymore. He charged the man with full intent to smash the guy’s head on the thorns until it was nothing but pulp. However, that’s not what happened. The High Priest calmly kicked his foot out at the right moment to send Hector flying. The only chance Hector had was the element of surprise, and he had squandered it by losing his temper. Now that his only advantage was gone, he was at the mercy of the twisted leader.

  The High Priest walked over to where Hector lay on the floor. The clergyman placed a foot on the Director’s neck and cut off the air supply. While Hector choked, the Holy One laid out his plan.

  “It’s no accident that our paths are intertwined. You have opened our eyes. You have opened my eyes. Now I need you to open the multiverse’s eyes. Humans who don’t yet know the glory of the Flame will see my face as evil. You, however, know our power, and they will listen to you, or they will have to deal with me.”

  The priest lifted his foot, and Hector gasped for air.

  “Why should I help you?” he asked between breaths.

  “Because now we work in the shadows. We slink around at malls, abducting youth, and growing our ranks like beggars and thieves. The Tuners have worlds where academies send you the best and the brightest. We want—no—we demand that people give us tribute to send us their young. A third will suffice; there needs to be breeding stock after all. You will be anointed as our messenger. The voice that the Flame speaks through.”

  “What if I say no?” Hector asked.

  “Then I will continue the old ways of purging universes, starting with 42, and maybe 87c and 61g just to make sure I got them all.”

  “Patel has created a barrier—”

  “And you got it up and running too late. The one who graced us with her presence. What was her name? Hailey, I think her name is; she has been using a TF3 with the tracker Ludie installed. One he had placed in the safehouse for you to happen upon.”

  Hector cursed under his breath. The codes for the safehouses were on file on his computer. The kid must have found them when he did a data recovery on the hard drive. Since the safehouses were never under threat the entire time he had been with the Tuners, recoding them with modern security wasn’t a high priority. It was like dedicating his top security team to update the locks on his gym locker. He never imagined that he would be in a desperate enough situation to need the scraps in the gym locker.

  Losing a TF3, finding a stash of Universe One tech in someone’s attic, and simply just chasing down the remnants of a dead civilization was an average day at the Tuners. Someone breaking into the safehouse would be no worse than the day DeAndre left his TF3 on a city bus. If the Tuners had a tight control on everything left behind by the creators of HQ, then he’d be an overpaid warehouse clerk.

  Hector generally learned from mistakes rather than dwell on them. Had this been an average day at the office, he would have immediately convinced a bunch of grumbling techs that updating the security on the safehouses was something well worth their time. He would suffer through the comments about the stuff collecting dust and make sure the mistake was never made again.

  However, the slightest misjudgment on his part now cost real people their lives. He couldn’t get past the fact that he was the one responsible for this mess, that through his own ineptitude, he endangered everyone he has ever cared about. He wasn’t making up for the mistake that he had made with his brother. He was the mistake.

  Either way, Hector was not too proud to admit when he had lost. With any luck, maybe he could convince Ludie to run away with the others, have them go to a universe the cultists wouldn’t touch for a while. One thing Hector could not do was to let the others suffer for his mistake.

  He didn’t look the High Priest in the eye. With his focus on the floor, Hector said, “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll convince the other universes it is in their best interest to comply with your demands, but you have to do something for me. You have to let the Tuners live.”

  The High Priest smiled and said, “My word is binding. I enforce the will of the Flame on Earth.”

  12

  Jon woke with a splitting headache and something slapping his face. He attempted to move his arm to brush whatever it was away and discovered that his hands were bound behind his back. He opened his eyes, and the world was blindingly bright. While his eyes adjusted, he realized that his feet were tied too. He was hogtied. What’s worse was that he was dangling over the edge of the Rimrocks a full 600 feet above the valley. The object slapping his face was a long stick.

  Alex was on the edge poking him. “Wakey, wakey,” they said.

  Jon looked from left to right and saw the rest of the Tuners were similarly tied. Azerius was sitting with his feet dangling, eating a sandwich.

  “Yo, buddy,” Alex said. “Wake up!”

  “It would have been easier to hand us over to the cultists,” Jon said.

  “But that would have gotten me killed too,” Alex said.

  “So why tie us up at all?” Jon asked.

  “Sure, says the guy who attacked me because he thought I was working for them.”

  “We were only going to incapacitate you until we figured out what was going on.�
��

  “Right, well, you could have asked.”

  “You followed us home. Cultists showed up. Can you blame me?” Jon asked.

  “At least you know now that I didn’t do it,” Alex said. “I would have made a lot more money just handing you and saved some of my best rope. That comes from 18. Universe 18! Can you believe it?”

  “I left my encyclopedia at home.”

  “Strong enough that even Meathook couldn’t break himself free, lightweight, and stretches to 10x the length. Perfect for all your dangling bodies over cliffs needs.”

  “Last I checked, we weren’t the bad guys,” Jon said.

  “Could have fooled me, attacking innocent bounty hunters,” Alex said.

  “Come off it! Just cut the ropes or sell us to the cultists already.”

  “Look, man, I like you, even though you are kind of a noob. Universe 18? Really? But I kind of burned my bridges with the cultists. They probably would kill me on sight at best and torture me at worst.”

  “You’re not all that. Azerius isn’t even worth their time, and he is a defector.”

  “Hey!” Azerius said between mouthfuls of the sandwich. “Maybe I’m just good at evading them.”

  “Even I don’t believe that,” Alex said. “Trust me, I’m pretty high on their hit list. You see, I kinda stole the High Priest’s headdress.”

  “You what?” Jon asked.

  “A collector in 34b paid me quite a bit of money for it.”

  “You’ve been to the cultists’ homeworld?” Jon asked incredulously.

  “Are you kidding me?” Alex said. “I got it from Tuners HQ.”

  “HQ?” Jon asked.

  “Yeah, you heard me right. There is a back door.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Trust me, I’ve been using it for years. I don’t know if it was a design flaw or if some piece of equipment failed and no one replaced it, but I found a tuning spot that lets a person through, barrier, or not. Just one, and it’s only open for a few seconds once every twenty-four hours.”

  “If you knew about it for years, why didn’t you sell off the information a long time ago?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Alex said. “You really are a noob. It’s more profitable to nick a few items here and there and sell them over time. Especially if I’m the only one with access. Besides, if I sold the information, who knows who would buy it? Look, I might be interested in a quick buck, but I have standards. The Tuners fill a particular role in our society. You guys make sure one group doesn’t get too powerful and screw it up for the rest of us. Good job on that, by the way; letting the cultists into HQ really nailed that goal.”

  “I didn’t see you helping,” Jon said.

  “I’m here now. Better late than never.”

  “You were just going to sell Hector your intel on the back door. Thanks for stepping up.”

  “You see? That’s what’s wrong with you goody types. What’s wrong with saving the world and making a buck? Han Solo took the money and destroyed the Death Star. Everybody wins if you ask me.”

  “Did you just sit around here watching movies?”

  “I have a sick collection,” Azerius said and threw the crust off the edge of the Rimrocks.

  Alex laughed. “Only because you all were too chicken to show up at the mall for a while. Then I had to spy for a bit until I made my move. A prudent bounty hunter is a living bounty hunter. Look, man, when the Tuners were in charge, Hector left us alone. Sure, he’d swoop in and grab a big score from time to time and put it in the vault, but if we weren’t killing anybody or causing too much trouble, he’d leave us alone. With the cultists at the reins, even the toughest bounty hunters are scared. Most have been going into hiding. Universes that know about the existence of the others are closing their borders and setting up patrols for unauthorized tunes. Getting you guys back in control will be better for everyone.”

  “It’s kind of hard to do that dangling to our potential death,” Jon said.

  “I just wanted to make you listen,” Alex said and walked away from the edge. Azerius followed. After a moment or two, Jon heard the rev of the antique car, and seconds later, they were all being dragged back up over the edge. Once they were at the top, Azerius walked over with a knife to cut the ropes.

  “What are you doing?” Alex scolded him. “That’s Universe 18 rope! Untie it! Untie it.”

  Azerius put the knife away and started undoing the bonds. “It’s effortless.”

  “I know, right?” Alex said. “That’s why it’s the best.”

  Once they were free, they woke up the rest of the Tuners, and Jon explained that Alex was on their side. Though, he still would keep an eye on the bounty hunter. Loyalty didn’t mean much to a person who’d go with the highest bidder. If Jon ever got a sense that the winds were changing, he’d have to be careful.

  After Alex carefully put the rope in the trunk of their car, which was filled with supplies and medieval weaponry, they piled inside and sped away. Even though they were on the outskirts of town, they didn’t want to risk an encounter with the local police.

  While they raced down a highway that skirted the edge of the Rimrocks, they talked about their next move.

  “If it wasn’t Alex who gave away the location of our base, then who was it?” Patel asked. “And more importantly, why didn’t they just destroy 42 to take us out?”

  “Maybe they don’t have enough people,” Meathook said.

  “It can’t be,” DeAndre said. “With HQ, they probably doubled or tripled their kidnapping operations.”

  “Maybe they realized the other universes are more useful to them alive,” Hailey said. “They can’t convert people if they kill them all.”

  Meathook sat up like he had an epiphany. “Do you think Ludie put something on us? Like a tracker?” he asked.

  DeAndre nodded. “Yeah, it was a little too easy to get away from them.”

  “My phone,” Hailey said. “I got a new TF3 from the safehouse. Do you think that—”

  “Let me see,” Jon said, and he began scrolling through the apps on the phone to see if there was anything unusual. If there was one thing he was familiar with, it was the TF3 default settings. He’s barely had time to configure his own with all the stuff going on, so he was familiar with everything that should be on the new one.

  While Jon looked for evidence of tampering, DeAndre said, “Maybe we should just go get Hector. He’ll know what to do.”

  “We’ve been through this,” Hailey said. “61g has a complicated social structure. They all wear these jumpsuits according to their profession. I just have the electrician one, not to mention the clothes you are wearing would make you stick out.”

  “We can be travelers.”

  “Trust me when I say that will not work.”

  Jon turned off the TF3 when he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Ludie was smart; who knows what he had done to the thing? Jon handed it back to Hailey and said, “I don’t know what he did to it, but it's better we keep it off for now until we find out how they tracked us here.”

  At the same time, all of the remaining TF3s, even Alex’s TF2, began to blare with an alarm. It was the emergency broadcast system from HQ.

  Hector appeared on the screen.

  With a heavy expression, Hector said, “To the citizens of the multiverse, the organization you know as the Tuners has officially been disbanded. The Holy Order of the Flame has ascended to the rulers of the multiverse. All worlds are to immediately bring all youth, ages fourteen to eighteen, to the processing centers that are currently being set up at your malls. The children will be evaluated, and one third will be taken as tribute. Starting now, each youth must report to the processing centers. Failure to comply will result in the destruction of your universe. All former Tuners must report to a processing center. You will not be harmed. Repeat. You will not be harmed. I will update you when we have more information.”

  Hector seemed to go off script with what he
said next. “This is not a joke or a drill. Many of you have known me for a long time. Trust me when I say they have the means and fanaticism to do it. Some of you might put up a fight; 78f, you know what I’m talking about, please do not fight them—”

  Hector was dragged off-camera by two cultists. The High Priest of the Flame took his place. “Do not weep for your youth but rejoice for their redemption. They will be given the glorious chance to fulfill the will of the Flame. They will be eternal. The nonbelievers will be purged. Universe 87c will serve as an example to all those who do not comply.”

  The video of the High Priest cut out and was replaced with a scene at the mall they had just visited. Cultists appeared on their knees, praying. The people walking around the concourse were confused and looking at each other. Eventually, enough cultists burst through the barrier to cause a breach. A vortex with a purple event horizon sucked in people, cultists, and the structure of the mall itself. People ran in fear, but it snowballed as more and more cultists burst through. People could not outrun it. They were hurled, screaming into the void.

  It grew to the point where the person doing the live feed got pulled in, and the camera went out. The screen was replaced with one of the graphics of a bubble that represented the universe. A hole appeared, and the graphic showed the contents flooding out into the cosmic space between worlds. After it was wiped from existence, the screen read, “U-87c TOTAL FAILURE.”

  The broadcast ended. Everyone was in shock. Even Alex had slowed the car to a stop when they took their foot off the pedal. A pickup whipped around them and honked. Alex put the car in gear and began to drive.

  They didn’t speak for a long time. Meathook finally said, “At least they were assholes. Am I right, DeAndre?”