“You bastard! You’ve killed us all! You set us down in the middle of a desert!”
Alli’s rage threatened to boil over. She knew it. She felt it. She just wasn’t sure she cared anymore. Marilyn was gone, stolen away by some psycho with powers. And now what was supposed to be a simple trip to get her had left her lost wherever this place was.
It wasn’t hot, nor was it really all that dry. But only a little bit of grass grew from the hard earth at their feet. It stretched for miles across the long planes. Only the path they stood on—a series of broken bricks here and there—marked any sign of a path.
She would find her way out of here soon enough, but first she needed to take care of Smith.
Ian threw himself between her and the teleporter. “Let’s not be crazy, Alli. He says he didn’t do this. We have no reason to believe he’s lying.”
“You saw what he put us through! Of course, he’s doing it on purpose.”
“Why?” Smith’s words cut past them. “If I wanted to strand you I could have done it with ease. But I’m stuck here with you. I can’t get out of here any better than you can. It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.”
Alli’s anger didn’t fade. “What do you mean? What game are you playing?”
“I have a sense of location beyond a normal human. I can visualize and situate coordinates thousands of miles away from me. Without it, I couldn’t teleport half way across the world. The thing is, I always have a sense of my current location. I can always tell where I am.”
“So where are we?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I haven’t been lost since I was eight. Now I have no clue where I am. Do you understand how strange that is. I could tell you where we were anywhere on earth.”
“What if we’re not on earth?” Peach’s words reminded everyone she was still there. “What if we’re somewhere else?”
“What, space? Are we going to run into Klingons?” Alli could tell Ian meant the words as a joke, but no one took it as such. She hadn’t considered it at all, but it made a sort of sense.
“Nah, that can’t be it,” Smith said. “Even in space, I would know where I was.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” Alli asked.
“I’d rather not answer that.”
“Wait, have you?”
Smith said nothing.
“It doesn’t matter,” Peach said. “I didn’t mean outer space. Outer space has a feel to it. This doesn’t feel that way. No, I meant a different plane.”
“You mean, another dimension?” Alli knew other realms existed. The ghosts she knew had to go somewhere to escape this world. But she had never contemplated finding her way into such a place.
“I mean that we might just run into people you’ve met before, Alli. This feels like a death-realm. I cannot begin to guess which one, but I’m more and more sure that is where we are.”
“Then what do we do?”
Peach shook her head. If she didn’t have an answer, Alli knew they were in trouble. She may know ghosts, but nothing about being a Spirit-Cop gave her any knowledge of this situation. The afterworlds were cut off to her. She knew how the spirits worked when they were trapped in the real world. But in this land, she couldn’t even begin to guess what to do.
“We need to get out of here,” Ian said. “We need to find a way, whatever it takes.”
“I’m not sure if there even is a way out,” Peach said. “Half these realms are abandoned, cut off from everything. Nothing controls them or oversees them anymore.”
“Someone has to watch this one,” Smith said. “Someone had to purposefully shunt us off to another world. My teleportation doesn’t fail. Someone had to move us here.”
“Now you’re Mister Perfect,” Alli said. She tried to hold in her rage, but it was no use. She couldn’t, not anymore.
“I’m so fucking tired of your bullshit. You’re a fucking thief that’s so far down his own rabbit hole you can’t come out anymore. You got us in to this goddamn mess and you’ve killed us all. And all you want to do is blame some fucking magic fairy nothing!”
“Listen to me, you little bitch, I—”
Alli heard enough. She dived forward. Her first swung out. It didn’t matter if Smith had a hundred pounds on her. It didn’t matter how strong or tough he was. He deserved every bit of the knuckles slamming into his jaw.
He took the blow a lot harder than she expected. He stumbled back at the impact. His hand went up to rub his jaw, clearly hurt.
Her hand throbbed with pain. Her knuckles were on fire, already swelling. But still it felt good. It felt right. He deserved what she got and she really just wanted to do it again.
Smith’s hands came up. “You get that one, lady. And just that one. Next time you take a swing at me, it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or not. I will beat you into the ground.”
“Bring it.”
Ian stepped between the two. “Enough is enough. This is getting us nowhere. We need to figure a way out of here, not just fight among ourselves. What hope do we have if we can’t get along?”
“What do you want us to do?” Alli swung her hands around her. “Where would you have us go? We’re nowhere with no place to go.”
“Are we?” Ian pointed down at the path. “It seems to me we have exactly two options. We just need to decide which path we should take.”
“We can’t decide on just one,” Peach said. “We can’t risk going the wrong way.”
“Then what do we do?” Ian said.
“Isn’t it obvious? We need to split up.”
Alli looked at the two men and women with her. They all looked back at her and each other. Peach’s solution was the obvious choice, but none of them liked it. They couldn’t have any idea of what they might encounter here. They could starve to death while they wandered the empty world. They might not ever see the others again. But they had little choice.
Alli opened up one of the pouches on her jumpsuit. She threw one of the two-ways to Peach. “They may not have cell towers here, but shortwave communication should work just fine. Want to test it?”
Peach raised the radio to her mouth. “Testing, testing.” Alli’s radio squawked and repeated the message.
“One problem solved,” Alli said. “Now we just need to split up.”
She looked at Smith and Ian. “And it’s obvious which way this should go.”
Smith chuckled. “I’m sure as heck not going with you.”
“It’s all right,” Ian said. “I’ll go with him.”
Peach raised the radio. “I don’t think that’s the plan. Alli has things right. You go with her. She will need the help in case you walk into any trouble. The Sticky Gun is only so useful.”
Smith nodded. “That means you and me, eh.”
Peach rolled her eyes. “I got over meaty guys with tattoos two decades ago.”
“Two decades?”
Alli jumped in to stop what she would know would be an awkward silence. “I’m sure it’s not the ideal arrangement for most of us, but we’re not here for a pleasure trip. We need to get out of here and find Marilyn. It’s our only hope of rescuing her and surviving this. If you find anything, any idea of a way out of here, use the two-way and call. Hopefully we can get out of here quickly. I don’t want to think what Marilyn is going through right now.”
Peach walked up to her and gave her a hug. She always seemed to know how to comfort her at the right time. For that Alli was grateful. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get her.”
Alli could only nod.
She pulled away. “Come on. We need to get moving.”
As they started down their path, Ian kept looking back at Smith and Peach. After the sixth or seventh time, Alli finally turned to him. “What? What the heck are you looking at?”
“I’m worried about her. We don’t know Smith that well and you just sent Peach off with him. What if he tries something?”
Alli rolled her eyes. “Stop thinking with your dick, champ. Peach is a big girl and believe me when I say she can handle Smith. I know your testosterone high has you wanting to defend your princess or whatever, but she’ll be fine.”
Ian looked back again and shook his head. “I still don’t like it.”
“Well, you don’t have to like it. You do have to live with it. Just like I have to deal with your ass. I’m still not sure I can even trust you. You kill a man, then you wander off and fuck my secretary.”
“Secretary? I thought—”
“Yeah, she’s more than a secretary. We haven’t worked out a good name for her position though. But don’t try to change the subject away from you killing a man then immediately fucking Peach. If I didn’t trust you before, I certainly don’t trust you now. What the hell is wrong with you, man?”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not really a great answer, champ.”
“It’s all I got. When I attacked Doppelganger, it felt like I had the entire world in my palm. I never felt power like that. And what scared me most is that I wanted more. It was like the ultimate high and I wanted to keep going and going.”
“But you stopped yourself. You didn’t attack us or anything.”
“I’m not sure why,” Ian said. “But I also knew it was wrong. I knew it was something I didn’t want to do. I think—I think it was like a drunk falling off the wagon. I think it was something I hadn’t tried to do in a long time.”
“Is that supposed to excuse it? You killed a man.”
“I killed a man that would have killed all of us. I don’t like how I did it any better than you did. But I would do it again to keep everyone safe.”
Alli shook her head. She still couldn’t wrap her head around the last few days. Ninety-six hours ago she was a struggling entrepreneur. Now she found herself surrounded by super-powered oddballs and her girlfriend was kidnapped to Rhode Island.
She missed her ghosts. Ghosts were simple. Ghosts she could understand. This was insanity.
“I’m sorry I’ve messed up your life,” Ian said. “I can see it in your eyes. You don’t want any of this.”
“That doesn’t take a lot to figure out there, champ.”
Ian nodded. “I don’t think any of us have a choice anymore. I think—do you believe in destiny, Alli?”
“Not at all. I’ve lived with ghosts all my life. And the one thing I’ve learned is that destiny doesn’t play a part in much of anything.”
“Maybe. I just have a feeling that what happened to me wasn’t an accident. I think that there’s a reason we’re all together.”
“Then what is it?”
“I wish I knew,” Ian said. They continued to walk on in silence.
No comments:
Post a Comment