Chapter 17

The first thing that occurred to Warren to say when the creature that appeared as Sofi led him to Sofi, chained wrist and ankle to the cavern wall on the dark side, was to ask if she were alright. Yet a tiny Livingstone hiding in the back of his mind advised against it. Her condition was fairly obvious to him: poor, yet alive. She stood rather defiantly in her shackles, rather than sagging in them, as others (several yards away on each side) did. But her head was bowed, her chin pressed to her chest—only when he was within an arm’s length of her did she look up.
Warren would never forget her face in that moment of recognition. There was joy, yes. But it weighed heavily both with relief and with exhaustion. He longed to hold her up, embrace her, keep her safe. But the harpy was near—she was watching. He had to win her mind. Such enigma inhabited those words. And so he chose his own carefully, and fortunately, she sensed that he must speak first and waited for him.
He swallowed and began. “A young lad went into town one afternoon, but having very little idea where he was headed.” Sofi cast him a strange glance, but didn’t interrupt him. “About halfway through town a voice from his side told him to enter the café to his right. He had not known this voice long, but he heeded the instruction nonetheless and entered. He felt very out of place; in fact, if you had asked him, he might have told you he didn’t care for coffee or tea at all. But in he walked anyway and almost immediately his eyes found a girl.
“From the start, he could tell she was exceedingly beautiful—the voice at his side even suggested he make her acquaintance. Suspecting the intentions of the voice from the start, the young lad nonetheless walked over and stirred up conversation with the girl—a pleasant one, too. It soon became apparent to him that she knew much more than he, for he asked a great deal of questions, of which she answered very little. But she found something desirable in him—a taste for adventure, a thirst for knowledge which wouldn’t be satisfied with half-truths.
“But almost as suddenly as the conversation had begun, it ended. And the boy slipped out of the café to head to the woods to think, but not before stumbling upon an article in the local newspaper, authored by the very same girl with whom he had just been conversing. The article addressed God’s business in the garden of the universe.
“Now imagine this lad’s surprise when he made this connection, and tell me, Sofi Gio Seville, if you can, what that boy might have told the girl next he saw her—if he saw her?” Warren finished. The harpy kept a corner of her mouth open in expectation.
Sofi herself simply smiled. “Are you a rose in that wonderful garden?”
“And what would have the girl responded?”
“Which path in the garden do you tred?”
“And the young man’s answer to that?”
“Wherever I must, in order to smell the roses,” Sofi replied, her eyes fixed upon Warren’s.
“Shall I finish the story then?” Warren asked of the harpy, whose delight was palpable. She came and kissed him on the cheek.
“You truly are a wonderful man,” she praised him and fished a key from her rags. She unlocked Sofi’s fetters and looked her squarely in the eye.
“Do not let go of this one. Ever,” she demanded of her. Sofi managed a weak smile and nod, and collapsed into Warren’s embrace. Then, with a rush of wind, the harpy burst into the air with her great flapping wings. “I will leave you two for a while. But your tests are not finished, Warren. You have more friends to rescue.” And with that she flew off into the darkness.
Warren simply stood and Sofi simply relaxed in his arms. And for several defining moments, she rested her head on his chest and he held her tightly. They exulted in feeling the rise and fall of each other’s breathing and could say nothing.
Then a whisper from Sofi reached his ear: “What was your task, your test for my release, as the creature inferred?” Warren sighed and stroked her hair.
“To love you,” he answered her whisper with his own.
“How was that?” she wondered.
“I had to rescue your mind, she told me.”
“Why my mind?”
“I guess she thought your passions would overtake you, otherwise.”
“Warren?” Sofi asked, looking in his eyes for the first time. Warren noted that this was the first time she had used his real name and gladly returned her gaze.
“Yes?”
“When we were taken last night, I thought only of you and how I’d let you slip from me. You were there, so tangibly, so pristine in your affections for everyone, so excellent in your love for anyone, your mind of questions only ever improved your understanding in any situation. And then, just like that, you were gone. I didn’t expect to see you again, Warren. And then, then there you were, with a creature that looked like me, talked like me, but wasn’t me. And you knew it. I knew you knew it when you looked at me. In that moment…she was right. My passions had taken me over.”
“And now?”
“Now I know I love you, rather than simply feel that I love you,” she stated without blinking, in a soft voice like jasmine in the cool midnight air. “Your story, Warren. You moved my heart from the moment into duration. You anchored my spirit in memory. I thought back as you spoke and realized how perfectly necessary it was for me to love you.”
Warren drank in her words like nectar. “Well I’m glad it worked,” he said at last with a wry smile. “I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing.” Sofi dropped her eyebrows and grinned.
“Yes, you were. You were talking to me; that’s all you needed to do.”
“For what, the harpy’s satisfaction?”
“For my love.”
“So I suppose now would be a good time for me to say how I can’t stop thinking about you, what you’ve meant to me in these crazy past few days, how I want to give you every thread of my love?” Warren asked with raised eyebrows. Sofi blushed, sighed, and placed her head back on his chest.
“Yes, it would,” she whispered.
“Sofi?”
“Yes, Warren?”
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” Sofi smiled and tightened her grip around his back. “You have meant more to me in these past few crazy days than anything else,” Warren continued. “And I love another girl.”
Sofi instantly pulled away to arms length—yet did not dare let him go—dropped her eyebrows, and stared him down. Warren’s poker face cracked into a smile. “What can I say? I love Ali, too,” he said, laughing. Sofi scowled and tried desperately to keep from smiling.
“Not funny, Warren,” she said, resisting his tugs and a smile.
“Sofi?” he said.
“Yes, Warren?” she answered.
“I want to give you my undying love. I want to love you with every fiber of my being, heart, mind, and soul.”She relaxed her shoulders and let him pull her back into his embrace. He kissed her forehead. And for the next several minutes, they stood in each other’s arms, participating in pefection.

Chapter 16

Before I continue, notice our poor Sofi’s condition has slightly worsened. I fear she may yet lose all patience, ask for her check, and leave. I suppose I’m trusting her resilience. I’m fairly certain that she has undergone traumatic situations worse than this. For instance, she had suffered much by the time Warren found her in that sagging, dying apartment building. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just please keep an eye on Sofi; I would hate for her to leave early and miss her surprise.
Back to the tale. Shortly after Warren felt the bone-chilling shriek resonating through him, a blur of motion and feathers shot up from beyond the edge, folded its wings around itself and landed with a shock on the floor. Warren’s heartbeat began to rise as he studied the now motionless figure. Then movement caught his eye. The wings began to drop away slowly. Warren squinted, watching the form intensely, and inched away with his left arm.
The dropping wings revealed a human form, head bowed, chest covered with feathers, and eagles feet perched on the floor. The wings continued to spread and the figure kept its head bowed. When it had stretched to its full wingspan, it promptly glanced up at Warren, whose mouth dropped open. For the creature before him had Sofi’s face.
Warren tried to speak, but the harpy folded her wings in a bit and smiled grimly at him. She waltzed over to him, hopped around him, fluttering her wings for balance now and again. Warren shuddered, with ice filling his veins.
“Hello Warren, my love,” she rasped in a hushed whisper. She stroked the side of Warren’s face with a claw on her wing. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
Warren somehow found the courage to speak, “I’ve been here for hours…”
“Yes, yes, physically. But what does that matter if you aren’t here,” she tapped on his head. “What is the body without the mind? It is a flimsy thing, fit only for a meal.” The creature with Sofi’s face licked her lips and clicked her tongue. “But you, Warren,” she continued, hopping around him and giggling, “you took awhile to arrive, today. Ahh but here you are, and what a delightful little surprise you have become. I think that the rest of this morning will be extraordinarily…” the harpy paused, as if searching for the right modifier. “Pleasing,” she said at last, with a wry smile. She folded a wing around him. “Come, Warren. We have much to discuss. But not here, in this disaster. So come along.” She halfway lifted him to his feet with her powerful wing and pushed him towards the edge. Warren found his balance, but didn’t walk with her.
In a moment, the pressure from the wing was gone and a burst of air sent the dust in front of him swirling. He glanced backwards in time to see the harpy burst towards him with incredible speed. She hit him in the ribs and sent him over the edge and into a freefall. Warren found himself facing away, and in the few moments he had, he noticed that the buildings outside of the crater didn’t adjust in their perspective as quickly as he thought they should in such a long fall. Then another shriek echoed through the ruins and he felt a terrible grasp around his shoulders again, and then the painful grip as her wings opened to direct their fall. They shot through what he thought was a stairwell breezeway and out over the backside of the apartment, where a true crater, nearly the size of a football field, dominated the ground. He was flown right into the center of the place and down into the darkness.
For nearly a minute, the only reason he knew he was moving was the gusts of air on his face and the sound of pumping wings above him. Warren tried to keep his feet tucked in, he certainly didn’t want to smack his shin on any debris likely littering the tunnel. So he hugged his knees with his arms, closed his eyes, and waited for disaster. The forces of turns and drops and rises all played on his stomach, until he was certain they had navigated to the center of the earth. After a while (be it seconds or minutes, he wasn’t sure) he opened his eyes and actually noticed some difference. Faint orange lines swayed across the darkness, stretching, glowing, then disappearing. It was a mesmerizing dance, one that grew in brilliancy as they moved onward.
Then he found that those orange lines had preceded the bright hue emanating from a large, vacuous cavern. The light shimmered off the rock formations, and as he quickly approached the light source, the talons gripping his shoulder released him. Warren’s heart jumped into his throat and flailed a bit for balance and fell towards the stone. But as he neared the floor, it dropped away, so that he felt himself flying over the rock surface, falling into a bath of light. Whatever it was directly beneath him glowed intensely—he nearly squinted as he fell down the hole. Then the side-walls ended and he found himself dropping into an even more monstrous and more brightly lit cavern. The light below him still seemed a ways off—but off course, still rapidly approaching.
Then he felt the talons again, but not as brutally this time. They wrapped around his arms, tightened their grip, and he felt himself slowing as he was edged into another spiral. Warren tried to take in his surroundings as they descended. One side was definitely brighter than the other; he thought he could pick out structures of some sort on the brighter side. But as he approached the ground, he was dropped again. It was a short fall, however, and he splashed into an underground reservoir, which acted like a mirror for the lights above him. He sputtered and kicked himself towards the brighter side of the shore.
When he pulled himself from the water, which had been surprisingly warm, his shoulders felt like hamburger. So he crawled forward on his knees, set his head on the rock and let his shoulders sag. When a shadow enveloped him yet again, he let himself fall sideways and rolled onto his back. There was Sofi’s sly face staring down at him. She perched herself on his chest and gazed thoughtfully at him. “You are something else dear Warren. All this…sensation! And still you manage to think.” She tapped his sternum with a talon twice. Warren decided against questioning her and making a fool of himself.
“Warren, let me tell you something,” she continued and leaned forward until her face was but inches from his. “You are a special person. You realize this don’t you?” She seemed to focus on his mouth and brought her wing over him, again stroking his cheek. “I think you do. Why else would you be here? Oh Warren!” she cried and buried her face in his neck. Then she whispered in his ear, “it has been so long since anyone in our path has thought as you do! They feel and they burn and they hate and they kill. Such an eternity has passed since anyone here thought. Even them!” she swept her wing back and Warren found hundred of hovering harpies watching him. “Their passions have undone them, Warren. I say again, rationality has fled this path; I trod alone in darkness.” She pressed her nose against his
“Can’t you see what difficulty it is to keep one’s sanity in the midst of such animalism? Can’t you understand how many ages have passed since I have sensed thoughts like your own? In the glow of your intellect, it’s impossible to know how I endured those years of darkness!” she exclaimed and brought both wings to Warren’s face, enveloping him in a warmth of feathers. She slid herself down his body and pressed her head against his chest. “Oh do say something!” she said, quivering in anticipation. “Tell me why you have come! What drives you, dear Warren?” she asked, suddenly raising her head from his chest and peering into his eyes, running her wing claws through his hair. “Is it virtue that you seek? Are you planning for the greater good? Or are you just along for the ride, soaking up information like a sponge, ready to use knowledge for your own benefit?” Warren let her talk, eyebrows narrowing and dropping as she went on. “I see you judge me now. Must you focus on outward appearances so much? Listen to me, Warren. Converse with me and discover my mind.” She seemed to study him and decide on a course of action.
“As you have probably guessed, I am not Sofi. My name is Sylvara. I had hoped you wouldn’t be so shallow as to require a similar form for conversation. But I trust this shall aid you, my dear.” Upon those words she stretched out her wings and with a swift motion downwards, shook the feathers from her arms. Warren stared, dumbfounded. The bird was gone—just Sofi’s human form, clad in rags, straddled him. She brushed her hair back and caressed Warren’s hair with soft fingers. “Now speak with me,” she said softly. “I have much desired conversation with you; do not hold out on me.”
Warren’s heart threatened to explode within him; he told himself again and again that the woman on top of him was not Sofi, but some foul creature of an underworld he knew nothing about. She was after something, he knew, and her deceptions likely wouldn’t end here. But then she bent over him and kissed him on the lips—and ignited a war between his senses and his mind. When she pulled back, Warren fidgeted under her pouting mouth, her begging eyes. “I know it’s in there; why won’t you let it out? Can’t you see, Warren? All I want is to talk with you.” Then her expression changed slightly, darkening a bit. “Unlike them,” she said, gesturing to the sky, “they just want to feast.” Warren shivered and she lowered her face again to his and kissed him lightly. “Talk with me?”
Warren couldn’t quite figure why this creature wanted to converse with him so badly—he knew that he knew very little about what was going on. But neither could he discern any reason not to talk; so he managed to swallow once, take a breath, and speak. “Um. What do you want to talk about?” he asked.
“What did you think, when you read that note?” she asked, intrigued beyond measure.
“I was concerned for my friends’ safety,” he answered.
“Yes perhaps you were; but something else, too. What was it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I have nothing left in the world but my friends, without them I’m alone and meaningless.”
“Ah! But was this a fear for them, or a fear for you?” she probed.
“I suppose both.”
“And yet…yet there is more here, more to your reaction. Why did you run?”
“I didn’t want to be too late.”
“To arrive before they died?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think you could do anything about it? You knew nothing but my name and a location not too far from you. Did this mystery enable or disable your actions? Would have done more, had I told you the reasons for your friends’ capture, their precise holding location, or the fact that I had to kill two of the more rambunctious ones?”
Warren’s smile faded. “You…you what?”
She sat back on his hips. “Do not burden yourself with the lost. They weren’t your friends, don’t worry. No, the ones you care for are still alive. For now. But what about the mystery, Warren? What did you think of the unknown?”
Warren sighed. “I’m not sure; I decided to try to help them, whatever that meant.”
“Despite the unknown, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Oh Warren. Be assertive! You did what few in the whole history of my path have dared to do. Tell me what you did. You risked all for the thought of love, didn’t you?”
Warren nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“And now I have you here, with a legion ready to tear you limb from limb, and you don’t seem to sense the danger to your life. Why? Is it only because I talk to you in the form of someone you love? Have you pity or understanding for a lie?”
“Why shouldn’t I give you a chance to talk? I have nothing to do with your deceptions—why should you have to appear as Sofi? What difference does that make?”
The creature in Sofi’s skin reveled. “Oh Warren! You are something else entirely,” she giggled. “If you saw me in my true form, you wouldn’t dare speak with me. I know you wouldn’t. But that does not matter, for we are speaking. And if I speak from a lie, it should not follow that I speak lies, am I right.”
“You are. But if you spoke truth from truth, I might be more apt to believe it as such, you know,” Warren pointed out. Sofi’s lips smiled and she tossed her hair around.
“So you have yet to ask me anything to resolve the mystery. Don’t you want to know where your friends are? How they are doing? How you can rescue them?”
“Would it really make that much difference if I knew?”
“Warren, Warren!” she laughed, “your questions are an ecstasy! It has been so frightfully long since anything of the sort has been put forth to me. But believe me when I say that yes, it would make a difference. Knowledge is power, Warren. And you, whether you choose to believe it or not, are a very powerful individual. I wonder what you will choose to do with that power? For instance, let us look at Sofi, whose image I have. She will not say it (for she does not know it, as I think you do) but she loves you desperately. She feels, but she will not acknowledge it. And with the power of the mind behind her passions, she will drift away into meaninglessness. But you Warren, ah! you will love her, and you will focus your mind behind it. This will rescue her, more than you could ever hope to do by breaking chains with your hands.”
Warren kept silent for a moment, considering her words. When he began, it was a slow and deliberate chain of words that he spoke. “Are you saying that if I can rescue Sofi’s mind, no earthly bonds will hold her?”
Sofi’s eyes flickered with excitement. “Yes, Warren. Rescue her mind with your knowledge. I long to see it—the love of two in mind and spirit. But beware! Should you fail, you will lose her forever.”
“You mean, this is a test,” Warren clarified. A sly grin crossed Sofi’s lips.
“You are precisely right. It is easy enough to think for yourself…but to bring true thought to another being—even I have seen the sheer impossibility of that. Look around me, Warren. You see years of my miserable failure to lead these wretches from the bonds of their passions. And from this I have learned this: if you fail, you will drive them even further into their ignorance. Just look at them, the mindless souls watching our every move, waiting to devour. Your precious Sofi will become just like them, unless you can light the beacon of reason in her mind."
Warren bit his lip and stared at the creature sitting on top of him. After a moment’s pause, he asked the question she had been waiting for: “Where is she?”

Chapter 15

It’s difficult to say what dreams might have haunted Warren that night in a dusty, unfamiliar room. And if he had remembered any of them, explanations might have been far from possibility. But troubled his dreams certainly were—for he awoke early, anxious and sore. The sun had already nipped above the horizon and extended its first few rays through the windows, laying them brazenly on the off-white wall opposite him. Warren tried to turn over and cling to the last vestiges of sleep, but found his brain already pondering the questions of the new day—namely where Ali had gone. He had surely watched as she had curled up next to his pad, hadn’t he? But now he propped himself on his elbows and scanned the room.
“Ali?” he said, coughing hoarsely afterward. He swallowed and tried again. “Ali, where are you, girl?” She was nowhere in sight and for a second he listened, hoping to catch the sound of any of her motions, the scratch of her claws on the wood flooring or the squeak of a sneeze.
Unsatisfied with nothing, Warren rolled out of bed, scratching at his scalp with one hand, and picking the sleep from the corner of his eyes with the other. The silence was desolate—nothing moved or ticked, not a shadow flickered nor a light flashed. He exited his room to find an empty, barren hallway. Dust lingered in the air, motes swirling lazily from his breath in the still beams of light, fixed in place by the shutters. Each step he took sent a small puff spiraling into shadows.
As he entered the front room, with a brazen, but dust-covered, chandelier hanging meaninglessly over the vacant room, Warren stopped. All the suitcases and bags and equipment were gone. The room had been stripped as bare as it had been when they arrived the previous evening. He glanced furtively around the room, nothing caught his eye at first, until he found a single notebook page, curled at the edges, resting in the early light. Warren approached the paper with obvious care—holding himself back, as if it might leap up and bite him—and his right eyebrow dropped into a scowl. He squinted at it, determined that it did, in fact, contain a lightly scribbled note.
When Warren crouched and picked up the piece of paper, he began to read the following, written in a loopy script:

“Walk east five blocks the moment you read this and you will live. Come unarmed and alone and one of your friends shall live. Give us what we desire and we may give you two more. Deviate from our instructions in the slightest, and you and your friends shall die.

--Sylvara

Warren’s heart must have missed a beat, for he stood there, looking at the torn piece of paper like a deer in headlights. He managed to read it again and react—he yelled about the house and waited for answer. None came. He spun and searched the walls, now brighter in the morning sun and he began to observe that which he missed upon first glance: several bullet holes. And something else, something new, came to his attention as he inspected the wall more closely. Fine little dots had been splattered across the bland yellowed wallpaper. Warren rubbed his thumb across one and it streaked red in the rising sun’s rays. He staggered backwards and hastily searched the other walls. Everywhere blood had been sprayed onto dust-coated surfaces.
He glanced back to the note; he figured he had no choice but to follow the note’s instructions. With the paper in hand, he burst through the doors and into an already balmy summer morning. He found the sun and began running east on the street just beyond the drive. It was a divided street with giant willows lining the middle, allowing only the tiniest snippets of light to fall on Warren like a fine crosshatch pen stroke. A squirrel seemed to notice his urgency and followed him in the trees, racing across the limbs and hopping lightly from branch to branch.
By the fourth street, his run had slowed to a minor jog and he couldn’t help but wonder where precisely he was supposed to be or what exactly the note-writer wanted him to do. But he felt his friends jeopardy acutely—he knew he wasn’t a soldier, like Livinstone, and had immediately abandoned hope of a forced rescue. He would have to play this game and trust his intellect to carry him through, Warren decided. Above all, he reminded himself the importance of questions—of asking the right ones, as Livingstone had taught him (although with a slight dose of frustration and humiliation).
But as he began down the fifth block, he found the sun’s light much intensified in only a couple yards. He squinted at the glaring light—flattened his hand over his brow. The tree just beyond him, nearly indiscernible in the brightness, seemed to be lacking foliage. Warren kept his feet moving, his hand at his forehead, his eyelids barely cracked. As he approached the first tree, he found its bark blackened, as if scorched from a fire, with only a few thick bare limbs stretching into the sky. Not a single leaf inhabited its heights, nor even the smaller twigs.
He looked back to the west at the brilliant, fully-leafed trees behind him, glowing green in the rising sun. A squirrel paused at the last healthy tree, quite reluctant to continue on. It chirped a couple times, its tail bobbing with each, and then scampered frantically back west. But then, on the street behind him, he saw a long, swimming shadow, stretching across the whole of the street. Warren’s right eyebrow dropped and then he turned to find the source. It seemed a figure in the sky—but he heard nothing of the thump of helicopter blades, nor the roar of a plane engine. Glancing back, he watched the shadow dancing on the street, approaching the long tower of his own. When the two combined forms, he glanced back up just in time to see a great span of wings silhouetted against the sun, hear a couple pounding flaps, wonder for a moment how big the bird must be, and then raise his hands to shield his face from the impact.
In the next moment, he felt as if a truck hit him. Then weightlessness occurred to him—he did not dare to open his eyes. He waited to hit the pavement again. When nothing of the kind occurred, he realized a dull but forceful pressure on his shoulders and armpits. His left arm went numb, followed by the realization of his weight again. He was hanging, Warren ascertained and tried to will himself to open his eyes.
One by one his senses returned to him—the deep monotonous wing beats assaulting his ears, the rush of a breeze on his cheeks, then sight of his legs dangling over a black and gray, debris-filled, smoking quarter of the town. Warren craned his neck upward in a failed attempt to ascertain his captor’s identity. Instead he focused on the vice-like talons hooked around his shoulders—they were the feet of an osprey, rough scaled toes with curving claws to keep prey from slipping their grasp. And the longer the flight lasted, the more acute the pain of the talons digging into his shoulders became.
Then Warren noticed a slight change in what was otherwise a fairly straight flight path towards what he thought was the center of the desolation. He felt himself dipping and turning north; then the banked turn became even more severe as he was dropped into a descending spiral—heading for what he thought the tallest building in the area, a six or seven story apartment complex with a gaping hole in one side. This appeared to be the target of his abductor and Warren found himself slightly concerned about the speed with which they were approaching the building. And all too quickly they dove through the opening and then he felt the wings spread wide and a brutal pain from the talons as they slowed from the descent.
Then he was free of the grip—but free falling to a large, emptied room. When Warren landed, face-first and sliding across the wood flooring, he cringed and coughed. He rolled himself over and grabbed at his left shoulder—it felt wet. He tried to use his tingling left arm to prop himself up, but failed and collapsed back to the floor. After a few short breaths while lying on his back and a grunt, he pushed himself into a sitting position with his right arm and glanced around the room. He found no sign of his captor, but just the cracked floor ending abruptly fifteen feet or so in front of him, affording him a good view of the surrounding buildings. Each seemed coated with ash; most of the windows were shattered and doors blown open. He wondered what sort of catastrophe had occurred here.
He pressed his right hand to his opposite shoulder again, pulled the collar of his shirt down to get a look at the wound. It didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly, so he kept some pressure on it and scanned the room. He imagined there had been another room between the one he was in and what used to be the edge of the building, as he found himself far within the cavity of the collapse. A room to his right, across the expansive hole in the building, was visible from his location, as well the one below it, and a section of the roof above it.
Sheer silence held the place captive, save a drip from a still-leaky pipe somewhere in the recesses of the ruins. Warren struggled to his feet and made a trip around his prison. The obvious first deterrent was the four-story plunge into wreckage. The wall to the right had no doors or windows, unlike the wall to the left of the edge. But when Warren inspected it, he found no doorknob, and it wouldn’t budge an inch when he kicked it—which told him that it had been boarded up or was otherwise blocked from the far side. A couple windows behind him were devoid of glass, and Warren wondered if they led to a balcony or fire escape. When he leaned out of them, however, he saw that perhaps there had been, at one time or another, a ladder of some kind, but nothing of the sort existed anymore. All he stared at was the cluttered ground, seven stories down.
Indeed his room was meant to be a self-containing cell, Warren figured, and sat against the wall by the door. An hour passed, while he massaged his shoulders and closed his eyes and tried to picture Sofi’s brilliant eyes gazing into his own. In fact, the percentage of time he noticed that he spent thinking about her served as an subject which ate up a rather substantial portion of that time. When he lost himself in thought, he watched the shadows shift along the skeletal buildings outside, in that repetitive sundial dance of daylight. What seemed to be more time than perhaps actually passed edged onward, while his throbbing shoulder counted the seconds better than any microwave timer.
These hours of solo introspection brought the same questions to his mind time and again: what am I here for? Who am I to these people—to Sofi and Livingstone, to the Mar, to the demons? How did it come to this? Why me? These, or other variations, sapped his mental energy while he sat there, on a cracked, dusty, wooden floor, rubbing his shoulder. As far as he could tell, he had no idea whatsoever to explain why he was in this particular position.
Warren felt it was series of disastrous and unexpected and flat-out strange events that had sent him tumbling to where he was now: like he was a rock that had been jarred loose on a steep hill and had gained too much momentum to stop on its own—as if he needed to hit something solid first. Problem was, he couldn’t find anything solid if he wanted to. He had been separated from his family in a morning. He had been driven out of his home town, even his home state, by several hundred miles. And now all of his new “friends” had disappeared overnight. What was solid in that? And now he found himself wounded and powerless, trapped in an exposed, seventh-story prison, awaiting who-knew what to save the lives of these people who had ruined his life.
Why was he so important? What could he possibly have or know that could have set off this chain reaction in which he found himself so impossibly buried at present? These unanswerable, but quite nagging questions pestered his soul to its core. Indeed, it seemed as though his very will had been stripped of him starting that night when he went to bed several days ago in his own bed, carefree and in love with life. Why had such change found him so quickly?
And the longer he thought about it, the more he meditated on these questions, the more it occurred to him that Livingstone was absolutely correct in renouncing the meaninglessness of such inquiries. What did it matter that this happened to him, one of billions (even on a single pathway…probably of billions more)? For every question that came to him, there existed a counter question just as far removed from an answer as the first. And the more he decided to lose himself in pondering these abstractions, the further he stretched himself from any answers. If there were a right way to dabble in abstraction, Warren decided that it wasn’t considering one set of questions without the other. Theory only amounted to something like an alignment on a racetrack. It was setting his wheels on the tracks. And bad questions only disrupted this process, and once set in motion, could steer him of course—perhaps ending in disaster.
So Warren decided to ask himself, “Why not me?” along with “Why me?” He thought about the consequences of his purpose as meaningful or as meaningless to the others he interacted with. And within a few moments, he determined that, if he were a drastic asset to either side, or completely worthless, his life still had value to him. And so if he sensed a necessity to keep an identity of value to keep himself alive, then so be it. If it seemed better to him to do the opposite, then of course he would. He would steer himself towards life at every opportunity.
The only issue for Warren, then, remained the question of Sofi—and whether he might tie his purpose to her. Unfortunately, nearly the moment he began to consider her value to him, a shriek pierced what had become a comfortable silence. It echoed up from the depths of the ruined apartment below him—and it certainly wasn’t human.

Chapter 14

Up until this point, it had not occurred to Warren that he was entirely hopeless to return to his former life. He had been told that his family was dead, yes. He had accepted that they were gone and that he was embarking on something new. But the first glimpse of that new moon, that intriguing and frightening moon, had told him that not only had his circumstances changed, but the whole of the world, even of its history, had developed into a intensely different scene.
His paradigm had been pressed and attacked, but the moon had shattered it. This was a new world, and it could be utterly foreign to him, moreso perhaps than a casual visit overseas. What had happened differently in this place? His mind drifted to some of the simple, momentous events of history. Had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. given his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech…or in that case, had he been assassinated? And had John F. Kennedy been killed? Had he been President? Who indeed was President? And of America…had it fought any wars at all? More? Had WWIII occurred? Even smaller questions pressed his mind: had his parents married each other in this history, too? Was there another Warren (with or without that name?) walking around?
And all this had been opened to his mind by the moon. And therefore, he had little success in looking away from it. Not to mention it gave him an excuse to lean against Sofi’s side—which he noted was an action she didn’t protest. While Warren certainly had a newfound respect for Sofi, in the few quiet moments he had, his thoughts drifted to her—he thought of her smile; he imagined her eyes gazing into his own. And naturally he wondered if she thought the same of him. But had you asked Warren if he were in love with her, he would have denied it vehemently. Which might have only proved the point that he found himself attracted to her. And so relished this quiet, semi-intimate moment with her, staring twofold out the window at strange moon in a foreign night.
When Old Fred slowed to a stop and announced their arrival at the second waypoint, no one immediately answered him. Warren slept, head tilted straight back. Ali had curled into a ball in his lap, next to his elbow. Sofi’s head rested on Warren’s shoulder—a fact which no one in the vehicle mentioned for days. Old Fred had weighed his options: startle them all awake with a blare of the horn or just exit the vehicle, hoping the sound of his door closing and a small breath of fresh, cool air would get the job done. Prudence led him to attempt the latter, and it paid off.
Sofi woke first and blushed immediately at her predicament. She looked at the waking Warren, pulled her hair behind her ears and over her shoulders, and straightened in her seat. She took in a breath and held it, closing her eyes for a second. Then she touched Warren on the shoulder. “We’re here,” she whispered to him.
He awoke from dream to a dream. He blinked several times and yawned, stretching behind his head. “Thanks,” he mumbled as she exited the vehicle. He looked at Ali in his lap. “Alright, wake up, girl; time to go to bed.” She quivered as he slid his hand underneath her belly and relaxed in his grip. “There we go,” he said and slid out the door into the mild night.
Fredric was already carrying a load of equipment into the place, so Warren followed him. Trent busied himself in the first room, ordering supplies to different sections of the house. When Warren and Ali waltzed in, Trent pointed to a hallway. “Down there, first right is where you’ll sleep. Take an air mattress,” he said, gesturing towards a pile of inflatable pads. “Blankets should come in soon, so come back for one,” he winked and scurried to help a soldier unload a tangled mess of wires and equipment from his arms. Warren picked up a mattress and found a nice corner in the room, next to the window (where he could still see the moon) and began inflating his pad. And these were no cheap air pads either, he noticed. These probably ran upwards of a hundred apiece, he guessed, as it hadn’t been so long since he had browsed an outdoors shop.
Just as he had finished inflating the pad, on which Ali was now sniffing and pacing, Warren noticed a moth beating against the window, straining to find the light. He watched intently, as if drawn to the plight of the bug as it slid across the pane left and right, searching for an entrance. And just as soon as Warren saw that the window was cracked open and stood to remedy the situation, the moth found the gap and fluttered inside.
But then, to Warren’s bewilderment, the insect veered sharply away from the bulb in the ceiling and alighted on his pad, his wings flattened outwards and swaying slightly. It’s front antennae twitched as it spun ninety degrees to face Ali, who had noticed the intrusion and had scampered up to the moth. She sniffed at it, whiskers trembling. Warren kneeled and studied the moth’s movements as it crawled towards Ali. Warren gave her a warning. “Don’t even think about it.” Ali turned her eyes to Warren, blinked at him, sneezed, and sat back on her rear legs. Then she turned her attention back to the insect.
“Warren, do you have a blan…” Sofi called from the doorway, but lost her words when she saw the spectacle before her. For a moment no one spoke or moved. Then Sofi tried again. “What are you…?” she tried to ask.
“I’m not sure…it’s just this moth…” Warren attempted to reply. Sofi sauntered in, squinting at the scene.
When the moth stopped moving, Warren blinked. He looked to Sofi, to Ali, then back to the bug. It had simply frozen—its wings were as still as the glass surface of a pond on a summer night. Even its antennae held their position. But that didn’t seem especially extraordinary—not compared with what happened next.
Warren swore that his bleary eyes were not seeing things; Sofi would have dismissed the events altogether, had it not been for the damaged, green moon shining outside the window. But when a wave a color crept over the moth, turning it a golden brown from the pale gray it had been before, Warren could help but point it out. “Sofi! Did you…?”
“Uh huh!” she whispered back, entranced by the occurrence.
Ali seemed the only living thing in the room that wasn’t surprised. She ambled up to the moth and, to Warren’s absolute horror, plucked off a wing and promptly ate it. Before he could stop her, she then snatched the whole of the moth and devoured it before their eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing found its way out. Instead, he gazed into Ali’s radiant black eyes and thought he suffered a heart attack when the rat twitched her nose and spoke.
“Hello Warren,” Ali said in a cheerful, soprano voice and blinked. Warren’s eyebrows made a slow journey up his forehead and Sofi’s hand again found its way to her mouth. “I have received this gift, that I may aid you.” Ali clasped her front paws together and bowed slightly. “Do not be troubled, Warren, and look on me as your servant and friend.”
While Warren floundered in amazement, a light of suspicion had grown in Sofi’s eyes. She found her tongue and spoke to Ali. “The demon sent you,” she accused.
Ali shook her head and twitched her whiskers. “No, it was the Mar who sent me to Warren that they might track him; I was ignorant then and searched only for pleasure and security. In this, I thank you, Warren for your generosity. I owe you much. But it was the ‘demon’ who gave me the ability to communicate with you. Its gift is precious, as is the message he gave me to deliver to you.”
Sofi narrowed her gaze. “Which is?” she demanded.
“The reason why you are where you are,” Ali ventured, and scratched at her cheek with her foot.
“And what is that, Ali?” Warren questioned.
“At your first waypoint, the Mar surrounded you, led by the demon Maghalis. In your analogy of the universe, Sofi, you compare histories to paths in a garden and waypoints as the places where those paths intersect, do you not?” Ali reasoned. Sofi could only nod. Ali continued, “Then at the last waypoint, you thought to switch paths in order to follow your plotted journey to St. Barthe’s in western Florida, correct?” Sofi didn’t reply, but Warren found himself nodding in agreement. “Well you must realize that that waypoint was not a crossing between two paths, but three. For sake of analogy, imagine your two paths met at a bridge over a third path. The Mar decided simply to create a hole in the bridge and ‘drop’ you into an entirely different path than you expected.”
“The pink globes,” Warren deduced. Ali nodded.
“Then Maghalis just moved his ship into position to ‘catch’ you.” Ali blinked and waited for her words to sink into the minds of her audience. Then she began again, “Now, my benefactor is an ally of Maghalis, but not necessarily a supporter. What Maghalis intends for the futures of the universe seems much to risky to our unnamed friend and thus he will attempt to undermine the demon in any way he can.”
“Wait,” Sofi interjected. “What are Maghalis’ plans?”
Ali looked at her paws. “That I cannot say, for it was not planted in my mind. But the intentions of our friend is quite clear. He will aid you in any way you can; but know that if you reveal his objectives to Maghalis or the Mar, you will lose that trust forever. But why you would find that option appealing, I don’t know. It would be absurd to refuse this generous offer. For it was he that ‘lifted’ you back onto your chosen path before the waypoint closed. It will take the Mar some time to mobilize and navigate to the next possible waypoint converging with this path. This is the most important news I bring you: you have at least 16 hours before the Mar will arrive on scene, and this waypoint closes before that time. However, if you enter the waypoint, they will be able to close on you within two hours of your departure for your next waypoint. Either way, our benefactor has given you a slight edge on your enemy. If nothing else, thank him for time for a good night’s rest.”
Sofi nodded and turned to Warren. “If we have 16 hours, we might be able to find an alternate route for a couple waypoints and increase our lead. I need to talk to Trent about this, but you. You get a blanket and get some rest.” Then she stooped and held out her hand. “Ali, will you come with me?”
“Certainly,” she said and scurried to the outstretched palm. Warren followed the two out. Once in the main room, Trent tossed him a blanket and a pillow. He caught both, watched as Sofi motioned Trent over, whispered to him, and then called Livingstone over as well. Warren turned to head back to the room, as the discussion evidently was not going to involve him. He slipped through the doorway, threw his pillow to the floor and watched the three shadows flicker on the floor in front of him as they moved to another room.
Warren rolled onto his back and kicked the bottom half of the fleecy blanket into place. He adjusted his pillow, closed his eyes and tried to process everything that Ali had told him—or even the simple fact that Ali had spoken to him. As he adjusted to the silence, he heard the muffled voices from the discussion taking place next door. They weren’t quite audible, so he tried not to focus on it. What was the point of straining to understand anyway? At the moment he probably understood more than Trent or Livingstone did.
But the voices, which had began in a hush, grew in volume, until Warren found it nearly impossible not to listen. Livingstone had been speaking when Warren decided to open his ears completely and eavesdrop.
“And you don’t believe this demon has some ulterior motive for ‘aiding’ us?” he was asking. “Even if Maghalis controls the Mar, you don’t believe this one has no influence at all, do you? Listen, demons hate demons as much as humans. But for a demon to betray a demon in the name of helping a human? That’s unheard of. I wouldn’t trust him if he were standing over my burning body with a bucket of water.”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense that a demon would aid us, but he has. We can’t overlook that fact. We would all be locked in some demonic prison, waiting to be chopped into tiny bits for some horrible experiment right now if it weren’t for his actions,” Trent retorted.
“Yes, true. But imagine if he had some ambush planned and Maghalis got the jump on him; he frees us, gains our confidence, lies to us about the time we have, and lures us into his own trap—take the credit for our capture for himself. He might even gain enough influence to seize control of the Mar from Maghalis. I don’t care what he’s done for us, I will not trust the devices of a demon.”
“But don’t you think he risks much by giving us this information through Ali?” Sofi asked.
“Certainly not. He knows his quarry. We wouldn’t dare negotiate with Maghalis—he knows that. He assumes that we will take his charity in good faith and uphold our end of the bargain…until he smashes the deal and destroys us himself. As much as we hold that humanity is not completely bereft of the power to do good, we must understand that demons are not on the same plane. They are corrupt thoroughly and are not capable of a good action. Not to say that their actions might lead to good, just as the growth of a weed in the garden might give the gardener cause to uproot it and churn the soil to make a fine place to plant a flower. But no. make no mistake, these demons are masters of deception, and I, for one, will not trust them. Any of them.”
“You seem to know much of the universe, o wise and masterful Oscar,” answered Trent, dripping with sarcasm. “You don’t trust anyone—so what would you know of trust? Why should we listen to you condemn what you have never known? I don’t care what the demon’s intentions are; I care about his actions. He has aided us, that much is certain. And it seems that he would like to continue to do so. We were in a tight spot, but now we have some room to work with. If we accept his future help, we are not relegating ourselves vulnerable to him. We would accept his information as we would any outside source, treating it according to protocol and comparing it to our own research. We can be as ready to terminate our agreement with him as he might be to do with us. Just because he might be playing us, doesn’t mean we can’t pay him back. The opportunity here of an ally within the enemy is too great to pass up—even if he’s only a momentary ally. I say we cross check his information with whatever the boys have found by morning and make our plans accordingly.”
“May I say something?” Sofi interrupted with a much quieter voice. Apparently the two didn’t object. “I don’t like the idea of trusting a demon any more than you do, Oscar. And I realize the aid he has already given us, Trent. But let us look at our situation. From what we’ve found already, signs indicated that another waypoint for them to merge with this path was fairly distant, at least not within twenty hours or so from our departure from the Denver waypoint, right. Well that seems to fit with his information. So I agree with Trent that we should finish some comparative data analysis in the morning; but I also think that we should watch our steps and be ready for anything. Is this reasonable?”
Warren imagined both nodding when no replies came. He listened for a moment and heard nothing more. Then a knock on the door frame caught his attention, Sofi peeked in. “I brought Ali back,” she said, winking with a slight smile. She bent to the floor and set Ali down, who scampered to Warren’s mattress and curled up next to it. “Good night. Sleep well,” she whispered and closed the door before Warren could reply. He yawned and stretched.
“Well Ali. I guess I’ll see you in the morning, girl.”
“Likewise, Warren,” she squeaked and nestled herself into a little ball of gray fur in the shadows.Warren looked back up and out the window. There hovered the decimated moon, and despite the strangeness of the glow, the dustiness of the air, the absurdity of his situation, Warren sighed and fell asleep, thinking of Sofi snuggled up against him, arm around his waist, her chin on his chest.

Chapter 13

“Well Warren, first order of business is to teach you how to take flashbangs. Grenades roll into a room, you close your eyes, turn away, and cover your ears. Doesn’t do much good, but it helps. It’s certainly better than staring at it with the curiosity of a monkey. Second order, you need to know that if something’s leaking gas, don’t breathe it. Especially if it comes from me.
“Okay, now that you’re all caught up, you can realize that since you did none of the above, you were out like a light—it was people like you that flashbangs and gas grenades were made for. So a few moments after you went down, they rushed in like the good little Mar boys are all taught to do and we, being the nasty little rebels we are taught to be, shot back at them and rushed back out of the room.
“After that, we had the two recon teams pretty much down and figured more would be coming in. Well only one came down. And it wasn’t Mar. Matter o’ fact, it was a demon, though not as nice a one as you met, evidently.”
“Wait,” interrupted Warren, “Demon?”
“Yes, demon. Nasty sons of bitches, demons are. Listen, let me explain to you what we’re up against: the Mar are stupid, greedy, ignorant sissies who have lots of connections and weapons and can usually get away with murder. The demons, who pull the strings of the Mar, are not any of the things the Mar are. They are cunning, resourceful, and attentive killing machines. My point is this, if the Mar want you dead (more than just the local thugs) that means demons want you dead. And if demons want you dead, you’re probably going to wind up that way. So.”
“So? What?”
“We’re going to need a car soon before the demons show up again to kill you. But while they go find them, you need to hear about Maghalis—he was the demon who dropped the ground from beneath us and landed us in a portal (or something) to his ship. Anyway, he’s a tall-walking, purple-winged wonder—long teeth, big claws, twisted horns, pointy tail. You know pretty much the portrait of your classic demon. Not to say they all look like that.
“But on with the story. We still had our weapons of course, so when we landed I the demon-shsip, we opened fire on the Mar operating the cargo hold (as we later discovered that’s where we were). It was a short journey to the bridge in which we decimated the defending Mar. I mean, they really didn’t stand a chance. I kind of feel bad about it, you know?
“So we take the bridge and check the instruments to find your location (since you hadn’t dropped with us). Sofi sprinted off for you, while four held the bridge and the other four went on a sweep and destroy patrol. There’s nothing sweeter than sweep and destroy missions on an enemy vessel. Loads of fun.
“Well anyway, the first group of four (with Trent) were attacked on the bridge by a couple demons and the gyro governor was damaged (you might have remembered the shift) and I think they were still holding them off when we got ported here. So by then our sweep team (slowed a little by the tilt) had scored ten or fifteen Mar kills and one demon kill. The demon had jumped us around a corner and would have taken Max’s head off had he not been in a corner-check motion with his bayonet armed. He sort of accidentally beat the demon to the punch. It screamed. We fired. A lot. It sort of writhed a bit and then burst into flames. Probably nothing but charcoal left now.
“It was right about that time we found ourselves a little light-headed and looking back at the blue sky. Are the trucks ready yet?”
Warren was still a little foggy about the demons, and decided to press the issue. “So if Maghalis is so powerful, how come he didn’t just kill us all? I mean, isn’t that what you’ve been saying they want to do?”
Before Fredric could wind himself up, Sofi answered. “The demons are each their own master—they work together on occasion when the outcome benefits them all. Which is rare. And to say that they control the Mar is also somewhat outlandish. They are not the Mar—though they will use the Mar to their advantage. Of course the Mar believe they have made the deal of the ages, working closely with demons, as if they have harnessed a great power. So rarely do they work in suspicion of the other’s motives, but even less frequently do they actually agree. It’s hard to tell which one is the host and which one the parasite in their relationship.
“Maghalis is probably the most Mar friendly demon in existence, and therefore most dangerous to us. But don’t be deceived, Watson, Maghalis doesn’t want you personally dead. He is fighting a larger battle and would much rather figure out why we want you alive and where we are taking you. He’s not a beast of anger and passion for destruction like many of his lesser imp friends—it’s his rather insatiable lust for knowledge that compels him.”
At this point, Livingstone, who had been sitting in silence, fidgeting, now spoke out with an unrestrained passion. “Which rulebook will you be playing by, ehh Sofi? Are we to tell him nothing or everything? You’ve been quite reluctant to reveal anything to him in the past; what has changed now? I mean, no offense to your faculties of thought, Watson, (they aren’t in question here) but honestly the less you know the better.”
“He has seen a demon and the demon has seen him; I should think that’s reason enough to explain his situation.”
“Watson,” Livingstone addressed Warren in answer to Sofi’s question, “we are trained soldiers. I cannot lie about that to you; you yourself have seen it. We fight against the Mar; you have witnessed this. And now you know about the faction of otherworldly demons which may or may not aid the Mar. This is not necessarily dangerous information for you. But if you come to understand any purpose behind our actions, if you come into enemy hands, they will find out. And, as Sophi said, once Maghalis knows, he will have very little use for your life. So when I tell you that it is better that you don’t know, believe me, for your own life’s sake.”
“You think I would tell them?” Warren began, but Livingstone shook his head. “These are no ordinary interrogations they would perform on you, question and answer type. Not even torture. No, once they have you in their custody, they will know what you know. It’s a simple psychic process and they will access your memories like an electronic file. Now as soldiers, we have had a defense mechanism implanted within us (by our voluntary choice) which disrupts this effort and will make them resort to torture, which we can and will withstand. But I have no wish for you to suffer nor for the demons to gain access to our purpose; therefore, for the common good, I will not, nor will I let anyone in our troupe, tell you more than you need to know. You do not need to be accountable for our actions.”
Warren stared wide-eyed at the hobo soldier and turned to Sofi, who glanced away. “Do you understand, Sofi?” He measured her silence and then nodded. “Do you understand, Fred? All of you?” No one said a word. Then Livingstone put a hand on Warren’s shoulder.
“I hope that you understand our intentions for you are nothing but for the best possible outcome in the sequence of events that have already begun cascading through time. I trust we have demonstrated this thus far. So look back on the last two days, Warren. Tell me if you would trust in us to lead you on—and not just to safety, but to understanding. And in the end, when you understand it all, then look back on us and judge our decisions.”
Warren pulled Ali from his shoulder again and looked at her gleaming eyes. “I think we can do that, can’t we, Ali?” She squeaked in admonition and tried to chew on his thumb. He raised his eyes to Livingstone. “I think we can do that.”
“Excellent,” Livingstone said, smiling for the first time in a long time. “And perfect timing, here are the trucks.” Warren searched in the direction that Livingstone pointed. Two giant, black SUVs raced around the corner and dipped to a stop. Then Trent spoke up. “Sofi and Warren go with Old Fred and Max, in Connor’s vehicle. Oscar and the rest of you, come with me in Shan’s vehicle. Let’s go; let’s go people. Long drive to Kansas City.”
Warren followed Sofi, as he was entirely clueless as to which vehicle belonged to whom. Old Fred climbed into the front passenger seat and Warren found himself seated between “Max” and Sofi. And he didn’t really mind, though Sofi seemed a little downcast since Livingstone’s rebuttal. As they buckled themselves in, Ali squeaked and caught Warren’s ear in her teeth. “Ow. Hey! I need that ear, Ali,” he said, wincing. Then to the rest of the passengers, he added, “Does anyone have something edible for Ali to snack on? I think she’s hungry.”
“Yeah,” Old Fred said, rummaging through the glove compartment. “I think…ehh…somewhere in here are some…aha! Here, she’ll get a kick out of these,” he exclaimed and handed back a pack of Jalapeno Cheddar flavored sunflower seeds. Warren hummed monotonously in indecision. “Okay, maybe lick them off first or something,” Fredric suggested.
Warren decided to rub them off as best he could; he did so and held it up for Ali. She sniffed the seed with interest—then promptly sneezed. “Hmm, maybe I’d better rinse it off,” Warren thought aloud. “Anyone have a water bottle?”
“There’s a bunch in back,” Connor, the driver, offered.
“I’ll snag one,” Max chimed in for the first time and pulled one from a package of bottled water behind him. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Warren sang, ripping the plastic off the top and opening it. He dripped a bit on the seed, rubbed it thoroughly, and handed it to Ali. She took it in her nimble paws, turned it around a couple times, and started gnawing. Warren watched her devour the whole thing, and then repeated the process. Even Sofi, who had seemed quite emotionally displaced from the furry little gray ball atop Warren’s shoulder, glanced over every now and again to watch the spectacle.
Warren thought Ali could sense the attention and believed that she rather enjoyed it, as if she were made to inhabit the spotlight. And so for the next ten minutes, they watched Ali devour sunflower seeds, with Warren dripping water down the edge of the cap so Ali could drink every now and again.
“We still need to operate on her, you know,” Sofi said quietly, eyes fixed on the little ball of fur. Warren’s gaze snapped to her—a smile tugging at his lips.
“Thank you.”
The rest of the day passed without much, Ali occupying the entertainment spotlight on the trip. Conversation drifted in and out—usually centered lightly on Ali’s antics. Several hours in, Old Fred took control of the wheel and shortly after announced their departure from Colorado. Warren felt somewhat uneasy without the mountains in sight, but distracted himself with keeping Ali in line.
The sun faded quickly behind them, revealing the glittering fields of stars above them. But what soon caught their undivided attention was the rising moon. Fredric, with his eyes searching the road for wildlife, had noticed it first, but hadn’t said anything until at least half of the bright orb had escaped the horizon. That second glance had hushed him in the middle of a story, and when the others had prodded him to continue, he pointed in the general direction of the moon and said something like, “I…look.”
Warren had to lean close to Sofi, a necessity he didn’t mind in the least bit, in order to glimpse the moon. But what he saw wasn’t the moon—well, half of it was. And most of that half glowed bright green in the sky. The other half hung in space around it, drifting in what must have been nation-sized chunks. Warren gazed with open mouth at the spectacle before him—he wasn’t sure which half of the moon to wonder at.
Sofi drew a long audible breath and raised her hand to her mouth. After a healthy silence, she all but whispered, “What in god’s name happened?” Warren shook his head and continued to stare. Only Old Fred dared to reply.
“I reckon the waypoint worked.”

Chapter 12

Do you know that sensation you have when you wake in a strange place? It’s as if you’re for a moment in your own bed, and as long as your eyes are closed, you can picture precisely what you’ll see when you open them. And the shock when you find yourself somewhere completely different makes you want to close your eyes and reclaim that lost paradigm. I’ve had this feeling many times, but probably not as acutely as Warren felt it when he awoke.
For that blissful moment, Warren imagined himself secluded in a blue bedroom, wrapped tightly in a thick comforter, hiding from the morning light. But when his eyes flickered open, he found not the pure rays of a rising sun, but the mechanical glow of fluorescent lighting. And the tight wrap was not of his own doing, but restraints of some kind. He heard voices babbling around him, fading in and out, but never quite comprehensible.
The ceiling was low, stained a dark metallic green with tints of blue. It seemed to press him into a state of claustrophobia. Its uneven nature made him wonder if it was strange, or if he had lost his sense of dimension. He tried to crane his neck, but found himself strapped down by the forehead as well. So he licked his lips and shut his eyes again, listening for all he was worth.
Two voices, one distinctly female, another male, seemed to fluctuate around him most often—at times close that he could hear distinct words and phrases, but found himself unable to scour any meaning from it. He thought it might be Latinate—every now and again he thought he had heard at least a cognate of the English language or two. Just when it seemed the voices had drifted far enough his way, that he could decipher a word or two, a deep rushing wind ripped through the place. It had almost a throaty howl to it, as if the air were being sucked into some deep pit in the corridors beyond him.
Then the voices became audible again—much clearer now. Then he felt a shadow fall across his face. He relaxed his eyelids, took a deep rhythmic inhalation through his nose—and hoped they wouldn’t catch on that he was listening. But their proximity to him now didn’t help. Sheer clarity couldn’t interpret a foreign language. A set of cold fingers touched his arm, massaged it lightly. Then amidst what he took to be idle chatter, a sharp prick in his arm made him jump—Warren made a nasally gasp and fluttered his eyelids, as if waking.
The woman said something soothingly and stroked his forehead. He felt a tingle in that right arm that crept up towards his shoulder. Then he realized he couldn’t feel his fingers—she had most certainly applied a local anesthesia. He stared at the ceiling, wondering what they planned for him. His ears heard a bit of machinery being maneuvered; his shoulder felt a weight on the joint, then a thud. Warren yawned and flickered his eyelids again, eyes straining towards his right arm. What looked like one of his father’s air-powered nail guns was situated over his right forearm. The girl was holding some sort of device to his skin. It bleeped twice and she made a satisfactory grin. The man turned away, apparently setting the gun down. His shoulder felt another tug. Warren returned his gaze to the ceiling, which didn’t seem so low any more.
Then his view was filled with the woman’s face—which warren found only slightly attractive. She had a rather emaciated look to her, with sallow cheeks and defined cheekbones. Her eyes seemed set too deep and her skin seemed stretched over bone alone. Thin, but ruby red lips spoke something to him, and those blue eyes pierced his own, searching him past a sharp, beak-like nose. Her short, crimson hair still fell over her ears, but had been spiked in front. Her thin eyebrows rose in expectation of an answer; she glanced at her partner, as if to ask for help—but just for a moment—then she settled her gaze back on Warren, who desperately wanted to say something but had trouble finding the words.
Then the woman stood back and turned. Warren’s eyes grew wide when he saw a set of ink-black wings stretch from her shoulders and block his vision of half the room. They were grand, majestic, and terrible wings—like those of a giant raven. With a swift stroke of those powerful, feathered limbs, she took off down the corridor. Still in shock, he turned to see the man grin and exit the corner. No wings on him though, Warren told himself.
Before Warren had any time to ask himself what he had just witnessed, the whole room shook violently and it seemed the bottom fell out of the left side—the whole room sank to an incline. The straps held Warren fast, but a myriad of tools dove to the left-hand wall, bouncing beneath him. The bed he lay on seemed secured to the floor well enough, so he tried to relax. He took three regulated breaths, then paused for one deep breath, and then repeated the procedure.
But then shouts began issuing from down one of the passageways beyond his room. A distant explosion and what he took to be erratic gunfire trickled into his ear. Just before another explosion, Warren thought he heard the words, “Get down!” but he wasn’t sure of anything at the moment—except that his arm was tingling with a vengeance. He tried to wiggle it, but that just sent a shower of needles down the length of his arm. So he relaxed and listened.
The shouts were definitely getting closer, the cracks interrupting what had become a storm of activity seemed more and more likely gunshots. He imagined Livingstone was behind it. At least, he hoped he were. When Warren believed the commotion closing in on himself, the woman, if you could call her that, returned—swooped down and landed on the left wall, folding her wings behind her. She made a cute frown at Warren and searched the spilt tools lining the corner of the room. A syringe made her happy and, with a couple great flaps, leapt over Warren and clung to a mounted lamp at the top half of the angulated room.
She found the cabinet she wanted, and carefully pulled the magnetized door open. Small glass vials crowded the opening, and one by one she tossed them over Warren, until she found the one she was after and a small pile of broken glass had accrued at the bottom of the room. With a playful stab, she stuck the needle through the thin rubber cap and drew the syringe full.
Her eyes flicked to Warren and her tongue caressed her lower lip. Then, like an eagle diving down to snatch a fish from water, she spread her wings and dropped to the right side of the table. Landing with a crouch, she smiled at Warren, found the vein in his numb arm, and jabbed in the needle. She sang something in a language he didn’t understand, kissed him on the cheek, spread her wings and dove down the hallway. When she was out of sight, Warren tried to look at his arm—he could only imagine what sort of injection she had given him.
Just then another shout, one most certainly recognizable as Old Fred’s, erupted from just beyond the passageway. Warren decided to call to him, to aid with what had to be a rescue effort. “Fredric!” he tried with a hoarse voice. He coughed and tried for more volume. “Fredric! I’m over here” Several shots rang out—followed by a thud. “Fredric?” Warren tried again, his vocal cords warming up a bit. Another, louder thump echoed to him. Then, to Warren’s surprise, Sofi’s figure appeared in the doorway, one foot on the floor, the other on the left wall.
“Hey you,” she said.
Warren tried to smile. “Hi.” Sofi seemed to judge the distance between the passage way that fell off to the left and the corner of the room filled with medical debris. With a jump and a slide, she found herself below Warren. With another leap, she had secured a grasp on his table’s leg, and she pulled herself up, wrapping her leg between the supports to free her hands.
Her nimble fingers quickly undid the straps on Warren’s arms, saving the waist and shoulder belts for last, to keep him from falling. As she released his harnessed right arm, Sofi noticed the blood on it. “What did they do?”
“Several shots via needle and one by nail gun, I think.”
“Hmmm. We’ll check you out later, come on. Hold onto me with your good arm while you pivot. Excellent; do you mind that drop?” she asked.
“Not a bit.”
So he landed on the wall and leaned back against the floor. Another explosion sounded further into the corridors and several small cracks of gunfire reached their ears afterward. “Are those the others? Warren wondered aloud. Sofi nodded and dropped down next to him, crunching a conglomeration of medical utility beneath her feet. “Let’s join them,” she ordered more than suggested. “Down, I think, will be our best option. She withdrew a pistol from a leg holster and peered down the passage. She nodded, gave a little leap and slid down the incline on her right hip, disappearing quickly in the failing light. Warren gave chase rather whimsically and tossed himself down the corridor, though not quite as far out as Sofi, in hopes he wouldn’t land on her.
The slide wasn’t nearly as smooth as he had expected, but his location was; when he hit the wall at a “T” intersection, he landed right behind Sofi. A cry to the left caught their ears and Sofi took off in that direction. Warren blinked and shook his right arm, hoping some form of life would come to it soon.
And as his mind’s focus was somewhat distracted by the semi-simple job of following Sofi and waiting for her commands, he found a moment to wonder where Ali had gone. This gave rise to just enough panic to send a shiver down his spine. He had not seen (or heard, for that matter) Ali in the room where he awoke. Warren joined Sofi at the edge of the next hallway.
“We need to find Ali; she’s gone,” he whispered.
“Who?”
“Ali. The rat you gave me.”
“We’ve been through this: I didn’t give you a rat. She was a plant to track your movements. If we find her again, they’ll be able to find us again. It’s for the best, Warren, that she’s gone. Now hold while I clear this next passage,” Sofi said and slid into the darkness. The echo of two shots came blasting back to him. “Clear!” Sofi’s voice issued up to him. Warren had half a mind to disappear in his own search for Ali—let the others catch up with him. It was such a troublesome situation, one with which Warren knew countless others had struggled. His instinct warred against Sofi’s words. He wondered how he would even begin to find Ali. “Watson!”
Another three shots clapped against the walls and bounced through the passages. “Watson, I need some help,” Sofi urged. This overpowered Warren’s train of thought and mandated action. He slid down to her side; she pointed across his chest, down a low-lit corridor. “Run that way, go now!” Warren obeyed and bounced from wall to floor to wall on as straight a path as he could go. He heard another pair of shots, then that distinctive hiss-snap as the floor beside him exploded into a small puff of dust. He reached for his shoulder, found nothing and switched shoulders. When he grasped only air a second time, he panicked. Then memory kicked it and the question of Ali’s whereabouts plagued him.
But another hiss followed by a ricocheting ping kept his head down and his feet moving. Several shots (without the deadly hiss) issued from Sofi’s weapon and a slight thud warmed his heart. The already much more uniquely distant passage began to fall off a bit, curving downward. And just when he began to slow out of sheer caution, a soft orange light illuminated the corridor beyond him, issuing from an object beyond the curve, beyond his sight. Warren glanced back to find Sofi right behind him. He pointed at the light.
“What do you think it is?” he asked.
Sofi raised her weapon. “Let’s find out.”
The glow rippled over the subtle curves of the passage walls, drifting steadily towards them, growing steadily brighter where their line of sight ended. When the object finally appeared, it was difficult to look at—but not overpowering in its brightness. It took Warren a moment for his eyes to adjust from the relative darkness he had been in before encountering the object; then epiphany lit his mind: it was a moth—a giant, effervescent moth.
Its wings fluttered in a blur, but the creature seemed not to mind taking its time in its progression up the tunnel. Its size was palpable—perhaps as long as he was tall, with wings spreading across the width of the hallway, more than he could stretch his arms. And like a fine dust, light seemed to float off of its beating wings and to coat everything in its path. Warren sighed at the warmth of the moth’s presence—it was as if an emotional burden had been lifted from his shoulders by the light.
Sofi, on the other hand, kept her weapon steady—almost as if she recognized the beast and knew it was dangerous. She passed Warren with a crawling but steady advance, pressing a hand to his chest. “What do you want, demon?” Warren thought he felt the effects of a shiver in her body, and raised an eyebrow. She had addressed it, “demon,” and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. It seemed harmless enough—but so had that gardener. He decided to stay behind Sofi and let her do the talking.
But then something happened that caught Warren completely off-guard. The moth spoke with a tender, but surrounding sort of voice. “Take care little one, for you know nothing of tending the garden.”
Sofi seemed to tense, fighting something with every muscle in her body. Her lips quivered as she spoke again. “I know I have been charged to deliver this one to St. Barthe’s, ae1205-Bau, Vilate 3 and neither you, nor any of your kind, nor any agent of the Mar will keep me from completing my task.” Sofi’s confidence seemed to wither with each passing second. A short pause seemed an eternity of conflict.
Then the creature issued what Warren imagined was a laugh—a crackling sort of trilling note. It fluttered closer and Sofi stepped back, her right shoulder pressing in Warren’s left. “I do not intend you harm—as do some aboard this ship,” the moth soothed. “The Mar are fickle and their trusts are as easily broken as gained.”
“And you are less so? I know your kind—your filth runs deeper than the oceans.”
“If you will condemn me along with my species, consider my actions from the free air above, and I beg you to choose on a different day your judgment on me,” the creature spoke and suddenly stopped his wings, alighting on the floor. Deep dark circular marks filled the wings, which it stretched to their full span. Then the beast began to vibrate its wings and the marks began to shimmer—then to move up, down, to focus in on Warren and Sofi like two great eyes, searching their souls. Then the wings stopped and a shockwave of what seemed sheer light knocked them backwards.
When the bright, dancing spots in their eyes faded and the shapes of dark blues and greens took on texture and shadow, Warren and Sofi found themselves outside of the Denver waypoint building. Beside them stood Livingstone and Old Fred, Ali squeaked from Warren’s shoulder, and the six man team were high-fiving each other and pointing to the sky, the buildings, etc. Trent was running a hand through his hair and checking his watch.
Warren snatched Ali off his shoulder and stroked her head—then turned to Sofi. “What was that?” Sofi looked only at Livingstone who shook his head and kicked at the ground.
“It was a demon,” she explained, more to Livingstone than Warren. “I’ve never seen one like it—it was…amiable, even. It’s responsible for…”
“I know, Sofi. I know. It’s just…” Livingstone responded and shoved his hands in his pockets. A long silence continued until Warren couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Where were we? What happened?” Livingstone just paced, and Sofi seemed most intrigued by his actions. Luckily for Warren, Old Fred would never turn down a chance to talk, and he seized it by the horns and ran with it.

Chapter 11

If, in the event of a catastrophe, you manage to remember your identity, your chances of survival will probably triple. If by a minor miracle, you somehow retain logical reasoning and critical thought, you will have surpassed (if only the cliché) masses of humanity which flounder in their plight. And finally, if you can master your senses and control motor-skills and muscle movements during such a crisis—well, you have probably been trained in the Armed Forces.
Sofi, Oscar, and the rest of the team qualified in the final category—the minority, to say the least. Warren did not. While he managed to think and demand action of his body, the rush of adrenaline (again) made his movements shaky and his grasp weak. And so he fumbled with the packing job to which Sofi had mandated him. He managed to follow the directions—when he actually saw them—and had nearly half the equipment packed when the window in the far corner of the room suddenly glowed with a bright pink haze.
Ali chirped and switched shoulders three times to figure out which afforded her the best vista of the window, as Warren crouched and skittered towards the window. He knew this action would be severely dissuaded by Sofi, but the intrigue of the luminous pink glow, now coating the room through the light drapes. His mind blitzed through questions before he had a chance to answer any of them. The final one he settled on—what was going on here?
When he reached the window sill, pulled back the drapes a bit, and peaked out, the scene which greeted his eyes blew his imagination to bits. Dominating the landscape, a large pink globe, hovering a couple feet off the ground, rotated—like a giant disco ball, Warren thought—and radiated a bright, but warm light, which blanketed everything around it. Looking to his extreme right, he saw the edge of another of the slowly spinning globes. But as he studied the landscape more, he found that smaller pink globules were breaking off from the big ones, floating—not in random directions—but towards the house. He also noticed from beyond the cherry spheres the small, indistinct contours of men with rifles behind cover.
Just before he decided to continue packing, he heard a muffled yell and saw the smoke of a rocket-propelled grenade take off towards a hedge where he had spotted some of the besiegers. But to his utter surprise, the rocket slowed, as if fired underwater, lost altitude and fell to the ground, sputtering along the grass until the rocket motor burned out. It fizzled for a moment on the lawn, then exploded, having only covered about a third of the distance between the house and the adversaries.
As the dust and smoke cleared, Warren began to see the pink light reflecting off of other spots in the lawn. He squinted. The pieces must be metal—then it struck him: they were bullets that had been fired at the enemy. Somehow the pink globes negated momentum—like an inertia generator or something. So surprised at his discovery was Warren that when the three knocks came at the door, it took him several moments to remember what the knocks signified, and then several more seconds to actually walk to the door and unlock it.
Old Fred stumbled into the room, panic-eyed. “Useless!” he cried, eyes glancing about the room—evidently searching for something. “It’s all useless—come on, where’s the damn…aha!” He picked up a hand-held device and began tapping away at it.”
“What’s happening, Old Fred?” Warren queried.
“They…uh…” Fredric began, as distracted as a four year old with a new toy. “Came. And…holy shit! How long?” He dropped the piece of equipment and snuck to the window, peering out for a moment, then crept back to Warren. “You’re coming with me. Leave all this; Sofi will worry about that.” And he grabbed Warren by the arm and the two sprinted through the halls. “Five minutes has never seemed so long in my life!” he ranted as they turned a corner into the dining room, where Livingstone was descending the stairs and spat.
“They shot at me!” he yelled, with obvious frustration and jumped the final three stairs.
“Welcome to my world!” Fredric snapped and flung Warren to a chair. Warren’s hands automatically (as had been the case for several hours now) cupped themselves around Ali on his shoulder.
“But you don’t understand—I was IN.”
“What do you mean ‘in’?” Old Fred wondered while creeping back to the dining room window.
“In their manual glider. They had absolutely no reason to suspect I stole it! And they shot at me!” Livingstone ranted, joining him at the window. “I hate being shot at.”
“They have terrible aim anyway,” Fredric soothed.
“But still, blind luck pays dividends sometimes. I don’t want to be killed by blind luck. In fact, I don’t want to be killed at all.”
“You are in the wrong line of work if you don’t want to be killed you know. You might have gone into masonry or something.”
“Forget that! At least I have a gun if someone shoots at me. But I was in their glider! Who shoots at their own glider?”
“Evidently the Mar.”
“I’m surprised you guys didn’t shoot me down.”
“You were on the radio, telling us it was you.”
“And I’m supposed to trust that you’ll believe me and that you won’t shoot at me?” Livingstone wondered.
“Yes! It’s called teamwork.”
“Like the San Diego exercise?”
“Luke was shot because he was an idiot.”
“And how do I know you wouldn’t shoot me down and call me an idiot afterwards?”
Old Fred began to reply, but the sudden thumping of a helicopter had drowned them out. Warren, who had been thinking about Old Fred’s citation of the wonderful communication that existed between himself and Oscar, now sensed a newer desperation crossing the faces of the two at the window. Through the doors of the kitchen behind them came Sofi and the rest of the team she had evidently rounded up, including Trent. Fred and Oscar joined them at the table, where Sofi began yelling over the helicopter.
“Trent tells me that these generators which make our armaments at present useless against them work both ways and that’s why we haven’t seen any responsive fire on their part. But he thinks it’s more than just defense, or a way of keeping us under siege. Tell them, Trent,” she demanded.
“If it works like I think it does, these pink balls basically mitigate the effect of forces—like the force behind a propelled bullet. This also probably makes it extremely difficult to run past them. They have been closing slowly on the building, which will make it more and more difficult for us to escape. But more than this, I think the effect on the structure itself will be profound. Architects carefully measure and direct forces to keep the building standing—by uses of arches, braces, supports, etc. Well, when these balls reach the edge of the building, the effect on the structural integrity will probably be extreme. I imagine then, that the helicopter has some sort of concussive weapon aboard. When the structure’s integral binding forces have been eliminated, it will become a house of cards—held together by only a few flimsy bolts and nails, not by the sheer forces acting on each other. So, in the same way that an earthquake produces a tsunami in the ocean, they’ll attack the house in this manner: by producing a tsunami in the air. And our “house of cards” will not hold up.”
The menacing thumps of the helicopter dominated the silence, while eyes searched eyes at the table. “So what do we do?” Old Fred finally asked. “We have five minutes until the waypoint even begins.”
“I say we down that helicopter,” Livingstone offered. “We may have a slight advantage over the effect of those balls by shooting from the roof, if our target gets low enough.”
Sofi nodded. “I agree. The bird is our number one priority; if we can keep it from blowing the house down, we might be able to slip paths and escape before the Mar make it into the house. How long do we have Fred?”
“I count…three minutes and twenty-eight seconds….now,” he determined.
“Okay, everyone to the upstairs bedroom with the skylights,” Sofi ordered and everyone at the table split and filed up the stairs—at what might be noted as a less than normal pace, perhaps even sluggish would describe it. When they surrounded the skylight and prepared to exit to the roof, they found, suspended on a cable below the helicopter, yet another of the pink balls. Fredric, per usual, was the first to speak.
“I don’t think they mean to crush the house.”
“They mean to trap us—we need to get to the very center of the house, away from the physical influence of the orbs,” Sofi counseled. “How much time until the waypoint opens?”
“Just under two minutes,” Old Fred answered.
“That’s all we need to hold out; it’s likely that when the event occurs, you should feel a little different, as the influence of another history, one hopefully without the globes, should give us the chance to run,” said Sofi, and so the troupe, even more lethargically, descended the stairs and found a basement bedroom nearly in the center of the house, about as far away from any brilliant, pink orb as possible. Oscar and Fredric took up positions by the door, with six (including Trent) forming a line behind them. Two more found cover positions protecting Sofi and Warren, while Ali dug herself into his collar.
The silence was awful (it seemed to take a special toll on Fredric)—but they new better than to talk and reveal their location. For surely the enemy knew the waypoint was close to breaking and would be sending troops in to wipe them out before they had any chance of escape. Old Fred had since handed the countdown device to Sofi in return for an ammo clip—and she checked it addictively. Warren tried not to breathe. Livingstone fidgeted, quite obviously uncomfortable with waiting.
At the minute mark, Sofi nudged Warren—he looked at the screen and then smiled at her. She seemed intent on listening for footsteps. At thirty seconds, she let out a sharp hiss, every eye turned to her. She flashed her ten fingers three times. Everyone seemed to tense up—each had a finger caressing a trigger. Warren wondered what exactly might happen once they crossed the threshold of the waypoint. Would he indeed feel himself move at all? Would he feel different? Would he notice anything strange? Or would it simply pass, leaving him to hope for the best?
Sofi flashed ten fingers. Warren felt his heartbeat rise. Five fingers. How precise could their calculations be? Three fingers. Warren covered Ali with a hand. One finger. Everyone sighed. With each second after (for the next fifteen or so) no one dared to breathe. Eyes glanced around the room, from gaze to gaze. Warren hadn’t noticed any change. Livingstone stood and stretched a leg—hopped once, twice. He shook his head and scowled at the door.
Just as it seemed he was about to say something, the door exploded. Two small, round metallic containers skipped into the room. One flashed brilliantly—but lacked the customary bang of a concussion grenade. Still, Warren found his vision blurred with white light. As it started to clear, the only sound, a lonely hiss, gave him a momentary hint that perhaps the fog wasn’t all in his vision. But by the time he had figured out that there was indeed a mist issuing from the other canister, a sudden, crushing wave of exhaustion overpowered his mind, and Warren faded into a deep, soothing sleep, ignoring the muffled, distant sounds of human voices and some irritating pops.

Chapter 10

Now. When I asked you to consider the journey of Warren Spicks, I had very little expectation of credibility. But the facts, as I lay them out here, remain true. And if you should ask for proof, well I’ve already supplied it: glance at our girl across the street, Sofi Gio Seville. Yes, that was her full name. And if you remember, she was indeed the author of that fascinating article which had caught Warren’s eye in the café in Manitou Springs on that first fateful day of his journey.
Now, why should she be proof of an international mob war you’ve never heard anything about? How does she explain elephants roaming Colorado’s valleys, a flood of pinecones, such reckless fighting with massive collateral damage, and not a stitch of news coverage? Well, should your doubts flare up, should your mind question the reality of the things I’ve told you, her articles, indeed her very field of study, will be of extreme interest to you. While her degrees in social psychology explain her skilled work with the human operatives within the organization—it was not her passion. Rather, she had nearly completed a bachelor’s in the field of philosophy, her favorite class, as she once told me, being one on cosmological philosophy—asking questions about the reality of the universe, asking about the entire progression and existence of the whole of what is.
But some professor noted her skill in perceiving human beings and talked her into switching majors (she had a few psychology classes under her belt already, I think) probably mentioning the quality and quantity of jobs related to the field of psychology, as opposed to philosophy. So she made the switch between asking questions about the whole of things, to asking questions about the mind—both rather complex with a fair amount of unanswerable questions to deal with. And probably because of their similarities, she excelled at psychology and proceeded to finish her master’s in it as well. This you already know.
And yet, somewhere, the longing to understand and address the bigger issues—well, the biggest issue (perhaps besides theology, based on one’s beliefs) which could be addressed. Her question could probably be phrased like this: What does it all mean? And this of course, contained all manner of sub-questions. How did it begin? What does it contain? Will it end? Etc. These were inquiries she addressed regularly in articles to whatever local paper would take them. Before she met Warren, she had been stationed in Manitou for some time, but when she was compromised by Warren’s arrival she had to uproot herself. So up to that day in Manitou, she had published in a local newspaper entitled, “Outside the Camp” several articles of interest, not only to the local readership, but probably to any chair of philosophy on the continent—had they the chance to read it.
Sofi, however, she isn’t a very forward human being at all—not like Trent, who will smile and swindle anyone he meets, nor Old Fred, who will talk your ear off, no matter who you are. And so Sofi’s aspirations remained small and her articles appreciated among local thinkers.
Here then, I submit my proof. Sofi’s discoveries in philosophy, particularly in the philosophy of time as it related to her preferred field of cosmology, had captured the interest of one of her readers. This man, as I found out from her, had visited Sofi not a few days before Warren arrived, asking about her most recent article. He was an elderly man—much older than Fredric—whose habit, it seemed to her, was the wearing of trench-coats. Even in the middle of the summer, he walked into the café and met with Sofi, dressed in a dark-gray trench-coat with a low-brimmed hat and dark aviator sunglasses. He had a salt-and-pepper mustache, and strands of brilliant white hair spilling over his ears and beneath his hat.
Their conversation, as Sofi told me, was short and sweet, for he too was afraid of the Mar and their capabilities. She would not tell me what he proposed, at first. But in the end, I coaxed this much information from her: he had told her that her theory of time and space was true in most facets, and that the Mar’s influence was far more reaching than she assumed. Then he told her about the waypoints and their importance to the future journey of Warren Spicks. She of course asked him about Warren—he told her only that Warren was, as she had assumed, of great value to the Mar and she would do best to escort him through the waypoints. With that, and perhaps an eloquent goodbye, the stranger had disappeared.
Now, I know little of what waypoints are, or even how they work, but they are points in time and space where overlap occurs. Overlap between what, you ask? Well, I just happen to have acquired that article of interest from Sofi. You may read it length, but let me summarize her main points and what the gentleman in the cloak pointed out to her. Sofi envisioned the universe as did the Latin writer of the mid 20th century, Jorge Luis Borges—as a garden of forking paths. These paths, infinite in number, represent a single history of the universe. Now when I say a history, I mean as a string of events as influenced by rational beings, or to quote Sofi, “the cascading stream of time resulting from a choice, be it a butterfly’s choice to land on a flower or the choice of John Wilkes Booth to pull the trigger.” Each of these paths of time crisscross the massive labyrinth of times in the giant garden of the universe. What the gentleman in the long coat told Sofi, was simply that there are waypoints, places where these histories cross each other and one might traverse into another path—and that the Mar had already succeeded in doing so.
This gave Sofi hope, as a team of code-breakers working on Mar transmissions had intercepted a great many codes which came out to be little more than random numbers. With this paradigm, the numbers were determined to be longitude and latitude and time locations of these waypoints. With this discovery, the planning to move Warren across these different paths to the final safe location on Florida’s coast had begun. A couple of the timings would have to be dead-on accurate—as several of the waypoints would only open for a few minutes, instead of days. Of course, this path-hopping strategy had been largely built on decoded Mar information until they figured out how to locate and track these waypoints.
Sofi had figured that Trent would be able to figure that out when he found one. The first, closest on their journey had been in southeast Denver, and she had ordered a team in to secure the location of the future waypoint—and, as she explained to me, had joined them via helicopter the night after leaving Warren.
So it should come as no surprise to you that when she heard the explosion and gunfire outside the secured area, she and her team arrived on the scene to find Old Fred and Warren working busily to save what looked like a gardener from death’s grip. But it did come as quite a shock to Warren to see Sofi trotting up with a group of six armed men. After Fredric had updated her, she ordered her men to get Scott’s body and the injured man back to the waypoint. She also insisted that Warren accompany her to the waypoint itself, while they waited for Trent and Oscar to arrive—explaining in the process as much as she could to Warren about the nature of the waypoints. As they entered the building, what seemed an ordinary upper-middle class residence, Sofi said something which caught his attention.
“Now I doubt that there will be many ways to tell once you’ve made it through a waypoint and have crossed into a different pathway. Most of the paths will seem so similar that until we’ve detected a bifurcation again, we can’t be sure we’ve been successful. From what information we’ve intercepted from the Mar, they seem to treat the waypoint as a waiting room. You go in, you look at your watch, when the time’s up you go out. It’s almost as if you have to rationally choose to enter and exit a waypoint—whereas, if you stumble upon one in everyday life, it seems doubtful you will cross. So we believe that if you choose to enter a waypoint, knowing that it is such, you’re chances of successfully navigating to another path will increase. If you do get separated from the team, keep an eye on your wristwatch.”
Warren didn’t know he had a wristwatch, and began to inquire what she meant when she pointed to his pocket. “Put it on. It will indicate your proximity to the next waypoint and alarm you when you have successfully made the transition.” Warren checked his pockets. Sure enough, he pulled out a gleaming burnished silver watch and slipped it onto his wrist. “If you happen to lose it, Watson, use your own sensibilities. If you have passed into another pathway, you should check the little ordinary occurrences in life to make sure. For instance, say you don’t see any butterflies. This is June, they should be in any garden. That might be a solid indication you’ve succeeded.
“You may feel a little different as well. Our scientists aren’t quite sure what side-effects this sort of travel may cause. Just keep your head and follow me or Oscar or your watch,” she finished and indicated for Warren to have a seat on a plush suede couch. “Do you need anything? Something to eat, a drink?”
“Do you have anything for Ali?”
“Who?”
“Oh, Ali is the name of the rat you sent me.”
“I didn’t send you a rat; what are you talking about?” Sofi wondered. Warren fished Ali out from his shoulder. Sofi wrinkled her nose.
“She came this morning with a note from you,” he said and stroked Ali gently. Sofi shook her head—frowned at the rodent.
“No, I didn’t authorize anything of that sort. Let me run some tests on her; make sure she isn’t being used by the Mar to transmit your location to them. Here,” she demanded, pulling a plastic bag from the counter.
“I’m not going to put her in there,” Warren stated.
“Watson, please, I don’t have time for games; we need to figure out if she has a tracking device in her.”
“I’ll take her wherever she needs to be taken; but if you harm her, so help me God…” Warren threatened, holding Ali close.
“Watson, it’s just a rat…” Sofi began, but Warren shook his head and interrupted her.
“She’s survived as much disaster today as I have—more than any creature should in a lifetime. I’m not going to let her suffer any more.” Likely sensing the determination in Warren’s voice, Ali squeaked defiantly.
“Fine, bring it along,” Sofi sighed and strode from the room. Warren followed her, but not closely.
“I’m sorry Ali. I don’t know what’s wrong with her today. She’s usually much prettier,” Warren said, setting Ali back on his shoulder. She squeaked and tried to decide which shoulder offered the better view.
When they entered a bedroom which had been converted into a sort of minor operation command post or the like—wired with all manner of portable electronic equipment—Sofi picked up a small device (Warren assumed it was a metal detector—or at least had such a function or something similar) and stood right in front of him, though her focus remained on Ali. Warren stiffened and suppressed a shiver. Her proximity to him heightened his senses—with each breath, her fragrance overpowered him. But she seemed oblivious to her marked effect on him, and so Warren tried to ignore the quivers in his stomach—attempted not to gaze at her hair, her neck, imagine her resting in his embrace. And of course failed miserably.
But as soon as she had approached, she spun away and grabbed another gadget. “You’ll have to hold her for a second,” she ordered and Warren obeyed, picking Ali from his shoulder. “Okay, start by holding her on her back. Like this,” she said, grabbing Warren’s wrist and rotating them. He noted the warmth, the delicacy of her touch—and while he tried to think of Ali’s safety, he only succeeded in dreaming of her fingers entwining his own.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, looking at the display on the device. “They’re tricky, the Mar.” She set down the tool and kneeled down to examine a suitcase full of such electronic gadgets.
“What’d they do to Ali?” he asked her, his voice coated with obvious concern.
“It’s a fairly recent development. Trent would know more about it, but basically it’s a small radioactive signature—not harmful, but easily tracked from within fifty miles or so. Because their network is so widespread, it’s unlikely we can ever get away from it—and if we do, say in the middle of Nebraska, they’ll have a pretty good guess of where to send a research plane. I don’t think it’s quite strong enough for a satellite to track it, but it’s certainly possible.”
“So what do we do?” Warren wondered, stroking Ali. Sofi put a hand on her hip.
“We could put it to sleep and mail the body to Alaska, which might serve as a healthy decoy for a while,” she suggested. Warren cringed and glanced at Ali.
“No, not an option. Can we neutralize whatever it is?”
“Maybe. If we had the access of a full research hospital. But we don’t. So no.”
“Anything else?”
“We could pinpoint the infusion location—it’s not an IV injection, it’s too concentrated to be in the bloodstream. Perhaps they fused it to the bone. But you’d need to convince our medical officer to perform a surgery on a rat. Which is highly unlikely. Best thing to do is to part with her, Watson,” she confided, tapping her foot as if anxiously awaiting a decision.
Warren found Ali’s gleaming eyes and couldn’t imagine ending her life—or even tearing himself away from her now. He thought himself a father asked to drop his daughter off a bridge to save his own life, an impossibility. His head shook automatically and Sofi sensed his distress. “I won’t give her up,” he stated. “Please, Sofi, you need to find a way to get this out of her.”
But Sofi found herself distracted by a sudden call from Oscar. She answered while patching it through to the main display in the room. “Yes?” was her simple question. A blurred picture of Livingstone came to life, “I’m…ehh…”he began, looking frantically left and right, “going to need a little help.”
“Where are you?” Sofi demanded, fiddling with settings to get a clearer image.
“Right above you—at least for a little while. Have you…looked outside a window recently?” he asked with evident concern thickening his words. Warren stepped to look outside, but Sofi caught his arm in a grip like a vice. “If not, that’s okay. For a bit. Like maybe…eighteen seconds. Whoops. They spotted me. Oscar out.” And with that, his face faded from the screen. Warren put Ali back on his shoulder while Sofi scrambled for a door. She shut and locked the one. “Stay in here—pack what you can; it’s all labeled.” Shoot anyone who doesn’t knock three times on the door. I’m going to send Old Fred back to help you when I find him. Until then, stay down and pack.” Warren started to protest, but the door slammed in his face.
“Well Ali, looks like we’re not done for the day.” Warren sighed and began unplugging everything.