John rubbed his eyes as the hologram shifted around him, causing some disorientation.
“Almost got it,” came Will’s voice through the handlink.
“Thanks, buddy,” John said, as images blurred past his eyes. “Wish it was a little simpler than this, I gotta be honest.”
“Yeah, me too,” said Will. “Higgins has no idea how to parse the Kromagg brain waves, so they’re interfering with our search a little. But we’re closing in. Just a minute.”
“Okay, I’ll just shut my eyes until the image stabilises,” John said.
“Ugh, not now…” Will muttered, at a barely perceptible volume.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, it’s nothing to do with the search. It’s just our detectors just triggered at the anomaly site.”
“Of all times…” lamented John. “Is there someone available to go scope it out?”
“Well, the only one around here not working on something important right now is…”
John grimaced. “Al?”
“Yeah.”
John scratched the back of his head. “S’pose you could ask him. He might not know what to do when he gets there, though.”
“Okay, I’ll see wh— yes! We have a lock. Finally.”
John opened his eyes cautiously, and relaxed when he saw a stable image of a small room around him, with a neatly made bed and a large window overlooking the tree city of the Kromagg world. As the audio of the environment came in, he heard a light tapping behind him, and he turned around.
Nexus Quinn was sitting at a cramped desk, with a laptop computer, typing up what John recognised to be sliding algorithms.
“Dammit, don’t do it, kid,” John pleaded, though he knew that was pointless. He needed to get Sherri to him right away.
Quinn let out a frustrated groan, as a box came up on the computer written in an unknown language.
“Come on…” Quinn mumbled, hitting a key.
John squinted at the strange text, and suddenly wished he’d gone on to complete his degree in ancient languages. Some of the symbols looked familiar, but he couldn’t recognise any pattern to them.
Phoenician alphabet, maybe. But not quite.
Quinn’s key pressing eventually cleared the dialogue, and he sighed, before reaching into his pocket and looking at the quartz crystal that John recognised all too well.
“Please, Quinn, don’t give that to them…”
The sound of a knock at the door startled both of them, and John watched Quinn frantically put the crystal back into his pocket before standing to open the door.
On the other side of the door stood, surprisingly, a human being. The man wore a military uniform just like the guys guarding Sherri, and John eyed the guy sceptically.
Is he using that cloaking ability?
Quinn’s notebook had described a Kromagg’s advanced mental abilities that allowed them to look like whatever they wanted others to see.
Reality distortion, like the leaper aura.
“The commander summons you, sir,” said the man. Nexus Quinn stretched, acting casual.
“Does he now? Tell him I’m busy.” He moved to close the door, and the soldier placed his foot in the way.
“It wasn’t a request, sir,” he said, making cold eye contact with Quinn. The self-assured Quinn didn’t flinch.
“That’s no way to treat a guest,” said Quinn, raising an eyebrow. “He did say I was a guest, did he not?”
The soldier stared him in the eye for a moment.
“I’ll go tell him you’re busy,” the man said, eyes narrowed, before turning and closing the door.
John followed him out, and as he walked down the corridor, he watched the soldier’s illusion dissipate, revealing the unmistakable head of a Kromagg.
Called it.
He followed the soldier to the end of the corridor, where he produced some sort of wireless keycard that he waved over a scanner. It accepted his pass, and he shot a quick glance in John’s direction before opening the door and entering.
He didn’t… sense me?
John continued to the door and peeked his head inside.
The room was a large, mostly empty office, with a floor-to-ceiling window stretching across the far side. The soldier approached a large desk, at which a Kromagg of a higher rank sat.
“Commander, the human has refused your summons.”
“I see.” The commander was silent for a moment, thinking. Then, he stood, turning toward the window.
“Continue to accommodate his insolence for the time being. He must complete his work, at all costs. We need those equations.”
John pursed his lips as he wondered why Quinn just hadn’t handed over the crystal to them. Their civilisation seemed more than advanced enough to retrieve the data from it.
He wants to keep the crystal for his own purposes, I guess.
“Yes, sir,” the soldier said.
The commander turned back around, and his eyes hovered at the door, near John, for just a moment, before resting on the soldier.
“Dismissed.”
John pulled back into the corridor, tapping into his handlink.
“Higgins, take me to Sherri.”
The hologram around him shifted immediately to a small bathroom, where several enslaved people were cleaning various surfaces in silence. Sherri, with some irony to the poor eyeless woman whose aura she was wearing, was wiping the mirror.
John, who wasn’t visible in the mirror, cleared his throat, prompting her to turn and give a relieved sigh. She looked around at the other toiling slaves momentarily, before meeting John’s eye.
“Hey.”
“You… good to talk?” John said, noticing with interest that none of the others in the bathroom had so much as looked up. “Higgins isn’t detecting any listening devices in range, but I see you have… company.”
Sherri pulled her rag away from the mirror, balling it up.
“I think these guys are used to just tuning out weird stuff happening around ’em. Have enough Kromagg mind games done to you and I guess this is the result.” She dumped the rag in the bucket on the floor next to her. “Did you find him?”
“I did,” he said, peering at his handlink, where Higgins had generated a 3D map of the immediate area. He turned it so she could see, and pointed at a red dot. “Okay, this is you.”
He zoomed out, revealing the forest city. Another red dot glowed in a tree nearby to the one Sherri was in. “Quinn’s in this building… uh, tree. Level fifty-three. He’s under pretty heavy guard. still thinks he holds all the cards, though.”
“How many thousands of ’maggs do you think stand between me and him?” Sherri moaned, cradling her temple. “This is a nightmare.”
John frowned. “Yeah, it’s… not great. I’ll get Higgins to run through some escape scenarios. Tracking changes to the original history is going to be a challenge, though.”
“Of course it is,” Sherri rolled her eyes. “What is it this time?”
“Well, Higgins receives the information by probing the parallel Earth in our present. He opens a wormhole there and scans for traces of internet and news wire. But in the Kromagg world; well, we don’t want them to trace the wormhole and expedite the invasion, do we?”
“Isn’t there anything Higgins can do to mask the trail?”
John pulled up Higgins’s report on the handlink, studying it closely. “He can reroute the probe through one or more layers of known barren parallel Earths to mask the trail. It’ll lag on our updates, though. So we need to be careful and not rush things.”
He wiped sweat from his brow. “But there are still obstacles. Namely, their written language is different to ours, and all of the pertinent info could be locked up in classified files.”
Sherri looked at him with a deflated frown. “Tell me you have some good news, too.”
“You could say the fact Quinn hasn’t handed over the data yet counts as good news. But we don’t have long.”
Sherri looked at the elderly lady’s sorry visage in the mirror. “In that case, get Higgins to hurry up on those scenarios.”
John gave another glance around the room. A middle-aged lady, mopping the floor. A teenage girl, scrubbing a toilet. A short woman with a long scar down her face, wiping a sink. Each had a listless, tired expression, like they had all faced such hardship that they could no longer allow themselves to feel anything.
The reality of this wretched world descended on him, and he felt sick to his stomach.
Is there nothing we can do for these people?
“Are they all like this?” he said, voice wavering.
Sherri leaned on a sink, looking down. “Almost. There was one guy who actually talked to me. Tim. Said he’s only been here a week.”
She pointed a thumb towards the mirror. “He’s with the men, cleaning the bathroom next door.”
John bit his lip as he considered the possibility of Sherri having an ally. “That’s a variable we may be able to work with. I’ll ask Higgins to factor him in on his scenarios.”
Sherri nodded. “Okay. How much do you think I should reveal to him?”
“Only as much as you have to. Who knows what kinda surveillance they’ve got around here. In your cell.”
Sherri gave him a hint of a nod, as she considered. “Alright. While Higgins is figuring things out, I need you to keep a close watch on Quinn.”
“Okay,” he said, swallowing hard. “You be strong, okay? Use all your senses and take mental notes.”
“Always,” she said, and held out her fist. John placed his against hers, and they momentarily passed through each other.
Then, with a tap of the handlink, he was back in Nexus Quinn’s little ‘guest room,’ overlooking the troublesome double, still typing away.
John found himself longing for the innocent days of Plan B.