6.10  ·  Reaching Out

In the Waiting Room, Quinn threw his double a bottle of iced tea, and sat back down beside him on the blue sofa.

“Let me see if I have this right: you find new tech on other Earths and register the patent back on your world?” Quinn leaned forward. “So you basically made a business out of stealing other people’s ideas for profit?”

Nexus Quinn gave him a hurt look through Sam’s face, as he cracked open the bottle.

“Well when you put it like that, it sounds downright unethical,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I merely engage in legitimate business dealings across dimensions. It’s capitalism.”

“I don’t disagree on that last point,” Quinn mused. “Thomas Edison would have loved you.”

“No doubt.”

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Quinn smirked. “So did you kiss my Wade before or after you started the affair with your Wade?”

Nexus Quinn gave a withering glare. “How many more ways to you plan to point out my character flaws?”

He took a swig of the tea.

“I’ve made a good, productive life for myself, and I live modestly. All round I’m happy with the way I’ve spent my time.”

“Except for the part where you were on Kromagg Death Row.”

“Except for that part. Yeah.”

Quinn brought a leg up over his knee. “I’ve been in a lot of situations that were just as dire, but I had friends to help me out of it. Why do you fly solo?”

Nexus Quinn leaned back, looking at the ceiling. He let out a breath.

“I don’t trust anyone else to make the right call. Too many variables to consider.” He frowned. “I don’t want to be worrying about anyone else getting into trouble in unknown environments.”

“You think having friends is a liability?” Quinn felt himself wondering what this Quinn’s life was like to bring him to such conclusions. “That’s a bleak worldview, man.”

Nexus Quinn met his eye, searching. “Who did you travel with, besides your brother?”

Oh, he doesn’t know, does he?

“Wade and Professor Arturo were the two I originally invited along…”

And then Remy got unlucky.

The double’s eyes widened. “Jeez, Old Man Windbag? Why him? He’d have slowed you down for sure.”

“The Professor was a great guy, saved our hides lots of times. What a shame you never gave him a chance.”

Nexus Quinn stiffened. “Was a great guy? So something happened to him? See, what’d I tell you?”

Quinn tore his gaze away from the smug face. “Actually, he was fine until the Kromaggs invaded my world. Sacrificed himself getting me here.”

It always comes back to you.

The younger Quinn shrunk away at this implication, and took a quiet drink as he digested the new information.

After a moment of thought, he turned to Quinn, biting his lip.

“I’m sorry. Guess I’ve been a reckless jerk.”

Quinn gave him a sad smile. “The two of us might be smart, but that doesn’t make us right all the time. We have blind spots, and it’s always helpful to have people there to point them out, so we don’t screw up.”

“So what do I do now?”

“You accept that this is out of your hands.”

Nexus Quinn screwed up his face. “That feels defeatist. Is there nothing I can do to help?”

At this point, there isn’t much, except…

“You could start by describing all you know about the ’maggs. Everything they told you, names of people in charge, what they already knew about sliding tech, any other info that might be useful. I can get you something to write on.”

“Okay, that’s better than sitting here biting my nails, I guess.”

As Quinn stood, he felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out, and saw an alarming text message from Colin.

“Oh my god. I gotta run.” He raised an eye to the ceiling. “Ziggy, could you take down any information he provides?”

With a sigh, Ziggy replied in the affirmative, as Quinn gave a distracted wave towards Nexus Quinn, and hightailed it out of the Waiting Room.

*          *          *

Thames looked groggily down the barrel of the Reality Lens, which John held as he looked back from the front seat of the SUV. In the driver’s seat was the buff Navy guy he understood to be Sam’s brother, Tom.

He shifted in his seat, as the chain of the cuffs on his wrists dug into the small of his back. His head was throbbing where Alia had clocked him one with his own gun.

“Fellas, I’m hungry. Can we stop at Burger King?” he said, with a flicker of fleeting hope that maybe they’d actually agree to the request. Next to him, he felt Alia’s eyes burning into him. She still held the gun on him, though the two of them knew it was hardly going to help if he did try to fight her or try to make a break for it.

“Who is this guy?” asked John, folding up the Lens. Before Alia could answer, Thames cut in.

“You can call me ‘Thames,’ though originally, that was just my screen name on AOL when I was fifteen. Well, the full screen name was ‘Thames6969,’ but I digress.” He threw a look to Alia, and she raised her eyebrows as if it was the first she’d heard of that. “Stuck when I moved in hacker circles and nobody gave their real names.”

He laughed. “Was about eight years before I found out that it’s not pronounced phonetically. Imagine my embarrassment.”

“We should’ve gagged him,” Tom said flatly, without shifting his gaze from the road.

Thames leaned over, getting a better view of John. “Hey, you’re a Sam, right? How would you like to help a guy wriggle out from under the thumb of a megalomaniacal computer? I bet you could earn some new boy scout patches.”

John narrowed his eyes.

“Why should any of us trust you?”

Thames glanced over at Alia, who was looking at him smugly.

“Aliaaaa,” he said, pouting, “tell them what I did for you! Zoey isn’t here right now.”

Alia let out a breath, and popped open the gun’s cylinder, displaying it to John.

“He did empty this thing and pretended it was loaded when I got a hold of it. He got captured on purpose.”

“Yeah, well,” John said, “that doesn’t mean this wasn’t some elaborate plan. I’ve read the reports about you guys.”

“See?” said Alia, gesturing to John. “There are limits to a Sam’s mercy.”

Thames squeezed his eyes shut, letting his shoulders slump. “Look, lemme make this easy for you. You figure out some way to help me escape, and in the meantime you can keep me locked up as tight as you damn well please. You just can’t let Zoey know.”

“And she could be anywhere,” Alia added with a frown.

“Then, in what sense is that making things easy?” John said, exasperated.

“You’re the brainiac, my dude.” He shrugged. “But you’d better work fast, ’cause if I’m in chains for too long, Zoey will be making sure the Cryin’ Man’s gonna have a few new tears in his ’fro, if you get the picture.”

“I literally hate this clown,” said Tom, scowling. Thames responded with a wiggle of his eyebrows. Unfortunately for Thames, Tom’s eyes were firmly on the road, and the reaction went unheeded.

John pursed his lips. “What’s she gonna do to him?”

Thames looked him in the eye, dropping his light and breezy attitude in favour of a grave stare. “What did the ’maggs do to Sherri?”

John went pale, and turned away.

Thames shifted forward, digging a knee into John’s seat.

“My Brother in Christ, I do not want that shit to happen to him either, okay? You know that pain is gonna leak through to me. So you being a bro and helping is a win-win.”

He leaned to one side, letting his head fall onto Alia’s shoulder.

“Alia, trash TV or not, these past few weeks have been… relaxing. I had so much time to think.” He peered up at her, giving his best puppy dog look. “You’ve been the Timmy to my Tabitha: healed my rotten heart and taught me the value of love and kindness.”

Alia pushed his head away. “Stop it. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you come out with things like that?”

He sighed, manoeuvring his body back to a seated position, and looked out the window, into the inky night.

After a moment of silence, his peripheral vision caught a new presence in the back seat, between him and Alia.

Damn, Zoey. Don’t you ever sleep?

He rolled his eyes, before turning to face the hologram, whose eyes were looking him up and down.

“So, how do you expect to get your hands on those crystals now?” she said tersely.

Thames snorted. “You tell me; you’re the all-seeing hologram.”

He felt the mood in the SUV tense up as they all realised who’d butted in. Alia fell back against her seat with a groan.

Zoey gave him the side-eye. “You might have exercised a little more discretion there, Thames.”

“What’s the damn point keeping it under wraps now?” Thames said flatly.

He nodded towards John. “He’s been a hologram.”

He nodded towards Alia. “And she’s been your leaper. Everybody knows you’re hanging round like a bad smell, Z-Dog.”

“Thames, I don’t think you realise how patient I’ve been with you all these weeks,” said Zoey. Her voice was tempered, but Thames could feel the burning anger oozing from her words. “While you were incognito, I allowed you enough slack to operate without drawing any undue attention, given the import of the mission. Now that you’ve been discovered, I’m under no such obligation. Particularly if you insist on announcing my presence to these fools.”

Thames rolled his head toward her. “You asked me a question. I answered.”

She leaned in close to him. “Consider yourself warned, Thames. Lothos is working on ways for you to complete your mission, but frankly he thinks you’ve been dragging your feet. Need I remind you of what happens when you fail?”

Thames’s gaze dropped as Zoey continued to stare at him.

“I know.”

“And I trust you’re going to stop calling me that demeaning nickname, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Zoey.”

“Good boy.”