Wild-Side
I woke up lying on an anachronistic wheeled gurney, at least by the standards of the Seeley. The blankets draped across me were made of a material that felt like a cotton and wool blend. While this reminded me of home, it was unlike anything I had experienced during my hundreds of Wild-Side trips. I also noted two other key points. First, I was still naked—or maybe naked again? Umm, and second—I was completely clean.
Both observations were disconcerting because a third point surfaced in my mind… I didn’t know how I’d ended up in this bunk. My last memory was teleporting to a strange white room on the Airbike with Piper.
After that…
Piper slipped through the narrow gap in the hanging privacy curtain, and I watched as it sealed itself behind her. Aside from that neat little trick, the curtain reminded me of those draping the beds in every emergency room I had ever visited. Here, at least, I wasn’t surrounded by a chorus of chirping and beeping medical devices. With only a tall nightstand and a stool, it was just me and the bed. “Welcome back,” Piper said. Although her words were succinct and her tone upbeat, the concern in her pinched expression was unmistakable. “Nap time finally over?”
I felt she was asking the wrong person. “How did I get here?” I tried to push myself higher against the slight incline of the bed but discovered I had little strength for the effort.
Piper swiped at something in her private AR display and quickly turned her attention back to me. “I’m bringing your tech back up to full, but at incremental levels. Your strength will return.” Her eyes shifted to the empty space over my bed, and I knew she was reviewing information only she could see. “Your diagnostics are out of the red…finally. You should be on your feet in a matter of hours.”
I rubbed my eyes against the migraine that was gaining steady traction behind my right eye. “I’m gone for a few days, and you got your PhD in nanotechnology?”
Piper eyed me silently for a couple of painfully long seconds. She pulled the stool close to the bed and sat with my hands firmly in hers. I watched as her other hand moved slowly up and down my forearm, her gaze seemingly focused on her fingertips as they shifted the hair on my arm. Her eyes grew moist, and I observed her throat move as she swallowed silently a couple of times before speaking.
“Then it was just a couple of days for you?” She said finally.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t understand what she was trying to tell me or what she was trying to ask. I finally just nodded.
Piper looked me in the eye, her gaze heavy with tears that had yet to break free and fall. “Gray. I haven’t seen you in almost five months. I thought you had been captured or killed.”
I didn’t understand what she was saying, but her expression clearly conveyed the pain of the experience. Given the uncertainty of our situation, it was evident that I had missed a lot. Then, there was the proliferation of the Elend. I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I simply sat and pulled her into my arms.
That’s when the tears flowed freely. Although she didn’t make a sound, she shuddered with deep sobs. All I could do was hold her and absorb that tension and fear. To her, I’d been gone for so long. Clearly, much had happened. She’d been left behind in a strange land—one filled with monsters.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a weary voice said from a dozen paces away. It was Doc Cormac, watching us over the top of his glasses with tired, bloodshot eyes. I sensed he had been there for a while, likely unwilling to disrupt this long-overdue moment. “Should I come back later?”
I felt Piper’s warm breath on my neck. She kissed me on the cheek and gently pulled away. I heard an exhausted wheeze that sounded like a laugh and felt her wipe hot, wet tears from my neck and collarbone. I’m not sure all of them were hers.
“It’s okay, Doc,” she said. “No time like the present.”
Doctor Cormac pulled another stool into my…cocoon? I’m not sure what to call it, but watching the curtain seal itself behind him seemed like an appropriate name. While it was far more efficient than the curtains used around beds back home, this automation was creepy. “I reviewed the diagnostic report on the way over,” he said. “I agree with your estimates for recovery time and the adjustments needed to prevent this parasitic response in the future.” He shifted on the stool and sighed as he looked me in the eye deliberately. “Very glad to have you back, by the way. You were sorely missed.”
I had a lot of questions at that moment, but the phrase parasitic response instantly moved to the top of my list. Unfortunately, Piper seemed to think my absence was a higher priority and beat me to the punch with her own concerns.
“Only a couple of days passed for Gray,” she said, leveling a sharp glare at Cormac.
Cormac appeared ready to speak, but this statement caused him to pause, his mouth half-open in preparation. He was so caught off guard that he didn’t move for two or three seconds. Finally, he closed his mouth and lowered his head. He seemed to gaze at the floor when he spoke. “Days?” he said in a quiet voice. “How many?”
Piper looked at me. I thought I had already explained this, but it occurred to me that I hadn’t been specific. “Five or six? I’m not sure. I was running without sleep, so it started to blur together. I wasn’t feeling well, either. I think I was coming down with something, but it could have been the fatigue. I was feverish and lightheaded a lot of the time near the end of it.”
As I said it, I began to wonder why I wasn’t more concerned about it when it was happening. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been sick. Even when I’d been stabbed or run through by an Elend, I didn’t feel that bad. I wasn’t firing on all cylinders, that was for sure.
“It clarifies what was missing in the diagnostic logs,” Piper said.
This drew Cormac’s gaze away from the floor. He nodded quickly. “Absolutely. It’s what you and Tripp theorized, just on a larger scale since he wasn’t sleeping and because the offset was much larger than we ever considered.”
Piper was nodding. She was conversing with Cormac using technical jargon that I’d never heard, and at speeds I couldn’t maintain. They were animated and seemed to be making progress on whatever thought process they were pursuing, so I was hesitant to interrupt. But when I heard the phrase “parasitic response,” yet again, I had to speak up.
“What does that mean?” I asked, interrupting their fast-paced conversation. “What’s this parasitic response you’ve mentioned a few times? Did I catch a bug?”
Doctor Cormac removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes slowly. “In a way,” he said, his tone weary. “But it was a bug we gave you inadvertently.” To my surprise, he signaled to Piper to continue the explanation. I think this is when it hit me for the first time just how much Wild-Side had impacted her.
I would soon discover how much she had impacted Wild-Side.
“Like all the tech here,” Piper began, “the nanotech draws power from various sources. In the cities, there are wireless power emitters broadcasting energy. It’s similar to how we use radio waves back home. Almost everywhere we go, we’re surrounded by radio waves in one form or another. Some broadcast on a certain channel. It doesn’t matter; there’s always someone broadcasting somewhere. Here, it’s the same thing… except it’s not music, talk radio, or NPR. It’s energy. Ubiquitous, clean energy. Free for everyone. It’s just the way it is.”
“Except in the dead zones,” I said.
Piper nodded. “That’s why Seeley technology doesn’t work there. However, you addressed the issue when you showed Tripp our battery technology. It was a workaround to keep your machine operational in areas where their technology typically struggled.”
I smiled. “Tripp said it was extremely inefficient.”
Piper rolled her eyes. “Wait until you see what he’s done with it while you were gone.” She waved her hands at the overhead lighting and then instantiated two AR displays into a shared space above the middle of my bed. They showcased my medical stats and what I could only guess were similar technical vitals for my nanosystems. “All of this right now?” She laughed. “Would you believe we’re in the middle of one of the oldest known dead zones?”
I rubbed at my temple and the migraine beneath it. “Clearly, I’ve missed a lot.”
Piper spread her hands and pulled the AR display closer. She expanded the skeletal view of my head until it was twice the size of a basketball. After a few quick adjustments, a glowing pink mass became visible behind my right eye. “There it is,” she said. “Once you’re back to one hundred percent, the autonomous algorithms will kick in. Until then, your tech needs a little manual guidance.” She tapped the pink mass with her fingers and adjusted a nearby slider on the interface. The pain behind my eye instantly began to diminish.
“The nanotech is distributed throughout your entire body,” Piper explained. “It was designed to draw power like everything else on Wild-Side, from the ubiquitous energy surrounding…everything. Like everything else, the tech loses power when you’re in the dead zones. Still, it’s not typically a problem for nanotech because, in aggregate, the nanites carry enough juice to keep themselves running for days. Long enough that it has never been an issue before. Plus, they gain a fair amount of power from your body. Motion, nutrients, and all the body’s biological processes supplement the tech. Since the nanites are designed to pull power from different sources, they are resilient.
“What no one ever really considered was what would happen if you didn’t return to Wild-Side for an extended time. Since you got the tech, you’ve been bouncing back here every night, or at least every other night. It’s been more than enough to maintain a balance.”
“Until I didn’t,” I said.
“Until you didn’t return for several days,” Piper said. Judging by the expression on her face, something had just occurred to her. “What happened? What kept you from coming back?”
“Fulbright.” A sharp pain spiked behind my eye again, but Piper quickly alleviated the discomfort. “He underwent the experimental treatment and entered a coma. From what I can gather, I think he might have crossed over—only, unlike me, he didn’t take his body. I had to place him on life support and hide him somewhere safe. If Breslin’s people back home find him, he’ll be much closer to discovering how to bring his creatures into Our-World.”
Cormac suddenly appeared both excited and uncomfortable. “Do you think one of your people crossed over?”
I shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. That’s not how it works for me. He apparently lobotomized himself. We experienced similar atmospheric effects, which makes me think something related occurred. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Cormac sat on the edge of his chair. “I think we’re more than halfway to making sense of things,” he said quietly. “This could explain why the offset has shifted so dramatically.” I was about to ask a question, but he stopped me by raising a hand. “You’ve been coming here for some time,” he said, glancing at me. “There was consistency in your visits, and during that time, only you and Breslin could move between Branes. Based on this, we established the offset. It wasn’t completely consistent, but I believe the inconsistency we experience is directly related to when you and Breslin are on or off a given Brane simultaneously. Since Breslin’s location is largely unknown, it’s been difficult to validate the theory.
“Now, though, Piper is here. If my theory is correct, that will impact the offset. There are three people affecting the natural balance between Branes and, therefore, the offset. Your absence for this long,” he said again, meeting my eye, “added support to my suspicion that some form of natural balance was being disturbed. But if Doctor Fulbright has crossed over as well? The calculus becomes even more complex. Add to that your going days without sleep? We’re dealing with far too many variables. There’s simply no way to determine how long it will be before you bounce back to your Brane or how much time will pass here by the time you return next.”
I shook my head. The offset was bad enough, but the parasitic response seemed to be the more immediate concern. Understanding that would be key to remaining functional if I was away from Wild-Side for an extended period of time. “You said my tech could draw power from different sources. Why was being away longer a problem if that’s the case?”
Feeling more uncomfortable, Cormac opened his mouth to speak but hesitated before voicing his thoughts. “When it can’t draw zero-point energy here, the nanotech in your body wasn’t able to identify additional sources to maintain coherence,” he said at last. “When that happened, it resorted to drawing chemical energy. In this case, your own biology.” He paused once more. “It became, in essence, parasitic.”
Super.
Piper placed her hand on my arm. “But now that we understand it, we can correct it. There’s no shortage of energy at your disposal back home. We just need to teach your tech how to use it.” She suddenly looked uncomfortable at the end of her statement, so I waited for her to clarify it. “Well,” she added with a sheepish expression, “to be honest, that modification will fall on Esker. We can provide the problem statement. He’ll need to adjust your tech once you’ve crossed back. The information needed to make those adjustments isn’t available to us on this side.”
I had at least a dozen questions, but the more I considered Piper’s words, the more they made sense. She was suggesting what I assumed to be a highly technical adjustment to my onboard tech. That would require a high degree of precision. If my nanotech couldn’t access zero-point energy on our Brane the same way it did here, it suggested there was some subtle—if not fundamental—difference in the laws of physics that shifted between Branes.
It was a technically slippery slope I wasn’t qualified to navigate.
“Got it,” I replied. “Esker is going to flash my firmware.”
Cormac’s brows arched, and his gaze drifted slowly between me and Piper. Confusion was written across his face. Piper grinned and nodded. “Pretty much,” she said with a reassuring nod toward Cormac, indicating that I was grasping the point they were trying to make. I don’t think Cormac understood, but he blinked, hesitated, and shrugged it off.
The issue seemed to be resolved.
Over the next two days, Piper gave a tour of Garwin. The underground city was expansive, though somewhat primitive by Seeley standards. This was because the facility was the first complex their people used before branching out to expand their presence across the continent. Once their first above-ground city was constructed, the Seeley never looked back. The other four cities followed just a dozen years later, and Garwin was largely forgotten. I found only a brief mention of the underground first city in Seeley historical records shortly after meeting Cormac and earning his trust.
Oddly, references to the city suggested it had been abandoned due to flooding and the facility’s location in a geologically unstable region. The city had been mothballed. Although it had suffered from centuries of neglect, it was no longer flooded, and the damage from that event and time seemed to have been repaired. As Piper had explained, it seemed more likely that those with influence over the Seeley had simply led their people to above-ground cities, allowing the first underground city to slip into obscurity.
Needless to say, this struck me as odd. A race of people only a single generation old willing to relegate their first home to history, all of them unclear about the fate of that first home, felt alien. This seemed to complement the fact that they didn’t know where they’d come from—other than that they were the Seeley, and Wild-Side was their home.
Piper shared my views. After spending months among these people, she immersed herself in their science-based culture. Finally, she understood everything I had tried to explain about them since I first told her about my ability to Cross back when I unexpectedly disappeared from her bed shortly after we had met.
“I can’t believe you finally got them to approve the perimeter guns,” I said after Piper showed me the line of camouflaged Gatling guns near the entrances to the underground city. “I tried for months. There was endless resistance.”
It was nearly midnight, and there was no moon. Piper was guiding me through patches of tangled thorn bramble. This part of the continent didn’t have much tree cover. The ground was cluttered with shrubs that ranged in size from a washing machine to a small two-story house. They resembled thick tangles of vines, with little leaves wreathing the twisted strands. It was the first type of vegetation I’d encountered here that wasn’t equivalent back home.
“I think your disappearance prompted even the most reserved to truly open their eyes,” Piper said as she guided me through the night. “Even your critics were depending on you to handle the Elend. When you vanished, they saw it as a wake-up call.” She paused and looked at me. “It’s true. I witnessed it firsthand.”
When I returned, something had undoubtedly changed. The people who had gone out of their way to avoid me no longer seemed to make the effort. In the cafeteria, I received no more accusatory glares from countless judging faces. But it was more than that. The group as a whole was behaving differently. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it… though that might have been due to my lack of effort. I had long since given up even trying to reach out.
I was tired of falling short. The Seeley, by and large, were a stubborn people set in their ways. I had been dealing with a race so averse to change that they would rather let the Elend whittle away at their numbers than choose to stand up and fight.
“You finally made it through,” Piper said. “It just happened when you weren’t paying attention.”
I didn’t understand.
“You introduced them to art, music, and film—every form of creativity they lacked. You helped broaden their horizons.”
“I tried,” I said with a shrug. “Almost all of them ignored what I had to offer. Wasted effort.”
Piper laughed, looped her arm through mine, and encouraged me to walk slowly. She rested her head on my shoulder as we strolled. “It wasn’t wasted,” she murmured. I could feel the warmth of her body next to mine, and it felt like home in so many ways. “Do you think the Seeley are any less curious than our people?”
I took it as a rhetorical question, so I didn’t reply. The truth is, I didn’t know what to think. The Seeley were fiercely intelligent, and I knew that without question. A few, like Cormac and his team, were inquisitive as well. But the rest had resisted every effort to bond with them or inspire them. They’d even resisted efforts to empower them to defend themselves and their neighbors. I’d reached out to them intellectually, emotionally, and logically. Every attempt had failed.
“All they needed was time,” Piper continued.
“Time has always been our greatest disadvantage. That and patience. I was never known for my patience.”
“Meaning?”
“Does it feel like people are different around you since you’ve been back?” I glance over to see her peering into my eye.
“Reading my mind again?”
Piper laughed. “Your data dumps became the talk of the town in your absence. Everyone was buzzing about it. Listen to this…watch that…what do you think about this or that? All that intellectual property you took from Our-World? It actually has a massive impact over here. It just took a little time.”
We were walking again. I didn’t know what to say. “Really? That, along with me being gone.”
“That too,” she admitted. “I think a fair number of folks were already looking through your data. They just didn’t admit it until you were gone. When you disappeared, people were unsettled. That upset got them talking. When they started talking, they needed a way to express their unease. I think that brought them back to what you left.”
“And?”
“I’ve seen people sketching,” Piper said. “A couple of people were trying to paint—Tripp has been approached twice to make musical instruments.”
I stopped walking and gazed at Piper. Her eyes were wide and sparkled with amusement. “You did that,” she laughed. “Well, you and the material you stole and smuggled here.”
Nodding, I said, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, steal.”
Adopting a suddenly serious expression, Piper stepped closer and shook her head with a frown of concern. “But seriously, Gray. What were you thinking when you gave them access to all that porn? We need to talk about it.”
I exhaled slowly. “That didn’t go over too well? It was a gamble,” I admitted. As I bought time for a more thoughtful response, I noticed a change in the vegetation. An open patch of bare dirt lay between a trio of similarly shaped, school bus-sized shrubs.
She leaned in close and brought her mouth near my ear. “Worse. It’s like a city full of teenagers discovering their naughty bits for the first time. They can’t seem to decide if they want to play with themselves or with each other. These people are adults, yet they’re behaving like hormonal teens.” She glared at me. “What were you thinking?”
Grinning, I didn’t know what to say. Never sure what to expect, this wasn’t it. At some point, I started laughing. I think it was the mental picture of what she’d been dealing with while I’d been gone. It must have been…unique.
“These people,” Piper began, “were as innocent as newly fallen snow. Do you know what you turned them into?”
I was still laughing.
“It’s not funny. From an anthropological perspective, do you understand the impact you’ve had on the developmental trajectory of this society?”
I nodded. “Hopefully, I’ve pulled the stick out of its collective ass. This place is a study in repression.”
With that statement, Piper really glared at me. “Personally, I’m tempted to agree with you. Professionally, do you think imposing your values on an entire society is right?”
Wait…
“My values? I brought them insights into creativity through exposure to art and music.”
With her hands on her hips, Piper was already shaking her head. “Maybe they would’ve developed that on their own in another hundred—” Her eyes shifted to the side as if deep in thought. “Well, maybe a couple of hundred years.”
“If they live that long,” I countered. “With the Elend threat, they can’t last. I needed to accelerate their development so they could see what they’re missing. They needed something to fight for. I wanted to infuse their humanity with a sense of purpose. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.”
“Yes,” she replied, exasperated. “But why is it your responsibility to try?”
Meeting her gaze, I said, “It’s the same reason I came here in the first place. You’re asking a question I can’t answer. Whether it’s bad luck or good, I’m here, and it feels like I’m the only chance these people have.” I reconsidered that last statement and placed my hands on her shoulders. “Well, now it’s you and me. For once, I’m not feeling so alone.”
Something about that took the wind out of Piper’s sails. She froze with her mouth open, ready to deliver a retort, her eyes locked with mine. I watched as they pinched. Something was about to happen…I just had no idea what. Only a dozen heartbeats later, those eyes filled with tears, and her mouth closed so tightly that her jaw clacked.
Not knowing what to say, I said nothing. I just waited.
Piper heaved a shuddering breath. “You and I?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “We’re in this together?”
Nodding, I said, “I hope so. I accidentally brought you here, but you’re clearly better at all of this than I am. I’m lost without you—both here and in the real world. I hope you know that.”
I haven’t a clue what happened next. It was the best missing time of my life, though. The next thing I knew, she was in my arms and her mouth on mine. For once I said something the way I meant it, and it’s a good thing because something about our relationship changed in that moment. Years later, that instant stands out in my mind—it was one of those pivotal points in our story. Don’t get me wrong. Regardless of that moment, we would have gotten to where we ended up. It just would have happened somewhere else and somewhen else. We were ready.
I just know I wouldn’t change anything about that instant.
“So, seriously,” Piper said as we walked back to the entrance of the underground elevator. “Do I need to worry about all that porn? From what I understand, there was a lot.”
I laughed. “So you’re concerned, but you never even looked at it?” I shook my head, debating whether to use this to provoke her. Given the moment we’d just experienced, I thought better of it. It was best to be straightforward. “I used a curator for that.”
“Wait, what?”
“Your buddy Jimmy Kell from school,” I clarified. “He was always into that kind of stuff, remember?”
She appeared confused but eventually nodded. I could tell she recalled more than one conversation about Jimmy’s preferences from back in the day.
“He’s working for some big website now. Apparently, they aggregate that content. It’s all categorized, classified, and tagged based on dozens of criteria. When I told him I needed material for a friend’s sex training boot camp, he only asked for filtering criteria. He provided terabytes of…material.”
Piper appeared stunned. “Do I even want to know what criteria you used?”
I shrugged. “To your point, I didn’t want to traumatize these people. It’s nothing too kinky or wild. The idea was to provide them with a kickstart guide to help them get going. There’s nothing there that should require trauma therapy. Training wheels. You know?”
She didn’t seem happy with this answer, but she was content to let the matter go. “Jimmy was a weird guy. Are you sure he didn’t put anything strange in there just to mess with people?”
I pointed to the trio of oblong trees evenly spaced around the patch of earth where we were standing. Kicking the dirt, I said, “I think there’s something buried here.”
Looking confused at first, Piper stared at the dirt for a long moment before scanning the inky darkness around us. She pointed at one of the bushes I had noticed; it was at our eleven o’clock position. Then she moved to direct my attention to the matching one at our five o’clock. Tilting her head toward the third, she said, “Good eye. The vent for the city’s power generation system is under our feet. I guess it was a geothermal system from their earliest days, mothballed when they harnessed zero-point energy.”
Lacy led us through a series of plain concrete corridors deep beneath even the city’s lowest level. “The technology was crude,” she explained as we walked. “It’s inefficient compared to our current power sources.” The path turned sharply, and she selected the new hall with just a brief pause to check her bearings. “Geothermal energy is still common on your world?”
Piper nodded. “One of our most reliable and cost-effective sources of power.”
Lacy nodded while waving a hand vaguely in the direction we were moving. “It powered this entire city for over a decade,” she said, her tone carrying a sense of resignation.
As we stepped into a lobby-like space with ten-foot-tall concrete walls, we eyed the wide silver door at the center. It stood about ten feet tall and was equally broad. The steel surface gleamed dully under the beams of our flashlights. It resembled a combination of a bank vault door and a blast door. A tablet-sized touch screen was mounted at shoulder height along the left edge.
Lacy placed her hand against the small panel. A dull glow pulsed slowly in response to her touch. “Access was tightly controlled even back then,” she explained. “It wasn’t for security. The chamber beyond the door is under tremendous pressure at times. Someone breaching this seal at the wrong moment could seriously damage the bedrock beneath the city’s lowest level.”
“Pressure?” I said.
A chime signaled, and Lacy stepped away from the door. A hiss was audible as the seal parted between the door and its frame in the wall. “No one has been in here for—” she paused and tilted her head in consideration. “Well, it’s been hundreds of years at the very least.”
The door swung open quietly on automated hinges that seemed quite sturdy. It was approximately two feet thick and appeared to be made of steel. Together, the three of us stepped into the doorway and directed our lights into the dark emptiness.
“Give me a minute,” Lacy said as she turned and stepped backward down a wide ladder at the base of the door. It was nearly invisible in the darkness.
Her head was the last to disappear into the space as she descended the ladder. Her movement on the rungs created a hollow sound that seemed to help me perceive the expanse of space beyond the door. There was a scraping sound, a thud, and then Lacy said, “Oh, right. Here.” She appeared to be fumbling in the darkness.
A pale glow emitted from high above in the space. It slowly grew in intensity, likely allowing our eyes to adjust to the change with minimal discomfort. As the light increased and spread, we started to grasp the expansive cavern beyond the vault door.
“Holy crap,” Piper muttered just before the light reached its full intensity. Even at its brightest setting, the illumination felt like only half of what was used indoors throughout the city. The vast cavern had glossy black walls that seemed to absorb the light.
“This is the pressure chamber,” Lacy said after Piper and I descended the same ladder she had used. She directed her light beam at the floor beneath our feet before kneeling to run her fingertips along the surface. “Do you feel the texture?”
Piper and I bent down and ran our hands over the uneven surface of the floor.
“That finish,” Piper said slowly. “It’s not stone.”
I shook my head. “No. But there’s a consistency to it. Some kind of coating over the rock?” It was a guess. I had never seen—or felt—anything like it. The surface of the rock beneath us felt man-made.
“Compression chambers,” Lacy explained. “They are randomly sized and spaced in a roughly honeycomb pattern. Each chamber varies in size, with the largest being about half the size of a grain of rice and the smallest exactly one-third the size of the largest.”
I directed the light’s cone of illumination across the floor and up the wall at the base of the vault door. The pale light was dull enough that my beam provided definition, showing a visible cone in the faint glow of the space. The walls were constructed from the same engineered material as the floor.
When I turned back, Piper shone deeper into the expansive cavern. Although the glare faded into darkness about a dozen feet away, my eyes had adjusted. The cavern’s distant wall was roughly a hundred yards straight ahead, while the ceiling loomed nearly a hundred feet overhead. I noticed the cavern floor slanted downward and further underground to my right, whereas the opposite direction tilted more steeply toward the surface.
Following my upward gaze, Lacy explained, “Fifty yards that way, the cavern narrows sharply into a tunnel about thirty feet in diameter. It extends all the way to the surface and ends at a retractable panel beneath that patch of earth you can see in the shrubs. It’s an emergency pressure release and has thankfully never been used. That panel is exactly as thick as the door,” she pointed to the still-open vault door set into the nearest wall, fifteen feet above our heads.
“That way,” she pointed to the yawning darkness where the cavern appeared to descend even further into the bedrock. “Leads to the magma chamber. It’s about a quarter-mile walk from here, though the chamber is small compared to this,” she said, waving her hand in the direction of the immediate ceiling. “The premise was simple. An automated system would adjust valves over the surface of the molten pit to control the heat entering this chamber. Hundreds of tiny valves placed throughout this larger chamber regulate the release of aerosolized water. With these two systems, an automated mechanism gently raises and lowers the pressure within this chamber. The honeycomb of cells embedded in every inch of every surface generates a tiny electric current in response to the pressure fluctuations. That power flows from the cavern into batteries located elsewhere in the facility.”
Piper and I exchanged brief glances before our eyes shifted to various spots in the cavern. There had to be millions of square feet of the honeycombed material overall.
“Each tiny cell generates a small amount of current in response to even the slightest change in air pressure,” Lacy explained. “The chamber as a whole has been engineered to shift pressure constantly between optimal tolerances. Essentially, the walls, floor, and ceiling surfaces generate a massive amount of aggregate energy at a consistent rate.”
Everywhere I looked, it felt like I was seeing a different version of Wild-Side. People weren’t avoiding me; well, they were still avoiding me, but they didn’t go out of their way to do it. When they stepped aside, they did it while meeting my gaze. The whispers behind my back were noticeably different, too. Everything about the experience was less hostile or dismissive. It felt as if they were reevaluating me, unsure of what to say or do after keeping me at arm’s length for so long.
“Do you think they’re really acting differently?” Piper asked as she led me through a door at the far end of the cafeteria. We both glanced over our shoulders and saw dozens of eyes following us silently as we walked. “Never mind,” she said. “I get it.”
Tripp had something interesting he needed to show us. Apparently, there was some urgency, so Piper showed me a shortcut to the lab that Tripp and Cormac had set up somewhere deep in the heart of the underground facility. The urgency expressed in his request was concerning, but the expressions I saw on everyone we passed were disconcerting. It served as a constant reminder of just how long I’d been gone, and likewise, how things had changed in my absence.
“You think you get it,” I grumbled. “For months, most of these people acted like all the problems were due to my presence. Then I’m gone for a while, and they finally start to see that I’ve been trying to help?” I was frustrated, but in reality, it was tempered with a degree of respect for how everyone on Wild-Side had had their lives turned upside down. The Elend posed a direct threat to their entire existence.
Who could relate better than me?
Piper’s hand slipped into mine as we walked. She leaned in close, her voice lowering. “When I get home, I’ll be able to write a doorstop of a book based on what I’ve learned here. Anthropologically speaking, these people are truly one of a kind. Their society developed without any central religious component. Do you realize how unique that is?”
The question made my stomach flip-flop, and it took me a moment to unpack exactly which part of the statement had caused my gears to grind. How Piper had landed on Wild-Side remained a mystery, and I worried that getting her home again might be an even more significant challenge. But after pondering it for a few strides while we continued down the underground corridor, I realized my consternation was based on another part of the statement. “You would publish? I mean, about your experience here?” I didn’t know how to feel about that.
She glanced at me sideways and gave a subtle shrug. “It’s not like I gave it much thought,” she admitted. “What we’re witnessing? It’s unprecedented. No one has ever encountered a people like the Seeley. There’s so much to explore—not just what’s happening now, but what they are—why they are. They’re like a pristine, unblemished society that’s as close to utopia as anyone can imagine. Well,” she waved her free hand in the air to indicate the stark white walls of the underground hallway and, presumably, the unusual living conditions tied to them. “Current apocalypse notwithstanding, of course.”
She was right in too many ways. This point had been swirling in my mind the more I thought about the artifacts quietly stashed away in that undisclosed location with the blue orb.
We traversed half a dozen halls and took two elevator rides before reaching Tripp’s lab. We stepped through the sliding security doors into the sterile environment with its ubiquitous white walls, glossy floors, and stainless steel counters and tables. I was surprised to find most of the core team present. Doc Cormac sat slouched in an ergonomic chair on wheels. Lacy perched on the end of a metal counter that was completely devoid of equipment. Tripp stood close beside her, absentmindedly wringing his hands. Wes was at the back of the room, packing pieces of some complicated technical gear into a protective crate. He looked up when we entered and offered a tired half-smile. Everyone wore expressions of exhaustion while trying to convey warmth. Their smiles were mere shadows of those I’d seen in the past, hinting at either fear or trepidation. This sight was enough to freeze Piper and me in our tracks.
“This isn’t going to be good news,” was all I could think to say.
Cormac stood and waved us into the room. “Actually, it’s very good news.” The smile that crossed his face was genuine for the first time since we entered. Still, the expressions of everyone else tempered his enthusiasm.
Wes called Tripp to the back of the room, and the two of them pulled a large component from another crate. I had been wrong. He wasn’t securing gear; he had been unpacking it. They quickly lifted a curved beam in a half-moon shape and attached it horizontally to a pair of stanchions.
“Some new information was included in the recent transmission from Esker,” Cormac explained. “He made an interesting observation. We need to conduct more precise scans to reconcile the telemetry we’ve already reviewed from the logs on our end.” By saying our end, of course, he was referring to Wild-Side.
I knew this was the cause of the distress I was seeing in everyone present. Piper clearly did too. She stepped slowly forward, her hands balled into fists at her sides. “What did you find?”
Cormac’s gaze shifted from Piper to me, then back and forth once more. The seconds of silence felt suffocating. I knew that what came next had the potential to change the game; it was just a matter of how and for whom.
“It would be better if we completed the scan first,” Cormac said in a low, dry tone.
Piper turned to me. “All of this,” she said—her eyes were already growing thick with tears. “Is it making you sick?”
I swallowed and tried to maintain a confident expression. The idea didn’t surprise me. What I was doing certainly wasn’t normal. I always thought it would get me killed one day. The thought that it could lead to a medical condition—a potentially fatal one—had never been far from my mind. Nodding toward Cormac, I said, “They’re worried about more than just me. This is bigger.”
Wes said the scanner was ready, so I approached the device. The curved bar began to hum, and everyone in the room retreated to the farthest wall. Then, the bar took a few seconds to perform what I was told was a calibration routine. It descended to the bottom of the frame from which it had been suspended. Slowly and methodically, the bar passed from my feet to my head, then returned to my feet again. It stopped at the floor, and the skeletal machine fell silent.
“You can step away now,” Tripp said.
Doc Cormac was already standing at the counter near the center of the room, manipulating a complex diagnostic display in shared AR space. He swiped and flipped through screens too quickly for me to grasp what I was seeing. The information was so technical that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d done it more slowly. After about thirty seconds, he paused the rapid screen switching. A thick horizontal progress bar hung in space for everyone to observe.
My gaze shifted to Piper, and she met my eyes. Through unspoken understanding, we both recognized that whatever everyone was worried about depended on the information conveyed by that single progress bar. All we could do was wait. Somehow, this made the progress indicator seem to drag on.
Piper’s hand found mine as I wrapped my arms around her. With my attention on her, I didn’t care how long the bar took or what sort of news it brought. My focus was on her eyes and the pouty curve of her lips. In that moment, it didn’t matter where I was or what was happening, as long as we were together.
A chime sounded, and it felt like the entire room began to breathe again. Piper and I turned back to the room. “Will you finally tell us what the hell this is all about?”
Cormac waved his hand, and the AR display vanished. He leaned against the counter. When he removed his glasses and wiped his tired eyes, he appeared to sag physically. “We know how to send you both back home. Esker figured out how to control the Transition.”
“Freaking hell,” I bellowed. “I thought I was dying!”
Everyone stared at me. No one spoke.
Rubbing my eyes, I said, “Esker?” Did he figure out how to get us home?” I suddenly felt challenged for words. Hundreds of questions jockeyed for position in my mind, but none seemed to find the off-ramp leading to my mouth.
Piper appeared completely bewildered. She simply stared.
“As unlikely as it sounds, even with access to much more primitive technology,” Cormac said, “yes.”
“Your AI used multi-frequency backscatter radiation,” Tripp said, emphasizing the point. “What it lacks in access to resources, it more than compensates for with its data analysis.”
“He,” I clarified.
Cormac and Tripp tilted their heads at me in confusion. Their expressions matched those of curious dogs.
“Esker,” I clarified. “He prefers to be referred to as ‘he.’ He finds ‘it’ disrespectful.”
Tripp’s brows furrowed, a distant look in his eyes. Something about my statement seemed to resonate with him. I could practically see his attention drift away. It was an experience I had encountered many times before. Something had just ignited his creativity.
Cormac nodded. “Fascinating,” he chuckled, a glimmer of light brightening his expression for the first time since Piper and I arrived at the lab. “He,” Cormac emphasized, “observed a shift in the electromagnetic field surrounding your body in the picoseconds before your Crossing. This isn’t something that would typically be detectable without highly specialized equipment. However, based on the information provided by Esker, most of the environments in Your-World appear to be saturated with various radio frequency spectrums. After gathering enough data across multiple Transitions, Esker managed to identify the signature linked to your Shift.
I grinned. “And with that information, you can replicate it,” I finished. “Are you saying we can finally control it?”
Cormac nodded, though he didn’t appear to be thrilled with the idea.
“What’s wrong with that?” Piper asked. “If it can be controlled, can’t I go home? Can’t Gray come and go whenever he wants for a change?”
Tripp was nodding, but he didn’t seem any more excited than Cormac.
Piper’s gaze shifted to me.
I nodded, “This is what Breslin has been hunting for. What they just explained—it’s the key he needs to bring his Elend army to Our-World.”
The room fell silent for a long time. Tripp broke the tension by sending a photo into AR space for everyone to see with a dramatic wave of his hand. “Esker sent this,” he said. “He believes Breslin will try to use it to create something similar.”
The photo was a screen capture Gray recognized instantly: a cavernous room with concrete walls outfitted with stainless steel tables topped with high-tech instrumentation. Men and women in white lab coats were captured in the freeze-frame as they attempted to scatter to the room’s periphery. Near the center of the image was a low, oblong table, bookended on one side by a tall, free-standing, mirror-like frame and on the other by a softball-sized orb resting on a squat pedestal. Tripp’s fingers tapped something invisible in the air, and the photo was enhanced to improve sharpness and visibility. The image, I knew, had been captured in less-than-ideal lighting conditions.
I stepped closer to the screen and ran my fingers over the stubble of the short hair on my head. Eyeing the image, I said, “This is from one of my operations against Breslin back home. He had a team conducting a test in an underground silo in Kansas. Esker thinks this experiment is significant?”
“It is,” Piper said, stepping forward and leaning into the image. Everyone in the room focused on her. I realized this and understood I was the one who was missing something.
Tripp nodded. “Esker found schematic drawings and documentation on one of Breslin’s corporate servers. There were references to something he learned here, which was the source of what the team was trying to reproduce on your Brane,” he explained. “Esker discovered only technical documentation. There was no other information linking to what Breslin found or the source of his insights.”
“But we know,” Piper added. She waved a hand through the air to dispel the freeze-frame image and replaced it with a three-dimensional, photorealistic depiction of the cavern’s interior. Human bodies littered the edges of the space, toppled and collapsed like dolls tossed aside by a petulant child—dolls ravaged by something superhuman. Near the center of the space was a now-familiar arrangement of a stout oblong table, an upright rectangular door-like frame, and a tripod topped with a glassy spherical orb.
Piper spread her hands, and the photo zoomed in. As it did, it transformed into a wireframe, encompassing almost the entire room where we stood. The apparatus at the cavern’s center was now life-size, positioned on the lab’s floor. The contrast between the sterile, clinical space and the savage killing site sent a chill down my spine. I was grateful that Piper had thought to change the capture to wireframe. We didn’t need to know what the rest of the team might have done if they’d been so quickly immersed in that imagery.
That Piper had so swiftly and efficiently manipulated Seeley technology was yet another reminder of just how long I had been gone. Days for me were so much longer for her. Once again, I questioned what she had experienced while I had been away.
Looking at the wire mesh surrounding my knees and ankles, I noticed that the mesh representation blanketed the rest of the room. The detritus littering the cave floor had been captured in precise detail. So too had each fallen body—the victims of the expedition who had presumably been present at the start of all this. I could see the contours of their protective gear, the tears in their armor and flesh, even the jagged ends of broken bones. It was all rendered in colorless, vector detail, thankfully. The apparatus was old—ancient-looking, yet clearly still functional if it had been the tool used to facilitate all of this.
Then, I observed the upright figures standing at attention along the cavern’s wall. Three erect forms were captured at the far edge of the depiction: a man and two women. They appeared anachronistic as they remained unharmed and intact, with their armor—
I stepped closer to one of the female forms and noted that the wireframe rendering instantly resolved into a higher resolution in response. It was still far from photo-realistic, but the contours of the form-fitting body armor left no doubt about the wearer’s identity despite the sleek helmet concealing the woman’s face.
Looking at Piper, I said, “You went to the cave.” It sounded more like a statement than a question. As the words left my mouth, I realized they came out more like an accusation.
Doctor Cormac stepped forward, speaking for the first time in a while. “Once the cave’s location was identified, she led the expedition.”
I gazed at Piper. Taking slow breaths, I grappled with my next words. “Are you okay?”
Piper shrugged. “It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.” Her voice was low and husky. “Something in that cave tore everyone apart. There’s no way to be sure, but it must have been Breslin. He killed those people.”
As I pulled her into my arms, I felt her sag. Her arms tightened around me in response, yet she didn’t cry. She seemed to find comfort in having as much of herself in contact with me as possible.
I’d missed that, too.
“It’s not exactly Breslin,” Gray said to everyone in the room. “Something came through a portal from another Brane. It used Breslin. Whatever exists on the other side can’t seem to Cross without that apparatus and a living host on this side to contain it.”
Tripp cleared his throat. “Host?” he rasped.
I shrugged with one shoulder, still holding Piper. “You can figure out the science. I can only tell you what I saw. Breslin has another one of these devices at the dig site where Piper found me. He’s using it to bring Elend over, half a dozen at a time. It seems like he’s using the people he’s abducting to make it possible. Based on what I saw, he needs your people as hosts. It’s part of whatever method he’s using for the Crossing.”
Everyone in the room appeared unwell. I thought this mirrored everyone’s fears in one way or another. Either the Elend was killing the Seeley outright, or they were consuming them. It seemed unlikely that anyone would believe thousands of people were confined in cells somewhere.
This wasn’t that kind of horror show.
“You still call him Breslin?” Lacy noted.
“He has embraced the name,” I clarified. “He’s using it on Our-World, so I’m not sure if it makes a difference. The Kilmer Breslin who walked with a team into that cave, if he was Seeley, couldn’t have done any of this. I’m sure you all know that better than me. So whatever is taking his place now—we can refer to it as that or call it something different. Regardless, the creature needs a name.”
“Until we kill it,” Piper clarified.
I chuckled. “Until we kill it.”
