Chapter Three
Noah
I forced my eyes open and turned my head, getting a mouthful of dirt and a serious case of vertigo for the effort. When it passed and everything stopped swimming, I picked myself up off the ground. I was alone. That bastard had taken me down with a dirty punch—though who was I kidding? If I hadn’t charged in like a mindless asshole it never would have happened.
I started walking toward the Doon. Had to find Cade and Kori. This was a new level of bad. The cuff had officially gone ape-shit and I had no idea what that meant for us. An instantaneous skip? That had disaster written all over it. What if it stopped working completely? Would we all be stuck wherever we landed? Would Dylan be able to move on without us? My mind spun with the possibilities, but more than that, with anger. I’d had him in my sights and failed.
Again.
I made it to the clearing where, on our world, a small playground had been erected to honor some dude who’d saved a bunch of people in an apartment complex fire. At least, that was the official story. The truth was he’d been trying to rob one of the apartments and set off the alarm, not realizing the building was burning and the fire detection system was broken. On this earth, instead of a collection of swings and monkey bars, there was a lake.
Walking to the edge, I peered into the water. The moon was full and I barely recognized the guy looking back up at me. He was tired and scruffy for all the wrong reasons. A wave of grief rolled through me. Right now I was supposed to be backpacking across Europe with Cade and Kori. One last hurrah before heading off to med school. We’d had it planned forever, even got the general to promise Cade the time off. Instead I was skipping from one dimension to another hunting down the bastard who gutted my life like the belly of a fish.
I sank down between two bushes, balancing on the heels of my worn boots, and dipped my fingers into the water. It was icy, yet refreshing. It used to drive Kori crazy. She hated the cold, while I thrived in it. “I’ll get him,” I said to my reflection. “If it takes the rest of my life, he’ll pay for what he did to you.”
I made a move to stand, but hesitated. Someone was coming. The sun had gone down and the moon was rising. I didn’t know what the deal was here, but it seemed unlikely that people were jogging through the woods after dark. Kori and Cade maybe…or Dylan. Still, I had to be careful. I readied myself to pounce as the person—who was running like hell—stampeded closer. Right about the time that I realized it wasn’t Kori and Cade, and it wasn’t Dylan—the footfalls were all wrong—something crashed into me, jarring my body backward. I tipped and my feet kicked out from under me.
Someone cursed, and something hit me in the head, and then I was in the water.
An impressive string of curses fought to be heard over the sound of splashing. “What the hell are you doing hiding in the bushes on the edge of a lake?”
I hauled myself back onto land and held out my hand to help the girl—yeah, it was a girl—who’d just tried to drown me, out of the water.
She smacked my hand away and climbed onto the shore. “What the hell are you doing skulking in the bushes in the middle of the night?”
“What the hell were you doing tearing through—” The moon moved out from behind the clouds and the girl lifted her head. I tried to force the rest of the sentence past my lips, but the inside of my mouth was suddenly like the Sahara. I was the king of cool. Smooth with the ladies. Yet standing here now, with this soaking wet girl, my heart rate spiked to epic proportions. Why? Because it was her.
Ash Calvert was standing in front of me.
She was pale and winded—not to mention soaking wet—and had that same haunted look in her eyes I’d seen a dozen times before. I’d never met her in an easy life. It was like there was some dark cloud hanging over every version of her in the universe. This place didn’t appear to be any different.
I tore my gaze away from her and scanned the forest. There was no one else out here. “Were you running from something?”
Instead of answering, her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. She leaned closer, then jerked her entire body back like, well, like she’d seen a damned ghost.
“Habla anglais?” I tried again. Something had obviously just gone down. Maybe she was in shock. “Usar un traje de perro cuando me bano mi abuela.”
She squinted and tilted her head. A chunk of what looked like multicolored hair—strands of red and purple, it was hard to tell in the dark—fell forward into her face. “You wear a dog suit to bathe your grandmother?”
“Yes—wait—huh?” She took another long step away and glanced over her shoulder. When she looked back, there was an instant of wonder. Almost like she was staring at something out of a fantasy flick. I waved my hand in front of her face.
She pushed a chunk of wet hair from her eyes. Still, she said nothing. Only stared in a way that had me wanting to move in closer. To put my arms around her. Because there was wonder in that stare, but there was also pain. A kind of pain I understood. You tried to hide it but it was always there, always throbbing just beneath the surface.
I raked my hand down my face, then squeezed the bridge of my nose. Say something. I had to speak. “Do I have, like, snot on my face? Or are you just struck silent by how hot I am?” I meant it to be funny, but from the look on her face, she wasn’t amused.
“Where did you come from?” She frowned, her features hardening a little. God. She was prettier than I remembered. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of skips and realized the memory I had didn’t do her justice. Then again, the times I had encountered her, we hadn’t spent much time gazing at each other… “You’re not from here. I know you’re not.”
“How do you know that?” Not the most pressing question at the moment, but the force behind her words intrigued me. That, and my brain had suddenly stopped functioning. It happened a lot when I was around this girl. That’s why she was dangerous. Kryptonite and crack all rolled into one.
Her shoulders sagged and she hitched a thumb in the direction she’d come from. “Obviously you don’t know who I am, which is—”
“I know who you are.” Shit. Had that come out weird? Too eager? Maybe I sounded like a damn stalker. “You’re the crazy chick who just knocked my ass into the water.” There. Better.
Her eyes widened, but the surprise only lasted a moment. She recovered and took another step away. “Knowing you, you probably deserved it. You need to stay the hell away from me.”
Knowing me? Stay away from her? Had this world’s version of me hurt her?
“Look, whatever it is you think—”
“Don’t move!” Footsteps thundered all around us.
Wow. Way to be observant, asshole.
I sighed. “Could this turn into more of a clusterfuck?” When I turned, I saw four armed men in what I assumed were this world’s version of a police uniform. Dark purple from head to toe with a crest on their chest that had the words Protect, Serve, and Enforce in bright white letters. Not exactly a fear-inciting fashion statement. Better than the bright pink uniforms a few worlds back, though. They’d come complete with skinny jeans and bowties. “If I’ve broken any laws, I’m sorry. I’m new to the—”
The man at the front of the group sprang forward, and before I knew what was happening, I was being thrown against the nearest tree, face first, and my arms were yanked behind my back. A second later there was a soft snap as a strip of cool metal rested against my wrists and my right cheek got an up close and personal introduction to the sharp bark.
Beside me, they were doing the same to Ash. She was cuffed and dragged toward the tree line. But she wasn’t moving fast enough for them.
“This isn’t a nature hike, sweetheart.” One of the cops shoved her and she stumbled, tripping and falling to the dirt. The asshole nudged her with his boot. “Get up and move.”
I didn’t think—which was pretty normal for me—just lunged at him. “Watch it!”
The response I got was a knock to the back of the head with something solid, and another heaping dose of darkness.
...
The air smelled of sweetness. That kind of fruity crap girls loved to douse themselves in. I forced my eyes open. Everything was blurry for a second, colors bled together and the edges of my vision swam at warp speed. If I’d eaten anything recently, I probably would have puked.
“—to. Need to get—all over.” Bits and pieces of broken conversation filled the room. I wasn’t able to put together the conversation, but I could make out the voice. I’d know it anywhere.
“Ma?” I was dizzy and disoriented, and as soon as the word left my mouth, I felt like an ass. When everything stopped swimming, sure enough, there she was standing in front of me. Cora Anderson.
My mother had always been a soft, understated beauty. She’d never worn make-up, usually pulled her hair back into a simple tail to keep it tamed as she pored over her work. This Cora had her hair meticulously curled and pinned, eyes slathered in black, and lips painted fire engine red. Where my mother was content to wear long cotton skirts on even her dressiest days, this version of her looked like she’d just stepped out of a power suit catalog. Despite the differences, though, I couldn’t help the feeling of happiness at seeing her face…
…at least until she gripped a chunk of my hair and yanked back hard. “Tell me what you’re doing here! Is it about Omega? Are you trying to sabotage the project?” The venom in her voice was alien. I’d encountered multiple versions of my mother during the time we’d been at this. They’d always been much like my own. Sure, there were subtle differences—hair color, style, speech pattern—but the two things that I’d never seen change was career and disposition. Apparently there was a first for everything.
This Cora Anderson was a raging bitch.
I had no idea what Omega was, and I couldn’t give ten rotting rats’ asses to find out. I narrowed my eyes and pulled defiantly against her grip. This wasn’t my mother. “Screw you.”
“You obnoxious little—”
“Come now, Cora,” another voice said, this one equally familiar. A moment later, this world’s version of Karl Anderson turned the corner and leaned against the doorframe. His hair peeked out from beneath a homburg hat, streaked with gray. He wore a double-breasted, chalk-striped suit and had a walking cane trimmed in silver balanced over his left shoulder. At some point in his life, he’d been in some kind of trouble. A thick scar decorated the left side of his face, trailing up from his neck and skimming his cheek. “He’s not our boy but he looks like him. Surely you can’t harm him?”
Cora glared at me for a moment more before straightening. She adjusted the front of her deep blue suit jacket and squared her shoulders, taking a step back to stand beside Karl. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close while at the same time, never taking his eyes off me.
“The girl who was brought there with me, Ash. Where is she?”
Cora nodded to my left. It wasn’t easy—my head was pounding—but I managed to twist in my seat just enough to catch a glimpse of Ash, zip tied to a chair like me. She was out cold.
“Look, I know this must seem strange to you. I look like your son, sound like him, but—”
“You’re not him.” Cora sighed. “We know who you are.”
“If you know who I am, then why the hell do you have me tied to a chair? Is that like a thing here?”
She didn’t respond. Instead she stepped close again, giving me a nice, long—and slightly creepy—look over. When her gaze fell to the slight bulge at my ankle, she snorted. Grabbing my denim-clad leg, she tugged the material up. “A cuff? You’re using a cuff? My God, how crude! Your Infinity must be decades behind ours.”
“You don’t use cuffs?” Despite the situation, my interest was piqued. We’d seen so many variations of the Infinity Division, but they’d all used the cuff.
“We used cuffs the first and second year. After that, we graduated to implants.” She crossed the room and rummaged around until she found what she was looking for. A moment later, she returned with a small chip. “Our deposit operatives have them implanted just beneath the skin on the top side of their wrist.”
“Deposit operative?” What the hell did that mean?
Karl cleared his throat. “What is it that you’re doing here?”
“My fr—my mission is to find and apprehend a criminal, sir.” There was no reason to mention Cade and Kori. As long as they were anonymous, then they were safe. No need for all of us to end up in the deep end of the pool.
“Sir?” Karl snickered. He nudged his wife and tapped the cane against his shoulder twice before letting it fall to his side. “That’s new.”
“I’m military.” Another lie. “Where I’m from, my father—you—is a general in the U.S. army.”
Beside me, Ash groaned. “What—what the hell is going on?”
“I get why you’ve got me all strapped up.” I glanced in her direction. She was fully awake now and instead of being freaked out by the situation, she looked pissed. “Why haul her in? She’s got nothing to do with me.”
“She’s none of your business,” Cora snapped. “A happy side effect of finding you. Someone saw you in town and contacted us immediately. You were tracked and brought here.”
No reason to tell them I planned to make it my business. This whole thing didn’t seem on the level. Those were obviously cops who jacked us, yet we were in a basement? Why not the police station? If I’d accidentally stumbled onto a serial killer version of my parents, I was going to be pissed. “I’m here to find a dangerous criminal. Someone you should be concerned about.”
Karl snickered. “Oh?” He winked at his wife. “Did you hear that, doll? Someone we should be concerned about.” Apparently she found it just as amusing because they both started cackling like idiots.
“He’s here looking for several people,” I continued over the sounds of their snorting. “One of them is Kori—”
“Corey!” All heads swiveled toward Ash. She didn’t seem to care about the scrutiny. She was tense, muscles straining against her bonds and eyes wide. She swallowed and let her head fall for a moment before lifting her gaze to meet Cora’s. “We were attacked. In the park. He—”
The humor instantly drained from Cora’s face and her eyes glazed over. Lips pulled into a feral snarl, she flew at Ash like a demon and grabbed her by the front of the shirt. If she hadn’t been holding tight, the entire chair would have gone over. “What the hell were you doing with my son? I made it clear—”
“Son?” I exclaimed, while at the same time, Ash narrowed her eyes and said, “Trying to talk some sense into him since no one else has the guts to listen.”
Karl crossed the room and managed to pry Cora away from Ash. You might have thought he was trying to rescue the girl if it hadn’t been for his expression. Feral and deadly, like he was barely restraining himself from doing just what his wife had and then some. Clearly, on this world, he was the voice of reason. “Where is my son?”
“Dead,” Ash said. It came out as barely a whisper, but somehow seemed to echo off the walls like she’d shouted it through a megaphone. “Someone attacked us. Corey was killed.”
Karl stumbled away, shaking his head as Cora sagged against him. The walking cane fell to the floor. He wrapped his arms around her, eyes never leaving Ash. “I am going to take my wife into the other room, and then I am going to find my son. For your sake, I hope this is a sick joke.”
She looked like he’d slapped her. “I would never joke about something like that.”
“Then my dear…you are in very big trouble.”