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| Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image AI software |
Team Matic were not the first people to try to find the second Earth Nexus.
It was reportedly somewhere in the South Pacific ocean, but despite having
literally all the time in the world, no one had ever uncovered it. If people
from the future were never able to, there wasn’t much chance of them
locating it either. Their best course of action was to ask for help, and
their best hope for finding that help was not in this reality. It wasn’t
even in the same universe anymore. Instead of spending time trying to build
something that could detect Nexa somehow, Leona, Ramses, and Constance
focused their efforts on creating a new kind of interdimensional
communicator. This would hopefully allow them to reach out to someone in the
Sixth Key.
It was now after midnight central, and the smarter people in the group were
still working. Even Angela and Marie found ways to contribute, leaving Mateo
and Olimpia to occupy their time with games and old media. They were in the
middle of the fourth Meg movie when Marie entered their pocket dimension to
retrieve them. He paused it just as it was getting to the good part. “Did
you get a hold of somebody?”
“We’re about to try,” Marie answered.
The three of them exited the pocket, closed the hatch, then entered the code
for Ramses’ lab. He was still tinkering with the presumed new communication
device. “Who are we going to try to contact?” Mateo asked. “Surely they
would need something like this on their end.”
“They do,” Ramses explained. “I already know someone who messes with stuff
like this. She’s the one who helped me get to all of you after Dalton split
us up. Well, except for you, Olimpia. That was different.”
“Oh, you’re talking about Shantel,” Mateo realized.
“That’s right. It’s hard to explain how this thing works to a layman,”
Ramses went on, “but it doesn’t work by dialing a phone number. It’s more
like GPS...except obviously we’re not on the same G, so not that.”
“You don’t have to explain it,” Olimpia said. “Just...dial.”
Constance reached over and started tapping on the screen. The special phone
trilled for a little bit before Shantel actually answered. She appeared on
the screen. “Why is this thing beeping? Hello? Who is this?”
“This is Ramses Abdulrashid. I believe we’ve met. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember you,” Shantel replied. “Why are we talking?”
“We need help; help which can only come from your people. I’m not sure if
you’re the person to ask, but I was hoping that you could connect us with
the right party.”
“What do I look like to you, an operator?”
Ramses held back whatever quip his brain came up with. “Please.”
Shantel sighed, realizing that it was probably not too big of an ask. She
was immortal, and this would likely take all of two minutes. “What do you
need?”
“The Antarctica Nexus is missing. Someone stole it. We were trying to find
the other one that supposedly exists, and if it was installed in the same
place on our Earth as it was on yours, then—”
“There.” A text message appeared on the screen that looked like coordinates.
“That’s where it is?”
“That’s where it was,” Shantel replied. “I can’t guarantee your version will
still be there, but the location is common knowledge. I gotta go. Please
wait one day to reach out to this device again. I will be handing it off to
someone else, so whatever you need in the future, it will be their problem
from now on.”
“Very well, Shantel. I appreciate your help.”
She hung up.
“That was easy,” Leona noted. “Too easy.”
“The answer is, don’t think about it,” Mateo decided. Maybe the Parallelers
weren’t as bad as Cheyenne said they were. Or maybe they had changed things.
It was never completely clear whether their actions had altered the
timeline, or if everything they had done to prepare for the Sixth Key was
just fate. It was possible that they had managed to subvert the Reality Wars
entirely. Wouldn’t that be nice?
“I’ll try,” Leona said. “Dante? Please convert these coordinates to standard
spatial reference, and jump with the cloak on.”
“Already done. Jumping now.” The ship teleported.
“Simplistic.exploration.boast,” Olimpia read on the screen.
“That’s where we are?” Mateo questioned. “That sounds familiar.”
“You may have been here before,” Leona pointed out. “We’re not in the middle
of the ocean.” She reached over, and pinched the screen to zoom out. “We’re
in Topeka.”
“Not just anywhere in Topeka,” Mateo realized. “This is the little graveyard
where I used to go to be alone. That is, it’s where I found the graveyard.
It was a little rest stop where The Gravedigger, Mr. Halifax buried all the
dead time travelers, and I guess it wasn’t in our dimension?”
Marie was looking at the exterior camera feeds. “There’s no cemetery here.”
“How did you find this place?” Leona asked Mateo. “It’s not that close to
where you used to live.”
Mateo shook his head. “I was drawn here. As soon as I got my license, I felt
compelled to come to this spot. I finally gave into it, and found my little
grassy clearing sanctuary. Surrounded by trees, one way in, one way out. No
one ever comes here, and now I’m sure they definitely don’t. The weird thing
is...” He opened the hatch to the outside, and breathed in the fresh air.
“The trees all look the same. It’s been nearly 400 years since I set foot
here, and nothing has changed.” He turned back towards the group. “Doesn’t
that seem odd to you?” He stepped onto the grass, and knelt down to run his
fingers through the blades.
Leona stepped out of the Dante too, and deeper into the clearing. “The
answer is, don’t think about it,” she joked. “Hey, Opsocor. Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Venus replied. Her voice was coming out of the aether; from
everywhere and nowhere.
Leona smiled, and looked back at the group. “We need to get to Dardius. Is
that something you can help us with?”
“Come on down. I’m only two kilometers below the surface.”
“Is there a way to take our shuttle with us?” Can we link them up?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ramses said as he was closing the hatch. “You two go
on down. We’ll meet you soon.”
Leona sidled over to Mateo, and reached down.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he noted with a slight shiver.
“It seems fitting to me,” Leona mused. “This is where it all began for you.
You were drawn here because you always knew it was a special place. You just
didn’t know how special.” She jazzed her fingers at him. “Come on.”
He took her hand and stood up. Together, they jumped down two kilometers,
expecting to find themselves in the Nexus building. They were immediately
aware that that was not what this was. “It’s a trap.” Now he was really
feeling bad.
“Jump back up.” Leona shut her eyes, and tried to teleport again, but was
unable to. They were locked in. The trap was either set for them, or people
like them. Whoever did this knew about Venus Opsocor, what she sounded like,
and how she would talk to Leona, even from two kilometers away from where
she was supposed to be in a Nexus.
“What do we do?”
“We can’t let the others come down here.” Leona lifted up her watch, but
before she could try to talk into it, she saw that it was off. She tapped on
the screen several times, but nothing happened. “It’s not operational. We
can’t get them a message.”
“But we can send them a feeling.” Their shared empathic bond was even
stronger than it was with their old new substrates. Mateo took a breath, and
said, “claustrophobia,” as he was exhaling the air.
“Claustrophobia,” Leona echoed with her own breath.
They both continued to think as hard as they could about feeling trapped,
but not in a way that suggested they needed their friends’ help; in a way to
suggest that they stay away. Love and concern is what the others returned to
them, so Mateo and Leona replied with patience and wisdom. They still
couldn’t express anything complex, but it seemed to be working. Or maybe it
wasn’t. Olimpia suddenly appeared in front of them.
“We were trying to get you to stay away,” Leona argued.
“We understood, and the others are leaving to prepare the next move,”
Olimpia told her. “I volunteered to come down.”
“Why?” Mateo asked her.
“So you two wouldn’t be alone.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” came a voice in the darkness. His silhouette
approached, and grew sharper with each step, until he was fully in the
light. It was, of course, that dude from the Fifth Division who could not
let go of his grudge against them.
“Did you build this place all for us? Did you lure us here with that outpost
manager from Dardius?” Leona questioned.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the Fifth Divisioner replied.
“You called a patriot who did her duty, and reported it to us. We didn’t
expect you to fall into our trap so soon. We’re not really ready for you,
but...” He looked around at the ceiling and walls. “The power suppressors
appear to be working, and that’s what matters.”
“My God,” Mateo said, shaking his head. “Can’t you just let this go? So much
has happened since we killed your friend. I’m so sorry,” he mocked.
“Oh, it’s not about that,” he said with a heavy laugh. “You’re wanted.
You’re all wanted. Some very powerful people in the Sixth Key would like to
talk to you. I joined them because I don’t think they’ll have very nice
things to say.” He started to pretend to be polite. “Anyway, sit tight, and
once your cells are ready, we’ll get you fully settled.” He checked his
watch. “Should take less than a year. In the meantime, you think about how
you’re gonna get the rest of your team to fall into our trap too. You don’t
want us finding them first. Trust me on that.”
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