Everyone in the hangar had started packing up at some point after James had stopped paying attention. Equipment was being strapped to people’s backs, and the hangar in general was being cleared. They didn’t look like they planned on coming back.
“All right, move it,” Leither ordered, prodding Ken with the barrel of his AK-47.
“Where are we going now?” asked Ken, despite promptly following Leither’s order.
“Wherever I tell you to go.” Leither countered tersely.
The three followed the large envoy of terrorists migrating through the base. At several points, James heard gunfire but it subsided quickly. The terrorists were gunning down anyone who crossed his path.
“It looks like they’re heading for the sublevels,” Ender noted.
But before they reached there, the commander broke off from the rest of the group. “Everyone keep heading to cell-block I,” she ordered the assembled. “Have base set up by the time I get back.”
Along with Leither and a burly terrorist, she took the prisoners back into the laboratories. Bodies were everywhere. James didn’t see a single living being.
“Lab 76 is still untouched?” she asked Leither.
Leither nodded. “As you ordered. Scientist and experiment are locked inside.”
James racked his brains but couldn’t remember who was in Lab 76.
He recognized the lab as they approached it without even reading the numbers; instead of being covered in blood with the door bashed in, Lab 76 had boards nailed across the entrance. James noticed it had been constructed to omit a window and an air vent.”
“Oh God,” Ender realized. “It’s Luddly’s lab.”
“Try and shield your minds, everybody,” Ken muttered under his breath.
Leither hushed them as the commander pried the boards off with her claws.
Inside James saw a lab designed to be an isolation chamber. A wiry, cowering scientist whom James recognized by sight backed into the corner, and canary wearing a restraining cap looked over from a cage designed to block thought waves.
“Wh-what do you want?” Dr. Luddly asked in a nasally voice James also recognized.
The commander ignored him, crossing to the cage and flinging the door open. “Read his mind,” she ordered the canary, pointing a claw at James. “Pick the most emotional moment of his life, even if he can’t remember it.”
James tried to do what Ken said and shield his mind, but his control was dashed when the burly terrorist grabbed him from behind and forced him forward. Ashley carried the canary toward him.
“Wait,” Luddly exclaimed, “don’t do that! That’s not how--!”
“Quiet!” Leither snapped.
The canary bit the commander’s finger, who screeched and slapped it against the wall.
Suddenly a thundering wave crashed in James’ mind and sent him to his knees. His vision faded out, he felt he was in another place. He heard crying.
“Please! You’ve got to concentrate!”
The arid smell of the hot Nevadan desert. It was dark, smoky, and James realized he was in a tent, a well-worn tent. Scientific equipment was revealed in the shadows, flickering in the light of an oil lanter. A microscope sat in front of him.
“What do you see in the sample?” the voice asked impatiently.
“I don’t see anything!” James replied, tears stinging his eyes.
“Then you need to focus the microscope. Start with the biggest dialó“
“There’s nothing there!” James hissed. He smashed his fist against the table.
Something walked in front of James, and with a flash he realized the smoke was a wispy figure of Halsey, Ashley’s brother. He wore a university school uniform, and as James looked he could make out a transparent computer lab superimposed over the contents in the tent. It was as if he was seeing two worlds at once. Lit monitors in the lab gave off no light in the tent, and Halsey was on one of them. He was also surrounded by books.
James focused and squinted into the microscope. “There are little things,” she said. “Hundreds of them.”
“Those are skin cells,” the wispy Halsey explained. He brought up an image on the computer. “Look at this. Can you see anything different between this image and your skin cells?”
James was aware that small aches hit various parts of his body. A small reptilian scale on the table caused him to remember he’d pried it from his elbow to examine, and his tooth hurt from the bone sample he’d shaved off of it.
“I don’t see any differences,” he said, squinting through the microscope until his eyes hurt.
Halsey sighed. “Okay, fine. Dammit, I wish I could see your world. You’re probably missing something.”
“I’m sorry!” James pushed the microscope and it almost tipped over. He grabbed it, but not before it made a loud clanking noise.
“Careful!” Halsey admonished.
A shadow appeared in the entrance to the tent. “Commander?” Leither’s voice asked. “Is everything all right?”
“Go away!” James snapped. The shadow quickly disappeared.
The smoky Halsey was grabbing his forehead in frustration. “Ashley, come on! You need to control yourself! No more temper tantrums!”
I just don’t know any of this!” James clutched his fists. “Stop yelling at me!”
“Stop overreacting!” Halsey took a deep breath. “Listen. I only need a bit more information, then I can figure out what Pelvanida did to you. Then I can figure out how to replicate it and get you back here. You want that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know…” James hesitated.
“What?” Halsey’s voice went low. “What do you mean, ëyou don’t know’?”
“Halsey, I justóit hurts, it really hurts.” James looked away from his brother. “All these tests I’ve had to do on myself. Maybe… maybe this is good enough? What we’ve got now?”
Halsey looked at him with an undescribable expression. James suddenly got very cold. He knew he’d just done something very wrong.
James tried to keep going. “I mean, we still have each other, even if we’re not together physically, right? We can still talk at any time, if we justó“
“How can you say this?” Halsey interrupted. “How can you say these things after all I’ve done for you?” He angrily approached James, and he unconsciously stepped back in fear. “I’m spending the best years of my life in cramped little rooms and in dusty libraries trying to get you back, and that’s how grateful you are?”
“But I’m trying to give you the opportunity to stop, if you wanted to…” James was shivering, his body cowed.
“Of course I’m not going to stop!” Halsey exclaimed angrily. “I’m about to create a bridge between universes! Create something nobody else has even dreamed of doing! I thought you understood how important this was!”
“I thought you were doing this for me,” James snapped back, feeling more tears come.
“I thought so too, until I heard what you just saidó“ Halsey broke off and hid under the table. A lght had clicked on in the hallway outside the computer lab. A night guard walked by, peered into the lab, and continued his route.
“I just wish you’d stop treating me like an experiment,” James tried one last time. “Is there any way to get the information so that it doesn’t hurt so much?”
“No…” Halsey growled forcefully.
“Then maybe you could at least show some compassion when itó“
“I’m running out of time,” Halsey interrupted. “The professor for the morning class comes in at 5:30. I just need one last thing; the blood test.”
James looked at the gleaming silver syringe sitting on the table. Cold fear trickled down his back, and goosebumps rised on his neck and arms. “Please, Halsey, not now. Can it wait?”
“No!” Halsey snapped. His eyes narrowed in determination. “Grab the moist towelette and swab your inner elbow.”
James did what he was told. “Please, not right now. Tomorrow! I promise I’ll do it tomorrow!”
“Grab the needle,” Halsey ordered. He didn’t seem to listen, he merely stared hardly at James’ hand as it grasped the syringe.
James felt panic choking his throat. “Halsey, you promised you’d never hurt me!”
“Aim for the brachial artery,” he said. This close to his goal, he didn’t even seem to regard James as alive. “Keep it in until the syringe is full.”
James shivered uncontrollably, eyes wide open, syringe held in a stabbing position. He closed his eyes.
“Now!”
James stabbed himself in the arm. Pain and panic flashed through him, and everything went black.
* * *
When he awoke, he was back in Luddly’s lab. Everyone was on the ground. The canary lay dead near the far wall underneath a splash of its own blood.
The terrorist commander got shakily to his feet.
Luddly had gotten up first. “Look what you’ve done!” he gasped.
“What was that?” the terrorist commander demanded.
“Since you startled it, it scrambled the mind reading around,” Luddly accused. “We all got to read someone else’s most emotional memory.”
There was a pause as everyone sorted out what they’d just witnessed.
“So, who was the girl?” Ender asked Leither. Leither glared back.
Suddenly Ken snapped his beak at the burly man and stabbed him in the neck. The man cried out, clutching his throat, as Leither drew his pistol.
Ender swung his paw and knocked the weapon out of his hand.
James bolted for the door. He heard Ashley snarl and pounce behind him, so he slid under the lab table. But Ashley had attacked Ken, who had retrieved a scalpel from Luddly’s workstation and started stabbing wildly.
Luddly tried to escape but Leither kneed him in the stomach. Ender jumped on his back, lacerating his face with claws.
Ken stabbed with the scalpel but the commander dodged and raked his back. Huge tears appeared in his radiation suit.
Leither flipped Ender off of him but got tangled in Luddly’s feet as the latter tried to get up.
Ken dodged the commander’s follow-through and used his momentum to cut her across the eye wth the scalpel. Then he dove out of the way as James and Ender pushed the lab table forward to trap the lab commander between it and the wall.
“Let’s go!” Ender yelled. The three bolted, followed by a staggering Luddly.
They didn’t get far when they heard a gunshot and Luddly fell to the ground with a cry. Leither had his pistol out, and his blood-streaked face was set with determination.
The three turned a corner but found the door at the end of the hallway locked.
“Can you pick it?” asked James, panting.
Ender extracted a paper clip and a few other random instruments from his lab coat. “Yes, but not fast enough!”
“I’ll give us the time we need,” said Ken, slipping his torn radiation suit off and running back down the hall.
As soon as Leither appeared, Ken threw the suit at him, causing his shot to go wide. Ken then dove in top and stabbed his scalpel through the suit, jamming it repeatedly into Luddly’s chest.
Leither stopped struggling and cried out. The pistol fell from his weakened grasp and he started struggling for breath.
“Ken, stop!” James rushed over and pulled Ken’s suit off. “You punctured a lung.”
Leither was drowning in his own blood.
“Ender?” James asked.
“I’m close, one more minute!” he grunted, still focused on his work.
James focused his attention on Leither. “What are Ashley and Halsey attempting to accomplish? What’s their plan?”
Leither shook his head.
“Please tell me,” James tried again. “If I knew how they plan to bridge worlds, I might remember myself.”
Leither smiled. “It…won’t…help,” he coughed. His lungs were almost completely filled. “I…saw…”
“Me?” gasped James. “You saw me?” He gripped Leither by the shoulders. “What did you see? Did you see how I crossed the universes?”
Leither continued to smile. Just as James realized the man was going to take the secret to his grave, Leither’s eyes closed and his head lolled to one side.
Ken took Leither’s pulse. “He’s dead.”
James angrily got up and swore. “What about you?” he asked Ken. “Did you see anything useful?”
“I saw Luddly getting his PhD,” said Ken. He helped himself to Leither’s pistol.
“I got it!” Ender exclaimed, as the door clicked.
Just then they heard a velociraptor’s roar of fury from Luddly’s lab. The commander was free.
“Let’s move!” Ken said, and the three continued down this new hallway. James could hear the commander’s claws clacking down the hallway after them.
ëHold it,” Ender said suddenly. “We’re entering an irradiated section.”
James’ suit was telling him the same.
“Now what?” asked Ken. “She’ll kill me if I stop here, and there’s nowhere else to go.”
James heard the commander approach. Her snarling became audible.
“You won’t have time to kill her with that,” Ender warned Ken, who was raising his pistol. “Raptors can take at least a dozen shots.”
“Here,” James started taking his suit off. “Take mine. She can’t kill me because she wants to know my secret.”
“She’s enraged right now,” Ender warned. “We don’t know what she’ll do.”
“We do if Ken is the one to stay behind! Do it!”
There was no time to argue the point. Ken forced himself into James’ suit and with a single “Good luck” the two headed off.