TWO OF US
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Dang woke with a gasp, bolting upright with his heart racing and adrenaline surging. It took a few seconds for him to calm himself at which point he noticed, and with some confusion, that he was back at his place.
“So, you operate out of an observatory on a mountain?” Cyborg Dang asked, sitting on the couch opposite Dang. He had Dang’s sunglasses on. He pulled them off and examined them. “Pretty good tech,” he said, before tossing the glasses back to Dang.
Dang caught the glasses and slipped them into his pocket. “It’s a decommissioned observatory,” he responded. “And how exactly did you find it?”
“Took care of the sentinels, found your glasses and interfaced with it, saw the locations it’d been pinged at recently, this place popped up a lot. Brought you here and patched you up and well, here we are.”
“Oh,” Dang said. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Other-Dang replied coolly and rose to his feet. He gestured around the observatory. “Your world’s got a lot of pretty outdated tech. Your computer, for example, you’re still on twelfth-gen processors instead of fortieth. Pretty crazy if you ask me.”
“You used my computer?” Dang groaned, still reeling from the fight’s injuries.
“I got bored,” Other-Dang shrugged. “We have the same password, that’s kinda weird, don’t you think?”
“Who the hell are you?” Dang demanded. Now that they had no sentinels to deal with, he was feeling a lot like getting all those questions off his mind.
Other-Dang shrugged. “Obvious, isn’t it? I’m you. Name’s Dang.”
“No, it’s not,” Dang said fiercely. “I’m Dang. You can’t have the same face and name as I do.”
“I can if I’m from a different universe,” Other-Dang replied.
Dang’s mind lagged for a moment as he tried to process those two words. Different universe.
No fucking way.
“Okay,” Dang rose to his feet, still feeling sore from the sentinel blast he’d received. “I’m going to need you to do a lot of explaining. Right now.” Dang folded his arms and leaned against his wall, regarding his doppelganger. Sure, he’d helped against the sentinels and they were lookalikes but he definitely didn’t trust him just yet. Although, if his doppelganger turned out to be a hostile, he didn’t see how he could stop him or match him, not after what he’d seen him do to the sentinels back at the construction site.
They had an entirely different powerset and this other him had abilities on a whole other level from his. That much was fairly obvious. Already he was wondering if the cybernetic tech had weaknesses he could exploit if such a thing ever became necessary.
“Where would you like me to start explaining?” Other-Dang asked, turning in the chair so he was facing Dang directly. “Chances are I’m going to need you to explain some stuff too, I’ve never actually been in a different universe before so all of this is new to me too. Didn’t think I’d have to make the jump so quickly.”
“Start with the cybertech,” Dang said, gesturing to the cybernetic parts that made up most of his doppelganger’s body.
Other-Dang looked down at his hands and his expression became a little sad. “Oh that,” he said and then sighed as he drew in a deep breath, shutting his eyes gently as though an uncomfortable memory was playing through his mind. “I, uh,” his voice beginning to crack, so he so he cleared his throat before continuing. “I had an accident when I was younger…an explosion at my dad’s lab–it killed him, but it destroyed my body, most of it anyways. I was going to die, but someone saved my life…retrofitted me with experimental cutting-edge cybernetic tech. So, this is more than just my skin…it’s my body, it’s me…whether I like it or not.”
“Your dad,” Dang said slowly, that point standing out more to him that the incident that had made his doppelganger a cyborg. Did you know him?”
Other-Dang glanced in Dang’s direction, a curious look on his face. He sat up again, appearing rather exhausted. “Not my biological father, no,” he shook his head. “I never got to know my real father. I was adopted. My adoptive parents were both scientists–my adoptive mom died when I was younger and dad died in the explosion. They were the ones who gave me my name–Dang.”
“I got my name from a woman who took me in at a shelter,” Dang murmured.
Other-Dang's facial expression turned melancholy as he asked. “A shelter? What about your parents? What’s that story like with you?”
Dang was taken aback by the question and this was made obvious by the fact that he gasped and made several spluttering sounds before finally clearing his throat and composing himself. “I, uh, I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I don’t know a lot about my past. Nothing about my family, or who I was before a decade ago. When I think hard about it, it’s just a blank, like there’s a void in my head where my memories should be. All I know is I woke up one day on the beach, and I could do what I do now. Made a life for myself.”
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“Oh,” Other-Dang’s face fell. “Guess we just have it tough in any world.” He sighed. “What a drag.”
“Okay, so the sentinels,” Dang pushed on with the questions just so none of this would get awkward. He wasn’t interested in some sappy, therapeutical conversation about their traumatic and damaged pasts. He was interested in the murderbots that suddenly appeared in his world. “I’m guessing that they’re from other universes too? They appeared out of nowhere, just like you did.”
“They are, yes,” Other-Dang nodded, his expression turning grim. “They’re his sentinels, part of his little army. He sends them out to scout, to eliminate threats, to prepare a world for his arrival.”
“Wait, who?”
“No one knows,” Other-Dang answered. “I mean, we know his name, his intentions, what he wants…but no one knows where he comes from. He just appeared out of nowhere one day, he and his army, laid siege to multiple worlds. We call him Bellum the Incurser. He journeys between universes laying siege to those he deems worthy, and exterminating the others. His sentinels came to my universe too…it was from the data stored within them that we learned of him. We fought them off, destroyed a lot of them, but they kept coming. We knew it was only a matter of time until he’d come, we knew we wouldn’t be able to win. So, we built the Atreus, a ship capable of universe-jumping, a last resort for if our world was ever going to fall. A chance at survival.”
Dang’s face darkened then. “So, the sentinels…that means he’s on his way here right now?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Other-Dang shrugged. “We found their H.Q. and launched an attack on it. We destroyed a lot of their technology and compromised their communications systems. More sentinels will come here but it will take time, won’t be a full-scale invasion like on my world, not immediately at least. But eventually, yes, it might happen. If it happens, first the sentinels come, and then he does. No world has survived his arrival. That’s why we call him Bellum. In our world, it means god of war.”
“So, your world,” Dang murmured. “It’s gone?”
“I don’t know,” Other-Dang shook his head. “But I can’t worry about that now. We knew the moment would come. All that matters is that I made it off that world, the jump tube worked, which means it must have worked for my friends. We’ve got to find them and continue what we started.”
“Woah, woah, slow down there,” Dang said quickly, raising both hands to calm his doppelganger’s excitement. “Let’s take things one step at a time, alright? We don’t even know how we’d find them.”
“You can project across quantum space, can’t you?” Other-Dang queried. “You can find them.”
“I can’t just shut my eyes and project, okay? I don’t know how to control it–,”
“Then learn, damn it!” Other-Dang roared angrily, his eyes flashing red for a split second.
Suddenly, an air of tension settled in the observatory, the hairs on the back of Dang’s neck standing as he tensed up, his fists firmly clenched. If this became a confrontation, he’d need to be very careful. Sure, he’d resonated with the cybernetic suit but he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d retain its properties or if even possessing its properties would be much help in a direct confrontation.
But thankfully, Other-Dang calmed himself and drew a breath. “Sorry about that,” he muttered. “Just hasn’t been a good couple of days for me.”
“Do you eat?” Dang asked.
“What?” Other-Dang said as his face scrunched up like it was a question he’d never been asked before.
“I mean, I’m not sure how much the whole cybernetic thing entails. Do you need food like a regular person or is that taken care of?” Dang inquired, still a little puzzled about the suit’s features. He was certain it would take a good while for him to fully understand the suit, if at all.
“Yeah, I eat,” Other-Dang answered and smiled a little. He looked around and then his face became skeptical. “But have you even got anything to eat in this dump?”
"No," Dang answered honestly as he let out a half chuckle or laugh before continuing "We're going to have to head out. But you’re going to have to wear regular clothes over that armor, it’s uh, it’s going to raise a lot of eyes if you head out like that, possibly even make it onto the news. And I’d like if you could do something with your hair just so we don’t look so freakishly alike. I could turn it silver like I do with mine.”
“No,” Other-Dang said at once. “And I don’t wear clothes either.”
“Please?”
Other-Dang sighed. “Alright, I’ll wear clothes. But don’t touch my hair.”
Dang directed him to the bathroom and waited while his doppelganger washed his face hair, he then, then proceeded to apply some gel to his hair and slick it backward. When Other-Dang emerged from the bathroom, his face and hair looked so much neater that it actually looked a lot like he’d aged several years backward in the bathroom. Without his hair rough, he actually did look like sixteen-year-old Dang. The resemblance was so uncanny that Dang wasn’t sure if he preferred his appearance this way or with the rougher hair.
Afterward, Dang gave him some clothes to wear. A black T-shirt, a red hoodie, blue sweatpants and white sneakers. Unsurprisingly, he fit rather perfectly into Dang’s clothes and once he was fully clothed, it really did look like the two of them were siblings.
“This good enough?” Other-Dang asked, while standing in front of a mirror and tugging at the sleeve of his hoodie. “What about my hands?” he asked, holding up his palms as if to indicate that people were still likely to think he was weird.
Dang shrugged. “They’ll probably just assume it’s paint.”
“Do people walk around with their hands painted a lot here?” Other-Dang asked questioningly. “In California?” Dang snorted. “You’re likely to see crazier out and about.”
“You know food won’t solve our problems, right?” Other-Dang asked.
“It’ll keep our bellies happy until we solve the problems ourselves,” Dang shrugged. “We get some food and then try to gather as much information as possible, find out if there’s any other multiversal activity on this world, any other incursers. Maybe your friends. Sound good?”
Other-Dang nodded.
They walked until they reached Dang’s car after which they drove into town. Other-Dang apparently really liked Hillcrest. During the drive, he stared with twinkling eyes as they passed the tall mountains that bordered the small town, at the number of European-style pubs that littered the place, cafe’s with neon lights that had people smoking at their entrances. They went past a basketball court that had kids running around, throwing and missing shots.
“It’s nice,” Other-Dang commented. “Different from my world.”
“How so?” Dang asked.
Other-Dang looked a little sad. “Just different,” he answered, not offering any further explanations.
They finally settled on eating at a Burger King. Despite his initial comment about Star Harbor being nice, Other-Dang didn’t refrain from making comments about the archaic technology–old traffic lights; slow cars, even though this comment had been made in reference to a pretty rapid BMW that shot past them. When they arrived at the Burger King, he looked a little irritated that there were doors in this world that needed to be manually opened with hands.
Thankfully, though, he didn’t think the burger was outdated and actually seemed to rather enjoy it. While he ate, Dang simply watched, his chin resting on his hands, fingers intertwined, eyes darkened with concern.
He knew things had changed.
Everything had changed.
But at the time, he had no idea just how much.