CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THAT DIDN’T GO WELL

----------------------------------------

Daniel woke with coughing, spluttering sounds, his eyes stinging, his chest feeling as though the world had just been dropped on it. Around him were fire, ashes, ember and bodies. Wait, bodies!

He rolled over to one side, groaning as a throbbing pain shot through the entirety of his body. His hands were blackened, covered in soot. And his body was tingling oddly. Something else had mixed in with his usual energy, he knew it, could feel it. He wasn’t sure he liked that sensation very much but that wasn’t something to think about just yet.

He looked around at the bodies, praying silently that they were all just unconscious and not dead. If that explosion had hurt anyone, if it’d hurt Megan–

He identified a shape that looked a lot like Megan and started to crawl toward her. He was far too weak in this state to push himself to his feet. Even the mere thought of doing such a thing made him feel tired, weak, useless.

He reached the figure and pushed them over gently. Sure enough, it was Megan. Their hair was caked with dirt now, and there was blood trickling down the side of their face.

“Meg,” he groaned, tapping her. “Meg, wake up.”

Thankfully, they responded at once, stirring with a groan. Their eyes fluttered weakly before opening wide. They blinked once at Daniel, then again. They bolted into an upright position and scanned the surroundings.

“What the hell happened?” Megan queried.

“Safe to say Dang’s idea was a bomb,” Daniel shook his head. “In this case, quite literally. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, are you?” Megan worriedly frowned.

“I’ll live,” Daniel smiled.

Megan got to their feet and offered a hand to Daniel to help him up. Daniel accepted. Once on his feet, he threw an arm around Megan’s shoulder for support, placing his other hand just over his ribcage which he was pretty sure had taken a few solid hits during the explosion.

“Hang on,” Megan said. With a wave of her hand, she generated a strong enough gust of wind to extinguish the flames left around them and disperse all of the smog in the air so they could see.

What they saw made Daniel’s mouth drop open. The observatory was gone.

Well, not entirely, but half of it had been blown off and considering there wasn’t a lot of brick piles around them, he decided the explosion must have disintegrated most of it.

“Whoa,” he said, his eyes going wide. If the explosion had disintegrated half of a building, then it was sheer madness that he’d somehow survived with nothing but a set of broken ribs. “How the–,”

Dante woke with a loud gasp, bolting straight to his feet with his eyes wide in horror. He engulfed his fists in flames and spun around as though he wanted a fight. Daniel hastily held up a flaming fist too, despite being certain he wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight in his condition.

Dante stared at him and Megan as though he didn’t recognize them; an almost feral expression in his eyes.

“Bro?” Daniel spoke warily.

“Dante,” Megan said softly. “Are you okay?”

“Who–,” Dante frowned. “Where–,” he turned around, as though he was confused. He turned to face them again. “Where are they?” he asked.

“Where are who?” Daniel asked, confused.

“The monsters, dammit!” Dante yelled angrily. He took a step toward the two of them and Megan stepped toward him, already summoning mini-vortexes in her hands.

“Back off,” she warned.

Dante paused. He looked at the both of them, then he raised a hand to the side of his head, rubbing it and groaning. His expression relaxed a little and then he regarded them again. When he spoke, his voice quivered. “Didn’t you see them?” he asked. “When the cube exploded, I saw flashes…glimpses.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I—,” Daniel tried hard to think. He couldn’t remember if he’d seen anything. He thought he had. At least, he remembered seeing someone who looked like a much older him. But he wasn’t sure if he’d really seen that. “I didn’t see anything,” he said finally. “And I don’t think there’s any monsters around, must have just been the cube playing tricks.”

Dante’s shoulders relaxed and the flames around his fists vanished. He bent over, placing his hands on his knees. “Crap, what did we do?”

“Well, the world’s still in one piece, right?” Daniel said, glancing up at the sky. “It’s not like we blew a black hole into the world or anything so that’s a win for us, no?”

Really, what he wanted to say was that he’d warned them against doing this, against trusting Dang. And that if anything at all was wrong with their world, it would be on all three of the doppelgangers. In fact, he wanted to do more than just say it. He wanted to yell it.

He was angry. But he’d found that joking about things whenever he got pissed often helped him get over it.

So, he forced a smile and did his best to remain in character.

“Yeah,” Dante nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” He straightened and looked around again. This time, he finally noticed the half-gone observatory. His eyes widened when he saw it and he let out a long whistle. “Crap, the cube did that?”

“We need to be glad it didn’t do that to us,” Megan said, her voice chilly.

“How do we know that thing didn’t like boot us all to a different universe or something?” Daniel asked, starting to think about some frightening possibilities. “Or maybe we’re all dead and this is a shared afterlife?”

“It’s the same world,” someone said.

They turned to find Daedalus standing there. He was pulsing with bluish-purple energy, and his eyes were glowing with the residual energy of the explosion. His hair was rough and face bruised but other than that, he looked fine.

“Are you okay?” Dante asked, clearly just as concerned about Daedalus’ appearance as Daniel and Megan were.

“Yeah,” Daedalus nodded. “Just a little overcharged is all, I took in some of the energy from the explosion to reduce its effects on everybody else. It might have killed the rest of you otherwise.”

Considering what it’d done to the observatory, Daniel didn’t doubt that at all. “Thank you,” he said, nodding at Daedalus.

Daedalus nodded back then looked at all of them as though he was doing a headcount. He frowned.

“Where’s Dang?” he asked.

All of them glanced around. There was some rubble around, bits of dirt that had been thrown up from the earth and all, and it was possible he could have been beneath them. Or at least, that was the best-case scenario.

There were a number of worst-case scenarios. For instance, he might have met the same fate as the top half of the observatory, which Daniel thought would be downright depressing. Or he might have been displaced to another universe, which Daniel thought would be frightening.

The last was that the explosion might have blown him right off the mountain, and it was perhaps the most forgiving of the worst-case scenarios since there was a chance he could have survived that. And so, Daedalus and Dante went off the mountain in search of him while Megan and Daniel blasted through rubble pile after rubble pile in search of him.

After about ten minutes, Megan unearthed him. But there was something off about him.

For one, his skin was glowing. His hair was floating around and his eyes were wide open, glowing an intense white.

When Daniel attempted to touch him, to jerk him out of whatever trance was in, he felt a sharp jolt, the likes of which he’d never felt before. This prompted him to back off at once.

“Daedalus!” he yelled. “Dante!”

“We’ve found him!”

Daedalus and Dante returned immediately and both looked concerned about Dang’s condition.

“The hell is wrong with him?” Dante asked.

“I don’t know,” Daedalus murmured. “But the readings I’m getting off him, they’re not regular energy signatures.”

“So cosmic then?” Dante said as he furrowed his brows. “You don’t think the explosion’s displaced his mind or something, do you?”

“I think it’s happened before,” Daedalus said, remembering his first encounter with Dang. “Look, we just need to move him somewhere else and wait for him to snap out of whatever this is.”

“Good luck with that,” Daniel said. “You can’t touch him. Shocked me when I tried to.”

“I can handle a little shock,” Dante said. He crouched next to Dang and extended a hand toward him.

“No, no, no!” Daniel yelled frantically. But then Dante’s hands touched Dang and nothing seemed to happen. In fact, the only thing that happened was that Dante’s eyes seemed to glow a little, and for a split moment.

Dante looked up at Daniel. “It’s fine,” he shrugged.

Daedalus headed toward Dang too and touched him. He didn’t seem to be affected by it. Together, the doppelgangers pulled Dang to his feet, jointly holding him.

“What the hell,” Daniel murmured. He stepped toward Dang again and reached for him. The moment his hand came within two inches of Dang, he felt the jolt once more except this time, a force blasted him backward, knocking the wind right out of him.

“Daniel!” Megan yelled and ran right to him. They stopped right beside him and helped him to his feet. “Are you okay?”

Daniel nodded. “Yeah. But what the hell was that? Why can’t I touch him?”

“Maybe only we can?” Dante asked, looking a little confused by the phenomenon himself. “Maybe it’s like a defense mechanism against anyone who isn’t him. And well, we sort of are him, right?”

“We can’t figure that out here,” Daedalus said. “Need to get somewhere else to lay low. Chances are an explosion like the one we just set off will attract attention. Need to get elsewhere before that happens.”

“Well, where do we go?” Dante asked. “The observatory was HQ.”

“Hang on,” Daniel said, a small smile creeping onto his face. “I think I might know a place.”