Kevin settled back onto his bench seat in the Pathfinder, next to Elaine. He was unsure what exactly was going on between them. In fact, he mostly believed that it was just a product of stressful circumstances, but he also didn’t really care. He hadn’t had many opportunities on his Earth, because he was fairly certain it was a multiversal law that females were not really attracted to bowling alley employees. Elaine was trying to have a conversation with Grit, so Kevin leaned his head back against the ship wall, closed his eyes, and thought about how strange it was that he’d suddenly acquired friends after being yanked from his universe.
The ship pulsed and Kevin opened his eyes in time to see Cassia with her hand on the ship wall. Almost immediately, the tunnels appeared outside the ship. Kevin could see them flashing by at lighting speed, each one sort of tugging on his consciousness. He knew that if he gave in to the tugging and jumped from his seat, he could take one of those tunnels and end up somewhere else in the multiverse. Kevin shivered at the thought of being lost and alone among infinite Earths. He was so distracted that he almost missed the enormous boulder-like object flying up the tunnel at them.
“Cassia, look out!” he shouted. The Pathfinder lurched to the left, narrowly dodging the obstruction. The miss had been so close that the side of the ship had actually scraped the boulder thing. Abruptly, the Pathfinder shot to the right down a tunnel and the entire tunnel system disappeared. They’d completed the jump. Kevin realized he was sitting straight up in his seat, and his heart was racing. He took a deep breath before he looked around the cabin. Everyone else looked a little shook. Mel looked angry, which was to be expected. She was the only one who’d fallen out of her seat. Kevin started when he noticed that Cassia was staring directly at him.
“What did you do?” she asked, in a low voice. Kevin could feel all the eyes on the ship turn to him.
“Wh-, do you-, I mean, I didn’t do anything!” he stammered. Cassia’s eyes narrowed and she stepped closer to him.
“Yes, you did,” she said bluntly. “The jump seemed longer than usual, then you yelled something and the ship practically rolled. Not to mention that!” She pointed to his right. Kevin followed the direction of her finger to see an oak tree seemingly growing out of the floor and straight up to the ceiling, with the branches and leaves smashed up against the roof of the ship. The tree wasn’t whole, in fact it looked like a sliver of it had been sliced off of a bigger tree and deposited into the Pathfinder. Kevin gasped slightly as he remembered the giant blockage in the tunnel he’d seen while jumping.
“I don’t…I don’t know,” Kevin managed. Cassia considered him for another long moment, before nodding tersely. She turned and addressed the group.
“Ok guys, this is Earth-Six. We’ve stopped over here to gather supplies, since this Earth doesn’t allow the IPF access to arrest anyone. We need more ammunition and, well, Mel has her own shopping list.” Mel smirked at her. Kevin wanted to shop too, though for a very distant set of items than what he assumed Mel was shopping for. He didn’t have any money, though, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go through another session of Mel acquiring funds.
“Stopped over before we go where?” Grit asked in a quiet rumble. Cassia frowned.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said eventually. “I hope to figure that out before too long.” Her voice trailed off and the ship was silent. After a moment, Cassia shook her head.
“Grit and I will be looking for ammunition and additional weapons here,” she continued, moving towards the door. “Mel will be taking the ship and collecting her own items elsewhere.” The last part came out through gritted teeth, and Kevin could see that Cassia obviously was not a fan of this part of the plan. Mel chuckled.
“If you want to go shopping with mom and dad, feel free!” she said in a sing-song voice. “But if you want to have a little fun…” Mel winked at Cassia, who sighed audibly.
“I thought the ship didn’t work for anyone else,” Kevin said. Cassia nodded and pointed above the dashboard where Kevin noticed a clock that hadn’t been there before.
“Mel has two hours,” Cassia said simply, though a muscle flexing in her jaw gave away her nervousness. “I’m pretty sure it will work.” She put her hand on the wall of the ship. The door opened and dry hot air rushed in. Cassia looked like she wanted to say more, but she settled for a pleading look at Mel. Then she and Grit, with Tango on his shoulder, stepped outside. Derrick looked torn, but then he gave Mel a little shrug and hopped out after the other two. The door solidified behind him. Mel cracked her fingers.
“Ok, kids, let’s fucking do this.” She sat down in Cassia’s normal seat and put her hand on the dashboard. This time, the ship pulsed like it usually did. Mel let out a long breath, and Kevin realized that she hadn’t really expected it to work. Mel spun around to look at them, hand still on the dashboard and a grin on her face.
“It’s showtime,” she said dramatically, and then the ship lurched through the air, throwing Elaine into Kevin. As the ship settled into cruising speed, Elaine shifted back to her seat...but not quite all the way. Mel swiveled back around to face them.
“We’re stopping by Wraith Harbor,” she said, and Elaine gasped slightly. Mel looked pleased at the response.
“What’s Wraith Harbor?” Kevin asked. He was getting tired of being the only one who didn’t recognize names or places. Elaine looked over at him with her brown eyes opened wide.
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“It doesn’t exist,” she said, almost in a whisper. Kevin was unsure how to read her expression. She seemed somewhat in awe, or perhaps like she could burst out laughing at any moment.
Mel’s customary smirk was fixed in place.
“Oh, it exists alright,” she said. She put her hand on the ship wall. Kevin felt the familiar pulse through his feet, and then a large window opened in the front. The ship was hovering over what appeared to be the ocean. Kevin gave Mel a worried glance, but she just winked at him.
“This is the fun bit,” she said, and the Pathfinder suddenly plummeted straight down. Somehow the g-forces didn’t seem to affect them inside the ship as much as Kevin assumed they should have. Still, he felt like his stomach would never recover.
The Pathfinder hit the water at full speed, and for a moment there was nothing to see through the windows except bubbles. That slowly faded away, and it was Kevin’s turn to gasp. The Pathfinder was docking up to an enormous underwater structure that looked like something out of a movie. There were multiple giant bubble-like domes, and many smaller ones, all connected by a confusing array of enclosed bridges. Most of the domes were just transparent enough that Kevin could see people moving around inside. In fact, it looked like there were people everywhere.
Mel was grinning out the window as the ship fully docked. Then she whooped loudly.
“Let’s go, kids!” she said as she stepped up to the door that had materialized. There was a pulsing glow from something outside. Kevin wasn’t sure how much he liked being called a kid by Mel, but he was distracted from that thought when her face suddenly got very serious.
“Stay right next to me at all times,” she said, as a system of filters sucked the water out of the docking bubble they’d landed in. Kevin followed her as she pranced out and through a sealed corridor, and his curiosity seemed to pique Mel’s enthusiasm. Elaine was right behind him, though she was visibly nervous. As he stepped through the door, his eyes widened in amazement.
The first thing Kevin noticed was the sheer size of the place. Wraith Harbor was an enormous underwater city. The giant domes that he had glimpsed from the ship's window were now towering over him. Looking around, he noticed that their ship had docked at the edge of one of the domes among hundreds of similar docking pods, and people were moving in and out of shop fronts between the edge and the center. Large enclosed bridges connected their dome to others but from where they stood he couldn’t see across to the other side of the enclosed city district.
“It’s like a cross between a mall and a club,” he said, still gazing around in awe. Elaine chuckled quietly, but Mel glared at him.
“Kevin, snap out of it!” she hissed. “Act like you’ve been here before or you’ll get your ass kicked and your lunch money taken before we even get inside.” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him along to a line of open air food stands and trinket sellers, feigning at perusal. A practiced eye would see that Mel’s attention was everywhere except the wares in front of her.
“Mel, I don’t suppose we are here for an I Survived Wraith Harbor novelty hat.” Kevin whispered next to her as he picked up and then set down a black ballcap. He felt Elaine’s arm wrapped like a vice around his bicep but despite her nerves she was keeping a calm expression up.
“Stay calm and stay quiet and whatever you do, don’t fucking forget the number of the dock we parked in.” Mel pulled them along, continuing deeper into the mass of shoppers as Kevin took a bewildered glance over his shoulder.
“They were numbered…?”
----------------------------------------
A fifteen minute walk later, Kevin found himself standing in the lobby of a tattoo parlor trying to pinpoint the exact moment he’d lost all control of his life. The obvious answer was when two trigger happy IPF officers dragged him from his reality but he was currently trying to puzzle out why they’d targeted him in the first place. For a brief time in college he used to bring up the Mandela Effect a lot because he thought it made him sound smart. Maybe that?
“Look alive, dipshit.” Mel muttered it out of the side of her mouth, shaking Kevin from his ponderings. Mel was currently seated flipping through a binder of tattoos with Kevin and Elaine sitting miserably on either side.
“Got an idea what kind of design we want today?” The tattoo artist was a middle aged man who had unfortunately gotten a wolf’s open mouth tattooed around his entire neck in such a way that it seemed he was being swallowed by the creature. Kevin caught himself staring and glanced away immediately.
“Sure, this looks pretty sick, but I’d like to workshop the outfit.” Kevin looked over to see that Mel was pointing at a drawing of Bugs Bunny with a Hitler mustache and full Nazi uniform. He glanced up to see that Elaine’s wide eyes and open mouth mirrored his own but Mel had a cool even smile.
“Right this way.” The artist led the trio back towards a sterile room where the inking took place but once the door was shut he took them into a storage closet that then shifted and began to descend to a hidden lower level. As the door opened again, they were facing a hallway with numbered doors on both sides. They followed wolf-neck out and down to the door marked 9. Before he shut the door and left he pointed to a doorbell-like button. “Three rings if there’s an emergency, one ring to leave.”
“That’s a little ominous Mel, where the hell are we are?” Kevin said through gritted teeth once the door had shut again.
“You know the black market? The dark web?” Kevin and Elaine nodded slowly. “Toys R Us compared to this shit. Come on.” Mel stepped over to the wall opposite the door and sat in an armchair before tapping a button on the wall. It suddenly lit up and Kevin realized it was a screen that nearly took up the entire wall. On it, a series of items were slowly scrolling past as if on a conveyor belt. Numbers and words he didn’t understand filled the vacant spaces and the top right corner had a square space that held the silhouette of a figure hidden in shadow.
“So…” Before Kevin could form a full sentence Mel flicked his ear. Hard.
“Broker, I believe you owe me some credit.” It was a statement, not a question and Kevin noted just how menacing Mel was when she dropped the playful profanity from her lexicon.
“Half pay, for half completion.” The Broker’s voice was warbled by some sort of software making their voice somewhere between monster and government leaker.
“You said stop the Illic brothers from getting your crate onto Earth-18, you didn’t say shit about returning it.” Mel stared at the screen with a hint of a smile on her lips and the silence stretched for a full minute.
“Three-quarters and a Silver.” Kevin was utterly lost but could tell the Broker’s words had the weight of finality and, at them, Mel’s smile stretched wider.
“Pleasure. Now let’s buy some highly illegal shit.”