“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Kevin muttered to himself as he walked briskly back across the bank lobby he’d crossed with Mel less than an hour ago. He clutched the duffle bag of Mel’s belongings to his chest as he walked. Mel had told him to get directions to some kind of station and find Cassia. He had, frankly, not been totally listening and it seemed he wouldn’t be able to abandon Mel to her fate even if he actually wanted to. No, as rough as she was, Mel was one of his only friends now and he was going to find her.
Kevin took a deep breath. With the decision made, he felt himself calming into a more controlled panic. Sure, he had no idea what he was doing but he had a task. Save Mel. Glancing down at the bag, a few things came to mind.
“Ok. What do we get?” Kevin whispered to himself and walked towards the sign for the restrooms. Luckily, he found they were individual bathrooms with locking doors and they were well cleaned too. He sat awkwardly on the lid of the toilet and began to go through the bag. He’d watched Mel purchase these things but he had no clue what they did. There had to be something that could help right now though.
First he produced the rectangular device Mel had been flaunting earlier. The central screen seemed translucent and as he held it over his thighs a gentle chime rang out and No Wound Detected blinked across the top of the screen.
“Ok, some kind of first aid device?” Kevin mumbled to himself and tucked it back into the back, producing a second item. He looked at the tube-like item and saw that it held several thin disks, like a larger, thicker roll of quarters. Removing one slowly from the tube he checked the size and estimated the tube held about six of them. The disc fit easily in one hand and felt almost delicate, flimsier than a quarter. It didn’t seem to have any visual indicator of what it might do and there was no button or switch. The disc was smooth and metallic with no markings. He turned his attention to the tube and noted a logo of some kind, a pixelated generic face with a Z instead of a mouth. Next to this, the tube simply said Lights Out.
Kevin tucked the disc back into the tube and scratched his head in frustration. This was going nowhere. He pulled a third item from the tote, a glasses case. Opening it, he found himself staring blankly at a pair of sunglasses. They were unremarkable, and from what he’d seen so far, not especially stylish on any Earth. He picked them up gingerly looking for labels or buttons but they were completely unmarked. With a sigh, Kevin tried them on and was surprised when he was looking at his surroundings through something resembling a heads up display.
“Calibration to owner retinal function complete.” The sunglasses said calmly in a quiet robotic voice.
“Oh no.” Kevin gasped. “Mel’s going to kill me.”
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Mel pulled steadily at her bindings. She was blindfolded but could tell that her wrists had been zip tied together then linked to something above her head. She was seated with her feet similarly bound. She could tell the space was small, the three goons who had brought her here had struggled to fit in the space and in turn, struggled to properly secure her. Nothing to do now but play the long game. She continued sawing the zip ties around her wrists against whatever held her in place. She’d been in spots like this before, with enough time, her hands would be free.
She thought back to her meeting and her anger boiled up. Apparently, the status quo had changed since she’d been in Wraith Harbor. A contact she thought could give her some information had been bought up by a newcomer. She should have known better than to think she could trust any of the lowlifes in this city. None of this would have happened if Kevin had listened to her. Kevin. A pang of guilt ran through her when she thought of him sitting on a bench in a hallway somewhere in the building above her. Hopefully, he’d do as she said before they snagged him too.
The low sawing sound her ties were making changed tone ever so slightly and she cracked a smile. Just a little longer and she’d get out of here and apologize to Kevin. She did bring him to the most dangerous city on Earth-6 after all.
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“E-Patcher MedBox, Origin Earth-18.” The glasses spoke through some sort of bone-conduction speakers in the temple arms. He was looking at the rectangular device and the words he’d just heard were currently displayed unobtrusively at the edge of his vision. Kevin glanced over to the tube. Zeta Brand Lights Out tablets, Origin Earth-98 replaced the previous text and the glasses once again spoke them. Kevin had figured out how to access a menu of sorts to make the voice speak through the headphone-style output instead of actually out loud via speaker.
The final item in the bag was a gun-like device that the glasses labeled as the Pentyon Cryo-XL Proto, which Kevin thought sounded dangerously experimental. The weapon didn’t have a barrel so much as a tube-like tip and with no spot for a clip or magazine, Kevin found that it instead had a valve connection that fit a few cylinders that had been loose in the tote bag. The end result resembled something close to a paintball gun that Kevin had moderate experience with. Looking over the haul, Kevin tried to think of how these things might come together in a plan. Planning hadn’t gotten him far in life honestly. He tucked the tube into his pocket, kept the glasses on, and put the MedBox and Cryo-XL into the bag again and left the bathroom.
In the hallway, Kevin thought frantically about how to proceed and found himself heading back to where he’d last seen Mel. The glasses gave a small low beep in his temples and “Blood Pressure Elevated” popped up across his vision. He rolled his eyes and kept moving, his anxiety climbing. What if he couldn’t even find her? A wave of nausea started to hit his body and his vision blurred. For a brief moment, as he leaned against the wall for balance, Kevin saw the corridor of doors that always accompanied a multiversal jump. He blinked rapidly and it dissipated and he remained in the hallway.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Arrival, Earth-6. Local Time, 10:45pm.” The glasses chirped at him.
“What the hell…?” Kevin murmured to himself. He pulled the glasses off, looked at them, then returned them to his head. Taking a breath, he stepped into the stairwell. “If I were Mel would I be up or down?” Kevin muttered.
“Down, probability 58%.” Kevin stared through the glasses in confusion. They answered his questions too? He shrugged and started walking down the steps. As he walked, he thought about the fact that Mel had come from a higher story of the building in the elevator. It made sense that they would take the stairs lower, rather than just stop at the higher floor they’d been aiming for. Down made the most sense.
He passed three landings, deciding to go all the way to the lowest basement level before he heard a muffled cry. Kevin stopped immediately and produced the Cryo-XL. He didn’t have a clue what it would do but he felt safer with it in his hands. As he approached the final landing, he could hear footsteps in the hall beyond. He paused, listening quietly from the stairs. The footsteps were definitely coming from more than one person and they stopped close to the stairwell.
“Yeah, she’s secure now. Almost rubbed clean through the fuckin’ zips. Got her sorted and Ward’s watching her. How much longer you want her to stew?” Kevin listened intently to the conversation, marking the pauses that indicated the speaker was on a phone. “Sure boss, I can have the boys take shifts till morning. Want us to bring her up first thing or…?”
Kevin crept up the stairs to the next landing and stepped into a hallway that ran the length of an underground parking garage. He walked briskly towards the other end and found a restroom to slip into. A plan hadn’t fully come together but Kevin resolved to wait a few hours till the middle of the night to make his move.
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Mel tried to shift her weight. It had been hours since she’d nearly broken free of her ties and her wrists felt like fire. She was bound much tighter with her hands fully behind her back. The zip ties dug into her and she could feel the blood running down her fingertips. Since her near escape, she’d been moved to the floor seated with her legs criss-crossed like a child. Her ankles were bound and whatever connected her to the edges of the room was taut and in the opposite direction of the leg it connected to. The result was that she was almost entirely unable to move.
She was blindfolded but she could tell the man guarding her hadn’t left. He was a shadow blocking a little light that came from a single bulb near the door of the small room. He made very little sound, in the minutes after she’d been rebound she had even wondered if it was just a bluff left in place to keep her from trying to escape. One attempt to move and a hard slap across the face answered that question and she’d been still ever since. Mel wasn’t one to give up but she was beginning to accept the circumstances were dire.
Of course, she was alive and hadn’t been tortured or maimed. Someone probably wanted to talk to her and that would be her opportunity. She waited patiently, slowly testing her various bindings just in case. She wasn’t sure of the time but hours had passed with her sitting on the floor in pain when a clatter echoed from the hallway outside and the large shadow across her limited vision shifted.
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Kevin frantically picked up Cryo-XL from where he’d dropped it. He had been confident in his plan until he’d kicked off the execution of it. It was nearly three in the morning when he’d slipped out of a closet near the stairs and crept toward the door he knew Mel to be behind. Of course, his sweaty hands betrayed his nerves and the gun had slipped away as he drew it.
He moved quickly and quietly hoping that the sound wouldn’t derail the whole plan. A click as the door opened shot down that idea and a grunt soon followed. Kevin turned and saw a mountain of a man looking into the hallway, directly at him. Unsure of what to do he watched as the man’s eyes flicked from Kevin’s face to the gun in his hands and a semblance of recognition crossed his face. Any wariness left the man’s expression and he was almost smirking as he stepped towards Kevin.
“Impact imminent.” The glasses whispered to him and a translucent square drew his attention to the man’s right hand as he approached. Before Kevin could react, he felt himself spinning through the air as the man’s full might slapped him across the face. As he landed, with the new glasses crooked on his face, Kevin tried to turn to keep eyes on his assailant. As he did, a hard kick caught him in the stomach and he winced in pain.
Kevin pressed the glasses back into position and watched the man casually produce a silenced handgun. His glasses highlighted the gun and prompted him that there was a 95% chance of lethal force. The plan had gone directly off the rails so Kevin did the only thing he could think of and fired the Cryo-XL.
A burst of frigid air erupted around the weapon as it fired and Kevin shivered as he tried to roll away from the man. The blast had hit the man’s gun and he tossed it aside as if it were on fire. The barrel cracked apart when it hit the floor and frost accumulated along the grip. The man’s face crumpled into a frown and he rushed towards Kevin, prone on the floor.
“Impact imminent.” The glasses chimed again and a square around the bulky man’s right fist was outlined. Kevin fired the Cryo-XL again and watched as the man’s expression switched to confusion. His fist became blue, ice crystallizing across his knuckles. Kevin rolled back against the wall as the frozen fist smashed into the floor where his face had been and shattered. A horrific cry of pain echoed throughout the hall as Kevin closed his eyes to protect from projectile shards of ice bursting away from the impact.
Kevin opened his eyes to see the man seated, his eyes staring at the mangled end of his arm. Bits of his frozen hand were scattered throughout the hallway and the stump at his wrist was blackened with severe frostbite. A slow ooze of blood leaked down his sleeve. Kevin’s glasses highlighted the wound and the man’s eyes.
“Victim is in shock, loss of consciousness probable.” As the glasses spoke, Kevin turned and vomited on the floor. After wiping his mouth, he edged around the man and opened the door to the room Mel was held in. He pulled up her blindfold first and checked her for serious wounds.
“Are you alright? I used your stuff, I’m sorry!” Kevin smiled nervously as he produced a pocket knife from Mel’s bag and began cutting away her bonds.
“Kevin, this one time only, I’m sure fucking glad you didn’t do what I said.”