Through the darkness they crept further towards the main building. Not only did they have to avoid Drotnira and Nummerfa, but also heavily armed STC agents who proudly paraded around with a whole arsenal of weapons from multiple world. They made their way through the shadows between the bright lights, regularly waiting in the shadows for long periods of time so as not to be seen. Although she really didn't like it, they also had to go through the side dimension a few times. Liana had suggested walking openly into the light, since they were wearing the right clothes, but Marah had thought it too risky. "Not yet!" she'd said decisively, as if she already had a plan she wasn't ready to unfold yet.
Liana trusted that Marah's intentions were good, but somewhere she doubted the unspoken plan. Plus, it's harder to anticipate the weaknesses in a plan you don't know, which made her nervous. But she just didn't feel like arguing here in this situation so she just kept following for now. If she really had to, she could just leave by making an invisible door and disappearing in it… So she wasn't really as afraid as she thought she would have been .
And so they went on for a long time, bit by bit, until they had almost reached the main building. It was guarded by regular guards, which were all humans. Grumpy-looking Americans in camo suits were going back and forth around the building, and she noticed that most of the people who entered were Oranderrans too. Apparently the Superior Tech Corp didn't quite trust its Nuanderan allies after all...
Liana and Marah stood in the shadows between two huge silos, surveying the traffic inside and out and suddenly they noticed a number of Nummerfa emerge from the main building: two Nummerfil guards who had the look of elite soldiers flanking a large, proud woman in very different clothes from the rest.She was clearly not a soldier, and probably some sort of leader. Liana thought she reminded her of Andira in appearance. She walked with her bodyguards in the direction of a small closely guarded outhouse from which bright lights shone. Mara looked surprised.
“That was someone from the University of the Oak Forest. What was her name again?” she muttered to herself; “Come on, let's go after her and chat with her a bit. There's something wrong here!" she added, and impulsively went after the three dark figures.
Liana, in her haste, tripped over some piece of material she hadn't been able to see in the dark. When she got up, her companion had disappeared, and to make matters worse, a patrol of heavily armed Americans had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, so Marah and Liana had to disappear into the shadows on two opposite sides of the road. Suddenly the patrol stopped, pointing their rifles and flashlights in the direction where Marah should have been. Liana couldn't see her in the bright light, and then suddenly she could see her running but less clear; so she was in the side dimension and was invisible to regular humans. The STC agents slowly shone with their flashlight in a few other directions and then stopped for a long time to inspect every corner. All the while, Liana hid in the shadows just metres away, barely even daring to breathe.
"Help" she silently called out telepathically to Marah, who seemed to be completely gone. She was probably chased away by the STC agents and had looked for a better hiding place elsewhere. It was much harder than she’d expected to maintain telepathic contact with someone she couldn’t see in an environment that kept being such an assault on all her senses. She scanned the whole area to see if she could find Marah's thoughts, but she realised that if she made contact with the wrong person she would also betray herself to their opponents. It slowly dawned on her that she was all alone now, in this strange and hostile environment. For a moment she thought of going back to Nuanderra to get help, but she couldn’t just abandon Marah now. She probably had a good reason for doing what she was doing.
Liana cursed the natural law that made it impossible to communicate between worlds. What would she not have given to be able to send a text to Nuanderra, or a telepathic message to Inaya… But she saw no way to reach anyone in Nuanderra, and texting people in this world would be useless. A message like 'Hello Mom, I'm trapped in a factory in an unknown location in the US. Can you send someone to come and help me neutralise the enemies of humanity here?” wouldn't do much, would it? Waiting was all she could think of.
Slowly the Americans moved on but Liana was still not alone. A new patrol came from the other side. Apparently the security had been stepped up. Had their entrance been noticed after all? Was Marah in trouble? Liana remained motionless, while Her heart beat in her throat like a steam train, which made her fear someone would hear her, which was a rather irrational fear in this environment of industrial noise. She surrendered herself to the dark and remained as invisible as possible in her hiding place. The soldiers stood still, so she moved as little as possible again.
Suddenly she realised she was fighting sleep. How long had she sat there? She didn't know. In the end everything started to look like a dream. She was completely sedated by the time this newpatrol was gone too. She started moving slowly, her muscles stiff from sitting still for a long time in a cramped position. Her breath returned to normal, her heartbeat calmed, and her rational thoughts returned. Now she had to find Marah again, who had gone after that professor or whatever she had been, from Oakwood University. But how? Marah was not telepathically available from here and she couldn't just scan the whole area.
She got up and started moving and randomly turned a corner to look for Marah. Too late she realised she was not alone and bumped into a heavily armed STC agent. "Oh shit..." she muttered when she saw his grouchy face, and the gun pointed at her now.
Liana caught her breath and looked at her opponent who had one of those alien weapons she wasn't even sure of what they were doing pointed at her. Why had she never asked Marah to explain those things? She cursed without words and stared into the dark eyes of the grim-looking man.clear that he didn’t have good intentions with her. Was this the end of the story? She knew she wouldn't even have the time to make an invisible gate now. These maniacs probably fired first and then asked questions. After all, that was what she had learned about American cops from TV shows and the news, and she guessed that this private militia couldn't be much better, and probably was much worse even. He really didn't radiate much respect for life, and the Nuanderran idea that he was a monstrous hell creature suddenly didn't seem so far from the truth.
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Luckily the man didn’t shoot yet. Strangely enough he just took a picture of her with his phone and forwarded it, probably to his headquarters, and gestured without words for her to come along. She did not protest, and did what was expected of her. She once again tried to reach Marah telepathically to send a fast “I'm caught”, but of course that's not how the telepathy of the Nummerfa worked if you don't even know where someone is and the world is so full of jamming signals. The guard recruited a few extra soldiers along the way who also pointed their weapons at her. Liana noticed that these beings communicated with each other in a kind of English that seemed to consist mostly of dirty words, but she would have understood them even without words anyway. They were pretty clear about what they wanted.
They had already been close to the main building when she was captured, so it didn't take long for them to get inside. Liana noted that this factory was eerily reminiscent of the constructions that she had seen on Kavanderra, with the same types of semi-alien machines scattered here and there. A forklift was driving around with a pallet of otherworldly materials. Men in white coats and blue overalls dominated this area, but there were still plenty of officers in their camouflage coats. Everyone here was human except for a few Nummerfa. Despite the night time there was still a lot of activity here. However, no one seemed to pay any attention to her and her guards while they walked to the office part of the building.
Finally, she was ushered into a small room filled with papers and computers. A man in a grey suit was sitting behind a desk, already talking with some superior about her on his phone.
"Yes, wake him up, she's certainly important enough." she heard him say.
Who needed to be woken up? And what was important about her?
"Ah, welcome to our little traveller." He said in English when he noticed Liana had arrived. “I think our boss is going to want to ask you a few questions.”
He grinned. Liana looked around and saw that there were still a lot of guns from different worlds pointed at her. The man in front of her got a phone call back, presumably from John the CEO himself, who was clearly not in a good mood. She heard his distorted yells from the phone but didn’t understand the words.
The man in the office gestured to the soldiers.
“Put her away with the other one for now. You know who! We’ll interrogate her later. And keep her alive if possible, she might be valuable.”
Again she was led through a nocturnal factory. Again they passed strange devices that seemed to be a combination of technology from different worlds in different stages of assembly. They passed more mechanics in overalls and lab coats in lab coats all with the same STC logo. The hour, the bustle, and the unreality of the environment put her in a kind of trance, and it seemed as if she was walking endlessly in this otherworldly factory, as if it were a video game stuck in a loop.
She returned to reality when they passed a gate like she had seen on Kavanderra on her left. Had the council of councils on Nuanderra been sure when they had declared that the Tech Corp would never again enter other worlds? She wasn't quite sure anymore seeing this structure. This gate wasn't completely finished, but it looked like there wasn't much work to be done on it before it could be used, and then these people would be able to not only reach their own world but also other worlds for their plans that could only be sinister…
But they had to go further and they were soon past the gate. The factory was a lot bigger inside than she expected, and her legs were getting tired. Eventually they arrived and she was led to a strange black structure that stood in a large empty hall. It seemed vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't place where she had seen a similar thing before. The officers who had taken her took her backpack and threw it on the ground, and then they pushed her inside. At least her sweater wasn’t in it anymore.
Liana sighed bored. For the second time in two weeks she was now caught and locked up by this organisation. The biggest difference from last time was that now she was put in a cell all by herself, and except for Marah who had been her opponent the first, she had no ally now here in this part of the world. Strangely enough, though, she realised it was almost the exact same cell as on Kavanderra, probably a copy of the other one in which Andira had locked her up in with Inaya and Lun. That would mean it was also constructed using material that closed off the outside world to sixth senses and kay-yitoh, and that made travelling through the dimensions impossible. Plus there would be cameras and microphones built in somewhere so that she could be observed from the headquarters by the people of the STC.
She doubted strongly she would be able to destroy everything by a high-energy rage outburst like last time. Some things you can only do once, especially if it's an outburst of a lifetime of frustration… Strangely enough, Liana was dead calm now. She was one of those people who can be in complete panic at the slightest social problem, but who remain calm when disasters lie ahead that make everyone panic. She knew rationally that there was a chance that those madmen out here would kill her and do terrible things to all of humanity on her words and even other words if they got the change, but that didn't bother her much than a few very minor bullying at school that she could go into crisis and completely get rid of and block.
She sat down and did nothing. The less she did, the more bored any observer would be and the less attention they would pay her. What could she do here, by the way, she didn't even have her smartphone with her anymore, because it was in her backpack, and it wouldn't have wifi in here anyway. This cell was specifically designed to block Nummerfa-style telepathy, so that was ruled out as well, and it too dark to do anything else. In the end she fell into a state of consciousness that was somewhere between waking and sleeping. Even her brooding thoughts eventually deserted her in this extremely low-stimulus environment, with little in return. Her sense of time was eventually gone, a side effect that this cell proved to have over and over again, so she had no idea whether she was in this cell for minutes, hours, or days in isolation.
She seemed to spend a timeless eternity in this cell, much of it in a state very much like sleep. Suddenly she woke up because something wasn't right. She clearly felt something trying to penetrate her mind. She had thought all along that she was alone, but that turned out not to be the case. She closed her brain to incoming attacks and sent a "Leave me alone" message to whoever it was who was now attacking her. She received something wordless that felt vaguely like an apology, and the stranger withdrew from her mind.
But her interest was piqued. There was no one in this cell, and no contact with the outside world was possible. So the person who had been trying to invade her spirit must be somewhere nearby. It clearly wasn’t a ghost or invisible energy either, and given the strong telepathic power, it was probably a Nummerfil.