Jason

Jason rolled his stiff neck and groaned. He’d lain awake for hours before finally falling asleep last night. It felt like he’d barely dozed off when he rolled off the mat to wake up on the floor of the little attic room he’d been given to sleep in. There was light coming through the window. Morning already? He dragged himself over to take a look.

Below the window was a circular green criss-crossed by hedge-lined paths. The morning was still dim, and the only people he saw out there were two women standing and talking on one of the paths. Across the green was another semicircle of row houses, its flat white facade broken into segments by dark brown crossbars. The roof swooped down to shade a walkway in front of the building, supported by poles at regular intervals.

It seemed like a normal neighborhood—just a kind of normal that was completely different from anything that Jason had ever seen before. Perhaps a place he could get used to if . . . he rebelled at the thought.

Jason trailed his fingers along the wall to keep his balance as he descended the steep stairs from the attic. They creaked beneath his feet, so everyone was already looking in his direction when he returned to the main room, the one with all the plant drawings and the giant cabinet. They were all already awake—he was the only one who’d slept in, apparently.

Even Naomi was awake.

She jumped to her feet when he came down, giving him a deer in the headlights sort of look. “I’m sorry I’m sorry—”

“Shut up!” Jason roared. “Do you really think that helps right now?”

“I’m . . . sorry.” She said it one last time in a small voice.

Jason unclenched his fists, shaking with rage, or terror, or both. The only thing holding him back from strangling her was the knowledge that she might be his only hope for getting back home.

“Good morning,” Esar said.

Jason ignored him, keeping his eyes fixed on Naomi. “They told me you weren’t going to be up for days.”

“Yeah, I—”

“But they said you could take me home. Well?”

Naomi looked down at the ground. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! I didn’t know it was going to happen like that. I just—I’d seen it in my dreams. I didn’t know what it was.”

“This isn’t a dream, Naomi!”

“I know! And you thought I was crazy, didn’t you?” Now she marched toward him, and Jason took a step back. “Do you still think I’m crazy? Do you still think I’m hallucinating, and there’s some other, sensible, scientific explanation?”

“I never said—” Jason lowered his voice. “I never said you were hallucinating. I still think you’re crazy.”

“That hurts,” Naomi said. Jason couldn’t tell if she meant it or not, but it didn’t matter.

“Yeah? How do you think I feel? How do you think my grandma feels right now? Or your mom?”

Naomi spread her arms wide. “Jason, would you open your eyes for just a minute? Look around—”

“I don’t want to look around, I want to go home!” Jason’s voice was breaking in spite of his best efforts to keep it under control. He clenched his mouth shut to keep his lip from trembling.

“Fine. Let’s go.” Naomi marched towards the door, then stopped. “I . . . don’t remember how to get there.”

“Do you know how to operate the portal?” Esar asked.

Naomi shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. I did it once, didn’t I?”

That didn’t inspire much confidence in Jason, but he was eager to get it over with. If he went home today, this whole . . . episode . . . would be like nothing more than a strange dream. He could put it behind him, pretend it never happened and go on with his life . . .

And never know what really happened to his father.

Jason and Naomi fell a bit behind Kelsam and Esar on the way back to the fountain.

“Can you do me a favor?” Naomi asked suddenly.

“A favor?”

“Tell my mom not to worry about me.”

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Jason stopped in his tracks as the realization swept over him. Going back to normal wasn’t going to be as simple as he thought.

“Naomi, no. You have to come back with me. If I go back and you don’t, after we both disappeared for a night, people are going to think that I murdered you.”

Naomi groaned. “Give me your phone, then.”

Jason clenched his hand around his phone in his pocket, but hesitated before taking it out.

“Look, I can’t go back, but I can make a video on your phone. I’ll tell everybody that I’m okay, and it’s not your fault, so they won’t blame you for me going missing. Okay?” She held out her hand.

It didn’t strike Jason as the best idea, but it was better than nothing. He unlocked his phone and handed it over to her.

“Keep it framed close on your face, okay? I don’t want to have to explain why you’re in some weird garden that nobody’s ever seen before.”

He watched goldfish swim around a shady pond while Naomi recorded her message.

“Hey, Mom, everybody, it’s me. Naomi Zervos. I want you all to know that I’m okay. So, I’m running away, I guess. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not your fault, Mom, and it’s not Jason’s fault. I kind of got him mixed up in it by accident. I’m sorry about that, Jason. He’s fine. And I’m fine. And when I’m ready, I’ll come home. So please don’t look for me. And please don’t worry about me.”

Naomi pushed the phone back to Jason. “How was that?”

“I don’t think it’s going to work.” Jason winced, thinking of the inevitable questions that would be thrown at him. Maybe he could just say she’d vanished, leaving that video for him to find?

“I don’t know what else to say. It’s better than nothing, right?”

“I guess.” Jason stuck his hands into his pockets and started walking again.

“Anything you want me to tell your father if I find him?”

Jason sputtered. “You’re not going to find—”

“Matt Nagy and Sophia Herrera disappeared without a trace when my father did. Well? We just disappeared without a trace, too.”

“People disappear all the time. It just means no one ever found their bodies.” Jason hastened his step, but Naomi easily kept up with him.

“We can’t have been the first people to come through that door. I’m sure that your father and Sophia—”

“Stop it. I don’t care, Naomi. It doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, my father is dead.”

“But—”

“He was never a father to me in the first place.”

Seeing pity on Naomi’s face was too much for Jason to bear. She didn’t say anything, but he could guess what she was thinking. A day ago he’d been desperate for answers, just as much as she was, and searching for a connection to the father he’d never known. He’d been so stupid, so focused on chasing after answers, dwelling so deeply in his loss that he’d been completely oblivious of what he still had. His grandmother, his friends, even school—just having a world that he knew. A world where he belonged.

Esar and Kelsam had stopped several yards short of the fountain plaza, and as Jason caught up to them, he spotted the reason why. Someone was there already. She was the first white person that Jason had seen in this world; everyone else they’d passed had skin of some shade of brown. She was dressed much like Kelsam with the same tunic and belt combo, her red hair twisted into a bun.

“It’s just Trilane,” Kelsam said to Esar in a hushed voice. “Probably trying to figure out why the fountain’s not working.”

“Then get her away from here,” Esar said.

“We could use her help.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Ah, Kelsam!” The woman hailed him, cutting off the quiet conversation. “We seem to be having a bit of a malfunction . . .” She drifted off as her gaze fell on Jason and Naomi. “New students?”

Esar stepped forward. “It’s a long story, and not one I feel like telling at the moment. Did you try reinitializing it?”

“Not yet. I got sidetracked. Never got a good look at these channel patterns before—didn’t know that there were channel patterns on the surface.” She indicated the slab at the center of the pool—the place where Jason and Naomi had emerged the night before.

“Can you read them?” Kelsam asked.

“Some of them, but there are patterns here I’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Kelsam whispered something to Esar, who sighed and whispered back. Kelsam wiped his hands on his tunic and faced the red-haired woman.

“Trilane, there’s . . . something we need to tell you about,” he said.

A few minutes later, Jason, Naomi, and Trilane were all standing in the water in front of the false door. Naomi squinted at the little squiggly lines that covered the door, searching them. It was taking forever.

“Can’t you just do the same thing you did last time?” Jason asked.

“It’s not the same,” Naomi said. “And it’s not telling me anything.”

“Telling you?”

“When I looked at the one in the museum, I just sort of . . . knew. Like, I remembered something I didn’t know I’d forgotten. This is different.”

“Try here. This looks kind of like an initialization circuit,” Trilane said, pointing to a random squiggle.

“Right here?” Naomi placed her hand on the spot that Trilane indicated, and a streak of bright green light flowed down the path, splitting into three where the pattern forked. Jason grabbed Naomi’s free hand and closed his eyes, bracing himself.

Nothing happened.

“Maybe not,” Trilane said. “These patterns aren’t quite like the ones I’ve learned. Old-fashioned, I think. Here, let’s try again.”

The next attempt failed, and the next. After five failures Jason was running out of patience. “Would it help if I tapped my heels together and said ‘There’s no place like home’?”

“I’m sorry!” Naomi cried. “I’m doing the best I can, all right?”

“How about this one?” Trilane said, quickly pointing out another spot. Naomi pressed her hand to it, and light spiraled out from her fingers, far brighter this time, giving Jason a jolt of hope. Three threads spread out across the pattern, two darting along paths to fill them with light, but the third seemed to reach a dead end. Naomi frowned at it, drawing her eyebrows together.

“Don’t try to force it—” Trilane said, but it was too late.

All the light went out as a tiny fracture crackled through the stone. It was only a hair’s width wide, only a finger’s length long, but it was enough. Naomi pulled her hand back, a look of horror on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Jason barely heard her.

“Fuck!” he screamed. He was beyond apologies, beyond anger, even. He was going to explode.

Jason ran. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he needed to get away.