“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being here. With me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
***
“You what?”
Cora flinches at the sharp bite in Callista’s tone. “I had to!”
“No, you didn’t. You can’t trust a word that man says. He trapped you, tested you, and you decided the best choice was to trust him?” Callista unfurls at the end of Cora’s bed and stares at the ceiling, dragging her hands through her hair. “He put you into a corner you had no way out of. That was a bad move. Even for you.”
“Maybe if you were there you’d understand!” Cora’s voice cracks. She scowls and turns away. “You don’t know what it’s like having that thing in my head. I can feel it there every single second I’m awake and I hate there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” Cora grunts, and she throws herself onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. Callista’s hand crosses a vast gulf of wrinkled bed sheets and touches Cora’s fingers.
“Are you sure?” Callista sounds so… afraid. Her voice softened by the blow she dealt Cora. She snakes her fingers over hers and squeezes her hand.
“I don’t have a choice.” She does have a choice, though, and the choice is to tackle the issue herself, delving deep into the complex chemistry of her own brain and purging the parasite on her own. Except if she fails, she’ll be possessed and destroy Muschia.
Callista traces a thumb over the back of Cora’s hand. “Whatever you choose, I’ll support you through it. Even if I disagree about trusting the governor.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t trust him. Not enough. But I trust him to get rid of the parasite.” Cora sighs and gnaws on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know what to do.” Her eyes trace the swirls of stone and packed mushroom flesh holding the ceiling. If each swirl represents a world, then the random specks of dead matter represent her, completely and utterly lost, trapped with a parasite that has the power to end worlds. “What I don’t get is why he was so, I don’t know, nonchalant about it? He told me about all these worlds people like me destroyed before. Esse? Duelium? Do you know those worlds?”
Callista tenses. “Disobey, and the Empire will reduce your world to nothing.”
“Callista?”
She grimaces and sits up. Her hand slips away, and she tucks it to her chest. Her sleek, black hair falls over her shoulders. “They’re old stories my parents used to tell so I’d behave. Esse and Duelium, they’re a few of the worlds that fought until the bitter end. At least, that’s what they said.”
“The governor told me people that used the gateway destroyed them. Duelium’s continent got split in half. Esse’s oceans were evaporated by some guy called Arlo.”
“Really?” Callista stares at her with an expression of pure curiosity. “They sounded like stories when I was little. You don’t look like you’ll end the world.”
“It’s not supposed to be me.” Cora clenches her hands. “It’s supposed to be the parasite. It almost tricked me back in the forest. When I thought I was gonna die, it came, and I almost said yes.”
“Cora. It’s okay,” Callista says, before Cora realizes she’s shaking.
“Oh,” she mutters, failing to hide her trembles. She’s shivering worse than she had the first night in the forest, buffeted by icy winds. “Yeah. It’s okay.” Callista takes her hand again, and this time she doesn’t let go. The pressing weight of her presence grounds Cora. Reminds her that she’s not alone. “Same goes to you, you know. You don’t get to act strong and not let it all out.”
“Then who will hold me?”
“I will, you idiot.” Cora sniffles and lightly smacks her shoulder. “We can hold each other.”
“And we will both fall.” But Callista scoots closer, and Cora sits up and closes the gap, sitting shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand. “If the governor hurts you in any way, I will kill him.”
“Callista!” Cora hisses, glancing around. The walls could be paper thin for all she knows. Or thick but hollow enough to encourage sounds into other rooms.
“You won’t stop me.”
Cora wouldn’t even dream of it. “You can’t do something like that. They’ve been helping us since we got here. They could’ve killed us or imprisoned us. But they accepted us.”
“One thing I learned is that people who think they’re right are the most dangerous.” Callista’s nose flares. She softens when she looks at Cora, though her jaw is set, and her lips are pressed tight. “Like the governor. They don’t care if they hurt anybody. All that matters is that they’re proven right.”
There’s a lot of personal history behind that Cora doesn’t dare poke to light. “He won’t hurt me again.”
“Did he tell you?”
“I assumed he wouldn’t… oh.” She is terrible at navigating conversations. If Mari was in her place, she’d be quick to push the governor to listen to her demands. “He never said anything about that.”
“Well, we have time until his preparations are ready. Promise me you’ll consider the risks before you listen to him.”
Callista’s eyes flare the slightest purple, and she leans forward. Cora suddenly freezes, transfixed by the slow, burning light of her irises, then her lips.
“What are you doing?” she squeaks out.
Callista blinks, and the light extinguishes. “I can’t help it. I…” In a stunning, rare display of vulnerability, Callista is speechless, caught between the truth of what she was about to do and a lie she might desperately concoct.
She reacts in the way only she would.
“I am not going to take advantage of you,” she says, straight-faced and serious. She sits straight and folds her hands in her lap. “I won’t do anything irresponsible without your permission. I promise you that, too.” Cora raises her eyebrows, and Callista quickly presses her finger to Cora’s lips. “Except the governor or anybody who tries to hurt you. I will kill them.”
She gulps. Callista is right there, and all it’d take is to push away her finger and just… What does Cora want, anyway? Her heart is a furnace, heating up her extremities, scalding her face. She aches to let her body follow its burning desires, touch Callista, and–she shakes her head, pushing Callista’s hand away.
Mari had always pushed her buttons about not just liking guys. Maybe Cora had been caught looking at places she shouldn’t have a few times, but she always brushed it off and blamed her wandering mind. Not like she wasn’t used to dissociating a lot.
Yet, the closer she gets to Callista, the more she wants her. She wants to grapple Callista to the ground. She itches to smother her in affection with her two functioning arms–two! She yearns to close the remaining distance and turn their bodies into one.
But she can’t.
She won’t.
There’s somebody else they forgot about.
“I’m gonna talk to Liam,” Cora says, drawing her shoulders back. She pushes herself off her bed and twists her back, vertebrae popping. “I’m not gonna flake out, I swear. Maybe when we get back we can… you know…” Callista stares at her blankly, and Cora sighs and tosses her arms up in exasperation. “Don’t play dumb. You have my full permission. After I talk to Liam.”
Callista perks up and smiles. “Perhaps there are other ways you can end my world.”
“You jerk, don’t joke about that!” Cora, with a smile of her own, shoves Callista, and she accepts the transfer of momentum and is sent sprawling on the bed. “Where’s Liam?”
Callista huffs and blows strands of hair from her lips. “I think he’s on the second or third floor in the other hospital wing. Are you going to talk to him about the box?”
“I have to.” Cora pats her pockets, makes sure her phone and solar charger are there, and turns toward the door. “You can stay here if you want.”
“I’m hungry.” Callista pushes herself effortlessly off the bed onto her feet, no gift needed. She rolls on the balls of her feet and crosses the distance to the door in two bounding leaps. “Good luck, though. There’s a reason why he doesn’t want to talk to you a lot. And no, before you ask, it’s not for the reason you think it is. It’s his reason to tell.”
Callista opens the door and steps outside. She waits until Cora crosses the threshold before closing it, and Cora quickly locks the door.
“Why can’t you tell me?” Cora says as they walk toward the nearest stairwell.
“As I said, it’s not up to me to decide.” They start the long descent down toward the near-bottom. Their voices echo over and over until it becomes a dull whine mimicking Cora’s tinnitus. “I personally understand why he doesn’t want to, but I don’t accept his logic.”
Cora grips the hand rails. The cold metal bites into her warm fingers. “Did I hurt him badly?”
“You did. In more ways than one, I may add. It was wrong for you to not tell him.”
“I was scared he’d leave me or do something worse. Then when I got to know him better, I just didn’t want to ruin the friendship we had, you know?” The lettering posted on each sign dwindles. One of the few things Cora learned from the Allied language was numbers, and the squiggly symbol is the equivalent of a 4. “It was stupid. I just wish I wasn’t such a coward.”
“Better late than never.” The next hospital floor opens up. Callista squeezes Cora’s shoulder. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Callista’s footsteps fade during the last few stories of her descent, and Cora enters the corridor. Several guards patrolling the hallways wriggle a characteristic Cenarian greeting, and Cora waves back. It takes a minute to reach the end of the hallway and cross the vast length of the main building. Normal sounds resume, and life bursts around her. Patients sit on long couches and chat, nurses scramble to escort patients on wheelchairs and gurneys into neighboring rooms, doctors scribble down notes on sleek journals while they go from room to room, and hospital staff maintain order at the big ring near the center, handling the paperwork. Apparently, even paperwork strangles alien worlds.
Cora waves at them as she passes and most wave back. Soon, she leaves the glow and warmth of the main building and descends into the gloomy depths of the second hospital wing, reserved for more serious injuries. Nearly every door is closed, and the nurses and doctors that frequent the hallways are dead silent. Cora nods in acknowledgement, and they wave their tendrils in return. This side of the hospital is dead quiet, and except for required medical personnel or the occasional curious adventurer like herself, never sees any meaningful activity.
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Why would Liam be here? Unless the Transient wanted some peace and quiet to itself. Maintaining an illusion forever can’t be an easy thing to do. Then again, she can’t imagine how a gift like that works, whether it takes the same toll on the body as manipulating the earth like putty does.
To her disappointment, Liam is nowhere to be seen. She takes the nearest stairwell down into the second floor, but before she takes the first step, a dark shadow lunges at her.
She squeaks and swings a fist at the shadow. Expert hands catch her flimsy punch and immobilize her. “What are you doing here?” Liam hisses, glancing at the hallway. “I’m staking this room out because the Transient is there.”
“I need to talk to you,” Cora says.
“Can you do it later? I’m currently busy.”
“You’re always busy, aren’t you?” Cora plants her hands on her hips and glares at him. “We talk outside.” He turns away and stalks back toward his hiding spot, a little recess in the wall plunged into shadows behind and beside the rising stairs. She storms up to him and grabs his arm. “Now.”
He looks at her hand. Her left hand. “I’m still not used to seeing you without a cast.”
“Now.”
Cora’s tone is sharp. Angry. She squeezes his forearm, and he relents, peeling away from his hiding location. “Fine.”
Like a chastised puppy, she drags him to the first floor, out a little-used back door, into the combed wilderness behind the hospital. Even here, scores of people linger, talking or walking or inhaling mysterious substances that suspiciously come in a white powder form inside cloth bags. Cora storms past them all, no longer pulling Liam’s arm. He falls in step behind her.
Together, they plunge into the first true depths of wilderness. Tufts of purple grass and hordes of tiny mushrooms claim some beaten, meandering flagstones. Beneath their boots, however, the mushrooms are reduced to paste, and the grass is bent and crushed. The mushrooms thicken, and their broad caps blot out most sunlight. A few trees sprout among clumps of mushrooms, but their trunks are thin, their canopies sprouting past the tallest mushrooms, leaves unfurled and soaking in glorious sunlight.
After a bit of walking, when she can’t hear any murmurs except leaves brushing against mushroom caps, she stops.
“I’m sorry.”
Cora can’t let the next words out. They don’t feel right, they don’t feel meaningful, they don’t express how much she regrets dragging him into her mess.
“For taking me here?” Liam raises an eyebrow and pats the nearest mushroom. The stalk is firm, unyielding beneath his muscular touch. “I can be kind of a jerk sometimes. I guess I had it coming.”
“No! No, you’re not a jerk.” Cora inhales and exhales. “I’m the jerk. I wanted to talk to you about lying to you about why you were here.”
“Oh. Well.”
He crosses his arms, face blank.
“I’m sorry, Liam,” she tries, and she shakes her head. Why won’t the right words come out? “I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have done this at all. I probably just sound stupid or something to you, right?” He doesn’t respond. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fuck. I guess that can’t be forgiven. It’s just, agh, I don’t know, there’s so many things I wanted to say but I don’t know how to say them because I’m scared I’m gonna make our friendship worse. And I am, right?” Once more, he remains silent, silently looking at her. “It feels stupid just saying I’m sorry. Ugh. Let’s just go back.”
“Want to talk it out?” He lifts his head and slowly lowers himself to the ground. He leans against the mushroom stalk, exhaling slowly.
“Of course I want to talk it out. I just don’t know how.” Cora joins him, slumping against the mushroom stalk, until she’s sitting beside him. Nearly shoulder to shoulder. Reminiscent of the forest when they had only each other for company.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says earnestly. His voice is low, soft. “It happened. It’s over and done.”
“But it can’t end like this. I hurt you, Liam.”
He glances away. “You have no idea how wrong you are.”
“I hurt you, and I’m still hurting you somehow, right? Callista told me you were avoiding me for a reason. I wanted to let you know that I don’t want anything bad between us. I know I fucked up, I know I should’ve told you about the box sooner, but I was scared you were gonna leave me.”
“I would’ve never left you.” His jaw sets, and a vein pulses dangerously near his neck. “I said I’d keep you safe, and I did. I still will. You lying to me doesn’t change that. In fact…” He threads his fingers together and sets his hands on his lap. “I don’t care. You saved me.”
Cora tosses her head up and counts the individual spots beneath the mushroom cap. “I dragged you here. You didn’t have to deal with any of this.”
“I’m glad I did.”
“What?”
He sighs, and his shoulders slump. The weight of the world reduces, and she’s presented with a Liam she’s never seen before. Soft, vulnerable. He drags his hands over his face and leaves them there.
“I’m not talking about the forest.” Quietly, he lowers his hands, and exposes his pink eyes. Traces of wetness cling to his eyelashes. The slow welling of tears are about to fall, shed for pain deeper than anything she can comprehend, something that broke his statuesque invincibility and scraped his strength away. “I’m talking about before. My old life. You saved me.”
Cora gnaws on her lip as he continues. “I wasn’t doing too well. Not at all.” He barely chokes out the last few words before he purses his lips and wipes at his eyes. “I was going to–going to kill myself.”
She doesn’t hesitate to snake her arm around him and pull him close. He lets her, choosing to rest his head on her shoulder. On the inside, she’s screaming endlessly, shocked that he had been suicidal, depressed because he had almost followed through, angry because he’s probably been hurting for so long that she misinterpreted his recent distance and took him for granted like the selfish person she is.
“I almost did it. That’s why I had the knife.” He stares at the ground. “I was so close. I had the tip over my heart right here.” His rough, calloused fingers pull down the hem of his shirt and points out a tiny scar about the size of a pinhead. “I gave myself no time to prepare. I didn’t want to spend another second alive. The world back home was unfair, still is unfair. But maybe God or whatever exists above our heads gave me another chance. Because why did the color lights pop into existence right there, right next to me, right when I was about to finish the job?”
“Liam.” Cora holds him tight.
“When I came to the forest, I thought I did it. I thought I was in hell. Parts of my bathroom came with me, but I didn’t care. I thought I was dead. A few animals attacked me and I killed them, but it felt so real. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Until you met me,” she says, trying not to cry.
“Until I met you.” He traces an image of the box on dirt. “Then everything else happened and I had to focus on you instead of just myself. Believe it or not, you saved me.”
“Liam.” She squeezes him again, and he reaches up to hug her. They hold each other for a few moments, sharing the silence through labored breaths. “How… how are you now?”
“It still hurts, you know. Which brings me to the reason me and Callista fought over. She thinks it’s unfair, but she doesn’t understand what I see. The reason I wanted to kill myself is because…” He hiccups, and in a fit of frustration, wipes at his eyes again, drying his fingers off on his pants. “Is because the only person who ever gave a shit about me, the only person who cared about me, who I loved more than anyone…” Liam snarls and slams his fists into the dirt. “Died.”
“No…”
“I didn’t want to talk to you because you remind me so, so much of her.” His voice is tight, teeth clenched. He grabs his legs and doesn’t let go. “You had no idea, and I didn’t want to burden you. I guess both of us are liars, then, huh?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No! Don’t fucking apologize. She died, and I accepted it the moment I saved you and realized no matter what I thought, you would never replace her.” Liam sobs, and his chest convulses, lips drawing back in a pained grimace. “I miss her so fucking much. It’s not fair that she was chosen to die and I got to live. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair. How could an angel like her suffer so much, and a demon like me get away with everything?”
Cora holds him tight. She aches to hold him tighter, let him know that he’s anything but a demon. Instead, he growls, and his eyes flash mercury. That’s all the warning she gets before the forest drops away and a new world ferociously slams into existence.
The scenes melt and regenerate. A small boy steals from stores and hides in alleyways. A boy hugs a grizzled old man. The boy grows taller, broader, more muscular, and savvier, exchanging hidden products with people of all ages and appearances, for wads of money that he pockets. Several times, the teenage boy brandishes a pistol to scare off people bigger than him, and on more than one occasion beats people into submission when they refuse to pay or look like they’re about to fight.
Customers, she realizes. Drugs. A life of crime spent loitering near areas starved of economic life, swapping drugs for money, and reporting back to the grizzled old man, who nods in appreciation and pats the boy’s head.
A dirtier version of present-day Liam confronts a skeletal man. Lips shout wordless obscenities, and they fight, but Liam quickly overwhelms his opponent in a fit of blinding rage that distorts the illusion and suddenly snaps it forward. Several gunshots later, the man slumps, dead, and Liam collapses, bleeding out.
Clean, polished, sterile, he awakens in a hospital. Weeks pass, and he recovers his strength, filling out his starved frame, engaging in physical therapy.
Then she appears. A girl with hair that blazes like living flames, cascading down her back, talking to him. They start physical therapy together. They talk to each other. They help each other.
They fall in love.
So many events flit by in the blink of an eye. Eventually, they move into an apartment together. Things look great. Until the girl is hospitalized again. Something is wrong. She’s weakened, frail, fighting off a disease that ravages her from the inside. Liam is at her side the entire time.
Then the worst happens. She slips away while he looks on helplessly.
Blinding bursts of white explode across the scene. The walls are melting. Liam is despairing, reduced to his worst instincts, daring the world to fight him. He surrenders, positions himself in the bathroom, and prepares his knife.
So close. Colored light bursts anew beside him, blazing potential. A new life. A new start. The hand of another touches several points in reality, and decides that he is perfect to accept into the portal.
Electric blue eyes manifest out of the colored lights first. The outline of a shadow appears, then fills out three-dimensionally. An aquiline nose, raised cheekbones, and eye bags follow. Locks of wavy brown hair sprout from the scalp and hang over the shoulders. Pouty lips redden. The jaw sharpens, and the chin narrows. A scattering of freckles dust across the cheeks and nose bridge.
The result is so pretty it hurts to look at. The parasite smiles, flashing pearlescent teeth. Cora.
She hisses and slams her mental awareness into the connection. The parasite sidesteps her attempt and smiles again, head raising ever-so-slightly.
You’re being played for a fool.
“Fuck off!” Cora rages, sweeping her awareness and capturing the parasite’s influence. “I told you if you’d ever appear again, I’d kill you.”
And you won’t. Who am I? Am I an angel or a devil? Am I a destroyer of worlds or a hero?
“I know the stories.” Cora attempts to sever the connection, and it rebounds, shielded by Liam’s continuous streaming of his gift. “The governor told me about things like you. Or was it you who did all of that?”
The parasite wraps herself around Cora. She shudders violently, recoiling at the slimy wetness of a hand grabbing her arm. The last event of the box’s appearance was not over three hundred years ago. Her voice slithers into her ear canals and toys with her eardrums. In fact, the box’s last appearance was thirty-six years ago.
Suddenly, the parasite leaps away and lands within the wisps of color floating above the illusion of Liam’s toilet. Take good care of him now.
And with a popping in Cora’s ears, the scene collapses and Liam sags into Cora’s arms.
Her chest aches. She gasps for breath, feeling the world swoop underneath her, feeling a constricting pressure threatening to crush her from the inside. Liam silently cries, wiping at his eyes every few moments, burying his face in between his raised knees.
“It was never your fault,” Cora says after several minutes, struggling to keep her heart rate below two hundred. She shakes, but this time it’s not about her, like she’s so used to thinking. He needs her more than she needs herself. “It was horrible and unfair, but it was never your fault.”
“It should’ve been me,” he whispers.
“If it was you, then how would she have felt if you were gone?”
He doesn’t answer.
“I’m here for you.” If the parasite doesn’t claim her body first. If something horrible doesn’t happen to her while testing her reawakened gift to manipulate the earth. “I’ll always be here for you. Callista, too. You don’t have to be alone. We’re your friends. We can be family.”
She squeaks in surprise as he turns and crushes her in an embrace. His head drops onto her shoulder. “Do you promise?”
“I promise. I swear that we’ll stay together.”
“But I don’t want to go back to Earth.” Cora stills. Liam lets her go and folds his hands over his lap. “Being here is nice. The people understand me. They accept me. They’re better than the people back on Earth.”
“That’s great. I’m glad you feel better here. So you won’t come?”
“I accepted that the moment the Cenarians helped us. If you figure out how the box works, then maybe you can open a portal from here to Earth.” He wipes away the remnants of tears under his eyes. “But I can’t go back. I hope you understand.”
“I do.” Why does it hurt to hear him say it? She should be happy for him. He found his purpose and stride in life again, and that’s supposed to be good.
“When we get back, we’re going to get Callista and we’re going to capture the Transient.” Bit by bit, he regains his strength. He’s more relaxed than before, like he freed himself from a crushing weight. “And then, we’re going to interrogate the Transient until we get answers. I’ll help you get home, Cora.”
But she isn’t sure if she wants to return home anymore. She can’t imagine a life without Liam or Callista. They’re close friends, almost to the same degree Cora was close to Mari. No, Cora can’t leave, not yet, not when Mari is still out there and there’s still so much to be learned and done.
Starting with whether something happened thirty-six years ago.
In the background, high-pitched laughter echoes on and on.