“What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck out of here!”

“It’s Sally. She–she’s not moving.”

“Did that thing get her? Is she okay?”

“I-I don’t know. Shit, oh my God. Sally, please, wake up! Sally!”

***

Cora sighs as she sits and leans on a gray tree.

“My back is killing me,” she groans, massaging her lower back with her one good hand. Her muscles feel like she’s run a marathon and swam an ocean.

She doesn’t want to move ever again. The blanket preserves most of her body heat so she’s cocooned from the cold, except her face. Her nose stings, her ears hurt, and her lips are chapped. Yet, she fights to keep her eyes open.

Liam sits across from her. He stretches his legs out, crosses his arms, and leans into the other tree. In his pants and long-sleeved shirt, he looks suspiciously at ease, but she knows better.

She can tell by the trembles wracking his body that it’s not enough.

“Same.” Liam closes his eyes and sighs. His shoulders slump and his posture sags. The trembles don’t stop. “Are you sure this isn’t a batshit insane dream?”

“I’m real. You’re real,” Cora says. She stops massaging her lower back and rests her hand on her sling. The gauze wears the grime of several hours’ worth of travel through the forest.

The cold long since numbed most of her hand and wrist. She can wiggle her fingers and feels the hardened edges of the sling, but the pain doesn’t bother her much.

It doesn't take too long for the familiar fiery ache to return, however. Buried beneath the blanket, she slowly warms up. But Liam, though…

The words roll off her tongue before she can process them. “Hey, do you want to share the blanket?”

Slowly, Liam’s eyes peel open. A sliver of his dark gray pupils is all she gets to see. “It’s not big enough for both of us.”

Her face heats up as she realizes what she's asking him to do.

If there’s anything she learned after meeting him, it’s that there won’t be much privacy between them. It’s a world of difference between meeting him at, say, a coffee shop or movie theater, and meeting him in the middle of an alien forest an unmeasurable distance from home.

They can’t be shy when their lives depend on working together. In a different place, a different time, she would’ve been mortified even thinking about the possibility of sharing a blanket with a boy she barely knows.

She still is, actually. The blush doesn't go away. But she needs to stay warm and so does he, and there's one blanket that could fit both of them if they huddle together.

She gathers every ounce of her willpower and shoves down the part of herself screaming for privacy.

“But you’re cold.”

His half-sunken eyelids don’t move. Neither do his pupils. The only shift in his body is the lazy flick of his foot in the air. “Are you sure?”

Is she? He’s been trembling since they left the clearing. Since they both agreed that the metal structures belong to some ancient machine whose purpose they could only guess at.

Maybe his trembles come from elsewhere. After all, the occasional chill creeps up her spine, and she knows exactly where they come from.

“It’s the safer option, anyway.”

Liam breaks his position and stretches. It’s followed by several loud pops, and then a couple arm circles. He sits next to her, cross-legged, his sheer presence making her forget why she called him over.

Cora isn’t short, not even by men’s standards, but Liam is still nearly a head above her. His broad, muscular shoulders dwarf hers, and his calloused hands and fingers could probably close over hers, palm to palm.

She feels so tiny next to him–slightly intimidated, even–and he hasn’t adopted another mask. Instead, he looks sheepish, thrumming his fingers on his legs.

“So uh…” he says.

Cora lifts the blanket and pulls it toward him. The edges of the blanket trail over her own leg, while Liam scoots beside her, leaving a gap between them. She lets the blanket drop. It doesn’t fully cover both of them. She can feel the chill bite into the side of her exposed leg.

“You’re cold,” Liam says. She doesn’t protest. Between her leg and her exposed head, shivers wrack her body. “If we get closer together–”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” She scoots and he scoots until their shoulders press. Again, she’s reminded of how big he is. And again, she’s reminded of how close she is to a boy.

Back home, she had Ben, of course. But she was never as close with him as she’s been with Liam in the short time they’ve known each other. He helped her walk, and they were close the whole time. True. Except there’s something more intimate about settling down, sharing a blanket between them.

It’s a very, very good thing they’re too shy to do more than stare off into space.

“You know, it was actually cold in my house when I came through that portal.”

Cora tenses up. She’s afraid to breathe, afraid for a rush of apologies to rush out her mouth.

“I’ve never been a believer in the supernatural. Or I wasn’t, before everything went to hell. To me, there was the whole world, and that was it. That type of shit, I thought it only happened in movies. Man. Imagine my surprise when I found it.”

The spell breaks. She takes shallow breaths so he can’t hear her gasp for air. “Found what?”

Liam turns to look at her. Under his scrutinizing eyes, Cora feels weak. But she maintains eye contact with him, wanting to hear his story. Absorb it, and relive it, and store it forever.

“I don’t really know how to explain. But since you’re here, then maybe you saw the same thing. The air warping like you see it over a desert. All these colorful threads weaving into and out of existence.” He breaks eye contact, setting his head back against the tree. “Did you see anything like that?”

A flash of light. A feeling of gravity turned upside down, her entire being unraveled into atoms, then reassembled on the other side. Too quick to register. Nothing like he’s talking about.

“Yeah,” she says. Forgive me, Liam. She has to pinch herself to ignore the revulsion in her gut. “And after that, did you feel weightless? And then go into…” Cora’s head pounds. A ghost of a memory drifts into the forefront of her mind, and it’s wrong. An aberration, an impossibility. Physics-wise it makes no sense. It strains the limits of her consciousness. “Shapes.” She chokes out the word, nauseous. “You remember?”

Liam winces. “God, it’s like remembering a nightmare. It really happened? The whole…” He waves his hands and winces again. “My fingers broke off. That sounds stupid, but did something like that happen to you?”

“Please, don’t remind me.” Cora screws her eyes shut and massages her temple. The pain splits down to her ear. She massages the base as well, biting on her lip, hard enough to draw traces of blood.

Compared to the splitting headache, the pain is nothing. Liam watches her silently, stuck in that perpetual frown.

“I’ll be fine,” she mutters, offering a smile that twists into a grimace as a fresh pulse of pain batters the side of her skull. “Give it a minute.”

“We have some aspirin.”

“No!” Cora drags her fingers through her hair. She tugs on strands, and the relief is immediate, a different type of pain to distract her. “Sorry, I mean it can’t be taken on an empty stomach. It’ll screw me up worse.”

Liam finally looks away. “Oh.”

Jealousy flares up inside her. How does he get to remember the void and its unnatural geometry and shake off the dizzying madness of it? She’s left reeling, forced to leave her mind blank and hope her thoughts don’t bounce back.

Slowly, too slowly, the pain ebbs. Liam is transfixed by a yellowish rock near his feet. The forest rustles, and the cold nips at her head and neck.

About as normal as things can get.

“It’s gone,” Cora says, sighing. “So you got teleported here for no reason?”

He nods. “Same as you.” Little does he know. “I’ve been wondering if other people came here. Like us.”

Her mood sours. She turns away and stares at the ground, gnawing on her lip. “You’re here. I’m here. We haven’t seen any evidence of anybody else.”

“What about your friend? You mentioned her before.”

Yeah, what about your friend, huh? Mari says. Tell him everything. Don’t hold back. Don’t lie like you always do for once.

Every cell in Cora’s body wants to wither and die. She sucks in a deep breath and holds it. She can’t–she can’t–turn around, because he’ll see the guilt scrawled over her face and know what she’s done.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Instead, she digs her nails into her knee, where he can’t tell how much it hurts, how much it fucking hurts, repeating those events. A full day hasn’t even passed. And yet.

And yet, it haunts her, a specter looming over her shoulder.

Her slung hand’s knuckles ache. She hit Mari hard. The blow had produced a sharp crack Cora can’t ever forget. Accompanying it, the spray of blood, and the heartbroken screams.

Cora is a monster.

“We were fighting,” she says. “Over something stupid. I-I thought I was right, and she thought she was right, and she actually was, but we kept arguing and then she punched me and I punched her hard and we started fighting for real until–” Her voice cracks. She takes deep, ragged breaths. “Until I saw the air change. But it was too late. It came out of nowhere. I was trying to pull away from her when everything changed.”

Whatever apprehension she has being next to Liam is abandoned when he lays an arm over her. She leans on his shoulder.

“That whole fight was stupid. Fuck. I wish I could tell her I’m sorry,” Cora says. She shudders and she bunches up the blanket in her hand, pressing the balled-up fabric against her eyes.

“Cora.”

She curls deeper into herself. “I just want her to be okay.”

Her throat aches and it’s hard to breathe and she heaves as her actions catch up to her. So much time wasted. She should’ve thrown the box away. Leave it to somebody else, make it their problem. Or she should’ve buried it so deep it would be lost to history.

I ruined everything.

For once, the Mari-apparition doesn’t sound gloating or cruel. Yes, you did.

Liam rubs her back. It’s so intimate, so caring, and it relieves some of the stress that’s been compounding since the box opened. She sobs and digs her fingers into the blanket until they hurt and her nails feel like they’re going to tear off.

“I’m sorry. You have no idea how it hurts hearing that," Liam says quietly. He continues his methodical massaging. She lets him. “You’re going to see her again."

She sniffles. She picks up her head, glaring at him through tear-ridden eyes. “H-how can you be so sure? I don’t even know if she came with me.”

No evidence of others. No evidence of Mari, though by logic she should’ve come, too. Then again, the box broke physics on a fundamental level.

Logic means nothing to its power.

“See, that’s the thing. I’m not. Sometimes I’m wrong. A lot of times, actually.”

“Jeez, that’s comforting,” she says, both giggling a little and sobbing, so the result comes out more of a hiccup.

“What I’m trying to say is that life has a funny way of making things work. There doesn’t have to be an explanation or anything. It just does. And something in my chest, my stomach, whatever, is telling me you’ll see your friend again.”

His words make little sense at all. Not in a million years will she believe what he said. But it's the fact that Liam is trying, anyway, that takes the edge off her grief.

“Even if we found each other, I don't think she ever wants to see me.” Mari's bloodied face, her amber pupils darkened with heartbreak and pent-up rage, is a sight Cora's committed to memory.

“You guys sound like you're best friends.”

They were until they weren't. Where did the line cut off? It's hard to tell. Mari always tried her best to lift Cora's spirits up, and she sometimes felt better hanging out with her.

One thing is for certain. Last year was when their decline began. When Cora went out to that stupid party with Mari, they hopped into that van and arrived at the abandoned mineshaft.

The memories of that night are a blur. But the aftermath is a scar on her psyche. It was the main reason she barely slept. There were always more pressing matters in her head she had to answer, or otherwise the events would catch up to her and finish strangling her.

“We used to be close… we are.” Another lie. A year and a half of acting like a jerk took its toll. The fight was the spark in the powder keg that blew their friendship apart.

Liam doesn't need to know, though.

“If you're really sorry about what happened, I'm betting she'd forgive you.”

If only it were that easy. Mari is the type of person who'd instantly forgive and want to fix things.

But Cora pushed things too far, for too long. Mari's kindness and patience got stretched thinner and thinner until it snapped.

It was the one and only time Cora had heard her shouting at the front door. Hurling curses that she never used. Slamming her fist repeatedly into the door, demanding that Cora open up.

Jabbing her finger into her face when she opened the door. From there, everything fell apart.

“I hope,” Cora says, because that’s all she can do. Hope.

“If it helps, I’m here for you.”

“We kind of have no choice. You know, we promised each other that.” She rubs her eyes and flashes the traces of a smile at him. “Thanks. I feel…”

Better is the wrong word to use. Her chest is tight and her stomach hurts. But her thoughts don’t lash at her anymore. Her mistakes recede into the background of a sense of calm that hadn’t been there before.

“Not bad.”

“Good,” he says. “We will get out of this shitty situation, and we will go home.”

His set jaw, the glint in his eye, tells her everything she needs to know.

Liam stops rubbing her back. She hugs her knees to her chest, careful to keep her slung arm separate. His arm drapes over her shoulder again, and she’s grateful.

Warmth blooms within her. Not just from the blanket and Liam’s body radiating heat of its own. Not from any crush she might be developing for him, because she isn’t.

It’s the friendship, the companionship, that he gives her. She didn’t realize how much she craved it. Back home, Mari fulfilled that role, but it was never enough, because Cora had the box and had to do more research or prepare supplies or simulate scenarios. Nothing Mari could give matched the thrill of exploring the box and its powers bit by bit.

Cora still has the box, and still has to do more research, but she’ll never repeat the same stupid mistakes again.

They’re silent for a while. Liam’s breathing grows even. His eyes close and don’t open again. Cora tries closing her eyes and relaxing her body, but the mental tiredness isn’t there.

Physically, she’s worn out, exhausted, aching, bruised. She feels even more drained than when they first sat down. She had been nodding off then, but she hadn’t been thinking about Mari.

Like she is now. The negative thoughts escaped through her tears. The emotional storm inside her chest died down as she tried to nod off.

But Mari is still there, lingering in her mind. Still. Expressionless. Cora checks on Liam. His head is tilted to the side, lips parted open, a snore rumbling from deep inside his chest.

He’d pulled back his arm earlier and left it by his side. The back of his hand rests on her right leg, the pocket where she keeps her phone. Inch by agonizing inch, she shifts her weight to the left until she slips her phone out.

She buries her head under the blanket, drawing her feet in so the warm air doesn’t escape through a gap. The screen lights up with a startling glare.

She recoils, sliding the brightness bar back until her eyes adjust.

Cora’s gallery is a crazy blend of artwork, schoolwork, family, nature, and Mari. She starts from the bottom, scrolling through years of history compacted into the last link to home she has.

She smiles at a picture taken two years ago. Mari had driven them twenty miles to the beach on a school day. In the selfie, they’re standing waist-deep in clear water, Mari sticking her tongue out and Cora playfully grimacing.

A few weeks’ later worth of photos, she smiles again at Mari’s artwork, a composite of loops and swirls intricately connected into an abstract piece of art for her art class. Cora smiles again as the following picture shows her poor attempt at proper art, ending at a stick figure posed for a mock-fight against Mari’s much more detailed knight.

So many other places flash by. The movies. The mall. Their favorite ice cream shop. Even a circus that had traveled near the city. So many other places appear, names and dates long forgotten, but in every single picture it’s her and Mari, either striking ridiculous poses or smiling widely, so painfully ignorant about what would happen soon.

Two months later, she jumps to the timestamp of that fateful day. The few pictures she has were taken before they traveled to the mineshaft. Mari, a can of coke pressed to her lips, her mischievous eyes drinking in the camera flash. Cora, her mouth stuffed full with gummy bears, the dimples she used to be conscious of standing out in full view.

Cora’s eyes tear up. She can’t keep looking. She knows what comes next, and it’s still every bit as painful as the days after what happened.

She needs to remind herself why she’s here. Why she pushes so hard to live and fix her mistakes.

A month passes between that photo and the next, a screenshot of a news article talking about the incident. Another screenshot, and another, and dense walls of text with no actual photos until six months ago, when Mari dragged Cora to a bowling alley with Ben and some people she didn’t know that well.

In it, they're posing in front of the score screen, Mari's name highlighted in yellow as the winner. But Cora has no dimpled grin. Just a tiny smile next to Mari, who has bags under her eyes. Neither of their eyes match their smiles.

The other pictures are the same. No point. They might be smiling in those, even, but gone are the carefree grins they shared.

Cora powers off the screen. She rubs her eyes. They sting and they burn, but she has no more tears left to give.

When did all that fun turn into a painful mockery?

Muffled by sheer distance, a scream breaks the silence.

She bolts upright, alert. Through her blurry vision, she scans the forest for any clue of where it might’ve come from. The wind stirs up. The rustling of leaves is all she hears until she isn’t sure if she even heard a scream.

Classic hallucinations, she thinks bitterly, hitching the blanket up over her knees. Hearing Mari’s voice is one thing, but hearing phantom noises, too?

Another scream rises above the rustling leaves. Somewhere to their right, behind them.

The creatures had howled. Their howls rung out, clearly animalistic, like wolves. The scream is nothing like a howl. Cora won’t take any chances, though.

Better wake Liam. But when she turns toward him, his eyes are alert, and his knife pokes through the side of the blanket.

"Huh?" she says.

“You said it yourself. The closer we get to the mountains, the more likely it is we’ll come across more of those things.”

Cora wants to agree. When the scream sounds again, the familiar heavy dread snakes into her stomach. She wants to believe her own words, she really does.

Why do the screams sound eerily human?

“Don’t think about it.”

Cora’s already on her feet. Liam’s hand shoots out and grabs her non-broken wrist.

“Let me go!” Cora says, yanking her arm back. His grip refuses to relent. “Liam, let me go. Now.”

He shakes his head. “We don’t know what that thing could be.”

She glares at him. “It’s not a thing. It’s a person.”

“Okay, but I’m staying in front of you. The moment things go bad, hide. I’ll take care of everything else.”

The screaming continues. Higher-pitched. Female. Human-like.

No, it can’t be. Cora doesn’t dare hope.

Doesn’t dare hope that it’s her.

Mari. Mari, who screams again, who with every scream Cora can imagine her fleeing a horde of disgusting creatures snapping at her heels.

“Hurry!” she says. Liam goes in front of her, silent on his feet, his knife held out.

She can barely walk, let alone run. Everything hurts too much. She feels like a rusted machine coming back to life, joints creaking, gait uneven. While she drapes the blanket over her shoulders, he stalks ahead. The screaming sounds even closer. It has to be her.

Cora grits her teeth. Why is Mari screaming? It has to be a pack of the creatures. Or she touched a purple tree. Or something else altogether.

They have no idea what they’re getting into. But it’s Mari. It has to be her. Adrenaline pumps through Cora's arteries. The aches and pains dull. She will do anything to save her, damn whatever danger there may be.

The next scream is close enough that she can hear how hoarse it is. “Mari!” Cora cries out, rushing forward. The cut on her leg lights up, but she ignores the pain and breaks into a run.

Liam’s fingers brush her arm. He stumbles on a root and trips, falling to a knee. “Cora, wait!”

She brushes past several trees. Breaks into a sprint for a few seconds. Another turn and a few steps away–

Cora sees her. Barely a shadow, more of a smudge, leaning against a brown tree, hair falling down like a curtain around her head. Tall, slender, with her head slumped and her arms crossed over her chest.

Cora’s heart feels like it’s going to burst. She hears Liam’s heavy footfalls behind her.

It’s her.

Mari.

“Mari!”

She picks her head up. Two purple rings of light pierce through the darkness where her eyes would be.

Fear prickles the back of Cora’s neck. “Mari?”

One word that hurts her more than anything else. “No.” In a flash, they lunge at her, hands outstretched, claws shooting out of their fingers.

Cora plants her heel into the ground and pushes herself aside. At the moment the person is suspended mid-lunge, about to pivot and rake her, Liam descends on them like an eagle.

His elbow strikes the back of their head. They collapse, claws retracting, head smashing into the ground.

Over in an instant.

Cora stares at the fallen body.

“They spoke.” Somehow, the news doesn’t surprise her. Or shock her. After everything she’s seen, she expected it. Not like this, though. Not when she thought it was her.

Liam sheathes his knife. He, too, stares at the person, hands balled up into fists, planted on his hips. “This world gets weirder and weirder.”

Cora’s numb to the pain rushing down her leg and jolting up her arm from her wrist.

Because Mari is still missing.