Darkest Designs Read online

  No echo. Although there appeared to be something. She turned slightly and called out louder, “Hello.”

  No echo. Maybe it wasn’t an echo? She turned to the other side and yelled, “Hello.”

  Hello.

  And damn it. That didn’t sound the same at all.

  Still, she didn’t have much choice but to go forward and find out.

  ***

  “How is it that we have no idea how to help Storey?” Eric refused to contemplate that she was dead. She’d find a way to survive. She was unlike anyone else he’d ever known. And she’d get out of this mess just like she’d gotten out of any number of her other chaotic disasters.

  She had to. Anything less was unthinkable.

  Paxton opened his mouth…hesitated and closed it again. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think she’s alive.”

  “I do.” Eric was stalwart in his stance. “There’s no way she’s not.” He glared down at the stylus in Paxton’s hand. “Ask it more questions. There has to be a way to track her.”

  “And what good will that do?” Paxton stared at him, concern growing in his gaze. “You can’t go in after her. That’s not possible.”

  Eric studied him. “It is you know. If we can track her on this side, I can set the coordinates, port to where she is, then port home again.”

  But Paxton was shaking his head. Tufts of hair flying in all directions. “No. No. That’s not possible. You could be lost in there with her.”

  “And I could get her back again. We owe it to her. I owe it to her. It’s my father who sent her there.”

  “We can’t lose you, too. No.” Paxton lifted both hands to his head and tugged on the ends of his hair. “No. You can’t go after her.”

  “Then find a way to leave breadcrumbs for her to follow so she can get out on her own.”

  Paxton brightened. Eric could only imagine at what he was thinking. His mentor had been impressed with Storey, but he’d sacrifice her in a heartbeat if it meant keeping Eric safe. Unlike his own father, Paxton cared.

  But now Eric had to get Paxton to care about Storey. Enough to help her to get out. And this could be the way. Have him help Storey in order to keep Eric safe. “Let’s ask the stylus to track her?”

  Paxton sniffed. “I already have.”

  Eric rolled his eyes. But not so the older man could see. “And?”

  “It’s trying to contact Storey’s stylus. The communication is getting worse.”

  “Could she be moving further away?”

  “Or she’s…fading.” Paxton shot him a quick look. Eric glared back at him. “But we won’t go there yet.”

  Paxton refocused on his paper and the stylus in his hand, busy writing down a message. “The stylus has a location for Storey.”

  Eric grinned. “Good. I knew this could work.”

  “But…” Paxton held up a cautioning hand. “The location is changing.”

  “Of course it is.” She wasn’t dead. Relief washed over him. He’d been right. “She’s going to be moving around. Trying to come back.”

  “Maybe, but she needs to be back at the same point she arrived at in order to leave. Otherwise time will have changed.”

  “Oh, shit.” Not that whole time thing again. Last time they’d messed with time, things had gone from bad to worse before they could get back where they belonged.

  Paxton spun around and stared at him in shock.

  Eric shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t mean to swear. It’s Storey’s influence, I know. I’ll stop.”

  Paxton thrust his nose up at an amazing altitude even for him. Then his hand jerked on the paper as the stylus started to move.

  “Her stylus has the coordinates of where they landed. It says Storey can see nothing. It’s like being in thick fog. The place is empty. She heard an echo so is looking to locate the reason. The stylus is tracking her movements.”

  Eric laughed. “That’s Storey. She’s off exploring.”

  “It’s dangerous.” Paxton glared. “She should have stayed put.”

  Paxton didn’t understand. Eric did. He admired Storey's courage. Her sense of making life happen instead of standing by and watching it happen. He needed to do more of the same. He should go over and help her. He frowned, remembering something else Paxton had said. “There were other men lost In-between, you said. Is there any chance they could still be alive?”

  The speed with which Paxton spun around stunned Eric. He backed up a step. “Whoa. I was just asking.”

  Paxton stared, his thoughts obviously engaged elsewhere.

  “Paxton? Is that possible?”

  He pursed his lips, then shook his head regretfully. “No. It’s been much too long.”

  “What’s been too long?” Eric studied the emotions rippling across his friend’s face. “Did you know someone who was lost?”

  “There have been very few people lost there. Mostly in the beginning when portal travelling was being worked out. Most died from being half in and half out when the transfer completed. Since then, only one, no two, have been lost completely In-between. One because he had a heart attack while travelling and fell out of the portal. We’re pretty sure he was dead first though. And then there was a young man whose foolish behavior sent him through the portal into the In-between during travel.”

  Eric winced. Not a great way to die. Paxton looked as if he wanted to say more, but he closed his mouth, his lips pressed firmly together.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Paxton sighed, then broke down. “That young man has been In-between for over a century and a half.” He paused, swallowed loudly and added, “He was my younger brother.”

  “Your brother?” Eric stared at him. “I didn’t know you had one. That must have been terrible.” He shook his head. Unbelievable. “Have you tried to get him back?”

  “He was a young man at the time, but always acting the fool. We were a group of six, and he was trying to impress the ladies and tripped and fell In-between.” Paxton frowned, his eyes losing focus as if gazing back into the years past. “We’ve never had a way to go in and find him. Or find what was left of him.”

  He picked up the stylus that he’d laid down on the tablet. “If only I’d known about this back then. But I’d just bonded with it. We were still getting to know each other. It was all so new. And I was so full of myself and my new status.” He shook his head. “And our knowledge was so limited.”

  “Maybe we can track your brother down. At least find his remains and bring him home.”

  Paxton looked hopeful for a short moment, then shook his head. “No. There’s no way to know where he went over. He could be anywhere and after so long, he must be dead. I can’t imagine there is food or water there.” He sighed heavily, as if he was letting go of a long held wish. “No, death should have come immediately and if not, then within days to a week at the most.”

  Eric wasn’t so sure of that. If there was anything over there to find, Storey would be the one to find it.

  “Hello?” Storey called out, her head cocked to hear the echo. There it was, faint, but solid. She walked quickly toward it. As quickly as she dared. In the dense nothingness, she didn’t dare look up or down. She focused on the sound, her hands out in front, and tried to keep a steady course forward. In her mind, she held to the thought of finding whatever created the echo.

  She didn’t understand how this place worked and with the stylus still not up to full strength… Were her messages to Paxton and Eric even getting through? She hadn’t heard anything in response. And that wasn’t good. She was running out of options. She had to find a way to boost the Stylus’s power. Fast.

  And she had to figure out if there was anything useful in this In-between dimension to make that happen. She called out again, and again, each time getting closer to the source of the echo. She felt like a fool, but there was nothing new in that. She’d never have tried to go through the portal in her bedroom floor if she’d been worried about what other p
eople thought of her. She knew she was ‘different.’ Tough. Who said different was bad?

  She dropped her arms and picked up the pace to sprint forward and smacked into…something…hard.

  “Oomph.” Storey groaned as she stumbled backwards, tried to regain her balance and fell on her butt. She shook her head and looked up.

  And looked again.

  “Hello,” she said cautiously. There appeared to be a person in front of her. A man. But he was tilting forward several feet in front of her. In fact he was leaning so far forward she didn’t understand what kept him upright. Then remembered where she was.

  The fog was so dense, she could barely see his features. She edged forward and studied him closely, noting his Toran style pants and shirt, his brown hair and oddly preserved-looking features. He couldn’t be more than mid-twenties, but there was something off to his face, as if it were weathered, like an antique. He slowly shook his head, as if waking from a deep sleep.

  Yet he didn’t straighten. He opened his eyes, blinked several times, then closed them as if to snooze off again.

  She was both relieved to see someone here and yet at the same time…discomfited at his oddness. Even after all she’d seen. Still, having another person to talk to, to bounce ideas off of, to show her how to manage this new dimension was huge. Her breath gusted out and her shoulders relaxed. She was not alone.

  “Hello,” she repeated quietly, not sure what else to do, but not wanting to freak him out.

  His eyes flew open and he twisted his head enough to see her. Now he looked really odd because he still leaned so far forward.

  Storey walked in front of him, hoping he’d straighten. And he did, slightly.

  “W…who…are you?” he asked, his voice a whisper of sound in the air.

  “I’m Storey Dalton. I just arrived here.” She grimaced. She sounded like a damn tourist. She took a deep breath. “Who are you, and how long have you been here?”

  He blinked, yet the rest of him remained eerily still.

  Now this was going to get irritating. Storey hadn’t realized how much of a get up and go person she really was until she’d started crossing dimensions. And how different she was from others. And not only her own people. The Torans with their endless discussions, the Louers with their communication system that didn’t include her and now this brain fogged sleeper. Nothing moved as quickly as she’d like.

  “Hello? Are you in there?” She leaned closer, gazing into his eyes. She was hoping to see some kind of light come on. A sign of comprehension – of knowledge that he needed to wake up – and proof that was going to happen.

  She got another blink.

  So not helpful. She reached out a tentative hand and watched as his eyes tracked her movement. Talk about creepy. She gently squeezed his shoulder, a little surprised to find him solid. She’d begun to wonder if he was real or as insubstantial as the rest of this world.

  “Stylus, who is this person. And what’s wrong with him. He appears to be barely conscious.”

  He should be unconscious.

  “Why? I’m not?”

  He’s been here much too long to remain conscious.

  “Well he might have been unconscious before, but I did run into him. Hard. Could that have woken him up?” She bent to look into the man’s face again. “Sorry about that by the way.” He blinked. She grimaced. “Stylus, I think he hears me and sees me, but I’m not sure he’s doing much comprehending.”

  It may take him time to come around. He could have been here for centuries. We have found only two men recorded to having fallen In-between in the last quarter millennia.

  She straightened. “Centuries,” she repeated, hating the tremor that wavered through her voice. Hell, her whole body was starting to quake. “Surely that’s not possible. How could he survive here all that time? His body needs food and water…doesn’t it?”

  This is not a physical reality. Time does not exist here.

  Time. She was really starting to hate that element. It kept screwing up her world.

  But in fact, you are the one that keeps…screwing…with time.

  She grinned. “Hey stylus, you’re really loosening up. Good on you.”

  You have introduced new words and language patterns. We are attempting to integrate these into our knowledge base.

  She had to laugh. “Not sure that’s a good idea, but hey, you will always remember my influence on your world this way. Nice to know I’ll be remembered.”

  You will always be remembered.

  Her thoughts turned melancholy. Would she? If she stayed in here? Eric would mourn her, Paxton would put her into the archives and the Councilman would cheer. Her mother could already be past the worst stage of grief. For all she knew, her old life was gone – maybe had never even existed in the first place if she’d truly twisted up time like it appeared she had. In which case, she most likely would never have been born. And if that wasn’t a mind-bender to consider.

  She so had to go back and fix that.

  But first she had to fix this mess. She couldn’t help but feel like it was all getting to be too much. She really wanted to just go home. Something she’d been trying to do since…well, forever.

  This man had to know something. Therefore he was just going to have to wake up enough to share it. To that end, she reached over and gave him a hard slap on the shoulder. “Wake up. I need to know how to get out of here.”

  He blinked.

  Was he in there? Conscious? Normal? She peered at him, wondering. Maybe he had brain damage. That fear jumped inside and wouldn’t let go. She closed her eyes and prayed for patience. She opened them and tried again. “Please, tell me how to escape from here.”

  His mouth opened and his voice, rusty from disuse, whispered, “There is no escape.”

  ***

  Eric returned to his home and packed. He didn’t know what exactly he might need, but was determined to make sure he had as much in the way of supplies as possible. Storey could get into trouble like no one he’d ever known. But she always got out of it. It’s just sometimes she needed a little help. He loaded a pack with emergency food rations, water, clothes and first aid supplies.

  This was one of those times. He pulled the codin clip from his belt and connected it to his pack, then sucked the pack into its envelope form. Storey loved this technology. It let him shrink wrap almost any household item down to a packet the size of a small envelope without damaging the contents. Just thinking about Storey made him remember something else. He tucked the pack away in his back pocket, then pulled out an empty one. Storey might need extra paper. Not something he had here. He returned to Paxton’s lab to find his mentor at the workbench. “Any news before I leave?”

  Paxton’s back stiffened. “Leave?”

  “Paxton, I have to try and rescue her. She would do the same for me. She has done just that. I can’t sit by now when she’s trapped In-between.”

  The older man’s face grayed and although already sitting, he seemed to shrink into himself. “I know,” he whispered. “I’d hoped I could make you see reason but…”

  “I may not need to if we can help her rescue herself.” Eric motioned to his table full of stuff. “But I’m preparing to go just in case.”

  He eyed the stack of codexes. Navigation was an inherent skill for him. Except in the In-between nothing might work – tools or instinct. The last thing he wanted was to get over there and wish he had brought more equipment. He added several to his pocket. He precoded them to save time.

  “Eric, look here…” Paxton stood up and pointed to the big monitor in front. He had some kind of blank screen set up with only lights flashing to show anything existed on it. “The top marker is the location Storey entered In-between, according to the coordinates given by her stylus. It has kept a running guide of her travels. As you can see, she’s all over the place.” The screen rotated to show Storey’s progress from various points of view, eventually morphing into a three dimensional picture.

 
Eric walked closer. “I don’t understand. Why are some of these higher? Is this a map?

  Paxton’s head bobbed. “That’s the issue. She’s not moving north or south only, she’s also moving up and down. The system is tracking the changes in her altitude.”

  “Are there mountains there?” Eric didn’t understand. Yet even as he watched, the signal moved again. This time slightly higher. He tapped the screen. “So you are saying that this little jag up in her pathway is actually an altitude change and not a few steps to the north?”

  “Exactly. On the whole she is moving toward the north. But you could walk for hours following her tracks and never see her because she could be above you or below, out of your line of sight. And the fog is likely all encompassing. You wouldn’t see her until you hit her.”