Darkest Designs Read online

  That just reminded Eric of finding Storey in the Louers’ dimension. His codex had locked onto hers and he’d tracked her all the way through the Louers’ housing. In fact, she’d jumped him out of the darkness as her stylus had told her he was there already. He pointed that out to Paxton.

  “Yes, but there’s no guarantee that the codex will function there.” Paxton replied. “If north isn’t north and gravity is nonexistent, all the machinery will be off too.”

  Yeah, he got that. He stared down at his codex. The arm band covered the bulk of his forearm. An essential tool of his work and lifestyle. And he’d been forced to use the codex in so many ways lately. For travelling, communication, even tracking. He hated knowing that it might not be there for him In-between. “Can we do anything to make my codex more adaptable? Boost it in some way. Give it an alternative navigational system? Alternate power? Something else?”

  Paxton stared at him, his brows narrowed in concentration. He stood suddenly and walked to his workbench on the side. “We can boost the tracking system. That will help us to know where you are at all times.”

  Eric wasn’t sure that would help. It would drive Paxton nuts to be able to track Eric, but not know how to bring him home. “What about the stylus? Does it have any suggestions on how to adapt or strengthen the codex?”

  Paxton shrugged, but picked up the stylus and his tablet. The stylus immediately started to write. Paxton read the message out loud. “We didn’t always have portal travel. In the beginning, to establish the pathways, we had to learn how to go In-between.”

  In-between? Paxton and Eric stared at each other. “I’m sorry. Did you say you had to go In-between to make the portal travel system work?”

  The stylus started writing. That’s how it works. You go between time-space reality to land in a new place. We made many mistakes early on. But it was one of us who created this process.

  “One of you?” Eric stared at the stylus. He still couldn’t get over the fact that there were souls inside the tool.

  One of us not in here.

  And wished, not for the first time, that they’d speak clearer and with less riddles. “If not one of you in there, then who?”

  He who exists in the broken one. He is much revered by us all. He had been lost to us until Storey saved him.

  Storey again. She just kept gaining admirers. Eric turned to Paxton. “Where are they? The styluses that Storey rescued,” he explained at Paxton’s blank look. “She gave them to you for safe keeping.”

  Paxton was already up off his chair and racing to the far side of the room. He unlocked a cupboard and removed a large box. Carefully he placed it down on his desk and opened it. There inside, on a purple cushion, rested the styluses Storey had brought back from the Louers’ dimension.

  Paxton grabbed up his tablet and stylus, quickly asking which of the styluses could help.

  Before the stylus could give instructions, Eric had rummaged through and found the thick broken one. It looked similar to the others, but older, more crude in design. Like an early prototype. “Got it.”

  Yes that one.

  Eric looked down at the stylus in Paxton’s hand. “How did it know which one I was holding?”

  Paxton’s hand jerked. We can see. And feel. As you touched the others, we registered the change in temperature. You hold the correct one.

  See? The stylus could see. See what? Everything? The more he learned, the more bizarre these tools became. Seeing, however, could be very helpful in finding Storey.

  “How can we wake this broken stylus up?”

  It is damaged. He is too weak.

  “No. See, I’m not going to accept that. He has information that Storey needs to escape her prison. As she saved him, he needs to save her.”

  The air filled with a high level buzz that had Eric spinning around in panic. It was too reminiscent of the Louers’ attack on Eric’s world, before Storey created a whole new world for the Louers.

  Even Paxton seemed to shake nervously. “It’s the stylus,” he exclaimed. He dropped the tool on the tablet and backed away. “Maybe it’s going to blow up. Maybe we did something to it. Broke it somehow?”

  Eric took a step closer and the buzz intensified. He held out the broken stylus and again the sound intensified. “I think…they are talking to each other.”

  Paxton rushed forward. “Why so loud? They’ve never done that before.”

  “Because this one is broken and…old.” At least that was the best answer Eric could come up with. He looked at Paxton and shrugged. “This one might be damaged, but that doesn’t mean his information isn’t good.”

  “Then it should be in the database and archived with the rest of the information. It’s unacceptable that one stylus should still contain sole ownership of any information.” Paxton looked so affronted at the breach in protocol that Eric had to laugh.

  “You might want to consider that it might be so old that it was created before the rules became protocol. They might have been just guidelines back then. Also consider that it might have been broken before the information could be sent to the archives.”

  “Harrumph,” Paxton said. He glared at the two styluses. “How long is this noise going to keep up?”

  Even as he finished speaking the buzz in the air eased down several decibels. “Makes you wonder if they heard your complaint and decided to tone it down a bit.”

  “They are instruments. Not reasoning beings,” Paxton said testily.

  Eric slid a sideways glance over at his mentor. Even with all he’d learned about his stylus, Paxton still didn’t get it. There were people inside. Real souls. Not living breathing souls as in walking, talking Torans, but real, functioning, thinking souls without a body. But Eric himself might not have understood if it hadn’t been for Storey and the way she’d communicated with her stylus. The damn thing could read her mind at this point. And apparently, she’d be able to read its thoughts soon, too. And if that didn’t blow away all their beliefs about a stylus being only an instrument, what would?

  “Could Storey communicate with the broken one?”

  “How could she? She’s not bonded to it.”

  Eric wondered about that. Storey, he knew, would have something to say about that kind of narrow thinking. Paxton just didn’t know what few limitations she’d found with her own stylus. If this stylus had information they needed…

  Taking a chance, he slipped the broken stylus into his pocket.

  “There has to be something here.” Even the sound of Storey’s own voice failed to reassure her. She was in deep shit. In the grim fog surrounding her, everything was amplified. Including her fear. Damn. She stopped, closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. She had to stay in control. She had to stay composed. She didn’t dare let fear take over. She’d end up as mindless jelly.

  This could be the end of everything, but she didn’t dare focus on that. Especially here. She might create that end before she understood what she’d done. Then she’d never get back to Eric’s world. She’d never make it home. She’d never see her mother again. Or fix the mess she’d left behind. That so couldn’t happen. How could her life be cut short before she’d done what she needed to do? She had yet to live. Had yet to love. Had yet to be loved.

  There’s no way she could die.

  She refused.

  And laughed. If insisting something could make it so, then she had this place beat. She wasn’t going to knock the value of positive thinking. She’d had too much of it drilled into her from her mom, who believed anything could happen if a person wanted it badly enough. Right now, Storey desperately wanted her mother to be right.

  ’Cause positive thinking was all that she appeared to have available to her.

  Damn.

  “Stylus, is there any way to draw in the air – versus on paper like I normally do – and have you take us out of here?”

  No.

  “Well then, let’s draw on my jeans again. Although I don’t think I can port through
those – or could I?” She looked down at her already doodle-covered jeans, then pulled her shirt up. She didn’t remember writing on her skin last time, but this time she’d do it in a heartbeat if it meant getting the hell out of here. She stared at the glowing gold pattern on her skin. Honor marks, Paxton had called them.

  In the darkness, they were a bright beacon. If anyone were looking for her.

  It’s not the surface. It’s the medium, the atmosphere, that is the problem. I can’t move us through this to another dimension.

  Storey shook her head. At least she could just talk to her stylus. Saved on writing surfaces. “See that doesn’t make sense. We drew portals from the Louers’ dimension to my dimension. Sure, we ended up back in time then, but we still managed to travel.”

  I don’t have the coordinates.

  Storey stopped. “Yes you do. You have the coordinates for Eric’s place, my homeland and even the Louers’ world. Take us to anyone of those.”

  I can’t. I don’t have the coordinates of where we are here.

  “But you said that you were going to keep track of the coordinates of where we landed before I started to move to where I thought I heard the echo.”

  Yes, I have the location of where we landed, but we don’t have anything to measure those against in this dimension. I have to have a map of this dimension in order to calculate a way out of it. A point of origin. To move anywhere, I need to know the point we are starting from.

  “Then get it from Paxton!” She was beside herself with excitement. They could do this. They would do this.

  Communication is faulty. And there is no guarantee that they will have this location. No one has been here before.

  She sighed and rubbed her eyebrows. “You mean no one has returned from here. So what do we need to do to improve the communication?”

  An odd hum filled the air. She grinned. A welcome sound. It meant the stylus was thinking about a solution.

  The sound cut off.

  We need more power. This place is difficult, more complicated.

  “Fine. How do we get more power?”

  More of us. We are damaged.

  She rolled her eyes. She’d heard that a lot lately. “And how do you expect us to do that?”

  “We don’t.”

  “Can Paxton help?”

  No. Communication is faulty.

  She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Okay. Back to the same problem.

  The faint cough at her side made her look up. Right – the odd guy she’d found. “Hey, you don’t have any idea how to increase our power here, do you?”

  He stared at her, a blank look in his eyes. As if finally understanding she was serious, he shook his head. Even that motion appeared to pain him. It was like his body hadn’t moved in many years. And she didn’t know how that could be.

  “Stylus, can we do anything to help ourselves from this side?” The stylus was quiet. Damn it. Storey wanted to pound something but in this foggy land of nothing, there was nothing to pound.

  She turned to the almost asleep-on-his-feet man. “Are there others here?”

  She had to nudge him and repeat the questions. He shook his head and in a voice barely above a whispers, said, “No. Not since a long time.”

  She jumped on that. “Since a long time? What does that mean? Are there other people lost here?”

  He gave a slight shake of his head. “I don’t know. I never saw anyone.”

  “Let’s find out. If there is someone here, maybe they can help.”

  If they had a way out, they would have left.

  Storey wasn’t sure when the stylus had started to get a personality, but this dimension appeared to bring it to the surface. “But they didn’t have you.”

  The hum started again. Storey glanced over at the man. He appeared to be asleep again. It was odd. Had he slept through the last century? Did he have food or water? And if he did, that meant body functions. Still, there appeared to have been little to no aging in all the decades or centuries that he’d been stuck here. Had time stopped for him? And if so, what would happen to him when it started again?

  Stylus, she asked mentally. Is he okay? If he’s been here all these years, can he survive in the Torans’ world now?

  He’s been comatose for all this time.

  Right. Was that good or bad?

  Does that mean we can take him back or we can’t? I don’t want him to die when we get home, but… She chewed on her bottom lip. This was a new concern. Originally, all she’d wanted was to get home. Now she wanted take this poor man with her and…she was very much afraid he couldn’t go back. That was a horrible concept…and one she had to question in her own case.

  We believe he will die.

  Will he? She glanced over at the sleeping man. Are you sure?

  Yes. And if you stay here, it will be your fate too.

  ***

  Eric finished packing, doubled checked that the broken stylus was safe, then tucked it away in his inside jacket pocket. He didn’t mention it to Paxton. The scientist was protective of all the styluses, and Eric didn’t want him to refuse to let it go.

  Still, if there was any chance this one had information for Storey, then all the more reason to bring it to her. Just because Paxton said she couldn’t access the information, didn’t mean that was fact. As he was quickly learning, Storey knew a lot more about some stuff than most Torans.

  A fact that would irritate them all. Especially his father.

  “While I’m gone, you’ll make sure to keep my father locked up, right?” When an answer wasn’t immediately forthcoming, Eric spun around, “Right?”

  Paxton nodded. “Yes. Still, I wish you wouldn’t go.”

  “I know.” But that wouldn’t stop Eric. “So help me minimize the danger.”

  Paxton held out a weird instrument. “Just in case there are no landmarks or sky to work with, I’m going to give you a different type of tracker.” He stood up and walked over to his workbench. He opened a drawer on the left side. Inside the drawer was another locked box. Eric leaned over. He’d never seen this box.

  Paxton opened the box and pulled out a small, pill-like object. “Here. Swallow this.”

  Eric stared down at the thing. His stomach heaved. He didn’t like the sound of this at all. “Do I have to? I can’t imagine what it could do in there.”

  “This tracker will flush out of your system in a few days. In the meantime it will track your body heat in case we lose communications.”

  “But you already can track me. Look…” He pointed at Storey’s moving pathway. “Track me like her.”

  “I’m tracking her stylus, not her.” Paxton waited patiently.

  Eric looked from the pill to his mentor and back again. “Fine. But I don’t like it.”

  “You never did like to take your medicine, did you?”

  Eric rolled his eyes at the mention of his childhood behavior and tossed the pill into his mouth. With difficulty he swallowed it dry.

  “Good. Now we’ll set it up and it should go live in a few minutes.” He turned back to his monitors, his fingers busy on the keyboard. “Do you have everything you might need?”

  “Paper? Something for Storey to write on if need be?”

  Paxton found a spare tablet in a different drawer by his knees. He held it out.

  “The only thing is these are small. She has these huge paper sheets that work well. And being electronic – will it even work over there?” Eric stared down at the tablet. He didn’t think it would work to jump through the same way as the many paper portals Storey had drawn.

  “We gave up paper decades ago,” Paxton said testily.

  “And that’s why I was wondering if I should port to Storey’s bedroom and grab more of her sketchbooks. Her closet has several of them.” Storey’d had everything she needed for the last trip to the Louers’ dimension, and as far as he remembered, she’d still had her travelling pouch during that last jump with his father. But…that didn’t mean she still
had it. What if she’d lost her pouch in her fall? According to what he’d learned so far, that could mean the pack was there, but just out of sight.

  Besides, the more supplies the better.

  The more he considered it, the better he like the idea. He might be able to scoop up some of her never ending stash of granola bars, too.

  “I don’t like all this traffic. You know it creates tunnels between dimensions when we do too much of it. That’s why visits to her dimension are so carefully regulated.”