I wandered the night, as close as my instincts would let me get to human
areas. My destination was blazed into my head, a single word repeated
over and over. Tobias.
It had been two days since I had managed
to figure a way to get out of my mind (conjuring up a Stargate). I was
cold, hungry, and thirsty. It was as if all my nightmares about losing
my mind, vanishing off the face of the Earth, and having no one care had
all come true. It was terrifyingly lonely, yet in a strange way I
actually enjoyed the feeling. Sweet melancholy.
I ran across the
road in front of a car, startled by the headlights. It screeched to a
halt. "Blaze!" a voice called out. Tobias. I wanted to stay put, to
allow myself to be rescued, but I couldn't. I sprinted into the
darkness. I hated what I was doing, absolutely hated it, but there was
nothing I could do. My body was, yet again, not under my control.
It
was sheer luck that had me trip over something, sending me tumbling to
the ground. Some kind of bird-of-prey morph dived out of the sky towards
me and latched on. "If you can hear me, I'm sorry about this, Blaze,"
Tobias whispered in my ear as he tried to lift me off the ground. My
paws flailed frantically, looking for something to fasten onto. They
tried to attach to the thing I had tripped over, but were unable to get
traction because it was made out of plastic. Hey, I said to myself. I've
got hands. Just as expected, I returned to morph shape. In a flash I
had regained control of my mind. We lifted off.
"I owe you one. How'd you find me?" Tobias bent his head down and looked at me.
"Blaze,
we've been looking all over for you. What's freaky is that there's been
no activity relating to your disappearance. It's like you've vanished
off the face of the Earth- and the Internet. Even hacking into the
communications of the local police revealed nothing. They aren't looking
for you, Blaze." We landed next to his car. I leaped in through the
open window and allowed my arm to be tied to the interior door handle.
"Do you know why? You'd think that there would be something." Tobias laughed bitterly.
"We're
nothing to them. What's a teenager to them, Blaze? Just another person
to have to keep tabs on. And the police weren't exactly big fans of
Music of the Spheres in the first place. Ever since the rocket-" I
winced.
"Please don't mention the rocket." He waved his hand in acknowledgement.
"In
any event, they don't like us. Most of them probably have mixed
feelings about your disappearance." He paused, then swore under his
breath. "Dammit, Blaze. I should have been there, done something-" I cut
him off.
"No. Tobias, I was out of my mind. I could have killed
you if you tried to stop me. Stop beating yourself up over it. It's
over and done." I flipped on the radio. An unearthly screech ripped
through the interior of the car. I pinned my ears back, but the sound
caused me to tear up anyway. Tobias switched the radio off.
"Blaze,
we're right next to the Change doctor's office." He sounded worried. I
blinked the tears away to see Tobias holding up his phone and moving it
back and forth. "Some kind of radiation's interfering with the signal." A
puzzled look came over his face. "Unknown type of radiation. It doesn't
match up to anything in the military database either. It's some time of
lepton, but I've never seen anything like it before." He turned to me.
"I've pinpointed the source. I'll go get it." He returned a few minutes
later with a metal orb about the size of a basketball. I recoiled away
from it, then collapsed in a fit of snarling. Tobias rushed over to me,
careful to avoid my claws. "Blaze!"
"Get... that... thing... out
of here," I said in a gravelly rasp. I was barely able to keep a lid on
my instincts, and that.. thing was causing it. Tobias tossed the orb to
the side of the road and slammed on the gas.
"We're getting you to my house. Now."
Nikki
stuck her arm under the bed again and tried to pull me out. In
response, I snarled at her and lashed my tail furiously. When she didn't
take the hint, I bit it. The arm, that is. She let out of yell of pain
and pulled her arm out in a flash. "Tobias, are you sure he's safe to be
around?" I responded before Tobias could.
"Safe? No, I'm not
safe. Safe is overrated anyway. I don't plan on eating you, though."
Nikki lied down in front of the bed facing me. More tentatively this
time, she stuck her arm under the bed. I let out a low growl. In
response, she scratched me behind the ears. A near-deafening purr
rumbled throughout the room. I heard the doorbell ring, and a moment
later Icestar walked in. I recognized him by his voice.
"Nikki,
stop harassing the cat. And where's Blaze?" In response I swished my
tail so that it poked out from under the bed. A moment later Icestar was
lying down right next to Nikki. "Correction: Nikki, stop harassing
Blaze." She gave him a dirty look, then returned to rubbing my ears. All
of the sudden, I heard cut-off expletive from the direction of the
computer.
"I'm going to assume that means you found something," I said.
"Actually,
the files are still in the process of downloading, and I'm not looking
at them until Dave's here. My Halo character just died." I attempted to
glare at him and failed due to the fact that the underside of the bed
was between the two of us. Just then, Dave burst in. He was dripping
wet.
"Sorry, my car broke down. Now, I believe you had something to show us?"
After we all were seated (or in my case, sprawled out on top of the bed,
basking in the Arizona sun), Tobias pulled up a few files- one of the
sphere I had encountered, several of small pendants that looked like
they belonged in a New Age store, two of DNA strands, and one of a long
silver rod.
"These files were from the datapad found in the
mud where I found Blaze after an irate old woman called the police about
a large cat in her yard. She was freaking out about her petunias," he
said, trying to smirk and failing. I cut in.
"The area
smelled of humans. Adult humans." There was a general silence after my
words. There, admittedly, those who were nearly human, but only about
sixty were known. None of them lived in Arizona, either. "After watching
Plan 9 from Outer Space a la the X-Files, I have an admittingly
farfetched idea about how." Tobias tossed me the remote, and I brought
up the bispin experiment of twenty years ago. "The bispin experiment is
the Holy Grail of Changeology because the field produced captured the
ripples that happened when three univeri collided, one of them our own."
I clicked the remote again, and a cutaway of the Plague nanobot came
up. "We change because of the Plague. It was chemically programmable,
and the bark of that tree caused it to become benign. Now," I continued,
switching back to the bispin experiment, "after a while analysis of the
field showed that it was picking up more than the Change, it was
picking up multiple, fainter signatures on a different frequency. A new
one appeared yesterday, suggesting that something involving another
universe occurred." Back to the Plague. "The Nazis didn't have the
technology to make the Plague- and for that matter, no one did back
then." I pulled up a very old, and very secret, document. "These
reports, which were found when Tobias hacked into the Department Null
database on a bet, indicate that the Plague was spread by beings from
another universe, one that was trying to colonize Earth. I suppose that
they must have a vaccine of sorts, which means that they could come here
without fear. My hypothesis is that they returned to check on their
experiment, but their equipment was damaged somehow." Nikki shrugged.
"Okay, let's go get the bastards." Dave looked like he would have a stroke.
"This
is reckless. You," he said, looking at me, "go nuts every time you get
near that thing. Tobias should still be adjusting to his new morphology.
All of us are mere teenagers," he put emphasis on 'teenagers' "who
would be going up against travelers from another universe! We should
contact the police." Tobias shook his head.
"No, we
shouldn't. A: I illegally borrowed my brother's car. B: We have no proof
that anything illegal or worth investigating into has been done. C:
Blaze's disappearance was paid utterly no attention to, which is highly
unusual and makes me suspicious as to whether the police aren't in on
this, at least to some degree," he explained, ticking off the different
items on his list on his hand.
"I'll buy that last one." I rubbed my paw pads together.
"Then
we are in agreement, unless Icestar has a problem with the plan." He
shook his head. "In that case, we need to start working on a way to beat
the effects of the Inducer Sphere." I brought up the file. "It seems to
simply be a ball of material that emits some kind of radiation that
interferes with the radio station 78.6 and causes new morphs to go nuts
after a short exposure, and who knows who else after a long exposure.
And since the people who made this thing are human, they wouldn't be
affected." A low growling in my stomach reminded me of something else.
"In addition, I haven't eaten in three days. By any chance do you have a
large gazelle steak?"