/ Transversal, Pt. 1 /

It’s so cold.

Arufa sat next to Locri’s body, watching it twitch and spasm with a hollow stare. She occasionally looked up to see Ghiles pacing around the room, trying to convince himself he’d done the right thing.

“If she remembered… but what if it worked? Maybe… no, no, I did what I had to. That’s all… I…”

His pristine lab coat now stained red, Arufa could tell he wasn’t handling it well. She was torn from grief, so much she could barely speak a word. Maybe Locri had started dipping into insanity—it didn’t matter. Blood had been shed.

“Arufa, are you… okay?” he asked lowly, kneeling in front of her. His sudden presence startled her a little.

She shook her head. Right now, she didn’t have the words to express how she felt.

“R-right. I’m sorry.”

Ghiles began to tremble. He stared at the tiled floor, blood seeping in the grout. Her vision blurry, Arufa barely noticed the bags under his eyes.

“I… I’ll tell you everything I know. Everything you want answered. So when you’re ready to talk, just ask me anything, okay?”

She looked him in the eyes, for once not darting around. He was lost in his thoughts, horrified and alone. His regret loomed over him like the shadow of the Transversal.

Arufa put a hand on his shoulder, her cold, dead fingers grazing the plastic reflector on his lab coat. She made eye contact and spoke.

“Dr. Ghiles?”

“What's up…?”

“Why us?”

“…We have time. Let me tell you.”

He rose slowly to an upright position and tiptoed around the blood, reaching the Transversal. He tapped on the side of the machine with his knuckle.

“The year was 2022. I wasn’t born yet, so I don’t know exactly how revolutionary it was, but… that was the year scientists finally proved the MWI.”

“MWI?”

“The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics. Every time a superposition collapses, a world branches off, non-interacting with all the others. The number of them isn’t truly infinite, but it’s as close as we could ever possibly conceive. Because of the way they never cross, Dr. White and I have been calling them parallels.”

Arufa wiped away her tears. “How did they prove it?”

“Computers like the Transversal. They were able to detect small fluctuations in their calculations which reflected the divergence of parallels. Basically, very similar parallel worlds had slight impacts on each other.

“At the beginning of the MWP, Dr. White and I just wanted to prove we could transfer information between them. It would have been the biggest breakthrough in history.”

The subject stood up, finally, and walked over to him. Part of her was genuinely enraged at his academic demeanor, especially after what he’d just done. But she saw his eyes and knew that wasn’t what this was.

This is a coping mechanism. Ghiles is still in denial, and he’s trying to make it up to me. But... why would he do that? Why would he care?

“But the experiment was messed up from the start. Once we figured out how to identify entangled parallels—those really similar worlds I mentioned before—we needed a way to extract information from them. And what do you think is the most traceable signature between parallels?”

She knew. She wasn’t sure how, but she did. “It’s the human brain, right…?”

“Yes. We make so many decisions each day, so many microscopic changes that alter the world in such minor ways. Because of how many entangled parallels we create, we’re easy to track. And that’s what the Transversal does.”

“You said that was messed up?”

“We had to scan a brain to locate a parallel consciousness. Dr. White wanted a living subject so we could accurately note the differences between them and their parallel counterparts. But that… didn’t turn out so well.

“The brain scan ended up killing our volunteer because White turned up the charge too much. But that was what brought the parallel consciousness through, too. Two of the same soul can’t exist in one universe.

“White put the new soul inside the old body and revived it, and that was our first subject. MWP1—Skyler Everly.”

Arufa remembered the warehouse she lived in with them, the criminal undertakings they’d done together. The Skyler she’d known for so long was from a parallel universe… and she was well on her way to assuming she was, too.

“I hope Skyler’s okay,” she said softly.

“I’m worried White’s going to do something rash, but when it comes down to it, I trust her. She chose me to assist her,” Ghiles said. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Okay. After Dr. Everly died, we started experimenting on dead brains instead of living ones. Cryogenically preserved bodies acted as our vessels, but… you read about Marsia’s condition. That’s why we had to rebuild her.

“But you and Locri were mostly intact. All those metal plates are implanted in your bones, connected to your skull and brain to give us access to your consciousness. But you saw the pictures. White didn’t tell us where she got your body from, but your head was… not attached.

“What White said about you all being the worst people in the world was a lie. You’re not even from this world. She just needed something to guilt-trip you with so she could get everything under control.”

Am I… not a terrorist, after all? Was it a lie? I remember doing it, though, if only vaguely.

“Arufa, everything I know about you came from Dr. White. I don’t know how keen she’ll be on answering, but if you’re lucky, she’ll give you the truth. I’m sorry for this experiment. And I’m sorry we stole your consciousness through the parallel. But that’s why you four were the subjects for the MWP.”

Arufa felt the metal ring around her neck. “…I’m remembering it now.”

“Remembering what?”

“Dying. I remember getting executed. They bent me over a stone, lifted the axe, and… I rolled on the ground for a few seconds,” she said. “But it’s just… not quite me.”

“…That’s fascinating,” Ghiles murmured. “You have a second set of memories from the brain we put you in.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It feels like my soul is splitting in two.”

“And if our memories define us, then Arufa, you are quite literally two different people right now. Just two very similar people. The others are likely more distinct, but… wow. I wish I could publish that.”

Arufa stared up at the Transversal, the device she now knew had stolen her from her body and brought her to this world. The thought made her nauseous—or maybe that was the metallic smell of blood still lingering in the air.

Dr. Ghiles is not the man I thought he was when we met in X2. I thought he was malevolent and cruel there, but now… He’s kind. It’s hard to believe how much he’s told me at his expense.

I’m scared for him. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him once we end up back in X2. They might… they’re going to have trouble without Locri, so they could substitute him in instead.

Dr. White is more like a real mad scientist: no reason at all for how terrible she is. She threatened to kill us and treated us like shit earlier. I hope she doesn’t hurt Marsia and Skyler. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

“Arufa,” Ghiles said.

I’m so terrified of what’s going to happen next. I feel like I shouldn’t be scared, like I should take the hits and keep moving. That’s what I would’ve done in X2. That’s what this world’s version of me would have done. Why is every other Arufa so much better than I am?!

“Hey. Arufa.”

She paused her internal rambling. “Yeah?”

“I just got a text from Dr. White. She’s coming here. Apparently, something bad happened.”

“Oh no. Oh, God, did she…”

“She didn’t tell me.” Ghiles held her by the shoulders. “But whatever it was—and I need you to look me in the eyes for this—you have to stay strong, okay?”

Arufa’s face broke into tears again. “I’m not strong! I’m pathetic! The fake me would never be crying about something so stupid!”

“Listen to me. Listen, just listen, okay?” Ghiles brought his hands up and wiped Arufa’s cheeks, his thumb gliding over the tattoo on her eye. “Okay? Okay. Are you ready to listen?”

“Mhm,” she whimpered.

“Alright. What you said earlier resonated with me. If I’m taking away your memories, even if it’s making you a better person, that’s stripping you of your humanity. You think people can really change—I want to believe that. And I need you to prove it.

“So please, stay strong, even if you don’t believe you are. It’s okay to have faults, it’s okay to be weak, as long as you don’t give up and let it all go. Remember what you stand for.”

Arufa blinked away a few more tears, her eyes darting back and forth from the corpse on the ground to Ghiles’s determined blue gaze. She decided at that moment she could trust him.

“Arufa!” someone called.

She perked up hearing her name spoken in that posh British accent. Marsia came forward out of the hallway, initially beaming.

“Arufa, you’re– EEEEEAAAAHHH!”

She screeched and fell to her knees seeing Locri’s oozing body. Her facial expression was demented, twisted with agony. She pounded the ground with her fists, babbling incoherently.

Moving out from behind her, Dr. White walked forward and shot a look at the corpse for half a second. “You went for the head, Ghiles? I gave you my gun and everything.”

“Look, if you were in my situation–”

“I don’t care. We have other problems. In the state we’re in now, the MWP is a failure.”

Further down the hall, Skyler caught up, a little out of breath. They seemed thoroughly annoyed. “You keep saying that! Why? What’s actually wrong with it?”

Ghiles gasped in dismay. “Oh, no. White, you mean…”

“Whistleblowers. There are SWAT teams on their way here right now to rescue these brats. Just because two of them couldn’t shut their mouths when you let them go.”

Arufa gritted her teeth. “H-he did the right thing!”

“Well, Arufa, the right thing is what’s going to get us all killed,” White snarled, looking her dead in the eyes. “But you’re in luck. Because I have a plan to fix it.”