\ Transversal, Pt. 2 \

“Because I have a plan to fix it.”

Dr. White approached the glowing device and accessed the console, quickly sorting through tabs and information. Her foggy breath lit up over the violet floor lights, calm and collected.

“And, Ghiles, good job keeping those two under control. We had… a few loose ends on my part,” she said. “We’re down to four bullets.”

Locri piped up, clenching her fists. Her grey eyes narrowed in contempt. “You didn’t.”

“I think you’ll find that I did. If my plan works out, you won’t remember Skyler anyway.”

Arufa’s face dropped. “Skyler…!” She turned her head to Marsia as if waiting for her to deny it.

But she couldn’t; she’d watched them die. She’d watched White kill them in cold blood. So she simply looked down with a blank face and nodded.

“Oh…”

White continued typing while the air grew thick with tension. The echoing clacks of her keyboard pierced Marsia’s eardrums, weaponizing the silent atmosphere and keeping her on edge.

Marsia, spaced out and alone in her mind, felt a slight touch on her shoulder. Arufa had come up to her in the dark, still holding Ghiles’s flashlight at her side.

“I don’t like this,” she said softly, barely audible over the beginnings of background chatter between the other three.

“At least you didn’t watch them die.”

“…”

“Go on, Arufa. Say what you were going to say.”

Arufa frowned and shook her head. “Not while you’re like this.”

“Like this?”

“I didn’t mean–”

“Like this,” Marsia mocked her. “Suddenly we’re not friends anymore because I’m not in the mood to chat?”

“That’s not– Marsia, I meant something else. I have this… feeling.”

“Yes. We all do. It’s called grief, so go on and get over it.”

“Let me talk! It’s like we’re split apart, that’s what it feels like. It’s not helpful, so maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but that’s what I wanted to tell you.”

It clicked with Marsia that she was acting like the old Marsia, the desert scavenger she was beginning to remember more and more of. She cursed herself internally.

“I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me that,” Marsia sighed.

“…Yeah.” And Arufa would stay in silence for a while longer.

She turned her attention, then, to the heated conversation behind her. Locri spat words at White, who brushed them off as she continued to work.

Eventually, Ghiles had the gall to ask. “What exactly are you doing, Dr. White?”

“Sorry, do I take orders from you, Ghiles?”

“No, but this is our project. I deserve to know what’s happening, too.”

“You’ll know exactly what’s happening once I’m done doing it. Have some patience for once in your damn life.”

“That’s exactly what you said about the New Dawn Experiment! But this is our project, not just yours, so you’d better–”

“God, shut up, Ghiles! This hasn’t been our project for years now!”

She slammed the ‘enter’ key and whipped around as the Transversal let out a low hum. A hand laid inside her coat, gripping the pistol they all knew was hidden there.

“It’s been two projects! It’s been the Many-Worlds Project, and it’s been the ‘nature versus nurture bullshit’ project. So, while you’ve been off doing hypothetical psychology crap, I actually kept going. I kept building towards the dream we once shared.

“Ghiles, I don’t tell you anything before it’s done because I know you’ll try to stop me. Even if it’s for the good of us; even if it’s for the good of Earth, or of the whole universe. You would say, ‘No! That’s unethical!’ and call me out.

“But now that it’s done, I don’t have to hide it anymore. I figured it out. If we can convert consciousness to information, why can’t we convert matter? Energy? Ghiles, anything we ever wanted is at our fingertips. The world we want can be ours.

“Except… you made a choice earlier. A choice to betray me. When you let Arufa out of that cell, you set up a chain reaction, a line of dominoes falling down towards our inevitable demise. That SWAT team will make quick work of all five of us if we don’t do something. So I’m doing something!

“I’m taking this entire laboratory and moving it through the Transversal! Wherever we land, whatever entangled parallel it connects to first… oh, we’ll control it forever. We’ll travel unharmed across an infinite sea of parallels and raise a trans-universal empire!”

The woman laughed like a maniac, her expression wide-eyed and psychotic. Her assistant took a step back, disgusted at her plan. Arufa, silent still, hid behind Locri, who bared her teeth. Marsia watched it all with an empty gaze.

“You… you can’t!” Ghiles objected. “Do you know how many people work here? If you do it, none of them will see their families ever again!”

“Everyone works hard with a little motivation.”

“You’re crazy!”

“As if you wouldn’t work to see your parents again, too. I know you. I know every single reasonable human on the planet would do the same.”

Marsia felt a low grumble in the earth, like an earthquake… but less natural. The Transversal was hard at work gathering all the data it needed, and the laboratory itself had begun to detach from reality.

Locri cracked her knuckles. “I say we beat your ass across the parallel.”

“You do realize I’m armed, right? And I just so happen to have one bullet for each of you. How convenient.”

The floor beneath their feet jittered uncontrollably. Dr. White fended off Locri with her gun, keeping her away from the control panels.

Ghiles cried out, “Turn it off! Don’t you have anything to live for?”

“This is bigger than living for something so temporary. I thought you knew that. Need I remind you of your obsession with remembering it all?”

“I remember it all because I don’t want to lose it all. You need to turn off the Transversal right now and get your subjects to safety, or we’ll all lose everything!”

“You have to lose it all to gain it all, Ghiles,” White laughed. “What is it you all don’t understand? I’m in the right! I’m saving you!”

“No,” Marsia mumbled, just loud enough for the mad scientist to hear.

White stifled her laugh and raised a brow. “No?”

“Every empire has an emperor,” was her response. “And an emperor with great power has no fear, except for his subjects discovering he is a fraud.”

The laboratory shuddered loudly as faint screams rang out overhead. The Transversal spat out more frost—Dr. White smiled ear-to-ear, gazing into Marsia’s soul.

“I think you’ll find I am no fraud, Lilia.”

“Then why do you fear death?” Marsia asked. “Perhaps in one world, if there are so infinitely many as you say, you’ll learn to wield this power and do it all anyway.”

“What makes you think that won’t be this world, Lilia? Or are you just complimenting me?”

“I don’t care about any of that. I asked you why you fear death.”

The scientist tried not to budge. “I don’t.”

“Then why does it matter to you so much that the SWAT team would kill us all off?”

“Because–”

“Because you’re running away. You’re hiding something. That’s why you shot Skyler right through the eyes, isn’t it? That’s what that lower laboratory is for, isn’t it?

“You don’t care a bit about being in the right, and you surely don’t care about saving us. You only care about hiding your sorry little secret until it’s ready for showtime. And you can’t afford anyone getting in your way. Is that right?”

The scientist’s face turned sour. Marsia had seen right through her with that hollow expression, barely even blinking.

Ghiles stared in disbelief. “Dr. White…?”

She snapped to him in manic rage: “What?!”

“I… don’t know why you’re like this,” he said. “You told me you lost someone important to you, but ever since we started the Project, you’ve gotten more and more irrational. You used to have hope.”

“Because some things are impossible, no matter how hard you try! That’s what I learned from this stupid experiment,” she replied.

“Listen. Making the right choice isn’t impossible. All it takes right now is turning off the Transversal before it rips us out of this reality. I don’t want to lose everything. And I don’t want to lose you, either.”

“Ghiles, I…”

“Ari, please!”

“…It’s too late.”

A loud crash echoed from the floors above, and suddenly spacetime itself caved into the Transversal’s demands.

The world warped around Marsia, her eyes seeing impossible colors, her ears hearing bizarre sounds. She repressed her boiling fear and focused on the only people she could rely on.

Locri made a break for the machine; a distorted gunshot rang in Marsia’s head as her bodyguard stumbled to the ground, her leg oozing an odd shade of red. Her scream barely sounded human.

Arufa, her twisted silhouette shivering, clutched her forehead and fell to her knees. She wriggled in agony, a searing headache welling up in all their brains as consciousness and body split in two.

Their reality had torn away from its place in the multiverse, and the laboratory, now traveling as information across a dense network of parallels, promptly ceased to exist.

Marsia felt her mind disconnect from her body, and the world fell into perfect darkness.