The Second Wave (3 page)

The woman’s face became cold. She made a step
towards him. “And in my endless generosity I choose to pay you to
take that risk. An offer that expires as we speak, Yuhanan. It is
Yuhanan this year, is it? Or Ivan? Giovanni? Ianto? Yuehan? It gets
confusing after a while. Your footprints can be found all over the
globe, if one knows where to look. Whatever you’re running from
must be terrifying. So be careful where you next direct your
steps.”

There was not much John could say to that.
And he did prefer to get paid for his jobs. So he took it.

* * * *

Tom was discussing the prices of a caramel
chocolate bar with his dealer, Gerald Higgins from administration,
over lunch in the cafeteria. The prices were ridiculously high,
but, as Gerald pointed out, it was increasingly difficult to hide
them from Elizabeth Burke. They were just about to settle on an
agreement when his brother all but jumped through the door, rushed
towards him and yelled, “You gotta see this, man! Amazing! Also
scary! But really amazing!”

“What is? Did you ask Doctor Scotia out?” Tom
asked, suddenly excited. One of them needed a social life, and Phil
was more outgoing than Tom—he sometimes even had lunch in the
gardens.

But Phil waved his hand dismissively, “No,
not yet. Tony’s online again!”

A spoonful of tapioca halfway to his mouth,
Tom froze mid momentum.

Three minutes later, the two doctors stood in
their lab in front of the main computer monitor, mouths hanging
open. The screen almost smugly stated: “Wormhole Status:
Online”.

“What do you think will happen,” Tom
whispered, awestruck, “if we press the ‘engage’ button?”

“I have no idea. This is so exciting!”

“I love our job!” agreed Tom. They shared a
big, ecstatic grin.

“Let’s hope Tony really reopens,” Phil
suggested. The fact that over two hundred people were trapped on an
alien Earth didn’t cause the brothers sleepless nights—but the
thought that their job might be rendered useless, if the wormhole
never opened up again, and they had to move back in with their
parents, terrified them both to no extent.

“Jack, Phil,” Tom explained with strained
patience. “His name is Jack.”

“Oh please. Stop naming stuff after old
flames. You’re such a softie.”

“Oh, I’m the softie now? What about Phyllis?
Hm?”

“At least Phyllis is a real person.”

“She’s an evil sorceress, Phil. In a computer
game.”

“Who is played by a real person! She is not,
and I cannot stress this enough, a robot.”

“Jack was more than just a robot. And I won
naming the wormhole fair and square with a thumb war, so show some
respect.”

“I’m not having this discussion with you
again. I’m ignoring you. You are being ignored.”

“You are being ignored back.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

A spell of silence settled in the chaotic
room. Finally Phil shrugged. “Let’s just press the button and
ignore us after whatever happens next.”

Tom frowned, the prior argument immediately
forgotten. “Shouldn’t we call General Fatique before we do
anything?”

Phil gave a hysterical yelp, “Are you insane,
man? This lab is covered in candy wrappings! If Burke sees this,
our salad days will not only be over, but also the beginning —
literally! Just press the button, Tom.”

Tom did, and in the room downstairs the
wormhole exploded back into existence, four months after it had
mysteriously vanished.

* * * *

The Goddess awoke.

The first thing she realized was that the
darkness was gone. She could see dim green light shining through
the thick foliage of a forest above her when her eyes adjusted. The
temple was gone. No, it wasn’t gone, she soon noticed, but it lay
crumpled around her. Only a few walls were still recognizable, half
broken down, corroded by the forces of nature. The Goddess hadn’t
even known there was a forest around her abode; it hadn’t been
there before the darkness.

She wasn’t actually a Goddess. Part of her
knew that. But she was called one, and she liked the sound of it.
She might as well be. She blinked, and rain began to drizzle down
on her. Time was of no consequence to her, so she couldn’t tell how
long she sat in the remains of her temple, shivering in the cool
downpour, watching puddles form around her, before she finally
understood that she was free. The temple was destroyed. The
invisible walls that had been her prison and home for eternity had
turned to wind.

Very carefully, always waiting for the
boundaries to snap her back into place again, she rose. She sighed,
and the rain stopped. Sunlight streamed through the trees, heavy
and orange. Around her, flowers began to blossom in colors she had
never seen before, had only heard of. Or perhaps she just couldn’t
remember. It seemed to her the petals were showing her the way, so
she followed them. Further into the forest at first, past
shrubberies and over roots, through lianas that hung between trees
like curtains. No animals were about. Not another soul was in
reach. The only sound was the soft squishing her bare feet made
when they sank into the mossy ground with every new step.

Finally the trees stopped, and she stepped
out into a clearing to watch the last of the sinking sun burn
behind the tree tops. Then it was just her and the darkness again;
only this time the darkness brought silence. Perhaps, it occurred
to her, silence was a bad thing. It told her what she had feared
before and now knew for certain: Everyone was gone.

When the sun rose again the next morning, she
continued her exploration. Her body ached, especially her head.
That, and that she was unaccustomed to walking slowed her down and
made her steps uneasy. What she was looking for she didn’t fully
understand until she came to the end of the forest and found
strangers. Thinking back, she realized she must have heard them
before but didn’t recognize their voices. Everything was different
now that she was out of the darkness.

She froze on the spot. Just looked. They
spoke to her, but their words meant nothing. They were uttered in a
language she didn’t know. Her head hurt. One of the strangers
pointed something at her, so incredibly slowly she almost missed
the movement.

The Goddess fell.

* * * *

Not even an hour after Doctors deLuca
successfully reopened the wormhole again, General Fatique stood in
the wormhole chamber next to Captain Emily Eleven and her team of
six. The protectors were in full gear, ready to go through and
check on the colony and the settlers. Nothing might have happened.
They had, after all, decided on the planet as Alpha Site due to its
almost non-existent wildlife, and the colony was designed and
prepared to function autonomously. But after the gateway had opened
up again, there had been no messages waiting for them, and so far
no one had tried to come back through. The settlement was a good
hour's march away from the arrival spot; the colonists may not have
noticed the reopening. But Fatique wanted to be absolutely sure
everything was in order and everyone was fine.

Captain Eleven was no stranger to the
wormhole. She had been through before, when they first started to
explore new planets. So had her team. Six protectors in their
twenties, youthful but skilled. They all knew Eleven from the
training academy in Winchester; they trusted her implicitly. More
importantly, the trust went both ways. They were an outstanding
team.

Eleven shook Fatique’s hand. “Whatever
happened, sir, we’ll find out.”

“Thank you, Captain. And give Victoria
Rochester her father’s greetings. Heath’s been worried about her
and her family.”

“Of course.” Eleven gave her team permission
to go. Then they turned towards the wormhole, whatever its name was
today, and marched through.

It was morning, just after eight o’clock on
Earth, but on Alternearth the sun was high in the sky, indicating
it was already around noon—it was another reality, certainly, but
the planet and the solar system were pretty much the same, meaning
the days and years of Alternearth were about equal to those on
Earth.

Eleven and her team arrived in a meadow. The
grass was ankle high, interspersed with flowers in full bloom, some
shrubberies and lone trees here and there, all of which looked
eerily like Earth’s once lush landscape. Behind was the beginning
of a thick forest, and from the left they heard the peaceful
gurgling of a creek, making its way through the landscape. The sky
was cloudless and blue. A perfect day.

Behind them the wormhole closed noiselessly.
Fatique would reopen it in four hours to allow the team’s return.
And while on the Earth side an almost unbelievable array of
technical equipment, computer monitors and gadgets was used to
create the gateway, nothing of the sort could be found on this
side. The wormhole disappeared, and nothing was left to prove it
once existed.

“Let's hope the docs can do their kung-fu
again in four hours,” Gavin Watts joked. “I’d hate to be stranded
here.”

“Hm, but it’s so nice and romantic, Gavin,”
murmured Sophie Bahr. She leaned against him, batting her eyes. “I
can almost see it, honey—you, me, a tent, a couple of cute
kids…”

“When did we ever agree on kids, honey?”

Carl Gibson, ever the steady one, shot them a
warning look. “Let’s try to stay professional for once, yes?”

Eleven turned in a circle, a map in one hand,
a compass and a gun in the other. “Which way to the colony?” she
asked, confusion in her voice. “This map doesn’t seem accurate. Who
developed it?”

“That was me, ma’am,” Mandy Rett, youngest of
the lot, confessed. “I think the wormhole must’ve opened up in
another part of the planet. I don’t recognize any of these
surroundings.”

Carl shook his head. “No. It’s the exact same
coordinates.” He held up his hand computer for everyone to see.

“Well, if it is,” Timothy Niman said, peeking
over Eleven’s shoulder at the compass, “we need to go
that
way. East. The colony should be there. An hour away or so.”

“Or so?” Sally Sheldon raised an eyebrow.
“What is this? A technical term?”

They marched on, listening more or less
fondly to Timothy’s definition of “or so”.

“This should be it,” Timothy stated, an hour
later. The team found itself in the outskirts of yet another
forest. Or, as Mandy pointed out while they were walking, the very
same forest they had seen near the wormhole, only a different part
of it. Apart from the trees that grew taller and thicker with every
step, the only other item of interest was a large group of deep
lilac flowers, each of them nearly two feet tall. When Gavin poked
at one, it emitted a hissing sound and all but tried to swallow
him, thus making the soldier the butt of the team’s jokes for the
next fifteen minutes. Until Eleven compared maps and coordinates
and announced that they should be standing right in the middle of
the first settlement.

“Not the middle, by definition,” Carl
corrected. “According to my coordinates, we’re standing in the
lower grade classroom.”

“How fitting.” Mandy smirked.

“And you know that how?” Sophie wanted to
know.

“Mister Jones gave me a tour when they were
building it.”

Timothy gave a wolf-whistle. “That architect
guy? The hot one? You made him give you a tour—is that what they
call it these days?”

“Carl, you hound!” Gavin joined in.

Carl held up his arms defensively. “What do
you even think of me? You call yourself my friends and colleagues?
I’m in a relationship, you morons!”

“Guys!” Sally interrupted the banter. “Will
you stop being guys, and concentrate! Where is everyone?”

Sophie made a few steps into the forest, but
came back and simply shrugged. “Not even an animal trail. No one
has been here in a long time.”

Timothy shouldered his weapon, put his hands
next to his mouth to mimic a megaphone and hollered, “Ho! First
wave people! Anybody home?”

No one answered.

Eleven let them do their thing while she
checked on the faulty map. It was as if everything had changed in
the last four months. How was that even possible? The forest
shouldn’t be here. The colony was supposed to be next to a small
river and a grove of trees. There should be fields and stables,
and, most of all, settlers. When she decided on a plan of action,
her voice cut short every personal argument of her team. In an
instant they were on their tasks.

“We’ll break up. Gavin, Carl, check the East
and the meadow. Sophie, Mandy, with me. Timothy, Sally, take a look
at the forest. See if you can find any life signs. We meet back
here in fifty.”

They split up.

* * * *

Sally, following Timothy along the forest
tree line due North, rummaged in her jacket pocket for a snack.
Walking made her hungry, especially with the sun warming them from
above. Timothy was two steps ahead of her, weapon at the ready, but
as soon as she produced the red licorice with a triumphant purr, he
slowed down and, without looking, held out a hand. They resumed
their way munching, passing another, smaller patch of the lilac
flowers, which they gave a wide berth.

It was a beautiful planet, they both had to
admit that. Just strange enough to be different, but not to make
them feel out of place. Sally felt like walking through a “one of
these is not like the other” picture, idly wondering which one was
indeed the right one. If there were so many realities out there,
with so many planet Earths, then who could tell which one was the
original? Was there even an original? Or were they all just copies
of something long gone?

“Holy Zeus!” Timothy’s yell yanked her back
into reality. He had walked a few steps into the forest, his
uniform was just visible between the trees. Something in his voice
made Sally grab her gun tight and rush after him.