Garrett listened to the man listing what ingredients he wanted in his latte while Garrett imagined choking him to death. He could see it clearly—the spindly neck beneath his fingers, the starched collar crumpling, the look of shock as—

“Did you get that?” the man snapped.

Garrett stared at him, at his expensive suit and flimsy personality. He would’ve succumbed to the Priscae Tenebrae in a heartbeat.

“Iced grande mocha, three shots, oat milk, two pumps hazelnut, cinnamon, no whip,” Garrett recited.

The man nodded, looking disappointed Garrett had gotten it right.

Garrett had memorized intricate spells that filled entire books. He could remember a prissy drink order.

“That’ll be right out,” Garrett grunted as he rang up the order. “Eight-fifty.”

The man paid and stepped aside, Garrett thinking about what it would sound like to snap his neck.

“Next!”

Another man stepped forward. He was the exact opposite of Business Suit. Shaggy hair, artfully unkempt, a hint of scruff. Faded t-shirt, frayed jeans. He smiled brightly, which triggered Garrett’s desire to snap more necks.

“Hi, Lenny,” the scruffy man said.

Garrett blinked at him.

That bright smile faltered, but only slightly. “It is Lenny, right?” He pointed at Garrett’s nametag, which did unfortunately say “Lenny.”

“Yes,” Garrett said, monotone. “How may I help you?” He wanted to ask something else—the word “help” may have been replaced with the word “kill”—but he refrained.

Scruffy looked at the menu behind Garrett’s head. “Hmm… espresso?”

“One shot or double?”

“Double. And a blueberry muffin.”

“For here or to go?”

“To go.”

Garrett inputted the order and retrieved the muffin. Scruffy smiled again as he handed over his credit card.

“Thank you,” he said.

Garrett grunted something that could have been mistaken for “you’re welcome.” He handed Scruffy his card back and pointed to where he should wait for his coffee.

“Thanks,” Scruffy said again, still standing in front of Garrett despite having been told where to wait for his drink. “Love your tattoos, by the way.”

Garrett shrugged. The curling lines of symbols entwining his arms from wrist to shoulder weren’t tattoos. They were wards, made of languages from across dozens of universes, designed to keep him safe as he hurtled from one reality to another, evading the grasping tendrils of the Priscae Tenebrae.

“Where did you get them done?” Scruffy asked.

“I did them myself.” With a searing Star Knife and ink from a Sapphire Ceph. But those didn’t exist in this reality, nor did any of the languages etched into Garrett’s skin. This was one of those damn Math worlds. They never had anything interesting.

“Hardcore. I have one on my leg and it hurt like hell.”

So did Garrett’s, but he didn’t talk about pain. Pain was expected. Pain was constant. Why discuss it?

“I’m Nick, by the way.”

Garrett stared at the hand Scruffy offered him. He shook it only because Mr. Harding had been getting on his case about being rude to the customers again.

“See you around.” Scruffy—Nick—picked up his espresso and left the café, waving cheerfully at Garrett. No one waved cheerfully at Garrett. No one did anything cheerfully to Garrett unless it involved trying to assassinate him. Most customers walked out—a fast walk verging on a run—while avoiding the glare from his one eye. There was usually barely concealed terror in their expressions, as if they thought he might jump the counter and chase them down like a wolf after a rabbit.

They were right to fear him. No one should be waving at him, smiling at him, with their perfect teeth and soft-looking hair—

Garrett turned his one-eyed glare back to the line of people waiting. “Next!”

~~~

The plan had been straightforward. Stop the Priscae Tenebrae from draining the infinite universes by cutting off their power source.

The Prisc moved between realities the same way Garrett had been trained, slipping through conjured portals. But portals weren’t created out of thin air. There were cracks between the universes, trillions upon trillions of imperceptible windows that would allow someone to slip through as long as they knew how to look for them. These cracks also allowed droplets of magic to spill from one universe to another. Each universe had its own rules—Math, Elements, Chaos, etc.—but the cracks between allowed magic from one universe to be usable in the other. Garrett’s Soul magic didn’t exist in Math universes, but if he kept close to the cracks—the open windows wafting in the rules of his home reality—he could still perform basic spells. He could only use his full powers, though, in universes that allowed for Soul magic—or Chaos universes, where every power flowed freely, but those were far too unpredictable.

The Prisc used the cracks between universes to keep connected with their original reality, where the source of their power was located. That source was an ancient Prisc, made from the primordial matter of the First Universe, that fed its own soul back to the rest of its kind, giving them immense power. But over the millennia they’d begun to take power from other universes, sucking the magic out of planets and people, raging destruction across the cosmos. If the Prisc were cut off from the Source, they would weaken, and if cut off from every other universe, they would weaken further. Then they could finally be defeated.

To pull this off, Garrett had to close the cracks, shutting off each universe from the others. No more portals, no more jumping from reality to reality, no more foreign magic bleeding through. But at least the Prisc could then be killed.

Garrett had no other choice. This was what he’d been trained for since he was a boy.

But he couldn’t do it alone.

~~~

Garrett arrived home after work, smelling like coffee. That wretched stench turned his stomach, made his body itch to rid itself of his tainted clothes. Determined to shower, he walked down the short hallway from the front door into the brightly lit living room.

A rattle shook to his right and he sighed, resigned to his fate.

“Uncle Dada!”

Something attached itself to his leg—the real one, not the one made of gears and pistons. He looked down to see a tiny head covered in brown curls, big green eyes staring up at him.

“Uncle Dada!” it shrieked again.

“Emma, sweetie, don’t call him that.” Cathy, the child’s mother, swooped in and picked up the tiny toddler. She did not look at Garrett. She never could. “He’s not Dada, sweetie. He’s Dada’s…twin.”

“Uncle Dada!” Emma tried to reach across the gap between her and Garrett, but Cathy carried her to the play area set up on the carpet.

Cathy’s other offspring, a six-month-old named Peter, was having a rattle shaken in his face by his grandmother, Sara.

“How was work, Len?” Sara asked. She did look at him, unlike Cathy, but it always came with a sad smile.

Garrett turned to his mother—no, not his—and shrugged. She seemed to accept this mode of communication.

“I’ve got some soup simmering on the stove, should be ready in half an hour.” Sara shook the rattle for Peter again, who giggled up at her. Garrett did not exist as far as Peter was concerned, and that was how Garrett preferred it.

Finally free from the chore of acknowledging other people’s existence, Garrett strode upstairs and turned on the shower. He took off his reeking clothes, then removed his lower left leg, placing it on the counter by the sink. He’d picked it up from some Mech world after a Prisc-possessed beast had torn off the real one just above his knee. His eyepatch came off last.

He took a quick glance in the mirror. He’d let his hair grow out from his customary close shave. It was a good indicator of time. Two inches of growth meant about four months. Four months since he’d gotten stuck here. Four months since he’d lost his powers.

Four months since he’d become Uncle Dada.

Garrett hopped into the shower, bracing himself against the wall. He still had his agility, at least. He couldn’t remember what age he was, but Gamma’s birthday was written on the calendar downstairs—Garrett’s 28th!, penned months in advance—so he assumed that was his age too.

Twenty-eight. According to his research, humans in this reality lived an average of seventy-two years.

Forty-four years. What in the name of the First Universe was he going to do for another forty-four years?

~~~

Recruiting someone to help him close the cracks between the universes meant picking the best of the best. Garrett was the best of the best, so he had to set his sights a little lower.

He would need someone who could write wards in Tenebrarum to protect them as they completed the mission. Several realities had prestigious academies that studied the Prisc’s archaic and impossible-to-pronounce language. One had a famed scholar, the foremost expert on it. He was the son of a powerful witch from a long line of powerful witches, and he excelled in ward work. His was a Linguistic reality, one where power was woven through words, enemies defeated by elaborate riddles. In this reality, the pen truly was mightier than the sword.

That was how Beta joined the team. In his head, Garrett called him the Professor.

Next, they would need a way to find all the universes—every reality, an infinite number. They would need someone who could do Math. Not regular math, Math with a capital M. Math magic. Some realities thrived on Math; they were built on it. In those, science and magic were one and the same. A well-executed equation worked the same as a spell, capable of collapsing a star with nothing but a string of numbers and symbols. Garrett had never understood Math worlds. His Soul magic was weakest in worlds of science and logic, so he rarely visited them. And few Math worlds engaged with the rest of the universes. They often weren’t even aware of the Multi-Versal Fleet.

Gamma’s world had only learned about the Fleet recently. He had been trained by his mother who came from a long line of Math mages. She was immensely powerful and had once held sway in her universe’s magical societies until she retired, but it was Gamma who had cracked the code of how to open a portal, stumbling across it almost by accident. It was thanks to him that his people discovered universes beyond their own and first made contact with those fighting the Prisc. Knowledge about the existence of magic and the multi-verse was restricted in his world. Most people didn’t even know about it, about how there were people who could stop someone’s heartbeat with their mind or speak a spell to move mountains. Gamma was new to all this. A rookie. A risk. But his Math was better than anyone else’s.

So he joined. Gamma the Scientist.

Then there was Delta.

They would need a reality where their different powers would work—Linguistic, Math, and Soul magic. The cracks between worlds allowed for minimal spell work in other realities, but they would need their powers at maximum. A Chaos universe would allow all three, but the rules of Chaos universes were constantly shifting. You might pull off a perfect spell one moment, then be inexplicably turned into a possum the next. They didn’t need randomness messing with this plan. Besides, the Prisc were from a Chaos world. They were more powerful in those.

Luckily there were realities that allowed multiple rule systems, grab-bag universes with a bit of everything. Garrett had visited many in his time, so he knew where to look for what he needed. But what he needed was more than a pick-‘n-mix rule system. They needed something far away from civilization. Far away. The middle of a desert or the bottom of the ocean wasn’t going to cut it. They needed to go off-world. Which meant they needed a reality with at least a basic form of space travel, enough to get away from Earth and other inhabited planets.

That left three universes. One, humans had never evolved. Instead, dinosaurs were still the dominant species, but they’d colonized Mars. There were many drawbacks to that universe, not the least of which was the possibility of being eaten by a T-rex on a space station, so that one was out. The second universe was nearly perfect, except it lacked one thing: Garrett had never been born in that reality. The blood bond wouldn’t work.

That left Delta’s universe.

Delta wasn’t a renowned mage. He hadn’t made a name for himself at any academy or among any ancient sects. His mother had been a powerful sorcerer when she was alive—their mother was always powerful—but she’d died when he was young, and Delta had been raised by an uncle of dubious repute who ended up getting killed years later after an illegal card game went south. Delta had a warrant or two out for his arrest in a couple realities, mostly for taking expensive things off the hands of unsuspecting halfwits. But he had a ship fueled by Salamanders that could get them as far as the Kuiper belt in two weeks (Garrett doubted it was obtained legally, but he wasn’t about to ask), far enough from Earth to take on the Prisc without fear of collateral damage.

So they’d found their fourth. Delta the Grifter.

~~~

Garrett watched carefully as Nick entered the café. He’d been coming in every day for the past two weeks. He always ordered a double shot espresso and a muffin, often blueberry, sometimes chocolate chip. He always smiled at Garrett, called him “Lenny” (why did he ever agree to be called that name?), and asked probing questions:

“I just downloaded this new album… What music do you like?”

“I moved here recently, and I’m still getting my bearings… How long have you lived in town?”

“I miss this Chinese restaurant where I use to live, and I’m trying to find a good replacement… Do you like Chinese food?”

It was obvious what this was. Garrett could see it a mile away.

Nick was a spy.

With the realities shut off from each other, he probably wasn’t a Shadow or a member of Sub Terra. Garrett had encountered both groups before, and this “Nick” wasn’t as well-trained as either. There were other orders, other governments that might have an agent stranded there, maybe hoping they could use Garrett to hitch a ride home—but if that was the case, Nick was out of luck.

Of course, Nick could’ve been sent from one of this reality’s native groups, but those were limited in power and extent. Magic was secret in this world, kept hidden by a clandestine organization Gamma had referred to only as the Society. Gamma hadn’t gone into detail other than to say the Society didn’t have a large membership. Sara had left them when she’d settled down to raise a family, so she wouldn’t know the latest developments. But for all Garret knew they could have spies. Perhaps they’d noticed an interloper in their universe and wanted to assess the threat.

Garrett wasn’t much of a threat anymore, though. He had no powers. He was just a veteran, forced into retirement.

Nick smiled as he approached the counter, but there was an undercurrent of nerves in his expression. Tensing his shoulders, biting his lower lip, fiddling with the leather cuff on his wrist…

Something was different.

He was planning something. Something big. Something he was going to do today.

“Hi, Lenny,” Nick said, but there was a slight waver. Apprehension.

He was a terrible spy.

Garrett eyed him warily, watching him squirm.

“Uh…double shot espresso, please.”

Garrett tapped in the order and waited.

Nick swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“And?” Garrett prompted.

“And?” Nick looked oddly hopeful.

“Muffin?”

“Oh…right.” Nick’s expression shifted to painfully flustered. “Blueberry…”

Garrett finished inputting the order. Nick swallowed again.

“Hey, um…” Nick scratched at his neck. “Are you busy Saturday? It’s just…uh…um…”

Garrett didn’t have a lot of patience on a good day. This morning Cathy had dropped Emma and Peter off for Sara to watch while she was at work, as usual. Emma had run up to attach herself to Garrett’s leg again, but she’d been carrying a tumbler of juice which spilled all over his pants. He hadn’t had time to change. He still smelled like apple. His patience had been riding on empty for the past two hours, and now Nick had just drained what was left.

Garrett planted his hands on either side of the cash register and leaned over as far as he could, catching Nick’s gaze with his one, unblinking eye.

“What do you want?” Garrett said, voice low.

“Huh?” Nick looked weirdly hopeful again.

“Why do you keep asking me questions? Why do you keep calling me by my name? What do you want from me?”

Nick paled and diverted his gaze to the ground. “Sorry.”

Garrett frowned. “What?”

“I—I’m sorry to have bothered you, I…I just thought—I thought maybe you might…” He darted his gaze around, avoiding Garrett. “Never mind.” Nick turned and dashed out of the café.

Garrett’s frown deepened. He leaned back. Nick’s order was still displayed on the register.

What just happened?

~~~

Two weeks to their destination meant two weeks of preparation for the showdown. They needed it. They needed time to write the wards, the equations. They needed time to rest and refresh their magical energy for battle.

What they didn’t need was two weeks of talking.

“Welcome aboard,” Delta said with that cocky grin Garrett always wanted to knock off his face. His brown curls were perfectly coiffed, his clothes ostentatious—an embroidered, red silk blouse and lace-up, black leather pants—but he was incongruously draped in a patched, brown coat. “It’s nice to meet all of me.”

Beta brushed past him into the cargo bay, not acknowledging his inane words, and inspected the bulkheads closely. His long brown curls were tied back in a ponytail, his doublet a lush burgundy velvet. He ran a hand over the metal. “These should take the wards, although I would have preferred a silver alloy. Silver holds magic better. This…this will do, but it’ll be like building a bird’s nest with mushrooms. It should work, but it’s not ideal.”

“There aren’t a lot of silver spaceships, my dude.”

Gamma adjusted his glasses as he looked around the ship in awe. His brown curls were cut short, though not as short as Garrett’s. He wore a button-down blue shirt and khakis. “Never thought I’d go to space. This is like Star Trek.”

“Meh, space isn’t that great,” Delta said. “Right, Al?”

“Don’t call me that,” Garrett gritted out.

Delta grinned again. Not the cocky one, though. The shit-eating one. “But you’re Alpha. Al is short for Alpha.”

“No nicknames.”

“Isn’t Alpha a nickname?”

“It’s a designation.”

Delta snorted and glanced at Gamma, who was watching their conversation with unease. Gamma adjusted his glasses again. He was the only one with glasses. Beta wore his reality’s version of contact lenses. Garrett had found a spell that healed his eyes—or rather, eye—so he no longer required a physical aid. As for Delta, he wore neither glasses nor contacts, but he had some impairment. He squinted at distant signs, asked people what they thought of things up ahead so he could find out what they saw. Garrett knew what was happening. Delta didn’t use vision aids even though he needed them because they would ruin his look.

“Why is he Alpha, anyway?” Delta asked Gamma.

Gamma looked terrified at being asked the question. “Um…”

“I mean, why is he the leader—”

“Because I am,” Garrett said. “And because I was first.”

“Like you’re the oldest?”

Gamma cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses again. “Actually, we should all be the same age. Our birthdays might be off a bit, but variants are always conceived around the same time.”

“That is true,” Beta said, still inspecting the cargo bay. He’d wandered toward the door leading to the corridor, not paying much attention to the commotion behind him but clearly still hearing enough to chime in.

“Then what makes you first?” Delta asked.

“I started this mission,” Garrett explained. “That makes me first. I gave you all designations based on when you joined after me.”

“So if we had one more, he’d be Epsilon,” Gamma said.

Delta smirked. “If we had eight more, the last one would be Mu.”

Something crashed to the floor in the corner. “Dear gods, what is—” Beta’s jaw dropped as a fiery orange lizard the size of a cat scurried out from behind a stack of crates. “That was a Salamander!”

“His name is Carl,” Delta said.

“This is an Elemental ship.” Beta did another sweep of the cargo bay with his eyes. Then he turned to Delta. “Are you an Elemental mage?”

Delta shook his head. “Nope. But I can do Elemental magic. And Linguistic. And a bit of Math.” He locked eyes with Garrett. “But I’m not a Soul-Eater.”

Gamma glanced between Delta and Garrett. He looked like he wanted to adjust his glasses again but refrained. “What’s a Soul-Eater?”

“What he is.” Delta nodded toward Garrett. “He gets his power by draining souls. Like a vampire sucking blood. It kills whatever he feeds on—”

“Not always,” Garrett said.

Delta grinned. Not cocky, not shit-eating. Knowing. “Souls are made of pure creation energy. If you can drain a soul and know how to harness it, you can do whatever you want. Like a god. As long as you don’t blow yourself up.”

Garrett tilted his head, giving Delta an assessing look. Perhaps he wasn’t as frivolous and ignorant as Garrett had thought. “You can’t do everything. There are limits. And it’s dangerous.”

Holding a soul in your hand was like holding a nuclear reactor in meltdown. Like holding a bomb as it exploded. You had to gather that explosive energy into yourself and hold it as you performed your spell, without letting the explosion take you with it. Advanced mages could hold residual energy inside them, creating a well of energy at the ready, but holding that kind of power required constant concentration. It was why Garrett didn’t have much patience for people like Delta. He was trying not to detonate.

“Still, makes you wonder why you need us.” Delta still held Garrett’s gaze. “Are we here to help you with this mission? Or are we here for you to feed on?”

Beta scoffed and moved closer to join the group. “Soul-Eaters can’t feed on their own alternates.”

“Says who?”

“Says the laws of magic. We share part of a soul. He can’t eat his own soul.”

“He can burn up his own soul for fuel, if he’s desperate.”

Beta scoffed again then a crease of doubt formed on his forehead. “That’s not…is that true?”

Beta, Gamma, and Delta turned to Garrett. To Alpha.

“You’re here,” Garrett said, sidestepping the question, “because you excel in skills I need but don’t have—or, have certain tools hard to come by.” He directed this last part toward Delta. He didn’t want Delta to get the wrong idea and think he had any enviable talents. “I’ve been fighting the Prisc for as long as I can remember. If I could vanquish them myself, I would. I need help. But I have been betrayed too many times to trust anyone other than myself. So I turned to the next best thing.” He looked at them one by one. “I trust you because we share the same blood, the same DNA. The same soul. And because we’re going to perform the blood bond.”

“The blood bond?” Delta rolled his eyes. “That’s a myth.”

“It’s neither proven nor disproven,” Beta said.

“Blood bond?” Gamma did adjust his glasses this time. “What’s that?”

“It’s a myth,” Delta said. “Supposedly, a person can’t harm a divergent of themself if they vow upon their shared blood. It is—I can’t stress this enough—a fucking myth.”

“Myth or not, I’m giving it a try.” Garrett unsheathed his Star Knife. “We vow before we take off.”

Gamma’s eyes went wide behind his glasses. “Uh…does the shared blood have to be outside our bodies?”

“Just enough,” Garrett said and sliced open his forearm.

~~~

Garrett arrived home, still wondering what had happened with Nick. His mind was so far away, he didn’t notice the tricycle until he stubbed his toe.

“I’m so sorry!” Sara dragged the tricycle away while Garrett bit back every swear word in every language he knew. “Cathy got stuck in traffic, so the kids are still here. Emma was showing me her new tricycle, but I got distracted when Peter needed to be changed—”

Garrett held up a hand to halt her apologies. “It’s fine.” His toe throbbed, but it was still attached. He’d experienced plenty of situations where he hadn’t been so lucky.

“I’m sorry,” Sara said again. She stood there, looking like she didn’t know what to do next.

Garrett couldn’t assuage her indecision. He stood just as uneasily. He never knew what to say to Sara or her husband, Adam, so he usually said as little as possible. He kept to his bedroom for the most part, only venturing out for food and work. He avoided Sara and Adam whenever he could, and he suspected they returned the favor.

Sara sipped a hesitant breath then looked Garrett in the eye. “Would you mind watching the kids for a minute? I’ve needed a bathroom break for the past hour. I won’t be long, promise.”

“I suppose—”

“Thanks!” Sara ran to the bathroom, leaving Garrett alone with Emma and Peter.

Garrett assessed the situation. Peter was in his playpen, napping. Emma had attached herself to Garrett’s leg in the two seconds Sara had been gone.

“Uncle Dada!”

Garrett sighed. “Yes. Uncle Dada.”

Emma was small, but she felt like a lead weight as Garrett shuffled to the couch. Luckily his mech leg was designed to mimic a real one, so he could put all his weight on it and still maneuver without stumbling. He sat on the couch, Emma still wrapped like a vine around him.

“Uncle Dada!” She wriggled, trying to climb his leg to get onto the couch. Garrett took pity on her and helped her up. She curled up by his side, sandwiched between him and the corner of the couch, and clutched his shirt in her tiny hand. “You smell like apple juice.”

“Yes,” Garrett said. He wanted to remind her it was her fault, but he didn’t want a reprimand from Sara if Emma started crying.

“Do you like juice?”

“No.”

Emma blinked up at him, her green eyes enormous in her tiny head. Eyes like his. Eyes like Gamma’s. He’d never noticed before how much she looked like him.

“What’s that?” She pointed a finger at Garrett’s face.

Garrett tapped at his eyepatch. “You mean this?”

Emma nodded. There was something gross bubbling at the corner of her mouth.

“It’s an eyepatch.”

“Why?”

He assumed she meant why did he have it, not why was it called that. He appreciated her straightforwardness. No one had dared ask about it before. Mr. Harding had danced around it when hiring him, asking if he needed special accommodations without voicing the obvious: Garrett was missing body parts. Several, actually—besides his mech leg and absent eye, three of his fingers were magical simulacra, two of his organs were biomechanical, and one of his ears was a regrowth.

“An incident occurred, and I lost my eye,” Garrett explained.

“Where did it go?”

Garrett didn’t know how to answer that without traumatizing her.

“It…went away.”

“Like Dada went away?”

Garrett stared down at Emma. Her giant eyes were on his.

“Yes, like Dada went away.”

She blinked up at him. Her eyes looked moist, but then again, most of her looked moist most of the time.

“Do you want to see Lamby?” she asked.

A sharp change in subject—one of the many remarkable tactics shared by both children and politicians. Garrett knew “do you want to see Lamby” was code for “bring Lamby to me,” so he leaned over and snatched the stuffed lamb off the coffee table.

“Sing the Lamby song with me.”

“No, I don’t—”

“Sing the Lamby song!”

So Garrett sang the Lamby song with her, which was composed solely of the phrase, “Lamby, Lamby, you’re a lamb, Lamby,” repeated ad nauseum.

By the time Sara returned from the bathroom, Emma had sung herself to sleep.

“Is she napping?” Sara whispered in wonder.

Garrett nodded carefully, not wanting to wake Emma. The thing that had bubbled up on her mouth was now on his shirt. He wanted to take many showers. He also did not want to move. She looked peaceful. Silent. He preferred her this way, but something not unlike guilt tugged at his heart as he looked at her. He shut the emotion away. He’d suffered enough feelings for one day.

Sara smiled as she looked at them. “You’ve never held her before.”

“She didn’t give me much choice.”

Sara chuckled softly. “She’s pushy like that.” She brushed a hair out of her face. Most of her hair was gray, some black strands still mixed in. Wrinkles crisscrossed her face, prominent when she smiled. She was only in her fifties, but she’d retired early—not just from the Society and working with Math magic, but from her university professorship. She’d left to help raise Emma and Peter now that Cathy was on her own. She would still be working if it hadn’t been for Garrett.

This was what Garrett’s mother would have looked like if she’d survived. The last time he’d seen her, he’d only been five years old, taken from her arms by the Aspis, the warrior monks who’d made it their mission to defeat the Prisc. She’d given him up because there was hope his bloodline, his power, would win the war. He could barely remember her face. As for his father, he’d never met him, conscripted into the Multi-Versal Fleet before Garrett was born. His mother had talked a lot about his father at first. She would send him a letter every month and visit him a few times a year at outposts, leaving Garrett behind with his grandmother, until one day a man from the Fleet knocked on their door. His mother had stared, silently, as he’d spoken to her. After that, there were no more visits. No more letters. His father never came home.

This was his mother. But it wasn’t. Just like he was her son, but he wasn’t. Emma and Peter were his children, yet they weren’t.

“Is everything all right?” Sara asked.

Garrett shifted on the couch. Emma didn’t stir.

Sara never asked if everything was all right. How could anything be “all right” when he was stuck here, no power, no purpose? How was he to respond?

“Something happened at work today,” Garrett said after a moment’s indecision. “A man has been coming in recently, asking questions. I confronted him and he ran away.”

Sara hummed thoughtfully. She looked down at where Emma nestled against Garrett’s side. “What sort of questions?”

“He wanted to know what music I like. Which restaurants I go to. Things like that.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected in response. Perhaps Sara would know who’d sent Nick. Perhaps she would recognize something and warn him.

He hadn’t expected her to laugh.

“What?” he demanded as she held a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. “What is it?”

Sara calmed down and shook her head, her face split in a huge grin. “Oh, Gar…” Her grin faltered slightly. “Len…that man has a crush on you.”

Garrett frowned. “What?”

“He likes you. He wants to get to know you better.”

“Why?”

Sara’s eyes sparkled. “Because he thinks you’re attractive.”

Garrett’s frown twisted in confusion. “Why?”

Sara snorted softly. “Because you’re a handsome man. Even if you’re a little…rough around the edges.”

Garrett studied her expression to see if she was lying, but he detected no insincerity. “What do I do then?”

“That depends. Do you like him back?”

“I thought he was a spy.”

Sara started laughing again. Garrett waited for her to stop.

When she got herself back under control, she studied Garrett’s face for a moment. “I think it’s time you decide if you want to live in this world or not.”

“What do you mean?”

Sara continued to stare thoughtfully at Garrett before saying, “Next time you see this man, imagine holding his hand.”

“Why would I hold his hand?”

“Try it. If the thought doesn’t bother you, ask something you would like to know about him. Go from there.”

Garrett wanted to ask more—like go to where?—but Cathy arrived. He handed over Emma, his side cold with her gone.

~~~

Gamma was still rubbing where his arm had been cut for the blood bond when Garrett arrived at the mess hall. It had been a few hours, the ship having launched and Beta having healed everyone’s wounds. He’d offered to do so, which Garrett appreciated. Garrett needed to conserve his power, so he couldn’t be wasting it on healing flesh wounds, but he didn’t want to admit this weakness either.

The mess hall was small, just a few tables clustered together, large enough for a dozen people if they didn’t mind sitting elbow to elbow. This ship was clearly meant to only have a small crew, maybe less than twenty, but it was still large enough there should have been a crew. And yet Delta had never mentioned having one. Did he fly this ship alone, or was this the first time he’d flown it since acquiring it? His familiarity with things—Carl the Salamander, the quirks of certain sticking doors and loose panels—suggested the former.

Beta and Gamma sat at separate tables on opposite sides of the mess. Beta, nibbling on apple slices, was engrossed in a book written in Tenebrarum—Garrett hoped it was relevant to the mission and that he wasn’t wasting valuable time on leisure reads—while Gamma was shoveling reconstituted mac and cheese into his mouth as he scribbled numbers onto a notepad.

Garrett used the cooking mechanism in the corner to heat up a food pack, then sat at Beta’s table, a chair between them. They ate in silence, Beta and Gamma seeming to not even notice he was there.

“I don’t know if that’ll work.”

Garrett, sitting by the open door, turned his head when he heard talking at the end of the corridor. He stopped eating to hear better.

“We could try but…nah, I don’t wanna get fried…”

Delta walked into view, staring at an electronic pad in his hand.

“Who are you talking to?” Garrett asked.

Delta looked up and noticed the mess hall was full. He tilted the pad toward himself—Garrett had spotted a navigation map of the solar system but no communication application open—and shook his head.

“Just myself.” He ducked into the mess to join them. “Then again, I supposed I’m still talking to myself.” He gestured at the alternate versions of him sitting around the room.

“Technically, we’re not the same person,” Beta said without looking up from his book. “We lack the same experiences. I am no more you than you are me despite our biological similarities.”

“Why were you talking to yourself?” Garrett asked.

Delta shrugged casually and sat on the last free table, propping a foot up on a chair. “Dunno. Old habit. Sometimes I just need some noise. It gets pretty quiet out here in space, and I usually live alone—a trait I think we all share.”

Gamma tentatively raised his hand as if he were in a classroom. “Actually, I have a wife and two kids.”

“Wife?” Delta stared at him, gobsmacked. “Like, a woman?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“You mean there’s a universe out there where I’m straight?”

Gamma let out an unamused snort. “Bisexual, actually.”

“Oh, thank the gods.” Delta held a hand to his chest. “I was worried for a second.”

“The exact cause of sexuality is still uncertain,” Beta said, looking up from his book finally. “While there is significant support for a biological basis, no one gene has been found. And though we have the same DNA, we most likely vary in our epigenetics, and that could possibly result in significant differences—”

“Save the lecture for later, professor.” Delta turned to Garrett who’d been eyeing him since he’d entered the room. “What are you scanning for, Terminator?”

Garrett raised an eyebrow. He’d been watching Delta, assessing him. He’d expertly changed the subject away from Garrett’s question about who he’d been talking to. Garrett was trying to determine if that had been an organic side-effect of Delta’s rambling conversational style or if it had been by design.

Gamma tilted his head, studying Garrett now too. “He’s not the right build. Not bulky enough for Arnold.”

“He could be a T-1000,” Delta said.

“True. But he’s not a time-traveling robot, he’s an interdimensional jumper, so he’s more like—”

“Jet Li in The One.”

“Bingo.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Garrett said. He looked to Beta for an explanation, but Beta was reading his book again.

“Of course, with that eyepatch…” Delta went on, “if he grew his hair out, he’d look like Snake Plissken.”

“Who are these people you speak of?” Garrett demanded.

“If we’re going for who looks like who,” Gamma said, ignoring Garrett as if he hadn’t spoken, “you look like Gambit.”

Delta grinned, popping the collar on his dingy brown coat. “You think so, mon ami?”

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Garrett said.

Delta turned to him. “Do you not have movies or TV in your reality? Does Hollywood not exist on your Earth?”

“In my reality, Earth was scorched in battle when the Prisc caused the sun to expand. No intelligent life was left.”

“So that’s a maybe?”

“You can’t expect every reality to have the same forms of entertainment or pop cultural attributes,” Beta remarked, turning a page in his book. “On my Earth, cinema is limited because we focused more on advancing our magical skills rather than artistic ones.”

“And that’s why you’re so boring?”

Beta did not respond.

Delta and Gamma started talking about things Garrett did not understand again. Garrett watched them—watched Delta. Had he been communicating with someone on Earth? Or had he been speaking with someone—or something—on the ship? Garrett wasn’t going to pursue the topic any further in front of Delta. He knew he wouldn’t get an honest answer. But he was going to search the ship from top to bottom during his watch at the controls when everyone else was asleep. In the meantime, he sat in confusion as Delta and Gamma spoke of stories Garrett had never heard of, the shared aspects of their universes Garrett could never understand.

Garrett did not come from a universe that indulged in such inanities. His universe had been the first hit by the Prisc. The first to suffer. The first to fight back.

The first to be destroyed.

~~~

Garrett always observed the schedules of the regular customers to prepare himself for their inevitable arrival and the onslaught of mindless chatter. Nick had quickly become a regular, arriving at the same time every day. But after their confrontation, Nick stopped showing up.

Garrett was concerned.

He hadn’t meant to scare Nick off—well, he had, but only because he’d thought Nick was spying on him. Realizing Nick was an innocent bystander with some harmless infatuation made Garrett feel guilty. Nick was just an ordinary, boring human from an ordinary, boring Math world. He didn’t deserve to be threatened by Garrett. He wanted to apologize, although he wouldn’t go so far as to follow Sara’s suggestion. He had no desire to hold Nick’s hand or ask any questions besides which muffin he wanted that day.

Except now Nick wasn’t there to order muffins. And they’d had a special muffin the other day—raspberry and white chocolate—Garrett thought Nick might have liked.

A full week had passed since Nick had stopped coming in, and Garrett was almost ready to accept he was no longer a patron to this café.

Then Nick walked in.

Right on time, too, but he wasn’t smiling that bright, cheerful smile. He kept his head down while waiting in line, focused on the wallet in his hand. He usually kept his wallet in his back pocket, taking his time to retrieve it while asking Garrett some foolishness like what’s your favorite color or do you prefer cats or dogs. But he was holding it now, as if prepared to get through this transaction as quickly as possible. By the time Nick got to the front of the line, he still hadn’t looked up.

“Double shot espresso and a blueberry muffin.”

Nick did not smile. He did not call Garrett by name (or the name he thought was Garrett’s). He did not look up.

Garrett rang up the order and Nick held out his credit card.

Garrett hesitated. Nick held the card between two fingers, two long, slender fingers. The nails had been chewed to the quick, then painted black to hide this fact. There was a small scar on the thumb and another on the index finger, like defensive wounds—or a cooking accident. He wore a silver ring on his middle finger and his ever-present black leather cuff on his wrist. Garrett wasn’t sure what it’d be like to hold this hand. He imagined it would not allow itself to be held for long, Nick’s hands often jumping about to emphasize whatever he was saying. But Garrett lingered as he took the card, his finger brushing Nick’s.

Garrett swiped the card then noticed something he’d always been curious about.

“What does the S stand for?”

Nick finally looked up, confused. “What?”

Garrett handed back his card, pointing at the middle initial in Nick’s name. “What does it stand for?”

Nick stared at the card then at Garrett. Something, not quite a smile, quirked the corner of his lips. “Salvador. It’s an old family name.”

“Oh.” Garrett wasn’t sure what to do with this information now that he had it, so he got Nick his muffin instead.

“What’s your middle name?” Nick asked.

“Don’t have one.”

“Oh.” It was the same oh Garrett had made. “So it’s just Lenny…Barista Guy.”

“I don’t like Lenny.”

“Oh?” A surprised oh. A concerned oh. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t feel like me.”

“What would you prefer to be called?”

Garrett would prefer to be called by his real name, but his real name belonged to someone else. “Leonard. Or Len. That’s what my mother calls me.”

“Oh…you could change your nametag…”

“My boss likes Lenny. He says it makes me seem less like a serial killer.”

Nick laughed. His smile was back, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Your boss is not wrong. Um…”

“Order for Nick!” Garrett’s co-worker, Angeline, placed Nick’s espresso on the pick-up counter.

Nick’s smile lessened and Garrett felt oddly bereft. “I guess I should get that…and let you get back to work…Len.”

Garrett nodded. “Right…Nick…”

Nick left. Garrett wasn’t sure what he felt in that moment, but that sense of being in the wrong place—a persistent feeling that had settled into his chest when he’d first become stuck in this universe—eased slightly.

~~~

“What do the Prisc look like?” Gamma asked.

Garrett and Beta were clearing out the cargo bay. Delta was fiddling with an electrical panel to create the override command for locking the bay down. Gamma was scribbling equations on the walls with a marker, his fingers black with ink.

Delta glanced up from his work and removed the spanner stuck between his teeth. “Like your worst nightmare.”

“No, really—”

“Really. They’re Chaos beings, they have no set form. They shapeshift constantly, so much it can drive people mad.”

“True,” Beta said, “but there are some common forms they tend to take. A thick fog or mist. Tentacles of light, like lightning. The young often appear in these simpler forms. They are also pure white, whereas mature specimens take on a blue tinge as they age. Older ones also tend to take on more complex forms, including forms we’ve never seen before, forms our minds struggle to comprehend…”

“I’m getting a Cthulhu vibe here,” Gamma remarked.

Delta snickered. “They’re worse than that.”

Gamma scratched his nose, leaving behind a streak of black. “And they’re all bad? Shouldn’t there be variations among them, differing opinions, like every other sentient race?”

“No,” Garrett said. “They’re all evil.”

Beta made a prevaricating noise. “Well, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. The Academy has done studies on younger ones we’ve captured—”

“You what?” Garrett nearly dropped a crate of food rations. “You captured Prisc? And didn’t kill them?”

“We analyzed them,” Beta said, offhand, placing an unmarked box into the corridor. “In order to defeat your enemy, you must understand them first. We wanted to know what made them tick. How they moved, how they thought. How else do you think we learned their language when it’s incomprehensible to most? It was a necessary risk.”

“You killed them afterwards, right?”

“What’s remarkable about the Prisc,” Beta said as if Garrett hadn’t asked a question, “is they’re all connected to this ancient member of their species, the one that feeds its soul back to them, giving them power. That connection allows them to communicate, creating something akin to a hive mind. They don’t all think the same, but they do have a connection with one another which allows them to move as one. That’s why it’s so hard to fight them. They are a united front, able to communicate through thought.”

“Are there any that disagree with each other?” Gamma asked.

Beta seemed to consider the question carefully. “The young ones we analyzed were heavily influenced by the Ancient—younglings have less power and rely on the larger, older ones. Like children who follow whatever their parents tell them to do, the young Prisc obey the commands of the Ancient without thought. We tried swaying them away from this, but the telepathic link made it near impossible.”

“I think an older one would do better,” Delta said, staring at the panel in front of him. “They’re more powerful, have more of their own minds, separate from the rest. They can even survive just fine without accessing the Source.”

“That’s merely a theory.”

Delta looked at Beta. “Yeah, but it makes sense. I’m sure there’s some ancient Prisc out there—not as ancient as the Ancient but old enough it’s grown cranky and tired of war. Probably just wants to get away, see the universes. I bet older ones can shut off the telepathic link, too, when they get fed up with it.”

Beta shook his head. “Nonsense. There’s nothing to suggest older Prisc can turn off the link or are more prone to dissent.”

“How would you know? You’ve only ever dealt with babies.”

“I never said I’ve only dealt with their young—”

“Did you kill them?” Garrett demanded.

Beta sighed and turned to Garrett. “They were young, less powerful, no real threats—”

“They’re all threats—”

“—but, yes, we did dispose of them.”

“Good.” Garrett shoved the ration crate into the corridor, dropping it with an echoing thud. “Good.”

Gamma frowned at Garrett. “Why is it so important to kill them? What if we could raise them to be different?”

“You can’t.”

“Well, actually—” Beta began.

“No.” Garrett glared at Beta. “Even the young can kill, can possess.”

“Possess?” Gamma’s eyes went wide. “Wait, what?”

“They can take over your body. Use you like a puppet. Force you to say and do things against your will. The Aspis trained me to fight their stranglehold, but few can keep the Prisc out of their heads. If you get too close, it’s already too late. You have to keep your distance, no matter how young they might be.”

Gamma’s eyes widened during Garrett’s speech. He glanced toward Beta. “Is that true?”

“Yep,” Delta said, studying the electrical panel again. “They often do it because, as Chaos beings, they stand out a bit too much in non-Chaos worlds. If they want to go unnoticed, they gotta hitch a ride in something.”

Beta made that prevaricating noise again. “Yes, it’s true, but…there was no risk of the younglings possessing anyone on the project, I promise you.”

Gamma looked to Garrett as if for reassurance, but Garrett took a step back from Beta.

“How can we be sure?” Garrett asked.

Beta scoffed. “Please, I am not possessed—”

“He’s telling the truth,” Delta said, still fiddling with the electrical panel, using his spanner to fix something. He seemed unconcerned with the conversation.

“How do you know?” Garrett said.

“Because I scanned all of you before you set foot on board. I’m not an idiot.” He shot a significant look toward Garrett. “I would know if one of you were harboring something.”

Garrett’s blood went cold. “You scanned us?”

“You’re welcome.” He closed the panel he was working on. “I’m gonna go feed Carl. Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.”

Garrett watched as Delta left the cargo bay, Garrett’s hands curling into fists, his heart pounding.

“What do Fire Elementals eat?” Gamma asked.

Beta opened his mouth to reply but Garrett didn’t hear the answer, blood rushing in his ears. He left the cargo bay, needing to calm down before he blew up the ship by accident.

If Delta had scanned him, then Delta knew…

Why hadn’t he said anything? What was he hoping to get out of this?

What was Delta hiding?

~~~

There was a screaming baby in Garrett’s arms. A screaming, smelly baby.

“Sara,” he said, urgent. “Sara!”

“Just a second!”

Sara had been cooking dinner when the smoke alarm went off. Some oil had dripped onto the bottom of the oven and burned. Nothing dangerous, but the alarm sounded, causing Peter to cry and Emma to cover her ears. Sara was trying to shut off the alarm. Garrett was trying to calm Peter down, covering his ears for him.

Peter was still crying. And he needed his diaper changed.

“Sara!”

The alarm stopped and Garrett sighed with relief. But he still had a stinky, screaming baby.

This was not the first time he’d held a baby, although it was the first time he’d held this particular baby. The Aspis recruited members young, younger even than he’d been. Any child born from a long line of powerful mages was seen as a potential savior, the one who would be strong enough to stop the Prisc. Garrett had grown up in a nursery among children so young they’d only just been weaned.

Sara hurried back into the living room. “Hand him over, I’ll change him.”

Garrett gladly gave her Peter, who was still crying. Sara put down a towel and lay Peter on top. Garrett turned away. He’d seen people ripped apart, gotten covered in their gore, but he had no desire to see the inside of Peter’s diaper.

Emma, sitting on the couch, still had her hands over her ears.

“You can lower your hands,” Garrett informed her.

Emma looked at him earnestly and eased her tiny fists away from her head. “Loud.”

“It was loud.” He sat down beside her. She immediately crawled into his lap. He didn’t fight it.

“My ears hurt.”

Garrett inspected her ears. There was no blood. “It’ll wear off.”

“Mommy kisses booboos.”

He was not going to kiss her booboos. Instead, he grabbed Lamby and tapped Lamby’s nose to each of Emma’s ears. “There. Kisses.”

Garrett looked up to see Sara watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She smiled but didn’t elaborate.

“What?“

Sara shook her head, chuckling. “You’re getting good with her.”

“No.” He was not getting good with Emma. Emma was an annoyance, a distraction, a biohazard—she was using his shirt to wipe her nose as they spoke. He was just trying to survive.

“I think it’s cute,” Sara said, but at Garrett’s continued glare she changed the subject. “How was work?”

“Fine. Nick came back.”

Sara, done with changing Peter, stood up and walked over, bouncing a no-longer-crying Peter in her arms. “Oh. How did it go?”

“How did what go?”

“You know…did you ask him a question?”

Garrett considered simply leaving the room, but Emma was climbing his torso and he didn’t know how long it would take to wrestle her away so he could make his exit.

“Yes,” he grunted eventually.

“Good,” Sara said, nodding. “Good.”

It was not good. He did not understand why Sara was so interested in how things went with Nick. All he’d done was repair a customer service relationship. Nothing more.

But Sara started asking, night after night, if Nick had been in today. Over and over, every day: Had Garrett talked to Nick? Did Nick ask Garrett any questions? How were things going with Nick?

Garrett gritted out brief replies each time.

He did not want to talk about it. He did not want to talk about how relieved he’d been when Nick started coming back to the café. He did not want to talk about how he felt an odd thrill when he saw Nick walk through the door. He did not want to talk about how Nick had stopped asking questions, so Garrett had started asking instead.

He’d asked about the scars on Nick’s fingers.

“I used to be a line cook,” Nick had said. “Then I became a photographer. Fewer knife accidents.”

He’d asked about the leather cuff.

“My best friend got it for me as a birthday gift back in high school. I’ve been wearing it for so long, I feel naked without it.”

He’d asked about the nail biting.

Nick had smiled ruefully. “I get nervous sometimes.”

“Were you nervous recently?”

His smile twisted in on itself. “I was going to ask someone…something…”

This went on for days. They had switched places, and Garrett wasn’t sure why he kept asking questions. He could have stopped, let their usual transaction occur without additional comment, but he felt a pit in his stomach when things were too quiet between them. And when he asked Nick a question, Nick would look at him, eyes alight, and there was something in Garrett’s chest that responded, a lightness he could not explain.

One day, Nick came in at his usual time and ordered his usual order. Garrett processed the payment, trying to think of something to ask.

“Did you ever find an acceptable Chinese restaurant?”

Nick stared at him blankly. “What?”

“You said you were trying to find a replacement for a restaurant you’d liked in your former place of residence. Did you fine one?”

Nick stared at him another moment. Then he planted his hands on the counter and leaned over the register, a move Garrett recognized as mirroring what he’d done to Nick a couple weeks ago.

Nick held Garrett’s gaze for yet another moment before saying, “Do you like to eat food?”

Garrett stared back, nonplussed. “Yes.”

“Do you want to eat food at the same place where I’m eating food?”

Garrett watched a sunbeam fall across Nick’s face, his brown eyes glowing like amber in the light.

“Yes,” Garrett said softly.

“Do you want to eat food at the same place where I’m eating food tonight at seven?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Nick leaned back, removed his hands from the counter. “I like China Garden. Just down the street. Meet me there?”

Garrett stared at Nick, at his soft hair (he used a special conditioner), his perfect teeth (he’d had braces as a kid), at his slightly crooked nose (his sister had broken it when playing dodgeball). He looked at Nick’s hand, fiddling nervously with his cuff, a hand Garrett had been thinking he might not mind holding after all.

“Yes.”

~~~

Delta had made himself scarce after the conversation in the cargo bay. While Beta and Gamma were busy crafting wards and equations to write on the bay’s walls, Garrett tried to find where Delta was hiding. It didn’t take long to track him down to the ship’s tiny bridge, his feet propped up on the navigation console.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Delta was muttering, “we’re not flinging them into the sun.”

“Who are you talking to?”

Delta looked over his shoulder at Garrett. “Myself. Sometimes I think we should launch the Prisc into the closest star once their powers are cut off, but the annoyingly logical part of my brain says it’s not practical.”

“It didn’t sound like a conversation with yourself.”

Delta swiveled his chair to look better at Garrett standing in the doorway. He glanced at Garrett’s eyepatch.

Garrett’s hand twitched, wanting to cover his patch, but he held back and stared Delta down.

Delta held his one-eyed gaze then let out a ghost of a laugh. He tossed the electronic pad he’d been holding onto the navigation dashboard. “You know, you’re famous, right? The Aspis’ great hope, the powerful warrior who slips between realities as easily as sharks swim through water. One of the few who’s beaten the Prisc in battle, the lone survivor from his Earth. The almighty Soul-Eater, who crushes evil like a bug without breaking a sweat. I know who you are, Beta knows who you are, and if Gamma weren’t from the interdimensional boonies, he’d know who you are. Everyone knows the impressive deeds you’ve done, the immense power you can wield. But no one knows a damn thing about the man behind the might.”

Garrett didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is what I can do.”

“And that’s all that’s ever mattered. The Aspis were always hellbent on doing whatever was necessary to beat the Prisc. They abducted children, trained them to drain souls and block off their minds, to focus on one goal and one goal only—defeat the enemy. And you embodied that focus better than anyone. That’s the reason you survived. But what kind of life is that, when you sacrifice everything, make deals with every devil, just for the chance to bring down the Prisc?”

“Deflection is a favorite tool of yours, isn’t it?”

Delta laughed again, but this time it was louder, mocking. “Oh, I’m the one deflecting? You come in here, accusing me of something, when we both know what you’re hiding under the hood.” He looked at Garrett’s eyepatch again.

Garrett’s blood boiled. He thought about feeding Delta to Carl. No one would miss him, and Carl would be well fed for the rest of the journey. “I don’t know what you—”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Garrett and Delta stared each other down.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Garrett asked, voice low.

Delta held his gaze a moment longer then shrugged. He leaned back in his chair, one of his annoying grins back in place. “We’ve all got secrets, don’t we? I respect your privacy. I know it’s not a danger—well…” His grin twisted. “Not to me at least.”

Garrett glared. “You’re not special—”

“None of us are special. We’re all the same. You, me, Beta, Gamma. There are millions of us across the cosmos. We all think we’re special, we all want to be special, but we’re not. We’re cannon fodder.” His eyes darkened, his jaw clenching. “I’m not a fool, Alpha. I know we don’t make it back from this.”

Garrett stood there, giving Delta another appraising look. “Don’t tell the others.”

Delta snorted, a huff of sardonic breath. “I told you, I’m not a fool.”

~~~

Sara was elated when Garrett told her he was going out to eat with Nick. She looked like she might hug him. He quickly maneuvered to put the couch between them to hold her off.

Emma latched onto his leg instead. He was used to that by now. He lifted her up and handed her to Sara so he could escape to take a shower before dinner.

Nick stood outside the restaurant when Garrett arrived. Nick wore an emerald-green, button-down shirt and black dress pants. Garrett wore a maroon sweater Sara had insisted on, paired with a stiff pair of blue jeans from the back of Gamma’s closet.

“You look nice,” Nick said, smiling softly at him.

Garrett felt his mind go completely blank. It took him a moment to respond. “Uh…you also look nice.”

They ate dinner. Garrett had eaten nothing but prepackaged food for years, bland meals designed for nutrition and a long shelf life rather than taste. Sara’s cooking had been the first home-cooked meal since he’d left his own mother’s house. Strong flavors startled his tongue and it had taken time to get used to eating for pleasure rather than to survive. The meal he ate now, across the table from Nick, tasted indulgent. He avoided the spicier items, not used to their strength, and enjoyed the sweeter dishes.

But the food was not the only indulgent part of the meal.

Garrett and Nick had exchanged questions and answers for weeks. These snatches of conversation lasted mere minutes, sometimes only seconds. Now they had an hour or more to fill. Garrett hadn’t been sure what they would talk about during all that time, but Nick took the reins with ease.

“What’s your favorite movie?” Nick asked.

“I don’t watch movies,” Garrett said.

“Sorry, the correct answer is Ghostbusters.” Nick grinned, his gaze warm in the low light.

“Haven’t seen it.”

“Then we’ll have to fix that. We could go back to my place and watch it after dinner if you’d like.”

“Maybe…”

Unfortunately, many of Nick’s questions touched on subjects Garrett wasn’t sure how to respond to. Not in this reality, at least.

“Where did you grow up?”

Garrett chewed his sweet and sour pork, thinking how best to answer that.

He and Sara had created a backstory to explain his existence. Her husband, Adam, who had been previously unaware of magic and alternate realities before Garrett had shown up, had helplessly agreed to go along with the plan, too shocked to offer an alternate opinion.

“I grew up…away from my family. I was taken from the nursery at the hospital. My parents thought I was dead, so they told no one their son had an unexpected twin. I was raised by my kidnappers, members of an insular cult. I escaped a few months ago and sought out my real family. I…don’t like to talk about it.”

“Oh…” Nick’s face fell, horrified at Garrett’s invented tale of woe. “I’m so sorry…”

Garrett felt a twinge of guilt at lying, but his real childhood would confuse Nick. The truth would sound absurd to him, like a plotline stolen from fiction. Nick would never believe it and trying to tell him would certainly not end well.

Nick chewed his homestyle bean curd in silence for a moment. Garrett worried perhaps Sara’s story had gone too far, but they hadn’t been sure how else to explain Garrett’s sudden existence to her friends and family.

“I didn’t know you had a twin,” Nick said eventually. “What’s his name?”

“Garrett,” Garrett said.

“Garrett and Leonard, huh? What made your parents pick those names? Or did the cult…uh…did your parents pick Leonard…?”

Sara and Adam had indeed picked Leonard. It was the name they’d intended to give their second son until Sara miscarried. In multiple universes, though, that second child lived, including Garrett’s own. Going by his brother’s name, a brother he’d barely known before being taken by the Aspis, a brother he knew did not survive the Prisc scorching the planet, felt like being a ghost. In a way, he was a ghost, lingering on after he was meant to be gone.

“We were named after our great-grandfathers—Garrett on my father’s side, Leonard on my mother’s. But my brother…he died several months ago.”

Nick’s face fell again. Garrett hated being the one responsible for that.

“I’m so sorry—”

“There is nothing to apologize for.”

“Yes, but—”

“Do you have siblings?”

Nick took the change in subject in stride. For the rest of the evening, he avoided asking Garrett any more questions about his family. However, there was so much more Garrett didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t belong to this world. But seeing Nick’s face light up as he listened to Garrett talk made him feel like he wanted to belong.

After dinner, they watched Ghostbusters at Nick’s place. Garrett was confused by the premise—that wasn’t how ghosts worked—but he eventually figured out it was meant to be facetious. It was the sort of thing Delta and Gamma would have enjoyed. He wasn’t sure if he enjoyed it, but it made Nick laugh. He liked it when Nick laughed.

“What did you think?” Nick asked while the credits rolled.

“It was…humorous…”

Nick bit his lip, letting out an amused puff of air through his nose. “It’s okay if you didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t…not like it.”

Nick grinned at him. He didn’t know why Nick kept grinning at him, but he didn’t mind.

“Maybe you’re more of a drama guy,” Nick said. “Next time we should watch something else, like The Matrix.”

“Okay… I would like that.”

“Good.” His gaze flicked down to Garrett’s lips. “Next week?”

“Yes…” Garrett glanced down at Nick’s mouth. “I should go. It’s getting late.”

“Right…” Nick covered up a flash of disappointment with another smile. “Let me walk you to the door.”

Back home, Garrett sneaked into the house, not wanting to wake Sara and Adam. He eased the front door closed as quietly as he could.

There was a sob from the kitchen.

Garrett froze. There was another sob, partially muffled. He crept closer and saw Sara sitting at the table. She was looking through photos of Gamma at his wedding, photos of him with Emma. There were only a few photos of him with Peter—he had left shortly after Peter was born.

Garrett watched her cry, sticking to the shadows so she wouldn’t notice him.

Had his own mother cried like this when she’d given him up? He could not remember her tears. At the news of her death—the death of billions as Earth was destroyed—he hadn’t wept. He had mourned the loss of his family enough when he was a boy, crying himself to sleep for a year, begging the Aspis to take him home. Eventually he’d learned to shut off that part of himself, the part that had a family, that loved and grieved, that felt anything irrelevant to the mission.

“Sara?”

She startled, turning to see him at the doorway.

“Len… I didn’t know you were home.”

“I returned only moments ago.”

“Oh…” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “How was dinner with Nick?”

Garrett studied the wrinkles of her face, the puffiness of her eyes. “Good. We watched a movie afterward.”

“That sounds fun.” She sniffed, wiping her face, avoiding his eye. “I’m glad you had a good time…”

Garrett was a remnant of another universe. He was not her son. She was not his mother. They should not have ever known each other. He should never have stayed in this house, eating her food, sleeping on sheets she washed for him as if he were still a young boy. Parallel universes were not meant to intersect, the lines not intended to bend toward the others. Garrett did not belong there.

He did not belong anywhere anymore.

But should he leave, die—a ghost letting go?

Or did he have the right to keep living?

Garrett stepped forward, hesitant, as he bent down and wrapped his arms around Sara. For a moment she stiffened, but then she returned the embrace. She stopped hiding her sobs as she buried her face in his shoulder, holding onto him as her body shook.

~~~

Someone knocked on the door of Garrett’s quarters, disturbing his meditation. He opened the door to see Gamma rubbing the back of his neck with an uncertain look on his face.

“I have a favor to ask,” he said.

“I promise nothing,” Garrett said.

“That’s…fair. I want…I want to see my family. Say goodbye in case something happens… I need you to open a portal back to my universe.”

Garrett clenched his jaw. He needed to conserve his power. Opening a portal would waste too much energy. But Gamma had a hangdog expression on his face, black ink staining his clothes and fingers. Gamma had a family, the only one of them who did. It was Garrett’s fault he was on this mission.

“Okay,” Garrett said. “But make it quick.”

“Sure, sure.” Gamma nodded, head bobbing wildly. “I just need to visit my parents’ house. My wife and kids have been staying there since I’ve been gone so Mom and Dad can help Cathy with Peter. He’s a newborn and—”

“I don’t care. I will open the portal and go with you. You will have five minutes.”

“Five minutes?” Gamma frowned but then nodded. “Fine. Five minutes.”

When Gamma was ready, Garrett opened a portal against the bulkheads. A white hallway, barely lit, appeared on the other side. Gamma and Garrett jumped through into the other reality.

It was night. There was a door open ahead, spilling light into the dark passageway.

Gamma held a finger to his lips. Stay here he mouthed. He crept down the hall and through the open door. There was an excited shout from a woman followed by hushed whispers between her and Gamma.

“Who are you?”

Garrett spun around, not having heard a second door open. A woman stood there. She was middle aged, her hair mostly gray. She wore fuzzy purple pajamas. Her brown eyes locked Garrett in place.

There was something familiar about her.

She studied Garrett, squinting at him in the dark of the hallway. Her eyes widened in realization.

“You’re…” She looked him up and down again. “Garrett?”

He nodded. “Not yours though.” He tilted his head to indicate the door on the other end of the hall. “He’s in there.”

The woman swallowed. “He said he was going into another reality, to fight the Leeches…”

Garrett frowned. “Leeches?”

“It’s what we call the Prisc here. They’ve never set foot in this universe, but we can feel them draining energy from nearby. It’s how he was able to find that first portal…” Her eyes widened again, this time with a different realization. “He’s here to say goodbye.”

Garrett nodded again. He appreciated how easily she understood the situation.

Sadness washed over her face and with a jolt Garrett knew who she was. He’d seen that look before, many years ago.

Gamma’s mother glanced down the hall to the open door where Gamma was speaking with his wife. Then she looked back to Garrett.

“How likely is it he’ll survive?”

Garrett stared down at her. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he didn’t want to lie. “Not very,” he grunted.

She took in a shaky breath, gaze flickering back to the door. “His poor babies,” she whispered. “And Cathy…” She looked to Garrett. “Please, bring him back home. Try, try as hard as you can.”

Garrett looked her in the eye. Gamma’s mother…his mother… He wasn’t sure why, but he nodded.

“Thank you,” she said, looking heartbroken already. “Thank you.”

~~~

When the oven timer went off, Sara handed Peter to Garrett as if she’d done it a million times before.

Garrett accepted the drooling infant because otherwise the child would have dropped to the floor.

Peter’s eyes were brown, like Sara’s. He couldn’t recall if Cathy had brown eyes. She never looked him in the face, and she did not like to stay long whenever he was home. Garrett understood. She did not want to see the eyes of her dead husband staring back at her from a stranger.

Garrett sat down on the couch and held Peter while Sara attended to dinner. He had an appointment with Nick tonight—a date Sara had called it, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready to use such a term. He needed a shower, to wash off the coffee stench and get dressed, but Sara had just gotten Peter to calm down after a bout of crying, and she hadn’t wanted to put him in his playpen.

So, Garrett held him.

Emma crawled up the couch to sit beside Garrett. She prodded at her brother. Peter giggled.

“Pete!” She waved at him. Then she pointed at Garrett. “Do you know him? That’s Uncle Dada.”

“Uncle Len,” Garrett corrected.

“He’s Dada but different.”

Garrett looked down at Emma, impressed. “Correct. But don’t say that to your mother.”

After a few minutes where Garrett successfully did not drop Peter, the front door opened. Cathy stepped inside.

“Oh.” She noticed Garrett. Then she noticed what he was holding. “Where’s Sara?”

“Kitchen. She’s cooking.”

“Of course…” Cathy shifted her shoulders, moving her weight back and forth on her heels. She did not look at him.

The Aspis had taught Garrett how to read people to tell if they were possessed by the Prisc or if they were thralls—those who willingly abdicated their free will and supported the Prisc’s cause. He could interpret a novel’s worth of information from a mere twitch of an eyebrow. But he didn’t need to be specially trained to read how Cathy felt right now.

“Do you want to take Peter?” he asked, for her benefit and his.

“Thank you.” She leaned down and took her son from Garrett’s arms. She smiled at Peter, who cooed. Garrett couldn’t remember ever seeing her smile.

“Uncle Dada has a date,” Emma blurted out.

“Uncle Len,” Garrett corrected again.

Emma climbed into Garrett’s lap now that Peter wasn’t in the way. “Say night-night to Lamby before you go.”

Garrett picked up Lamby. “Night-night, Lamby.”

“Give Lamby kisses.”

Garrett felt Cathy staring at him. She never stared at him. He didn’t return her gaze in case she might look away.

He kissed Lamby on the nose.

“A date, huh?” Cathy said.

Garrett glanced up. She was still looking at him. She did have brown eyes.

“Yes. His name is Nick.”

“Sara mentioned him. I’m…I’m happy for you. Have a good time.”

“Um…thank you.”

Garrett extricated himself from the ensuing awkwardness, but not without having to give Lamby another kiss on the nose.

Nick picked him up later. They went to Nick’s favorite pizza place because Garrett had mentioned he’d never been there. The food was greasy but delicious.

Afterwards they took a walk downtown, Nick talking about his job and how he loved photography. Garrett listened, intrigued. Art was not something he’d ever thought about before. The Aspis considered it a distraction.

As they walked, Nick’s hand brushed against Garrett’s. After a moment’s indecision, Garrett grasped it, held it. Breathing became difficult until Nick squeezed back.

As they returned to the car, Nick grew quiet. Tentatively he said, “Can I ask about…” He tapped under his eye.

Garrett ran a finger over his eyepatch. “It…was an accident.”

Nick nodded, accepting this answer. “When you’re ready maybe you could tell me what happened?”

“Yes,” Garrett said, knowing it was a lie. He couldn’t tell Nick the truth.

He let go of Nick’s hand, parting ways to get in the car, feeling empty.

~~~

Beta was scribbling in his notebook when Garrett arrived at the mess hall. Beta hadn’t written any wards in the cargo bay. Gamma’s equations crisscrossed the bulkheads, but not the arcane script of the Prisc.

Garrett eyed Beta’s twitching hand. “Tomorrow.”

“I am aware of the timetable,” Beta said, still writing.

“We need those wards—”

“Do you know how difficult it is to translate into Tenebrarum? I am working as fast as I can. You wouldn’t want me to daub the walls with the wrong words, would you? A misplaced verb, an incorrect conjugation, could spell certain doom.” He flashed a page of his notebook. The Tenebrarum looked like it was oozing off the paper, the words as shapeless as those who spoke it. “I am constructing the wards. It won’t take long to write them when they’re ready.”

“It better not.” Garrett heated his food pack and sat down, still eyeing Beta.

Gamma was half-covered in marker at this point, his clothes irreversibly stained. He shoveled rehydrated noodles into his mouth. “I finished the equations,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

“Good.” Garrett dug into his food. It was a plain brown slab, full of nutrition, lacking in flavor. “That’s one down.”

Delta swanned in last, his coat swirling around him as he made an exaggerated entrance. He glanced around the mess. “Tomorrow’s the big day, huh?”

Garrett, Beta, and Gamma looked at him but didn’t respond.

“It will be very dangerous,” Delta went on. “This could be our last night alive.” He clapped his hands together. “Who’s up for an orgy?”

Garrett turned back to his food slab, not dignifying that with an answer.

“C’mon, anybody?”

“I’m married,” Gamma said.

“It’s not technically cheating. It’s practically masturbation.”

“No, it is not,” Beta said. “We are not the same person. It would count as infidelity.”

Delta blew a raspberry. “Fine, whatever, Gamma’s out. But how about you, B-man? I heard you Linguistic mages are good with your tongue.”

Beta kept scribbling in his notebook. “We are, but I’m not giving you a demonstration.”

Delta tutted then turned to Garrett. “What about you, Alpha? You dress like rough trade, but I bet you’re secretly a cuddler.”

Garrett simply stared at Delta with his one eye.

Delta stared back, showing his teeth in something that could be mistaken for a smile. “What, too shy? I can’t tell if you’re the any-port-in-a-storm kind of guy or more of the virgin monk type.”

Garrett finished his food slab. Without saying a word, he walked out.

As he made his way down the corridor, he heard Delta say, “What? Can’t he take a joke?”

“Those were jokes?” Beta asked dryly.

Garrett walked to the observation room. It was one of the few luxuries on this vessel. In the fore of the ship, one transparent wall looked out at space. They had reached the Kuiper belt the day before. The sun was a distant speck, barely larger than any other star in the sky.

Keeping the lights in the room low, Garrett stared out into the black void. Here, in the empty darkness, was where it would all end. The war. The Prisc. Everything.

His whole life had been leading up to this…

“I guess it was rude.”

Garrett turned slightly to see Delta hovering at the door. “Are you talking to yourself again?”

“Yep,” Delta said casually, too casually. “Talkin’ to myse-elf, oh-oh, talkin’ to myse-elf.” He sang the words to some tune Garrett didn’t recognize.

Delta strode over to where Garrett stood. Garrett returned to observing the void, pointedly not paying him any attention. Delta leaned his back against the transparent wall.

“Will anyone mourn you?” Delta asked, uncharacteristically serious.

Garrett glanced at him. Delta wasn’t looking at Garrett, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance. His tone was quiet, contemplative. Melancholy.

“I have no family,” Garrett said. “My Earth is gone. My universe is a husk, drained by the Prisc.”

“But…is there anyone…anyone at all? Friends? Lovers?”

Garrett turned back to the black wall of space. “No. Never.”

“Never?” Delta’s voice was barely a whisper. “That’s a lonely life.”

“My life has a purpose. Sex and love are only distractions.”

“I can’t imagine…” Delta frowned at the opposite wall. “I could never have survived under Aspis rule.”

Garrett assessed Delta’s slouch against the wall, the faraway look in his eye. “Who will mourn you?”

Delta snorted softly, humorlessly. “Probably no one. My family’s gone too—well, those who want anything to do with me. My creditors might miss hunting me down for the bounty on my head at least.”

“No one else?”

Delta’s gaze shifted slowly to look Garrett in the eye. “There was…once. He was…kind. Good. Deserved better than me.”

“Where is he now?”

Delta’s lips twisted into something dark. “Conscripted into the Multi-Versal Fleet. Haven’t heard from him in two years…he’s not coming back.”

Garrett had to look away from that gaze. “My father died in the Fleet.”

“Many have. That’s why we’re doing this, isn’t it?” Delta turned around, gesturing at the expanse of space. “To stop the Prisc once and for all, bring the Fleet home. End all the death.”

Garrett heard the undercurrent of spite in Delta’s voice but did not know how to respond.

“And you never know,” Delta said, his breath ghosting the transparent wall, “maybe we’ll survive this. Maybe we’ll finally get to have a life.”

“No,” Garrett said, his voice low, quiet. “There was never meant to be more for me. This is the end. My end.”

Delta stared out into space for a silent moment. Eventually he said, “You deserve a life, for the one the Aspis took from you.” He pushed away from the wall. “And we all deserve what the Prisc have taken from us…” He smiled a sad smile. “But we never get what we want, do we?”

Delta walked away, toward the door.

“Wait,” Garrett said.

Delta paused in the doorway. He glanced back, cocking an eyebrow.

Garrett looked over his shoulder at him. “What was his name?”

Delta stared back, his expression more open and vulnerable than Garrett had ever seen. “Nico.”

Garrett held that defenseless gaze. “Maybe Nico’s still out there.”

Delta shook his head, a faint revenant of his smile returning. “No. He’s not. Because if he were, there’s no way I’d be on this ship right now.”

~~~

Garrett was at Nick’s place, watching Escape from New York (he looked nothing like Snake Plissken), when he received a text from Sara:

Emma has a fever. We’re bringing her to the hospital.

He stared at the text, chest tightening. He’d seen many children suffer from fevers while living with the Aspis. Fevers could be easily treated with magic, but one had to know the right spells. Sara’s specialty was conjuration, not healing, which would explain why she’d resorted to a hospital instead. Garrett had learned many healing spells, though, and could have healed the fever in a heartbeat—if he’d still had his powers.

“What’s wrong?” Nick asked.

“Emma’s sick. They’re bringing her to the hospital.”

Nick’s jaw dropped and his eyes grew worried. “Do you need to go? I can give you a ride.”

Garrett looked at the text, the words so stark. “Yes, please.”

At the hospital Garrett found Sara and Cathy in a waiting room. Cathy was shaking her head, eyes shining with unshed tears. As Garrett arrived, she was saying to Sara, “I can’t lose her too, I can’t.”

“How’s Emma?” Garrett asked.

Cathy looked at him and her face crumpled. The tears finally fell. She threw her arms around Garrett, crying into his shoulder.

Garrett stood stock-still. “Um…there, there.” He awkwardly patted Cathy on the back.

“They’re running tests now,” Sara explained. “Adam stayed home with Peter. We’re so glad you’re here.” She spotted Nick. “Oh, hi. Are you—”

“Nick, yeah.” Nick shook her hand. “You must be Sara. I’ve heard a lot about you. Wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

“Me too,” Sara said. “Sorry we ruined your date.”

Nick waved it off. “This is more important.” He turned to Garrett, who was still under Cathy’s assault. “Do you want me to stay, or should I go?”

“Stay,” Garrett said without hesitation.

Sara managed to pry Cathy off Garrett just as a doctor arrived.

“Her fever is still high,” the doctor said. “But we should be able to treat it. We can let a couple of you visit, but we don’t want to overwhelm her right now.” She looked at Cathy. “I’m assuming you’re the mother.”

Cathy nodded, tears falling down her cheeks. She glanced at Sara. “Could you please…I need someone…”

“Of course.” Sara put an arm around Cathy. “I’ll go with you.”

Garrett and Nick stayed in the waiting room. They were the only ones there, sitting in padded chairs with dated upholstery, a muted TV in the corner playing an obnoxious home renovation show.

Nick put a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry Emma’s sick. But the doctor sounds hopeful.”

Garrett nodded, a lump in his throat. It was so absurd. If he still had powers, he could have cured Emma himself. Waiting here, trusting mundane healers without a drop of magic to do it instead…he felt helpless. All he could think of were Emma’s big green eyes, staring up at him from where she liked to sit in his lap. He couldn’t imagine a world without those eyes…

“You two are close, huh?” Nick said.

“No.”

“But you talk about her a lot. She’s your niece—”

“No, she’s not.”

Nick raised an eyebrow, confused. “What do you mean?”

Garrett sighed, staring at his shoes. He hated this. He hated lying. He hated that Nick could never truly know him. Every time they were together, he pulled back just before Nick tried to get closer. Every time Nick tried to kiss him, he turned away, pretending not to have noticed. He couldn’t allow himself to be vulnerable, to let the truth slip. He had to hide that part of himself, forever. He could never show Nick who he really was.

But he wanted to, more than anything.

He had never allowed himself to become distracted by someone. He had never allowed himself to feel affection, attraction…love. But there was something, something he feared to identify, that fluttered in his chest whenever he saw Nick.

He wanted Nick to know him like he had come to know Nick. But…Nick had no concept of the multi-verse. Nick could never, would never believe the truth…

Garrett had lost so much in his life. He didn’t want to lose anything more. But the things he had now…they weren’t really his. This was Gamma’s world. It was Gamma’s daughter who was ill, it was Gamma’s mother who helped Garrett navigate this reality.

And Nick…he belonged to Gamma’s world too. He wasn’t Garrett’s. He could never be Garrett’s.

Garrett was tired. So very tired.

He didn’t want to hide anymore. He didn’t want to tease himself with what he couldn’t have.

If he could never truly be with Nick…then he needed to get this over with.

Garrett sighed, something releasing inside him, like a fist loosening its grip.

“I don’t have a twin brother named Garrett,” he said quietly, speaking to the floor, unable to watch Nick’s expression. “I am Garrett. I’m from an alternate universe. I got stuck here after a battle went awry. Emma is the daughter of an alternate version of me, the version from this universe. I once had magic, but it doesn’t work here. I don’t belong in this reality, but I can’t return home.”

There was a long moment of silence. Garrett didn’t look up from the floor.

Eventually, Nick said, “O…kay…”

His tone did not sound encouraging.

Garrett gritted his teeth. “I know it sounds ridiculous. I know you don’t believe me. But it’s the truth.”

“Len—”

“That’s not my name. I hate lying to you. I can’t be with you if I’m lying about my life, about who I am. I can’t do it anymore.”

Garrett still could not look up at Nick. He had hoped to end this as soon as possible, that there would be some relief once it was over, but now he felt like he was sinking beneath the waves of some great ocean. The knowledge that Nick would leave any moment, that he would never see him again, had him casting about for some sort of buoy, some kind of proof he could offer to make him believe. Garrett had been trained to stay calm, to face down the Prisc when they tried to climb inside his mind, but now he felt a desperation he’d never had before, scrambling for a lifeline.

Something occurred to him and without a second thought, he lifted the leg of his pants, revealing his mechanical leg.

“This is the only proof I can offer,” Garrett said. “I know your reality doesn’t have this technology. That…that might not be enough…I understand… I know you won’t believe me, but… I can’t do this if I can’t be who I really am around you.”

The room was silent. Garrett’s heart beat hard, his body shaking with an emotion not even torture could ever make him divulge. Gaze still on the floor, he waited.

“Garrett…”

He looked up.

Nick was staring at him, eyes soft. “I believe you.”

Garrett’s hands shook, his breath shook. “You do?”

Nick nodded. “Yes. I’ve…I’ve never seen you act like this before. Maybe I don’t know who you really are, where you really come from, but…I think I know you well enough to see when you’re being sincere…when you care… Yeah, it all sounds crazy and…” Nick laughed, a barely audible gasp of breath. “Maybe I’m crazy to believe you, but…I do.”

Garrett’s heart felt lifted, the buoy bringing him up to the surface.

“But…you said you don’t belong here…” Nick said, concern darkening his eyes. “Will something bad happen if you stay?”

Garrett shook his head, feeling as light and weightless as if someone had turned off the gravity on a ship. “No. I’m just not native to this universe.”

Nick smiled a small smile. “That doesn’t mean you don’t belong.”

He gazed at Garrett, his eyes earnest. Garrett stared back, unable to look away. He feared he might float away. He needed something to ground him, to hold onto.

Nick leaned forward, and this time Garrett did not pull away.

Garrett’s hand shook as he rested it on Nick’s cheek, anchoring himself to this world, to this moment. The kiss was short and sweet. It was earth-shattering and scorching. It felt like holding a nuclear reactor in meltdown. Like holding a bomb as it exploded. Like holding his own soul in his hand and reaching out, giving it freely, giving it gladly.

~~~

The klaxon interrupted Garrett’s meditation.

He hit the intercom button. “What’s happening?”

“Get to the bridge.” Based on inflection, it was Delta.

Garrett sprinted to the bridge. Delta sat at the navigation console where a holographic display showed their surroundings. Something massive, something shifting in shape, was rushing toward them.

“Shit!” Garrett hissed. “How long do we have?”

“Maybe half an hour,” Delta said, expression serious for once. He sat up straight without his usual boneless slouching.

“How did they find us?” Garrett asked. He turned his eye on Delta.

Delta glanced over his shoulder at him. “You think this was me?”

“You’re the most likely candidate.”

“I’m not a traitor. It wasn’t me.”

“How can I be sure?”

“Because it was me,” said a voice from the doorway.

They turned to see Beta standing there, covered in blood.

“By the way,” Beta said, “the blood bond doesn’t work.”

He tossed something across the room toward them. It rolled to a stop against a console. Garrett stared down at the object, his heart rate tripping upward. Gamma’s head, his glasses gone, gaped back at him. Blood mixed with the ink smudged on his cheek.

“Fuck!” Delta jumped out of his seat, but Beta held up a warning hand.

“I cannot let you harm them,” Beta said. He took off his doublet, revealing wards carved all over his skin in the shifting script of Tenebrarum. “They are the gods of old, the great beings of power at the heart of every religion. They are our true masters. It is an honor to serve them, to give them our strength—”

“He’s a thrall!” Delta spat. He cut his gaze to Garrett. “I thought you vetted us better than that.”

“There is no way our dear Alpha could have known,” Beta said. He stepped further onto the bridge, stretching out his arms covered in wards and Gamma’s blood. “No one knows the Academy has seen the light, that we have opened our eyes to the truth. But they will, soon, once we end the Aspis’ foolish plan.” He turned his gaze to Garrett. “Once I destroy you and let my masters take those souls you’re holding inside.”

Beta started muttering ancient words of different tongues, crafting a Linguistic spell. Magic infused the air like static electricity tingling against skin. The wards etched into Beta’s body protected him from Garrett’s Soul magic, but Beta was still bound to the physical plane—he could still bleed. Garrett darted his gaze around the bridge, trying to find something he could use as a weapon. He regretted not having armed himself before leaving his quarters.

The spell began to take shape, its building power edging into Garrett’s bones. There were no weapons at hand on the bridge. Garrett couldn’t hurt Beta with Soul magic, but what if he used his magic to call upon a device that could? It would be a waste of his power, especially now at the threshold of his final battle, but if he didn’t make it through this then there would be no final battle. He would have to risk it, use some of his power to fight—

Suddenly Beta’s tongue slipped—literally. It fell from his mouth, swapped with his nose, then his entire body became a tongue before it burst apart and fell to the floor as a bowl of petunias.

Garrett, shocked, looked over at Delta, who was panting as if he’d just run a mile.

“You can do Chaos magic,” Garrett said blankly.

“You really didn’t vet us very well, now did you?” Delta bent down, studying the petunias. “Like I said before, I know a bit of everything.”

“Chaos magic is dangerous,” Garrett said, voice tightening. “You could have blown a hole in the ship—or turned it into a turtle.”

“Yeah, I know, but how else was I going to get through his wards? You can only fight Chaos with Chaos. You have to out-random it.” He glanced from the petunias to Gamma’s head. “Poor kid. He didn’t deserve to go out like that.”

Delta picked up the bowl of petunias and Gamma’s severed head. Then he dashed into the corridor. Garrett followed.

“What are you doing?” Garrett huffed as he raced after Delta.

“Welp, we’ve got maybe thirty minutes before the Prisc arrive,” Delta panted over his shoulder as he ran. “I figured we finish what we came here for.”

He took a sharp turn into the cargo bay, Garrett still at his heels.

“We can’t move forward without the wards,” Garrett said.

“I’ll write the wards.” Delta strode across the cargo bay. Gamma’s body was splayed in the middle, blood pooling around him. Delta stared down sadly then knelt beside it. “I actually liked him,” he murmured before gently placing the head back on Gamma’s neck.

A flash of green light and Gamma’s head was reattached. But there was no life in his eyes.

Nothing could bring back the dead.

Delta stood, still staring at Gamma. Then he glanced at the bowl of petunias.

“This douche, though.” He opened a disposal hatch and tossed the flowers inside. He turned and jumped when he saw Garrett standing directly behind him.

“How can you write the wards?” Garrett demanded. “They’re in Tenebrarum.”

Delta shrugged. “I know Tenebrarum.”

“How?”

“Do you want to nitpick right now, or do you want to go feed on Carl?”

Garrett furrowed his brow, confused. “What?”

“Feed on Carl’s soul. Should give you a nice top off before you blow yourself up. Might just be enough to pull off this crazy scheme.”

Delta grabbed the paintbrush Beta had intended to use to write the wards on the walls, but Garrett grabbed his wrist, holding him in place.

“Blow myself up?” he asked.

Delta quirked an eyebrow. “We’re gonna need a massive explosion to close all the portals between universes. You’ve been conserving your energy, and I can feel all the souls churning inside you. You’re a bomb. That’s the Aspis’ grand plan, isn’t it? Burn through every soul within you—even your own—to take down the Prisc once and for all.”

Garrett held Delta’s gaze for a long moment then nodded. Delta was right. The Aspis had made him a bomb. It was his destiny to destroy the Prisc’s resources—and himself—in the hope others would finish the job.

He released Delta’s wrist. “You’re not as stupid as I thought.”

“I’m touched, really. Now go Soul-Eat my Salamander. He’s gonna die when you blow up the ship, so you might as well.”

Garrett did take Carl’s soul. He’d never fed on an Elemental creature before. The fire made it burn. It was almost too much, his body struggling to hold every soul he’d absorbed. He had to meditate, to calm his mind.

Once he had his powers under control, he left the engine room, climbing up from the bowels of the ship back to the main deck with the cargo bay.

The klaxon rang out again.

He ran to the bridge, Delta crashing in seconds later. The display flickered. The location of their ship flickered, too, obscured by a large mass. It was there, and then it wasn’t.

“They’re here.” Garrett could feel them, their power pulling at him like gravity. “Did you complete the wards?”

Delta nodded, his hands and clothes covered in red paint. It masked Gamma’s blood. “Yeah, just finished. Should be right.”

Garrett didn’t like to operate on shoulds but he had no choice. “Return to the cargo bay. You can help with triggering the spell.”

Delta nodded. “With our powers combined…” he muttered under his breath.

They stepped back into the corridor. Garrett blinked, his vision suddenly going foggy.

No, not his vision.

“They breached!”

A screeching earthquake of a sound ripped through the air. The lights went out, throwing them into darkness before the dull orange of the emergency backups stuttered on. The entire ship groaned and shook.

“Fuck!” Delta stared at the end of the corridor where white lightning tinged with blue began forming along the bulkheads. He turned to Garrett. “Go! I’ll hold them off.”

“You can’t!” Garrett shouted over the screeching calls of the Prisc. “You’ll die.”

“We’re gonna die anyway, aren’t we? Get back to the cargo bay. End this thing. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Delta, no—”

But Delta strode down the corridor toward the fog of lightning. He stripped off the patched brown coat he always wore, glanced over his shoulder at Garrett, and winked.

Something shot out of Delta’s back, a glowing blue tentacle. More shot out, sprouting like massive wings, his body enveloped in a deep blue light. The tentacles shifted, not holding shape, Garrett struggling to keep sight of it as he realized what was happening.

Delta was possessed. By the size and color, the Prisc was ancient, almost as old as the Source.

“Don’t worry!” Delta shouted over the din. “He’s on our side!”

“That’s impossible!” Garrett roared back.

Delta shook his head with a smirk. “I told you they weren’t all bad!” Then he ran down the corridor, throwing himself headlong into the oncoming enemy.

The wing-like blue tentacles of the ancient Prisc inside Delta bore him aloft, flying him into the brewing storm. It parried a strike from a dagger of light formed by the opposing Prisc. It shielded Delta from another blow as Delta raised a hand and let forth a Chaos spell, rendering a foggy tentacle from a young Prisc inert.

Garrett had never seen a Prisc fight its own kind before. He could hardly believe that a Prisc would fight on his side. The battle unfolding now was like none he’d ever witnessed. But he had no time to waste watching the spectacle. After taking one last look at Delta, he ran to the cargo bay, keeping his eyes forward and his mind focused.

Arriving at the bay, he slammed a hand over the controls to shut the doors behind him. The override was activated. No one could open the doors from the outside, not even from the bridge. Of course, the Prisc could get around that by tearing through the bulkheads, but the wards would slow them down, giving him time.

Gamma’s equations covered the walls, Delta’s wards mingling with them. Red and black symbols, floor to ceiling. Garrett slapped the wall, using the slightest push of magic to trigger them. The wards glowed a fiery crimson, the equations darkened to an impossible blackness. Garrett strode to the middle of the bay as the magic of his other selves activated around him.

Portals flashed open, purple cracks in reality appearing one by one until they crowded each other, building together an infinite mirror in the center of the room. Garrett tried to look but his mind could not comprehend what it saw, the vision of infinite worlds overwhelming it.

The wards around him flashed again, glowing a bright scarlet. The Prisc were trying to breach the walls. They must have been too much for Delta, even with an ancient Prisc on his side. The ink of the equations seeped into each other, coating the walls completely black.

That was the signal. The infinite universes were all exposed. He had a portal open to every possible reality. Now it was time for Garrett’s part.

It was time for him to die.

A detonation of every soul within him, including his own, would obliterate the nexus point he had created. It would seal the cracks between the universes, stop the Prisc from accessing the Source, cutting off their power and leaving them vulnerable. They would never be able to terrorize another universe again.

This was what the Aspis had trained him for. This was his destiny.

But Garrett had always seen a flaw in this plan. If something went wrong, if the explosion didn’t seal off the universes, there would be no one left to fix it. No one to add a bit more energy to tip it over into succeeding, no one to take down the Prisc who were attacking at this very moment.

Garrett had accepted his fate. He did not intend to live beyond this moment. But he’d always thought it foolish to burn through everything when he didn’t know if it would be enough.

So he’d created a backup. He never told the Aspis. They would have tsked, told him he was being foolish. They believed he needed to burn through his own soul to complete the mission; there was no other way to gain the power to destroy the portals.

Garrett did fully intend to burn through his soul to complete his mission. But he planned to do it destroying all the Prisc in this universe. He’d known they would swarm as soon as they sensed the portals opening, bringing every last one in this particular reality to a single location. He could then take them out with one blow, his soul—his life—sacrificed to save trillions.

He didn’t need to burn his own soul to ignite the bomb to destroy the portals, however. There was something else that would give him the necessary boost.

He removed his eyepatch.

No one had ever seen Garrett without his eyepatch since he’d acquired it. He had never removed it, not even when alone. It was never questioned. Scars and missing body parts were standard for warriors of the Aspis. People saw it and assumed what they wanted, crafting their own versions of what probably had happened, and Garrett let them. He told no one the truth.

Garrett didn’t have an eye anymore. He had a prison.

Years before, a Prisc had tried to possess him. Using the training of the Aspis, he had been able to hold it at bay, keep it from taking over his body and mind. But as he wrestled it, he felt the immense power of the beast flowing through his body. One of their souls alone would be enough to destroy the nexus point.

He kept it. The thing had gouged out his eye, so he forced it into the empty cavity, holding it there with wards and shields. He knew he’d need it one day.

Delta had seen it on his scans. It wouldn’t have shown as a possession because it was limited to Garrett’s eye socket. He wasn’t sure if Delta had known why it was there, but he was cleverer than Garrett had ever imagined, so he may have seen it for what it was. An ace in the hole.

With his patch removed, the imprisoned Prisc slithered out, its senses dulled from the wards in its containment field. Garrett grabbed it before it could orient itself, before it could call upon the Source. It glowed a bright white, no hint of aged blue, a mere adolescent. But its power was enough.

Garrett pulled with his mind, sucking its soul dry, squeezing the life out of it. He dropped its shriveled husk to the floor, its light quenched.

With all his might, Garrett slammed his fists to the floor, letting out the energy of the souls within him, igniting the bomb.

A white fireball engulfed the nexus of portals. The light grew in intensity, the power building. It would take a minute before the power would be fully transferred, for the explosion to be complete.

Garrett, drained of all souls but his own, slumped forward, sweat dripping down his face. The energy required for such a powerful spell had left him exhausted, empty, more so than he’d ever felt before. Panting, a lightshow happening around him, he glanced down at the floor.

Gamma’s dead eyes stared back at him.

He didn’t know why he did it. A voice echoed in his head—please, bring him back home—and his heart twinged. Using what little strength remained, he opened another portal, one to only a single universe.

He stepped through, Gamma’s body slung over his shoulder.

It was dark in the house. It must have been night again. Garrett stood in a room with white walls and white carpet. Clean, tidy. A television sat across from a couch. Garrett lowered Gamma to the floor. He didn’t have much time.

“Oh, my god!”

He looked up. Gamma’s mother stood there, once more in pajamas. Her magic must have been tuned to sense a portal opening. She gazed at the body at Garrett’s feet.

“No, no, no, no.” She ran then fell to the floor, clutching Gamma to her chest. “No, no, no, my boy!”

Garrett stood up, watching her sob over her dead son. “I’m sorry.” He turned back to the portal.

It was gone.

Garrett tried to open another portal, but when he reached for his magic, he felt nothing.

He had no power.

The cracks were sealed. The portals destroyed.

Horrified realization creeping into his heart, Garrett turned back to Gamma’s mother.

“It is done.”

But he had not fulfilled his destiny.

He was still alive.

~~~

Six months had passed since meeting Nick. Three more inches of hair had grown. It was almost as long as Beta’s. Garrett had an appointment to get it cut on Monday.

Emma had made it through her illness, now perfectly healthy and happy. She grew bigger every day, but she still climbed into Garrett’s lap when he came home. If Garrett held onto her a bit more tightly or kissed her curls when no one was looking, that was his own business.

Peter was getting bigger too. He crawled everywhere and babbled sounds that were almost words. When he babbled dada, Garrett and Sara held Cathy as she cried.

Garrett had told Nick the truth. He’d showed him the wards covering his body and explained what they meant. He revealed his scars and the pieces of him replaced with simulacra and mech. Nick had listened, kissing the seams where old wounds had been healed. Nick then showed Garrett his own marks—the tattoo on his leg, the scar from when he’d crashed his bike. Garrett ran his hands over them reverently, as if they were wards of their own.

He helped Sara with the kids on his days off, but he and Nick spent most of their time together. Sara smiled and hugged him whenever Garrett left for a date.

One night, he stumbled out of Nick’s bed to get a drink of water. He didn’t turn on the lights, not wanting to wake Nick. He navigated by the nightlight in the hall instead, which illuminated enough of the kitchen to find his way. Yawning, he grabbed a glass from the cupboard.

“We look good with long hair.”

Garrett froze, hand on the faucet. Delta sat on the counter, grinning widely.

Garrett had to put his glass down, hands shaking. “You survived.”

“Most of me.” Delta rolled up his sleeve. His arm glowed deep blue from elbow to hand. “My pal helped make some replacements for the parts the Prisc tore off. I’m missing a leg too.” He tapped his foot against Garrett’s shin. “We’re twinsies.”

“How did you get here? The portals were supposed to be destroyed.”

“They were, thanks to your bomb. Once the Source was cut off, the Prisc that were gnawing on me sort of drooped and faded. I took care of them easily. Of course, I was floating in space, kept alive only by the Prisc inside me, so maybe easily isn’t the best descriptor…

“The local Fleet command picked me up and confirmed the Prisc in my universe were gone—well, other than my buddy of course. But without the portals, we didn’t know how the other universes were handling things. The Prisc were weakened but still lived—and older ones especially still posed a threat. So we devised a plan to check on every universe affected by the Prisc, to make sure they were eradicated.”

Garrett narrowed his eyes. “How did you access the other universes?”

“We opened a portal.”

Garrett swore under his breath. “You opened a portal? How? And what if the Prisc—”

“Hold your horses, cowboy. It’s a limited spell. We basically carve a hole in the wall of the universe we want to visit and then weld it shut once we’re done. It’s temporary and only affects one universe at a time. We can’t open this type of portal twice, so it’s one time only. The Prisc can’t use it to connect to the Source. Don’t worry.”

Garrett sighed with relief. “Good. I’d hate for you to have undone what I sacrificed everything for.”

Delta smirked. “There was talk about opening permanent portals, but I told them we couldn’t risk it. And I mentioned how a brave soldier gave up everything to see the Prisc defeated. Which they have been, by the way. So, congrats.”

“Thank you,” Garrett said awkwardly. It felt odd to accept compliments on the defeat of an enemy he hadn’t personally finished off. “But why are you here? This universe wasn’t affected by the Prisc.”

Delta shrugged, holding out his hands. “That may have been my doing. Everyone thought you were dead, but I had my suspicions. I’d felt something as I was fighting the Prisc. I’d tapped into the energy you were exuding to see if you were performing the spell. I felt the infinite portals open, singing in my blood, but then I felt something else. A single portal. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d thought maybe…maybe you’d created an out for yourself. With that Prisc in your eye” —he nodded at Garrett’s eyepatch— “I knew you could’ve performed the spell without burning your own soul. I hoped you’d escaped to some paradise, living it up in retirement. I felt for your energies in every universe we visited as we cut down the Prisc and brought Fleet members back home. When I didn’t feel you anywhere, I requested a visit here under the guise of a diplomatic mission to thank the Math mages for Gamma’s sacrifice. As soon as I stepped through the portal, I sensed you.” He glanced around Nick’s one-bedroom apartment. “Not exactly living it up, though, are you?”

Garrett stared at Delta in wonder. “You came here for me?”

Delta shrugged again, almost bashful. “I’m not gonna leave you behind if you got stuck here by accident. Which I’m guessing you did, because why would you go to a Math world? You can’t use your powers here.”

“I brought Gamma’s body back to his family. The portals sealed before I could return to the ship and fight the Prisc. I’ve been stuck here almost a year.”

“Good thing I came, huh?” Delta’s face lit up like a little kid. He looked like Emma when Garrett took her out for ice cream. “C’mon, I’ll bring you back with me. My universe allows Soul magic, and if you don’t like it there, we have more universes to visit. You can pick whichever one you want to settle down in.”

Garrett hadn’t been able to use his powers for ten months. He could feel the open portal to Delta’s universe, could feel an ember within him reawakened. Losing his magic had been worse than losing his limbs. There was no replacing that emptiness deep inside his soul.

But going with Delta meant leaving this universe forever.

Garrett shook his head slowly. “I can’t go with you.”

“What?” Delta squinted at him in the dim light. “You’re powerless here. Why wouldn’t—”

“Gar? Who’re you talkin’ to?”

Delta flickered out of sight—an invisibility spell—as Nick wandered into the kitchen, his sleepy eyes half open.

“What’s going on?” Nick asked.

“Nothing,” Garrett said. “Just talking to myself. Sorry if I woke you.”

Nick hummed and leaned into Garrett, kissing him clumsily in his half-awake state. “Come back to bed soon, okay?”

“I will.”

Nick ambled away. Delta flickered back into view. He stared at Garrett, an unreadable expression on his face.

“You’re staying here,” Delta said. Not a question. A statement.

Garrett nodded. “I’m staying here.”

Delta’s lips quirked into a small smile. “Good luck.”

He disappeared again, and Garrett felt the ember within him go dark once more. The portal had been closed.

He got a glass of water and went back to bed. Wrapping his arms around Nick, he fell asleep.

___

Copyright 2024 Lauren Triola