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Chapter Two
Necsis
Rick’s head throbbed, a relentless, discordant percussion behind his temples, like a grade-school band—all enthusiasm, no skill. Before he even opened his eyes, he felt it: heat pressing against the side of his face, sharp and merciless. Too hot. Too bright. He blinked against the glare.
A bird sat perched on the battered hood of the car, peering at him through the cracked windshield. For a heartbeat, it registered as a crow—sleek black feathers, a curved beak. But as his vision steadied, the wrongness sharpened. Its wings were too long, the tips tapering to bladelike edges that shimmered faintly, like oil on water. And its eyes—not dark but shifting, deep wells flickering with pulsing embers.
The bird cocked its head, studying him with a gaze that felt too focused. Too knowing.
Rick tensed, bracing instinctively for a caw, but when it opened its beak, the sound that emerged was two voices woven together. Soft, layered, unsettling. Two tones. Simultaneously. The impossibility played with his still-groggy mind. How…?
Before he could blink, the creature bristled—and vanished. No flap of wings. No burst of motion. Just… absence, as if it had slipped between heartbeats.
Rick sucked in a breath, his hand knocking against the steering wheel. The jolt rattled something loose in his mind. Evan.
He was alert now, his heart lurching painfully against his ribs.
Twisting toward the passenger seat, he sagged with relief. She was slumped forward, her chestnut hair tumbling like liquid copper over her shoulder, rising and falling with each steady breath. She looked impossibly small against the light from outside.
His hand found hers almost before he could think, his fingers brushing her knuckles. Warm. Alive. A ragged breath escaped him.
Evan jerked awake with a gasp that sharpened into a choked cry, her hands flailing until her gaze locked on his. “Rick?” Her voice was raw, trembling.
“I’m here,” he said, his own voice rougher than intended. “You’re okay. We’re okay.”
Not even close to true—but even partial truths mattered in that moment.
She blinked hard, nodding as if trying to will herself to believe it.
A low groan from the back seat dragged Rick’s attention away. Chad. Relief warred with confusion as Rick turned—and froze.
Beyond the cracked windows, the world was… changed.
Gone were the towering ponderosa pines, the familiar rise of the San Francisco Peaks. In their place stretched a shattered landscape of black igneous rock, jagged outcroppings casting long shadows across a plain of ash and dust. The sky above blazed a shade of gold that belonged to no desert he’d ever seen.
“What the—”
Rick fumbled with the seat belt, shoved the door open, and staggered out. A wave of heat assaulted him, a wall of pressure that coated his skin in sweat almost instantly. His boots crunched against gritty ground as he turned in a slow, disbelieving circle.
No forest. No mountains. No sign of Flagstaff.
Evan came around from behind the car to stand beside him, brushing his arm—a quiet tether he hadn’t realized he needed until he felt it. Chad stumbled after her, squinting against the glare, sweat plastering his usually chaotic hair to his forehead.
“Where are we?” Chad rasped.
Rick had no answer.
Chad pulled out his phone reflexively and held it aloft. After a moment, he shook his head. “No signal.” He angled it this way and that, as if attempting to coax service bars from thin air.
Rick barely heard him. His gaze snagged on the ground—the trail behind the car. Skid marks. A short stretch of them. Beyond that, the earth lay undisturbed.
He moved closer, crouching despite the protest from his aching skull.
There—a line. Faint but unmistakable. Perfectly straight, slicing across the earth like a surgeon’s scalpel.
He brushed his fingers across the boundary. The soil on one side was coarse and volcanic, the other finer and paler. Same hue; subtly different texture. No blending. No transition.
Following the line, he found a boulder split cleanly in half—the cut surface smooth as glass. And a plant—strange and yellow-spined—had been severed so precisely it looked sculpted, its missing half simply… gone.
Something had carved through the landscape with impossible precision.
Rick jerked his hand from the line as if stung and backed away, heart hammering. Danger.
“Uh, Rick?” Chad’s voice behind him, tight with uncertainty.
Rick turned—and his stomach dropped.
The car… Its entire front end was gone.
Not crushed, not twisted, but sliced clean off at the front tires, exposing the mangled engine like an anatomy display. Fluids dripped steadily onto the cracked ground.
Chad, with that trademark gallows humor that surfaced whenever he was rattled, muttered, “You don’t usually get to see the inside of an engine like that.”
Rick shot him a glare. His mind reeled, scrambling for something—anything—to anchor him, to explain, but this went so far outside logic he felt like he was falling.
“What’s that?” Evan asked suddenly, pointing beyond the wreckage.
Rick turned.
A thin plume of smoke curled into the sky beyond a low ridge.
Without thinking, he scrambled up the rough slope, Evan and Chad close behind. The ground burned through the soles of his shoes, but he barely noticed.
At the top, the world opened before them—and Rick staggered.
A shattered plain of volcanic wasteland sprawled as far as he could see, the surface cracked and crumpled like a discarded sheet of aluminum foil. And beyond it, looming like sentinels, rose three volcanoes—alive, their flanks streaked with lava rivers, smoke writhing upward into the molten sky.
Rick stared, throat working uselessly.
Not Arizona.
Not anywhere he had ever heard of.
Beside him, Chad pivoted, his jaw slack as he took in the view. His voice, when it came, was a strained whisper. “Um… guys?” His eyes were fixed upward.
Rick didn’t want to look. Some part of him—the desperate, rational part—screamed to keep his gaze forward, to hold onto something familiar.
He turned anyway, and the last shreds of reason shattered.
Two moons hung low in the sky. One was pale but far too large. The other, small and unnaturally bright. Neither bore the patterns he knew by heart.
Chad’s soft voice broke the silence, stretched thin with disbelief. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”
Rick closed his eyes for half a second, feeling Evan’s hand slip into his without a word. Her fingers tightened, grounding him.
He squeezed back—once, fiercely—then opened his eyes and faced the impossible.
Evan felt like a fifth wheel.
Rick and Chad busied themselves at the car—wrecked though it was—sorting the salvage with grim focus. The ground crackled underfoot, volcanic grit shifting like brittle snow with every step. So far they’d gathered the clever picnic backpack with its half-finished meal, Chad’s half-full CamelBak, and the emergency kit from the hatchback. Rick inspected each item with clinical precision, stacking supplies into neat piles on the back seat.
Chad found the emergency radio. His face lit up—the first sign of hope Evan had seen since they had all woken up here—but it flickered and died as quickly as it had come. He scanned the bands twice. Static, and nothing more. With a sharp, frustrated twist, he clicked it off.
“Was worth a shot,” he muttered, his shrug stiff around the edges.
Rick didn’t even glance up. He was already sorting the protein bars by their expiration dates, his movements efficient to the point of being mechanical.
Evan lingered nearby, trying to help. Every offer ended the same way—a polite deflection, a kiss on the cheek, a touch to her arm. Not unkind. Just methodical. Rick needed to think, to solve, to control. Chad needed to move, to fix. Neither had room right now for anything less tangible. And the cracks were starting to show.
“The number one rule when you’re lost,” Rick said tightly, folding a blanket into a square with almost military precision, “is to stay put and conserve resources.”
Chad snorted. “Yeah, if anyone’s actually looking for you. Which they’re not. Unless you think they’ve extended the search grid to other planets.”
Rick’s hands stilled—briefly—then resumed their work, even more rigid than before. Evan saw the tells Rick thought he concealed—the tightening of his shoulders, the way his thumb compulsively brushed the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t even looking at the volcanoes anymore. Or up at the sky.
Two moons. No matter how many times she looked, it was still true.
They weren’t on Earth.
Her mind drifted back to the curtain of light—the impossibility of it—and the certainty that had seized her before they crossed it. It’s a door.
But to where?
A chill traced down her spine despite the suffocating heat. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. On the breeze, the faint smell of sulfur twined through the dust. At least the smoke from the volcanoes was blowing away from them. For now.
The argument brewed thicker in the air between the brothers.
“Look,” Chad said, pacing in a tight arc behind the car, “we can’t know where people are—but we can damn well figure out where they aren’t.”
Rick didn’t lift his head, but his eyebrows rose. “Do tell.”
“They won’t be by the volcanoes,” Chad pressed, ignoring the jab. “Which means heading away from them is our best shot. Find better terrain. Maybe water. Anything.”
“And maybe a convenience store is just over the next ridge,” Rick said dryly, folding the blanket a little too sharply.
Evan winced inwardly.
Rick’s sarcasm wasn’t like his brother’s. Chad used humor like a shield—an invitation to deflect. Rick used it like a scalpel—precise, cutting, meant to wound.
“Maybe I think it’s better than standing around with our thumbs up our—”
“Enough,” Evan said, cutting across them before the crash could happen.
Both stopped. Chad flushed, his hands flexing restlessly at his sides. Rick went rigid, like a door slamming shut.
“Chad’s right,” she added, voice steady even though her stomach twisted to say it.
Rick stared at her, his blue eyes going cold, distant. For a moment, he looked less like her Rick and more like some stranger locked behind glass. His mouth opened, closed. He glanced at Chad, then away.
“Fine,” he said finally, voice as jagged as the barren land around them. He didn’t argue, just folded inward.
Evan’s chest ached. Not for herself—for him. For how hard it was for Rick to surrender even this much.
He glanced toward the invisible line that had cleft this world—the scar across the earth where their reality had torn—and exhaled a breath that sounded more like defeat than agreement. “I didn’t want to stay near that thing, anyway.”
Neither did she.
The line radiated wrongness, even now. Looking at it twisted her stomach, the same way leaning over the edge of Hoover Dam had the previous summer—that gut-deep scream of gravity, scale, consequence. She hadn’t needed Rick to warn her not to step close.
“How much do we have for supplies?” she asked, forcing her voice to be light, practical. Something to pull them back.
Rick rubbed his forehead, the gesture tight with frustration. “Three days, maybe five if we’re careful. But without more water, it won’t matter.”
“Then we’d better make that time count,” Evan said, summoning a brightness she didn’t feel. “Can I carry something?”
Rick didn’t answer right away. His jaw flexed once, hard, before he shoved the last of the gear into Chad’s CamelBak.
It was Chad who finally spoke, forcing a grin that was pure armor. “With two strapping lads like us? Nah. You get to be queen for the day.” His tone was teasing. His eyes weren’t.
Evan saw it—the tautness in his arms and calves, the way he avoided her gaze. Chad was close to breaking, covering it with bravado because somebody had to.
It was sweet. And heartbreaking.
She smiled anyway, because sometimes pretending a little was better than shattering altogether. “Lead on, then,” she said.
Rick hoisted the pack in silence. Chad grabbed the emergency radio and tucked it under his arm. Evan fell into step behind them as they moved away from the wrecked car, from the impossible line gouged into the earth.
Anything was better than standing still. Especially when she had the creepy sensation the world itself was watching her.
At least she’d worn her hiking shoes.
They trudged forward, the ground shifting beneath them in tiny betraying slips. The volcanic grit slid under their boots like ground glass. Rick walked two steps ahead, shoulders stiff, focus narrowed so tightly it barely left room for breath. He was retreating into task and motion, hiding from the ache he didn’t know how to fight. Chad muttered under his breath, kicking stones from underfoot with sharp, aimless energy—his anger closer to the surface, more raw. More honest.
Frustration knotted under Evan’s ribs. They were both trying so hard.
Both too stubborn. Too scared.
Understandable but exhausting. God, sometimes they make it so hard to hold them together.
Evan drew a slow breath and let it out, feeling the air scratch its way through lungs that wanted to tighten instead. She let the wind carry it away, as if she could shed the weight along with it.
She loved Rick. That had never been in doubt. She loved him with a fierceness that still startled her sometimes, when she saw all the careful, precise ways he tried to protect what he couldn’t name.
And Chad… Chad she loved very differently, but no less. Even if he didn’t always know how to ask for it.
They were hers. For better or worse. And no matter how impossible this world had become, no matter how high the odds stacked against them—she wasn’t about to let either of them fall apart.
Not if she could help it.
The crunch of volcanic cinders underfoot kept time with their march, the sound almost—almost—soothing in its regularity.
Chad didn’t know where they were heading. Only that anywhere had to be better than standing by the wreckage and waiting—for what, he had no idea. Besides, the car—its front sheared off like a shop project gone wrong—had grown creepier by the minute.
No machine deserved that.
No fixing it, either—not even if he’d had a full shop and every tool in the catalog. That thought stung more than he cared to admit.
He jammed a hand into his pocket and closed it around the familiar shape of his Swiss Army knife. The metal was warm against his skin, the edges worn smooth by years of handling.
“A good tool can’t fix everything,” Uncle Jake had said once, pressing it into his hand. “But it’s a start.”
That was the day Chad had found his calling. Mechanics. Rick had his calculus. Chad had machines. Things that made sense. The knife couldn’t fix whatever mess they were in now—but it grounded him.
He patted it once, then cast a final glance over his shoulder. The Mazda sat dirty and broken against the fractured land, like some gutted beast.
When they crested the next rise, it vanished from view. Good riddance.
He almost walked into Rick, who’d stopped dead ahead.
“Is that a road?” Rick asked, squinting downslope.
Chad followed his brother’s gaze. Calling it a road was generous. It looked like a drunk partier had scribbled a line through the wasteland and someone had decided to call it infrastructure. Rough. Narrow. Crooked as hell. But unmistakably worn by use.
“At least we know there are people,” Evan said quietly beside him. Hope, cautious and thin, laced her voice.
Of some kind, Chad thought grimly. Maybe even the friendly sort. Wouldn’t that be nice!
They picked their way toward it.
The road wasn’t rutted in the traditional sense. Ruts needed moisture. Instead, all the loose soil had been knocked aside in places to reveal bare stone. The rest had been baked hard by sun and time. Scattered piles of manure dotted the path, so dried out they didn’t even attract flies.
Chad grimaced, giving the nearest one a wide berth anyway. “Those tracks,” he said, pointing. “Too thin for tires. Wagon wheels, maybe.”
Rick crouched, studying the impressions. “Maybe.” His voice was dry as the dust underfoot.
“And those,” Chad added, indicating a second set of prints, “definitely aren’t from cattle. Unless Flagstaff’s gotten a whole lot weirder.”
He frowned. The hoofprints didn’t look right—too long, too narrow. Not horses. Not anything he recognized.
Rick made a noncommittal grunt and straightened, brushing grit from his jeans. His movements were stiff. Slower than usual.
Chad felt it too—the weariness creeping into his bones, the heat dragging at his limbs. If heat had a smell, it was this—dusty, sharp, heavy enough to coat the inside of his mouth. Every swallow felt like sacrificing one more precious drop of water.
“Look,” Evan said, shielding her gaze with one hand as she stared ahead of them.
Chad squinted into the glare. There—a thin smear of movement against the horizon. Dust kicked up by something big. Or a lot of somethings.
“I wonder if we should get off the road,” Rick said. His voice stayed level, but Chad caught the tension underneath.
“Good idea,” Chad said immediately. No argument for once.
They scrambled up a slope, seeking shelter behind a scatter of jagged rocks. Chad’s heart picked up, but it wasn’t from the climb. It was the anticipation. And fear.
“What if they’re not friendly?” Evan asked quietly.
Chad didn’t answer, and neither did Rick. “There,” he said instead, pointing to a low outcropping. “We can watch from behind that.”
They crouched as the sounds reached them—hoofbeats, the creak of heavy wood, the faint clatter of metal on metal.
Chad peered through a gap between the rocks. A wagon rumbled into view first, trailing plumes of volcanic dust. It looked straight out of a history book—a Conestoga written large, canvas stretched taut over heavy hoops.
But the creature pulling it wasn’t a horse or a cow. It was… something else. Broad and hulking, with horns that curled like those on a bighorn sheep.
Flanking the wagon were soldiers. Chain mail glinted dully beneath sun-bleached tabards. Their mounts were sleek and lean as greyhounds, moving with a disquieting smoothness. They sniffed the air as they passed, sharp snouts questing.
Chad huddled lower. Definitely not Kansas.
The column slowed.
One of the soldiers—the one closest to their hiding spot—reined up sharply, scanning the hillside with practiced eyes.
Chad’s gut twisted. Their tracks. He shrank farther behind the rock, heart pounding against his ribs.
Too late.
“You there!” a voice barked. Strong. Crisp. No-nonsense. “If you’re bandits, you’ve laid a right-sorry ambush. If you’re friends, come out before we decide you’re not.”
Chad shot a look at Rick and then Evan. Rick’s jaw was tight, his hand resting protectively on Evan’s shoulder. Evan nodded once, her expression steady.
They didn’t have a choice.
“Last warning,” the soldier called.
Chad stood slowly, hands raised, palms forward. He didn’t need Rick to tell him—Look harmless. Look small.
“We’re not enemies!” he called. His voice cracked on the last syllable—dry mouth—and he grimaced. Hopefully, they’d chalk it up to nerves.
The three moved down the slope toward the soldiers with care.
The soldiers’ details sharpened as they approached. Their armor was battered but functional. The tabards bore a strange symbol—a black circle pierced by a thin silver spire.
At least no one fired any weapons.
“You can put your hands down,” said the soldier who’d spotted them. He was stocky, square-jawed, with a rough grin that wasn’t exactly unfriendly. “You’ve got the look of Outlanders. That right?”
Chad blinked. Outlanders?
Rick beat him to the punch. “You’re not speaking English,” he said sharply.
The soldier’s grin widened, his expression oddly like Rick’s when he’d just solved a puzzle. “Nope. You’re speaking yours. We’re speaking ours. Necsis handles the rest.”
Chad frowned, his brain scrambling to catch up. “Necsis?”
Before the soldier could answer, an older man rode up. His face was weathered leather, his eyes sharp under a tangle of sun-bleached hair. A white braid cord looped over one shoulder. “Necsis,” he said, reining in beside them, “is the name of this world.”
He reached into a saddlebag and pulled out something that looked like a soccer ball crossed with a porcupine.
“Each bump,” he said, gesturing at the spiny fruit, “is a Shift. Pockets where other universes bleed into ours. You came through one. In between are stable zones, like where we now stand. Inlands, we call them.”
Chad’s brain did a full-system crash. Universes? Shifts?
Rick, predictably, objected first. “That’s not possible.”
The man’s expression said he’d heard it before. “You appear thirsty,” he said simply, and he tossed the fruit toward them.
Chad caught it reflexively. The spines were surprisingly soft. He looked at it, then at the landscape around them, and decided not to argue. He cracked the fruit open. Inside, it split neatly into juicy sections. He pulled one out and took a cautious bite.
The flavor was bright and tangy—like citrus turned inside out. The juice soothed his parched throat instantly. He broke off another piece and handed it to Evan without a word. She smiled faintly in thanks.
But Chad couldn’t shake the officer’s words. Stable zones. Bleeding universes. He wasn’t sure what scared him more—that the man believed it or that he said it so casually.
A low rumble vibrated through the soles of his boots.
Chad stiffened, whipping his head toward the volcanoes. Smoke roiled upward from one of the peaks, thick and dark.
The soldiers didn’t even blink.
“Not so silent today,” the officer said, his voice cool. He flicked a hand. “Sergeant.”
“Captain Gallus?”
“Take Andrus and Kenwick. Get these three to Emberhold.” No debate. No elaboration.
The officer wheeled his mount about and rode off without looking back.
Chad, Rick, and Evan were left standing there—three strangers, three extra mounts, and a whole lot of questions.
“Do you know how to ride?” the sergeant asked.
Chad met Evan’s glance, then Rick’s. His own face must have looked about as poleaxed as theirs. Ride or walk? Not much of a choice.
The horses—he was calling them horses, no matter how sharp their teeth were—looked surprisingly cool up close. Alien. Powerful. Real.
Chad patted the knife in his pocket. Solid. Familiar. “When in Rome,” he muttered, moving toward the least bitey-looking one.
Whatever came next, he figured he’d better hang on tight.
The patrol disappeared into the shimmering heat, the last clatter of hooves fading into the haze. Rick’s head swam. None of this made sense. He dragged in a breath through his nose, but the sulfur-stained air only thickened the dizziness clawing at him. Universes bleeding between worlds. Shifts connecting them. It sounded like the fever dream of a bad science-fiction novel.
Movement at his side was Evan stepping closer and laying a hand on his shoulder. Grounding him.
Rick dropped his own hand over hers for a moment, anchoring himself to her calm. “You okay?” he asked, hearing the raw scraping in his own voice. He brushed a strand of hair back from her temple, fingertips skimming her skin.
Not feverish. Not clammy. Normal.
But she hadn’t looked quite right since the soldier had named this world. Her smile was too tight. Her fingers still clutched the pendant at her throat, knuckles pale against the chain.
She gave a small shrug. “I just felt off for a moment, but it passed.” Her words said one thing. Her body said another.
Rick filed it away. A problem he didn’t have the tools to solve—yet.
Later. For now, she was standing. Breathing. Here.
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Name’s Jens. Half day to Emberhold. We need to move. You ever ridden before?”
Rick turned to him, grateful for the excuse to pull himself together.
“Horses,” Chad stated, eyeing the spare mounts. Rick caught the hesitation—not fear but unease.
“These are horses,” Jens said easily. His voice was rough but not unfriendly.
Rick watched his mouth move, and the thought clicked: the lip movements didn’t match the words perfectly. Like a foreign film dubbed just well enough to fool a viewer if they weren’t looking closely. Beyond words, something deeper was being translated. Concepts. Meaning that said a horse was a horse.
Of course.
The thought was dangerously manic, and Rick shivered despite the heat.
Mounting was awkward. It had been years since he’d last been on a horse, but old instincts trickled back. He settled into the saddle, adjusting for the leaner, longer frame of the animal beneath him—faster than any horse he remembered.
His gaze snagged on one of the soldiers—Kenwick, if he remembered the name right. The man’s skin had a faint green cast, and small tusks curled from the corners of his mouth. Orc. The word surfaced without effort, even though it made no sense.
Kenwick caught him staring and bared his short tusks in something halfway between a grin and a challenge. “Haven’t seen an orc before?” the soldier asked, amused—and maybe a little wary.
“Not unless you count when Chad made me play World of Warcraft,” Rick said before he could stop himself.
Chad barked a short laugh.
Jens tilted his head. “You travel between worlds where you come from?”
“No,” Chad said, slowing as he realized how absurd it sounded. “It’s a… computer game. Stories. Uh, pictures in a box?”
Kenwick muttered something under his breath.
The air tightened.
“Maybe,” Evan said lightly, “instead of trying to explain where we’re from, we let them tell us where we are.”
Rick shot her a look of gratitude.
Jens chuckled—a rough scrape of sound. “Probably for the best. It’s not wise for Outlanders to dwell on their pasts.”
He nudged his mount into motion. They fell into line, leaving the ruined road behind.
That statement had carried more finality than Rick liked. His hand started dancing again, and he stilled it. Adjusting his balance, he let the motion of the horse settle into muscle memory. His thighs ached almost immediately—Great—but at least they weren’t stumbling across volcanic rock anymore.
We’ll see what my butt has to say about this tomorrow. He focused outward as they rode.
The landscape drifted past—a cracked wasteland under a sun too large, too bright. Plants dotted the terrain, wrong shades of green, wrong shapes. The air shimmered over the rocks, bending the horizon in uneasy waves.
Now that the first shock was wearing off, the alienness pressed in harder. Tiny details gnawed at the edges of reason. But the worst wasn’t the plants nor the sky nor the endless dust—it was the logic problem clawing at the back of his mind.
He needed to understand.
Rick urged his mount a little closer to Jens. “You said that thing we crossed—the Shift—connects to another world?”
Jens nodded without glancing over. “Aye.”
“And the terrain matches up?”
“As close to perfect as makes no difference.”
“Every time?”
“Every time,” Jens said.
Rick swallowed. “But how?”
Jens shrugged. “It’s the way of the Shifts. How they are.” Not an answer. Worse—an acceptance.
Rick let the horse fall back beside Evan. She glanced over at him, the worry clear in her eyes.
He worked it through, anyway. His mind couldn’t help itself. Infinite possibilities. Infinite chances. Somewhere out there, perfect matches had to exist—not by design but by sheer probability. He murmured, “A million monkeys.”
Evan’s voice was quiet. “What?”
He glanced at her—the furrow in her brow, the faint hope in her gaze. She was holding on.
He squeezed the reins tighter, forcing the words out. “There’s a thought experiment. I think it goes something like if you had a million monkeys typing at random, given infinite time, eventually they’d type the complete works of Shakespeare.”
Chad snorted from a few paces back. “Sounds messy.”
“It is,” Rick said. “The point is probability. Something astronomically unlikely becomes inevitable with infinite attempts.” He shifted in the saddle again, grimacing. “Like roulette. You know the odds of hitting double zero ten times in a row?”
Evan shook her head but smiled faintly, as if encouraging him.
“One in over six trillion,” Rick said. “Basically impossible. But infinite time means it happens anyway. Over and over again.” He turned back to Jens. “The Shifts. Is that what you call the region or what happens when it changes?”
“Both,” Jens said.
Rick rubbed the heel of his palm against his forehead. “How many regions are there?”
“Countless,” Kenwick answered from behind.
Rick’s mouth went dry again. “Infinite worlds,” he murmured. “Infinite matches. Infinite chances to find a landscape that fits.”
He looked at Chad. Saw confusion giving way to something harder—something that tightened his brother’s grip on the reins.
Rick felt it too, like a lead weight sinking into his gut.
Zero chance of finding their way back.
He couldn’t say it aloud. Not to Evan.
Instead, he asked, “Jens, can you control them? The Shifts?”
The sergeant’s mouth tightened. “No more than you can command the weather.”
Rick sat back hard in the saddle and rubbed his forehead again, the pressure doing nothing to ease the throb behind his eyes. We’re trapped. He didn’t say it aloud. Didn’t need to.
Chad summed it up for all of them, his voice bleak.
“We’re so screwed.”
The grind of hooves on cinders softened as they rode south, the ridges thinning around them. The ground shifted underfoot from brittle volcanic grit to dry, cracked earth, sprinkled here and there with stubborn patches of yellowed grass.
Chad sat stiffly in the saddle, the acid ball in his stomach growing heavier with every mile. The realization they had no way back wasn’t a slow creep anymore. It was a sucker punch, square in the gut.
Jens and the soldiers rode ahead, talking low. They didn’t check behind them much. Didn’t need to. Where would they run? Into the wasteland?
Chad glanced at his watch—8:17 p.m. Has it really only been twelve hours since we left the house?
The thought of home—real home—punched him all over again.
He twisted his wrist absently, the familiar weight of the watch a small comfort. Solid. Anchoring.
Jens must have caught the motion. The sergeant’s gaze fixed on Chad’s wrist with a sharpness that made Chad’s skin crawl.
Chad lifted his arm half-jokingly. “Just a watch. Cool, right?” He tapped the face. Digital numbers blinked in the fading light. “Stopwatch, alarm, messages from my phone—”
“Phone?” Jens cut in, sharp.
Chad blinked at the sudden tension. The other guards were watching too now, hands twitching toward their sides. Okay. Weird. But he pushed on, holding up his phone like he was sharing a toy at show-and-tell. “This is a phone. You can call people, send messages—instant letters. No carrier pigeons needed.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood.
No one smiled back, although Kenwick’s tusks made it almost look like he did. A bulldog with an overbite.
Jens leaned in slightly. His eyes narrowed, not curious—wary. Like Chad was waving around a loaded gun. “Put it away,” he said. The words were soft. The iron beneath them wasn’t.
Around them, the soldiers reined back, forming a loose ring. Casual.
Too casual.
Chad swallowed and slid the phone back into his pocket, feeling the atmosphere tighten like stretched wire.
The third guard made a gesture—a spiral drawn in the air, then a pushing motion toward Chad—muttering words Chad couldn’t entirely catch.
Fragments floated: “…hand… we thrive… thought… guide…”
Evan’s voice brushed his ear. “Maybe we keep the revelations to a minimum from here on out.”
Chad nodded stiffly, the prickle at the base of his neck refusing to fade.
They rode on without another word, and the terrain eventually changed again. A river appeared out of the desolation, winding its lazy way southward, carving a gash into the earth—a lifeline where none should exist. Scrubby plants clustered along its banks, growing denser the farther they traveled. The road bent to follow the river’s edge as it plunged into a deep cut through the land ahead.
The sun, low and heavy on the horizon, slanted across the landscape in sharp angles, throwing everything into harsh relief, and Chad caught his first glimpse of the town.
Buildings huddled along the riverbanks—ramshackle, smoke-stained, sagging under their own weight. They sprawled outward like a broken jaw, shadows pooling thickly between them.
Nothing about it looked inviting.
“Miner’s End,” Jens said, waving a hand like he was pointing out a gas station bathroom.
Chad grimaced.
The air here was heavy—smoke and mildew wrestling for dominance, laced with something sweeter that made his stomach turn. Faces peered from cracked windows and doorways as they passed—hollow-eyed, following them with silent suspicion.
One building stood straighter than the rest—two stories, small windows. Guards lounged out front. A checkpoint.
The travelers dismounted. One of the guards sauntered up, voice a slow drawl. “A fresh catch from the Shifts, eh?”
The man’s skin was sallow, almost damp-looking. Bureaucrat, Chad thought. Paper pusher with a badge.
Jens didn’t rise to the bait. “Three Outlanders. I’m to take them to the embassy. After we deal with the contraband.”
Chad stiffened. The what?
Jens turned toward him, his mouth twisting in something that might have been sympathy. “I’m sorry. We have to confiscate your technology before we proceed.”
Chad stared at him. “It’s just a watch.”
“It’s the law,” Jens said evenly. “You’ll understand more later. But for now, it has to go.”
Chad glanced sideways. Evan tilted her head—that analytical tilt she had when she was putting things together. Rick’s jaw hung slightly open.
Around them, the guards subtly closed ranks.
Suckered. Chad’s stomach twisted into a cold knot.
One of the guards produced a sack that looked older than half the buildings here. He held it open expectantly.
Evan moved first, dropping her phone into the bag with a hollow shushing sound. She nodded toward Rick and Chad. Rick followed, his face already sliding into problem-solving mode. His phone landed atop Evan’s with a dead sound of finality.
“I also have a radio and flashlight,” Rick said tightly.
“What powers them?”
“Batteries.”
Apparently, Necsis understood that much. Jens’ gaze flicked downward and the devices vanished into the bag.
Then the sack loomed in front of Chad. He stared at it, chest tightening. The phone in his pocket. The watch on his wrist.
Contacts. Pictures. Memories.
Pieces of a life suddenly impossibly far away.
Evan’s hand brushed his arm—steadying, silent.
I can’t.
His fingers fumbled at the watch clasp, every second peeling away another layer of home. He thought of the pictures he hadn’t backed up. Texts he’d never read again. Friends he’d never talk to.
The click of the clasp sounded loud in the stale air.
He dropped the watch into the sack. Then the phone.
The bag closed with a jerk of the guard’s hand. Chad felt the tether snap—and just like that, his last link to home was gone.
“Anything else?” Jens asked. “Be warned, if you’re caught with forbidden tech later, the punishment is exile. Back to the Shifts.”
Chad’s hand brushed his pocket where the Swiss Army knife rested. He hesitated. The flashlight attachment—small, concealable.
Some things were worth the risk.
He shook his head, matching Jens’s gaze with a blank stare.
The sergeant’s eyes lingered, then slid away.
“The Ban keeps us safe,” Jens said, quieter. “Since the wars. I know it seems strange. But it’s for the best.”
Chad didn’t answer. He let the silence carry the weight for him.
The other soldiers stayed behind with the mounts. Jens led them onward on foot through the crumbling skeletons of Miner’s End.
Chad walked in silence, the loss gnawing a hole in his gut. So, what now? he wondered. Build a sundial?
Evan’s hand touched his, just for a moment. “It’ll be okay,” she said, low and sure.
He wanted to believe her.
God, he wanted to.
The stench of smoke and rot thinned gradually as they descended. The ground sloped downward, the river carving deeper into the land. And with it—change.
The ravine widened first into a gorge, then into a full valley—a deep scar cut by time and water. A bridge spanned it high above, stone streets dropping down on either side with it. The farther they walked, the more the world transformed. Smoke gave way to the smell of baking bread. A breeze teased sweat off his skin. Ahead, faint music floated on the air—strings, voices, laughter. Chad’s stomach growled on cue.
Shadows thinned. Color returned. Stone buildings gleamed in the sun’s dying light—whitewashed walls catching fire in gold and red, green vines spilling from carved balconies.
Above them, the cracked higher walls still loomed—but here, hidden away, something new grew. Alive. The city reminded him of those old documentaries of medieval Europe, dense and close and breathing.
“It’s like London and Petra got into a fight,” he muttered, almost to himself. “And nobody won.”
Rick barked a short laugh. A real one. Chad swallowed down the tangle in his throat. Rick was holding it together. Meanwhile, Chad felt like he was unraveling at the seams. Even here, I can’t get out of his damn shadow.
“Emberhold,” Jens said, gesturing toward the golden heart of the hidden city.
And Chad, still fighting the ache behind his ribs, couldn’t help but wonder—was this salvation?
Or just another prison, dressed up pretty?