Faces

“Heading out?”

The voice coming from her left snapped Charlotte’s attention away from the prep table. “Yes, why?”

Lucas shrugged his thin shoulders. “No reason. But this is, what, the third time this cycle? You might wanna watch yourself.”

Charlotte finished laying the weapons she would need aside. “I know what I'm doing, Luc. No need to worry about me.”

“Hope so.” Luc’s smile faded. "Something happens to you, and…”

“I know.” Her old friend didn’t need to finish the sentence. Charlotte reached for the button at the edge of the glass table, guilt lancing through her. “Terminate simulated avatar.”

Immediately, Lucas was gone. The huge machine in the far corner of the room, the place Lucas’s image had been projected from, hummed in wait.

Charlotte closed her eyes. Her pulse tapped against both lids. The real Lucas was a world away, dead for all she knew, but making his simulated face disappear hurt anyway.

The only thing that kept her hanging on to her mission were three faces. One was Luc’s.

You can never go back to your old life with either of them, a little voice reminded. Screwing that up is why you're here, remember?

Her teeth ground shut, and she hefted her pack over one shoulder. Maybe it was time to ask the Port to stop recreating comforting simulations.

Her cot, sitting on the opposite side of the room, was the space’s simplest piece of furniture. When she'd been setting up, she decided not to file down the metal piece that jabbed her spine every time she used it.

She deserved that too.

Flat on her back now, the brunette stared up at the ceiling’s white slab before reaching for the connections fastened to the cot’s sides. One moment to gather herself, ignore the temptation to reminisce…

She couldn't help herself.

His bed was in the hospital downtown and he was still in it, unmoving, all thanks to her. The ubiquitous Portal, besides being a gateway to every other known world in their sphere, also doubled as life support in every hospital and quick-care clinic.

Nathaniel.

Her second face.

She’d gone to see him yesterday. The same dark veins tattooed his closed eyelids, the same ones she'd kissed so many times. Those clasped, bloodless hands, the ones she'd held.

Just a mistake. Charlotte pressed her eyes shut so she wasn’t haunted by Nate's inert form.

The Portal had been a marvelous creation at the turn of the twenty-sixth’s century, depended upon for everything anyone could think of. Entertainment had come last, and it had been that need to relieve constant boredom, curiosity, that led to exploring the boundaries between all the known universes.

They called the process Uncoupling.

Uncouple your mind from your body, explore any of the several worlds out there that you wanted--safe, sterile and overseen by so many clinical technicians, nothing could go wrong.

Or so she’d once believed.

Nothing could go wrong-- unless you had an aptitude to tinker with the Portal’s technology the way Charlotte had, and bought your own Portal hardware for personal use.

The plan had been to surprise him. They'd been seeing each other for months. She knew all of his favorite worlds. He knew hers; having the Portal to reach them at home made sure her plan would be cozier, more intimate with no one else there.

After some food and wine, she presented the interface connections to him. Smiled. “I have something I want to show you.”

His mystified look made the wine in her belly warm with something else. “Like what?”

Tears prickled past her shut eyes. A grove, mountains in the background. A lovely place to tell him--

The ends of the Portal’s remote connections bit into her palm when she clenched them. They hadn’t been in the world she’d discovered for more than a few minutes. She'd just been guiding him to that open space in the trees when it had all blacked out. The searing pain, the scramble to disconnect both of them before the damage was done. The worst thing that could happen was to become too invested in a world besides your own, a place where your mind could go but your body couldn’t follow, a danger that was especially real in new worlds with their unknown perils. It was a fact that she knew, should have taken seriously. She hadn’t, and it was Nate who had paid her toll.

Activating the connections sent a jolt through her every cell. Charlotte’s mind lit with a thousand worlds, a thousand possibilities, and she forced them to slow down so she could sift through them all. Some of them were already explored and had turned up no trace of Nate. She discarded those and turned to a few others, honing her focus. Nothing in the first four, five worlds. Six, seven, eight. No, no, no. She couldn’t give up. She didn’t have a choice; Nate was her purpose.

 Nine, te--

Charlotte froze. There was a glimmer of something in the tenth world. Just a speck. But it was enough; Nate's disconnected mind could be there, waiting for her, waiting to be reunited with his body. Charlotte locked on and took a deep breath.

Go.

With another press, she activated the Portal modifications she’d so painstakingly prepared. A flash of the world she was going to lit the back of her brain, blotting out her living room.

Medieval.

She had to modify her clothing and weapons to match the time period and hope the locals didn't sense anything amiss. A simple dress and dagger would suit that purpose, and she molded them quickly, double checking before activating that one last push to set her mind free.

A blur of swirling color, a sucking sensation at her core. Then she was waking, dragging herself up in a grassy field with dew sticking to her hems. The usual dizziness and nausea cleared, and she took stock of her surroundings.

A village in the distance beckoned to her. Trees and a field stretched as far as the eye could see. The village may have been a good place to find clues, but as she adjusted, Charlotte sat up and worked her dagger from its sheath.

Mingling with the denizens of any world posed a danger, and she didn't like doing it unless it was necessary. Besides, her senses were pushing her towards the forest, its shadowed fingers touching the outskirts of the field.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the heaviness from her limbs and started over. The trees on the outermost edge were as thick around as her torso. Brambles, ready to trip her up, nestled at their bases. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she modified her skirts into a pair of trousers and stepped in.

The temperature dropped, the leafy canopy overhead ensuring none of the fading sunlight speared its way to her. Charlotte’s palms grew clammy. The dangers in each unexplored world were myriad--magic in several of them could cook the blood in your veins, and there was always the human element of pickpockets, charlatans, and worse. The longer you stayed, the more turmoil you courted. She knew that well.

A dirt path opened to thread through the worst of the undergrowth, and she followed it to the right, gaze skimming the tops of the trees. The feel of Nate's core, warm compared to the shadows, was drawing closer. She dared one more step.

She didn't hear it coming, didn't pick its silhouette breaking free of the treetops until it was almost on her.

It crashed down in front of her, broken branches raining down over her head and arms.

Charlotte’s mind shrieked. Too late!

Despite her precautions, the weapon, the cloaking shield she’d put over her body before she came in, it found her anyway.

The beast changed form every time, this thing that stalked her from world to world, but one aspect remained eternal.

The pale face leered up at her from the monster's own, white sclera and ink-drop pupils.

Her third face, the biggest mystery.

A name to put to it danced in the back of her mind, but she could never bring it to the fore, never knew where it came from.

But it was holding Nate’s mind captive. It was the cause of the accident. She knew it was. There could be no other explanation. Charlotte’s shriek rose into a battle cry. She’d failed, over and over again, all at the hands and tentacles of this thing. And every time, she honed her weapons, programmed herself, to be stronger. If she could work the dagger up and under the creature's legs, maybe this time she could defeat it and reconnect to what she had been. Shut her mind up once and for all, that doubt, that shame. The feeling that something was wrong with all of this and always had been.

Raising her weapon, Charlotte dove forward and let the darkness take her.

***

“Damn shame.”

Two bodies hovered over the cot stationed in the corner of the dim warehouse. One, thin and tall, kept his eyes on the body hooked to the surrounding cluster of beeping machinery. The other, shorter and better-dressed, looked up from the game he was watching on another glowing flatscreen.

“What?”

The first man shook his head too quickly, unaware that he’d slipped. “Nothing.” He gestured to the tiny figures on-screen. “They score any points yet?”

“Them? Nope. The Stars chase their own tails every damn season.” The second man’s eyes didn’t slide back to the game’s hypnotic glow. “Something wrong?”

“No.” Again, too quickly.

“You sure?” Eyes narrowed, becoming watchful. “You know, Luc, you’ve been acting weird lately. Sentimental. Not changing your mind about this, are you?”

Luc swallowed. “No. Just been tired lately. You know how it is.” He forced himself to hold the other man’s stare. “Think it’s time for a break yet, Nate?”

“Why?” The word skittered up on a dark laugh. “You want another fix?”

Shame cloaked Luc’s stomach with black ice. “No.”

But the pull contradicted him, drew the legs out in front of him, past the cot and the body on it to where the tables, mobile interfaces strewn across them, sat waiting. Yes.

Another fix meant seeing her, the young woman that would’ve been his daughter’s age if Sophie had lived past ten. Their faces, their laughter, and Sivia had even lost her own father when she was ten. Maybe there was something to the eggheads’ theories that all the known worlds interconnected somehow. One day, Luc would gather the courage to tell her the truth.

Silence passed between the pair for several heartbeats. And then,

“This one’s almost ready.”

Luc turned at Nate’s declaration. That ice swelled into a hard frost. “She is?”

She. Nate’s eyes vanished into shadow as he sat back in his chair. “You must be losing it,” he mumbled. “The Luc Beckett I met wouldn’t give a damn about this meat pile.”

Luc licked his lips. Too many screw-ups. Sivia was changing him there, too. “How much longer?”

“A week, maybe. Couple days if it keeps wearing itself out in there.” Nate’s gaze flicked over to the woman on the cot. “Good job picking this one by the way, Luc. Has a lot of Talent to change what needs it in the worlds, but a mind just malleable enough for what I need.”

Good job. The new Luc wanted to vomit. People who could use the Portal’s advanced technologies were few in number. Some, like Nate himself, came from families that had to enhance their natural aptitude with tech. Others, like this woman, could bend the tech to their will and make it into whatever a situation called for.

A shame Luc hadn’t met her before he encountered Nate. “Yeah,” was all he could find to say.

“And then we make our next big sale.” Nate couldn’t hide a syrupy smile. “Ten hundred thousand this time.” He punctuated that last by laying one of his slim hands on their victim’s leg. Wires, metal, ran from her upper arms and thighs down to her wrists and ankles. People who could manipulate the Portal and the worlds to such extents were also perfect candidates to become dolls. Cyborgs. Have their own minds screwed with, twisted until they didn’t know up from down.

Just like this woman. Like the several others that came before her. Charlotte. Why the hell did he remember her damn name over all the rest? Why did her face hover in his dreams? Why did he tap into the Portal to see her from afar when Nate wasn’t there? Charlotte was certainly pretty enough—brunette, with a freckle under her right eye, those a soulful brown he wished he’d never seen.

Luc also knew her dreams, the ones Nate implanted in her head when he’d drawn her into the Portal for the first time with the two of them alone. The way he’d flipped the truth on its head, made her think he was the one that needed rescuing, her boyfriend. How for every time Charlotte failed, how each time was set up so she would, she lost a little more of herself to the cyborg she was doomed to become.

Nausea danced in Luc’s throat and he coughed it back. Defying Nathaniel Green meant losing his access to the Portal, to Sivia. Luc couldn’t afford a home unit himself, not on the salary Nate gave him.

“By the way.” His employer’s voice changed to smarmy merriment. “The buyer’s coming back today to check our progress. Says she wants to use this one to help her make her own world. Even charge a fee to get in. Ah, rich people. Am I right?”

A fresh shiver walked Luc’s spine. The client, a woman from the Uptown District, was someone he strove to avoid every time she dropped by their makeshift shop. Her face like the whitest of milk, her eyes matching, her voice the hiss of spiders crawling over a corpse. Nate had told Luc before what her name was when she first came in, but he never wanted to remember it. Whoever she was, she was a predator.

And Charlotte sensed her, a fly waiting for that spider. Luc saw that in those stolen times, wanting to reach out, wanting to be the hero.

 He swallowed.

“Don’t forget that we have another high roller coming next week.” Nate’s stare burned between Luc’s shoulders. “Make sure you find what he’s looking for after you take your break. We need to get started on a new one if the client needs it by December. Got it?”

Three words worked themselves loose from the chaos in Luc’s head. Mechanical, the only tone he was finding left to use these days. “Got it, boss.”

“Good. You got two hours this time. Consider it for a job well done.” Nate grinned. “Say hi to…what’s her name? Silvie?”

“Sivia.”

“Whatever. Say hi to her for me.”

Anger prickled Luc’s flesh; if Nate turned on him one day, he wouldn’t be surprised. He gulped the emotion back and nodded. He needed to get away from him, from this place, make himself absent when the spider woman ducked in.

He picked up the Portal’s mobile interfaces and sharpened his focus on Sivia, seeing the shape of her world, her village, imagining the music of her voice. They would go to the field outside her hometown today, talk, drink strong wine.

He would forget.

He had to.

***

“Eryx? One more?”

Luc turned at the sound of his assumed name. The bartender already had a mug in hand, waiting for his command. Luc nodded.

“Yes,” Luc said in his put-on accent. “Two more, actually.”

“Coming up.” The bartender began to pour. Imbala was normally a pleasant world, not too different from an eighteenth-century Earth, all but for the magic. Today…

“Here. You’re certain you’re well? This is your fifth ale.”

“I’m well enough.” He took the ale and got up from the bar, leaving a silver in his wake. “Keep the change,” he called over his shoulder.

Then he found a lone table tucked into the tavern’s corner, and put his ale down.

He ran. Earlier, when he’d first come, he’d met with Sivia. Her same voice, her same clothing, the same sweet lilt of her voice. She’d been standing over him when his eyes opened, when the awareness had come back to him. But…

He took a long drink of ale and set the tankard back down, letting the heat of the alcohol heat him. Maybe he’d been imaging it. Maybe he was overworked.

He took a second drink and chased it with a third.

But what happened after that…

He took another sip of ale to soothe himself and blot the image from earlier away.

Then, he caught the image drifting in his ale.

The face staring back at him wasn’t his. Brown eyes, a freckle under the right one. Brown hair. Not his.

Hers.

As he sat staring at that face in disbelief, the same face Sivia had worn—his first warning that he’d been betrayed--he heard Nate’s voice in his ear, his serpentine laugh following him from the world left behind.

“Sorry, buddy.”

Luc felt that final cold snake its way from his core into his limbs, gelling through his blood.

“You know too much. Don’t worry, I’ll find somebody good to take you.”

With that, blackness engulfed him.

But the woman stayed with Luc, comforting him, whispering his name as she followed him down into that darkness.

Her face filled his awareness, sparking through his mind, expanding until it was the only thing that mattered.

Suddenly, he was awake. Seeking it. Seeking her.

He knew he had to find her, had to remember what her name was, where she was, why she was.

Nothing else would ever matter again until he did.