“What… what sort of deal?” Jake asked rather unenthusiastically. He wished the elderly man would just shut up and let them stew in silence. Glancing next to him he saw Alice sitting near catatonic, lost in thought and unmoving. She’d been like this for a while now, totally uninterested in the conversation. Her lack of ability to commune with the doctor allowed her to slip deep into thought uninterrupted, allowing her to begin to unpack the possible ramifications of the duo''s actions. Jake wasn’t allowed such a luxury. He had to keep the doctor engaged, prattling on with Dr. Lewis for what felt like an eternity.


    “What I mean…” Dr. Lewis said, standing up from the workbench and walking away from the pair, “Is that I believe we can both come to help one another. If everything you told me is true, you’ll be leaving here when the sunrises. Barely anytime at all, certainly not enough time for any serious study on you two. The best I’ll have to settle for is a few samples. I could try and trap you here, devise some sort of cell or shackle that could bind you here, but would good would that do either of us? No, it’s best for all of us if you leave. Avoid the protesters and busybodies before they can swarm this place.”


    “So your deal is… you let us leave?” Jake asked, a small flicker of hope flaring up in his desolate chest. Even as his head was full of confusing thoughts twisting and eating themselves in an unending cycle trying to grapple with the report of the datapad, at least it seemed there was hope to escape.


    “No, no. Nothing so basic. You’ll be leaving here in a few hours no matter what I do. What sort of deal would that be, hmm? I offer you something you already have. No, no. What I want to do for you is so much… bigger. I want to help you find a way to control your… falls. Help you find a way home.”


    “…Really?” Jake asked, a note of skepticism leaking into his voice despite his best efforts to hide it. Looking around at the ramshackle remains of Lab 458, he couldn’t help but doubt the doctor’s claims. Seeming to note the suspicion in his voice, Dr. Lewis let out a small chuckle.


    “I can understand your trepidation about trusting me. This place surely has seen better days. But I assure you, nowhere in this reality is better equipped, or more willing, to help you. And thus far, from what little you’ve told me, you’ve found no one else even willing to try and help you. Now I don’t know how long it’ll take, but as soon as you leave here it will be this lab’s sole mission to develop a way to master and control travel between realities.”


    “Ok…” Jake said, voice lacking any real excitement as he stewed in Dr. Lewis’s promises. He still wasn’t sure what to make of the doctor, and he knew for a fact the sprawling dilapidated lab around him left much to be desired. Still, the small chance he offered to go home, to end his hellish fall through different realities seemed too good to pass up.


    “What then? I’ll be able to go home just to, what, fall through reality again? Start this nightmare all over?”


    “Hmm… that is a good point… an anchor… an anchor will also be required…” The doctor was mumbling to himself now, seemingly distracted for a moment before he turned toward the pair a large smile across his face, “Tell you what then, a way to control your falls and an anchor. We''ll figure it out here and build it, and you two can be the first ones we send it to. I promise.”


    Dr. Lewis snaked forward now, arm extended, ready for a handshake. Neither Alcie nor Jake moved to accept, however. Alice had moved, shaken somewhat from her catatonic stupor to watch the doctor with suspicion clear in her eyes while Jake leaned forward slightly and asked,


    “And you? What do you want?”


    “What? Oh yes, I forgot! Got too excited for a moment, my apologies! Just some bloodwork, some urine, some solid waste if there’s time. Typical bio samples, from both of you. I’d like to go through your belongings as well and see what I can isolate from them. And as for you two, when you leave in the morning, do so in a place we can monitor. We’ll want as much data as possible from you two before you leave. OH! And the trackers, we’ll need to install some in you. How else can we uphold our end of the deal if we can’t find you?”


    Jake fidgeted, eyeing the extended hand of the elderly man and looking into his large eyes and artificially inflated smile. The longer he spent with Dr. Lewis the worse his impression of the man became. Behind his sugary words and fake smiles, Jake felt he could see a cruel calculating man just waiting for his chance to strike. A chance Jake feared was coming all too soon. With a nervous gulp, he turned toward Alice.


    “He wants to make a deal. He says he’ll give us a way to control travel between reality and a way to anchor ourselves.”


    “Well, that sounds perfect!” Alice said with mock enthusiasm, rolling her eyes as she shot the doctor with a glare. “I don’t trust this guy at all Jake. I mean, he just happens to be able to solve all our problems?! Look around this dump! What the hell is he going to do?”


    “I agree… but we’re still stuck with him till sunrise, and we have no clue how long that’ll take. Let''s just play ball, and get it over with. What’s the worst that can happen? Worse comes to worse, he doesn’t hold up his end of the deal and we leave this place behind.”


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    “Doesn’t sound so bad… can’t wait to get out of here…” Alice said, voice dropping a bit as her gaze fell to the floor. With an understanding sigh, Jake returned his gaze to the still-waiting Dr. Lewis. Noting that the doctor’s wide smile had dropped somewhat, Jake gripped hold of the doctor’s hand and shook.


    “We’ll do it.”


    “WONDERFUL! Let’s get started, shall we?”


    <hr>


    Simon gave a casual knock on the door leading into Lab 458. He waited awhile yet no response came. Eventually, growing bored of standing around doing nothing in the hall he flashed his ID badge to the scanner, disengaging the lockdown overtaking the whole of Lab 458. Entering through the now unlocked door, Simon braced himself for what horrors he may find waiting for him. Instead, he saw his boss sitting alone with his back to the door, hunched over a cluttered workstation. With a sigh that could be either relief at his survival or disappointment at his lack of sudden promotion, Simon strolled up beside the workstation.


    “Returned the transport shuttle. Also stopped by the crash site. The official report is defiantly exaggerated, though the damage was still substantial.”


    “Well, that was to be expected. They had quite a crash, the Centralized Government may like to exaggerate from time to time but they still need something to work with.”


    Neither story Dr. Lewis had presented the pair with regarding their crash had been accurate. Their uncontrolled crash had done substantial amounts of property damage to two buildings, nearly completely leveling the roof and top floor of the garage the car had crashed into. In total the amount of damage caused had totaled nearly as much as crashing into three separate buildings, but only two were ever really hit.


    The real difference lay not in structural damage, but rather the human damage dealt by the crash. No fatalities were confirmed by either Dr. Lewis or Simon, however, over a hundred injuries ranging from minor cuts and bruising to severe lacerations and broken bones were confirmed. The most severe of these injuries was a woman admitted to the hospital in a coma. She’d still yet to wake up.


    “Which version of the story did you give them?” Simon asked as he pulled himself up to sit on an empty part of the workstation, legs dangling in the air.


    “The first version. You were right, they were shocked. Even the edited version seemed too much for them to handle, barely managed to get anything out of them.”


    Simon nodded, smirking slightly in vindication at having been proven correct. They had prepared two stories about the accident to feed the convicts. One in which their accident was far tamer than what was officially reported and one in which their accident was far more destructive than what was officially reported. He’d known which the two would most want to hear as soon as he met them in their cell and heard them crying and begging for mercy. Still, though, Dr. Lewis had insisted on preparing a second draft of the story as ‘it never hurt to be prepared.’


    “Think they bought it?”


    “I don’t know, do I? I could only understand one of them… that reminds me…” Dr. Lewis said, his tone darkening a bit as he stood up before he started sending a barrage of furious blows upon the sides of the intern''s ribs. Surprised by the elderly man’s sudden attack, Simon slipped free of the workstation and fell to the floor with a groan.


    “The hell’s the matter with you?! Why didn’t you mention only one of them could understand us?!”


    “What?” Simon looked up rubbing his side, the back of his head ringing from the sudden fall to the ground “What are you talking about?”


    “One of them doesn’t understand our language, the woman! The man had to translate for us so who knows what they were saying to each other. I saw their facial expressions twitch and they weren’t throwing me the most trusting of looks, but I have no idea what they were saying!”


    “What are you talking about?” Simon asked, giving up on rubbing the side of his chest instead of opting to rub the back of his throbbing head. There underneath the mane of hair he grew he felt the dull cool sensation of metal greet his hand and suddenly everything clicked into place.


    “Ah, crap!” Simon exclaimed as he pulled himself up towards the still-enraged doctor, “It''s my translation implant. Got it installed a few years back for travel. Didn’t even notice it was working when I was talking to them!”


    “Well great, if I knew only you could understand them I wouldn’t have sent you away, would I? Who knows what they''re thinking?” Dr. Lewis said with an exasperated sigh, head sinking into his hand.


    “Not a total loss so it doesn’t really matter, just stick close to them whenever they come back. They already agreed to the deal, I’d just like to know what they''re whispering in private.”


    “Sure, sure,” Simon said, waving his hand dismissively not exactly thrilled with his new task of designated stalker. “Where are they anyway.”


    “Sent them to use a decontamination shower after I managed to get some blood out of them. Wanted more but they were in shock, like I said even the tamer story seemed too much for them. We’ll have to be more forceful when they come back. Said they just wanted to shower and sleep so I let them go. We have stuff to prep anyway.”


    “What’s the rush?” Simon asked with a shrug “Not like they''re going anywhere.”


    “Wrong. If their testimony is right they’ll be gone by sunrise. We need to do everything we can to be ready for them. I already have a list ready for you.”


    “Sure, sure, I guess. Why not! All this work just to let those two waltz away in a few hours?!” Simon sunk his head into his hands as he shouted, his words echoing out around the room.


    “It’s not so bad.” Dr. Lewis said, returning his attention to the vials of blood gathered on the table.


    “YOU WEREN’T THE ONE DOING THE WORK!”


    “Calm down, just think about it ok? We keep them here somehow, which we can’t do anyway so no point thinking about it, and what does that get us? Public enemies one and two who, from my initial tests so far, are no different than anyone else biologically speaking. We let them go however and we get a controlled breach, a breach we know exactly where it’ll open so we can monitor and record it. Along with that, we send them off with trackers and you know what else we’ll have?”


    Simon shook his head no, glancing toward Dr. Lewis as growing curiosity replaced the annoyance he was feeling.


    “Test Subjects." The doctor responded, a sly smile tracing itself across his face.