{"id":464,"date":"2024-06-11T19:07:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T23:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/?p=464"},"modified":"2025-01-28T23:46:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T04:46:35","slug":"identity-theft-chapter-37","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/identity-theft-chapter-37\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changeling Game, Chapter 37"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\ntt {\nfont: .857em menlo, monaco, consolas, monospace;\nmargin: auto;\n}\nh2 {\ntext-align: center;\n}\nh2.chapterhead {\nmargin-bottom: 2em;\ntext-align: center;\n}\n  .nowrap {\n    text-indent: 0;\n    display: inline-block;\n}\n<\/style>\n<p><b>Title:<\/b> The Changeling Game <small>(Formerly <i>Identity Theft<\/i>)<\/small><br \/>\n<b>Author:<\/b> Ardath Rekha<br \/>\n<b>Chapter:<\/b> 37\/?<br \/>\n<b>Fandom:<\/b> TCOR AU<br \/>\n<b>Rating:<\/b> M<br \/>\n<b>Warnings:<\/b> Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language, body horror<br \/>\n<b>Category:<\/b> Gen<br \/>\n<b>Pairing:<\/b> None<br \/>\n<b>Summary:<\/b> Even the most carefully planned heist will have something unexpected happen.<br \/>\n<b>Disclaimer:<\/b> The characters and events of <i>Pitch Black,<\/i> <i>The Chronicles of Riddick,<\/i> and <i>The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury<\/i> are not mine, but belong to Universal Studios.  I just <i>wish<\/i> I were in charge of their fates.  No money is being made off of this.  I\u2019m writing strictly for love of the story.<br \/>\n<b>Feedback:<\/b> Absolutely, the more the better!  Shred me, whip me, beat me, make me feel grammatical! I post \u201crough,\u201d so I can always use the help. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<input type='hidden' bg_collapse_expand='6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093' value='6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-more-text-6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093' value='Long post is long. Click to read the story.'><input type='hidden' id='bg-show-less-text-6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093' value='Hide the story again.'><button id='bg-showmore-action-6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093' class='bg-showmore-plg-button bg-green-button  '   style=\" color:#D9ECFB;\">Long post is long. Click to read the story.<\/button><div id='bg-showmore-hidden-6a8e6ea15b16b3062326093' ><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"chapterhead\">37.<br \/>\n<u>Folding a Dali Cross<\/u><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">By the time Jack and Ewan left to go to the morgue, <i>everybody<\/i> had weighed in on the heist. Very few major changes had been made to Jack\u2019s plan, but there had been many good suggestions and improvements.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Including the idea that she should go back to dressing as a boy\u2014but an <i>Amazigh<\/i> boy\u2014for the day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The entire family, as it turned out, had known who Kyra really was, and known as much about Jack as anyone on Helion Prime did, for as long as Tomlin himself had; Takama\u2019s intelligence-gathering had been the original source of that information. They had simply chosen to wait for the girls to tell them, or not, themselves. Before his death, Tomlin had also told <i>them<\/i> that, despite assumptions to the contrary, it had been Jack who had masterminded the hospital escape rather than Riddick. They had been better-known quantities to the Tomlin-Meziane family, the whole time, than they had ever realized.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Either way, she thought, the family\u2019s willingness to include her and Kyra in all of the discussions and decisions that affected them, rather than cutting them out and arbitrarily making decisions on their behalf, still astounded her. Maybe it was even <i>more<\/i> amazing, given what they had known all along. If only <i>any<\/i> adults had treated her this way before now\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That, she reflected, made it harder than ever to plan to move on. Going back to being Audrey MacNamera would mean going back to being talked <i>about<\/i>, rather than <i>to<\/i>, by all the adults in a room.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The dinner table conversation had been all about the heist. She and Ewan had both gone to bed early, taking mild sedatives to help them fall asleep so that they\u2019d be fully rested when they woke up just two hours after noon. Kyra, although clearly wishing she could go too, had given the plan her stamp of approval.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Even <i>they<\/i> seemed to approve.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI can\u2019t talk to you long,\u201d she had told them when she found herself suspended among the stars again. \u201cI have to rest so I can do something difficult in a few hours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That had only excited <i>their<\/i> curiosity. She had struggled to explain, until one of them seemed to come to a strange understanding.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>It is hiding the shells of its lost broodmates from <b>them<\/b>, so <b>they<\/b> can\u2019t find the rest,<\/i> it told the others. She felt comprehension, and endorsement, spread around her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Now, suddenly, everybody seemed to understand <i>except<\/i> her. \u201cWho are <i>they?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>The Demons of the Darkness. The makers of the cages.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That sounded like something the being that hated her and Kyra might have said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>The \u2014 does not understand,<\/i> they told her. She wasn\u2019t exactly sure what they called it. Not as much a name as a descriptor. Moribund? Something close to that. <i>Your shell looks like <b>their<\/b> shells, and it thinks that makes you one of <b>them<\/b>. But your five-shape is different.  You and your broodmates only just hatched into your five-shapes. Only you and one other larva are so developed. The others are barely growing, aside from the three from the smallest shells of all. But none of you will ever be like <b>them.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI\u2026 are you talking about our bodies? Our physical shapes? When you say shells?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Your shell is not your shape. Your shape perceives your shell, but your shell cannot perceive your shape. With each hatching you will perceive more, understand more. You are strong and growing so quickly. But we are patient, and you must be too. You will hatch into your six-shape in your due time. Do not try to make it happen too soon.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>And then\u2026 you will be ready to help <b>us<\/b>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They let her sleep then, and her dreams were full of strange attempts to understand what they had been telling her, to riddle out its meaning. Still, she woke feeling alert, ready to execute her plan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Do I always start my crazy adventures at 2 in the \u201cmorning?\u201d<\/i> she found herself wondering, as she dressed herself like a teenaged Amazigh boy. This \u201cmorning\u201d was bright, of course, the sun only beginning to come down from its hot zenith. She knew from the 44-hour library that people were awake at this hour, but not all that many. She and Ewan would arrive at the morgue while activity was still at its lowest ebb, and while the tide was still dropping away.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Sebby, who now had his cricket tub in their bedroom, climbed all over her for a moment, running his antennae over her strange new clothes, before returning to the bed to snuggle up to Kyra.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Ewan\u2019s room, she had learned, was just two doors down the hall from hers and Kyra\u2019s.  He was emerging from it at almost the same moment that she emerged from theirs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They went over the plan as they ate a simple breakfast, and then checked over their packs and the gear that Cedric had insisted they take with them in case anything went wrong. He had given them a comm with extremely powerful frequencies after dinner\u2014\u201cThis thing can transmit through <i>solid rock<\/i>\u201d\u2014and had instructed Jack to take it halfway between \u2019verses. Then they had tested its signal, confirming that the part that was still in U1 could still connect to the comms system and reach him. Jack had taken it into the courtyard, isomorphed over to Elsewhere, and used it to call him in possibly the first comm conversation across universes. Before she and Ewan isomorphed into Elsewhere, they were to leave it behind in an agreed-upon, protected location in U1; if they ran into trouble and needed help getting back, they could return to that space in Elsewhere and use it to call Cedric. Kyra, when asked, had said that she felt strong enough to pull them back if she was taken to that location.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That was something Jack hadn\u2019t even thought of when she had begun planning the heist. It made her very glad they were on her side and watching her back. She\u2019d had to add one embellishment to that part of the plan, though, storing the comm in a plastic bag that \u201clived\u201d in both universes and would shield it from harm in either direction. The outside of the bag, when she checked it over after breakfast, was wet on the Elsewhere side from the pre-noon high tide, but no water had gotten in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack and Ewan went onto the roof, which turned out to have a beautiful rooftop garden, shortly before 3 pm to look over the city. Sunlight glittered on the waters of Elsewhere, which still overlaid most of New Marrakesh\u2019s downtown streets. She described what she was seeing to Ewan, wishing she could show it to him. Technically, she could have, but she was afraid to transition <i>him<\/i> halfway between worlds, lest she somehow infect him with Threshold Syndrome and make him a target, too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Describing it would just have to do for the moment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They spent the next almost-hour walking down toward those streets, which were still nearly completely deserted. The sun was still high in the sky and Jack was suddenly very glad that Ewan had shown her how to wind a proper Amazigh <i>tagelmust<\/i> around her head; it kept the glare away from her eyes in addition to partly obscuring her face.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYou make a surprisingly convincing boy,\u201d Ewan told her as they walked.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cReally? How come?\u201d Her hair under the <i>tagelmust<\/i> was still short, of course, just starting to grow longer than was considered a \u201cboy cut\u201d back on Deckard\u2019s World.  But other than that, and using bandages to flatten her small breasts against her chest when she had changed, she wasn\u2019t sure what he found so convincing besides dressing in his years-old castoffs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI think it\u2019s the way you walk. You don\u2019t normally walk like this. It\u2019s\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cOh! Yeah, I watched the way Riddick walked.\u201d She hadn\u2019t been consciously aware that she had slipped into her Riddick imitation, but she realized in that moment that she\u2019d also dropped her speaking voice by a full octave.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The only one she hadn\u2019t been able to fool with the imitation, she thought ruefully, had been Riddick himself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYou really ran with him, didn\u2019t you? Not as his hostage.\u201d There was no judgment in Ewan\u2019s voice, just curiosity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI was never his hostage. He was\u2026 nothing like you\u2019d expect.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWhat <i>was<\/i> he like?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That was, Jack thought, a good question. She remembered him luring Fry closer and closer to him, his voice a teasing purr, before lunging up out of his seat, held back just inches from her by his chains, to see if she would flinch. Testing her mettle, Jack thought, testing whether she\u2019d be brave enough to face down the <i>real<\/i> threats on that treacherous, desolate world. She remembered him telling Shazza how they could use the skiff, which the New Australian woman had noted wasn\u2019t a Star Jumper, to flag down the next transport that came through that node in the shipping lanes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Stick out a thumb. Bound to get picked up\u2026<\/i> Somehow, she\u2019d skipped telling Kyra that part of the story. She\u2019d have to fill that in for her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cPretty self-contained, I guess,\u201d she told Ewan. \u201cI was trying to learn how to walk and talk like a guy well enough to fool everybody, so I followed him around for a while, figuring out how to act like <i>him<\/i>. He spent that whole time exploring the mining settlement, looking at everything the people\u2019d left behind when they disappeared. He knew they\u2019d all been killed, and told us so, way before we found any bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cSo he was honest with you. Volunteered information.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cYeah. Johns\u2014the merc who\u2019d captured him\u2014was lying to all of us the whole time about a <i>lot<\/i> of things, but Riddick never lied to us. Not once.\u201d She found herself chuckling suddenly. \u201cThe only thing I know for a fact he hid from anybody is that I was a girl and he <i>knew<\/i> it the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">But, she realized, he\u2019d tried to forewarn <i>her.<\/i> After Johns had tried to play his little master-and-dog game with Riddick\u2014\u201cYou\u2019re missing the party! C\u2019mon, boy!\u201d\u2014and walked away, Riddick had repeated the same words to <i>her<\/i>\u2026 minus the <i>\u201cboy.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI can see that. I looked up his record.\u201d Ewan smiled at her expression of surprise. \u201cHe appears to have a\u2026 <i>code,<\/i> I guess, for lack of a better word. Maybe even an <i>ethic.<\/i> There\u2019s a pattern in who he does and doesn\u2019t kill. And aside from some insinuations your former hospital has attempted to make about his treatment of <i>you\u2014<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAll of which are horse shit,\u201d Jack found herself snapping.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">That seemed to amuse Ewan. He grinned and shook his head. \u201cAside from them, all the evidence points to the conclusion that you were probably quite safe around him. Given what I\u2019ve read in the declassified portions of the <i>Hunter-Gratzner<\/i> crash story, you may have even been far safer <i>with<\/i> him than away from him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cHe\u2019s the reason I\u2019m still alive,\u201d Jack told him. \u201cHe saved my life several times. Even times when he could\u2019ve just let me die and nobody would\u2019ve blamed him, and things probably would\u2019ve been easier for him if he had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThen he truly was a friend,\u201d Ewan agreed, before changing the subject. \u201cHow\u2019s the water level on the other side?\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cDropping, but the lower level of the hospital will still be flooded. We\u2019ve got time to get into position.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">In the meantime, they took the comm to its designated location, a private garden grotto that Cedric had booked for the family\u2019s exclusive use for the next two days. Jack tethered its bag to a bench in the garden, making sure that the tether was tightly knotted and straddled universes as well. If they needed to take the comm to another location and still keep it protected from Elsewhere\u2019s waters, they could do so. There were no cameras in the space, hinting at one of the ways the grotto was probably used. No one and nothing would see what happened next.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cIt\u2019s time,\u201d Jack told Ewan, turning to him.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">He took a deep breath, just a tiny hint of nervousness in his eyes. \u201cI\u2019m ready.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">There was sand beneath their feet on the other side; it would be a smooth transition. Jack stepped closer and put her arms around Ewan, stretching her senses to encompass his shape\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014<i>his shell?<\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014and drawing both of them, gently, carefully, into Elsewhere, letting one world fade away and the other take its place. She felt his heart speed up against her ear.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>\u201cBaraka\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Now, for the first time, Ewan would be able to see the things she had described to him, the world on the other side of a threshold few could cross. He would see the rolling surf, still retreating from the sloping plain of sand and rock that corresponded with New Marrakesh\u2019s downtown. Off to the northwest, the sun glittered on the hull of the <i>Scarlet Matador<\/i>, marking the location of the devastated spaceport. Nearer\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She took her binoculars out of her pack and focused on the area where the hospital building, in U1, was visible to her as a faint outline. Something had begun emerging from the water. This was going to be creepy as <i>fuck.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cC\u2019mon,\u201d she said to Ewan, hoping he wouldn\u2019t be too horrified when he saw it, too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">They had almost reached the morgue when he gasped beside her, an appalled look on his face.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The bodies floated in the air, at different levels above the glistening sand, all eighteen of them. Five appeared to be hovering vertically, toes just inches above the beach, while the rest were perfectly horizontal. Back in U1, she knew, they were resting in cold lockers in multiple rooms, draped by shrouds and tagged with identifying information. On the Elsewhere side, they were undraped, untagged\u2026 and nauseatingly putrescent. Bone showed in many places where passing fish had nibbled during high tides. Her cousin Joey would have <i>loved<\/i> a horror vid with visuals like these\u2026 as long as he couldn\u2019t <i>smell<\/i> them. Jack suddenly wished she\u2019d thought to bring nose plugs. Next to her, Ewan made a retching sound.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cWhat the hell <i>happened<\/i> to them?\u201d he asked. \u201cThey\u2019re supposed to be refrigerated!\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThey are,\u201d Jack told him. \u201cOn the U1 side. Over here, they\u2019ve been exposed to the elements for the last two and a half weeks.\u201d She shifted her vision enough to see what they looked like in U1. The walls of the cold lockers blocked her view of most of them, but five were hanging from hooks in a separate room, shrouded in plastic wrappings. \u201cThey look frozen over there. I think someone\u2019s been trying to stop the decay with no idea why it\u2019s progressing so quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She hadn\u2019t expected it to be this bad, but she really should have. Fortunately, the thought of touching corpses had already been bad enough; she\u2019d brought two pairs of thick rubber gloves, one sized for her hands and one for Ewan\u2019s, with her. Ewan, she knew, was carrying eighteen proper white funeral shrouds in his pack. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Regardless of his beliefs or hers, he\u2019d told her, the bodies should be treated in a way that would respect their lost owners, whatever their creeds had been. He\u2019d acquired a clandestine copy of the <i>Matador<\/i>\u2019s passenger manifest and had the religious affiliations of every passenger who had drowned. He knew which prayers to say over them if they were Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish, or even, in two cases, Buddhist or Hindu, and intended to send them on their way properly upon the shores of Elsewhere, once Jack stole all of them from the morgue of U1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>So let\u2019s do it already\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">One by one, trying to breathe through her mouth against the terrible stench of decay, Jack reached out and put her gloved hands on each body, telling Ewan the name on its tag before pulling it the rest of the way into Elsewhere. The moment it was released from U1\u2019s hold, it fell to the wet sand, now half-frozen and\u2014mostly\u2014odorless. The flesh cratered in places where parts that had remained whole in U1 sagged over the gruesome cavities that had developed in Elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I did wonder what would happen if a shark from Elsewhere tried to make a meal out of me\u2026<\/i> The answer was far more disturbing than she\u2019d expected.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It took an hour. An hour she knew she would desperately want to forget forever. She would, she thought, probably have nightmares about this day for a long time. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Jack did the hanging bodies last, since their disappearances would be the easiest to notice. The last of <i>them<\/i> tried to topple onto her, which gave her a few really bad moments while Ewan held her, murmuring soothingly and stroking her shuddering back.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">He had followed her as she worked, draping each body in a shroud, arranging them to face eastward if they were Muslim, and speaking prayers in different languages\u2014Arabic, Latin, English, Hebrew, Khmer, or Hindi\u2014over them depending on which name she had given him for each one. As he was finishing with the last ones, Jack walked over to a strange multicolored cube that hovered, untethered, in part of the space that the morgue occupied in U1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Their personal effects,<\/i> she realized as she got closer. <i>All stuffed into a compartment on the other side\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Those definitely had to go, too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">A moment later, all of those items had fallen and scattered onto the beach of Elsewhere. Clothes, that had probably been stuffed in now-empty plastic pouches in U1; jewelry; wallets and purses; corroded comms and chronos; all the little things that eighteen people had had with them first in cryo and then in the hospital, before they had been betrayed by the Quintessa Corporation and left to die horrible deaths\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Quintessa can\u2019t have <b>any<\/b> of it.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Had any other artifacts been left behind? There didn\u2019t appear to be anything else straddling \u2019verses in or around the hospital\u2026 aside from a pair of expensive-looking earrings and a large wad of cash she spotted and recovered from within an orderly\u2019s nearby locker and dropped onto the sand. She pulled out her binoculars from her pack again, training them on the spaces occupied by first Mansour Plaza and then Othman Tower. Nothing appeared to float incongruously in those spaces. She would take her higher-powered telescope to the roof of the Meziane house to verify it when they got back, but she was almost certain she\u2019d gotten everything. The Quintessa Corporation wouldn\u2019t be able to analyze any of the physical objects that had been straddling universes. Not now.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Except, she suddenly realized, her heart sinking, one <i>very large<\/i> one\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cFuck. I have to move the <i>Scarlet Matador<\/i>,\u201d she groaned.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was nearly a two-hour walk across the drying sand.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cAre you <i>up<\/i> for this?\u201d Ewan asked as they hiked closer and closer. \u201cTakama and Dihya have both talked about how you were almost completely wiped out from transitioning those two shuttles back and forth. I don\u2019t want you getting hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI transitioned them really fast,\u201d Jack said, aware that she was whistling in the dark. \u201cI\u2019m going to do this one slowly. Pull it over here a little at a time. It\u2019ll help that it\u2019s already halfway <i>in<\/i> Elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cIt\u2019s <i>huge<\/i>, though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cI can\u2019t leave it connected to U1. Not now. You\u2019re sure the cryo-tubes were returned to it?\u201d Tracking down nearly two hundred cryo-tubes felt like it would be a far more daunting task than moving the ship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThat\u2019s what the reports said,\u201d he told her. \u201cOnce the tubes were vacated, they were returned to the ship to be quarantined with the rest of its contents. The logs said nobody has entered since. I\u2019m sure the Quintessa Corporation is planning on confiscating it next, though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cBringing me back to my point,\u201d Jack told him. \u201cI\u2026 this is crazy, and I could be dead wrong about it, but I don\u2019t think they <i>know<\/i> what\u2019s in U322A. Your brother, when he was talking to the flight crew back when they first called him\u2026 he said that this was the first Level Five Incident on that Star Jump. If we cut them off from accessing anything directly connected to Elsewhere, I don\u2019t think they can get to it on their own. Not without actually using an Isomorph Drive to open a new path.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of supposition,\u201d Ewan observed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cMaybe. But at least I\u2019m not gonna make it any easier for them.\u201d She wished she could make it not merely difficult but painful for them, after all the pain they\u2019d inflicted on others.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cJust promise me that you\u2019ll stop if it gets to be too much.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She promised, but she wasn\u2019t sure he believed her. She wasn\u2019t sure <i>she<\/i> believed her, either.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She paused, briefly, to check whether her Ghost Codes still worked with the ship. Once her tablet confirmed the connection\u2014and she had to briefly make it straddle \u2019verses to get the connection strong enough\u2014she sent a few instructions to the ship before they entered the range of its now-deactivated exterior sensors. None of the cameras that could still see into Elsewhere would record anything unusual, and any cameras covering the ship in U1 were irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">It was just a few hours over eleven Tangiers Prime days since the <i>Scarlet Matador<\/i> had touched down. On the U1 side, it looked almost pristine\u2026 at least, on the side facing away from the shuttle explosion. In Elsewhere, seaweed coated many of its surfaces and barnacles had begun to grow. In its shade, creatures that looked eerily like Cambrian fossils Jack had once seen in a museum rested and trundled through the sand. Some of the metal surfaces were beginning to corrode. In a few years, Jack thought, the <i>Matador<\/i> would just be a strange reef on the beach of Elsewhere, sinking into the sand more each time the tide came through until it settled against rock\u2026 once it was released from the anchors and platforms of U1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She put her hand on one of the struts and closed her eyes, feeling it, feeling its existence in both universes, feeling its shape\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014<i>its shell, this is only an empty shell, a shape is so much more\u2026<\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014and sensing its boundaries.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She began to call it, and everything within it, home.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Slowly, little by little, she broke down the hold that U1 had on the massive spacecraft, aware that Ewan had moved to stand close behind her at some point, chest against her back, and had his arm around her waist. Bit by bit, she pulled it more and more of the way into Elsewhere, letting it begin to fade from the other \u2019verse altogether.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Except for one part. One part refused to budge, refused to let go of the other \u2019verse. One part was obstinately staying anchored.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She opened her eyes, focusing on what was happening in U1, aware that she was leaning back against Ewan and he had both arms around her now.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Alarms were sounding in that other world. People in ground crew gear and security uniforms were running toward the landing site, pointing and shouting. She could see a figure in flowing white garments racing with them\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The envoy. And around her, Jack could see, there was darkness. Some terrible darkness that inhabited the same space the envoy did, hidden by her white garments and the fact that human eyes weren\u2019t made to see such hideous abysses in the fabric of reality\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The envoy was staring at one part of the <i>Matador<\/i> as she ran.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The rest, Jack felt as a small shockwave passed through her, had just finished crossing the threshold into Elsewhere. Back in U1, the anchors dropped to the ground with loud metallic crashes. Only one thing remained suspended in that space: a smallish metal box.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">A box that refused to relinquish its grip on U1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Her breath quickening, Jack focused all of her attention and energy on it, willing it to cross from U1 to Elsewhere\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014<i>Is it already <b>in<\/b> Elsewhere?<\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u2014and vanish from the other world. It resisted, feeling inert and far too dense, too complex, for something as simple as a <i>cube\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She shifted her focus, pushing at it, willing it to relinquish its connection to U1, no matter where else it was\u2026 <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Little larva, what are you doing?<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">The envoy was hurrying toward it, one hand outstretched.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>I gotta get it out of there before she gets to it\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>No!<\/i> they cried out in her head. <i>You are not ready!<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She could feel it slowly, grudgingly beginning to shift, its ties to U1 almost imperceptibly thinning.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\"><i>Little larva, you must stop! Stop now!<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">\u201cTislilel, what in God\u2019s name\u2026?\u201d Ewan gasped at the same moment, echoing <i>them<\/i> without knowing. \u201c<i>Stop!<\/i> Stop <i>now!<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">She couldn\u2019t. Not yet. She was almost there. She couldn\u2019t let the envoy reach it\u2026 She almost had it\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">With a final, aggressive thrust, Jack shoved hard at the box with her mind and felt something snap, lashing back at her and into her. Blinding pain bloomed in her head.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">In U1, the box vanished, startling a horrified scream out of the envoy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-indent:1em;margin-bottom: 0\">Darkness engulfed Jack.<\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: The Changeling Game (Formerly Identity Theft) Author: Ardath Rekha Chapter: 37\/? Fandom: TCOR AU Rating: M Warnings: Adult themes, controversial subject matter, harsh language, body horror C","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"\u201cThe Changeling Game\u201d 37: \u201cFolding a Dali Cross\u201d","bgseo_description":"Even the most carefully planned heist will have something unexpected happen.","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fan-fiction","category-the-changeling-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ardath-rekha.com\/wips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}