Chapter 20

Amy stood back and looked at the whiteboard covering half of the wall in her small home office. Her neat handwriting nearly filled it, but she could easily trace the relationships that were most interesting to her story. Devon McAlester’s holding company had fingers in plenty of defense-related pots, not just the three companies he held board seats on. She tapped the hard plastic end of her marker against her teeth.

The three major corporations provided information systems to the DoD. One focused on shipboard and aviation platforms. One held the high-ground, building space-based systems for the military. The last was almost a pure infrastructure company, building high security data centers and networks. These were the main tier of companies.

The next level, with lesser degrees of ownership, included software companies, consultancy firms, and some security operators. The final group were the privately held firms that seemed to have been purchased by the holding company or created by them. Overall, it painted a picture of someone building a private intelligence operation if they were colluding together.

“What would people think if they saw this?” She wondered aloud.

Of course, congress would call for hearings if she could create a buzz.

And there it would die, she realized.

The intelligence committees in congress were peopled or controlled by the politicians who had taken bribes or been involved with the trafficking ring she had hints of. If McAlester knew of their secrets, and she was certain he did, they would sweep his corporate holdings under the rug and shield him from any exposure.

“Fuck,” she muttered without emotion. Another obstacle to exposing them.

Pamela looked at the one-way mirror lining the interview room she was in. Her reflection was haggard. She had been here much too long after letting their suspects disappear. She replayed the moment repeatedly, struggling to explain how they could vanish so completely.

The door opened silently, and Deputy Director Sinclair entered. Is neat navy suit contrasted with the rumpled clothes Pamela wore, wrinkled and soiled from her active chase of the suspect. Sinclair sat as the door was closed from the outside by another agent.

“So, they got away,” Sinclair said.

“Yes, sir. I don’t know how or what they did to us to slip through our fingers. I’ve never seen or heard of people vanishing into thin air, but I swear that is what they did.”

Sinclair nodded. “We have a partial image from the ATM and security footage from the Rayburn Building. Both show you getting within arm’s reach, only for them to disappear completely.”

Pamela felt a wash of relief flood over her. She had not imagined the escape.

“Did you continue to hear their footsteps?” Sinclair asked.

She thought before answering. No other interrogator had asked about the sounds. “No, sir. Visually, they seemed to fade to nothingness, but the sounds of their feet, the heaving of their breath, those just stopped.”

Sinclair leaned back and sighed.

“For now, we must assume they have gone to ground and evaded us. We don’t know how, so we need to figure out what they were doing at the Capitol. Who were they meeting with or trying to see? Why did they risk such exposure? They are even more of a threat if they can disappear so easily. We need them and the tech they used to escape. Who knows what havoc they could create in our government. I still want them found. Is that clear?”

Pamela nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he said as he stood. “Go home and come in fresh in the morning. Your team needs to see what congressmen or senators they might have approached. Go back through all the footage and see what they saw and did from the moment they came into the Capitol area. Once you have that, I’ll have some additional intel for you to work with. This chase has had a big setback, but it is not done.”

Pamela rose, thankful for the second chance, bur realized she would not be given a third opportunity. She would figure this mystery out.

Finn tumbled through coruscating darkness, falling without a sense of fear. His hand clasped Elara’s. Her warm grasp the only sense of feeling. He did not feel wind on his face or in his hair. He did not hear air rushing past. It was as if he were flying through the cascading flashes of light and dark in a dream. Time had no meaning. The sensation was infinite, yet he thought it could only last an instant as well. He concentrated on the sensation of touch on his arm. Was it Elara, or was it a dream? What had happened?

One moment they were being chased, their pursuit closing in on them as he struggled to think of a way for them to bolt free. His sense of desperation had been rising. They had planted the virus in at least some members of congress. He trusted it would propagate to the people he needed to trap. Then they had been exposed.

He had seen the bulky radio and knew why they had no warning. The agency was no longer using their phones for routine work. If they had, he would have known they were closing in on him and Elara.

He had hoped when Elara managed to disguise his look. It was different from her prior weaving of moonbeams on herself. He did not know what was different about it, but instinctively understood it was not the conjuration of real clothes, as she did for herself.

The flashes of light seemed to become less frequent. He wondered if he was dying, his brain shutting down due to lack of oxygen in this strange world he was falling through.

Abruptly, things stopped. He realized his eyes were closed. He opened them to see blue sky above. It felt like he was lying on cool grass, with a hint of moisture seeping into his clothes but when he turned his head, the grass was gray rather than green. He rolled his head to his left, seeing Elara lying next to him, her own eyes still closed.

She looked like herself once again, with silver hair and her beautiful face. She was still garbed in black leggings and the loose top over what he knew to be a light green t-shirt.

Finn sat up, feeling his stomach tighten as if he had done his hundred sit-ups just before rising. He was in jeans. His clothes were the same as he had worn out of their apartment earlier. His computer bag was still slung over his shoulder and his phone was clutched in his right hand. He shook his head.

They were on the side of a low hill covered with the strange gray grass. A few high, wispy clouds were visible, but the sun was behind them, either rising or setting. He could not tell which. There was a brook a hundred yards down the hill. On its opposite bank, strange, twisted trees rose. Their bark was brown, but their leaves were steel colored. It was obvious he was nowhere on the Earth he knew of.

Elara let out a small moan beside him, then opened her eyes.

“Thank the goddess,” she muttered as she sat up.

“What do you mean?” Finn asked.

“We’ve come to Elysia,” she said. “I stopped resisting the magic.”

Finn shook his head. His first thought was “crazy is back”, but he knew that was not fair. They were in a different world. Or they were drugged and in a shared hallucination.

“Is this the Enchanted Forest or the Ethereal Plains you’ve mentioned?” He asked.

Elara shook her head as she sat up to look around.

“No. I think this is the In-Between; the Nexus that connects realms,” she said.

“You haven’t mentioned that before,” Finn replied. “I thought you were from one world.”

Elara pulled her knees to her chest, still looking left and right as if following the stream with her eyes. “No, each world is distinct. The In-Between connects them through magic. I’ve only visited the main portals here, assuming that is where we’ve landed. Better here than the Realm of Shadows.”

“But you weren’t sent from here, if I followed your story,” Finn said, speaking to keep his fear at bay. He suddenly realized he would rather be in a jail cell in his world than floundering here in this strange wilderness.

“I thought I was sent from the Realm of Shadows, the world surrounding the Chaos Sea, but any sending from Elysia would need the power of chaos as well as order and would channel through the In-Between. It is the gateway to our worlds. It’s how I traveled to start my trials. I think we landed here instead of where the spell wanted us. I prayed I could deflect us from that realm somehow.”

Finn struggled to understand. He knew the words she was speaking but could not form the meaning into something that met his understanding. Worlds were planets. How could multiple planets we connected through this strange place?

Elara stood while he sat breathing. “Come on, we need to figure out which way that stream flows. The area of the main portals has a larger river nearby. I just hope this flows into that river, or that we can find a higher hill to get our bearings.”

Finn stood, reminding himself of the times Elara had trusted him to navigate his world despite her unknowing nature. It felt like time to return a little of her trust.

Malachi’s eyes snapped open. He straightened in his chair, forgetting the swirling sensations of chaos flowing over and through his consciousness. It felt like he needed to gasp for breath. A heaviness tugged his heart downward, making a pit in his stomach as sensation flowed from the very ether around him, as if his soul was riding the ripples in a pond disturbed by something dropping from high above. He rode the tumultuous sensations, seeking what had caused the fluctuating waves in the fabric of his world.