19

Dark Passage

Dan had called everyone to assemble them at Andrew's bookshop. Trillion was there as well. Dan had a daring plan. And yet, his teammates had been unearthing their own discoveries to be explored. Jack mentioned that he'd found where the red boxes the redshifters used to entice and control people were stored. Mary had found previous portals they had opened and used. They would make time to explore these things later. Right now they were on the warpath and this time they all felt stronger. Dan could feel it around him, the energy around them was fed by fear, excitement and determination. Trillion showed them a new small technique for controlling their powers by working together. It involved touch anddeep concentration while working. They had not quite gotten the hang of it but Trillion had promised that after his business he would be training all of them regularly to use their abilities to the full.
"The time is close, it is the darkest hour. I can feel it. Good luck to all of you," he said."I'll see you soon."
"Good luck to you too, Trillion, and thanks you for bringing us together," said Dan.
"Where are you going?" Asked Mary.
"There is a convening of rebels at a secret location. preparation for the war that is coming."
They watched with trepidation as their mentor and protector left. Dan felt a chill run up his spine. Things now rested upon his shoulders to lead them. 
They were going to one of the major portals opened by the redshifters. It was revealed to him by the old blueshifter who went by the name Leonard, who had since lost his abilites through some tough, pitched battles. He'd met with the old man several times to talk and learn secrets since his return to the waterfront. 
Leonard once had powerful abilities when he was young, a stout fighter against the redshifters and as a result he'd sustained massive injuries and lost much of his powers because of this. He'd had reconstructive surgery and even had his fingerprints removed. He'd moved from state to state, even livingout of the country for a while to hide from the redshifters after dealing them a terrible blow as a resistance fighter in WWII. According to Leonard they had engineered the second world war just as they had engineered the first one.
He'd gone into hiding and had remained in hiding for the past twenty years. Leonard told him to come and bring his team. he a gift for all of them. "A passing on of the baton, so to speak, son," he'd said. Though he no longer fought, he remained vigilant and close to the fight,  observing while hidden.
When they'd reached Taylor Street and Third Avenue downtown Dan led them to a very old brick apartment building. It was four stories high made of brick and stone. it was a vestige of Portlan'd early days. but it was also rundown and in serious need of repairs. In fact form the outside it contrasted so much with much fo the rest of the buildings on the street that it looekd condemned. The other two gave him doubtful looks as if they had thought he led them to the wrong place.
"This is it, guys. trust me," he said. It was  a lock-out with an old telephone style call box. Dan pushed the numbers: 101.
"Looks like it came rihgt out of a 19th century dunghole." murmurred Mary, wrinkling her nose.
"Come on,  guys. Don't tell me a creaky old building is going to scare you off." The answer box crackled and buzzed with static.
"Yes?" Came a voice. 
"It's Dan." After some seconds that felt like minutes they were buzzed inside. Dan knew that though they couldn't be seen, there were cameras stationed at the front doorstep. There was a watcher who knew everyone coming and going from the building and fed this information to Leonard when it was necessary for him to know. The hallway was dark, and smelled of caked grease, years of tobacco smoke, urine, mice and mold. It had the heavy dank scent  that had become part of the  archetecture of the building itself. It was doubtful it would  ever come out. Dan marveled that it still stood where it did. They followed Dan all the way down the long hallway. At the eastern end, the opposite side, there was a door leading to the basement of the building and to the other side seven steps down. Here, there was one apartment unit with a red door. On the door it said: 101.
"Mr. Bing, he calls himself," whispered Dan. They heard a small dog bark briefly behind the door as he knocked softly. Then it was quiet for some minutes. So quiet that the entire building seemed abandoned. As if to dispute his very thoughts, a door opened and shut, the floorboards of the second floor  creaked and whined as they heard someone make their way down the hall above them. Finally the door to unit 101 opened. There was an old man with a balding head, thick white tufts of hair bristling out on both sides, no mustache and a bit of a beard. Dan thought he looked rather comical without his plaid hat.
"Come in. I sense your friends are much like you, Dan. I no longer possess them but I can still sense it in others. Beneficent and malicious." He guided them inside and locked the door.
The apartment was very small, spare and rundown but swept clean and the air had a slight fresh pine smell. The living space and the kitchen were essentially one room. The walls were cracked as if disheveled in an earthquake. The furniture was clean but threadbare. The little dog, a black Scottish terrier, sniffed at Mary and Jack, ignoring Dan, and satisfied that neither of them were a danger to him or his master, went to his little basket and tufted down the blankets. After having finally arranging them how he wanted, he plopped down and promptly dozed off.
"You said you had something important to show us."
"Right," said the old man.
"Sit down and relax at the table, if you want. Want some tea?" He asked. 
"No coffee?"Asked Jack. mary frowned at Jack.
"Sorry, kid. Coffee gives me the jitters." They all shook their heads. 
"Then I'll be right back." The man disappeared from the living room towards a closet door. Mary sat down at the little wooden table first. One of the legs was held up by sevreal folded newspapers.  A daddy-long-legs skittered across the kitchen floor. She folded her hands together looking about the place. she carefully placed her hands on the table and closed ehr eyes. Jack leaned agianst the wall and Dan sat down across from Mary. He reached out his hand to her and then to Jack. They all touched hands as they had been taught by Trillion; tapping into each other's powers , and in Mary's case, fleeting thoughts and feelings. It seemed to Dan that they could almost reach that pinnacle of zen where everything was warm light and energy flowing from and through each of them, but they needed a lot of practice so that this particular technique, which could be extremely powerful, could go smoothly. They had to work hard to tap into the weakest level of ability in each of them. Dan was looking forward to those lessons from Trillion. The man finally came back with a large cloth sack and  carefully placeed it on the table.
"These here are what I told you about," He nodded to Dan. Then he looked steadily at the other two. 
"These are special obects found near wormholes or were attached in some way to wormholes. Some objects such as these actually come from other places in the universe and have made their way to this world through. The history of those weird and wonderful objects remains unexplained. I have none of those. Mine are more mundane. This is a secret world of collectors and practitioners of enhanced abilites. Those of us who know of the portals often hunt for and find these things to collect and in some instances, trade. In other instances, people are killed for them. It's a dangerous business to possess them. These objects can even give one who is not gifted with abilites, power. They have residual energy in them if you know how to wield them, know their history when it comes to energy fluctuaions. What I have is only a mere fraction of what's out there. If the wrong person gets ahold of them, it can spell trouble."
"Objects empowered by coming through or being attached to wormholes and the energy fluctuations surrounding them?" Said Mary in hushed tones. Leonard nodded.
" People kill for them. This is an obscure, cult-like group. To wield them is dangerous for it is Nature you are dealing with. As unpredictable and controllable as the weather. Use them carefully."
"What makes them special besides that?" Asked Jack  The man opened the bag and poured its contents out and spread them about.
"On their own, unless they are truly alien artifacts, some are, they're noting special at all. It could be a pen, a cellphone, a Swiss army knife, a toaster a doll or a keychain. Anything mundane, to be honest. The proximity to these special alien made wormholes where they have opened up doorways and have affected the surroundings is what makes them special and powerful. They are imbued with cosmic energy. Take this knife, for example. When I was young I had the ability to  levitate myself or other objects around me. If you know how to use that energy it can enhance your powers,  whatever they may be."
"What a find!" Exclaimed Jack. Dan found the very idea of alien-made artifacts finding their way to Earth's black markets tantalizing. he was sure Jack did too. Jack was staring intently at Leonard, his eyes glittering with surprise. The old man sat down.
"Of course, the most powerful among the adepts, human or alien, can use the touch of other living beings as a way of extending their own abilities but that takes some time to hone. I saw you guys at the begiinnings of it, just now. It's good to see young people carrying on this fight. I  was robbed of my powers," he said sadly. The little dog gruffed softly behind them and shifted around in his bed. His ears were laying back on his head, however.
"Sammi's telling us there's something afoot."
"I would think it's very useful to have a pet around. Sort of like a familiar but without magic," said Mary. The man nodded. He motioned toward the objects spread out on the table.
"Please, each of you take one and I'll show you the passageway to the wormhole hidden beneath this place." Jack  took the knife, Mary the keychain and Dan took the pen. 
"Are we ready to go?" Dan asked his teammates.
"Yes," they both replied. The man grunted in approval, went to his call box and punched a few numbers, then listened as it rang. The bell sounded mor elike a loud, drunk buzzing bee.
"Adepts are coming down the doorway, Jackson."
"Right," said a voice through the speaker. leonard turned to Dan.
"Once last thing. You may think that Shafer Point is where you should be looking, but the real prize is right underneath this building. Good luck to you."
Dan led his team down through the basement door where they found another old man, a black man, sitting in a chair by the wall. He nodded to them and they nodded back. Dan hadn't seen him here before. It seemed as if he'd appeared out of the woodwork. Dan could feel the danger boiling and cooking around him in the air, unseen but felt he was sure by the others too. He could taste its bitter tang and it excited him. This was a hidden place the redshifters had built and had once moved in and out of frequently.
"You're the ones?" He asked. Dan nodded. The man lifted an arm. The basement passageway was narrow and very dim and as it continued to slope downward. What lay beyond was the unknown. When the man lifted and pointed his arm toward the direction they should go, the passagway seemed to suddenly grow longer, stretching out into darkness.
"Down there lies the doorway," the man said gravely.
"And how do we get back?" Asked Jack.
"The same way you came," said the man.
"Thank you," said Dan "Come on, guys. We've got work to do."

. . .

They had reached the edge, a vast, swirling of energy where they could see shifting views of different places in space, as if they were looking into a moving window of the cosmos. Its beauty was terrifying. This was far bigger and more powerful than the one he had encountered in the railyard. They felt the boiling energy shifting the air currents and the fabric bits of time around them. An abyss into space. Dan turned and looked at them and held his object tightly in hand. The other two did the same.  And then they held hands and walked through the portal.

18

Shrimpy

He turned over in bed, pressing down into his blankets. His body felt as if it were ablaze, nerves endings sensitive to the touch. He couldn't figure out if he'd just awakened from a sex-fueled dream or if he were on some powerful drug. Jack turned and glanced through the window, squinting his eyes. The sky was overcast and air blowing through the bedroom window was cool for a change. It had been as hot as an oven for the past week and once his place got hot, it stayed hot. Jack now had a new roommate. It took him a while to get used to the soft gurgling sounds the creature made in its container. It was still so odd, as if he hadn't awakened from a disturbing dream yet. It bobbed up and down slowly, twitching briefly, gurgled and then went back to silence. It had only been here since last night. Jack waited, lying in bed and looking up at the wall, expecting any minute for the police to show up at his place. He could only guess the little shrimp-shaped creature was asleep. Heaving a sigh, Jack climbed out of bed and headed towards the bathroom and into the shower. The hot water calmed his nerves as it splashed onto his body. Tiny rivulets streamed down his hair, arms, back and legs, caressing him like gentle hands. He closed his eyes and took long, deep breaths, almost drinking the steamy air around him, then soaped up and washed down. In the next room he could hear the cell phone ringing. He turned off the water, climbed out of the shower and went to the bedroom to get dressed. As he walked passed the wall mirror, he noticed something. Several objects were levitating in the air. As soon as he'd noticed this they crashed to the ground. He felt a power go out of his body at this raw sensation. 
The gnawing sensation of nervousness and anxiety settled on him again. It was something that had seemed to grow within him in the past few days. A new ability or perhaps his own ability augmented by something? Stress? The change in circumstances? Well, he had that in spades. Jack toweled off and put on a t-shirt and some clean underwear. He listened out for the little fetus, glancing at it. It still seemed to be in a resting state. So he went into the kitchen and fixed breakfast and sat down at the tiny kitchen table and wolfed down his eggs, bacon and burnt toast. Just in time for his new house guest to wake up. Jack heard loud gurgling noises coming from his bedroom, signaling to him that the thing was doing more than turning around in its sleep. If it actually slept. he was hoping he'd get some important answers from it. He wondered if he should reveal its presence to the rest of the team. No. He'd wait on that. He wanted to find out for himself what the creature was really about. It was time for twenty questions. Jack entered the room and came and sat in front of the little terrarium-like case.

"So, do you eat anything?"

"Not in the way you do. And at least not now, in this form."
"So how do you maintain yourself?"
"So far, I'm able to exist on a self-contained and self-propagating system of my own matter and this flesh. When I eliminate my bowels and urine I refeed upon it. So far, it is sustainable, if not exactly appetizing."
"Wish I hadn't asked." Jack made a face. "So, what's your name?"

"Before I was imprisoned, I went by the name of Gage," the little fetus turned up to look at him with dark, sclera-less eyes. "Gage is my most recent name or alias."

"How old are you?"

"Old enough to have used more than one name and one lifetime. I've gone through several."

"Well. . . Gage, I've got to figure out what to do with  you. If you're gonna stay here you'll need to be useful."

"And what sort of work would I be doing?"

"Giving me answers as to why your people are here, what they've done in the past and perhaps what their future tactics will be."

"I'll do my best but I'll need protection."

"You've got it. Now, how long have you been part of this Expansion project, how is the enemy organized and how do I locate them?"

"You're working by yourself? Surely-"

"I'll ask the questions, Shrimpy. Let's start with when you first arrived on Earth." He was going to make this little monster prove its worth or it was going to the bottom of the Colombia Slough.

"I first came here on the Expansion mission as one of several waves of hanyar in the year 1918. It was four years after our so-called new era to be ushered in, when we were supposed to have triumphed over the human population by bringing in the ideas of nation-states and new economic ideas. Things were set in motion that caused the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Hungary's assassination, he and his wife. The hanyar, my species, had engineered this war for so long, for so many years. There were so many things we put in motion, unbeknownst to humans, that led up to it. The culmination was the destruction of the old human order of monarchy. We were sure that if we influenced certain humans to overthrow a governing system that had created an imperfect stability for thousands of years of human rule world-wide they would destroy each other and go down into total ruin and then we could come in and take over quite easily. By the time 1918 came it was clear that the first plan had failed. All of that seeding of dangerous and destructive ideas, the giving of new technological progress and know how and influencing humans to use these new technologies in warfare, and secret politicking in the 19th century, lost. Even when the Romanov family had been assassinated, under hanyar influence, it was still lost. Though things had radically changed, humans were still here and obviously not going anywhere. What happened afterward was chaos but human society managed to patch itself together and kept going, limping along. And then we came WWII. That was partly the hanyar's doing and partly through events we unleashed that were not under our control. It became clear after WWI that many hanyar would die here in the quest of the Expansion. It would not be some easy takeover as we were led to believe by the leading lights of hanyar society. When I came it was to be a foot soldier for the cause of taking back Earth. But I was one of a few rebels who, once we had tasted our predecessors' way of life, we didn't want what we saw and experienced destroyed, nor the friends we'd made here."

"You've been here since 1918?"
"Yes."
"Tell me, when you first arrived here, I assume you had a duty or were assigned to do something, to work with - comrades - or something. Are they alive now?"
"Some of them."
"Do you know where they are?" The creature gurgled softly. Jack could only guess that this was in regards to it's being deep in thought.
"I'd left the Expansion behind and was in hiding for so long that I'd lost contact with most of the others. We stay hidden because we are deserters. They hunt us and kill us. I don't know much about my former fellow soldiers anymore. But. . . .the last I knew, one of our cell leaders had been assigned to another task and location. This was many years ago. Back in the 1930s. A location called Telon. We have our own certain names for important locations. Telon is one of the biggest gathering places where the hanyar work. It's in New Mexico. We have another in Chicago, I think, but I'd heard only scant gossip about that one. I don't know its name."
"What are they, exactly?"
"They are bases of operation. The one in New Mexico is in the Jemez mountains."
"Do you guys have a hidden place like this in a vault with a planetary symbol on it?" The creature just looked at him. He couldn't really tell as there was not much expression on its face.
"Vault? I don't know. I've never heard of such a place." Jack didn't know if this was true or a lie but he decided to move on, for now.
"Nevermind, then. Can I assume that your species also had a hand in the 1929 stock market crash and the following Depression?"
"We had a hand in that, yes."
"Telon. How would anyone be able to get inside this base?"
"It's been many years since I saw schematics on the place. There's a specific cave opening that you would use last time I saw it. from a faint memory I can remember this, most of the large bases are connected by one doorway. You would call it a wormhole. it is the most stable wormhole we've ever constructed. It's been in operation since 1918. it connects the large bases scattered around the world. It is highly secured and highly guarded and difficult to enter. I think one of the bases here is connected to it." Now this was information the team could use, if it were true or accurate. Who knew? The fetus might have been telling the truth but since it had been sundered from its contacts for decades, things could have radically changed. But, it was a start. He felt excitement rise in him. Jack sat back, appraising the little fetus with a cool gaze.
"You don't believe me," stated the fetus.
"I don't know yet." He had an idea. "Of all the places in the Pacific Northwest we could find and hit which ones should we go to? And which one is the important base connected to this massive, stable wormhole?"
"There are several small hideouts operating here but the one that I know of connected to the most important bases. it's where you found me. The little house on Ankeny street. Believe it or not. it's different from the others int hat things are stored there, very important things and information. Especially in the basement. There are. . .other places where we have opened doorways and because of stability issues closed those doorways and abandoned them. But they still leave traces that a wormhole was once there." Jack would hire someone to investigate this privately to see if this were true. The fetus gurgled urgently. 
"I realize that the few humans who know about us see us as the enemy. But not all of us are your enemies. Just like not all humans are your allies in this. Some have created a place for themselves in the establishment of the coming New World Order."

"New World Order?"
"Yes. Even in this prison I've seen and heard things no human is suppose to know about. Right before I was caught and imprisoned they set another lofty goal. A final war. I fear they have learned their mistakes and about human adaptability and ingenuity. They won't fail this time. There was a twenty-year time-table last I heard of this new project."
"Which means that it is even closer now. What project is this?"
"Project Destruction. It's a biological weapon. A disease designed to kill only human beings. The code name for this superbug is hyper-pneumonia."
"Lovely." Jack had to use all of his strength not to break his cool exterior. "What happened to your planet? Why come here and take this one?"
"Our planet is not like Earth. It is vast, frigid cold and full of violent storms. It's more like a failed star. It is beautiful. . . but not in the way that Earth is. Our planet is cruel and cold."
"It's a ringed planet." The creature gasped.
"How did you know?"
"That planetary sigil is emblazoned on certain things. I've seen it." There was silence for some minutes.
"Perceptive. We were once you, you know, but we changed ourselves to a type of being with minds, hearts and senses unable to taste, smell and experience the sensations humans have."
'If you've evolved beyond these earthly things why would it matter so much?"
"Because those long lost gifts were encoded within us. We dream them even though we cannot have them as we are. it's a form of torture." Jack thought on this, inclining his head at the fetus. What a pitiable existence. He wanted nothing more than to experience  life in the way he did. He wondered who or what process brought these people to this state. So many questions.
"You don't have to destroy us to get them back."
"I know this. But many of my kind don't see it that way." This creature was put in this awful prison of a half-formed body. And shoved into a creaky old room in a dusty old house. Why would it lie?
"Why didn't your enemies kill you?" It made a sound that was something of a sigh. rolls of air pockets and bubbles rippled through the fluid and bubbled up to the surface.
"I know something they still find valuable. However, they were planning to get rid of me sooner or later."
"Is there any way I can get you out of that state you're in?" The thing made a mournful sound that Jack could feel in his belly. Jack heard his phone ring in the other room.
"I don't know," it finally said.
"Look, help me save my kind, Shrimpy, and I'll do my damndest to help you."
"I thank you to the very bottom of my quantum soul and as I've said before, I want to help you. But actually, my name is Gage."