No Rest For The Wicked
An Astra Cosmic Tale
By Nathalie June Hawthorne Hafner
Retired United States General of the Army Karen Reis teleported back to her home, deep in the Rocky Mountains. She teleported into her training room, and unbuckled her sword belt and shoulder holsters, and set them on their equipment dummy.
She teleported to her washing machine, and took her clothes off and threw them in.
She teleported into the shower, and turned the hot water on all the way. She stood in the stream and scrubbed most of her skin raw, and then let her skin heal before washing her hair.
She turned the water off, and teleported to the nearest towel.
She dried herself off, and teleported to the washing machine again to throw the towel in.
She teleported to her closet, and picked a new wardrobe. Jeans, T-shirt, and a short leather jacket.
She teleported back to her training room, and buckled her shoulder holsters back on.
She teleported to her kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of her fridge.
She teleported to her bedroom, and grabbed her sunhat and sunglasses from her bed stand.
She teleported to Venice Beach.
It was early morning there. She sat in her usual spot, a bench at the southern edge of the beach. She watched the waves roll in and out, sipping her water, while she waited for her contact to arrive.
“You’re early,” the contact said when he sat down five minutes after Karen arrived.
“I wanted to enjoy the view,” Karen answered.
“That’s your prerogative, I guess.” He handed her a file in a manila envelope. “Usual payment. Delivered upon confirmation of kill.”
“It’ll get done,” Karen said before standing up and teleported back home.
She opened the envelope, and saw the contract. Some Saudi businessman. She didn’t recognise him, so he must have only been a bit player in the Caliphate cold war. Nobody that anyone would miss.
She teleported to her bedroom and left her briefly worn clothes in a folded stack at the foot of her bed. She teleported to her training room, and geared up. Lycra catsuit, body armor, and ballistic face mask. She strapped her sword belt on, and then teleported to Dubai.
She appeared on the beach, facing the city. It was late evening. The contract said that the target lived in the Burj, 150th floor.
She teleported up to the 150th floor. The room she teleported into had 3 armed guards, who scrambled to take out the intruder. She drew her swords and quickly dispatched them, and then pulled a couple of bullets out of herself, putting them in her pocket when she had retrieved them. She noticed that she had bled on the floor, and dragged one of the guardsman's bleeding corpses through her droplets to obscure them. A door burst open, and another 3 guards opened fire.
Karen teleported behind them and took them out. There were even more guards rushing into the room Karen had teleported into. They all raised their guns and took aim, stupidly waiting for Karen to make the first move.
She rolled her eyes, and swiftly drew her dual modified Berettas. Ten targets, 30 rounds. Too easy. They all hit the ground within half a second of one another. She slid the pistols back into their holsters, and then retrieved her bullets from her targets, and put them in her pocket.
She examined the penthouse, now that the guards had been taken care of. Fairly expansive, taking up a slice of two floors of the tower. No sign of the target, but evidence suggested that he had been home very recently. She closely examined the walls...
“Bingo.” She spotted the seam of a secret door, cleverly hidden by some carved paneling. She searched the area for the requisite hidden switch, and found it, hidden in the very same paneling. She pressed it and it revealed the safe room behind it. There was a biometric lock on the thick steel door.
It would be risky teleporting in without having an idea what’s on the other side, but she wasn’t seeing any other way.
She teleported into the small room, and was greeted by her target.
“AHHH!” the target yelled.
She grabbed him by the neck, and opened the safe room from the inside. “Hello.”
“What does the US military want with me?!”
A bit presumptuous, Karen thought, him assuming that the only people who would bother to assassinate him were the USA. “Oh, the military doesn’t want anything to do with you. This is a private hit.” She dragged the target out of the safe room, and to a window.
“What are you doing!?”
She shot the window, facing out towards the sea, and the window shattered. “I’m gonna see how big a mess I can make out of you. See if you turn into world news. Now, if you wouldn’t mind screaming on your way down...”
Karen tossed him out the window, and he obliged. A considerable while later, he hit the ground.
“I’ll give him nine out of ten. Bad form, but he really stuck the landing,” Karen commented as she started unbuckling her ballistic mask.
She teleported up to the peak of the tower, and looked out over the Persian Gulf, just barely being able to see the coast of what used to be Iran. Her facade of sociopathy melted away in the cool breeze.
She sighed, and teleported to her prayer spot, a hundred or so miles north of Baghdad. A cave, in the side of a mountain, in a region that she had been told once had previously been named Eden. She sat, on her simple prayer mat, and prayed. Prayed that the Celestial Warrior was real. Prayed to the god that the Celestial Warrior represented, to send her along, and usher in the Revelation and the Second Coming.
Karen was a very religious woman, but that fact was a sacredly kept secret. Only Alice Prince, whom Karen liked to think of as her closest friend, however distant that may be, knew.
She finished her prayer, and stood up again. She left her secret cave, and looked upon the Holy Land. It was a beautiful sight, marred by the corruption of the Caliphate. The Caliphate that had spawned from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and taken the entire Middle East, while she had been forced by the restrictive United States Government to sit by and let it happen while they tried non-superhuman measures. And now, it was far too late. Far too established to do anything about. A poison, corrupting the cradle of civilization, and the Garden of Eden. It disgusted her.
Alice Prince’s ghost of a sister, her Celestial Warrior, she was the solution to the problem of the Caliphate. The solution that would come from Paradise to smite the false prophets that had established the Islamic State and liberate the Holy Lands... Or, on the off chance that the Jihadists had been in the right all along, lay waste to the nonbelievers who had resisted the rise of the Caliphate.
It was a depressing non-zero possibility.
There was a crack of thunder, and a flash of light in the sky, and an object appeared, falling from it.
“What the hell...” Karen muttered. “And of all the possible places, it had to be my special spot.”
She watched as the object fell to the Earth, and then teleported to the crater it made.
It was a man: tall, brown hair, handsome features, wearing a raggy t-shirt and jeans, and smoking slightly. He was still conscious somehow, and glanced upon Karen with a look of... Familiarity. He laughed. “Imagine, of all the places I could have ended up, I get one with you in it.” He bolted upright, with a speedster’s quickness, and grabbed Karen by the neck.
She teleported behind him and drew her blades. “Alright, asshole. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.”
He looked at his now empty hand, and chuckled. “No, you are not the woman that I know...” He turned and faced Karen. “You have her face and speak with her voice, but you are not her. You are something so very much greater. Forgive my undue aggression.”
“Who the hell are you?”
He smiled. “What a question. Who, the Hell, am I? Who is a person, truly. Who are you? Are you Karen Reis?”
“I am. What does it matter?”
“So brusque, Karen. I might prefer mine after all.”
“Where are you from that there is another me, another Karen Reis?”
“Another world, Karen. Another universe. And if I’m honest, likely a much better, more fun one.”
Alice and Karen had once discussed Multiverse Theory, when they were younger, and closer. The idea that there were other universes where alternate versions of them might live. Alice had ruled out the possibility of travel between them, saying that creating a portal from one to another was impossible by mortal science or magic. So, if this man was speaking the truth, and had come from another universe, then Alice would very much like to speak to him.
“I assume we are on an Earth, of some manner?” he asked.
“We are. You didn’t answer my first question.”
“Is there, in this universe, a man by the name of Jeremy Ryan, that you are aware of?”
“Not on my radar.”
“Well, now I am on your radar. Also, may I ask, is there a woman by the name of Roxanne Fürst?”
“There was a Roxanne Prince, with a mother last named Fürst. But she’s been dead almost...” Karen was reminded how old she was. “Eighty five years, now.” Alice’s dead twin sister. The Celestial Warrior. “A rare, hereditary lung cancer. She was 15.”
“So she did succumb to it, in this world.” Jeremy sighed. “A shame. This world is truly lacking of a Paragon. Where on this Earth are we?”
“The dead center of the Holy Caliphate of Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Arabia. 100 miles north of Baghdad.”
He examined the landscape around them, and the look of familiarity appeared again. “Eden...” Jeremy chuckled. “It was no coincidence that I have landed here, then. Your Blink, can you carry others with you when you use it?”
“I can. I assume you want a ride?”
“If you would be so kind.”
“Got a destination in mind?”
“Anywhere.”
Karen held out her hand, and Jeremy took it. They teleported to her home, and she let his hand go so she could teleport to the bedroom and quickly change back into the civilian outfit she had worn earlier. She left her catsuit, mask, and swords on the floor. She teleported back to Jeremy. “Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
“I know just where to take you.”
They teleported to New York City, right next to Karen’s favourite pizzeria in the world.
“Evening, Tino,” she greeted, pushing through the front door and seeing the proprietor.
“You’ve got a date? I thought you were, uh...” Tino started.
“He’s just a friend, Tino. Wanted to get him one of your world famous slices. Usual for me, and...” she turned to Jeremy.
“As the buddhist said, ‘make me one with everything’,” Jeremy said, looking away from the window, from the massive skyscrapers towering over the skyline. “How tall is that one?” he asked, pointing to the FürstTech building, the tallest tower he could see.
“2500 meters exactly. One of a set of Quadruplets, in New York, Detroit, Danesville, and San Francisco, all sharing the title of tallest in the world.”
He smiled. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. We’ve got one just like it at home. I helped build it, as did our Roxanne Fürst. Your Roxanne died young, so who built this one?”
“Her brother David and her sister Alice built it in her memory. Do they exist in your world?”
Tino handed over their slices, and Karen paid.
“They do. I never met her brother in person, but her sister and I have met many times.”
“From what it sounds like, your version of Roxanne got to grow up. What was she like?”
“She is one of the greatest superhumans my world ever managed to forge from the fires of a bloody Revelation. Boundless strength and tenacity, matched only by myself in those regards, as well as a heart with more than enough room to love every creature on every Earth, and a mind with room to hold all their knowledge.”
“She sounds like a spectacular woman.”
“And you know that more than anybody, in my world. You and her are quite famously an item.”
“Are we? Now I wish I’d gotten to meet ours.”
“I’m sure you would have hit it off.” Jeremy continued watching the tower. “Who runs FürstTech now?” he asked after enjoying his pizza for a while.
“It was passed down to David’s daughter, Aradia, after he died. But, she’s as much a scientist as she is an occultist." Karen watched a news ticker while she spoke, and smiled as it reported that a Saudi businessman had been thrown from his penthouse less than an hour ago. Job well done.
“Aradia, you say?”
“You have one of her, too?”
“Could I meet her?”
“I suppose, if she isn’t busy.” Karen grabbed his hand again and blinked into the science lab lobby on the 300th floor, but not of the tower they had been examining, instead one of its twins, in Danesville, WI. “Is Aradia in?” she asked the secretary.
“Miss Fürst is in her workshop with her sister,” the secretary replied.
“Sister?” Jeremy wondered. “Ashley?”
“What?” Karen replied, perplexed. “No, Thrúd.” She blinked them into the big workshop at the peak of the tower. In the middle of the room were two women, both of them middle aged in appearances. One of them, Aradia, was wearing ornate gold and black robes, holding her hands over the other and muttering incantations. The other, Thrúd, was wearing robes, body armour, and a body suit covering her torso. Her limbs were long ago amputated, replaced with black and gold, but organic-looking, metal.
Without looking, Aradia snapped her finger and flicked her wrist, and a dense patchwork of runes was revealed on the floor. “Do you even understand the great evil you have brought into my sanctum?”
“What?” Karen replied. “Jeremy, what is she...” She looked to him for an answer, and she saw him straining against some invisible force. But, slowly, he was advancing.
“This is the greatest evil to have ever appeared in this realm, and you led him straight to me.”
“You are even more skilled in this universe, Aradia, and even more alike to your namesakes,” Jeremy said. “But you are no Sorcerer Supreme. You do not possess the strength to stop me alone.” As he slowly took steps forward, his eyes shimmered to a deep crimson red.
“I may not, but I know of the one who does.”
“You won't be able to summon her and hold me back at the same time.”
“If I slay you, I will have the requisite time.”
“But then you will release me upon the citizens of Danesville. And you're not that foolish.”
“There are risks and costs for every action. You do not know me well enough to balance mine in my stead.”
“What the FUCK are you guys talking about,” Karen interrupted. “What is going on? Aradia, what are you saying?”
“This ‘Man’ you have brought here is the Greatest Demon in this Multiverse. A wretched soul that craves no more than the sowing of Chaos and the suffering of the innocent. I present to you, Therion, The Beast From The Pit, The Seven Headed Dragon, The King of Demons.” Aradia’s voice boomed as she announced the full title of her guest.
“My reputation precedes me,” Jeremy said.
“Thrúd, take him out.”
“With pleasure,” Thrúd said, her voice heavily synthesized. She dashed forward, drawing a sword from literally nowhere, and holding it out so it would pass through Jeremy’s neck as she flashed past him.
He smiled, and laughed, and then his head slid cleanly to the floor, his body following closely after.
Aradia collapsed to her knees. “Archangel, Paragon of Light! Hear my calling! I am summoning you from beyond the void to return this evil to its proper place. Bless us with your strength, and deliver us from the Beast!”
The room reverberated with the sound of the plea, and a moment later a portal opened in the ceiling. Out of it fell a woman, who landed on one knee and with a fist slammed into the ground. She stood up, quickly, and yelled “Jeremy!” The portal zipped shut barely after Karen had even registered that it was there.
She was wearing a full-body blue super suit with silver streaks of lightning wrapping around it, knee-high black boots, a golden metallic backpack, and huge golden wrist gauntlets, with three, meter-long golden spikes sticking out the elbow of each of them, parallel with the forearm. Her face was slender, her chin was pointed, her cheekbones were sharp, and her eyes were bright green. She was short, at 149cm, and she had paper-white hair, in a short bob. She looked exactly like Alice, but 70 or 80 years younger.
She quickly approached the body of Jeremy, and flicked her wrists. The elbow spikes of the Gauntlets slid forward and became enormous claws, now protruding out the back of the wrist area instead of the elbow, with a loud snikt. She stuck his head with one set of claws, and raised it closer to her face. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, you son of a bitch.” She impaled the torso with the other set of claws, and lifted it up off the ground. “Aradia, take me somewhere far away from people. I can’t risk the fight spilling out into populated areas.”
“I know just the place,” Aradia said.
“He’s already dead!” Karen interrupted. “What is there to fight?!”
Aradia opened a portal to a familiar desert, and the Archangel stepped up to the threshold, the body she carried beginning to writhe. “You don’t want to know.” She stepped through, and the portal closed.
Karen stood there, dumbfounded. Had that truly been Alice’s twin, the Celestial Warrior? She seemed so... Vulgar, human, nothing special. ‘You son of a bitch’? She was certainly no angel. But... Karen couldn’t let her get away. “Where did she go?” She asked Aradia.
“You know very well where,” she answered.
Karen blinked to her home, and hastily buckled her sword belt back on. She had a bad feeling she would need it.
She swallowed, crossed herself, and blinked back to Eden.
She appeared in the middle of the desert, and stumbled from the earth shaking. She slowly spun around, and was met with a terrifying sight.
A massive, red-scaled dragon, 200 meters long from tail to head. And concerning the head, it had seven of them, vaguely feline but lizard at the same time, at the end of seven snake-like necks, all sprouting from its crimson-maned shoulders. Distributed across the heads were ten horns, one on every one but the middle-most, which held the remaining four. It had two enormous wings, large enough to block out the sun, beating down, causing a dust storm with every motion. Its four massive legs, each as thick as a stand of redwoods, stomped on the desert sands, causing earthquakes. It roared with all its mouths, spitting napalm into the air.
Therion. The Beast from the Pit. The Seven Headed Dragon. The King of Demons.
The Celestial Warrior, the Archangel, stood with her back to Karen, bracing herself against the repulsive force of evil exuded by The Beast. “You wanted to know?” She yelled, without taking her eyes off The Beast. “Well, now you know! The greatest evil I have the displeasure of being my immortal enemy. Now get away from here, it isn’t safe for anybody to be within miles of this.”
“I want to help you!” Karen yelled back.
“No! I won't let him get to you again!” the Archangel outburst.
While she did, The Beast surrounded the two of them with its heads. “An inter-cosmic lover’s quarrel,” it growled, in Jeremy’s voice. “Poor little Karen, oblivious to how she makes the Paragon feel, ignorant to what they are in another world. She doesn’t know what she is to you, or what I did to her.”
“JEREMY! This ends now!” The Archangel leapt into the air and impaled one of the heads with her golden claws, and then slid around the neck and landed on The Beast’s shoulders, and started hacking away at it.
“Karen!” The Beast said, fighting off the Archangel with three of its heads, and focusing on Karen with the other four. “Come on, FIGHT ME! Share the glory!”
“Don’t listen to him!” The Archangel rebutted. “You’ll only get yourself killed!”
“I’m not weak!” Karen said in response. “I know how to fight!”
“YES!” The Beast cried. “Prove yourself! Prove that you are an equal of the Paragon! Slay me as she has done hundreds of times!” He wound back the four heads focusing on Karen, and pounced.
As four steam-engine-sized sets of jaws, with razor-sharp teeth the size of tower shields, rapidly approached her, Karen drew her swords. Right before they hit her, she teleported out of their way, they rammed into each other, and she chopped at The Beast’s necks.
The Beast laughed as the fight began in earnest. He darted his heads back and forth at lightning speed, far faster than a creature that large should be able to move. Karen blinked out of the way with ease, coming to and from the immediate area of the fight to recover when she required brief respite. The Archangel opted to tank the attacks, her suit showing the damage and bloodstains this approach incurred. Fortunately she healed at an incredibly rapid pace, even faster than Karen’s own healing factor. What was exceptionally curious was the color of her blood: golden, and glittery.
Karen blinked away from the fight, and watched as The Beast grabbed one of The Archangel’s limbs, and threw her up into the air. She responded by firing a grappling hook, which she had been concealing in her gauntlets, back towards The Beast. It quickly retracted, propelling her claws-first into The Beast’s side.
The Beast recoiled as if he had been hit by a high-power howitzer round when The Archangel slammed into him. The Beast laughed as it stumbled.
Another of Aradia’s portals opened behind Karen. Before she could turn and look, she heard a familiar man’s gruff voice.
“Lo, behold the Angel of the World Tree,” Alice Prince’s father, and Aradia’s grandfather, Robert Prince said.
“And lo, behold her immortal foe,” Aradia said.
“And lo, behold Merlin and the Enchantress...” Karen muttered.
“And lo, behold!” Aradia said, coming to stand by Karen’s side. She was still wearing her gold and black robes.
“The woman who broke my daughter's heart,” Robert said, standing on Karen’s other side. He, too, was wearing ornate robes, his gold, blue, and brown. He looked no older than Aradia was, but was obviously two full generations her elder. Karen assumed that for mystical folk immortality began whenever they reached peak regality, somewhere around 45.
“It was mutual,” Karen said, quietly, pointedly, and sadly.
“Hmm. Well then, let's put the past behind us.” Robert flicked his wrists and assumed a martial pose, and constrained bolts of multicolored energy condensed in his palms, writhing across his skin. Aradia did similarly, assuming a more dance-like pose than her grandfather. They strode forwards towards the battle in unison, and let loose their spells at The Beast.
“HAHA!” The Beast responded as one of his legs collapsed out from beneath him. “A family reunion!” One of his heads pounced at the duo of magicians, and the head was deflected by a quickly-summoned shield. Robert held the shield up, and Aradia fired an energy bolt at it.
The shield’s natural magic capacitance absorbed the energy, and when the shield was dissipated, the energy was released outwards at The Beast. The energy struck The Beast on one of his necks, and exploded the flesh, causing that head and half of the associated neck to drop away, dead.
The Archangel, covered in not only The Beast’s blood but also her own, landed roughly on her knees behind the magicians. She retracted her claws with a snikt.
She stood and stretched as her ravaged flesh regrew. Her bodysuit was barely there anymore, covering her chest only via a thin ribbon of fabric around one shoulder, the other shoulder having been sliced through and hanging free, revealing some of the flesh of her breast.
“Take a picture,” the Archangel said. “It'll last longer.”
Karen realized she had been staring at the half-revealed breast and her face went flush. “Oh, I... Uh...”
“You really are just like her.” The Archangel wiped some of the copious blood from the area around her mouth. “There’s something about Roxanne Morgan Fürst that always trips the ‘bumbling’ switch in Karen Reis.”
“Roxanne. So you are Alice’s sister.”
“Technically. And please, call me Roxy. Now, this has been fun, but I think it’s about time I got Jeremy home.” She prodded at her gauntlet, and then spoke to it. “Groom Lake, I’ve got Therion at my location. Open the portal and prepare the Kingslayers, we’re coming in hot. My position Z-minus 1 meter, Radius... let’s say, 500 meters. T-minus 30 seconds. Me and Jay, plus one. Oh, and make it an airdrop.” She dropped her arm back to her side. “Aradia, Robert, you can head off now. I’d suggest looking into strengthening your Demon wards even further.”
Aradia summoned a portal back to FürsTech headquarters. While Aradia quickly stepped back through it, Robert instead approached Roxy and gently cupped his daughter's face.
“I’ll talk to you later, Dad,” Roxy promised. “I have to deal with Jay first.”
Robert smirked, chuckled, and released her face, before dropping the shield and stepping through the portal. It closed behind him.
“I’d suggest bracing yourself,” Roxy said as soon as it did.
“What?” Karen asked.
The ground disappeared out from beneath them, revealing an expanse of sky where there should by all rights have been earth. Karen, Roxy, and the Beast dropped into the hole, stretching across the desert a kilometer wide.
The location they were in was alien to Karen, but strangely familiar to her at the same time. Three kilometers below them was a desert, sand and dirt stretching off in every direction. Nearby was a lake, and a fortified military base of some kind, every building ostentatiously built out of pure gold, it appeared. While the architecture was different from the one she knew, the relative locations of landmarks meant it could only be one place: Groom Lake, Nevada. Off in the distance, on the horizon, she saw the glittering of a gold-plated city. Again, based on the relative locations, it would have had to have been Las Vegas.
Roxy grabbed Karen by the collar of her shirt and jacket, and when the portal they had fallen through closed, stopped falling. Karen craned her neck to look up at Roxy, and saw the faint outline of aetherial wings emanating from her shoulders, and stretching hundreds of meters in either direction.
She is an angel, after all, Karen thought.
“Meet you at the bottom,” Roxy said, releasing Karen and letting her continue her fall.
Karen teleported towards the distant ground, landing on her feet at the peak of Bald Mountain, just to the north of Groom Lake.
Compared to the one she was familiar with, this Groom Lake region looked like it had been dug up and redistributed, and hit with a couple million artillery impacts, or something of similar nature. It was a superhuman warzone, Karen realized, having seen many in her life. A battleground where powerful beings often opposed one another.
And now she was watching an instance of such a fight before her very eyes. She looked up and saw Roxy stretching her arms and shoulders, and saw the almost-invisible wings flutter and flap, and then, suddenly, she disappeared.
No, she hadn’t disappeared. Where she had previously been, there was now a stack of sonic vapor rings, pointing downwards towards the still-falling Beast. Below the rings, descending at a meteoric pace and surrounded by a vapor cone, was Roxy, claws pointed downwards.
Roxy intercepted the Beast in the air, and without slowing drove it into the Earth, creating an additional great crater with the impact.
A swarm of figures emerged from Groom Lake, flying with jet boots and packs the like Karen had seen many times before. The angry hive of them flew around the Beast, with swords and guns of various types drawn.
Karen teleported closer, and watched the soldiers as they surrounded The Beast. Whenever the Beast struck out at one of them, they would strike back at him.
Roxy all the while was hacking away at the Beast, carving him ever smaller. After 15 more minutes, the Beast was lying limp, in thousands of pieces of various sizes, none larger than a car.
The largest piece started shrinking, and slowly reverted to the form of Jeremy, and Roxy quickly snatched it up and flew off towards Groom Lake with it.
Karen blinked after her. She flew into a massive excavated shaft in the center of the base, and down a few miles until they hit the bowels of the facility, a maze of corridors.
Karen had difficulty teleporting fast enough to follow Roxy’s angel wings’ speed, but was able to keep up until she flew into a cell and slammed a set of golden chains onto all of Jeremy's extremities, head and neck included.
Jeremy stirred to life after a moment. “Which number was this? 1305? It has to have been whereabouts of that.”
“Including the Fall of Babel, 1306,” Roxy answered.
“Ah, to think I almost forgot our first time.”
“I’ll never forget.”
“Don’t try to make what I do special by pretending you could do anything but remember every second of your long, miserable existence.”
“I’m not the one spending most of mine in a cage.”
Jeremy looked past Roxy and saw Karen. “Is that one yours, or the other one?”
“You know the difference. You haven’t had a chance to mutilate this one.”
“This one’s tougher than yours. You should trade up.”
Roxy visibly strained not to smack him so hard his neck snapped. “We’re done here.” Roxy flew out of the cell, and Karen followed her. Roxy shut the cell door, and then crushed the lock so the door would be unopenable by anyone else but her. “Let’s get you home,” she told Karen. She led her through the hallways, and into an elevator. The Elevator took them up to the near-surface, and opened into another hallway. That hallway led to a control room, filled with technicians.
When Karen entered the room, they all stopped and stared.
“Open a portal back to the Astraverse,” Roxy commanded. “This one doesn’t belong here.”
The technicians got to work, and a handful of seconds later the far wall of the room was replaced by a view out into the desert of Eden.
“Go on,” Roxy said to Karen.
Karen blinked to the threshold of the portal, and felt the warm desert breeze on her face. She stepped through the portal, and as she did she heard the door to the control room open. She looked back and saw...
Herself, except, not. She had the same short black hair, and the same heterochromatic eyes: grey-blue in the left and grey-green in the right. But aside from that, they couldn’t have been more different. Her left arm was gone, replaced by an advanced magitech prosthesis, as were both of her legs. Her face was covered in small, faded scars, excepting the two on her cheeks, which visibly stretched from the corners of her lips to her ears. On her throat was another large faded scar, across the left jugular vein. Though she was wearing a tight t-shirt, more scars on her chest peeked across the neckline. The arm that was still flesh and blood had scars up and down it, with a tightly packed row of them on the wrist under all the rest.
Karen stared at herself, and the other her stared back, until the portal closed and separated them.
Karen stood in the Iraqi desert for a long moment.
She blinked to her home, the edge of her bed. She stumbled back into it, and slumped onto it. After a while she brought her right arm up to be examined. Her skin was superhumanly flawless, but if she was still capable of scarring, her wrists would be just as crisscrossed as the other hers’ had been.
That was the only evidence that Karen needed to be convinced that the other one really was her. Karen Reis, at her core, was a depressive girl who cut herself when she was low. No amount of degrees of Multiversal separation would change that.