SOUL OF SIREN - EPISODE 1
Chapter 1
The Daimon Gate
Pain. That was all Lorcan felt. It was like being stabbed by thousands of knives all over his body. The pain started inside him and exploded outward.
The strangest thing was not the pain but the fact that he could see it—like he was watching himself from above.
Wait.
From above?
He tried to raise his hands to touch his face, but he couldn’t. But he saw himself convulsing with pain while lying on a bed.
Was he dead?
Who was the beautiful woman crying at his bedside and the man who was trying to calm her down?
He was really seeing himself from above, like a spirit observing his body.
Then he saw the two bleeding spots on his abdomen, and the two small objects protruding from inside him. That was what was causing the searing pain. And he felt a pain in his chest coming from somewhere near his heart. That was where it hurt the most.
The woman said something to the man, and he stepped over to the bed and punched Lorcan in the head. He blacked out.
His eyes opened abruptly, and he saw the most beautiful thing in his whole universe: the face of his beautiful wife, Orla.
“Hey, how are you feeling? It’s okay, just stay still for a bit. You’ll be fine.” She touched his face and pushed down lightly on his chest so that he couldn’t sit up. Her Irish accent was a lullaby. He could swear it had gotten thicker since they’d come to the multiverse and had lived in the Daimon Gate.
“Was I drunk?”
“No. You were working with Jo, and then you just passed out for no reason. You must have had a bad dream just before you woke up.” She smiled at him. There was nothing as comforting as her smile.
He sat up slowly and groggily. “Yes, it was a bad dream.” He rubbed his abdomen and felt a lingering pain from where the objects were sticking out. “I must have freaked Jo out.”
“Indeed you did. Jo said she saw something in your mind right before you totally shut down, and she was going to do something about it…”
“How long have I been out?”
“Not for long …in our time …”
He shook his head and raked his hands through his hair. “Did Jo have to go to Earth to do what she said I needed?”
Orla nodded.
He got out of bed even though Orla tried to stop him. Something was wrong. He could feel it. No, he didn’t feel it—he knew it.
He went to his control room. He commanded one of the most important data centers in the Daimon Gate and had access to one of the most secure data resources in the multiverse. He didn’t like the fact that someone or something had hacked into the system via him.
“Did Ciaran know about this incident?”
Silence.
He turned around to look at Orla, who had followed him to the control room. “He knew?”
“Jo went to Earth to get what she saw in your mind. Ciaran sent Tadgh after Jo. When they didn’t come back quickly enough, Ciaran and his commanders went after Jo and Tadgh. He told me to tell you not to freak out, just in case you woke up before he got back… which is the case now.”
Lorcan paced around the room. This was his worst nightmare, people acting on what was in his mind as if it were fact.
What if what I saw was indeed fact, a piece of memory of a past event or a simulation of a future event based on historical data? Either way, he didn’t like his prediction right now.
He placed his palm on the control panel and ran a diagnostic scan. The software he had completed just the other day worked like a charm. There it was, his latest dream, which was indeed a suppressed memory. Dreams were not data, memories were.
He stared at his memory on the screen, seeing himself lying in bed, helpless, with objects coming out of his body. Who is that woman? “I have no idea when this happened, Orla. I don’t know why I have this memory or why it was suppressed.”
Orla squinted at the image of the woman on the screen and the man who punched Lorcan, knocking him out cold.
“I’m serious—I don’t know this woman.”
“I’m not jealous, Lorcan. I think I’ve seen these two people. Can you go back and see what Jo saw in your mind when you passed out?”
Lorcan nodded. He scanned the data backward. In a short while, he saw what was in his mind. It was a talisman.
“Jo did mention a talisman, and she said she had access to it,” said Orla. “I had no idea it was on Earth.”
Lorcan zoomed in on the screen. The three-colored talisman looked familiar. Then he returned to his latest piece of memory. The scene where he was convulsing in bed looked as if it was in the past. So why had the event replayed in his mind now?
Jo pointed at the screen. “This looks like two-thirds of the talisman.” She was right. Two colors out of three. Where is the third piece? What is this talisman?
“I’m going to look back a bit further,” he said to Orla and went back as far as his patience allowed. After scanning for a long while, he came across an underwater world.
“Is that Atlantis? You’ve been there?”
He felt a chill run up his spine. “No, Orla. It’s Nepolymbus. It’s what Ciaran calls a gypsy universe. It doesn’t have an exact location.”
“Why did you go there?”
“I don’t remember. And why my suppressed memories are surfacing now, I’m not sure. But it must be something more significant than a suppressed memory. It must have future implications. I’m going to do a simulation of future events.”
“Sure, Lorcan.”
Lorcan knew Orla didn’t like him working, but he had to do it. It was hours before he got the results and looked up from his computer.
She rushed over. “What did you find?”
He couldn’t find the words.
“What’s up, Lorcan?”
“In a very short time, in the future, there will be a brief but precise moment when the three worlds will line up.”
“The magical world, the material world, and the amalgam?”
Lorcan nodded. “Nepolymbus is always moving across multiple dimensions. Sometimes it parks on Earth, and that must be when I was there. But the biggest worry is that if they want to fix their universe’s location so that they don’t have to float around all the time, they need to do it during that small lining-up moment.”
Orla raised an eyebrow. “That has nothing to do with the Daimon Gate and the multiverse.”
“Yes, it does. Ciaran, Jo, and Tadgh are in Nepolymbus now. Someone or something was controlling and manipulating to get the three most important people of Eudaiz to that elusive universe. Eudaiz is one of the key universes that balances the power of the multiverse. The Daimon Gate is the gateway connecting universes. We are neutral, but, as you already know, we favor universes with a good history, and Nepolymbus isn’t even on the list for consideration. If my theory is right, we are looking at receiving the biggest ransom in multiverse history.”
Chapter 2
Nepolymbus
The spaceship hovered over the shallow water for a second then dove to the bottom of the ocean, following a gigantic stingray that held Jo’s only hope for a meaningful life—Tadgh, her husband and her soulmate.
Its tail was wrapped around Tadgh’s body, which was no longer moving.
The ray flapped its enormous wings, making its way vertically through layers of earthly ocean water, then through the seabed, and then through dimensional gateways.
From inside the spaceship, there was nothing Jo could do for Tadgh.
She wasn’t the sentimental kind. At least, that was what she thought. But he was her constant and her only attachment to the multiverse, especially to a virtuous universe like Eudaiz.
She was nowhere near being virtuous. That word didn’t even exist in her extensive vocabulary.
They had been fifty yards away from the coastline of New York. Fifty yards away from where they could get to the best spaceship Eudaizian technology could offer and go home. But that insidious stingray had grabbed Tadgh and destroyed everything she longed for.
She loved Tadgh. More than she’d imagined she was capable of. But that was exactly and ironically the heart of the problem. Her judgment was clouded. She convinced him to go on this trip, and because of that, she might lose him forever.
The spaceship wasn’t sinking. Rather, it was following Tadgh through the vertical dimensions of the ocean. The front window of the spaceship gave her a fisheye point of view of the scenery in the waters ahead of her.
Manning the ship’s dashboard was Ciaran, king of Eudaiz, Tadgh’s brother.
He was another constant in Jo’s life.
Ciaran was the man she trusted with everything she had. He was calm. In control. Or at least he appeared to be.
It was only after they came to the multiverse that she learned Ciaran and Tadgh were half-brothers. When they were on Earth, despite the fact that they looked as if they had nothing in common, they could finish each other’s sentences. They didn’t know at the time that they shared only a mother—they learned that fact the hard way. But it didn’t change their relationship. They were brothers, and Jo knew Ciaran would never let any harm come to Tadgh—as long as Ciaran was in control of the situation.
He was in control now, was he not?
Jo shuddered at the thought. If Ciaran didn’t have a solution to save Tadgh, no one would.
But how?
It would be best if she said nothing and let Ciaran work. When the stingray grabbed Tadgh and dragged him down into the deep water, Ciaran didn’t hesitate to leave his commanders on the beach and pilot this spaceship into an unknown dimension. He had opened the void compartment of the spaceship and sucked Jo inside.
Being a commander in Eudaiz came with perks, but it also carried with it a major disadvantage. When one’s supernatural power was in use, and the person was attacked at the eudqi point in his body, it was a fatal injury. Jo knew for sure Tadgh had turned his supernatural power off before the stingray grabbed him. That meant he had been dragged across multiple dimensions as a human, and the chance of his survival was next to zero.
Now, Ciaran fired at the stingray. But it didn’t change the situation. The gigantic fish still had Tadgh, and it was still swimming deeper.
But if he hadn’t turned off his supernatural power, he wouldn’t be in a better position. This stingray had attacked him before and knew his fatal point, so the chance of him surviving a second attack from the same creature was zero.
Ciaran said nothing. He adjusted a computer function on the dashboard. A chill ran down Jo’s spine when she saw him do it. Ciaran was using his final card. He was going to fire a missile at the stingray. And not just any missile—it was the most advanced weapon Jo knew of and was designed for the most dangerous crossworld creatures.
“Are you sure, Ciaran? The ray still has Tadgh.”
“If he’s going to die, I’ll be the one to finish him, not that fish.” Ciaran’s eyes hardened, and he fired.
The missile glowed in blue, broke through the water, and hit the stingray. It exploded, and the ray’s tail loosened its grip. Tadgh’s body began to sink. In anticipation, Jo shot out a rescue net, which wrapped around Tadgh and pulled him into the ship. The door sealed, and the water drained. Tadgh’s body lay on the floor, lifeless.
Ciaran let the spaceship hover on autopilot.
Jo knew a dead body when she saw it. She didn’t need to check Tadgh’s pulse or try to do anything else. She didn’t know anything more she could do. She was numb.
Ciaran didn’t check to see if Tadgh was alive either. There was no point. He tore Tadgh’s shirt open at his chest.
Jo knew the silver blood eudqi could heal any wound on a soldier’s body. But it couldn’t bring back the dead. She didn’t want to say anything, though, because Ciaran seemed to know what he was doing.
He opened a compartment and pulled out a spare charger that was there to turbocharge their escape vehicle in case of evacuation.
“You’re going to jump his heart with that?” Jo asked.
“His eudqi will kick-start the healing process if it thinks he’s alive. We only need one pulse.”
“That thing can power a vessel, Ciaran. It’s too much! It’ll rupture his insides!”
“Do you have another solution?”
“No.”
Ciaran held the charger over Tadgh’s chest. Then he paused and started to chuckle. “Bastard!” He dropped the charger to the floor and punched Tadgh hard in the chest. “Wake up!”
No response.
“Ciaran! What are you doing?”
He punched again. “Come on!”
And again.
Tadgh gasped and then resumed breathing. In a short while, he opened his eyes.
“You’re lucky. A few more punches and I’d have broken your ribcage, Tadgh.” Ciaran smiled at Jo. “I’m not going to kiss him, but you may.”
Jo scrambled over and wiped the stray hair out of Tadgh’s face. She kissed him as he moaned lightly with pain. “Your body’s sustained a bit of damage, but your eudqi will heal that in no time.” She gave him a peck on his cheek.
“You’re a bigger gambler than I thought,” Ciaran said while putting the charger away.
Jo knew it now. Tadgh didn’t just turn off his superpower, he switched himself off, playing dead. He knew he would be dragged across dimensions. If he was dead, he couldn’t be killed again. Playing dead was the riskiest choice he could have made. When dead, he was totally defenseless, as were most dead bodies. Jo had done that before and was almost raped by Saiyan.
She should have guessed his strategy. But things happened so fast, and she was so distraught by the whole thing, she hadn’t thought of this possibility.
“You didn’t plan to use that charger on me, did you, Ciaran?” Tadgh asked.
“No, of course not. This was to charge our spare vehicle to take you out of here.”
“Sure … you wouldn’t use that thing on me …”
“Okay now, concentrate. You need to rest and heal your injuries, Tadgh. Ciaran fired at the stingray, but you took some of the impact of the missile.”
“He did that when I was dangling from its tail?”
“Would you rather I do that, or let the thing drag your bogus dead body to whoever ordered it to do so?” Ciaran asked.
Tadgh moaned, trying to sit up. “No, shoot at me as much as you like, brother.”
“Whatever ordered the stingray to get you won’t give up that easily,” Jo said.
“Then let’s get out of here while we still can,” Ciaran said.
They heard a loud bang, and then the spaceship jerked and stopped as if hit by a large, hard object.
Ciaran rushed to the control panel, but before he got to it, the lights inside the spaceship went off.
They were surrounded by complete darkness.
Chapter 3
“Stay horizontal and fix yourself, Tadgh.” Jo had to scold him to make him stay still and let his eudqi repair the injuries to his body. The energy worked faster when the person rested. As for herself, she definitely worked more efficiently when he rested!
Ciaran said nothing. He concentrated on the dashboard controls and worked on keying in the chain of commands to get the spaceship moving again. He had gotten some light back, so they could at least see their way around.
But the spaceship was still hovering and not making any movement. The good news was that the large object that had struck them hadn’t caused a significant impact so that they had to evacuate. The bad news was that they had no idea what had hit them or what was happening in this deep sea in another dimension.
“I think Nepolymbus has just shifted position,” Ciaran said while still working at the dashboard.
“Do you think we can navigate back to where we were, Ciaran?”
He nodded. “Not easily, but in theory, yes. The problem is not with us, Jo. The army we left behind will be disconnected from us. There’s no way they can trace us.”
“The tracking device on this spaceship assumes universes don’t sail through different dimensions,” Jo said.
“Which is a totally reasonable assumption. Universes can move within their dimensions, just like the Earth, the sun, and their galactic system. But moving across dimensions hasn’t been accounted for by Eudaizian technology.”
“I guess that’s why you call this a gypsy universe, Ciaran.”
He turned from the dashboard and looked at her. “We may have to park somewhere …”
In front of their spaceship was a world of darkness. She approached the window and looked out. “Do you think we’re in Nepolymbus, and that’s why it carried us with it when it moved?”
“I haven’t been there. It would have been helpful if we could have looked outside. But, in theory, if the turbulence we just experienced was because Nepolymbus lived up to its reputation and moved when we least expected it, then yes, we are somehow wrapped inside that strange universe.”
“Look …” Jo pointed outside. In the distance, the dim shape of a dome appeared. “If Nepolymbus is the only universe made of water and gigantic bubble domes, then I can assure you we are inside it.”
“This is just great…” Ciaran muttered. “Our commanders back in New York are top-grade and won’t let things fall into chaos. But if the news gets back to the Daimon Gate, we’ll be facing a galactic-scale war.”
Jo looked at Ciaran. “Why?”
“Because the multiverse doesn’t understand Nepolymbus. It’s elusive and doesn’t conform to any multiversal law. Anything Nepolymbus does will look like a threat and an act of war. Now it will look like Nepolymbus has kidnapped three important people from Eudaiz. The multiverse might not normally be united, but when Nepolymbus goes against them, they might just get together to fight.”
“Nepolymbians don’t seem that dangerous when we’re down there.”
“The danger is in the unknown, Jo. Nobody knows this universe except its citizens and associates. Because of its constant movement, its data isn’t even captured in the EYE databank.”
Jo frowned. “No data at all in the Daimon Gate’s databank?”
Ciaran shook his head.
“So how can you engage in any communication with them?”
“We can’t. They reach out to us. But as soon as their universe moves, all past data will be invalid. I’m sure they have their own system, and that’s why we are at a disadvantage.”
Jo nodded. “They know us, but we don’t know them. But because we don’t know them, we refer to them as a whole. There are good people in Nepolymbus. They are having a civil war themselves, Ciaran.”
“I know this sounds awful, but their civil war could be our savior. Let’s get this vehicle moving and get out of here. If any of their power players here figure out what they have at hand now, we’ll be a handsome gift for them to use to turn the multiverse’s fear into reality.”
They heard a hum, like an army of whales whistling to each other in the distance. Then the spaceship dropped from its hovering position. They seemed to fall through the water for quite a while, and then the ship hit a hard surface and started to roll.
“Tadgh …” Jo and Ciaran tried to get to Tadgh, who was lying on the floor, to grab him so he wouldn’t be tossed around like a rag doll. But they were all being tossed around. Soon, the rolling stopped.
Jo hopped up from the floor. “Well, at least we aren’t belly up.” She scrambled toward Tadgh, who was trying to sit up. The movement had awakened him.
“At least we know they have gravity here, wherever that is,” Ciaran mumbled.
“Are you okay?” Tadgh asked Jo groggily.
“I should be the one asking that question, Tadgh.”
“I’m fine. In a few seconds, I’ll be a hundred percent,” he said and then frowned. “Where are you going, Ciaran?”
Jo turned and looked back to the window above the control panel. Ciaran had left the panel and was headed toward the door of the control compartment of the spaceship.
Ciaran pointed to the window. There was a shimmering beam of light coming in from the outside. “I guess we’ve arrived at Nepolymbus. But I have no intention of staying. The spaceship has some exterior damage. I’m going out to take a quick look to see if I can repair it.”
Jo rushed toward the window. From this distance, Nepolymbus looked magnificent. It was like a fairy-tale city resting inside a gigantic crystal ball, an entire universe to itself. Thousands of domes scattered across a surface that stretched out as far as she could see. Inside the domes, towns and cities had lit up again after the tumbling move of this universe. Outside the domes, mer-citizens were going about their business. From Jo’s vantage point, they looked like moths flying toward the light inside the domes.
She had never seen Nepolymbus from this angle before. She figured in her previous visit, they had headed straight toward the capital area. This, however, seemed to be the common area of Nepolymbus. It was just like a magnificent city on Earth.
She heard the thud of the door as it closed, and then the sound of the water seal securing the outer layer of the spaceship. Ciaran appeared in front of the control panel window, looking in. He smiled at her. She figured he had turned on his eudqi, and she watched as he went about fixing his very big toy that had crashed in another universe. Ciaran was passionate about technology, and because this spaceship was his latest plaything, she knew he’d try to bring it home no matter what.
She smiled back at him. He dove down a bit to examine something at the nose of the spaceship. Then a chill ran down Jo’s spine as Tadgh yelled from behind her, “Get him back in!”
Behind Ciaran, in the darkness, a fever of stingrays emerged. They came toward the ship from the right, where the main entrance was. Ciaran couldn’t possibly get back in via that door. Jo banged on the window to get Ciaran’s attention. When he looked up, she pointed toward the stingrays.
Ciaran looked at the fish, and Jo knew he understood he couldn’t get back inside the ship the way he came out.