The Multiversal Road-Trip: Book Five

32

Stephen had given up trying to leave his seat now (and he did feel awfully weak, which he supposed was the hidden message behind Loki's words) so he spun around and watched Loki let Wanda out the ship. This movement on his part unfortunately meant the cloak was freed and it flew away and slipped through the door with her just before Loki shut it. "Stupid cloak," he mumbled. "Sorry about that."

"Eh. The cloak doesn't need oxygen to survive anyway, and it'll come back," Loki shrugged, as he and Scott came over to watch at the cockpit. Wanda was using her magic to propel herself through the weird limbo dimension place.

"You think she's going to find anything?" Stephen asked after half a minute.

"How would she find them anyway? There's nothing there," Scott said, confused. "Unless it's one of those magic things where it looks different to everyone?"

"She's only checking if they're really out there or not," Loki said, but that didn't clear anything up for either Stephen or Scott. How could she do that if she could see them? "It's a telepathic thing."

Right. Made sense. If Stephen didn't understand something, it was usually a telepathic thing.

"Well, you're telepathic, do you know if she's found them or not?" Scott asked, but Stephen was more concerned about the clock. She'd been out there nearly a minute...

Loki screwed his face up in thought. "Not sure if it's really my place to say. But she should really be coming back now."

As they watched, Wanda seemed to slow down, as though her magic was tiring her. Or maybe she'd heard something? But no... after another couple of seconds, it didn't seem right...

"Wanda, get back in here now," Loki said into the earpiece that was connected to Wanda's. He hesitated for a few seconds. "Wanda?!" He suddenly grabbed his forehead in shock at the same time as Wanda stopped moving outside. "Shit. Shit."

"What?" Stephen asked, and Loki was scared so he was automatically terrified.

"She's unconscious," Loki said, staring out the windshield. "And I'm learning too late my magic doesn't work in limbo, so my telekinesis isn't bringing her back."

Stephen felt his heart skip a beat, but wasted no time in trying to open up a portal to Wanda, and to his horror, it didn't work. Oh crap. Oh crap. "One of us is going to have to go out there," he realised aloud. "Scott, can you breathe in space with your helmet?"

"I don't know," he said, clearly panicking, because he was literally pulling his hair out. "And I don't really want to find out that I can't and both of us die!"

"Well, what else can we do?" Stephen fretted, starting to pull his own hair out, looking back out at the unmoving floating Wanda. "I don't even have the cloak to send after her-"

A thought hit him. The cloak was out there with her.

The cloak was literally her only hope. But the question was... could it get over its grudge in time to save her?

The voice in the back of his head sang Drama! He told it to shut up, this wasn't the time for jokes.

Loki ran to the ship door, opening it very, very slightly, just enough to stick his head through and shout to get the cloak's attention. Then he quickly ducked back inside so that he could breathe, shutting the door to slightly to stop the oxygen in the ship escaping. "Tell me when they come," he said to Stephen and Scott.

Stephen turned back to face out into the emptiness, and saw his cloak come back into view, then attach itself to Wanda's shoulders and fly her to the door. "They're coming," he said, and as soon as Wanda and the cloak came back in, back to the gravity, they collapsed onto the ship floor.

Loki slammed the door shut again and Stephen, ignoring his previous instructions to stay sitting, immediately jumped up to check on Wanda, and make sure she was OK. He was the only one with a PhD and an MD out of the three of them, so he probably had the best chance of making sure she survived.

She was still unconscious, so first off, he took off the mask thing and checked her vital signs – to his relief, they were all in order, except breathing rate, which was slower than usual, but that was to be expected of an unconscious person, and that would be back to normal when she got the oxygen back into her lungs. His sigh of relief made both Scott and Loki relax too, and the cloak thought it safe to leave her, and collapse further on in the ship, for what, he was sure, was not a medical reason, more simply for dramatic purposes.

She didn't wake up for the next ten seconds, so he started worrying a bit, then decided he might have to step in. It wasn't CPR she needed, so instead, he decided on mouth-to-mouth. After a few times breathing into her lungs, her breathing rate started speeding up, and her eyelids fluttered open, and suddenly, she was sitting upright, gasping for breath.

"I heard them! I heard them," she gasped as soon as she could speak, and to their surprise, tears started falling, which she hastily tried to wipe away before giving up. "I heard them, I heard them..."

Scott, thankfully, always seemed to know what to do in these situations, and pulled her into a hug, holding onto her as she sobbed, repeating the same thing over and over again. His presence seemed to help Wanda calm down, and her breathing calmed down somewhat, and it was only at that point Stephen realised she'd been having a panic attack. His experiences with them weren't pleasant, but he was so glad Scott was there, because he had no idea how to help with them. Physically, he could help with pain, but mentally... no.

Stephen glanced over at Loki, who was sitting on the floor next to him, holding his forehead as though he had a terrible headache. He could sympathise. That's what jumping through space had left him with. Though somehow he suspected this wasn't a result of space travel. "You OK?" he asked, under his breath, while Scott consoled Wanda.

"Not really, but yeah," Loki responded, clearly preoccupied by something in his mind.

"You wanna talk about it?" Stephen asked, trying his best to channel his inner Scott-The-Therapist.

Loki looked a bit confused at the question. He was probably struggling to respond as his inner Wanda-The-Therapy-Patient. "Uh, not yet. But thanks, I guess."

"No problem," Stephen replied, a bit confused at why he'd just had that conversation. He decided to return his attention to Wanda.