The world comes back into focus slowly and quietly. First I see only dim shadows in silence, then the room brightens and I begin seeing colors and blurry shapes. Then I begin hearing dull sounds like I have my head underwater which suddenly makes me think I landed us in a lake again and I'm actually drowning so I try thrashing about to swim to the surface.
I feel something holding my arms and thinking its seaweed or something I struggle harder trying to break free before I run out of breath. That's when I realize I'm not holding my breath and I've been breathing this whole time.
I stop struggling as the room finally comes into focus and normal sounds begin filtering into my ears. I see my dad and Katrina standing over me along with Angela, Uncle Leo and Aunt Eve. I hear Alexei calming Tesla behind them as my dad tries to calm me down.
"It's ok son" he says holding me down gently and I realize I'm in a bed, "you're safe now. You got us home, you did it son!"
"I what?" I asked groggily, "where are we, what happened?"
"The stress of the jump must have been too much for his system." I heard Uncle Leo say.
"You're ok" my dad said, "you are in your own bed son, what do you remember?"
"Ungh" I said trying to sit up, my head throbbed as I did, "the last thing I remember was the Commander trying to tell me something about my stupid new watch." I said holding up my arm.
"Yes" Uncle Leo said, "We were wondering about that since you've never needed a watch your entire life." He said chuckling a little, "I've examined it a bit since we were unable to remove it from your wrist. A most remarkable piece of technology, it is far beyond anything modern science can achieve on our world. Do you know what it is?" he asked me.
I looked at the device and saw the spinning stone it had previously had was now a tiny tree.
"Well the box it was in was pressure sealed with some kind of military markings around it. It said, um" I said trying to recall what the label had said exactly, "Oh yeah it said ah, Experimental Tesseract Field Support Unit, Do Not Touch."
"And of course being you" Uncle Leo said laughing, "you immediately cracked it open."
"Well, yeah" I said kind of embarrassed, "I was curious."
"Haha that's my boy" my dad said laughing and shaking his head.
"It was bigger" I said looking at it closer, "but when I put it on it shrunk down and stuck my arm with something sharp and did some kind of DNA genetic link with my arm and then it said it was activated. It used to have a small spinning stone where that tree is."
"When I pressed the deploy button a giant boulder appeared from nowhere and nearly knocked me through the wall. The recall button made it disappear but that's all I know about it. Oh and after the stone disappeared when I was still in the supply depot the stone turned into a small black tent like the ones that were on the shelves."
"Hmm" my dad said, "that is very interesting."
"I was trying to ask the Commander about it right before we left but all I could hear him saying was to not press something." I said, "I was wondering if it was anything like the ammo boxes they were using in the middle of the battle since it said it was a Tesseract device.
I was wondering if we could use it for transporting equipment or even people between worlds like what you were asking about. He looked really shocked that I had it." I added deciding to not hide anything since it might end up being something my dad or Uncle Leo can figure out.
Looking around at everyone and seeing that Uncle Leo and Aunt Eve are not acting strange toward these strange new people from another world I had to ask.
"Umm" I said to no one in particular, "how long have I been out of it exactly?"
"Well" my dad said slowly, "we were a bit worried for the first few hours when your breathing and heart rate nearly stopped a few times but after the first day you improved rather more rapidly than I would have thought possible. I imagine it has a lot to do with the Commanders gift to us. Otherwise I am not so sure you would have survived the experience." He said.
"Ok" I said again, "but how long have I been asleep?"
"Twelve days dear" Aunt Eve said to me.
"Twelve days?" I said a little too loudly.
"You were basically comatose for the first five days" she said, "and we had to use intravenous feeding to keep you alive but after that you began responding and we were able to feed you normally. You just wouldn't wake up. You had us all so worried." She said resting a hand on my arm.
"We theorize that when you use your ability" Uncle Leo says to me, "it uses a portion of your own strength to enact the changes you are trying to achieve. More than likely the smaller things you do within a single world uses only a fraction of your power but the more drastic changes you try to make, like transporting a group of people across dimensions, must use a proportionately larger chunk of your strength. You will need to be more careful in the future or you could quite easily kill yourself if you tried to do too much."
Looking around at everyone once again I seemed to be noticing many more things, like a scar on Uncle Leo's ear I never noticed before, a small birthmark on Aunt Eve's shoulder, how Katrina's eyes had specks of gold in their violet depths and also that Tesla who was sitting on the other side of the room with Alexei smelled of rain, grass and what was that, squirrel?
Now that I thought about it everything seemed more vibrant, the colors brighter the sounds clearer the smells crisper. I felt good too, strong and after the initial wave of dizziness wore off, clear headed.
I was wearing a T-shirt and my arms with their new tattoos were exposed. Embarrassed at what Aunt Eve would think I tried covering them with a blanket or something. Knowing it was obviously way too late for that but not being able to help myself. She caught on to what I was doing and laughed at me.
"Sweetie, it is a bit late for you to be worrying about being self conscious about those." She said smiling at me, "I've been changing your clothes and bed sheets for almost two weeks now. I can't say I approve but your father said you had no choice in the matter even though he wouldn't tell me the whole story." She said with a disapproving look toward my dad,
"I have to say, they are very strange markings, did you know they appear to move on their own? I am sure it must be an optical illusion but I've never seen anything like it before. It is a very intricate design and I guess it would be pretty cool if you were into that kind of thing but just promise me that you are not going to get anymore. I think you have more than enough already dear."
"Oh I promise that is the farthest thing from my mind right now" I said blushing at the thought of my Aunt seeing me naked, "Trust me I certainly didn't even want these." I said holding up my arms.
"Well I am not sure how you are going to explain them and all the other ones you have to the school but you better come up with a good explanation so they don't start asking too many questions. We don't need any unnecessary attention especially not now that we have five new guests staying with us that are going to be very hard to explain where they came from should questions be asked." She said stating the obvious.
"Why don't you get cleaned up and come on downstairs when you're ready" my dad said, "then I think we all need to go over what our cover story will be and fill you in on what's been going on lately while we eat the wonderful dinner Angela and Eve made for us since you've been sleeping the day away."
"I'll chill up here and make sure he doesn't fall down and crack open that overly large head of his on something" Alexei said with his usual crooked grin, "wouldn't want that big important brain of his to get damaged before he figures out how to use it."
"Oh very funny" I said throwing a pillow at his head that he caught easily, but I was glad for the company regardless.
"That is a good idea" Uncle Leo said, "He might not be too stable on his feet yet."
"Well make sure he changes those clothes too please" Aunt Eve said to Alexei.
"Um, hello, I'm standing right here!" I said irritably but knowing they were just concerned about me.
"Now, now dear no need to get grumpy" She said to me then to everyone else, "ok come on before he starts throwing more things at us." She said smiling as she shut to door behind them.
I got out of bed and stretched. My muscles were stiff from not being used and as I tried to loosen up my joints by rotating my arms and neck my body felt weird. My shirt felt tighter than it usually was and so did the rest of my clothes. Alexei saw my awkwardness.
"You ok dude?" he asked me.
"Yeah" I said trying to massage what I took to be a knot in my shoulder as there was some large bulge there when I moved my arm around. "I just feel, strange I guess."
"Oh, well that would probably be all the modifications your body has undergone since the Commander gave you his gift." He said smiling at me.
"Wha" I began to say as I felt my other shoulder and there was an identical knot over there too. "Wait a minute" I said pulling my shirt over my head and going to stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom.
I almost didn't recognize the person standing there. Even though I had been out of it for almost two weeks it looked like I had put on twenty pounds and all of it muscle. I looked almost as well built as Alexei himself. As I flexed my arms and shoulders the muscles around my neck and biceps rippled with the movement.
It looked like there were steel cables running under my skin. My hair had grown out like crazy and was nearly to my shoulders, not sure how that was possible but that was the least of my worries. The long burn on my face was about as healed as it ever will be but the scar was there. It wasn't very obvious but if you looked you could see it running from the corner of my eye almost down to my mouth.
My eyes too had changed, gone was the scared kid hiding behind lockers, now what stared back were blue intense eyes that, while still mischievous held a dangerous and perhaps deadly coldness in them. The mysterious markings adorning my arms beginning just above my wrists swirled their way around my arms and shoulders across my new and improved chest that was no longer scrawny but buff as heck.
They dipped down around my neck so I think I could hide them with a long sleeve shirt if I needed to. But the black symbols completely covered my chest, back, sides and most of the way down my legs. They were not merely black as I looked closer but swirled with silver, gold and red throughout certain ones.
If you looked long enough at them they really did seem to shift around slightly making it difficult to stare at a single point. It almost resembled a kind of camouflage now that I thought about it. I remembered the soul stealers where supposed to be nearly invisible when they wanted to and wondered if I had that ability now.
I stood back against my bathroom wall which had wallpaper with some kind of floral design in it that my mother had picked out years ago. It was a tan color and the designs were a sort of sea green color. I closed my eyes and tried to will myself to blend with the wall. I thought I felt something crawling up my legs and thinking it was a spider or something I looked down quickly.
My leg was gone! I was so shocked that I almost toppled over until I realized I could still feel them and I could also see the markings sliding around my skin to blend into the wall behind me. My skin color had changed too it wasn't a perfect match but it was pretty darn close.
This was awesome! I was thinking and then I had another idea.
"Hey Alexei, come here and check this out." I called out to the bedroom and hugged the wall again closing my eyes while trying to disappear.
Once again I felt that creepy crawling sensation but I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated even harder.
"What's up?" I heard him say as he walked into the bathroom, "dude? Hey, Zach where'd ya go man?"
I opened one eye and saw him standing right in front of me. I reached a hand out tapped his shoulder. He jumped back crouching in an attack position, his claws slid out into long sharp talons and his eyes turned golden.
His wings whipped out from his shoulders, shattered my mirror, flinging everything off my sink to crash to the ground and his other one smashed through the glass shower stall doors. Tesla leapt down from my bed and started barking at Alexei.
"Whoa, whoa!" I yelled holding out my hands and stepped away from the wall, "relax dude it's just me." I said and felt my skin shift again. I couldn't help but to shake myself trying to get rid of the bugs that weren't there.
"What the?" he hissed at me through long fangs and lips pulled back into a snarl.
Just then my bedroom door was blasted off the hinges and smashed into the far wall as Katrina literally flew through the wall. Her wings folded back as she took out chunks of drywall and studs and then she landed in the middle of my bedroom wings fully extended her black eyes scanning for enemies, long fangs ready to tear someone's throat out if need be. Everyone else pounded up the stairs behind her to see what was going on.
"It's ok!" I shouted to everyone, "It was just an accident. I surprised Alexei and he's still understandably a bit on the edge and we knocked a few things down."
"A few things?" my dad said walking into the bedroom and then looking into the bathroom. "I think I'm definitely going to have to increase my insurance policy with you two around." He said smiling at us, "Oh well, I am sure it will take quite some time for you two to get used to not being hunted every waking hour. No harm was done, nothing a long weekend with a hammer and nails can't fix."
"I'm sorry" Alexei said folding his wings into his back after shaking the broken glass out of his feathers.
"Yeah me too" Katrina said, "sorry about the door."
"Wow!" Aunt Eve said, "I know you told me about them but to see it in person is something else. You guys are beautiful. How do you fit your wings into your backs?" she asked Katrina as she too folded her Snow white feathers into her slim shoulders.
"Don't know" Alexei said walking back into the bedroom and nodding his head impressed at his sister's destruction. "We're still kinda new to them ourselves and now that our Uncle is gone we have no one to ask since we're the last of our kind."
"I am truly sorry about that" my dad said to them both, "had we not travelled to your world he would still be alive."
"Our Uncle would have wanted it no other way." Katrina said, "He died fighting evil and saving humans, that is what he did his entire life. That is the legacy he left with us now and I plan to honor his wishes to the best of my abilities."
"Yeah whatever they might be" Alexei added.
"Whoa" a little voice said from behind Angela as Lucas and Lucy poked their heads around the corner looking at the mess.
"What happened Momma?" Lucy asked.
"Oh no worries Button" Alexei said to her and she ran over and jumped into his outstretched arms. "Zach just needs to clean up his room better wouldn't you say?" he said poking her belly and she giggled hysterically at him.
"Button?" I asked.
"Yeah" he said, "her nose is as cute as a button so I just call her Button now, don't I" and he gave her nose a tweak.
"Uh huh" she said and gave him a big hug, "Aleky when are you gonna take me flying?" she said holding her arms out.
"Well Button you're going to have to ask your mother about that." He said smiling his crooked grin at her "but why don't you go downstairs with your brother and get cleaned up for dinner, I'll be down in a minute ok?"
"Ok" she squeaked as he gave her a hug and she kissed his cheek.
I looked at him questioningly with a raised eyebrow.
"What?" he said shrugging his shoulders a little embarrassed, "hey what can I say, kids love me."
"Well just use my shower for now, we'll clean this up after dinner" my dad said.
"Ok" I said and began grabbing some clothes to change into as everybody headed downstairs.
I turned around from my dresser and nearly ran smack into Katrina whose violet eyes were narrowed as she slowly checked me out up and down. I felt a bit like a side of beef on display at a butcher shop or perhaps the last lollipop in a candy store full of hungry kids.
"Hmm" she purred deep in her throat and rested a hand on my bare chest, "My how you've grown. I think I like this new you even better" she said walking around me trailing her hand on my skin me as she did so, making Goosebumps rise on my arms. Gulp!
She flicked her tongue along the edge of my ear making my knees turn to instant jelly. She smelled of jasmine and vanilla as she walked back in front of me. She raised herself on her toes to look into my face.
She was so incredibly breathtaking I could barely stand looking at her. She was inches away from me as she leaned in and kissed the corner of my mouth softly. My stomach did that fluttery thing and my legs almost buckled as I closed my eyes praying I wouldn't pass out. Both her hands were on my chest as she gently kissed the other corner of my mouth.
Her lips were as soft as rose petals when she pressed them fully on my own. I tried my best to kiss her back like I knew what I was doing but I probably failed miserably. Her lips parted slightly and she moaned a little. I thought she was upset I was doing it wrong so I pulled away from her.
"I, I'm sorry" I blurted out.
"For vhat" she said and she seemed to be breathing hard for some reason and it looked like her cheeks were flushed.
I figured she must really be mad so I turned around and sat on the edge of the bed embarrassed and angry at myself.
"I'm sorry" I said frustrated, "I don't know what I'm doing. I've never kissed a girl before. I didn't mean to make you mad." I sighed, "I feel so stupid."
"Vhat are you talking about?" she asked sitting next to me taking my hand in hers, "Listen, I have never kissed anyvone before either."
"You haven't?" I said not really believing her.
"I never had ze chance" she said, "A lot of people on my vorld think verevolves are how you say, disgusting."
"How is that even possible?" I asked her, "I can't even breath around you, you're so amazingly beautiful. I have a hard time not looking at you. Everything about you is perfect from your silver hair to your cute little toes."
Her cheeks were flushed again as she averted her eyes.
"Yeah right" she said shyly, "you are just saying that to be nice."
"Katrina" I said lifting her chin up so I could look into those gorgeous eyes of hers again, "I've never felt this way toward anyone before. I just don't think I am good enough for you. Once you see other guys and get used to our world I am sure you'll find someone better than me. Someone that is a much better kisser than I am I'm sure."
She laughed, closed her eyes and leaned in to kiss me again soft and slow.
"Mmm" she purred again as she stood up, "You make my toes curl, you are an amazing kisser my big strong varrior and don't vorry about anvon else as that is something ve share with our four footed brothers. Once ve find a mate ve stay with them for life and ve protect them with tooth and claw."
I was so shocked I couldn't speak as she sauntered out of the recently enlarged doorway. Um, did she just say I was a good kisser? Me? The kid who spends more time inside my locker then my books? And did she just call me her mate?
"Um, wait a minute, I didn't mean" I started saying after her but quickly realized she was already gone. Oh boy that might be trouble I thought but I was grinning from ear to ear as I took the world's fastest shower and went down to eat.
Dinner was amazing and as we ate they brought me up to speed on what has been going on around here. It appeared that the Vampire Lord did manage to use my bracelet and activate its emergency recall function in time to avoid the bomb going off.
He must have used those nanobots of his to gain access to it. He managed to subdue my Uncle Leo before he could activate the security override. But when Q suddenly appeared, the twin's grandfather didn't know what to think of him. When hypnotizing him failed and so did physical attacks he tried using the nanobots.
I guess Q just barely managed to disable them before they could do any permanent damage. Realizing this intruder was far beyond his capacity to handle he overcharged the Tesla coils and electrocuted the vampire with enough power to incinerate the Empire State building.
Failing to destroy him with even that, Q programmed the Teleporter to a set of coordinates he knew went to an uninhabited world and sent the Vampire Lord on his way after first relieving him of my bracelet. Then he disabled all access to and from that world to prevent him from returning.
We didn't know what kind of information his nanobots were able to acquire before Q stopped them and no way to tell if he had any more or if any survived. But Uncle Leo and my Dad had scanned the lab thoroughly and were unable to find any surviving nanobots. Q was studying the ones he disabled to learn what he could from them but it would take some time.
With everything that had happened they were forced to tell Aunt Eve about the Lab and what they are doing since it was a bit hard to hide that fact that Alexei and Katrina aren't human, at least until they learn to better control themselves and stop breaking down bedroom doors that is.
After getting back from the hospital with a minor concussion, Uncle Leo and my father began the designs for the new teleportation module that will allow them the ability to send more people and equipment to worlds and they already had a working model of a communication device that would allow messages to be sent to and from other worlds built.
Q hacked the government and social security servers for both the U.S. and Russia and created new identities for Angela, her kids, Alexei and Katrina. The new ID's should be here in a day or two complete with driver's license, social security cards, passports and even a couple credit cards.
Angela and her kids will be from Boston originally and Alexei and Katrina will be from Sankt-Peterburg or Saint Petersburg as we called it, in Russia as that was about the closest location to where they were on their world and might have the easiest time learning about. That was also the place their Uncle was said to have defended in a battle long, long ago so they liked that idea.
The twins will be living with Uncle Leo and Aunt Eve now that I was up and around again since no one could convince either of them to leave my side until I was ok.
They will be their newly adopted children as their story will be that their Mom, which will be Uncle Leo's make believe second cousin, died in a fire and only the kids survived and he is the last remaining relative.
Q even created a newspaper article about the tragic fire and he made up death certificates for the non-existent relatives, which was better than his own idea that they would be the long lost kids of Bill Gates and heirs to his fortune.
My dad arranged for Angela to take a position on the company's legal team after she applied for and aced her bar exam. She immediately began preparing a proposal to license and copyright all the teleportation technology my dad and Uncle Leo had created.
She even had ideas on how to legalize the importation of people from other worlds and setup trade procedures between them also. She had been studying our legal system this past week and a half and even though it was very different from their world she was quickly getting the hang of it.
Uncle Leo said she was as much of a genius with the legal system as my dad was with science. He said he felt sorry for any judge that failed to rule in her favor or any other attorney that went up against her. Q said he might even have to revise his earlier decision that all attorneys are lower on the food chain than pond scum.
Q redesigned the tracking and communication bracelets so they now have a failsafe function so what happened to mine couldn't be duplicated. They were also sealing off the teleportation pad with armored glass and steel.
They will add multiple forms of self defense and ways to subdue or if needed, destroy unwanted intruders. That was really hard for them to come to terms with but after the close encounter with the Vampire Lord they had to admit that that was a necessary precaution. They're also incorporating many of the ideas we saw in the bunker defense system.
They had discussed registering Katrina and Alexei in my school but the fact that they have had hardly any schooling so far made my dad reconsider, at least until they could get them mostly caught up with what they needed to know.
Plus the fact that they really, really needed to learn to control and hide their abilities meant they weren't likely to be going out into public anytime soon anyway. I mean could you imagine what would happen if someone tried to start a fight with Katrina at a football game or something and someone with a camera phone just happens to record a young girl sprouting wings, tearing someone's head off and drinking their blood and then they decide to post it on the internet or something!
Yeah, I don't think so. Although it would probably break a lot of records for how many hits it gets on YouTube I bet. Hmm, nah, don't even think about it. But maybe if I spread enough false rumors about flying kids around that if they ever really did lose control, heaven forbid, then it would be kind of like the boy who cried wolf, maybe people wouldn't believe it then. It was something to consider.
Since the twins have already ruined several dozen shirts by accidentally opening their wings I suggested that maybe we need to make some kind of brace or something that would wrap around them preventing their wings from coming out. At least until they could get better control of them.
They didn't like that idea very much but like I explained to them that there really shouldn't be much call for them to fly and even if there was they should never do it unless it was a matter of life and death. So I conceded, maybe we need something that could prevent accidental feathery appendages sprouting from their backs while allowing them to forcibly tear through it in case of an emergency, perhaps some sort of strong Velcro allowing it to be reusable.
They all agreed that would be a good idea. There wasn't much we could to about their eyes or teeth short of getting them to wear contacts and some kind of dentures or something but we figured if they just wore sunglasses all the time that would cover most problems with their eyes changing colors.
"It is too bad they don't have mood glasses like they have mood rings" Aunt Eve said out of the blue, "you know so if they get angry the glasses turn black and cover their eyes changing colors and when they calm down they get clearer."
We all stared at her in amazement before Uncle Leo gave her a big kiss.
"That is brilliant!" he said beaming at her, "It's such a simple solution! I can have a couple pairs made up in a day or two I'm sure of it."
She smiled shyly as we all congratulated her on the idea.
"Can you make mine look cool at least?" Alexei said suddenly thinking he was going to be forced to wear some dorky looking glasses.
"Haha" Uncle Leo laughed at Alexei's not very pleased look, "don't worry, I'll make sure to model them after the latest fashion."
That made Alexei happy and he elbowed me.
"Dude, I'm gonna get me some kick'n shades." He said trying to make me jealous.
"Yeah I heard, good for you" I said and couldn't help but to feel guilty about being jealous over all the attention being poured over them.
"Oh don't worry son" my dad said catching the tone of my voice, "we'll be sure to make a pair for you too."
We finished dinner and after cleaning up we all sat around, talked and everyone got to know each other better. Alexei told the others what he knew of the TimeLord prophecy of his tribe in that the TimeLord and the two Slayers who are half of a whole but together are greater than any other Slayer in history, would be the ones destined to stop a great catastrophe from happening in the cosmos.
"And they think this prophecy is about you three?" Uncle Leo said indicating the twins and me.
"Yeah unfortunately" I said frowning.
"Wow" he said "no pressure there huh? Well did it say anything about what kind of catastrophe or how you were supposed to go about saving the universe?" he asked.
"Nope" Alexei said simply, "that's all I know."
Katrina shook her head when he looked to see if she had anything to add.
"I guess it does no good worrying about something you have no control of, we just need to keep this in the back of our mind and keep an eye out for clues." He said and that simple statement made me feel a ton better because he was right, there was nothing we could do except keep a look out for clues as to this universal apocalypse.
While we talked Lucy fell asleep in Alexei's lap and Lucas did the same in Katrina's. Angela sat next to my father holding his hand most of the time and I saw Uncle Leo smiling approvingly at his friend's obvious happiness.
"Dad?" I asked when there was a lull in the conversation.
"Yes?" he said looking over at me.
"What should we do about me and school?" I said.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Well" I said hesitating then trying to sound convincing, "don't you think I should take the rest of the year off and help teach Katrina and Alexei stuff." Seeing it wasn't having the desired effect I added, "I can help you and Uncle Leo in the lab too."
"Son" he began to say.
"Dad" I cut him off before he could say what I knew he would, "you know I could test out of my classes and probably the rest of high school as well, why can't I stay home and help."
"You know why" he said, "I want you to have as normal a childhood as possible and now that seems even more important what with everything that has happened. Look," he said, "I know it has been a difficult year for you. But for now we need to appear to the outside world as though nothing has changed. I need your help with this son, and by you going to school and trying to pretend as though nothing is different will be very hard. I need you to try, for all of us. Can you do that for me?"
Darn it, I thought. Just when I thought I had a good reason to stay out of school. Sigh, oh well I guess he does have a point.
"Ok" I said chagrined.
"That's my boy" he said smiling broadly and gave my shoulder a squeeze.