The scent of lilac and ginger tickled his nose. Jim drew a slow, deep breath and winced at the pain in his—well—everywhere.
The skin of his arms brushed against a rough sheet, stretched over a thin mattress if he had to guess. The mattress didn’t conceal the hard frame beneath it.
His eyes wouldn’t open.
That was bad. They felt stuck, glued together with grit. Or maybe they were swollen?
After what he’d seen, it wouldn’t surprise him.
Shadow and lightning had come alive all around him, invisible fingers clutching his body and dragging him into darkness.
The soft murmur of strange voices faded in and out of his hearing. With his luck, someone had fished him out of a dumpster and dropped him off at the nearest emergency room. Geez, had he even brought his ID to the lab?
If he was unconscious at a hospital without an ID again, Barb was never going to let him live it down. And she certainly wouldn’t let him out of the house again.
He tried his eyes again, and the fluttering of his lashes gave him hope that his eyes still existed somewhere on his face, even if they weren’t obeying direct commands.
The dull ache in his chest probably meant that his ribs were cracked. Maybe broken this time. The rest of him throbbed with a soreness like he’d survived a pileup on the Central Freeway or maybe been run over by a BART car.
But I’m alive.
He remembered the roaring sound, the sensation of prickling electricity ripping through him. His muscles had seized, the current burning through his body as though he was a flesh-and-bone grounding rod in a thunderstorm.
Reality itself had torn apart, and he was still breathing.
He could count that as a win.
Jim stretched his face and worked his jaw, trying to rediscover the muscles that would activate his eyelids.
The mumbling voices came back, and he froze for a half-second, straining to hear the words. But they didn’t make sense.
Bhejo—-anhaa—jaag’ta—
The words blurred in and out of his senses. Not English. That’s why they weren’t lining up. That meant he was definitely concussed. He only defaulted to English when he had a concussion.
Jaag’ta. Jagada. Jaagata. The pronunciation variables flipped through his linguistic brain. Anhaa. Anha. Andha.
Hindi. It was Hindi, or some variation of it. But it was—wrong. Even if he were catching all the words, which he seriously doubted, the syntax was a confusing mishmash of conjugations and extra words.
Maybe my ears are broken too.
Gentle pressure on his brow made him pause, a wet cloth cool against his skin. A different voice reached him, softly murmuring in that same Hindi-variant language. A girl. And that scent again. Lilac and ginger. Who mixed lilac and ginger?
The cool cloth brushed against his eyes, and a sigh escaped him before he could stop it. Relief surged through his mind as whatever was on that cloth soothed the burning ache he hadn’t even realized was there.
The voice again. The soft press of a small hand against his face pulled away and took the cloth with it.
Aha. There were his eyelids.
He blinked and grimaced, trying to force them apart. His eyes blurred with tears. Maybe his eyes had been damaged, his vision foggy and hazy.
How far away was the ceiling?
Jim scowled at it, heavy dark wooden beams supporting an ornate ceiling of richly decorated panels. Was he seeing that right?
Motion at his side.
He blinked again.
A girl sat beside him, her face heart shaped and smiling. Hair the color of sunflower petals and huge eyes, a color somewhere between deep blue and dark sky.
“Wow. She’s pretty.”
The girl’s left eyebrow arched at him.
Oh, did I say that out loud? Lame.
Grunting, he moved to sit up, and he hissed, sharp jolts of pain spiking up his back and shoulders and neck.
“No.” The girl set her hand on his chest. “Don’t move. You’re hurt.” She gently, but firmly, pushed him back down against the cot.
He clenched his eyes shut and opened them to stare at her again. A light dusting of freckles were barely visible across the bridge of her nose, and her little red mouth turned down in a worried frown. Even her ears were perfect.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The corner of her mouth turned up. “I was going to ask you the same question.”
Had he imagined someone speaking Hindi? He must have. The girl spoke perfect English, even though she used a cadence he didn’t recognize. Her words had a lyrical quality to them, carefully formed and clear.
“I’m Jim.” He cleared the gruffness from his throat. “Jim Taylor.”
“Hello, Jim Taylor.” The dazzling smile returned. “I’m Meg.”
“Meg.”
She was stunning.
Meg shifted on her stool, and the window behind her came into focus. Thick wooden frame with old wavering glass. Outside, the cerulean sky stretched out over rolling green hills and a distant line of forest, shadowed and strange.
His mouth dried out, his heart lurching behind his cracked, aching ribs. The world outside the window wasn’t San Francisco.
Did it work?
Jim focused his gaze on Meg’s beautiful face. “Where am I?”
She pressed her lips together. “Where do you think you are?”
He scowled. Not the answer he was expecting.
“I need to sit up.” He got his elbows under himself and pushed his body into a sitting position, ignoring how the room whirled in his vision.
“Easy.” Meg stood, holding his shoulder with a strong hand.
Seriously, her fingers were like iron cables. Almost bruising.
Jim straightened slowly and grunted as the dull ache in his chest and sides took his breath away. Definitely cracked ribs. But he’d survive. He cracked his ribs all the time.
“Would you tell me where I am?” he asked.
Meg slowly released his shoulder and sank onto her cot, her expression oddly blank. Her eyes darted over his shoulder briefly and then came back to his face.
“Maybe we should start with where you’re from.” She folded her hands in her lap.
Jim rubbed his neck slowly, ignoring the creeping chill of someone’s hard gaze on the back of his head. Someone was standing behind him, staring. He could feel it now.
“San Francisco,” he said carefully.
“In California.” Meg nodded.
“Yeah.”
His voice fell.
Well, maybe it didn’t work after all. If this is an alternate dimension, I wouldn’t think anyone here would know about my world.
He frowned to himself.
Worst case scenario: He’d opened a vortex and been dropped somewhere else in his own world. That was certainly possible. That technology wasn’t the most reliable, but the Peregrine Agency had been using it anyway.
But he’d been certain his calculations should have resulted in a full breach of the electromagnetic barrier he’d always theorized had separated one world from another.
“Jim?”
He glanced at Meg again. Both her eyebrows had lifted.
“Sorry.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “I was thinking.” He flashed a smile. “So where did I end up? I don’t recognize the architecture, but hills and forests out the window—and someone who speaks English—maybe Canada?”
Meg blinked at him and looked over his shoulder again.
“What do you think happened to you?”
Her question this time was much more carefully phrased, her casual tone forced.
Jim took a slow breath.
He couldn’t read people very well. Non-verbal cues were too much of a social awareness issue he’d never been able to pick up. That was Barb’s bag. But tone, cadence, the shape of words—that was his specialty.
This is an interrogation.
He turned on the cot to set his feet on the floor, squaring his shoulders as best he could. “I’d like to know where I am.”
Meg lifted her chin, her stunning eyes narrowing.
Okay. That got a reaction. Barb had showed him a few facial expressions to watch for when he was treading on dangerous ground—or at least running the risk of being punched in the diaphragm.
Being punched in the diaphragm wasn’t fun. He wanted to avoid it if he could, but at the moment, it might be worth the pain if he could figure out where he was.
“Before I tell you anything,” Meg said quietly, “it would be best if you explained how you came to be here.”
“I disagree.”
A spark of irritation flared in her eyes.
Funny. She made the same face Barb did when she was losing patience. Maybe it was a girl thing. That would make sense, since girls were so incredibly confusing.
“You can disagree if you want,” Meg said. “But that won’t change the facts.”
“The facts being?”
“Before I tell you anything, you need to explain how you came to be here.”
“I’d like to know where here is first.” Jim shrugged and swallowed a hiss of discomfort. Note to self. Don’t do that again.
Meg folded her arms across her chest, her embroidered blouse rustling with the movement. She looked over his shoulder again, not a glance this time. A long pause.
“Tum’ne it’na kaha.” She said under her breath.
A heavy sigh sounded from the rear of the room. A door latched firmly, and the rustle of clothing drew near. Jim didn’t turn and waited for the mysterious figure behind him to appear in his line of sight.
Okay. Unexpected.
A woman in a khaki tunic and trousers glided across the room to stand beside Meg. A beaded hijab draped over her head and shoulders, but the hair he could see was black as jet, shot with striking streaks of silver. Angular features, high cheekbones, razor-like eyebrows, and fierce eyes the color of spruce trees.
She moved like a dancer and set a long-fingered hand on Meg’s shoulder.
With the variant of Hindi floating around, he’d assumed there would need to be Hindi people around. But this woman wasn’t Hindi. She looked more—Arabic or maybe Israeli. It made no sense at all.
“Mr. Taylor, it would be most helpful if you would first explain how you came to be here.” She formed every consonant emphatically, her voice almost monotone except for the evident strength behind each word.
Something was really wrong here.
Some part of his brain fluttered with fear. It was that same old sensation he used to get when he bumped into the wrestling scholars at the university commons. The fight or flight reflex, which in his mind usually always defaults to flight.
This woman wasn’t right. She was off somehow. But he couldn’t quantify the threat she posed. He just needed to get away from her or at least escape that green-eyed glare that stripped away his mental defenses.
Cross your arms, dimwit. Barb’s voice echoed in his brain. It’ll make you feel better.
Ah. Yes. Social cues and body language. If he’d known he’d needed to review Barb’s tips for interacting with people, he would have studied before the experiment.
Jim cleared his throat and crossed his arms.
A shock of pain rippled across his shoulders, but he hid the wince. Mostly.
It hurts, but I do feel better. Thanks, Sis.
“And you are?” He narrowed his eyes at the intimidating woman, hoping that she’d take his expression for one of intense skepticism rather than a mask for his discomfort. I should stop moving. Moving is a bad idea.
The woman arched an eyebrow at him, just like Meg had.
Jim glanced from Meg to the woman and back to Meg again. “Look,” he said, “I appreciate you helping me. But you have to understand the importance of my work. It’s classified. Top secret. I can’t just tell anyone about it.”
Meg and the woman traded a significant glance.
“Men toh sahee.” The woman nodded at Meg.
Bingo. Jim clutched his elbows. “You were right about what, ma’am?”
The woman stared at him, shock in her expression, and a muscle twitched at the back of Meg’s jaw.
Nostrils flaring, the woman pinned him with a dagger-like glare. “Aap sun’te hehn?”
Of course, the language would choose that moment to deviate.
Sun’te. Sun’te. Hear? He scowled. “Yeah, I hear you.”
The woman’s expression hardened like granite. “How?”
“You’re speaking Hindi.” Jim held her harsh gaze. “Or a variant of it. I can’t catch everything, but I get the gist.”
“Velanna,” Meg murmured softly.
The woman hushed her fiercely, her eyes not leaving Jim’s face. She watched him in silence for a long moment before she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Very well,” she said finally. “A proposition, Mr. Taylor. I shall tell you what I believe happened. You will confirm or correct. Is this agreeable?”
Jim gulped and nodded. “Sure.” He cleared his throat again. “Your name is Velanna, I assume?”
Meg turned red.
“Yes,” the woman said stonily.
Jim let his hands fall to the cot. “I’m Jim.” He nodded. “Nice to meet you.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. But she did nod, and her eyes might have softened a little.
“My hypothesis, Mr. Taylor,” Velanna began, “is that you generated a quantum-scale intensity electromagnetic field intended to breach the interstitial barrier between dimensions.”
Jim clutched the sheet on the cot in an attempt not to tilt sideways. She was exactly right. Disturbingly right. How had she known that? And how had she known how to explain it? He hadn’t even been able to explain it to Barb that clearly. She wouldn’t have understood the terminology.
“Accurate?” Velanna snapped.
Jim licked his lips. “Y—yeah.” He shook. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Furthermore,” Velanna continued with a sharp nod, “your calculations did not anticipate the severe vacuum effect that accompanies an incorrectly structured interdimensional rip.”
“Vacuum effect,” Jim muttered. “That’s—yeah—it dragged me right inside.”
Velanna nodded and shifted her weight. “Whose theory was it that you utilized?”
Jim hesitated. “Uh—my own.”
The woman scowled at him. “Your own?”
He shrugged and hissed at the pain again, grabbing his shoulder in pain. “Yeah, I’d developed a working theory of interdimenional transit for a thesis years ago. This was just the first opportunity I’d had to test it.”
Velanna blinked at him. “To test it.”
“Yeah.” Jim glanced between her and Meg again. Velanna looked interested. Meg looked like she had a headache. “My colleague, Dr. Fallen, has also been studying various theses on multiversal theory. He developed a field generator that could—”
“Let me attempt to understand you, Mr. Taylor.” Velanna raised a hand to interrupt him. “You are both a linguist and an expert in quantum mechanics?”
Jim chuckled. “Linguistics is a career. Quantum mechanics is a hobby.”
On the stool beside Velanna, Meg scrunched her face up and pressed her knuckles into the sides of her head. “Oh look, Velanna, you made a friend.”
Jim shifted on the cot, the mattress creaking beneath him. “You understand quantum mechanics?” He stared at Velanna.
Slowly, the woman tucked her hand back into her arms.
Jim looked out the window over Meg’s shoulder again, his heart pounding and breath turning shallow.
“It worked, didn’t it?” His voice shook.
Meg looked up at Velanna, scowling, and Velanna shook her head with a half smile.
“Yes, Mr. Taylor.” She let her hands fall to her side. “You successfully breached the interdimensional barrier between your world and ours.”
Jim choked on a sudden laugh. “You’re kidding.” He groaned and clutched his ribs. “I can’t believe it.”
“Disastrous though it may have been in its formation and execution, you should be congratulated.” Velanna shifted to stand closer to him. “It is impressive. No one from your world has ever been able to effectively open a gateway in the barrier before.”
“Well.” Jim sat back, the room still spinning. “To be honest, my first attempt this morning failed. It was Dr. Fallen who adjusted the quantum field enough to make the difference.”
It worked. The phrase circled his brain like a tilt-a-whirl. It worked! I was right!
Jim laughed again. “I have so many questions.” He beamed up at Velanna. “You don’t understand. Fallen and I have had a lot of disagreements, and my theories have always been the outliers in the academic world. To reach this world—and find it not only inhabited but with humans!” He gestured to Velanna. “It’s unbelievable!”
“Humans.” Velanna cast a sideways glance at Meg. “Indeed.”
Meg raised her hand. “I have a question.”
Jim blinked at her.
“How old are you?”
“How old?”
“Yeah, because you don’t look older than me.” Meg screwed up her face in a way that shouldn’t have made her more attractive—but did.
“I’m seventeen.”
Now it was Velanna’s turn to scowl. “That is impossible.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.” Jim leaned forward and carefully stood up. He paused when he straightened and found Velanna at his shoulder.
She’d seemed much taller when he was sitting down.
“So,” Jim adjusted his shirt collar. “Can I ask you where the others are?”
Heavy silence fell in the room, as Meg sat up.
“What others?”
Jim’s stomach turned over. “The others. They should have been with me.”
Velanna’s face went stony again. “There were others with you during the time of your experiment?”
“Yeah.” Jim faced her. “Dr. Fallen, my colleague. And my sister.” His heart thumped. “Barb.”
Meg looked down at the toes of her boots.
“Unfortunate,” Velanna mumbled.
“No,” Jim stopped her. “What’s unfortunate?”
A cold fist of anxiety lodged in his throat.
“Mr. Taylor, what you accomplished by opening an interdimensional rip is extraordinary indeed,” Velanna said. “But what process you and your colleague used to execute the generated energy field is flawed. The rip is unstable.”
“What do you mean?”
“The rip itself should have consumed itself shortly after ejecting you,” Velanna said. “As of an hour ago, it was still open.”
Jim shook himself. “Look, thanks for assuming that I know what you’re talking about, but I’m not proud. I don’t know what any of that has to do with Dr. Fallen and my sister.”
Velanna set her jaw. “Unstable rips open with vacuum force, drawing objects from one world into the next. This process must be sequential and immediate. If your colleague and sister did not come through the rip with you, then they are lost.”
The floor dropped out from under Jim’s feet. “What?”
On her stool, Meg slumped her face into her hand, and Velanna lifted her chin defiantly.
Jim tilted on his feet and sank back to the mattress again. “No.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not—it can’t be.” He ran his hands into his hair.
It wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be true. Barb couldn’t be lost.
“Barb wouldn’t go down like that,” he said. “That’s not her. She wouldn’t stand for it.”
Panic crept into his mind in an anxious whirl that stole his breath and made the room spin.
Velanna cleared her throat. “I acknowledge this information must be shocking. Perhaps there will be opportunity for you to grieve at another time. However, at this moment, there is a far greater threat that you have caused, which must be addressed.”
“Velanna.” Meg spoke sharply from her stool as she stood up. “Can we give him a moment?” Meg stood at his set and set a hand on his shoulder.
Velanna shifted her weight, her clothing rustling. “No, Margaret. We cannot. We have no time to spare on emotional displays, no matter how necessary they may seem.”
Jim held up both his hands. “Stop. Please.” He hated how his voice trembled. “I need—how do you know—what if they’re still inside the rip? You said it was still open.”
Velanna sighed heavily and shook her head. “Within an open interdimensional rip is pure vacuum. Any breathable air is expelled. If somehow they are still trapped within the rip, they will have suffocated by now.”
Meg’s grip on his shoulder tightened.
“Well, maybe they got sent somewhere else.”
Velanna frowned thoughtfully. “That is possible.”
“Yeah?” Jim sat up.
“If that is the case, it is more likely they were lost in interstitial space and ejected into one of the limbo dimensions.” She shrugged. “Most limbos cannot sustain human life.”
Jim sagged again, face in his hands.
Meg’s fingers were like iron on his shoulder. “Velanna, maybe we can talk about that later?”
Meg and Velanna seemed to be involved in a staring contest.
Jim ignored them.
It didn’t feel right. They had to be wrong. There had to be another explanation. Barb couldn’t be gone. Who would he argue with? Who would he prank? Who would annoy him when he was trying to write a program?
The knot in his throat expanded. His eyes burned.
Barb couldn’t be gone. If she was, and it happened in his lab, it would mean he’d killed her. And that wasn’t even in the neighborhood of possible. Barb was too stubborn to die. If some alternate world tried to eat her alive, she’d give it indigestion out of spite.
“My condolences to you, Mr. Taylor,” Velanna said finally, the staring content apparently over. “I assure you that we will do all in our power to assist you in your return to your world, but right now we are in dire need of your help.”
Jim looked up in surprise. “My help?”
“The rip remains open,” Velanna said with exaggerated slowness. “The longer it remains open, the greater danger that it will expand. Once it reaches a certain size, it shall become unstable and unable to be closed. It will keep expanding until it consumes this entire world and everything in it.”
Jim swallowed hard. “I didn’t know.”
Velanna shook her head. “You couldn’t have known, Mr. Taylor. But I need to understand your theory and what your colleague did to your field generator in order to create this rip.”
Jim’s heart clenched painfully. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Meg shut her eyes.
Jim met Velanna’s eyes. “Dr. Fallen adjusted the generator without telling me what he did. I have no idea how he adjusted it.”
“So if he’s lost, so are we.” Meg ran her hands into her hair.
Velanna stroked her chin. “Unfortunate.”
Jim raised his eyebrows at her. “Unfortunate?”
Velanna caught her lower lip with her teeth. “This shall require a great deal of study and observation. It will be the only way we can close the rip.”
A knock on the door interrupted them. Velanna lowered her hand. “Enter.”
The door swung open to reveal another woman. Actually, a carbon copy of Velanna, just much younger. Jim scrubbed the grit out of his eyes. Was he seeing things?
The younger woman hovered on the threshold of the room. Long black hair tumbled around her face to mid-back, and the sharp points of her ears curved upward.
Pointed ears. Jim blinked. Okay. It’s not impossible that some variations in the human genome would have developed in an alternate world.
“What is it, Tzaitel?” Velanna addressed the younger woman.
She stayed in the doorway, eying Jim suspiciously. “Mother, we have just had a radio transmission from Baari Village.”
“And?” Velanna spun her fingers in the air.
“And they claim a human has fallen out of the sky.”
“A human?” Velanna hesitated.
“A human female.”
Jim’s heart stuttered again, and he choked on a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. I knew it.
Meg set her hand on his shoulder again.
“Are they quite certain, Tzaitel?” Velanna narrowed her eyes.
“Yes, Mother, and they are quite adamant that we send someone to collect her.” The woman named Tzaitel folded her hands in the bell sleeves of her tunic. “By all reports, she is ill-tempered and unpleasant.”
Jim sat up. “Has she got red hair?”
Tzaitel glanced at him, left eyebrow raised in surprise. “How did you know?”
Now Jim did laugh. “I told you she couldn’t go down like that.” He grinned. “If an interdimensional limbo tried to eat my sister, it would spit her back out.”
Meg met his gaze with a smile. “I think I want to meet your sister.”
Relief surged through him, his vision blurring and head spinning. “I think we can probably arrange that.”

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