Page 96 of Rescued

“I’m listening.”

“First I need to get something to show you. Wait just one minute.”

He went back to the front of the ship and Sonya wondered if she ought to try and hide. But before she could find a good place, he was back. In one large hand he had something that looked like an ancient black and white Rubik’s Cube.

“What’s that?” Sonya asked flatly. She was still holding the holo coin which kept showing her images of herself and Davrik in situations she’d never been in.

“This is the Far Box—a device that enables you to cross into different parallel universes in the Multiverse,” Davrik explained. He went and sat on the couch, still holding the black and white cube carefully in one large hand.

“Wait—you’re kidding, right?” Sonya took a wary step towards him. “Are you trying to tell me you came from a whole other universe?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I came here to find you, baby girl. To find what I lost.”

“What you lost? So…this isn’t me?” She nodded at the pictures the holo coin was still showing.

“It is…and it isn’t,” Davrik said heavily. “That’s the Sonya from my universe—the woman I loved and married and Bonded with. Then, five years ago, there was a…a shuttle crash.” He swallowed hard and a look of pain came over his face. “My Sonya died in that crash—I felt her light go out here…” He clenched a fist to his heart. “But I couldn’t get to her, couldn’t save her.”

“So…the other me—the Sonya from your universe is…is dead?” Sonya asked faintly. This got stranger and stranger and yet she had no urge to disbelieve him. The sincerity and pain on his face were all too real.

“She died in every universe but this one,” Davrik told her. “Only in this one universe in all the myriad of parallel universes did she—you—survive. I think it’s because this is the only universe where the Scourge took over Earth and the Kindred only came later. In every other universe you Bonded with a version of me and were killed in that shuttle crash.”

“Wait—so there are more Davriks too?” Sonya’s head was beginning to hurt.

“One in every universe—except this one,” he informed her. “I have no doppelganger here. At least, not one I’ve been able to identify. But this isn’t about me—it’s about you, baby girl. I’ve crossed time and space to get to you again—I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier but I thought you might think I was crazy.”

“It does sound crazy,” Sonya admitted. Her head was still spinning from everything he’d told her. Slowly, she sank down onto the couch cushions, the holo coin still gripped in her hand. She watched as it played image after image of the other Sonya—the one Davrik had loved—laughing happily and looking completely contented. “She’s dead,” she whispered, looking at the holo images of her doppelganger.

“They’re all dead,” he said soberly. “All except you, baby girl.”

“Don’t call me that,” Sonya said tightly. She had finally gotten her head around what he was telling her and emotions were beginning to surface—none of them happy. “You don’t care about me—not really,” she said, looking up at Davrik. “You just wanted a substitute for her—for the Sonya you lost.” She nodded at the happy, smiling woman who wasn’t her—who would never be her.

He shook his head unhappily.

“I was afraid you might think that when you finally found out. But it’s not like that, baby girl. I wasn’t just looking for a substitute—I swear it!”

“Oh, really? Because that’s the way it seems to me,” she snapped. “Why else would you come all the way to another universe?”

“I came because I couldn’t not come,” Davrik said hoarsely. “I came because you’re the other half of my soul and I can’t live without you!”

His impassioned words might have stirred something in her but then the holo-coin in her palm produced yet another image—this one of the other Sonya with her head thrown back in laughter. Her eyes were fixed on Davrik who was looking at her with an expression of such love and devotion written on his strong features that it made Sonya’s heart ache.

They belonged together, she realized. The other Sonya was happy because she had Davrik—and because she never went through what I did. She didn’t have to live through the Scourge invasion, running and hiding and then being captured and sold as a sex slave! She was happier than me—better than me.

“I’m sorry, Davrik, but I think this is all a mistake,” she said slowly. “You coming here to get me, I mean. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m grateful that you saved me from The House of Flowers and from that awful Trollox, I truly am. But I don’t think I could ever be the person you need me to be. I can’t be your Sonya. And I don’t want to be just a substitute or a stand-in, anyway. I thought you wanted me for me—when actually you just want a copy of her and I can’t be that.”

A look of loneliness and grief filled his face but he only nodded.

“I can understand why you’d feel that way. If you’d prefer, I’ll leave you aboard the Kindred Mother Ship instead of taking you back to my own universe. The Kindred here are 95 percent female instead of being 95 percent male as they are in my own world. I’m sure they’ll welcome you with open arms.”

Sonya wasn’t sure about the idea of living with strangers, even if they were mostly female—but where else did she have to go? Her home on Earth had been vaporized and she certainly wasn’t going back to The House of a Thousand Flowers.

“All right,” she said at last. “Let’s just get to the ship and then we can go our separate ways.”

“Agreed,” Davrik said heavily. “Excuse me—I’ll go call and ask them to fold space for us now.”

He rose and left the room, leaving Sonya behind. She watched him go, wondering why she felt so bad when this was clearly not her fault. After all, she hadn’t asked him to come looking for a replacement for his dead wife! She hadn’t asked him to trick her into caring for him, thinking she was what he wanted when in actuality, he just wanted his own Sonya back. She—

But her thoughts broke down as hot tears stung her eyes. She gripped the holo coin tightly in her hand, stopping its endless flow of images.

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