and my family would want me to. I’d want me to. It wouldn’t be fair to raise their expectations, give them false hope that I was back for good, or that I could at least visit for a while. I wasn’t, and I couldn’t, for their own safety.
He was nodding, accepting my answer and the unspoken reasons behind it. “Okay. That scrape doesn’t look too bad; you’re not going to bleed out if I run to the drugstore. What do you need?”
“Ah.” I hesitated, trying to think. “My right wrist is definitely broken, and some of my ribs might be. I also might have a concussion; I fell pretty hard a few … on the way over here,” I stumbled, not wanting to give him the impression I’d been in trouble right before coming to his door. “My shoulder was fractured”—I paused, trying to figure out how long ago it had been—“in a rockslide,” I said, stalling. “It was tended to and mostly healed, but it’s still aching.”
“How long ago was it seen to?”
It was so hard to tell. The last few days were a blur of places and people and injuries, and I hadn’t slept or eaten with any kind of regularity. “Ah … a week ago? Two? I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“I’ll get you some aspirin. A brace for your wrist is the best I can do, since I’m assuming you don’t want me to take you to the hospital.” I shook my head, and he continued. “I’ll get medical tape for your ribs, but if one of them is broken, the best you can do is not move for a while.” He eyed me. “I take it that’s not an option?”
I shook my head again.
“I’m leaving as soon as I can stand again,” I said.
“To where?”
“Another dimension,” I said. “Somewhere I might be able to find help.” I’d already told him some of it, after all.
“I see,” he said, and stood up. He sounded regretful, and offered his hand. I took it with my left one, not really sure why. “Joseph Harker,” he said, “I’ve never been sure if you’re crazy or if I am, but I’m glad to know you either way.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and he paused at the honorific. It was habit for me; I’d gotten used to calling the Old Man that. To his face, anyway. “Mr. Dimas,” I amended.
“Call me Jack,” he said. “I’m not your teacher anymore.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I nodded. He patted his jacket to make sure he had his wallet, and moved toward the door. “If you can wait on the aspirin, I’ll pick up some extra-strength painkillers.”
“That’d be great,” I said, though the thought of waiting a few more minutes wasn’t awesome. Still, I’d live, and it would be better for me in the long run.
“I’ll be back,” he said. I nodded again, even though he wasn’t looking at me anymore, and listened as the front door opened and closed behind him. I heard the click of his key in the lock. I wasn’t sure if he was locking me in or making sure to keep everyone else out. Probably both.
I’ll admit it: I was nervous about going to anyone for help. Not only was it entirely possible he’d be coming back with some nice men in pristine white coats but there was no telling what kind of trouble I might have brought with me. My enemies had sent me here on purpose, which meant they probably wouldn’t be coming after me … probably. There was no way to know for sure. Even aside from that, I had already had one teammate turn on me in recent memory. I was having a few trust issues right now, not that I think anyone would blame me.
I tilted my head back against the covered couch, listening to the crinkle of plastic around my ears. I was dizzy. What I really needed was to sleep for about a decade, but I’d probably get about an hour. I’d been sent here to witness the destruction of everything. I didn’t know how soon they were planning on making that happen, but I probably couldn’t afford to rest for too long.
Despite that thought, I must have passed out on the couch while I was waiting for Mr. Dimas—Jack—to get back from the store. One moment I was sitting there, thinking about how I couldn’t rest for long, and the next I was hearing the key in the lock again and realizing I’d fallen asleep.
And I woke up with a headache, which is pretty much the worst thing ever.
“How long were you gone?” I asked, as he stepped into my line of sight.
He looked at his watch. “Twenty-three minutes,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Are you okay?”
“Water and painkillers,” I said. “Please.”
He brought me a bottle of water and two maximum-strength aspirins. I swallowed them both at once, along with half the water. Mr. Dimas (I kept thinking of him that way, no matter what he’d said) was laying out supplies on the table: a wrist brace, an Ace bandage, medical tape, butterfly bandages, gauze, disinfectant, etc.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, sitting on the table across from me and dabbing the disinfectant on the gauze.
“It’s not going to make much sense to you,” I said apologetically.
“That’s fine. Just talk to me. This is going to hurt.”
Oh. I nodded, trying to figure out where to start. I had told him some the last time I’d been home, before I’d made the decision to fully commit my life to InterWorld. … “How much do you remember from what I told you before?”
“I’ve never forgotten it,” he said. “You went missing for a day and a half, and then you came to see me at school one evening with a story about how you’d discovered you could travel through dimensions.”
“We call it Walking,” I said. He was cleaning the cuts on my wrist left by Lord Dogknife’s claws, and they were starting to sting. A lot.
“Right. You were being chased by this magic organization. …”
“HEX,” I filled in. “They’re the bad guys. One of them, anyway.”
“And you were rescued by an older version of you, who was killed in the process.”
“Jay,” I said, the ache of the words and the memories nothing compared to the stinging of my wounds. Thinking of Jay no longer hurt as much as it used to; everything healed eventually. “And I brought his body back to InterWorld. That’s where I met the other versions of me.”
“Because you all have the same power,” he said.
“Right. See, since I have the power to Walk between dimensions, every other version of me in every other dimension has that same power. I don’t know why me—or, why us—but there it is. We can all do it, some better than others. Apparently, I’m … pretty good at it.”
“Which is how you did it by accident at first,” he said, pinching my skin together as he placed a butterfly bandage over the worst of the cuts. I continued to speak, watching him with a vague, detached fascination. “And then you went on a training mission, correct? The one that turned out to be a trap?”
“Yeah. Everyone got captured by HEX, except for me. I only escaped because of Hue.”
“Your little
