The Morph (Gate Shifter Book One) Read online

  I sat up pretty much the instant he did.

  I still had to fight to choke down oxygen, and I still gripped the bike’s handlebars in both of my hands, but I couldn’t help letting out a gasp of relief when his weight no longer pinned me to the gas tank. I had the helmet off my head a few seconds later, and then I was practically screaming at him.

  "What was that?" The words burst out of me. "What the hell was that? Seriously. I mean... are you mental?"

  "Malek," he said, his voice sounding as strange as before.

  He sounded worried.

  At first I thought the worry was because I had half a mind to deck him.

  But he cleared that up, too, with his next set of words.

  “...They will follow," he said. "I must go. I must... report back. This is not expected. My handlers will expect a report... I should not be here...”

  He hesitated, looking at me a few beats longer, as if unsure what to do with me. He rubbed the center of his chest with one hand, then looked down at it, too, as if confused by something there. The expression on his face came close to pain, but I didn’t understand it.

  “The lock,” he said. “Can you feel it? How did you get in my lock?”

  I stared at him, not sure if those were real questions.

  The pained look remained on his face, but he looked away.

  "You will be safe,” he said at the end of that pause. His voice was flat once more, but I heard a decision in there, somewhere. “They will not bother you. If I go now, my signal will disappear. They will know I have gone. They will leave you alone...”

  My mind spun briefly around his words.

  Once more, I came up almost totally blank.

  "Go?" I said finally. “...Go where?"

  I stared around the field where we stood as he climbed off the back of the bike. I couldn’t help noticing that he moved as fluidly as he had when he'd escaped through that window in the abandoned office building.

  "Are you really meeting someone out here?” I said. “Now?” Pausing as my mind tried to wrap itself around that last part, I blinked at him again. “What did you mean before... you said handlers, right?' Are you a spook?"

  The thought scared me a little, truthfully.

  Then again, it also maybe explained a lot.

  Maybe the whole concept seemed less foreign to me, too, because of my ex-special forces, on-again, off-again, sort-of boyfriend, Gantry.

  Although, unlike Gantry, this guy clearly had some kind of social-interaction disorder, like Apserger's or something. That had to limit his ability to blend, right?

  Still, I could tell that wasn’t what bothered me about the guy.

  It was something else. Something more personal, maybe.

  Of course, with the way he moved, this guy being an assassin wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility, either. Either way, if he was a spook, I had serious doubts he hailed from the same America the Beautiful as me and Gantry.

  Climbing off the bike, I found myself following him before I'd thought about what I intended. When he continued walking purposefully away from me, heading for the line of trees past the pond, I sped my feet to catch up with him.

  "Hey!" I called out, taking two steps for every one of his. "Hey! Where are you going? Seriously. If you’re really worried about those guys chasing us, I can take you somewhere safe, you know? Somewhere with four walls... a roof?"

  He didn't slow his pace, but that time, after the requisite pause, he answered me.

  "You cannot follow. I am sorry."

  "Follow? Follow where? Hey... I need some answers here, man...”

  "I must go back to Udael."

  "Udael?” I wracked my brain, but it didn’t sound familiar. There’re a ton of small towns in Washington State alone I don’t know, so that didn’t mean much, really.

  “Where's that?" I said.

  He turned to look at me, but only briefly.

  Right about then, I noticed we’d reached the edges of what looked like a really big campfire pit, only without the fire.

  I only really looked down as he crossed the line of boulder-like stones.

  No wood or scorch marks broke the grassy lawn, and I didn’t see any ash, just a rough circle of sparkling white pieces of what looked like granite. They were large, each about the size of a basketball.

  He walked right into the middle of that stone ring, and only then did he turn back to look at me. His symmetrical face remained smooth as he met my gaze, but the feeling I got off what I saw there came closest to regret.

  He was breathing harder, his chest moving the fabric of that thick, black suit.

  “You cannot come with me,” he said.

  I paused at that, weirdly put off by his words.

  "You must go," he said, his voice firm. "Go back."

  "Go?” I glanced at the Enfield. “Go back where?"

  He waited a beat, as if thinking.

  "Go back to somewhere not here," he suggested then.

  I shook my head, feeling my jaw harden. "No,” I said. “...No. Not until you tell me something. Who were those guys? What the hell was that blue flame thingy they did? They knocked out a danged lamp post... I saw that thing fall. You know how hard that is, without some kind of bazooka? And that shot didn’t make a sound...”

  I’d been walking forward that whole time, thinking aloud as I spoke.

  He held up a hand.

  I stopped unthinkingly when he did. Then it struck me as strange, that he’d halted my movements right as I was in the process of crossing the line of white stones. It felt almost like being pushed. Really, like being pushed in the middle of the chest.

  "Stop!" he said.

  The word came out harsh, a near-command.

  I found myself rubbing that spot in the middle of my chest, just like he’d done.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I said. “What’s wrong with my chest?”

  His voice grew even more insistent, almost fearful when I frowned at him.

  "Do not come inside the circle!” he said. “You must not be here! It would be bad for you, if you got caught in the shift field... I cannot protect you, I am sorry. The connection... it will go away once I am gone. It will not harm you...”

  “What connection?” I said, halting a second time when he held up his hand, but frustrated by that pain in my chest. “The what field, man?”

  “Humans cannot survive the shift,” he said. “It is why they send the morph.”

  I frowned at him, as much confused by my own feelings as I was by him. Why was I still here? Why hadn’t I just walked away when I got my bike back from him? Called Gantry or Irene? Instead I lingered there, watching him.

  Still rubbing my own chest.

  “Seriously,” I said, hearing the stall in my own voice. “What are you talking about?”

  “You cannot be here!”

  I looked around the moonlit lawn. "I can’t be where, man? I don't think you're supposed to be here, either, if you want to get technical on––"

  "You will get hurt. The light... it is not for you. For your kind." That regret returned to his voice. “I am sorry. I do not know how it happened... with the lock. The connection. I am sorry for that... but there is nothing I can do.”

  My mind whirled around his words, finally settling on one thing.

  "My kind?" I said.

  "The gates led to the same world,” he said, shaking his head. “That has never happened. The gates... they never cross. One gate leads only to its own worlds. The other gate leads to its own worlds. They never go to the same one. Never. I must go and report this, and you cannot come. I know you want to, and I know why... but you cannot. Do you understand?"

  "No," I said.

  I fought with the part of me that wanted to cross that line.

  As if he felt it, he held up his hand again.

  Again, it was like someone shoved me in the middle of the chest.

  “No!” he said. “Do not! I am morph... do you understand? I go through the sh
ift, but you cannot. We are not the same... do you understand?”

  “No!”

  “I only work for them,” he said, obviously agitated. “I only work for them... I belong to them. Do you see? I cannot stay! Even if I wanted! They would come for me. They would come for me here... they own the lock!”

  “Who do you work for?” I said, fighting to keep up. “The government? Which government?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  There was a silence.

  In it, I could see that he was still upset, but he didn’t speak.

  “Yes?” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “Yes, what? You work for the government? Which government?”

  But he was already shaking his head.

  He still looked as frustrated as I felt.

  “They are not from here. There are two... tribes...” he said, as if forcing out the word. “Two tribes in the place from where I come. One is Pharei. The other is Malek... those you just saw.” He paused, as if seeing something in my facial expression. “We do not come to the same worlds. They are not friends to me. You and I... we are not the same. Do you see this?”

  “I don’t see shit,” I said. “What the hell are you talking about, man?”

  He didn't answer me that time, not really.

  I saw him rubbing his chest again, though. That pain look slid back over his expression, and when he looked at me that time, I saw more of that regret, almost a longing.

  “There is no time...” he muttered. “I cannot stay. I cannot.”

  I saw a small, whitish-gray device in his hand when he next lifted it.

  I couldn’t tell what it was, or even see it clearly in the near-dark of the grassy lawn, but it appeared to be made of metal. I wondered if it was an oddly-shaped phone, or maybe a remote control of some kind, when he started doing something to it, his eyes and focus concentrated there, instead of on me. He didn’t look like he was hitting buttons though, more like he was massaging the thing, or maybe squeezing it with his long fingers.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  He didn’t answer me that time at all.

  Before I could think of what to say or do next, he looked at me again.

  Something more final lived in his expression that time.

  "Go home," he said. His voice turned more gentle, just before he gave me an odd kind of bow. The gesture was formal-seeming, and precise, but unlike anything I’d ever seen before. “...I will pray for your safety, my friend,” he said, his voice grave. “I appreciate your concern for my wellbeing. It is...” He hesitated. “...Rare.”

  Seeming to realize what he’d said, he blanched a little, looking up.

  “I do not mean that as an insult to your race,” he clarified. “It only makes the occurrence all the more appreciated...”

  "My race?" I said, staring at him. "What ‘race’ would that be, exactly?”

  “Human,” he said, blunt.

  “Dude, seriously...”

  "Go home," he repeated.

  Anger, frustration and a kind of panic rose in me.

  The fear didn’t make any sense to me, but it worsened as I looked at him, even as it remained nameless, or at the very least, difficult to pin down.

  He finished whatever he’d been doing and shoved the remote-control-slash-smart-phone into a pocket of his scuba-like shirt. I watched him do it, silent, and still standing just outside the circle of stones. I tried to understand what I was seeing on his face as he avoided looking at me.

  I was already half-bracing myself for... something.

  I had no idea what, but some part of me totally believed something new and equally strange would happen soon.

  Probably from whatever he’d just done to that remote control.

  I started to think it was just my imagination working overtime after all, when a light rose subtly around where we stood.

  Dim at first, it rose quickly in strength, until the glare half-blinded me, reflecting sharply on the wet grass. The light didn’t have a source... well, none that I could identify, anyway. I looked around as I blinked against it, but it seemed to come from everywhere and no where all at once.

  Whatever generated it, it continued to brighten. It threw my mystery man’s outline into sharp relief with an intense, gold-white beam.

  I gasped then, suddenly short on oxygen in my lungs.

  Looking down, I realized the light did more than simply illuminate the surrounding space. It raised the hairs on my arms and neck. It tightened the muscles in my chest, forced my breath out in near-pants. A kind of electricity seemed to erupt from the very air.

  I felt dizzy, but my muscles tensed so much I couldn’t move.

  Then my new friend, my maybe-assassin-definitely-vigilante-maybe-alien-spy, began to disappear.

  I thought I was imagining that, too, in the beginning.

  The longer I stared, the less sure I felt.

  I noticed his leg, first.

  The outline of his left leg gradually grew less and less distinct as I watched. I blinked, and it was nearly gone in that fraction of a second.

  The leg didn’t look gone exactly, though. He still stood there, as if he had two, fully-functioning legs. It looked instead almost like the leg had been separated from him somehow, by a pane of warped or beveled glass.

  I still worked to wrap my head around the disappearing leg when the rest of him began to fade, too... slowly, at first, and then in earnest. It still happened in pieces, but the pieces began to follow one another a lot faster. I couldn’t see his left hand much at all anymore, or his right foot or lower leg. His face still looked reasonably distinct, but his shoulder and most of his right arm had begun to fade, too. I glimpsed his bare chest briefly through the gummy, dense shirt he wore, then his chest began to grow transparent.

  The center of his chest changed like the clothes, showing me skin and veins, muscle and bone, as layers gradually disappeared one at a time in front of me.

  I felt my body pulled towards what remained of his.

  Looking back, I don’t think my mind was really working all that well.

  I didn’t even try making up a story about why I would approach him right then, or what I felt as I looked at the guy. All I knew, without a single doubt in my mind, was that if I let this guy disappear now, I'd never see him again. I'd never learn a damned thing about whatever had happened tonight.

  The whole experience would just be a big black mark in the weird column... and I wasn’t sure if I could live with that. I’d have to be content with guesses and unconvincing theories from Gantry and others who hadn’t been here about how easy it all was to explain. I wasn’t sure if I could live with that, either.

  I knew how good most people were at rationalizing.

  Unfortunately, I completely suck at it. Quasi-scientific theories that only ring half-true to me never really satisfy me. Not when I know... like, really know... something more happened. Something that the easy theories flat-out don’t explain.

  I honestly wasn’t sure if I could live with any of it.

  Maybe I was getting too used to getting answers to most of the puzzles that got thrown my way. Maybe I hated how this guy gave me the brush-off, like I was just too much of a simpleton to fully get his weird and dangerous world.

  Either way, I knew that leaving things like this wasn’t going to work for me.

  The light inside that circle of stones brightened still more.

  Now, it filled most of the small field.

  I started noticing other things about that light, too. Like, how it wasn’t cold like that blue-white blast from the weapons in Chinatown. Instead, a kind of fire underlay the brilliance, something denser and more real-seeming, like shafts of sunlight slanting through deep water. I still couldn’t see a source of the light; in fact, now it almost seemed to be coming from my friend. Even so, I felt like I knew the light better, somehow.

  And yeah, I know what a fat lot of no-sense that makes.

  Even as I thought it, though, he looked up at me aga
in. I could see his pale green eyes staring at me through the shadow of his face, even as the outline of his head began to shimmer, making his symmetrical features indistinct for the first time.

  His cheekbones began to fade... then his mouth.

  My throat constricted as those flames strengthened.

  Tongues of white fire sharpened in the night sky, seemingly rising from the ground at his feet up into the sky. The expression on his face stood out to me briefly, the colors sharp even through the oddly-perfect lines. I got the sense, suddenly, that I was seeing only the barest hint of him, what might even have been a costume of some kind, or some mirage to keep me and whoever else from seeing what lay behind it.

  Then his form melted.

  It just... melted.

  The white flames ascended abruptly to a shocking flash.

  Then, slowly, the brightness began to dim. Still fighting to breathe, I stared over the edge of that circle of white stones, looking for him.

  He was gone.

  Something in my chest hurt, surprising me, I guess, with the intensity of emotion behind it. It wasn’t just the mystery of the whole thing, I realized, a few seconds later. It wasn’t just the thought of having no answers that upset me when I saw his outline start to fade.

  I really didn’t want him to go.

  The light was definitely fading now, though. I watched it, knees shaking, conflict rippling through my mind, tugging my thoughts back and forth.

  Abruptly, I stepped over the line of stones.

  Hairs on my arms and the nape of my neck leapt to attention.

  That electric current flared before I could take a breath, light igniting like a spotlight inside the stone-bound circle. My whole body grew hot at once, as if the very blood in my veins had been ignited by that same fireless light.

  Light began to shine off my skin, off my fingers and the toes of my boots.

  From inside the circle, I could now see that the light emanated off the white, basketball-sized stones themselves; they sparked like giant, glowing embers, too bright to look at once I faced them from the other side.

  I took another step towards the middle of the ring, but that time, I didn’t see where my foot landed. I could no longer see the grassy knoll, or the trees.