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  Not a side tunnel. A hole in space and time itself. A fissure. A flaw. A wormhole. The swirling colors and shadows that filled the gap could only be the myth of escape transmuted to the reality of a famous sanctuary.

  Brechal had heard stories but never hoped to see one himself. What they were, only a physicist might know for sure. Brechal certainly didn’t. All he knew was that some people thought of them not as an anomaly, but as a gateway between worlds.

  Brechal had started to smile. “Hope,” he answered.

  With bittersweet feelings, the bartender fastened on that instant of hope, when he had prayed that they had found salvation. When Tina’s life would not end, and he might still be alive to love and care for her. All too soon, the rush of memory pulled him away to what happened next.

  With no real knowledge of what he might find if he tried to step through, with no certainty that even getting through was possible, he had lunged towards it, half dragging and half carrying Tina along with him.

  But before he’d covered even half the distance, the monster closest to the wormhole shrieked once again and surged to intercept them.

  Tina had screamed, and Brechal’s heart had dropped. He had known with absolute conviction that they couldn’t make it to the hole before the monster blocked it. It was over. They were defeated. Done.

  He felt soul-crushing despair that Tina was going to die.

  Except….

  Brechal had no time to consider his actions. He only had time to act. “You go!” he had shouted, with desperation clear in his voice. “I’ll distract it. Go now!”

  Tina had understood his intent but had shaken her head in denial. “No! You go!”

  “There’s no time to argue! Hurry!” Even though he had desired nothing more than to hold her in his arms one more time, he physically shoved her away from him. His life didn’t matter to him. Compared to her, he knew he was nothing. An oversized fool who lived only to be a torment for others.

  She was everything that he wasn’t. She had to live. Had to escape.

  He had waved his arms in front of the monster and started to yell.

  “Hey, foul monster! You dung-lying slime-producing beast of a paralytic mother! Over here! Come and get me!”

  Perhaps it had been his imagination, but he thought that he had gained its interest. Maybe he had bought Tina enough time.

  Brechal remembered the focused purpose of that moment. He had prepared himself as best he could for whatever came next. He had not relished the thought of endless years spent in manufactured terror within the digestive system of such a beast but thought it would be bearable if he knew that Tina was safe.

  He didn’t watch where she went. Instead, he stood tall and waited.

  Brechal remembered that resolution, the clarity that willing sacrifice brought. Even now, he could feel that certainty in his bones, the willingness to give everything for another. Echoing around him, he felt the faint presence of the BHB and Madrik, united in their support, proud of him and accepting. Beyond them were others, the rest of the BHB team, the family that had formed to include him. They took up their positions at his side, telling him without words that they were there for him.

  At some level, he was astonished. Did they not know that he was flawed? A con man and a thief. Not someone to depend on. An ugly man with a nasty inside. His memories swept him away, not allowing him to dwell on the shock of acceptance, flaws and all.

  Without conscious volition, he had started to move.

  At first, he had not understood what was happening. Wildly confused, he had tried to fight, attempting to regain control of his body, but he could not. He found himself hurtling flat out toward the wormhole, and there was nothing he could do to stop.

  He panicked. This wasn’t the plan. He needed to take the nightmare creature’s attention away from the wormhole. Not towards it.

  Then he saw Tina. She wasn’t at the wormhole entrance. Instead, she stood as straight as she could, tears of grief streaming down her cheeks. Her covering illusion had disappeared, leaving her well-loved face for him to see. The small woman was facing the monster from the same spot that he had stood just a few moments before, the place that should have taken the beast as far from the wormhole as possible if it had taken the bait.

  Which it had. Only it was focused on Tina instead of on him.

  He knew then what was happening. Tina. She was controlling him. Forcing him against his will to escape while she stayed.

  “NNNNNOOOOO!!!” he had cried, his voice breaking as his heart struggled to contain the weight of his torment. He didn’t want this. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t sacrifice herself for him.

  With his heart pounding madly in his chest, he had desperately fought to regain control. He had to save his love. Had to.

  The memory of that moment ripped his emotions free from their roots, leaving bleeding in every part of his psyche. He felt others pushing on his chest, forcing his heart to beat and his body to breathe. Desperately, he longed to be able to go back to that moment and change what had happened. But that was not to be. Helpless in the river of memory, he was washed downstream toward the end.

  “Stop,” Tina had commanded. Only she didn’t say it out loud. She said it in his mind.

  He had no choice. She had controlled him entirely.

  “This is the way it must be. I cannot face a world without you in it. Go. Live. Carry my love with you and be well and happy. In my memory, if nothing else.”

  And then it was too late. The creature had engulfed Tina the same way it had the guard. Brechal heard her horrified scream in his mind, saw her sink into the monster’s throat beside the guard who was already there.

  He had watched all his hopes and dreams get swallowed by this creature of doom.

  It had been like having his heart ripped out of his chest. He remembered being unable to breathe. His body echoed that in the here and now, and he felt the BHB as it wrapped tendrils around him, squeezing and releasing so that his chest drew breath in and let it out.

  Walled behind remembered horror and sadness, Brechal felt the abandonment and despair of the moment and the impact of its smash of emotion again now. The image of Tina being engulfed was as profoundly burned into his mind as if someone had used a brand and seared it into his brain.

  Nor could he do anything about it. He had not been able to save his love. The monster was too powerful, too impossibly big. All he could do was stare at Tina’s still body within the beast and feel trapped in an endless world of despair.

  The wormhole was forgotten, and he would have sagged to the floor if Tina had not been still in control of his body. He had felt pain and loss so profound it was as if the universe had suddenly stopped and given a collective moan of pure desolation.

  He had wanted only to die. To sacrifice himself to the monster so that at least they would suffer together.

  But she would not let him.

  “Go,” she had said in his mind. Such was their connection that she couldn’t hide the terrors that the monster already engendered within her. To him, they were as nothing to what he now felt. He would gladly, happily endure all of it, if only he could take her place.

  “No,” he had said, barely able to get the words past the constriction in his throat. “Don’t make me. I can’t … I can’t.”

  But she had. “Please, go,” she had said, the tone of her thoughts clearly desperate, and just as full of love. She had not wanted him to stay. She wanted him to live.

  And she could force him to do so.

  He had acquiesced. There was nothing else he could do.

  “Only, please, may I take a piece of you with me?” Tina had pled.

  Brechal had not known what she meant. All he had been able to tell was that the strength she had shown was fading behind a tsunami of fear. Her mental voice was quivering, almost lost to sheer terror.

  “Anything.”

  He had felt the most intense pain of his life, stabbing deeply into his mind. It hurt like a hun
dred migraines all lumped together, as if someone had opened his skull, grabbed a fistful of his brain and stretched it so tightly that ripped. He didn’t object, then or now. His life had been over the moment that he lost Tina. He had known at that instant that from now until forever, he would be lost and alone.

  Just like that, the pain in his mind was over.

  “Thank you,” Tina had said, with a last loving touch directly into his mind.

  As the monster had begun to lunge in Brechal’s direction, Tina had forced her love through the wormhole and away from her forever.

  <<<>>>

  It might have been an eternity later. Or no more than a moment. Either way, Brechal had suddenly found himself as far from the monsters in the tunnels of Neria 7 as it was possible to get.

  He hadn’t cared if the wormhole opened into the cold depths of space or the howling inferno of a sun. For him, it would have been better than living alone, without the one person in the universe he could love, and who could care for him in return.

  Instead, astonishingly, the fracture in space through which Tina had forced him opened into a bar.

  Brechal’s first impression was that it was warm and inviting, like a comfortable sitting room. There was an open fire and thickly-cushioned couches that looked to be just about perfect for even his oversized frame. There were also a couple of people there, staring at him with openly curious expressions.

  But he had not cared about any of that. All he was concerned with was that the door. It was imposing and ornate, and the wormhole that connected it to Neria 7 was still open.

  And he could still feel Tina from the other side.

  Immediately, he had gritted his teeth in determination. He had tried to step back through, but he was blocked. Either Tina was stopping him from the other side of the universe, or the door did. Perhaps the wormhole only worked in the one direction.

  Either way, Brechal remembered the fiery disappointment as he collapsed to his knees, howling out loud in madness and anguish, bashing his fists against the doorframe.

  He had wanted to keep howling forever. He wanted to keep going until his fists were bloody and he had nothing left. But even this was denied him.

  His connection to Tina was still there. He could feel her, doing what she could to calm him despite the dreadful torments she was suffering.

  Finally, he had hung his head and wept.

  Faintly, he could hear the sound of a woman crying and knew that someone else was mourning with him. The grip on his shoulders was still firm, and the support of the BHB was a dependable presence at the back of his mind. Even acknowledging that was difficult as the river of memory pulled him into the current once again.

  “Do not grieve, my love,” Tina had begged, her mental voice distant and strained, and yet comforting even so. “You are still here with me, and that is how it should be.”

  Somehow, he understood what she meant. She’d taken a piece of his soul and kept it with her, to give her strength and a measure of peace even in the face of such terrors.

  “Now, please go,” she said. “This monster seeks to follow you through the hole.”

  Prevented from returning to her, Brechal had wanted to do no more than stay where he was and weep until the universe ended. But Tina’s words had penetrated to his rational self. He didn’t care about his own survival, but there were others here. Innocent people who would suffer a fate worse than death if he allowed the monster to come through.

  With a painful wrench like the twisting of a knife buried deep in his heart, he had whispered, “Goodbye, my love,” to Tina. Somehow, despite the vast distance between them, he knew that she heard his words, and felt her love for him in return.

  Then he turned to the people who still stared at him and glowered at them.

  “Don’t just stand there!” he had bellowed, filling his voice with enough rage and hate to bury his grief at least for the moment. “There are monsters on the other side of this door, and they want to come through!”

  Chapter 7 - Cooperation

  Madrik was thinking about how his life had changed since Brechal’s large body had come crashing through the portal. His explosive entry and hard landing had been startling, even frightening. The man’s desperate attempt to get back through the doorway had been heart-wrenching.

  Just thinking about that drama pulled Madrik’s eyes to the bartender as he stood behind the bar. He noticed that Brechal’s ordinarily sure movements had paused. Holding one of the glasses that he been rearranging in mid-air, the bartender stood frozen and appeared to be looking off into the distance.

  This was so different than Brechal’s usual manner that Madrik stood up in concern. “Brechal? Is everything all right?”

  The bartender did not answer. Others were now looking at Brechal, drawn by Madrik’s question and the lack of an answer. Quick to respond to any distress within the bar, Wynn began to hurry, joining Alastair in his targeted trajectory toward the back of the bar. Before they could reach Brechal, the ordinarily imperturbable man had turned pale green with nausea, swallowing several times and turning his head as if fighting the urge to vomit.

  The BHB was now involved, pushing pictures along their companion bond to Madrik that he could not interpret. Flashing images of a clock and vast interstellar distances made no sense to the bar manager as he realized that one of his team was in trouble.

  Quickly, he moved to stand in front of Brechal, separated only by the width of the bar itself. The pained look that he saw on the bartender’s face reminded him of one that he had seen in his own mirror many times. It screamed the remembrance of pain and telegraphed someone lost in the flow of memories.

  Wynn would have rushed up to grab Brechal if Vincent had not prevented her. In a low voice, the veteran said, “He’s having a flashback. Do not grab him or he may hurt you by accident. Talk to him gently, be soothing. Draw him out. He would not forgive himself if he hurt you.”

  The waitress would’ve argued, but the naked pain in Vincent’s voice told her that he knew exactly what he was talking about. Focusing on the man who held her in a gentle but firm grip, she replied, “I will not grab him. Thank you very much, Vincent. But I can tell that he needs help. What can we do to help him?”

  At that moment, Madrik and the BHB realized that Vincent was also in distress. His pale face and shaking hands betrayed a connection to what Brechal was going through. Torn between trying to talk Brechal back and deal with Vincent’s distress, Madrik didn’t know which way to turn.

  Vincent straightened his backbone and stared squarely at the bar manager. The veteran soldier was almost at attention when he said, “I will be okay. I can feel extremely intense emotions coming off of him and it both hurts and makes me ill. However, at least I now know that I’m not crazy and that those are his emotions, not mine. We need to help him first.”

  Just then Brechal grabbed the edge of the bar with both hands. His grip tightened, and Madrik heard the creaking and crushing sounds that betrayed the strength of emotion and fear that was written for all to see in Brechal’s face.

  Wordlessly, the BHB flooded Madrik with reassurance, and in the Anchor’s mind, he could see faint lines that were growing, connecting both the BHB and him to Brechal and the rest of the team. A wave of that same reassurance and support tumbled down that network to each of his people, and Madrik could see the effect of that heartfelt emotion.

  The results were most apparent in Vincent’s posture and the returning color of his face. Looking far less strained, the assistant bouncer lost some of the rigidity of his stance. Wynn’s brief smile and Alastair’s nod of acknowledgment told Madrik that everyone in the team had felt it. He just hoped that Brechal knew that they were all there for him.

  A strangled gasp of pain ripped its way out of Brechal’s throat and sent Wynn flying toward the bartender. Vincent’s warning was forgotten as she broken-heartedly clutched Brechal’s forearm and crooned at him, “Brechal, my brother. It will be all right. We are here for you. Please
come back to us, please.”

  The bartender did not appear to hear her, nor any of the other shouted questions or reassurances that were starting to come from everyone in the bar. Lost in the memories of his own mind, Brechal began to collapse. Desperately, Wynn tried to slow his fall but was pulled downward with him. Madrik felt a surge of energy from the BHB, and an oversized chair exploded from the ground and caught the falling man.

  As his bartender, and friend, had started to fall Madrik vaulted the bar. Landing beside the newly materialized chair, Madrik grabbed both of Brechal’s shoulders, ignoring Vincent’s gasp of dismay. Unconcerned for his own safety, the bar manager knew that the only thing that he could provide was his presence.

  Around his back, Madrik could feel the rest of his team closing in. Alastair to his left, Wynn practically in Brechal’s lap and Vincent shaking in fear but advancing in the face of yet another enemy.

  Even Najeer had emerged from the kitchen to lend his presence and support. The cook’s face was wooden with remembered stress and fear, but he stood to Madrik’s right in quiet courage.

  At a later point, Madrik knew that he would be overwhelmingly proud of them all. But right now, he was focused on Brechal.

  Vincent whispered, “I can tell that he feels us. He knows that we are here and that all of us are around him.”

  Satisfied by that reassurance, the BHB team held their positions. Staring at Brechal’s face, they watched the flow of emotions wash over his countenance as that display took them on a spectators’ journey of fear, anger, and grief.

  The rest the bar was quiet, as everyone there helping with preparations waited to see what would happen. The bartender’s face continued to work with the power of remembered emotion and events until the man threw his head up into the air and a mighty shout of, “NOOOOO!” was ripped from his heart and thrown out from his vocal cords.

  It was as if everything stopped with that mighty roar. There was no sound for a few seconds until Wynn’s frantic voice screamed, “He’s not breathing!”