Chapter 8: V
1192 Words
Eden awoke slowly. For a moment, she had no recollection of last night's events, and a wave of panic rushed over her. Moments passed, and it all slowly came back to her. I'm in another dimension...and people are trying to kill me.
She lay in the soft bed, watching the darkness of her private chamber, trying to think of something else, but it was hard to distract herself from the intense anxiety. Still groggy, she crawled her hand across the soft sheets of the bed and fiddled with a switch on the smooth, navy blue bedstand. The dark tinting on the ceiling and the walls faded away a bit, giving her a shielded glimpse of clear blue skies.
Momentary snapshots of her previous life flashed in Eden's head. Ted and Mary Gardener had been her parents. When she was 13, they told her that they had adopted her when she was just a newborn, but they'd always known that she had been the child that God intended them to raise. The three of them had lived a quiet life in the suburbs of Greensburg. Her parents were simple, kind people, so Eden always just did her best to keep them from worrying. She never told them about the nightmares about dark men that plagued her, or the other strange things she experienced as she grew up. And then, one year ago, a drunk driver collided with her parents' car on their way home from the bowling alley, killing them instantly. Eden was still in mourning, not only from the loss, but from knowing deep down that her life would never be the same again.
Mom...dad... she thought, tears welling up in her big eyes. I miss you so much.
The more she cried, the weaker Eden felt. Shaking away the sad memories, she tried to focus on something positive: memories of the strongest woman she'd never known, a woman named Victoria. When Eden was a small child, she remembered being visited frequently by a friend of her parents: a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair.
Once, when they were playing basketball in the driveway, Eden fell and skinned her knee on the pavement. As she started to cry, Victoria knelt down beside her and whispered softly to her.
"Other kids may cry when they get hurt, but you don't need to, Edy. You're different. Look back down at your knee, and remember: you're unbreakable."
Eden can still remember what it felt like to hear those words - as if the wound had just disappeared, as if it had never existed at all. She stood back up, grabbed the basketball, and went right back to playing.
I always wondered if maybe she was my real mother.
Eden pulled herself out of bed and rolled her T-shirt up. She could remember her pursuer's bullet blazing across the side of her stomach, but there was no longer any trace of the wound, not even a blemish.
I'm different, Eden thought, lightly skating around the unsettling truth that she'd worked so hard to hide from many different people over the course of her life. She'd even made sure to hide it from Cliff during their car ride. But am I really strong?
Wiping sweat from her brow, Eden moved over to the wall and twisted a dial on the nearest vent. Crisp air drifted through the tinted æsotech walls, and for the first time, Eden realized how clean and empty her bedroom was.
Aside from the bed, the bedstand, and a strange console in the corner which Eden didn't know how to use, the room was bare. There was a small alcove with a large panel near the bed, which she hoped led to a bathroom and a shower. Across from it, on the other side, was the dark panel she'd used to enter the room after Cliff got called back by the Seneschal.
Eden moved up to the door. It looked like a plain sheet of plastic encased by a thin white shell, flimsy enough to break with one's bare hands. As she touched a finger to it, the door vibrated and let out a dull sound. She put her palm on the plate next to the door, but it generated no response. Even slamming the door didn't budge it, and she was left with nothing but the echo of that unnerving vibration.
I'm trapped, she realized in horror, stumbling backwards. How could I have been so naïve?! Parallel dimensions...I actually believed that? They're going to keep me in here, and... Tears began to stream down her cheeks. Oh my God...
Eden covered her face with her hands, breaking down, just as a muffled voice called out to her from the other side.
"Miss Gardener?" It was the Seneschal's voice. "I came to see if you'd like to have some breakfast. Is everything alright?"
You're unbreakable.
"Y-yes, I'm fine..." Eden murmured, pulling herself up. "But I don't know how to open the door."
"Understandable, since it requires psynergy to open," the Seneschal replied. "If you don't mind, please allow me."
A moment later, the panel disappeared, and the Seneschal carefully walked inside. He was dressed in the same cloak-tunic as before.
"Miss Gardener?" The Seneschal noticed Eden's swollen eyes. "Oh, my. You seemed to be adjusting well earlier, but perhaps the shock was just a bit delayed. But really, you don't need to worry. You're in good hands here."
She rubbed her eyes. "Am I...really?"
The Seneschal took a step back. "What's gotten you so shaken up?"
"I thought I was locked in this room...that I was being kidnapped or something. What's going to happen now? When do I get to go home?"
"Home..." The Seneschal pursed his lips. "An interesting question, Miss Gardener. Of course, we have no right to imprison you against your will, and the choice is yours. But I believe you would be very unsafe if you decided to go back to Earth. In the meantime, if you would be so kind as to let us guard you, I'd like to devote some resources to figuring out why exactly you were being pursued in the first place."
Eden listened to the Seneschal carefully. "What's Cliff going to do?"
Tao's warm eyes remained focused on Eden. "He'll be heading to Despair shortly to retrieve something. Despair is his homeworld, but he's had...some rough times there. It may prove to be a painful journey for him."
"I'd like to talk to him," Eden said abruptly. "Once more, before he leaves."
The Seneschal smiled. "That's perfectly acceptable. I can call him right now, and we can all have breakfast together."
"Okay," Eden grinned, feeling some warmth rush back into her face. "Oh, but before that..." She ruffled her T-shirt awkwardly. "I, uh, really need to take a shower."
"Right. The private bathroom is right back there. Let me show you how to use it. There's a vortex pool, a steamer, a massage shower..."
Eden raised an eyebrow. "Umm, I don't know what any of that is."
Tao put a palm to his forehead. "Of course you don't. Okay, let's start from the beginning."
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