Kennedy Cast Out

Chapter 1: “I don’t know what you’re bitching about, at least you're still human,” Randell barked, following close on her heels. Rather than the scrawny doctoral candidate she had become friends with, he still looked like a German shepherd with an exceedingly dark silver coat. It took a surprising amount of strength to carry her body through the streets of Boston, a strength she didn’t have. Kennedy needed to reach somewhere safe but thought of no one or nowhere in Eldric’s strange land. She had no measure of the age that took over her body. That she was still alive was certain… death could not be this painful. If the entirety of the three hundred plus years struck her at once, she would have landed behind the Green Monster a pile of bones held together in a bag of leather flesh. Not how Kennedy wanted her life to end… no matter how fitting it might be. Out of habit, she checked her cell one more time. It was still dead, no power. She fought the urge to throw the useless weight in the next trashcan. She tried once more to light a small flame between her fingers. The magic failed her. The fatigue on old joints wracked her body with agony. If this was growing old, they could keep it… Defeated, she slumped, exhausted, on a bus bench tucked down a deserted side street, her pack dropped, forgotten, on the ground next to her feet. The story of her life. Out of sight, out of mind, out of touch… alone. She failed to hide the desperation in her voice. “I don’t know how long I can go on…” Nose plugged, she needed to breathe through her mouth, making the raspy sound of her breath more pronounced. “I can’t breathe… worse, I can’t smell a thing. Something strange is in the air.” Tom jumped on the bench next to her. “You need to keep moving. This is no different from Saint Patrick’s night… If you can escape this hell, you should return to normal. Only this time, take me with you…” The seal-point cat purred. “Yes, we need to kill the bastard that turned me into this,” Randell growled. “Let’s hold off on killing anyone till I catch my breath…” She focused on one deep breath after another. This repetitive action gave Kennedy back some tiny portion of her strength. “I didn’t leave you… I… thought you were dead. We watched you die.” Randell snarled, “You sided with the doll. You’re lucky to be alive.” Kennedy reached out and patted Randell’s head. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” She wasn’t sure where that came from, but she didn’t need the two in a literal cat-and-dog fight with her caught between. She was still miffed with Tom, but in the end, he did risk his life to help at Fenway and tried to warn her about Eldric. Unfortunately, he failed on both counts. Now the three of them were trapped in this odd place. Her in this decrepit body, Tom in the form of a cat, and Randell in the shape of a dog. They needed to escape this fresh hell. Tom jumped to the back of the bench. “I won’t lie. Vita’s words soothed my hurt feelings… my tortured soul. I felt alone. I was certain you were going to hand me over at the first opportunity… He coaxed me to Potato-Head Joey’s side with his smooth voice, but it was all a lie. He didn’t have anything for me I didn’t already have.” Tom spoke the truth. In many ways, Kennedy’s words chased him into the arms of the enemy… but still… “Vita… who the hell is Vita?” Kennedy shifted her gaze from the ground, trying to locate the feline. It was a name she’d failed to recognize. “I thought we needed to worry about Eldric…” “Under the graveyard… That night… a voice came to me in the tunnels. Swore you and the succubi Semele were out to use me. Claimed only he knew who could help me learn about my past…” Tom laid his chin upon his paws. “I felt… so alone… Please forgive me… I was afraid.” “How’d that work out for you?” Randell barked. Tom hissed, “It didn’t… all right… Vita is the Warden. I later found out he didn’t even work for Danny… The puppet was a pawn in the truest sense. Eldric is the one behind everything. He controls this place. Vita is just another tool Eldric uses to collect the unwary.” Kennedy had a hard time feeling anything at the moment. She was too worried about her frail body. Age did not treat her well. “Who the hell is this Eldric?” “Darkness… Last night was the first time I came so close to him.” Tom’s tail puffed out while he spoke. “It would be nice to hear what you have learned about here… since the two of us don’t even know where here is.” Kennedy wanted to lash out, to seek some retribution for what happened, but she didn’t have the energy, physical or magical. “I don’t know much. I think this is a pocket dimension like we encountered with the dummy Joey, only this one is different.” “How so?” Randell asked. “I was getting to it,” Tom hissed. “What you see here… are mostly empty buildings. There is not the population like on Saint Patrick’s… It’s like everything is fake…” “Technically, I think everything in a Fae veil is fake… or at least a creation made from their mind…” Kennedy scanned the empty streets. Randell sniffed the air. “What, no zombies?” Tom tried to continue. “Not only that but no… no one. Remember, the Fae followed us into Danny’s world. Also, it was a slow transition. I was blown here that night… The only people I’ve seen are the gray uniforms… only a few of them… everyone else seems to be hiding. If we can find the veil’s doorway and force it open, we should be able to escape this place.” “What about those trapped here?” Kennedy asked. Tom arched his back. “Let them find their own way out. We should worry about ourselves first.” “I’m not sure he is correct about that…” Randell leaned his muzzle on the bench next to Kennedy’s thigh. “We lost time. If we skipped ahead in time, we might be stuck here.” Out of reflex, Kennedy reached out and stroked Randell’s nose. The action helped to comfort her disquieted soul. “What do you mean?” Randell closed his eyes while he spoke. “We not only lost location, but we lost time. We were in the tower before midnight… Let us assume the blast happened slightly after midnight. By the glow in the east, it is almost dawn… What happened to those hours?” Kennedy listened. “So what?” Tom jumped down next to Randell’s muzzle. “At most, a few hours were lost.” Randell pulled his nose away from Kennedy’s hand. “You don’t understand… if this is a different timeline, even if we slipped a second into the future, according to Einstein and all of physics… we can’t go back. We will be stranded in this alternate universe. This new timeline.” Kennedy rested her hands in her lap. She wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Even if forced to live in this ancient body, she wanted as much adult life as possible. “We have seen the Fae create different veils to call home. Randell, you and I just left the Gnome’s veil… We have to assume this place is simply another constructed pocket dimension, like the others… If we are stuck here, then here is where we will stay. We will need to make the best of it… But I’m not ready to give up just yet.” Tom hissed, “I’m not staying in the body of a cat. Ten days has been hell… I won’t go into the more disgusting aspects of being a cat.” Randell barked agreement, “Or me a dog.” “Then I suggest we focus on the possibility that we can get out. Can you tell us anything about this Warden, or Eldric?” Kennedy glanced toward the warm glow in the eastern sky. “As far as I can tell, the Warden is a mage. I have not seen his spellcraft, but I have to assume it is powerful. He stays hidden… Speaks with magic mouths… He has never shown his true self to me. Eldric, you’ve seen his poster. Expect more of them, but that is an illusion. The few times I’ve caught a glimpse of him in person, he is shrouded in darkness. More of a shadow than a man.” “What is it with mages and the color black?” Randell asked. Kennedy looked down at her ill-fitting dark jeans and black hoodie… Best she could do was a shrug. “It’s kind of an unofficial dress code.” “Your magic might not work, but I do know magic items will function, like the rod of black I sent you… and you lost.” Tom looked up from the bench. “My shoes aren’t working… Sorry…” Kennedy reached for her backpack. “I wonder if this still works?” From it, she pulled her wheel. In an instant, she found it had no power. “The charge is gone.” Randell took a few steps down the street before looking back. “Just as well, not sure you want to go flying about the city if magic is as rare as it seems to be.” Kennedy stuffed the wheel back into her pack. “True… but it would have been nice to not walk.” Kennedy’s gaze followed the path Randell moved toward. “Any ideas where we should head?” “If the others are looking for us, where would they look?” Tom asked. Kennedy thought of only one place: home. “We need to reach Medford. They would return to the tree…” Randell shifted direction. “Then we should get moving. It will be light soon enough.” “But… it stands to reason the exit, our escape to freedom, has to be between the tower and Fenway.” Tom remained on the bench as the two headed toward the Charles River. Kennedy stopped, glancing back toward the cat. “I need to check on my home… If there is the slightest possibility my family is stranded here, I need to find out. Marylynn might still be trapped inside the cauldron.” “You’re wasting our time… We need to escape.” Tom hissed. “Maybe, but for me, family comes first.” Kennedy turned and followed Randell. “Screw that…” Tom jumped off the bench and headed in the opposite direction. “With luck, we will meet again on the other side.” Kennedy risked a glance back, but the cat had disappeared into the shadows. “Just like that asshole… he left once again.” Randell growled. “He is his own person. Would you expect less from any other cat?” Kennedy wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. Now was not the time for tears. She feared there would be plenty of reason to cry later. Randell led the way, his nose raised. He constantly sniffed, Kennedy assumed searching for danger. She was lucky to have him leading the way. The streets seemed laid out the same, but the buildings were all wrong. From the looks, someone took a blank grid of the city and overlaid the blocks of buildings. The style was all wrong, more the 1920s than the city had a right to be. Kennedy’s Boston was a mishmash of architectural styles collected over the centuries. With neighborhoods of three-hundred-year-old homes nestled between blocks of much taller, modern buildings. Stranger still, she spotted no stray animals searching the streets for a free meal, nor rodents scurrying along the base of the buildings. It seemed not only humans and Fae had not been brought into this new dimension. The very ecosystem a person would expect a large city to have was missing. The longer Kennedy pondered their surroundings, and the strangeness involved, the more she concluded this was a construct of Eldric’s making, not some alternate timeline created from the magical explosion. The only solace she gained from that tidbit of knowledge was magic she could comprehend, even if she lost the ability to cast. If they played in time, she would have been lost. She didn’t care to be more dependent on Randell than she already was. “Randell, do you smell any animals?” Kennedy asked in a soft voice. The dog in the lead paused and breathed deeply before answering. “Not a one… I only smell you.” With no traffic on the streets like a normal weekday rush hour and no animals about, it was clear they stood out even more. Light from the rising sun washed the far side of the Longfellow Bridge. Crossing the Charles with the growing dawn, it was easy to tell even the buildings of MIT had been altered to a more art deco design. It was going to be an abnormally hot day for April first… if that was indeed the date. Whoever this monster Eldric was, his choices displayed a flair for the dramatic—nostalgic even. The buildings were built on an epic scale, not very useful, short of stroking a person’s ego. Randell reached the far side of Memorial Drive and barked. He sat with his nose pointed at a newspaper rack. “That can’t be good,” the dog said as soon as Kennedy reached his side. He pointed out the same alien technology, a three-dimensional moving profile and full-faced headshot of Kennedy plastered above the fold. In the same German font, the headline read, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” She shook her head. “That can’t be good.” This was no April Fools’ joke. The headline did its best to increase the pain in Kennedy’s head. She would have bought a paper, but she had no money. Before today, she’d never had a dire need to carry cash on her person. The old Kennedy could have popped the lock with a snap of her fingers. “At least the picture looks nothing like you… now.” Randell circled around her legs. “Do you need to rest?” Kennedy probably did need a break, but with them being the only pair on the streets, she felt the naked city peering deep into her guilty soul. The sunlight made her feel even more exposed, dwarfed by the buildings of Randell’s university. No matter how the story came out, Kennedy and her friends were guilty of an act that could only be seen as terrorism. They should be judged… even if they did the deed to save lives. The events of March thirty-first would surely come back to haunt her, if not in this world then the real one. Just yesterday, the run from MIT to the Mystic River would have seemed a light workout. Now Kennedy felt the journey an arduous undertaking that only the aged might feel. It wasn’t the pain in her knees, nor the stiffness in her back—though both were unbearable—so much as it was the boredom. With no other humans about, no animal life whatsoever, this new land Eldric created would be the death of any social creature. Kennedy never liked people that much, but the boredom of this lifeless world would quickly drive her bonkers. She needed to return to the real Boston for the sake of her sanity. Tom claimed to have been stranded here for ten days. Kennedy had no data on how long it would take a mind to crack if left alone. To hear him describe it, only a handful of creatures lived in this shadow of a world. “Something is wrong.” Randell had stopped and stood to point with his nose across the street at a paper rack. They were back at the corner of Mass Avenue and Memorial Drive. From across the street, Kennedy’s holographic portrait stared back at her. She turned full circle, and right behind her stood the Longfellow Bridge. “Did we travel in a circle?” She knew they hadn’t. The streets through MIT ran fairly straight. “Of—course not…” Randell’s halting words did nothing to inspire confidence. His head darted from side to side. “How?” Kennedy asked while trying to regain her bearings. “I’m thinking…” He loped across the deserted street and sniffed around the newspaper rack. Returning, he sat at her feet. “I think we can rule out time travel… Have you ever encountered the end of one of the Fae’s pocket dimensions?” Kennedy shook her head. She spent as little time on the other side of the veil as possible. The Fae were simply too foreign for her tastes. No matter how Randell proved the genetic relationship between Fae and humanity, Kennedy would find it hard to accept. There were too many differences… the Fae thinking too alien to be closely related. She hated to admit it, but at times she hated every Fae. Randell had kept talking the whole time Kennedy’s mind wandered. Randell talked a lot, even in dog form. “…If we assume the pocket realms of the Fae have limits, they must have some feedback loop to maintain the border integrity. If not, a person would simply walk face-first into a wall of sorts… Or worse, walk right out of the dimension and into the unknown.” “So we can’t go farther?” Kennedy didn’t need to see the math of his internal equations. What she needed was a succinct answer so she might try a different escape. “It would seem so, unless you can cast a spell to break this enchantment.” The reminder Kennedy was helpless in this place did nothing to slow the throbbing in her head. “You know I can’t.” The easy solution blocked, Kennedy decided. “We need to return to Fenway. Perhaps in the daylight, we can find some answers the darkness hid.” “As much as I hate to admit Tom might be right…” Randell bobbed his head and set off for the bridge over the Charles, talking all the while. “If we assume for a moment… This Eldric has some power over this realm, and if not magic, at least some impressive technology not available in our world… If we also assume there are limited persons in this place… why haven’t we been plucked off the street yet? We seem to be sitting ducks out here, wandering about aimlessly.” It was a reasonable question. Despite the difference in her looks, the correct spell should have singled her out of a crowd easily enough. “I don’t know… This world is too different from our own. We need to find that black rod… Maybe with that, we can find some answers.” That was the best she could think of. The thought of struggling back to Fenway weighed heavy on her mind, and body, but she didn’t have a choice. This strange land contained no magic cab waiting to chauffeur her about the city. Kennedy really missed Alleye and her Gremlin.