Splintered

by Tom Underhill

part 2

Jason was sprinting by the time he reached the first of the bison, who drew up short when he ran past them. As he continued, the horde began to turn in on itself; those in front started to shy away, and those in back pressed on obliviously. Within a moment, he was surrounded by a sea of panicking giants, and, finally realizing how much danger he’d just put himself in, panicked with them.

Freezing in mid-stride, he instinctively tried to make himself as small as possible... until an emboldened buffalo brushed up against him. Even more terrified, Jason screamed and jumped back at the same time the animal jumped back from him. He kept screaming, unable and unwilling to stop, and the bison around him started retreating again.

Hopping from foot to foot and flailing his arms now, Jason started making as much noise and motion as he could. It worked; before long, the horde was stampeding away in every direction. Miraculously unharmed, Jason collapsed, relief flooding though him and chasing out the adrenaline. He lay there for a long time, enjoying the receding thunder he could feel through the trampled earth.

“I thought I told you to wait for me.”

Jason narrowed his eyes as soon as he opened them. “Where have you been?”

“Making sure of the path ahead,” the stranger said. “Get up. We have a lot to do.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”

The stranger shook her head and laughed. “I wondered when you’d stop snarling and ask.” Settling in beside him, she let her knee press carelessly against his side as she plucked one of the few unbent blades of grass. “You know, I might miss this plane the most, out of all the Possibles. That is, if we fail, which we won’t. Not if you do more listening and less sulking.”

Thrilling at her touch in spite of himself, he angled his face to look into hers. “Possibles?”

“The infinite number of planes representing every branching in time. A reality for each of history’s options. Every option its own universe, every choice its own manifestation. Components of the Multiverse, if you prefer the sci-fi term.”

Jason snorted. “Sounds like Impossibles.”

“Clever.” Her smile took the sting out of the sarcasm. “But whether you accept it or not, the Possibles are collapsing, and everything that’s ever been or could have been will die if we don’t reverse the process.” She smiled again.

He didn’t. “We?”

“You’re marked for this, Jason, even if you don’t know it yet... Look at your hands.”

Slowly, grudgingly, he did so... and immediately sprang to his feet.

The stranger laughed again, longer this time. “Don’t be so alarmed, Jason. You’re not a bigot. It shouldn’t bother you that much.”

He stared at his skin, which was darkened to a healthy brown and still darkening. His forearms also seemed to be thicker, expanding a little bit more with every heartbeat. And in the back of his head, a ball of emotions started to form and overlap with his own.

Jason screamed and flailed even more violently than he had with the buffalo.

“Jason. Jason! Calm down. You’re just blending with this plane’s version of you. It’ll stop once we cross over into the next Possible, which is why we need to keep moving, so there’s less to reverse. Jason... God damn her. Don’t tell them anything.”

“Jason!” a different voice called, and Jason refocused just enough to register that his guide was running in the opposite direction of two more strangers dressed in white.

* * *

“Jason! Jason, calm down!” The new male stranger seemed to want to say more, but his breathlessness overcame him.

The new female seemed in better shape, though, despite her doughy figure. “Don’t be alarmed, Jason. We’re here to help. I need you to just sit down and relax for a second. Just sit down and relax, please... Jason?”

He could hear the pair, but only barely; their words seemed to come from a distance rather than just a few yards away. He did stop moving, however.

“All right, Jason, you can stay standing if you prefer. I think we’ll sit, though.” The couple sat down slowly, eyeing Jason concernedly.

He kept his gaze on his hands, which were clenching and unclenching at regular intervals.

The male stranger cleared his throat and wiggled his mustache before beginning. “Jason...”

“How do you know my name?” Jason raised his head and looked directly into the man’s brown eyes.

“What’s wrong, Jason?” The woman answered for her partner, who seemed a bit taken aback.

“My hands... my body... how, godammit, HOW?!?”

The woman looked worried now too. “Jason?”

He made a broad, encompassing gesture at the alien horizon. “What in the hell is all this?”

“This?” She seemed legitimately puzzled.

“That,” he gestured again, before marveling at how familiar she suddenly looked. And then he wondered why on earth they were pretending not to see the insanity around them, why they were trying to deceive him like everyone else. “And how do you know my goddamn name!?!”

The woman glanced over at her partner for help, but the man was totally at a loss. “Jason... what’s bothering you? You’ve been so nervous lately.”

His eyes narrowed, and his expression reverted to blankness. The foreign emotions in his head were solidifying, and he could hear a whisper now: the beginnings of another inner monologue, in a language he couldn’t understand.

“Jason.” The man tried his best to re-enter the conversation. “We’re just a little bit concerned by your behavior the last few days. It’s been... less than appropriate, and we were wondering—”

The unmistakable staccato of gunfire cut through Jason’s confusion.

* * *

Whirling, Jason scanned the idyllic landscape for the shooter and found what looked like a Marine, a hundred yards distant, blazing away at... nothing. And then suddenly it was something, another spectral scene coming into focus. A wasteland filled with ghostly warriors killing each other with weaponry he’d never seen before.

Upon closer inspection, the Marine he’d seen first was slightly transparent as well, but not enough to prevent bullets from causing explosions of red mist as they passed through his body.

Turning back to the pair of strangers in white, Jason found to his even greater bewilderment that the two hadn’t even blinked an eye at the phantom madness coalescing just a football field away. They looked concerned, but they were looking only at him.

“Jason?”

He stared at the new woman with open disdain. She was either unbelievably oblivious, crazy, or both.

Swiveling back to the battle that was raging with increasing clarity, he immediately spotted the first stranger. She was beckoning from the epicenter of the violence, amidst a storm of men and metal...

Jason had already sprinted ten yards before the pair behind him found the breath to try and call him back.

* * *

The soldiers who stopped to ponder their surreal circumstances were shot down almost immediately. The rest, exhibiting extraordinary discipline, ignored the planar limbo and kept killing; they were still shot down, but not quite as instantaneously.

Too far in now to turn back, Jason could only grit his teeth and keep running when a soldier in red materialized directly in his path, forty feet ahead. The Marine should have eclipsed Jason’s view of anything in front of him, but even as he drew nearer Jason could still make out the plains of the current Possible through the man’s translucent torso. And even when the soldier was shot through his left breast, wind-blown grass was still discernible amidst the rush of crimson...

The bullet passed just over Jason’s left shoulder, causing him to stumble. Righting himself before he fell, Jason kept running and started screaming.

He did his best to dart in and around the ghosts fighting and dying all around him. But navigating the twin terrains — one real and one becoming real — was rapidly getting more difficult; shortly after the near miss with the soldier in red, Jason lost his balance and stumbled into a soldier in blue. The Marine, solidly flesh and blood, jumped back too quickly for Jason to react, trained his gun... and had his head taken off by a stray shot.

Ten steps later, another solider in blue backed into Jason’s path, firing away at a target Jason couldn’t yet see. His momentum too full, he braced himself for a second impact, only to pass through the soldier as if he were a hologram. The bullets the soldier continued to fire ghosted through Jason as well, exiting his chest without affect. After the shock wore off, he swerved sharply to his right.

Another half minute of scrambling and he was almost there; the new voice in his head was sobbing hysterically, and Jason felt tears streaking down his own cheeks, but he was only a few strides away from the still beckoning stranger. He reached out, and a solid shot sped through his right calf.

Staggered, he managed to finish stumbling to her before collapsing. She supported him by looping her arms under his and then nodded in the direction they needed to move, towards a point where the barren ground seemed the solidest and the lush plains the weakest.

His eyes clouding, Jason murmured an assent and let himself be dragged towards a destination thick with corpses.

* * *

Proceed to part 3...