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imjustthemechanic · 5 years

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Our Own Demons

Part 1/? - A Bolt from the Blue Part 2/? - A Different World Part 3/? - Stark At Home Part 4/? - Pot Roast Night Part 5/? - Space-Pie Continuum

What if Tony Stark really were the villain of the Marvel universe? How would that work? Tony himself is about to find out, as he battles his inner demons (and some outer ones, too) across a multiverse of infinite possibilities.

At the other’s command, the windows rearranged themselves on the phone screen, bringing to the fore one that was showing black and white video with the date in the upper left corner and the words Special Projects Workshop in the lower. Tony found himself wanting to reach out and increase the image size the way he could with one of his holographic displays, but of course that wouldn’t work, so all he could do was drag his chair around the little table so he could see right-side up, and squint.

The view showed a suit of armor assembled in the middle of the workshop, while Tony’s counterpart worked on something in the left room. The frame rate was low and the resolution was not great, but Tony still noticed that this suit had definitely been built for a woman. It was smaller and slimmer than any of his, and the shapes on the front were clearly meant to suggest a sweetheart neckline, though the armor didn’t actually mold to the breasts. If Tony had been going to build armor for Pepper, he thought, that was exactly what he would have made it look like.

The other Tony turned away from the suit to look at something on a nearby bench, and then the screen went white. For half a second there was no picture at all, then a buzz of static, and finally the image returned, slowly, block by block, to reveal the suit in bits on the floor and Tony struggling to his feet while his counterpart grabbed the pipe wrench.

“That’s pretty much what I saw,” said Tony. “Everything went white, and the audio squealed… that’s an EMP,” he realized – a sudden burst of electromagnetic radiation. It must have been incredibly intense to knock out an Iron Man suit. He’d specifically designed them to be resistant to pulse weapons. “Something on the order of the magnetic field of Jupiter.”

“Exactly what I was going to say,” the other agreed, flipping through windows. “The video overloaded, but we monitor other frequencies, too. JANIS, can you give us a plot of the radio and the infra-red, please?”

Tony observed that this guy was awfully polite to his computer, but before he could decide how best to tease him about it, the graph appeared. At first it looked like random bursts, but of course, those were just the frequencies JANIS was programmed to monitor. If Tony were to join them up… he reached over and ran a finger across the screen, connecting the dots.

“Extrapolate a blackbody spectrum,” he ordered.

What’s the magic word? asked JANIS, but she did it anyway: a curve appeared, showing a peak much further up the spectrum. There’s a margin for error, of course, the computer noted apologetically.

“That’s okay.” Tony scratched his beard as he studied the result. “Turn around,” he told his counterpart. “I need to see the back of your neck.”

His double obeyed, and Tony touched the skin with the back of his hand. It was about as pale as a man with Mediterranean ancestors could get, and warm to the touch but not overly so.

“That can’t be right,” Tony said. “That peak is in the ultraviolet. You should have a sunburn.”

“A sunburn, hell.” The other frowned at the display on his phone. “That spectrum would require a temperature of about ten thousand Kelvin. The surface of the sun isn’t that hot. It should have burned the building down.”

“Not to mention vaporized me,” Tony agreed. “Or at least turned me into the Hulk or something. So we’ve got… some kind of phantom radiation?”

The other chewed on his lower lip. “It’s got to be a side effect of something else,” he decided. “If you’re from another universe, the only way to get to this one would be by tearing a hole in space, and as far as we know no amount of radiation can do that. The only force that can is gravity. If you want to rip open the space-time continuum, you need one of two things: a black hole, or…” he paused, frowning.

“Pie?” asked a voice.

Tony and his counterpart both yelped in surprise. They’d been so focused on their conversation that they hadn’t realized Audrey the waitress was back. She held up her hands, apologetic.

“Didn’t mean to scare you!” she said. “I just wanted to say, our dessert today is homestyle apple pie.”

Tony breathed a sigh of relief, trying to make his heart start pounding. “How about this,” he said. “We’ll take the whole pie, a pot of coffee, and the cheque, okay?” Hopefully that would head off any future interruptions.

“All right,” said Audrey. “I’ll… uh… I’ll be right back.”

The two men kept quiet until she returned with the pie and coffee, and a tub of vanilla ice cream for them. Tony tossed some money on the table, to pay for their meal and to make up for the tips Audrey would not be getting while they continued to occupy the table. The alternative was heading back to his double’s apartment and he didn’t want to do that. They helped themselves to dessert, and tried to pick up the thread of their conversation again.

“Where were we?” asked Tony.

For a moment the other couldn’t remember, then he glanced down at his pie. “Pie,” he said. “Pie doesn’t break space, but black holes do.”

“Or other things,” said Tony, picking up his train of thought. “I’m thinking specifically of a blue, cubey thing that’s good for blowing shit up. Contains an enormous amount of energy, and yet energy that doesn’t seem to hurt people unless they come into direct contact with it. Hence no sunburn.”

“Please tell me your reality doesn’t actually call it the Blue Cubey Thing,” said the other.

Nobody was listening to them and the waitress was at another table, but Tony still lowered his voice to reply. “Tesseract,” he said.

“Thank you.” The other pulled out his phone again and opened another window. “JANIS, please get me the stuff we pulled out of SHIELD’s database on the tesseract.”

“What happened to it in your reality?” Tony asked, while the data loaded. “We sent it back to Asgard, where the aging republicans who run the world can’t get their mitts on it.”

“Yeah, the Odinson took it back with him when he took Loki home,” the other said. “I definitely didn’t have it in my workshop.”

“It wasn’t in my back pocket on the way to California, either,” said Tony. “So if I came here through a tesseract wormhole, it didn’t start out in my reality or in yours…”

“Which means there’s a third universe involved here, where it was accessible to a third one of us,” the other agreed. He looked at the tablet, which was showing a rotating image of the tesseract with text scrolling beside it, then sighed and took another bite of pie and ice cream. “Man, when I got up this morning I thought the biggest challenge I was going to face today was phoning the damn credit card company.”

“What’s so hard about that?” asked Tony, who had never done it.

“They’ve got one of those voice-activated menus that doesn’t work, so you’ve got to talk your way through half an hour of bullshit before you can even be put on hold,” the other said. “Honestly, this makes sorting out my overcharges look like a fun afternoon.”

“We have to take a proper look at that suit,” Tony decided. “If that was the tesseract, it’ll leave an ionic residue. Banner did some work on that… can you find his paper?”

“Who?” the other asked.

“Bruce,” Tony clarified, but that didn’t seem to improve matters. “Dr. Robert Bruce Banner. You’ve never heard of him?” This was a world where Tony was broke, Pepper was a superhero, and there was no Hulk… what other surprises might it have for him?

“Can’t say that I have. Dr. Ross might have something for us,” the other mused, “but she’s not easy to get in touch with.”

“Never mind. We’ll figure it out,” said Tony. “Two heads are better than one, and here we’ve got two of the best.”

“Are you sure this counts as two heads?” the other asked suspiciously.

“Close enough,” Tony decided, his mouth full of pie.

The two of them had not actually talked about it, but somehow Tony had his counterpart had come to the agreement that they should not let Miss Potts find out about this. When they returned to the building in the morning, they did so not through the lobby but via an old emergency exit from the train station, where they were less likely to be observed.

“How did you find this?” asked Tony, as the descended a very narrow flight of metal stairs. He was trying to remember if there were anything similar in his Tower – he didn’t think there was. If there ever had been, it must have been pulled out during construction of the new building.

Thinking about that was far preferable to the other thing that was on his mind, which was that he was wearing clothes that belonged to his counterpart. The jeans, striped t-shirt, and green jacket weren’t the problem – it was the underwear that was bothering him. Sure, it was clean, and yes, Tony had shared pretty much his entire wardrobe with Rhodey when they’d been room-mates at MIT… but this was still weird.

“We explored down here pretty thoroughly while we were looking for somewhere I could work on the suits,” the other explained. “There’s a service elevator that goes all the way up to the penthouse, which is handy, and this entrance means I can get in and out when the building’s closed at night.” He reached the top of the steps, where there was an old metal door with the paint peeling from it. A keypad opened the lock. Tony expected the hinges to squeal, but they were apparently the one part that was in good repair. The door swung silently.

Unfortunately, there was a flaw in their plan. When Pepper had told her employee to take the rest of the week off, she must have meant it. Tony’s double tried to use his key card to open the workshop, but the only result was a buzz and a red light. JANIS wouldn’t let them in.

Miss Potts wanted you to stay home and rest, she reminded him. She’s told me to keep you out until Monday at least.

“Why didn’t you warn me?” the other asked, exasperated.

You didn’t ask, said JANIS, as if that were entirely reasonable.

“You let your machines talk to you like that?” Tony wanted to know. JARVIS’ wit was as dry as a good martini, but he was never passive-aggressive.

“Technically, she’s Miss Potts’ machine,” said the other. “And she’s very polite to her. All right, JANIS. You know what this means.”

If you can reset it without security noticing, I’m all yours, said JANIS sweetly.

The security office was on the ground floor. Tony and his counterpart walked with a purpose as they headed up – apparently the other knew, as Tony did, that if you looked like you knew what you were doing people were unlikely to question you. They marched into the office, and there found an obstacle in their path. A short, muscular, red-headed obstacle, who was very much startled to see them.

“Oh,” said Tony’s double, in a voice that sounded less like he was greeting his girlfriend and more like he was at his high school reunion saying hello to the guy who used to stuff him in lockers. “Good morning, Beth.”

It took Beth a moment to recover from her surprise, but then she widened her stance and folded her arms across her chest. “I thought you were supposed to be at home, recovering from a sudden case of crazy. And maybe amnesia,” she added, with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” said the other. “I swear I remembered, but my cousin got into town, and…”

Beth interrupted him. “Seriously?” she asked.

“Seriously,” Tony spoke up, stepping out from behind his double.

It was actually very gratifying the way Beth’s jaw dropped. “I… oh,” she said, her arms moving from guardedly in front of her to awkwardly behind her back. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” said Tony. “I’m his cousin. From Italy,” he added, figuring that was safely far away enough that she would buy never having heard of this guy before.

The other put his arm around Tony’s shoulders. “We’re like Patty Duke, except there really are two of us,” he said.

Tony nodded. “Have we got a Betsy? I forget.”

“I hope not. We don’t look good in a pretty floral bonnet!”

“Speak for yourself,” Tony snorted. “Anyway, Ms. Cabe – we need a small favour.”

#fanfic #tony stark #iron man

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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[SP] Mariana's Dreams Ch 5

[Ch 1 - 4 here](https://www.reddit.com/r/shortstories/comments/h8xcvk/sp_marianas_dreams_part_1/)

Preface: (not included in previous post):

On a cold Monday afternoon there is a small girl playing alone at a bus stop. She's older than she looks, and she has noticed that recently she has been running into strange people more often than not. People that want to hurt her, or take things from her. However she looks at it, it all works out the same. She has disrupted something. Some balance. And it is like the entire cosmos is rising up in mutated forms to stop her. Either that or perhaps she just moved up a grade and is now more aware of what's going in the world, and the world is really sick.

She doesn't remember when it started exactly but she can swear that it happened after she started dreaming. That is the only thing that changed. Because before that, she had never dreamt a night in her life. And then one day the curtains were opened and there was new world before eyes. A world so much like her own that sometimes she would see both worlds blend together in ways that were more frightening than she liked. After it began it never ended. And she began to wonder if there was any difference between the two.

Her parents are here to pick her up from school and drive to a family gathering in New Mexico. She doesn't want to go because she dreamt that she would never make it. She dreamt that she was eaten by rats on the side of the road a long, long ways from home.

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Chapter 5:

As Nathan gazed starry eyed up into that cosmos up there, he wondered about where all the aliens were. He knew they were probably out there, zooming around in their fleets of organic spacecrafts or something. But if that was true why weren't they here? Why wasn't he already beaming up there like in Star Trek, and accelerating towards Jupiter at half the speed of light? Shouldn't there be at least a whisper? At least one sign that they're here?

And then he thinks of somebody giving a small child an extension cord and an electrical socket and advising them to figure it out.

They probably didn't want to be seen.

"Nathaaaan!"

His mom was calling out for him. He rolled out of his hammock like a true professional and landed on his feet, it felt like he had just done a wicked trick on his skateboard. There was a light sprinkle everywhere, and humungous clouds hung lowly in the air like massive gray sponges.

When he went through the backdoor to his kitchen he saw the warm food was already laid on the table. His mom sat down and he sat across from her. His little sister crawled up onto a chair and stood just a couple feet off it.

She gleefully yelled "Food! Food! Food!" and stomped her little pink fists on the table with about as much vigor as a viking demanding mead in the Halls of Valhalla.

"That's right cupcake!" His mom said to her "we have mash potatoes here" she pointed, and before her mother could say another word the girl interrupted

"Ya! Mash Tatoes!"

She got a good scoop with a gracious amount of gravy and began wolfing it down with that delicious sense of delight that is only found in small toddlers.

Nathan was already helping himself to the food as well. He packed on a couple of turkey legs, stuffing, and about twenty eight pounds of mash potatoes with avalanches of gravy bubbling over the top.

They were all very quiet for a few minutes as they worked their way through the hard task of putting away a thanksgiving dinner with more food to eat than either three could possibly consume, but which nevertheless made everything much more exciting. The bubbling sodas in their cups made Nathan feel like he was at a carnival.

"So did you apply at the movie theatre yet?" His mom asked.

Nathan was just old enough to get his first job. He had applied at the local theatre that played B rated films and scary movies. It was his job to sell candy and popcorn and clean up after the hordes of mongrels that rushed in and made everything a disaster. It was unbelievable when he really thought about it. How could people be so gross? At one moment they were dressed up nicely, working at a bank, and then afterwards they brought their kids to the movies and treated it like their own personal litter box. Did they actually throw popcorn all over their house and dump soda and slushies all over their floors? What kind of mass hysteria came over people when they were all mashed together staring dumbly at a big screen?

"I started yesterday." he answered his mom.

"Oh that's nice." She took another bite off her plate, and after chewing asked "How do you like it so far?" She held up her fork.

Nathan knew how he liked it. It was weird and gross. The theatre gave him the creeps. It's large spaces and dark corners, the long curtains and the creepy projector camera that cast a ghostly light, all of it made him feel like he was on the edge of something bad when nobody was around and he had to correct the film reels. He had already done every job there on his first day. It was exhausting. He wasn't looking forward to growing up if this is what he had to look forward to.

After they finished dinner Nathan put his dishes in the sink and then prepared for bed because tomorrow he had day 2 after the holidays.

The next day he was up at 8am, threw on his shoes and his uniform and forgot to take a shower because he was so anxious about his second day. He was thinking about using the cash register again. He hated it last time because he forgot how to add up the change for some reason. An elderly woman was glaring at him as he fumbled around with the change, trying to subtract the total amount from what she gave him, which suddenly seemed like an impossible problem he was trying to solve on an abacus he had never learned how to use.

"$2.51" he gave her back and she just stood there with a little glob of spit on the bottom of her lip.

"$2.59" she said in a deadpan voice.

"Oh sorry, yeah here" and then he dropped eight cents into her hand. He didn't actually know if she was right, he just wanted her to leave. And he was grateful that he could at least count to eight.

The theatre was making him stupider too, he thought darkly.

He was walking over to work now. Even saying that phrase made him feel a year older.

And then there was Mr Edison, who always made him feel like he was a little kid at show and tell, one who stands up and takes out the thing from their backpack, and when they expose it to the crowd they can see from the look on everyone's faces, with heavy embarrassment, that what they brought was foolish and made them look very stupid. What child would not want to sit down sadly by themselves and gloom over the failure?

He could never do anything right on that first day. Mr Eddison kept jabbering at him about how to do it a different way. He wasn't sweeping right, he gave someone too much soda, did he really drop out of school when he was in first grade because he couldn't figure out where the syrup went in the soda machine.

No, Mr Eddison, he wanted to say, but it sounds like you sure did.

He was at the heavy glass doors now and was looking at a poster about superheroes. He thought it was the same one he saw a few days ago, but then he noticed there were small changes in it. Some of the people were missing. And one of them had missing a head. He thought that was weird because it didn't seem to fit, and he didn't think there was someone without a head in the movie. He had seen it at least 4 times that day.

Nathan gave a little prayer of thanks that Mr Eddison was not at the glass panels where people bought tickets, he was usually over there wearing his creepy black mustache and round glasses, looking like a member of the gestapo rifling through a dreadful clipboard.

Nate was only two minutes late but he didn't think Mr Eddison would use the word 'only' to describe this travesty. So he bustled in looking as serious as a lawyer on wall street, and took his post behind the cash register.

It was still very early so he wasn't expecting a lot of people to come in, and fortunately he didn't have to work the night shift which would bring in more people than wood stock, he thought wisely, as if reading about it was like being there.

But then someone did walk in and Nathan cursed under his lips about how the universe wouldn't give him just a couple minutes to get prepared.

She was a girl, maybe a year younger than him, with light brown skin, and eyes that seemed focused on everything they saw. Those eyes were so brown they were almost purple.

They were purple.

Nathan blinked. No, they were brown.

"Hey!" she said to him happily.

"H-Hi." he stuttered "Uh-what could I get you".

It was then that he saw Mr Eddison walk around a corner, behind her, and then pass out of sight.

But that couldn't be right, it looked like Mr Eddison had a tail sticking out of the back of his pants. A thick black tail that had something like an arrow at the end of it like he was a dinosaur stuffed into human clothes. Nate saw how it swayed back and forth like a flagellum, and then he was gone.

Okay Nate, you need to take it easy, he thinks to himself. He was way too anxious about his second day.

The girl asked "Can I get a Snickers?"

Nate handed her the snickers and took her money, it was exact change, and when he put it in the register and looked back up, she was gone.

He was going to ask her what movie she was watching. Something in him wanted to talk to her. She seemed nice. And he was a little sad that she hadn't stayed a moment longer. Then when he looked down on the dollar bill, still in the open cash register, instead of seeing George Washington, it was the girl's face staring up at him, and there was something bound over her mouth. Her eyes looked terrified. And in black marker, written in large straight letters, it said

"Find Me"

And then he flipped the dollar bill over and on the back side, written again in black letters,

"News"

Nathan woke up to his alarm. It was squealing like his room was on fire. He smacked at it and wiped the sleep out of his eyes, thinking about that girl. It was time for work. He had to hustle. So this time he really did get over there, at least he hoped so.

He had read about false awakenings and it kind of scared him, but it scared him about as much as it fascinated him too.

This wasn't the first time it happened. Sometimes he would wake up at least three times before actually doing so. And each time he was back in the same world but it was twisted in a different way. His mom might walk into to wake him up and when he opened his eyes she didn't have a face. Or he'd hear his sister fall down the stairs and running out, cringing at each loud thump, he'd see her down at the bottom. Each time it jolted him into another false awakening, like rolling ever over the wheel of Samsara.

Maybe the false awakenings were behind this anxiety, he speculated, as he stepped through real doors leading into the theatre. Or perhaps he really didn't want to have a job. He didn't want to grow up. Could anyone blame him?

For the second time he thought about that girl. She had seemed different than other parts of the dream. The two of them were the only clear things in a room that was blurry and ever changing. Who was she?

He started to feel silly thinking so seriously about a girl in his dreams. And although the part of him that was turning into a man was trying to veer his mind towards another direction, the part of him that was still a boy pondered the mysteriousness about her.

What did that all mean?

Towards the end of his shift, and after Nathan had watched that super hero movie another three times and was convinced there were no headless people in it, he had been walking towards the back room where they kept the machine for his time card. A door flung open and a kid ran out. Nathan caught just a glimpse of a wet face running by. Then Mr Eddison came out. Nathan turned around and saw that the kid was already outside. And then before Nate could get the stamp on his time card, Mr Eddison demanded he come into his Office.

"Nathan. Come on into my office." He snapped. Mr Eddison didn't wait for Nate to respond, he took it for granted that Nate would follow orders, and he did.

"Is there a problem Mr. Eddison?" Nate asked politely.

"Yes Nate, there is a problem. Sit down."

Nate sat. The room felt hot.

Mr Eddison was gritting his teeth as if he had caught Nate performing the best prank of all time, like peeing all over his sheets.

"You were late today Nathan."

"Um, yeah sorry sir, I -"

"You're fired."

"What!?" Nathan was shocked.

Suddenly Nathan felt very silly for still sitting there. It didn't feel right! What a mean old man! He was counting on this job. He needed to make five hundred dollars.

"You were late on your first day too. I told you I would not tolerate laziness, Nathan."

Mr Eddison pulled out an envelope and handed Nate twelve dollars.

"Here's your pay" He said in a prissy voice. "You don't need to come back. You can go."

Nate took the money and walked out of there feeling ashamed. On his way home he pulled out the money and counted it. As he was flipping the bills over he caught his breath. Because the bill that was now in his hand had big black letters written over it's face. It was the same message in his dream.

"Find Me"

"News"

Except now it was just George Washington staring off to the side.

Nate folded it carefully and put it back in his pocket like it was a precious map.

When he got home he saw that his sister was watching T.V. She had the remote in her lap and she was pressing buttons like she was playing the piano. Sometimes the volume would go up or the channels would flash by. Suddenly he snatched the remote away from her and she gave out a cry.

"Mine!"

But Nate had seen something. He flipped back a couple channels and there was a picture on the right corner of the TV. It was near the head of a news anchor describing, in somber tones, an abduction somewhere. Nate did not believe what he was seeing. This was no dream but there was something that looked like a gas station from the view of a helicopter, and a picture of a dark skinned girl with blazing eyes was looking at him from a five by five white card.

Nate had sold her a Snickers.

When his mom came in the room she was surprised at Nate's severe expression. She thought it made him look years older, and a part of her was struck by a feeling of great loss that anticipated his flight from the nest one day. Another part felt pride.

"Oh, that's very sad" she said when she drew closer.

"That poor girl. I hope they catch'em"

And then took the remote and switched it to a cartoon.

"You need to get to your homework now."

Nate walked slowly out of the room without talking to her. His head felt like it was under water while he listened to the muffled sounds of his heart slowly thumping. He was in his room. He didn't tell his mom he was fired. He would do that later. He needed to know about that girl.

She had sent him a message.

She asked him for help.

But that's impossible! He says to himself. That's crazy.

He fired up his computer and searched for the name he saw above her face.

"Mariana Herrera Cruz"

He found a website with information about her.

She was eleven. Four feet eight inches tall. Missing for 3 days.

It was her. It looked just like her. What are the odds?

He pulled out the dollar bill just to make sure he was not insane. It still had the message on there.

A feeling of great responsibility settled on him. He had to find her. But what could he do when there's a whole police force looking for her? He couldn't do anything but look stuff up online! He didn't even have a learners permit to drive.

But she had found him.

Nate was startled to see that there was something to that. Maybe the message was more like a riddle?

Find Me.

An epiphany blossomed in Nate's mind.

Find her. She wants him to find her in his dreams.

Their dreams must connect.

It was all racing behind his eyes.

Of course, she wasn't asking him to go on a search party for her. She wanted to talk to him. Maybe she could tell him something and then he could alert the authorities!

It all sounded totally nuts and part of him felt like he was play-acting. It was ridiculous. But that dollar bill. His dream. It could not be a coincidence.

It was late when Nate could actually get to bed. He was so full of adrenaline, up to the point expected from a twelve year old kid who finds they are part of something great and inexplicable.

It was in the dark morning when Nate woke up in his mind, thinking all the while that perhaps that was not too much different than waking up in the real world. It was just another world. But in this one there was a trail to Mariana.

The trail was made out of dollar bills. When his eyes opened, the slight warping in the walls was the first clue that he was probably sleeping. But if it wasn't that he guessed the dollars would have convinced him. They were spaced-out in regular intervals, starting from the foot of his bed, going out the door, and it was anyone's guess after that. He stood up and put on shoes, thinking, why does he even need shoes? But it felt better to put them on anyways.

It was amazing how realistic everything was. And it blew his mind how much information could be stored in his brain. How did it reconstruct itself like this?

He followed the trail out of his room, down the steps and to his front door. When he opened the door he saw that the trail went over the porch steps, onto the sidewalk, and then down the road as far as he could see. The trail was getting a little bit longer than he had expected. He thought he could see a million dollars.

He shook his head wondering how this would turn out and when he would wake up.

He stepped outside.

And then everything changed.

It was no longer his street. His house was gone when he turned around. And he looked up at the black sky and saw orange bolts of lightning. Grey trees with dead leaves around them grew up in twisted form out of the sidewalks. They appeared to have broken through the pavement, leaving a small crater in rubble about their base.

Nate turned his head in panorama to get a full sense of what he was looking at.

There were disheveled piles of rubble that looked like old houses, and there appeared to be a black factory about a mile away. It was pumping dark plumes of smoke into the air, and there was fire that looked like small candles hovering over black pipes that were scattered about. The trail went in that direction. He began to walk down the street noting the uneven ground.

Huge gashes in the earth that cut the street in half appeared towards the end of his neighborhood. There was hot air blowing up out of them. He didn't want to step across since they seemed very deep, but he had no other choice, so he found the smallest gap and leapt across. He felt brave.

Then Nate saw where he was. He was downtown and that factory was right where the movie theatre was. The trail led there.

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