Chapter 8

By AliasJaneDoe

The three men all regarded each other in silence after Emma ran off. Finally, Brennan spoke. "So which one of us is going after her?"

Jesse and Adam both stared at each other.

The quiet was unbearable, and Brennan couldn't tolerate it another second. He flung his legs over the edge of his bed and got up. "Fine," he said to the others, "I will."

After stumbling his way into the hall, he stopped. "Well?" he demanded. "Which way did she go?"

"I'll get her," Adam said, moving past an upset Brennan. He rushed in the direction Emma had fled. It didn't take him long to locate her. She was furiously kicking and pounding the floor and walls of the dojo.

"Emma, I know that right now you must be feeling--" he began, positioned at the bottom of the stairs.

"You LIED to me!" she screamed at him.

"Yes, I did," he replied. "But you need to calm down. You're going to break something."

"I'm trying to break it! I want this damn thing to turn off, I want the fake world to go away, I want it off so I can be back home again where everything - everyone - is real." She glared down at him. "You're lucky I don't have an active power to use against you."

He sighed. "You do have an active power, Emma. You're just choosing not to use it. That kind of behavior won't accomplish anything. You know this. Now let's all sit down and talk about the situation."

"No." She shook her head. "And my power wouldn't work on you. You're required to be able to feel!"

He could certainly feel her rage.

"You promised, Adam!" Her expression transformed into one of pure hurt. Heartache. "You betrayed me. You screwed me over, Adam. You screwed us... and Brennan's going to kill you for it." He'd promised to kick Adam's ass, and Brennan actually kept his word. Unlike this sick version of Adam that she didn't know who was twisting the knife he'd stabbed in her back.

-----

Brennan leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. He tilted his head back, gasped for air because there suddenly didn't seem to be any.

Jesse saw the tears which streaked his face. "Bren..." He hesitated a moment. "You and I... we could both belong here, couldn't we? Our stories match."

Brennan was glad he couldn't see the hope that must have been in Jesse's eyes. "They match because you told me." Jesse had shared the conversation he had with Emma, concerned about her. "You said she... You told me she admitted to being mistaken."

"Brennan, what are you saying?" Jesse asked, confused, desperate. Brennan hadn't only agreed with him then to humor him. He couldn't have. "What are you doing to me?" he added silently.

"I lied."

The two small words were so quiet Jesse almost swore he didn't hear them. He couldn't have heard them. "What?"

Brennan bolted back to his feet, rounded on Jesse. "I lied." This time it came out very clearly. "What I said was wrong, and I am not losing Emma over it. I was wrong, and I won't give her up. I lied..."

He sounded more desperate to have it be a lie than Jesse was for it to have been truth. He looked so shattered that Jesse wondered if now was the lie, if Brennan was lying to keep her instead of him. "So, if we get this sorted out, then you three all still leave, and I supposedly get copies of you that are entirely different people who are living some other life in some other reality right now. You send them back here?"

"Yeah, Jess..." His tone was normal again, or it was a forced calm.

He took a deep breath and then let it out in a huff. "Doesn't seem very fair."

This time Brennan took the deep breath, but he let it out slowly, buying himself a moment before responding. "I know it seems like we're all willing to just abandon you..."

"No, that's not what I meant." He yanked at the wheels of the chair, doing several back and forth movements that allowed him to turn within the hallway so that he was pointed back toward his room. "I meant that it's not fair to them."

Brennan leaned back against the wall again, feeling very guilty.

-----

An hour later, after they'd all had a chance to gather their thoughts, they regrouped in the main room. Brennan and Emma took the couch, and Adam sat in the large chair. There was another empty chair, but Jesse merely parked his wheelchair beside it.

"So who's leaving?" Jesse said. They were all thinking it.

"Can we still go?" Emma asked. "If the gateway connects to multiple worlds, then what's the point?"

"Five," Brennan commented. "It likely only goes to five, maybe just three... counting this one. I mean, we didn't get any doubles, right? And nobody is missing either. Makes me think every world just got one complete set. So we'd still have good odds, considering."

"No... I'm a double." Emma held more tightly to Brennan's hand, not knowing when he'd grasped hers. "Adam said I'm dead."

"On his world," Brennan corrected, "not this one. For now, let's just assume we're on Jesse's."

"The more grim possibility is that while there is only one of each of us here, that might not be the case in the other dimensions," Adam stated. "Also, each reality might have a set, as you said. We, however, have no way to know if only five dimensions were involved."

"It's probably three," Emma said, needing to accept that she and this Brennan did belong together, because if they didn't, if she were alone... she thought she might just want to die. "What are the odds of more than that? How many copies of us could have all been at Naxcon at the same time, doing exactly the same thing so that we could switch like we did?"

Jesse frowned. "Quite good," he remarked, not sure if he should bother trying to be optimistic about this whole ordeal. "In fact, if popular theory is correct, an infinite number of us all were in that same explosion. And an infinite number of us weren't."

"Let's go with Brennan's assessment for the time being," Adam suggested.

"If so, then what?" Emma looked around the room at them.

"You still try to sort yourselves out," Jesse said. "You still go. It's the same as before, only now you'll need to go to five parallel realities. Play roulette until you work it out."

"So who's going?"

And they were back to square one.

"I'm staying with Emma," Brennan said. "Or going with her. Just together, we're going or not together. We are not from different worlds, and I refuse to accept that. I was holding her at the time, there's no way we didn't dimension hop together. There isn't."

"About three inches to your right," Jesse informed Brennan automatically.

Emma hadn't even noticed yet that he'd reached for his glass of water. Despite being on the opposite side of the coffee table, Jesse hadn't directed him the wrong way either.

"Thanks," Brennan replied awkwardly, finding the cup.

Adam stood. "If any of us are leaving, it needs to be now."

"Do you think it'll happen like before?" Emma was nervous again. She played with the fingers of Brennan's left hand. "Will we switch places with other versions of us?"

"This time, we likely won't." Adam was using hand gestures again, causing the others to dread some complicated scientific explanation. "In each reality, we have all been living different lives since the explosion. The odds of any of us returning to the same point at the same moment yet again, this time with the intention of trading places, are rather improbable."

Emma wrinkled her nose. "I thought they were infinite."

"But we're just dealing with a handful of possibilities now," Brennan corrected.

"But for every decision, a new dimension is formed, right?" Her brow furrowed farther. "So right this moment, that limited number of worlds is splitting off into a whole lot more. I mean, all somebody has to do is say 'pick a number between one and ten' and we're completely screwed."

Brennan squeezed her hand. "I think you're making this more difficult than it needs to be, sweetie." He grinned at her.

"Well then, I guess yes." She glanced at Adam and Jesse, then looked to Brennan. "I want to try."

"Me too then." Once more, Brennan was glad he wasn't able to meet Jesse's eyes.

-----

The three of them stood amongst the remains of the Naxcon building, feeling utterly dejected. They'd finally just went for it.

And absolutely nothing had happened.

"What went wrong?" Emma said, her voice sad and confused. Brennan draped his arm around her.

"It's possible the gateway is no longer here," Adam replied. "Or we can't re-establish it from only one side."

"Let's call it a night, go home, and get some breakfast," suggested Brennan. "I'm tired and starving."

"Yeah, I guess," Emma relented, snuggling herself against him in the crisp early morning air. "I could use some chocolate chip pancakes right about now."

"I'm going to return to the safe-house, try to figure this out," Adam told them. They'd taken two separate cars, so it wasn't a problem. They'd all suspected it might not work. At least now they didn't need to feel guilty over leaving Jesse behind.

"We'll see you tomorrow." He actually meant later that day, and he couldn't actually see anything either, but Brennan didn't correct himself.

Adam nodded, and they parted ways. On the walk back to his car, he noticed a sign attached to the chain-link fence that had been set-up around the property after the explosion. It was a notice that construction of a new building would be starting. Adam checked the date. It was in two weeks.

-----

Emma steered Brennan into the kitchen back at Sanctuary. "Pancakes now, wake Jesse once there's coffee?"

"Sounds like a plan." He let go of her arm so that she could prepare the meal.

Emma went about her task of scurrying around, gathering supplies. She began searching for the chocolate chips, then frowned. "Who ate all the Jell-O?" There'd been plenty just last week.

"I did."

Emma swirled around at the unfamiliar voice. A tall brunette woman, who was already wearing mascara at six in the morning, was standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. Emma merely blinked several times.

"Who's your friend, Brennan?" the woman asked, clearly not amused.

At that moment, a scruffy-looking Jesse who still had bed hair stumbled his way into the room. He held an empty mug in one hand. "Okay, Lex, just point me at the coffee and then--"

He suddenly froze, his gaze locked on Emma. The expression of looking like they'd seen a ghost accurately described them both. She didn't realize he dropped the mug until it shattered.

"Oh my god..."

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