Chapter 15
Weiss's POV
I've been waiting in the hospital for several hours now. I want to go home and get some rest (I really don't enjoy getting up at 2:00 am), but I wait in the lobby for any news to be announced. The TV is on, but muted, and I'm not paying much attention to it; I'm much more intrigued by this story I'm reading in Reader's Digest. I hear my name spoken and I look up to see Sydney standing before me, her hand bandaged.
"What happened?"
"There may be a way to cure Nad…"
I look up at her to see why she stopped talking, and that's when I see the spaceship on the TV.
"Not good," she mutters quietly. She shakes her head slowly. "What do we do?"
I shrug, and then sigh nervously. "There's really nothing we can do."
"We've been exposed," suddenly I hear Kendall say, and I look over at him. "We're going to let the media put whatever sort of spin they want to on this. I talked to…" he trails off as he looks at Sydney. "I talked to the other you," he says, emanating a weird feeling of uncertainty, a trait I have never seen in Kendall before. "She told me that the ship is from Area 51. I contacted a co-worker who has been working on controlling the spaceship we have there by computers. She said that she could probably hack into this spaceship and fly it over to Area 51. It's a risky procedure, but I gave her the go ahead."
Minutes later, the reporter was gesturing emphatically as the ramp on the ship closed, and it slowly rose into the air, and then streaked through the sky with an unbelievable speed.
"That's that," Kendall said, and walked away.
I look over at Sydney, who's slowly shaking her head.
"What is it?" I ask, concerned.
She shakes her head again. "I love Vaughn. I love him more than anything. I'm just a little apprehensive about having Kendall be my father-in-law."
"I understand." I glance over at her, and speak again. "Not to change the topic, but didn't you say something about possibly being able to save Nadia?"
She nods, and smiles. (Considering all Sydney has been through in the past four years, it's nice to see her smile on occasion.)
"It's just a theory right now, but…" she trails off, and then asks if she's explained how Sydney (the other Sydney, that is) got her injuries. I tell her that she hasn't and she proceeds to explain what happened to Other Sydney (Syd2 if you will).
When she finishes, I look up at her completely confused. "How does that help us?"
"I've been thinking about it. Perhaps my parallel version got my injuries because I have a stronger…" she pauses, searching for the right word, "life-wave…" she says, and pauses again. "Perhaps I have a stronger life-wave than she does because I'm a native of this specific universe. Perhaps if I were to go to their planet, they'd have a stronger life-wave. If that's the case, if they take Nadia back with them when they head back for their planet, perhaps she'll get cured. Perhaps Nadia's parallel version will be able to cure this universe's Nadia. It's a long shot, but who knows? It may work."
I start to feel a sense of hope, but it soon fades. "What if it doesn't work? What if we just contaminate Parallel Nadia? Then we'd have two Nadias, neither able to cure the other."
"The way I see it is that if we try and it works, we get Nadia back. If we try and fail, we won't have gained anything, but we won't have lost anything. If this Nadia stays contaminated, and the other Nadia doesn't get contaminated, then she'll be contaminated upon arrival on this planet. If that Nadia gets contaminated, and they leave her there on that planet, Parallel Nadia will die, but this Nadia won't. It's going to be risky no matter what, so why not hope for the best?"
I think about what she just said.
"I wanted to ask your opinion before authorizing it. What do you think? Do you want to try it?"
I look at Sydney and smile. I reach up to my neck and grab a hold of the necklace I'm wearing. Taking it off, I hand it to her.
She slowly turns the ring at the end of the chain in her hand.
"It's my grandma's," I explain quietly. Vaughn told me that he was planning on proposing, and I told him about how I had been considering it myself. He told me that, if you would both agree to it, we could have a double wedding. I was going to pop the question when you all got back from Savogda, but…" I trail off. "Do anything you can to save her."
She smiles and nods. "I was hoping you'd say that." She hands me the ring and walks away.
For the first time since I found out about what had happened to Nadia, I genuinely smile.
…TBC…