iCarly: iMeet the Relatives, Chapter 23: Investigations
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I don't own iCarly.
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Chapter 23: Investigations
Devlin and Grif were finishing up in Jemiah's headquarters, when the ninth circle demon suddenly got a faraway look in his eyes. "Devlin?"
"Uhm. Yes. It—it's Brittney. Something's wrong. Very wrong." He visibly shook himself, rubbed his eyes, and turned back to his reluctant ally. "Now, where were we?"
"We were planning an investigation of this intrusion." Grif's eyes narrowed. Like the demon, he could see far more than the exterior. "But I think you've got something to do first."
"Don't be ridiculous. This is vastly more important."
"It's also something you'll not be able to devote your full attention to until you resolve this other matter. Now what did you sense?"
"None of your bus—oh, what am I saying. Something's happened with Brittney. I can feel her anguish all the way over here."
Uncharacteristically, Grif put his hand on the demon's arm. "Go see about her."
Devlin shadowcloaked straight into Carly's apartment, and immediately noticed Brittney sobbing on the couch, Carly and Sam on either side of her, trying to comfort her, with Freddie looking on. He looked at Devlin and shrugged.
Devlin could already tell something about what had happened, but so overwhelming were Brittney's emotions that they actually blocked his ability to discern details. He approached the couch, trident retracted and secure in its holder, and cleared his throat. "Excuse me."
All three of them looked up at him, Carly and Brittney with expressions of relief, Sam…with an unreadable expression on her face. "What happened?"
Sam gestured towards the distraught girl. "We just discovered Brittney, here, isn't from this Earth. Probably, what, a parallel dimension or something?"
"And, with all the tact and subtlety of a pile driver, you just told her, right?" He shooed them away from Brittney, and sat down beside her. "Come on, Brittney. Here. Lean back." The crying girl leaned back—right onto his shoulder. He had to keep from starting; he hadn't really intended that. But…. "Now, just breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Just breathe. Take your time." And he drew off her feelings of fear, anxiety, confusion, and a host of others. She began to calm down.
Sam looked like she was about to burst.
Carly noticed. "C'mon, Sam, Freddie. We can't do any more here." She began to usher them out of the room.
"Wait." Sam's voice was as livid as her face. "You're actually gonna leave her alone with him?"
"Yes I am. Just as I left him alone with you, in the Darkness. Now, come on, Sam. Out." They were both surprised by the tone of authority in Carly's voice.
Things were not the same as they had been.
After a while, Brittney began to calm down. "Now tell me what happened," he said, still holding her.
She took a shaky breath and began. "I don't exist. Not on—in—this world. Nobody knows me, all my ID numbers either don't exist or belong to somebody else…Devlin, my own grandmother never heard of me!" She looked up at him in horror. "I spent every summer at her house, all my high school years, and one year of college there, but, but she doesn't know me!"
On pure reflex, he put his arm around her and drew her close. In the back of his mind, he wondered: why was he doing this? But demons are creatures of almost pure emotion; he went with the instinct, and pulled her into an embrace. Her arm automatically went around him, and she clung to him. "You made sure? All numbers, any other relatives, everything?" She nodded, tears still running down her face.
"I, I don't belong in this world. Something…something went wrong, and, and….oh, I don't know! I'm just so…"
He drew off more of her fear and confusion. It was like a tidal wave; it just kept coming. "Come on, Brittney. It…well, I won't say it'll be alright, but, but we'll find a way to, to do something about it."
She looked up at him. "Can you get me home?"
Probably not, he thought to himself, careful not to let that show in his face. "I won't lie to you. I've never heard of this sort of thing happening, but then this whole 'pulling people out of the Darkness' thing is still relatively new to all of us. We've long known the Darkness touches on more than one universe, more than one world-line. But exactly how to use that knowledge, how to get you home….Brittney, I just can't promise anything."
"But, but you'll try?"
I really have other things to do, he was about to say. Such as trying to save this world from sliding down into the very Darkness we just came from. But those clear blue eyes looking up into his just did something to him. "No promises, Brittney. But my home dimension, the Hell universe, does touch on many other universes as well. Not all, but a lot. I….I'll ask my uncle, see if anything can be done. But don't get your hopes up, okay? Your world-line may not touch on mine at any point. And in any case, there's….well, there's an awful lot of them. Finding yours…could be…difficult." Now how would he persuade Uncle Darian to actually put forth the effort to find this girl's home time-line?
Well, he'd think of something.
All she'd heard of that, however, was "I'll see if anything can be done." That was all she needed, and she clung to him ever more tightly. In the back of her mind, she was a bit embarrassed by this, this "girly"-type behavior; she'd always considered herself to be a modern and self-reliant person. But everybody has their limits. Finding yourself trapped in a world that looks like yours, but isn't, cut off from everything and everybody you knew, was apparently a really big button she didn't even know she had.
Thank God for Devlin!
Carly caught Sam peeping on the couple on the couch. "Sam?"
"Sh. I can't hear what they're saying."
"You're not supposed to! Sam! You're stalking them!"
"I am not! I just wanna make sure he doesn't, you know, try anything, that's all."
"And what exactly would you do about it if he did? Sam. Come on away from the door. Let 'em have some privacy."
Sam turned, reluctantly from the door she'd cracked open. "Why do you trust that, that…thing so much? You know what he is!"
"Yeah. I know what he is. He's the guy who saved your life, twice, down in the Darkness, and the guy who saved Brittney from the Darkness. And, and, even if, you know…she isn't where she came from….it still beats being in the Darkness. And he's the guy who did that."
Sam shook her head in fury. "You're deliberately blinding yourself. He's a demon. By definition, he can't be trusted!"
"Sam, listen to yourself. You trusted him, for years. And did he ever really hurt you? It's true he didn't come right out and say he was a demon, but if he had, would you have believed him?"
Again Sam shook her head, lips thinned together in anger. "You don't understand."
I think I understand all too well. Aloud, Carly said, "Well, maybe I don't. But in the meantime, we've other problems. Grif tells me his people are mounting an investigation team to go look into this, this…whatever it is, in Lake Superior. I don't know what our role in it will be, if any, but, well, maybe we'll just be support crew. In this case, that means supporting and helping Brittney there. How would you feel if that was you out there?"
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"….Aaaaand…you guys are saying you're actual angels?" Dr. Weston was trying to wrap his mind around the concept. And clearly failing.
Dr. Phillips, on the other hand, was nodding. "Makes a certain amount of sense, George. Now what was done to that timer…yeah. It stands to reason they could control time."
Weston turned to his friend. "You mean you're actually buying all this?"
"You mean you'd rather they be space aliens? Terrorists with super science? Time travelers from the far future? How would that be better? Maybe that's what we call 'space aliens' actually are. And remember, just because they call themselves 'angels' doesn't mean they're necessarily anything like what we've been taught. Keep an open mind."
"Yeah, but angels?"
"And demons," said Darian BenDarian, standing over by the window in Jemiah's office. Weston looked at him as though reminded of his presence, suddenly. Curiously enough, he found the notion of demons more believable than that of angels. Maybe because they'd just been overpowered and tied up by superhuman beings who, judging from their comments, weren't all that nice.
But where were the horns?
"Yes, angels. I, myself, am leader of the Host of the Seraphim, the Judges, here on Earth. And the reason we now reveal ourselves to you is this." And Jemiah gestured, and the three-dimensional image of Lake Superior, as seen from orbit, sprang into existence. "We tell you this because, like it or not, you are already involved. The explosion at Mt. Adams was done in an effort to combat something we call the Darkness, which is a condition unlike anything you can imagine. Basically, it is a condition of non-existence. And it is a condition that is now preying upon your world." The scene zoomed in on the spot on Lake Superior. "We believe this to be a sign of its encroachment upon your world." Weston and Phillips stared in disbelief. The Darkness? A condition of nonexistence? And it was….here?
"That's…I know you've checked it out, made sure it's not just some perfectly normal shadow or something."
"We have. No shadow would have caused Lake Superior's water level to drop. Nor would a shadow be affecting weather patterns." And they could see for themselves the fluffy white clouds beginning to curve around the spot of Darkness, like iron filings in a magnetic field. "The effect is small now, but if unchecked, it will endanger your world as surely as a black hole would."
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"…will of course defray the cost of her staying here, but I don't feel it's a good idea for her to be too far from you and your group right now. So, you're sure it'll be okay, her staying here with you?" Devlin was talking with Carly. Sam had taken Brittney into the guest bedroom and was getting her situated there.
"Of course it'll be alright. We wouldn't be very good friends if we turned our backs on her now."
He smiled, but there was something almost bittersweet about it. "Thank you, Carly. You are a good friend." He turned to go. "Even in Hell, we honor friendships." A pause. "Perhaps especially in Hell." Then he was gone, shadowcloaking back to the Columbia Building. Carly watched him go, a smile on her face. Devlin put on such a big show of being such a bad guy, but she wasn't fooled.
Brittney appeared, coming out of the guest room with Sam. She seemed to finally have herself under control. "Brit? How's it going?"
The blond girl nodded. She didn't look happy, but then, Carly hadn't really expected her to. Rescued from the Darkness, only to find herself in a world, a universe where, apparently, she didn't exist, was something that could break the mind of a weaker individual. Carly admired the way she was holding up. "I'm tired of crying. It seems like all I've done, ever since I came here, was cry, and I'm tired of it. I'm just so very tired of it. Maybe there's something I can do around here? It'll help take my mind off…stuff."
"Oh, sure! We'll find something for you to do. Sam and I do a web show; you can help with that. Hey, Freddie! Show Brittney how we do things, okay?"
"Sure." Freddie had been tinkering—carefully—with the router Grif had given them so long ago, when they'd believed he was only human. With the discovery that he was actually an angel, and that the router employed some means of working that originated in his universe, the Heaven dimension, it had become Freddie's passion to learn more about it. It didn't seem to involve wires, conduits, or anything that humans could recognize as circuitry, but Carly had no doubt that, if human minds could puzzle it out, Freddie would be the one to do so. "Right over here." He led her to the table where his laptop was. "Okay. What do you know about computers?"
"I do okay with 'em. I'm not exactly a whiz, but I get by."
"Well, it should be no trouble to teach you. Here. Which operating system are you used to using? iOS or Windows? Linux, maybe?"
She looked puzzled. "What are those?"
"Uh…what sort of operating system do you use?"
"'Crystal.' I've never heard of a 'Windows.'" She looked at the laptop. "Mine looks different. Looked different, I mean." She pointed to the top edge of the laptop's screen, at the spot where the camera was. "Is that the neural scanner?"
Freddie was silent for a minute. Then, "This is startin' to sound like the beginning of a voyage of discovery."
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Drs. Weston and Phillips were on the angel airship flying out into Lake Superior to investigate the Darkness. They had both first thought that it was their government connections that had attracted the attention of the Immortals, but that proved not to be the case. Both the angels and the demons had connections even higher. Figures, thought Weston, always suspected the higher levels of government had some demonic influence. The angels he still wasn't sure about.
Jemiah had nixed their initial idea of using military transportation. If this was what they were afraid it was, not only would it be highly dangerous to the mortals simply due to the physical effects, but there were also psychological effects occasionally associated with the Darkness. Sometimes the Darkness had been known to latch onto mortals' minds, with unpredictable but invariably unpleasant results. It wasn't unheard of for humans to be suborned, their free will suppressed, becoming living extensions of the Darkness. Also, it wasn't unheard of for things to emerge from the Darkness, things no mortal had any power against. The angel airship provided better protection. "You're in on this," said the one called BenDarian, "because you're already involved anyway. And we can use your input. It would be stupid to waste a resource, and you are that." Thus saying, he detailed two demons to accompany them. Should worse come to worst, the demons could teleport them back to safety.
The airship—which could function as a watercraft, or a spacecraft, should the situation call for it—was bringing them closer to the phenomenon. "Aren't you excited, George?" Phillips was rubbing his hands with glee. "We get in on the ground floor of a transcosmic event! This is what I've always dreamed of! And," and here, he glanced around at the angels and demons, "we've learned so much about, about the way things REALLY work. This is what I went into physics for in the first place!" He was as excited as a kid at Christmastime.
"Yeah," replied his friend. "We know a lot. Maybe too much." He glanced uneasily at their attendant demons, whose tridents were retracted and carefully put away. "I could see that as being an issue at some point."
The horizon came closer.
To be continued…
