Chapter 42:
The group sat at a large dinner table as an uncomfortable silence drifted over the table. Quinn glanced to the door and saw it guarded by two armed Kromagg soldiers. Rebecca broke the silence.
"So... How do you guys know our host?" Rebecca asked.
"Logan is my double." Quinn replied. "We met her during our third year sliding."
"Ms. St. Clair's world's natural resources were almost depleted, so her company planned to use the sliding that my double had developed to raze other worlds for their resources and hold the world hostage." Arturo started. "Of course, that had to be done after killing my double."
"She tried to kill us, and chased us to the next world, forcing Quinn to give her coordinates so she could exit the vortex safely." Wade said.
"But you didn't, isn't that right, Quinn?" Logan asked.
"That's right." Quinn replied. "I couldn't let you use sliding for evil."
"It's all right though, I'm not mad. Because I got all I ever wanted and more." Logan started. "Your coordinates sent me hurtling through the multiverse, and I exited the vortex, but not on my world, or even my time. You see, the tampering caused me to travel into the past onto the Kromagg Homeworld."
"Kromagg Homeworld, you mean my homeworld?" Colin asked.
"Yes. And when those Kromaggs found me, they were nothing, a sub-human group living under the subjugation of the humans of that world. And then I arrived. I gave them the ability to slide, and all I asked for in exchange was to become their leader." Logan replied.
"This doesn't make sense. The Kromaggs hate humans, how does a human become their leader for this long?" Maggie asked.
"I guess evil just defers to the greater evil." Quinn said.
"So the war between Colin's parents and the Kromaggs was your doing?" Wade asked.
"And when that war ended badly, you left and set up shop somewhere else." Michael asked.
"Not quite. By that point I had them researching rudimentary time travel. I had them jump me into the future, allowing me to begin work on my latest project. Taking my world hostage was a necessity of the time, but the world I really want to hold hostage, is yours." Logan replied.
"Our world?" Quinn asked. "Why?"
"You ruined my life, so I want to ruin your world." Logan replied. "Seems fair."
"From your twisted point of view, I suppose that is fair." Quinn said.
"Anyway, the problem was that I didn't have your coordinates, and couldn't find you, so imagine my surprise when you stumbled upon a world that my soldiers had subjugated in my absence." Logan said.
"Earth Triple Prime? The world that Quinn's double and Rickman fed into the timer?" Wade asked.
"Yep. I finally had the way to find your coordinates, I figured I could try to find you and confront you, or I could drive you insane. So I started to chip away at what you loved." Logan said.
"Making me think I was from another Earth, Wade in the camp, Rembrandt being used as a sleeper agent. That was all to get to me." Quinn said.
"And when I realized you weren't going to budge, I went to the weaker mark." Logan said.
"You left Rembrandt and took me away, hoping that he'd lead you to our homeworld." Quinn said.
"And he nearly did. Until you got in my way again." Logan said.
"We sprung everyone from your little trap and managed to evade you for fifteen years. Not bad, huh?" Quinn spat. "You still don't have the coordinates. If you did, you'd have invaded already."
Michael turned to Sam, who was sat next to him and looked at him with a confused look.
"Didn't the Mags invade our world?" Michael whispered. "Then we helped them repel the invasion?"
"Maybe Tiberius didn't share that bit of info with Logan. Maybe he has some ulterior motives." Sam whispered.
"Wouldn't put it past him." Michael whispered back.
"Put your timers on the table." Logan ordered. "You don't want to know what happens if you don't comply."
Quinn sighed and placed his timer on the table. Michael did the same, glancing at it to see that the timer had about twelve hours left before the next slide.
"Now, you are going to identify the coordinates that go to your homeworld, right now." Logan ordered.
Everyone at the table sat with their mouths clamped shut. Michael glanced at Logan's reaction, which was of calm silence.
"Lieutenants, take our guests to their cells. I'll see you when you're ready to talk." Logan said as she stood up, grabbing the timers off the table.
Later, the group of sliders sat in a windowless cell, with only two benches and a force-field to off-set the dark gray walls.
"Well, this is just great..." Sam sighed.
"I refuse to believe that Logan St. Clair is the biggest evil in the multiverse. There has to be more to this!" Wade said.
"This is my fault. When I gave her the wrong coordinates, I didn't think she'd end up there. I assumed it was going to kill her." Quinn said.
"What?" Michael asked.
"They were landing coordinates, without the correct ones she should have been burned alive when she entered the gateway." Quinn replied. "Obviously the random coordinates I put in ended up saving her."
"You... tried to kill her?" Colin asked.
"She was willing to kill us. She killed the Professor's double. It was the only way." Quinn replied.
"He's right. She was ruthless, and despite how the result played out, ultimately I believe he made the right choice. She would have killed us without any qualms." Arturo said. "And would have have taken Quinn with her if she had her way."
"And now we're locked in a cell." Rebecca said. "Without the timer."
"We can get the timer back." Michael said. "We got it back from Tiberius, we can get it back from Logan."
"Well I wouldn't come up with any escape plans, since they probably have the cell bugged." Maggie said.
"Was Logan the type of bad guy to monologue?" Sam asked.
"We only met her once, we don't know." Wade replied.
"I didn't even meet her, I was dealing with my own problems that day." Rembrandt said. "Actually, I wish I was dealing with that crazy fan instead of Logan right now."
"That's a story for another day, Mr. Brown. What we need to do is wait for Logan to make the first move and plan accordingly." Arturo said.
Suddenly the force-field lowered and two Kromagg guards walked up to the spot where the force-field was. They stepped into the cell and grabbed Quinn and Michael, dragging them out of the cell and re-activating the force-field. The remaining sliders sat hesitantly, watching their friends get dragged away.
"What do you think she's going to do to them?" Rebecca asked.
"I don't know, but I know it's not going to be pleasant for them." Arturo replied.
Quinn and Michael were dragged into a room and thrown into two chairs, which they were strapped down to.
"Well, talk about deja-vu." Michael said.
"Ditto." Quinn said.
Logan walked into the room and looked her prisoners up and down. She took out their timers and placed them on a table.
"Let's make this simple and painless, which coordinates are for your Earth?" Logan asked.
"Go to hell, Logan." Quinn spat.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you. Like you tried to send me there when we last fought." Logan said.
"Listen, if you think I'm just going to willingly give you the coordinates to my Earth, you've got another thing coming." Michael said.
"No, you listen. I can just hook your timers up to a computer and cross-check all inputted coordinates against each-other and find every world that you've encountered that Quinn has, so it's just a matter of time before I figure it out. Plus that way, I can raze more worlds in the process." Logan said.
"Listen, I don't have my home coordinates, if I did, do you think I'd be here? I'd be sitting on my couch drinking a beer and watching Jeopardy if I had them." Quinn said.
"Yeah, I've been searching for home since I started. Found a lot of worlds, but none of them are mine." Michael said. "Wish I was watching Jeopardy too, I think it's the Tournament of Champions this week."
"Do you expect me to believe that? I've been watching you. I know that you've shared your coordinates with them. Case and point, these pictures from about four months ago. A world where a stoner took control of the U.S. government. You gave them the home coordinates, and now I want them." Logan said.
"Oh, I see what's going on. That's not us. Those must be our doubles from some other Earth." Michael said.
"Don't play dumb, I checked your quantum signatures when you came in here, they match Quinn's and the scans I took of Quinn's fifteen years ago." Logan said.
"Worth a shot." Michael said.
"I take it you're not planning on cooperating." Logan said.
"I'm not giving up my world to you." Quinn said.
"Neither am I!" Michael shouted.
"I expect this from the kid, but you Quinn, I expected you to grow up, after all, I grew up since we last met." Logan said.
"No you didn't, you're the same sadistic psychopath we met eighteen years ago." Quinn said.
"Wait a minute, why aren't you guys on Earth Prime? You have the coordinates." Sam said.
"Yes, well. That's a bit of a dilemma for us." Arturo started.
"I can't breathe on your world. For whatever reason, all the other worlds I've been two have breathable air, but your air is toxic to my lungs." Maggie finished. "And since my world is gone, we can't even try to figure out what element is missing from your air."
"And so we couldn't return home knowing that Maggie might die, since with the random timing of the slides, we might have a week there, and she barely survived a half hour there the last time." Wade said.
"Good answer. We haven't returned home since we were trying to locate Rebecca's world. And we did. But unfortunately Michael and I were arrested and we had to leave quickly, then the timer broke so we can't choose coordinates anymore." Sam said.
"Listen, we better keep on our toes. The Kro-Maggots don't mess around in their prisons." Rembrandt said.
"And with them, we can't even be sure of what's real. Their telepathic powers can make anything seem real. Not to mention that holographic thing they used when we got here." Colin said.
"I swear if Logan hurts either of them..." Wade started.
"Quinn, if you don't talk I'll start hurting the kid." Logan said.
"I'm not a kid! I'm nineteen!" Michael shouted.
"Quiet!" Logan shouted back.
"Listen, none of us are going to tell you anything. So why not let us leave and you can keep the Kromaggs?" Quinn said.
"I've spent way too long planning this, Quinn. I want to finish what I started, what you ruined." Logan said.
"I might be ready to talk." Michael said. "But can you loosen these restraints? They're cutting off my circulation."
"Oh, don't even try that. That's the oldest trick in the book, the fact you thought I'd fall for it laughable." Logan said.
"Keep me, let everyone else go. Especially Michael and his friends, they had nothing to do with our dispute." Quinn said.
"If I do that, then you'll have no reason to talk. And if you have no reason to talk I'll never get your coordinates."
Suddenly a Kromagg soldier walked into the room and showed Logan a tablet computer. Logan scowled and looked at her captives.
"Back to your cells." Logan said as the Kromagg soldiers released them from the chairs. "I have bigger issues to attend to."
Quinn and Michael were dragged back to the cell and thrown into it by the guards. Sam and Colin helped them up off the ground.
"What did she do to you?" Wade asked.
"Interrogated us, tried to get our home coordinates out of us." Michael replied.
"She's been surveilling us, there are pictures from when we were last on A-Bomb world." Quinn said. "How, I can't figure out."
"Perhaps she's only been watching us recently. After all, she wants your home coordinates, but the Mags already invaded your world. We were there." Rebecca said.
"Yeah, even that holodeck dragged that bit of info out of our minds." Sam said.
"Well, there are infinite dimensions, maybe it was a different set of Kromaggs." Rembrandt said. "We've see stranger things."
"I just can't believe that those two aren't somehow connected. This prison even seems like same prison they had us in last time." Michael said.
"You know, the cell might be bugged. We shouldn't be discussing this." Colin said.
"What will she learn? Either one of her subordinates betrayed her, and tried to take a world solo, or another group of Mags tried to take our world before she could get to it. Not very crucial information." Sam said.
"Information is information, and I'd rather not give her any, if she's as bad as you guys have said." Maggie said.
Suddenly, two Kromagg soldiers walked up to the cell, followed by Logan. She smiled, evilly as the soldiers dropped the force-field.
"One of you is going to show me your coordinates. Now who is it going to be? Wade? Professor? Or Colin?" Logan asked.
"It will be none of us, we'll never divulge that information to you." Arturo said.
"Oh, but I know Colin will. Isn't that right?" Logan asked. Colin stood up.
"What are you doing?" Quinn asked.
"I'm sorry, guys. I... I can't control myself." Colin replied as he walked to Logan's side.
"Farm Boy... not you..." Rembrandt sighed.
"How did you brainwash Colin?" Wade asked.
"You never wondered why he never had any doubles?" Logan asked. "Wasn't it obvious?"
"What do you mean?" Rembrandt asked.
"Do you know how hard it is to make a gender-swapped clone of yourself?" Logan asked. "I never could get the face exactly right..."
"You can't be saying..." Arturo said.
"Oh yes, Max. I cloned Colin and sent him in as a plant, it's taken years, but I've finally won." Logan said.
"You... monster!" Quinn shouted, lunging at Logan when the force-field re-activated, sending him flying back.
"Well, we've got work to do, don't we Colin?" Logan asked.
"We do." Colin replied as they walked down the corridor.
"I'll get you for this! I trusted you, Colin! I trusted you, and treated you like a brother! You'll pay for this!" Quinn shouted as he dropped to the floor of the cell.
A few hours later, the sliders sat in their cell as Michael paced around the confines of the small cell.
"I can't believe Colin was a plant! I mean, you guys don't seem as angry, but I'd be pissed if my friend, or my brother was a Kromagg clone, especially of Logan!" Michael shouted.
"Can't dwell on the past..." Quinn muttered.
Suddenly there was a loud explosion. The sliders stood up and tried to see out of the force-field. Quinn put his hand out towards it, and his arm stretched out into where the force-field should have been, but touched nothing but air.
"Now! We've got one shot at this!" Quinn shouted as he ran out of the cell and started motioning for the others to follow.
"What the hell is going on?" Sam asked.
"I'll explain later." Quinn replied as they ran down a corridor as another explosion rang out.
Suddenly, Colin came running up to the group, holding their timers and tossed the timers to Quinn.
"Wait, Colin is on our side?" Rebecca asked.
"Sorry for the subterfuge, we had to make sure Logan bought our gambit." Arturo said.
"Someone explain right now!" Michael demanded.
"We've got a little time, I've knocked out their wormhole tracking equipment, so we can make a clean getaway." Colin said.
"Fine. We've known Colin was a plant for years, shortly after escaping the Kromaggs, we ended up finding the lab where they were cloning people, and sure enough, we found records for Colin. It's too long a story to talk about here, but he was a sleeper agent at one point, but we deprogrammed him once we found out." Quinn said.
"We didn't know that he was cloned from Logan though. We always assumed he was an imperfect clone of Quinn." Rembrandt said.
"Okay, that was one hell of a plan. How did you know it'd work?" Sam asked.
"We didn't." Colin said. "We got lucky, and we have to get out of here."
"One minute!" Quinn shouted as he handed Michael his timer.
"Holy crap!" Michael shouted.
"What's wrong?" Rebecca asked.
"Nothing!" Michael replied. "The timer's random coordinates cycled back to a world we've already been on."
"What world?" Sam asked.
"Earth Prime!" Michael replied.
"Remarkable!" Arturo exclaimed.
"Okay, new plan. Everyone go back to Earth Prime, they can't track the wormhole, so you're going to be pretty safe there." Quinn said.
"What?" Wade asked.
"Go home. I promised I'd get us all home, and I'm finally making good on that promise." Quinn replied.
"Well, I have to stay with you, then." Maggie said. "Not sure if the air is breathable for me there."
"That's fair." Quinn said.
"And what will you do, Q-Ball?" Rembrandt asked.
"Someone has to stop Logan permanently, I'll need time to formulate a plan and set it into action, but I can't let her use sliding for evil." Quinn replied.
"I'm staying with you." Michael said.
"No way." Quinn said.
"There's some pertinent information that you need to know, and I can't tell you here. Plus, I'm not exactly sure, but the Kromaggs might be tracking me, and I already got us captured by them once, I don't want to do that to the entire Earth." Michael said.
"No time to argue, we've gotta go." Sam said.
"Fine." Quinn said.
"Sam..." Michael said as he placed the timer in Sam's hands. "Get home, get settled, find my notes and get Rebecca home, especially if I don't come back."
"Don't say that." Sam said.
"Go! Now!" Quinn shouted. Sam pointed the timer at the wall and activated the vortex.
"Goodbye, Mr. Mallory." Arturo said as he stood in front of the vortex. "And good luck."
"You better come back, you still owe me a new Caddy." Rembrandt said, as followed Arturo into the vortex.
"If anyone's going to stop Logan and come out in one piece, it'll be you." Colin said as he hugged Quinn, before jumping into the vortex.
Wade walked up to Quinn and they embraced each other. She looked Quinn in the eyes and opened her mouth to say something.
"We've had enough of these goodbyes, I know exactly what you're going to say." Quinn said. "Me too."
Wade smiled and jumped into the vortex. Rebecca pulled Michael aside and took a piece of paper out of her pocket and pressed it into Michael's hand.
"You'll need a safe place to go." Rebecca said.
"Thanks. I'll miss you." Michael said.
"Oh come on, you'll end up following in a few weeks like you did last time. You can't stand to be away from me." Rebecca laughed.
"Come on!" Sam shouted.
"Bye, guys." Michael said as Sam and Rebecca leapt into the vortex together before it closed.
Michael walked over to Quinn as he checked over his timer, which displayed a thirty second countdown.
"Put these into the timer. I don't know where Rebecca got this paper, but my guess is that it's wherever she was before she ended up here. Worth a shot to see what's there." Michael said.
"Good thinking. Let's go." Quinn said as he entered the coordinates and the three sliders entered the vortex.
To Be Continued...