Chapter 43:
The vortex opened up in front of the Mallory House as the sliders emerged from it. They stood up and looked around at the quiet street.
"So, this is home?" Rembrandt asked after the group emerged from the vortex.
"According to the timer, yeah." Sam said.
"We're finally back." Wade said.
"This is certainly our Earth, but is it still home?" Arturo asked. "We have been gone quite a long time."
"What do we do now?" Colin asked.
"Well, the timer's got two weeks before it times out again, and the coordinates cycled up aren't Rebecca's so we've got to build a new timer." Sam replied.
"That can wait, we should probably announce our return. No doubt your families want to see you." Arturo said.
"Yeah." Wade said. "God, I don't even know if they live in the same house. I've been gone for so long, they must think I'm dead."
"I say we take a day to announce our return to our loved ones, that's priority number one. Rebecca, my apologies that we aren't holding your needs as high, but well, you know." Arturo said.
"Of course. You've been gone quite a long time." Rebecca said.
"Indeed. So, my friends. How shall we make this announcement?" Arturo asked.
"I think I know how." Rebecca said. "I just need to make a phone call."
Michael, Quinn and Maggie emerged from the portal on a dirt road. They stood up and brushed themselves off.
"The place looks like a war-zone." Maggie said.
"Yeah." Michael said. "But Rebecca was here, so I guess this is where whoever sent her back is."
Suddenly a portal opened and a truck drove out of it, stopping in front of them as Quinn and Maggie stepped back. James stepped out of the truck and smiled upon seeing the trio.
"Ah, hello Michael. So nice to finally meet you two." James said.
"I'm Quinn Mallory and this is..." Quinn started.
"Captain Maggie A. Beckett, U.S. Marines." James said. "I know who you both are."
"Someone's done their homework." Maggie said.
"Indeed, it helps that we have a cache of Kromagg files and thanks to Michael, Sam and Rebecca, we knew who was traveling with Quinn." James said.
"So, he's your double?" Quinn asked. "He on the level?"
"Yeah. He was betrayed by the Kromaggs, and we sort of became friends." Michael said.
"Anyway, did Rebecca make it back alright?" James asked.
"Yeah. She was here, huh?" Michael said.
"Yes, when your slide got hijacked, she ended up getting re-routed here, and I sent her back. That reminds me, we should get back to the base and continue our conversation there." James said.
"Let's go." Michael said as they climbed into the truck and drove into another portal.
Arturo sat on the bed at the Dominion Hotel, he sighed as he waited for the others to return from meeting with their families and friends. Rebecca walked into the room, smiling as she led a man in dark sunglasses and a suit into the room.
"Professor, this is my contact with the FBI." Rebecca said as the man stood in front of Arturo with a stoic face. "Allow me to reintroduce you to Agent Conrad Bennish Jr."
"Mr. Bennish?" Arturo asked with a shocked expression on his face. "You're an FBI Agent?"
"Isn't it wild, Prof?" Bennish asked as he took his sunglasses off.
"How on Earth did you join the FBI?"
"Well, I was the only other person on the planet who knew what Quinn was up to, so the FBI snatched me up right after you guys disappeared."
"And he's going to help us bring you guys back to the world."
"This is going to be good. I just wish you had Quinn with you... I always did feel bad for his mom."
"For once, we're in agreement, Mr. Bennish."
"Well then, let's get to work."
Wade walked up to the door of her parent's house and hesitated a moment, before knocking on the door. She stood there waiting, when the door opened and she was face to face with her sister, Kelly. Kelly's eyes widened and she started to stumble back.
"Oh my god..." she said as she covered her mouth. "Is it really..."
"It's really me." Wade said, as her eyes started to tear up.
Kelly stepped forward and embraced Wade in a hug as they both cried on each other's shoulders.
Rembrandt walked up to a gravestone at a cemetery and knelt down in front of it.
"Didn't waste any time, did they?" Rembrandt asked as he read the gravestone, which read "Rembrandt "The Crying Man" Brown. March 4, 1955 - September 27, 1994"
He stood up and put his hand on the gravestone. He though back to the day he first traveled through the vortex.
"Guess we can't do the comeback after all, Artie." Rembrandt said as he turned to leave, seeing an older man standing a few feet behind him.
"This can't be happening." the man said as he started to rub his eyes. "I've finally lost it."
"Artie?" Rembrandt asked as his frown turned into a huge grin. "Oh man, it's been so long since I've seen you! And it's really you this time and not some double!"
"Rembrandt... where the hell have you been for the past twenty years?" Artie asked.
"It's a really long story, but trust me, I have a really good excuse for dropping off the face of the planet... although technically I never left the planet, I just went to different versions of it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Artie, The Crying Man is back and he's ready to make his comeback!"
Michael, Maggie and Quinn exited the truck and walked into James' command center and James handed a timer to one of his soldiers.
"So, what brings you here?" James asked.
"We need an army. We're taking down the Kromaggs." Michael said. "Though it's a little more complicated than we once thought."
"Nothing can shock me about them anymore." James said.
"The leader of the Kromagg Dynasty... is a human." Quinn said.
"I stand corrected." James said. "A human?"
"Not only that, she's someone we've met before. Logan St. Clair, she was spearheading an effort on one Earth to use sliding for evil, to raze other worlds." Quinn said.
"She got her wish, I guess, judging by the state of this world." Maggie said.
"Not quite, the Kromaggs are never interested in resources. They just want to destroy." James said. "They want to be superior, so they ensure that everyone has less than them."
"Anyway, about taking them down, I've been doing some thinking." Michael said. "I'm not a science whiz like Quinn, but could it be theoretically possible to get all of the Kromaggs from Kromagg Prime, into one place? Even if we take down Logan, splinter groups will still exist. We need to find a way to stop all of them."
"Well, tracking based on dimensional signature is easy, but I've never heard of a way to pull all those signatures into the same universe at one time..." James said.
"I have an idea." Quinn said. "Maggie, remember the Slidecage?"
"Yeah, that thing that one of your father's doubles put in place on Kromagg Prime? That the Kromaggs were trying to get us to crack when they had us in their little web?" Maggie replied.
"Exactly. Remember how we escaped?" Quinn asked.
"You and Colin whipped up a device to send everyone back to the last universe they had been on." Maggie said. "So?"
"So, that concept could possibly be used to instead of send people away, bring people together, all people in the known multiverse with the same signature, unless they're behind the Slidecage..." Quinn said.
"Meaning, that if we figured that out... we could get all the Kromaggs onto one world... and possibly trap them behind some sort of reverse Slidecage!" James shouted. "Brilliant!"
Conrad Bennish Jr. walked up to the podium and cleared his throat. The assembled reporters bustled and looked expectantly at the stage. He raised the microphone to his mouth and began speaking.
"Hello, I am Agent Conrad Bennish Jr. of the FBI. Twenty years ago, four people disappeared without a trace." Bennish started. "And we couldn't find them. Until recently, when the two students at Cal-U disappeared, and we started looking back into the case, and now we have located three of the missing people. May I introduce, or rather re-introduce to you, Professor Maximillian Arturo, Wade Welles and Rembrandt Brown."
The three sliders walked out onto the stage and the reporters began shouting out questions too fast for any of them to understand.
"One at a time. We want them to answer all the questions you have, but they have to be able to hear them." Bennish said.
"Where did you go? Was it a kidnapping? Government testing?" one reporter asked.
"Nothing like that. We took a trip, an exhilarating trip that is like nothing anyone has ever done before. Quinn Mallory, discovered something that week we left, a way to cross the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky Bridge. A huge scientific discovery, but one made on accident and one needed to be tested." Arturo replied.
"We were those test subjects. Well, they were. I was an unwilling participant, but I'd never trade those years for the world. Q-Ball, he was the brains of the operation. He created the timer, the device we used to travel between worlds, and well, we got lost on the way back." Rembrandt said.
"It was only with the help of those two students, Michael and Sam, that we were given a way back home. Unfortunately, Quinn remained behind for the time being, as a friend we had made on the trip cannot breathe our oxygen and so would die if she was to cross the bridge onto our world." Wade said. "But he is alive and out there, waiting for a way to help our friend before returning. Quinn puts other before himself, he always did during our trip."
"That's about all we can say about where we were without going into the heavy science talk. If you have other questions we'd be glad to answer them." Arturo said.
Sam and Rebecca sat in Michael's dorm room at Cal-U. Rebecca started tinkering with the timer, popping the back of the case off.
"I don't even know where to start. I know I'm smart, but I can't even imagine how he put this together." Rebecca said.
"Yeah. He says he not a science guy, but that is way beyond my capabilities." Sam said. "We'll have to wait until Arturo and the others can help."
Michael sat as Quinn pored over the computers and Maggie was given a tour of the troops they had. James walked up to him and sat down next to him.
"What's wrong?" James asked. "You're usually a lot more hyperactive."
"I'm can't stop thinking about how Logan didn't know that the Kromaggs invaded my homeworld. But you know they did, right?" Michael replied.
"Well, it was a failed invasion. Perhaps the Mags struck it from the records in order to hide their failure." James said. "That is something they would do."
"I guess. It's still weird." Michael said.
"Anyway, I have a gift for you." James said, handing Michael a small box.
Michael opened the box, revealing a timer, his timer, identical to how it looked when he handed it to Sam and sent them through the portal.
"My timer! How.. how did you get this?" Michael asked.
"When Rebecca ended up here, the timer was duplicated. I used it to send her to wherever you were, and then I fixed it up and reset it back to it's default state, but with all the little additions still in like wormhole tracking, plus, I put back in all the coordinates that were in there before I reset it." James said.
"Wow, thanks."
"Don't mention it. I figured you might want your own timer back, and this time it you can activate it whenever you want instead of waiting for a countdown."
"It's awesome. Now, what can I help with?"
To Be Continued...