Twice Forsaken (The Aternien Wars Book 9) by G J Ogden

Author:G J Ogden [Ogden, G J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ogden Media Ltd
Published: 2024-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

UNDER THE SEA

Carter felt suffocated like he’d been buried under an avalanche of gleaming white snow. For a few seconds, he couldn’t move or even breathe. Then, he felt the space grow around him as if the snow was melting. Soon, he was standing in a chasm, surrounded by a blinding nothingness. Then he saw a shape. At first, it was little more than an indistinct blob, as if his augmented eyes had suddenly become myopic. Then the shape resolved and came closer, and instead of a blob, he found Carina standing in front of him. She was frowning, as he imagined he also was at her.

“Are you actually here?” Carter asked, his voice sounding strangely hollow in the void they were occupying.

“I’m not sure,” Carina replied. “Maybe you’re just a figment of my imagination.”

Carter considered this, then held out his hand. Carina hesitated, then also reached out, and the tips of their fingers touched. There was a spark, like a jolt of static electricity, though it wasn’t painful. Carter moved closer, and they gripped each other’s hands as if they were about to arm wrestle. Her skin was warm, and her touch felt real. She was real.

“Well, this is just about the strangest thing I’ve experienced for a while,” Carina said, releasing Carter’s hand and pressing hers to her hips. “Amaya said that the planet-to-planet jump would be weird, but I didn’t expect this.”

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Carter admitted.

As they talked, Carter noticed that the chasm seemed to be getting smaller. Instead of endless white as far as his eyes could see, there was a dark boundary to the space, and it was getting closer by the second.

“I think we’d better prepare ourselves for this to get even weirder,” Carter said as the boundary accelerated toward them.

He held up his hands, instinctively trying to fend off whatever force was racing at him. Then, the boundary not only reached his body but swept through and past him, and instead of standing in a sea of white, he found himself on the streets of Churchill City on Terra Two. The Jalapeño Junction, the favored restaurant of Carter and the other Master Officers, was across the way. It seemed to be early morning, but there was no one around save a few guards manning roadblocks at each end of Normandy Lane.

“Is this now?” Carina asked, taking a few steps further along the street. “I mean, now, as in we’re viewing Churchill City through some giant cosmic telescope in real-time?”

“It could be,” Carter said. According to the warp synchronization data from Skinakas, it was supposed to be early morning on Camp Olympia Island when they arrived. Carter sucked in a deep lungful of the island’s warm, sweet-scented air, which smelled of olives and oranges, even in the city. “It certainly seems real to me.”

Suddenly, the city began to disintegrate around them. It was like watching paper burn in a fire and slowly crumble to ash. This time, Carter simply stood and

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