Broken Spells (Broken Realms, #6)

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4Mara felt less panic as she plunged through the streaks of dark and light between realms, at least until she wondered if she had grabbed the correct node. She’d acted intuitively, not using an object from her destination to draw a node to her as she had in the past.

Jeez, I could end up anywhere.

The blue sphere burst open, and daylight flooded through its transparent walls; then it collapsed into the copper medallion which fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. Mara bent to pick it up and realized she stood on worn gravelly asphalt.

“You!”

Mara looked up to see her counterpart standing next to a car with an open hood, an angry expression on her face. They stood in the alley behind Mason’s Fix-It Shop—in Prado’s former realm, the birthplace of the Aphotis, and the world where people put the souls of their dead in lightbulbs.

“Which one are you? The one with the lizard fetish or the one who killed my brother?” the other Mara asked. She raised her right hand, palm up, and a glowing cinder spun in the air above it, quickly growing into a ball of hot lava.

Mara raised her hands in surrender. “Don’t start with the fireworks again. We’ll be here all day.” The burning mass pixelated and broke apart, sending a cascade of translucent red and orange cubes tumbling down the other Mara’s arm.

She batted them away in frustration and glared at Mara. “Get lost. I’ve got a rush job to do, and I don’t have time for your nonsense,” she said.

“I need your help with something.”

“No way. I’m done with you—all of you. You show up here, asking for favors, and the result is nothing but death and destruction. Now, get out of here.” Her face reddened.

“Look. I’m not leaving until you listen to what I have to say.”

Her counterpart sagged, the fight seeping from her, like air from a punctured tire. Leaning against the front of the car, she slid down to sit on its bumper while wiping some clear goo from her hands with a rag she pulled from her back pocket. Without looking up, she said, “I will fight you if I have to.”

“I’m not here to fight,” Mara said. “What happened to Sam? You said someone killed him?”

“I said you did. How did you know his name was Sam?”

“I have one of my own—a brother named Sam, that is.”

The other Mara looked up, the anger melting away. “What’s he like?”

Mara shrugged. “He’s a little brother. Always tagging along, blurting out the wrong things at the wrong time, making a game out of life. But he’s a good kid, who would do anything to help me if I were in trouble. Why did you say I murdered him?”

“I gather from the pixel thing that you’re not the lizard girl—the one who had me create the customized geckos for her mother a while back.”

“No. That’s another Mara. She’s dead.”

“You came back to this realm after the last time we talked, about six months ago. Didn’t you?”

“I did come to this realm after we met, but I’m not sure about the timing. From my perspective, it was less than a week ago. Either time progresses differently in each realm or my travels through the Chronicle have been more haphazard than I realized earlier.”

Something moved behind the other Mara’s head, slithered up like a snake from beneath the hood of the car. Mara’s eyes widened, and she pointed. “Ah, something’s crawling out of the car.”

The other Mara turned. Casually she swatted the serpentine thing, and a tiny arc of electricity jumped when her hand touched it. If it was painful, she didn’t show it. “Just a loose tendril from the transmission. I’ll get back to it after you leave.”

Mara approached the open hood and looked inside. Instead of an engine, the vehicle had entrails—thick wet tubes packed tightly together like intestines, into which she watched the quivering tendril disappear. A network of thinner translucent pipes wound through the mass, pumping brown liquid in spurts, like blood vessels, to various organs that she had no hope of identifying.

I forgot about the biomechanics of this realm.

She grimaced and looked away. “Jeez, that looks nasty.”

“It’s not so bad. I’ll have it running in less than two hours, assuming its liver isn’t failing. It can take a day to grow one of those.”

Mara wasn’t sure she had the stomach for gadget repair in this realm. Growing queasy, she needed to think about something else. “How did you know I had returned on an earlier trip? I stopped by the shop, but you weren’t here.”

“You had a luminaire. You placed it at the luminarium—the funeral home—down the street.”

“It was the soul of Juaquin Prado, the guy I told you about.”

She looked doubtful. “The darkling wraith.”

Mara nodded. “He possessed the body of my friend and turned into the Aphotis. How did you know I went to the luminarium?”

“Because they have security cameras. That’s why the zealot luminaries think I’m responsible for killing the Aphotis and destroying their religious beliefs. The Coven of the Unbound came here looking for me but found Sam instead. They killed him, all because you couldn’t keep your nose out of my world.”

Mara gasped. “Is that true?”

“I would not joke about losing my brother.”

“What do they want with you?”

“Revenge, I suppose. Retribution for undermining their faith. The most radical segment of luminaries broke away from their caste and created the Coven. There are rumors they practice magic and plan to restore their religion and force it on the rest of us.”

“Oh, my God! They didn’t release the Aphotis, did they?”

“They tried, but, when they smashed the luminaire that contained him, his spirit clung to the broken pieces and could not free itself. They blamed that on me as well, accusing me of casting a spell on him. You did that—cast the spell, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t a spell. It was more like a chemistry experiment from a dream realm.”

“A what?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’ve got a lot of those.”

“I know.” Mara decided she had caused enough damage. It was a stupid idea anyway. “I’ll let you get back to your repairs. I’m sorry for the interruption. And I’m sorry about what happened to Sam and to you. It was not my intention to hurt you or your family. I’ll go, and I promise never to return.”

The other Mara jumped up from her perch on the bumper. “Wait. Why did you come here today?”

“It was nothing—just a silly idea. I don’t want to put you out any more than I have already.”

“You came all this way. You might as well tell me. Why are you here?”

Mara sighed and felt stupid. “I was wondering if you had the ability to build—or grow or whatever it is you do—a human body. Don’t answer that. I’m not asking you to do that.”

Her counterpart raised an eyebrow. “What kind of human body?”

“One like ours.”

“You want me to build another Mara? Don’t we have too many already?”

Mara chuckled. “You’re right. Forget about it.” She pulled the Chronicle out of her pocket and held it out.

“Wait a minute. You’re serious. You want me to create a copy of your body. Why?”

“Really. Just ignore this visit. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Considering all that you’ve done to my life, the least you owe me is an explanation. Why another Mara?”

Guilting me into telling her. Exactly what I would do, if I were her.

“The Aphotis destroyed my original body.” She held out her arms and looked down at herself. “This one is synthetic.”

“No way.” She approached to examine Mara more closely.

“Don’t touch me, or I will be pushed back into my own realm—at least I think I will. With this body, who knows where I would go. Regardless, it’s not from here, and I don’t want to set off an explosion.”

“What are you babbling about?”

“Counterparts from different realms cannot touch each other.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She continued eyeing Mara’s physique like it was a machine she needed to fix, an expression that had shaped Mara’s features thousands of times. She just wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of it.

Wagging her finger up and down in front of Mara’s torso, the other Mara said, “This is artificial?”

Mara nodded. “I was in a realm where people gave up their biological bodies for mechanical ones because of a virus.”

“I see. Fascinating. What is the power source?”

“My skin absorbs solar energy.”

“Cool.” She walked behind Mara, still examining.

Beginning to feel self-conscious, Mara said, “Can you stop doing that? I’m not a toaster. You don’t need to examine this body to tell me if you can create another one.”

“It’s illegal to create a human body. Besides, it doesn’t work anyway. The body functions on a technical level, but there is no soul, no Consciousness. It isn’t really a person.”

She kept looking Mara over, and Mara sensed she wouldn’t walk away from the challenge.

“I’d have to create your entire physique by slurry.”

“Slurry?”

“Remember the tank of goo in the back of the shop? I use it to grow parts for gadgets, cars, other devices.”

“Vaguely.”

“How identical does the body need to be?”

“Completely. My mother is freaked out about me losing the body she birthed. I need something that would pass a medical examination, not to mention her examination. DNA, the whole nine yards.”

“I’ll need a sample from your biological body to do that. Can you get it?”

Mara shook her head. “No way. My dead body was stolen.”

“It’s just one drama after another with you, isn’t it?” the other Mara asked. “Why the hell would someone take your dead body?”

“I haven’t had time to figure that out.”

“How did they get you into this body?”

“They extracted engrams from my brain. They are now located in the biosynaptic interface in my cranium.”

“Cool. Let’s go take a look.” She walked toward the back door of the shop, stopped, spun on a heel and returned to the car. She slammed the hood closed and said, “Don’t want the alternator to escape. Those suckers are fast once they get loose.”

Mara laughed, imagining a little creature detaching itself from the engine and running up a tree. “Wait! What do you mean, take a look? In my cranium?” She followed her counterpart inside.

This version of the shop looked much as she remembered it. The area used in her realm for Bruce’s bicycle repair garage was taken up with the large glass vat of goo, additional shelves and stacks of boxes. In the wide doorway leading to the front of the shop sat her counterpart’s pet chobodon, a creature that looked like a cross between a pig and an armadillo. It snorted and squealed when it saw Mara follow her counterpart into the room.

The other Mara said, “You remember Ginger?”

“How could I forget? You sicced her on me.”

“Be a good girl, and go keep an eye on the front of the store while Mommy works,” she said to the animal. The creature waddled away after a final snort.

“Mommy?”

“She’s my baby. You got a problem with that?” She pulled out a tall stool and placed it in the center of the room. “Sit here.”

Mara complied and listened to her counterpart rummage in the shelves for a moment before returning with a device that looked like a cricket paddle—a wide, flat bat made of beige plastic. She fiddled with dials mounted around the handle, and it glowed with a pale white light. Extending her arm, she held it horizontally and approached Mara.

“What is that?”

“A bioform wand. It can detect and analyze living tissue. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you. Just try not to move while I wave this over your body.”

She wielded the device like a hand-held body scanner at an airport security checkpoint, moving it up and down in front and behind Mara. Once she had finished, she flipped the device over and examined a tiny screen built into the backside of the handle.

“Good news. There’s a nice chunk of brain matter in there. I’m also picking up some biomatter in your abdomen region. What is that?”

“I had coffee and fruitcake shortly before coming here.”

“Why do you need to eat if you absorb energy through your skin?”

“The designers of these bodies wanted them to be as human as possible. I even taste food like I did with my other body.”

“Interesting. Do you poop?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I poop. Like I said—”

“—as human as possible,” the other Mara said. “Got it. Anyway, if we can crack open that skull of yours, we could produce a body by applying your genome to the slurry matrix. It would take about four days.”

“Is this process like cloning?” Mara asked.

“No. Cloning involves manipulating the nucleus of a cell, usually an unfertilized egg, and then letting it grow into a fully formed animal—in this case, a person. That process takes too long, and errors creep in too frequently. No one even bothers with that anymore. The slurry matrix absorbs genetic coding and reorganizes itself to match it.”

“I would be my mother’s biological daughter again? Even though my body will have come from this slurry stuff?”

“Your cells will contain the genetic material that came from your parents. The cells will be new, but the design will be from your forebears. You realize the cells in your biological body had been replaced thousands of times since your birth? It’s not like you were walking around with the tissues that formed in your mother’s womb. The genetic legacy will be intact. There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I told you. I can create a functional body, but I can’t give it a soul.”

“I can take care of that. I think. Will you have to remove all the engrams from my cranium? I’ll need to have my wits about me to make the transition.”

“I just need one cell. You can continue in your synthetic body while your biological one grows. Are you sure you can do this—this transition?”

“When I first woke up in this body, I inadvertently slipped out of it for a moment. So, yeah, I’m sure I can do it.”

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll grow you a body. But there’s one condition—and it’s not negotiable.”

Mara’s heart skipped a beat. There had to be a hitch. “What?” she asked.

“I want to see my brother again, and my mother needs to see him too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You have to bring Sam here. Your Sam.”