I was so exhausted from this unexpected redirection of my world that I felt no guilt at all for spending the next two hours asleep in my old palace quarters. Before mere survival sleep could turn into something more restful, Thayer called and asked me to join him back at the entrance to the Batcave.
“Dry already?” I asked when I found him waiting for me in the corridor we’d visited earlier.
“Not entirely, but the pumps have removed all the standing water,” he said. “I suspect you would like to make an initial survey of the facility.”
“Right you are,” I said. “We may have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Thayer punched his code into the blast doors’ number pad. They sprung open but the crashing wall of water I feared didn’t come. The area beyond was dimly lit by recessed emergency lighting. Pushing all expectations from my mind, I stepped into Terra Group headquarters for the first time in three years.
“A LOT of work,” I said when I saw the condition of the Batcave.
It was worse than I imagined. All the windows were shattered, of course. A layer of sediment covered every surface. Puddles of water that escaped the pumps stood in places on the floor Thick green slime covered the walls. Sea creatures that weren’t pumped out with the water thrashed helplessly on the sandy floor. The pumps had generated a lot of heat, and the air stood thick and stale with the smell of hot salt water. It was warm and sticky, in a place I’d never felt anything but cool and dry.
Well, that wasn’t completely true.
——
One morning back when Sci was still around I woke up feeling a little off. The kind of achy, foggy-headed feeling that usually precedes a cold. I immediately suspected I’d seriously overslept.
My eyes snapped open with the panicky feeling that I might be very, very late…and saw that I wasn’t in my own room. I recognized the room immediately. This was Becki’s room, the one set aside for her use in the Palace before she married Thayer. The one that sat empty and unused from the end of Project Boussh to the beginning of Operation Arrakis.
But this room was neither empty nor unused.
I lay in a massive four post bed that belonged in a production of The Princess and the Pea. If its very comfortable mattress were any higher off the floor I’d be in danger of a nose bleed. Matching furniture filled the room: a mile-wide dresser, a cheval mirror, a couple of chests, a pair of nightstands, and some well-stuffed chairs.
And candles. Not just a few – dozens. Pillar candles filled the room. On the dresser. On the nightstands. On the chests, on pedestals on the floor, even in an iron chandelier. And they weren’t for show. Every one of them was burned down below its top.
Before I could begin to comprehend what I saw the door to room opened and the Queen herself came in with a very, uh, friendly smile on her face.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she purred. That she wore noticeable makeup was easily the least shocking thing about her appearance. She wore a low-cut, form fitting top that fit her form very well indeed. It ended somewhere above her navel, and her equally low cut jeans started well below it. The jeans hugged her hips in a way I found uncomfortably distracting.
That was when I realized I wasn’t wearing anything under the sheets.
She stepped up onto a bedside stool and leapt into the bed, flopping down beside me. She gave me an unrestrained, un-Becki grin and said, “I thought you’d never wake up.”
It took as long moment to find the words floating in my head. “Becki, what…what are you doing? What am I doing here?”
“Oh come on,” she said, “you said it yourself last night – what’s the point in sneaking around? We weren’t fooling anyone.”
“But – where’s Lenka?”
“Lenka Leannan? Thayer’s little trollop you executed during the Arrakis mission?”
“Executed?”
“You must have had another one of your dreams,” she said. “You tossed and turned all night. Let’s see if this brings anything back.” She took my face in her hands and kissed me, long and deep. Having kissed Becki before - just that once – this was nothing like kissing Becki.
She finally pulled back and flashed a bemused grin at the at on my face. “I’ve got to go. Something to do with Thayer. I’ll be so glad when we can finally be rid of him and Sci both. Later, love.” She flounced out of the room as quickly as she’d come.
I found my clothes piled in a chair and dressed quickly, keeping the bed between me and the door in case anyone else made a surprise appearance. At least I guessed they were my clothes. I didn’t own any t-shirts that snug.
With my head finally clearing I headed for the Batcave. My situation was pretty clear. Science fiction was my life before my life became science fiction. If this couldn’t possibly happen in my universe then this couldn’t be my universe.
The Batcave was just as disturbing as Becki’s quarters. The musty smell of seawater hung in the damp air, like a beachside restaurant had moved in down there. An oppressive heat filled the base. Not even a slight breeze stirred down there, and for the first time ever I actually felt like I was several floors below sea level.
The place was dark, too, like Jabba the Hutt’s interior decorator had designed the place. As I walked down the entry corridor I passed from light to shadow more times than I could count. The shadows offered a pleasant break from the sloppy condensation and patches of slime that covered the cool stone walls.
I was headed vaguely toward my office on the second floor catwalk in the hangar – if that’s where my office was in this place – when something caught my attention. A dark shape in the back of one of the holding cells.
I walked into the small room and barely stifled a yelp when the lights came on automatically. A body hung by its wrists from two metal rings set into the back wall. It wore only a ridiculous pair of leather pants, which were soaked in blood from dozens of cuts on its torso, arms, and head. The blood flowed down its feet and across the floor to a drain in the center of the room, which most certainly didn’t exist in my version of this room. There was something familiar about the shape, so fought back a wave of revulsion to lift its head.
It was Arrek Lorrdain.
I left the room as fast as I could and ducked into the first seemingly empty room I came to, which in my world was Kristy’s lab. Apparently it was Kristy’s lab here, too.
The usual array of computers, DNA machines, centrifuges, and other labware covered the tables in the middle of the room. Above the counters on both walls hung a double row of small cages. A nightmarish assortment of genetically engineered monsters filled the cages. A hippo the size of a housecat. A rabbit with antlers – the mythical Texas jackalope – with six-inch sabertooth fangs. An armadillo with a scorpion’s tail. A normal looking rat that sprayed a bright green fluid through the bars of its cage. The back wall held a stack of larger cages for bigger and more imaginative creations. There was a pack of hairless, six-legged dogs covered in armor plates, and what looked like a quarter scale velociraptor. The freak show went on and on.
The mad scientist herself stood in front of one of the cages, running a handheld scanner over what appeared to be a cross between a kangaroo and a tiger. She had earphones in her ears and hummed along to music I couldn’t hear as she swung her backside back and forth. That backside nicely filled out a pair of short shorts with a tank top above them. Her hair was pulled up into a hasty bun with a few loose strands plastered to her glistening neck by the humidity. She turned away from her creation and jumped when she saw me standing there.
“Hey,” she said as she yanked her earphones out. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” I said with a gesture toward the earphones.
“What’s up? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“Not quite. But I did see Arrek.”
“Yeah, apparently Sci and his sexretary Emily finally finished with him last night.” Her smirk suggested she was pondering some great private joke. “I don’t think Arrek had as much fun as they did. Sci called Arrek his masterpiece this morning.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Ah, the kid was useless. Besides, I bet nobody tries smoking in the Batcave again soon.”
Smoking in the Batcave? Seriously? I’d jerked a knot in Arrek’s tail for that a few times myself, but it wasn’t enough to make me homicidal. I hoped I could find a way home without meeting this universe’s version of Sci. Or Emily, for that matter.
“Hey, are you okay?” Kristy asked. “You look kind of pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just need a long vacation.”
“Aw, is Becki not taking care of you?” She crossed the room with a mischievous grin on her face, pressed herself against me and reached up to wrap her arms around my neck. “I think it’s time for us to go out on “patrol” in the Revenge again. Get away from it all for a few days. Have some fun.”
My head was spinning. Who the hell was I here?
“That sounds great,” I heard myself say. “Uh…I’ve got to get going for right now, though. Got a, uh, meeting with Thayer.”
I was out of the room before she could say a word. Around the corner in the hallway I stopped to lean against the wall and let my head loll back as I stared at the ceiling.
“Wow,” I said to myself. “They must have some really strong antibiotics in this universe.”