Primitive Instinct: The Journey Home

“I guess we should start with how long you’ve been here,” the human woman asked, pouring me some tea while we sat together in her tent. Her name was Ivy, and I was so damn glad that she spoke freaking English.

“I think it was the very beginning of winter,” I answered.

“Hm. I was afraid of that,” she sighed and sat beside the fire with me. “I’ve been here since the end of spring.”

“How did you get here?”

“I think it might be best if you tell me first,” she made a face. “I might be wrong with what I think and hearing your story might clarify a lot of things for both of us.”

I told her about the trip I had planned for Diesel and I and the events that had led to me waking up in the snow. It seemed like it all happened so long ago instead of roughly two months. I blamed my easy adjustment into my new life and how natural it all was to me already.

“I see,” Ivy said when I was done, and she stared at the fire for a second before sighing. “The place you stumbled across was a black site. Not exactly government sanctioned or funded, but the government was benefiting from the research being done there.”

“Research on what?” I asked.

“A number of things that, if the public knew, there would a hell of a lot of push back that would inevitably lead to the program being shut down,” she said. “I didn’t agree with a lot of the projects and the things that would need to be done in order for those projects to be active, but they would serve a much larger purpose. At least that was the rationalization I tried to sell myself. I hated it, honestly, but I had a lot of debt that needed to be paid and I wasn’t exactly there willingly.”

“You were blackmailed?” I asked and she nodded. “Shitty, but I guess we should expect that kind of bullshit when a black site is mentioned.”

“Yeah. Red flag, right?” she scoffed and shook her head. “I was working as an assistant to a theoretical stooge. He was brilliant, but kind of crazy, and I don’t mean it in the way that people called Einstein crazy. He was legit cracked in head. I suspected that he was trying to turn the theoretical into actuality for a while, but I was told my concerns were above my pay grade and that my job was to assist, not to let my paranoia hinder the looney-toon’s work.”

“Wow. Very forward workplace dynamic there, Ivy,” I said flatly, and she laughed.

“I wasn’t there because I wanted to be. My dad was an idiot and made enemies who would have pinned his stupidity on me, and I would have ended up in prison where I’d probably be killed the first week I was there,” she shrugged. “Well, I got a bad feeling after he sent me to take some papers to another department, so I went back. Turns out, I was right. He was conducting an experiment based on his theoretical work.”

“Moron,” I muttered. “Does no one watch movies anymore?”

“I tried to stop him. That stuff was only ever meant to be theoretical for a reason, Fern. It was dangerous and had repercussions that we can’t foresee, no matter how many times it’s analyzed,” she said seriously. “There were too many variables that no one can predict, and I tried to get the idiot to stop his test, but he was determined and locked me out of the lab. I watched as he powered the device he created and then how it all went to shit. It created a field of magnetic disturbance so powerful, it literally ripped him apart because of the natural metals in our bodies, like iron.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed out with my eyes wide.

“The facility had safeguards in place for instances where experiments go wrong and power was cut and the alarm sounded, but the damage had already been done,” she said, staring blankly at the wall of her tent. “The magnetic force continued to grow, and I was only protected because of the lead lining the walls and windows of the lab to prevent radiation leaks and such. The place practically imploded. I can’t be sure, because, like I said, the things that crackpot was doing was meant to only ever be theoretical for a reason, but my guesses as to what happened next come from the knowledge of the things he was working on.”

“We’re on some kind of alternate Earth,” I stated, and she nodded. “I got that figured out a few weeks ago. Not one of my finer moments.”

“Whatever went wrong, whatever it was the triggered the magnetic disturbance and the events that followed, it somehow created a rip in the trans-dimensional barrier, the thing that keeps our Earth separate from the other versions of Earth, like this one,” she said. “It was only for a moment, but I saw it. It was unstable and wouldn’t last, but then I was pulled into it, probably as a result of it sealing itself shut again.”

“That’s crazy,” I shook my head and joined her in the distant staring across the tent, thinking back to that day. “How come you ended up here before me, though?”

“Temporal shift,” she said. “Inside the rift, time would be different. Being closer, I was probably pulled into it fractions of a second before you, but once we came through, that fraction turned into months. At least, that’s what I’m going with. It makes the most sense, from a scientific point.”

“So, you worked there. They would know you’re missing, right?” I asked. “Would they be trying to get you back?”

“No,” she said. “There were cameras in the lab, so they know the experiment ripped the idiot to pin sized bits before it tore the place apart. They’d assume I was, too. Even if they didn’t assume I was dead, there are so many of those unpredictable variables to account for. There is no way, at all, to recreate the exact instant the rift was made and took us through. If, by some miracle, they did make a rift that was stable enough to launch a rescue, there are so many alternate Earths that they’re constantly shifting around one another. The rift they open could lead to any version of Earth. But after the catastrophe that ended up with us here, they won’t bother trying. People go missing all the time, Fern. Very few of them actually ever get found. We are now just statistics.”