***

  Eric tried to sit up. Bad idea. He gasped at the sledgehammer in his head. Then the bile from his stomach tried to climb up the back of his throat. Then saw his bare arm. His codex was gone. He vaguely remembered being grabbed and putting up a crazy fight before taking a direct hit on the side of his head. He could have lost it then. Or they'd taken it. Whoever 'they' were. The loss of the codex could also contribute to the headache. He groaned softly. Brutal.

  "Eric? Are you awake?"

  Eric tried to open his eyes. Pain forced them closed again. "I'm here," he whispered. "Where are we?"

  "I don't know. Hell, maybe?"

  Peering through slit eyes, Eric saw his father squatting down in front of him. "What happened, sir?"

  Shifting to sit on his ample butt, his father said, "We had just finished the emergency council meeting when the alarm sounded. Louers. Everywhere. Seemed like hundreds of them. I don't know how or why. They overran us in minutes. At least I think they're Louers. They look different, though. Not like they used to look."

  "Different how? What did they used to look like?"

  His father peered around nervously. "Like us. Exactly like us."

  What? Eric shot him a startled look. He didn't ask the burning question he wanted to ask. Instead, he went for the one next in line. "What are they like now?" Moving gently, he struggled into a sitting position, heaving a sigh of relief when the room stopped spinning. The fear in his father's voice made him look up.

  "Mutants. Deformed weird looking animal things. Nothing human about them now."

  "That makes sense in a way. They've had to evolve to survive. Did you know what the place was like when your people banished them?"

  "No and I don't care." Sitting like a rotund Buddha, his father placed his hands on his knees and glared at Eric. "They're killing anyone who resists and rounding up the survivors. We've been taken somewhere. I'm afraid it's off planet."

  That stopped Eric in the act of trying to stand up. "As in across the veil?" Just then the smell hit him. He bent over, plugging his nose. He groaned. "What's that smell?"

  "Louers. We're prisoners in the Louers' dimension."

  Nasty. Experimenting, Eric unplugged his nose and shuddered at the rank aroma. All the archives spoke about a horrible aroma at the gate. Words hadn't done it justice.

  He struggled past it to refocus on the mess they were in. From Storey's history, he'd learned that every war sported winners and losers and the losers, historically, became prisoners. When able to cross dimensions, it wasn't hard to imagine returning the prisoners to your home. Particularly, if you needed slaves.

  "Are you guarded? Has someone come to speak with you?"

  "No." His father shook his head. "There's been no one."

  "Does anyone have a codex?"

  His father leaned closer to whisper, "I do. I don't know the coordinates to punch in."

  Eric could take care of that. His father's unit wouldn't be strong enough to take everyone back at once. "Are they taking the codexes away?"

  "Don't think so. We were herded forward as a mass. Outside of giving us a quick check, they haven't done a massive search. There's one codex and even a couple of taprins,"

  "Good." But not great. The simple codexes wouldn't help here. There wasn't a weapon amongst them. Why would there be? "Slip me your codex. I can get out and back with reinforcements in no time."

  His father glared. "Not without me. If you're going, then so am I."

  Eric grimaced. "Best if we all go at once. The guards could come any moment." He struggled to his feet and managed to look around. "How many of us are here, about twenty?"

  "Closer to thirty."

  "Marshal the others into a group. I know where to go." Eric put on his father's codex, punching in Stanshor mine. That would get them clear of here, then they could jump to another point. The mine was better for a large group like this. Paxton's lab could be the second jump. Not that it would help much unless it was secure.

  "We'll try for the mine," he whispered to the group gathered around him. "Everyone squeeze in as close together as possible and hang on. We’re trying to move a lot of people at once. I don't know that I can take everyone in one jump."

  "You're not leaving me here," blustered a big man in the back, shoving the others in closer.

  "Nor me." That was a young woman holding a young child.

  "I ain't staying. No way. Those things are going to come back and I want to be long gone." An older man spoke, Eric vaguely remembered seeing him in the council chambers.

  Eric understood their feelings. "Who else has a codex?"

  Two people held up their arms. "Darn." They were both simple versions. "Okay. Let's try."

  He tapped out the code for Stanshor and waited for the sequence to run on both, picking up the signals of each other, building power in their connectiveness. Who knew if the codex worked in the Louers dimension? They could very well end up someplace else entirely. He figured anywhere had to be better than here.

  Reassuring blackness swirled around them. He closed his eyes and willed the portal to open. A wretched smell filled their nostrils and the air became fetid, hot. He coughed several times.

  "Is it working?" whispered one of them.

  "I'm never going to forget that smell."

  "Horrible, isn't it?"

  The blackness deepened until Eric couldn't see his father's face in front of him. Isolation often accompanied a dimension journey, with the cold an ever-present symptom. He closed down inside and waited. Uneasiness knotted up his stomach. This needed to work.

  "Are we there yet?"

  "No."

  Another long minute of frightful silence. A child whimpered. Her mother hushed her. "Shhhh. We'll be there soon."

  "Will we? I've never been in such a long transfer." The grumbler was in the back of the group. Probably the big man who'd spoken up earlier. Eric didn't have any guarantees to offer. "Some of the gates aren't working well. Not to mention with this many people the transfer will take twice as long."

  Just when he thought they were trapped, the mist started to recede. Sighs of relief washed over him. The air lightened, the others grinned. He turned to look around. "We're here. Or maybe I should say we're somewhere."

  As the mists dissipated, Eric realized they weren't in Stanshor at all. He didn't know where they were.

  "What is this place?" Everyone stepped back to look around. Curiosity and relief wreathed their faces. Trees, trees, and more trees surrounded them. Blue sky and sunshine looked down on them. Eric had to wonder if they'd crossed to Storey's world.

  "I'm not sure yet. I don't recognize it."

  "I don't care where it is. It's not over there." A murmur of agreement wafted through the crowd.

  "I want to go home." The little girl huddled against her mother's legs.

  Eric's father walked over to him hooked his arm and led him a little ways away. "Have you heard about this place before?"

  Eric circled the area. "I don't think so." He walked a few steps further as his father watched. "It's possible we're in another dimension."

  "You mean like having crossed the veil?" he hissed, staring around as if something might jump out at him. "Do you know how dangerous it is over here?"

  Eric looked at him oddly. "Yeah, I think I do. You sent me over here, remember. I've been back and forth several times with Storey. Still...I'm not sure that's where we are."

  "So how do we find out?" The self-elected group leader, the large burly man stepped forward. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have gotten shut of that place...where's home though?"

  "Please keep in mind that the Louers have taken over our home. We don't want to jump back into the same situation. I'll contact Central and let them know we need assistance."

  He tapped his codes, watching the colors shift in the right order. Reassured, he contacted Central next. No one answered. Sending off a message, he hoped someone there would see the flashing signal and hit the receiver. He didn't want to consider the possibility of no one being there to receive it. Using other codex functions, he tried to get a location for this place. The wrist unit beeped and flashed and in the end, came up with an error message.

  Even the codex didn't know where they were.