crossing of two dimensions,” Kane murmured. “Right?”
“Yes.” Promise slapped Kane on the shoulder. “Exactly. I think you combined two, which created a time flux, the only way you could be in two places at once. You guys interfered with time.” She shook her head. “You messed with a whole lot more than that when you created those three worlds.” She frowned. “Strike that. You didn’t create three worlds. You found your way to three and bound them together—by using gravity and time. The magnets you told me about, Ronan. The ones you had to arrange religiously so your world stayed stable. Those affect the gravity. Don’t you see?”
“No,” Ivar said.
“All right.” Promise set down the laser pointer. “We know from studying the brain that paths are created. Maybe by good habits, maybe bad, and so on. Anxiety makes a doozy of a path as well.”
The woman was comparing brain paths to teleporting paths? All right. “I’m with you,” Ivar said.
She sobered. “You’ve been down the path. Now that you can teleport again, you should be able to go where you’ve been by creating those paths in your mind. You teleported instinctively before, and that’s how you’d need to do it again, now that you’ve healed your brain.” Her lips drew tight, and she took a deep breath, obviously not wanting to give him the information. “However you teleport, whatever you draw on, I think you, and probably only you, can return to that world.”
Only because she’d identified the injury in his brain that he’d been working on healing. “So I can take Quade’s place?” Ivar asked.
She sobered even more. “Not in the time frame we have right now. But if there’s a way to do it, we’ll find it, and we can fight about it then. For now, you need to seek information before we can determine if the worlds are failing—and you’re the only one who can make a definite return trip.”
Garrett breathed out. “You have elite status to travel to hell and back.”
Ivar snorted and quickly lost his amusement as Promise gave him a glare.
She cleared her throat. “Quade is important, I know. But entire worlds are at risk.” She looked at Ronan. “When your world failed, I think the catastrophic disaster created these hell worlds. And I believe the reaction nearly destroyed Quade’s.”
Ronan blinked. “So if Quade’s world breaks…”
She nodded. “More worlds could be destroyed. Every action has a reaction. Using unnatural forces to combine those three bubble worlds left voids in the universe, and some of those were filled. You altered more than we can probably comprehend.” She made a sound of frustration. “Okay. Imagine that the earth disappeared. What would happen to the moon?”
Since the earth’s gravitational pull kept the moon in orbit, it would…what?
Promise tapped the screen. “The moon would either continue circling the sun, fall into the sun, or zip off in a straight line and get caught in another planet’s or star’s gravitational pull. We don’t know exactly what.”
Kane nodded. “Yep. That’s right.”
“So we need more information before we do anything with Quade’s world. Or Ulric’s. A lot more, and you’re the only person who can get it for us.” She focused on Ivar. “If you want this mission, which means you’ll have to go twice and somehow return twice. The first time will be doable, based on the math. I’m not sure about the second time. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I do,” he said soberly.
She studied him and then nodded, her eyes darkening. “I’ve had Emma’s scientists working on instruments with the 3D printer that aren’t made of metal. If you return to Quade’s world, you have to look for differences since you were last there, and you need to take measurements and leave several instruments if possible. We need that data to determine how much danger that world is in. All the worlds, actually.”
Ivar finished his coffee, his gut roiling. “Is there a chance I could take the path and not find Quade’s world?”
“Absolutely,” Promise whispered. “You had three worlds balancing each other with inertia, gravity, time, and who knows what else. One blew up. The other two have certainly shifted as well as changed, and unless one is much more powerful than the other, they’re heading for a collision.” She sighed. “Such an event could take a millennia…or two days. We have no way of knowing absent a practical experiment.”
Ivar stood. “Then it’s time we conducted an experiment. The faster the better, right?” he asked.