Chapter 20

Twenty

"You want to run that by me again?" Theo said, because he was pretty damn sure that the monster hadn't just said what Theo thought he had said.

Baku gestured to the serum still resting in the palm of Theo's hand, sparkling slightly in the light from the cave's luminous walls. "The serum will disguise you," he said.

"From the munching monsters?"

"Yes."

"By turning me into one of them?" Theo asked and again, he was pretty sure that couldn't be what Baku meant because why the fuck would the monster possibly imagine that was something that Theo would even contemplate let alone actually do?

"That is not the correct phrasing," Baku said after a moment. "It…it changes the frequency your body vibrates at, so they think you are one of them."

The image of one of those monsters filled Theo's mind. Their purple bodies, their pulsating limbs, and those horrendous chattering teeth. He shuddered. "So the nightmares, the vile things that are eating my world, will think I am one of them, but I wouldn't be," he said quickly. "I would still be me?"

"In the main," Baku replied.

"In the main? What the hell does that mean?" Theo demanded.

"It should work how it does on my people," the monster said. "Our biology being so similar will make it so. A slight alteration is all."

"Your people?" Theo breathed and he gasped slightly as he realised what Baku meant. "Which of your people have taken it?"

Baku shrugged one brawny shoulder. "Several of us, including me."

"You…"

"Yes."

"I don't?—"

"It is why my skin now has this purple glow," Baku said, and he sounded perfectly reasonable as he said that, like he was not talking about an experiment he was running on himself! "It was not there before. My skin is usually green."

Theo ran his gaze over Baku's body, the very same body that he had kissed and caressed the night before. The same body that he had allowed inside of him. He tried to imagine it green but utterly failed. "You're part munching monster?" he eventually whispered.

"I have the essence of one, perhaps," Baku said.

Theo did indeed gasp again. "I need a moment here…" he said as he stepped away from the table, his heart racing, and a horrible knot of something that might well be panic now swirling around in his stomach. And yet, what the hell had he expected!

He'd been abducted into another dimension by a monster.

A fucking monster!

The fact that Baku looked and talked like a human did not make him one. He himself had said as much. How had Theo let himself believe otherwise? And he had brought Theo here for a reason, he'd said so from the beginning. Theo was not in this dimension by chance!

"So, you…you…drank the serum and now you're part muncher…I can't believe I'm saying that…and you want me to become part one as well? Have I got that right? Does that sum it up?" he eventually said.

"Yes," Baku replied.

"This is why you brought me here," Theo continued. "To do this?"

"Yes."

"You abducted me from my dimension to…alter me."

"It is only a minor change," Baku said.

"Minor how?" Theo demanded. "Will my skin turn purple as well?"

"Yes."

"And the silvery glow?"

"Yes."

Theo shook his head, remembering well how that silvery glow had looked under his fingers last night. God, if ever there had been a clear fucking example of post-nut clarity it was now!

"How does the serum even work?" he demanded even as he looked down at his own arms, imagining them being purple. "Does it alter DNA?"

Baku seemed to sigh. "No, DNA cannot be altered in that way."

"Then—"

"It is entirely to do with frequencies. Your people are woefully behind on that area of science. Much can be altered by influencing that. It's how the rips are formed after all."

"By sound?"

"By something like that."

"But it alters something, it alters me?"

"Yes."

"Is it permanent?" Theo demanded.

"It is not meant to be."

"But…"

"It could be over time, if enough doses are taken."

Theo was aghast. "You don't know?"

"We are still in the testing phase."

That was all Theo needed to hear. Well, no, that wasn't true, part munching monster had probably been enough. "I'm not doing it," he said and there was finality to his voice that was unmistakable to anyone who knew him even a little bit…and after last night that included the monster.

Baku growled slightly before gesturing to the serum. "If you don't, this mission will fail."

Which made no sense and Theo quickly said as much! "You seem to have it covered off just fine. I mean look at you," Theo added, gesturing to Baku's bulk. "And you've taken the serum, right? The munchers will think you're one of them and I assume that means you'll be able to slip in and kill the queen?"

Baku nodded.

"And when the queen is dead, they all die, so you have it all sorted." He paused. "I get that you want some back up, but I'm not your man. I don't even know why you thought I would be!" He shook his head, becoming more animated with each word. "I didn't even want to join the MDF. Didn't want to be here at all. And doing something that fundamentally alters me? Becoming one of them…the munchers…" Theo took a few steps back, closing his fist around the serum. He was quite close to the door now, and it suddenly occurred to him that is ever there was a time to make a run for it, it was now. "I'm not doing it. No way."

Baku might have sensed Theo's newfound desire to flee as he too took a couple of steps forward, only with his longer legs he closed the distance between him and Theo quite quickly.

"The serum does not last long enough with me," he said after a moment. "I am disguised from the nightmares for only a short time. It is not long enough for what we need to do."

"Where's the rest of your squadron?"

"There is only me."

"Well, frankly, Baku, that seems like a failure in planning!" Theo snapped. "Who sends just one person for a job this important?"

"There are dozens of us being tested in this phase but there are hundreds of rips, and we cannot cover them all." He shook his head. "The situation is becoming increasingly dire, Theo. If we are not able to stop it soon then we are all in peril."

"Peril has been the name of the game for the past three years!" Theo said. "And it's not just the munching monsters. Dozens of monsters from your damned dimension have come into ours. God knows what they're up to, but people are dying!"

"Dying?" Baku said, and his voice changed and for the first time since he had dragged Theo into his dimension, Theo was suddenly scared. Baku looked like a monster.

"The fatalities in your world are nothing, nothing compared to how it has been in mine," he said, his voice low and hard. "We have lost millions upon millions! The nightmares came, and we thought they had destroyed us but then the rages arrived and…" he shook his head. "They have done so much worse."

Theo took another step back, one that Baku quickly matched. "But…" Theo shook his head. "Why didn't you do this when they were destroying your world? Why wait until they have started on ours?"

"Because we didn't realise before just how dangerous they are," Baku said. "And how important it is that we stop them once and for all!"

"I don't?—"

"The nightmares didn't come from our dimension," Baku said. "They came from another through to ours and now into yours. Some of their queens are eating their way through dimension to dimension and as they do so they are destabilising the boundaries between our worlds. If we do not stop them, then it is possible that our worlds will collide and everything within them as well!"

"They're responsible for the rips," Theo breathed, and it was not a question, but Baku nodded anyway.

"Every time they eat through from my dimension to yours, they cause rips to form. It is almost like a cascade affect. We think that for every rip they create when eating through dozens more are created elsewhere." He growled his displeasure at that. "And there's no pattern to it. They eat through in your Italy but corresponding rips form in your France. They eat through in Germany and a rip appears in London. Worse, the rages followed them here through those rips."

"They're disrupting the fabric of the dimensions…"

"Yes. There used to be very few queens who could eat through dimensional walls, but they have increased in recent years. We do not know why."

"How many are there?"

"At this point, hundreds."

"And they…eat through…what? Space? Time?"

Baku shook his head, waving the words away. "You cannot eat through space and time. It is a very specific substance that separates the dimensions. They consume that."

"They're not from your dimension…"

"No. We do not know which dimension they have come from or how many they ate through to get here." He paused. "It is possible they entirely consumed their own world and that forced a shift in their evolution which allowed them to then eat through to our worlds."

"That's why you call them the nightmares…"

"A being that can eat through dimensions is entirely a nightmare."

"And you think we can stop them?

"If not us then who?" Baku asked. He paused, and his next words hurt Theo in a way that he had never experienced before, not even when the rages had called for him. "A being from my world and one from yours, joined together to stop one that would consume us all. This is how heroes are made, Theo."

Theo thought about how he felt when his conscription papers came through, the long legal challenge to try to stop it, even the morning in the classroom when their mission was being described and how angry he had felt. "I'm no hero," he said softly, almost sadly, and Baku smiled.

"The moment you came through the door to my world you became one," he said. "There is no choice in it anymore. I am not sure there ever was. It is you and me now, Theo. This is how it is meant to be."