Chapter 27

Twenty-Seven

They had no choice but to continue onwards. Time was not on their side. They walked across the beach, sliding in and out of the nightmares that surrounded their queen, and eventually paused next to a similar outcropping of rock. Theo hunkered down there, knife in his hand, as he tried to understand what he was seeing. He could describe it no other way than as if someone had set off an entire box full of fireworks only the fireworks didn't fly but stayed at ground level, and they made no noise, but were filled with a horrible, unnatural static.

"Why does it look like that?" he breathed as the colours seemed to twist and turn in time with the waves crashing onto the shore.

"Because she is eating through," Baku whispered. "And the dimension is fighting back."

"None of the other rips look like that…"

"Once she is through it will settle again," Baku said. "And then it will look like all the other rips."

Theo shook his head even as he remembered what Baku had told him before. "This rip here is going to create more elsewhere?"

"Dozens," Baku said. "Like cracks in ice. And some of them will grow much larger than this one."

Abruptly, the image of the rip by his basement flat came to Theo's mind. He wondered which queen had created it and where she was now. Still in this world or had she moved on to the next one? And if she was in another world, what creatures lived there, how had they responded to the arrival of her and her kin?

He shook his head, his body continuing to vibrate horribly being so close to her. The nightmares between him and her were the same. They were pulsing furiously.

"She's surrounded," he said after a moment.

"We have no choice but to walk straight into it," Baku said. "Eight minutes have passed."

Which meant that they only had a handful left. Theo straightened up and behind him Baku did the exact same thing. They reached out, squeezed one another's purple hands, and then moved forwards. This close to the queen they were packed in tight. The monsters moved fluidly, almost gracefully, and Theo and Baku both found themselves responding in the same way. In and out they walked, in and out they moved, and with each step closer to her, Theo's stomach churned. It wasn't just that it was her, and he had to kill her, but it was the rip. It felt so absolutely against nature, so abhorrent that he didn't want to be near it.

A being that ate through dimensions.

Could there be anything worse?

He gripped his knife tighter, sweat pooling down his back as he walked. He could taste the salt in the air, hear the waves crashing on the beach. It was all so surreal, and Theo marvelled out how things had changed so very rapidly to bring him to this point.

They were a few meters away from her now.

She was surrounded by her younger children, by fresh monsters who were circling her as she continued to eat. She was quite a bit bigger than them, bigger than Theo had expected. He opened his mouth, wondering whether he should say something to Baku, whether he should be talking at all. But then, they were almost there, right next to her where she was eating away, directly in front of an outcropping of rock.

A moment, a pause, and then Baku knocked into one of the monsters. The action was so abrupt and so against the synchronicity that even Theo noticed it. He turned just as the muncher did, its eyes focused now on Baku. A moment later and it let out a vibrating screech.

Baku responded instantly. He buried his knife directly in the monster's head, straight into its brain, and it fell to the floor with a wet sort of splatter. He then grabbed Theo's hand and dragged him over to the outcropping of rock, pulling them round so that they were hidden from the now chattering crowd of munchers but close to the queen…so close...

She knew something was wrong.

They all did.

The dead body was enough to tell them that but even if it wasn't they could sense it.

Something didn't belong.

Theo grabbed Baku's head and pulled him down, as close as he could, and gasped when his worst suspicion was confirmed. Baku's serum was wearing off. His skin was no longer that deep, vibrant purple but was fading back to the violet colour that Theo had come to know and to love.

To love…

He shook his head, refusing to even entertain that thought given the levels of peril they were in.

"It's wearing off too quickly," he whispered.

"I know." Baku's chest rumbled slightly before speaking, and he clearly did not want to say what he was about to say but he did. "A second dose so quickly does not extend but shorten. I have expected it to wear off long before now."

"They'll kill you!" Theo gasped.

"Not before we get to the queen," Baku replied. "Nothing else matters but that."

Theo's chest tightened horribly. "You'll never make it!"

"I won't but you will," Baku replied. "We'll run for it, hard and fast. I will hold them off for as long as I can, just as we agreed, and you will kill her."

Theo shook his head. "You need to stay here."

"I'll do no such thing."

"Baku—"

"And the longer we talk, the less time I have." He pulled Theo close. "Breathe now, Theo," he continued. "This is what you were meant to do. What you were always meant to do. Are you ready?"

And with that he pulled them out from behind the rock and they went straight into the crowd of monsters who were waiting for them. It truly was like something out of a nightmare. There were dozens of them, and they immediately leapt at Baku. He responded by smacking them away, one after the other, but there were so many and who knew how long he could keep it up for. Theo hesitated for just a moment, torn between his desire to help his monster and his task, which was to kill the queen.

This is what you were meant to do.

Just a moment.

Just a thought.

And then he ran.

And she knew he was coming. Only, she thought he was coming to protect.

Bigger than the others by at least a couple of feet, she was almost Theo's height. She was wider, larger, and her mouth was the size of Theo's head. It was wide open, biting away at the air directly in front of them, causing explosions of those horrifically repulsive lights.

Theo ran for her. He held his knife high in the air. She let out a screeching vibration as she sensed danger, but she didn't understand. He was one of hers. She could feel him. The other one, the one now fighting the monsters who would protect her was clearly the invader. What was happening?

Theo jumped and he jumped higher than even the time he'd had to traverse an upended bin during a park run and had pulled a hamstring that kept him out for a week. But there was no torn hamstring today. Theo was fast. He was strong. And he landed on her in a flurry of limbs and a scream of anger.

She was the reason he was here.

She and her kind had killed tens of thousand of his people.

The nightmares.

But no more.

She screeched against him and tried to push him off and she was strong also, and she was fast, but Theo held on tight. He lifted his knife and without so much as a heartbeat's pause he plunged it into her. She opened her mouth to its widest extent in a scream and as she did so, she bit into the air, bit into the gaps between worlds. For just a moment Theo found himself in the space that exists between it all. Lights surrounded them, every single colour in existence pulsing there. Time seemed to stop, or at least not to be anymore. Theo couldn't breathe, there was no oxygen here, but then he didn't need it, because there was no him there either.

It was the space between it all.

The space where there was everything but also nothing.

And Theo had been here before and he would return here again. He closed his eyes as he let that knowledge wash through him, as he accepted what it meant, and when he opened them just a moment later, he lifted his knife, and he sank it deep into the queen's brain.

She let out a piercing shriek as he did so and screamed once more as she died. Around her, her children did the exact same thing, and the sound rang out across the beach, travelling from Theo to Baku who was surrounded, and even all the way to the MDF who had quickly realised that something was afoot and were waiting to see what would happen.

The lights of the space between worlds exploded out one last time but then faded as the new rip settled. It was a space a meter or so across that looked through into a bleak, dark landscape beyond.

Theo fell to the ground, on top of the queen's body, pulling in air as he did so, settling himself back into his own dimension, the place he had always belonged. Pain shot through his wrist, and he realised that he had wrenched it as he stabbed her. He waited only a moment before gathering himself and then looking for his monster. Baku was there, on the ground, dozens of dying munchers surrounding him.

Theo pulled his knife free from the queen, swapped it into his good hand and raced over and straight on top of the muncher who was attempting to eat Baku's face. Theo stabbed him hard and then kicked him aside. Another dying muncher barrelled into him, followed by several more, and Theo realised his serum was wearing off.

Baku let out a roar and he grabbed them one after the other, flinging them across the space. He was covered in blood, he had lost several chunks of flesh including a large one on his upper arm, but he turned, and he stood over Theo, and he smashed nightmare after nightmare aside as they tried to get to him.

"He is mine!" Baku roared. "Mine!"

And slowly but surely the munchers began to weaken, and bit by bit they began to die, and there in the middle of it all were Theo and Baku, the monster and the human, and they had done exactly what they had set out to do.

They had saved the worlds.

At least for now.