Young Writers Society

"You think they're from another planet, then?" Mal whispered. "Sure, they don't look anything like that airship, but that airship was pretty old. And I'm not sure I want to think about two alien worlds instead of just one."

The panther rumbled. "Who cares? There's more important stuff to worry about. Like, what if they find us? I don't want to be 'studied'."

"They've barely moved since we got here," Mal whispered. "But I'm wondering if they showed up because of the airship and that weird beam thing."

"Oh, so this is my fault now?" Lunis whispered, a little louder.

"Get over yourself," Mal hissed. "You didn't know what you were doing - none of us did."

"Mal's right," Apophis whispered. "None of us knew what we were doing. They might have come because of what happened in the ship, or because of something else. It's too hard to tell right now - we don't even know why we ended up on the ship."

"I might not have known what I was doing," Lunis grumbled, "But it definitely wasn't my fault."

"Do you need me to spell it out for you?" Mal hissed. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault. Don't get us caught, you idiot."

The panther pulled his head back, restraining a snarl. "Would that be my fault?" he whispered. "Because I think we should get this over with and smash those things up."

Wiping away the panther's spit, the lion crossed his arms and glared up at the panther, whispering, "That would be a stupid idea - we have no idea what we're going up against, and it would be your fault, as a matter of fact."

Pride and Apophis exchanged a look.

"Stop fighting," Pride whispered. "Until we have a plan, we don't want to get their attention."

For someone who looked like they were the youngest person present in the entire group, Pride was acting far more mature than the other two in said group - Apophis was suddenly very, very thankful that he had decided to come along.

"You don't want me to get their attention," Lunis growled, "Because everything's my fault."

With the panther ignoring words, Mal decided to step things up. The lion grabbed the panther's jaw with his paws, slamming it down.

Lunis didn't take too kindly to that. Snarling, Lunis flung himself away from the hill and landed in the middle of the spheres' beams. While the lion let go of the panther's jaw, holding his paws up to keep the growling panther at bay, the searchlights quickly crowded around the two.

Before either of them could react, a mesh of wires and rods extended from the searchlights. It quickly surrounded them, stretching from just over Lunis's head to the ground by his paws.

"What the-" Lunis began, raising his head. Fur touching against the mesh, he convulsed, flopping down on Mal. The lion could feel the electricity buzzing through him, causing his and Lunis's fur to stand on end. To say nothing of the smell of singed fur. Mal almost felt sorry for Lunis.

Fortunately, though Lunis was down for the count, Mal could still spot the small screen that run along the network of wires, stopping next to Mal. The lion, pinned under the panther, turned his head to face it.

After a few seconds, Mal heard a voice, fading in and out of a strange buzzing noise.

You can talk? Who are you? What are you?

Pride let out a quiet groan.

"This is like dealing with my family," he said.

Though Apophis didn't know Pride's specific version of the homunculi, he could understand the frustrations. It reminded him of his own "family" - though they were even less of a traditional one than Pride's. Specifically, it made him think of how immature God could be sometimes, and how that usually got him and whoever he was with into trouble on the few times that Apophis had joined him in his hunts.

"We should go over to them," Apophis suggested. "If we get caught like they did, you can use your alchemy and I can use my magic."

Pride nodded, and the two also left their hiding spots - though they were careful to avoid the search lights. For Apophis, it was easy - he could move quickly. But Pride's gait was much smaller than his, and there was a time or two where he had to jerk the homunculus out of the way.

Noticing the screen before Mal, Apophis raised a hand in greeting.

"Hi," he said.

That's weird, the voice said. I didn't think there were any humans out here. Or, I guess you're humanoid, human-ish, horribly mutated, whatever. Human enough.

"Hey!" Mal said. "I'm not 'horribly mutated' - I'm a lion."

A pause. Sure, but I'm going to stick with horribly mutated until you all tell me who you are, what you are, and how you got here. Especially that last one, because I'm pretty sure everyone went into the domes a long time ago.

Unsure of if they had been noticed, Pride and Apophis moved closer to the netting and the screen - it seemed like the owner of the voice had just seen Mal and Lunis.

"Hi," Apophis repeated, a little louder than before.

Well, you look human enough, said the voice. If I could use any of these trackers to confirm that you are human, I would, but they're all pretty preoccupied keeping an eye on this 'lion' and whoever was stupid enough to get zapped by the electric mesh. So, y'know, might as well make my life easier and get that mesh off of them by telling me what your deal is.

He saw the irony in being seen as a human in this situation, but he would go with it if it meant getting answers.

"This is going to probably sound like I'm making things up," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, "but none of us really know what our deal is. We found ourselves on a wreck of a ship earlier today. I'm not from here, and presumably they aren't either."

He glanced around before looking back at the tracker.

"From what you've said, it sounds like there was some kind of nuclear disaster here," he guessed. "If not that, something else that could be just as catastrophic. Where are we?"

Throughout this entire conversation, Apophis had been careful enough to avoid mentioning two things: that there were more than the two captured and himself, and that Pride was standing right next to him. Pride seemed to notice it, too - the owner of the voice hadn't questioned a seemingly ten year old child.

Mal groaned; if he could move either of his paws, he'd probably set one of them on his forehead. This stranger couldn't possibly believe that they had somehow just ended up here, or tell them that yes, there had been some kind of a 'nuclear disaster' (whatever that was).

I'll buy it, the voice said. Look, they picked me for this job because I'm supposed to be calm under pressure or whatever. Some dude and a couple talking cats popping up in the middle of f***ing nowhere? That's right up my alley, and that's kinda up this world's alley. But if you think I'm going to tell you what went down, or where you are, you're kinda out of luck. We're pretty happy keeping our domes safe and secure, and I don't think you'd help with that.

"We never said we wanted to enter your domes," Apophis protested. He moved a little closer to the net, still avoiding touching it - he didn't think it would help his case if he had to heal himself in the middle of the conversation.

"We just want answers," he said. "We're lost and confused. You don't have to tell us how close we are to one of the domes; we just want to know what place we're in. What's the name of this world? And what happened to it? We can't change the past if you tell us, and there's nothing we could do about the domes now."

It was midway through this conversation that he realized something. From the look that flickered across Pride's face, he had just realized it, too. They had been walking through the desert without feeling any ill effects - neither one of them had to heal any injuries caused by radiation or whatever had destroyed this world.

But the people of this world were inside of domes still, and the way the group's presence had been reacted to suggested that they weren't supposed to leave the domes.

There was something else going on here.

An exasperated sigh came out of the screen. Not until you tell me who you are. You might be lost and confused, and you might've been teleported into that wreck, but I don't know who you are and what you're capable of. All I can tell you right now is that you're on Earth, and something happened a long time ago.

A sinking feeling nestled in his gut.

"My name's Alex," he said. He looked at the barren landscape around them, trying to imagine this as somewhere on Earth.

He couldn't.

He knew alternate realities existed. He had been to an Earth where there had been another Apophis once, and that Apophis had been a demon possessing a woman. His best friend had been dead in that reality, and his other best friend was his counterpart's father - and a demon.

There was nothing to say that this was his Earth.

But his voice still was quiet when he asked, "Do you know what country this part of Earth used to be?" he asked.

Yes, the voice said. What, you think I wouldn't know that? Do you think this is one of those stories where everyone's been hiding from the surface so long we forgot about what all used to be up here? We've got maps, we've got documents, we've got computers - we've got lots of information. Maybe not as much as we'd like, but it turns out trying to fix a f***ed up satellite and computer network is pretty hard. Look, I can at least say you're in what used to be the United States. But again, I'm not telling you anything more until I get some info. Your name doesn't cut it, 'Alex.'