Chapter 7: V: WE NEED TO WADDLE-DADDLE

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LUCA

LUCA DIDN'T USED TO BE the type to panic.

He didn't panic when he was sixteen-years-old and impregnated his girlfriend of the past two months. He didn't panic when both their families abandoned them, leaving two teenagers to raise a child completely on their own. He didn't panic when his son was six months old and his girlfriend shot and killed six police officers. He didn't panic when they gave her a life sentence, even though he found himself more alone than he'd ever been before.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, because, you see, hardly a month after Marieka Zhou, the mother of his child, was arrested, he met the girl he swore he was going to marry. And, well, he didn't exactly meet her then, per ce—they'd gone to the same synagogue since they were children. She was the only other Jewish-Chinese Italian he'd ever met, but they'd never been exactly close, and when he'd left home, they'd lost touch. It wasn't until then, hardly a month after Marieka Zhou, the mother of his child, was arrested, that he really met Emi Ruan.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, because with Emi, he didn't have to. She was intelligent and virtuous, almost to the point of being biddable. She evened him out and kept him on his toes, and, in return, he helped loosen her up a little. Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, because it was a year into his relationship with Emi Ruan when she got pregnant. He was seventeen by then, she two years older and a university student. She was studying medicine. He had a job in retail. Everything was fine, really, except for one tiny little thing, because, as you see, four months earlier, he'd killed someone for the first time. And he knew it wouldn't be the last.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, because Emi stuck around with him for three years after their daughter was born. But all good things have to come to an end, and, well, he kind of let the whole murder thing slip to her. She was gone the next day, but Luca still didn't panic, because he had a plan. He left for America right after she left, needing a clean state and a fresh start. Not for himself—for his children.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, and that was a good thing, because finding a job wasn't easy. Maybe it was because he was an illegal immigrant. Maybe it was because he didn't speak any English. Maybe it was because he lacked so much as a high school degree. Maybe it was because he had two young kids to look out for, or maybe it was because of his criminal record. Whatever the case, the only job he could find was as a domestic worker under the employment of a multi-millionaire in a cute little New England town.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, and that was a good thing, because murder is best committed with a clear head. He worked for the man for a little over six months, taking small sums of money out of his account every time he got the chance. And when the rich bastard dropped dead from a supposed heart attack, nobody suspected his poor little domestic worker, because there wasn't any suspects at all. His death had been ruled a natural one.

Luca didn't used to be the type to panic, and as a murderer-turned-hitman-turned-leader-of-an-organized-crime-ring, it was a good thing. But as a father? Not so much. His son would disappear for days at a time, providing no explanation for his whearabouts, and he wouldn't panic. His daughter would get in nasty fights at school, and he wouldn't panic. His son would kill someone, and his daughter would help him, and he wouldn't panic. That was just how things went.

But then his son nearly ended the world, his daughter fell into a different dimension, and Thea, a poor, mistreated girl he'd raised as his own for the past couple of months, was killed, and all of a sudden, Luca started panicking. Lately, he hasn't been able to stop panicking.

So, naturally, when Luca finds Cain missing from his room, he panics.

After he closes up shop with the Villa, he heads home. He finds Bianca in his living room, watching some documentary with Cerberus in her lap. He realizes, after a second, that the documentary's on Nikola Tesla.

"Tesla, really?" Luca asks her, sitting on the couch beside her.

"He hated Thomas Edison and thought women were superior to men," Bianca argues. "I love him."

"Bee, he also hated fat people and Jews."

"He was a Nazi?"

"I don't know, but he was friends with one. And he believed in eugenics. I'd be surprised if he wasn't."

"We can watch something else." Bianca grabs the remote from the coffee table in front of her, flipping through the channels.

"Wait!" Luca exclaims. "Fox News is on. Go back."

"You watch that bullshit, and yet you make fun of me for watching a documentary on Tesla?"

"I like to make fun of them."

"Luca, I'm Puerto Rican. If I watch Fox News, they're gonna personally jump out of the TV with a shotgun and try to deport me. And Puerto Rico is a part of the US."

"And they'll try to stab me with chopsticks," Luca adds. "Are the kids here?"

Bianca flips through some more channels, finally settling on a rerun of My Strange Addiction. "Atlas came over. They're all up in Cain's room watching High School Musical. I swear to God, they're treating it like it's some kind of cult."

"Because it is a cult!" Luca replies, deadly serious.

Bianca rolls her eyes. "Everything's a cult to you. You think the government's a cult."

"It is! The lizard people—"

"I don't want to hear about your lizard people again! I used to work for the government. Don't you think I'd tell you if I used to be in a cult?"

"I do, but I also think that what you were doing at the Mendoza Institute would have qualified as a cult."

"What even qualifies as a cult?"

"Lots of things. The Jesus Junkies, Red Robin . . . "

"What?"

"Burger heaven awaits." Luca offers no further explanation. "I'm gonna go check on them."

He heads upstairs, his feet sinking into the floorboards. And that's when he starts to panic.

The first sign that something is wrong is the silence. No music, no laughter, no nothing—just old house creaking as he ascends the wooden stairs. The second sign is the open door. Cain always keeps it shut, especially when Atlas is over. The third sign is the empty room (well "empty" other than Nick and Lili passed out on the air mattress on the floor; understandably, neither of them wanted to stay in Rachel's room), the fourth is the open window, and the fifth is the gaping hole in the window-screen.

Standing there, Luca panics. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and frantically tries to dial his son, but the line dies after one trill. He sends him text after text after text demanding to know where he went, but none of them deliver. Discouraged, he throws his phone at the bed and sinks to his knees.

An idea pops into his head. He fumbles for his phone, sending a text to Atlas's mom. In his haste, he asks her: R HE BOY S AT UR HSOUE

He doesn't have to clarify. Eva Villa instantly texts him back: No?? Omg r they supposed to be.. atlas has bean home all day but i havent seen Cain

Another text soon follows the first: OMG LUCA I JST CHECKED ATLAS'S ROOM ANDD HE ISNT THERE!..!!!!! Jesus Christ fucking Christ our lord and Savior take the whhel!!!

A couple of seconds later, a third text comes: O my god i think he ran away

"Fuck!" Luca exclaims.

He hears footsteps pounding up the stairs, and Bianca appears in the doorway a second later.

"What's wrong?" she asks. "Luca, what happened? Where are they?"

"Gone," he responds. "Eva said that she—that she thinks Atlas ran away."

"What?"

"They aren't here or there and Eva thinks Atlas ran away!"

"Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck! What do we need to do?"

Luca takes a deep breath, squeezing his phone so tight in his fist he worries he might break it. "I have no fucking idea. Should we call the cops? No," he decides, immediately dismissing the idea. "They're incompetent. If anything, they'll make everything worse . . . "

Luca's calmed himself down enough to open his phone back up and reply to Eva: Y do u think he ran away. Did something happen???

"Is there anywhere you'd think they'd go? Maybe the mountains?" Bianca suggests.

"I have no idea!" Luca tells her. "They're both smart, aren't they? If they really did run away, they'd go somewhere we wouldn't think to look for them."

Luca's phone dings. He checks it to see a message from Eva: Ya kind of but its nothing.. When did u last see Cain?

"So where wouldn't we think to look?" Bianca asks.

"Probably Ukraine."

"I'm being serious!"

And Luca really can't help himself. "Hi Being Serious, I'm Dad."

"Luca! Your son is missing!"

"Right! Right, right, right, right, right." Luca buries his head in his hands. He's really bad at this whole parenting thing. "God, I don't know. Maybe they'd know we'd think they'd be too smart to go somewhere obvious, and they'd use that to our advantage. So we'd be off looking in remote corners of the world while they chill in Target and—oh, my God! Bianca, how could I be so dumb?"

"You can't seriously think they're in Target."

But Luca really isn't paying attention to her. He loves Bianca, but his children—his child now—will always come before anything else. He grabs his phone and clicks on Snapchat so hard the screen temporarily goes black. "Snapmaps!"

Once the app opens, he drags the camera screen down to open up Snapmaps. He doesn't have that many friends on Snapchat, and the few ones he does have are in Ghost Mode. He sees himself in the middle of a cul-de-sac, though he knows he's in Ghost Mode, too, so no one else can see him. He sees Bianca's and Lili's Bitmojis right beside his, and he sees Eva's. But he can also see Cain's. His vain obsession social media will be his own downfall; a modern-day Icarus. Luca zooms in.

"Che due coglioni?" Luca asks himself.

"Look, there's us." Bianca points at their Bitmojis, then notices Cain's. "He's in the middle of the woods."

Luca nods, trying to zoom in even closer as if seeing his Bitmoji in an even higher resolution will make him pop out of the screen.

"Do you think he's in trouble?" Bianca asks.

"Please! He's always in trouble."

Bianca, all of a sudden, grabs hold of Luca's arm, her eyes wild with fear. "Luca! Oh, my God!"

"What is it?"

"The rift!" she exclaims, stabbing her finger into the screen.

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LUCA KNOWS THAT AN UNSPOKEN RULE OF GRAVE ROBBERY is to always pay your respects to the victim beforehand. Once you have, you can have at it—rules and laws and societal expectations be damned. Hiking through the woods where the rift formed is just the same. Before you step even a foot inside the dense forest, you have to stop at the monument commemorating the victims.

A sad comparison, really, considering . . .

Bianca is kneeled in front of the monument, one hand hovering over Rachel's name, the other cupped over her mouth. She seems so much more alive than the names inscribed on the pyramid, her mahogany skin a stark contrast against the white marble. Lightning bugs sparkle in the woods just beyond her like the flicker of ghostly lanterns. The world's so silent, Luca can hear the low hum of the earth budding into spring—the buzz of mosquitos and the chitter of squirrels.

Luca is trying very hard to leave as quickly as possible.

"Do you miss her?" Bianca whispers, the suddenness of her voice cutting into the silence like a warm knife.

"Rachel?"

She nods. Luca shrugs, not caring if her back is turned to him. How can he explain to a childless mother what it's like to lose a child? It was like he was a planet knocked suddenly out of orbit, never to see the light from his sun again.

"She was such a sweetheart when she was at my institute. She was almost like a daughter to me . . . " Bianca smiles softly—sweetly—sadly, lost in a memory dripping in bitter nostalgia. "But I don't think I really knew her at all. What was she like?"

"She was the smartest girl I ever met. I had trouble keeping up with her sometimes." Luca sucks in a deep breath of warm night air. It feels like the entire world heaves with his lungs. "You know, she wanted to work for NASA?"

"Really?"

"Yeah—as an astronautical engineer, so she could build the first ship to carry people to Mars. She had her entire future planned out. I sent her to Space Camp every year we could afford it. This year was gonna be her first at Advance Space Acadamy, and she was so excited. It's a pity she'll never get the chance to go." Luca swallows back a lump in his throat. "She always said that her main goal as an engineer would be to inspire other young girls to get into science. I wish she could have gotten me in on some top-secret alien drama."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Bianca mumbles. "Maybe you could use her story to carry on her legacy. Make a charity to get more young women going into STEM fields. I'm a woman scientist. I can help."

"Maybe . . . " Luca mumbles. It seems a bit like her life's been copyrighted. He sits down in the grass beside Bianca. "Do you miss Thea?"

"Of course I do." Bianca hugs her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "I just wish . . . I wish I'd been a better mother. I wish I hadn't done what I did to her. I wish I could have a second chance."

Luca grabs her hand. "And maybe you'll get one."

Bianca instantly shoots to her feet. "I don't think so."

"I don't mean like that! I just mean . . . God works in mysterious ways, Bee. You won't get a second chance with Thea. You can't redo the past. But you can always try to do better tomorrow."

"It's not safe out here." Bianca frantically dusts the mud off her jeans. "We need to hurry."

So the two of them walk into the dark woods, side-by-side.

It takes a couple acres of walking before he starts to notice it. The way the woods seem to pulsate, like the breath of a giant. In a world as frightening as this one, he can't help but understand the primitive fascination with larger-than-life gods. A couple more acres, and there it is: a single unmoving spot, shades darker than the blackness around it, a vantablack as dark as the pits of hell. It looks like a clean-cut black circle hastily photoshopped onto a fuzzy image.

"We don't have time to waddle-daddle," says Bianca, looking like she's trying to talk through a layer of numbing gel.

"We don't have time to what, now?" asks Luca.

"The rift."

"Yeah. It's there."

She sighs, rubbing her forehead. "With all of these motherfuckers around, it's like we're swimming through a pool of flesh-eatin' bacteria."

Luca almost wants to laugh, her voice sounds so ridiculous. Is it because of . . . because of it, the elephant in the room? The interdimensional rift?

"Would you mind being more specific?" he asks.

"We need to waddle-daddle," she repeats, frustrated.

"Skedaddle?"

"Exactly!"

Luca doesn't bother saying anything else. He just gives her this weird little smile, takes three steps forwards, and disappears like he was swallowed by a blackhole.

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THE TRANSITION BETWEEN WORLDS is as instant as it is dark.

It feels, to Luca, like it didn't even happen. Like he snapped his fingers and suddenly traveled from the warm, dark New Hampshire woods into a brightly lit place he doesn't recognize, as easy as flipping a channel.

But, he realizes after a moment, he does recognize this place. It's the very same woods that they just left—but it also isn't. It is and it isn't; he recognizes it but he doesn't; this is his dimension but it isn't. It's like he's having déjà vu of something he saw in a dream once.

It's giving him a headache.

Somehow, Bianca had reached the world before Luca did. She stands a couple feet in front of him, squinting up at something against the harsh sunlight, her hand cupped over her eyes. He follows her gaze to find a wall—metallic, huge. Even harder to look at than the sun.

"Are we in prison?" Luca asks.

"I don't think so," she replies. "There's nothing else around us. If this was a prison, there would be guards, other inmates, and—"

"Maybe we're just outside of a prison," he offers. "In the middle of nowhere."

"Maybe . . . " Bianca shrugs. "I think we need to know if we're inside the fence or outside of it."

Luca doesn't have an answer for her, but he wishes he did. Are they being protected, or is something being protected from them? He doesn't know which option scares him more.

For a moment, they simply stand there, side-by-side in this strange world. Luca's worrying that they're wasting time. Who knows? Maybe Cain and Atlas have been killed or eaten or—worse—baptized by now. Who knows what horrors this dimension hides?

He knows they're wasting time, but he needs a moment to wrap his head around what they just did. So he stands there, feeling awkward and impatient and uncertain. Bianca's dragging her shoes through the dirt, her head tilted forwards to examine what she manages to dig up. All of a sudden, she reaches down and grabs something: a dark blue cloth, a little bigger than her hand, caked in so much dirt it's practically useless.

She picks it up and offers it to Luca. "Look."

"What?" he asks, confused.

Bianca stares at him like it's something he should know. "You know Atlas, the boy your son's dating? You know how he wears glasses? You have to clean glasses every once in a while so you can see out of them. He always used this cloth—I remember it." She flips it over to the other side, showing him the white embroidery. "See? It's even got a monogram on it. AV—Atlas Villa."

Is it weird that Bianca noticed that? Probably. But she's a scientist. Luca figures she's observant by nature and curious at best.

"So we know they've been here. But how are we going to find them?"

"I'm already on it." Bianca kneels, laying her hand on the sun-baked dirt. "Four sets of footprints all leading in the same direction."

Luca looks down at the dirt, then up at her. "But there should only be two."

"Meredith and Silas," Bianca explains. "Of course they'd take them with them."

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with the Mention of the bitmojis i feel obligated to say that i got bored a while ago and made bitmojis for all these guys. enjoy them.