Sliders: Earth 30858

Episode 7.12
The Omen
by Slidemania

Disclaimer: The Sliders television series' characters and storylines are property of Universal and St. Clare Entertainment, series creator Tracy Tormé and Fox Broadcasting Network and The Sci-Fi Channel. No copyright infringement is intended and no monetary profit is being made off of this work. All other characters who are not found on the Sliders television series were created by me, and should only be used with my prior permission. Posting to archives is encouraged as long as my name and title stay with the story.
Author's Note: Beware of spoilers. This story is part of my Sliders fanfiction series, picking up where the episode "The Seer" leaves off. You should be familiar with most, if not all, of the original Sliders series, as well as the preceding episodes of my fanfiction, before reading this story.

I would like to extend special thanks to SpaceTime for his speculative theories (which can be read at his website, EarthPrime.com) regarding Sliders mythology based on information deduced from the episodes "Invasion," "The Return of Maggie Beckett," and "Requiem," as well as TemporalFlux for providing access to "lost scenes" from the episodes "Invasion" and "The Return of Maggie Beckett" (the scripts of which can be read at his website, The Dimension of Continuity). Much of these theories and script details were helpful to me when synthesizing my own interpretation of how the synergy of the Sliders multiverse can be explained.

I would like to credit David Peckinpah for his script dialogue from the actual Sliders episode entitled "Dinoslide," as some of this dialogue is recalled during this episode via flashback sequences. I would like to credit Michael Reaves for his script dialogue from the actual Sliders episode entitled "Requiem," as some of this dialogue is recalled during this episode via flashback sequences. I would also like to give due credit to the following writers, who, in writing past scripts for actual Sliders episodes, created various guest characters that appear in this story: Tracy Tormé, Bill Dial, Michael Reaves, David Peckinpah, Chris Black, and Eleah Horwitz.

* * *
Mallory leaned his head back, pouring the final sediments of wine from a golden goblet down his throat. "Aw, yeah!" he gasped, savoring its fruity, delicious flavor. "Nothing like free outdoor wine-tasting, eh, Malcolm?"

Malcolm Eastman was walking alongside Mallory through the crowded, colorful streets of Ventura. "Yeah," he responded, unenthusiastically. Even though he was getting to drink at the young age of seventeen, the adolescent could hardly muster up any excitement or sense of enjoyment. He unceremoniously finished the swig of red alcohol from his own goblet.

"Hey buddy, what's on your mind?" Mallory tossed the plastic chalice aside, and draped his arm around Malcolm's shoulder. "This stuff is supposed to calm your nerves, not make you feel down in the dumps."

Malcolm stopped to rest on a bench at one of the street corners, and Mallory sat down beside him. "I don't know, man," Malcolm said to his friend. The youngster's shoulders sagged with lethargy, despite all of the liveliness buzzing around them. "For the last couple days, my stomach's been churning. I don't know why . . . but it doesn't feel good, that's for sure."

Mallory placed his hand on Malcolm's forehead, checking for warmth. "Well, it doesn't feel like you have a fever."

Malcolm scanned the bustling street festival, where exhibitions of artwork and wine-tasting were in full swing. "I know you guys brought me here to see the art." Now he looked almost guilty.

"Don't worry about it," Mallory reassured him. He placed his hands on both of Malcolm's shoulders. "We don't slide until later this afternoon. Just try to relax, okay, buddy?"

Malcolm nodded, as the two of them stood up. They began strolling across the brightly chalked sidewalk, past jugglers, mimes, and portrait artists who were working on their masterpieces-in-progress along with their stationary displays of completed work.

"How about some more wine?" offered Mallory, taking two complimentary goblets from a nearby hospitality booth.

"No thanks," muttered Malcolm. He began lagging at a slower pace. "I've just been thinking a lot about Gretchen lately. Where she is right now . . ."

Mallory nodded in understanding. Malcolm had choked up and trailed off, unable to complete his oral thought. He was trying to get his mind off of imagining all the terrible things Gretchen must have endured during the last two years. Searching for a diversion, Malcolm centered his attention on a glass-framed acrylic portrait of the Channel Islands. The simulacrum depicted humps of a jagged archipelago, dotting the shaded blues of the Pacific Ocean amid cloudy whiteness. It was being sold for $500.

Softly touching Malcolm's shoulder again, Mallory reassured him, "She doesn't blame you, Malcolm. You can't beat yourself up over what happened to her. Gretchen wanted you to be safe from the Kromaggs, remember? She told you to escape while you still could."

Malcolm didn't answer. He and Mallory commenced their stroll amid the boisterous crowd of the Ventura street festival, remaining silent as they took in the raffish sights.

One tempera-based portrait caught his eye. It was a glossy depiction of a man shining his flashlight into the shadows of some dark woods at night. In this still image, his flashlight illuminated a haunting, shimmering humanoid figure. This appeared to be one of the area's well-known ghost hunters.

"You like it?" asked a female artist with thick red glasses. Malcolm couldn't take his eyes off the audacious skull-shaped tattoos on this woman's arms.

"This is Clayton Barnes embarking on one of Ventura County's earliest 'ghost hunts' in 1927," she explained to Malcolm and Mallory. "Here, Mr. Barnes is in the process of encountering his very first poltergeist."

"And the two of them make a lovely couple," quipped Mallory, hastily steering Malcolm away from the freaky artist. He could tell that Malcolm felt uncomfortable, from the way the teenager shifted in place.

"Hey, watch it, man!" called out an irritated Elston Diggs, who happened to be a nearby citrus vendor whom Mallory almost tripped over. "Watch where you're going!"

Ignoring the Alternate Diggs, Mallory reached out to steady a shaken Malcolm. "Hey, buddy, are you okay?"

Slightly dazed, Malcolm responded, "I don't know . . ."

An unexpected wave of nausea overcame him.

Out of nowhere, an ugly black crow fluttered toward them from an angle. The bird promptly landed on Malcolm's shoulder, perching itself there as though it was at home in a nest or tree branch.

With a gasp, Malcolm tensed up as a vivid flare of green light penetrated his vision. Amid this sudden incandescence, Malcolm caught a glimmer of what looked like a human face.

"Malcolm . . . a dazed, feminine voice resonated.

Even as he snapped back to reality, the imprint of that ghostly visage remained etched in his consciousness.

"Gretchen . . ." whispered Malcolm, distinguishing his friend's faint locks of blonde hair even amid the murky image.

Mallory began leading Malcolm away from the crowd. They were headed toward one of the city parks, where Mallory knew the other sliders would be convening. "You saw Gretchen?"

Malcolm stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Yeah, I did. It was her, Mallory!" He looked at his friend frantically. "I'm telling you the truth! Please believe me! Gretchen is in trouble, and we've got to help her!"

Mallory put his arm around Malcolm, who looked utterly terrified. "I do believe you, Malcolm. Don't worry, we're gonna figure this out."

Minutes later, they had rejoined their six friends at the Ventura Pier, by the ocean's edge on the outskirts of the Thomas Bard Memorial Park.

"How was the art festival?" Wade asked them with a smile, failing to immediately notice Malcolm's trembling lips.

"We saw more than just art," said Mallory. "Or at least, Malcolm did."

Rembrandt approached his young friend, concerned. "Malcolm? What happened, partner?"

"It's Gretchen. She's still alive." Malcolm looked deep into Rembrandt's sympathetic eyes. "She was calling out to me."

Without any hesitance, Rembrandt believed his young friend's claim. "Yeah, I've been there," he proclaimed, switching his gaze knowingly over to Wade.

Wade lightly took Malcolm by the wrist. "When the Kromaggs abducted me, Remmy had been the last important person in my life who I'd had contact with. That's probably why I was able to form such a natural psychic bond to him." As she and Rembrandt exchanged nostalgic glances, Wade continued, "If Gretchen is still alive, it's possible that she could be reaching out to you in the same way."

Maggie stuffed her hands in her pockets. "So how do we get to her? You sent us space folds, Wade. You brought us to the Earth where you were being held prisoner."

"I haven't seen any," Malcolm said, perplexed, referring to the space folds.

Mallory put his hand on Malcolm's shoulder, as the Professor checked the timer.

"We have a little more than ten minutes," Arturo told them, showing the display panel.

"Malcolm," said Diana, "if you can, you need to try to reestablish contact with Gretchen. If she's still being used for breeding, we have to get to her before the Kromaggs decide they're done with her."

Tears began to appear in Malcolm's eye ducts. "I don't know how," he whispered, painstakingly.

Wade was thinking back to her time in psionic suspension. Most of it was a blur, since Wade had been heavily infused with drugs by the Kromaggs. After serving as Christina Griffin's midwife, and then having helped Christina and her son escape from their breeder camp, Wade's initial weeks upon weeks of psychic concentration had been initially unsuccessful. Nevertheless, she still remembered some faint flashes of her numerous attempts to contact Rembrandt from across dimensions.

"Try this," Wade advised Malcolm, after extensive recall. "Close your eyes, and focus your mind entirely on Gretchen. Project your thoughts as far as you can, until you feel her again. Then ask her to send you a chain of numbers . . . the closest numbers she can see."

Diana realized what Wade was trying to get Malcolm to do. "A coordinate set. Good thinking, Wade!"

Standing in the middle of the serene municipal park, Malcolm shut his eyes and took several deep breathes. His silent thoughts resonated outward from his mind.

"Gretchen? . . . Gretchen? . . . Where are you . . . ?" Malcolm thought, feeling himself half in his body but half outside of it.

Professor Arturo gazed at the meditating Malcolm, in wonderment. Years ago, he would have merely dismissed Malcolm's attempts as naīve optimism. But after all of the amazing psychic phenomena Arturo had witnessed since then, he could no longer disregard the untapped power of the human mind. The Professor was whole-heartedly fascinated by what was unfolding within their group - - while simultaneously concerned for Malcolm's safety too, of course.

With only a couple of minutes left on the timer, the sliders watched as Malcolm murmured Gretchen's name under his breath.

"Gretchen . . . please tell us where you are . . . the adolescent mentally beckoned his good friend.

"Malcolm? Gretchen's voice resonated across hyperspace. "Everything . . . so hazy . . ."

"Numbers, Gretchen!" Malcolm emphasized. "My friends want you to send me numbers! Please! It's the only way we can find you . . ."

Wade deftly took one of Malcolm's quivering wrists. "We're running out of time," she whispered to him, hoping that Malcolm - - and perhaps Gretchen - - could somehow hear her. Wade feared that if Malcolm broke the connection with Gretchen in order to slide, he might not be able to find her again.

"Four . . . six . . . four . . ." Malcolm suddenly spat out a succession of numerical digits.

Diana already had out her PDL, and began entering numbers as Malcolm recited them.

". . . seven . . . eight . . . five . . . three . . ." continued Malcolm, now totally in sync with Gretchen.

" . . . five . . . four . . . four . . . zero . . ." Gretchen communicated to Malcolm.

". . . five . . . four . . . four . . . zero . . ." Malcolm repeated, aloud.

The Professor was entering these numbers into the timer, as Malcolm spoke them.

". . . one!" Malcolm said, in unison with Gretchen. He felt their psychic link dissolving.

When Malcolm opened his eyes, he was greeted by his seven friends staring avidly at him.

"Welcome back," Janine said, with a snarky yet amicable smile.

"It was Gretchen!" Malcolm told them, with great urgency in his voice. "She needs us to come to her!"

"We know, partner." Rembrandt put his arm around Malcolm's rib cage, holding him closely. Non-verbally, Remmy exchanged percipient glances with Wade. The two of them had been through this before. "We definitely know."

Diana had begun to intensely scrutinize the screen of her Portable Dimensional Laboratory. "Well, Malcolm, those numbers you gave us fit perfectly into twelve digits. They meet the common parameters for a standard set of sliding coordinates."

Arturo had finished entering the twelve-digit sequence into the group's timer. "I assume we are in consensus about accessing these coordinates when the window opens?" He looked up, studying everyone's faces.

"It could be a trap . . ." Janine was the only dissenting voice to bring up a situational concern.

"We've all got the anti-Kromagg virus in our bloodstreams," Maggie disagreed with the risk factor. "Besides, we owe it to Gretchen." In her own mind, Maggie felt a great deal responsible for Gretchen's situation, since she shared the same homeworld as Malcolm and Gretchen. She and Quinn had chosen that primitive world for the Pulsar Prime refugees. From her perspective, Maggie felt that if she had only been able to find a highly populated, more civilized Earth for them to settle on, Gretchen might never have been abducted . . .

Diana linked her arm with Maggie's, as though she could sense Maggie's guilt. "It's no one's fault but the Kromaggs'. They are the ones who started this . . . but I think it's time for us to finish it." Even as she said that, Diana quietly slipped her PDL into the inner pocket of her vest, and then caressed her hand over the barely noticeable bulge.

Wade peered over Arturo's shoulder to see the timer's readout. "Only about thirty seconds left . . ."

Mallory took Malcolm's free hand, sandwiching the seventeen-year-old between himself and Remmy. "We're gonna get her back," Mallory resolutely told Malcolm.

"That's a promise," Rembrandt echoed Mallory's sentiment, with a nod of his head.

As soon as the Professor opened the vortex, Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut while his friends ushered him into those winds of uncertainty.

* * *
Each of the sliders could only remember seeing one thing inside of their vortex. The sparkly purple tunnel morphed into an ominous shade of reddish-orange all around them.

Rembrandt opened his eyes, remembering virtually nothing about his preceding trip between worlds. What he did recognize was that eerie feeling of impotence, having one's body suspended in midair, with no way to move one's limbs or joints.

Rembrandt Brown's eyes darted from side to side, and his eyes soon adjusted to the dim enclave. He spotted, to his left, Arturo, Diana, and Maggie. On Rembrandt's right side were Malcolm, Mallory, and Janine. All of the sliders were similarly being held by some invisible force of stasis, inches above the ground.

Professor Arturo's heart thumped as he glanced toward Rembrandt, who was directly to the Professor's right. "Déjā vu, Mr. Brown?" Arturo dismally ventured.

"What the hell's going on here?!" shouted Janine. By now, all seven of them were fully awake.

"Welcome," came a hauntingly monotone female voice.

In the corner of the small enclave, a bright light shone down from the ceiling. This "spotlight" revealed the skinny figure of a woman dressed in simple clothing. The sliders' hostess had slanted, Oriental eyes, and straight black hair cropped right below her chin.

"Mary." Rembrandt said the name in stark, disheartened realization. Then, he took a second look at the mysterious woman from his friends' past. "Wait a minute . . ."

". . . aren't you supposed to be dead?" Professor Arturo balked, completing Rembrandt's thought.

"Who's she?" Maggie asked Remmy and Arturo, obviously failing to recognize Mary, despite their encounter with one of Mary's doppelgangers two years earlier.

"She's the Kromaggs' lapdog," Rembrandt uttered, his voice like poison. He rotated his eyes, and verbally addressed Mary. "But Quinn said you died."

Mary took a step forward, and continued to speak in her somber tone. "Yes. That was part of their plan. The Kromaggs instructed me to stage my death and allow you to escape, so they could track your journeys." With a pensive tilt of her head, Mary added, "But you had undoubtedly figured that out, by now."

"How did you know we'd be coming here?" demanded Professor Arturo. He twitched his face, perplexed as to how they could possibly even dream of getting out of this one.

Mary paused, as though she was listening for instructions on what to say. "My masters were informed of your impending arrival by a reliable source. You are presently in a eugenic research center on 'Earth 23,' one of the earliest dimensions that fell under Kromagg rule. The Dynasty has unfinished matters to attend to, regarding your interference in its affairs."

"OUR interference?!" Even from where most of his body was frozen in midair, Rembrandt was livid at the mere suggestion that this was somehow humanity's fault.

"Where's Gretchen?" asked Malcolm, in a strained voice. He feared the worst - - that the Kromaggs had already killed her.

Mary shut her eyes, telepathically communicating with her Kromagg superiors. "My masters do not know who you are referring to," she told Malcolm.

Mallory rolled his eyes. "You can drop the act," he sneered at her. "We've met Kromaggs who can speak English. You don't need to translate what we say for them."

"No, Mr. Mallory," Arturo acknowledged Mallory's suspicion, "but they do need her to communicate telepathically. They don't want us to hear what the Dynasty apparently has in store for us."

"Mr. Mallory?" Mary paid special attention to Arturo's address of Mallory. Out of her own volition, the interpreter took a few steps in Mallory's direction. "You cannot be Quinn Mallory," she stated to him, her petrified British accent underscoring the pivotal ambiance around them. "I remember Quinn Mallory vividly . . . his voice, his appearance . . . are you related to Quinn?" Her last question was spoken in a curious tone.

"Yeah, I'm his fraternal twin," Mallory sneered again. "I'm not telling you anything. You want to know about me, come and get the information yourselves!"

"They may just take you up on that offer, Fog Boy," quivered Rembrandt, reminding Mallory of the Kromaggs' propensity for interrogation.

"Wait . . . where is Miss Wells?" Arturo had been so overtaken with shock from the situation, it wasn't until then that he suddenly noticed one of the members of their team was absent.

Rembrandt flinched. "What did you do with Wade??!!" he roared, the Cryin' Man's vocals echoing through the chamber.

Mary's eyes shifted uncomfortably. She was clearly receiving more telepathic orders from her masters. "Enough," she stated. "You shall have your answers shortly."

As Mary turned around and took a stride into the darkness, Janine addressed her comrades. "So . . . what does this mean?" her voice uncharacteristically shook.

"Interrogation. Mind probe. Execution. Dissection." Maggie flatly laid out her prediction, as a blur of tears obscured her vision.

They were all caught off-guard by a raspy hissing noise coming from someplace behind where they were being held in stasis.

"What's that smell?" Diana referred to the sterile, gaseous scent that slowly filled their noses. "It smells like . . ." She felt her eyelids dropping. ". . . ether."

Rembrandt wanted to calm his friends down, tell them everything would be okay. Proclaim that somehow, they would beat the odds yet again and get out of this. But he couldn't - - and not just because the ether was suppressing his speech and causing Rembrandt to fall asleep . . .

Because deep down, Rembrandt wasn't at all confident he could believe they would.

* * *
A voluptuous, olive-skinned maiden strolled down a pathway paved with marble. She wore a skin-tight silvery gown that clung to her flesh. The woman had tiny pomegranates strung throughout her free-flowing black hair.

But she was not any ordinary wanderer. Her intuition had drawn her here, to stand beside a humanoid statue, which bore the likeness of a man whom she had been responsible for enshrining in a bronzed cage.

The goddess Aphrodite swiftly extended her long, slender arms, touching the effigy of Colonel Angus Rickman. Her fingers caressed his hardened surface, causing Rickman's bronze shell to melt away.

As he was released from his entrapment, Angus Rickman commenced with a feral snarl, and proceeded to jab the syringe forward in his outstretched arm.

The needle simply snapped like a toothpick, as it failed to pierce Aphrodite's immortal flesh.

"I am too strong for your mortal weapons," the goddess smirked, staring down at the bewildered and agitated Rickman.

Rickman whipped his head around in a frenzy, surveying the landscape of Pagan World. "Where are the sliders?!" he demanded.

"They are gone," she replied. With an unnerving smile, she gloated, "I suspended your life force in time. You have been trapped on this world for countless cycles."

The colonel looked perturbed, although not all that surprised. "How . . . how long have I been here?" he growled.

"Seven months, in mortal time," Aphrodite answered him.

Rickman was intimidated, fully subscribing to the notion that a deity had controlled his fate. But he tried his best not to show it. "Why now . . . ?" he asked, with breathless apprehension.

Aphrodite began to circulate around the sliders' enemy, compelling him to turn and follow her movements. "Not long ago, I was resting on Mount Olympus when I received a message. It came from beyond my realm, which was quite unusual." Aphrodite bent down to pluck a rose out of the ground, and she began tearing apart its red petals with her fingers. "I still do not know who sent me that message, but it contained great wisdom. It was delivered to me in the form of an empathic sensation . . . I recalled my previous subjugation of your meager subhuman fur. That memory ignited a surge of presentience. Apparently, another power of equal greatness to myself desired for me to take pleasure in the pain you will inflict upon our mutual foes."

"What are you talking about?" Rickman's eyes boggled as he tried to process Aphrodite's cryptic words.

Aphrodite fumed with impatience. "I am sending you to seek them out!" she hissed, with naked vengeance in her eyes. "To cause Colin Mallory and his comrades great pain for daring to cross me!"

"You don't say? 'Great pain,' eh?" Rickman, despite all the remarkable things he had seen during his lifetime, remained skeptical. He wondered if Aphrodite was simply stroking her own ego by elucidating a grandiose fantasy that she harbored.

Reluctantly, Aphrodite inched her fingers toward Rickman's rugged skin. As she held back a cringe, the goddess stroked Angus Rickman's flesh, closing her eyes and moaning as she channeled the prescient deluges of pain that Rickman would be destined to inflict on those whom they both despised.

By now, a handful of poorly-dressed peasants had stopped to watch the goddess rant in front of Rickman. From a distance, the Greek plebeians cowered and observed in silence, intimidated by the powerful deity's ire.

"What are you staring at?!" Aphrodite whipped her head around and barked at the peasants. The small crowd of impoverished citizens fearfully scurried away, scattering in all directions.

Rickman crinkled his nose and snarled. "I'm not afraid of you. I've been to hell and back - - what are you going to do? Turn me into a statue again?"

"If you fail to heed my command," the goddess stated, simply. "Besides, this is your chance to exact revenge on your foes. My powers allow me to track Colin and his companions to their present location among worlds. I shall open a portal at the edge of my universe, and send you through it. You will track down our adversaries and destroy them on my behalf."

The defiant adrenaline was still rushing through Rickman's veins too quickly for him to process Aphrodite's words. "You dare to give me orders, goddess?!" he growled at Aphrodite, out of pure rebellion.

Aphrodite fumed. "You fool! I am bestowing upon you the opportunity to bask in the obliteration of those who have caused you a lifetime of agony!!!"

As Aphrodite's words hit him, Rickman took a calculated pause so he could ponder Aphrodite's proposal. "So why don't you just go after them yourself?" he suspiciously asked the goddess, wondering if there might be a catch.

"Now listen here, beast!" Aphrodite had pretty much lost all of her patience with this malformed creature. "I am not doing this for you. You will merely serve as a vessel for me to punish those who have dared to defy my authority. If I leave this world, I may never be able to return. I am unwilling to give up dominion over my kingdom. In simple terms, your life is expendable." She stared Rickman down, sensing how his remaining human cells would gradually die completely over the next couple of years. "I could make you a god, but that would be such a waste. Do you not want to kill these enemies of yours before you perish? Is that not the purpose behind your pursuit of them?"

Rickman looked down at the still-malfunctioning timer in his hands. "I suppose I can only suck out other people's brain fluid for so long . . ." he admitted, realizing how far ahead of him the sliders must have gotten by now. "Fine. If you really can do what you claim, then send me to them right now." He folded his arms, as he stood before Aphrodite expectantly.

"So be it." With a whisk of her hand, Aphrodite had opened a rift in time and space, which appeared as a large, gaping, swirling hole of energy only inches off the ground. She informed Rickman, over the roar of the vortex, "This is a one-way journey! Once you arrive at the destination, you will be on your own! From that point forward, you will be out of my reach!"

The deformed and antsy Colonel Rickman faced the thunderous wind of Aphrodite's portal. "So long, beautiful," he thanked the goddess in jest, turning his head to bid her farewell. Swiveling back toward the vortex, Rickman braced himself and leapt in. "I'm coming for you, my dear Maggie!" his bloodthirsty howl echoed across the transdimensional tunnel.

Once her portal had dissipated, Aphrodite turned back to the new crowd of mortals that had tentatively gathered during the last few seconds. She spotted one particularly muscular, tan, shirtless human male - - a servant who had been running an errand when sidetracked by Aphrodite's scene.

Even from several feet away, Aphrodite could feel what the handsome servant was feeling - - his mortal lust for her flawless physique, and the blood rushing to his loins.

The goddess proceeded to frolic toward him.

* * *
As Malcolm groggily awoke, he saw that he and his friends had been moved. Wade was still absent from their group, but the other seven of them were now sprawled out across the floor, inside a spherical enclosure that appeared to be approximately twenty feet cubed in area and volume. The edges of this strange entrapment were slightly murky, although translucent, for the most part. Outside of their new "prison," a dimly lit sea of spaciousness could be seen.

In other words, there was no real way of deciphering where they were - - aside from knowing they were in Kromagg captivity, obviously.

Malcolm crawled across the cold floor, and began shaking Rembrandt, who was still asleep. "Remmy! Remmy!"

"Huh . . . ?" Rembrandt Brown gradually came to. He opened his eyes to see Malcolm's face looking down at him. "Malcolm? Wh - - what happened?"

"Remmy, the Kromaggs moved us!" Malcolm helped Rembrandt to sit up, and the Cryin' Man took in their gloomy prison that they were enveloped in.

The others began to stir. Maggie sat up next, and Diana opened her eyes next to Maggie.

"We can move again . . ." Maggie realized, taking in their surroundings.

"Bastard 'Maggots!!! Let us out!!!" Rembrandt leapt to his feet with a surge of adrenaline, and charged toward the translucent barrier in heated rage.

"Remmy, no!!" Diana shouted after him, as Mallory and Professor Arturo proceeded to wake up.

Rembrandt paid no attention to his friend's warning. With a sense of desperation, he propelled his body forward and upwards, vainly hoping to penetrate the barrier that kept the sliders penned in. As soon as Rembrandt hit the translucent wall, an electromagnetic flash illuminated Remmy's body, shocking every bone in his skeletal structure and stopping him cold. Remmy slumped to the floor.

This was the scene Janine awoke to.

"Rembrandt!" Maggie shuffled over to him on her hands and knees, followed by Malcolm, Diana, and Mallory.

"I'm fine . . ." groaned Rembrandt, unconvincingly. While he was not seriously injured, the electrocution from the force field had left every cell in the Cryin' Man's body tingling.

"What's going on?" The first sight that the newly-awakened Janine had been confronted with was that of Rembrandt being zapped and falling back, having failed to defeat the Kromaggs' electromagnetic "fence."

"They relocated us while we were sleeping, Miss Chen," the Professor informed her.

Janine looked around in confusion. "So why go to all this trouble? Why didn't they just kill us in our sleep?"

"Because," replied Maggie, who'd had plenty of her own experience dealing with Kromaggs, "they want to get as much information out of us as they can. And since they probably know who we are, we're doubly valuable to them."

"Quite right, human." Another eerily familiar female voice wafted from behind the translucent "fence."

All around the sliders, bright lights flickered on from the ceiling and walls, causing a blinding sensation. Once their eyes had adjusted, the sliders saw dozens of armed Kromagg guards surrounding them on all sides.

However, the commanding officer who had taken center-stage looked awfully recognizable - - at least, to four of the sliders. She stood tall and proud, her slender figure adorned in a decorated Kromagg military uniform. Mary stood by Kesh's side, her eyes modestly and meekly staring at the floor.

"Colonel Kesh?!" spat out Maggie, identifying the soldier in shock.

"It's 'Lieutenant Kesh,' actually," she responded, in a superlative tone of voice.

"She got a promotion?" Mallory looked at Diana, Maggie, and Rembrandt, bewildered. "How?" he gaped. "Didn't she die on the manta base?" He directed his next statement at Kesh. "Didn't you die on the manta base?"

Lieutenant Kesh pressed her lips together in amusement. "Hardly."

"Wait, you know this brood?" Janine asked her friends, referring to Kesh.

Rembrandt coughed raucously, trying to catch his breath so he could answer Janine. "She's the commanding officer who oversaw Wade's implantation. We thought she blew up when Wade destroyed the Kromaggs' command center - - the one that deployed space folds."

Lieutenant Kesh served up a tiny smirk for them. "That was not me," she told them, enjoying the suspense. "I was nowhere near 'Earth 50' when your Ms. Wells hijacked our achievement. No, the 'Colonel Kesh' whom you encountered was bred from the same two Kromagg specimens at the same time as myself."

Diana was taken aback. "Your sister?"

Rembrandt glared at Lieutenant Kesh. "Well, that would explain why you and her have the exact same butt-ugly face."

Mallory wore an odd combination of astonishment and amusement. "Kromagg twins?"

"So she was your identical twin sister?" Maggie said to Kesh.

Kesh stuck up her nose. "Kromaggs do not cling to such sentimental bonds as you humans. It is one of your greatest weaknesses as a species."

"And I suppose a Kromagg sign of 'strength' is chewing through the umbilical chord on your way out?" Janine rolled her eyes upward.

Kesh replied to Janine's retort with a pseudo-chuckle. "Do not underestimate our intelligence. We have tracked your long-term movements every step of the way, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. And here we are."

"So you have been tracking us through every world we slide to?" Diana confirmed. "Through the device you implanted in Quinn?"

With a coarse affirmative nod of her head, Kesh asked the group, "Speaking of which, why is Mr. Mallory not currently with your party?"

"He took a little road trip," quipped Maggie, in a wise-ass tone.

"Where is he?" Kesh demanded.

"I have a better question," Mallory piped up, putting on a fake smile of charm. "How did you know about our visit to the manta base when that entire dimension was vaporized?"

As her boots clacked against the floor, Kesh made her way over to a spot from which all the sliders had a clear view of her. The Kromagg lieutenant swept her arm in a horizontal motion, somehow activating a data stream that rained down from the ceiling.

The digital video feed from three years earlier showed Rembrandt, Maggie, Diana, and Mallory being surrounded by armed Kromagg guards. Lieutenant Kesh's biological sister, who had been in control of the manta base at the time, had already strode into the camera's frame at some point before the data stream was activated. She stood before the four sliders upon encountering them for the second time that day, sizing them up once again.

"How refreshing to actually underestimate a human mind for once," commented the biological sibling of Lieutenant Kesh. "It's a mistake I have no intention of making twice." The vicious colonel reached over to the hydropod that Wade was encased in, and turned the dial to sedate the cyberiad. "Clever human, indeed," Kesh remarked, shooting a glance in Mallory's direction.

Mallory flashed her a cute yet defiant smirk. "To know us is to love us."

"But to no avail," Kesh retorted. "You are just in time to witness the greatest triumph in the history of the Kromagg race. The liberation of our homeworld." She pressed a button to turn on the intercom. "Bridge, this is Kesh," she relayed her instructions to the control room. "Stand by for launch countdown. Initiate transdimensional fold." Turning her attention back to the sliders, Colonel Kesh smugly explained to them, "Once our ship is past the Slidecage, we will bombard the planet with an anti-human plague. And we owe this all to your friend and her colleagues." Kesh indicated Wade and the other cyberiads, still trapped in their hydropods. "Sad to say, but the prolonged psionic effort of this mission will probably burn their brains down to cinders. Fortunes of war . . ."

The streaming video that recounted this scene from three years ago was suddenly paused in place, and the likenesses of these players on the video feed became frozen in time.

"This security tape was transmitted offworld from Outpost 50 only minutes before that dimension ceased to exist," Lieutenant Kesh harshly narrated. She cast a critical glare upon Rembrandt, Maggie, Diana, and Mallory. "The four of you were added to our database of transdimensional fugitives. This little escapade is what convinced us to place a bounty on your head, Mr. Brown." She stared directly at Rembrandt. "When Ms. Wells obliterated our project, it only underscored how detrimental your influence was to the Dynasty's future survival."

"So where's Wade?" Rembrandt demanded from Kesh. "You wanna know what happened to Quinn so badly . . . you tell us what you did with Wade, first. She'd better be safe!"

"Or you'll do what?" sneered Kesh, holding in her temptation to chortle at Rembrandt's hollow threat. The lieutenant whisked her hand in another steady motion, shutting down the paused video feed and retracting the data stream. "Your impudence will only get you a more painful mind probe."

Rembrandt shuddered, as he observed the terrified expressions on his friends' faces. He couldn't bear to put them through that.

"Look, we're not going anywhere," Diana tried to reason with Lieutenant Kesh. "So why don't you just tell us why you brought us here? How did you bring us here, anyway? And what do you have to gain?"

Kesh pursed her lips together, before saying to Diana, "You have a logical mind. So unlike most humans. You are correct that we sought you out for purposes other than just random torture." She turned to address Mary, whose eyes were still locked on the floor. "Mary, why don't you explain to our 'guests' how they got themselves into their current predicament. They may possibly comprehend the technology more easily if they hear it from a fellow homo sapien."

Mary finally took her eyes off the floor, making nervous eye contact with Diana through the force field. "You were brought here, to this exact dimensional point, by a 'pandimensional energy snare,' which generates a magnetic pull across multiple worlds." She averted her eyes away from the sliders, choosing to focus in on the wall across the room. "The Kromagg Dynasty programmed its cyberiads to telepathically emit a stream of numerical coordinates in a continuous loop. Due to the random nature of your destination selection, they knew it would only be a matter of time before the cyberiads' hyperspatial data aligned precisely with those on your translocation device."

"So you had the cyberiads feed those numbers into our timer?" Diana didn't want to tell them that Malcolm had made psychic contact with Gretchen. If the Kromaggs realized one of their human prisoners had the mental capacity to interact with the cyberiads from afar, they might simply take Gretchen's life.

"Cyberiads?" Maggie sounded appalled. "So you rebuilt your fleet?"

"Of course," Kesh replied, with a sinister grin. "It was our only hope for exterminating your kind. After all, do you not intend to do the same to us?" She raised her eyebrows, knowingly.

Mallory hissed to his friends, through gritted teeth, "I think they know about the virus . . ."

"Yes, very resourceful." Kesh began circulating around the "fenced" force field, compelling the sliders to follow her footsteps with their eyes. "Based on how efficiently you've decimated so many of our outposts, I assume this virus is airborne? I must commend your sense of strategy. You have managed to slow the Dynasty down, forcing us to sequester our own soldiers. Most of the Humagg hybrids we have deployed to those dimensions end up being . . . how would you humans word it? . . . sacrificial lambs."

"Cannon fodder," Rembrandt seethed, under his breath.

Kesh made her way back over to Rembrandt. She stopped right in front of him, protected by the force field that separated them, and crossed her arms. "But now that we have you in our possession, we can draw blood samples from you and your companions, in order to create an antidote." She raised her eyebrows. "Kromaggs everywhere sincerely thank you, Mr. Brown."

Rembrandt was totally frozen, paralyzed. His whole body had gone numb, after hearing Kesh's words.

"Now, I can make this entire process very quick and painless for your friends, Mr. Brown . . . IF you agree to cooperate. That means telling us what happened to Quinn Mallory." Kesh leaned toward Remmy, her nose inches away from the transparent electromagnetic barrier that divided them. "Why is he no longer a member of your little group?"

The Cryin' Man used every ounce of strength he had to contain his rage. "You want answers, 'Magg? . . . you come and get them yourself!" he spat out at Kesh. Remmy was unwilling to sell out Quinn and Colin voluntarily, and vowed that if the Kromaggs wanted to obtain that information, they'd have to do it by force. "Dissect my brain, find what you need."

"With pleasure." Lieutenant Kesh confidently backed away from Rembrandt, a gleeful glint of triumph in her beady eyes. She acted as though she was about to stride away, but then stopped, swerved her body toward Rembrandt's general direction, and spoke with a sense of happenstance that was clearly calculated and rehearsed. "Oh, and Mr. Brown, before we begin the interrogations, I assume you still would like to know what we have done with your dear Ms. Wells?"

With another wave of her hand, Kesh had activated a second data stream, which appeared on the wall once again in plain view of all the sliders. Through the transparent electromagnetic walls, they watched as Wade's current situation became clear.

The streaming video feed showed Wade, strapped upright in a chair, completely immobilized. She appeared to be trapped in an even more cramped "cell" than the rest of the sliders were in. It was surrounded by a similar electromagnetic barrier. Wade's eyes were covered by a metallic bar that hung down from the ceiling, horizontally curved so that it appropriately molded with the shape of her cranium, while obscuring her entire line of vision from one ear to the other.

"Is . . . is she still alive?" Malcolm eked out, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"Oh, very much so," affirmed Lieutenant Kesh. "She can hear whatever we decide she should be told. However, we felt it was imperative that we suspend her capacity to freely move any of her appendages - - including her eyes. After all, we wouldn't want Ms. Wells to find some way to utilize any of her telekinetic abilities in an offensive manner."

A rumble arose from Rembrandt's stomach. "Don't you hurt her!" he warned Kesh and the other Kromagg guards who were stationed around the room.

"You are in no position to make threats, Mr. Brown," reiterated Kesh, with derisive amusement in her voice. She retracted the data stream, and the image of Wade vanished.

"Oh yeah? You can't keep us in here forever." Rembrandt stared at Lieutenant Kesh, defiantly. "And the moment you try to extract my blood to create your antidote, the virus will kick your 'Maggot asses. Bet ya didn't think of that when you decided to lock us behind this nifty little force field of yours?"

"Bravo," Kesh condescendingly clapped her hands in fake applause. "You outsmarted us. Your blood is indeed toxic to my species." She paused, in mock contemplation for effect, as a beat passed. "However, there are some individuals on my side of the war who ARE immune to your viral pathogens." Kesh shouted over to some of the guards, commanding them, "Bring her in."

A mechanical door slid open, shedding a ray of exterior light into the dark, spacious chamber. As the Kromagg guards at the doorway moved aside, they cleared a path for a curvy, feminine, silhouetted figure.

Another light from above sprayed down upon the recent arrival, bathing this human female in glowing fluorescence. Her chocolaty brown skin and frizzy, reddish-brown hair were made visible by the neutrally tinted lights.

Rembrandt's beating heart nearly jumped up into his throat, as he recognized and verbally addressed the Kromaggs' apparent human ally with an emanation of incredulity.

"Grace . . . ?"

* * *
Two Kromagg guards were striding down a dim corridor in unison. Both of them gripped their large, sturdy weapons, heading straight for the central control room.

"What is the plan for interrogating the transdimensional fugitives?" one of the soldiers asked his compatriot, as they orally communicated in their native Kromagg tongue.

"Lieutenant Kesh has instructed Dr. Venable to appeal to the human emotions of Rembrandt Brown," answered the other Kromagg soldier, who happened to be a personal aide to Kesh's second-in-command. "If that interrogation proves fruitless, we will extract additional information from each of Mr. Brown's companions, one by one. After a thorough inquisition of these seven humans, we will execute them in gradual succession, right before Mr. Brown's very eyes."

"And if he still resists?" the first soldier countered, throwing out another hypothetical.

"I cannot imagine that he would," offered the second soldier. "But if Mr. Brown does somehow tolerate the complete massacre of his friends, we will still have samples of their blood. We can place Rembrandt Brown in cryogenic suspension, until the viral antibodies have been fertilized. Then, we can bring Mr. Brown out of stasis, and force him to witness the destruction of his own species."

The conversational rumbling of their shared Kromagg dialect was cut short by a spontaneous anomaly of light. It had materialized as a bubbly mass of luminescence at the end of the hallway that the two Kromagg soldiers were proceeding down.

Both of the simian soldiers grunted in stupor, as a humanoid figure tumbled out of this bright rift. The unexplainable tear in space-time sealed itself shut, as the hairy form of Angus Rickman crawled to his knees.

Rickman stared up at the hideous faces of the uniformed Kromaggs, although he was not terribly fazed by their appearance. "Who are you?!" he growled. "Where am I?!"

This was the first time Rickman had ever seen a Kromagg.

Each of the Kromagg soldiers raised his hefty weapon and fired straight down at Colonel Rickman. The deranged madman howled as waves of medium-voltage energy from the Kromagg weaponry stunned him into submission.

"What is this creature?" one of the soldiers queried. "And how did he get here?"

"We shall find out soon," uttered the other one.

Together, they lifted Rickman's rugged arms. One of the soldiers handed an arm off to his partner, who clasped onto both of the colonel's wrists. The Kromagg soldier who gripped their prisoner unilaterally took on the task of dragging the unconscious Rickman down the corridor, while the other soldier spotted them, armed with his high-tech stun gun.

Soon, they had arrived in the epicenter of Kromagg Command, where the sentries shocked their superior with this newly-acquired prisoner.

"Where did you find this animal?" demanded General Konntul. His dark, turnip-shaped head remained staunchly serious, soliciting an arrogation of respect from any and all subordinates.

"He arrived through a vortex," one of them diffidently responded. "But it was unlike any vortex I have ever seen . . ."

Rickman was coming to, as his advanced adrenaline allowed him to recover from blows to the head faster than most humans would. "Where are they . . . ?" he mewed, fighting through groggy deliria. "Where are . . . the sliders . . . ?"

"The sliders?" General Konntul repeated Rickman's words, clearly intrigued.

"My dear Maggie . . . and Quinn Mallory . . . I will kill them!" Rickman had snapped to alertness, regaining his sense of dispatch. He gritted his teeth and snarled, fighting against the restraints of coarse Kromagg hands.

"Sliders? Quinn Mallory?" Konntul suspiciously regurgitated the words that had spewed out of Rickman's mouth. The general gave his subordinates a hard stare. "How does he know Quinn Mallory? Is this cretin under the employment of our enemies?"

"We do not know, sir," replied one of the soldiers, nervously.

General Konntul seethed, and yanked Rickman up off the floor by his collar. "Then I will find out!" He asked his soldiers, "Is Lieutenant Kesh still debriefing the prisoners?"

"Yes, sir . . ."

With an impatient grunt, General Konntul roughly pulled the still-unsteady Rickman out of the room.

* * *
Kesh gave Rembrandt a cagey smirk, watching as the Cryin' Man sized up Dr. Grace Venable with a mixture of incredulity and indignation.

"Mr. Brown looks perturbed," Kesh commented aloud, to no one in particular. She sprouted a titillated smile for Rembrandt. "Ah, so you and the good doctor ARE acquainted, after all?"

"Of course." Grace shot a side-glare at Kesh. "You should know by now I wouldn't lie to you. It would jeopardize our agreement." She moved closer to the force field, reading Rembrandt with her conflicted eyes. "Long time, Remmy."

"Not long enough for me . . ." Rembrandt eyed Grace with utter revulsion.

Mallory watched Rembrandt and Grace glare each other down. "Um, you two know each other?"

Maggie took the other sliders aside, and whispered to them. She began explaining who Grace was and how they'd met Grace.

"You couldn't have ended up here!" Rembrandt protested to his former lover. "We turned you over to the authorities on your Earth."

With a modest nod of her head, Grace replied, "Until the Kromaggs reinvaded my world. It turned out the initial supply raid wasn't enough to satisfy their leaders, so the mantas came back for complete domination. They broke me out of my London prison cell." She glanced above Rembrandt's head, reflectively. "I agreed to work for them again, in exchange for amnesty."

"The Dynasty felt that Dr. Venable would prove to be quite useful at some point," Kesh broke in, still trying to repress the demented glee in her voice. "How right we were."

Rembrandt ignored Kesh and stayed focused on Grace. "How can you even look at yourself in the mirror?" he asked her, his vocals stained with pure disgust.

Grace looked hurt and irate at the same time. "You betrayed me, Rembrandt," she accused him, her voice shaking.

"You betrayed your species, Grace," countered Rembrandt, shaking his head. It was clear to him that if this woman had any remorse at all, it was buried deep beneath her flesh and bones.

"Didn't you learn anything?" Maggie piped up, speaking angrily at Grace. "You saved Quinn's life, dammit! A human life. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Grace released a regretful sigh. "I did what I had to do for my own survival," she said, and shifted her lingering eyes from Maggie back to Rembrandt.

Their exchange was interrupted by the door to the chamber opening and releasing another gush of light from the exterior corridor. More Kromagg guards ushered a decrepit, moaning, hunched-over body through the metallic doorway. As they pulled this struggling person into the light, the fluorescence beat down on his shaggy chin. All seven sliders were terrified at what they saw.

"This . . . creature arrived in the facility only minutes ago," announced General Konntul's voice, as he emerged from the shadows. Marching over to Lieutenant Kesh, Konntul indicated Rickman's hideous appearance. "He has given us no indication as to where he comes from, or how he was transported here. I believe he could be a misguided human experiment gone badly awry."

Kesh's gaze bounced from Rickman over to the others. "Perhaps we should turn him loose on our 'guests'?"

Rickman continued to snarl, squinting in discomfort as the fluorescent light bothered his corneas.

But Maggie, still overcome with the initial distress of seeing her enemy again, finally reacted aloud. "Rickman?!" she practically screamed, balling her fists while remaining conscious of the electromagnetic barrier that penned her in. In another second, her voice shrunk to a confused quiver. "But - - but . . . you died? . . . didn't you?"

Diana came to Maggie's side. "We saw Aphrodite turn him into a bronze statue," she reminded Maggie.

"I was freed," Rickman bared his pointy teeth at them, in satisfaction. "We have some unfinished business to attend to, Maggie dearest . . ."

"You bet your neanderthal ass we do!" Maggie pounded her fists against the energy barrier, before Diana could stop her. Maggie jumped backward and shrieked, as the force field shocked the flesh of her knuckles.

"Ah. So you're acquainted with him, as well? What an ironic stroke of good fortune for the Dynasty." Kesh smiled sadistically at Maggie, and then whipped her head around toward Rickman. "Take this . . . monster to one of the interrogation cells," she ordered the guards. "We'll put him to good use, in time."

"Rickman, I swear to you, I'll . . . !" Maggie ranted a variety of colorful obscenities, as Mallory, Diana, and Rembrandt all cohesively restrained her.

Meanwhile, Rickman teasingly licked and puckered out his lips at Maggie, while intermittently flicking out his tongue. He leered at her and cackled, even as his Kromagg wardens dragged Rickman out of the room.

Once Rickman was gone, Kesh cleared her throat to get everyone's attention. "Dr. Venable," she spoke to Grace, "perhaps if our 'guests' heard some firsthand accounts from you, describing the scope of our activities, they would be more cooperative?"

"Listen . . ." Grace said, glazing her eyes over the seven interdimensional travelers. She felt it was time to try to talk some sense into them.

"Save it," Mallory cut her off. Despite having never met either of them before, he gave Grace and Mary a sharp, cold stare. "We don't want to hear anything you have to say. Not after selling out your entire species."

Mary shyly dropped her head to the floor, while Grace turned to look at General Konntul.

"You cannot get through to them?" he asked, impatiently.

"If I could have a few minutes alone with them . . ." Grace proposed, her head oscillating back and forth between Konntul and Kesh.

Kesh sighed, and then snapped her fingers at the guards. "Allow Dr. Venable five minutes alone with the prisoners." She no longer even bothered to put up the front of cloaking her semantics by using the word "guests" as a reference to the sliders.

As all of the Kromagg guards filed out, Kesh and Konntul both gave Grace expectant looks. The general and lieutenant accordingly followed their subordinates out of the chamber, leaving all of the humans alone together.

"You fools! I'm trying to help you!" Grace shouted at the interdimensional rebels - - most pointedly at Rembrandt. "The Kromaggs WILL kill all of you if you don't do what they want!"

"What exactly is it that they want?" shot back Janine, with tired skepticism in her tone. "Are you seriously trying to convince us that we can avoid interrogation somehow?"

"If you play your cards right," Grace put forth. But none of them were buying it.

Mary took her eyes off the floor, and made eye contact with Rembrandt and Arturo. "The Kromaggs may not simply kill you. They have the ability to do much worse."

Arturo returned Mary's stare, critically. "Madame, why should we give credibility to anything you say?" he challenged her. "The last time we crossed paths, you helped set up an entire ruse so the Kromagg Dynasty could track our journey."

"You faked your own death just to gain favor with your masters," Rembrandt fiercely spurned Mary, adding to the Professor's contempt. "You played us. You exploited our sympathies. As far as I'm concerned, you're just a lying piece of trash."

Mary winced, their words striking an emotional chord in her. "Please understand, I had no choice."

"There's always a choice," Rembrandt negated her claim. "But you took the easy way out. You just blew in whichever direction the wind took you. I spent three months stuck in Kromagg hell because of people like you!"

Mary didn't respond. She simply bowed her head in shame.

Grace lightly touched Mary's arm next to her, while scowling at Rembrandt. "You just don't get it, do you? You have no clue what kind of even worse hell you're in for, if you resist. I've seen the things the Kromaggs have done to test subjects from other worlds. I've helped them do it!"

"Is that all we are to you now? 'Test subjects'?" Maggie turned her back on Grace and Mary, unable to look at them any longer.

"I've been with these apes for the last seven months," Grace emphasized, trying to get through to them. "They've made so many scientific advances since you last saw them. Your determination to spread your virus across the multiverse only makes the Dynasty even more hell-bent on defeating you. Don't you see? I can prepare you for what you're in for. Maybe I can broker some kind of a deal, at least for some of you . . ."

"Get out of my face!" Rembrandt spat out, in complete revulsion. He was clearly putting this conversation to a definitive end.

Grace sighed, gravely. "You have no idea what you're doing to your friends, Rembrandt."

She and Mary turned their backs on the prisoners and sauntered out of the chamber.

The slam of the metallic doorway had a hostile, ominous sound to it.

* * *
Hours had passed. The seven sliders had been left alone in their spherical prison. They sat in silence, occasionally speaking to one another at intervals. Not that there was much to say.

As Diana had admitted earlier, they weren't going anywhere.

Maggie gulped, leaning her head against Rembrandt's shoulder from where they sat on the floor. "Do you think they're listening in on us?"

"You can bet on it," Rembrandt muttered.

"That's probably why they summoned their guards out of the room," said Arturo, glancing cautiously upward at the dimmed lights that splashed down on them. The eerie brightness only partially splattered against the sliders' faces.

"So they're hoping we'll let our guard down?" Diana tried to understand the Professor's reasoning. Despite her own intense personal hatred for the Kromaggs, and her burning desire for vengeance against them, Diana had forced herself to remain extremely calm during this entire situation - - mainly because she knew someone had to take control, as the rest of her friends successively began to flip out. "They're making the atmosphere less intimidating, to trick us into giving something away?"

"It's not gonna work!" Mallory pointedly called out, loudly projecting his voice toward the ceiling. "We know what you're trying to do!"

No response.

"What's going to happen to us?" quivered Malcolm. "What about Gretchen? I swear she brought us here! You don't think the Kromaggs brainwashed her?"

"No, I can't believe that," Remmy said, putting on a confident front for Malcolm. Silently, he had been wondering the same thing himself. Since the Kromaggs had the means to turn Wade into a human computer, who knew what else they were capable of!

"You'd think they'd at least give us some food," sulked Janine. As if on cue, her stomach growled with hunger pains. "They're not going to learn anything new from us if we starve to death."

"Janine, how can you think about food at a time like this?" Maggie snapped, harshly. She crinkled up her face, irritated with Janine. "All you ever do is complain! Well enjoy it while you can, because we probably won't be alive much longer for you to dump on!"

Rather than shooting back one of her standard retorts, Janine just blinked several times while staring at Maggie. Usually, she gained great satisfaction and amusement from getting Maggie's temper riled up. But this time, something was different. Something in Maggie's voice. It was much more frantic. Not something you'd hear from the indomitable Maggie who never gave up. This wasn't the indignant, proud, headstrong Maggie Beckett who always had to get in the last word with combative superiority.

No, this Maggie sounded downright helpless - - almost as though she was admitting defeat. Janine watched curiously, as Maggie snuggled closer to Rembrandt, cowering in his arms. Janine noticed that Maggie's face was uncharacteristically streaked with tears of helplessness.

They barely noticed an imposing Kromagg figure stalk through the mechanical doorway as it slid open. He stood at the edge of the force field, sizing up all of the prisoners. Some gun-toting miscellaneous Kromagg guards had followed him into the chamber.

"Her!" They recognized the voice of General Konntul, whose stubby finger pointed straight at Janine.

"Me?" Janine indicated herself with her hands. She had no idea why she would be singled out before any of the others.

One of the guards had armed a hefty weapon, which was much larger than the standard defensive machine guns used by Kromaggs. He angled in toward Janine, and fired.

"What are you doing?!" The words had barely left Janine's mouth before she spotted an odd-shaped impediment fly right through the normally-indomitable force field, landing with almost perfect precision by Janine's feet.

Another translucent barrier of energy sprung up from the crystal on the floor beneath Janine. In the next moment, Janine Chen found herself trapped within her own bubbly "cage," independent from the greater energy barrier that domed and encircled the septet of explorers.

Mallory exhaled, remembering this same technology from not too long ago. "The containment crystals," he said, identifying it. "The same ones the Humaggs used when they invaded Michael Mallory's penthouse on Kromagg Prime!"

"Oh, great . . ." Janine rolled her eyes, and slammed her hands against the solid yet transparent surface that now separated her from the outside world.

General Konntul had removed a smaller green crystal from his pocket. He held it out, directed at Janine. "You will be coming with us, human," he stated.

A magnetic pull caused the "energy bubble" - - with Janine inside of it - - to slide across the floor and pass right through the edge of the force field, which a human body otherwise couldn't penetrate. As Konntul and the other guards exited the chamber, the Kromagg general carried the green crystal in one of his hands, pulling Janine along with him in a virtually magnetic fashion.

Janine Chen nearly burst out laughing as she witnessed herself - - from inside this enclosed orb - - gliding down the dank hallway. Her situation seemed so surreal that is was ludicrous. Janine felt as though she was some human mannequin on display for the Kromagg Dynasty to gawk at, serving as an expositive centerpiece in this procession of evil. It felt like her garish, superfluous captivity was merely for show.

"Now I know how zoo animals feel," she muttered.

The Kromaggs directed Janine's "bubble" into a smaller room, where a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist's office was reclined backward. It was just calling for Janine to be strapped in and have her brain picked apart.

"Is it time for my fluoride rinse already?" Janine cracked, as the ominous sight of this lone chair caused fear to truly proceed to set in.

Her sarcastic quip was answered by a hissing sound. Janine began to feel faint and light-headed. The gaseous substance was somehow being pumped into her bulbous prison.

"Well, at least they're giving me Novocain first . . ." Janine silently thought to herself, while losing consciousness.

When she came to, Janine saw she had been firmly strapped into the "dentist's chair," unable to move any of her limbs. A myriad of tubing protruded into the various spots along her arms. The Kromagg figures standing around her all wore astronaut-like hazmat suits. They were clearly cognizant of and prepared for the possibility that Janine might be carrying the anti-Kromagg virus.

The only parts of Janine's body she could really move of her own will were her eyes and her mouth - - and even they felt numb. Her remaining senses tightened, and Janine went on the defense.

"So, since this is my first interrogation, don't I even get a goody bag?" Janine clenched her jawbone, in terse preparation for whatever they were about to do to her. "I need something to commemorate this moment. Where's my 'Welcome-to-Hell' coffee mug?"

She recognized General Konntul's piercing eyes through the helmet of his hazmat suit. "You are the transdimensional fugitive whom we know the least about," he said, audible through a voice communication device attached to his protective headwear. "It is time for us to become acquainted."

Janine screamed out in agony as a searing burst of pain unexpectedly shot through her forehead. She could literally feel Konntul's claws scratching and digging through her brain.

As Janine struggled to breathe normally amid the intrusive agony, she concentrated on thinking certain thoughts. General Konntul wanted information from her, and that was exactly what Janine intended to willingly give him.

Konntul trudged into Janine's mind with unflagging valor. He found himself standing on a brightly lit stage, above the captivated gazes of hundreds of human eyes shrouded in the darkness. As Konntul swiveled his head, he spotted a male and female dancer linking arms while they stood in the center of the stage. The male dancer wore skin-hugging purple tights with his red hair tousled and his pinkish face painted kabuki white. His partner, the female dancer, wore a fluffy, frilly blue leotard with a matching tutu that dropped below her knees. The female dancer had her long, silky black hair pulled back with ladybug barrettes and fastened to the top of her head. She stood there with an energetic, goofy grin plastered across her face as she and her partner began a synchronized succession of avant and arričre steps.

That female dancer was Janine Chen.

As the ballerina and her counterpart physically separated from each other, Konntul couldn't help but watch in compulsive fascination at their respective divertissement. Janine gingerly rotated her body, completing a series of soft pirouettes while in the Arabesque position.

Janine's male partner, meanwhile, executed a smooth développé, unfolding his leg as he raised it. For a man, he was remarkably limber - - almost like a spaghetti noodle. His movements were independent from Janine's, and if their terre-ā-terre had any connection, as far as storytelling, Konntul possessed neither the temperament nor the patience to interpret it.

This adagio continued to unravel, accompanied by the gentle orchestra music. Janine looked completely withdrawn from reality, staring off into space while lifting her foot in a dégagé move. The male dancer had transitioned to a round de jambe, meticulously circulating his leg outward. He lifted his foot in a passé, flashing the audience a huge, goofy grin.

"Enough of this!" growled General Konntul, obviously not getting any information he found useful. Projecting his thoughts into Janine's, the oafish Kromagg commanded to her, "I do not care about your past occupational toils! I want to know how you came to join Rembrandt Brown's group!"

Even as he extracted those words from his own mouth, Konntul mentally delved farther into Janine's consciousness with antsy expectancy. He saw flashes of multiple imagery, none of which he recognized: Pearl Chen ranting with haughtiness, Vera Serrano laughing with psychotic frivolity, Admiral Gareth Mackay gagging as a machete pierced his gut. All of these firsthand perspectives from Janine's memory, unfamiliar to Konntul, phased in and out of Konntul's telepathic reach, one blurry enigma after the other.

Suddenly, they were back on-stage, in the extravagant opera house. The music from the orchestra pit was louder, faster, narrating the scene as Janine and her male dance partner jointly rollicked across the stage together in allegro.

Some secondary members of the corps de ballet danced out, adorned in frilly, colorful garments. They began to prance around in deliberate formations surrounding Janine and her stage partner, performing a fluid enchaînement that seemed to speak to the movements of the two main dancers.

Janine moved away from the male dancer, initiating a variation as the spotlight shone down on her. She inched across the stage in a careful pas de bourrée while the female members of the ensemble circulated around Janine as they performed soft glissades en tendu.

"Tell me of your attempts to breach the Dynasty's security!" commanded General Konntul, plaintively trying to sweep aside the sprite-like humans who rotated around Janine.

But all he got in response was a silently defiant tingle, as the orchestra music accelerated. Janine sprinted all over the stage in a series of complicated sautés and jetes. The females of the corps de ballet allowed their bodies to follow Janine in camber, occasionally pivoting in détourné according to whichever direction Janine had shifted her body in.

Konntul found himself inexplicably captivated by this mere human woman's dexterity, distracted with trying to visually keep up with her.

The human male seemed almost sorrowful in his measured advances toward his counterpart of the opposite sex. The Oriental ballerina simply ignored him, launching into a plié before performing an entrechat as though she was a rocket ship launching into outer space.

Even as Konntul reached for the information he desired out of Janine's mind, his hand felt somehow whisked away. This happened as the male ballet dancer proceeded toward Janine in a cabriole while the music quickened in its pace. He appeared to be trying to capture Janine's attention, doing a succession of virile battements. Meanwhile, Konntul's own head throbbed with each kick.

Janine passionately leapt upward in a pas de chat as the music intensified to its peak. Upon landing, she spun on her leg in a fouetté, confronting her stage counterpart with a hopelessly vapid expression still on her face.

The orchestra proceeded into the coda. Janine lifted herself up in a grand jeté, followed by a tour en l'air topped off with a batterie of tremendous ballon as the music gaily taunted Konntul. The male dancer caught Janine in his arms and helped her descend to the floor, so she could end their dance with a triumphant pirouette. Even their anticlimactic port de bras made Konntul's head spin. The music slowed. General Konntul hollered in aggravation.

Konntul emerged from Janine's mind, his face flushed deep crimson. "She is useless!" he complained. "She is wasting our time, and she knows it. She knows nothing but her silly human avocations!" He roared at the subordinate guards, "Send her back!"

Janine smiled surreptitiously to herself, even as more gaseous fumes were fed into her bloodstream intravenously, and she lapsed out of consciousness again.

* * *
Lieutenant Kesh's boots clacked against the floor, as she flowed down the hallway. She was surrounded on both sides by a number of lower simian soldiers who'd been assigned to her security detail.

"The standard protocols will be suspended," she was telling her subordinates, speaking exclusively in their native tongue. "These humans do not warrant the same procedures for disposability as normally applied to our expendable prisoners. We have an unprecedented opportunity to halt the spread of this virus that is so toxic to us. If approached prudently, we may even obtain the knowledge to reverse it . . . and, perhaps, 'turn the tables' on the humans."

Kesh suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, as a blobby mass of energy appeared at the end of the corridor. About twenty feet in front of Kesh and her minions, a tangerine-colored wormhole had completely formed. The thick, textured vortex crudely expelled a human woman from its core. The strawberry-brunette haired, slipshod woman - - whose business-casual attire was rumpled, as though she'd just emerged from a battlefield - - skillfully landed on her feet in a crouched position once she'd exited the quantum anomaly. She was armed with a pistol - - however, that didn't deter Kesh's soldiers from aggressively flanking this human on all sides.

"Identify yourself!" Kesh snapped at the human female, who was fruitlessly struggling to resist the Kromagg guards who'd managed to disarm her.

Logan St. Clair stared back at Lieutenant Kesh, obviously feeling confounded to have landed there, but not seeming terribly thunderstruck to be surrounded by Kromaggs.

"I'm not a threat to you!" winced Logan, wrestling against the Kromaggs who'd seized her arms. Her eyes dashed around the immediate vicinity of the Kromagg facility, with deductive contemplation. "I'm hunting down the sliders."

"Who?" Kesh only was momentarily confused by Logan's reference. After pausing to recall the limited information she and her peers had already gleaned from Rickman, Kesh formed an astute smile across her lips. "What are these 'sliders' you speak of?" she solicited from Logan - - although Kesh had a pretty good idea already.

"They're interdimensional travelers," Logan spat out, ceasing any upper body resistance against her captors. "Six men, four women. Surely your race has encountered them before." Logan's facial expression slowly transformed from uncertainty to portentous caginess.

Kesh pressed her lips together, hiding her delight. "Indeed we have. Although two of them are no longer traveling with their group."

Loan blinked, astonished. "Which two?"

"Quinn and Colin Mallory." Staring peculiarly at Logan, Lieutenant Kesh approached the solo slider. "Why are you pursuing these transdimensional travelers?" she demanded.

"Let's just say they destroyed me, and now I intend to do the same to them," Logan stated, coldly.

"How did you acquire your translocation technology?"

"I've seen what your kind does to humans," Logan defiantly smirked at Kesh. "I'm not telling you anything else until you grant me full amnesty."

"We shall see about that," retorted Kesh, sticking her nose up in the air. "Lock her up!" she commanded to her lower-level cronies, indicating Logan.

"You can't do this! . . . You'll be sorry . . . !" Logan railed in animus as the Kromaggs dragged her away, leaving Lieutenant Kesh standing there with her third-in-command.

"The 'sliders' . . ." uttered Kesh, contemplatively, repeating Logan's reference. She gave her subordinate a smug side-glance. "I think we may have found yet another resource to break down these humans' defenses. Indeed, this could be most entertaining . . ."

* * *
Rembrandt, Maggie, Arturo, Mallory, Diana, and Malcolm sat around helplessly inside of their stasis "cage." With no clocks and no further contact from Mary, Grace, or any of their Kromagg captors, the six remaining sliders were helpless. They could only lounge on the cold, hard floor . . . waiting.

But waiting for what? None of them knew. In some ways, that was the worst part.

Diana tilted her head up toward the ceiling. "It must have been hours by now since they took Janine."

With a muffled gulp, Malcolm whispered, "Do you think she's . . . ?"

"No." Rembrandt cut off Malcolm's verbal thought, straightaway. Then, more calmly, he continued, "The girl's a tough cookie. And they know the least about Janine, out of any of us. Yeah, I'm sure the 'Maggs are squeezing every once of new information they can get out of Mountain Girl."

Maggie was silently fighting back tears. As she finally proceeded to speak, for the first time in hours, the pain was evident in her voice. "They're just going to keep taking us away, one by one. Until we're all gone." She gagged on a throatful of phlegm, but coughed thickly to get it under control. "We have to take them down, the first chance we get. I'd rather die than help these monsters kill off the rest of our species."

"But how do we do it?" countered the Professor, rolling over from his belly onto his back. "What power do we have over these skilled warriors? How could we possibly overtake them?"

"Yeah, they just pump ether in here to knock us out every time they want to perform another interrogation," Diana pointed out, morbidly. "I wouldn't be surprised if they've already drawn Janine's blood and have started working on synthesizing antibodies."

A baleful silence followed Diana's words. Mallory had an unspoken urge to break that inaudible veil, but he couldn't think of any dialogue that seemed appropriate.

In another minute, the six prisoners could hear the metallic door to the chamber entrance slide open. This faint sound was postdated by a crack of light, with soft footsteps echoing against the floor.

"Who's there?" called out Rembrandt, alarmed.

"It's me . . ." came a soft, familiar British intonation.

"Mary?" hissed Professor Arturo, in bafflement. "What in God's name are you doing here? Why did you come back?"

"Are you here to scoop our eyeballs out for your masters?" Maggie contemptuously sneered.

"No," Mary flatly and emotionlessly answered Maggie's snide remark. "I am here to free you."

"Yeah, right!" Rembrandt chided her. In the dark, he folded his arms with skepticism. "Fool us once . . ."

"I swear to you, it's the truth," Mary insisted, her voice drenched with a painful desire for acceptance. "I had to wait until I could make my way to you, alone. The Kromaggs are not watching you at the moment, but this window of opportunity will close very quickly. Please, you must trust me!"

With that, Mary slid a glowing rectangular key against the force field. In a flash of bluish luminescence, the transparent wall came down.

Rembrandt had jumped to his feet, and he emerged from the "cage," pushing Mary out of the way. He suspected it was a trap, but he'd take anything he could get. "Run!" he ordered to his friends.

The sliders' reflexes became keen and responsive. They dashed out of the chamber, emerging into a brightly lit hallway.

"Which way?" Malcolm's voice spoke in terror. The young man balked at the selection of divergent hallways spanning the vista before him and his friends. Every corridor seemed to jut out into a separate unknown direction.

"This way!" Rembrandt hollered, instinctively pointing toward the corridor directly in front of him. No sooner had Remmy's command of initiative resounded than a caustic klaxon began to yelp, acutely penetrating the sliders' ears.

Rembrandt and Maggie hurried in front of their sextet, forging a directional path for the others. They proceeded to lead the rest of the group, preparing to turn its first corner while on the run.

"We gotta get our hands on some weapons . . ." Maggie began to declare, momentarily swiveling to face her sliding companions. But the very moment that words spilled out of Maggie's mouth, the former Marine suddenly keeled forward.

"Maggie?" Diana's voice shook with incertitude. Then, with horror, Diana and the others could see a thick red blotch seep through the front of Maggie's white blouse, over her abdominal area. The sliders shifted their gazes to spot a Kromagg soldier standing not more than three feet behind Maggie, having suddenly appeared from around the corner.

The Kromagg soldier had shot Maggie at point blank range.

Rembrandt had no words. Just uncontrollable rage, as the Cryin' Man lunged at the simian soldier and tackled him. Moving quickly and ferociously, it had taken Rembrandt merely a split second to clobber the soldier with three successive, hefty sucker punches to the face, offensively knocking the sentry out cold.

It all happened too nimbly for the Kromagg guard to defensively respond. In the process, Rembrandt had confiscated the guard's pistol. Shaking, weapon in hand, he kneeled over Maggie, who has no longer breathing.

"Oh, God!" gulped Mallory, practically speechless.

Diana's lip quivered. "Maggie . . ." she meekly said, as tears began to erode her eyes.

To make matters worse, the klaxon continued to audibly grind away over the facility's loudspeakers. It sounded like a pregnant female pterodactyl in labor.

Rembrandt tightened his grip on the pistol. He tensed up, a deadly glare hardening in his eyes. "We've gotta keep moving," he stated, with very little emotion in his tone - - although it was clear from Rembrandt's stone-cold facial expression and shaky knuckles that he was about ready to explode, and basically kept it held in for everyone else's sake.

As the five remaining sliders jetted down the dim corridor, Diana pointed to an oval-shaped crevice that was errantly carved out of the wall. "Look. Over there."

Arturo squinted toward the spot Diana had gestured at. "Is that . . . ?"

"I think it's a sliding machine!" Her heart jumping with bittersweet hope, Diana raced over to the spacious crevice. "It might be a way out of here."

"But we don't have our timer!" Malcolm shouted, over the screech of the klaxon. "We'll have no way to slide anymore!"

Rembrandt twisted his neck around, glancing at Malcolm through pained eyes. "I'm not letting the 'Maggots recapture you guys . . ." He hurriedly turned to Diana. "Can you make it work?"

Stepping forward, Diana began to push some buttons on a panel adhered to the wall. She didn't seem to know what exactly she was doing, but attempted to enter a random coordinate set.

Amid a fissure of wires, the sarcophagus-shaped alcove - - which was only big enough for one person - - became illuminated with titian quantum energy.

"Go!" Rembrandt abruptly pushed Diana into the small, cramped space, and he slammed his knuckles against the activation pad. Diana fell backwards into the funerary-like mold, and within seconds she had vanished from sight, swept up in an interdimensional displacement of photons and ions.

Rembrandt turned to face his three remaining friends, ready to repeat the process. "Malcolm . . ." he began to beckon the youngest member of their team.

But Remmy's intent was bamboozled by a harrowing jolt to his arm. Rembrandt Brown saw another handful of Kromagg soldiers in Nazi-like uniforms rush up from around the corner, and one had fired his weapon with great precision at Rembrandt's elbow.

Amid the screams that exploded from Rembrandt's lungs as he clutched his now-bloody upper joint, Arturo artlessly rushed a couple of the shoulders. The Professor heaved his full hylic weight against the Kromaggs, causing the pristine warriors to topple against each other like dominos. But a forceful boot came down hard on Professor Arturo's spinal chord. Arturo plummeted downward, his jawbone making callous, painful contact with the solid floor. The helpless professor proceeded to feel the valences of numerous Kromaggs form a dogpile onto him.

Mallory's gaze jumped from the outnumbered Arturo to the flesh-scorched Rembrandt. As Remmy fought back howls of agony, Mallory noticed what the Kromaggs intended to do. They had inflicted a non-lethal injury on Rembrandt, with the intent to torture him in a prolonged manner. Through a combination of physical pain and psychological trauma - - having to watch his friends die in a variety of hideous ways - - Rembrandt would be emotionally broken down by their Machiavellian tactics.

Moving with instinct, Mallory shoved Malcolm in the direction of the sliding machine that had previously whisked Diana offworld. "Go, Malcolm!" he painstakingly called out, giving his young friend a push toward the pall-shaped crevice.

But the next thing Mallory saw was a discharge of radioactive light strike Malcolm. It illuminated the teenager's body, highlighting Malcolm's otherwise invisible exoskeleton. Malcolm's final screams of life dwindled to a mere echo, as he was vaporized from existence by a Kromagg plasma weapon.

"NOOOOO!!!!" Horrified, Mallory couldn't believe it. He could not bear to think that Malcolm's life had been snuffed out so expediently and superfluously. Mallory's eyes darted from Rembrandt, who'd been encircled with judiciously positioned weapons, to Arturo, who'd become physically immobilized on the ground.

Yet, all Mallory could think of was Malcolm's senseless demise. Mallory released a primordial roar, and lunged headfirst at the nearest Kromagg soldier. Almost supernaturally, Quinn's fraternal double clasped the Kromagg's neck and snapped it with one crusty motion.

Everything began to move around Mallory in slow-motion. Visually, the movements of the Kromaggs were reduced to a snail's pace. His entire view became compartmentalized into chunks, like shards of broken glass from a shattered mirror.

Slowly, Mallory's skin tingled, and he could see the fractures recoalescing. He was lying on a surgical table, strapped down, unable to move his arms or legs.

Looking down at him, her image made refulgent by bright ceiling lights, was Lieutenant Kesh.

It took Mallory several moments to catch his breath. Only then did he realize this had been an exercise in Kromagg deception. Mallory could feel the pressure from the energy emitted by the translucent force field barrier that separated him from Kesh.

"You!" he seethed at Kesh.

She smirked down at him. "Did you have a nice dream, Mr. Mallory?" she taunted him, with amusement in her voice.

"So, my friends . . . ?" Mallory wanted to brush the perspiration from his face, but his limbs were tightened against the surgical table.

"Yes, they are still alive," Kesh confirmed for him. "All of them."

"It was just an illusion," he said, with stark realization setting in.

"To remind you of our superiority," Lieutenant Kesh stated, raising her eyebrows supremely.

"Don't you mean your manipulation?" Mallory retorted, clenching his muscles.

"Call it what you wish," responded Kesh, haughtily. "We simply desired for you to see what will happen to your beloved companions if you fail to cooperate."

Mallory strained to speak pugnaciously. "You wouldn't."

Kesh snorted at his wishful thinking. "The Dynasty has plundered thousands of worlds, decimated billions of human beings. What makes you think we would treat the eight of you any differently?"

"Because we're not just eight random people," Mallory countered. Even from his constrained position, he relished the thought of somehow making Kesh squirm. "We have information you need. If you kill all of us, that knowledge dies as we take our last breaths."

Lieutenant Kesh's triumphant smirk contorted into a deflated scowl. "We have ways of attaining the information you speak of."

"Then why don't you just go ahead and do it?" he challenged her, cringing in defiance. Although he could barely move, Mallory was determined to prevent Kesh from retaining all of the power in this impossible situation.

Kesh called his bluff. "Ask, and you shall receive," she curtly replied to Mallory. With a snap of Kesh's fingers, a hazmat-suited male Kromagg stepped forward from behind the anterior end of Mallory's position on the surgical table.

Mallory knew what was coming next.

The impact of this Kromagg interrogator's mind scraping against Mallory's neural lobes grated throughout the slider's auditory system. Mallory winced, fruitlessly resisting the release of visual data images from his memory. Close-ups of each slider, in turn, being injected with a viral fluid substance. Wade telekinetically moving a pile of stones in a forest on Witch World. His own body merging with that of the Quinn from Earth Prime, as they fluttered across Dr. Geiger's wormhole generated from the Combine. Leaning in, kissing Wade on the lips for the first time. Quinn and Colin phasing out of sight as they teleported themselves off of Kromagg Prime, away from their longtime friends.

Mallory exhaled, once the interrogator emerged from Mallory's mind. "He does not know how to synthesize the virus nor its antidote. Neither does he have the transdimensional coordinates of the world where this virus originated," the interrogator informed Kesh, referring to the data he'd retrieved from Mallory's mind. He spoke in a heavy Kromagg dialect, to shield his words from Mallory's ears.

Under her breath, Lieutenant Kesh sharply altered a curse word in the Kromagg language.

The interrogator continued to speak heavily in Kromagg, due to Mallory's presence. "The humans disabled their Slidecage device. However, the homeworld is still plagued by a viral agent . . . although one that is different from the one their species originally concocted. The transdimensional fugitives must have released this second pathogen they carry, upon arriving on our homeworld - - undoubtedly in a conscious attempt to preempt our repatriation efforts. Quinn and Colin Mallory have separated from their friends, presumably to preventatively spread this new virus to other parallel dimensions."

Kesh cocked her head, digesting the interrogator's revelations. "What about Ms. Wells?" she spoke to him, still from behind the safety of an invisible energy barrier. "Did you obtain any insight into her newfound powers?"

"Indeed." The interrogator smiled knowingly. "The details are not entirely clear to me, but through some set of circumstances, Ms. Wells acquired telekinetic abilities . . . similar to those inherent in so many of our own offspring. Apparently, homo sapiens can possess it even on worlds where our race never existed."

"Impossible," scoffed Kesh, glancing upward. "Humans are incapable of developing such mental strength on their own. Every telepathic human being we have seen has been co-opted and taught mental projection abilities by the Dynasty before mastering them."

"Believe what you wish," said the interrogator, "but I know what I saw. The human did not acquiesce those memories to me voluntarily." He paused before coyly adding, "You also may be interested to know that Mr. Mallory has romantic feelings for Ms. Wells, which are duly reciprocated."

Kesh pursed her lips together, thoughtfully. Hearing this additional piece of information opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for her. "Very interesting, indeed."

"What shall I do with the prisoner?" The interrogator gestured down at the drowsy Mallory, for whom one hell of a headache had set in.

Lieutenant Kesh tapped her foot for a few moments, and then addressed Mallory in English. "You will not be reunited with your companions, Mr. Mallory. We still have unfinished affairs to attend to, regarding your presence here."

"What do you mean?" Mallory demanded, imploring her with sharp eyes.

Kesh's smile tightened deviously. "If you do not willingly answer our questions, then Wade Wells will be the first of your friends whom we execute." Finishing off her threat, she gestured for the interrogator to leave the room as she was planning to. "And her death will be more excruciating than anything you have seen in our illusions - - by a thousand fold."

They left Mallory laying in the dark, unable to move as his heart raced.

The Kromaggs obviously knew how much Wade meant to him.

And they were not making idle threats.

* * *
Rembrandt had sprawled himself on the cold floor within the sliders' enclosed prison. Hours had passed since the guard had removed Mallory from the cell, and on top of that, they hadn't returned Janine yet either.

Maggie reached over to massage Remmy's shoulder. "They're both tough, Rem. It will take a lot for the Kromaggs to break 'em." But even as she unconvincingly told him that, Maggie's stomach churned and constricted into tighter knots. She couldn't seem to control her shaky voice again, and Maggie's feigned optimism was underscored by a rush of tears. "It's . . . gonna . . . be . . ." But she couldn't choke out the rest of the words.

Remmy silently took Maggie Beckett into his arms, as she wept uncontrollably.

"Rembrandt." The voice that called to him echoed throughout the prison chamber.

The Cryin' Man slowly turned around, recognizing the female voice with revulsion. As expected, he spotted Grace Venable standing outside the energy "cage," looking in at him.

"Go away, Grace. Or 'Helen.' Or whatever the hell your name really is," Rembrandt icily said. At the moment, he was most concerned with being there for Maggie, who had broken down completely.

"Madame, what is your business here?" the Professor confronted Grace, standing up to face her through the translucent wall.

"I've been given permission to take Rembrandt on a 'tour' of our facility," Grace responded, keeping her voice steadied in a business-like tone. "The Kromaggs feel he should see firsthand what all of you are up against. Trust me, it's much greater than anything any of you could ever imagine."

Over his shoulder, Rembrandt shot Grace a glare of pure hatred, while still cradling Maggie in his arms. "I'm not going anywhere with you," he whispered with a baneful hiss.

"You have no choice." Grace solemnly stepped out of the way as a Kromagg soldier emerged from the shadows behind her. In a matter of seconds, the Kromagg had aimed an elongated rifle at Rembrandt through the wall of the force field.

Rembrandt beckoned Diana, and handed off the distraught Maggie into Diana's caring arms. Then, dauntlessly, Rembrandt got to his feet and walked over to the force field's edge, staring down the barrel of the Kromagg's gun with valorous resolve. "So this is how it's gonna end, 'Magg? You're gonna assassinate me with some superbullets that can piece a force field, just to make an example . . . ?"

But Rembrandt suddenly realized that the weapon he was confronting head-on was not just any standard life-snuffer. He had seen this same type of weapon used earlier.

By the time Rembrandt fully realized what it was, the Kromagg soldier had already fired a familiar-looking crystallized "grenade" through the force field. It landed at Rembrandt's feet and immediately blossomed a limpid enclosure around Remmy's body.

The Cryin' Man couldn't believe he'd been duped so easily. He knew he should have expected it. But things were happening so fast, it just hadn't occurred to him as instantly as it could have.

"You bitch . . ." Rembrandt seethed at Grace.

Dr. Venable's eyes dropped to the floor. "It's for your own benefit," she told him.

Rembrandt didn't even bother to protest, as he was pulled away from his friends, confined to his own little rectangular "bubble." Grace clutched a small green rectangrium gem, which she used to extract Rembrandt's glassy pod from the sliders' "cage" and guide him out of the chamber.

Grace and Rembrandt traveled through countless corridors in silence. Ultimately, Grace was the first to break their mutual chagrin. "Aren't you even the slightest bit curious why I'm doing this?"

"No," lied Rembrandt, making sure to keep his voice distant and cold. The truth was: he did want to know what the Kromaggs were up to, and what could possibly be motivating Grace to aid them. He'd thought Grace had recaptured some of her humanity when she healed Quinn's mortal wounds on Thatcher World - - but apparently not.

"It's called self-preservation, Rembrandt," Grace told him, without prompt. It was as though she could read his mind, knew what he was thinking. "The Kromaggs gave me an opportunity, and I took it. Don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing."

"I wouldn't," Rembrandt replied, icily.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," Grace said, muttering with frosty realization. "That's your problem, Rembrandt: you're too emotionally invested in people. You can't figure out how to be resourceful, work with what life throws at you."

Rembrandt bristled at Grace's flippant taunting. "You know nothing about my life. You don't know what it's been like . . ."

"Maybe not," she interrupted him. "But I do know how you and your sliding squad have devastated the lives of so many people on other worlds." She saw, via Remmy's facial expression, that her words had made a psychological impact on his psyche. "Oh, you mean even with Quinn's genius IQ at your disposal for so long, your ragtag team couldn't figure out that every Earth you've slid to would end up being conquered by the Kromagg Dynasty?"

Rembrandt's hardened face didn't change. "There was nothing we could do about that . . . short of leaving Quinn behind. And that wasn't an option for us."

"I see. Always thinking about yourselves first, huh?"

"We started releasing the virus on every new world we passed through, once we figured out how it worked." Rembrandt balled his fists together from inside the containment field. "I know what you're trying to do, Grace, and it won't work. I'm not gonna fall for your reverse psychology."

"Really? It seems to be working pretty well so far." Grace raised her eyebrows at Rembrandt.

"Why do you care, anyway? I'd think all those worlds and people the Kromaggs slaughter would be your last concern."

She didn't answer him. "We're here," Grace announced. The physician stepped back and flicked her hand toward a window seemingly made of glass.

Through the crystalline containment pod, Rembrandt found himself gazing into a quarantined room. Slumped over on a bench against one of the four walls was a humanoid figure, clad in only a simple gown. The gray flesh of his bald, reptilian head contained scales and indentations. The "creature" caught Remmy's eyes through the translucent divider. With pained humanity in his facial expression, the hybrid personage pointed his mostly homo sapien finger straight at Rembrandt, accusingly. "You! I remember you!"

Rembrandt was taken aback. "The Leader?" he muttered under his breath, upon seeing the duplicitous human-turned-hybrid who had once kidnapped Maggie and held her hostage with the intent to kill. Remmy had never suspected he might see this malevolent individual ever again.

"Actually, his human name is Edwin Weir," Grace spoke up, gesturing to The Leader. "The Kromaggs captured him after invading his homeworld, and have learned a lot by performing a cacophony of experiments on his body. 'The Leader,' as he calls himself, has given us a great deal of data on Reticulan physiology. His world's technology has also been fascinating to explore."

The Leader was solely focused on Rembrandt, flaring at the slider with hateful recognition. "You traitors left me high and dry, only to abandon me at the mercy of those monsters . . . !" He abruptly shifted his finger upward toward the ceiling, clearly switching his reference to the Kromaggs.

Grace continued. "Our research from 'Earth 1478' shows that the Americans dissected the earliest Reticulan peace emissaries, and most of the rest of the extraterrestrial species kept its distance from Earth. It seems Mr. Weir was the most developed live specimen the Kromaggs could find who possessed Reticulan DNA. Apparently, alien nucleotides were infused into the human polymer chains of him and his peers, creating these abhorrent genetic defects. Fortunately for us, those flawed medical treatments resulted in a plethora of interspecies science for the Dynasty's geneticists and physicians."

Still fuming, The Leader snarled at Rembrandt, "Why didn't you and your friends bring me with you through your vortex?! I've been at the mercy of these neanderthals, poked and prodded, sliced and sewn back up . . . !!!"

Having reached his breaking point, The Leader propelled forward in a homicidal rage. He clearly intended to penetrate the glass in an attempt to attack Rembrandt. Obviously, he wasn't thinking rationally, since it was unlikely the Kromaggs would have left the "glass" of his cell wall unprotected - - plus Rembrandt himself was still shielded by his containment pod.

As The Leader charged toward Rembrandt, Grace flicked a switch on the wall next to The Leader's cell. In mid-lunge, The Leader's entire body came to a halt, frozen in place several inches above the floor.

Rembrandt's eyes bulged in shock at the surreal sight. "Wh - - what did you do to him?" he stammered, observing The Leader suspended in mid-air.

Grace calmly turned her head to face Rembrandt. "It's just an antigravity field. We use it to keep him from overexerting himself. Don't worry. This 'glass' barrier is impenetrable. From time to time, Mr. Weir tends to forget that fact . . . how it isn't actually glass, but a fortified silicate that's keeping him penned in."

Some hazmat-suited Kromaggs had unlocked and entered The Leader's cell from a backdoor. They approached the mutated Edwin Weir, who was still "frozen" in mid-air, and one of the Kromaggs proceeded to inject him with a syringe from a utility pack.

"Now what are they doing?" Rembrandt, despite his indignation, was peculiarly curious.

"They're giving Mr. Weir a dose of tranquilizer. It's necessary to keep this subject docile when they bring him into the lab," explained Grace.

One of the hazmat-suited Kromaggs nodded at Grace from inside the cell, indicating that they were done administering the tranquilizer to The Leader. Nodding back, Grace flipped the switch on the wall back to its original position.

Inside his cell, The Leader promptly unfroze. He dizzily fell back into the arms of the well-protected Kromagg technicians.

"Intrepid out . . . !" slurred The Leader, slipping out of consciousness.

Grace folded her fingers, and shot a sly look at Rembrandt. "Thanks to you and your friends," she said, "the Kromagg Dynasty gained an unprecedented outlet to study the Reticulan species. If you hadn't passed through 'Earth 1478,' they never would have gotten their paws on him."

In light of his revulsion, Rembrandt had to ask, "What did you do to him?"

"Just some DNA splicing, a little bit of cloning." Grace shrugged off his inquiry. "Several of the Earths you gave the Kromaggs access to have had plenty to offer in the way of human DNA replication. And the clones they've created have been thriving . . . there are quite a few 'Little Edwins' running around in these facilities, for us to observe."

Remmy squinched up his face. "You have no right . . ."

"Lieutenant Kesh would beg to differ," Grace quietly replied. "They view us as a threat to their survival. Of course the Kromaggs are going to do whatever science will allow them to, for the insurance of their survival. And we've discovered many useful possibilities from Mr. Weir's modified physiology: expanded brain capacity, enhanced auditory nerves, self-propulsion, multiple pectoral glands, double eyelids . . ."

"Stop! STOP!" Rembrandt covered his ears. "I don't wanna hear anymore!" He scowled at Grace. "Take me back to my friends! Now!"

"I can't do that, Remmy." Deep beneath her piercing eyes, Grace flashed her former lover a softened gleam. "There's still more you need to see."

Grace Venable began to magnetically pull Rembrandt's crystalline "cage" away from The Leader's cell. She used her handheld crystal to direct Rembrandt through additional corridors for the next half hour. All the while, Rembrandt saw them pass by more electromagnetically sealed cells housing human prisoners in decrepit states of existence.

"You're running a freakin' death camp in here!" Rembrandt shouted at Grace, through the glassy barrier.

The doctor didn't respond. She soon halted their movements in front of a much wider, fuller screen. Looking into it, Rembrandt could see the inside of an elaborate laboratory - - obviously shielded from the outside by another transparent force field. But something - - or rather, someone - - specifically caught his eye.

Kneeling on the floor was a black woman in her early-to-mid forties. She wore a gown resembling green hospital scrubs, and appeared to be oblivious to Grace and Rembrandt's arrival. Her scraggly hair was a kinky, unbraided mess, falling just past her shoulders where it was hastily chopped off.

As the woman turned to stare in Rembrandt and Grace's direction, Rembrandt recognized those unmistakable piercing eyes.

"Dr. Sylvius . . ." he said, recalling the hard-ass geneticist from Organ Donor World.

"We thought she'd be familiar to you." Grace continued, in a subdued voice, "A limited memory scan of this specimen showed us traces of your group's intervention on her homeworld. After you allowed her identity to be consumed by the alien symbiont presently inside of her, an epidemic broke out across her dimension. Alien parasites procreated using humans - - particularly woman - - as their vessels for gestation. Their primary requisite for longevity is heat."

Accordingly, Rembrandt noticed heat lamps built into the ceiling of Dr. Sylvius's cell. The whole enclosure appeared to be balmy, with Dr. Sylvius's own skin covered by beads of perspiration and an oily glow.

"So you sequestered her? Why?" Rembrandt couldn't take his eyes off of Dr. Sylvius, although she gave no indication that she had reciprocally identified him.

"The species that symbiotically lives within Dr. Sylvius and her colleagues - - it has been invaluable to us in our study of cell replication," said Grace. "Especially because it contains some strain of an accelerated growth hormone. In a controlled environment, its behavior has shown the Kromaggs how to develop more sophisticated techniques for cloning."

Rembrandt scrunched up his face, mainly in confusion. "Cloning? Why would you need . . . ?" But in an adroit moment of clarity, the reason became frighteningly evident to Rembrandt as he verbally trailed off.

Picking up on this, Grace magnetically hauled Rembrandt farther down the corridor. It was only a matter of time until they arrived at a heavy steel door, to which Grace punched in a code on a keypad. The metallic doorway slithered open, revealing a stream of neon green light from the interior chamber.

"Where are we?" asked Rembrandt, taking in the gargantuan maze of crisscrossing corridors stretched out before him and Grace. It seemed like miles of twists and turns that no one could possibly navigate their way through.

Then, Remmy heard footsteps in the distance. Countless footsteps belonging to countless pairs of feet. The clacking of boots against cement flooring echoed across this coliseum of endless latitude, growing louder by the second.

And what Rembrandt Brown saw next sent shivers up and down his spine.

Marching in lock-step with each other were at least sixty or seventy Kromagg children, who walked in an irreproachable, systematic procession. The young Kromaggs - - none of whom looked more than ten-years-old - - had formed an obedient line, and they each carried smaller-yet-durable weapons across the left shoulder. All of them were dressed in neatly-pressed black bodysuits as they strode in tandem past Grace and Rembrandt, double-file.

Rembrandt couldn't even speak.

An adult Kromagg voice barked out an order to the simian children, upon which their footsteps came to a collective halt. Another command was belted out at them, and in response, the children-in-arms struck a defensive formation.

Rembrandt stared at Grace in disbelief. "They're . . . they're Kromagg children?"

"Training the next generation of Dynasty manpower," said Grace, without even a flinch. "This battalion is just one of hundreds."

"But . . . but Kromagg women die right after giving birth," choked out Rembrandt. "Limited fertility. That's why the 'Maggs began crossbreeding, right? So how could you have produced so many of them?" He still wasn't sure how to react. He took another look at the militant sequence of miniature warriors. "They're only children, Grace! And . . . and these are PURE Kromagg children - - not Humagg hybrids."

Grace Venable returned his gaze with merely a silent expression of hubris.

"How'd this happen, Grace?!" He was losing it. Rembrandt pounded against the cramped containment field. "You obviously brought me here for a reason, Grace! So spill it! When did the 'Maggs regain their ability to breed?"

With a sigh of pity, Grace began to explain, "Three decades ago, certain Kromaggs who possessed soothsaying abilities had the foresight to advise the Dynasty's military leaders on their species' imminent fertility problems."

"PSYCHIC Kromaggs?!" blurted out Rembrandt, interrupting Grace's narration. Although knowing what their species was capable of, he was surprised it hadn't occurred to him earlier.

"Taking this prophetic advice, the Dynasty made the decision to place thousands of Kromagg embryos in cryogenic suspension, and shipped them off to multiple locations offworld." Grace sounded rather bored having to explain it all, but she was coherent and soft-spoken as she did so. "However, their methods of cryogenics were underdeveloped, and there was no way to fully gestate them to term."

"Then how . . . ?"

"If you'll let me finish." Grace cut Rembrandt off with a sharp reprimand in both her eyes and voice. "In the past five years, the Kromagg Dynasty has utilized more advanced cryogenics from other parallel worlds."

"Don't you mean 'stole'?" sneered Rembrandt.

"Coupled with that progress," Grace commenced, ignoring Rembrandt's dig, "Kromagg scientists adopted a human-conceived 'artificial womb' from one of the worlds their military raided. It apparently was invented by humans on that Earth for men to carry babies to term, after genetic defects prevented pregnant women from doing so."

It mentally clicked for Rembrandt. The monarchy-based Earth where Danielle's double was a duchess and Rembrandt had served as a surrogate father for unborn King Rembrandt in place of his own double . . .

"That 'artificial womb' has repopulated the Kromagg race, allowing it to harvest and fully gestate their species. This scientific innovation compensates for the lack of fetus otherwise endured by past generations of Kromaggs." Dr. Venable finished the recount, and placed her hands on her hips.

"The last five years . . ." Rembrandt closed his eyes, realizing the role he and his friends had unwittingly played in this development. "So how did they grow so fast? Some of those kids can't be much younger than ten!"

"Kromaggs age twice as fast as we do," stated Grace, matter-of-factly. "And we're harvesting more and more of them by the day, all over the multiverse. These young Kromaggs are being trained for war. Many of them will go on to serve as future military leaders, since they will automatically be allowed to excel and ascend to higher ranks over their Humagg counterparts."

"Why are you telling me this?!" Rembrandt had clamped one palm over his face. "If you think this is gonna break me down, Grace, think again. I'll never give up the fight against these monsters, so they'd might as well just kill me right now!" Rembrandt searched Grace's cold, barren eyes for any trace of sympathy. "What happened to your humanity, Grace? How can you so easily aid in the destruction of your own species?"

"Because . . ." She leaned in to intone her rationale to Rembrandt through the pellucid wall. "My own species was willing to throw me to the wolves long before I knew the Kromaggs even existed."

"What are you talking about?"

"My father was Franklin Venable, a surveillance operative for the British government. He risked his life, away from our family, throughout much of my childhood - - he was a double agent, working covertly on behalf of the Crown during the Anglo-Stani War. He suffered in the trenches of Tajikistan to subvert Rasulov . . . but in the end, he was charged with espionage by corrupt U.K. officers - - our own government that we'd trusted."

Rembrandt was now quietly listening. During their previous time together on Thatcher World, Grace had never divulged these details of her family's history to him - - obviously because she'd been hiding her true identity from him throughout their entire romance.

"Luckily, we were able to escape before they could apprehend my father," Grace elaborated. "He arranged to have the deaths of everyone in my family faked, and we fled to Ireland. I was only eight at the time. He moved us all - - my mother, my three sisters - - to the Irish Republic. My dad became 'Gilbert Donovan,' a bourgeois chimney sweep . . . and I took on the name of 'Helen.' We spent the next nine years as free missionaries, constantly on the run . . . until the Green Guard detonated our safe house!" Grace closed her eyes, and a lone tear fell down her cheek. "I was the only member of my family to survive. So one of my father's colleagues, Basil Canterbury, put me on a boat bound for America, which, at the time, had no extradition agreements with Great Britain or any other country. I thought I was safe . . ."

"And that's why you took back your birth name," Rembrandt quietly concluded.

"To honor my father's memory." Grace sniffed, and wiped some more tears away. "One of Basil's contacts got me into medical school at Georgetown. I built a better life for myself, and vowed to keep my family's work alive through my practice."

Rembrandt was torn between feelings of sympathy and reprisal toward this woman. "So how'd you get caught?"

"Bounty hunters," muttered Grace. "They tracked me down in Philadelphia, kidnapped me, and had me shipped back to Europe. I was being tried in the International Criminal Court - - as 'Helen Donovan,' due to a bureaucratic oversight - - when the Kromaggs invaded Luxemburg."

"And the 'Maggs recruited you," Rembrandt finished, with an acrimonious murmur, "to be their patsy."

"I was facing life imprisonment," Grace defended herself, haughtily. "Even behind bars I was still in danger. When the Green Guard discovered I was the only member of my family to survive, they would have sent mercenaries from the Irish Republican after me. Somehow, they would have found a way inside whichever prison I was housed at, and they would have executed me in cold blood. Before they left my world, the Kromaggs provided me safe passage to the nation of California. It was the only place I could be free . . . and even then, I was still always looking over my shoulder."

"How do I know you're not lying, Grace? . . . making this all up?!" snapped Remmy. "You've deceived me before!"

"Why would I lie to you at this point, Rembrandt?!" shot back Grace, her voice emotionally strained. Grace's tone was completely devoid of any trace of deception or desperation - - only sadness and verity.

Rembrandt inhaled with heavy realization. She was right: the Kromaggs, and Grace, clearly had the upper hand right now. Besides, what she was telling him was way too detailed, intricate, and unrehearsed for her to be making it up all on the spot - - even if she had mastered the art of pathological lying in most situations.

The Kromaggs were going to do whatever they wanted to him and his friends. There was simply no motive that could benefit or justify Grace embellishing her personal history to him.

"Why didn't you just tell me all of this in the first place?" sighed Rembrandt. "Back when we were on your world . . . my friends and I could have helped you. We would have found a new Earth for you to live on . . ."

"Get real, Rembrandt," muttered Grace, her eyes dropping to the floor. "There's no way you would have helped me if I had told you I'd worked with the Kromaggs. Or any of the other things I did in my past that made me ashamed to call myself a human being. Besides," she made eye contact with Rembrandt, in a moment of pure sincerity, "I loved you, Remmy. And I couldn't bear the thought of losing you. I knew it would only be a matter of time before other mercenaries came after me in California . . . Agent Hackett just beat them to it. And they would go to any lengths to apprehend me . . . California was free from any conciliation agreement with the U.K., so unauthorized covert operatives were the only way to bring in fugitives. And hitching a ride with you and your friends was my only chance at a happy life."

Rembrandt quickly shook his head back and forth. "I'm sorry, Grace. I really am. I'm sorry for the loss and pain you've had to endure in your life. But mostly, I'm sorry that I can't forgive you. Because at the end of the day, you were still a knowing accomplice to the Kromaggots. You stood by and did nothing while human genocide broke out all around you. And the fact that you've collaborated with the 'Maggs not once, but TWICE now . . ." He just closed his eyes and shook his head again. "I can never love you, Grace. I can't even hate you. I only pity you."

Grace puckered his lips together. "Very well," she replied, in a chilly whisper. "But I can only do so much to help you if you won't get past your personal feelings."

Rembrandt tightened his own lips. He had no intention of saying one more word to her.

Grace glanced over her shoulder. The infantry of Kromagg children had been instructed to march forward, and they were headed in lock-step down one of the corridors. Dr. Venable turned back to Rembrandt. Her eyes nervously darting upward for a moment, she hissed at Rembrandt, "I don't know what else I can say to make you see reason."

Beneath his clamped mouth and clenched jaw, Rembrandt Brown silently retorted, "Don't say anything else. You've said enough for one lifetime."

* * *
Angus Rickman awoke to the sight of bright fluorescent lights shining down on him from the ceiling, accompanied by the upside-down masked face of a Kromagg surgeon in blue scrubs.

"Psycho monsters!" roared the deranged colonel, spitting upward at this captors. He tried to maneuver his arms and legs, but they were strapped down tightly.

Rickman felt a needle being plunged into one of his arms, and he howled out accordingly. Tilting his neck, Rickman could see the clammy, hairy hands of a female Kromagg nurse drawing his blood through some tubing.

Colonel Kesh had entered the medical bay, safely enshrined behind a standard "invisible" force field for her own protection. She curtly nodded at the Kromagg head physician and interrupted him, "Kollrak, begin the interrogation."

Of course, not understanding the Kromagg language, Rickman had no idea what the hell she was saying.

Kollrak projected his own mind into Rickman's, all the while emitting an ominous whistling sound as Kollrak's mental energy was expelled and transferred. Rickman roared in torment, his brain tissue sliced through and brushed aside with metaphorical knives.

Images from Rickman's past came whizzing back to him, obscured by a slightly blurry border of crepuscule from Rickman's perspective. He felt himself regressing into a youngster, standing back at a distance as an adult male shoved an adult female against a wall.

"Mum!" he heard the child-like version of himself call out, helplessly. He watched his mother teeter from the impact of her husband's grainy fist colliding with her jaw.

Flashes of history surged through Angus Rickman's brain, placing him by his mother's bedside as she took her last breath. He stood near her gravesite, and gently placed a small carnation at the base of his mother's tombstone. But that memory was soon jettisoned away from Rickman by the sting of his father's bare hand gruffly slapping Rickman's own pre-pubescent cheek.

"How many times do I have to tell ya . . . don't leave your damned toys on the foyer, you worthless git!!"

Rickman could smell the elder Rickman's intoxicated breath as it whipped against his nostrils.

And then . . . SMACK!!

Rickman felt himself toppling against the carpet. His head pounded. His ears rang.

He ran forward in a daze, pushed by the shrill vocals of a drill sergeant. In one moment, Rickman was dashing along with other uniformed men through a strenuous obstacle course. They weaved through tunnels, around pipes, and into wading pools. They "regained" on ropes suspended over a water tank, and practiced their marksmanship by piercing cardboard targets that depicted soldiers of the Kremlin. But in the next moment, he was being pinned on the chest with a silver star by a stately general, while proudly and ceremoniously wearing his green beret.

Kollrak peeled aside layer after layer of Rickman's memories. He watched from Rickman's firsthand perspective as the younger soldier, a member of the British Royal Marines, rocketed across the sweltering, sandy deserts of Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. The Kromagg interrogator could almost feel then-Colonel Rickman's dry mouth and sweaty skin as he dove into a sand pit to dodge an incoming blast of enemy fire.

In another moment, the heavy artillery evaporated from Rickman's arms. He was now horizontally spread out on a silk-sheeted, king-sized bed, making love to a scantily clad Maggie Beckett.

Maggie, sporting a shorter hairstyle of reddish-blond curls, removed her lips from Rickman's and pushed him away. "I can't do this anymore, Angus," she said, guiltily covering up her bare chest with one of the lavender bed sheets.

Strapped down in the Kromagg medical bay, Rickman growled as he relived that moment of betrayed rage. His memories shifted to a firsthand view of his outstretched arm, plunging a syringe into Corporal Thaddeus Eastman's neck. Then, his syringe morphed into a gun as he used it to pull the trigger and fatally shoot the wheelchair-bound Dr. Steven Jensen. Then, Rickman was suddenly transported to the corner of a tiny Escondido antiques shop - - on an alternate dimension - - gazing at himself in a Victorian mirror while he used a syringe to jam some fluid into his scalp . . . and momentarily morphed into the likeness of a sprightly nun whom he'd left comatose just moments earlier. Then, he whisked his head from side-to-side, vaguely recollecting the blurry images of assorted huminal faces - - gathered around him against a jungle backdrop - - as one female creature with zebra-patterned skin gently pressed a wet rag against Rickman's forehead.

Finally, multi-colored luminescence filled Rickman's eyes, and a buxom Mediterranean woman stood before him. The sparkly light dissipated as the goddess removed her hands from Rickman's formerly petrified chest.

"Aphrodite!" called out Rickman, as confused longing radiated from his lungs.

Kollrak had emerged from Rickman's mind, relatively unfazed. He faced Kesh and the rest of his fellow Kromaggs in the medical bay.

"He was captivated by some woman . . . he referred to her as 'Aphrodite,' before I lost contact with his memories," Kollrak spoke to his colleagues in their native language, gesturing to Rickman.

Lieutenant Kesh tilted her head in contemplation. "Aphrodite . . . the human goddess of love." Rolling her eyes at the unconscious Rickman, she scoffed, "He's delusional."

"Are you certain?" Kollrak blinked, still wide-eyed. "Everything felt so real."

"Aphrodite is a fictitious deity representing humanity's hormonal urges," reiterated Kesh. She book-ended her statement, in a dismissive tone, "A figment of the human psyche."

"But the rest of what I saw . . ." protested Kollrak.

Kesh held up her hand, stiffly cutting him off. "Most likely, a majority of it was real . . . or based on a vestigial reality. Tell us, Kollrak, what else did you learn about the subject?"

"This human was a warrior," Kollrak told his Kromagg colleagues. "At some point in his life, he contracted an abhorrent, heteromorphic disease . . . and was subsequently discarded by his own species. This subject endured an abnormal metamorphosis into a degenerate specimen. His genetic makeup contains attributes and markers from an assortment of lower mammals. Somehow, he has blended their genetic components with his own."

"And the virus . . . ?" Kesh tapped her foot expectantly.

"He knows of it, but possesses no trace of it within his own physiology." Kollrak raised his eyebrows. "This beast is motivated primarily by his desire for revenge."

"How intriguing . . ." Kesh snapped her fingers magisterially at one of the Kromagg nurses. "Wake him up!" she ordered the nurse, referring to Rickman.

The miscellaneous nurse, a dowdy female Kromagg who seemed intimidated by the mere sound of Kesh's voice, removed some smelling salts from a nearby surgical table. She shakily held them in place beneath Rickman's nose.

Rickman's eyes soon popped open. "What's happening to me . . . ?" he garbled, barely audible.

Instead of answering, one of the several Kromaggs who were hovering over him jabbed his arm with a syringe, and began extracting a blood tissue sample from him.

Reacting, Rickman yelped, causing the Kromagg nurse at his beside to release a startled little squeal herself.

"Be silent, Kylia!" Kollrak gave the nurse a harsh reprimand.

From his lateral position, Colonel Rickman stared up at Kollrak, Nurse Kylia, and the other Kromagg medical personnel who towered above him dressed in medical scrubs. Gradually, Rickman watched their images morph until they were all wearing hazmat suits, revealing their true sartorial selves.

"You deceived me . . . !" Rickman growled, and then clenched his teeth together. He could feel a sharp intrusion slice into his other arm.

Nurse Kylia displayed a scalpel along with a pair of forceps, which had a chunk of skin adhered to it. The skin sample was a severed cuticle of scales - - one example of the mermaid DNA that had ingratiated itself into random areas of flesh throughout Rickman's body.

"Interesting," commented Kesh, from the corner of the room. "The manbeast harbors much for us to discover. I shall report this latest development to General Konntul." She turned and exited the room.

Rickman gritted his teeth, and prepared to feel the unpleasantness of additional incisions to his flesh.

* * *
It had been just a few hours since Grace Venable returned Rembrandt to the sliders' communal cell. Wade had not been seen or heard from. Mallory and Janine had not been brought back either. The five remaining inmates could only sit - - or pace around in circles - - and wait to see what would happen next.

Malcolm was slumped over, in tears. All he could think about was Gretchen and the psychic message she had seemingly sent him. Was she all right? Was it too late to save her? How could they even find her when he and his friends were entrenched in Kromagg captivity