A World Awaits: Shatterrealm, #1

By Hannah Rose Williams

In the beginning, God created. Man destroyed. And the universe was shattered.

 

Carver isn't as human as he seems. Though he doesn't know why he has green blood, a sixth sense, and a little device that opens portals to other worlds, he does know that it isn't safe to go looking for answers. A xenophobic militia is trained to execute "dimension hoppers" on sight. When some estranged siblings crash the quiet rehab clinic where he works, Carver can no longer hide his identity -- or run from his fate.

 

Readers call the addictive first installment "highly thought out" and "compelling." For the first year, net sales went to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The document also contains the URL for a secret page of short stories and behind-the-scenes sketches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hannah Rose Williams
• Release date: Dec 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781502767844

Book preview

PART I

1

Will you trust Me?

Carver still thought he heard thudding music from the car. Maybe the squeal of tires, too. They echoed in his skull as he regained consciousness.

Vision clearing, he glimpsed a sliver of cotton white sky. Then the dark buildings came into focus. An old woman peered at him from the window of her slum apartment. A cluster of dead-eyed kids watched from another.

His knee throbbed. That's where the car had first struck him. His forehead throbbed from hitting the windshield, which had pin wheeled him over the roof and onto the cracked asphalt.

The car was long gone now, leaving nothing but a scent of fuel and fear and shock. Not their fault. The street had been totally empty until someone had pushed him into it.

The next thing he was aware of was a girl’s voice.

As he sat up, rubbing his temple, her heavy boots clomped toward him. Ruby was sixteen, her hair an intentionally grungy blonde, her full body crammed into all-black clothes that seemed a pinch too small for her. On her face, a look of remorse he wouldn’t have expected. She was apologizing for pushing him. She didn’t think she’d pushed him that hard.

He had clambered to his feet, and now she froze, puzzled. That was when he realized his mistake. Normal people didn’t walk away from hit-and-runs. Normal people...

She was gaping at him. He drew his hand away from his temple and examined the light smear of gore on his fingers.

Normal people didn’t have green blood.

He shouldn’t have gotten up. He should have hidden his face and hoped that Ruby would flee as the driver had. If he'd been as human as he looked, the impact from the car, and the street, would have been much worse; as it was, he'd sustained about as much injury as a hollow mannequin would have. If he’d been as human as he looked, he wouldn't have been in the street at all; Ruby wouldn’t have been able to push him that far; she only came up to his chest.

Did his fear show? It must have, because realization had begun to dawn in Ruby’s eyes. She took a step back.

Wait, he said.

She turned to run.

Don’t tell anyone! he shouted, wondering if he sounded intimidating, hoping he did. He felt a twinge of guilt for that.

He felt something else, too – eyes peering down at him, boring into him, searing. It’s just the old lady in the window, he told himself. Just the kids across the street. Don’t look. A normal person would not have known that people watched him.

He pulled the hood over his head and turned to walk back to the center. A glance in the opposite direction told him Ruby was still running. He cringed. She'd been right about him.

2

Glister, Kanata. Dimension Earth 12.

Carver had been escorting Ruby to the train station. Not because he much cared for her, but because she’d been breaking the center’s rules, and part of his job was getting visitors like that out of the building. Somehow, she thought this made him a hypocrite.

I’ve seen the faces you make when you think no one’s looking, she said, pouting her glossy black lips. "This place sickens you almost as much as me."

I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Carver laughed. I know it may be hard to understand. But we’re not kidding when we say we love you — that God loves you—

Can you hear yourself?

He stammered a little.

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. "While I’m being honest... We both know my friends in there are lost causes. Abel doesn’t know what he wants out of life. He’ll be back in the club as soon as the emotions get to be too much for him. Hell, she laughed, I’m surprised he applied at all, considering the things you people say about gays. And Daphna? Daphna’s quit drugs on her own like six times, eh! She just likes the attention she gets when she’s in withdrawal. That’s how badly she craves it. We all stopped lavishing it upon her forever ago, so now she gets it from the good people of TeenRec."

This is how you talk about your friends? he asked.

"Oh, sure. This is how I talk about my idiot friends. I’m genuine, and I’m genuine to their faces, too. Why are you here?"

The answer never came, but his id itched and crawled suddenly. What would a youth worker say?

Because God wants me here.

Oh! Ruby chirped. God wants you to project your insecurities onto addicts and homeless guys so you can feel better about yourself? And you people honestly wonder why I won't stay fer chapel. Wow.

Pride bristling, he plodded behind her and listed all the things he’d done for the center, and the neighborhood, in the year that he’d lived there. He had visited foster homes. He had gone looking for relapsed students under bridges and in crack houses. He had worked from dawn to the late night, six days a week, sometimes with hardly a moment to eat sitting down.

Those things are nothing to you! she exclaimed, whirling. Those things make you feel like a martyr.

She clutched a handful of his pure white sweatshirt, clutched it just under his throat, and craned her neck up at him. "Someday, ‘God’ will make demands you don’t want to meet. And just like the rest of us, you’ll say no."

That was when she pushed him.

That was when they both saw what he really was.

And what is that? he asked silently, bitterly, as he walked through the chain link gates of the TeenRec Center.

The original building, a drafty old brownstone house, had been converted into a sort of dormitory. The female students and counselors slept on the top floor; male students and counselors slept below them; the ground floor hosted a dining room and kitchen, behind which a little corridor had been constructed to attach this building to the chapel. The new auditorium had been built right outside the chapel door. During the long winter, no one had to go outside unless they were leaving the premises.

Screams of laughter bubbled from the basketball court. He glanced askew to take in the kids from the daycare. It was being hosted in the auditorium, for now. They were trying to raise funds for a new building.

Doreen Li stood in the center of the lot, gently tagging the kids with dodge balls. Still alone. A volunteer was supposed to be with her, helping her with all those kids. She saw him and waved distractedly. He gave a curt nod, nervous that she’d try to make conversation:

I gave you the right key? The cellar is locked?

It is now, he replied. Now that he’d gotten the key from her and dashed back to the main building. Had someone gotten into the cleaning supplies? Of course.

Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! she called as he passed. He winced and gave a comforting wave.

Kah-vuh! One of Doreen’s little ones charged over to him and gave him a hug. When the boy had first come here, he’d been distrustful and stoic. Months of consistent love had transformed him, and now he usually stole a hug from Carver every day. Carver tried not to think about it as he watched the boy run back to his class. Tried not to think that today would be the last time.

He entered the main building and crossed the dining hall, heading for the narrow hallway near the kitchen. Earlier that morning, he’d had to run here, from one end of the facility to the other. Reverend Sayres had still leaned against the cellar door, guarding it, when he’d returned.

I’ll have to talk to Doreen, Rev had said. This is not good. And I’ll have to come up with a better system for getting and returning the keys.

I hear automated locks are getting cheaper, Carver offered.

Rev laughed. So are flying cars! Remember that one? ‘Everyone will have a flying car, not just police.’ And they were all supposed to be solar powered, too!

Carver hadn’t grown up in this world, much less this culture. He tried to pretend he related; the reverend had seen right through him.

Ah, you’re too young, he said. Anyway, I think all we can afford is a penalty box. You forget to lock the door, you forget to return the keys, you lose key privileges.

Now, climbing the front door to the brownstone, Carver checked his pocket. The keys were still there. He should return them to the reverend...

His hand went to the cut on his temple. He didn’t want to be near anyone. Not until he’d washed the blood from his face.

Ruby’s long, black coat still lay wadded on the bottom step where he’d caught her smoking a joint. That would have been fine almost anywhere else, but at TeenRec, everything was contraband. He had paused at the top of the steps and watched her examine the generic painting on the wall, where a tan, limp-wristed Jesus morosely knocked on a door with no knob. If Carver had only let her sit there and smoke, she might not be running home now to plot exposing him as an inhuman aberration and, more importantly, a faker.

Ragged breathing issued from the top of the stairs. The first room to the right was full of men in sweat-soaked beds, all suffering from withdrawal. Some were much younger than they looked. Some almost looked healthy. Some were from good homes, upper-class neighborhoods, others born into haunts of violence. All had turned themselves over to corporate-manufactured entheogens. They were here because they hoped they could be free.

Someone still rocked back and forth in the twisted sheets, trying to read from a prayer card:

The... sacrifices of God are a... broken spirit...

As Carver walked by, Abel glimpsed him with that one eye blotted white by a horror contact. He smiled as he absently twisted one of his black liberty spikes. Hey, Mr. Winchester.

The formality always felt odd. Carver was only twenty. He mustered up the biggest, dorkiest grin that he could. God bless you, Abel!

Carver followed the worn path in the hardwood floor to the bathroom, where he rubbed every last trace of blood from his face, being careful as always to avoid looking at his own reflection. Not careful enough. A flash of his emerald eyes was all it took to have him reeling, sick to his stomach, gripping the counter for balance.

People usually found them striking, sometimes eerie. There was something about the infinite feedback of a mirror that made it hard for him to look at himself.

You goddamn freak, he said to himself. It struck him how decidedly he did not belong with these people. Or any people.

A recorded voice boomed from his room as he approached it. A mixture of dread and bitter relief flooded him. He most certainly wouldn’t miss his roommate.

Mark was finishing a late lunch on his bed. His mobile on the dresser was propped up, displaying a projection of the weather (cold returning soon) and playing yet another old sermon on holiness. Carver’s bed was on the other side of the room – about 40 centimeters away.

He didn’t attempt to hide his scowl. Not from Mark. He flung himself into the permanent groove in his mattress.

Good morning, Mark said, in a friendly enough tone that Carver had come to mistrust. Did you get your daily bread today?

Carver touched his scraped forehead self-consciously. He had prepared an answer ahead of time. I’m almost finished with the book of Job.

Interesting. That’s what you said a month ago.

What are you implying? He could almost smile, imagining Mark meticulously keeping a log on whatever Carver claimed to be reading. Mark had always been suspicious of him.

Unprepared for candidness, Mark hesitated. I’m just concerned aboutcher spiritual health.

Carver closed his eyes. The sermon droned on. Then Mark ran out of food, shrank his mobile to pocket size, and headed out. Well, I s'pose, he said. That was Kanatian for goodbye.

Close the door, Carver yelled.

Mark obliged.

The room seeming suddenly hushed, he lay in somber silence. Then he began to notice all the little sounds: people talking down the hallway; creaking footsteps above and below; passing cars; distant sirens.

Music began playing. Then Mark’s sharp voice cut it off. Carver had once been impressed with himself for sharing a cramped space with that whitewashed tomb of a man. Now he realized he was just as useless, just as much of a hypocrite.

He pulled off his sweatshirt and flung it to the floor. Laying back again in a black, secondhand T-shirt, he smoothed it out to examine the Chinese character. The French translation beneath it read, sort – fate. Another concept he’d been unable to scrape from his head.

Sort: une raison de rester détaché.

He wondered how many people Ruby had told about him. It could be any number of people if she’d used the network. He wondered how readily people around here believed in aliens.

He gritted his teeth suddenly, wondering what sort of person pushed guys into the street. Then again, what man of his height and frame was so light that a girl could push him into the street? He rolled his tongue in his mouth resentfully.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was needed here, he told himself. And he needed to be here, doing meaningful work. He couldn’t keep adopting new worlds, new cultures, and new languages. He’d finally adjusted to this austere lifestyle.

I should have known you’d ruin this for me, too.

He directed this thought at the painting that had come with the room, yet another canvas prison for a fictional Jesus. This one was pale as death with bright red hair, his eyes lolling back in supplication, his knuckles rapping incessantly on a door.

Carver hated that painting. He hated the missing door knob. What novelty was it to imply that the door had to be opened from within? God didn’t need a door knob. God, it seemed, could kick His way in whenever He pleased. Just a routine visit, Carver. Just a little suffering for your neatly organized life. Carver wished his heart was more like the house in that painting, with the knob on the inside and Christ on the step like a beggar, forever knocking.

God had never settled for that arrangement. God either got in or moved on.

Isn’t this better than what I was doing before? Carver ranted. I’m actually rebuilding lives! I’ve made my life about others instead of myself! How is that not enough for you? How much more do you have to take?

Everything, said the character on his chest. What was fate if not death?

The painted Jesus just stared at His feet. Sad eyes. Still knocking. If only He was like that. Unfortunately, Jesus wasn’t that spineless.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Carver could remember some of the context: I know your deeds... I will come like a thief... I know your deeds... I know your deeds... I am about to spit you out of My mouth... Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline...

Beneath the curling old wallpaper, a previous lodger had written, Smile, somebody loves you! A heart dotted the exclamation point. He had stared at that graffiti every morning, and the response beneath it: Love is pain.

He rolled onto his feet. There was still a pile of clothes under his bed, and he stuffed them into his backpack to join a few other things. His old D-gun. His old Bible, which he’d never unpacked.

Carver paused. He’d packed the D-gun. Shaking his head, he laughed faintly. Had he intended to walk out of TeenRec?

3

The City of Breena. Lenovra. Like height, width, and depth, this dimension coexisted with all the others. Unfortunately for the girl stranded inside it, other three-dimensional beings could not see her unless they were stranded there, too.

The bleeding wasn’t so bad. That was what Stefana concluded as she bent over her scraped knee. There had been a time when she’d thought everyone had green blood. Knowledge of the truth had been a shock, and she had wondered if something was wrong with her. Now, as she rose to her full light and dropped her long skirts, she hardly gave any thought to the way the sun tanned her arms to a honeydew hue.

It was a brilliant day, muggy with just enough breeze. Grass, weeds, and saplings waved lazily around the ruins of Breena. Its undying architects had immigrated long ago; the roofs had collapsed and succumbed to rot, and the wood paneling, too. The circular doorways, however, were the same. They had never held doors. What would atemporals need to hide?

Humans needed doors, Stef thought, her mind traveling briefly to other worlds she had seen, despairing places, only made more tragic by their commitment to pleasure. Stef may have been lonely in the woods of Lenovra, but she never missed humans. She would sooner cross into the hostile territory of the Gaiskosk.

The soft beat of cloven hooves interrupted her thoughts. Grinning, Stef whirled. Vyldrike!

Vyldrike nodded in greeting. He was an anhorn, and he towered powerfully above her, his neck rearing a heavy equine skull and a corkscrew horn. She only came up to his haunches. Built like a draft horse, he had nevertheless crept up on her.

You must come with me, he said in his deep, rich voice, and his lion’s tail whipped impulsively. There is a hopper, a human, and he stinks of perversity.

Stefana's stomach twisted at the thought, but she could never resist an opportunity to jump onto her old friend’s back. Once she was safely mounted, he swung around and cantered toward the forest.

A dimension hopper, she thought, and asked fretfully, Is it a druid?

I do not believe so.

She sighed, both relieved and frightened anew. If it wasn’t some sort of sorcerer who had found his way here, then it was probably someone with actual trans-dimensional technology — but she was even less informed about those people.

Vyldrike sped to a gallop, deftly navigating the obstacles of the forest. Stef hunched close to his neck. After a few minutes, he spoke. If the stranger is not a druid, you must leave with him.

The shock took a moment to register. What?

"We have found traces of druid forces, elsewhere. There will be fighting again. You must go."

Panic seized her. Go where? she asked, eyes stinging.

Anywhere.

But, she said, her voice quavering, you are all I know!

If they defeat us, no corner of Lenovra will be safe.

She barked a laugh. "They could not defeat you!"

Vyldrike said nothing.

This is not fair, she croaked. Her heart danced wildly. But he... But you said he was perverse!

He is hardly the only one.

Once again he’d hit on her inferiority. She pretended not to be deeply hurt.

Vyldrike halted. The momentum nearly sent her flying over his head. She clutched his mane and looked up. Through her tears she could see they were already at the ravine. She could see the wide ditch the river had carved and the faint trickle it had since become. Her earliest memory took place here.

Stef sniffed. Even she could tell there was a foreign scent in the air. Something chalky. Then she saw it, and coldness swept through her bones.

Standing on the cliffs was a figure in dingy black armor. He was enveloped by smoke — the chalky smell — which seemed to emanate from his body. Horns and blades protruded from him. He was all deep silhouettes.

It had been a long time since Stef had seen a human. She smoothed her hair back, in awe of his broad shoulders and steel, claw-like hands. The armored man turned slowly to survey them, and in a swooping black fog, he jumped to the ground.

Stef slipped from Vyldrike’s back in the same instant that he braced himself, lowering his horn to the level of the man’s heart. Seeking shelter behind a tree, she squeezed her eyes shut and waited.

No sound of a clash. Just her escalated heartbeat thumping in her ears. She peeked out. Vyldrike and the stranger were facing each other, cautious, frozen. Then the armored man leaned around Vyldrike to gaze at her. A distorted voice passed through his helmet.

Camella?

He sounded incredulous. An inexplicable apprehension seized her, and her voice shrank. In tepid English, she asked, Who is Camella?

4

Dimension Earth 377.

It wasn’t so hot up here. A wind blew in from the west. Sighing gladly, Camella turned to savor its fresh scent as her ragged hair flapped behind her. She was standing on a slanted tile roof, surrounded by a sea of identical houses and thinking she could see a break in the pattern. Curious, she jumped onto the next house, ran across the spine of its roof, and jumped again.

In what seemed no time at all, she was upon it — the last row of houses — waving her arms for balance, bright eyes fixed in awe at the sudden drop before her.

The infinite suburban sprawl merely blanketed the real city. Just past the toes of her worn sneakers, the skyscrapers plunged down and down, their smooth and shining cliff walls like a manmade canyon. Either the town had been built on top of the city, or the city had been carved out under the town.

She bent over the edge of the roof. She couldn’t see the bottom, the street – only a faint light.

Cam had left the last dimension without any plan other than staying free. This world, too, she barely knew and didn’t consider safe. All she knew now was that fresh wind was blasting into her face, and leaning into it, she felt a little thrill.

She did not think. She simply leaped from the edge of the roof.

Then the wind was roaring, stinging her face, drowning the noise of her own wild laughter. A cold rush swept through her arms and legs. She screamed in elation. Yes!

Cam grasped a lamp and swung further out from the buildings. Had that been an accident? Instinctively, she waved in search of something that might break her fall. But she could reach nothing now. Laughing again, she watched the windows racing past her — first archaic and ornate, then progressing into more barren designs, illumined more often than not, now.

The fall continued. The thrill faded. Now she was alive with terror.

Okay, she panted. Okay. Okay! I didn’t mean it!

A flagpole below her. She reached for it. Plummeted past it. There was nothing to pivot from. She was too far from the edge of anything, and she feared that, light-footed as she was, her contradiction of a body had gained momentum by now. Her friend Ron had warned her about something called terminal velocity.

She could barely move. There was a D-gun strapped to her ankle; she couldn’t reach it.

Aw no c’mon no no! She let out a shriek of rage. I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean it!

And further she plummeted.

The fall seemed endless. Soon her screaming and cursing ran as dry as her laughter. The tears ran dry, too. Her lips moved. Hoarse babbling, too soft to reach her own ears.

Minutes rushed by. Cam kept her eyes closed most of the time, pretending or wishing. Once, when she peeked, she found the hazy light at the bottom of the pit had disappeared. She had passed it. Maybe the fall was endless.

Now the windows that rushed past were dark, and the light above was fading. Miserably, she watched her own hands become less and less visible before her.

The roar of an engine penetrated the roar of the wind. A large aircraft shot out from some sort of garage, and she watched it