New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative by C.J. Carella Page A

were high enough. He would definitely want to hear the details of Christine’s dimensional travels, details she still was reluctant to share with anyone, including me.
    She spoke out loud: “I’m beginning to remember what happened to me during my coma vacation.”
    “I see,” Doc said.
    “I was sent to an alternate universe by the First.”
    Adam frowned slightly, which make him look a lot more like Damon Trent, but didn’t say anything else.
    “It was the world where I went evil and killed most everyone. I was there for a while. I… I was captured. I managed to get away.”
    My heart skipped a beat. I’d suspected that was what happened, but I’d hoped I was wrong. My new life had softened my head enough to actually hope for something good. Reality would take care of curing me from that sort of bullshit, though. It never disappointed when it came to destroying hope.
    There was an awkward silence after that. Christine clearly didn’t want to elaborate.
    “I suppose the rest of the story is really none of my business,” Adam finally said. “Unless you think there is any information that might impact our local space-time continuum.”
    “I… I don’t think so. I mean, my evil twin followed me, in astral form, and tried to attack Mark in Dreamland, but I clobbered her pretty badly. Like dead badly. And even if she survived that… well, she didn’t really have much of a home base to go back to.”
    Adam raised an eyebrow at that.
    “Yeah, okay, Mr. Spock, there’s more to the story,” Christine said. “Short version: Earth FUBAR is gone. Destroyed. Kaput. Along with like ten million mostly innocent people. All dead.”
    “That world was already dead,” Adam said. He could see the same thing I did: Christine blamed herself for the destruction of Planet Fucked Up. That was why she wasn’t ready to give up all the details.
    The look she gave me, and the feelings beneath, told me there was more to the story, though.
     
    * * *
     
    We walked home in silence.
    As soon as I closed the door to our apartment, she hugged me tightly. I could feel a toxic emotional stew boiling inside her: terror, guilt, sheer trauma and under all of it a deep, abiding sadness. She was mourning the dead from that other world; those deaths had affected her more than all the losses we’d experienced here, even the ones of the Genocide War. Even the time when she’d thought I was dead hadn’t hurt her as badly as what happened in that other world.
    “I can’t tell you,” she said. “Not yet. It’s too fresh. It’s too raw. It hurts too much to think about it.”
    “That’s okay. Whenever you’re ready. Fuck the past. You’re here, I’m here. That’s all that matters. Fuck the past.”
    She looked at me and tried to smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off.
    I was terrified that she might not have made it back after all. That she was no longer Christine.
    But I didn’t let go of her. Fuck the past. And fuck the assholes who had done this to her. My only regret was that I couldn’t kill them myself.
     
    * * *
     
    A week went by, and she still wouldn’t talk about it.
    On the surface, things went back to normal. We didn’t mention the elephant in the room. She caught up with all the paperwork from the fight with Maxwell Henderssen, a.k.a. Molten Max. We got some disturbing news about the murders of three looters at the site of the battle – an unknown Neo was suspected – but whoever it had been had covered his tracks pretty well, and his identity remained unknown. I asked my buddy Condor to keep me posted and quickly forgot about it.
    Whenever we had some free time, we went out, caught a movie at the Liberty City Multiplex, came home, made love. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night, but we both did that. Nightmares are part of the life; mine had started the day after I killed my stepfather, seconds after going Neo. The dreams had only gotten more varied and intense over time. But hers had taken a turn