The Space Between Worlds

The Space Between Worlds Plot Summary

Introduction

# The Space Between Worlds: Echoes of Alternate Selves The desert sand still clings to Cara's boots when she finds the body. Another version of herself lies crumpled in the wasteland between Ashtown and Wiley City, neck snapped clean, the expensive traverser collar still glowing faintly around her throat. This dead girl has everything Cara has ever wanted—citizenship papers, a job that pays in real money, a future that extends beyond scavenging scraps from the wasteland. Without hesitation, Cara strips the collar from the corpse and fastens it around her own neck, stealing not just the dead girl's possessions but her entire identity. In this world, death is currency and survival is art. The Eldridge Institute has learned to pierce the veil between parallel realities, sending traversers to collect data from worlds where they're already dead. The universe has rules—try to visit a reality where you still live, and you'll be torn apart by forces beyond comprehension. Cara exists because she shouldn't, alive on Earth Zero while 372 versions of herself lie buried across the multiverse. But when she discovers that her doppelganger on Earth 175 isn't dead as reported, she faces a truth that could shatter everything she's built. The space between worlds holds more than darkness—it holds the weight of every choice that led her here, every death that made her valuable, and every lie that keeps her breathing.

Chapter 1: The Currency of Death: A Traverser's Value in Multiple Corpses

Six years after stealing a dead girl's life, Cara has perfected the art of being someone else. The gleaming towers of Wiley City rise around her like monuments to possibility, their clean lines a stark contrast to the concrete wasteland of Ashtown where she was born. In the Eldridge Institute's traverser bay, she descends into the hatch with practiced ease, letting the darkness between worlds embrace her like an old lover. Dell Ikari watches from the control station, her pale beauty untouched by the desert sun that carved lines into every face Cara knew as a child. When the hatch opens and Cara emerges, Dell's scanner reads her vital signs with clinical precision. No broken bones, no radiation poisoning, no signs of the trauma that should accompany dimensional travel to worlds where violence is currency. The apartment that comes with her stolen identity sits forty floors above the city streets, higher than Cara ever dreamed of living. Through floor-to-ceiling windows, she watches the artificial sun dim to simulate evening. Everything here is controlled, regulated, perfect. The refrigerator hums with fresh food, the shower runs clean water hot enough to scald, and the bed is soft enough to swallow her whole. Jean Sanogo appears in the debriefing room, his weathered face breaking into a smile that transforms him from company supervisor to surrogate father. He's one of the few who remembers the early days of traversing, when the technology was new and the rules were written in blood. When he embraces her with easy affection, Cara feels the weight of her deception like a stone in her chest. He's watched Caramenta grow up, guided her career, celebrated her successes. But Caramenta is dead in the desert, her body long since claimed by scavengers. That first night in her stolen life, Cara lies awake cataloging her good fortune. She has a job that pays more than most Ashtown residents see in a lifetime, citizenship papers that let her walk freely through the city, and a future that extends beyond mere survival. But in the darkness, she can still feel the weight of the corpse she left behind, and she wonders how long she can wear a dead girl's name before it starts to feel like a shroud. The mathematics of her existence are simple and brutal. Every version of herself that died young in Ashtown's concrete slums, every Cara who overdosed like her mother or bled out under a runner's wheels, makes this Cara more valuable. She is the exception that proves the rule, the girl who crawled out of the wasteland and into the city's light. But exceptions, she's learning, come with their own price.

Chapter 2: Forbidden Crossings: When the Universe Rejects Its Own Rules

The call comes during her morning briefing with Dell, whose professional coldness has never thawed despite their daily proximity. Earth 175 needs a traverser, and Cara is the only one with access to that particular slice of infinity. The assignment should be routine—collect data, avoid contact with locals, return home safely. But when she descends into the hatch, something goes wrong. The pressure that usually kisses her skin with gentle resistance turns predatory, claws raking across her consciousness. The universe is rejecting her, trying to break her apart and scatter the pieces across the void. Her ribs crack like kindling, her collar snaps like a wishbone. In the darkness between stars, something vast and hungry examines her worth with the dispassion of a god sorting grain from chaff. She lands in the wasteland of Earth 175 like a broken bird, bones grinding against each other in ways that make her vision white-hot with pain. Blood fills her mouth as she reaches for the emergency syringe that will give her two minutes of clarity before Dell pulls her back to die cleanly on Earth Zero. But Cara has never learned to die gracefully. She crawls through sand that tastes like her childhood, dragging herself toward the road on willpower and spite. When consciousness returns, it's to gentle hands and a voice she recognizes like a half-remembered song. Nik Nik tends her wounds with the care of someone who's never learned to enjoy another's pain. But this isn't her Nik Nik, not the monster who carved his name into her back with obsidian teeth. This one wears glasses and speaks softly, his touch careful and kind. The wrongness of it makes her vomit on his shoes. In her world, Nik Nik was the gentle brother who refused to kill when his father demanded blood. Here, those roles have reversed. It's Adranik—brilliant, bookish Adranik—who rules with teeth and terror as the Blood Emperor. The man who should have been a scholar has become something that makes his father's cruelty look like mercy. As fever claims her for three days, Cara begins to understand the scope of her mistake. She's not just in a world where she died—she's in a world where everything she thought she knew has been turned inside out. The gentle have become monsters, the monsters have found peace, and somewhere in this twisted reflection of reality, another version of herself is walking around very much alive.

Chapter 3: Mirror Worlds: Confronting the Woman Who Survived Differently

The woman in the mirror wears Cara's face but not her scars. Nelline moves through the Blood Emperor's court like smoke, untouchable and dangerous, trading information for protection in a world where knowledge is the only currency that matters. When their eyes meet across the palace courtyard, Cara feels the universe hiccup. Two versions of the same person, occupying the same space, defying every law of physics. Nelline has survived in Ashtown by becoming everything Cara fled—spy, survivor, the emperor's kept woman who sells secrets to the highest bidder. She bears the marks of Adranik's attention, broken bones that healed crooked, scars that map a geography of violence. But where Cara learned to escape, Nelline learned to endure, making herself indispensable to monsters who would otherwise destroy her. The recognition between them is instant and mutual. They are the same woman wearing different wounds, shaped by different choices and different worlds. Cara escaped to the city and learned to speak like she belonged there, while Nelline stayed in the ash and learned to make herself valuable to predators. Both survived by becoming something other than what they were born to be. When Adranik discovers Cara's true nature, his brilliant eyes light up with the hunger of a scientist examining a new species. He's not just the Blood Emperor—he's Adam Bosch, her boss from Earth Zero, twisted into something that makes corporate cruelty look like kindness. The man who invented traversing technology has used his genius here to reinvent weapons, stockpiling guns and ammunition while his people starve. The dungeon walls press close as Adranik circles her like a shark scenting blood. He speaks of visitors in black suits, of assassination attempts that only he can see. Paranoia has made him dangerous in ways his father never was—where Nik Senior was brutal but predictable, Adranik is brilliant and mad, seeing threats in every shadow and responding with calculated violence. Nelline appears in the darkness of her cell like a ghost made flesh. She's faked her own death once before, dosing herself with paralytic and blood thinners to survive the emperor's favorite method of execution. Now she sees Cara as her ticket out of hell, and she'll take it even if it means murder. The woman from another world represents everything she's ever wanted—escape, freedom, the chance to become someone new.

Chapter 4: The Emperor's Face: Unmasking Adam Bosch's Interdimensional Genocide

The truth comes in fragments, scattered across databases and hidden in encrypted files. Back on Earth Zero, Cara begins to piece together the scope of Adam Bosch's empire with Jean's help, his weathered hands steady on the keyboard despite the magnitude of what they're uncovering. The man who invented traversing didn't just create a technology—he created a monopoly, maintained through systematic murder across infinite worlds. Every competitor, every rival scientist, every government that tried to replicate his work has been eliminated. The kill count spans decades and dimensions, a genocide so vast it defies comprehension. Fifty-seven scientists, twelve research teams, entire universities shuttered overnight. The Maintenance Department's black jumpsuits don't repair equipment—they repair problems. Human problems. Jean's eyes hold the weight of complicity as he shows her the files, the burden of a man who has served monsters because the alternative was worse. The numbers burn in Cara's memory like brands. In her apartment that night, she stares out at the city lights, each window representing a life built on the foundation of Adam's crimes. The clean air she breathes, the safety she enjoys, the future she's building—all of it paid for with blood spilled on distant worlds. The anonymous tip to enforcement should have been untraceable. Cara crafts it carefully, laying out Adam's crimes with clinical precision while obscuring her own identity. But Adam Bosch didn't become the most powerful man in the multiverse by being careless. When the investigators come calling, they don't arrest him—they inform him, as the law requires for citizens of his standing. The realization hits her like a physical blow. She's not fighting a criminal—she's fighting the system itself, a machine designed to protect men like Adam while grinding up people like her. The rules that govern traversing, the laws that regulate interdimensional travel, the very structure of society in Wiley City—all of it exists to serve his interests. He doesn't just own the technology; he owns the world it created. In the darkness between worlds, something with teeth stirs. The creature that has watched her traverse for six years recognizes the change in her, the shift from prey to predator. When she closes her eyes, she can feel its approval, cold and ancient and hungry. It has been waiting for this moment, when the girl who learned to survive finally learns to kill.

Chapter 5: Blood Price: Jean's Murder and the Cost of Knowing Truth

Jean is in his office when they come for him. Cara finds the aftermath—overturned furniture, shattered glass, and blood on the chair where her mentor spent his final moments. The official story spreads quickly through the building: Jean Sanogo, beloved traverser and company veteran, killed by runners while inspecting equipment outside the city walls. A tragic accident, a reminder of the dangers that lurk beyond Wiley's protective barriers. But Cara knows better. She's seen Adam's handiwork before, in the calculated cruelty of his alternate self. The man who can order the deaths of thousands across infinite worlds wouldn't hesitate to eliminate one inconvenient employee. Jean died because he tried to protect her, taking responsibility for a crime he didn't commit. The funeral is a city-wide event, the mayor speaking of heroism and sacrifice while Adam Bosch sits in the front row, his face a mask of appropriate grief. When the ceremony ends, he approaches Cara with the casual confidence of a predator who knows his prey can't escape. His condolences carry just enough sympathy to sound genuine, but his eyes never leave hers as he speaks. The message is clear: I know what you did, and I can do it again. Jean's death is both punishment and warning, a demonstration of the price of defiance. When Adam adjusts his cufflinks—a casual gesture that draws attention to the corporate logo embossed on the gold—Cara understands that innocence is a luxury people in their line of work can't afford. That night, she sits in her empty apartment, surrounded by the gifts of her stolen life. The clean air tastes like ash in her mouth, the soft bed feels like a coffin, and the future she's built crumbles around her, revealed as nothing more than an elaborate cage. Jean is dead because of her choices, and Adam Bosch walks free because the system is designed to protect men like him. But in the space between heartbeats, in the darkness that exists between worlds, something ancient and hungry recognizes her transformation. The girl who learned to survive by bending is finally learning to break. The creature that dwells in the void between realities has been waiting for this moment, when prey becomes predator and victim becomes avenger. In her dreams that night, it shows her teeth like broken stars and whispers promises of justice served cold.

Chapter 6: Desert Alliance: Recruiting Ashtown's Fury Against Wiley's Power

The desert heat hits Cara like a physical blow as she steps through the portal onto Earth 175, but this time she's not here as a victim. Three weeks have passed since Jean's murder, and the grief has crystallized into something harder and more useful: rage. She's come to recruit an army, and she knows exactly where to find one. Nik Nik receives her in his palace with the casual warmth of an old friend, though his eyes hold the calculating intelligence of a man who has learned to survive by reading people like weather patterns. The emperor of Ashtown has grown into his power, trading his brother's theatrical cruelty for something more subtle and infinitely more dangerous. When she explains what she needs, his interest sharpens like a blade. She activates her cuff, projecting a hologram of Adam Bosch alongside an image of Adranik in full imperial regalia. The resemblance is undeniable—the same brilliant eyes, the same cruel mouth, the same aura of absolute authority. But where Adranik wore his evil openly, Adam hides behind a mask of respectability, using corporate boardrooms instead of dungeons to destroy his enemies. Nik Nik studies the images with the intensity of a man seeing a ghost. His fingers trace the air where Adranik's face hovers, and for a moment, the emperor's mask slips. Beneath the power and confidence, Cara sees the boy who lost his brother to their father's paranoia, who spent decades believing himself alone in the universe. The revelation that another version of Adranik exists—one who chose exile over family—cuts deeper than any physical wound. The negotiation that follows is brutal and precise. Nik Nik wants more than money or favors; he wants to send a message to the brother who abandoned him. Cara offers him the only currency that matters: the chance to prove that Ashtown blood runs stronger than Wiley City gold. In exchange, she'll give him something no amount of wealth can buy—a weapon from the old world, a gun with six bullets and the power to reshape the balance between the cities. When the deal is struck, Nik Nik's smile returns, but now it carries the weight of imperial decree. His runners will serve her, but they'll move in his name, carrying the fury of the wasteland into the heart of paradise. As Cara prepares to return to Earth Zero, she realizes she's not just planning an assassination—she's orchestrating a war between worlds, with herself as the bridge that will either unite them or burn them both to ash.

Chapter 7: Poisoned Paradise: Justice Served and the Long Journey Home

The mansion party glitters with Wiley City's elite, their laughter echoing through halls lined with portraits of Adam Bosch's achievements. Cara moves through the crowd like a shadow, her runner's mask concealing everything but her eyes. Around her, Nik Nik's men create carefully orchestrated chaos—flamethrowers in the garden, chainsaws carving through topiary, the kind of theatrical violence that sends security scrambling in all directions. While the city's attention focuses on the spectacle outside, Cara slips through Adam's private quarters with the skill of someone who learned to steal before she learned to read. His bedroom is a monument to narcissism, walls lined with news projections featuring his face, shelves filled with awards bearing his name. But it's the small details that reveal the man beneath the myth: empty eyedrop bottles scattered across his nightstand, the medical scanner built into his bathroom mirror, the way his hands shake when he thinks no one is watching. The ocular implant that makes him the smartest man in the multiverse is also his greatest weakness. The technology requires constant lubrication, specialized drops administered every four hours to prevent the delicate machinery from burning out his retinas. Cara has brought her own medicine—a vial of Lot's Wife, the most insidious poison in any world. Colorless, odorless, and virtually undetectable, it mimics the consistency of medical-grade lubricant perfectly. She works quickly, replacing the contents of every bottle she can find. The poison won't kill him immediately—that would be too merciful. Instead, it will turn his body into a living statue, bleaching his eyes white before spreading through his bloodstream like crystallizing salt. He'll have months, maybe years, to contemplate his mortality while his empire crumbles around him. The sound of approaching footsteps sends her diving behind a marble pillar. Dell appears in the hallway, resplendent in an evening gown that catches the light like captured starlight. For a moment, their eyes meet across the space between worlds—the woman Cara loves and the monster she's becoming, separated by choices that can never be undone. Dell's face cycles through recognition, horror, and something that might be understanding. She doesn't cry out or raise an alarm. Instead, she watches in silence as Mr. Cheeks appears to drag Cara away. Later, when the runners have melted back into the desert and the mansion lies in smoking ruins, Adam Bosch will discover what she's done. The eyedrops will burn going in, and he'll know with the certainty of genius that his time is running out. But by then, Cara will be long gone, leaving only the echo of her laughter and the promise of justice finally served.

Summary

The deportation van drops Cara at the city limits, leaving her standing in the desert with nothing but a backpack and the weight of her choices. The acidic air burns her lungs for the first week, but gradually her body remembers how to breathe poison. She finds work as a letter writer, translating between the languages of two worlds, her desk in a corner of a curiosity shop where locals come to gawk at the fallen world-walker with the traverser's scars. News from Wiley City arrives in fragments. Adam Bosch has taken on apprentices, his company pivoting from profit to philanthropy as his condition worsens. Buildings rise with his name carved in stone, monuments to a legacy he's desperate to preserve before the poison claims him completely. Dell finds her on a Tuesday afternoon, appearing like a mirage made flesh, dressed in white and carrying a jewelry box containing the third jade earring, reset on a chain that catches the light like captured fire. In her dreams, Cara still walks between worlds, guided by the ancient presence that dwells in the darkness between stars. It shows her glimpses of other lives, other choices, other versions of herself scattered across infinite realities. Some are happy, some are broken, some are dead. But all of them are her, and she is all of them, connected by threads of possibility that span the breadth of creation. Here in the desert, surrounded by the harsh beauty of her birthplace, she finally understands that home isn't a place you escape to, but a truth you carry within yourself—scarred and beautiful and utterly, defiantly alive.

About Author

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Micaiah Johnson

Johnson interrogates the intricate relationship between identity and systemic inequality through her imaginative science fiction narratives. Raised in California's Mojave Desert, she draws on her unique upbringing in a Jehovah's Witness community and her biracial identity to explore themes of belonging and privilege. Her academic background in creative writing and fiction further informs her approach, as seen in her debut book, "The Space Between Worlds". This novel utilizes a multiverse setting to examine socioeconomic forces and identity dynamics, employing speculative futures to reflect on real-world issues like poverty and climate change.\n\nHer writing method blends speculative world-building with sharp social critique, making her work relevant to readers interested in complex social themes. By addressing issues such as racist geographies and travel bans, Johnson’s narratives emphasize community and resilience, providing a mirror to contemporary societal challenges. Her subsequent book, "Those Beyond the Wall", delves deeper into these themes, focusing on desert landscapes and community connections. This approach not only enhances the reader's understanding of her themes but also elevates the discourse around identity and belonging within speculative fiction.\n\nRecognition of Johnson’s contributions includes the Compton Crook Award and the Carl Brandon Award, underscoring her impact on speculative fiction that engages with race and ethnicity. Her books serve as valuable resources for readers and scholars interested in the intersection of social justice and imaginative storytelling, thereby offering fresh perspectives within the genre. Her bio reflects a journey marked by overcoming socioeconomic barriers and achieving literary success, making her an inspiring figure for aspiring authors navigating similar challenges.

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