LEA

My phone buzzes in the distance, but I barely even register it. The monster left some time ago, but by then there was no hope of catching up with Chance. His outburst had left me stunned, not knowing exactly where it came from. And his revelations left my mind spinning with confusion.

After a couple minutes of doing nothing, standing outside in the road, I pull my phone out of my pocket and check it. It's from Brock, unsurprisingly, since he seems to be the only one I can contact.

It's a simple message, and guilt trips me for not contacting him sooner. "Are you okay?"

I sigh, and hit the call button, holding the phone to my face. It rings for a couple minutes, and then Brock picks up.

"Lea!" He sounds relieved, which is natural considering I told him there are monsters everywhere, and then failed to contact him for a long time.

"Hey. Sorry about not contacting you. Its been a hectic couple days." Even to myself I sound.... Down? Upset?

"What's wrong?" He asks, catching onto my tone.

"Despite the fact that I'm stuck in a dimension that no one else is in?"

"Yeah, besides that. And aren't you with Chance now?"

"Here we hit the core problem." I let a gush of air out abruptly. "Chance left a couple minutes ago."

"Wait, why?"

"And there we hit another core." I stop to organize my thoughts, and then start to pour out everything Chance just told me. How he was connected to the dimensions, how I'm actually in the real world, how he caused all of this... everything. It's as much getting myself to accept it as it is to tell Brock.

I knew Chance and I had never been super cliquey, but I thought we might have at least been friends. Maybe it had only been one-sided? But then why had he stuck around with me for so long?

"Woah." Brock says the only appropriate response to everything I just told him.

I force a laugh. "So what's been up with you? New pair of sneakers or anything?"

"Actually we've been getting the radiation lab to start spilling some secrets. Big, big headlines. Of course, not as big as new sneakers would have been."

"Wait, you're getting them to talk about the dimensions?" I raised my eyebrows, and then nearly jump out of my skin when thunder seems to boom all around me. The day seems to be speeding by at an abnormal rate, getting darker and darker.

"Yeah, something like that. We took it a little higher than the lab, and then started getting them to talk. Turns out, there was a disappearance of another kid some time back that was never solved. This might just explain that."

The winds have picked up around me, whipping my hair sharply in every direction.

"Are you having weird weather now? And is it getting dark pretty fast?" I ask. Do the dimensions have the same weather as their original?

"Not really..." There's a break in which I assume Brock checks out his window. "Yeah, nope. The sun's going down slowly, and everything else is normal."

"Okay... That's good, I guess." I have to speak louder to get over the winds now. I glance at the sky, and my jaw drops. "Brock... check the sky. Check it now."

"Um... okay?" He's quiet, and then I hear him murmur. "What is going on?"

There, in the sky, I can see a visible rift, like paper that was just torn. Beyond that, I can see stars, and explosions of colorful galaxies.

And I have a feeling I know who's causing this. "It's Chance. He has to be causing this." I stumble to the side a couple steps, trying to fight against the wind. It seems determined to push me towards something unseen in that direction.

I hear Brock yelp. "Lea, a brick just nearly--" Then my phone plays static, and the call abruptly ends. I jam my phone into my pocket, heart thumping. What he started to say sounded like something that would happen over here, not over there.

The rift in the sky is growing wider. I don't know what this is, but I need to stop it. If it's anything Chance is doing, it can't be good. Not after we just had an argument.

Those words keep ringing in my head. Not good. Argument.

"Think, Lea, think." I yell into the wind. "What does Chance want? What is he trying to do?" He said it was unfair that everyone wasn't feeling what he was. Could he connect everyone to the dimension like him? No... He said he got his connection through an artifact, assuming that he wasn't lying about that. It wouldn't be possible to make everyone like him.

In my mind, I picture a brick suddenly falling out of Brock's ceiling. Their dimension is decaying like the world around me. The real world.

What would make the two realms come together to be the same? My eyes widen. Come together. Could... Would that even be possible? To meld this monster hole with the normal-like dimension? To make them the same?

My heart thumps louder. I have to stop this.