She pushed his hand aside and stepped forward. "I wouldn't be fully satisfied if it didn't," she said and crossed to her world.
He smiled at the now empty room. "Perfect. Upsetting my brother is so easy when those he cares about practically volunteer to drive him nuts. Now I just need to ensure the plan falls into place just the way I want it to."
He picked up a hair left behind on her pillow. It glowed in his hand. Soon it started multiplying itself into more and more hairs. Pieces of skin started to grow at their roots. The skin grew more to meet itself and make a head. Still it grew until the rest of the body formed. Slowly it filled with muscle and bones until a perfect replica of Alyss was laid down before him, down to the clothes she'd been wearing. He tucked the simulacrum under the covers so it looked like Alyss was still in the room and peacefully sleeping. He grinned and transported away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Town Bazaar
Richard's portal dumped her off in her bedroom at home. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, taking in the feeling of freedom; but she couldn't waste much time on that when she knew pursuit was likely not far behind. Alyss had thoughts and plans race through her head and it was so tempting to just take her time and think through a plan, but she knew she'd have to act. Now. She dumped all her binders and pencil case on the floor to clear space in her backpack. She rushed around the house, stopping by the pantry and garage where she packed some food and supplies and stuffed them in the bag. Then a quick scrabble in a box labeled "manure fertilizer" revealed the stash of emergency cash her parents thankfully kept for times of need. Escape, in her mind, definitely qualified.
Alyss paid a taxi a hefty sum to get her to the commuter train station. Once she was there, the ticket counter warned her she had less than a quarter of an hour to get across the entire field to the actual tracks where she'd need to board. She sprinted to make it. Alyss huffed, the air moving far too slowly in and out of her struggling lungs, but she knew she couldn't stop running until she was gone.
One train ride and four buses later the view outside the window had grown brown, even as more towering high rises started to crop up. She boarded yet another vehicle, but eventually her last bus was stopped by a smoking engine and dumped all of its passengers in a rest stop town along the road before finishing its route to get from Vegas to LA. The other passengers were still close enough to home that they could call for rides from family and friends from their starting point, but no one could offer her a ride even when she asked them. One passenger told her that the next town over had a bus that would take her the rest of the way to the West Coast, so she trudged along the shoulder of the highway until she eventually came to Sunny Oaks. Sunny Oaks was neither sunny nor filled with trees of any variety. In fact, it seemed to be devoid of almost anything. She'd been walking, tired and thirsty, for miles until she made it there and realized the only intact buildings were a deserted gas station and an old chapel. There were blocks of other structures, but all of them had lost the fight to time and gravity and lay crumpled on the ground. Some houses still stood a little behind the gas station, but they looked empty. The lawns were bare of any greenery and the driveways were cracked. Some of them had holes in the roof. All of them were faded. She still knocked on the doors, just to check, but the sound of her fist echoed in each one and nobody came to answer it.
The gas station was empty, but the garage standing next to the empty convenience store still had a roof and four sides. She checked the door and found that it looked clean enough. It was obvious that this town was a bust and she'd have to retrace her steps to see if the same bus that had dropped her off could either bring her further out or return her to Las Vegas where she could catch a different ride, but for now she'd need to sleep if she was going to be walking several miles to go home. Alyss looked at the roof and noticed that there were, in fact, some holes in it. She remembered that the weather out here could usually be relied upon to stay dry, so it still seemed as good enough a place to stay as she could hope for in this ghost town.
"Hey, little lady." Some men, boys really, came knocking at the garage door when she had already curled up to sleep. "We heard you making noise out here. Sorry we didn't come out to meet you sooner, but we don't get up before night time here."
She eagerly went out the door to meet with them. "Oh I'm so glad there were people here. Can you guys help me find the closest place to sleep?"
Another one of them walked forward with a grin, his piercings flashing in the lone streetlight. "I've got just the place for you, honey. Want to spend the night with us?"
She backed up a step. "I want to sleep somewhere, but I don't really like the sound of doing it with anyone else," she said.
"We couldn't get into town today, so we're pretty lucky you showed up," the third one said.
"I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as we will," the
