In The Wildest Dimensions

14. A Myth Busted

The tranquilizers began to dissipate away into dilution in Adam's blood. What felt like a minute's escape from consciousness was actually a healthy thirty minutes from the moment his heart had been impaled by Radiyana's gun.

The same Radiyana conflicted to be Adam's first wife.

"Ugh..." he grunted as he vigilantly woke up in a dark room. "Radiyana, what's the meaning of this? And how a-"

They were in unit 206, Radiyana's unit. The window shutters silenced any exterior light from blessing the dim confines of the rectangular room.

Candles were lit, their wicks patiently watching from every corner.

A hand clasped over his mouth, the skin softer than satin. From the coolness of the body temperature and the overall fingerprint pressure points, he deduced a familiar identity of the person doing this.

"Good girl, Aria," Radiyana's voice flew out like an arrow from the corner of the room. "Our little pet detective needs to be disciplined about knowing his limits."

'Aria? Who's...'

"I know what you're thinking... mister detective," the slightly older-than-Aria, curvier woman walked nearer. "Aria is the middle name of our dear Evelyn Bouchie. I'm sure you already know the reason why your name needs to be classified, given the circumstances of girls whose memory are as fragile as their hearts."

'Ah, how did she do that?! Is that really Radiyana? THAT Radiyana Doestoevsky? She's... Not dead?'

"Now, Aria."

"Y-yes, Radi?"

"Release him. It's time to cut the cake."

Adam raised his eyebrows. 'What? A cake?'

From a table out of view, the timid (but sentient) female clone retrieved a platter of circular baked yeast, topped with creamy cacao paste.

"Congratulations!" the Russian-surnamed woman held it out in front of the detective, sitting against the windowside wall. "It's your birthday. Have some cake."

'What?'

She smeared and squashed the cake on Adam's confused face, without warning.

"Hope you enjoy the present," she let the platter fall to the floor with a clangor that was guaranteed to wake up the neighbors below. "It's very handy."

For the time in his life, Adam Void Jucas gulped down an uncertainty pill.

Among the sticky crumbling mess of the confectionery, a piece of meat rested in the middle.

It was a disembodied human hand.

"Goddamnations!" he exclaimed. "What madness is this?!"

Radiyana chuckled. Her siren eyes sparkled with vengeance, matching the scarlet hue of her irises. Her long platinum-blonde hair reflected off a pastel cyan sheen in the ochre fiery luminescence.

"The same goes for you, dear Jucas," her height matched that of the detective perfectly. "Running around from door to door... massacring clones as if they grow from the ground!"

"J-Jucas?" Eve suddenly recognised the man's face. "My dear Jack! H-how are you? I missed ya... I'm sorry... I'm not sure what's going on," she embraced her husband.

"I should be saying the same," Adam verbally noted. "But you both have some explaining to do."

"I'll do the honors," Radiyana stroked the detective's cheek with a gloved hand. Her deeply rich femme fatal voice brought a feeling of warmth and care in her ex-husband's mind. "Welcome to Vicilia, m'love. A town that doesn't exist. Yet always did, and never will."

"Do you always speak in paradoxes?" Adam interrupted. Eve removed her face from his beating heart and stepped back to a vantage point ideal for facing both him and the other woman. "Not sure how you're alive after a month. Not sure how you're in Vicilia. Not sure if you're the same shy girl I remember."

Radiyana continued after securing the lock on her frontdoor.

"Patience," her siren lips were glossy with an aesthetic coating of lipstick. The maturity of her face stood in clear cardinal opposites with the youthfulness of Bouchie's. "It's no wonder how you've finally gained sentience in this mess of an intellectual hellscape. The question is... What took you so long. Usually we expect one unusual male clone every two months. You're the first one we've seen in the last six years. Now... I'm sure my partner-in-crime here," she laid a sisterly arm on Eve's shoulder. "Has already declared the rough ideas about what's going on. Your questions have some straightforward answers, to be honest. Especially for a detective's intelligence quotient."

Adam tilted his head to the side. 'Huh?'

"No worries if you're defective on the detective angle, mister Jucas. Every clone seems to have some aspect of their profiles missing or faulty. I can still clarify, by the blessings of long-term probability and the knowledge banks robbed from the Authorities themselves."

Radiyana began walking around in circles, orbiting her target listener.

"Firstly, I was never dead. Atleast from my sentience and memories. In order to safeguard yours, me and Eve had planned out a synthetic background to add some depth to your sense of being. You wouldn't have lived long enough for your consciousness to breakthrough completely if you were questioning the past too early. Eve isn't the only female who has reached the wilder dimensions. I was there first. I was there for Eve when she first showed minor signs of gaining her mental independence. Sadly enough, her memory capacity began deteriorating till it reached the state you see her now in," she ruffled Eve's hair. "Such a sweet girl, no?"

Adam straightened his neck upright again.

"What's the meaning of that hand then? Whose is it?" he demanded.

"Ara ara," his pretend-wife brought her fingers near her mouth. "Don't wanna leave out any curiousity for dessert? Hahaha..." Radiyana's body showed signs of attaining a higher level of womanhood than her adopted friend's. "It's Michael's. That annoying brat keeps getting on our nerves. We can't really blame him though. He thinks this town is real like the way you all did before you knew the sealed truth. I chopped it off this evening, while you love birds were busy pecking each others' heart out. Otherwise he'd have come upstairs to his dying niece's aid by now."

'With that kind of cleavage and sacred feminity organs on your chest, I doubt any man would resist,' Adam smiled subconsciously.

"So... My dear soldiers of love, are you ready for your next quest? Vicilia gives me nightmares. I cannot wait to lead us out of here."

"M-miss Radi, what ab-"

A powerful fist knocked on the front door.