Perspectives

Chapter 35

Piper sat alone at the table with a faint smile on her face. As much as she tried to suppress it, there was a mounting surge of hope coming over her. It was only a chance, she told herself. A slim chance that they would be able to pull off some harebrained scheme to get her back home. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but she couldn't help but fantasize about the idea of finally getting back to Earth. 

The sound of two giant pairs of feet on the stairs announced Celia and Kalen's return. Piper stood up as they made their way back over to the table.

"Devon is making the calls now." Celia informed Piper. "If all goes well we can likely begin making plans tonight." Piper gave a subdued nod in response, trying to mask how anxious she was feeling.  

For the next half hour, the three of them sat at the table in waiting. Piper and Celia exchanged some polite conversation, mostly discussing various cultural differences between Earth and Amasis. Kalen remained almost entirely silent throughout. He seemed to have recognized that Piper wasn't up to having a pleasant conversation with him. 

Feeling increasingly more on edge as time went by, Piper practically leaped out of her seat when she heard Devon coming down the stairs. 

Devon swung around the corner of the stairs, hand on the banister and grin on his face. "They've both agreed to help." He announced.

Piper released a heavy sigh of relief and broke into a soft smile. Of course she knew they were nowhere near out of the woods yet, but this was a step in the right direction, and damn it she wanted to be happy about it. 

Looking over at Celia, Piper could see a relieved smile on her face. Kalen on the other hand had some unreadable expression on his face. Piper narrowed her eyebrows at him, suspicious of why his reaction seemed less than positive. Before she could consider calling him out on it, Celia had spoken up. "Who are they?" She asked of Devon. 

"Lora Kaiden and Jed Ambrose." Devon told her, grin remaining ever prominent on his face. "Lora has agreed to do what she needs to whenever we tell her to, and Jed's coming over in a few minutes to work out his part of the plan." Piper felt the usual wave of nervousness that came with the prospect of meeting a new giant, but she quickly brushed the feeling off, this giant was going to be her one way ticket back home.

~

After Devon's announcement that his friend and soon to be fellow conspirator would be coming over soon, the four of them had relocated upstairs to the sitting room of the Bradford Manor. Kalen, Celia, and Devon sat in the plush couches that surrounded the glass coffee table where Piper was sitting in her own little doll's chair. Kalen had had to push down a strange sense of possessiveness when he had watched Celia carry Piper upstairs in her hand. He knew it was entirely stupid to feel that way, Piper didn't belong to him, especially after what he had done to her. But seeing her in someone else's hands after having been his own little secret for so long...

The distinct whirring of a transporter could be heard from outside the room. Kalen caught Devon give Piper a reassuring nod before exiting the room to go meet his guest. 

Kalen glanced down at Piper. He could tell she was nervous by the way she was fiddling with her hands on her lap. It had always been clear she wasn't a fan of having to be around more "giants" than absolutely necessary. For awhile that had meant only him, but now things were different. 

"My gods, I half thought you were lying Devon." Kalen turned to see the speaker was a tall man with dark skin and closely cropped black hair. He wore a mesmerized look on his face as he slowly approached the table on which Piper sat. 

One look at Piper out of the corner of Kalen's eye and he could see she was highly uncomfortable, but trying to cover it. Kalen tensed as the stranger got closer, ready to intervene if he made some kind of unwanted move towards Piper. However, he stopped a few feet away from the table, proceeding to dip into a small bow. "Pleasure to meet you, I'm Jed Ambrose." He greeted genially, a bright smile on his face as he pulled out of the bow.

Kalen looked back at Piper to see she looked considerably uncomfortable, evidently unaccustomed to being bowed at. She hesitated for a moment before giving a polite nod in response. "Uh--hi, I'm Piper." She replied. 

"Go ahead and take a seat, Jed." Devon said, gesturing to the open space on the couch Kalen was occupying.

Once everyone was seated, Devon cleared his throat and began. "Jed is an engineer for the SSD." He explained. "Not only that, but he's assigned to the trans-dimensional transporter." Kalen couldn't say he wasn't surprised that someone working on one of the most important piece of technology in the world was willing to betray the council, as this man was. Before recently, Kalen had been under the assumption that no one would ever even think of going against the rule of the council. Today he'd met three, and was now among them. 

"Trans-dimensional transporter?" Piper piped up. "Is that what brought me here in the first place?" Kalen realized he'd never specifically told Piper what had been responsible for bringing her to Amasis. 

Devon gave a nod of confirmation. "Yes, and we'll need to get you back to it in order to send you home." He told her. 

"That's where I come in." Jed said. "I can operate the transporter and get you back to the Earth Dimension, the only problem is doing it without anyone else noticing." He explained, leaning down slightly to meet Piper's gaze from down on the table. 

"We have part of that taken care of already." Devon told Jed. "Lora has agreed to hack into the camera feed and give it some fake footage for awhile." 

Jed gave a cheerful laugh. "Should have known that woman would be on board." 

"So what's the other part?" Piper asked, returning the focus back to the plan they were meant to be constructing. 

"The trans-dimensional transporter is the biggest project the SSD has right now, there's people working on it around the clock, and never just one at a time." Jed explained. "The shift I usually work has five people assigned to it at once." 

Sneaking a human past four other scientists sounded pretty much impossible to Kalen. He had a feeling they would notice if their most important piece of technology suddenly started up. 

"So what can we do?" Celia asked. 

"Well the shift with the least amount of people working on the transporter at a time is the 2am-7am shift." Jed informed them. "There's only two people working on it, and if one of them was me, then we would only have to worry about one other person." 

"And can you get this shift somehow?" Devon questioned. 

Jed nodded. "I think I could convince Orton Welles to trade shifts with me." 

"We still have the problem of the other person working." Kalen reminded everyone. He still didn't entirely like this plan, but was refraining from saying that particular opinion of his. However he was going to be sure to poke any holes in this plan when he took note of them. If they were going to go through with this, he wanted to make damn sure it was solid. 

"Certainly they must have some kind of break at some point." Celia inquired.

"Everyone has a break every two and a half hours of work." Jed replied. He sat thinking for a minute before nodding and saying, "I think I could probably manage to just hang back while they left, I only need about ten minutes alone with the transporter." 

Kalen wanted to point out how contingent this whole plan was. He could think of a hundred things that could go wrong just off of the top of his head. And yet one look at the hopeful look in Piper's eyes silenced him. He knew how desperately she wanted to get back home. He also knew she wasn't stupid. Surely she recognized the apparent risks, but seemingly saw them as worth it. 

Piper's smile faded as she looked up at Jed. "I know what you're doing for me is risky for you, and you don't even know me at all--" 

"Oh please, don't worry about that." Jed brushed it off. "This may be my one chance to help a human, and I'm going to take it." He told Piper with a wide smile on his face.

Piper returned Jed's smile. "Thank you." She said with sincerity. 

Jed chuckled. "Don't mention it." He then cracked his fingers before pulling a telecommunicator out of his pocket. "Now, let's get you back home."