Free Edge Walkers by Shannon Donnelly

headed toward the remnants of some kind of processing equipment. A metal conveyor belt, creaking in the breeze, stretched between rusting towers. The place must have used water to generate power, but the water had long ago stagnated into a dank tarn at the bottom of the pit. He’d never given a thought to using any of that water because of the bits of things he’d once seen floating.
    They skirted the edge of that gaping gouge in the ground. Gideon put his hand over his nose and mouth to block the worst of the putrid stench. A doorway gaped open, black and bleak, and Gideon led the way.
    Inside, the smell lessened. The empty shell of the structure rose around them. Their steps echoed dull from rusting metal walls. Light filtered in through dirty windows to their right, the glass surprisingly intact still. He’d been surprised, too, when he’d gotten a reading on this place before Carrie had showed. Now, Temple gave him another silent shout.
    Turning, he saw Temple lift the EM meter to show the flickering needle. The man pointed toward the far wall.
    Damn—this shouldn’t be happening. This place should have been emptied—that’s how the Walkers worked. Walkers raked a spot over for every scrap of energy. They should have bled the place dry—nothing should be here.
    Eyes narrowing, he glanced at Carrie. “What the hell were you—?”
    “Oh, my…” Her words broke into his and she broke away. He tracked her as she stepped forward, put out a hand to stop Temple from going after her. Two steps from his side, she stopped. She pointed to a shimmering image on the far wall and said, “That’s my lab.”
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The universe seems to want to maintain order—if you cross to another dimension, it wants to put you back. Which is why Edge Walkers need physical form. They don’t want us because we’re pretty. If they’re inside our skins, they can hold onto the dimension they’ve entered. And they have plenty of reasons to stay since it has to be, for them, close to an all you can eat buffet.                                                                      — Excerpt Carrie Brody’s Journal
    Carrie stared at the far wall, at the rusting metal and the image floating over it, behind it, inside it. It looked almost as if someone had made a hole in the wall with a blow torch, leaving charred edges, so that she could see outside to foggy twilight. Except daylight filtered in behind her and to her right, so that hole wasn’t showing the outside of anything. Through that circle of murky-gray, she could see her lab. Or that’s what it looked like.
    She’d expected more destruction.
    The equipment seemed intact—at least the shapes of things looked right—workbenches, generators, computers, slabs of mineral samples. She could even see the flash of what looked like her laptop still running the results of the last test. The hum of the equipment buzzed in the background—everyone had always found the high pitch of the frequency amplifier faintly irritating and tempers had often been edgy by the end of a long working session.
    Mouth falling open, she squinted at the scene. She tried to see more details, to make out if she could see anyone. She tried to remember. They had started the test, had set regular EM cycles at amplified bursts ten seconds apart. The equipment had been in place to monitor the conductivity of the various samples even with interference running.
    And a power surge had hit.
    Thompson had yelled something about the readings. Chand had…what? Memory slipped into a blur of motion and noise and screams. She could picture a sizzle, a flash of light—she could now see how one of the benches had been ripped apart, shredded into sharp shafts.
    Stepping closer, she glimpsed movement in the shadows of her lab.
    “Carrie?”
    She heard the voice behind her and registered worry, but she was caught up in trying to piece together what