Sardius had not quite got Jenna out of her dress when a strange white light surrounded them.  Sardius reached out for Jenna and caught her just in time to prevent them from being torn apart by unexplainable forces.  He held her in arms like metal as the white light swallowed them utterly.  Jenna closed her eyes and held on desperately.

What happened next was that Jenna felt like she was being torn apart and then turned inside out.  She wanted to keep her eyelids shut tights, but as she was being warped, she wasn’t sure that she had eyes.  The only thing that was the same was Sardius’ arm that felt as reliable as the rail in a hospital shower.  She might break her head open on his arm, but it would not move.

When Jenna found herself rearranged and felt enough like herself to breathe, she inhaled.  The air was strange, like drinking mineral water, except only breathing instead of drinking.  She coughed and sputtered, but when she opened her eyes she saw white and black.

Sardius still had his arms wrapped around her and it took a full minute for her to understand what she was looking at.  

They were on the surface of a white moon or planet.  They were facing a star that span and radiated white light and then blue light.  They sat on the white stubble of the ground.  Jenna could breathe, but it was strange, like she was going to need to walk around if she wanted to breathe enough to stay conscious.  The surface of the world around them was flat, and the star did not create enough light to outshine the little stars that made up the night’s sky.  Their skin looked white and blue under the light of the star.  The oscillations almost made them look like they were underwater, but the frequency of the light changes were dizzying, almost nauseating.

“I can’t even!” Sardius spat when his eyes opened.

“Where are we?” Jenna choked, still coughing with the feeling of the new air in her throat.

Sardius wasn’t coughing.  He was normal, except that he was more pissed off than usual.  “We’re in the Xypher Zone.”

Jenna’s eyes went wide.  “We can’t be in the Xypher Zone.  I’ll die!”

Sardius looked around them, alert and searching.  “Normally, I’d say there is too much radiation for you, but I think your forcefield is keeping out most of the radiation.  Look at your skin.”  He said, running a hand over her bare shoulder.  “It’s not unusual for someone to develop what looks like a sunburn almost immediately upon entering the Xypher Zone.  You’re still white, not red.  We’ll keep an eye on you for the next few minutes, but if you stay clear I’d say it’s because of your force field.”

Jenna shook her head frantically.  “That’s almost as bad.  If my force field is working all the time, that’s going to drain me. I’ll have my face pressed into these pebbles because I won’t be able to keep my head up.”

Sardius was listening to her, but he was also looking around them.  “We can’t change the facts either way.  We’ll just have to see how well you’re doing.”  He was looking into the distance by the horizon.  “Look,” he said, pointing.  “Do you see that yellow star?”

Jenna turned and saw it.  It was large and shaped almost like a triangle.  

“That’s the Prison for X Chromosomes,” he said.

“So, that’s where Ixy, Ivy, and Conrad are,” Jenna concluded.  She put her hand to her earpiece and tried to get Ixy on the line.

“That’s not going to work,” Sardius said.

“Is that because we had Ixy sign off so we could have our private wedding?” Jenna asked, feeling quite angry.

“No,” Sardius answered cleanly.  “It’s because Rold Xant delivered a mobile dimension shifter when he dropped off Harlee.  We knew his ship dropped something or other into our system, but we weren’t sure what it was.  According to our instruments, it could have been nothing, or it could have been something.  We don’t have equipment meant to scan for dimensional portals.  Nobody does.  That’s one of the reasons why having a PA in a different dimension is such a great idea.”

“So why can’t we get in touch with Ixy?” Jenna asked, stirring the very depths of her patience.

“Because the portal in your earpiece would have cracked when going through the portal that Rold used on us.  The bigger portal would have collapsed the smaller portal.  It’s useless now and it will be forever.  It’s unfixable.  Do you see that bright white star?”

Jenna saw another tiny triangle in the night sky.  She nodded.

“That’s my old prison.”

“How nostalgic,” she said drolly.  “I’m confused.  Where are we and why are we breathing okay?”

“I think… and I’m not totally sure, but I think we’re on one of the River Moons.”

“That explains everything,” she said, nodding.

He nodded along with her for a second before he realized she was mocking him.  “Okay. There aren’t any big planets with moons around them here.  The Xypher Zone only has dwarf planets.  The prisons are both on dwarf planets.  We’re in a particular string of white dwarf planets that hang together due to their gravity.  They flow around the star in something like a river.  I don’t know which one we’re on, but if we’re lucky, and I think we might be, there are a few leftover Adamis settlements here.  They were built before they realized that the radiation from the Crying Sun was more than their tech was going to be able to deal with, but you know what else?” he said, rising to his feet.  

“What?” Jenna said, taking his hand and getting to her feet too.

“If we can find one of those settlements, I bet their buildings plus your force field will be enough to protect you from the radiation until help can arrive.”  He extended his hand and she took it.  Then he looked around, still alert.  “We just need to figure out which way to go.”

Jenna pulled the earpiece out of her ear.  “So this is useless now.”

“The pearl might still be valuable,” he said.  “And we might need something to trade depending on how things go.  Don’t throw it away.”

Jenna put it back in her ear.  It was most convenient to keep it there.

“I think I see something over there.  I don’t know what it is, but there is something over there and there doesn’t seem to be anything in any other direction, even when I look with the scanner in my false eye.  It looks like our best bet.  Let’s go.”  He started leading Jenna in that direction.  

Jenna realized in two steps that she was very lucky that her and Sardius’ fooling around had not escalated past a light makeout session before they were sucked into a different dimension.  They both still had footwear on and all their clothes.  It felt extraordinarily lucky as they walked in a motion that was almost a bounce across the River Moon’s surface.

“What do you think Rold was playing at zapping us off to another dimension?” Jenna questioned, interested in hearing Sardius’ thoughts.

“I’m not sure it was personal.  Rold does not seem like he’s in charge of himself.  He’s a tough man, but someone else is pulling the strings.  That’s one of the reasons he acts extra tough, and why Scion was sent down to be a diplomat candidate.  I don’t think it was his idea and nor do I think it was his idea to come see Scion in his palace.  I think he’s a puppet.  So, I’m not sure he ought to be blamed personally for this.  It’s just more of the same.  Someone, maybe someone in the AAMC, wants to stall the diplomatic talks.  And maybe they want me out of the picture too.  I mean, I haven’t done anything great yet, but my reputation precedes me.”

Jenna gave a deep throated giggle.  “You think we’ll be able to be rescued if we get to a building?”

He waffled his hand.  “I don’t know which River Moon we landed on.  If it was a good one, we won’t die.”

The spot in the distance he mentioned grew larger as they walked.  

“Maybe it wasn’t as far away as I feared,” Jenna said as the building started to take shape.  “It looks like a castle with a spire.”

Sardius rolled his eyes and pulled her closer to him so he could walk with his hand around her waist.  “Who knows what it is?  If there’s a person there, we should be able to get something useful worked out pretty quickly.”

***

When they arrived at the white castle, it looked empty.  They knocked at the tall gate doors.  No one answered, but the door opened after Sardius messed with the security lock.  The tools in his boots came in handy at every turn.  

Inside the courtyard, there was nothing but more white.  I looked like someone had tried to grow some potted plants, but they were long dead and the blackened leaves gave Jenna an ominous feeling that ran all through her skeleton and made her feel cold when she hadn’t felt cold before.

Sardius tried to knock on the front doors to the house, but when there was no answer a second time, he whipped out his tools and opened the door.  

Inside was magnificent.  There were high ceilings, beautiful carpets, elegant furnishings, and beauty everywhere.  The tinted stained glass windows made the light more colorful and normal and again Jenna and Sardius looked like skin color instead of the blue and white they looked while they were under the Crying Sun.

“This isn’t a safe place to be,” Sardius proclaimed as he worked on the control panel.  “This house is equipped with a magnetic field that is supposed to ease the radiation, but if no one is living here, I’d say it doesn’t work very well.  I’ll turn it on now.”

“For me?”

“Well, the radiation doesn’t bother me,” Sardius grumped as he input the command.

“What about sending a transmission to the warden of the women’s prison?” Jenna suggested, trying to be helpful.  “She knows me.”

“She knows me too, but uh… I don’t want to call her,” he said slowly, pausing at the controls.

“Why not?” Jenna wanted to know.

“If we contact them, they can come get us.  The prisons have ships for escorting prisoners.  It’s just that if we ask them to come get us, they’ll come get us in a vehicle intended for moving prisoners.  If someone has a reason to keep us detained, that would be a good way.  They could take us right to the jail and you could be jailed along with Ixy and Ivy.  I could be taken to the men’s prison and forced to help with the rebuild.  I heard that was happening over the communications server when I passed through here in Don Leo’s ship.  I just don’t know if we’re safe going there.  Maybe they’re our friends when we’re in a different dimension and maybe they’re not if we’re in the same dimension with them.  I think it would be better to take our chances with whoever owns this mansion.  If we can find who’s living here, if anyone is, maybe we can try contacting the owners.  If we can’t do either of those things, I think it might be smarter to try to flag down a ship that’s passing through.”

“Wait,” Jenna said, putting up a hand.  “I thought no one came here but the prisoners of the jails.”

“The jails are the main thing in the Xypher Zone, but there is some other traffic.  Bonemen are not as affected by the radiation, so there are scientists who conduct studies here, build homes.  After all, someone built this home.”

“So, we need to go through every single room until we find someone?” Jenna asked, suddenly quite concerned that the place was so dead the only things they were going to find were empty rooms or corpses.

“Try to be brave, Dear,” Sardius said as he kissed her knuckles to encourage her.