"This is silly. I shouldn't have come," said Chance.
"Kris, take it easy," said Henry Quantos. "Relax for a while, let the others get to know you, and try to get to know them a bit more, too."
"Y'know, Doc, I never really made any close friends on the team, well, except for Shirley. Kristogar Velo and I had a professional respect for each other, but we could hardly have called each other our 'buddy.'" Kristofer Schanz turned to Edulcore Cicciotto, the former Eurostar, and said, "Ed, Kristogar is the reason nobody on the team except my old friend Dr. Quantos here calls me 'Kristofer,' since sounds too much like 'Kristogar.' That's why I took to calling myself 'Chance,' which is more of a nickname than any kind of code name. But it seems to work as both."
Edulcore nodded, sipping at his drink and still awed by the strangeness of this bar. "Ehy, sorry to change the subject, but... Have the rest of you noticed that this place seems to be a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside?"
"Hm?" said Quantos, sipping a shot of brandy. "Oh, I hadn't really noticed. There are so many walls and columns impeding the view."
"You obviously didn't look up, Doc," said Danny. The group looked up and gasped as they realized how high the ceiling ran, and that there were other levels to this bar they hadn't seen.
"But -- but that's impossible!" said Quantos. "The building Grimm brought us to was only one -- or possibly two -- stories high!"
Edulcore grinned and chuckled. "Sort of like our old tesseract, eh, Danny?"
Danny nodded and took another sip of his drink.
"Interesting," said Chance. "I've read the files about the team before I joined up in Mandelovia, and I remember that the part about an actual tesseract existing was enough to 'blow my mind,' so to speak. Never thought I'd see one for myself, though."
"Where did they -- or you folks, for that matter -- get ahold of tesseract technology?" asked a bewildered Dr. Quantos. This type of technology had still been in development stage at Malvan-X when he was head of the Research Department there, and it was well above Top Secret. Yet it seemed that here it was being used for commercial purposes. "Will wonders never cease?"
"So you never really explained what happened to Pete, Chance," said Danny. The table became suddenly quiet and uncomfortable. "Uh... did I say something wrong?"
"No, Danny," said Dr. Quantos, "it's something we have to talk with the group about soon, anyways. Pete is... well, he's--"
"Pete is dead," said a grim-faced Chance. The others said nothing. "Really dead. Not a dream, not an imaginary story. But that information can't leave this table." He looked into the eyes of the others at the table: Dr. Quantos, Edulcore, Danny, and the very quiet Turner. "The others are here to have a good time, tonight, and relax for a few moments after the hectic last few cases we've had."
"What do you mean by 'dead,' Chance?" asked Danny. "You mean dead-dead?"
"Yes. Dead."
Danny was quiet for a moment. Besides Dr. Quantos and Chance, he was the only other one at the table who had known Pete "the Chimp" Glover.
"I-I guess I found it hard to believe," he said. "After all, none of us has really died before. We thought you were dead, Eurostar, but of course you came back. And even though Sonja looked like she'd been murdered, according to Nae she wasn't dead either. And Naecken himself: Who knows what death and life means to a composite being who's half angel and half demon? Although they told me he was dead I never really believed it. Same with Pete. But you're telling me he's not coming back?"
"This isn't a comic-book, folks," said Dr. Quantos. "The dead -- those who are truly dead and not only missing -- just don't come back."
"But where's the body? And the proof?" said Danny.
"There is no body, and there can never be any proof where this is concerned, Daniel," said Chance. "It all happened at the Castle of Crossed Destinies." Edulcore frowned in question at this name. "I'll... tell you about it later, Ed."
"But can't we try to get him back? The Castle of Crossed Destinies is a mysterious place. Mysterious and spooky. Very spooky. I mean, if YOU can come back from the dead, Chance, why can't Pete?"
"It's not that simple, Danny," said Dr. Quantos.
"I never came back from the dead, since I never died in my reality," said Chance. "There's something about the Castle that it is able to somehow tap into alternate realities. Every millisecond of every day things happen which could have happened somehow differently, ever branching off into separate threads of possibility, never to be reconciled again -- except through the Castle. Somehow, the Castle accessed the possible alternate timeline in which I never died but Pete did. Our destinies were crossed."
"That makes no sense," said Edulcore. "Was Pete not the luckiest man on Earth before you? That doesn't seem like a lucky fate to me."
"The only way I can explain it is that luck can only take you so far in the Castle. It's run by sheer chance itself, so powers of chance don't make much of a difference in matters of fate there. Anyways, for some reason I came back into reality in the timeline in which I had died and Pete had lived. Only now Pete was dead. And I am still alive."
"So why don't we try to get back to the Castle?" said Danny, getting more upset every moment. "Our teammate -- our friend -- could still be out there somewhere!"
"How?" asked Chance sadly.
"Well, I don't know..." Danny stared into his drink for a few moments, and then looked up. "Doc, can't you invent something to tune into the wave pattern of the Castle, or something like that?"
Dr. Henry Quantos raised his hands. "I wouldn't even know where to begin, Danny. I'm just a research scientist. I'm not God."
"But he's missing, he's not dead. There's no body!"
"He is dead, Danny," said Chance. "And there's nothing any of us can do about it. Believe me, it's all I've been thinking about today. And neither Dr. Quantos or I can do anything by scientific means to save him."
"Then get a magician or something," said Danny, exasperating by their apparent apathy. "I mean, he's trapped in this ghost-like state; that's not really dead."
Chance looked up. Edulcore and Turner looked puzzled at this statement. "I suppose I should explain. This is probably going to sound strange, guys, but... I've seen Pete. He -- he haunts me sometimes. I even saw him this afternoon laughing at me over my concern about somehow bringing him back. He seemed to say something to me. Something about how only the living want to bring back the dead due to their fear of death, that unknown final step in life. But death's not anything like we imagine it to be. It may be a loss for us, but for Pete it's more like a reunion with everyone he cared about and lost.
"Anyways, that's how I know he's dead. And from what Danny's said, I'm guessing that that's how Pete saw the spirit of the dead Kristofer Schanz of this timeline. That's how I know he's not coming back. Outside of a comic book or the movies, nobody can bring back the dead..."
"Also, folks, we'd like to keep this quiet until the night's over," said Dr. Quantos. "No sense in spoiling the rest of the team's fun. Er... sorry, Danny."
Danny shook his head. "That's all right," he muttered, sipping a bit more from his drink.
"It was also the idea of Doc and I to hold a Wake for Pete," said Chance. "He was from Newfoundland, so it's traditional to do so upon one's death. We figured that tonight, before we head back to the apartment, we could all raise our drinks to Pete's memory. And we'll finally be able to grieve in peace, each in our own way. But we'll wait until later on. Just try to have fun for the rest of the evening."
"Here's to Pete," said Danny, raising his drink. The others raised their own and clinked their glasses together.
