by Francis Tint
Blake looked at the woman, tongue-tied. “I was just… I was just curious.”
“It’s an s-field. Do not get close. When it sucks you in, you will never get out.”
So many questions were running through her head. What’s an s-field? How was it formed? Where was she? How did she get there? “Who are you?” Blake asked.
She never got a response. Something started hissing at them. She felt the ground getting warmer. “We got to run,” Scout Cap warned. Gas started to burst out of the ground like steam escaping a kettle. Scout Cap urged Blake to keep running if she wanted to stay alive.
They arrived at a tall structure. Blake could tell it used to be a glamorous building. A large corporation or maybe a fancy hotel. Something disastrous must’ve happened. All that’s left before them was bare steel and broken windows. They entered a large area with disorganized tables, resembling some sort of a canteen. No, it couldn’t be. Were they at Ashlea Edwards? What had happened?
They were surveying the area, but Blake wasn’t quite sure what they were looking for. A loud high-pitched screech disturbed the peace. Scout Cap became very alert. Something terrible was going to happen.
With a loud rumbling sound, the ground started to separate between them. A large forced field began to materialize. “Back away from it!” Scout Cap yelled. “Stay fa…” Her voice faded away. The force field manifested into a dense opaque void between them. The same void she had seen in the barren field.
She was separated from the woman whose name she had never learned. Trapped in the building, Blake made her way to her old lab. She saw burned marks on the lab bench, and a cabinet that had been frozen over. She felt the marks on the bench. They were still warm to the touch. These were recent. She knew at once what had caused the damage. Her friends must be around.
She followed the trail of frozen lockers, tossed over bins, and charred walls. She arrived at what used to be Ashlea’s office. Blue and yellow flashes of light were seeping through the door frame. She found them. They must be inside.
She opened the door. Tylor was holding tightly onto the ice gun, discharging as many cryogenic pellets as possible against an emerging dark void. Corey summoned wind trying to keep the void from expanding.
“We should’ve built the device. We could’ve stopped this. Long before we learned about the device, they’d already ripped the fabric between the universes apart,” Tylor said.
“We tried to stop as many of these voids as we could. But it’s too late. The imbalance is irreversible. These fields are only getting stronger,” Corey said.
Their attacks were becoming increasingly futile. The void refused to be contained. She started to feel a gravitational pull toward the void. She held tightly onto a nearby table.
Tabletop objects flew across the rooms and were sucked into the void, disappearing from existence. She tried to summon her powers but they failed her. Tylor lost grip of the gun. He fell on the floor, holding on tightly to a table leg. The void became stronger, and Tylor quickly succumbed to the insatiable pull.
Blake and Corey locked eyes. There was nothing more to be said. They knew that was their last moment. They had lost. She watched helplessly as Corey gave way to the ravenous void.
“No!” She yelled, and was instantly enveloped in darkness.
Corey put Blake in her dad’s bed. He nudged her gently, “Blake?” He checked her vitals. Her pulse felt normal. Her breathing was regular. He placed his hand over Blake’s forehead. No temperature. Why was she stuck in a slumberous state?
Without warning, she jerked her body up and inhaled loudly, gasping for air as if she had just been forced underwater. “Stop! We can’t destroy them!”
“Destroy what?”
“The instructions. Please tell me you haven’t destroyed them.” She jumped out of the bed and ran to the safe. It was opened, but the contents had been emptied. “No, no, no…”
Corey approached her gently, holding the three pieces of instructions. “They are right here. I was about to burn them before you turned unresponsive. What happened?”
She took a deep breath and said, “We cannot burn these. We need to build the device. Right now.”
He had never seen Blake so resolute before. “We will need Zach’s help. It’s too complicated for us to build it here. But what happened? What did you see?”
“The end of our universe,” Blake said simply. “I saw the end.”
“Ok, run this by me just one more time,” Zach said as he sipped on his espresso drink. “First, you were all determined to safeguard it against the evils of the world. But for the sake of keeping scientific progress, we didn’t want to burn them. Then now, you want to build this doomsday machine that could trigger Armageddon. Did I miss anything?”
“Because they have already opened the portal,” Blake recounted her vision. “This has upset the balance across the dimensions. And it will get much worse. Everything we know will be torn apart into absolute oblivion. We have to build the Synchronizer to reset the energy balance. That’s our only option.”
“That’s quite dramatic even to my standard,” Zach said.
“It’s an absolute void,” Blake said in a trembled voice. “If we do nothing, we’ll be left with… just nothing. Indescribable emptiness.” Corey placed his arm over Blake’s shoulder, and gave Zach a look, who took it as a cue to stop his imprudent remarks.
“Can we build this?” Corey asked plainly.
“Let me take a look,” Zach snatched the pieces from Corey’s hand. He examined the blueprint carefully. “The design is actually shockingly simple and elegant. The challenge is not on the construction, but on getting the materials.”
“What do we need?” Corey inquired.
“It’s not something we can snag from some random junkyard. It needs state-of-the-art dense nanomaterials to stabilize the trans-dimensional energy-balancing reaction.”
“Where can we get something like that?”
“We should have it,” answered Blake. “Not quite ‘we’, since I’m not employed at Ashlea Edwards anymore.” She reached Tylor on the phone.
Tylor arrived at Zach’s lab with some BSG nanostructure, a super-thin and super-tough material that conducts energy super efficiently. He said he couldn’t get a hold of Julia or Rachael the whole day. They seemed to be both tied up with Victor on some project launch. The team finalized the assembly of the three-pronged vessel, materializing the design of the celestially potent device.
“In my head, I always thought the machine that could manipulate the energy balance of the multiverse to be seriously bigger and more complex than this,” he said.
“Well, that’s why you’ll never be the genius to come up with such an elegant design,” Zach said derisively. “It’s really remarkably delicate. It concentrates the energy of three pure elements to its core, trapped within the nanostructure. The condensed energy is then activated to do its magic.”
“Cool,” Tylor said slightly dismissively. “Just tell me where you want the BSG.”
“Right here.” Zach pointed at a housing unit connecting the three arms of the device. “We will need one more thing in the core to absorb the excess energy. Plutonium.”
“Where can we get those?” asked Corey.
“It’s one of the common radioactive wastes generated from a reactor site,” Zach answered. “And we pretty much have one on speed dial.”
“We’re not going back to that place,” Tylor warned. “Dylan would be a fool not to have upped their security system. They wouldn’t be welcoming us with open arms.”
“We would alert them only if they could see us,” Blake proposed. “I would like to suggest an idea. This could turn out to be a simple stealth mission.”
“Is everything on track?” Ashlea inquired authoritatively. Instead of the easygoing outfit she had usually donned before Blake, Ashlea was dressed in an ostentatious power suit, flamboyant heels and no glasses. Her tone of voice had also undergone a do-over, characterized by a cruel mann
erism, as she imperiously gestured for her assistant to refill her coffee cup.
On the other end of the extravagant boardroom, Benjamin stood before a flat screen showcasing some photographic evidence of his work. “Yes, ma’am, it is. Everything is going according to plan. Preliminary studies of the kid show that he’s successfully exhibited trans-dimensional abilities. I’m confident he will be able to perform wonderfully.”
Ashlea nodded gently, but without a smile to grant him any encouragement or applaud him for the success. She starkly stood up and said, “Make sure we have a tight control of the situation. Absolutely no surprises. She will not ruin my plan. Keep me posted on all updates.”
“Certainly.” He knew what she meant. Corey had already been a nuisance, almost ruining their plans of kidnapping the kid. He made sure Ashlea’s daughter was exactly where he needed her to be. Everything was under control. Blake could not stop them anymore.
“Thank you for coming,” Blake greeted.
Kaitlin did not immediately respond to the expression of gratitude. “Let’s get this over with.”
No pleasantries required. Straight to business. “Alright, then,” Blake acknowledged, and gave her one of Zach’s earpieces. “This would allow us to talk to each other in case we get separated, and also with the group back at the station.”
“Don’t flatter yourselves,” Kaitlin said bluntly as she swiftly put on the earpiece. “You call that dumpster a station?”
Blake wasn’t sure how to respond. Kaitlin was quick to lend her help to the group, but why did she need to carry such a discouraging attitude?
They stepped out of the coffee shop and approached the nuclear site. Blake covered herself with the special blanket and looked around. Kaitlin had already disappeared out of sight. She checked her reflection from a nearby window to make sure she had also become invisible.
“Stop standing over there. Let’s go!” Blake couldn’t quite tell where the voice was coming from. She could only assume it was Kaitlin’s.
“Put on the glasses I gave you,” Zach spoke to Blake over the earpiece. She followed the instruction. Her partner in crime instantly materialized standing beside the entrance. “Don’t worry about her. I’m pretty sure she can see you very well. One of the perks from her powers,” Zach explained.
They went through the entrance to the dreadful space. Blake inspected the inflicted damage. She saw the danger her friends had gone through to rescue her. What remained was like the aftermath of a warzone.
“This is way too quiet,” Kaitlin warned. “There’s no way they didn’t set up any booby traps.”
“Agreed,” Blake concurred. “They said last time there were infrared sensors equipped all around the space. Zach’s glasses should allow me to detect them, but I couldn’t see any.”
“They’re not going to use the same tactic twice. Just watch your step. We’re invisible, so hopefully they won’t see us coming.”
Blake noticed a security camera hidden at a corner, but there was no indication that they had been detected. Gingerly, they took a few more steps forward. They were instantly alerted when they heard a small click.
“Did you hear that?” asked Blake.
Kaitlin nodded and put a finger before her mouth, signaling her to keep quiet. They looked around, but nothing seemed to indicate that they had been discovered. Perhaps they were just being overcautious.
Blake turned around and saw no movement. As she was turning, she caught sight of Kaitlin’s reflection on a window. She removed her glasses and was shocked to see Kaitlin’s corporeal form.
“I think we’ve been discovered,” Blake said. “We are becoming visible again!”
Woof! A dart shot out from a corner aiming at Kaitlin. She leaped swiftly to her side to dodge the attack. The dart caught her hair instead and burned right through the strands. The smell of the poisonous chemical permeated the air. “The dart’s laced with some sort of corrosive material. Every shot’s lethal.”
Mercilessly, more shots were launched forcing the pair of them to retreat. The ground was quickly covered with obnoxious-smelling chemicals dissolving any remaining paint on the floor. Promptly, two more shots were directed right at Kaitlin, to the left and right of where she stood, pinning her to a corner. Her back was pressed against the rough wall surface. Blake saw a third shot about to take a direct hit to her head, aiming right between the eyes.
Without a second thought, Blake jumped right before Kaitlin, with her hand stretched out. She willed an ice shield, blocking any incoming attack and also clearing the floor of any corrosive residue. Their dinky assault was no match to Blake’s newfound powers.
Kaitlin followed behind and said, “That’s some nice new trick you got there.”
They arrived at a crossroad. “Zach,” Blake asked through the earpiece, “where would they store the plutonium?”
“Typically, each nuclear reactor has some storage facility of untreated waste. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. We just need a small canister.”
“Would you be able to find a blueprint of this place or something?”
“The place’s too old. I can’t find any digitized information.”
“Well,” Kaitlin interrupted, “let’s split then. We can cover more ground this way.”
Blake traversed the dark hallways in an attempt to locate the said storage area, watching her every step in case Dylan had set up more traps. She came across a few rooms, but was met with no success in locating the covetable plutonium.
She encountered another door. This had got to be it. She couldn’t bear to be in that abominable place for a second longer.
She opened the door. She immediately recognized the chamber and the bed she had been strapped in. Unintentionally, she found her way back to the very room where she had been kidnapped, where she had been tortured. She took a few inattentive steps forward, to take a closer look at the bed that had given her the worst nightmares.
Bam! The door slammed shut behind her. She quickly ran to the door handle and pulled hard. It didn’t open. The door wouldn’t budge. No, not again. They trapped her in the same room, again.
“I’m trapped,” she said through the earpiece. “Kaitlin, any luck on your side?”
No response.
“Zach, are you getting this?” Please respond. She desperately pressed hard on the earpiece.
“Blake?” Zach’s voice came through the earpiece. “I lost you both a while back. They attempted to jam my signal. Good try, but they’re clearly not on my level.”
“I lost contact with Kaitlin. Have you heard from her?”
“No. Her earpiece is fully functional as far as I can tell.” Blake heard a few grunts over the earpiece. “Damn it, I knew we couldn’t trust her.”
“We don’t need to jump to conclusions. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt,” Blake said. “But I would need your help now. I’m trapped. I couldn’t get out of this room.”
As she was listening to Zach’s long list of suggestions to escape the room, a strong gust started blowing into the room, generating a frosty coating on the wall. “Zach,” she stuttered from the bitter cold, “I need something quick. The room is getting very, very cold.”
“How? Do you see where the cold air’s coming from?”
She looked around frigidly. Ironically, her power didn’t quite insulate her from the cold. At the very top, she spotted a vent that was pumping in icy air. Use cold to fight cold, she thought to herself. It sounded a little illogical but she had to try.
She lifted her hand and shot ice at the vent, in an attempt to obstruct more cold air from entering the room. The vent was blocked. It looked to be effective. She continued rubbing her hands together to generate some warmth.
She took a breath of relief as she shifted her focus back to Zach’s conversation. However, the comfort was short-lived. She heard some rumbling from above. Before she realized what was happening, the brisk gust broke through the blockage. The ice brick landed directly on her head.
“Hold tight, Blake,” her dad warned, as he delivered another push.
“Yay!” young Blake cheered. “More! More!” But her wish was not granted.
The swing slowly came to a halt. She sat idly. Her dad approached her and delivered some strange advice. “Don’t give up now. You’re very close.” He walked away promptly and disappeared into the strong glare from the sunlight.
She jumped off the swing and chased after her dad. She ran and ran, but to no avail. Her dad had vanished. She took a few more hasty strides and tripped over.
With her body flat on the ground, she looked up. A young boy was hovering over her. “Blake, get up!”
She summoned the will to get up on her feet, but her body failed to obey her command. She felt exhausted, and cold. Her breath was frosting before her as the tepid sunlight dissipated into the wintry gust.
“Blake, wake up. You can fight this!” Corey’s voice was becoming clearer over the earpiece. Drowsily, she opened her eyes and tried to regain consciousness.
“Corey?” she asked in a slumberous voice.
“Yes, yes,” he said with a tone of relief. “You can do this.”
Hazily, she stood up, supporting herself by holding onto the cold door handle. The brisk air around her harshly reminded her of the impending trouble. “I…” she spoke in a weak voice, “I’m still trapped. What should I do?”
“You need to break the handle,” Corey advised, “by deep freezing it. Make it so cold that it’s frozen at the subatomic level.”
“I… I don’t know if I can do this. I’m so weak right now.”
“Yes, you can. I believe you can.”
With his encouragement, she placed her hand on the door handle. With her eyes glowing a bright sapphire blue, she willed her power through her palm and sent a wave of power through the molecular lattice, suspending all microscopic motion and shattering the door’s structural integrity.