by Nick Cook
We stepped through the door into the large detector room. The sickly smell of death filled my nostrils as I spotted clothes scattered over the floor.
‘God, here we go again,’ Ethan said, grasping his arm over his nose.
We rushed to the guy sprawled beneath the quietly humming detector and carefully rolled him over, both shifting back into the Real so the guy could see us if he was conscious.
I recognised the grey-bearded face immediately, despite the red blotches that covered his skin. ‘That’s Professor Jackson. I’m guessing that the burn marks are due to the radiation flying around in here, Sentinel.’
‘I’m afraid you’re almost certainly right. You have eight minutes to get him out of there before your self-healing abilities will be overwhelmed.’
‘Understood.’
‘At least we know we’re on the right track,’ Ethan said.
I nodded as I knelt down by the unconscious man’s side. ‘Professor Jackson, can you hear us?’ I said.
His eyes remained close, the only sign of life his chest rising and falling.
I took hold of the professor’s shoulders and gently shook him. ‘Professor, you need to wake up.’
Jackson’s eyelids flickered and he gasped in a lungful of air. A moment later, he sat bolt upright and stared at us, now fully alert. His expression twisted as he held up his hands to shield his face, scrabbling backwards until he reached the far wall to cower from us.
I held up my hands as we followed him. ‘It’s OK, Professor Jackson, we’re here to help and get you to safety.’
He whimpered. ‘They’re dead, all dead.’
‘You mean the team that operates the accelerator?’ Ethan asked.
Jackson gave a sharp nod. ‘That monster Archios fed them all to his bird creatures. He made me help him get past our security and into this facility. By then it was too late to stop him.’
Ethan gave me a grim look. ‘And the shadow crows multiplied here – is that right, Professor?’
Again, he nodded quickly. ‘It will haunt me till I die, which won’t be long as the accelerator is running. I’ve already been exposed to way too much radiation.’ His eyes widened on us and he grasped my arm. ‘Save yourselves and get out of here before it’s too late for you too.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ I said. ‘And we have people who may be able to help you.’
Jackson pinched his lips and shook his head.
But we knew better. Ethan and I placed a hand under each of his shoulders, lifted him to his feet and started back towards the door.
‘So how come they didn’t kill you too?’ Ethan asked.
‘I got hit in the head in the confusion and fell. I managed to crawl under here before I blacked out. But the things I saw before I did…’ Tears dripped from his eyes, his pupils pinpricks of fear as he came to a hault.
‘You’re in shock, Professor, but we need some answers – specifically why Archios was interested in Brookhaven in the first place?’
‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea.’
‘Did they bring some sort of giant machine with a metal sphere here with them?’ Ethan asked.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve not seen anything like that,’ Jackson replied. ‘But there is one immediate threat. Archios made me override the system safety protocols on the RHIC. This facility will tear itself apart unless I can shut it down.’
‘Is that what Archios’s plan is then – to destroy this accelerator in a huge explosion?’ Ethan asked.
‘That will do some damage, but it won’t affect much apart from this building,’ Jackson said.
‘Unless those Shade runes are connected with something far worse,’ I replied.
‘Damn it, you could be right,’ Ethan said. ‘If they destroyed a manor house with some sort of Shade spell, imagine what they could do here.’
‘We need to let the others know about this and bring in an Awoken task force to deal with it.’ I pressed my finger to my eBud. ‘Sentinel, can you alert Chloe, Gem and the others to what’s happening here and take appropriate steps?’
He didn’t respond.
‘Sentinel, are you there?’
Again nothing came through my eBud. I checked my phone – no reception there either.
I shook my head. ‘It must be the particle accelerator screwing with our comms.’
‘Just what we need,’ Ethan replied.
‘Come on – let’s get out of here. We can’t have much time left.’
We started again towards the door, but the professor held back.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Just listen.’
From somewhere beyond the room, the sound of chanting drifted through the walls.
‘What the hell is that?’ Ethan asked.
Jackson pointed to the blue metal funnels feeding into the huge detector above us. ‘I think Archios’s people must be inside the actual acceleration tunnel itself.’
‘Let’s get back to the control room and find out what the hell is going on,’ I said.
We closed the detector-room door behind us and were soon all staring at the control-room monitors. Although the professor was still obviously frightened to death, his expression was now clearer, his breathing less ragged.
A line of marching elderly men and women had appeared on most of the screens displaying the particle accelerator tunnel. They were chanting – the sound relayed to us by a speaker in the control room. One by one they turned away from the line and took up positions by the pipes facing in towards them.
Archios’s voice echoed throughout the building, making Jackson cower. ‘Immortals, the thing we have worked so tirelessly for is now upon us. In a few seconds, Dark Sunset will begin. I will release our successfully bred offspring into the acceleration chamber to help accelerate the particles within the accelerator. When we achieve that, a cascade of microscopic black holes will be created in the detector chamber. You may begin the ritual to open the rift to the Void.’
I stared across at Ethan, who was gawping back at me. ‘Professor, is this really possible?’
Jackson rubbed his neck. ‘It was theorised that when CERN, a far more powerful accelerator than this one, was first switched on, it would create black holes that might tear our world apart. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. And even if it had, they would have been tiny and only existed for a split second – certainly not long enough to do any harm.’
‘Bloody same old – scientists taking stupid risks,’ Ethan said.
‘Please don’t worry. The flow of particles into the accelerator is controlled, so if anything goes wrong it’s easy to shut down. Also, RHIC hasn’t sufficient power to do anything like this.’
I stared at Jackson. ‘But what about the safety protocols you mentioned? If they’ve been overridden, the Immortals could use shadow crows to accelerate the particles to an even greater speed.’
He clenched his fists and slowly nodded. ‘A day ago I would have thought this mad. But after what I’ve witnessed, I honestly believe that anything could be possible right now.’
‘Trust me, Professor, when we’re talking about the things behind what’s happening here, that’s exactly the right attitude to take,’ Ethan said.
The men and women now arranged along the pipeline began to change their chant, their voices harmonising and bouncing off the concrete walls like a church choir, but with a far darker tone than any hymn.
‘OK, Professor, I need you to hang on to your new open-minded attitude, because Ethan and I are about to vanish in a moment,’ I said.
‘Time to take a closer look, in other words,’ Ethan muttered.
‘Exactly.’ I grasped Jackson’s shoulders between my hands. ‘Professor, is there a way for us to access the accelerator chamber so we can see what’s happening with our own eyes?’
‘Yes, follow the corridor to the end. It leads straight to a maintenance hatch.’
‘Got it. OK, Ethan, time to shift.’
Jack
son managed to stifle a gasp as we both seemingly disappeared into thin air, then Ethan and I walked down a short corridor and round a corner, approaching another heavy sealed door. Above it a red light strobed, sending patterns whirling around the walls. As quietly as I could, I unlocked the door with my mind and pulled it open. Chilled air washed over me and the Shade’s hymn drowned out any other noises.
Together we crept into the tunnel.
The Shade’s Immortal men and women stood on either side of the two pipelines.
In the thermal wavelength, dark vapours flowed from the Immortals’ fingertips and raced along the two pipelines. The outer line of Immortals were spinning their dark energy streams clockwise over the blue striped pipe, while the opposite line faced the yellow striped pipe, their streams anticlockwise. Within those twin streams of energy, shadow crows blurred past us, their wings tucked tight to their bodies, rushing from person to person. The air grew Arctic cold and frost began to cover the curved metal walls.
‘This looks beyond bad,’ Ethan whispered. ‘We need to get backup here now.’
‘I agree,’ I said.
But as we turned to go, the Immortals’ chanting strengthened in speed and pitch as the shadow crows hurtled even faster.
My skin prickled as the old men and women started to shake and scream, before dissolving into the flow of shadow crows. Their empty clothes fluttered to the floor as the Shade raced into a stream of dark energy that cocooned both accelerator pipes. The heavy metal tubes began to bounce on their mounts and the ground shook.
I knew a reasonable amount about particle physics from discussions with Dad. Normally, only detectors could spot collisions – capturing the moment the particles slammed into each other. But as an Awoken, I had all the senses I needed to pick up any impacts.
I concentrated and shifted up through the electromagnetic spectrum into the gamma wavelength.
Around us, purple bursts of light were exploding all the way along the tunnel, the collisions no longer limited to the room housing the detector.
I dialled in some thermal and immediately spotted pinpricks of darkness appearing along the tunnel. The truth of what I was seeing slammed into my brain. This was like the gravity bomb the Shade had used back at the manor and if just one pinprick of darkness had done all that damage…
‘Let’s get out of here, Ethan,’ I whispered.
We closed the door behind us, shifted back to the Real and raced to the control room.
We found Jackson staring at the displays, his eyes widening. ‘The particle streams seem to be exceeding the speed of light!’
‘Oh, it’s happening all right – and there are hundreds of microscopic black holes appearing all along the accelerator tunnel,’ I replied.
Jackson balled his hands into fists. ‘Are they crazy? They’ll destroy the whole Brookhaven site at this rate.’
‘I can guarantee that they intend to do a lot more than that,’ Ethan replied in a strained tone.
Archios’s voice rang out through the whole building with a strange echoey quality. ‘We are about to reach critical mass. In a moment, the micro singularities will begin to merge together to form a huge rift through the fabric of this world’s reality. Rejoice, because our enemy is beaten and there is nothing they can do to stop it.’
I stared at Jackson. ‘Is that true?’
The professor, pale-faced, nodded. ‘There’s simply nothing that human technology can do to collapse a black hole.’
On the monitors, a tremor ran through the tunnel as cracks appeared in the wall and the blue pipeline started to bounce even harder against its mounts.
I felt my body begin to lighten. Ethan grabbed a strut to stop himself floating up.
‘What’s happening?’ Jackson asked, staring around us as he began to drift from the ground.
‘That’s the effects of the Void leeching into our world,’ I said. ‘Something like this happened back at the Hopworth Science Park when the Shade opened a portal before – but nothing on this scale.’
‘It sounds as if the Shade are only going to keep coming through this new portal – and that they will engulf our entire planet,’ Ethan said.
‘If that’s true, we have nowhere near enough Waveriders,’ I said and hung my head. The enormity of what we were facing hit me. This was impossible. ‘Maybe Archios is right and we’ve already lost.’
‘The hell he is,’ Ethan replied. ‘We keep fighting until we have nothing left, Jake. And we’re nowhere near there yet. Besides, I’ve got something of a plan, although you’re not necessarily going to like it.’
‘If it means saving lives, I’m up for anything right now.’
‘Good, because we might not have enough Waveriders, but if we concentrate on protecting just the cities, then people in the surrounding countryside could be evacuated into them.’
‘What, you’re talking about cities becoming the equivalent of the bio domes on Mars scientists have talked about – for the human race to survive in?’
‘It’s better than being wiped out, isn’t it? What do you say?’
I met my friend’s gaze and felt his determination reignite my own. ‘Damn it, humanity isn’t beaten yet, at least if we’ve got anything to do with it.’
Ethan grinned at me. ‘The more I get to know you, Jake, the more I get to like you.’ He shoved off from the ground, floated over to the professor and took hold of his arm. ‘Let’s teleport back to Gem and make sure we get the first Waverider online to protect New York in double-quick time – before the Shade start erupting out of the rift and go on a killing spree.’
‘Got it.’ I tried to focus on the jump spot on Ellis Island, but after several attempts no flash of white light came.
Ethan’s forehead ridged. ‘Why isn’t this working?’
‘We must be too close to the rift and it’s messing with our abilities – like it has with the comm signals. We need to get clear of its influence to be able to jump.’
Ethan nodded and hung on to the professor and we pushed off. Like three astronauts, we floated through the door and away along the corridor.
Chairs and tables were drifting up from the floor in the offices, mugs dancing in spirals and sending their caffeinated contents spinning away. A photo of a mother and child caught the light as it rose towards the ceiling.
As we neared the entrance, the tingle of building static washed over my skin. Then gravity tugged at my body and I smacked down hard onto the floor beside Ethan and the professor.
Before I could ask Ethan what was going on, the whole building groaned around us. With a screech and explosion of plaster, a supporting roof beam crashed down in a shower of dust – straight onto Jackson, pinning him down.
We rushed over to the professor, but blood was already pooling beneath his head.
His eyes stared at me vacantly as I checked his pulse. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Damn it! Another life lost to the Shade,’ Ethan said.
Detonations came from deep within the building behind us, followed by the screech of bending metal.
‘This place isn’t going to last much longer – come on!’ I shouted.
We rushed through the empty reception area to the outside world. As we cleared the doors, the building swayed behind us as if it were built from rubber. Then, with an explosion of glass, every window detonated inwards at once.
I pulled out my phone, the screen crackling with static but still usable. I found the image of Ellis Island in the photo folder as a shudder passed through the entire woodland around us. Trembles rushed out from the building and into the surrounding forest, sending trees toppling.
The wind roared past us, just as it had back at the manor house. I turned to see not a pinprick of darkness this time, but a massive black sphere a hundred metres wide in the forest – it had to be the centre of the accelerator ring.
Archios had succeeded in creating a black hole on the surface of the Earth – a huge portal that led directly to the Void.
Ethan sta
red at it and then at me. His look said what I was thinking: What can we do to stop this?
Then, with a hiss like escaping steam, black fog burst outwards from the singularity and rose into a mushroom cloud. The smoke billowed and flowed with it, giant tentacles of dark fog probing outwards that carried countless dark seeds within it. I stared harder and my blood iced as I realised that each speck was a shadow crow, millions and millions of them, with more arriving by the second.
And then the Shade creatures began to swarm together, forming something that grew increasingly solid, and no longer restricted to the Shadowlands but visible in the Real too. Archios, and he’d become what I could only describe as a shadow titan, fed by the shadow crows that swept into him.
The monster tipped back his head and stretched out his arms. ‘To me!’ Archios bellowed, his voice a thunderclap cracking the sky.
Thousands more crows flowed into him until his head touched the clouds inside the expanding fog bank.
This was Dark Sunset – the end of world. How could we ever fight him and win?
‘We have to get out of here!’ Ethan shouted.
‘To do what?’
‘I have a new idea that might work, that’s what. Come on, we have to get further away so we can teleport out.’
I couldn’t think what possible plan Ethan had, but I followed him anyway, my leg muscles quivering as we fought against the wind whistling past us. We reached the road that had crumbled inwards, revealing the shattered remains of the accelerator pipes blazing with fires along their broken lengths.
‘Let’s try teleporting out again now,’ Ethan shouted.
I pulled out my phone and ignored the hammering of my heart as we concentrated again on the image of Ellis Island. The world blazed with light and the scene straight out of a nightmare faded away.
Chapter Seventeen
The light from the teleport jump began to fade, but the view of the museum on Ellis Island wavered before us as if we were looking at it through water. Then the scene switched back to the Brookhaven Laboratory, also with the same shimmering view, before it came back fully, and the roar of the destruction of Brookhaven filled the world around us again like a waking dream. The shadow titan of Archios seemed to have disappeared back into the expanding mushroom cloud of dark energy.