“This is the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, currently docked just outside Annapolis in Chesapeake Bay. This is where the President is going to hold his press conference. He figured if he was going to show off the portals, he needed to control each of the portals in and out of where he was going to be. That doesn’t mean he’s safe, though,” A. Street narrated. “Look over there on the right. There are a couple of groups, but I think you can probably see Penny there, right?”
Nik searched the screen and found his wife. As soon as he saw her, tears came to his eyes. He had worked so hard and gone through so much, and there she was...just a portal away.
“But, Mr. Davidson, look just a few feet away. Who else do you see?”
His stomach dropped. The man who’d fooled him from his first trip over to this side was there. Nicholas. His double. Otherwise known as Agent Green.
“Me.”
“That’s right. That means we can’t just go barging onto that aircraft carrier with you in tow. Don’t get me wrong, we will need you, but we need to be smart about this. Him being there means you weren’t able to stop him in Arizona and he had another way back to this world. Him being there means you could be construed as a threat to the President. But most of all, him being there means there definitely is a threat to the President,” A. Street intoned. “We’ll do our best to get Penny, but we also need to protect President Hanson. Penelope has given up on this world, but we haven’t. Right Agent Street?”
“Right, Agent Street,” E. Street fistbumped with his mirror double.
“So what do we do?” Nik asked.
The Streets looked at each other. “We’re glad you asked that,” they replied in unison.
Smith and the Brains
Smith surprised the guard as he walked around the corner, and Chuck was unconscious in seconds. Bridges ran up and fished around in his pockets and found the security passkey card. For good measure, he took the keys as well while Smith was busy patting Chuck down and disarming him. There was only a taser. Smith passed that off to Marie and grabbed the man’s wrists while Hoppy and Bridges each grabbed an ankle.
Marie opened the door out into the central hall and the men brought Chuck out.
“Where are we putting him?” Smith asked.
“Left,” Bridges nodded. “That suite is unoccupied at the moment. The other two suites contain some people that are better left alone.”
Smith grunted in acknowledgement as he shifted his weight toward the brig on the left. They quickly stowed the unconscious guard away and left him locked in behind them. They met out at the central guard post.
“We don’t have very much time,” Bridges said. “A second guard should be coming back this way in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Smith said. “Get going on the next part. I want to see it.”
Bridges and Hoppy rushed back into Bridges’ suite and came back holding something about the size of a two by four between them. They closed the door to the suite and began to set up a frame that unfolded, attaching to the doorframe.
“It’s my own portable portal,” Dr. Bridges said to the air as he worked. “I can take it with me anywhere I go. It’s an early model from about 2006. I’ve made improvements since then, but this was handy.”
“There’s no mirror?” Smith asked.
Bridges turned with an expression of mocking hurt on his face. “Sir, I invented this thing. You do not think that with some time to tinker I wouldn’t be able to make some improvements?” Smiling, he turned back to the work. “Ha! It’s actually the same thing that’s happened to me here. They want my technology, they use it and abuse it, stick me in a cage and never wonder what else I might have up my sleeve.”
Bridges made one more adjustment with Hoppy’s help and stepped back. “It’s ready. Once I set it, stay away. You do not want to go in there.”
“What is it?” Asked Marie.
“I’m setting it to go to a mirror that was in a recent shipwreck in the Pacific Ocean. If somebody makes the mistake of going there, they’re not coming back.” He pressed a button on a remote and the door was gone, replaced by an underwater scene. Everyone scooted back a step except Bridges.
“I set it as a one-way portal and the only way to change it is with my personal authorization. The kids are safe.”
Smith breathed a sigh of relief and looked at his three companions, scientists all. He felt a bit out of place. He rubbed his hands together and breathed a sigh. “So, we’ve got to get to the main portal chamber, where’s that and how do we get out?” Smith looked around—there was no obvious door out of the chamber they were in.
Bridges stepped back from the watery grave he had just established in the doorway and turned back to the guard station. “Come with me.”
He walked behind the desk and stood in front of a bank of video monitors. “Hoppy told me about your experience in the cave in Arizona. You remember Nik’s experience in the Engine Room? We have one here too, and just like in Arizona we had to put it behind layers of rock. So the decision was made to build our secret portal system underground. We invented a new way of drilling rock using the portals to shift rock to another location, and the process of building of our Engine Room was relatively quick.”
“At about the same time, decisions were being made that drastically increased the scope of the Utility Company here. They needed more space, so they decided to build more levels, and since they, like any secretive organization, love secrecy, they decided to build these additional underground levels in the same way we built the engine room. Every level is self contained, accessible only by mirror. Air and water are recycled. Power is run from the main grid, but each level has its own backup generator in case of emergency. There is no way to simply go down the stairs from one level to the next.”
Hoppy spoke up, “And even if we could, there would be security meeting us at most of the levels along the way.”
Bridges nodded. “Yes. There is a pathway—we would have to punch this button here on this panel, a mirror rises out of the platform we stand on, and we find ourselves back in a room in the upper levels of the UC, which then could redirect us to one of the lower levels where we would have to then pass through three more mirror checkpoints before reaching the control room.”
“You two don’t look like this is a hopeless endeavor,” Smith replied. “What’s the plan?”
Hoppy looked back at Smith, glanced over to Marie and Dr. Bridges and shrugged. “This is as far as Dr. Bridges told me, but we wouldn’t have got this far without a plan.”
All eyes turned towards Bridges. He smiled.
“There is only one way to go.” Dr. Bridges moved the chair aside and did something to the floor. In a moment, the floor beneath them began to shift. They all stepped aside as the desk and the monitor station moved to opposite sides of the room. Under them was a stairway leading down into a small room below.
Hoppy grabbed Bridges’ arm with his three fingered hand before he began to step down. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing? I can’t stand that place!”
Bridges patted Hoppy’s fingers. “It’s the only way three scientists and an agent are going to sneak in. Agent Smith will have to lead us at some point.”
Hoppy glanced back at Smith, who still stood, uncomprehending.
“Where are we going?” Smith asked.
Marie grabbed his hand and started leading him down the stairs. “The back door, Smith. We’re going to the Engine Room.”
_____
Smith continued down the stairs as the floor cum ceiling returned to form above and behind him. The passage down the stairs darkened as the ceiling closed. Dr. Bridges pulled a flashlight out of a pocket at about the same time that Smith pulled his out.
“Are there no lights down here?” he asked Dr. Bridges, guiding the line in front.
“There are,” answered Bridges, “But if we used them, we would alert others to our presence. This passage is old enough that only a handful of people remember it exists, bu
t if we flip the power switch the security station above will register it.”
The stairs continued downward, switchbacking several times. Smith estimated they had walked down five stories when the passageway opened up. Smith stepped forward and looked around with his flashlight while Hoppy and Bridges stayed back by the stairway discussing something. In front of them was a large round room with a dirty concrete floor, partially covered with old rubble. Rusty girders crisscrossed above, holding up the earth. There was a three-foot darker circle in the center of the floor. There did not appear to be any exits.
Smith shook his head and turned back to Hoppy and Bridges, “What is this place?”
Hoppy came forward to the threshold and gestured at the room. “This is level 5B, a place that was used as a staging area to drill out levels 6, 7, 8 and the parallel passage that went to the Engine Room, but we’re not going in there.”
Smith looked back at the stairway passage. It was definitely the bottom of the stairs. “There’s nothing else there,” he hesitated, remembering that nothing in this journey had ever been as it seemed, “or is there?”
“Come on, Smith,” Hoppy responded. “See for yourself.” Dr. Bridges and Marie were already walking back to the area behind the stairs. Smith shook his head, wondering if he got on the wrong train back at the station.
They all gathered under the final landing and Bridges pointed up. Smith looked up into the gloom and noticed the surface under the landing appeared shiny. He raised his flashlight up for a better look and saw his own reflection holding the flashlight looking back. He smiled over at Dr. Bridges, “You’ve been saving this one up, haven’t you?”
Bridges chuckled. “Yep. I can count on one finger the people that know this one exists. I installed it years ago when they still gave me some rope, but I was starting to see the direction this was going. I’ve got some others, like the one in my closet, that only I know about. So even if someone does figure out that we went down the stairs, they’ll have a hard time finding this. And, once we go through I’ve set it to self-destruct into a pile of sand on the floor. Our passage here should be practically untraceable.”
Bridges pulled a flat black rectangular device out of a pocket, something small enough to be palmed. He placed it on the mirror and pressed both sides of the device at once.
The mirror shimmered and Smith had the distinct impression he was looking at the floor under his own feet, except some minor differences like a ladder attached to a wall on the other side and a black metal box jutting out from the wall about an inch on the other side of the portal down to the floor on that side.
“You’re looking at the bottom of another stairway like this one,” Hoppy said next to Smith. “It’s part of the original infrastructure but was supposed to have been filled in with rock and concrete. It...wasn’t. Oops.”
Dr. Bridges pressed another button on his black rectangular device and the box opened up. Cables dropped through the portal while a pad similar to an inflatable gymnast mat opened on floor the other side. Smith could see the need for that as soon as he saw it.
“Have you tested this thing?” He asked. “Is it safe to go through a portal with gravity going two different directions?”
“Yep,” Bridges responded. “It’s a bumpy ride, though. You have to be pulled through from the other side or you could be separated in two as you struggle to climb through. It’s much better to go fast. Who’s first?”
_____
Smith landed feet first and rolled to take the impact. The roll carried him right off the pad where he landed on his feet. The others were not so graceful. Dr. Bridges had gone first to demonstrate that it was safe, then Smith, then the two of them helped Marie and Hoppy through.
As soon as they were through, Bridges keyed his little black remote and the cables retracted into the black box and the pad deflated. The mirror above them began to disintegrate and particles rained down on the floor and the shrinking pad. Marie and Hoppy scooted out of the way of the falling dust.
The lights came on overhead and Smith turned to see Dr. Bridges already on his way into the next room. He followed, as did the other two.
They were in a room similar to the recently vacated 5B, but this one was filled with equipment. Dr. Bridges opened a metal cabinet and began to pull out a very large burlap bag, but was struggling a bit. Smith went over to help.
“Where are we going with this?” Smith asked.
“To the center,” Bridges responded between grunts. The two of them side stepped toward the middle of the room, suspending the bag between them. Hoppy took Marie off to the side of the room and they lowered a cable hook from a pulley system that right now was set in the middle of the ceiling.
Smith and Bridges reached the center and Bridges started peeling back the burlap to reveal an eyehook matching the hook lowering from the ceiling. Smith held the stem below still while Bridges connected the two pieces. Once done, he stepped back and signaled okay to Hoppy. The cable lifted slightly and the contents of the bag were raised half a foot then Hoppy stopped the cable. Dr. Bridges came back to the bag and started pulling it off. Smith saw what he was doing and helped him.
As the bag came off, Smith saw what appeared to be a mirrored chandelier. Every mirror was slightly convex, about three inches in diameter and overlapped another. Smith could see from the top that the mirrors were layered four deep in the overlapping pattern. The convex mirrors as a whole looked like half of a very fancy mirror ball. The light in the underground chamber bounced back in full mirror ball effect with dots of light radiating from the chandelier to points all over the room.
Smith admired the view for a couple of seconds and turned to Bridges as Hoppy and Marie walked towards them. “It’s pretty, but what is it?”
“It’s a portal drill,” Bridges answered. “Once we turn it on, whatever those things touch will be transported away. It needs to go about three hundred feet down and sideways.” Bridges was pointing in a downward direction away from the stairway they recently left.
“To get to the engine room?”
“Yes. From there, we’ll need you to take a lead role, but first we need to get there. Do you think you can crawl down a hole not much wider than yourself going about three hundred feet from our present location? A lot of people can’t do that kind of thing.”
Smith smiled. Finally something to do. “No problem. Let’s get this thing going.”
Mirror Time
“Today, I have some distressing news that I have only recently become aware of. While I do not have all the details about what exactly this technology has done or helped accomplish over the past decade or so, I do intend to find out. Before I dig further into what was deemed ‘Project Blink,’ I felt it necessary to bring what I did know to the attention of the American people and the world.”
President Hanson stood at a dais on a makeshift stage aboard the U.S.S. Reagan. His words seemed to echo in the three-sided mirror chamber they’d constructed around him, but perhaps the echo was purely in Penny’s mind.
Penny still felt as if she was an outsider in her own body. The breakfast with the NAACP went well, but as she tried to think back about it, she found her memories were hazy at best. The entire time, she felt beset by the burdens of this world, a world that was not her own.
There were about forty chairs lined up for the press on the aircraft carrier’s deck. Her Chief of Staff Jorge Ramos had apparently gotten the inside scoop before their flight over on Marine Two, a twin Huey helicopter. He quickly filled her in on some details—at least what he could drag out of his counterpart on President Hanson’s staff.
“Where are we going, Jorge?” Penny asked as they were climbing aboard the helicopter.
“Neal says it’s on an aircraft carrier. That the President personally allowed members of the press aboard Marine One, even sending it back a few times for stragglers.”
“What’s going on?”
“Neal refused to say, but did slip something about a top secret pr
ogram.”
Penny noticed Nik...check that, Nicholas...check that, Agent Green...stiffen. Something that Jorge said triggered something in the man and whatever was coming was evidently something he hadn’t planned on. He immediately grabbed his phone from his inside breast pocket and vigorously tapped out a few messages. Jorge furtively glanced at Agent Green, but didn’t say anything. The rest of the ride from there to the Reagan was quiet. Tense. Worrisome. Penny just hoped it wasn’t the last trip she’d ever take.
“The code name for this classified operation was ‘Project Blink.’” President Hanson said. Penny snapped back to reality. The press was enraptured by the President’s words, leaning forward, their microphones gobbling up his words like a lioness with her prey.
The time for questions from the field of reporters hadn’t come yet, but the young woman from CNN couldn’t help herself. “And what exactly is Project Blink?”
The President hesitated for a split second, and in that moment, all hell broke loose. From the mirrors surrounding them, seven black-suited men emerged, guns in front of them, pointing them not only at the Chief Executive, but also at the gathered press as well. There were no wild movements. No threats. Nothing except precision and professionalism.
Immediately, the President’s service detail rose, their hands reaching for the weapons in their own jackets. Before they were even upright, each disappeared. Penny gasped and looked over. She hadn’t noticed it before—there was a canvas tarp over the deck—but Nicholas must’ve planted portals under the secret service members’ chairs. They were gone.
The press corps was in a panic. Screams and hysteria were prevalent, but strangely Penny felt none of the urgency that the rest of the ship did. Her voice was not one of those that was involved in the din, but her heart did attempt to beat out of her chest. She sat still, not wanting to be the next target of this assault team.
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