by Dario Solera
“Léa? Is that you?”
“Sarah?”
“Do you know each other?” Rambald asked.
“Yes…” Sarah’s voice was unsteady. “But that was almost a year ago.”
Léa’s eyes glistened with the slightest hint of tears. “You are not…” She extended her hand forward, as if to reach for Sarah’s cheek, but then she withdrew it.
“Dr. Davinson, she’s not the same person,” Rambald said, his voice conveying a hint of scorn.
Sarah’s expression changed. She shut her mouth tight and frowned, still staring at the woman.
Richard’s face was dark and he looked at Sarah with his lips slightly parted. His right hand was massaging his bearded chin.
“It’s not you.” Sarah took a few steps back from the doctor. “It’s you, but it’s not you.”
***
“It can’t be possible,” Léa said. “I mean, it explains the missing people, but it’s absurd.”
Sarah sat in a corner of the gazebo. The cold bit at her limbs, but she didn’t mind. She couldn’t help staring at Léa, who avoided eye contact with her. Same moves, same attitude, and same inflections in her voice. Sarah recognized the way she squeezed her eyes when, like now, she was thinking about something intricate. How she bit her lip.
“Your name again?” Rambald asked.
“Dr. Léa Bosshart.”
He scribbled it down. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.”
“Did you have any problems with the helicopter?” he asked Gagnier.
“No, sir,” he answered. “Everything looked good on the instrumentation.”
“That’s interesting. The anomaly does not affect electronics. Nice to know,” he said with a grin.
“Where does it draw energy from?” Léa asked, attracting a sideways look from Rambald.
Sarah smiled to herself. It really was her. “Good question. No idea.”
Rambald seemed unsure what to do with Léa’s observation. “Professor Richards?”
“I’m sorry. We just don’t know.”
“One thing’s for sure,” Sarah added. “The energy is not coming from the particle accelerator. Not anymore at least, but there’s no chance that the power we used could have created this.”
Richards nodded.
“Do we even care?” Gagnier said, taking a couple steps toward the middle. “We have a way out. We could all move to this side.”
“That’s out of the question, Lieutenant.”
Léa stepped forward. “But we could live. There’s a war on the other side. We could save everybody!” she said with a loud voice. Her curly red hair quivered as she spoke.
“We heard about the conflict from some of these people, but it’s irrelevant. As far as I know, you could very well be a hallucination.”
The air resounded with a distant whining sound.
Everyone froze and listened, looking around.
“Sergeant, prepare your men,” Rambald spoke into his radio.
“Copy that,” it crackled back.
“Lieutenant, are there other missions going on?”
“Not that I know of.”
Everyone went out of the gazebo and looked up, craning their necks.
A large, black, smooth object flew in the sky above.
“It’s one of them,” Gagnier shouted.
“What kind of plane is that?” Rambald asked.
“That’s no plane, sir.”
The object flew high and began circling in the air with its high-pitched metallic noise.
“Then what the hell is it?”
“Alien aircraft.”
“Alien? Are you trying to make fun of me, Lieutenant?”
“You’re at war with aliens,” Sarah stated. She couldn't resist and laughed to herself, oblivious to the reality.
“No, sir,” Gagnier answered, ignoring her. “We’ve had attacks for the last three days.”
“You are at war with aliens, and they have found the anomaly,” Sarah said, her face now flat as she slowly came to terms with the facts.
Rambald seemed to consider Gagnier’s words for an instant. “Will they attack us?”
“I don’t know, sir. Their behavior has been erratic,” he answered. Just then something dropped from the alien aircraft. “Run! Take cover!”
Sarah watched the spherical object fall down from the sky and followed it for a few seconds. “It’s not falling. It’s too slow.” The show mesmerized her and she squinted her eyes, trying to get a sharper view.
“It’s taking aim. Run!” Gagnier pushed her on the back.
Sarah woke up from her stupor and began jogging toward a nearby group of trees with Richards and Léa.
”Spread out! Move!” Gagnier yelled from the middle of the field.
The alien aircraft was almost still in the air, as if fluctuating and defying gravity. It then lurched backward and disappeared back into the anomaly. The sphere was high in the sky, perhaps thirty meters. It looked solid and polished, but it seemed to rotate on its vertical axis.
With her nose up, Sarah watched the bomb, her eyes glued to the sleek surface. It seemed the size of a football and didn’t look dangerous at all.
Suddenly, it began falling, faster and faster, until it was only a blur.
It hit the ground and raised a plume of debris some ten meters into the air. A split second later, it detonated deep below the surface, spitting a giant, bright fireball upward. The heat of the fire reached Sarah’s face just before the blast knocked her off her feet. The noise was powerful and low-pitched and it propagated through the soil, resonating in her bones and chest.
She found herself lying on her back into the snow near Richards and Léa. Her ears rang and her chest felt like it was going to burst. She wasn’t even sure what had happened, and her confused mind wondered if she had just lost her balance, but then her eyes spotted the others on the ground like her.
Rocks, grass, and lumps of earth began falling everywhere, hitting the surface with muffled ticking and thumping sounds.
“Everyone OK?” someone yelled.
Shrieks raised in the distance.
Richards got to his feet and helped Sarah and Léa to stand. “Are you fine?”
Sarah looked down at her quivering legs, listening for a moment to the sound of her heart beating through her ears. “Yes.”
“Dr. Bosshart?”
“Yes, thank you,” she answered with trembling voice.
“Have you seen other attacks like this before?” Sarah asked. Grit ground between her teeth.
“Not in first person. I’ve seen the effects though.”
The mist clogged their view, so they walked closer to the place where the sphere had hit the ground. The crater was a dozen meters wide and five deep, with its inner surface burned and black. Blocks of concrete and tangled wires came out from the smoking rubble. The bomb had turned the earth inside out, burrowing seventy meters underground and demolishing what had taken decades to build.
“That is the accelerator,” Sarah said. “It was.” Her heart sank and she shook her head. “Why?”
“We need help!” someone called from another group of trees.
Léa ran in that direction as cries of pain and fear came from all around the crater.
Gagnier jogged forward, a worrisome look on his face. “Colonel Rambald is dead. My pilot and one of my men as well.”
Sarah stood on the edge of the pit, following its ridge with her gaze. Black debris covered the dirty snow. Only then did she notice that the white tents were gone.
Twelve
“I am Dr. Bosshart. What’s your name?”
“Christine. Help my son, Luc,” the woman said in a gurgle of blood. “Help him first.”
Léa glanced around and saw no children. “Find him,” she told to the soldier standing near them.
“Where’s Luc?”
“We’re searching for him, Christine.”
Something woody was protruding from the right sid
e of the woman’s belly. Bloody shreds of intestines dangled from the tip of the branch, caught in its thorny end as it had traveled through her body. The hole in her abdomen oozed fluids, which stained her greatcoat. Her chest raised and lowered with a quick rhythm.
“I need to check on the other side,” Léa told her. “It will hurt,” she added, the words echoing those she had said at the hospital so many times in the days before.
The woman nodded, or perhaps she was just trembling.
As gently as she could manage with her still-shaking hands, Léa stuck her fingers underneath the woman’s body, near the wound. Her fingertips touched the other end of the branch.
Christine screamed.
“You’ll be fine,” Léa lied.
A man in uniform crouched close to them. “I can’t find the boy,” the soldier said in a whisper. “How is she?”
“Luc,” the woman uttered, as the urge to find her son pushed her head up for a moment with a burst of motherly energy, just before she passed out.
“Search again, and gather all the available doctors so we can begin triage. And call for reinforcements.”
“Can’t you help her?” he asked with wide eyes and a crooked expression.
Léa gazed at his face for a moment, noticing that his eyes were fixed on the branch. “If I remove the branch, she will bleed to death. Go, now!”
“Yes, madam,” he said, and then he jogging away.
***
At dusk, no one was screaming in pain or crying for help anymore.
Her clothes felt wet and cold, and a thicker fog was dancing and flowing over from the fields, pushed by feeble hints of wind.
Black body bags were lined on the snow near the trees, where the surface was still even and clear of debris. Forty-three so far.
A few meters nearer the crater were the remnants of the tents and gazebos. Most of the dead had been found there, within that garbled mess of struts and white tarp. Some had suffocated, others had their skulls broken or limbs torn off.
“Are you OK?” Gagnier asked.
He and Léa were standing at the border of the area, watching paramedics care for those with lesser injuries.
“For a moment I thought that I could forget this. Forget death,” she said glancing down at her sticky, bloodied hands.
“Yeah.”
“If it’s true that we are in another world, then we took the worst from ours into this.”
He was silent.
“What if that alien aircraft followed us here?”
“Are you saying it’s our fault?”
“No,” she said with a tired voice. “It was just bad luck.”
“The search with the helicopter was my idea. Maybe—”
“You were doing your job. You couldn’t have known. No one could. Even Sarah and her colleague don’t seem to know what’s happening, even if they might have caused it.”
An ambulance drove away with blue flashing lights blinking but no siren. They remained silent for a while, waiting for dusk to leave and night to replace it. People moved from one side of the field to another, but activity was slowly dying down, and no more body bags had been added to the file.
“Is she the same?”
“Who?” Léa asked.
“Sarah.”
“Oh,” she said, taking a few moments before replying. “Perhaps. It’s weird.”
“How did you meet her?”
“She moved into my building a couple of years ago, in the apartment in front of mine.”
“Are you friends?”
That was an obvious question, but she didn’t feel like answering it. At least not yet, and not with all the details. “We were. Before…” Her voice trailed off, and she let out a sigh. “Before she died.”
Thirteen
Her phone had a number of unread texts. Several were from Frank, who was asking about his car. She ignored them.
Will had also sent one: “Geneva is in panic. Cannot get to you,” and then a second: “Saw the news report. You seem to attract explosions today. You OK?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
Another text arrived right away. “Will you return home tonight?”
“Not sure yet, sorry.”
“What did you find?”
“You couldn’t imagine.”
“There’s someone down there!” a yell came.
Refugees hadn’t stopped coming through the anomaly even during the bombing. A man recounted that he had crossed the threshold only to find himself in front of a distant ball of fire.
The remaining soldiers had called reinforcements and more paramedics had arrived. Because the area was deemed unsecure, after tending to all the people in need, newcomers were shuttled away as soon as they were spotted.
“They told me the number is increasing,” Richards said. “About a couple dozen each hour, and it looks like even night won’t stop them.”
“It’s obvious,” Sarah replied. “They’re fleeing from war.”
“Gagnier said they had refugee camps. They were safe.”
“Many thought they would be safer here.”
“Perhaps. They are setting up artillery and antiaircraft units all around this area. They will fire at everything that comes through.”
“What? Even these people?” she asked with a loud voice.
“They’ll place signs instructing them to walk to a first-aid camp two kilometers down the road. We’d better go.”
“I have a car half an hour in that direction,” she said pointing. “Frank’s SUV.”
“They’re offering us a lift home. Apparently there’s a little uncertainty on what to do since Colonel Rambald died.”
“Frank will kill me if I don’t return it.”
“Let’s have this walk in the woods, then. I’ll borrow a couple of flashlights.”
“You don’t have to go with me.”
“It’s fine. I have to clear my mind, and a walk always helps.”
***
“Are you sure it was here?”
“Yes. I remember that gate with the lock. Look, there are my footprints.”
“Then where is the car?”
“Someone must have stolen it. Fuck! Now we are stuck in the middle of nowhere, at night, and it might even start snowing.”
“We can walk back and ask for a lift.”
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Not the end of the world, Sarah.”
“Oh, of course. It’s not like we have flying saucers dropping bombs on us.”
Richards laughed. “Come on, let’s go back.”
It was dark now, and there was no moon. The crunchy snow reflected the light from their flashlights, illuminating a tiny portion of the trees and the bushes. Shadows moved as they walked.
“I can barely feel my feet,” she said.
“Then we must walk faster. Try to move your toes inside your shoes.”
Except for their steps, the fields were as silent as a graveyard. Occasional ticking sounds came from the trees.
“So, Professor, did you buy the story on the aliens?”
“I’ve seen some strange things today, Sarah. I think we should expect more.”
“There are a lot of coincidences. They said that the war started three days ago. That is, two days before the experiment.”
“Go on.”
“At that time, we were prepping the accelerator. Doing the last checks.”
“Yes.”
“It’s just a bug in my head. What if the aliens knew what we were about to do?”
“None of us was expecting something like this.”
“No, not us, but perhaps they were.”
“How?”
“I have no idea. But then comes that alien aircraft and, by sheer coincidence, drops a bomb right onto the accelerator’s tunnel, destroying it.”
Richards didn’t speak, he just looked perplexed.
“Professor, it’s as if they wanted to inhibit our chances of reversing the anomaly, assuming we coul
d do it.”
“Well, that’s a pretty wild conjecture, Sarah.”
“I know.”
“Moreover, no one has seen any of those aliens—or so Gagnier told me. Those aircraft never landed, and none of them have been destroyed.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Nobody knows who they are, and I have this gut feeling that tells me they might not be aliens, after all.”
“I hope you are right.”
“Would you prefer to fight against other men?”
“That’s not the point.” She paused for a moment. “I’d rather not fight at all. But it would be sad if our first encounter with an intelligent alien species were a war. It would be a waste.”
“Indeed.” After a time, the Professor spoke again. “May I ask you something?”
“I met her two years ago.”
He laughed. “You never cease to amaze me, Sarah.” He remained pensive for a few paces, illuminating the way with his flashlight. “Earlier at the camp, it looked like you hadn’t seen each other for a while.”
“We lived in the same condo. We ended up in bed one night, but…”
Richards kept silent—a sign of politeness that Sarah had always appreciated.
“It didn’t work. We broke up, and I moved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“So this is it,” he said with a vigorous voice, as if to close the subject of her personal life. “The accelerator is destroyed. I bet the bigwigs are going nuts now. They don’t even know where we are.”
Sarah’s legs felt heavy, and she dragged her cold feet in the snow at each step.
“But we’ll work to figure it out tomorrow,” he continued. “I’m too old and too tired right now to clear my thoughts.”
“Anyway, there won’t be much to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“It will take years to restore the synchrotron. That is, assuming we can find the money.”
“Yes, but it’s not only that, Sarah. We have a lot to do, even without the accelerator.”
“I’m sorry, Professor. I’m just tired, and frankly I still have the doubt that this is a nightmare.”
He offered a smile. “You wish.”
“Yeah. It would be nice to wake up tomorrow and discover that this isn’t real.”