She sped on down through the Node’s levels, stopping several times to allow CPOs to continue their slovenly patrols. Eventually she arrived at the Node’s control room door and saw an unconscious officer handcuffed nearby. Evidently something hadn’t gone according to plan: Roy had told her that he would put the relevant paperwork in place when dealing with the guards.
Cassidy pushed open the door and saw the brightly-lit control room ahead. From the corner of her eye she saw a man brandishing a raised fire extinguisher and she quickly took a step back. The man hastily set the cylinder down on the floor and she suddenly recognised him. Within a second she’d closed the distance between them and flung her arms around him.
Marshall winced but didn’t let her go.
“Guys?!” Roy pointed incredulously at the open door behind them.
They broke apart and while Marshall returned to his Field control console, Cassidy slammed the door shut and raised the handle into the locked position. In a few minutes they’d probably need to secure the room more thoroughly, but right now she needed to see how the overall plan was progressing.
“Where are we?” she called to Roy.
“We need to know what’s out there,” he pointed to the opaqued observation window, “but I’m struggling to find a way to hack a single panel.”
“Maybe these’ll help,” Cassidy handed him Alfred’s tablet and Biomag.
“Shit!” he grinned and took them off her.
“We know he’s got… he had… Biomag control,” Cassidy looked at the tablet, “He could have done the same thing with window control.”
Roy pushed a button on the side of the tablet and was met with a ‘locked’ screen. He brought Alfred’s Biomag a little closer to the tablet and after a second it displayed the text ‘RF Biomag unlock: Barnes, A.’
Cassidy could see several tabs across the top of the screen relating to various Node functions, but one tab seemed particularly relevant.
“Obscura,” she pointed it out, “Start with that.”
“How did you…” Roy began.
“Lucky guess,” she lied. She wasn’t about to discuss the pillow talk where Alfred had praised her quick thinking in obscuring the window. She felt another fresh stab of guilt at the thought that Marshall didn’t yet know the specifics relating to her time with Alfred.
Roy tapped at the screen and hurried away with it.
“Gail and Scott?” she asked.
“Lower deck,” Marshall called out, “Tell them to move it, I don’t have full generator access yet!”
Almost seeking a way to physically leave behind the feelings of guilt, she dashed out of the main control room and onto the balcony that overlooked the Observation Deck. She stared at the stubbornly opaque window. It had been over two years since she’d had to turn the key.
“How are you guys doing with the power?” she called down to Gail and Scott.
In response the lighting on the main deck below her went out.
“Done!” came Gail’s voice.
“Thanks!” yelled Marshall from the control room.
There was a rattling sound, then Scott called out from the gloom below.
“Doors secure!” he turned on a stick-shaped LED lantern, “I’m gonna see if I can find some more of these.”
Cassidy returned her gaze to the opaque window. The diffuse light from the control room behind her was casting her silhouette onto the white screen.
“Come on,” she whispered, almost willing the panel to clear.
…
Atka stood by the fire and extended his hands to its golden warmth. There had been other times when he’d considered undertaking the tradition, but as the stars had unveiled their brightness tonight he’d felt a strong compulsion that this was the right time; as though the Guardians were somehow expecting him.
A light breeze passed over him and he looked up towards the Orb. The sight that greeted him was almost beyond his comprehension.
At the centre of the Orb’s bright surface, a small space had formed, like a hole in white ice. The hole was held open by straight edges and at its centre was a silhouetted figure. A Guardian, standing motionless and surveying the world.
In fear, Atka fell to his knees and bowed in reverence, averting his eyes. Although few still chose to undertake the rite, many had claimed they had seen a Guardian. He recalled their chilling stories of the Guardians’ appearance and their terrifying size, but he had seen something different. Either the tales of others were falsehoods or the Guardian was choosing to appear to him in human form.
He heard his ancestors speak within him, telling him not to be afraid. Slowly he raised his head to see the small opening in the Orb’s surface once more. He knelt transfixed by the sight.
The Guardian within had turned and was very slowly moving away from him towards the Orb’s centre. Perhaps the inside of the Orb was filled with water, he thought, because although the Guardian’s posture was that of someone running, the movement was slow and flowing.
…
Cassidy turned away from the suddenly clear square section of window and ran back towards the centre of the Node’s control room.
“There’s a fire out there!” she yelled.
“Dammit I lost it!” Roy growled at the tablet in frustration, “Tinting’s back up again.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” she arrived next to Roy, “We need to stop!”
“What?” he stopped work on the tablet.
“There was a campfire out there!” she half laughed, “A whole bloody forest! A campfire means people! We need to stop!”
“This is the Node we’re talking about, you can’t just pull a handbrake,” Roy mimed the action, “The Field doesn’t just -”
“Listen, Roy, days are flying by out there,” she continued undaunted, “What if they leave?”
Cassidy saw Marshall sit upright.
“We need to get their attention.”
“What?” said Roy, turning to Marshall.
“The hole in the electro-tinting was only open for a few seconds in here,” Marshall pointed out, “but out there it would have been open for a lot longer. If there are people out there, they might have seen you. We just need to get their attention again.”
An electronic bell sound came from Alfred Barnes’ tablet.
“Oh no,” said Roy and angled it so that the others could see the message that had just appeared on the screen.
…
Recalling the pride he’d felt, Trevor Pike could see that Steven was balancing without his help; his son was now riding the bicycle all by himself.
They’d spent a week renovating the second-hand bike together; he’d restored the mechanical aspects and Steven had been given the important task of decorating it. Steven’s choice had been to paint it bright orange with little silver stars.
All that remained of his son now were home movies and completely insignificant clips he’d captured on his smartphone as he’d grown older; the last ones being from the Node’s Christmas lunch in 2012. Eight months later he was dead, a victim of the catastrophic Mark 3 fire.
“Go on,” Trevor accompanied his own voice on the recording, “Keep pedalling.”
The viewpoint twisted to one side, then the video abruptly ended.
He pulled the rewired DRB unit from his damp eyes and tossed it onto the sofa next to him. In response, his pile of video memory cards became an even more random mix of home videos and illicit material; habits of comfort that provided no meaningful solace. The drinking glasses cluttering the tabletop in front of him were all empty and therefore no help to him either.
There was a knock at his apartment door and he hauled himself off the sofa, throwing a dressing gown around himself as he went. When he opened the door, he could tell from the dimmed lighting that the Node was still in night-mode.
“What?” he spoke to the hesitant-looking CPO in front of him.
“Sorry, Sir,” he replied, “There may be a problem.”
“What�
�s wrong with the phone?” Trevor pointed to the communication panel on the wall.
“Comms are down again.”
“Doesn’t anything work in this place?” he muttered.
All manner of unaccountable technical issues had been cropping up during the previous week, this appeared to be the latest development. However, when the officer told Trevor why he’d called in person, the comms issue appeared trivial by comparison.
“You’re telling me he’s just strolling around the Node without a Biomag?” Trevor stared at him.
“I don’t know how he’s done it,” the officer held up a Biomag on a thin chain, “but I’ve checked the RFID. This is definitely Marshall’s unit and he’s not in the cell.”
“Then for your sake, you’d better hope he turns up as a Field-fragged pile of bloody guts…” Trevor leaned closer, “Or Barnes will be after yours.”
The officer began backing away, “I’ll start the search.”
“Did you get that brilliant idea all by yourself?” Trevor stared at him incredulously then slammed the apartment door closed.
Sitting down heavily on the sofa, he cupped his hands around his face and exhaled hard. Heads would roll for this, he thought, possibly literally. Although his own Biomag was excluded from the targeting system, Barnes would undoubtedly make someone pay for Marshall’s impossible escape.
Trevor felt the weight of responsibility crushing his shoulders.
Alfred had manipulated his grief over Steven; converting his powerless remorse into misguided revenge. From the moment he’d agreed to help create the Biomag targeting system, Alfred had owned him.
Framed as a favour returned, Alfred had turned a blind eye to his underground DRB dealings. The enterprise had made his life more bearable but it had also given Barnes even more power to expose him.
He pushed the empty glasses aside and opened his laptop.
Despite the civil disruption at Beta Beach, he knew that Marshall was actually only guilty of being drunk, something he could sympathise with. He now regretted the harsh words he’d just spoken about him. If by some miracle Marshall was still alive, he’d rather things stayed that way.
He could pay off the CPO who’d discovered it, but Alfred Barnes was another matter; Trevor couldn’t risk being accused of withholding information from the president.
He created a new message to Alfred, flagging it as low priority, then typed:
‘Possible RF tagging error. Fixing now.’
He pulled on a pair of trousers and walked toward the cluttered shelves near the door. Pushing his hand past a broken DRB, an empty spray-paint can and a photo of Steven, he grabbed the whiskey bottle at the back; the one that Alfred had given to him. If things went badly, then he could drown his sorrows before any new punishments began.
He took a deep breath, then headed out through the door.
…
Cassidy swore at the message on the tablet screen.
“OK, Pike doesn’t know we’ve got this,” she pointed at the tablet, “But it’s not gonna take him long to start checking it out. We need to stop the Node. Now.”
As she pushed a table in front of the control room door, Roy seemed to have an idea.
“We can’t pull the handbrake,” he said, “but we can pull the E.M. main fuse.”
“Brilliant!” Marshall grinned, “It’ll trigger a Field radius reset! We’ll slow down… I mean… each second in here’ll go by less quickly out there. They’ll have more chance of seeing our actions.”
“So how do we do that?” said Cassidy.
Roy was already moving to the Node’s central axis that ran down through the corner of the control room.
“Oh, crap,” Marshall recalled the required maintenance routine, “We’ve not got the thermal gloves, the fuse’ll be too hot to pull out.”
“Well that depends doesn’t it?” Roy unclipped a cover plate to expose the Field emitter.
“Depends on what?” said Cassidy.
“On whether you can feel the heat or not,” he rolled up his sleeve and showed them his burn-damaged hand, “Souvenir of my handshake with a blazing Mark Three. I’m not gonna feel a thing with this!”
Both Marshall and Roy looked towards Cassidy, almost seeking her confirmation.
“Do it!” she said.
Roy turned on the spot and grasped hold of the high-current fuse. A sizzling crackle was briefly audible before Roy succeeded in pulling the fuse out. With a grimace he dropped the hot metal to the floor and shook his steaming hand.
“Piece of cake!”
Immediately the Node shook, seemingly to its foundations.
“Shit!” said Marshall, reading the screen, “Electromagnetic output just dropped off the chart!”
“This didn’t happen when the Field shrank, what’s wrong?” Roy shouted as he dragged more desks in front of the door.
As the shuddering continued, a warning tone rang out from the console.
“It’s the E.V.A.!” Marshall winced and began making rapid adjustments.
“What!?” said Cassidy.
“We’re between stable ratios, the eversion volume algor- doesn’t matter!” he yelled, “I can’t compensate fast enough for the increasing radius! We’re getting gyroscopic shear effects within the structure!”
A shudder passed through the deck.
“Whoa!” Roy stared at the observation window.
As the electrical systems tried to rebalance the load, the electro-tinting began to rapidly fluctuate on and off; not just in the small square area they’d managed to test, but across the full width and height of the whole observation window.
Beyond the gloriously transparent window, they could see the forest that surrounded them. The Node’s dense magnetic field sent shimmering green and purple hues hurtling through the night sky, whilst the tall trees vibrated in a gentle breeze. In the distance, arching low through the sky, was a blurred ring of lunar debris.
“We got everyone’s attention now!” yelled Cassidy as the balcony floor jolted.
…
During her countless millennia within the Boundary, Kate knew she’d helped a great many people. But only now could she return to those needing help within the Node.
As ever, she could see the Node’s exterior in crystal clarity but, even with her extraordinary abilities, she couldn’t influence events within an active Field. However, the temporary de-tinting of a single panel and the later opaquing failure of the whole window had provided her with an opportunity. She could now retroactively prepare for the events that would follow.
Remaining outside the Node, she shifted her viewpoint several years earlier to see a young mother holding her baby near the fire-lit commemoration stone.
As the woman passed her hand over the ash-blackened letters on the stone, Kate gently reached into the baby’s mind and caused him to cry. In response, the woman stopped moving her hand. Where her hand had come to rest, lay the name Atka.
The mother was overjoyed to have named her son with a word that meant ‘Guardian Spirit’, but Kate had guided the outcome for a different reason. During the first few moments outside the Node, Cassidy would see that the names ‘Atka’ and ‘Kate’ were linked via the words that the exiles had chiselled. It would inspire a moment of trust that everything else would depend upon.
Kate moved on through time, guiding the boy as he grew older. Sometimes, in moments that required him to show great courage, she countered his fears; speaking to him almost like the voice of his ancestors.
Although she’d guided him to witness the first de-tinting of a Node window panel, the will to return had been his own. For the past forty nights he’d returned to this location outside the Node, each time hoping to see a Guardian. Kate had to remind herself that Cassidy’s Field-slowed first appearance would have seemed like sheer magic to him.
Tonight, Kate could see him smiling up at the Node’s magnetically induced aurora; shifting streams of charged particles illuminating the gasses within the atmosphere.
She knew that his interpretations of the world were of course very different: the result of a simple mistake, distorted into legend by the passage of time.
As the Node began its temporal shift, the eversion volume fluctuated, but Kate easily compensated for it by adjusting the value of local gravity. The result was enough to pass a low shudder through the ground surrounding the Node.
It was also enough to draw the young man’s attention away from the sky.
…
For as long as Atka could remember, it had always been there: an ever-present Orb of light at the heart of the forest. From where he sat the Orb filled his field of vision, its cold ethereal glow warding off the darkness. A light breeze whispered through the illuminated trees; he shivered and moved his bare feet a little closer to his small camp fire.
Looking into the flames he recalled that night, many suns ago, when he had seen his first Guardian standing motionless within the Orb. In fear, he had fallen to his knees and bowed in reverence, averting his eyes. When he finally dared to raise his head, the silhouetted figure had turned and slowly receded towards the Orb's centre.
He looked up to the Sky-Spirits and smiled, they always moved so beautifully, passing through each other exchanging hues and intensities. Some believed the Sky-Spirits were The Guardians themselves, able to shed their corporeal forms and fly among the stars.
He turned away from the glare of the Orb to look at the scintillating rings that surrounded his world, and the stars beyond. Many had speculated that The Guardians came from those stars and may one day depart from here, taking their followers with them.
Hearing distant thunder, Atka turned away from the stars to focus on the present. Puzzled, he saw there were no storm clouds. A second growl of thunder split the air, and he realised that the sound was not coming from the sky but from the Orb. Without warning, the ground under his feet began to shake and he fell. The Orb's once steady light was now pulsating and the Sky-Spirits had almost vanished.
The whole Orb began to shudder and then slowly vibrate towards him, the forest floor crumpling and breaking up in its wake. It started to push against the first of the surrounding trees, vaporising each in a brilliant flash of violet light
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