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Chapter 22
"One dead, one paraplegic." Sam wiped a tear from her eye as she read the report. "Literal millions in equipment and a full month and it's still not fully cleaned up."
She looked up from her desk in the Nevada field office, making eye contact with Dominic for the first time since he handed her the report. "What happened? I thought we weren't using explosives at that depth."
"We didn't, ma'am." Dominic was still wrestling with the emotional fallout from the accident. "I was watching the guys park for the night, Tom's loader scoop hit the ground and—" his face lost its color as the memory flooded back. "Boom!" He looked at Sam. "You need to watch the drone footage. No warning. No sound. No fire or explosives — the ground just exploded."
"I read something about the dust hanging in the air oddly long?" Sam pressed. "What does that mean?"
"Well—" Dominic scratched his head for a second, then looked toward the door. "Let me show you. It wasn't just the dust — the excavators, loaders… everything just hung there in front of my eyes."
He drove them out to the upper floor of the main dig site, stepped up to the edge, and motioned for them to join him.
"Watch," he said simply, throwing a rock as hard as he could toward the center of the hole.
The rock flew outward, then slowed to a stop as though sliding across a floor. For a long moment nothing moved at all — no wind, no dust drift, just the rock hanging in empty air as though the world had forgotten to let go.
"That's odd." Victor tilted his head, his mind already trying to solve the mystery.
"We have always thought the machine was causing the anomalies," Sofia said with a satisfied smile.
"Nearly a minute," Sam noted, checking her watch, as the rock finally started drifting to the ground. "Falling like a leaf, though."
"Rocks aren't supposed to do that." Victor laughed. "Let's go have a look at the torture machine, shall we?" He started walking down the brand-new road leading to the lower floor. "At least we don't have to rappel in this time!"
"Took almost a week to get the road cut," Dominic called out after him as the rest of the team turned to follow. "Had to, in order to get this hole cleaned out — would'a taken a month with the telestick!"
The lower excavation floor was scraped clean — swept clear of even leftover dust. Only the enormous cube-shaped portal remained.
"Looks smaller now," Sam sighed.
"Funny how that always seems the case when we get our treasures above ground," Sofia laughed.
Smooth white walls rose up from the excavation floor, perfect and seamless but for the gap that formed the track, the light still racing around the mouth of the hole. The bottom of it sat about fifteen feet off the ground — a massive maw the size of a house, disappearing as it passed from one side to the other.
"I'd like to get a look at the top of this thing," Sam said, looking up at the nearly four-story edifice. "I'm willing to bet whatever caused the explosion is the same thing that was keeping the cavern roof from falling in. They must have figured out a way to aim gravity upward—" she paused, gesturing upward, "and it has to be coming from something up there."
"Rick, you there?" Dominic mashed the button on his radio.
"Go for Rick." A deep voice boomed out of the radio speaker.
"Get me a scissor lift down here, please," Dominic said. "We need to access this thing's roof."
"On it, boss. Have it there in thirty!"
Mark pressed his hand to the pad next to the door.
Hiss.
The inside of the cube was cool and quiet — not even the expected hum of electricity flowing through equipment. Just silence waiting to greet them, so complete it pressed against their ears, and a faint thrum through the soles of their boots — the only sign the place was alive at all. It was the first time Sam, Mark, and Sofia had seen the inside of the cube without the rush of fear deleting the awe of discovery — and the first time Victor had seen it without the anticipation of the coming torture since his rescue.
Victor froze two steps inside.
"It's OK, Victor," Sofia said, wrapping her arm through his elbow. "I am here, and I will never let anything happen to you again."
Victor took a breath, then a step, then another deep breath, searching for the courage that was stolen from him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them, the cold gray fear reflecting back had turned into icy resolve.
"I will make them pay for the years they stole from us," Victor hissed.
"Has R&D been in here yet?" Sam asked, looking over at Dominic.
"No." He shook his head, a grim expression washing over his features. "I've kept it sealed until just now — no more risk on this site. I have never lost a man before Tom. I wasn't about to risk another."
"No," Sam said, frowning thoughtfully, "that's what Gideon's team is here for."
"You sound disappointed," Dominic said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"Not disappointed, it's just—" Sam closed her eyes. "I don't like putting people in danger. Tom is just one reason why." She looked at Victor with sorrowful eyes. "It was my project, my team." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Then the flash flood, then the radiation poisoning…"
"It's not your fault," Sofia said sternly.
"But it was my project, Sof." Sam choked back a sob. "I'm the one who found the anomaly, applied for the research grant, organized the teams. The blood is on my hands."
"No." The word caught in Victor's throat. He tried again. "No, Sam. It's not your fault…" He looked at the door leading to the other world before angrily adding, "It is them! And we will show them the cost of the fight they picked."
"You're starting to sound like that schoolboy I met in Sighișoara." Sofia jabbed her elbow into his ribs with a laugh. "Careful — Gideon might recruit you with that attitude!"
"Four more days till they're back from R&R," Mark said, looking over at Sam. "Should we wait for them before we bring the R&D team in?"
"No." Sam shook her head. "They said the door was in a warehouse, unused. I think we're safe for now."
Sofia crossed the room to the main control desk. "I translated the training course for these research labs — if I can just line up the lessons with the real-life machine, maybe I can figure out how to use this thing."
Mark was digging through a row of lockers along the far wall when he paused, looking over at Sam. "They left in a hurry."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"If I had to guess—" Mark held up an armful of what looked like someone's personal belongings. "All this wasn't meant to be left behind. That says they left in a hurry. All these lockers are filled with stuff like this. Books, pictures… I even found a couple of wristwatches!"
"What could have made them abandon it?" Dominic wondered aloud.
"Do you remember the looks on their faces?" Sofia asked softly. "When we first found Victor and we saw them through the portal, they looked shocked."
"Fear is what I read," Mark suggested.
"Fear?" Sofia asked softly. "Of what?"
"What if—" Sam breathed, "they were afraid of being caught."
"That could track." Victor frowned. "Considering what they were doing down here."
"What if they didn't think it was even possible?" Sofia wondered.
"That's hubris in epic proportions," Dominic offered.
"So let's take advantage of it instead of making the same mistake," Mark said, glancing toward the gateway door. "Dominic — get us something we can use to seal that door. Top priority!"
Dominic mashed the button on his radio. "Hey, Rick, send me some two-by-fours and something that can tap a hole in this thing."
Nothing.
"Rick, you there?"
The only return was silence.
"Maybe the signal can't get out," Sofia suggested.
Dominic stepped back outside and tried again. Five minutes later he walked back through the door. "That did the trick, Sofia! This thing must be shielded somehow."
"Shielded walls, gravity-affecting technology," Sofia softly recounted, "multidimensional portals. What the hell kind of people did we discover?"
"Sort of makes you excited to see the other side of that door, doesn't it?" Mark had a dreamy look in his eyes. "Wonder if Gideon would let us come on the next trip."
“Good luck stopping me.” Victor growled.
Mark turned back toward the main console but froze mid-stride. "That's curious."
"What's that?" Victor asked.
"There's a seam in the wall here." Mark traced a barely visible line in the empty expanse beside the row of lockers.
His hand paused on the etched outline of a hand print.
Whoosh!
The wall slid upward, disappearing into itself, revealing a large, empty, square room. Mark stepped inside. The room was devoid of furniture save for a single computer terminal on a small desk next to the door. Its center was occupied by what looked like a dance floor, large and perfectly smooth: one continuous pitch-black polished surface about a foot above the floor. Suspended above it on tracks set perpendicular to one another hung a small, round, white ball with a lens tube extending an inch out of its bottom. A logo etched into the side in scrolling letters read 'WeaverTech'.
"Uhh, guys?" Mark shouted to the other room. "I think I found what we're looking for!"
A second later, the room filled with the five of them.
"Great find, Mark!" Sam exclaimed, giving him a slap on the back. "Sof, think you can figure it out?"
Sofia sat down at the desk and started clicking through the menus.
"Found it!" she whispered, then shrieked with excitement. "The laptops use standard WiFi RF signals — this one's the same." She trailed off for a second, glancing around for an unseen answer. "Sam, can you step outside and lend me your hotspot?"
Half a beat later a smile spread across Sofia's face. "Perfect!" she shouted, then added almost to herself, "Now — connect to the mainframe…" A pause. "And the specs for…" She clicked a few more times, then leaned back in the chair with a satisfied grin as the weaver head began sliding around the center of the platform, silently layering the continuum lattice onto the polished surface — threads of light stitching themselves out of nothing, each pass leaving a faint warmth on the skin of anyone leaning too close.
"That was fast!" Mark laughed.
"Nothing my Sofia can't figure out." Victor smiled proudly, resting his hand on her shoulder.
"It's not me," Sofia giggled softly, "the AI they made is amazing! All I had to do is figure out the language so I can talk to it — it does the rest. I'm going to let it out on our internet when I have time to build a sandbox for it, so it can learn our languages. I'm going to transition us all to these laptops."
Sam made a mental note to make sure that sandbox got built before Sofia’s bright ideas outpaced safety.
"Nice!" Sam breathed as she came back into the manufacturing room. "What're you making?"
"You remember that cell phone I designed?" Sofia looked up at Sam.
"Senior year — yeah, that was a great design. Probably where they got the idea for those new folding-screen phones."
"Right?" Sofia laughed. "Well, this should be an upgrade even to my design."
A soft bell rang through unseen speakers in the ceiling as the weaver head returned to its base position in the center of the platform. The tiny creation glowed softly where it sat, its screen casting a faint blue wash over the polished floor. Sofia crossed the platform and bent to pick it up.
"Light as a feather!" she gasped, tapping the screen. "It's perfect — and already connected to my account."
Victor's phone rang.
"Can you hear me?" Sofia asked into the mouthpiece.
"Crystal clear!" Victor laughed. "Can you make one for me?"
Sofia clicked the mouse a few more times and the weaver head snapped back into action, building twenty copies of the design.
"Let's try a bulk order," Sofia said thoughtfully.
Less than five minutes later the weaver head settled back into the center, its work finished.
"Done!" Sofia announced, a proud grin spreading over her features. "Grab one and turn it on, hold it back-to-back with your phone, and hit the pair button. The phone will do the rest."
"Of course it will," Sam laughed.
The next two hours were spent poring over the weaver lab, learning everything they could about its function and form, before moving back to the main room again.
"What's the scissor lift for?" Gideon appeared in the doorway, his smile brightening the room as he entered. “Couldn’t keep the team away any longer so we came home early!”
"It's here?" Dominic's excitement showed on his face. "Finally gonna get a close look at the top of this thing."
"Vixen, you and Ghost process those lockers. Wyvern, you're up top with Sam's team — the rest of us will run forensic processing out here."
"Up top is right up my alley, boss." Tessa smiled.
Rachel and Julian moved to the lockers and started digging while everyone else dispersed around the main lab. The scissor lift groaned in complaint as it hoisted the five up to the top of the four-story cube. The top was smooth and clean, without even an access hatch. They stepped off the lift and onto the surface, crossing quickly to the center, where the only visible attachment rose from the roof. The desert wind tugged at their sleeves — hot and gritty after the cube's sterile cold — and the excavation fell away on all sides, sixty feet of empty air between them and the scraped-clean floor below.
"Four antennas?" Sam snorted. "What the hell was holding up the roof?"
The antennas were mounted on a small half-sphere that protruded from the center of the roof, one aimed at each top corner of the original cavern.
"The spread makes me wonder," Sofia said, thinking aloud, "could this be it?"
"Only one way to find out, Sof." Victor sighed, a glare replacing his smile. "We have to go and have a look for ourselves."
They only spent a couple more minutes on top before returning inside. As they were stepping through the door, a truck loaded with wood planks skidded to a stop.
"What's that?" Gideon looked out the door.
"Sam wants the portal door secure," Dominic said, "we're just gonna cover the whole thing up. We can pull the boards off when it's time to use it."
Gideon thought for a moment. "Negative. All boards do is advertise there's something worth stealing, and they won't stop anyone who actually wants through. We do this right."
His voice dropped into command cadence. "Wyvern — schedule a watch on the door, you've got the first watch. Two-person teams, four on, eight off, around the clock. Nobody touches it without Sam's or my say-so. Ghost, Vixen — those lockers are an intel haul now. Inventory everything, photograph everything, and I want your read on what kind of people pack like that by end of day. Dominic — forget the lumber. Your crew welds a steel frame, hinged, padlocked. Keys to Sam and me, nobody else. And run a hardwire from in here to the surface — radios are dead inside this box, so we do it the old-fashioned way. Anything comes through that door that isn't us, I want to know about it before it takes two steps."
He glanced at Sam. "Your call stands, Sam. We're just doing it properly."
A beat of silence. "Questions? Move."
Rachel was the first to speak as she started listing each item in the first locker while Julian took notes. "Diary — might be useful. Doctor's notes?" she laughed. "Mundane is not what I expected. Feels like these are just ordinary people."
Julian pulled open another locker. It exhaled stale air — old paper, worn leather, someone's long-faded cologne. He picked up a wristwatch from the shelf inside. "Ordinary people — so why does it look like they strip when they come to work?"
"That's the way we do things." Sofia laughed. "Labs must be sterile — a cleanroom. I used to literally change my clothes in my office at school." She paused with a snicker. "Of course, with what we were studying in that lab, even a speck of dust could have compromised the results."
"I thought you majored in geology?" Tessa asked.
"One of my doctorates is in geophysics." Sofia said it as though everyone held multiple doctorates. "That lab was hunting mammoth DNA strands left in the microbiome. This lab might serve the same purpose — which would require them to shed anything personal, including electronics, to prevent contamination."
"Makes you wonder who left this behind." Julian was examining the watch. "Looks like they break the day into forty-eight instead of twenty-four. Should be easy to interpret." He held the watch up for Rachel, showing off the intricately designed face, the gold-colored inlays, and a band worn smooth at the edges, the way a favorite thing gets.
"Nice," Rachel breathed, "looks expensive!" She touched its face, and it flashed to a calendar task view. "If I'm reading this right, I think this person is in management."
"What makes you say that?" Sam asked, crossing to Rachel.
"I think it's a schedule for an executive-level meeting."
"What's the date?" Sofia asked.
"Says 'Rubix research board, 7.25 – 1800. Earth: Tue 9/22, 9:00 AM,'" Rachel translated.
"Did we just find a clue to their calendar?" Sam asked.
"Already had that one, Sam," Sofia laughed, "late to the party?"
A shy laugh rippled through the lab as everyone tried to stifle their amusement.
"Either way, that was week before last." Sam noted. "They likely have already announced the breach — that's gonna make a return trip a little more risky."
"Unavoidable," Gideon said. "My team is used to the risk — we've already heard from HGH headquarters. The trip is going to happen regardless. Whether your team accompanies us is strictly voluntary."
"I'm going," Victor declared before anyone else had the chance to speak.
"If Victor is going, so am I." Sofia snapped, giving Victor a side-eye glance.
"And if Sof goes, so do I," Sam decided on the spot.
"That leaves you, Mark," Gideon said with a smile, "and I have a feeling I already know your answer."
Mark smiled. "And miss the chance to be one of the first to see another world? I'd sooner sign up for cryo-storage and miss the whole century!"
"It's decided, then." Rachel's sudden shift to a serious tone cut through the excitement. "We all go — but you four will need weapons training."
"Huh?" Sam stared. "We're scientists — the guns are for your team."
"Not if you plan to set one foot through that portal." Tessa snapped before softening her tone. "What if we're over there and you get separated from the group? How will you defend yourselves? No — SOP states all soldiers…" she paused to correct herself, "all personnel accompanying an away mission carry the standard arms loadout. No compromise. I'll train you myself!"