"Countdown is progressing. T-Minus three minutes... mark!"

Ace fidgets with the catch on her knife, snapping the blade in and out as scientists rush around her tapping commands into keyboards and monitoring readouts. Above the chaos she can just hear Beckett on the far side of the room, arguing with the Director over video-conference. That isn't anything new of course. Ever since Yvonne Hartman was promoted, she's taken a smug pride in pushing her face into every project and op that they run here, often taking the credit when things go well and quick to apportion the blame when they don't. Ace knows there's history there. What that history is exactly is something Beckett hasn't cared to elaborate on. Still, she knows him well enough to decide whose side she's on.

Just after the two minute mark, a fired-up Beckett spits a curse before cutting the call and moving over to the teststage. "The Kommandant still on your back?" Ace asks rhetorically.

A simple nod affirms the statement anyway. Beckett looks troubled. "You know we can still put a stop to this. We've got nothing to prove to her."

Ace turns to the small team beside and behind her. Other then Beckett, they form the nucleus of the base's permanent operations personnel. The studious looking whitecoats are on loan from London purely for the test. "Maybe not," a man's voice replies with an Irish lilt. "But it's gonna be fun watchin' her wipe the egg off her face f'r sure." The rest smile in response.

Ace turns back and looks at her C.O. with an amused expression of her own. "You heard him."

Beckett nods again, more confidently this time.

"T-Minus sixty seconds and counting," the tannoy sounds.

"That's our cue." Ace steps up the ramp and onto the pentagonal floor.

"Good luck!" Beckett tells them all as the translucent doors roll shut. Ace pockets her knife and slides her coated shades down over her eyes. The others do likewise. The burst of energy produced by this test would blind them otherwise. Arching her neck upwards, she looks at the Collector, an exposed mass of crossfed technology gleaned from past ETIs. With any luck it'll represent humanity's 'Great Leap Forward' in transportation. Suddenly Star Trek doesn't look so futuristic.

"Nervous?" the Irishman asks.

"Kakking me pants mate," a Yorkshire sounding voice replies, doing a fair emulation of a certain sitcom android.

"I was wondering what the smell was," Ace jokes deadpan, prompting a small ripple of laughter.

"T-Minus thirty seconds and counting." The tannoy is now being piped into the enclosed teststage.

"There's no need for fear," a high-pitched but gentle sounding woman announces. "I ran over fifty simulations of this experiment, using the precise parameters we're using now. We're completely safe."

"Always expect the unexpected," Ace prompts.

"How does that work anyway?" the Irishman wonders. "I mean if y'r expectin' the unexpected, then the unexpected isn't really unexpected is it. You've already expected it."

"Oh someone bat him," the Yorkshireman snorts. Ace's calm expression threatens to break out into a grin.

"Twelve... eleven... ten..."

"Remember, no-one look directly at the lens," Ace reminds everyone. "Ready?"

She gets a trio of acknowledgments as the final seconds are spoken off. "Beam us up, Scotty," the Irishman quips.

"Three... two... one..." Then the four agents are bathed in a painfully bright light. At that same moment, in a small town halfway across the world, another massive burst of energy is taking place. Magic and science resonate in a way never felt before on Earth. And the effects are shattering.

The ambient light flashes between extreme glare and pitch darkness like an overpowered strobe. Shapes occasionally reveal themselves, but they're hazy... indistinct. This at least was predicted. Their physical selves are phasing in and out of spatial dimensions at an incredible rate. Light and sound are only reaching their senses between phases, as are oxygen particles, but the transition is so fast as to make the deprivation effects negligible. What wasn't predicted was the jolt of mild nausea that hit Ace as the transport began. Still, it's a small price to pay for the time-saving. Speaking of time... Lifting her wrist, Ace watches the seconds blink by. Twenty-nine... thirty... thirty-one... She holds a breath of anticipation. Then...

... The seconds continue to count upwards. Damnit! she silently curses. She doesn't want to alarm the others, but by the look of them they're already realising this is taking longer than expected. Even in the brightness, Joy is quite clearly ashen-faced. However it isn't for the reason Ace thinks, as she finds out when another hit of nausea grabs her, more violently than the first. She struggles to hold everything in, even as she sees Joy wretch up. Gritting her teeth, she concentrates on the ever changing numerals of her watch. One minute, then two, then three.

Ace stumbles as something collapses against her. It's the prone figure of Joy. She quickly examines her fallen colleague. Joy's breathing is shallow and her breath smells acrid. Poor sod's probably coughed up half her stomach lining. As she looks up, the two guys aren't doing a whole lot better. Dennis looks weak on his feet and Marty's face is set in stone. "Hold it together!" Ace orders. Whether they heard through the staccato accoustics is another matter.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Ace is the last to succumb to the sickness. Her head swims painfully and she can no longer focus on anything, no longer see anything except the constant flicker of light and dark.

Five hundred and fifteen seconds after the experiment began, it ends just as abruptly. Thrown jarringly from her suspended state to hard ground some feet below, Ace winces as she feels her shoulder pop out of its joint. That's the least of her worries though as moments later she feels a godalmighty rumble beneath her. Scrambling to her feet as fast as she's able, she half stumbles away, seconds before the ground splits and sinks like quicksand. Coughing and still queasy, but no longer uncontrollably sick, she peers around in bewilderment. Whatever this place is, it bears no resemblance to London.

"MARTY!" she calls, ignoring the growing throb in her shoulder. "JOY!" But her colleagues are nowhere to be seen. Fear mixes with anger. Why don't they answer her? As the ground splits again beneath her feet, Ace starts to run through the seemingly deserted streets. Expect the unexpected? No-one could have expected this in a million years.

Light shoots up from the widening cracks like lances, creating an odd aurora effect in the sky. And from the cracks a few deformed creatures pull themselves, seared and burned. Ace stops dead in her tracks. Weevils? She's never seen one up close, but they resemble them right enough. Ace slowly pulls her trouser leg up with her good arm. The creatures stare for a moment, then start to advance, quickly. Pulling the small automatic free from its velcro holding strap, Ace takes no time to aim, unloading snap shots into the inhuman mass. And as she does so, the ground starts to rumble once again.