Chapter 12 – Stop, Everybody, What's That Sound?
Jaina knew that hearing thumps and other strange sounds wasn't good, in her world or this one. Blundering around, she found the door to the chest room and opened it.
Nothing.
Just the usual hallway stretching seemingly endlessly both directions as part of Down Under's labyrinth Functional Supernatural Phenomena storage system.
"Must have been whatever brought me here" she muttered. "I remember a loud noise, so I bet it was an explosive."
This thought jolted her into motion—since she'd just been killed, the responsible party would likely be trying to attack the United Nations. Jaina navigated out of storage, walking briskly to the strategic headquarters buried inside the base.
"We're aware of your…untimely demise" said the base commander. "It appears two of your fellow Heroes disregarded direct orders, hid themselves in the crowd, and moved to take down your attackers. Despite this breach of protocol, I will confess to being grateful that all six terrorists are alive and in custody now."
"I heard something here, in the base, after I reappeared" she continued. "At first I thought it was just an aftershock, but then I realized hearing the same explosion again after I respawned wouldn't make any sense. It had to be something in this place!"
"We're not ignorant, Jaina" replied the commander, somewhat annoyed. "Since the 'stand down' and subsequent refocusing from ablation to research, some of our projects have not entirely gone as we'd hoped. The former Weaponized Extraction Teams aren't the only ones to get in over their heads in excitement to do their jobs…"
"Is it something I could be of assistance with?" she asked. The mage hoped to escape being buried in paperwork and statecraft again.
Even the dryads must tire of their eternal watch over the forest she thought.
"Possibly. We'll see if the science teams can get things back under control. Part of the problem with you Hero-types is that everyone else feels…inadequate. Every time a problem pops up, one of you could swoop in and solve it, so why bother? Makes people think they aren't useful anymore. If everything explodes, which it might since outsiders would call this yet more science fiction, I'll see about sending you in."
Dr. James-Johnson Arbat knew quickly something was off. The spatial warp factor from his test wormhole was way too high—he was targeting the next room, not another base! Yet, data confirmed his spatial coordinates had been altered to…
"It can't be."
Arbat's fingers flew to no avail—the link between Down Under and Atlantis couldn't be disconnected.
It's too early! We have to confirm this technology works before we start using it to salvage the other facility!
Every indicator went red and alarms began blaring.
"Not again…"
The doctor sighed. This was precisely the thing he'd been sure could never happen again due to advances in technology since the last attempt to work with space-warp transit technology (better known to outside science as wormholes).
"Intersection event, quadrant zero" he droned.
At least that would give them some time (though not much)—the throat of such a portal was mapped precisely with a grid system with zero being exactly halfway between the start and finish. Positive numbers moved toward the origin where the wormhole had been initiated while negative numbers indicated transit toward the destination.
"Seriously?" barked SHARD (Supernatural Helpers And Recovery Division, the "new WET"). "We downsize our security forces, and you drop an Alternate Universe Oscillating Rotational Activity in the second month?"
"It's not my fault" started Arbat before getting cut off.
"So you just happen to decide to connect to Atlantis instead of the actual test room. Something you've only been wanting to do since you got reassigned to Applications of FSP Physics. And even if it wasn't you, those old coots who'd resigned to retiring into obscurity because WET washed out their research were just waiting for an excuse to do this anyway!"
"I didn't…"
Realizing SHARD wasn't buying it, he cut the comm.
"I swear to all that's holy, someone must have messed with something!" Angrily, he began tabbing through every setting for the Field Lattice Generator. None were any different than the settings he'd triple-checked before hitting "CONNECT."
"Someone must have tampered with it at the generator itself" he fumed. "I'm not looking forward to this…"
Arbat's eyes wandered over the copious amount of personal protective equipment he'd have to don before going anywhere near the Field Lattice Generator. All sorts of strange emissions and unexplained happenings had occurred around these devices—the bigger the device, the higher the chance. Of course, this was a cargo-rated FLG with a diameter of five meters, but connecting it one room over had a very small AURORA probability. That it actually linked to a base over 18,000 kilometers away meant such an event was practically unavoidable (hence the desire to test first).
