Disclaimer: None of these characters actually belong to me. Nor does the concept of Immortality. The plot is, however, entirely of my own devising.
Author Notes: Black Holes, of course, do exist, as is the evidence here for how they are formed. The idea of wormholes comes from Einstein's findings, in that he was the first to put forward that they might/could exist. It is stated that wormholes cannot be formed, but must be already formed.
In some ways, this is a companion piece to several others I have written. These stories (When Universes Collide/When Boundaries Fade/When Fate Intervenes/The Eleventh Demension) can be found unbderneath my profile. While none of those stories have to be read to read this one, some of the concepts put forward into this story have been mentioned in those stories as well. A few characters might pop up as well.
"Dear Diary, Yesterday morning I killed myself, and I am still alive…"
"Did you see that?" Annie Thelan squeaked. Technically, her name was Annie Thelan-Bell now; she had married Clu Bell the same week she had graduated from college. They were meant for one another, that was what everyone kept telling them. They both liked to surf (Clu had taught her while she was still in school), he encouraged her quirky traits and weirder obsessions with the abnormal. As the best friend of both Jack and Fiona Phillips, he seemed to think it was normal.
But no one called her Annie Thelan-Bell. At least no one called her Annie Thelan-Bell professionally. Socially, she was simply Annie Bell. Professionally, she was still Annie Thelan. It was only for a girlish-marriage sake that she sometimes hyphenated the names. She planned to hyphenate the names on her child's birth certificate. She hadn't yet told Clu that.
"Did you?" she asked again.
"See what?" Fiona Phillips asked. She barely looked up from the metratron she held in her left hand and the small stenopad of notes she held in her right. A pen was perched over her ear.
"That… this… lightening… I swear, it was just there, then gone. This weird sort-of blue-green color. Like so weird, right?" Annie waited for Fiona to smile, but Fiona did no such thing.
It was a May morning. A bright, early May morning, with birds chirping somewhere in the distance, flowers blossoming into full bloom in the Seacouver Parks and the trees in the perfect height of their spring green-ness. Fiona had come out early to gather the new coordinates Declan Callaghan had asked from her; Annie had tagged along for the ride.
"There's probably an electrical storm somewhere," Fiona shrugged. "How far away?"
"A couple miles. Definitely no more than three or four."
"And you distinctly saw the lightening shape?"
"Definitely a fork," Annie agreed.
Fiona sighed. She averted her eyes from the coordinates that flashed across the tiny two inch screen. It was just chilly enough outside that she was comfortable in her khaki-colored capris, but that she still wore a light denim jacket over her green tee. The denim jacket remained unbutton, and a small Irish flag emblazoned the tee front. She reached for the pencil behind her ear, and made a few quick notes on the page. She was glad she wore the jacket, she was glad the denim sleeves lay long and loose past her wrists. Those sleeves hid the small tattoo she wore on her right wrist from Annie's prying eyes.
"It's possible a storm in moving in from somewhere."
Fiona knew that notion wasn't improbable. Thunderstorms lived by strange and fickle rules. One side of a street could be pelted with rain or thunder and lightening while the other street side had clear, perfect and sunny weather. But things like that usually happened in warmer, more tropical places, places like Florida, where thunderstorms were as commonplace as ants. Here, in the Pacific Northwest, they very often had rain, but never rainstorms so divided.
And even more, the sky was perfect for miles around. There was no hint or inkling from anywhere that a storm was moving in or moving out. It was a perfect spring morning.
But harking the possibility up to the weather seemed like a much better than revealing to Annie her true thoughts or hypothesis. Because scarcely one minute before Annie had said anything, the readings from the metratron had spiked to dangerously high levels. To numbers up over a thousand, then down again, evening out to again to hover over one hundred.
To Fiona, it could either mean one of two things: either an Immortal had just taken a Quickening, or somewhere, something had just gone terribly wrong.
"Dropping you off at home?" Fiona asked once they were back in her car. Annie straightened her seat belt, and reached over the emergency brake to fiddle with the radio. "Or are you coming back to the office with me?"
"I'll go home," Annie decided. "I'm just a bit tired." At eight months pregnant, she decided 'a bit' was an understatement.
Fiona smiled, and nodded. She pulled out cautiously from the parking lot, and scooted onto the highway.
She, obviously dropped Annie off first, asking her if she should stay, but Annie shooed her off, telling her, "If we can't both get any work done today, at least one of us should." Fiona had the good tact to smile at the statement.
She stopped in at one of the local coffee joints to order herself a medium vanilla-caramel mocha, and on a whim she added a peppermint one for Declan. If she had read her cards correctly, he would need not only the caffeine when she shared her findings, but he would also need to be sitting down.
Fiona Phillips worked in the center of town. The offices were on the fourth floor of a sixth floor building, and on either side they were surrounded by law offices. She pulled into her regular parking spot, grabbed the two coffees, her purse, keys, notepad and the metratron and she hurried into the building. She took the stairs. Declan was sitting at his desk—like she knew he would be—frowining at his laptop screen—like she knew he would be. She placed the coffee she had bought for him in front of him. He blinked up in surprise.
"What's the occasion?" he asked.
Fiona perched herself in one of the chairs he kept for clients. She sipped her own coffee. "Have you heard of any Immortals dying today?"
Declan blinked again. "None of ours, no. Why? What happened?" He was instantly alert, folding the laptop down so he could better see Fiona's face. He picked up his coffee in his hands and he smelled it first before he took a sip.
"Annie saw some form of lightening. Claimed it was blue. I figured there might be a chance it might one of ours out there." Declan shook his head, and Fiona sighed. "Whatever it was, Dec, it caused the readings to jump over ten percent."
Declan gave a low whistle and sat back in his chair. He took another sip of his coffee. Peppermint. His favorite. "Any other ideas?"
"Just one." Declan's eyes widened, and he motioned for Fiona to continue. "Are all our guys accounted for?" she asked.
"Everyone. Harvey and Miles are out scouting. Roxie is in her office taking care of some back paperwork. Justin is in his office also, uploading the coordinates from yesterday into the archives. Said something about backlifting coordinates from earlier this week too. Annie, I am assuming, you dropped off at home?"
"I did." She sipped her coffee. "Shit," she swore quietly under her breath. "My theory is correct."
"Fi…" Declan's voice was low, almost tender. His eyes softened when he caught her gaze, and he gave her a smile. "Just tell me. I'm already sitting down, and you brought me coffee. I promise. I will not overreact."
Fiona returned the smile. "Don't promise me anything until you hear what I'm going to say." She sighed, again. "You're familiar with how a blackhole works, right?"
"Sure," Declan shrugged. "Something of a high mass—usually a star—collpases in on itself, and its mass is too large to simply vanish, so it creates another object, a black hole. The new gravity is too high, and everything is drawn into it, including light itself."
"Close enough. I made a point to do some research on black holes while at university, Declan. I came across a few other interesting things as well."
"Such as?"
"Wormholes. I came across a theory that similiarly to how black holes create in space, so too can wormholes be created here on Earth."
"But you can't create wormholes! they must already exist."
"I know. But if it wasn't a Quickening, and the sky is clear for miles, Declan, I can't think of what else it might be. And Miles has been saying something about higher electrical volume in the atmosphere. Somerone could easily manipulate that if they knew how."
"Anyway we can prove this?"
"I could make some phone calls."
"Who?"
"Giles, for one. I could try Ryan and Charlie also." Declan raised his eyebrow, and Fiona had the tact to somewhat grin. "I promise you, Ryan and I are on quite civil terms now. We have been for a while."
"If you say so," Declan shrugged it off. "Anyone else? Oz?"
Fiona shook her head. "Giles would tell me if Oz knows anything. Besides, I'm making a point to steer clear of him. Pete might know something though. I could try contacting him."
"We should contact Dawson. Just to double check it wasn't one of our charges out there. Mike Ross, too, for that matter."
"Mike wouldn't necessarily know anything. You're right about Dawson though."
"Good. Have the information to me by midnight tonight. Do it here, do it home, I don't care, just have it to me." He swallowed more of his coffee, and again, his expression softened. "Do you want me to call Rick, or should I?"
"Let me do it," Fiona answered softly. "I need to talk him eventually. Father or not."
Declan nodded. He closed his eyes momentarily. "Are you sure about the readings?"
"Positive."
Declan opened his eyes. They were green –too green for his otherwise olive complexion; almost jade, a color like forest underbrush and new grass and tree leaves. "Let's hope you're right," he spoke quietly.
But Fiona was already gone. He could hear her flipping through an addressbook through the wall.