Field Mice
6. Infinity Gate
The portal was only noteworthy for its feeling of out of place. A thin stone arch, it was roughly the size of a large door, and surrounded by a landscape of steel and iron.
It was also, as luck and Tyler found it, nonfunctional.
"It's been abandoned for almost thirty years," Sara whimpered in her own defense, "What did you expect?"
"When you say, 'We have a chance,'" Hein clarified, "I expect you to mean, 'We have a chance.'" He watched, wearied, while she struggled over something at the device's base. When she caught him staring, she huffed indignantly,
"Could you maybe lend a girl a hand?"
The commander sighed, but did as much, finding her trying to lift a tile out of place. It was not heavy as she made it seem, but it was certainly heavy for how it looked. He placed it aside, and Sara disappeared beneath the hole it concealed. He glared.
"What are you doing?"
The girl reappeared, "Ever flipped the polarities of the power cells on a portable to get a little more energy?"
"No."
She ducked down again, and hit something hard. Back again, she reached a hand and smiled, "Same principle."
Llorin helped her up, despite it not being necessary, and she brushed herself off.
"Anyway, it should be working now."
The gate was silent. But for a glow only noticeable to the trained mind, there was nothing different. Tyler eyed Sara, suspicious, through the arch before taking a diminutive step forward. He was about to berate the inanity of making him walk through mundane architecture – jump through hoops, as it were – when he noticed that the ground had changed. And the sky was closer to dawn, and a desert stretched out around him.
Hein appeared behind him, and Sara. Last by a margin, Llorin fell to the caked ground in a coughing fit. For a time, it was the only sound.
"This isn't the Citadel," the Commander growled. There was no way to know where they were, and no way back.
"They must have changed it," Sara shrugged, "It wasn't even in use, so they probably figured no one would use it and-"
"No," Hein said. "They knew. Don't move."
"Don't move?" she asked, turned, and Ahed sagely, "Don't move."
In the day and age, some might have argued that the Lunar Circle had nothing to do with the outside world, and that being ambushed in the middle of a far off desert was a meager coincidence. Contrarily, Hein took it to mean that they indeed paid just enough attention to set an ambush.
---
Now you're showing off.
His intentions were evident. There was certainly nothing she could have wanted him for. Hein presumed he should have been thankful; she was giving him time to scrape a plan together. But the glittering hall went on and on, and he was sick of the sparkle and getting tired of walking.
Those of his entourage yet to complain, but that might have had something to do with their escort. The Commander admitted to himself that there was a certain mystification in being able to see... non-humans, these things he hadn't a word for, up close and when they weren't trying to murder him. These were not the same as those he had killed; two were far closer to human and the third was misleadingly gentle and almost avian.
Driven inward, he thought of many things. Trudging up memories better left forgotten, but always at the edge of dreams, he sought for the edge that would win back the game. When his mind caught up with his feet, they were all but alone at the end of the path. Their escort had vanished, here or there, if they had been real at all; it was hard to determine in such a place. The glassy chamber glowed softly with life, but the eye was drawn to the dais in the center.
It was here that Hein knew he made a mistake. The last time he had seen her – left her – she was a child clinging to a lifeless body. Now, things were different. Lifetimes different, in fact, yet she stared coldly at him, wearing her mother's face.