Chapter 12:
"Are you sure we can trust this Albert Manstein? I'm pretty sure he is under CIA's list of 'assume terminated'," Astrid pulled out her phone and typed in a set of passwords. A photo of someone's face showed up with dyed sky blue air, emerald eyes, and dark chocolate skin. Two dotted red lines formed an X across his photo.
"He is wanted by the CIA?" Ruffnut's eyes widened.
"Was. The CIA believes that he is dead. According to their intelligence, Albert Manstein, member of Heimdall, was shot and killed in 1999 near the shore of the Persian Gulf by Saudi Arabia army," Astrid replied.
"Then why this says he is 'assume terminated'?"
"Because they didn't find his body. The file says that after a machine gun emptied a whole belt at him, he disappeared. No blood, no broken limbs, no tracks, just disappeared."
"Is he trying to help us or the hard drive is some sort of computer virus?"
"Technicians in the Interpol didn't identify any sorts of malware or potential electrical threat. The hard drive is clean."
"Ok, so now the problem is why he wants to help us."
When Hiccup woke up at night, Astrid was still beside him, her naked body covered by Hiccup's dark brown blanket sleeping on her stomach with her hands buried beneath her white pillow. Her bare back rose and fell with rhythm as she breathed softly. The opaque curtains covered the windows completely, not allowing any bright moonlight to peak through. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling with his hands underneath his head, clearing his mind from yesterday's chaos and panic. He knew that Project Bifrost was not just some random deal with a client, but an obstacle that Muspelheim spent more than five decades trying to fix. The math equations flashed across his mind, complex calculations took place in his brain as if he was a human-powered computer. His left hand unconsciously landed on Astrid's uncovered back and gently rubbed her spine. After the attack his research reached a bottleneck, since during the gunfight one of the invaders threw a grenade into the lab that stored the only laser cooling machines in Asgard, and that was a key element of making Bose-Einstein Condensate. Those machines were not something that you could get from the Best Buy down the road.
He already started building one with the remaining materials that Asgard had on hand. He was not an expert at states of matters, but when it came to straight engineering like making some machines, he was the god of this field.
Sleepiness slowly crept up his body in the dim room, trying to put him back to sleep. He could still have three hours of sleep before going to work. He turned his body toward Astrid and stroke her blond hair. When he picked up a small wisp of her hair, it revealed a small part of black metal sticking out from beneath her pillow. His curiosity shook him awake immediately.
He placed his right hand on the exposed metal, smooth as silk but cold as ice. Hiccup then slowly lifted the heavy pillow with Astrid's head on it, trying his best to not wake her. Two brand new MP7s unveiled. Astrid's two hands gripped the handle of the guns tightly and index fingers placed around the trigger.
That's why she came back late last night, Hiccup thought. Astrid left her two MP7s in the glove box of Hiccup's Ford, but the gunfight at the parking lot turned it into waste. She went out yesterday night and got two new ones from a nearby gun store. Astrid had all the reasons in the world to replace her arms later, but she decided to do so right after the incident. For their safety.
And she still wouldn't let go of the arms even when she was asleep so that she could react faster when something happened. Hiccup was sure that it was she who covered the windows last night, not leaving a single gap.
Hiccup froze, then the tips of his mouth curved up into a smile. Everything was back on track.
Suddenly someone shoved him away from the sleeping Astrid violently and threw a powerful punch at his left side of his face. Hiccup could feel that the attacker was trained, and the punch almost broke his skull. His head was thrown backward and he fell on the mattress on his back. His cheek skin burned as if someone poured a bottle of boiling water on his head. Then two hands pinned him onto the bed, the powerful grips prevented him from escaping, fingers dug deep into his shoulder skin. The punch made him dizzy, he blinked a few times, the entire world spun like a fidget spinner, throwing his mind into temporary chaos. Hiccup could feel that someone was on top of him, probably a female, locking his neck to the pillow with her elbow to prevent Hiccup from raising his head. A small, ice-cold tube landed on his forehead. In the darkness, he could see nothing, but he knew that the small tube was the muzzle of a gun.
A beam of strong light as bright as staring directly at the sun appeared before his face. He squinted his eyes to avoid the eye-piercing brightness, turning his head away from the light source. He tried to cover his eyes with his hands, but they were pinned to the sheet as if two iron bars locked his wrists on the bed. He could see the weapon above his forehead, and the cold surface of it shivered Hiccup, like how death reaches out for its victim. If whoever was holding the weapon pulled the trigger, he would be right on his way to Valhalla. No one can survive when a bullet punches through his or her brain.
"What the...Jesus...I thought...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Astrid's shuddering voice came into his ears when the shaft disappeared after she turned off the flashlight. She jumped off the bed and walked across the room to turn on the lights.
Her hair was tangled up after sleeping face down, a handful of scars located across her body. Hiccup pushed himself up, sitting against the headboard, panting heavily. Hiccup had seen firearms, grenades, and even shoulder missiles all the time, since the guards of Muspelheim loved to wander around Asgard, so it was hard not to see some six and a half feet muscular men and women walking down the corridor with a shotgun or assault rifle in hand. Those arms never scared Hiccup. He knew that if some muttonheads dared to interrupt the best engineer in Muspelheim, those muzzles would turn at the stupid intruder.
This time, he felt the dark side of those arms, the horrible breath like those blood-thirsty beasts. He pushed himself against the headboard, trying to keep distance between himself and Astrid, wrapping himself with the blanket as if it was a bullet-proof shield. It was not Astrid that Hiccup tried to avoid, but the loaded MP7 dangling in her left hand. The weapon that almost took his life a few seconds ago. Astrid looked at Hiccup, his eyes no longer contained life, blank as a piece of paper. Astrid walked slowly and carefully toward the bed and sat down beside him. She could see a red mark appeared on his left cheek, since she punched him with her right elbow.
She dropped her weapon on the ground, the metal thing landed on Hiccup's brown carpet without a sound.
"I'm so so sorry, Hiccup..." Astrid whispered. She didn't know how to comfort him. She used to calm Hiccup down and soothe him after him getting beaten to hell by bullies, but that was around a decade ago. In DPA, no one comforted her when she was hurt or injured. She became an independent person. Her teammates fought side by side with her during missions, but they would prefer to watch her suffer instead of helping her out.
She reached her hands for Hiccup's auburn hair, combing his tangled hair into the original straight and neat brown cascade.
"Sorry Hiccup…" that was the only thing she knew what to say. "I should've trusted you… I knew that was you…"
She sat down next to him, surrounding Hiccup's shoulder with her left arm and enveloping him with her body. The room was fairly cool at night, but she didn't put on her clothes. Hiccup didn't move, and he just stared forward blankly.
"It's ok. I shouldn't touch your weapons," Hiccup's lips parted and the smooth voice came out from his mouth.
"Don't say that," Astrid laid a light kiss on his cheek.
"Forget about it," Hiccup shook his head. "You are part of the military, right? Or something similar to that. I understand you."
"I can't forget about this. I can't forget about almost killing my love. Will you forget if you almost killed me?"
Hiccup didn't answer.
"Can we start over again?" Astrid whispered by his ears.
Hiccup turned and looked at the blonde beside him, puzzled. "I thought we already restarted."
"I mean we go back to Charleston, the beach, and the sunsets and sunrises. We can continue doing what we did when we were nine. I checked the government records, your father's house is still under his and your name. DPA means nothing to me. I am in that thing because I was lonely in society, but after you showed up again, I don't need the people in DPA to replace my family. I can quit that thing whenever I want. You are my family Hiccup," Astrid finally threw out the words that she hid in her mind since she met Hiccup. She was too afraid to say that to Hiccup before.
Hiccup's emerald eyes lightened, but his eyelashes quickly dropped and his eyes turned dim again.
"I want to go with you, and I actually planned that before, but…" He paused, "I can't. Engineering is my life… I mean you can leave DPA whenever you want, but I can't just leave Asgard and Muspelheim. They can't finish things without me."
Astrid looked at Hiccup. Her fingers traveled across Hiccup's arms and back, mapping the scars that he got from years of dangerous experiments and testing. He avoided her glance, staring at the blanket. An awkward silence fell into the room.
"How about after finishing Project Bifrost, we go back to Charleston?" Astrid suggested.
"How do you know its name?"
"I know everything that is going on in Muspelheim," Astrid smirked. She straddled on Hiccup's thighs, her right hand lifted Hiccup's jaw, forcing Hiccup to look up at her, "So, what do you think?"
"I'll think about that," Hiccup nodded slowly.
"That's more like it," Astrid smiled, laying down next to him, her ocean blue eyes blinked at the man beside her.
At the campus of Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.
On weekdays, the massive campus was filled with students traveling between buildings and buildings with books heavy like stones in their hands. But on weekends, the crowdedness of the campus turned into quietness, like when someone explores deep into the forest, away from the society, they can hear nothing but the hummings from birds and whistlings from the wind.
A thudding sound broke the quietness of the campus. Axl walked into the campus alone alone, wearing a black jacket and a camouflage safari trousers. His green jungle boots landed heavily on the pavement. He knew that these boots was not suitable for walking on flat, paved ground. These boots were born for travelling across the Alps Mountains. But he didn't have the time to change.
"Hmmm, doesn't look like ETH," Axl murmured as he zipped up his jacket to protect himself from the cold wind.
On weekends the campus was quiet, but today it was way too quiet. Normally students who loved to study would still come to the library and custodians would clean out the fallen leaves and keep the campus clean. But today he could not even see a squirrel jumping among the trees finding nuts for winter.
What Axl didn't notice was that on the top of the three-story auditorium, two people wearing a pure white camouflage jacket held two McMillian Tac-50 rifles in their hands, one male and one female. Their muzzles pointed at Axl's head and chest. Their camouflage blended them into the surrounding building completely; no one could find them easily, especially when someone didn't know what they were looking for.
Axl paced across the central square among the buildings. Normally this stadium-sized open ground would be filled with students, but today no one accompanied Axl except for the cold chairs that were meant for the students to rest. The white physics building stood a few hundred yards in front of him. Through the large open windows on the wall, he could see rolls and rolls of empty seats facing the stage at the front.
"Bonnie and Clyde in position," the two snipers on top of the auditorium whispered to their headsets, one male, one female.
"Lay your eyes on Axl at all times," Valka's command came into their ears through the speakers of their headsets, "Only fire when extreme necessary. I want him alive."
"Roger that," the male sniper responded.
These two snipers of DPA Team Foxtrot were the best sniper squad in DPA. They nicknamed themselves as "Bonnie and Clyde." They had been through more than twenty missions, no missed shots.
As Axl walked up the stairs in front of the glass door of the physics building, two black SUVs stormed into the central square. Their tires screeched on the pavement, leaving black trails on the ground where gray smoke ascended. The two vehicles stopped before the stairs, six men and women wearing black uniforms jumped out from the cars with tranquilizer guns in their hands and pistols with lethal rounds in their holsters.
Ruffnut raised up her gun and launched a tranquilizer dart at Axl. They all knew how over-power Axl could become if he was triggered or really pissed off. They didn't want to face him one to one. The darts in their tranquilizer guns were reengineered, so that they could remove the muscle system of the victim almost right away. The dart with a pink flight flew up the stairs and toward Axl's neck, powered by the great air pressure in the barrel.
Axl pulled out a Beretta pistol from his jacket pocket and tried to squeeze its trigger before the dart could pierce into his neck. But he was still too late.
"Oh fuck," Axl murmured as he watched the dart on his neck with the tip buried into his flesh.
His vision started to dim as if the sky was blocked by a giant blanket. His power drifted away from his body as if someone sucked them away Just a few minutes ago, he could still lift a small car with bare hands, but now his legs couldn't even support his body weight. The light pistol suddenly turned a thousand pounds heavy and the trigger felt like it was glued in place. Other agents fired their tranquilizer guns as they advanced toward Axl, the deep gun firings sounds indicating that more and more darts landed on Axl's body.
His knees slowly bent, the pistol dropped on the stone stairs. After a few more seconds of resisting, he fell unconscious on the ground and rolled down the stairs. The agents watched as their target lay still as a dead body on the ground in silence.
Valka picked up Axl's Beretta and sighed. She couldn't believe Axl just gave up without a manly fight that suit him. He didn't look like a person who would accept court trial. Valka expected another massive gunfight before they could take out him. In the two SUVs were filled by loaded guns and grenades and even rocket launchers. Valka wouldn't be surprised if they had to blow up a building or two.
But Axl just went out without a fight. All the agents standing around Axl were from DPA Team Foxtrot, and they had been chasing Axl for more than half a decade; more than a dozen DPA agents died in his hands.
"Valka, check out the bell tower, at three o'clock!" Bonnie's voice came from Valka's headphone.
Valka turned toward the brown bell tower. In the setting sun, she could only see the faint silhouette of it. The giant bronze bell hung on a thick metal bar at the top of the tower, but the tower wasn't even in the campus. It stood at least two and a half miles away from them. Valka had to use binoculars to see the massive bell clearly.
"I don't see anything. It's too far," Valka replied as she zoomed in toward the tower.
"A person, at the top of the tower!" Bonnie yelled.
Valka raised up the binoculars to get a better view of the tower. Then, a small flash of orange light showed up from behind a small stone statue as if someone quickly turned on and off a flashlight. The crows who rested on the tower flew in the air with horror.
"Sniper!" Valka yelled.
Following her word, she heard the terrifying sound of a bullet punching through the skull of a person next to her mixed with the echoing sound of a sniper rifle firing.
"Anyone hit?" she asked.
"Not one of us," Ruffnut replied in an eerie voice.
"What do you mean…" Valka removed the binoculars from before her eyes and looked around her. The six agents were still standing, but a fresh bullet hole appeared in the middle of Axl's forehead, blood flowed out from behind his head. "What the fuck…"
More and more gun firing came from the roof of the auditorium, Bonnie and Clyde returned fire. Their skills were infallible, but McMillan Tac-50's effective range is around a mile. After a mile, the wind could carry the bullet off course. After emptying their mags, most of the bullets ended up striking the brick tower, breaking down a few pieces of stone, only a few landed on the top of the tower, but completely missed their target.
"Too far!" Clyde yelled. "I need a Barrett."
Ruffnut swung open the door of her SUV and took out the deadly black Barrett M82 and another heavy box ran up the fire escape of the auditorium to deliver the big gun to Clyde.
"But Barrett only has around 2000 yards," Bonnie pointed out.
"That's the one with the longest range we have right now," Clyde replied as Ruffnut set the Barrett beside him.
"We have an even farther weapon," Ruffnut unlocked the box that was one-third of her height.
"What, you have a drone?" Bonnie asked.
"No," Ruffnut said as she took out an FGM-148 Javelin.
"Jesus…" Clyde moved aside from Ruffnut, "You are going to blow up the whole tower. We are in the middle of a city, not in the desert where you can mess around."
"If that shooter is still alive, we are all in danger. You are a sniper, and you should know that that dude is really good," Ruffnut loaded the Javelin. "You try to headshot someone two and a half miles away."
As she pulled the trigger, the missile shot up from the roof of the auditorium and headed toward the top of the bell tower directed by infrared homing, leaving a thin white trail in the air. It took the missile around seven seconds to reach the tower and created a bright red fireball on the top of the tower. The great bronze bell dropped down from the crossbeam and crashed into the building. Stone statues and pieces of concrete fell from the tower, and the explosion shattered the windows. The whole tower shivered under the impact.
"Laser cooling machine is hot... rubidium is in place...emergency shutdown brake is on, just in case we blow up the whole building again," Emma said as she pointed the four laser guns at the small transparent cube among them. "You are ready to go."
"How long is this going to take?" Hiccup asked.
"Around half an hour," Emma replied. "Laser cooling is something like whipping heat out of the gas until there is almost no heat. And you made this machine in a rush. Turn off the lights, please."
"Why is that?" Hiccup questioned, but still walked to the switch on the wall and turned off the lights.
"Because BEC is so fragile that energy from the light can destroy the condensate."
"How do you know so much about BEC? Right now I feel that my dominance in Muspelheim might be overthrown by an Assistant Engineer," Hiccup laughed into the darkness. He could only see the faint blue lights coming from the laser guns and an ambiguous figure walking around the room.
"Because I studied states of matters," Emma said. "This is what I'm good at, and that's why Gobber assigned me as your Assistant Engineer. He knows that you are good at engineering, but your physics is a bit rusty. The laser cooling machine can make the rubidium reach the designated temperature, and after that we need the Laser to make the atoms inside more powerful… if you know what I'm talking about."
"I know what you are talking about. The Laser doesn't cool down stuff. It only gives the atoms more energy from moving."
"Right, and that makes the Laser extremely dangerous."
"What's that container made of?" Hiccup asked. "Is it non-magnetic?"
"Of course, and the inside is a vacuum."
The laser cooling is a technology that is very effective when studying ultracold molecules. When the laser beam hits the gas molecules will lose kinetic energy. Emma decided to use four laser guns and positioned them around the cub to maximize the cooling effect.
The attack destroyed the laser cooling machine in Asgard, forcing Hiccup and Emma to build a cooling machine. The quadri-cooling machine, which was something like a concoction of four laser guns, took Hiccup 50 hours of hard work and digging through the data in Niflheim for the correct components for the cooling machine.
"Well, hopefully, your laser cooling machine would work," Emma checked the power range of the apparatus. "It's way over the limit, which can decrease the cooling time and reach an even cooler temperature than the original cooling machine of Asgard. But if something goes wrong, the possibility of blowing up the whole Niflheim is pretty high."
Sam moved Hiccup's lab into Niflheim when Asgard was still under reconstruction. Emma was fine with the decision unless the AC is fixed, but Hiccup felt that Niflheim would be a distraction to his work. Mountains of databooks and information stored in Niflheim absorbed his attention from Bose-Einstein Condensate. Most of the time he would be walking among the giant bookshelves and reading the materials that were intriguing to him and not work on Project Bifrost. So Emma ended up talking over a lot of the work.
"Hiccup, how can you still read when the lights are off? I need some help over here," Emma protested.
"I'm not reading, just feeling the books with my fingers," Hiccup's replied.
Emma sighed. After working with Hiccup for three weeks, she already knew that when Hiccup was attracted to something, he would do anything to get it. Project Bifrost was obviously less interesting than the mountains of information in Niflheim to Hiccup.
"Fine, go ahead and feel your books, but you need to start preparing the Laser. I want to finish this thing consecutively."
Hiccup grunted as he walked into Room 108 and started organizing the cords in there. Emma turned on the switch on the cooler and watched as the gas in the glass cube slowly became opaque and turned visible.
"Shut the lights off!" Emma screamed at Room 108, where lights poured out from the opened door. "The lights are damaging the condensate!"
"But I need light to operate the Laser," Hiccup objected. "Use something to cover up the cooling."
After around half an hour of machine humming, Emma darted into Room 108 with the cube covered by a piece of black cloth in her hand.
"I can't believe that you machine actually worked. Right now the condensation is negative 273.139 Celcius," Emma yelled as she placed the cube on the metal plate between the two power lines and removed the cloth.
"Look at this," Hiccup bent down and stared at the cube. "Look at this miracle. Bose-Einstein Condensation. It looks like water in the space. You can even see the combination of particles and molecules."
"C'mon, you know what BEC looks like," Emma connected the ends of the two power lines to the cube and turned the red knob of the controller.
"But it's the fifth state of matter. The first state of matter that can not be found naturally on Earth," Hiccup stood up. "Let's see how much power it has."
As the Laser was charging, bright blue lights ran down the two sides of the two power lines, electrical sparks flashed in the pipes like plasma. When the wave of blue plasma-like substance reached to the ends of the power lines, the cube was lightened by the shaft as if the cube was some sort of bioluminescent creatures. Electrical sparks started to appear within the cube, and each time more sparks exploded in the cube, the brighter the BEC became.
"What the…" Hiccup murmured when the bright blue light almost covered the white light in the room like a lightning bolt.
The cube suddenly shattered with a loud explosion as if a grenade went off in this small room. Pieces of sharp glass flew in the air like darts and cut open Hiccup and Emma's exposed skin. The two power lines still poured out the eerie blue electrical sparks even though the cube was gone.
The sparks charged atoms in the air, sending shivers through Hiccup's body. The hair he breathed in was filled with overly charged nitrogen and oxygen atoms. Emma's long hair slowly raised as static electricity in the room began to build up. Before Hiccup could push the red emergency shutdown button on the wall, the two power lines got overridden by the out of controlled electrical waves and exploded like a sonic bomb, and the blast wave shoved Hiccup and Emma to the ground.
The power lines were the only way to restrain the over-powered electricity, and after they got destroyed, all hell broke free.
Trillions and trillions of electrons combined with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the air, electrical sparks were created right before their eyes as if there was a mini thunderstorm in the room. Hiccup could feel small currents of electricity zapping him every second. The light in the room started flashing and the lightbulb finally exploded when the electrons overcharged the circuits.
"Shut it off!" Emma yelled, kneeling on the ground, a piece of glass punched into her left thigh, blood flowed out from the wound. Her face and arms were covered by ripped skin and blood since the cube exploded two yards from her.
Hiccup reached up for the red button, but the untouchable air seemed to turn into small spikes. Every inch he reached up, he felt like he was crawling through a field filled with cactuses. The button was just a few inches above his fingers, but the electricity in the room disturbed his neuro activities in his brain, causing him to go blackout, images from his memories flashed before his eyes: the beach next to the coast of North Carolina, his father hugging him when he was a little boy, and the time he spent with Fishlegs in the labs.
In Niflheim, no one could help them. Hiccup felt that his head was going to explode. He didn't know what kind of element was causing this weird magnetic field disturbance, but he knew that Sam and Gobber are geniuses.
The wall in which the power lines were connected to shattered into pieces, concrete debris filled the room along with the gray dust. The machine controlling the power lines seemed to be overridden as well. This explosion shook the floor of Niflheim; the blast disconnected the steel door of Room 108 and threw it among the bookshelves outside, knocking down a bookshelf, piles of datasheets and paper flew into the air. Flame escaped from the room as if Room 108 was a fire-breathing dragon, igniting the bookshelves outside.
"SHUT IT DOWN!" Emma shouted before the blast picked her up like wind carrying up a piece of leaf and threw her heavily against the wall.
"Ahhhhhhh!" Hiccup let out a furious scream as he pushed his body up, trying his best to not think about the overwhelming electrons that almost broke his body into pieces.
He slammed his palm on the red emergency shutdown button. The glass protector of the button was already shattered during the explosion. He didn't know what would happen after. If the shutdown device were just going to stop the electrons from escaping, the remaining electrons in the air would still crash his neural system and other organ systems. After he slammed the button, the blue electric sparks within the two broken power lines suddenly turned into brown.
"It's just changing color," Hiccup yelled as he pushed the button again. The remaining pieces of glass protector around the button cut open the skin on his palm, blood drifted down his hand.
"Protons…" Emma replied powerlessly, resting on the ground and leaning against a part of the wall that was still standing. She survived the blast, barely. Blood covered her face and hair, her left arm bent back in an awkward angle, probably the blast broke the bones inside. A piece of concrete ripped open her lab coat and carved a deep cut on her right waist, blood dyed her clothes red. "Not sure how Sam separated electrons, protons, and neutrons from atoms and use them separately. The emergency shutdown is not shutting the Laser down. It releases protons to neutralize the electrons."
Hiccup walked toward the badly beaten controlling panel of the Laser. The heavy metal protector of the controlling panel cracked open during the explosion. The protector was meant to prevent accidental damage to the sensitive controlling devices. Some of the wires were disconnected from the panel, bronze cords exposed in the air. The screen used to show the running conditions of the Laser fractured. But, the three red toggle switches were still connected with the cords and the three green lights above them were flashing, signaling that the switches were still in function.
He flicked the switches one by one from "on" to "off," and the rumbling voice from the Laser finally stopped. The room fell into silence again. Hiccup sighed at the scene. Even with his knowledge, he still couldn't figure out how the Laser worked. It was like a giant scientific but also magical apparatus created by one of the richest and smartest people on earth, who was Sam.
He walked through the broken pieces of the concrete wall and pulled Emma to her feet. "Well, at least we are still alive," Hiccup reassured her. "We can find another way to finish the project."
But Emma stared at the middle of the room, where the glass cube was located. The cube was gone, of course, but the product was, magically, still sitting on the ground.
"The explosion didn't destroy the condensation…" she murmured as she stumbled over to the pile of ooey-gooey, jelly-like substance on the floor. Bose-Einstein Condensate is supposed to be very fragile and can even be destroyed by the energy from lights, and an explosion that even broke down the concrete wall would turn the condensation back to its original gas status. But this time, the condensation sat quietly in the middle of the room, blue lights came from the middle of the transparent material. Light smoke ascended from the material as if it was a pot of boiling water. Hiccup turned around and looked at it. He blinked.
"Is that… charged BEC?" Emma knelt beside the substance that was just the size of her foot even though blood still dripped out from her wounds. "Magical!"
Hiccup picked up a small piece of concrete from the ground and threw it at the BEC. As the concrete touched the BEC, it suddenly turned dark, a thick layer of crystal ice swallowed it within seconds. He walked over to the rock and flicked it. It shattered into small pieces of crystal.
"It froze the rock to a temperature so low that it just turned into pieces when just a small outer force was applied to it!" Hiccup shrieked. "This is the goal of Project Bifrost! The original Bose-Einstein Condensate cannot freeze other things because even though itself is as cold as hel, but its atom speed is so low that it doesn't have the energy to cool down others. But whatever came out from the power lines increased the energy that the BEC can generate without increasing the speed of the atoms themselves."
Emma reached her right index finger toward the condensation, then she quickly withdrew her hand when she touched the light smoke from it. Even the smoke from the condensation gave her frostbite.
"We need to put it in a container that can manage to deal with the extreme temperature!" Emma rose to her feet and darted toward the elevator. "I'm going up to the remaining labs."Then go quick. I feel that this thing is even cooling down the air," Hiccup said as he put on his coat.
"We did it! We did it!" Emma screamed as she darted out of the elevator and into Sam's office.
His office was still under construction. Engineers removed the completely burnt wall frame and pumped in new concrete. They repainted the floor and the walls and replaced the destroyed furniture with new ones. Sam was an engineer himself, and he actually took this chance to redesign his own office. The windows were still unrepaired, a cool wind blew into the room. When the hardware of Muspelheim needed replacement or reconstruction, the engineers would do the works themselves and never hire people from outside to do the work.
Fortunately, the elevator survived the gunfight. The hardened steel door and frame were covered by small craters created by bullets, but no bullets could punch through the steel. When Emma appeared from the elevator and started shrieking, all the engineers stopped what they were doing at watched the young Assistant Engineer.
"Calm down Emma," Sam dropped his clipboard on a table and looked at her4. He had a few ideas of what Emma was talking about, but he still wanted to hear it. "What did you do?"
"Project Bifrost, it's completed!"
To be continued