They reached the building of the institution.
"The epicentre must be here somewhere." Shandra told them, without taking his look from the screen of his laptop.
"Okay, first of all we should go to Neil and then we can search for the epicentre." He determined. He wanted to see his son. He never had wished to see his son like that before. They entered the building and met Dr. McQueans who had been waiting for them.
"Dr. McQueans, where is my son?" He began to ask. There was no use for politeness in this case. He needed to se his son and then he needed to save the earth. Politeness had to wait for that.
"Mr. Taggart, I'm glad that you're here now. Your son is upstairs right direction at the end of the corridor with your wife." 'What?'
"Sorry, my wife?" 'What in hell was going on?' He felt stunned. His wife wasn't supposed to be here. She was supposed to be with her parents. She was supposed to be safe, not here. 'Oh my God, why didn't I realize that she was able to act like that? Why didn't I realize her desire for her son?'
"Paige Taggart, I guess she is your wife, isn't she?" 'Of course she was, but what is she doing here? She told me that she wanted to go to her parents. She wanted to go to Arizona. This here is not Arizona. This here is far away from her parents.'
"What is she doing here?"
"Searching for her son."
"Mr. Taggart you have to hurry." Shandra interrupted them. He won his composure back.
"Okay, I go and get Neil and you wait and try to find out what to do then." He advised them. Kurt nodded and then he ran up stairs. He stormed into the room and there.
"Step away and nothing happens to her!" A female voice screamed, when he had entered the room. There was a woman pointing a gun at his wife. She looked young, she couldn't be older than Neil.
"Chuck!" Paige called him. He wanted to go to her, but the woman turned around and pointed the gun towards him.
"No step further commander." She threatened him. He did as she said. Her skin looked dead. There was no crease in her face and her hands looked strange. The whole person looked in somehow dead and he realized what this was supposed to mean. What was standing in front of him was anything else than a human being.
"Where is my son?" He asked. McQueans had told him that his son was here, but there was only his wife and this bitch of a synthetic.
"I would like to know that either." The woman said. Neil wasn't there? This boy never would leave his mother alone with such a threat. This didn't fit him.
"Chuck, go and find Neil." Paige began to beg. He was sure that he didn't need to look for him. No matter how much they had hated each other. Both knew how the other one acted, what the other man thought. This had been the reason why Ed had put them together into one team although everybody had been against it, because if their obvious conflict. He remained where he was. He was aimless. He wouldn't have any chance against this bitch.
"What about a deal Taggart?" The girl said. It didn't look like more than that.
"Depends on the content." He answered.
"Your son for your wife." A life for a life. He could only hope that his suspicion about Neil was right. He wasn't able to make this decision. He wasn't able to lose anyone of both. He needed both. He couldn't make this decision.
"Chuck you have to…"
Shot and a lot of blue and white phlegm. Where did this come from? He had no time to think about that. He needed to safe Paige. He took her into his arms.
"What…What was…that?" She asked him.
"Nothing we have to worry about anymore."
"At least we don't have to worry about this one." He heard a voice from behind. He turned around and there he was. His son. His little skinny son, who was everything else than little anymore.
"Neil! Where have you been?" He asked his son, who stood in the door frame. He never had felt this kind of relieve. Seeing his son alive with a cheeky impression up his face, was the best what had happened to him since years.
"Hey, c'mon human against synthetic, my chances would have been less than zero and I really don't need some more broken bones." A smug answer. But he didn't expect something else. It was a good sign to hear that his son still was the cheeky monkey he always had been.
"You're right." Chuck went to his son and hugged him.
"Hey, boys could you explain me what this thing was?" Paige asked them. Chuck looked at his son. He was likely to know how this thing was able to enter this institution.
"Uh…my girlfriend…hey, but I didn't know about something like that then."
"Maybe you should start to control your testosterone." He answered him, but he wasn't angry about it. He knew about his son's charm and the fact that he could get every girl he wanted. He should enjoy this time until he had found the one he never wanted to lose anymore.
"I think of it later."
"Okay, then let us go, there is no time to waste." He said and then they went off.
They sat in Dr. McQueans's study. Naran Shandra had started to explain to Neil what has happened or better, what was going to happen. He still would like to know how his son was able to get his mind around all this stuff. He had stopped trying to understand what was going on. He only had been focused on finding solutions.
"Uhm…epicentre?" Neil asked Shandra.
"Yeah. Dr. Mendel had told me that what you've seen was no explosion, but an implosion."
"Higher external pressure than internal pressure, but what do you mean with epicentre?" His son asked on.
'Wow, now I know what an implosion is. Why didn't I understand this earlier?'
"This is the point from which the pressure is generated. After I told Dr. Shandra about the implosion he had installed a system which meters the pressure on earth and he had found out about a few irregularities." Kurt started to get involved as well.
"Okay, pressure, earth shakes, implosion. I got it until there, but what has a computer code to do with it and why is this code revolving?" Neil pointed at the screen of the Laptop.
"I installed this code as a kind of observer. It controlled the actions of the other sentients, but the fact that it is resolving now is an indicator that they have found it and started to kill my code, because none of them is able to absorb it, like they have absorbed the others. The fight had begun. They will destroy the earth." He looked at his son, whose glance told him that he thought the same. 'What the fuck is this speech supposed to mean?' He watched his son thinking. Maybe he soon would get the answer to his question.
"Okay, tell me when I'm wrong." His son started after a while.
"We're faced with two sentients which fight each other and one of them had killed your observer for the case he might intervene." Shandra nodded. He by himself was thinking about how his son was able to make this out of the Hindi's speech.
"And due to this fight the fibre optics, which are spread over the whole earth to provide even the most outlying corner with internet, start to get overload. This produces a nice heat, a lot of very fast moving atoms and molecules, which leads to a lack of space under the earth's atmosphere, the pressure increases and increases and at the end the pressure is that high that the earth's core can't get along with it." 'What? Now I understand how someone with such a big problem with authorities got into NASA.' Again he was faced with the fact that his son's potential exceeded his considerably. No wonder why Ed always has had an eye on his son and why he had started to take to role of father figure. This potential needed a strong hand which guided it a long the right way. It had been his job, but he had failed.
"Right and the epicentre is the point where the fight takes place and this is here." Shandra went on.
"Our server. The institution commands an intranet which gets provided by our own server." Dr. McQueans added.
"Where is this?" Kurt asked.
"Down stairs in the cellar."
"Then we should head off." He began. He wanted to get this thing to an end. He couldn't wait until he would be able to live a normal life again.
"Hey, one moment please. You want me to do what? Play the role of the mediator?" His son asked confused. Right there still was the question what his son had to do in all this.
"No, you should stop them." Dr. Shandra answered, but he didn't saw a difference between stop someone and a role of mediator.
"And how?"
"No idea." Kurt answered. Chuck saw how Neil was close to go berserk. He could understand him too well. Nothing was worse than getting told that you had to do a job, but nobody had an answer what it was or how he had to do it.
"Best conditions for saving the earth." Sarcasm. How often had he met this shell? A shell which pretended his son being emotional, a shell which pretended others to see what he really felt and thought about what was going on. He caught the frightened glance from Paige. How much would he have liked to tell her that things were going to be alright again and that she didn't need to be frightened, but he couldn't tell her that. The only thing he knew as that things would come to an end this night, but what kind of end nobody was able to predict. He took her into his arms, how he always did, before he went to his job for another mission. She would feel at least a bit saver again. Then they went all together to the server. Dr. McQueans and his wife, Kurt and Angela, Naran Shandra, Paige and he. All hoped that Neil was able to do what they all expected him to do. He didn't want to change with his son. The pressure on his shoulders must be immense and he wasn't sure if he would have been able to bear it. His son himself didn't show any kind of uneasiness and he admired him for that.
They reached the server and Shandra immediately connected his laptop with it. On the screen they saw a clutter of numbers and symbols. Blue and green. It looked like the codes when Harry had entered the world of sentients and got united with this killer sentient.
"Wow." His son said. It sounded as if he had no clue what he should do about this. He was thinking.
"I have no clue what to do with this. Maybe we should find someone who knows a bit more about this." His son stated. He was insecure. But this didn't mean that he wasn't able to solve this problem. How often had he doubted in his skills at NASA? How often had he asked for someone else to do a job, because he hadn't been sure whether he was able to? Only when he knew he was alone he started to trust in his skills.
"Neil I've told you, you can do it." Dr. Morgan started to encourage him, but his son didn't react. He looked at these codes.
"Dr. Shandra, you invented these codes, maybe you better know what to do to stop them." He started. Was this a matter to get rid of the pressure on his shoulders? This wouldn't match his son, but he could imagine that everyone would get cold feet in such a situation.
"But they have developed. These codes have nothing in common with those I have invented." Computer codes which had started to develop on their own as if they were some kind of natural thing. He really began to hate these freaks.
"But on which base did you program them? I mean at least their base needs to be the same." His son was thinking.
"I have thought about the same, but there's nothing." He saw how his son was close to despair. He tried to find a way to help him, but unfortunately he couldn't. Nobody could help his son with that.
"Honey, don't worry. Just be calm." Although his wife probably didn't know what was going on she had figured what pressure was left on her son and she felt how he struggled to deal with it. She always knew what was going on inside of their children and she always knew how to calm them down.
"Okay, this looks in somehow familiar to me, but I don't know where and when I've seen it." His son rubbed his eyes. He was nervous. Kurt sat down next to his son, also focusing the screen. Another earthquake began to disturb them. He took Paige into his arms to prevent her from falling.
"We have to hurry." Shandra began to panic.
"Instead of standing around you should start to help. After all this here is your doing." Angela began to bark at him. She spoke words he thought.
"Neil look as his." Kurt made Neil aware of a symbol which was part of both sentient codes.
"Yeah, you're right this symbol gets repeated frequently, as well as this on and this." Neil pointed at two other symbols.
"Here what about this?" Angela asked.
"Okay, okay. This is looks like a first step. We have four frequently repeated symbols. We only need to know why and when they get repeated." Neil concluded. 'Skinny I don't wanna be unfair, but you should start to hurry. I have the feeling as if we don't have enough time.' Again they were shaken by another earthquake.
"This looks like a mathematical equation to me. But nothing I ever had to deal with." Neil went on.