Chapter 13 – The Mission

The delivery van pulled up outside the small furniture store. Vintage wooden drawers, cupboards and chairs were shown off in the window, catching the eye of everyone who walked past. The store owner came out to collect the delivery, his arms wide open as if welcoming home a friend. He had brown hair with a blue fringe and wore a great big grin as he inspected the bounty of furniture all just in from District 7. He glanced around the labelled cardboard boxes, ecstatic to open some up, but his excitement soon turned to horror as an old, tabby cat strolled out of the van. The man screamed.

'How did you get there?!' he bawled at the cat. 'You better not have made a mess on my furniture!'

The man ceased shouting, for the cat began to change shape. It took the form of an old woman in green robes.

'I assure you,' guaranteed the woman, 'I did not make a mess on anything. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've had a rather long journey. Good day.'

With that, the man fainted. McGonagall knew where she was going as she had done plenty of research on her voyage to the Capitol, so all she had to do was follow the signs. She would have just Apparated, but since she had never been to the Capitol before, she decided it was safer to travel without magic. Eventually, she reached her destination; a pastel blue apartment building. She looked to the names by each buzzer by the door and smiled when she found the name she was looking for. She pulled out her wand and with a whisper of 'Alohomora', she entered the building. Slowly creeping up the stairs, she kept a vigilant eye open for anyone who might see her, but was safe. With another Unlocking Charm, she entered the apartment.

The walls were a light shade of pink and the floor made of pale wood. Paintings of dresses hung all over the walls, and a tiger skin rug lay in the middle of the room. Lamps shaped like tulips sat on tables and a chandelier that looked as if it was made of antlers hung from the ceiling.

'Spacious and chic,' mocked McGonagall in her best Capitol accent, 'with a dash of animal cruelty.' There was a clicking sound from behind her head. She turned around and found the homeowner dressed in a yellow dress with red, green, blue and orange polka dots and a big orange wig of the same pattern, holding a pistol at McGonagall's head.

'What are you doing in my house?' asked Hilaria.

'Oh, you know,' began McGonagall, 'I was passing so I just thought I'd pop in to say hello.'

'You may not have noticed the gun in my hand.'

'Oh, neither I did! Wow, what a lovely gun! It looks great in white, matches your skin perfectly. Say, is that by any chance a Vektor CP1, the standard issue handgun for Peacekeepers?'

Hilaria's jaw dropped. 'Someone's been busy.'

'I've been bored, needed to pass the time.'

'You could have always just watched the TV. In fact, my favourite show's on right now, you may have heard of it.'

'I've never been a fan of television; I much prefer reading. But anyway, what are you doing with a Peacekeeper's gun?'

Hilaria hesitated. 'It was given to me for protection from people like you.'

'By whom?'

'A Peacekeeper!'

'Miss Castleton, if I've learned anything about Peacekeepers from my time here it's that there's a lot of them, now which Peacekeeper?'

'What does it matter to you?! I'm the one who ought to be asking questions here, so tell me what you are doing in my house!'

McGonagall smiled. 'Or what, you'll shoot me?'

'You think I won't?'

'I know you won't.'

'What makes you so sure of that?'

'Because I'll dodge the bullet and knock you out before you can say 'circus reject'.'

Hilaria giggled. 'Well,' she smirked, 'you should place your bets now.' With that, she fired at McGonagall, and in one fluid movement, McGonagall brought up her wand and deflected the bullet in mid-air, then disarmed and stunned Hilaria, leaving her sprawled on the floor and her gun at the other side of the room. McGonagall walked over to her.

'Now,' she began, 'normally I'd just use some Polyjuice Potion and pose as you, but I don't fancy having to try and copy that green eyeshadow and I don't think any part of you is real anyway. But no matter; what happens in the Capitol stays in the Capitol, or so I hope. Now, Rennervate.' There was a bright flash of red light and Hilaria regained consciousness. 'Excellent, and now, Imperio!'

Hilaria sauntered down the street, a smile devoid of worry on her face, as the Disillusioned McGonagall guided her to the next stop on her tour of the Capitol. They stopped at a hexagonal, professional building and walked towards the automatic doors at the entrance. Above the door, there was a logo consisting of two purple hexagons, the darker one overlapping the lighter one, with a white 'V' across the both of them. Underneath the logo was the word 'VortaCorp', the company title. They moved forward, entering the building, greeted by a room completely unlike what one would expect from the sleek exterior; the vast, spacious room had a large glass sphere in the centre surrounded by metal rings, similar to an armillary sphere. The rings moved around slowly and the sphere let out bursts of white light at random intervals. Documents and books littered the floor and the staircases to the raised circle of computer monitors that surrounded the peculiar sphere. Loose cables sprayed sparks in random directions, while two people in white lab coats dashed around madly. They were a man and a woman, both dark skinned, both with thick glasses. The man was taller than the woman and wore a dark pink shirt and black trousers under his lab coat, while the woman wore a blue peplum top and a black skirt. They tapped on computers madly, trying to stop the chaos that unfolded around them but they had no luck. The man's hair was big and frizzy, while the woman sported a ruthless buzz cut. The man's eyes suddenly landed on Hilaria and he screamed with surprise, nearly falling over the banister of the raised platform. The woman screamed back, and screamed again when she saw Hilaria. Hilaria replied to them both with a long, piercing scream.

'I think I win,' said Hilaria, smiling contently. 'Hello to you both. My name is Hilaria Castleton, and I am the escort for District Seven.' She began walking around. 'I have been asked by President Snow to investigate the recent 'wormhole', as they call it, that occurred in Seven, and I do believe that you might know a thing or two about it. Pleased to meet you.' She extended a hand to the woman first, standing at the bottom of the staircase to the right.

'Professor Aemelia Delmont,' the woman responded, shaking Hilaria's hand 'and this is Professor Barnardo Rosenfelt.' She gestured to the man standing at the computers, who now was walking towards them.

'So,' Barnardo said, 'what do you want to know?'

'Oh,' Hilaria responded, 'just what happened in Seven and what you can do to reverse it.'

Barnardo and Aemelia looked to each other in awe. 'Miss Castleton,' Aemelia protested, 'there's a lot we don't know about what happened as it is, and trying to reverse it would doubtlessly have catastrophic effects on our current existence.'

'Although,' Barnardo interjected, not wanting to sound unintelligent, 'we can speculate quite a few things pointed to the giant sphere. 'What we do know is that this machine can widen the gap in between pieces of quantum foam – the matter believed to be the fabric of all things - creating a temporary bridge between two different times. We tested it on an area above District Seven, since we thought that would be safest, and discovered that the quantum foam in that particular area was linked to the place that those new people came from.'

'Being a purely theoretical object,' Aemelia said, taking over again, 'it's not possible to explain exactly why, but we have considered that that particular piece of foam once existed in that other place at that other time, hence why opening it up took us there.'

'Opening up the foam creates a sort of pathway, but it only ever goes one way. Well, you could try going the other way, but it would be incredibly difficult. You see, each 'wormhole', if you like, has two ends; the black hole, which sucks up everything, and the white hole, which spits everything out, and in between those is the tunnel through time.'

Hilaria smiled. 'It sounds like my head! All this science stuff goes in one ear and right out the other!' McGonagall particularly enjoyed making her say that. 'However, if you have one end that sucks and one end that blows, couldn't you just create a pair of holes in the same place but flowing the opposite way to cancel each other out?'

Aemelia and Barnardo stared at each other, very impressed but also angry that they'd never thought of that before.

'We could,' started Barnardo, 'but only if we could locate the exact same piece of quantum foam and calculate the exact amount of power needed to open the wormhole to exactly the right time in the past and cancel the original one out.'

'Not only that, 'added Aemelia, 'but if we did somehow manage to prevent the wormhole from ever happening, we'd be changing the past and altering the present! We'd all fade away and cease to exist, another version of ourselves living our lives. Or at least, so I would guess. It's not as if there's much known about this kind of stuff already.'

'But it would still be us?' asked Hilaria. 'If it would still be us, then we wouldn't be dead, just in a different position, no?'

Barnardo rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'I agree with Aemelia; there's so little we could judge about the consequences of doing that. Besides, are things really that bad that we should do something so drastic to change time?'

McGonagall's hands turned to fists; her feelings were that the whole wormhole deal and everything that followed counted as inconvenient enough to do something.

'I suggest you track down that foam if you can,' said Hilaria flatly, McGonagall's anger seeping through her. 'Those people are up for a fight, and they aren't happy about how things have gone for them so far. So, just in case we're suddenly attacked by an angry rebel movement from the past, you should probably make sure you're prepared to set things right.'

There was a short silence, broken by Barnardo; 'Yes, ma'am, of course! We'll get on that right away! Will you be coming back soon?'

'Only if I'm requested to by my superiors, and yours.' The two scientists gulped; they had heard the rumours about what happened to people who failed to please President Snow. 'Thank you for your time,' concluded Hilaria, smiling. 'You've been very helpful.' And with that, she – and her puppet master – left the building.

The pair of professors turned to each other. 'Do you know how to track down quantum foam?' asked Barnardo to Aemelia.

'Nope,' she replied. 'Guess we won't be seeing much of the Games this year.'