"But I wanna," Philips pleaded, straining forward against the hands Ross had planted firmly on his chest. Ross braced his feet like doing lunges at the gym, keeping the physicist from surging past him and through the narrow path between the desks they had moved into the Forge and covered with observation equipment.
'Never should have cut him loose,' Ross thought with regret.
"No," Ross insisted. "You cannot go through the portal. We have no idea if it's safe."
"The Slayer went through!" Philips insisted, grabbing onto the edges of the desks and trying to pull himself forward.
"He's got a super-advanced suit. The portal might require special equipment to go through without damage."
"I'm a physicist! There's a crazy amount of physics-bending going on over there and you want me to just leave it alone?"
"Yes. Until Darren gets the test drone up and running, and even after that we have orders to do animal trials before sending people through."
Philips made incoherent noises and pushed so hard that he moved Ross a few feet backward.
"Aren't any of you going to help me?" Ross shouted with irritation at their audience.
Bailey grinned, as did the military police that Garcia had flown down from Denver to guard the portal.
"Nah. I haven't been this entertained in months," the government agent said.
Ross swore under his breath at them, twisting around swiftly so his back was now against Philips's chest and he could grip the edges of the desks and brace his feet against them.
'This would be a lot harder if he ever worked out,' Ross thought.
"I gotta," Philips protested. "I've been waiting my whole life for something like this. A stable Einstein-Rosen bridge! An honest-to-God wormhole, right in the middle of my lab!"
"You – have – to – wait." Ross grunted with effort as the physicist shoved at his back.
"What if it runs out of power? What if The Slayer shuts it off? What if it can only be maintained for a brief period? This could be my only chance! I gotta go through!"
Philips leapt back suddenly. Ross fell flat on his back, losing his earpiece and augmented-reality glasses in the process.
"Philips, don't!" he yelled, but his friend was already sprinting back down the pathway and around to leap over a low wall of crates, making a break for the portal.
The four MPs were easily able to nab Philips, having extensive practice corralling drunken servicemen. Bailey took a snapshot of the spectacle with his personal data slate.
The Slayer suddenly appeared in the arch. Bailey and the MPs didn't look surprised. Oppenheim had probably warned them when he saw the supersoldier approaching the other end of the wormhole in that maintenance closet.
Ross scrambled to get his earpiece and glasses back.
"Please!" Philips shouted at The Slayer as he passed the group. "Tell them it's safe for ordinary humans! They won't let me go through without animal trials first!"
The Slayer stopped dead when Philips said "animal trials". He turned his head toward Ross, who could feel the man's deep growl reverberating through the concrete floor.
"Uh … yeah. It's protocol to test risky new technology on animals first. They start with tissue samples and insects and graduate up to a pig, the closest analog to a human body's composition. Except for chimpanzees, obviously, but it's illegal to have captive primates now, so – hey, what are you doing?"
The Slayer was stalking toward Philips and the MPs. He waved the four soldiers back with an irritated flick of his hand. Philips blinked up at the huge marine towering over him.
The Slayer threw Philips over his shoulder like a sack of grain and marched into the portal.
After a few speechless seconds, Philips came sliding back through the portal in a snowboarder's stance, fists held high in triumph.
"Woooooo!" he cheered. "First non-Slayer through the portal! And it tickles!"
Ross sagged against a desk in relief.
"I guess that answers that," Bailey said pleasantly, taking a picture of the ecstatic physicist.
Philips flashed Bailey double peace signs for the photo, then turned to go back through the Gate.
"Grab him," Ross demanded of the MPs, who fortunately followed his order without question.
"Hey!" Philips renewed his struggle to reach the portal again. "What are you doing? I gotta go through at least fifty more times!"
"No," Ross said firmly, picking up a Geiger counter. "It's chock full of radiation, and I'm not convinced that it won't have a cumulative effect on normal human tissue."
"Oh, come on!" wailed Philips. "The radiation lasts literally a fraction of a nanosecond!"
"It's a constant chain of reactions, and you're completely saturated in them for all the nanoseconds it takes you to step through. Your ionized DNA could be melting down as we speak. Radiation sickness is a bad way to die."
"I'm fine!" Philips insisted, twisting in the grip of four burly soldiers. "The Slayer wouldn't take me through if it were dangerous! I thought you said you trust him?"
"Don't make us duct-tape you to a wall again," Ross warned.
"I have handcuffs," one of the MPs offered.
"That'll do."
They had just gotten Philips zip-tied to a chair and bolted it to the floor when The Slayer came back holding an unusual device in his hand.
"Uh, hey, big guy. Whatcha got there?" Philips asked nervously as the marine made a beeline for him.
The Slayer raised the device, which turned out to be a cordless tattoo gun.
Philips's eyes opened very wide. His cheeks went from rosy brown to a yellowish russet as the blood drained out of his face.
"What's … what's that for?" Philips shrank back against the chair.
The Slayer unceremoniously ripped off Philips's left sleeve and pinned his forearm down. The tattoo gun started up with a nasty buzz.
"Ross? Ross, help!"
"Slayer, what are you doing?" Ross dashed around to Philips's left side, his hands hovering as he wondered if covering Philips's arm would help, or if he'd just get his fingers tattooed.
"Ow! Owwowowowwow!" Philips writhed frantically, but there was no dislodging The Slayer. He was getting tattooed whether he wanted to or not.
Bailey and the military police crowded around, trying to figure out what was going on.
"Hey, somebody move!" Tucker called through the speakers. "I can't see!"
He was completely ignored.
Philips eventually settled for screwing his eyes shut and breathing harshly through his clenched teeth as The Slayer punched ink into his skin with a dozen tiny needles. The pattern turned out to be a simple line of fourteen dashes down the inside of the physicist's forearm.
Finished for the moment, The Slayer made eye contact with Ross as if to say Pay attention.
Ross nodded gravely.
The marine added a neat little dot just above the left edges of the first two dashes. Then he shoved the tattoo gun into Ross's arms, turned around, and left through the portal once again.
Ross used his sleeve to dab the excess ink away from Philips's new body art.
"How bad is it?" his friend asked, eyes still screwed shut.
"Just a couple of dashes and dots."
"Morse code?" asked Philips, finally daring to look.
"No, I don't think so. I think … yeah. I think this is a counter."
"A counter? A counter for what?"
"How many times you've been across an Einstein-Rosen bridge." Ross smiled, patting Philips on the shoulder. "Looks like you've got six more round trips in you before the radiation builds up to a dangerous level."
Philips looked despondent. "Only six?"
"Relax, buddy. We have the Trauma Machine, remember? It can fix almost anything, including DNA damage."
"Yeah," Bailey said, "but you've only got one Machine, and there's a line of literally a million people with life-threatening injuries and severe PTSD waiting for their turn. That thing runs day and night trying to heal as many people as it can."
"Oh," Ross said in a subdued tone. "I … can't believe I didn't think of that." There had been an awfully long queue of people lined up outside the Machine room when Ross had gone through. He had been so focused on returning to The Slayer that he'd barely noticed them. A lot of them had been in wheelchairs. Or straightjackets.
"Awesome," Philips said, back to his cheerful self. "Guess I know what I'll be doing in my spare time."
"Hmm?" Ross asked, distracted.
"Building another Machine so I can go through the Gate any time I want!"
"Well," Ross agreed, "Martin is a Mixom. I'm sure he can lean on his family's company and get us the schematics. We've got more than enough of the rare materials at White Sands to make a few more."
"While you're at it," one of the MPs said seriously, "my buddy Chris is in the psych hospital with a bit in his mouth so he doesn't chew his tongue off and bleed to death."
Ross's stomach flip-flopped, and Philips's dark skin went sallow again.
She continued, "Maybe you could make enough Machines to give him, and people like him, a turn. You know, before using it like a decon shower so you can go have some fun." Her voice shook only on the last word. One of the other MPs put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah," Philips said softly. "Yeah. That would be a better reason to make one."
The soldiers relaxed a little. Clearing her throat, the MP said, "That'd be really great." She gestured to the Gate. "We realize you're doing something important here. We really do. Director Oppenheim wouldn't be so focused on it if it weren't something that could win the war. But …"
"But if we could save a few more people along the way, that'd also be really great?" Ross guessed.
"Yeah."
Bailey arched an eyebrow at the physicist. "I trust we can cut you loose now and you won't go waltzing through a portal?"
"Cross my heart," said Philips.