Hello! Welcome to my second fic! I really wanted to finish my first fic before starting another one so that I could keep all my attention on it. However as I have been learning, creativity just happens when it happens and my attention will end up on whatever I happen to be more interested in at any particular time. So screw it, here's my second fic, I hope you enjoy :)
Chapter 1 : The Machine
He walked with urgency through the office, two thick binders tucked under his arm. From just looking you could tell that he had been in the office too long, his blonde hair and beard were messy and unkempt, his dress shirt and tie were disheveled, and his eyes were red and bloodshot from lack of sleep. Still, he walked forward with vigor until he reached the conference room, bursting in and slamming down the two binders.
"We've found it." He stated triumphantly.
The small group of people who sat at the table all looked up at him, perplexed and tired. "What are you talking about? Found what?" One woman asked.
"I know how to manipulate the Higgs boson."
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to look over to him, wide eyed and slack jawed. One of the men stood up abruptly. "When? How?"
He pushed the two binders towards the middle of the table. "It's all there, all of it. In black and white. The equipment is being tested and double checked as we speak. I just need you to go over it and we can proceed."
"Proceed? When?"
"As soon as possible." The man said as if it was obvious. "We've been waiting forty years for this moment and we're almost there."
One of the women put her hands in front of herself cautiously "Let's not be hasty, we've thought that before and it didn't go well. Every precaution should be taken before we make a move, this has the potential to be extremely dangerous."
He nodded in agreement. "Of course, absolutely. Everything is being very carefully prepared.I have no intention to have a repeat of what hap-"
Before he could finish a man opened the door to the conference room and took a step inside. "We have some complications, the drone isn't responding to the controls and the machine…"
He paused and looked around. "It's not starting up for some reason, after I put in the numbers it just stopped. It could be the power source, I'm not sure."
"There must be something wrong with the numbers then…" The man trailed off. "I'm calling an emergency meeting, I want everyone up here immediately. We need to go through all the data and make sure it's all correct."
"...and the drone?"
"Have the head engineer call someone else to come fix it, we need all hands on deck right now."
Hiccup sat in a dimly lit movie theatre, a large bag of popcorn resting on his lap as he watched the screen intently. It was a movie marathon of one of his favourite comic-book superheros and he inched closer to the edge of his seat as the pivotal fight scene moved closer to it's climax. Right before the moment that the hero finally defeats the villain, Hiccup's phone began loudly ringing in his pocket, startling him and causing multiple people in the theatre to angrily shush him. "Crap." He fumbled with his phone, pulling it out of his pocket and glancing at the caller ID. "Great." He muttered in a sarcastic tone.
"What is it?" Fishlegs whispered from the seat next to him.
"It's the lab, I have to take this." Hiccup replied standing up and shuffling down the aisle. Once he had exited the theatre and was in the hall he answered the call and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
"You need to get over here, right now."
"What? It's Saturday night, I'm at the movies."
"The drone isn't working, we need you to fix it."
Hiccup groaned and placed a hand over his face. "Are you kidding? Can't it wait until Monday?"
"No, it's extremely urgent."
"Why? What's going on?"
"I don't have time right now to explain everything, and most of it you don't have clearance for anyway. Just get down here and fix the drone. I have to go."
"Wait-" click. Hiccup sighed heavily, just about the last place he wanted to be on a Saturday night was the lab, he was so tempted to just walk back in the theatre and ignore the call, but he didn't want to risk losing his job. So he walked begrudgingly out to the parking lot and got into his car and began driving to the lab.
Hiccup sighed, climbing out of his car and stepping out into the deserted parking lot, rubbing his tired eyes as they burned into his dimly lit phone screen. He glanced to the corner of his screen where the tiny characters 10:36 pm were illuminated. Hiccup entered the building, nodding to the men at the security desk as he passed them. He didn't understand why fixing the drone was so important that he had to come in at such an ungodly time but he wasn't really in a position to argue about it. Hiccup walked to the engineering workshop and grabbed his lab coat, putting it on. He went to where the drone usually was so that he could start checking it, but the drone wasn't there, much to his annoyance. Hiccup moved quickly down the halls looking in various rooms for where his boss was, but he couldn't find a single person anywhere and the lab was completely silent. Hiccup opened up his phone to send a message to his boss but the as he did a small message popped up on his phone screen.
No network available
Hiccup stared at the screen for a moment, flabbergasted. "Oh come on, really? Right now?" He smacked his phone a few times and shook it angrily with no avail, sighed, and then continued his search around the lab. It was then that he noticed that the control room that looked over the machine was lit up and Hiccup ran over, swiping his key card to get in. Nobody was there but the controls for the drone were on. Actually, all the controls were all on. "What's going on?" He asked himself as he looked over at the monitors that were supposed to be showing live footage of the machine. For some reason they were just showing static, so instead Hiccup walked over to the window and looked through the thick glass. The lights were all on and lo and behold there was the drone, just sitting there, only a few metres from the airlock door. "Are you kidding me?" He growled. The room that the machine was in was one of the few rooms Hiccup did not have access to enter.
Hiccup stood with his forehead leaning up against the glass, debating on what he should do, whether he should leave, or stay and wait for someone to arrive. He sighed and moved to the drone controls and turned them off, almost ready to leave he suddenly thought of something, his head tipping to look in the direction of the workshop for a moment, his brain going a mile a minute. "Impossible, it's impossible." he murmured pacing around the room anxiously. Despite his efforts he couldn't keep it out of his mind. Finally he growled in frustration and stormed back to the workshop and over to his desk ripping open the top drawer and digging through the contents. From the bottom of the drawer he grabbed a old worn out key card. Hiccup wasted no time getting to the airlock that led to the room with the machine inside. Once at the door Hiccup held the key card above the card reader, shut his eyes and took a breath before swiping it and much to his surprise the door made a loud beeping noise and unlocked. He stood there for a moment, in disbelief, but quickly composed himself and cautiously walked through the airlock. Hiccup opened pressed the button to open the second door, only to hear a loud beep noise and the small message; airlock not pressurised, press again to proceed. He narrowed his eyes at the message before pressing the open button again. Hiccup immediately felt an intense gust of air blow into the room from behind him, it was so strong it nearly knocked him off of his feet but he managed to keep steady by holding onto the door handle. Once Hiccup was steady he looked up at the machine, much to his surprise and confusion, it was on.
Something was there, in the middle of it all, a enormous orb, with the warped image of a sky inside of it. A sky, not too dissimilar from the sky he was used to. It was an orange tinted sky, and despite how bright it was, there were many visible stars scattered across it. There were also what appeared to be wispy purple clouds, and way back in the distance he could see the faint outline of another planet. The image of the sky was spiraled and morphed as if he was looking at it through a glass marble. What Hiccup saw before him was breathtaking and kept him frozen in astonishment for what felt like forever, but he was soon pulled out of his trance by the blaring of the airlock alarm. He had kept the door open too long. "Shit," He cursed letting go of the door quickly, and allowing it to slam shut. This did nothing to stop the alarm, it continued blaring away. Hiccup wanted to see what was through the machine, but he knew that the alarm had alerted security and he couldn't stay any longer, he had to let someone know that the machine was on. He rushed back through the airlock, across the hall and back to the workshop where he grabbed the emergency phone, dialing his boss's number and pressing the phone to his ear. As he waited, listening to the dial tone, he tapped his foot impatiently and stuffed his free hand into his pocket. He stopped for a moment, pulling out the old keycard he had used to get through the airlock, and looked down at it. The name on the card in peeling dry plastic was not Hiccup's name and the image, with white streaks and barely visible from overuse, was not a image of him. It showed a woman in her early thirties, she had long brown hair and blue eyes, underneath the picture the name Valka Haddock was printed.
Hiccup quickly stuffed the card underneath some files in his top drawer and locked the drawer shut.
I almost added more to this chapter simply because I thought it was too short, but I really like where this part ends so think of this chapter are sort of a prologue.
