Rescue is a strong word. The two people who Alyssa brought through the
barrier between Kansas City and the rest of the Fourth Quadrant didn’t need
to be rescued. There is nothing inherently problematic about living in the
bubble. They did want to take that bubble down, though, so they sent two
scientists to start tackling the issue from another angle. They had been
studying the dimensional barrier for centuries, but always from within, so
this was an opportunity to gain some insight that they couldn’t pass up.
They might never get another. They will live on the ambassadorial ship that
Great Britain sent there for communication, and stay until the job is
complete, if that should ever happen. The team, meanwhile, has teleported to
Stonehenge in the hope of finding a way back to their friends in the Third
Rail.
Erlendr Preston has remained quiet. He hasn’t caused trouble, or tried to
get in their heads. He’s just watching and waiting. The opportunity to free
himself from their grasp is coming, and he has to be patient. He doesn’t
even smirk as he watches these little ants struggle to figure out what’s
going on here, and how they can get back to where they want.
“These four portals are the ones that didn’t work,” Mateo says, pointing
them out. “My hypothesis is that they would lead to the other realities, if
they were unlocked. How we might go about unlocking the, I wouldn’t know. If
the Traversa bracelet doesn’t work, then I really don’t know. Maybe they
need more power?”
“Go ahead and try,” Leona says to Alyssa.
“Not alone,” Alyssa replies. “You come with me. I don’t want to be over
there alone if it works, but I can’t find a way back, and I don’t want you
to be the one left alone with Erlendr.”
“That’s fair.” Leona takes Alyssa’s hand, and they attempt to walk through.
They just end up on the other side of the rocks. They step back and forth a
few times, but don’t get anywhere. Either these are just rocks or they don’t
have the secret ingredient. They do the same for the other three mystery
openings, but those don’t work either. “Mateo, are you getting the sense
that they should work? Like with your hands?”
Mateo looks over at their audience. Of course, a team of scientists,
military officers, and other experts have been stationed at this location
since its power was first discovered, and have been trying to unlock its
secrets the whole time. It hasn’t worked for anybody but Mateo with his
unreliable temporal energy reserves. “I’m not getting the sense that they
work, no. The other seven, on the other hand, are in perfect working
condition. So is that.” He points up to the sky. In the Third Rail, the
once-portal on Easter Island has solidified. Down here, it looks like
there’s nothing special there. It appears to have disappeared, except it
hasn’t. Mateo’s hands feel a draw towards it.
Leona narrows her eyes, and steps through the portal to Muskoka. Just before
she disappears, they see her tilt her head funny. When she returns, she’s
holding her hand several centimeters from her ear. “Yeah, that’s Huntsville,
Ontario all right.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My earpiece,” Leona says. “It was squealing from feedback. Did yours do
that?”
“Yeah, when we came through the barrier,” Alyssa confirms. “You didn’t
expect that to happen?”
“I suppose it makes some sense. You were making a call from somewhere, and
then you were suddenly at a different, distant somewhere. That’s bound to
mess with the signal.” Leona keeps the earpiece at a safe distance as she
tries to step through one of the mystery openings. She shakes her head.
“Nothing. No feedback.”
Alyssa tries the same with another as she’s still the one wearing the
bracelet, but doesn’t hear any squealing either, though she does when she
steps through to El-Sheikh Zayed on her own.
Leona thinks on it a moment. “I watched a movie once where a man was running
with a case of vials containing a deadly plague. The detective shot him
dead, only to discover there to be seven vials in eight slots. What ensued
was a pursuit of any lead that the investigators could find to figure out
where the eighth vial was, and do you know where they found it?”
“Umm...in his stomach at the morgue, like a drug mule,” Mateo guesses.
She laughs. “No. Nowhere. The vial didn’t exist. There were seven total, but
the case came with eight slots. They couldn’t find a case with seven. We’ve
been assuming that all the openings should be portals. Maybe they’re not.
Maybe they never were.”
“That’s fair,” Mateo decides. “What can we do then? How do we get back?”
“Well, you’re feeling something up there, aren’t ya?”
“I’m feeling like I don’t have wings,” Mateo returns.
Leona puts on her diplomacy face, and walks over to the research team. She
spends a lot of time with them, no doubt negotiating for an aircraft of some
kind, or maybe a crane capable of reaching that sky portal. Finally, she
waves them over. Mateo takes Erlendr by the arm, and ushers him to the
helicopter that he predicted. Knowing what these people are going to do next
is almost too easy. He sits patiently in the craft as the pilot begins the
preflight check, and teaches Leona what she needs to know to navigate it up
and down. The Brits are probably never gonna get it back. At least the
Matics are smart enough to recognize this. If Erlendr were in need of it,
though, he wouldn’t have told the military that. He would have let the pilot
take him home, and then just let her be trapped on the other side. He
wouldn’t care about her. He doesn’t.
Erlendr turns out to be right, as per usual. Simply by having the Traversa
Bracelet on her wrist, Alysa gets them through that sky portal, and over to
Easter Island on Third Rail. What she doesn’t notice right away is that the
bracelet falls apart, and off of her wrist. This is no surprise to him.
Leona and Mateo talk a lot when they think that no one can hear them. They
were particularly chatty while they were waiting for Alyssa to say goodbye
to her sister. They were concerned that she wouldn’t be able to cross back
over. Apparently, they didn’t come to this concern on their own. A friend of
theirs from space did. Kestral thought that using the bracelet to transport
their entire ship could destroy it, and she was probably right since this is
just a regular helicopter. Ramses may be able to fix or reverse engineer it,
though, so he gathers every hair he can find. He can use them as leverage.
Again, he just needs to find the right opportunity.
When Leona lands to regroup, that’s when they discover the bracelet to be
missing. There is no known way to return to the Fourth Quadrant, which from
Erlendr’s perspective, is either a good thing, or a whatever thing. Having
planned for this, everyone gets out to prepare to teleport. This bird can’t
make it all the way to the mainland, so they’re just going to donate it to
the Rapa Nui people. Erlendr would have instead crashed it in the ocean just
for fun, but he’s not the one in charge...not yet.
No comments :
Post a Comment