His office was no longer the restful sanctuary it once was. It was dark once the blinds were closed, but it was no longer quiet. The glass walls that separated his room from the hallway that lay beyond muffled all the noise and clatter, but it was still too noisy for a good day's sleep. Even the comfy reclining chair he's so used to passing out on was slowly giving up with the worn-out springs. For a man with no regular sleep schedule, those couple of hours of sleep he could get was vital.
From time to time the noise in the lab down the hallway would get loud, so loud to a point to induce anxiety. If his sleeping hours are coming to an end, he usually responds, but most of the time he's too tired to walk, so he makes up his mind that they wouldn't need his help and if they did, they wouldn't hold back knocking on his door.
'Dr. Minato,' a voice woke him from his poor excuse of a proper sleep.
He was shaken awake.
'What? Wha-' Minato answered, wiping his lips clean with the back of his hand. 'What is it?'
'Mr. Hiroshi's here,' the girl at the door in the white lab coat said.
'Oh, tell him I'll be right there,' Minato replied, getting off his chair. The girl nodded and walked away.
A few moments later, adjusting his coat, Minato was at the lab down the hallway. It was congested with people in black and white. Inside, Minato saw Mr. Hiroshi holding a tab in his hand, looking at with an expression of either confusion or constipation. His usual gang of henchmen had followed him into the lab and, duty aside, one of the five was clearly hitting on one of the young female researchers in the room and, duty aside, she was clearly into it.
'This is why we pay you Minato,' Hiroshi said, relieved to see him. 'To decipher these hieroglyphics.'
'I'm surprised you know what hieroglyphics are,' Minato replied playfully, but Hiroshi was reluctant to return that smile.
'Brief me.'
'Well, after months we started making some progress with the search,' Minato explained. 'We noticed anomalies in knethonic echo detections a few weeks back. Our machines that were supposed to map the hyperflux regions noticed holes that humans could not see -'
'Whoa whoa... hyperflux?'
'Oh, it's what we call this weird reflective-refractive-fog around the bounds of the castle site.'
'The one that took Yoshino's hand?'
'Yes.'
'Ok, continue.'
'Ok, so we started examining these holes with no new progress until one of our researchers put her hand through it and noticed that the hyperflux retreated.'
'What? What do you mean 'retreated'?'
'It extended, revealing a new path through the hyperflux.'
'And didn't eat her hand?'
'No.'
'Huh... and why did she put her hand through it? Couldn't she have tried it with a pencil or something?'
'Ah, that's the other thing. These 'holes' only retreat if a sentient living being pushes through it. The researcher who put her hand through it was one of our scientists studying noetic science, especially regarding Doctor Kikuchi's theories of the hyperverse. Just like everywhere else in the hyperflux, these holes eat it if the object pushed through is non-living.'
'Huh... that's interesting.'
'Interesting? That's like the discovery of fire for noetic science. Up until now it was all weight differences in corpses after death and skin becoming slightly charged with static electricity from hypnosis and that kind of stuff. This is tangible evidence. For the first time in human history, we can clearly see human thought reshaping reality!'
'Yeah, I'm very excited as you can clearly see,' Hiroshi said in a monotonic voice with no facial expressions. 'Yippidi-doo, now just give me some good news that I can tell back to the board.'
'Well, we've been clearing paths and we found one that extends about a mile down the hill, and we believe it would emerge at a bigger pocket in the hyperflux. I could show you,' Minato invited.
'Hmm,' Hiroshi took a break to consider. 'There's a lot I don't know about this place for that to feel like a good idea. How about this? Wear a body cam and give me a tour, I'll assess from here.'
'You don't wanna go?'
'No,' Hiroshi sat down on a chair and leaned back with his hands behind his head, already relaxed. 'But you can take Gibi.' Hiroshi gestured to the agent who was still trying to hit on the female researcher.
Minato turned back to notice what he then judged to be inappropriate workplace behavior.
'No, it's completely safe,' Minato replied. 'I can go alone. There's already a few down there.'
'Excellent,' Hiroshi leaned on his chair back even further.
The sky was dark outside. If not for the drones escorting Minato through the web of routes down the hill, he would have been in complete darkness. Three of the drones that escorted him had flashlights on clearing the route, one drone was hooked to a black vest he was wearing and the last drone that followed kept ejecting smaller drones, each the size of a fly, along their path.
Along his route down the hill, he met a couple of groups of people that had their own swarm of drones helping. Whenever Minato went past one of the groups, they would extend a friendly welcome and continue with their work. The routes were wide enough to walk through without much fear, but the ethereal fog at the bounds of the route stood destructive as always to induce a great level of concern.
'So, let me get this clear,' Hiroshi's voice spoke in Minato's head. 'You still don't have any leads on the knife or the girl?'
'No,' Minato replied as briefly as he could, more concerned with the readings on the device he held in his hand. 'No, we don't.'
'Are you even sure we are in the same world as her?'
'Well, we can say with a guarantee that this is where she came first.'
'What is that supposed to mean?'
'She could have jumped to a different world after she got here.'
'Ok, so let me get this straight,' Hiroshi asked, now sitting up on his chair. 'If she jumped between worlds fifty times by now, would it take us fifty more years to get to her?'
'Not fifty years,' Minato said ducking under a tree branch making his way further down. 'Now we have the technology, so, maybe two months per jump?'
'And she can jump whenever she feels like just by slashing with that blade?'
'Presumably.'
'So, you are telling me that the board spent a year of resources for nothing?' Hiroshi was getting furious. 'And you are telling me this now?'
'Not for nothing, now we know a lot about the hyperverse that we previously didn't know,' Minato replied. 'If we keep this pace up, we might be able to recreate Kikuchi's findings without getting our hands on the blade at all.'
'Maybe you should talk to the board instead of me,' Hiroshi replied, leaning back once again. 'It's not fair that I got to put my neck out for your billion-yen spelunking project. This is a lose-lose for me.'
'Ok this is it,' Minato stopped.
He was standing in the middle of a small circle surrounded by the hyperflux. There was one other man with him in the circle and his gears stood by a tree stump accompanying him. He was wearing a blue overall with a device, similar to Minato's, in his left hand and a lit torch in his right hand. He had the torch aimed at the hyperflux and was too focused on the readings on the device to notice Minato.
'This is an alternate version of a forest we have in Telamore,' Minato said. 'And the Telamore city is only about three miles to the west. We are hoping to find something once we get there.'
'That is if you get there.'
'Oh, Dr. Minato,' the man in overalls noticed the visitor behind him and greeted enthusiastically in response. 'Didn't see you, but it's certainly a pleasant surprise. I was just done with the readings, and I was gonna pack up and go back up, unless you need help with something?'
'Oh no, Peipo,' Minato smiled at the man. 'You can go up; I was just looking around.'
'Ok,' he said picking up his belt of gears and putting it over his shoulder. 'Call me if you need anything.'
He walked past Minato with an enthusiastic smile and started climbing up the hill along the path through which Minato came down.
'This is a disappointment Minato,' Hiroshi commented. 'I'm not denying the progress, but I'm sure the board is not going to be happy with this.'
'This takes time, there is no way that this can be rushed,' Minato replied. 'I'm sorry, but this is what the board signed up for.'
'Believe me, I know,' said Hiroshi. 'But I don't think the guild would keep funding this. Especially with Dr. Howard Tyson so close to cracking vacuum fission. They believe that it'll fill the holes in Kikuchi's theories, and they are much more eager to get him working for them.'
Minato stood in thought looking at the dirt, spaced out. His eyes were flicking around with no purpose.
'Would we be able to at least get power for the gateway?' He finally asked. 'Without the gateway the studies would just stop.'
'Minato, right now fission cells are the most expensive.'
'So that's a no?'
'We'll see.'
Suddenly the device on Minato's hand beeped loudly, drawing his attention. There was a red line on the display that was spinning around a center pivot on the screen like a hand of a clock that kept turning around. The red line, as it turned past parts of the screen, projected the bounds of the hyperflux onto it. In addition to the bounds that it kept redrawing on the screen over and over again, now there was an array of blue lines that had extended out the bounds it previously marked from ten o' clock to eleven o' clock of the screen.
'Wait,' Minato with frowning eyes of confusion observed the screen carefully. The red line went past ten o' clock beeping once again. 'There is an uncleared path here... that... that just appeared?'
Minato slowly made his way down closer to the point that the device marked. The drones followed him down. Once he was close enough to the point of interest, carefully observing the device, he extended his hand to touch the hyperflux.
Instantly, the drone that had been hooked to Minato's vest suddenly jerked him back pulling him away from the hyperflux. 'The devil-?'
Minato looked up at the drone, irritated, before he unhooked himself from the drone aggressively.
'Warning: safety clips have been unattached,' the drone's robotic voice warned repeatedly.
Disregarding its warning Minato slowly pushed his hand into the shatter leaning back as farther as he could.
When the hyperflux devours someone's body, the person would not feel the pain for a few seconds or until that body part is pulled back out. Knowing this, the sensation of 'nothing' was not aiding Minato when his hand started pushing into the shatter.
Suddenly the fog of glasses spread apart letting his hand pass through. Minato had done it multiple times himself, hence the observation was of no surprise, but that which was a surprise was, instead of revealing more of the same hyperflux after the closest walls of it retreated, this time there were buildings: a human civilization less than hundred meters away.
Hiroshi sat upright on his chair seeing this on the screen. Minato's heart had started beating heavy and fast. The parts of the lab that saw this had grown quiet. Minato stood frozen for a few more seconds before he gathered enough processing power to think of the next move.
'Send men here right now,' Minato said slowly retreating from the window.
The agents in black started packing up, picking their weapons up and hooking themselves to drones. The flirting broke off, he too was springing into action. Some were satisfied with packing a pistol while the rest picked up rifles.
'No.'
Everyone stopped right where they were.
'Go and check if there's anybody,' Hiroshi commanded.
'What? Are you- are you talking to me?' Minato asked.
'Yes.'
'But this is dangerous, we don't know anything about this world.'
'Well, if it's anything like ours, they've already seen you,' Hiroshi replied. 'And a civilian would be a lot less threatening than a dozen armed men rushing in.'
'What if people here are terrorists or something?'
'You and I both know If this is Telamore, it's highly unlikely,' said Hiroshi. 'We'll be at standby, just go, see and report in fifteen minutes.'
Minato let out a heavy sigh of acceptance before taking his first step forward. Beyond the window the hyperflux was nowhere close and, stepping out, Minato felt as if he could finally breathe in this foreign world.
Sunlight was starting to peek through the shattered sky and the closer Minato walked to the buildings the brighter the surroundings grew. A white mist that covered the grass field for miles started fading away with the light.
'Mina- - we- - signal,' a few of Hiroshi's words made It through the voice channel before a white noise took over.
'Hello? Hiroshi?'
There was no response. Minato turned around to look at the window. He had walked a considerable distance from it. He considered returning but, having come so close, Minato decided to sneak a peek before going back.
The buildings seemed abandoned. Other than the wind blowing through the abandoned town there were no other sounds. When Minato entered the threshold of the city, the noise of Grass crunching and rustling under Minato's feet was traded off to the noise of his sole hitting the concrete. Looking all around the city, noticing no one around and being thankful for it, he thought maybe it's time for him to head back and report.
He turned around facing the direction he came from to now notice a very bright glow stick burning away and someone sitting down on the ground at the feet of a tall four storied building. The distance obscured the view Minato caught in his sight, but even with the distance one detail was clear; there was a blood splatter behind the head of whoever that person was.
Ash blew out a puff of smoke leaning against the wall under the darkness of the broken sky. Weighing a sniper with her left hand, her metallic fingertips supported a burning cigarette.
There were men and women heading to and from the building she was leaning against, but nobody noticed her in the dark, behind the wall she was leaning against.
Knightly came running out looking around. When he saw Ash, he stopped looking around and headed straight to her.
'They are here,' Knightly said. 'Come on.'
'Oh,' Ash threw the cigarette onto the ground and stomped on it.
'Wait,' Knightly stopped on his way back inside. 'You smoke?'
'Huh?' Ash processed. 'Oh, no. I actually quit long ago. Found this pack a couple of days back in an old box and thought it's a shame to let these go to waste.'
'Oh ok, well, anyway, come quick,' Knightly dashed back into the building, and Ash slowly followed him inside soon after.
Passing a few injured and mostly a sleep deprived population they headed into a room. The strangers in the building were eyeing Ash's hulking figure in an expression of appreciation, but Ash was too focused on her task at hand to notice.
'Gentlemen,' when Knightly entered the room the only three men in the room, who were sitting down, grew quiet and when Ash walked in, all three stood up.
'It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Nova,' one extended his hand. Ash accepted the extension with a smile and shook his hand. The other two followed suit as well. After all the relevant hands were shaken, all five took seats around the small round table that lay beside a much larger office table.
'So, what's this about?' Ash asked. 'I'm still a little fuzzy on the details.'
'Miss, we are from a small settlement to the east,' one of three men answered. 'I'm not sure if you know, but we are from-'
'Crosswind,' Ash interrupted. 'Dr. Knightly told me.'
'Well,' next of the three men, the one with a handlebar mustache said. 'There were a couple of uh- ghost sightings for the past few months around town. We didn't care too much about them, obviously. We just assumed they were false news or- something like that. But tonight, things escalated.'
He took a breather and looked at his two comrades before he continued.
'These... I don't know what they are... dark, almost shadow-like creatures appeared out of nowhere and started running down our people. We just picked up whoever we could help and left the town immediately.'
'It was terrifying to see,' the third said, looking down without making eye contact.
'Did you try sending any drones to assess after you got here?' Ash asked.
'Well miss,' the man with the handlebar mustache answered. 'There are jammers inside the region. Even shielded electric and photonic equipment stop working in the area.'
'We couldn't communicate with outside, that's the biggest reason we all left when we could. As soon as we got out, we took measures to seal off the area.'
'We need to know what's happening to take any measures,' Ash explained. 'Is there anything we can do to get eyes on the inside?'
'Well,' the three looked at each other and then at Ash. 'Someone has to go inside.'
Ash looked at Knightly to discuss to notice him avoiding eye contact. It didn't take Ash long to pick up what they were laying down.
'You want me to go in?' Ash asked.
'If anyone can get in and out safely it would be the trained collectors, ma'am,' the man with the handlebar mustache asked. The room broke into an uncomfortable silence.
'But my body is electronic, right? Wouldn't it stop functioning?' Ash asked, breaking the silence.
'I thought about it and uh- I don't think it would affect you too much,' Knightly replied, making Ash give him a look requesting more elaboration. 'Your body is not entirely electronic. It's mostly knethonic, so if whatever's jamming these electronics and photonics did not affect the people, then it's highly unlikely to affect you.'
The room became silent once again with Ash considering silently, Knightly reconsidering his calculations and the other three too scared to break the silence.
'I could assemble the rest if you want,' Knightly said, initiating a new conversation breaking the silence.
'No, I can go in alone,' Ash commented, considering her options. 'Now what exactly would I have to do?'
'For now, we just need eyes on the situation, roughly know what's happening, see if there are any jammers inside and get them deactivated, if possible,' Knightly replied. 'It would be best if we could get an estimate on the range at which the electronic devices start to fail.'
'Ok,' Ash said. 'Gear me up, let's get this done by morning.'
Three beans, after about fifteen minutes of travel, stopped at an intersection. The three gentlemen stepped out of the first two beans and Ash and Knightly got off the third bean. The three lead the way for Ash and Knightly to follow. There were several armed men patrolling the street they went past.
One of the armed men walked over to one of the three and whispered something in his ear. Once he was done, he turned towards Knightly and said 'Ah, can we also get a relief team for the wall?'
'Oh no need, if it's just monitoring we need, we can station drones,' Knightly replied. 'I can get them here in about twenty minutes.'
'Thank you,' the man replied.
The group of five continued walking past the patrol to pass poorly set up barbed wire and barricade setups to the sight of the giant wall that had been erected at the middle of the street. For a makeshift wall, it stood incredibly sturdy. There were support columns keeping this thirty-meter-tall wall of black steel and its bounds at the either side were decided by the bounds of the shatter.
'We need to get this opened,' Knightly said to one of the armed men and with a nod he quickly ran to contact someone at the wall.
'No,' Ash replied. 'If opening a door is risky, you better shouldn't.'
'What do you mean? How would you get in?' the man with the handlebar mustache asked.
'So, this is all the stuff, right?' Ash turned to Knightly. 'I just go in, talk to you until I lose the signal, go in to get a visual and then come back?'
'Be careful,' Knightly nodded. 'And run back if you feel anything unordinary.'
'Ok,' Ash sighed looking at the rest of her escort and walked towards the wall. Once she felt that she was close enough, holding the rifle tight in her hands she lowered herself a little. Then with a strong thrust that cracked the asphalt she leaped to the tall wall of steel to cross the threshold. 'Whoa,' one of the three men involuntarily screamed with the loud bang of the leap that cracked the floor.
'I'm in,' Ash's heavy body sunk about a foot down into earth upon landing.
'Ok, now head to Crosswind, I'll record the point where we lose your signal.'
Few hundred meters into Ash's walk, the signal was lost; it was a lot sooner than what she expected. But as expected, the jammers did not affect her. The black of the night was beginning to fade away as the dawn marched closer and closer to the horizon. The city was starting to become clearer, but still, with no lights on, the city was drowned too deep in darkness. It was completely empty, but Ash proceeded without letting her guard down.
In the city, surrounded by buildings, it was getting too dark to see anything. Hence Ash, supporting her rifle with one hand, pulled out a small stick. Looking away from it, she broke it in half. With a considerably loud fizzing sound, the stick illuminated bright.
Now Ash was moving a lot slower. Holding the glowing stick out of her field of vision to the side of her head, she monitored her surroundings very carefully. The blurred shadow of her head shading half of the buildings in the city was starting to make her uncomfortable; she couldn't be announcing her position to the enemy any better.
CRACK
Ash dropped the glow stick and turned around in a whiplash, aiming the rifle. The glow stick bounced twice before settling on the ground. The light illuminated the corner of the street Ash was now looking at, except for one pure black figure that stood still. Even with the bright light of the glow stick only the silhouette on the pavement was visible. It seemed to be dripping a dark mist that dissipated a little distance away from its body.
'Hello?' Ash tried speaking with it. When she got no answer in return, she started stepping closer, with her rifle drawn. Suddenly the silhouette drew one step back and Ash froze where she was without advancing further. 'Don't move.'
'tːuʃ tnʊəd,' with a deep echoing voice the shadow spoke terrifying Ash.
'ŋɪnɔːˈm əð nɪ uːj iːs,' a similar voice rose from behind her. She turned around in an instant. A black silhouette like the one by the pavement was walking towards her, but even with none of its physical features visible Ash could clearly identify that it was walking backwards.
Ash immediately opened fire, but to no avail the bullets just hit the silhouette and disappeared.
'lɛw,' the silhouette spoke again, continuing to walk in reverse.
'kɪewəˈ ziːʃ,' one more silhouette joined from Ash's right. Ash slowly started stepping back, firing a few bullets, afraid to run out shooting pointlessly. The silhouettes approached faster than Ash was backing away, reducing the distance between them and her. A couple of more joined it.
It didn't feel like a fight Ash could win, so she turned around to leap and run away, but her legs were growing weaker that no matter how hard she tried she could barely move. She turned around to shoot, firing a few bullets. 'Stop!'
'uːj tplɛh iːw,' the silhouette by the pavement announced. 'tːuʃ tnʊəd.'
Ash started tasting metal and the taste was growing stronger the closer silhouettes walked to her.
'Stand back,' Ash backed off too far, she had nowhere to back off anymore. Surrounding her were the black silhouettes increasing in number and growing in their low-pitched noise.'
'pʌ tɒɡ iːʃ'
'dɒɡ kŋæθ'
'idɒbirvˈɛ ɪekʊˈˈə zːiʃ'
A headache was taking over, she started to feel as if she was bleeding all over; Deja'vu. She fell to her knees, unable to talk or walk anymore, dragged backwards with the remaining strength of her metallic arm. She was cornered against a wall and the dark silhouettes surrounded her. And then,
nothing,
nothing for what felt like a few seconds.
She couldn't open her eyes; it was too bright out. Too bright that she could see the red of her eyelids. But she had to open her eyes, the danger could still be imminent. So, all of her will power she opened her eyes. The sight she saw was immediately obscured by the tears that covered her eyes. Hence, she squeezed her eyes dry with her eyelids and blinked a couple of times to reassess her surroundings.
She was no longer feeling any pain, she was bleeding no more. No headache, no taste of metal. Her rifle still rested in her hand, and she was still sitting laying down on the concrete against a wall. Even though the sun had risen a lot higher she was still in Crosswind, that much she was certain. But the inconsistency she needed time to understand now was the man kneeling in front of her in a white coat holding an empty injection gun. He seemed relieved, but Ash could not understand why.
'Are you feeling ok, Miss Young?' the man asked, packing the injection gun back into his pocket.
'Who-' Ash raised her voice. 'Who are you?'
'Oh, how rude of me,' the man chuckled mildly. 'I'm Dr. Kurokawa, Dr. Minato Kurokawa.'