by Terri Lane
Reilly’s skin crawled at the ease with which he said, “putting it down.” But then she supposed this was hardly the first time he’d killed something. Or someone. But that wasn’t the important part of what he had said. “A portal opened up in the street? How big was it? Was it the only one?” She wanted to ask fifty more questions, but then she remembered the thing crunching away at something on the other side of the lab, and she shut her mouth.
With the tone of someone trying very hard to maintain his calm, Maksim said, “It was about twenty feet across and round. Hovered maybe a foot off the ground.” There were rattling sounds, like metal buckles being fastened in the background. Several metallic clicking noises came next, which Reilly thought she recognized from movies. Maksim was checking his guns. After a minute, he said, “Judging from the screaming outside, these holes popped up everywhere. Bet you if I turned on my computer, YouTube would be full of cellphone videos of them. You're at the lab downtown?”
“Yeah,” Reilly whispered. “The thing in the lab seems occupied. It hasn’t noticed me yet, but I don’t know how long that is going to last.” She didn’t dare take a look. “I need you to get here quick.”
Maksim’s voice lost all of its tension, becoming smooth and professional like the recording on the answering machine. It was like he’d just switched off his emotions altogether. It still freaked Reilly out that he could do that. Did his emotions maybe have a physical switch? Considering who he was. “I'll be at your lab in about twenty minutes. Stay hidden and stay quiet.” He paused for a moment, and then said, more naturally, “I'll even give you a discount on my usual rates since we're friends.”
Despite everything, Reilly smiled a little at this. She hadn’t known him for very long, little more than three months, but she’d learned to recognize Maksim’s attempts at humor when she heard them. But then again, considering the situation, there was a chance he wasn’t joking at all. And she couldn’t afford his rates, even at a discount. “Just get here quick. Good luck, and thank you.”
“Thank me when I get there,” Maksim said, and then hung up. Without conversation to distract her, Reilly became acutely aware that she was alone in the dark wreckage of a room, with a monster that was almost certainly chewing on someone. She couldn't be sure, because of the chaos, but she hadn't heard the door on the far end of the lab open at all after it all began— and there had been fifteen other people in the room when the portal collapsed. Maybe they’re hiding, like me, she thought. And then, almost immediately after that crossed her mind, she thought, right, and maybe whatever’s out there is gnawing on all the spare bones I just keep in piles around my physics lab. That’s definitely it.
Reilly was afraid. She’d never been more afraid. But for some reason, sitting in the dark listening to some kind of alien creature eating one of her colleagues, she found herself strangely calm. It was just too surreal. Her brain couldn't process what had happened in the last hour, so it had just stopped trying. So instead of wondering how long it would take the monster to get bored and start searching the room for someone else to kill, Reilly found herself wondering if the government would be canceling the grant for the project. “Technically,” she said to herself, “it was a success. We did, after all, open a portal to…somewhere.” Reilly wasn’t sure, but she figured unleashing unholy hell on all of Washington D.C. would be something of a black mark on her professional record—provided she, or anyone else, got out of this mess alive.
Friday morning, Breach minus fifteen minutes
Dr. Reilly McAllister was nervous. She didn't look it. She looked calm, collected, and in control, as she should. Her white lab coat was clean and freshly pressed, her long, platinum blonde hair was wound up in braids into a neat, professional knot, and her freckled face was set in an expression of utter confidence. In that room, in NextGen Laboratory 4B, she was the conductor, and the carefully orchestrated sequence that she would set in motion would be a perfectly performed symphony. With excellent colleagues, a comfortable budget, and the very best equipment, there was no part of the veteran physicist's plan that opened the door to error. In Lab 4B, everything was plotted out to exacting standards, then checked, rechecked, and checked again. In this lab, long-established ideas were challenged, boundaries were bent, and limits were broken. This was Dr. McAllister's arena, her home turf. Here, she could truly cut loose with her tremendous intellect, without worrying about budgets or politics or corporate intrigue. She should have been completely comfortable. But she wasn't. Something felt…a little off.
It wasn’t the experiment that was the problem. Reilly’s team had been working on this project for the better part of six years, and Reilly herself had been working with the underlying theories for nearly a decade before that, ever since she’d started grad school. The team had constructed five smaller proof-of-concept devices before they’d even tried to scale up to full size. For the most part, the whole project had gone smoothly. This wasn’t even the first time they’d tested the device. It worked just fine. So there was no reason to think today would be any different. But still, Reilly was nervous. Though she didn’t show it on her face, her apprehension came out as a nearly compulsive need to triple check everything all over again. When one was working with the amount of raw energy that Lab 4B was trying to harness…
“Dr. McAllister?” Reilly looked up to see Bill Haynes, her assistant, standing beside the sprawling control desk, concern in his dark eyes despite his attempts to keep it off his face. “Are you ready to begin?”
Reilly took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to banish the strange sense of unease. She scanned the room. In addition to the usual five other members of her lab team, there were ten other people present to witness their experiment. Eight of them were other scientists, visiting from other departments within the massive edifice of NextGen Solutions. The other two were ‘Suits’—a none-too-affectionate nickname that the Reilly and her colleagues had for the government representatives that periodically showed up to ensure that federal funds were spent appropriately. She couldn't remember their names. She couldn't even be sure they were the same two reps every time. After all, they were so nondescript as to appear almost as bland as their dull gray suits. They might not have had the same features, but they all had the same…presence. They were supposedly from the Department of Energy, but Reilly somehow doubted that. More than likely one of the ‘alphabet soup’ of three-letter agencies was involved. The taller of the two checked his unremarkable watch and then looked over at her. She turned back to Bill, unsuccessfully pretending that the federal representative's cold stare didn't make her uncomfortable. Maybe that was it. The Suits bothered her. Sure. That was it. Nothing wrong with the experiment. Everything was fine. So why didn't she believe it?
Reilly sighed. “I'm ready, Bill.” She forced some cheer into her voice and called out to the rest of her team, who stood at their various positions, monitoring the myriad parts of their device. “Is everybody ready to make history?” They all responded with customary enthusiasm, even Roger Lloyd, who stood before the machine dressed in an environmental suit. If anyone was more nervous than Reilly, it was him. He gave her a thumbs-up with his thick, rubber-gloved right hand. “Alright,” she said, turning back to the computer that took up most of the surface of the desk. “Let's start her up.” Reilly entered her password, opened the main control program, and activated the starting sequence. Then she looked up at the device.
They called it ‘The Door.’ Perhaps that wasn't the most imaginative name they could have given it, but they were physicists and engineers, not marketing gurus. It was a three-meter-tall ring of metal, standing upright within a sturdy frame. The inner edge of the ring was smooth and bare. The outer edge was a spider's web of pipes, wires, and cables, each of them part of an intricate network that channeled energy into the Door in just the right way. As Reilly watched, the inner edge of the ring began to glow. The air in the lab became thick with static, and Bill's mop of brown hair began to stand up straight.
Despite her tension, Reilly couldn't help but smile at this. It reminded her of the ‘mad scientists’ in the cartoons she had watched as a kid. Even then, she'd known who she wanted to be. Granted, this wasn't an evil lair, but that part of the gig had never appealed to her. She wanted to push the limits; to do what no one had ever done before. Abruptly, the glowing inner edge of the Door seemed to bleed into the air, sending tendrils of light into the circle of space it enclosed. It was like a giant hand was smearing the light like paint. Then, with a sudden crack of electrical discharge, the device became fully active. The Door was open. A mirrored, shimmering membrane filled the steel ring like a smooth plate of silvered glass. Reilly stared into the shining surface, and met her own green eyes in the reflection, staring out at her from behind rimless rectangular lenses. Her team had just opened a miniature wormhole in their lab in Washington, D.C., a portal to another place. A few of the onlookers let out short gasps. Reilly smiled to her reflected self. They were impressed now, but the actual experiment hadn't truly begun.
Caught up in the familiar rhythms of her work, Reilly started to relax. Her voice was smooth and unhurried as she led the team through the various steps of their checklist. “Roger, check your safety harness.” The eager young grad student tugged at the H-style straps over his environmental suit to demonstrate they were tight, then gave the braided steel cable connected to his harness a little tug, rattling the oxygen bottles attached to his back. The cable spooled a little from the industrial strength reeling machine that stood between Reilly's desk and the gate. If anything went wrong, they could have him back in the lab in moments. But nothing was going to go wrong, they had performed this particular experiment with robots several times, and once with a lab monkey in a miniature version of the same suit that Roger was wearing. All of the previous explorers had come back from their short jaunt into the wormhole none the worse for wear. The monkey might have appeared a little frazzled, but that was to be expected. The only problem seemed to be that some sort of electromagnetic phenomenon was preventing the robots' sensors from recording much good information. The robots ran and operated fine. But they hadn't been able to record so much as a single video of what lay on the other side of the wormhole. The monkey couldn't tell them what he'd seen, obviously, so the way forward was clear. Roger, new to Lab 4B and eager to prove himself, had volunteered.
Reilly watched Roger step up to the Door, and watched the retaining cable spool out from the reel. The cable wasn't a simple tether. Within the braided steel was an insulated line of wires that connected directly to a radio rig attached to Roger's harness. He couldn't transmit wirelessly once he was through, so her team had come up with a solution. So long as Roger stayed attached to his safety tether, they could talk to him, or pull him back if needed. The Door loomed around him as he stepped closer. Slowly, he lifted one hand to touch the mirrored surface. The moment his gloved fingers connected with the membrane, it rippled, then seemed to adhere to him, tugging lightly at his hand as if urging him forward. Roger appeared to steel himself. His voice came through a speaker I'd set up on my desk. “Alright. I'm going through.” Then he stepped straight into the rippling quicksilver surface of the open Door and was gone. Another gasp ran through the onlookers. Reilly suppressed a grin. That was exactly the reaction she had been expecting. It was the first time that her team had had spectators for this. The mirrored membrane warped and bent the reflection of the lab in its surface as the ripples began to settle, and for a moment, it seemed to Reilly that her reflection was smiling at her, a wide, full smile, even though her own lips hadn't parted. She blinked, and the illusion was gone. The surface of the Door slowly settled back into smooth stillness, but for minute ripples around the cable that snaked through it into the unknown place beyond.
Reilly bent so that she was closer to the little microphone perched on her desk. “Roger? How are you doing in there?”
There was a short delay, just long enough for a little of the nerves to creep back into Reilly's mind as she waited for Roger to reply. The cable continued to spool, slowly, through the Door. The explorer was walking, at a slow, steady pace. Everything was fine. He was probably just speechless at whatever he saw. The speaker crackled as Roger activated his microphone. “I'm doing great in here. Reilly, Bill, all you guys need to see this place. It's amazing.” As if he suddenly remembered that they were supposed to be serious scientists, Roger's voice switched from boyish enthusiasm back to crisp professionalism. “Alright, I'm standing on a solid surface. It's dark here, but I can see fine—which is difficult to explain. The ground seems smooth. Though there's some kind of dust coating it. I keep kicking it up as I move.”
“What do you see around you?” Reilly asked.
“Not much to see. Just seems to be flat, dusty ground around me. There's a haze that limits visibility beyond a few dozen meters. I think—” His voice dropped off.
Reilly was about to ask him to repeat himself when a sudden spike of pain lanced through her temple. She winced and let out a short yelp of surprise. Some of the spectators, particularly the two suits, looked over at her. Bill frowned, concerned. He moved as if to come over to her, but she waved him off. “I'm fine. Stay on the winch. Just a sudden headache. Probably allergies.” Bill nodded and turned back to toward the portal, his hand resting on the frame of the reeling machine. Reilly bent to the microphone again, trying to ignore the pain. “Uh, Roger, I didn't get all of what you just said. Repeat that for me?”
The radio crackled, and Roger's voice came through, though it seemed garbled and distorted. That was bizarre. Were the energies of the Door interfering with the connection somehow? That wouldn't make sense. They'd been fine just a moment ago, and his radio was hard-wired through the tether cable. Nothing should have been interfering with it. Her headache was getting worse, and fast. Reilly put one hand to her head and braced the other on the desk, trying to concentrate on making out what the young explorer had said. Something spattered onto the desk in front of her. She touched it with her fingertips and was surprised when they came back red with blood. Was her nose bleeding? Roger was still talking, though she still couldn't understand it. The headache was turning into something much more like a migraine; as if someone was driving an icepick into the side of her head. Bill was by her side all of a sudden, his hand on her shoulder, his voice concerned. His words came to her as though she was underwater, and she couldn't understand them.
“Bill,” Reilly groaned through clenched teeth. “Can you understand what Roger is saying?” Bill shook his head. He said something else, but it was just as indistinct as the radio. A deep, almost inaudible tone was vibrating through Reilly’s skull, like the song of a whale deep in the ocean. She was afraid to ask Bill if he heard that as well. Already she was aware that the spectators to the experiment were staring at her. Blood was flowing freely from her nose now, making a mess of her desktop. What was happening?
There was a crackling sound, and Roger’s voice became clear again. He was panting. “God! Oh God!” The winch was still spooling cable into the Door, but it was doing so much faster. Roger was running now, running away from the Door. Reilly could barely see now; her skull felt like it might split open at any moment. People were talking all around her, their voices colliding and mingling to become a wall of terrible sound, devoid of meaning. Roger was in danger. Reilly had to focus. Roger was running. He was in danger. She opened her mouth to tell Bill to reel the young explorer back in. “Reilly!” Roger screamed. “Reilly! Close the Door!”
Bill seized the microphone by Reilly’s desk. “Roger! What’s going on!”
“Close the Door!” He screamed again. “Close the damned Door right fucking now!”
Someone had started up the winch, and the cable began winding itself back into the spool, presumably dragging Roger toward the Door, toward safety.
Roger didn't stop screaming though. “No! Don't pull me out! You don't have time! Close the Door! It's almost…” Roger’s voice abruptly cut off, and his communication
line became nothing but random snapping sounds and loud rattling. There was a loud grinding noise, and Reilly managed to lift her head enough to see the winch struggling to reel in a fully taut cable. Whatever was happening to Roger, the winch wasn't pulling him out anymore. The machine began to smoke and let out sparks, as whatever force opposed it forced it to grind against its engine. Suddenly, the cable went slack, and a moment later, the neatly severed end of it came whipping out of the door, narrowly missing Bill, who had moved to check on the machine. He picked up the cable, his eyes wide, and showed the end to Reilly. It had been neatly cut, though the end was corroded, as if by some acid.
Everyone in the room gasped, and Reilly looked up at the portal in time to see the mirrored surface turn completely black. The Door shook, and the now opaque membrane began rippling and stretching—as if something was trying to come through. People were screaming. With the last of her strength, as the migraine robbed her of the ability to stand, Reilly slammed her fist down on the red button beside her workstation labeled ‘Abort’. There was a loud blast, like thunder, and the power went out. Reilly could no longer see through the pain. She could no longer stand. She fell to the floor behind her desk and curled into a ball, clutching her skull and waiting for it all to end. People were screaming. The great thrumming song was so loud in Reilly's head that she couldn't even think. She fell unconscious.
Friday morning, Breach plus one hour, thirty minutes
Reilly sat beneath the desk, clutching her phone and listening to the thing crashing around her lab. Occasionally, it would stop smashing things, and then the crunching sounds would begin. Reilly was pretty sure she knew what those sounds were, and she was equally sure that she didn't want to think about it. She didn't even know what the thing out there looked like. She'd woken up to sounds of the monster savaging her lab. There was no more screaming, and her headache was gone. Calling Maksim had seemed like a good idea, but now she wasn't sure. According to him, portals like the now defunct Door had been opening up all over the place. How could she trust that he could make it to her alive? How did she know he even would try? After all, Mack was a mercenary, and she wasn't paying him. She only knew him at all because he'd been working a federal contract as a secure courier for highly classified data. Reilly's project had been beyond top secret, and all her data reports were collected daily by Maksim for perusal by whatever secretive government agency had actually been funding her lab.
