“Fine,” Dorlan growled. “Take my last two grenades. You might need them.”
“Bad idea,” Allie said. “Any explosion near one of the support struts holding up the central spire could bring it crashing down into the containment area. They support an unbelievable amount of weight, and even the slightest crack could cause one to shatter under it. I am relatively certain that the paradox will be balanced if the containment field goes down in ways other than the one I am planning, however, we will be left without a way home if I am not allowed to follow our plans exactly. And it is logical to assume that the Apostle has a way of creating an unbalanced paradox else she would not have bothered to come back in time at all. We must arrive before her. We do not have time to take a wounded man with us or stand here chatting for long.”
Gabriel relayed the information to the others.
“You’re just full of good news ain’t ya,” Dorlan muttered as he stuffed the
grenades back into his coat. “Stop fussing over me like a mother hen and get going.
Move it, maggots!”
“Follow me,” Allie said as Marius pulled a flashlight from inside his coat and tossed it to Gabriel.
Switching on the light Gabriel followed after Allie, reloading first one pistol then the other as he ran. He hoped landing in the water hadn’t ruined the shells on his belts, or he was in trouble. Splashing through ankle deep water, Marius followed.
A strong concussion knocked Gabriel from his feet as Dorlan’s two grenades
exploded, causing the tunnel to collapse, blocking it off behind them. Gaping, Gabriel pulled himself to his feet.
“He blew himself up!”
“Keep moving, maggot,” Marius growled like a bear.
“But he just blew himself up!”
“Get moving! There’s a job to be done. Complain about it when you’re finished, or dead!”
Chapter 40: The Containment Area
After running through the foul smelling water for about five hundred yards,
Gabriel stepped onto a poorly secured metal grate with the water flowing along beneath.
Shortly after that, the duct slanted steeply downward.
Followed by Marius and running faster than was strictly safe, Gabriel dashed after Allie’s small form. If the Apostle were near, she’d certainly hear the racket that their feet made on the grating. Though it was only in his head, Allie’s feet also made quite a bit of noise, and her skirt flared out behind her. He wondered why she bothered making herself appear so realistic to him. She even cast a shadow in the light of his borrowed flashlight.
After a short time of darkness there was light ahead. When it got bright enough to see by, Gabriel tossed the flashlight back to Marius.
When the tunnel came to an end, Allie kept running. Turning back with a swish of her skirt, she smiled at Gabriel and winked, hovering in midair.
Approaching the drop, Gabriel looked down into a huge underground cavern.
Water poured from the duct in a long, discolored stream into a standing pool far below.
Around the edge of the circular chamber were seven other shafts pouring water into the pool from the seven other towers. It smelled like a rotting bog.
Beside each duct was a steel ladder leading down to a catwalk that was held
above the pooled water by support cables from the ceiling, as well as pilings disappearing into the depths below. Large doors that were level with the catwalks were spaced evenly around the chamber, presumably the main accessways back to the towers. Each of the catwalks ran inward where they met a wide ring that circled the center. A single catwalk branched into the middle of the ring at an odd angle with a computer console at the end.
Just beyond the short, oddly angled catwalk was a large reflective sphere. Gabriel couldn’t say what it was, exactly. Eight cones like gigantic electrodes jutted from floor and ceiling toward the reflective sphere, four above, and four below. The points came together, almost touching, and electricity frequently arced between them with loud cracks.
Space around the sphere seemed to distort almost like the lensing effect of
looking through the bottom of a glass bottle. Everything that was seen through the distortion was bent, seeming to stretch into the silvery sphere. It appeared almost as though the sphere had placed a dent in reality itself.
“What the hell is that thing,” Marius asked.
Gabriel’s hair and coat seemed blown toward the sphere as if by wind, but there wasn’t even a breeze. Snatching a shell from his belt, he dropped it. As it fell it arched more and more toward the sphere.
Gabriel and Marius shared a look.
“Craziest damn thing I ever saw,” Marius grated.
“What is that,” Gabriel asked Allie, who was still standing in midair.
“What you are looking at is the event horizon of a black hole,” Allie explained.
“That reflective silvery sheen is the point at which nothing can escape, not even light or time. Anything that goes beyond never returns.”
“Why does it reflect?”
“It does not actually reflect. Your mind is trying to comprehend something that is completely incomprehensible to it, and reflection is the closest thing it can equate what it is perceiving to.”
“What do you see when you look at it,” Gabriel asked in curiosity.
“I am looking using your eyes. I see the same thing that you do.”
In movies black holes were always dark pits ringed with fiery clouds and flashes of lightning. The silvery surface of the sphere was a stark contrast to those fictional visions. It looked almost like living liquid or flowing mercury. Able to feel something wrong about it, Gabriel could hear a deep, primal part of himself screaming for him to run in the opposite direction as quickly as possible.
“The black hole,” Gabriel said for Marius’ benefit. “It’s the core of the Gate Jump System, able to tear a hole in reality, making travel to other worlds and times possible.”
“You mean like outer space,” Marius asked. “Collapsed stars that suck up
everything in their paths? What the hell is something like that doing here!”
“No time to explain. There’s a terrorist bent on destroying this place. If she does, the black hole will devour this entire star system for breakfast.”
“Excellent. Any more good news?”
Scanning the cavern, Gabriel found several huge struts supporting the ceiling, one midway between each catwalk. He did not see the Apostle anywhere, but he supposed her best bet would be to destroy one of those, and drop the Central Spire into the black hole. If it didn’t break through the containment field, the lack of power drawn from the sun would.
“All right,” Gabriel nodded to Marius. “When we get down to that ring, I’ll go to the right, you go to the left, we’ll meet up at that catwalk that goes into the middle there.
Look at the supports in particular but don’t ignore everything else. She’s tall for a girl, wearing a big black cloak, and may not be alone.”
Marius nodded.
Gabriel had given him the longer path on purpose. Hopefully he could get to the console and set things up for his own plan before the man made his rounds and joined him.
“Be careful, this chick is one nasty mofo. She moves so fast that your eyes can’t follow her. I think she’s only armed with a sword, but she can cut bullets out of the air with it. Always shoot twice, she has trouble blocking two at once.”
“Are you going to keep bitching all day or can we get to work already?”