Tuesday, September 23. Dead of night. Tryte.

The blinding strobing light of machine gun fire, and the deafening roar of explosions thundering in the distance mixed with and were swallowed by the raging thunderstorm. Winds strong enough to uproot trees, to demolish buildings and to lift entire trucks from the ground forced the troops to retreat farther and farther from the epicenter of the destruction. All the while, they kept shooting. Without pause. For they knew that if they stopped, then whatever it was that they were seeing in the distance would get close enough to kill them.

Samantha watched with growing desperation the fight occurring in the storm, from the relative safety of the base of operations outside the perimeter. Countermeasures had been put in place to contain the threat, effectively condemning the soldiers that had been left inside to certain death. But, she was sure, they would have never made it out anyway. That’s what she told herself to remain sane. That’s what she had to tell herself if she wanted not to lose it. And she couldn’t lose it. Not now. Hell, not even SpaceOps could teleport in there and be expected to come out in one piece, and it was almost an unexplainable miracle that the soldiers were still holding on, clinging to life.

A miracle she was not going to be reporting to her superiors under any circumstance. She would probably have to take some time to weep later tonight.

The door of the hurriedly built container burst open, and a torrent of wind invaded the space. The diminutive figure of SpaceOps appeared as a silhouette against the lightning strikes and the rain, while the cold bit at Samantha’s skin through her still drenched clothes that had stuck to her like a vice. Trapping her in her own skin.

“What did you see in there?” She asked without pause.

There was no way to photograph what was going on inside the containment field, because the runaway energies simply showed as a blinding white on any instrument trained on them. Event the oldest cameras did not report anything of value in the visible spectrum, and all the new satellites and telescopes simply refused to spit out data that made any sense. The Quadrangle was working overtime to isolate signal from noise in the constant stream of information that was reaching it, and some findings had already been relayed to the screen Samantha was consulting, but it was precious little.

It appeared that only eyewitnesses could report what was happening. SpaceOps had been sent there to merely watch from as close as possible without risking certain death.

“Golems. Monsters of stone and magic. Animated automatons spewing out of a portal that opened where the town used to be.” He said while heaving, trying to restore his blood oxygen after the considerable exertion of teleporting through the containment field and through the magically saturated air of the event. “They are like nothing we have ever seen.”

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“What about the soldiers?”

The small man shed some of his waterlogged items. “They are all dead. They managed to repel the first wave, with heavy losses. Our weapons were useless, all of them completely useless except for the heavy ordnance, the explosives and the missiles. Some high caliber chipped away at the golem but it was way too slow.”

“You said the first wave?”

The man nodded. “It was one single golem, ma’am. Then the second wave came, but there were almost no soldiers left and definitely no more weapons in a usable state. And the golems were many. Five of them.”

Samantha did not speak.

“But I have collected invaluable data.” The man said, rushing to the computer. He began to type furiously. “I might be able to update the model, predict where the next event will happen.”

Samantha’s right eyebrow rose. There was not much use predicting another event if they couldn’t even deal with this one. At least it was clear now that anything beyond Tier 2 was able to open a stable rift.

“It’s not stable,” SpaceOps said, almost reading her mind. “It’s semi-stable. They are building something to stabilize it. That’s why they haven’t challenged the perimeter yet.”

For the first time in her life, Samantha lost her cool on site. “…What?”

She almost yelled it. She couldn’t even believe it. But before she could process the emotional response to the fact, she was already holding the red phone at her ear.

“I request a nuclear missile. Trinium-tritonium enriched. Naquadriah works too, yes. Yes. Inside the perimeter. Yes. It will hold. No, we don’t have time to fortify it. No, we don’t have another choice. Yes. I will go myself, then, just give me clearance. It is a matter of national security. The code is: SMTH224Y663DD6 override under the BSA Act, directive Emergency-01. Yes. Call the president if you need to. No. Even a one-minute delay could be catastrophic. Yes. Understood.”

She then turned to SpaceOps. “Drop everything you are doing and come with me. You are temporarily granted Access level One. Listen to me. Look at me. Isolation breaks causation. You understand? We need to get to the Cache under the Quadrangle and retrieve the Harmonic Oscillator for the forcefield, or the nuke will wipe half this state from the map. Then, you will need to plug it into the shield generator.”

“I don’t know how to do it! I don’t even know what the damn thing is!”

“Oh, but you do. As clear as sunset.”

SpaceOps’ eyes became vacant. “Yes ma’am. Of course, ma’am.”

Samantha sighed, right as she teleported to the hidden cache under the Quadrangle. She was going to be one man down after this, and she had no idea how much time SpaceOps would have to spend in the CARF before he was once again cleared for field work after the security breach. She was counting on the fact that Tier 3 events did not happen back to back, although she only had a sample size of one to make that prediction. Because if they did… then she was fucked.

And, fate wanted it, PsyOps had shown signs of degradation well beyond concern. But she couldn’t afford to send him to the CARF too. She needed his telekinetic powers, as well as his mind-reader powers.

“Call the psion,” she spoke into the phone, talking to the Quadrangle. “Relay this exact message, using this exact tone. Compliance is advantageous. That should stabilize him for the time being.”