Chapter 23

Kaitlyn Carter

January

Kaitlyn Carter stomped across the snowy field to her lab, her shadow stretching behind her in the pale light of an evening winter sun. The clouds were peach meringue, whipped to a froth and spread thin across the bright sky. Her breath danced away to join them with each exhalation. She wore a fuzzy winter jacket over her lab coat. She had an item tucked under each arm: under her right, a big stuffed caterpie Pokémon named Heisenberg that Liz had got for her. (It resembled the eastern tiger swallowtail caterpillar, Papilio glaucus!) And under her left: a shoebox containing something mysterious and special and important.

Whiskey bounded up to her when she was halfway across the field. He was always excited to see her! She was happy to see him too. He jumped in circles around her as she stepped through the thick snow, making his weird little yipping noises. She stopped to pet him before entering the lab.

She flipped the lights on and began the process of removing her snow clothes and gearing up for lab work. Luckily, she’d remembered to turn the heat on a while ago, so she would not be freezing her wrists off. She wouldn’t have to wait long for the equipment to warm up, either. She completed her ensemble by fitting the protective goggles over her glasses. She flourished her lab coat with an elaborate spin for the benefit of the observing Dr. Heisenberg. She bowed in thanks to his applause, and picked up the shoebox.

“You m-may th-think,” she said to the doctor in a professional tone of voice, “that this b-b-box contains sh-sh-shoes. A logical c-c-conclusion. B-B-BUT!” She leveled a dramatic finger at his squishy round head. “That’s w-where you’d-d be m-m-mist-ta-mi-sta- taken!” She threw her head back and performed her very best maniacal laugh (the kind she always imagined her uncle doing). “Aha! Ahahaha! Eheheheheeeee!” She imagined thunder booming in the background.

She carried both the box and the caterpie over to a lab workbench. Then she went to her lab computer. She put on some lab tunes (thanks, Eric!) and checked her email. That girl on the island hadn’t got back to her yet. Kate dug into one of the many pockets of her lab coat and retrieved the note Aunt Becky had given her. Kate read it for the five-millionth time. It was in her father’s handwriting, and it told Kate to get in contact with a person named Heidi Sheppard. Aunt Becky said she just found it somewhere! Kate didn’t know what was so special about Heidi Sheppard, but she would trust her father, even if he wasn’t around anymore.

Oh well. She’d figure it out. She and Heidi would figure it out together! Yes! For now, it was time for experiments.

She equipped rubber lab gloves, just in case, and approached the shoebox. She swiped some lab tongs on the way and made a big show of cautiously approaching the shoebox as though it might explode! (She was only doing this to put on a show for Dr. Heisenberg.) She reached out and cautiously flipped back the lid of the shoebox, and then ever-so-gently reached in with the tongs, paused a moment for suspense, and then slowly raised up a glowing purple crystal the size of an egg. She glanced over at the caterpie and could tell from his huge eyes that he was impressed.

This fine specimen of McFinnium was mainly purple, though it did tend to fluctuate in color more than the other samples. It looked like a cluster of hexagonal crystals, making it one of the more normal manifestations of the stuff. Except for the strange subtle glow, it could pass for a regular crystal—maybe a chunk of amethyst?

“I have q-questions f-f-for you,” she said as she brought it close to her face. Oh yes, many questions. She didn’t know much about the McFinnium, but she still knew more than almost anyone else. And she could never get a hold of her uncle to ask him stuff! She thought maybe he wanted her to do experiments and learn on her own, even though it was a little bit dangerous, maybe because he was proud of her? Like that mattered if they never saw each other!

She placed the purple crystal on a special pedestal, which was actually the top of a big electromagnet, switched off. McFinnium did weird stuff when exposed to different types of energy or radiation, but the results were so far impossible to predict. She had a theory that the color of the McFinnium mattered, but she didn’t have access to enough samples to verify this. She didn’t even know how many varieties existed. All of this was incredibly exciting. She was dealing with a material she knew next to nothing about, and trying to figure it out from square one. In an alternate, more boring universe, she would have killed for a chance like this.

In her previous experiment, a weird thing had happened with a yellow piece of McFinnium where she’d tried to turn off the centrifuge but it wouldn’t turn off, even after she disconnected the power supply. It had remained stable and running for over an hour. She eventually had to conclude that the McFinnium itself was somehow powering it. She had finally stopped it by spraying it all down with a non-conductive foam polymer.

So this time she would see what the purple crystal did when subjected to various forms of electromagnetic radiation.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

She got to work, and for a while became fully engrossed in the experiments. She didn’t notice when Eric’s playlist ended and it switched over to ballet music she had got from Liz. She didn’t even notice when the sun began to set and the patchy clouds out the window turned shades of blue and grey and purple that would have enthralled her had she noticed them.

But at 4:58 PM, Greenwich Mean Time, on January 28, something went wrong. It coincided with Kate bringing the yellow piece of McFinnium into close proximity to the purple crystal she was analyzing. The purple crystal’s energy levels began to rise, imperceptibly at first, but exponentially. (This was in the data she had managed to salvage after the explosion.) By the time Kate noticed, it was too late. She later came to the conclusion that there was nothing she could have done once the resonance began, aside from perhaps destroying the McFinnium, which was not a thing she knew how to do. She could have been quicker to escape the lab, though.

Kate was humming an improvised bass line to the music and writing a note in a notebook when the resonance became noticeable. Over the course of several seconds, the violet sample began to glow brightly. Then it began to move, vibrating on its stand. She heard a faint ringing noise.

She dropped the notebook and looked over at the lab computer. Then back at the crystal, adjusting her glasses. The yellow crystal was also glowing, also ringing. Louder and brighter.

Time slowed down. She saw and heard the screen of the spectrometer crack. The hairs of her arms rose on end, and she felt the static crawling in her hair even though it was wrapped up into a bun. She smelled burning metal and smoke. Sparks flew from nearby machines. The yellow crystal shuddered on the nearby table as arcs of crackling electrical energy crawled out from it. A sound like faint resounding chimes rang in the eerie silence.

Kate was surprised when the cold glass of the window broke against her arms. She was diving through it. When had she decided to move? She couldn’t remember. At almost the same instant that the glass broke, her lab exploded behind her.

There was little heat in the explosion, but there was a wild release of strange energy. The shockwave hit her as she crashed through the window and sent her tumbling through the snowy field outside.

Pain. Confusion. Panic.

Cold.

She couldn’t move. She panted and whimpered, lying on her back in the snow. She felt a burning pain in her left shoulder and arm. She felt a tightness in her chest and tears on her cheeks. She heard the faint, melodious sounds of distant chimes—a beautiful sound, but underscored by a steady high-pitched whine that made her worry about her hearing.

She stared up at a shattered sky. It was full of cracks, a blurry spiderweb of fissures criss-crossing over the grey clouds overhead, still lit by twilight. The lenses of her glasses had broken.

Stupid. She had forgotten to check for resonance. The only damn thing she knew about McFinnium, and she had forgotten. She had been careless. Stupid!

Her back and legs were cold against the snow. Except under her left shoulder, where it felt warm. Was she bleeding? Was she dying? She didn’t want to die. She hadn’t met Eric yet, or Jim or Isaac. She sniffled; her body shook with little sobs. She closed her eyes…

And she opened them to darkness, some time later. No, not darkness: stars. A starry night sky. But the stars were moving…some of them drifted down and touched her face with tiny cold hands. Kate couldn’t help but smile. The snow, like stars, spun down through the darkness, lit by some light source off to her left. Calm. Quiet. Her ears no longer rang.

So peaceful. She almost forgot the pain, and her hunger, and the numb cold. She closed her eyes again, and then realized that there was a weight pressing against the right side of her body. Was it Whiskey? Without looking she reached her right arm up to touch it. It meowed in content. Callie!

Kate shook the lab glove off her right hand and pulled Callie close. Callie was warm and soft, and her purr was comforting. “I’m sorry, C-callie,” she whispered, still gazing up at the snow. “Sorry Liz, and Eric. Sorry Aunt B-becky. That was stupid.” She watched the white flakes melt on her broken glasses. “ But . The s-sun is rising somewhere.” And she’d been lucky enough to live after making a stupid mistake. She just hadn’t been careful . But now she had new data , which made her tingle with excitement. Storms always come with rainbows!

She lay in the snow for a while before attempting to get up. Shivering and clumsy from cold, hungry, bleeding and shaken, Kaitlyn Carter slowly got to her feet in a dark snowy field. Her hair, wild and matted, blew around her; part of her pretty lab coat had stained an ugly red. Lit by a light from the lab, her shadow, and the shadow of the cat at her feet, stretched out into the cold empty darkness beyond. The snow, like stars, swirled around her.

And she knew that somewhere in the world, at that very moment, a beautiful sunrise was making someone happy. Sunrises and sunsets were continually happening in a never-ending wave that washed around the planet once per day. That’s what her father had told her. And she was still alive. She would figure this out. She would make him proud.