Chapter seventy-two
Souls in Transit- Part One
Jim Stuart gritted his teeth and disposed of two mercenaries in his path and a droid, while explaining the situation to Lizbeth over the open communication channel.
He had continued on his own.
While the woman was fighting with Shin, Start was targeting the LC2 sector, where one of the subjects had been transported. It was 50/50 that it was either Oxy or the professor. Shin would go to the other chamber, once he took care of the woman who had attacked him.
In a way it was a miracle that she had chosen Shin as her target. She had not hesitated. She had launched herself at him and had passed inches away from Stuart, ignoring him completely. Although on the other hand that was a miracle. The truth was that Jim Stuart didn't see himself standing up to her.
He had read the reports of what had happened at the Pyrene Station and how she had fought two of the best agents. No, he definitely didn't stand a chance against someone like that.
Especially considering the sounds behind him. Those rumbles and tremors were making dust fall from the ceiling. He didn't want to imagine what was going on back there.
Although, on the other hand, did those who were carrying out the whole thing know who Shin was, and had determined that he would be more dangerous? That was also something to consider.
Lizbeth had contacted Stuart through the Neurowire, but he could only tell her what he had seen.
Apparently Granger and Jade were already on target and were taking care of the mercenaries and droids guarding the main surface access elevator. Only Lizbeth's team had yet to reach the core room and they were already there but they were in the middle of a fight that would last a little longer.
Jim Stuart continued running and looked back.
It was a little strange to him.
He had barely encountered any resistance on his way. Just to make sure, he checked the map and corroborated that he was on the right track.
If they were right and the abductees had been separated in those chambers, there was not much security. Was the energy areas and the elevator more vital?
He couldn't think about it. Not when he was so close to his target. And finally pondering about it he had arrived.
He entered a corridor, at the end of which a steel door awaited him. The door was plainly unmarked or anything of the sort. On one side of the wall were several security signs with smudged and dirty letters and other regulations indicating that in the past it had been part of a neutrino detector.
“Neutrino detector?” He wondered in confusion. He checked the map quickly, indeed that had been part of a pool for the detection of those once almost undetectable particles.
Stuart looked around and noticed that there were parts of that corridor that looked newer than the parts he had come through. The cracks had been covered with new reinforced coatings. Even the door looked shiny.
Stuart approached the door and with his Neurowire took some readings. There was nothing to indicate that there were any traps or anything like that. He took a few more steps closer and touched it.
Almost instantly he heard the devices on the door and stepped back, drawing his weapon. To his surprise no traps appeared. The door was a double door and the sections opened to reveal a corridor on the other side. On the other side of the double doors no ambush awaited him either. Only an ultraviolet light in the corridor and a smaller door at the end.
Jim entered the corridor cautiously, but began to pick up the pace as he went, feeling his heart pounding.
It's a 50/50... he thought as he reached the final door.
It opened and Jim entered the final part of the place.
It was blacker than the darkest night.
He fell to the floor as he entered. He thought he had entered a gigantic hole and would fall into the void. But that did not happen. On the contrary, his face hit a cold surface. He was on the ground but the black totality of the place had made him dizzy. The door had closed behind him so there was no light to orient himself.
He turned on his night vision. It did not work. There was no radiation of any kind and no ambient light for the night vision to work. It was strange, but he turned it off and then turned on one of the lights on his clothing.
Infinity appeared before his eyes.
He was surprised to see the room. It was a gigantic mirrored chamber at least ten meters high, by ten meters wide and long. It gave him a strange sensation to see his reflection and that of the whole room repeated ad nauseam as if he were in a kind of meshed structure, since the only thing that gave a frame of reference in those reflections was the edges of the room. In the center, resting on the floor, was an elongated capsule no more than two meters long.
But something else struck him as he set foot inside the room. It was that feeling of dizziness. It gave him a strange sensation, but it was one he was used to.
A distorted space. A distorted space and a mirrored room, he thought.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. The last time he had seen that had been in the Sil Moore case. It couldn't be that it was a mirror box, could it?
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He walked to his right, crouching on the nearest edge.
His fears intensified. It had an edge of a few centimeters. He didn't know what material it was, but examining it quickly he noticed it. There were distorted engravings on those edges. The distortion of the engravings was because the space had been distorted.
They had turned a neutrino detection chamber into a mirror box. Why? What was it supposed to do there?
He felt sweat running down his temples and stood up. He hurried and ran to the capsule.
Someone was inside for sure. Whether it was the professor or Oxy, he had to get them out of there and get away from that place.
It didn't look good.
***
Lizbeth wondered how Shin and Stuart were doing when she opened her eyes. Through the door where they had to go, a girl with messy brown hair had just entered the room. Her eyes were slightly lost, as if she didn't understand what had happened.
“Oxy?!” Lizbeth said in surprise and Oxy looked at her, as if she didn't understand anything.
The truth was that the sickbay wing where Oxy's mind reading had been performed to extract the data was close to where they had to go.
Oxy had just woken up a few seconds ago
She had woken up a little dizzy and confused and didn't understand where she was. The last thing she remembered was passing out in the tent in the middle of the night and that Professor Lee Reubens was at her side.
After that, she had woken up in a place she didn't remember at all.
There was no one around her. Or rather there were, but they were lifeless bodies lying on the ground.
Oxy had looked but could not understand what had happened. What was she doing there?
She had left the infirmary with hesitant steps and had passed a short corridor completely deserted.
Until she came to the door to find Lizbeth and the others.
Looking at her, Lizbeth was glad they had found her, but another doubt assailed her. If Oxy was there, who was the other guy in one of those chambers that had been transported just an hour ago?
She tried to reach Stuart one more time, but was unable to establish communication.
***
The pug had rounded the last bend in the tunnel, while evading the obstacles in the path. His size was three times what it had originally been and his mirrored dark crystal fur glistened in that space of destruction.
He had been dodging the fallen bodies of those mercenaries and pieces of the droids blown to bits. Although those debris had been disappearing in the last stretch and almost nothing had impeded his path in that part.
Yes. He felt it.
Whatever it was, he felt he was reaching his destination. The place where for some reason he had to be.
He entered a hallway and after running a few meters he found himself in front of that security door, which opened as soon as he approached it.
The pug stepped through and walked down the hallway in the ultraviolet light until he reached the final door.
That door opened and he stepped into the room illuminated only by a series of lights that moved in sync.
The door closed behind him and he looked around.
There was a man kneeling in front of a somewhat elongated object, in what appeared to be the center of the room. Beyond that another man was doing the same. He looked in every direction and the same thing was everywhere. Even underneath.
The dog looked carefully. He knew that scene.
He was inside a box that repeated the reflections ad infinitum.
He discovered himself looking at himself from different angles. And then he realized.
He had changed.
It was almost four times his size.
***
Jim Stuart barely noticed the sound of the door opening into the room. In fact he didn't so much notice the sound as the faint ultraviolet light that came from the hallway when the door opened. He was standing on the capsule trying to open it and saw the reflection on the bottom of that mirror box.
The reflection quickly disappeared when the door closed.
He stood up quickly and drew his weapon, expecting droids or perhaps mercenaries to have come for him, but what he saw surprised him even more.
“What the hell?”
Wasn't that the dog they had taken just a few days ago? No. It was different. Bigger. It didn't look the same, but he remembered that in fact while he was with that detective the others had chased a larger version of that dog. It didn't make sense.
“How did you get here?”
He had only seen the facts of that chase in Edinburgh from the case files, but if it was true that that small dog of an extinct breed could change size. But how had it gotten there? What was going on?
He could not inquire any further, because suddenly he heard a sound behind him and it made him turn around. He had been trying to hack the opening of that capsule, but had left a program running to unlock the lock. It was tightly closed, but it had finally opened.
It wasn't Oxy. It was Professor Lee Reubens, completely asleep and naked.
At that moment both Stuart and the pug could hear some mechanical sounds coming from the door.
What's going on now? He wondered, but to his amazement his Neurowire devices shut down as if they had been blocked by something.
All he got as a result was [Out of service].
As if that wasn't strange enough by itself the space began to change throughout the LC2 chamber.
What is happening now?
The first thing he noticed was that the dog had started to slowly slide towards him. It wasn't walking, it was sliding on the glass. Whatever was going on, the dog had started to whimper pitifully.
The second thing he noticed was that the reflections in the entire room had begun to warp and distort.
The transformation lasted less than fifteen seconds, but now Jim Stuart, the capsule and the strange dog were in a totally spherical room with distorted reflections of itself.
Stuart thought about it. He had no idea how strong the surface might be or exactly how the mirror was made, but he knew he would have to get out of there before it activated. If it was indeed a mirror box, who knew what could happen at any moment. He would have to shoot at the surface and destroy it. The surface was so slippery and polished that it prevented him from moving from the center to any other point. The door was far away.
No.
Stuart frowned. Where had the door gone? The door had completely disappeared too, there was no escape from that room.
When he was no longer expecting any more surprises, the unexpected happened. But the next moment he remembered.
The mirror boxes have a small part through which the light enters. That had been the way they had rescued Agent Zi when she had been trapped.
A light on the opposite top appeared and the room filled with light.
A blue electric light began to enter.
No, that was not exactly light. Or at least not in the conventional sense of the word.
What the hell is going on? Stuart shouted as he felt a heat like he had never felt before invade him. He felt dizzy and fell down. That dizziness hadn't come out of nowhere.
The whole damn space was starting to spinning now. He was in a blender. The dog appeared and appeared, becoming invisible one moment and visible the next, whimpering cries were all that could be heard, along with a buzzing sound that seemed to be increasing with that blue light that was flooding everything at the same time as the room heated.
What is this?! Jim Stuart felt like throwing up even though the synthetic body he was in.