*Aiden:* *5 September, wy593 - Sagan Advanced Research Laboratory, Pershing, Simmons* You and Rich stare at the message from the Navy in silence. > [!Note] > TO: Dr. Lee, Dr. Harlan > CC: Dir. Alvarez > > Your request to send a high-energy research team to the Solace system has been denied. > Discontinue these inquiries immediately. > > *Office of Advanced Defense Research* >*Whistler Defense Force* The "*or else*" seemed strongly implied. "I'm out of ideas," Rich grumbles, "we're at a standstill until we can reproduce the lensing phenomenon." You grit your teeth. Project Monarch had made astronomical advances in sub-cellular interfaces based solely on what Rich had taken to calling "Aiden's Religious Experience", but the neural mesh that you *know* is possible has been elusive. Without the ability to recreate the phenomenon and actually record the electrochemical interactions you observed, the research is at a dead-end. You tap your glass against the table in frustration. "We can't stop now, we're quite literally on the verge of the next phase of humanity." Rich *harumphs* bemusedly. "You'll figure out another way. Or the next guy following in your footsteps will. That's how this is supposed to work. Besides," he says, lightly kicking your foot under the table, "you cured Zacharias Syndrome...like...it'll be wiped out of the genome in a generation." You snort. "Christ, take the win, Aiden! This research has ended something that's plagued hundreds of thousands for six centuries. They're going to give you the prize for it, you know. The committee's already reached out to me." "There's a link between our minds and *n*-dimensional spa-" "I know that, you stubborn twit. But you're not getting the answer from Solace." You get up from your chair and stretch. "I have a few more calls to make." --- *17 December, wy593 - Whistler Exploration Corps Headquarters, Skyward, Whistler* Director Alain Dubois gives you a level stare from behind his desk. "They told me you were coming." "Who?" "They told me you'd made a dozen formal requests to go back to Solace and that you'd ask me if I could help." "Can you?" Dubois glances away from you, perhaps looking out the window to the city or some bit of art on his wall, you're not sure. "You know Wei went a little crazy too..." "I'm not crazy Al-" "...he's partnered up with Cordova and they're tearassing around the Reach looking for Aliens. Nobody's happy about it, but they've found half a dozen Tritium and Feludinite sites so they're being tolerated." "Tolerated by who? What the fuck is going on out there?" Alain tears a flimsy off the top of a small pad and writes something on it. "This is the number of a crisis therapist we use when really smart people run into really weird shit..." "Goddammit Al!" "...I want you to talk to him. Please, Doc." He folds the flimsy carefully and slides it across the desk to you. You swipe it up and into your pocket as you stand to leave. "This is fucked up, Al," you snarl from the door. "Situation normal," he responds quietly. "Read that number when you're calmer." Half an hour later, you're fuming in the back of an air taxi headed to the Elevator. You pull the note out of your pocket. > [!Note] > They removed an artifact from Solace. The lensing is gone. Black site under U-Grove. "Holy fuck," you whisper to no one in particular. --- *7 January, wy594 - Sagan Advanced Research Laboratory, Pershing, Simmons* Cara's recorded message plays on the screen. > [!Note] > You are so completely full of shit. "Merry Christmas, congratulations on making full-bird Colonel, and hey would you mind checking out the high energy research lab at the University?" > > What the fuck is wrong with you? I'm trusting that you're too fucking dense to know the absolute honey-soaked, dick-withering, ratfuck shitstorm that was going to erupt out of General Gallagher's asshole for my simply putting that query into the goddamned MILNet. > > Whatever the fuck you're looking for, it's classified so high the fucking classification is classified. Motherfuckers in suits showed up at my door, Aiden! Suits! I'm pretty sure if I'd been a grunt instead of in command of this whole goddamned planet I might have been well and truly dis-a-fucking-peared. > > Listen Doctor Jekyll, I know the shit that went down in that place whose name I'm not even going to fucking utter at this point fucked you up something bad. I love you, I want you to be whole, but you need to get yourself religion or some pills or something because you are on a dark motherfucking path. > > Your ass is flagged, Doc. Crawl into a hole before it's too late. --- *26 March, wy594 - IBI Business Office, Eriksson Station, Whistler* "What kind of artifact?" Jack asks with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know. Something that was causing the gravitic disruptions." "You're scared, I can tell." "I'm pissed. Dubois is scared. Hell, Cara's scared." "Then you should be fucking terrified." "Yeah...maybe." You sink into the seat, exhausted. Being honest with Jack was your last hope. "This is that important to you?" "Yeah, Jack, it's change the futur..." "Future of humanity important, yeah, I heard you the first time. Okay. There are one or two people on Grove who'll still talk to me. I'll put out some feelers. It's going to be tough - something's brewing on Grove, something bad." "Is that what the Bureau thing was about?" "Yeah, they got the wrong guy this time, but they're on to something." --- *14 August, wy594 - Sagan Advanced Research Laboratory, Pershing, Simmons* You stare dumbstruck at the blast door in front of you. Beyond the viewport there's nothing but an uncontained plasma jet. "Rich..." you sputter. The alarms are screaming. The entire lab dome had cracked like an egg. Everything was gone. Either lost to vacuum or consumed in the unquenchable fire of the high energy collider. Someone was pulling at your arm. [[Bhavesh Sinai|Bhavesh]], one of the lab assistants. He'd obviously been woken by the explosion and ran from the dormitory in shorts and a t-shirt. "Doctor Harlan!" he cries, yanking at your arm. "The coffee...we were out of coffee..." You're in shock. "Went to the commissary for coffee." "Doctor Harlan," Bhavesh presses, more urgently, "this door isn't going to hold, we need to clear the lock or we could lose the hab!" Your spacer's instincts finally kick in and you allow yourself to be half-led, half-dragged a hundred meters through the passage back to the dormitory dome. Bhavesh seals the airlock and sets off the explosive bolts on the throughway so the fire won't have a way to cross. You collapse into a chair in the break room and stare out the window as the lab dome is consumed. "Rich..." --- *14 November, wy594 - Sagan Advanced Research Main Campus, Whistler* Jack is on the screen. "Every route of inquiry I have has dried up, many of them violently. We need to stop this. Listen, I've been thinking. That Sagan Prize is coming your way. I'm going to have Dirk make you famous." "What? Why?" "Famous people rarely go missing under mysterious circumstances." "What about lab explosions? Do famous people die in lab explosions?" "Aiden..." "Yeah. Yeah I know. Sorry, I know you're trying to help. Thank you." "Keep your head down for a while, okay?" "Yeah. Yeah. Message received." --- *7 February, wy602 - Grove* Dirk is on watch, and you've locked yourself into the tiny captain's quarters of *Hamster* watching a camera feed from the helmet of one Staff Sergeant Peter Xu, formerly of the Grove Planetary Defense Force, now open for hire to anyone who doesn't make him "pick a side in this mess". He and four other soldiers of fungible loyalty were making their way to the sub-levels of the University of Grove High Energy Research Lab - which had been abandoned for months since the [[Grove Independence Army|GIA]] uprising. You're paying Xu's team exorbitantly - and getting them off the planet - if they can arrive at a certain spot at a certain time carrying a certain item or items. Jack had refused to help you make connections on Grove, insisting that you keep your mind on the rescue - but Tomoe and Julian had been down there with the two sleuths for a month so you had plenty of time to do it yourself. You watch the small team arrive at the bottom of the stairs and move into a kill box disguised as a utility room. *"You smell propellant, Sarge?"* *"Yeah."* *"Well....shit...."* "Control," came Xu's half-whisper, "we've got two bodies here. Unmarked utilities. Looks like a brief firefight. Couldn't have happened long ago - no more than a day, probably just hours." Your jaw drops along with the cold feeling in the pit of your stomach. *Hours? After all this time, you miss it by hours?* "Intel, Sergeant, anything you can find." "Roger that." The men move in and begin a sweep of a very small facility. Dormitory. Civilian clothes. University IDs. Galley. Two offices that you'd bet your PhD were those of the two head researchers. No names. No paper. No computers. At the end of a short hall the men find a number of bodies behind a barricade. Five more soldiers, and two older men wearing the sort of protective gear one wears when messing about with spacetime in a lab. "Control, still no IDs or data storage devices anywhere. This place has been swept clean." Something catches your eye. "Sergeant, pan back to the old man." Xu complies, turning back to look at one of the researchers. He's very old, but didn't look frail, at least not until he took bullets to his chest and neck. "Anything?" You sigh. "Yes. That's Philip MacGregor." "Should I know who that is?" "He invented the Jump Drive." "Oh. Shit." "Yeah. Let's see the lab." The men move into the lab but you're not expecting much. You've played with the most advanced tools in this arena of science and they're all present, accounted for, and thoroughly wrecked. *"Sarge, got a storage room back here, looks like a bank vault."* "You get that, Control?" Your heart skips a beat. "Let's see it." Sergeant Xu finishes up in the lab and heads back into what appears to be a materials storage vault. You've seen fewer precautions taken with pathogens that could wipe out humanity. While he's on the way you hear more chatter from one of the men. *"Here we go, this whole room is labelled Artifact Sigma. November, Golf, Quebec, Juliet."* Xu finally makes it into the room in question. It was divided into two large bays roughly the size of a ground car labelled "Golf" and "Juliet", one the size of a foot locker labelled "Quebec", and a small case on a pedestal marked "November". Besides that, the room was empty. "We're sweeping the rest, but I think whoever got here first cleaned the place out." "You're probably right. Go ahead and clear out and get to Laurel. I'll get you rendezvous info for your ride off planet." "Roger that." *"Hey Sarge? I think this place is rigged...."* *"What?"* An instant later, a ball of fire erupts into the vault and Xu's feed goes blank. You gasp and jerk so violently you float away from the terminal. You double and triple check. All five feeds are gone. "Shit..." you whisper in shock. Then the rage comes. "SHIT! FUCKING SHIT FUCK!!!" You tear off your headset and throw it so hard it bounces off the desk and floats off to back of the room. A moment later there's a quiet knock on the door. "FUCKING WHAT?!?!" "Jeez," drawls Dirk from the other side of the hatch, "I don't know who poured sand in your vagina, but Sherlock and She-lock down there came through. They think they found Cara. They're heading out there now." You take a few deep breaths, rage and guilt mixing with a spark of joy in the pit of your stomach. It's such a weird feeling, it almost clears your head. "Astounding. Let's make sure we're ready." "Fuck yeah," crows Dirk, "I wanna go home." "Yeah," you mutter, staring at the five blank feeds on the display. "Home."