11

Strange Clues

Dan felt his body floating, weightless. He finally opened his eyes feeling a surge of sharp stress pain shoot through his back, fearing what he'd see. His skin felt damp, sweaty. He was floating as if in a zero gravity environment. The pain of the light still hurt his eyes and he closed them again. Had he only been here for a few minutes? A few seconds? It didn't matter, he had to move. 

He made a motion like swimming with his arms and legs. The light seemed, even against the closed lids of his eyes, to fade. He breathed deeply and slowly, practicing the techniques Trillion taught him and his body flailing came under his control, panic subsiding. He thought about moving forward and slowly, he moved. The web of light and mists became fainter and then he saw something. He was still enveloped within a cocoon of light and mist but was now deep inside. He saw a portal and just beyond were two "doorways". One, to the right, was a massive vault and a metal door on one of its walls. There was a strange looking machine sitting in the middle of this vault. The other to the left was what looked like a wormhole into deep space. Above the vault door to the right was a strange symbol in metal of a planet with massively outsized rings. Or that's what it looked like to him. He couldn't possibly go to the left as he had no idea where it would take him or whether he would survive the trip and he shuttered to think what he would find at the end of it. To the right? maybe. But where was this place? He strained through the hazy and waving scene before him to suss out another clue as to what this room was and where it was located. Dan realized that he'd found something of utmost importance for his team. Things no human was ever meant to find or see.

Suddenly the vault door began to slowly open. A feeling of terror washed over Dan and he pushed himself back, so far back that he found himself pushed out of the wormhole portal and back into the boiler room. Mary was gone. What had happened to her? He remembered that someone was coming and she started screaming and he'd told her to run.

Where was she? He couldn't leave until he found her. He listened carefully for he thought he heard something. A woman's voice. A woman was screaming, Mary! perhaps his leap into the wormhole and what happened before had only occurred a few minutes ago and if that was so, he still had time to find Mary! He followed the sound. It sounded as if she was far away and drawing away even farther still. He stretched out with his feelings. He could feel her terror and even. . .anger? But she was no longer in the building. She must have been somewhere outside. 

The place was dark. he sensed that all of the matter that made up the space had re-shifted and energy was seeping all over and through it from different places and different life forms. He could feel it and his own perception growing more powerful in his fear and anger. Dan looked around desperately as Mary's screams grew more distant. Around the corner was a tank of gasoline and beyond was a room that looked like a small closet. He pushed open the door. It was full of tools and other odds and ends, and he saw several bottles of grain alcohol. Seething with rage he turned and gazed at the pulsing wormhole energy and then he snatched several bottles of alcohol from the shelf, picked up the can of gasoline and got to work.

. . .

In the middle of the night no one saw a tiny figure running from the burning building, now a bloom of red- orange waves of light and fury. Deep inside it seemed that an earthquake would erupt. Several figures came running out of the building while he watched behind an abandoned boxcar on the tracks. These were not human though they may have looked it. He could feel their alienness and see their red outlines as clearly as he could see the full moon. He discerned that this was a small hive of redshifter activity and some of them had taken Mary. Most were burning inside the inferno. The other figures screamed in agony, their cries as beastly and alien as them. Strangely he didn't care, nor did he feel afraid, not in the midst of his anger. But one figure had stopped and looked toward his hiding place as if it had sniffed him out, and pointed and screamed a horrible scream, piercing like a crow's screech and then it stumbled and fell, burning. Dan's heart was burning, swelling with emotion as he felt it's own dwindling rage and the fear of the death engulfing it. This was a battle and a mighty war would have to be waged. It wouldn't do to hesitate against them for they wouldn't hesitate against destroying humans. He remembered his ordeal with the thugs on the waterfront. From far off he heard sirens approaching. It was time to go. Dan crept away from the burning inferno and deep into the night to track Mary. He was responsible for bringing her out here. He had to find her.

And he had to warn the others of the important clues he'd found.