The fall of Terra fortress. Chapter 4

It was almost midnight and the cold became worse with every passing second. Lawrence was leaning on the windowsill, incapable of seeing it, but feeling the cold accumulating in the glass. Being blind had robbed her of many experiences and even when she had managed to circumvent many of the inconveniences, some of her old habits remained. For example, touching the window to feel the cold or the heat, as long as she can hold it. In a way, she found herself fascinated by the unique sensations her other senses gave. She felt it all with a vividness that she herself could not find words to describe.

Very far away the lights of the closest village had just turned off. Is common for them to use torches to have some light when there’s still some heat around, but around this time they all turn off due to the cold and the wind.

“Trevor, status report on the rocket?” She asked, taking her hand off the window as she felt the burning sensation the cold had given her.

“Is nearing the top of the dome. As Terra said, the movement became slower as soon as the rocket came near the crack.”

“And the readings? What can you tell from them?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.”

“Fascinating. You are truly a genius in your field” She said, getting up from the windowsill and nearing him in front of the machine.

“Even then, this is too strange. The rocket had enough fuel to reach the top without any inconvenience, but even when we launched it yesterday it could barely get near it. The readings say that it’s still accelerating, but it just keeps getting slower.”

“Terra did warn us about that, although she miscalculated the time it would happen in by a very wide margin”

Lawrence looked at the paper the machine was releasing with every passing second, or at least, turned her head towards it. No amount of circumnavigation could help her to read anything written on paper. Even then, math had never been one of her strengths and the technology they were working on was incomprehensible for her.

“Is there anything about this that you do understand?” she asked, hoping for anything to free her from the boredom she had been feeling for several hours now.

Trevor took the paper that was being released by the machine and examined it again.

“Well, at the very least, there’s a single thing that I can identify. The rocket is calculating a time in hours. A countdown, to be precise”

“Countdown? a countdown for what?” Asked Lawrence, moving at his side, faking as if she could read the paper.

“That, I don’t know. You know that Terra didn’t give us any details about this. She just told us to do it and deliver her the results back. What I do know is that the estimated number of hours was a lot higher when it started.”

“Thought experiment. This rocket was created to study the crack in the dome, right?”

“Yes”

“If the number keeps going down, it can’t be the number of hours before it arrives at the crack, cause that time is only going up the slower the rocket moves. By that same logic, it also can’t be the number of hours since launch.”

Trevor nodded, already guessing which conclusion she had reached.

“Is not our place to throw unfounded suspicions, but I think we are thinking the same thing” he responded.

“So, the number of hours until the dome finally breaks. But yeah, that’s just my guess. We’ll just ask her when we deliver the results” responded her, wanting to avoid the obvious implications such an event would have.

Or more precisely, the absolute uncertainty of what could be beyond the dome. Even she didn’t know, and right now she was closer to the crack than anyone else in the land.

Oh, of course. She hadn’t mentioned that part, did she?

“You know, I hid one of my spy eyes in the rocket before launch.”

“Are you kidding me? no, you can’t” He responded with disbelief, but looking at her, soon he realized she did not speak in jest.

“No, I did. And thanks to that little surveillance trick I no longer have any doubts. The crack is growing, and I think it’s cracking faster than yesterday.”

“This can’t be. The dome has been there since forever. Why would it start breaking now?”

“I have no idea. Can you imagine what would happen if it truly fell?”

“No, I can’t even picture it. Isn’t our sun fixed to the cusp of the dome? Would it fall into the desert? would we all burn to ashes, or would we have another ice age like in the old legends?”

“That isn’t even the worst part, as long as the sun doesn’t break when it falls of course. What worries me is what could be outside.”

“What could there be?”

“Exactly”

Trevor tried to think about it, but drew a blank immediately. From the oldest of all recorded history, that history that could be found in the most well preserved archives of the private library of Terra, the dome was already there. If there was anything outside, there was no one on the land who knew.

Lawrence was immersed in the same thoughts, but suddenly something caught her attention and brought her back to reality in a flash.

“Someone is approaching” She warned Trevor, taking his attention out of the machine.

“What?”

“A group of three people, no, four people are approaching the lab. I think they have torches, but there’s also a strange gust of wind surrounding them. I think they are using transmutation to keep themselves warm.”

“But who would even come here? we are in the middle of nowhere”

“Let’s do a little thought exercise. How far is Mayhem city from here?”

“I don’t know, maybe a few dozen kilometers?” Trevor answered while shrugging

“Is it possible that anyone could have seen the launch from there?”

“The rocket is really small, they would have to know where to look at to have noticed it”

“Those are a lot of words to say that it is possible. Now imagine this scenario: Mayhem was watching us from the start, saw the rocket and decided to investigate us. They couldn’t come yesterday when we launched it because he wasn’t prepared to send anyone and they decided to not send anyone in the morning because we would have noticed and escaped. Meaning, they came here in the night cause they thought we would not be able to escape from them in the darkness.”

“Why would he even do that? I don’t think science is one of Mayhem's hobbies.”

“No, but he is trying to get information from Terra. She informed me before we came here that she was organizing a meeting with him and I also saw her making a lot of calls to him in her private library.”

“Wait, you spy Terra when we are in the fortress?” He asked, bewildered by the nonchalance she had while talking about spying on their boss.

“That’s irrelevant to the point. She didn’t mention it, but we both know that both kings have spied on us in the past, and right now we are closer to Mayhem’s kingdom than Gun’s. Not even Gun would dare to traverse the land of the phantom opera just to pay us a visit.”

“Yes, but have you considered that they could simply be random travelers?”

“Trevor, get your head out of your ass for a moment and think about it. At midnight, nobody would travel through the night unless the journey had as its destination the karmic sea via a harsh and painful hypothermia.”

“I get it, you are right. But what do we do? turn off the lights and feign that we are not here?”

“No, they could try to get in and use the idea that they wanted to take cover from the cold if we make it seem like the building is empty. At this point, if they want to get in, they will, the real question is how much of a fight is going to happen up to that point.”

“Why would they? Besides, it is not as if we are doing something illegal. If they are Mayhem’s soldiers, we could reason with them. And we don’t even know if they are soldiers in the first place!”

“No, but considering the wind they are using, at least one of them is a rather skilled transmuter, so we may as well guess that they all are skilled karma users.”

“Oh. Oh my. We… are in very grave problems aren’t we?”

Only then, the true graveness of the situation sunk in for both of them. If they were up for a fight, then they were already outnumbered. Trevor looked at her expectantly, waiting for an order to follow, but nothing of the sort came from her. Instead, she let out a chilling scream while taking one of her hands to her face.

Trevor tried to catch her, but he wasn’t quite enough and she fell to the ground, still screaming. She seemed to be agonizing, but managed to keep enough control of her body to hit herself in the head with the open palm. When she did, she instantly relaxed, falling to the ground while sighing deeply while tears from the pain started forming on her eyes.

“Shit, this can’t be. Shit!”

“Law, what happened to you?! Are you ok?!”

“Next time, shut your damn mouth and try not to jinx us like that. You just had to mention problems and this happens. Shit.”

“But what happened? Was it the soldiers? Are they here?”

“No, they are still some minutes away. But the rocket just exploded. Just look at the machine, it stopped returning results now.”

“The rocket did what!”

“And my spy eye was on board with it. When it exploded, I felt as if half of my face was enveloped in flames, I can still feel the heat on my cheek. Damn.”

“Are you fine? I’ll go for the medikit”

Trevor tried to go out of the room for it, but she grabbed his arm to stop him. He looked at her in confusion, but she simply pointed herself out, trying to make him see that she needed help to get back on her feet. He lent her his shoulder, and while resting on top of the machine, they took a moment to breathe before she started speaking again.

“Don’t bother, my body is not hurt, it’s only pain. It’s really strange, it is true that when the spy eye gets damaged I can feel the pain from it, but it never was like this before.

“I don’t really get it, but does that mean you are fine now?”

“Yes, I disconnected from it manually. You know what’s the strangest part of it all? This is not the first time my eye gets caught in an explosion, but last time it did disconnect almost immediately because it got destroyed. This time I could see the fire from the blast slowly creeping on me instead of quickly expanding. How can an explosion be slow?”

Trevor took his hand to her forehead, but she didn’t seem to have a fever nor any residual effects from it. Finally, he sighed in resignation.

“You seem a little out of sorts, but you do seem to be fine. Rest a while, I’ll try to get the last registered data of the rocket before it exploded. If we don’t get at least that, Terra won’t let us hear the end of it.”

Lawrence got back on her feet, quickly recovering her balance. She started walking to the hallway by using the wall as support.

“Do your science, science man. I’ll go to warn Ernst of what’s going on. We only have a few minutes, but the mystery guys are still on their way here. If they are coming for a fight, we would do well in avoiding it. Now that the rocket is gone, there’s nothing here that’s worth protecting.”

“Meaning, get the data, delete everything else and prepare to leave. Got it.”

“Exactly, delete the data, break the machine, hide the magical wish granting jewel. You know, the usual.”

“Of course, I’ll do it after putting a rug on top of the floorboards where we hid the dead bodies. Like a thousand times before”

She snorted a little bit, but said nothing else before going out to the hallway. As much as both tried to alleviate the grave atmosphere that had formed a moment ago, neither were really in the mood to joke with each other and they failed to get rid of the growing anxiety.

Trevor couldn’t feel it when he examined her, but Lawrencce was indeed still feeling the heat of the fire on her cheek and forehead. It was steadily decreasing, but present enough to remind her of the danger they were in. She looked once again to her spy eye in the forest. The four figures were approaching rapidly, with a speed that indicated that they knew precisely where they were going even in the profound darkness of the night.

It had been a long time since she last had to fight, but she steeled herself, knowing that she would have to be their first line of the defense once they arrived.