Chapter 2 - The Past and Present in the Space Without Time

If time has stopped, if time can stop...

"Why is he here?!" The agitated woman stomped up to the portly figure she called 'Lemongrass' while pointing at Hector.

"And you are?" Hector asked.

"None of your business." She sharply responded.

"Excuse me?"

He couldn't see her face, but didn't need to. This kind of hostility wasn't new to him.

"Is he someone notable, Kayla?" Lemongrass asked languidly.

"Hell no!" She snapped. "And don't say my name out loud!"

"Now that's just wrong, miss." Hector wasn't about to take that in particular. "I am Doctor Hector—"

"Hector Richt," the brat cut him off. "Yeah, I kno—"

Hector's turn to cut her off. "You know my name and dare stand there and dismiss my work? What exactly have you contributed t—"

"A lot more good than you ever—"

"Bold talk for some no-name—"

"Why is that always how you valu—"

"Excuse us a bit." Lemongrass cut their cut-off off, before dragging that girl to a grassy patch beside the path she came from, out of sight behind a tree.

"Okay, okay, I'll chill! Quit stabbing me with the grass, they're like spikes in here! Keep this to the trail, at least!" Was the only thing he could hear.

---

"Sorry for my partner." Lemongrass returned after what would be a few minutes with that girl, her arms crossed next to him.

"Accepted." Hector nodded. "I'll apologize for my unprofessional conduct as well."

He was still incensed, but it was better to take the olive branch. It helped that he physiologically wasn't seeing red, and there were far more important things to focus on than bickering with imbeciles who obviously don't come in good faith.

"All good, Doctor Hector." He gave a dopey thumbs-up.

"Lemongrass, was it?" Hector asked. "An alias, I presume."

"That's my name." He could hear the vacant smile under his helmet. "Lemongrass is the only name I need."

"Right." Hector carried on. 

"And... Kayla." She flinched slightly as he said her name, before averting her gaze. "I don't know what you have against me personally, but I trust that whatever purpose you're here for, you have the mentality to set hard feelings aside."

She didn't open her mouth, besides a barely restrained "Tch."

He took a deep breath. "I suppose if my reputation precedes me, then you know why I'm here. I came here to see if time had really stopped beneath the Black Sphere."

"Time, huh?" He heard her mutter under her breath.

Hector grinned. "Precisely. Everyone clung to the law of physics as an ironclad rebuttal. But as we can plainly see, it is possible for time to stop."

She scoffed, more pointed than before. "That's not all, is it?"

He narrowed his eyes. "What other reason is there to be here?"

Lemongrass raised his hand. "We're also here to explore this place. We're from an adventurers' guild."

"Expedition team." She corrected.

"One of the many that went missing trying to enter the Black Sphere." Hector surmised. They didn't correct him. "Are there any others?"

"There may have been before, but right now it's just us," Lemongrass replied.

"Interesting."

There were zero credible reports of anyone ever making it out of the Black Sphere—only hoaxes and satire pieces that got misconstrued as real.

If there were others, then they must've perished somewhere.

"And that exploration has to do with whatever you discovered in that mountain?" He asked that girl.

She jolted. "Ugh, he heard that part."

Hector furrowed his brow. "What is it you're surveying, exactly?"

There was a brief silence between the two before Lemongrass spoke up. "Guess you could say we're looking for what caused this."

He motioned around him. "Why time stopped, and where it came from."

"Lemongrass," that girl started, "I don't think we should—"

"Why time stopped?"

"Oh no."

Hector let out another laugh. "Yes, I suppose that is the natural next step after getting here, isn't it?"

He thought he only had enough in him to see if time was capable of stopping. Uncovering the source of the phenomenon wasn't something he thought he'd get to see in his lifetime.

But here he still was. And these two sounded like they had a lead.

"That 'sleep tier list' of yours, is that also a part of the puzzle?"

"Oh, that's just for me."

Hector nearly stumbled over as Lemongrass pulled out that book of his again from somewhere. "I have someone to give this book to someday, when I finish recording as many places as I can."

"You speak as if you have a way out of here," Hector remarked.

Lemongrass tilted his head. "Don't you?"

"Does it look like he wants to leave?" That girl pointed at him again, looking at her colleague.

"...It wasn't a priority." Hector just said as he looked around. The mountain at the center of the island was tall, but it didn't reach past the sky, its peak shorter than the frozen waves surrounding the island.

It was theoretically possible to scale the ocean wall and come down the other side out of the Black Sphere. But the only thing beyond where time moved again was the stormy North Pacific in the middle of nowhere.

Coordinating a pickup was impossible since communication signals couldn't travel without the flow of time. And it's not like he paid that pilot to stick around.

He had figured as much, but escape from the Black Sphere seemed impossible.

But in here, the impossible is possible, Hector thought to himself with a grin before facing the two before him.

"Your destination is inside the mountain, correct? I'm coming with you."

The girl protested. "Absolutely not—"

"Sure." Just said Lemongrass. "I don't see why not."

"Lemongrass?!" She shrieked aghast.

---

"Are you sure we should be taking him along?" The girl was still hissing at her partner as they began to scale the mountain. "Isn't this a bad idea in general?!"

"He's a bit of a borderline case." Lemongrass shrugged. "Not like he wouldn't try to follow us even if we said no, Kayla."

"It's because he's borderline that—Ugh, it would've been way easier if you just pretended to be dead when you were sleeping. Or if he conveniently fell off here."

"I can hear you, you know," Hector just said from behind. She was probably rolling her eyes.

The path to the peak was fragmented. Falling rocks and debris, frozen midslide in time, formed large platforms to jump across, a trail that conveniently led to the top.

It was a precarious climb, except that it wasn't costing him much energy as each leap was done in the same eerie silence.

It was intriguing. If he were fully exempt from the stasis of time in the Black Sphere, then he imagined oxygen or fatigue would have caught up with him by now. He couldn't tell if his suit was actually still sustaining him.

But here he was still.

"Aren't you supposed to be a good climber?" The girl helped Lemongrass up after he nearly failed to make a jump.

"Not really." He yawned as he steadied himself. "I'm a Persian."

"I don't think nationality is the issue here," Hector muttered as he looked down at the beach where they came from.

He had no idea what either of them looked like under their suits, but he certainly did not have him pegged as Middle-Eastern.

Lemongrass brushed himself off. "If anything, I thought you would be the faster one, Kayla."

"You know why I'm not right now." She crossed her arms, shooting a glare back at Hector.

"Don't use me as a scapegoat for your shortcomings." He fired back.

"I don't want to hear that from you!" She retorted. That girl was remarkably easier to provoke than some of his naysayers.

She didn't show much sign of exhaustion, while Lemongrass... it was difficult to tell with him.

But if Hector wasn't feeling the lack of energy, then the same must have been true for those two who've been here even longer.

He didn't even need to ask; they'd be long dead if they were consuming energy and oxygen at the normal human rate.

Though it was hard to say if they had truly limitless energy.

...

...Limitless energy.

---

"Something wrong, Kayla?" Lemongrass asked. They were nearing the peak after what felt like hours when the girl suddenly stopped in her tracks.

"Yeah, up there." She pointed up to a distant sight in the sky. Hector stared in silence as his eyes made contact with what he thought were atmospheric specks from the perspective of the beach.

Scraps of metal were littered across the sky, along with larger broken pieces that were unmistakably those of engines, wings, and cabins.

It was the wreckage of several planes, scattered as if they were in zero-gravity orbit, locked in place. And in between those remains were people.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of them of various profiles just floating in place in the sky. Some were just sprawled like ragdolls, others were holding onto each other in their final moments, be it lover, children, or strangers, all with telling expressions.

"These..." Hector started. "These must be the airlines and passengers that went missing near the Black Sphere."

There were tragedies like this in the wake of the Black Sphere, of passengers who never got to see their destination. But seeing them with his own eyes instead of words on a report landed differently.

They must have been here for years, even longer than those two. Yet not a single person looked like they experienced a day postmortem.

Paired with the sunlight still shining down as strong as ever with unmoving rays, it was an uncanny sight.

A graveyard in the sky, forever sealed in time.

Beautifully preserved.

"They're not... trapped here forever, are they?" That girl asked softly.

"As if it's possible to retrieve them," Hector commented. They were high enough to be close to what should be the upper boundary of the Black Sphere. Perhaps they were the culprit behind his rough entry. She didn't fire back.

Lemongrass studied the sight along them. "Hm... They've all moved on to the next life by the looks of it." He responded rather casually.

Ah, they meant the afterlife.

Hector wasn't sure on what basis he was making that observation, nor why it sounded like a new sight to them.

"Are you both of faith?" He asked, knowing it was unnecessary for one of them.

The girl simply responded, more subdued than usual. "I know that I'm not above the higher powers at least. Unlike some." Some pointedness made its way back into that last remark.

"I hope you're not implying that I put myself above the divine."

She didn't respond this time, denying him an elaboration.

Not that Hector concerned himself with the divine, unless it was being used to push some unfalsifiable conclusion.

Although if dabbling with the flow of time was considered an affront to God, so be it.

"Do you believe the Black Sphere to be one of God's creations?" Hector questioned.

Lemongrass tilted his head, pausing for a moment. "It'd be easier if it were."

"What does that mean?" He was expecting him to fully agree.

"We'll find out, soon." Lemongrass turned to the girl, still facing the distant wreckage in the sky, her hands clasped together, and her head drooped down. "Kayla?"

She didn't turn their way, only muttering softly.

"I'm giving them a moment of silence before we go."

Lemongrass looked on. "They have plenty, though."

Hector took the opportunity to pay a little respect to the fallen as well.

The mystery of the Black Sphere that claimed them and countless others was just around the corner.

And importantly, the mystery of why time has stopped.