Dark Energy: The Mortal Fracture

CHAPTER TEN: DRAGON LINES

Alaska – Late Winter 2011

The flight back to the research camp was bittersweet. On the one hand, it was exciting that their research had produced results that could be tested in the field, but on the other hand, the level of danger that the team would now be working under was severe. Wasi felt the tension of the impending escalation of danger deep within his being. He watched Sade who seemed unaware of how much things were about to change. She seemed happy and excited, two emotions he rarely witnessed in her. This change in her personality was attractive and enticing, and he very much envied the naivety that she displayed in her enthusiasm.

While Wasi wallowed in his agony, Sade stared eagerly out the side window of the airplane watching the sun dip below the horizon. At this point, the night took over the landscape and for everyone on the plane, the world seemed to disappear beneath them. This was not the case for Sade who, to her own surprise, was still able to see forms on the ground.

“Wasi, come here,” she said as she beckoned her colleague to her side of the plane.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he sat down next to her.

Sade pointed out the window at the ice flow. “Look at that,” she said, “I haven’t seen a heard that big in my life.”

Wasi leaned over Sade and looked out the window. He strained his eyes as hard as he could but he couldn’t make out anything but darkness and shadow. “I don’t see anything.”

“Nothing?” she asked curiously.

Wasi settled back in his chair. “What did you see?” he asked as he pulled out a notebook and a pen.

“It looked like a heard of caribou, maybe about 1,000 head.”

“How much detail can you see?” he asked trying to gage the extent of her new visual perception.

Sade looked out the window and tried to convey to Wasi what she saw.

“I can see some color, but mostly I see contrasts of light and dark. Movement seems to make some of the images easier to identify. It doesn’t look like night vision or black and white. I don’t know how to explain what I see. It’s not like anything I’ve seen before.”

Wasi tugged gently on Sade’s arm to get her attention as another passenger leaned in to eavesdrop on the conversation.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this now. Here,” he said as he handed her his notebook. “Keep a log of what you are seeing and we can talk about it when we get back.”

Sade took the notebook and returned her attention back to the new territory that stretched out in front of her.

Wasi reclined in his chair and asked, “What did the raven mean?”

“It meant that we were being watched,” Sade said as she jotted down notes about her observations.

“Why a raven?” Wasi asked.

“When I first met Kim he was minoring in mythology at the University of Montana. His favorite body of mythology was Norse mythology. One of the most powerful gods in these legends was Odin. He was referred to as many things, including Odin the Wanderer. To keep tabs on what was happening in his world he had two ravens, Hugin and Muninn, who would fly around gathering information for him. The raven in the bathroom was a message from Kim that we were being monitored.”

“How did Kim get the message to you if he’s laid up in the hospital?”

“We are not working alone.”

#

Martin’s Office

Martin sat behind his desk staring out through the small window in his office. Snow was falling and ice was slowly taking over the glass. As the window turned opaque from the frost, he felt a coldness enter his office. It felt as if all the heat had been sucked out of the room and all that remained was the cold emptiness of space. Even the sound of the old grandfather clock that sat in the corner of his office seemed to go frigid, leaving a silent void in place of its rhythmic tic-toc, tic-toc.

“Martin,” a voice sounded from the doorway. “We need to talk.”

The hair on Martin’s arms stood on end and his heart stopped. His time had run out.

#

Arctic Research Camp

After a short flight, Sade and Wasi finally landed at their research camp. A shaggy little dog ran out to greet them.

“Hey, there,” Sade said as she bent down to greet the little dog.

Datz jogged out to welcome them back. “How’s Kim doing?” he asked as he grabbed Sade’s duffle bag.

“He’s giving the hospital staff hell, but nothing out of the norm for him,” Sade said.

“When is he coming back?” Datz asked as Sade gave him a hug.

“He’s not,” she whispered. “Come on, boy,” she said prompting the little dog to follow her back to the protection of the building.

Datz immediately understood that things had changed dramatically while Sade was in Anchorage and the project was about to take a turn in a new direction. As they entered the research center and were secure within its protective walls, Datz waited for an update on the project.

“So?” he inquired. “Where are we now?”

“In a very good spot,” Sade said as she entered the laboratory.

“Why do I doubt that?” Datz asked mordantly.

She handed him the notes from their experiments and smiled proudly as he browsed through the pages. Reading through the notes, his face lit up, “So you found the missing piece?”

“Yes we did.”

What now?”

“I need you to work on a few tech projects for me while Wasi works on the serum production. I want to field test the results in two days. We are really running against the clock so the sooner you can figure the tech end out the better,” Sade remarked.

“Okay, I’m on it,” he said as he disappeared to his tech lab.

“What about me?” Wasi asked.

“We don’t have much time to work with so let’s push the limit to 10,000UI/kg body weight. I know this is like playing with death, but if we max out on the deoxycholic acid and amp up the electrical stimulation then we should be okay, don’t you think?”

Wasi just stared at her trying to determine how to offset the risks she was proposing, and then he replied, “Sure, I can just hook you up to a car battery.”

Sade understood that his sarcasm was a symptom of his concern, but they really were in an all or nothing situation that required drastic measures. “Can you make it work?”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

#

Later That Night

“Are you ready for this?” Wasi asked as he prepared the serum. “This time it’s going to hurt. The serum is thicker than you are used to.”

“It’s what has to be done,” Sade reassured him as she braced herself for the painful injection.

As the thick serum was pushed into her veins, her body fought against it. Her vascular system contracted and choked in desperation as it strained to move the retinol molasses through her body. Sade gripped the edge of the chair, digging her fingernails into the wood and gouging out evidence of her discomfort.

“How are you doing?” Wasi asked as he squatted down in front of her and lightly touched her shoulder.

Sade pulled away from his touch as if her skin burned from the contact. “Don’t touch me,” she pleaded as she tried to will away the pain.

“Hang in there, it’ll be over in just a minute,” Wasi tried to reassure her, but in reality, he had no idea how long it would take for the pain to pass, or if it would pass.

Sade screamed from the pain and fell from the chair on to the floor. The fall was so hard that it cracked the plaster cast protecting her broken wrist. This fracture was ignored, as her possession by the pain intensified, and her body was thrown into spastic convulsions and contortions. Then in one violent contraction, she vomited on the floor black bile that resembled tar.

Wasi moved towards her to help, but as he approached his energy field crossed hers causing a wave of crackling pain to radiate over the surface of her skin. “Stop. Stay away,” she gagged as she tried to regain control over her movements.

He stopped and took a step back, waiting for permission to help. Sade squirmed in the slime that had been purged from her body as she tried to find enough traction to draw herself up onto her knees. “Can you get me a washcloth, please?” she asked as she finally pulled herself up to a sitting position.

“Yeah,” he said as he left to retrieve the washcloth.

Sade closed her eyes and felt the serum interact with her cells. She could feel the cells draw in the serum in languid slurps, but as they reached their upper intake limits they became sluggish and exhausted. She groped for the edge of the chair and pulled herself back onto its seat. She leaned against her elbows and rested while she waited for Wasi to return.

Upon his return, he gently wiped the black bile from her body. She seemed frail and delicate to him, especially when the features of her body were compared to his own.

“I need the electro-acupuncture treatment. I can feel my cells starting to burst,” she said weakly as she leaned against his body.

Wasi lifted her out of the chair and placed her onto the exam table. He removed her soiled clothing revealing her pale torso and helped her to lay back on the table. Softly he cleaned her skin with an alcohol swab and inserted the acupuncture needles along the length of her body. After making the necessary electrical connections, he turned on the power source. The system hummed with current, but Sade felt no response.

She turned to Wasi and said, “Turn it up.”

Wasi complied and turned the dial to its highest setting. Sade arched her back in response to the pleasure derived from the electrical stimulation. The ends of the broken bones in her wrist were electrified, and their raw ends tingled and burned as new cells propagated, knitting the damaged pieces back together. She clenched and extended her fist repetitively in response to this cellular activity as if each movement was helping to pump the curative elixir in her body over the new bone and muscle growth.

The sensations that overtook her body were like nothing she had felt before. It was like hot fluid being drawn from her liver up to her brain at which time her brain came alive with new purpose. After an hour of electrical stimulation the machine clicked off and Sade and Wasi shared the silence of the moment.

“What now?” Wasi asked breaking the vow of silence.

“We wait until its dark and then we see what there is to see,” she said as she broke away the remnants of the plaster cast from her arm.

#

Cargo Bay Door – ARC 2011

It was early spring and the balance of light and dark was shifting. This forced Sade, Wasi, and Datz to wait for twilight to come before they could leave. The three stood anxiously at the cargo bay door watching for the moment when they would be released into the wilds, like a pack of dogs ready to go on a run.

“So how does it work?” Sade asked Datz in regard to the new gadget he developed.

“The sensor will track your ability to focus on objects at various levels of light exposure. It will keep a record of what focusing capability your eyes register at each descending level of light. This will tell us how far your EM spectrum sensitivity has been extended and what limits your vision still has,” Datz responded.

“Wasi?”

“Yeah?” he responded.

“Things will be heating up out there so I need you to watch for hazards on the ice,” Sade suggested.

“I’m on it.”

The light began to fade and twilight was at hand.

“Let’s head out then,” Sade said as she opened the cargo bay door and the team exited the controlled safety of their research facility.

#

Arctic Tundra

The ice cap of the Arctic was still frozen and harsh, but the promise of life that the light brought with it had awakened a few of the mammals that called the frozen north home. An arctic fox scampered across the snowfield chasing the last shadows of the day as it searched for a cozy place to bed down for the long night. The team had driven out about ten miles from their camp to an area that they could use for testing Sade’s visual acuity. It was flat and open, and it provided the most gradual decrease in light possible.

Wasi positioned himself about a half-mile from Datz and Sade and stood guard for any approaching threats, natural or manmade. He stayed in contact with Sade via a short-wave radio which they had used many times in the past. Datz stayed close to Sade as he monitored the operation of his latest invention. The readings were bright on his LED screen so he stayed far enough away from Sade so that it would not skew the results of her vision test.

As the light faded, Wasi spotted trouble on the horizon. A large male polar bear was actively feeding on a seal carcass.

“Wasi to Sade,” he called over the radio.

“Sade, go ahead.”

“We have a polar bear about three miles north by northeast on an active kill site. Stay alert. I’ll let you know if there’s movement. Over.”

“Copy that, Wasi. Over and out.”

“Is there something wrong?” Datz asked as he fine-tuned his instruments.

“No, let’s keep going,” she lied.

Wasi fixed his eyes on the polar bear and its behavior. The bear was digging through the warm fat that insulated the seal’s body searching for the most delectable morsels. This bear was healthy and big, and it was used to getting its way even during the toughest of conditions. Noticing that its attention was not fully on its kill, he watched as its eyes rolled back in its head with every sensual bite of flesh and then quickly refocused on the horizon after each swallow. Wasi’s skin tingled and his heart rate increased when the bear stopped eating and lifted its nose to the air. It took several short sniffs in the air and then it locked onto a target. The bear shifted its posture, hunching its back and digging its claws into the ice and snow. Wasi knew that it was preparing for a fight.

He traced the vicious gaze of the polar bear to its target, Sade and Datz.

“Son of a bitch,” he said to himself as he pulled the short wave radio to his mouth. “Wasi to Sade, come in.”

“Go ahead,” she responded.

“You need to move back, the bear has locked onto your scent.”

“Repeat,” Sade replied in a static laden response.

“You need to move back, the bear has locked onto your scent.”

The reply was nothing but static.

“Damn it,” he cursed as he started running towards the team waving his arms and yelling for them to move back.

Sade and Datz were trying to figure out the equipment problem when they heard Wasi yelling in the distance. Datz raised his binoculars to his eyes and examined what Wasi was up to. Then he saw the polar bear in full gallop heading towards them.

“We need to get out of here,” Datz said as he pulled Sade to retreat from their position.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Bear!” he said as he took off running. “Come on!”

Sade started running after Datz, but her curiosity enticed her to look back at the bear. As her eyes locked onto the predator approaching her, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned towards it. The bear seemed to be lit up in a bright lemon yellow ball of light as it streaked across the darkened landscape.

“Sade, get out of there!” Wasi yelled.

He shot his rifle into the air trying to scare off the bear’s charge, but it was to no avail. The bear was focused on confronting Sade as his opponent, and nothing was going to stop him short of death. Sade’s intense connection with the bear was cut short, however, when it suddenly changed courses and headed on a new bearing to the east. As the bear disappeared on the horizon, Wasi reached Sade’s position.

“What the hell do you think you were doing? It could have killed you.” Wasi complained panting from his cold sprint.

“Why did it change course?” was all that Sade said.

“What?”

“Why did it change course? It doesn’t make sense.”

At that moment Sade noticed the soft gray snowfall that had taken over the landscape. She wiped away the flakes from her face and immediately realized that they were in a micrometeorite shower. She looked at the particles that had fallen onto her hand and felt the material. It was similar to what she collected in Antarctica. She looked up at the sky and saw the Aurora Borealis reacting to the meteorites that were breaking up in the atmosphere. She watched as a larger piece of the meteor streaked across the sky and landed in the direction that the bear ran.

“Come on,” she said as she pulled at Wasi’s arm to follow her.

Datz saw the two run to the east so he followed. After running about a mile from their starting point, the three stopped and tried to figure out which way to go.

“I don’t see anything,” Wasi said as he scanned the horizon through his binoculars.

The men scouted around trying to catch their breath. Sade too was scanning the horizon which seemed barren and unremarkable, but as she climbed to the top of an embankment she was struck with the vision of a white light emanating from a crater about three miles in front of them.

“Over here,” she directed as she took off jogging towards the crater.

The meteor had landed east of the team. Around the perimeter of the crater was an ash field that was eating away at the snow. As Sade approached the outer ash ring she could see sparks of white light shooting sporadically from the material. She crossed over the ash carefully, fully aware of how unstable the micrometeorites could be.

“Be careful,” she directed the other two as they approached the vortex of the crater.

In the center of the crater nested a meteorite the size of a softball. It was visibly glowing from the heat contrast between its outer shell and the frozen ice. As the ice melted around the meteorite Sade noticed that it radiated a vortex of energy that only she could see, but that the others could feel. Sade threw her goggles into the rotating vortex and it levitated them into the air 100 feet before tossing them to the ground.

“Let’s take a sample back to the lab, but be careful. Try to keep it dry,” Sade remarked.

#

Antarctica –2004

Martin woke up on the ice sheet blinded by the frozen blood that covered his eyes. He pawed at the bloody icicles that cascaded over his eyes and struggled to make sense of what had just happened. He called out, “Eisla!”

As he crawled on his hands and knees he felt around, searching for her, but instead of a body, he felt an energy field. Drawn in by the energy, he sat inside its embrace. A bright white light spun above him, radiating warmth that gently melted away the blindfold made of frozen blood. Finally, his surroundings were revealed to him.

Martin stood up and marveled at the spinning vortex that he had entered. The spinning energy not only comforted him, but it also seemed to initiate the healing process. Blood and fluid oozed out of the wounds as the light from the vortex washed over him mingling with his personal electrical field and resurrected him as a new entity.

As he looked up into the spinning plasma vortex above him, ball lightning shot out of the vortex and skipped across the ice. Without warning the vortex drew up into the sky leaving Martin alone. Then it dove into the ice, carving out a 20-meter tunnel that traveled from the ice to the bedrock, three miles down. Without the healing presence of the energy force, Martin’s wounds seized and wept with blood and other fluids, devastated by their abandonment.

Completely entranced by the marvel in front of him, Martin ran to the edge of the crevasse and peered wantonly into the hole disregarding his severe injuries and oblivious to the pain they caused. As he breathed in the energized air swirling out of the crevasse, he was connected to a source of intelligence that communicated with him on a cellular level. Cell by cell he was filled with divine knowledge priming him for experiences that would simultaneously save and damn his soul.

Overwhelmed by the amount of information that he had literally been bathed in, he was frightened by what he now knew. He rushed back towards the snowcat to find refuge. As he approached the vehicle he heard Sade calling for him. Running over to her, he fell into her arms.

“Martin, thank god you’re all right. What happened to you?” she asked as she examined his body for injuries.

“I’m all right,” he lied as he took control of her examination.

“We need to get back to the camp.”

As the snowcat bounded across the icy tundra, the earth shook and shifted. A vine of gold ore crept up the side of the crevice, fusing with the ice and marbling it with metallic evil. The vine thickened and spread around the crevice, charging the ice crystals with an energy source the earth knew and feared. The ice chasm moaned in response to the weight of the golden ore and collapsed in on itself sealing the secret of what Martin had just unleashed.

#

To be continued...