In the center was a table cluttered with papers, photographs, and notes, which two team members were sorting through and cataloging. One was a chubby guy, and the other was a short woman who had taken off her cap, revealing the havoc the humidity had wreaked on her hair. Nobody in the room looked remotely clean.
When Adam and Vicky entered, the woman shot them a look, as if they were intruding, greeted Halstein curtly, and returned to her tasks.
Next to a humming portable generator sat a sleek, glassy control panel and four holographic monitors, starkly contrasting with the rest of the tent’s equipment. None of the equipment had a visible logo, but Adam couldn’t help wondering if any of it had been manufactured by Homam Enterprises. What an irony that would be, if that were the case!
Anderson called over one of the two guys working at the computers: a guy who stood out from the rest, not only for being the youngest and relatively well-groomed but also for having the only attractive face in the group, with vibrant red hair bright enough to cut through the darkness and large honey-colored eyes.
“This is my assistant,” Anderson introduced him.
“Luciano Green, biologist,” the guy said with a friendly nod.
Green? Huh! Us orphans really do get around, Adam thought.
“Allow me.” Luciano took their tracksuit jackets with a courteous smile and hung them on a nearby rack. “That morning chill is long gone,” he added cheerfully.
“Luciano, there’s been a change of plans,” Anderson informed him. “Mr. White will go with the lady instead of me.”
The announcement didn’t seem to faze the man, who simply nodded before opening a cabinet, pulling out the only two protective suits available, and handing them over.
Vicky unfolded hers for inspection. It was a white chemical protection jumpsuit, similar to those used in biohazard or quarantine operations, made from reinforced plastic material with some additional features—though nothing special.
“What’s so unique about these?” she asked.
“Put them on,” Halstein ordered.
“Do we really need to do it now?” Vicky frowned. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to put them on when we reach the rock?”
“No,” Halstein replied firmly. “We need to verify the suits’ systems are working properly. Unless, of course, you have an objection…”
“No objections. It’s fine.”
Adam looked at them, puzzled. “Hey, nobody needs to walk. I can fly us to the rock, carrying Miss Viveka.”
Anderson shook his head, visibly annoyed. “It seems Dr. Gabor didn’t fully explain the radiation’s effects,” he said. “The Kappa radiation from the Ita-Hu has a gravitational weight of nine units. It’s so high that it’s turned the area into a zone of intensified gravity.”
“Uh-huh. And that means…?”
“It means that if you fly into the radiation zone around the rock,” Vicky said, “even you would drop like I did yesterday with the thrusters.”
Anderson elaborated, “The intensified gravity affects anything airborne, whether propelled by combustion or gravitational manipulation. It even makes it difficult for large birds to fly. You’ll notice—there’ll be plenty of parrots just sitting still.”
“Got it. So, walking it is,” Adam muttered. “No other option, huh?”
“None, Mr. White, and believe me, we’re just as disappointed. It would’ve been quicker and easier to send a drone for the sample.”
“Well, speaking of quickness…” Vicky sat down and removed her sneakers. “Let’s get those fancy rubber boots. Just hope they fit.”
“Don’t worry,” Luciano Green said. “I think you and Dr. Anderson are the same size… Though we’d have to see if your feet are as delicate as his,” he joked softly, drawing an unexpected smile from Vicky.
That brief and rare flirtation didn’t go unnoticed by Adam, and whatever faint camaraderie he’d felt for the redheaded biologist after learning he was also an orphan went right down the drain. He pressed his lips together, took off his sneakers, and unzipped his jumpsuit.
“Can I wear it without clothes underneath?” he asked, not waiting for the likely negative response as he pulled it over his tracksuit. “I’ll try not to pass out from the heat.” After some effort wrangling his sweatpants and the suit’s material, he got it on. “Will I even be able to move in this?”
“It’s for your safety, Mr. White,” Halstein assured him.
The suits were fitted with a vertical zipper, adhesive straps, and a utility belt loaded with small tool pouches filled with utensils, miniature electric saws, pliers, and sample containers. They also featured a computerized bracelet on her left wrist, resembling an Auriga cuff.
Anderson anxiously approached Adam and began explaining the procedure, his gestures exaggerated as if he were a fussy teacher addressing an inattentive student.
Adam, though, found it hard to focus amidst the activity around him. His gaze darted from his gloved hands to Vicky, then to the red-haired biologist she was speaking with, then to Halstein’s scrutinizing stare, and finally back to the talkative, bird-like scientist in front of him.
“Using your abilities carefully,” Anderson explained, “you’ll create a small fracture in the rock, take a sample, and place it in one of the plastic vials on your belt.”
“Yeah, assuming my Fotia can penetrate the rock’s force field.”
“It will, it will,” Anderson assured him. “Dr. Gabor’s studies confirm it.”
“Just so you know, I’ve destroyed things with my powers before,” Adam warned, holding up his covered hands. “What makes you so sure I won’t fry these gloves?”
Anderson waved dismissively. “Mr. White, this fabric is specially designed to channel energetic radiation, even high-energy flows like yours. The suit’s equipment is reinforced and fully prepared for electromagnetically charged environments. Don’t worry—it’ll work flawlessly.”
Luciano Green helped Adam and Vicky adjust their transparent masks and pull the hoods over their heads.
The masks came with a built-in autonomous breathing system. Adam couldn’t help but associate the faint smell inside the mask with hospital disinfectant. That damn smell again! Lately, everything in his life seemed to bring back memories of emergency rooms.
At the control panel, Green activated the small cameras mounted on the hoods like a third eye. Two of the monitors displayed live feeds of what Adam and Vicky were seeing.
“I’ll supervise your movements from here,” Rune Halstein announced, pulling a plastic chair to the console with regal composure, as if it were his office throne. Crossing his legs, he lit a cigar. “You’re wearing a fortune in those suits. Take care of them.”
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“Oh, so they’re expensive,” Vicky quipped. “That’s why there are only two of them, conveniently. If I were a more skeptical girl, I’d say this whole setup is designed to force Mr. White and me to head to the black rock alone—and in the most uncomfortable way possible.”
“May I remind you, it was your insistence on accompanying him,” the Division Chief countered. “If you wish to withdraw…”
“No, no. You know I won’t.”
The tension between Vicky and Halstein was palpable. Their exchanged glances sparked an intensity that froze the room; even the workers stopped to watch, as if bracing for a physical clash.
There’s too much here that doesn’t add up, her eyes said.
My word will have to suffice, his eyes replied.
Luciano Green, sensing the discomfort, broke the standoff by testing the masks’ radios. Picking up the console mic, he spoke, “Testing, testing.”
After a final glare at Halstein, Vicky turned her attention to Green.
“Loud and clear,” she confirmed.
Anderson hurried to get the pair out of the tent to avoid delays. Wiping the sweat off his face with a handkerchief, he led them away from the camp and toward a spot in the forest where a narrow path carved through the undergrowth, opened up by the explorers.
“This is where the Ita-Hu radiation zone begins,” he said. “Follow this path for about fifteen hundred feet, and you’ll reach it.”
The path resembled a macabre tunnel cutting through the trees—a giant mouth waiting to swallow them whole, filled with lush laurels, ferns cascading from above, pink trumpet trees, and other wild plants.
“We’ve taken the precaution of sealing off the clearing where the Ita-Hu is located with a protective dome,” Anderson explained. “Reed is waiting for you there… Reed is our Cyclops. Once you have the sample, hand it over to him, please.”
Forget it, old man, Vicky thought to herself. That sample is my ticket out of here. No one’s getting it until I’m sure they’re not shipping me back to Markabia with a boot to the ass.
Two agents in gray approached to escort them.
“I thought you’d come with us, Dr. Anderson, at least up to the dome entrance,” Vicky said.
“Since I won’t be able to oversee the task in person, I’ll have to do so through your cameras,” he replied, still visibly annoyed by the Division Chief’s decision to exclude him from the operation.
“Well then, sir, I hope you enjoy the show.”
“Ready?” Halstein’s rough voice came through their hood communicators. “Move.”
Dressed in white, the two stood out starkly against the endless greens and browns of the surrounding flora.
They followed the path, pushing aside vines and bromeliads, carefully avoiding protruding roots and the natural unevenness of the terrain.
Since stepping into the range of that strange radiation, Adam had repeatedly tried to fly, but just as that skinny guy Anderson had predicted, the gravitational force generated by the stone was doing an excellent job of keeping him grounded. All he could do was walk.
Fearing that a thorn or sharp branch might tear the suit, he overcompensated in caution as he walked. He lifted his feet like an astronaut walking on the moon, swinging his arms for balance with all the grace of those inflatable tube dancers outside car dealerships. Sure, he figured the fabric had been designed with such scenarios in mind, but he didn’t want to take any chances. After all, the geniuses who had designed it seemed to have considered everything—except two things: the stifling heat the wearer would experience and how uncomfortable, even painful, it could be to move around with such stiff fabric pressing against one’s groin.
“This thing is absolute hell!” he said, his voice muffled by the mask and hood. He yanked the suit away from between his legs, adjusted it slightly, and kept walking. Wearing pants underneath had been a terrible idea. “I don’t get why they invented an oxygen recycler for this suit but didn’t think to include internal air conditioning. My balls are roasting!”
Vicky let out a whistle. “Oh, such poetry in that statement! Look, if you get nervous, you’ll sweat even more.”
Adam glanced back. “How far have we walked? Three hundred feet? Six hundred?”
Another whistle from Vicky. “One hundred, tops.”
“Damn…”
A moment of silence.
“I don’t think I thanked you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For what you’re doing. You’re in this partly because of me, aren’t you?”
“And you wouldn’t be in this if it weren’t for me,” Adam replied. “I’d say we’re even.”
Squawking sounds came from nearby. A pair of enormous, colorful parrots perched on a nearby branch, flapping their wings and struggling to fly, while smaller birds flitted effortlessly from tree to tree, just as Anderson had described.
Then came the crunch of branches and the sound of footsteps in the underbrush. Two agents in gray were a few feet behind them, with two more flanking them on either side.
“They’re guarding us like we’re about to bolt,” Adam commented. “What a bunch of clowns.”
They crossed a patch of swampy ground, their boots sinking into the thick mud with unpleasant squelching sounds. Squish, squelch, squish.
Vicky noticed stagnant water to her right, just off the marked path—a thick, murky puddle covered in dust and lichens.
“That way lies the Black Plateau wetlands,” Anderson chimed in over the communicators. His tone—part fussy scientist, part schoolteacher, part tour guide—was beginning to wear on their nerves.
“Wonderful,” Adam muttered. “The only thing I care about is getting back to civilization before sunset, before this place turns into mosquito hell.”
After a while, they spotted something dark and blurry ahead, beyond the foliage. The blurred effect was caused by a semi-transparent barrier: the protective tent Anderson had mentioned, the one isolating the rock from the rest of the area. The dark shape behind it had to be the Ita-Hu.
They moved closer and came face-to-face with the smooth, translucent wall, supported by steel rods.
They looked up to get a better view of what was in front of them, and despite the tangled network of leaves and branches overhead, they could see the plastic wall and rods forming a massive dome. Just as Anderson had said.
Then they noticed the entrance, right in front of their noses: a door as translucent as the rest of the tent, though solid.
“Welcome. I have been expecting you.”
Not only had the door’s image eluded them at first, but so had the presence of the Cyclops waiting beside it like a silent doorman.
“Reed, I presume,” Vicky said, and the android confirmed it with a pulse of light from its large red eye.
Unlike the Cyclops units back at the camp, this one wore a gray jumpsuit.
“It’s all about the branding, huh?” Adam whispered.
Reed pushed the bar, and the door opened with a soft hiss.
From the outside, Vicky could see that inside the dome, the terrain—which spanned a radius of roughly eighty to one hundred feet—was completely barren. Beyond the doorway, the ground was as cracked and dry as the desert where they had trained.
No palm trees, no ferns, no other plants; just the Ita-Hu, which truly resembled a giant, rough, black egg embedded upright in the ground: a conical monolith with a rounded tip. The wildlife remained outside the protected zone like an unwelcome guest, a greenish stain visible beyond the dome’s translucent cover.
There were no traces of tree-cutting or remnants of grass. It was as if vegetation had never existed there in the first place.
They’d seen photos back in Halstein’s office, and the Division Chief had remarked on how the terrain beneath the Ita-Hu had started to change. Still, seeing it with her own eyes gave Vicky a new, unsettling perspective on just how strange the rock’s effects were.
Adam, on the other hand, barely noticed the state of the ground. His full attention was captivated by the Ita-Hu. The dome softened the shadows, diffusing the sunlight, which further emphasized the rock’s blackness and made it impossible for him to look away.
“The Ita-Hu has an approximate circumference of fifty-two feet, a diameter of sixteen feet, and a height of forty feet, although only half of it protrudes above the surface,” Anderson’s grating voice began again. “The clearing around it is about two hundred feet across.”
Adam and Vicky stepped into the dome, but the android stayed behind.
“What’s wrong, Reed? Not joining us?” she teased. She knew the Cyclops’ capacitors were highly complex electromagnetic mechanisms, just like the Daedalus thrusters. A single step into the dome, into the radioactive epicenter of the rock, could mean a complete system failure for the android.
“Reed will wait outside for the sample. Proceed,” Anderson instructed. The Cyclops remained silent as it shut the dome door behind them. Its silhouette, along with the gray-clad agents who had escorted them, became blurry smudges against the plastic wall.
Those bastards won’t move an inch until we’re done, Vicky thought. She’d figure out a way to keep any agent from taking the sample once the mission was complete.
Adam, guessing what was running through his partner’s mind, gestured for her to keep moving. If they didn’t, Halstein would order them to soon enough, and Adam didn’t want to hear it.