The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 11, pt. 3

A short time later Dunn dropped in to see her. “Ms. Rush, you look like hell.”

“Thanks, just what I always love to hear,” she said. Her voice sounded rougher than she expected.

He smiled. “The docs tell me you’ll be fine. You and Mike both.” His smile vanished. “You gave us quite a surprise. We were expecting you to be in there a lot longer. What happened?”

She lay back and closed her eyes. “The radiation was stronger than we’d expected. We knew there’d be a lot, but … what’s happening there? What we saw was so much worse than anyone told us.”

“That’s exactly what we’d hoped you’d be able to tell us,” he said with a frown. “I won’t make you go over all of it right now. You’re weak, you need rest. But when you’ve recovered, we’ll have a full debriefing. I want every detail.”

Her heart sunk a little at that. Dunn meant exactly what he said; he was going to want to hear everything. So far Quinn and Mike had both been okay with what she’d had to say about these visions of hers, but she wasn’t looking forward to spilling it to Dunn. She knew how it was going to sound.

They were sent to the hospital overnight; just for observation, Dunn assured her. He also promised to have more information for them about what had happened with the radiation. “We’ve got some guys in the lab who can check into it and give us some answers.”

“Why weren’t they sent in first?”

“They should have been. Had we had any idea that the radiation was worse than we’d thought, they would have been.”

It wasn’t a very satisfying explanation, but it was what she had.

<>

The next day she felt like she had a full-body case of the worst sunburn she’d ever had in her life. It was all she could do not to scratch until she bled, until the nurse she’d been assigned came by with a round of medication to help. Within an hour she was red and slightly swollen all over, but felt vaguely numb, the burning sensation distant, as if it were happening to someone elses’ body.

Mike was in the same room, but a privacy sheet separated them from one another. As she lay drifting in the place between sleep and wakefulness, she overheard a doctor drop by his bedside.

“What’s the good news, doc?”

“There’s no permanent, short-term damage. You’re going to be fine.”

“Short-term? What does that mean?”

“With radiation exposure at these levels, there is always the chance for long-term effects. They may be mild or more severe. There’s just no way to know. We’ll be adding skin cancer screening to your regular suite of tests. Your regular MD can carry itout during your regular checkups.”

“How long will I be here?”

“We’ll want to keep you at least a few more hours for observation. Maybe a day or two at most.”

She drifted off then, mind occupied by dreams of scenes and people from the past.

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 11, pt. 2

Heat seemed to ebb and flow through her as she lay in recovery. They’d been met outside by Nickolaus & Midori, the next-most green members of the department next to Jo herself. They’d gotten them back to HQ and out of their now-radioactive clothing and into clean outfits, as well as assisted them through a more thorough decontamination than the tabs could provide.

Dunn had debriefed them, a process that lasted about half an hour but felt at least four times as long. He’d questioned them separately; they hadn’t had the chance to talk to one another beforehand, but they’d independently arrived at the conclusion that their respective … visions, for lack of a better word, were private, and so they’d both left any mention of them out of their reports.

It was strange, Jo thought; just seeing an image of a guy out of time could evoke such a connection in her. She didn’t know who he was, beyond her initial conviction that he was tied to that other one somehow, that Archerd. Yet watching him conduct his … his …

Investigation. That’s what he was doing. Some sort of investigation of his own, in his time. The bones he’d been so intent on had been a dead giveaway, she supposed. Had someone died down there, then? She mentally filed the question away for a later investigation of her own.

How was it that he was able to see her? How could see see him, for that matter? It had happened with Archerd, too; to an even greater extent, come to think of it. She’d come into physical contact with Archerd, hadn’t she? So she couldn’t just be seeing things.

And Mike, too. They’d been quiet on the way back to HQ, and he hadn’t said what he’d seen, but it must have been something, and she hadn’t seen a hint of it. Had he seen something, or someone, just as she had been? A longing awakened within her at the thought; not of anything sexual in nature, nor even romantic, but simply for someone she could talk to about it. Quinn was open-minded as well as open to talking about what she’d been seeing, but his understanding could only go so far. He hadn’t experienced it. He didn’t know.

If Mike had, though …

Her thoughts were interupted by Midori bearing water. The tall, pretty, athletic Japanese girl handed her a green glass. “You’re to drink this,” she said, somewhat more severely than Jo thought was strictly necessary. “Boss’s orders.” She grinned. “It’s my hide if you don’t, so I’m going to stand right here and stare you down until you do.”

It was no idle threat. Midori’s eyes were an intense emerald banded around the edges with blue, and she could win staring contests against cats. It didn’t matter if you were old or young, male or female, naive or jaded, her air of command and those eyes ensured few could stand up to her. Jo drank the water. The banks of fires inside her started burning lower, reducing the waves of heat passing through her.

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 11, pt. 1

Mike visibly steeled himself against the debilitating dizziness that threatened to overpower them and took a step towards the door. Jo moved beside him, ready to grab his arm if he needed help. She wondered if she’d really be any help though; she felt as ready to collapse as he looked, and they weren’t even inside the hot zone yet.

They paused at the doorway in, feeling a faint heat wash over them. Mike gasped. “It’s bad in there. Takes a lot of radiation to get so that you feel it. The tabs aren’t going to help us for long.”

She nodded and they stepped through. A short corridor stretched ahead of them, plainly visible until it bent ninety degrees to the right. Blue shadows danced across the walls in the uneven lighting, which did nothing to help Jo’s growing dizziness and disorientation. Aside from the sound of their footsteps and Mike’s labored breathing, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

The trip down the corridor to the bend passed in a slow motion dream-like state. They kept trying to hurry, but the faster they tried to go, the harder it became to walk. By the time they got to the corner, they were staggering as bad as the last time Jo’d found the bottom of a scotch bottle. Also like that time, she found that hugging the wall helped a bit.

“Ten … minutes,” Mike gasped. “Maybe fifteen—if we’re lucky.”

“I didn’t … ask!” she grunted in response.

“J—just trying to stay focused … talking helps a little.”

They rounded the corner. The hall was constructed about the same time as the door, and of a similar heavy steel in large plates. Ahead of them, just a few steps away, the hall opened out into the foundry floor of the old ironworks. The light there was intense; the dancing shadows were few and far between, simply because there were few shadows to start with.

The space was dominated by large tipping vats that would have held the molten metals, with racks for casting molds to make various pieces and parts on demand. Only the racks and vats remained, and they positively blazed with blue light.

“C-can’t … give this place high marks f-for safety,” Mike stammered.

Jo didn’t reply. The sight of the foundry triggered something in her, and the pins and needles sensation went into overdrive. Her eyes were drawn to a figure on the foundry floor, walking slowly toward a loose group of objects she was certain hadn’t been there a moment ago.

The figure was tall but very thin, with a scholarly air to him. It was an impression she was certain of, though she couldn’t see him clearly. He seemed to be in deep shadow somehow; it was like she was outside again, seeing the ironworks at different points in history. Everything was both brighter than day and darker than night all at once.

Mike took a cue from her and leaned against the wall, but gave no sign that he saw anything unusual. Jo moved with purpose, though she had to do it slow. The tall figure was male, she saw, with a distinctly scholarly air to him. He reminded her strongly of the other man she’d seen; Archerd Dolet, his name had been. This man was younger, and she was certain it wasn’t Archerd. There was a distinct resemblance, though.

He knelt down before the objects, which as she got closer, she identified as bones. She should be repulsed, she thought, but they were hard to see clearly. She couldn’t focus well enough.

He stopped his examination of the bones and turned, startled. His eyes widened as he saw her, and there was a jolt, almost more of a shock, of recognition between them. She gasped; he disappeared. The shadowy, dark version of the basement faded, leaving her eyes stinging with the full force of the radiation’s glare.

“Let’s get out of here,” she whispered. There was no reply. Mike was staring ahead, mouth slack, eyes terrified. She looked around, but couldn’t see what he was staring at. “C’mon!” she yelled. “We’re pushing our time here!”

He started backing his way into the hall again, and she grabbed his arm; he blinked a few times, mouth working soundlessly, and looked around in confusion. “Did you see it?”

“See what? The young man studying the bones?”

He blinked at her in confusion, then shook his head. “No. Leave now, we’ll talk outside,” he said, and they turned and quickly made their way out the way they’d came.​

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 10, pt. 5

Mike’s pallor got worse as he stared at the cool blue glow beyond the doors, and he took a hesitant step towards it before Jo caught his arm. “Hey, hang on! We have to give it a couple of minutes, the anti-rads won’t be protecting us yet.”

“Right,” he said. His voice sounded funny, like the word didn’t quite fit his mouth.

“Hang on, we’ll get out of here soon,” she said, hoping it was true. She felt a bit unsteady herself, and flushed, with a growing heat in her chest. She caught her eyes darting around at shadows and found herself picturing every image she’d ever conjured in her mind of the stories of the ghost. She shut her eyes tight and shook her head to clear it, to questionable effect. Finally a tone from her phone told her the pre-determined time had elapsed and they should be relatively safe from the radiation.

A sudden thought clicked in her mind and she cringed. “Shouldn’t have opened the door before we took the anti-rads, Mike,” she said as steadily as she could. “We’ll need treatment now.” At least they hadn’t actually entered the hot zone.

“Oh, right,” he said. His eyes were dull and half-closed; he looked like he wasn’t entirely there.

Is this how I look to others when I’m seeing … them? she thought. They couldn’t afford to wait around. The anti-rads would protect them even from the fierce electrite radiation within the sealed area, but not for long. Every moment they wasted before going in was a moment less to spend inside, learning what they could of what had been abandoned there.

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 10, pt. 4

It took them a few minutes to reach the barrier door, a heavy steel monstrosity that looked distinctly out of place in the aged basement, having been built about a century and a half after the rest of the place.

“Hope we can get this thing open,” Jo said, with a touch of trepidation in her voice.

“Got to, can’t come this far and go back empty-handed.”

“Yeah, that’d be bad,” she agreed, and got the package of anti-rad tablets from her pocket. She inspected the package carefully; it was slightly discolored from the rain little bit of rain that had managed to leak through the fastenings, but the pills were perfectly preserved. She popped one in her mouth and handed the other to Mike; they had to dry-swallow, but they both managed to choke them down.

Mike wordlessly set himself to the side of the door. It was smooth steel, dulled with age. Mike visibly fought to focus himself as he dug through his pockets for a heavy key, which he fit to the lock with some difficulty. He set his weight against the door, which swung open with surprising ease and quiet, given its age.

The space beyond was lit with an eerie blue light that sent chills down Jo’s spine, and made her cast an uneasy glance at the package the anti-rad tabs had come from. They’d been briefed to expect radiation, but not so much that the area was lit as bright as day.​

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 10, pt. 3

Together they wrestled the door open, making enough noise in the process to scare off any wayward ghosts that might have been in the area. Once safely away from the acid rain, they put their backs to the walls and rested.

“Mike, you look awful. Are you feeling okay?”

“I—I’m fine,” he said.

“Liar. We’ll rest here a minute but then we have to get on with it and get you out of here.” And me, she thought. She didn’t feel nearly as bad as he looked, but she felt a heat on her skin that had nothing to do with the minor acid burns. It was like something had latched on to her and was sucking the energy right out of her.

They ended up waiting a couple of minutes before moving on. The interior of the ironworks’ basement was pitch black; Jo once again used her phone’s relatively diffuse light to brighten an area around them, while Mike tried to use his more directional light to focus on specific areas. In practice though, they relied on her light; Mike couldn’t concentrate enough to be effective.

The space they were in was huge and still littered with discarded equipment. Part of Jo was surprised there was anything left, given how long the place had been abandoned, but given the briefing they’d gotten, it wasn’t too hard to understand.

The old ironworks was a recognized radiation hazard, had been for decades. Jo didn’t know all of the specifics, she just knew that they would very shortly find their progress blocked by very old containment blockades, and then they had to take anti-radiation tablets before entering the hot zone.