You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Page 69<br />
Commander Future stepped around the desk so he could scan what Williamson was<br />
typing. "Anything unusual today?"<br />
Williamson smiled. "The whole thing is unusual. Every second it exists is unusual."<br />
"You know what I mean…"<br />
"Our only guest is the one you brought."<br />
"Good. Thank you." Commander Future laid his hand flat on the surface of the<br />
screen, and for a moment, I could see words flash up his arm, like the suit was somehow<br />
absorbing the data. One last ripple and the suit went still again as the Commander looked<br />
at me. "We're going inside now. You're going to see an ulcer in time-space. Prepare<br />
yourself."<br />
I flashed back on the moment in Triumph Plaza, during what I later learned was my<br />
job interview, when I peered through what looked like a broken pane of glass in the sky. I<br />
shuddered at even the fleeting thought of what I saw on the other side of that break. Blood<br />
and sorrow and suffering, pure malice in physical form.<br />
The Commander saw my reaction, saw me shrink back from the door. He put one<br />
giant hand on my shoulder to steady me. "Don't worry. It's contained."<br />
Even with him standing there reassuring me, my anxiety levels spiked as he reached<br />
out and opened the door. Inside the room, there was what I would describe as an energy<br />
event, maybe eight feet in diameter, roughly three feet off the floor. This wasn't anything<br />
like the broken-glass appearance of the thing from Triumph Plaza, though. It was more like<br />
a clean hole, and all the light in the room bent in towards that hole, pulled towards it.<br />
There were several small devices in the room fixed to the wall and the floor and the ceiling<br />
in an irregular pattern, all of them generating a violet light that fully surrounded the event.<br />
"That is an Intrusion."<br />
"What does that mean?"<br />
"Exactly what it sounds like Something that has no rightful place in our time has<br />
broken in, and what that happens, there is a… scar… left behind."