“I’m sorry, father. Something went wrong with the passage master.” Emily Sigma’s dour expression said it all as her latest invention was suddenly and inexplicably reprogrammed without her input.
“Any chance of forcing the diagnostic, Emma?” Her father’s unwavering response to the panicked state of his daughter’s mind said it all.
“I’m trying as much as I can!” Emily’s reply was equally frustrated in its tone. “It’s just a shame that it’s too quick with—“
But she never finished her sentence – just moments later, the lab’s coordinates were targeted by the device and the first of many mysterious vortices to come opened below her and Alexander, sending them to a place that was yet to be known.
Ten hours passed since the incident, the entire day inundated with reports of similar occurrences across all of Aerodonia. Alexander’s presumed widow, Carli Sigma, approached the imperial throne with the finalized report, having assumed responsibility for the family’s research firm in the wake of the accident.
“We have no choice, Your Highness.” Carli’s unwavering report said it all. “The device must be retrieved and analyzed by a neutral party in order to determine what went wrong.”
“I was beginning to suspect as much.” Empress Cleopari Tutenso’s expression concurred with the report to a full and unquestionable extent. “Consequently, I will be assigning this job to the understudies of both you and your belated husband, or in terms of speaking based on the official record as this does open up the possibility of locating them in a place that could easily be one which is not of this world.”
Within an hour of the meeting, the response team – led by Capt. Nefersila Rogers “Neffie” Takumis and supervised by Gen. Sandra Jasmine Mettaton – were in position at the site of the initial incidence. Deputy knights Julia Sanderson and Nathan Daniels were positioned on standby to ascribe scene backup and recon as the first details of the incident came through Nefersila’s receiver.
“According to the lab records,” Gen. Mettaton reported, “there was a rather untimely networking intrusion into the data systems at about the time of the incident. The council is still at a loss as to whether it’s connected or not.” Nefersila surmised from the first ascribed evidence from their response that a hack into the data network just as Emily suddenly and inexplicably reestablished her telepathic connections to the rest of her society at approximately the same time that the response team began to consider the matter of a team member who had been taken off the project.
“He was ultimately removed from the Sigmatech organization as a whole,” Emily stated in response to the matter, “although we still don’t have enough evidence to support a direct implication.”
But little did any of them know as to the full extent of what had been started off of the research project, or that the response team would soon have to deal with related incidence on an entirely different world before the whole thing could devolve even further into chaos.