Chapter 101 (1 of 2) Hurdles of Heracleion

Heracleion. Thonis-Heracleion. Unlike the mythical Atlantis, it was an actual sunken city. Off the coast of Egypt, it had been discovered 74 years ago, in the year 2000.  

It was also the name of the most advanced research facility on Earth funded solely by the World Government, and located ‘somewhere’ under the surface of the pacific.

Mathew thought it was a stupid name. It felt the same as when long dead governors or captains or what have you named countries they then claimed as part of their proud nation, such as New Zealand, New York and New Mexico. Without the new part.

Except whichever ‘head-in-the-clouds’ scientist who had been granted the honour of naming some construction barely anyone would know the name of thought they were being unique by naming an underwater facility after a sunken city.

Just call it Atlantis and be done with it.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

His frown, already adequately depicting his misgivings about the place, twisted into a more unsightly grimace and he crossed his arms.

The lab techs painstakingly recording his vitals for cross-referencing gave him frustrated looks and he lowered his arms, instead directing his discontent at the woman who had dragged him into the literal abyss.

“Keep still Whitlock, we wouldn’t want one of your jolts registering as heart attack and have to trap you in this ‘Deep Sea Sanatorium’ as you so finely put,” the woman spoke, eyes never straying from the clipboard she held.

“It’s a sealed building buried under miles of seawater, filled with moody eggheads who hit their prime before their teens and now rattle off strings of numbers like a paranoid schizo grandpapa finding the truth of the universe.” He slapped away the hand trying to take one last blood sample and marched up to the sealed double doors. “What about this place isn’t like an asylum for the criminally insane?”

“One of those ‘moody eggheads’ wouldn’t happen to refer to me, would it Whitlock?” Cold eyes behind thick framed glasses looked him over accusatorily, but he remained staunchly silent. The Assistant Head Researcher’s eyes strayed over to the lab technicians lingering awkwardly with needles and heart monitors in their grasp, and with a sigh, waved them away. She put down her own clipboard.

“Are we going to go in or are we just going to hover around its entrance like overly large flies on stinking meat?” he demanded.

Rachel huffed and pressed a button. The shutter inbuilt into the wall slid up with a rattle to show the menacing black box with a small opening. She shoved a hand in it and just as quickly withdrew it as a small red bead formed atop her index finger. She wiped it away on a handkerchief from her pocket and walked forward when the doors opened.

“DNA testing? Wouldn’t those hypothetically dangerous ‘clones’ just slide their way into the holy workspaces of your conspiracy cult through this?” ‘Clones’ was punctuated by him with a mocking wiggle of his fingers as he held his hands up.

“It didn’t test DNA but tested for energy levels.” The woman with greying hair rolled into a tightly bound bun ignored his sarcasm with her lips a thin line, and swiped her holographic keycard to let them into the next level security zone of the facility. “Whatever conspiracy theories you believe my colleagues capable of thinking up over drinks pales in comparison to the apparent truth of this reality, it seems.”

It only briefly registered that her tone held no hint of humour when they turned a corner, and she had to pull him back as he mindlessly went to trek the well-worn path to the exosuit development lab and radioactive decontamination chambers.

“Not that way.”

“What?” He stared at her as she pressed a small indent in the wall and it slid open to reveal a surprisingly concealed elevator for them to take. “Then where?” He frowned and looked around, dubious of her intentions now. “I did think it was much too soon for me to come down again.”

“Yes, but we’ll put you through standard procedures while you’re here anyway,” Rachel replied, tapping away at a uselessly convoluted keypad before the lift began to descend.

Mathew scowled. “Bloodsuckers.”

“Blame your own body for being O- with such an adaptive ability.” He stumbled as the lift moved sideways, while she just crossed her arms and waited for the lift to switch transport rails. “You should be glad we have a replicator on the team to duplicate your blood and that we’re not keeping you down here as a living blood bag.”

“Bah.” He looked away. “Like you could keep me down here.”

Rachel Carlson fixed a very pointed look on his face as she pushed up her glasses. “Need I remind you that while your ability lends very heavily to survivability, yes, you remain entirely dependent on external weaponry to actually harm anything to any noticeable degree. The very reason for the exosuit you so proudly wear on your person at all times.” The corner of her lips lifted, hinting at a smirk. “Punching through solid steel doesn’t matter so much these days as it did fifty years ago, unfortunately.”

Mathew followed her out the doors of the elevator and into another neon-lit corridor, with unfamiliar signage. The scientists they passed ignored him and he frowned at all of their preoccupied, nervous behaviours. “Why exactly can I do that? I sure as hell couldn’t do that fifteen years ago. Never could get a straight answer from your assistants.”

She scoffed as she pushed open a pair of doors. “The Class Z steroids have done their job, that’s all.”

“Class Z.... wait.” He glared at her. “Those were the ones outlawed on the first day of human testing because of the side effects ten years back.”

“Nothing and everything is legal here at Heracleion, Whitlock.” She marched over to two slightly larger doors, walked inside, and ignored the substantial amount of people there to go sit on one of the corner couches, gesturing for him to take a seat. “It’s quite fascinating that your body somehow completely negates every harmful condition that might come your way yet the benefits of otherwise lethal substances elude its supernatural grip on your immunity. Which further reinforces my belief that you are categorised as an Edictional ability wielder over irregular qualitative-type Avatarist-”

He let out a loud groan as he rested his head in his hands. “Don’t start this debate up again, please.”

Now that they had stopped moving, he finally had a moment to take in the oddities of the room he was in. It looked... close to a repurposed cafeteria, or recreational zone, but with all the tables piled against walls and just nervous looking academics mulling about, talking in low murmurs, or sitting on scattered chairs. Several were keenly focused on a door at the edge of the room where roughly ten people were lined up, and Mathew tried to see what was so interesting to them.

After a couple of minutes, the line hadn’t moved an inch, so he leaned back in disappointment and frowned at the middle-aged woman on his right. “Are we waiting for someone, or something to happen?”

Rachel, who had taken up more work on her holowatch screen, closed it after a beat and regarded him. “We’re waiting for you to be called in, like all the others.” She gestured broadly to the lab coat figures.

“How funny. I don’t remember completing a degree in Nerdology.” A small, levitating device with a tray floated near him and he accepted the cup of coffee offered to him.

“You may be shocked to know that this... event isn’t exclusive to academics.” She glanced at the unsettled scientists with an unfamiliar look in her eyes. “And before you ask, no, I cannot reveal details before you enter that room. None of the people here know what happens when they enter the room, and neither will you.”

“So... you’re going to, what, drag each civilian here one by one and I’m just the first sad representative of humanity to be stolen from the surface for the gig?” He downed the scalding liquid, barely feeling the heat through the acrid taste of its cheap synthesised residues. He sat it down with a foul look on his face.

“...no. Let me clarify something: you are an exception.” She gazed at him with grey, solemn eyes. “It was heavily debated whether to bring you down here for this or not, but concessions were made and you’ll be ‘inducted’ in the same manner as everyone of this facility.”

He snorted, unfazed. “I’m not joining the conspiracy cult, Carlson. I thought we’d established that from day one.”

She looked at him with frustration. “This has nothing to do with my colleagues’ workplace mannerisms, Mathew, it’s the delivery of information that will make or break the current status quo-”

Before he could register her slip, the rest of her sentence was masked by the loud sobbing echoing from the corner of the room. They watched as the door creaked open, revealing a white-haired man ushering out the crier with a reassuring pat on his shoulder.

Then the scientist let out a scream and ran for the door. “Let me out of here! I’m going home! I don’t want my last days on Earth to be someplace the light can’t touch!”

“Jeremy!” the white-haired researcher yelled harshly, storming after the man. “Calm down! You’re having an adverse mental reaction, you mind is playing tricks on you- the world is not about to end! Come back here so I can give you a proper run down and-”

Rachel Carlson outstretched a hand, muttering a one-syllable word. “Lock.”

The motion of the frantic escapee seemed to slow over the course of five seconds as a blue box rose up around him, until finally, his face was frozen in a wide-eyed, maniacal look, limbs still arranged in a half-leap motion towards the door. The translucent box narrowed to encase the man and he was left their, a highly dynamic statue of a person.

Mathew eyed the woman responsible for the restriction, her hand shrouded in a similar blue sheen.

I’ve rarely seen it, but ‘Utter Stasis’. Never could get her to tell me if it worked on monsters. If it did, she could rise to be one of the strongest espers to ever exist, but...

The middle-aged man with white hair gazed blankly at Rachel before recognition dawned and his eyes lit up. “Ah, Assistant Carlson! What lucky timing- or, should I say how convenient that you’ve arrived so promptly,” he corrected, noticing Mathew standing beside Rachel with his arms crossed.

“Shall I call for the agents to remove him and administer the appropriate therapeutic amnestics as according to Protocol 37-B, Section Nine, sir?” Rachel dryly asked, though Mathew knew she was really ordering the Head Researcher to let her resolve this situation without him poking his unorganised nose in.

The Head Researcher was rubbing his hands with this constant, nervous energy Mathew had long associated with the unkept and frazzled-looking researcher. Antoine Sutherburg nodded so quickly that Mathew wondered if he had even heard her.

“Yes, yes, Protocol 37- ah, B and Section 12-”

“Section nine, sir-”

“Yes, that, go fetch the agents to deal with this... mishap.” He looked up as if he had just noticed the stares from all the scientists in the room, and waved them off with a smile that looked mostly reassuring. “What are you all staring for? Didn’t you hear Assistant Carlson? Everything’s all well and good, you may all go back to pondering over what to have for breakfast or... whatever the lowest level employees think about in this ocean-bottom structure.”

“It is nearly time for afternoon tea, sir,” Rachel subtly poked. She tapped away at the holographic screen from her watch, and two heavily-built men with thick black armour suits walked in to hoist the still-frozen Jeremy off to the rehab centre over their shoulders.

“Give me some peace, Carlson, the body’s clock has long since stopped working since I came here twenty years ago.” Antoine waltzed up to Mathew and took his hand before he could back up, roughly shaking it with cold and somewhat thin hands befitting the pale man in his late 50s. “Very glad to see our most valuable research subject here once again, Mathew Whitlock, very glad indeed. Rachel, you have notified the appropriate personnel to do his standard tests while we have the opportunity to-”

“Already sorted sir.”

Mathew had a sour expression at being called a ‘research subject’ yet again, but the conversation moved on too soon for him to complain.

“Ah, how wonderful.” Antoine looked around then nodded to himself, muttering quietly. “Someone with a personal relation to her... yes, I think we can skip procedures this time.” He looked up and smiled at Mathew. “Someone as important as you shouldn’t have to wait. Whitlock, we’ll take you through now while you’re here, and then we can leave the rest of your visitation time to higher priorities-”

‘Priorities’ in question being more dubious experiments for his person. Already annoyed that Rachel hadn’t notified him he would need to meet the certified crackpot maniac before him, the rushed pace Antoine Sutherburg always pressured everyone near him into copying did not suit him very well at all.

“Let me reiterate what I told you when I first accepted being you guys’ lab rat,” Mathew confronted, marching up to face the distracted Head Researcher. “One word from me, the Chief Officer of the Fringe Special Forces... and I’ll no longer let you extract those precious antibodies you breed in my ‘oh so valuable’ blood. Over the Medical Department and the Rift Management Bureau...” He swiped a thumb across his neck. “You do know who the head honchos favour, don’t you Dr. Sutherburg? They’re willing to let anything fly if I land another A+ Rift in their grip. I don’t think you want to test the possibility of budget cuts in a place like this.”

“...right. Yes, of course, we’ll proceed with the standard tests only with your explicit consent, Chief Whitlock,” the white-haired researcher relented, in some insincere farce of an apology. “Shall we proceed to the room now?”

Mathew glanced at the fabled ‘room’ with a frown, but nodded. “The sooner I get out of here, the better.” He shuddered slightly. “I hate the ocean.”

“Funny, hearing that from the man who cleared SS-grade Rifts at barely 29,” Rachel replied, following the two men to the corner of the hall. “Didn’t you earn your infamy for killing some draconic S-tier monster and dragging its head to the Esper Union’s doorsteps just to shut down their complaints about your... how did your alumni put it... ah yes, ‘remarkably unmarketable presence’?”

“Those things, are on land,” he spat, jabbing a finger at the ground. “Where I can fight them, and become the hunter. But if they’re in the water, I’m no longer in my home territory. Humans were not made to be deep sea creatures.”

“Officer Whitlock, I do believe you’ll find that there are worse beings than an overly large shark in the familiar ocean of Earth,” Antoine interjected with a kind of veiled humour in his tone.

“Sir-”

“Now, now, Assistant Carlson. We’ve already long crossed the threshold to continue withholding that information.”

Rachel frowned at him, looking oddly uncomfortable as he opened the door.

Mathew only glanced at her briefly, caught surprised by the unfamiliar expression, but his mind was ultimately drawn to whatever secretive operation lay inside that room. He followed the academics into the dark room, eyes squinted to pierce through the layer of secrecy so deeply entrenched in the facility.

Inside the room was sparse. It held a plain, beige desk with two chairs on either side, the same as in the hall they had come through. Pasty yellow light beamed down from flickering bulbs, giving it a dreary, time-worn look. It looked like an interrogation room, not some holding cell of a dangerous creature or...

Well, Mathew didn’t know what else he was thinking could be in there. But the fact was, there was nothing remarkable about the location.

As Rachel shut the door behind them and stood standing by the door, guarding it from being opened by unwanted visitors, Mathew pulled up a chair as Antoine Sutherburg sat opposite him. He leaned back, arms crossed, and unimpressed. “How boring.  If you were going to be the deep-sea heralds of some dreadful doom, you should’ve chosen a fancier location-”

“Now is not the time for jokes, Officer Whitlock,” Rachel cut in sharply, eyes turned away as she pressed a hand against a small plate beside the door. The bulbs overhead gleamed once and then faded, leaving them in total darkness.

Mathew felt the firm hand of the assistant as she tightened her grip on him. He was feeling very unnerved by the sudden solemnity around him.

Rachel’s voice became very quiet. “I would’ve told you to remain standing if I could, but I didn’t want to risk it. Just try to keep your balance at least.”

“What-” His words fell short when the cool shift of metal reached his ears, and as his eyes adjusted, he watched as dark metal plates slid down the walls, encasing them in a thick metal box. The room rumbled as if they were in the belly of some great beast and he tried to speak again, yet his words were drowned out by low murmurs.  

“-this level of subterfuge is-”

“Necessary, sir. It’s necessary. They’ve become aware that something big is happening under their noses, and we need to secure everything before they put two and two together and begin to associate anything with her-”

‘Her’?

“-alright, alright, you’ve made your point. But what’s taking Wilson so-”

Mathew blacked out. When he next came to, he realised it couldn’t have been for more than a couple of seconds because neither researchers had shifted positions.

Rachel blinked once, registering the short lapse, and immediately hit the button next to the door. The metal plates retracted with a screech and then the door swung out by itself. “Done. Let’s get out of here before the intruder notices our escape.”

“What the heck.” Mathew marched after her, his head whirring with worst-case scenarios. “What bureaucratic conspiracy have you dragged me into, Rachel Carlson? ‘Something big’? ‘Intruders’? I can tell you now, if this forsaken quagmire of an institute is going down I will not be risking my skin to drag your sorry body out of here!”  

“Ah. Hush,” she shot at him, eyes closed in concentration as she raised her head to the blank roof. Then she gripped a button on the lapels of her coat and raised it to her lips. “Section Soldiers 4-1-2-9-0-6, we have an interloper on the 4th floor rec hall’s private room? Take him to the Metacognitive Sector and find out his motives. You have my full permission to deal with him regardless of any forces that may support him.”

The woman nodded her head to some unheard response, then swiftly turned to Mathew. “Do you know where we are?”

He gazed at her blankly, before finally taking the time to observe his surroundings. Almost perfectly circular, they were standing beside one box that had been the ‘room’ he thought he had entered prior. Everywhere else was a vast open area, filled with computational devices on semi-circular desks and rotating geometric structures of pure light spaced evenly, floating above metal tables. Unlike nearly all of the institute he had seen, this place had windows. From what little he could make out past the murky haze of dissipating light from the facility... they were deep underwater.

Much deeper than he thought the facility reached. One entire side showed a field of glowing turrets spouting thick plums of black ash, rivulets of magma running down their sides and hardening when touched by the abyssal water. Pale fleshy things of unknown origin clung to their sides, obscure sea creatures only found where the light doesn’t reach.

“...am I in hell?”

Rachel snorted. “Hardly. This is probably the most luxurious zone of the facility to date. Medallion spares no expense when they want to. We’re in Sector Null.”

Mathew stared at her. “That doesn’t exist.”

She nodded, a slight smile on her lips. “You’re right. It doesn’t. On record, that is.”

Not even registering the transferal of Antoine Sutherburg to the nearest projector table, intently intrigued by the newest experimental results, he followed the 44-year-old woman in a half daze, feeling his suspicions grow stronger by the second.

“It’s a research station of the Marinara Trench back some thirty years. It was bought by Medallion seven years ago,” Rachel explained, leading him to a small ring of plush red lounges set into the ground.

She stepped down, and looked over her shoulder at the rest of the underwater building. “They had been rebuilding since then and while I don’t know why they wasted money on such a place instead of a new building...” She shook her head and regarded him with calm eyes. “With select members of Heracleion and Medallion, this is now a joint operation.”

Medallion again. She had mentioned it a third time. A sense of dread crept in, like the memory of a certain girl’s cunning smile. “So what does this have to do with the Fringe Special Forces’ Chief Officer? I have no connection with ‘Medallion’.”  

“Really.” Rachel Carlson pressed a switch beside her and a new hologram flickered on like a ghostly spectre. “Because that’s not what she told us.”

Mathew Whitlock gazed at the familiar face of a girl who he would rather much forget existed, aghast.

Lucille Goldcroft.

And what he dreaded the most was what could she have possibly gotten herself wrapped up in...

...that forced an entire world to rise to her call.

...

“I can’t believe I’m still doing this even- Ow! Hey! Kid! Stick it elsewhere, that spot’s had enough! Did none of you read my files?!”

Mathew Whitlock glared at the young post-grad who had been unlucky enough to find himself responsible for skewering the mercenary with large surgical needles. The young man cautiously extracted the one lying under the man’s skin, looking nervous.

“I-It’s normal- I mean, standard procedure to target the brachial artery for b-bloodwork,” he stammered, as other scientists busied themselves around the man lying on the medical chair.

“Oh yeah? Standard procedure? Well it sure ain’t ‘normal’ to have my blood sucked out of me every month!” Rachel Carlson walked into the lab and Mathew begrudgingly accepted a cup of coffee from the woman. “I’ve been tortured like this without fail for the last fifteen years so don’t pretend you know ‘procedure’ better than me! Now, stop trying to lacerate my arm and stick it anywhere else!”

The young scientist glanced at Rachel for confirmation to which she nodded. “His files mention the build-up of scar tissue around the standard arteries normally used. Unofficially, when it comes to this subject, we adopt the ‘anywhere it draws blood’ is good enough.” She eyed the extremely sharp utensils with poorly disguised frustration. “His ability heightens his defences considerably, so even without the scar tissue you’ll struggle to find an access point.”

“A struggle? You’re kidding me.” He pointed to all the other translucent tubes extracting his blood from various other injection sites. “You hooked me up to all these gizmos in five minutes flat.”

“Those researchers are ones familiar with you and have worked on you before. Now...” She sat on a tall stool directly in front of the man and regarded him keenly. “I’ve brought you coffee as promised, so if you could now tell me what the relationship between you and Lucille Goldcroft, I would be much obliged.”

He looked around and stared at her with incredulity. “Here?”

“No better place to extract an answer from a man who refuses to sit still in normal circumstances.” She took a sip of her tea.  

He scowled at her for a tense moment before giving up without retort. “I first met that girl when she was fourteen.”

The cup paused moments from Rachel’s lips as she heard something he knew she wasn’t aware of. “The incident reports state your first meeting with her was in the Fringes.”

“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “And that’s the truth. I met Lucille Goldcroft, when she was fourteen years of age, in the shield bunker of our temporary biodome encampment. Obviously, we freaked out because it was impossible that a young teen had just waltzed through miles of radioactive terrain and landed herself in the core of our protective structure. We figured we had discovered our first humanoid monster and detained her.”

A crease formed between his eyebrows as he recalled the situation. “Then... we received a warning that an SS-ranked monster was heading our way. We were to activate the repelling shields.” Mathew looked to the roof. “They didn’t turn on.”

“So she sabotaged them then,” Rachel surmised.

“We thought that too but nope.” He shook his head. “The truth was even stranger. As we scrambled to fix the damn thing, she told us she could get rid of the monster if we took her to the generator room.” Mathew’s face screwed up. “We assumed she meant the repelling shields, and maybe she could repair them.”

“...why the generator room?” Rachel queried, enthralled by his conversation in a way that slightly unnerved him.

“Because she fried that thing,” he deadpanned. “Burnt it to a crisp. The stench is still in my mind today. From what we gathered, what she had done was find a backend into the repelling shield’s energy frame network, then turned up the power to max, smashing through safety limiters and killing the beast when it touched it. It broke, but we were just stunned to have seen her kill a powerful monster with a press of a button. And then she asked us where our cafeteria was a second afterwards.”

“At... fourteen,” Rachel repeated, rolling the word around like it was unfamiliar on her tongue.

“Yep. Anyway, she told us she was Lucy and that she had wanted to see the Fringes for herself, insane reason it was. We believed it though, and her help made us trust her that little bit more.” He waved a hand. “Now, we weren’t stupid. She didn’t get to touch any more gadgets after that. We also called up Fringe Operation Headquarters to find out what had happened, and apparently a new Rift had formed nearby, releasing a supernatural frequency that interfered with the repelling shield. Logs told us it was spawned 3 months ago, and the girl had only turned up in the last day.”

“And what of Lucille?”

“We stuffed her into a Personnel-Transport Lead Plated Container and sent her back as soon as we felt we could.” He barked a laugh. “She turned up a month later, watching the camera feed from the survey station. Same thing happened another two times, but it was like trying to fill a hole-covered bucket. We gave up. Our decontamination chambers showed us no readings on the Geiger counters for her, and her biometrics were all stable – uncannily so, just like her expressionless face. Eventually she showed us a bunch of top-quality equipment which, according to her, was custom-designed but manufactured to the same quality and guidelines as our stuff.”

Rachel raised a brow. “But we made your gear here.”  

“When she said that I figured she was some psycho test subject from you guys,” he confirmed, pointing at her. “It was only when she left us for ‘good’ with a short video recording and instructions for frying another monster if needed, that I found out her full name. We don’t have access to the Network in the Fringes, you know, so it had to be when I was heading here. Lucille Goldcroft, the third member of the Goldcrofts... I was more shocked she was famous, to be fair. Though it left more questions than answers.”

“...I see.” Rachel paused for a moment, and Mathew could see she was trying to approach a difficult question with her mind ticking away behind thick glasses. She settled on another mundane one. “Did you see her again?”

“Of course.” He crossed his arms. “Six months later, she turned up with a backpack and some other stuff, saying she was here on holiday for two weeks. Told us she wouldn’t leave the biodome as she’s not that stupid, and didn’t need to touch any of our tech because she had her own projects to work on. I think, knowing what I do now about her, that she was escaping the prying eyes of relatives.”

His coffee, which sat on a table next to him, had cooled over the course of the discussion, but his throat was dry. He downed the lot and set it aside.

“And from then on, this ‘tradition’ repeated itself twice a year. The others warmed up to her, and the technicians sometimes worked with her on stuff. None of us could do anything about her, and nobody believed us when we told them she was there – apparently she had made very convincing alibis for herself.” Mathew shrugged. “That’s it. She didn’t really cause any more chaos while there. Besides making a few dastardly contraptions – like that desk chair that lowered in height for the shortest guy on the team, and only him.”

Rachel gazed at him with an indescribable look, probably feeling the same emotions he had a long time ago when it came to the enigma known as ‘Lucille Goldcroft’. They fell silent as they digested his words, the other scientists who had been testing Mathew’s blood over at the far sides of the room watching interfaces crawling with data.

Rachel cleared her throat and tapped on her holowatch, reading digital notes on her screen. She scanned it before returning her attention to him. “Are you aware that Lucille Goldcroft has been registered as one of the thousand youth referred to as the ‘Stolen’ from July? The World Government has deemed that she is no longer present in any capacity on Earth.”

He laughed. “Sure, I heard some stuff, but I never bought it for one second. Knowing her, she probably knew it was coming for ages and decided to follow along for the thrill of it.”

“...I see. Well, across the globe, a thousand young individuals going missing would be barely noticeable when glancing at statistics, but what made these cases unique was the outpour of an extremely unique and entirely unfamiliar frequency accompanied by energy. Her disappearance is definitively supernatural in origin.” She closed the holowatch screen and watched him solemnly with grey eyes. “Has she contacted you since July?”

“Contacted me? No?” He frowned. “Lucille Goldcroft never contacts any of FSF before she arrives at our doorstop. She’s just there. I’ve never been contacted by her when I leave the biodome either. We have nothing to do with each other until she chooses, quite frankly.”

“Hmm... that is... unexpected.” Rachel Carlson eyed him cautiously. “But I think it’s time you know why you’ve been brought here.”

“You think?” he retorted, words dripping with sarcastic exhaustion.

“Mathew Whitlock, Chief Officer of the Fringe Special Forces and Anomalous Ability User of ‘Immunity’, if I were to tell you that Lucille Goldcroft has unearthed a threat to our world large enough that it has forced the World Government’s highest echelons to move,” Rachel announced, wearing the gravest expression he had ever seen, “Would you believe me?”

“I’d say hell no, you’ve all gone mad,” he stated blandly. Then he stuck a hand out for a handshake. “Then I’d end up believing you anyway, because if this is Lucy we’re talking about... if she needs me, then something really big is going to happen. Go on, drag me deeper into the conspiratorial pit.”

“A good answer. And that is exactly what she told us you’d say.” Rachel grabbed his hand before he could say anything, her eyes glowing with a strange, unworldly light. “Which is why I must ask you to breathe, Mathew, and not go insane like many poor souls after seeing this. She’s discovered what many refer to as The System.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes! a Chapter! I know many are eager to see Lucy (or Adrianna) and what's happened, but I felt a little bit of backstory was important. Anyway, as for Mathew...

He was the one being interviewed in Chapter 51 on Stephen's news channel. Lucy has directly referenced him in Chapter 57(1 of 2) in this segment:

*…in Earth terms, it was a vegan and 'all-organic' restaurant. Still, the food served was all from magical plants, so they functioned as far better meat substitutes due to their marvellous flavours compared to the chemical varieties from Earth.

That reminds me of the FSF. The World Government's provisions for them were… of interesting taste, to say the least. I wonder how Matthew is doing…

She gained a slight smirk as they walked up several stairs to a raised platform.

His squad will be completely paranoid after not seeing me for a year. I always enjoyed sneaking into their base in the Fringes. Maybe I should add Matthew to the list of potential 'Super Schemer' club members.

A better club name should probably be found first though.*

And Adrianna in this( Chapter 75 (1 of 2)) segment:

*"…I have to say, your capabilities continue to surprise me, Captain Riftmire," Silenis Vima interjected quietly. "Both as our leader and as a mage. Did you have a military background before this?"

If terrorising Mathew Whitlock and his subordinates over in the Fringes every couple of months counts.

"Not formally," she replied coolly. Adrianna pointed her staff at the half-fae hovering above the fight. "Arventiel. Join in."*

Haha! Foreshadowing!

Hopefully this leads in to me writing more. But I need to post this quickly to get on my way to uni!