All That Falls

1 A Hole In The Sky

Rifts in the fabric of time and space were becoming a real nuisance.

I stared up at the swirling black hole and grimaced. It warped the surrounding air, shifting and contorting so that the starlight of the night sky shimmered, the lights of the aurora borealis weaving in and out of this world, dancing in a way that was entirely new and utterly terrifying.

I breathed out, watching as the tiny molecules of carbon dioxide exiting my body condensed into an icy mist before my very eyes. It was cold here; the climate bordering on inhospitable. Even my two thick coats, one of wool and one of fur, and thick, woolen socks weren't keeping the chill from reaching my bones. My teeth chattered as a familiar voice spoke from beside me, shouting to be heard over the cacophony of the fissure, the long, guttural wail it was making, like the world was crying out to us as it ripped itself apart.

"Professor Belling," Wyn Kendrick shrieked.

I turned toward a man who I could only describe as supremely average. Average build, average height, average light brown hair and dull grey eyes. Ridiculous wire-rimmed spectacles sat perched upon his nose, sliding ever downwards so that he had developed the habitual tick of pushing them back up again. The only difference in his appearance between here and the grim desk job he occupied in a nondescript government facility far away was the skepticism in his eyes and the little line of frost along his jaw.

"Every attempt we've made to close the rift has only resulted in ripping it open even further."

I frowned, turning my attention back to the breach, considering.

"If we could reverse the polarity—" I began, already knowing he would have a reason we could not. That was always the first attempt they made.

"It's too strong, too big," he told me. "Our machines can't generate enough power even in a more accommodating environment. But out here..."

"Right. Yes, I understand."

I narrowed my gaze, staring into the swirling mass as if it would reveal itself to me. As if it would gift me some epiphany, some solution to this celestial conundrum.

"It isn't behaving like a normal black hole," he said then. "Not that there is a normal black hole, to be certain. But what I mean is, it isn't exhibiting the sort of properties that one might expect from the astrophysical anomaly that you and I have spent our lives studying."

That he had spent his life studying. Men like Wyn studied the black holes, the celestial bodies, the stars and their alignments. I studied beyond those things. I studied past and present and future. I studied connectivity and meaning. I did not research black holes because I wanted to know how they formed, where they had come from. I studied them because I wanted to know where they would lead. And it was merely fortune that my studies coincided with a point in history in which these anomalies had apparently decided to materialize in our own skies.

"You mean it isn't devouring every bit of matter surrounding it," I replied, raising a brow to remind Mr. Kendrick that I wasn't a fool.

If this were a true black hole, it would have created a field of gravitational pull so powerful that nothing could evade it. Not even light. Hence the name "black hole". And yet, soldiers milled about below it, glancing uncertainly upward from time to time as if waiting for a threat that they could actually shoot to present itself. Unanchored crates and equipment lay scattered around tents and snowdrifts. Scientists who were more concerned about marking themselves as intellectuals and distinguishing themselves from the common servicemen flitted from instrument to instrument in their flimsy lab coats.

"Precisely," Wyn answered with a nod, adjusting those accursed spectacles and ignoring my look of displeasure at being patronized, yet again, by a man in my field. "It's behaving just like the last three except even more erratically."