Chapter 3
Present
Poor Dave was just about to end his shift when the alarm blared.
He jumped up and out of his seat. "Class 2 unauthorised use of Circean Arrays, sir!"
Immediately murmurs broke out across the crowded operations room. Others turned away from their screens to peer at Dave and his workstation. The man watching over the room from a central platform rushed to Dave's station.
"Situation report?" He looked at Dave expectantly.
Looking at Dave was one of the most powerful men in the world. Although Leonard Sandoval's type of power wasn't very public or showy, its effects were extremely tangible. Many people often thought of him as a modern Machiavelli, with links to ministers and presidents of countries all over the world. He had this way of persuading very important people to dance to his tune. Some were legal. Most were not.
Dave stood rigidly at attention. Nothing less would meet Leonard's expectations and would most probably result in punishment for Dave.
"Five individual Primus masses detected on origin end of the portal, sir. Circean Arrays activated at 15.37 UTC by an unregistered user. Registered owner Blake Smyth, Operator-Mentor, sir."
"Where is this?" he asked Dave.
Dave squinted at the screen. "According to our coordinates, the Array opened a Rift in the Eastern Seaboard to a location in south-eastern Asia, sir."
Leonard's lips curved upwards in a smile. "Send a retrieval crew to the origin site. Continue to monitor the situation. Notify me of any other developments."
Dave snapped off a sharp salute. On the outside, he looked every bit the obedient worker he was supposed to be, but on the inside, he was moaning at the overtime he'd be doing that night.
"Yes, sir!"
Dave watched as his boss, a very important man, exited the room contentedly. Perhaps doing this overtime wouldn't be too bad. If Leonard was happy enough, Dave might get a raise.
******
Jumping through the portal bestowed Rain with a severe dose of nausea. The instant he was through, he felt like crawling to the nearest bush and puking his guts out. But Rain fought to get the remaining half of Blake through before the closing portal cut him in half.
Rain heaved, and somehow managed to get Blake across, right before Blake's feet would have been severed. But he cut it a little close, shaving a little bit of sole off Blake's shoes.
As it shrank back into nonexistence, Rain saw the cloud closing in on the other side of the portal. And he could see now that the portal would have closed before the cloud could ever reach them. They had never been in that much trouble.
Rain sat back and sighed. Then Rain's body remembered that it was nauseous, and he rolled over to throw up.
When he was done hacking and coughing, Rain wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, standing up to survey his surroundings. On all sides, imposing vegetation hemmed the duo in a small clearing. The treetops choked out much of the sunlight, their trunks stretching up to meet the sky above, and wildlife chittered around Rain. Rain got the impression this was not anywhere near St Willough's.
"That was quite well managed," a voice said, with something almost like grudging admiration. Rain almost jumped out of his skin, whirling around to find a perfectly healthy Blake.
"Weren't you totally out? Don't give me heart attacks like that!"
"I was never 'out'. I just thought it prudent to assess your adaptability."
Rain fumed at being put on the spot. "We could have died!"
"No, we wouldn't. I had everything under control."
"What the hell was that anyway? I've never seen anything like it. Did I hit my head from that lightning blast? Am I hallucinating? No, wait, if I'm hallucinating, I won't be able to tell anyway..." Rain groaned in frustration. "Just what is going on?"
Blake reached over and pinched Rain, who drew his arm back swiftly. "Ow! What's that for?"
"See? Awake."
"OK, so?"
Blake sighed. "They're called Primus. We named them Primus. They began appearing at the tail end of World War II, when the US government started the Manhattan Project. The first bomb tests awoke them from their dormant state."
"What happened then?" Rain asked.
Blake sighed dramatically. "I wish I could explain. Oh, if only I had a chance to speak..."
Rain, prudently, shut up.
"Then it was chaos for the first few weeks. As you experienced firsthand, Primus will assimilate metallic objects in order to grow." Blake paused. "Though, they're not picky about their food. They'll absorb organic matter too."
Rain shuddered.
"In addition to assimilation, Primus can apparently alter conditions in the surrounding environment to their advantage. They are able to control weather conditions."
Blake ignored the darkening look on Rain's face as realisation dawned, and continued.
"A couple of neighbouring bases and test sites were destroyed by hostile Primus. It's a miracle more lives weren't lost. With no clear method of combating the Primus, the Manhattan Project withdrew from the area. But on its way out, they somehow managed to capture a sample of a Primus. The early analysis results shocked them, to say the least."
Blake moved around the clearing, gathering little sticks and leaves. He gestured for Rain to help him, which Rain did. They picked up any spare vegetation off the ground, dropping it in a large pile.
"The Primus were made out of technology the world had never seen. Nanobots, more advanced than any human technology by orders of magnitude, that were able to alter molecular structures. It explained how the Primus manipulated the elements so easily, and how they self-replicated. They changed the surrounding material to suit their own ends."
Rain tried to shut off thoughts of being eaten and absorbed by an ever-expanding mass of Primus.
"In addition, the alloy that the nanobots were made of ... didn't match any known alloys or elements found here on Earth. And the dirt samples found with the Primus sample were carbon-dated to a time before the dinosaurs. That's where their name comes from. They predate any known civilisation or life-forms.
Here, Blake paused. He let the implication sink further in for Rain.
"It was revolutionary. Aliens existed out there somewhere, somewhen, and they had visited Earth. The Manhattan Project morphed from a nuclear arms development programme to an extraterrestrial technology research programme. And then that too turned into weapons development. The governments tried their damndest to weaponise Primus tech in a joint project. Because, after all, whoever weaponised Primus tech first would probably be the most powerful in the world."
"Imagine it. Guns that would make any opposition literally go up in flames. Turning tanks into puddles of water. None of that came to pass. But, in its place," Blake held up his fingertip, "they created something worse."
