MF1.0 - 25 - Tremors

Jones had been talking for twenty minutes, for the first ten, Stef had been able to keep up. Now, she was happy just to watch. He spoke of things she didn’t understand and complex equations spilled out as easily as poetry.

She chanced a look at Ryan, who wore a similar expression. He noticed her looking, then moved forward. ‘What is the bottom line?’

Jones stopped his pacing. ‘Put in simplest terms,’ he said as he took off his round glasses and placed them on the desk. ‘No matter what data he had, no leech could ever hope to track down a single person. No, he is tracking the mirror.’

She thought back through all the mental notes she’d taken. ‘How could he have known it was going to fall here?’

The tech agent shook his head. ‘He couldn’t have, but he was obviously chancing that it was. He wanted to know when and where it was going to fall so that he…’ Jones fell silent.

She shrugged. ‘He wants to use it as red materia?’

Both of the agents were silent for a moment, then Ryan turned to her. ‘The mirror is potential in a physical form. If he gets to it first, he could recreate this woman.’

‘Recreate, not summon?’

‘Very few leeches make it through the void, it’s likely she’s already dead, this is his only course of action – that is, if he was telling the truth about his intent.’

It wasn’t a statement, it was a question.

‘So much as I refuse to believe in that romance junk, the Beast is after his Belle.’ She sighed. ‘This is the part where I ask why it’s a bad thing and you tell me it will cause the end of the world or something.’

‘As easily as it can recreate a lost love, it can create a weapon, a killer, a plague, a gateway – there are so many ways in which it could, indeed, end the world.’

‘One. Duh. Full.’ She looked at the screens behind Jones. ‘At least you know where it is, so go grab it first.’ The looks on the agents’ faces told her it wasn’t that easy.

Ryan looked to the ceiling, then down at her. ‘We can start the testing now.’

She nodded and followed him out of the lab, then down one floor and into one of the small, anonymous rooms only differentiated from its brethren by the small number plate.

The room was small, functional, and had some hard plastic chairs, a desk and a large plasma screen, there was also a back door, a young man with a buzz cut and a mountain.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">No, not a mountain, a volcano, and one that looked like it was about to erupt. She was pretty sure it was shaking, and the red on top was obviously fire, lava or the beginnings of a pyroclastic flow.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">The volcano rumbled, it was a deep, rocky sound – one that would have made the residents of Pompeii wish they been thrown in jail.

<p style="color:rgb(189,190,190);font-family:Verdana,'CenturyGothic',Tahoma,sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Ryan addressed the volcano. ‘Taylor. Are we ready to start?’