EUNOIA ━ diego hargreeves

40

CHAPTER FORTY
──-ˋˏ☂︎ˎˊ-──

THE WALK down to the basement was eerily quiet, except for the sound of their footsteps. Once they'd finally come up with a plan, which honestly had Freya's nerves in a twist, they had begun to go through with it.

Freya squinted, turning a corner along with the others, and came across a bright, blinding light that seemed to be alive. Small sparks shot out from the curves of it, and the damned thing almost seemed to have a swelling sound, if that made any sense. Freya eyed it wearily, stepping beside Diego.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Fei asked. Freya couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic, because the thing before them was certainly... something.

Diego's brows raised. "Oh, wow."

Lila scoffed. "That's what took Stanley."

"Along with a few other billion people," Fei added, nodding her head.

Lila brushed past her, scowling, and continuing to examine the orb. "Yeah, who I didn't know and don't care about."

"Right, so it's all about you."

"All of us are irrelevant," Five cut in before Lila could start an argument. "This thing's gonna take the whole damn universe. What is it made of?"

"Micro black holes collapsing at increasingly short intervals," Sloane answered.

"Wow," Freya mused. "Moon-man found his space-girl."

Luther shot her a dirty look, while Five resumed his lap around the orb. "Why aren't we all getting sucked inside?"

"Honestly, we don't know," Sloane admitted. "You shouldn't exist here, and neither should this."

"An impossibility for an impossibility," Five sighed. "The universe is a sucker for balance."

"Grace has been tracking the waves," Fei told them. "Next one is due in three hours."

"All right, so what do we do?"

"We trap it," Sloane said.

"Dyson sphere?"

"Yeah."

Five clicked his tongue, nodding. "Okay. Confident factor?"

Sloane stepped up to meet his challenge. "0.98 at peak energy flux."

"Tensile strength?"

"UTS ceiling of 10,000 gigapascals."

"Okay," Freya interjected. "Nerds."

Lila cocked her head to the side. "Should I be finding this hot?"

"No!" Luther protested.

"What do you think, Five?" Allison asked.

"Could work," he lifted a shoulder into a shrug. "Or we could all die horribly." He paused. "I'm in."

"You're not the one we need," Ben stated.

Allison tensed. "Excuse you?"

"For this to work, we need Sloane, Freya, Lila, Christopher, and—"

"Viktor," Allison concluded, smiling humorlessly. Freya rolled her eyes, watching her stomp away. "Of course."

"Well," Freya murmured once she was gone. "I'm gonna go grab something to eat before you all drain the shit out of my energy with..." She waved at the giant ball of light. "That."

Diego immediately straightened to follow her. She heard Lila snort obnoxiously from behind, and refrained from giving her a sharp look. "I'll come with you."