Darkness

Ch.24: Friends on the Other Side

Pov: Earth

The control room stunk of cigarettes, stale coffee, and sweat. Several people had cleared room on the floor and had laid down to get what sleep they could. The team's all-nighter was turning into days. At the front of the room a monitor had been set up, displaying each message from the other side that came through. There was a lot to discuss with their new, possibly alien, friends. The haggard team had taken turns at the main computer, typing questions and receiving responses. They had worked like this for hours, their new 'friends' on the other side seemed to require no rest.

There were two people, or aliens, or things, responding on the other side. Brains and Percy, they had introduced themselves as. They made no note of who was speaking when responding to the human team, not that it usually mattered, but every so often the tone would shift just enough to be jarring, and it would occur to Miller all over again that this was not one voiceless person he was communicating with, but a team like his own.

Miller had tried to get some sleep but it hadn't come easy and eventually he had given up. All as well, Moore had been on the keys the past several hours and looked ready to collapse. A lot of data had to be sent on both sides, and it couldn't exactly be emailed to their new friends, so that meant he and his team had to manually type data, and similarly, manually write down the data they received. They had been working in shifts around the clock.

The company was still on red-alert. In some drafty conference room Miller pictured big men in big suits talking hushed in the gloom of emergency lighting. It would be a meeting of his boss's boss's boss. The people who ran this research facility. The people who were in charge of letting this 'quantum tangle' continue or not. Or at the very least, they were the people in charge of the power. And boy did this tangle require power.

These big men in big suits would want answers. They had already sent people to come peer into the room, to pull researchers out of their busy haze to answer questions about what was going on. These people were concerned and empathetic, they asked questions carefully and kindly, but Miller could see the coldness that rested at the end of these questions. The men in their meetings would not care about the loss of three people, not if it was a choice between financial disaster, or the loss of confidentiality. If they knew their big secret was out, and that his team had spent hours and hours sharing all the top secret data at their disposal to some mystery people on the other side... well. Well, these men would flip the switch and end this entire ordeal. His daughter, his friends, would be lost forever.

He could face the consequences when his daughter was back. He looked around at the disheveled, baggy eyed team working around him. They all would be facing consequences after this. They all knew it, yet here they still were.

"The situation has gotten complicated?" John read aloud from the screen. "Uh oh. What do you think they mean?" His words had caught some attention around the room and tired eyes looked up, taking time to squint at the screen as if to confirm he had spoken correctly.

Miller gripped the armrest of his office chair. Quickly he leaned forward to type his reply, speaking out his words as a courtesy to his new audience: "What do you mean?"

The reply came right away:

The Decepticon fleet has arrived as anticipated. Their presence may greatly complicate our efforts. Cautionary maneuvers have been taken, both our locations remain secure. For now.

"Both of ours?" John said.

"For now?" Miller said

"Decepticon?" Moore said. She looked around at the others, "Have they used that word before: Decepticon? Do we know what that is?"