“Where?” Kalus asked.
“Down in the base!”
“Where’d she come from?”
“Some…window? In space? I don’t know - this big white slit opened, like a cut in the world. She fell out of it!” Sophia struggled to explain.
“What the hell… Did it close?” Kalus asked.
“No, it’s still there,” Sophia reported, numb. Kalus spun her around to give her a push back down.
“Come on, show me,” he said. The second Sophia did, he was stricken with the same blind confusion.
It was just as she described. It was a white slice in the world. Through it, there was only light. Kalus stared into it long enough to work up a headache. No matter how he circled it, however, it looked exactly the same. Instead, he shifted his focus to the old woman on the floor. She curled up on her side, twitching quietly. Three of her limbs were coated in black glass. The same stuff marked half her face, over a mechanical yellow eye that never fully shut. Kalus and Sophia bunched close, staring down at her, until she twitched straight upright. She looked rapidly from Arms Master to Artillery Specialist.
“Are you two Dogs of War?” she asked.
“Wha-what makes you think that?” Kalus demanded, with an attempt at authority he didn’t remotely feel.
“Things I overheard in a Martian WCC facility from Marcus Brass. The Dogs of War, a unit of five. Then I met three of you…in that… Well, anyway, one of them, just before it spat me out, I thought he said “Kalus”. I heard you calling that name a second ago.” said the old woman.
“That’s me, but…what the hell are you talking about?” Kalus demanded. The woman reached up to them with her human arm. A wrinkled inked mural of Dragons spiraled around it while she waited for help. It was Sophia who eventually grasped it to help her up.
“I’m Morgan. To tell you the truth, I hardly know anymore. I used to think I knew…but then… I know I have news about your friends. And it’s not good,” said the woman. Kalus grabbed Morgan’s shoulder to refocus her, when he saw her mind drift through her eyes.
“You said you met our friends. Where?” Kalus pleaded. First Morgan looked mortified, then confused, then she turned to look into the white slit in the world she’d come from.
“In there,” she said. Kalus, Sophia and Morgan drew close to the white window. “I can’t tell if its the beginning or the end…or something else altogether.” Kalus watched her eyes. She couldn’t focus on anything solid. Her eyes zig-zagged across the world without really seeing any of it. She saw something through, something beyond.
“What’s happening out there… Is that what you’re talking about?” Sophia shuddered, a loose finger at the ceiling. As if on cue, the stones that made it up began to rattle. That cosmic sheet of unfolding doom loosened the very bonds that held together its atoms. Morgan could only nod to confirm. “Great… So either we get sucked up into this…beginning or the end, or we jump into it,” Sophia sighed. To Kalus, a single detail made the choice for him.
“You said you saw the others? Demi, Lilia, Howard?” he said. “Hey!” Kalus shook Morgan by the shoulders.
“I didn’t catch any names…but they were in there,” she said. Kalus nodded, helped Morgan stand on her own and motioned to Sophia to follow. Kalus looked back just before he stepped through.
“What are you waiting for?” he questioned. “Let’s go save our crew!”