Rick left Jack’s office, pondering what they’d talked about. He was expecting a different reaction from Jack. Somehow he didn’t seem as interested in the T.U.C. as Rick would have thought. As he understood it, Jack’s only real loss was a warehouse he’d wanted to acquire for his businesses, but all this suspicious activity should have piqued his curiosity, not to mention that Scott, one of his men, had been murdered. Rick was a long way from understanding Jack’s shady business dealings, but he’d taken him for the stereotypical hardass who never let anyone who worked for him be taken out by someone else—not because he felt anything for his men, but rather because not doing anything about something like that would be an open invitation for his rivals to do more of the same. Apparently, that was not the case with Jack. Or maybe it was just that this new matter he was about to reveal was of the utmost importance at the moment.

  He went into the conference room. It was a large room with at least one hundred chairs. In the middle of the front of the room was a podium with a microphone, and on the wall behind it was a large white projection screen.

  Rick heard a familiar laugh. He looked in that direction and saw Susan in the far front corner of the room, talking to someone he didn’t know. Their backs were to him, but the long brown hair that reached almost to her waist—and the way she moved—was unmistakable. He made his way among the rows of seats over to where they were standing. Quite consumed with their conversation, they didn’t hear Rick come up behind them. Susan was laughing loudly, evidently in stitches over something the tall blond man beside her had said. She leaned back as she laughed, and when she straightened back up she delicately laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder. He responded by putting his arm around her back and moving in a little closer.

  Watching the scene unfold sparked off an explosion of jealousy in Rick. He felt his blood boil; he felt nervous . . . both of which surprised him. He wasn’t prepared for such an intense emotional reaction, nor did he understand how an insignificant detail such as seeing Susan laughing with another man could cause him to come unglued. He desperately wanted to interrupt them somehow and find out who the guy was and what the nature of their relationship was. Feeling this way bothered him greatly. He was a soldier, for God’s sake! His discipline and self-control had allowed him to survive some extremely dangerous situations, and they were two valuable qualities he hadn’t expected to see so easily derailed.

  “Wow! Is that you, Rick?” came a voice from behind him.

  Rick turned around and looked at who’d addressed him. He was a rather short man with a mop of curly brown hair. His big eyes locked on Rick from behind thick, geeky glasses. His shirt was unbuttoned enough to show off a white cotton t-shirt displaying the logo of a computer company. Rick knew he’d spoken with this young man before but he couldn’t place him; his mind was still hung up on Susan.

  “Don’t you remember me?” the young man asked disappointedly. “I’m Rylan. You thought I was a doctor the first time we saw each other. I was wearing a white lab coat, remember?”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t recognize you,” Rick said apologetically. This was the first person he’d seen after Jack and Susan had gotten him away from Gordon. It felt like an eternity had passed since then. “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “That’s okay. I’m happy to see you again. It’s such a thrill to talk to the only person who’s crossed the portal. I’d love it if you could tell me what you saw in that place. After the talk maybe we could go get coffee,” suggested Rylan hopefully.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure I’ll have time. I—”

  “Hello, Rick,” Susan greeted him.

  Rick turned and saw that Susan and her friend had come over to them. The man she was with was taller than Rick, looked younger, and was without question more handsome. He had silky blond hair, and his face had that chiseled look of the male models from cologne ads before the Wave. Rick looked him up and down and knew he wasn’t going to like him even before he’d said a single word.

  “This is my brother Nelson,” said Rylan. Rick offered his hand and made sure to inflict a little pain in the handshake. “We work together.”

  “What do you do?” Rick asked Nelson.

  “We’re scientists,” Nelson responded with an air of self-importance. “You’re the soldier, right?”

  “I told you I knew him,” Rylan said to his brother. “He crossed the portal—he’s been in another world!” he added, brimming with admiration.

  “Interesting. From what I’ve heard, only two of you made it back, and the other guy totally lost his mind. How did you manage to escape?”

  Rick detected a hint of irony in his words. His eyes were shining defiantly, quickly leading Rick to the conclusion that he hadn’t chosen the word “escape” by accident when he’d formulated his question.

  “We’re all here,” announced Jack as he entered the room. “I see you already know each other. Take a seat, and we’ll begin.”

  The four of them sat in the first row. Rick had thought more people would be in attendance given the size of the conference room. Jack went up to the podium, lit a cigar, and loosened the knot of his necktie. He took a long drag and slowly exhaled the smoke.

  “The topic of this talk,” he began as a small cloud of smoke floated above his head, “is something that must be held in absolute secrecy. It is vitally important you talk about this with no one.” Jack stopped and looked around for something that apparently was supposed to have been there, but which he didn’t find. After turning around a couple of times, he shrugged his shoulders and tapped the cigar, letting the ashes fall to the floor. “I’ll do a little introduction to review what we already know so we all have the same information. We’re all familiar with, at least in broad terms, the existence of a portal that leads to somewhere yet to be determined, possibly another world. An expedition of one hundred men recently crossed through the portal and the results were disastrous.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Rick squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. It was now clear what other important matter had captured Jack’s attention. He remembered the first conversation he’d had with him after they’d taken him from the hospital. He’d mentioned there was another portal and that he would soon be sending another group through it. At the time Rick hadn’t thought much about it, but now it was clear that Jack had been dead serious about it. Knowing what he knew now, he was not pleased that Jack had drawn him into this meeting without telling him what it was about. He’d no doubt been afraid Rick would have refused to attend.

  “Rick was a part of that expedition,” he said, pointing at Rick as he said his name, “and he and one other soldier who has still not recovered are the only ones who made it back. The rest of the team died when they were attacked by some kind of inhabitant of that as yet undefined place.”

  “Do we know the exact condition of the other soldier?” Rick took advantage of the moment to inquire about his former comrade.

  “Thanks to Susan,” Jack answered, “who is his doctor and is still treating him, we know that his condition has not changed since he returned. His physical condition is stable but he has lost touch with reality. There is no indication that he’s going to recover his faculties.”

  Susan placed her hand on Rick’s and gently squeezed it. He barely noticed as the image of his men, torn to pieces, rushed back into his mind.

  “What interests us now is that this other portal exists,” Jack continued, “and we’re going to prepare another mission to cross it. This time, both the government and the army will stay out of it. Only we know its location and that’s how it’s going to stay.”

  “What do you know about those portals?” asked Rick. “I mean, someone has to have built them; I don’t believe they could be a product of nature.”

  “That remains a mystery,” Jack admitted. “Our scientists have not been able to find out much. But they’re close to confirming that they’ve been here a long time. The thinking is that the Wave changed something and now, for some reason, we’ve found them.”

  “I’m one of those scientists,” Rylan proudly whispered to Rick.

  Rick couldn’t dispute Jack’s brief explanation. They didn’t know where the portals came from but he had no doubt the answer was intimately tied to the Wave, as was the Fog and every other inexplicable phenomenon that was now a part of their everyday life.

  “How did you find the portal?” There was still so much Rick didn’t understand about all this and, given that none of the rest of them seemed the least bit concerned by the fact that almost one hundred people had died crossing one of these portals, he wanted to clear up as many unknowns as possible.

  “We owe that to Rylan and his excellent investigative work.” Jack extended his hand toward the scientist.

  “And to me,” underscored Nelson, annoyed with having been left out.

  “Of course. The two brothers discovered the portal. It’s best if Rylan explains how they did it.” Jack stepped away from the podium and looked at Rylan, inviting him to take the floor.

  Rylan jumped in his seat, as if he’d just realized it was his turn. He immediately stood up and walked toward Jack. After he tripped on the first step and almost fell down, he went up to the podium and stood there looking at them, his face pink with embarrassment.

  “Well, my brother and I were carrying out an experiment with the Fog.” Rylan was visibly nervous. He was rushing his words and it was obvious he was not accustomed to being the center of attention. Rick assumed this was at least in part due to the fact that he was used to being eclipsed by his good-looking brother. He pictured what it must have been like for them as teenagers—Nelson going out with girls and Rylan staying home to study.

  Rylan continued his rapid-fire speech. “We were studying its refractive index which, quite simply, consisted of sending polychromatic light through it to prove the existence of a parallel environment by means of refractive dispers—”

  “Get to the point, Rylan,” scolded Jack, who looked rather annoyed “I told you, we aren’t scientists and we don’t understand all that mumbo jumbo. Sum it up for us in plain language.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s a habit . . . In simple terms, light behaves strangely in the Fog. We were trying to find out why, and by sheer chance we stumbled on another location where the same thing happened. At first we thought it was another static bank of the Fog like the one in Hyde Park, but then we realized the flux capacitor was activated . . .” Rylan stopped talking, and an expression came over his face that his audience didn’t know how to interpret. His lips curled into a sly smile and his eyebrows rose, wrinkling his forehead. He winked at his brother. No one said a word. “Oh, come on. Haven’t any of you seen Back to the Future?” The smile vanished from his face when he realized that no one had gotten his joke. “It was just a joke. Anyhow, what I was saying was that we discovered abnormal behaviors in the light in that other place, and we thought it was another bank of the Fog, but it was a portal.”

  “We were lucky,” Nelson confirmed. “Remember we almost missed it? We were so absorbed with trying to make conclusions about our measurements that, at first, we didn’t see its significance. Do you remember, Susan? You were with us that day.”

  “That’s right. You two were quite pleased with that discovery.”

  Rick didn’t care for Nelson’s clarification. It had nothing to do with all the gibberish about the light. He clearly didn’t understand that stuff. The only thing that was for sure was that Nelson and Susan had been spending time together, and that bothered him.

  “It might be that the light’s strange behaviors were due to the fact that, on the other side of the portal, everything is different,” stated Rick. “Especially the light. In fact, there are no shadows there.”

  “Seriously?” Rylan’s eyes opened wide.

  “He’s screwing with you, brother.” Nelson smiled, cool as can be. “The solider knows that’s impossible.”

  “The soldier knows what he saw, being he was actually there,” Rick snapped back caustically. “Something the scientist can’t say.”

  “You can argue about details later,” Jack intervened. “Rylan, thank you for your explanation.”

  “Were you serious about what you said about there being no shadows on the other side?” Rylan asked Rick, sitting back down beside him. “Wow! That’s amazing.”

  “How are you planning to open the portal?” asked Rick, ignoring the young scientist’s enthusiasm. “I remember you needed a seal to activate it, some sort of flat stone that you placed in a symbol drawn on the floor.” He actually was hoping they hadn’t thought of that detail since without it, the trip would be impossible. He was still incredulous that no one else seemed worried about dying on the other side.

  “That’s right, and we have that seal. My ‘overgrown driver,’ as you called him, got it for us.” Jack pointed to a corner of the room and all eyes followed in that direction. The hulking chauffeur was seated—taking up two chairs—with his back leaning against the wall. “After the portal blew up, Gordon gave the order to destroy the foundry. With that rather excessive measure he hoped to insure that no one followed you back through. Our silent friend here got the seal without anyone knowing it before they demolished the building.”

  It was hard for Rick to imagine a man of such colossal proportions going unnoticed anywhere. He remembered the scene he’d caused on the bridge when he’d come to pick him up, and there the only thing he’d done was to stop his car and get out.

  “So, everything is ready then,” Rick commented. “But what I don’t get is why you’re really all considering going back to that place. Do you not understand they slaughtered us in a matter of seconds? Do you really believe this time they’ll greet us with flowers? I don’t know who those guys are but they will not be happy to have more visitors.”