A pillar of blinding white light cleaved the darkness asunder. The pylon of radiance yawned wider still as the massive hangar doors slowly wailed apart on their tracks, dragging their way along with a considerable lack of haste–as if they fought against the impending ingress of the cargo truck that idled just beyond the shadows’ reach, waiting to penetrate the clean, cool depths of Cecilia’s sanctuary with the blight held in its lead-encased belly.

        Apart from the rending screech of metal on concrete, the only sound that pressed against Cecilia’s ears–muffled as if a great pair of rubber hands were cupped over them–was the sound of each ragged breath that her lungs managed to puff into her mask. She kept her breathing as steady as she could–the cumbersome hose attached to her mask could only supply so much fresh oxygen before her lenses fogged up.

        With a teeth-chattering clang, the doors reached the extent of their hospitality and shuddered to a stop. Cecilia raised her rubber-clad arm to shield her view from the sun as her eyes adjusted, and she peered out into the sunbleached expanse of the Command plaza. The grounds that were bustling mere hours ago were now akin to a ghost town–not a soul lingered in the shadows that stretched from the wings of Command, no PT formations blew past the hangar in a flurry of sweat and the barked sing-song of cadences. It was just the truck–and a handful of figures scattered around it, all clad in the same olive-colored NBC suit that Cecilia now found herself strapped into.

        The R&D building had passed EPA inspection only two days ago. Hell, the paint was still drying in the break room when her team got notice that they were due to receive a potentially radioactive Soviet shipment, freshly seized this morning. 

        Potentially. She scoffed at the thought.

        All room for speculation had been dashed when she had learned that one of Davy’s men had made the mistake of opening the truck’s cargo hold. The poor fool had arrived back on base on a stretcher, blood spurting from every orifice from the chest up. His split-second decision was a careless lapse in protocol that he would ultimately pay for with his life.

        This display of utter incompetence was why Cecilia had pressed Commander Harper for a lockdown of the base, with only a skeleton crew of her own choosing–protected to the teeth–to bring the load in. The breadth of Javelin’s forces had only proved that they were sorely underprepared to treat caela radiation with the caution she had urged them to from the beginning. If the cargo–whatever it was–was radioactive enough to eat through a man’s organs in a matter of seconds, Cecilia alone would see to it that no further slips were made until someone else with a modicum of competency decided to kindly rise to the task and share her burden.

        She hoped that lessons could be learned today.

        A muffled order was shouted from one of the figures outside, and an arm was raised, circling at the elbow, as it motioned the truck into the hangar. 

        The three sets of triangular gas mask lenses that flanked Cecilia–all belonging to the newcomers to her budding R&D team–flashed reflected sunlight toward her as they faltered back a step, anxiously looking to her for instruction as the truck rumbled towards them like a gallows on wheels. 

        Cecilia steeled her nerves and plodded forward in her oversized boots, motioning in a wide arc of her arm toward one of the two largest lead-lined modules that had been constructed within the hangar. The giant vault-like door was already open, awaiting the truck’s arrival. The suited driver nodded from behind the dirt-streaked windshield and turned the truck’s wheels with a squeal, slowly guiding the truck into the entrance marked Module 4. 

        “Okay–good,” Cecilia breathed. She turned to the scientists behind her. “Dawson,” she called to the tallest of the three. “Show the driver to the decon line. He needs to go all the way through–just take him as far as the mats and then meet us back at the hot line.”

        “Right.” Dawson clomped past, following the truck into the module. 

        A burning itch of worry nipped at the back of her neck. At the SNOW lab back in Germany, she had run a tight ship when it came to containment procedures–but such standards were easily met when her team was as well-coordinated as the fingers on her own hand. Now, however, she had no choice but to cast all of her faith in these new, untested peers of hers–people she had only worked alongside for a matter of days–to avoid catastrophe of the worst kind. She had screened all of her team personally, of course, and there was no doubt that she was working with the best, but the concept of caelumology was unheard of to the lot of them, nonetheless. She could only hope that they feared the risks enough to avoid doing something stupid.

        “And the rest of you,” she said, keeping her tone level, “let’s head in.”

        Following Cecilia’s lead, the two of them fell in behind her as she closed in on Module 4. Once again, all sense of sound was lost to her, save for the groan of rubber against rubber and the woosh of her breath in her mask as she moved to the large door. She let the others step inside first, and once they did so, she took hold of the lever and leaned her entire body weight into pulling the door shut.

        “Sealing the control point,” she grunted, and with a satisfying hiss, the door latched shut behind her. 

        The truck lay in wait in the middle of the bay, the radiator clicking as the engine began to cool. It seemed that Dawson was at least able to adequately perform the task of directing the driver through the heavy plastic flaps, which now swung gently in the breeze of filtered air at the far end of the room. The bare metal walls around them were tarped in a similar clear plastic, ready for the thorough wash-down that would ensue when Cecilia’s work was done. 

        The thick silence that permeated the air was broken only by the periodic click and hiss from one oxygen tank or another as Cecilia and her team slowly circled the truck. Each gentle step of a boot sole panged and pattered against the grated floor in unstructured rhythm. 

        Cecilia reached out as she walked, tracing her gloved fingers along the pocks of damage that marked the corrugated faces of the cargo container. Her fingers stopped just shy of a hole, the metal rending suddenly inward in the shape of a thumb-sized pit. She reached up toward her head and fumbled for a moment with the light mounted to the side of her mask, eventually succeeding in snapping the switch forward. Amber light flooded the hole in front of her and refracted off the face of a deformed puck of lead, buried less than half an inch into the metal.

        “Start taking the readings from the outside before I open up the back,” Cecilia said. “Check the bullet holes–let’s make sure nothing has compromised the cargo hold.”

        There was a lull, then a caela counter buzzed to life from the other side of the truck. It clicked with a meter slightly more frenzied than a clean environment would call for.

        “Reading?” she called.

        “One-forty-seven,” a Danish lilt responded.

        Cecilia exhaled steadily.

        Nothing in, nothing out. I am safe without a doubt, Cecilia mentally repeated the words that had been drilled into her head during her own NBC training years ago. Avoiding panic in the suit was the foundation of NBC safety–even though such a thing always seemed like a no-brainer, she had witnessed her fair share of near-disasters in the past, with colleagues suffering a fit of claustrophobia and trying to tear their mask off in a hot zone–just for a breath of fresh air. 

        It happened more often than one would think.

        “Stone?” she said, tiptoeing to peer over the truck’s side mirror at her only female counterpart, who wasn’t more than a year or so older than Cecilia herself. The young woman’s thick, square glasses were pressed flush against her pale face under her gas mask. “You doing okay?” 

        “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” Stone spoke, swallowing the waver at the tail end of her response as she came around the front of the truck. She began attaching a flash block to the camera she held, closing in on a spot of interest at her end of the cargo container. She aimed the camera and fiddled with the focus for a moment before the flash pinged and the camera buzzed, turning the film.

        Cecilia turned, rounding the back of the truck. “Andersen?” she said, checking in on her other compatriot. 

        The soft-spoken Dane–the oldest of Cecilia’s entourage and a respected radiobiologist–leaned around the rear corner and responded to Cecilia’s query with a nonchalant thumbs-up before returning to his checklist, jotting a few hastily-scrawled notes on a pad of paper.

        Good enough.

        Cecilia reached to her hip and unhooked her own caela counter from her ALICE belt, flicking the switch to the “on” position. It began to click in tandem with Andersen’s.

        103.

        She held it abreast as she turned to face the pair of doors on the back of the cargo container. Her heart squeezed its way up into her throat as she reached for the rusty lever, her hand hovering for a moment just above it. 

        It’s not too late to just leave it all alone. 

        Her hand came to rest on the lever.

        “Opening the door now. Don’t come around the back until I can get a reading on whatever it is that’s in there.”

        Cecilia could feel the collective breath held between the three of them; the anticipation hung weightless in the air. With a solid, grating chunk, the lever was released from the latch and the door popped open–just a crack.

        Her caela counter keened. The digitized numbers scrambled for a moment before settling on their new reading.

        9,713.

        “Christ,” she breathed. She heard a muffled, panicked exchange between the two others.

        Nothing in, nothing out. Cecilia swallowed, her eyes wide and staring dead ahead at the sliver of fatal blackness before her as she hooked her fingertips around the edge of the door. I am safe without a doubt. Under her light touch, the door creaked open.

        The caela counter buzzed like an angry hornet in her palm. The count spun up, up, up. 

        21,028.

        Cecilia placed a boot solidly onto the rear bumper, looking down to ensure her footing was secure, and hoisted herself up into the cargo hold. The counter continued to whine in protest, urging her to turn back. Her eardrums hummed as the blood drained from her head, flooding her senses with a wave of vertigo. This is normal–just a vasovagal response. She would have felt her veins cooking already if her suit was compromised.

        34,115.

        “Thirty–” she began, her voice turning to a wheeze in her lungs. She tilted her head to the outside, cleared her throat, and began again, louder. “Thirty-four thousand at the doors.” She turned her attention back to the cargo hold, the light from her headlamp now spilling over what lay within.

        Before her, postured as though frozen mid-blow, was a skeleton fully entombed in black glass. In the dark, hollow pits of its eye sockets, fiery life burned with the glow of refracted light. Its spindly hands were extended outward, reaching. In an instant, she was there again.

        Caela Plant Mischa.

        She staggered toward the skeleton, unable to process the reality that this nightmarish ghost had somehow followed her–had come to haunt her–from the ruins of the Tanzanian village. The furious clicks of her caela counter melted into a continuous scream, harmonizing with the cries of a thousand doomed souls that her mind had repressed for months.

        The ghastly, skeletal figure condemned her for the breaths she still drew. You should be with us, its gaping, splintered maw seemed to say, chewing through the thick cocoon of onyx glass to deliver its judgement on her.

        Cecilia’s innards tied themselves into a knot. She gagged, reflexively pressing her hand to the mouthpiece of her mask as she doubled over at the waist.

        “Holy Mother of God,” she whimpered as her stomach turned. Her knees buckled, and she braced her hand against the wall next to her, slowly backing herself against it as she closed her eyes, squeezing the lingering memories of what she had witnessed in Tanzania from her retinas. Her labored breaths sucked the precious oxygen from her tank, and its demand valve ticked angrily, straining with the effort to keep up with the wasteful pulling of air. The caela counter droned on.

        “Whitaker? Everything alright?” came a voice from outside. Boots clapped on the metal grates as Stone and Andersen circled the back of the truck–now joined by Dawson once more. Both doors were abruptly thrown open, allowing more light to bleed into the cargo hold. Andersen’s caela counter joined the cacophony.

        Stone gasped, stumbling back a step and nearly dropping her camera.

        “The fuck is that?” Dawson said, his voice cracking. He reached to pull his way up into the hold.

        Cecilia flung her palm outward. “Wait!” she said, remembering her duty to the lives of those who depended on her now. She righted herself, bringing her caela counter back out in front of her as she inched closer to the crystalline abomination, swallowing the taste of bile on her tongue. She roved the counter over and around the mass, waiting for the reading to level out at its highest before pulling it back.

        “Seventy-five thousand, three hundred sixty-seven counts per minute,” she read out, her voice thin with strain. Anyone who removed their gear would surely have their insides turned to soup in an instant.

        “Herregud…” Andersen choked, momentarily too stunned to write the number down.

        “Okay–let’s get some pictures,” Cecilia said, trying her best to push down her unease and regain her facade of confidence as she stepped toward the open back and extended her hand, helping the frightened Stone up alongside her. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf.

        “Whitaker–I-I don’t think I ca–” she blubbered.

        “You can,” Cecilia snapped, sweat beading on her forehead and a sick heat roiling in her gut. “We don’t have much time. Dawson–grab the oscilloscope. Over by the table–yep. Careful with the probe.”

        Cecilia turned back to face the jagged sarcophagus of glass, unable to allow her eyes to meet the two hungry pits in the skull as she studied the color, the pose, the form. The confounding phenomenon was just as it had presented itself during the Event. She recalled the dark tendrils that had swept up each soul indiscriminately–man, mother, and child–and peeled the flesh from their bones, crystallizing their essence and encasing their remains in this very same black glass.

        Caeloblastite. She had since given the ore a more proper sounding name–for research’s sake. There was now no doubt in her mind that this was the same uncorrupted material from which the jewelry had been crafted; it dripped with the same deep purple hues and swallowed all light with the same insatiable hunger.

        As Stone set about snapping her photos and Dawson shimmied past the skeleton’s extended arm with a spool of measuring tape, Cecilia stepped aside and settled into an inward odyssey of thought, puzzling over what she could surmise so far–considering the conditions she had observed first-hand that had nurtured the glass’ formation. 

        The lithification of a caeloblastite deposit seemed to require two main factors: an instance of massive, violent caela energy expenditure, and an extraordinary amount of organic matter.

        More specifically, human life.

        Where there was a cataclysmic Event of utter ruination such as this, one would most certainly find black glass. 

        It was a safe assumption, then, to surmise that what had occurred in Tanzania had also occurred here, in the Middle East–wherever the jeweler had sourced the glass for his opulent jewelry. What eluded Cecilia, however, was why this sample of black glass was exorbitantly more irradiated than the jewelry–the difference in size alone couldn’t account for that large a disparity in radioactivity.

        And, if a Ruination Event had indeed happened before Tanzania, what could have possibly triggered it? The explosion at Caela Plant Mischa marked the first attempt in history to harness caela energy to that extent; it simply wasn’t possible for caela molecules to have been gathered in such a large quantity before the advent of Abramov’s generators–

        “Dawson!” 

        Cecilia nearly jumped out of her skin at Stone’s splitting cry. She whirled around. Stone was pointing a trembling finger towards Dawson’s leg. Dawson backed into the cone of Cecelia’s headlamp light, looking along with the others to where she pointed.

        A long, clean cut sliced through the rubbery material of his NBC suit. From where Cecilia stood, she could see straight through to the matte weave of his black undersuit beneath. She didn’t dare tarry long enough to see if there was exposed skin.

        “Jesus–go. G-go!” Cecilia blurted, her order slurred with urgency, as she waved her hands outward. “Decon–now! Go!”

        Bewildered by the gravity of this sudden development, Dawson stumbled back a step, spinning in a half-circle as he looked for a spot to safely place the oscilloscope that Cecilia had requested.

        “Oh God, oh God, oh God…” Stone wailed, wringing her hands tightly against her chest as she watched Dawson squander his precious time.

        “Fuck the equipment! Just go!” Cecilia cried, straddling a wide step forward to snatch the oscilloscope and its attached probe from his hands. 

        Dawson pivoted and half-slipped his way off the back of the truck, tumbling to his knees as the notched soles of his rubber boots awkwardly caught on the grated floor. He quickly scrambled to his feet and disappeared. 

        Cecilia held her breath, following the sound of each of his pounding steps on the floor until she heard the swish of the plastic flaps being parted.

        She stood for a moment in her lunged stance–her hands hooked haphazardly around the equipment–as she closed her eyes, doing her best to rein in the panic that had begun to swell in her chest, only further spurred on by her pounding heart.

        His life’s trajectory could have changed in an instant–it could have simply been over. It still very well might be, depending on how deep the glass had cut. Cecilia may have to write to his young wife, saying what an honorable job he had performed for all of four days, and how sorry she was that his new baby would grow up never knowing his father because he had brushed too closely to a shard of glass–and knew nothing but agonizing pain and suffering in his final hours.

        No. She wasn’t going to lose anyone else. She couldn’t.

        “Please,” Cecilia said quietly, squeezing her eyes tightly shut twice to rid the stinging sweat from her lashes. “Please be careful.” 

        She straightened up again, rearranging her grip on the gadgets. She shifted the oscilloscope–a cube-shaped device slightly larger than a lunchbox–by taking hold of the smooth ergonomic handle on the side with one hand, and with her other hand, she took the pen-shaped probe, shaking out any kinks in the thick black wire that connected the two devices. With the thumb of the hand that held the oscilloscope, she flicked on the power switch. The small, square screen upon it flickered blue. A teal line danced on the median, jumping up and down periodically and without any order as she waved the probe through the air.

        An oscilloscope was hardly a standard piece of equipment for radioactive research; caela counters were more than sufficient at determining a total radiation count–which was the only piece of data Javelin wanted record of, anyway. Nonetheless, it was up to Cecilia to take the investigation further. Behind every click on the caela counter was a plethora of data that wasn’t being recorded. In recent days, Cecilia had begun to mentally retrace the steps of her research back in Cologne–picking up where she had left off before she had stepped on the plane to Tanzania. At the time, she had just begun toying with a theory that stronger emissions of caela radiation had the ability to produce electrical noise, which could be far more precisely recorded and analyzed. Determining the strength, duration, and frequency of these “waves” of radiation would be the key to understanding–and even taming–the unpredictable nature of caela molecules.

        Satisfied that her equipment was in working order, Cecilia aimed the probe at the skeleton. The glowing ribbon of teal fluttered frantically across the x-axis for a moment, then settled into a recurring pattern. It crested, then fell, then crested again in an arc that mirrored the first, then fell once more–

        Cecilia’s eyes narrowed, catching a minuscule divet that broke the median between each peak and trough of the reading. She wiggled two of the knobs, adjusting the scope’s sensitivity. The arcs on the screen became engorged, sweeping wider across the axis. Then the divet appeared again. 

        Her brow furrowing, she brought the tip of the probe closer to her mask, checking it for a source of interference–a strand of hair, a grain of sand–anything that could impact what should have been a perfectly balanced reading. But the probe was clean–fresh out of the box, in fact.

        “Andersen,” Cecilia said absently, aiming the probe back toward the glass. “Bring me the necklace, will you?” The same curious pattern zagged across the screen. She shook her head, dumbfounded. 

        Andersen returned in a moment, extending one of the recovered caeloblastite necklaces up into the cargo hold. Stone tiptoed over to retrieve it, then held it so that its full, glimmering length was strung between her hands–as if she were playing a game of cat’s cradle with the priceless string of gems. 

        Cecilia toggled the sensitivity input again and turned the probe on the necklace. A similar–yet weaker–arc snaked across the graph on the screen. And there it is again. A sharp tick in the reading, wherever the signal crosses the x-axis. This time, it was more noticeable–and wide enough that Cecilia could see minuscule jittering abnormalities within the abnormality itself. 

        Like a heartbeat.

        “What is it?” Stone said quietly.

        Cecilia switched off the oscilloscope and stowed the probe. “Not sure,” she said, her mouth dry. She turned her wrist to check the bulky watch that was strapped to her suit. “But we need to call it–enough exposure for one day.”

        Andersen and Stone didn’t seem particularly brokenhearted to be cutting their time in the hot zone short. By the time Cecilia had stepped back down from the cargo hold, they had already disappeared through the plastic flaps that led to the decontamination line. At least they’re efficient, Cecilia mused, reaching to close the cargo door behind her.

        She paused, taking a final, lingering glance at the skeletal figure that cowered in the shadows at the back of the hold. This wasn’t a coincidence… Why would the Soviets have brought it here–all the way from Tanzania? She became lost in a swirling sea of thought as she cast the glass back into utter darkness and latched the door shut.

        The jumping line of teal was still burned into the forefront of Cecilia’s mind when she made it through the last of the decontamination measures, now stripped down to nothing more than her uncomfortably form-fitting neoprene undersuit–her feet bare and cold against the concrete floor. She had just barely given Andersen and Stone the all-clear to check on Dawson at Medical, and to subsequently relay Gambin’s report back to her. 

        Cecilia had initially doubted the effectiveness of the undersuits–and she was still hesitant–but if Dawson ended up being given a clean bill of health, she would be the first to sing Junto’s praises to anyone at Command that would listen. 

        Now alone in the stark-white clean room, Cecilia lowered herself raggedly onto the long metal bench that cut through the middle of it before her legs could give out beneath her. Propping her elbows up on her knees, she hung her head loose between her shoulders, allowing her breathing to regulate naturally–now that she was no longer hooked up to a finite amount of oxygen. Her head bobbed limply as she closed her eyes, trying to squeeze away the image of the skeleton that periodically jumped forth from the darkness behind her eyelids. She flinched every time.

        Her fingers buzzed, and she looked down at them with curiosity. Her hands were shaking, her wrists too weak to quell the tremors that racked her extremities. 

        There was a click as the door opened, and Cecilia quickly dropped her hands back into her lap. Pascal entered, his trademark warm smile absent–perhaps the situation beyond the walls of R&D was more dire than she had been led to believe. 

        Cecilia clasped both hands around each other, willing the shaking to subside as she summoned her remaining strength to sit up as straight as she could. Pascal's lips drew into a thin line as he wordlessly crossed the room toward her, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his slacks.

        “Pascal,” Cecilia said, immediately wincing at the waver in her voice that had sullied her greeting. She hadn’t expected to meet with him for another two hours–presently, her mind was far too frayed at the edges to adequately field any questions. She swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling parched.

        He paused next to her and rocked his weight back onto his heels, his eyes fixed on an unseen point beyond the plastic flaps beside her, as if he could see straight through the lead-lined walls and into the cargo hold on the back of the truck itself. 

        “As you can imagine,” he said simply, his eyes unmoving–still transfixed, “everyone’s been dying to hear what’s inside.”

        Cecilia’s tongue bobbed uselessly in the back of her throat, unsure if his choice of words was simply unintentional or if he had instead chosen this as the most appropriate moment to reveal that he possessed the blackest sense of humor she had ever encountered. He wore no expression that could give his intention away.

        “Caeloblastite–er, black glass,” Cecilia said. The quiver at the tail end of her words was back with a vengeance. She cleared her throat, trying to force her hoarsening voice to remain level. “From Tanzania, I think–I-I mean, I’m sure of it. The remains of… I…”

        With no warning, a geyser of tears burst forth from her eyes. Powerless to stop the shameful emotions she had bottled up so efficiently for so long, she melted into herself and pressed her trembling hands to her face, her fingers clawing into her eye sockets. Her skin was hot to the touch, still slick with the sheen of sweat that had bloomed under her NBC suit. 

        “I… I killed those people,” she sobbed quietly through bared teeth. The sentiment was directed toward herself, but she couldn’t deny the cathartic sense of relief that came with allowing him to hear it, too. A thread of saliva pulled away from her quivering lip and fell to her lap. 

        Every ounce of maturity that had called her to hold her head high in past weeks–age and circumstance be damned, she had purpose and demanded respect–abandoned her all at once as her body now shook with sobs–childlike, pathetic. Her cheeks grew red with the anguish of her guilt and from the embarrassment of this display in front of the man upon whom the entirety of her precarious position balanced. She curled her fingers into her hot, damp hair, pulling it into her shaking fists at the root. 

        “And you paid the penance for your mistakes by offering up the remainder of your life,” Pascal said, his voice suddenly dropping to a velveteen softness. “Did you not?”

        She shook her head against the heels of her fists. “It’s not enough,” she choked between sobs. She lived in the company of specters. She would never be free from the sins of her past–they would follow her until she took her dying breath. 

        “Cecilia…” Pascal chided. His shadow next to her shifted, and Cecilia felt a hand smooth over her back. She couldn’t help but release a deep, shuddering breath, starved for nurturing human contact such as this. “What authority do you have to determine the weight of your own existence?” he said.

        She peered through her curtain of unkempt, sweaty hair. Pascal’s form was blurred by the stinging tears in her eyes, crowned with a halo of fluorescent light.

        “The universe,” his bleary outline continued, “God, fate, call it what you will–has already put your soul on the balance. For this higher power to demand the lives of hundreds just to equal a piece of yours… I would say the scale is settled. Wouldn’t you?”

        Cecilia’s chin quivered as she mulled over his sentiment. She turned her head toward the floor once more and knuckled a finger against her nose, ashamed of the snot that now dripped from her nostrils.

        “Now–here,” Pascal said gingerly. The air swirled with a breeze of expensive cologne as he lowered himself to a squat before her and pressed something soft into her hand. 

        Blinking away her tears, she looked down to see a pristine silken handkerchief. It was a deep, rich burgundy with hand-rolled seams of Caribbean teal–delicately stitched into a blue spine that lined its edge. Trying to remain respectful of its elegance, Cecilia gently pressed the square to her eyes. Compose yourself. Now.

        “I think the job you have left to do is very important, Cecilia,” Pascal said quietly. “Don’t cradle the ashes. Take up the torch.”

        Cecilia kept her eyes on the handkerchief, curling and uncurling her fingers around it as she tried to settle the sharp huffs of air that her lungs demanded. The burning heat of shame scorched the back of her neck as she tried and failed to piece together an appropriate response. 

        “I-I’m sorry… I couldn’t keep my team in there any longer,” Cecilia stammered, electing to change the subject to one she could more easily navigate. “The count was too high–even with the suits–”

        Pascal placed his hand solidly on her shoulder. “I know I can trust you to make the right call–although you seem to be alone in that sense of responsibility today.”

        Cecilia sniffled and dared to cast a glance in his direction as he rose, shocked by the telling note of annoyance that had crept into the tail end of his remark. His eyes glinted as they snapped downward toward her.

        “It has become apparent to me that we have grossly underestimated the value of your expertise in our operations,” he said simply. “And for that, I am sorry.” He shuffled his jaw back and forth, looking beyond the plastic flaps once more as he drew a great breath. “Javelin’s response to what happened today–”

        Response.

        Cecilia choked mid-swallow as her mind zeroed in on the word.

        “–further incidents can be avoided–”

        A response.

        She jumped to her feet as if she had been electrocuted, suddenly wiping the wetness from her cheeks with the back of her hand. A renewed sense of energy hummed to life in her core.

        Pascal cut his oration short and dipped his chin incredulously as he blinked, awaiting an explanation for her abrupt change in momentum.

        “S-sorry,” Cecilia said, thoughts and theories whipping through her mind faster than she could comprehend. Everything else outside of her skull became noise. A distraction. She blindly offered the damp handkerchief back to Pascal, stumbling toward the doors on legs that had barely begun to register the sudden return to a standing position.

        Call and response.

        “I’m sorry,” Cecilia echoed again, quickening her step as she pushed through the double doors to her lab. “I need…” she trailed off.

        “A penny for your thoughts,” Pascal mused, following her through. 

        “I need a map,” Cecilia announced plainly to the handful of scientists that loitered about around the lab tables. She scooped up a pencil from a table as she passed it. Her compatriots shared mixed glances, unsure if her order was directed at them. “A map. A map!” Cecilia said, snapping her fingers. The gathering of white lab coats suddenly split like mice in an alleyway, moving to comb the shelves and cabinets.

        Cecilia placed the pencil between her teeth as she padded over to the strip chart recorder–and the long, wide piece of paper that hung from it. The readings from the oscilloscope. She took hold of the length of printed fan-fold paper with both hands and tore it from the machine, eyeing the data on it before flipping it onto a nearby table.

        Pascal braided his fingers together behind his back as he watched with interest, skirting the edge of the table with a posture of poise that starkly contrasted the flurry of movement going on behind him.

        “Where’s the map?” Cecilia said distractedly, beginning to jot down an arrangement of figures.

        “Which country?” someone called.

        “World map.” Cecilia ignored the ensuing shuffling of papers and the exchange of swear words on the other end of the lab. She continued her calculations, her pencil scratching away furiously against the paper.

        “Here.” A pair of palms slapped a large, colorful world map onto the surface of her table.

        Cecilia moved her attention to it, trailing her finger down the length of Africa–to Tanzania. She carved a dot into the approximate location of Caela Plant Mischa.

        “Find the distance from there to Vanguard,” she said, pushing the map away again and returning to her numbers. 

        A ruler was brought over, followed by another two scientists who quietly snapped at each other for a moment about the best way to measure the distance. Pascal’s head cocked to the side, a hint of a smile appearing as he savored the merry chase so graciously performed by Cecilia and her band of intellectuals. 

        “Four thousand, nine hundred and sixty-eight kilomet–”

        The scientist was interrupted by another. “No, no–she’s American, you pillock. Miles. Miles–”

        “Kilometers are fine,” Cecilia breathed, copying the number into her equation.

        Heads vultured over her table as the others fell into a hush and watched, but Cecilia paid them no mind as she spun her numbers, murmuring to herself. Her lungs felt as though they would burst from the breath she held within them. She couldn’t afford to inhale now. Not yet. It was all too precarious. Everything now hinged on her formula tying itself up with a pretty little bow…

        With one final slash of an underline across the paper, Cecilia finally released a shaky breath, observing the conglomeration of numbers and variables that littered the paper. There was no room for mistakes. Her eyes darted from number to number, double-checking–triple-checking her work.

        She straightened up, and as she did so, she felt every ear in the room bend in her direction to hear what she had to say. Her eyes met Pascal’s–and held his gaze with a newfound sense of confidence.

        A knowing grin unfurled across his face.

        “I can find the black glass deposit,” Cecilia said. “Here, in the Middle East.”