What Lurks Between - A SciFi/Horror Novella - Part Twenty-One

The monster is back, and it’s pissed. Last episode, Barry got knocked for a loop.

Let’s see what happens next.

Artwork copyright Revensis and Mikhail Matsonashvili, licensed through Dreamstine

What Lurks Between - Part Twenty-One

Blacked out is not the right term.

I lost track of what was going on around me as the pain overwhelmed it all. By all rights, I should have fallen unconscious as my mind sought a last refuge from the bunny monster’s onslaught, one last bit of peace before the end.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead of the peace of oblivion, as my gaze filled with nothing but red and my mind registered nothing but pain, I blinked and found myself elsewhere. But not just elsewhere. Elsewhen.

All at once, I found myself bathed in a soft, yet somehow sickly, white light and I realized I was standing upright. To my left and right stood walls that were painted a boring shade of pale grey. They stretched ahead, enclosing the corridor where I stood, for about twenty meters before bending sharply to the right. Looking behind me, I saw that the corridor did the same thing in that direction, except it bent to the left. Somewhere in my head, the analytical part of my mind took that in and decided that the corridor must double around itself to form a complete loop around a central core.

It all clicked together then. I was aboard Ketcham Station.

Of course, that made no sense. I had departed the station days ago, and it now lay adrift, uninhabitable, the victim of one of any of the thousands of stupendously unlikely, but deadly nonetheless, mishaps that could befall a space station. There was no way I could be on the station. I knew for a fact that I really lay on a scaffold in the southbound tunnel of the red line of Boston’s T network, just two stops from Downtown Crossing. This was just…well, I did not know what it was.

But damn if it didn’t seem real.

Voices echoed down the corridor toward me, and a moment later two men and a women, all dressed in lab coats with security badges on their left breast pockets, strode into view. The men were nameless faces to me, but I recognized the woman immediately as Dr. Liu, the researcher who had shooed me away earlier.

I didn’t want to deal with her again, so I turned quickly back to the electrical panel I was working on. Then it hit me - I was working? I had not realized that at first, but then what else would I be doing? If this was not real, it must be a memory, and all I did on Ketcham was work. I presume.

The trio walked past me without slowing, though I thought I saw Dr. Liu cast a wary glance my way. They were discussing something in technicalese that was way over my head. I did not even bother to try listening, but then two words jumped out and grabbed me.

Quantum Tunneler.

Those two researchers in the cafeteria had used that phrase; one of the men flanking the Dr. Liu said it now. My interest piqued, I listened more closely.

“…the last test was very promising,” the man, tall and lean with sandy-blond hair, was saying.

The other man, more dumpy and older, with a bad combover, snorted. “Promising? The damn rabbit came through in pieces.”

“But it did come through. Horace and Shelby have high confidence that their adjustments are sound.”

The balding man’s responding snort contained entire levels of derision. “Really. And who checked their work? I would not trust those two to -“

“Enough!” Dr. Liu said in a stern tone, silencing both men. “We will proceed with the next test.”

Baldy opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off.

“As soon as you are satisfied with the adjustments, Leo.”

They turned the corner then, and the rest of their conversation faded. Baldy’s expression of chagrin as he vanished from sight spoke volumes, though. He had not planned on carrying that ball.

Not one bit.

For the next several minutes, I finished up tightening the connections within the panel. It had gotten to the point that I could perform that particular job without paying much attention, so my thoughts began to wander. What was this tunneler thing?

They were sending rabbits through it, whatever it was, and it was doing bad things to them. To put it mildly. But what was it?

*****

Previous Posts:

1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three
4. Part Four
5. Part Five
6. Part Six
7. Part Seven
8. Part Eight
9. Part Nine
10. Part Ten
11. Part Eleven
12. Part Twelve
13. Part Thirteen
14. Part Fourteen
15. Part Fifteen
16. Part Sixteen
17. Part Seventeen
18. Part Eighteen
19. Part Nineteen
20. Part Twenty

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