Chapter 10: The Cost of a Spark
December 28, 2016 – 5:23 PM
The darkness of the tunnel was absolute, broken only by the wild beam of my flashlight as I dragged the sobbing Doctor behind me. Every sound from above was a knife in my heart. The shrieks of the monsters, the explosions, the gunfire—and underneath it all, the silence where the sound of my brother's fight should have been.
"Please, slow down!" the Doctor whimpered, stumbling over the uneven concrete.
"If you want to live, you run!" I snarled, the fear for Ade twisting into a vicious anger towards this man who had caused it all. I pulled him harder, my own breath coming in ragged, tear-choked gasps.
We reached the Oasis maintenance hatch. I shoved it open, hauling the Doctor up into the storage closet. Papa was there, his face etched with panic.
"The explosion… we heard gunfire from their direction! Where is Ade?!" he demanded, his eyes searching the empty tunnel behind me.
I couldn't speak. I just shook my head, a wave of nausea and grief crashing over me. Papa's face crumpled. For a single, horrifying second, the strong, unshakable man I knew vanished, replaced by a ghost of pure agony. Then, the mask of resolve slammed back into place, harder and colder than before.
He grabbed the Doctor. "You. With me. Now."
We took him to Uche's office. The man—Dr. Adisa, he stammered—was a wreck. He collapsed into a chair, trembling.
"What did you do?" Uche's voice was low and dangerous. "What is the Crimson Hour?"
"It was… it was an experiment," Dr. Adisa choked out, his words tumbling over each other. "A particle accelerator. We were probing the boundaries of dimensional physics. We found a fissure… a parallel reality. We thought it was inert. We were wrong."
He looked up, his eyes haunted. "The energy signature of that reality is a constant, violent crimson. The creatures are its native fauna. Our world and theirs are now… overlapping. For one hour every twenty-four, the barrier is at its weakest. They can cross over. The 'red mist' people see with strong emotions… it's a localized thinning. Anger, fear… it draws them."
"How do we stop it?" Papa asked, his voice like granite.
"The accelerator… the university lab. The reaction is self-sustaining, but if we could trigger a controlled collapse from the source… we could seal the fissure. But the campus is a nest of those things now. It's suicide."
"The Akudama wanted you to do this for them?" I asked, my voice hollow.
"No! They wanted me to control it. To weaponize it! They want to be able to open the fissure at will, to unleash the horde on their enemies!"
The room went cold. The horror of our situation deepened. We weren't just fighting for water; we were fighting to prevent these monsters from gaining the power to unleash hell on earth whenever they chose.
The Crimson Hour ended. The Oasis fell into an unnerving, grief-stricken silence. We had the Doctor. We had the truth. And we had lost Ade.
An hour later, as we tried to formulate a plan from this new, terrifying information, a sound came from the front gate. A single, weak knock.
Papa and I rushed over, weapons ready.
It was Ade.
He was barely standing, leaning heavily against the fence. His face was a bloody mask, one eye swollen shut. His left arm hung at a sickening angle. But he was alive.
We got the gate open and he collapsed into Papa's arms.
"Hacker?" I asked, my heart in my throat.
Ade managed a pained, bloody grin. "He's… better with a keyboard. Slowed him down… smashed more of his toys… then jumped back in the tunnel." He coughed, wincing. "He shot… but he missed the important parts."
The relief was so profound it was dizzying. We had paid a price, a heavy one, but we had not lost everything. We had the spark, and we still had each other.
But our victory was short-lived.
As we tended to Ade's wounds, a familiar roar echoed outside. A single motorcycle.
Courier stood there, alone. He didn't have his rifle. He simply held up a single, broken object, its fur stained with blood and dirt.
It was Ngozi's rabbit. Mr. Hoppington.
He tossed it contemptuously through the bars of the gate. It landed in the dirt at our feet.
Then, he pointed a single, gloved finger, first at me, then at Papa, and finally, slowly, directly at Ngozi, who was watching from the doorway.
The message was absolute. There was no need for words.
We had taken something of theirs. Now, they would take everything of ours.
The war was no longer about water or territory. It was personal. And the Akudama had just declared it.