Chapter 6

Chapter 6

After a few hugs between her coworkers and watching the audience cheer Julia went back to the console and activated a stabilizing field that should keep the Dark Node safely in place inside the cube until research begun.
"Ladies and gentlemen you have now witnessed the first containment of a Dark Node." She said with a smile.
"Are there any questi-" Julia's words trailed off as her gaze wandered back towards the tank. The blue-white patches on the Heliogel had started to pulse and brighten again. Julia looked once again at the console and was getting strange readings. The pulsating started to give off a low vibration each time, like letting a pencil hit the blades on a fan. It started to increase in volume, frequency, and brightness each time. The crowd started looking at the tank with puzzled, slightly worried faces and began to back away. Samuels spoke up.
"Don't you see what's happening we need to get everyone out of here now!" His face was frantic and he backed away from the tank and ran to the door, starting to open it with the small handpad. Julia kept her cool and spoke into the mike at the desk.
"Everybody please calmly and orderly line up behind-" It was a useless effort the group of people was already swarming towards the opening doors. Julia started to follow them at a jog and she looked back at the tank. It nearly blinded her with its intensity and she could feel the vibrations in her torso. She new something was about to happen. Everybody crowded into the hall and started running up the main staircase, trying to reach the elevator. It was utter chaos. People were tripping, alarms were firing, there was yelling and screaming. Scientists and administrators emerged from offices, some of them trying to calm the crowd and some joined them. Even from here the noise was deafening. KRACKOOM. A wave of light and sound hit her like a ton of bricks and she hit the ground hard. The world started to turn to black.

She woke up slowly like she was a creature finished hibernating for the winter. The first thing she saw was darkness. Lights still flickered on and off from the walls and ceiling of the building but she could already tell it was in ruins. A gaping hole was above her head in the ceiling, giving her a view of the elevator that was surrounded by the darkness permeating The Hole. Because the half a year night had begun the only light coming from above were small pinpricks dotting the sides of the hole and running up getting fainter and fainter. She thought it looked like one of those eels that live in the deep ocean, covered in bioluminescence. She groaned and sat up. It looked like she had been blown into an open office room from the hall, she could see a few other bodies lying on the ground in the dim light, motionless or just starting to stir. Her eyes followed a metal beam behind her that one end had fallen from the ceiling. She followed it to the floor where there was only a patch of blood and gore. An arm twitched on her side and she could only assume the rest of the body was on the other side of the beam. She tried her best not to throw up all over herself and wondered. "What the hell just happened. That shouldn't of happened there's nothing about Dark Nodes we know of that could have possibly have caused and explosion like this." She shook her head in disbelief and thought again "We were in uncharted territory. We thought we knew what we were doing. We thought we were safe. We were wrong."