Chapter Text
⠀⠀⠀ “Hey, double check my work for me, real quick?” She sits back on her haunches and drops her wire strippers beside her thigh, rolling her shoulders back stiffly as she waits for the response.
⠀⠀⠀ Its reply comes smoothly from the speakers overhead, “Everything appears to be in order, ma’am, power supply is even. Ready for replacement of insulation.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Roger,” She quips back and reaches for the self-adhesion silicone, unfurling some and ripping it with her teeth before she wraps it carefully, securely around the exposed wire. Meticulously, ridiculously careful. This is it, after all. The last piece.
⠀⠀⠀ She gathers her tools, dropping them into the box beside her, “Go ahead and run diagnostics and power procedures and report back.” She pushes herself up off the floor, reaching to lift her toolbox up onto the cart beside her.
⠀⠀⠀ “Everything comes back clear. Ready to launch on your father’s command.” The AI’s voice always keeps a calmness to its tone, homely, “Shall I check in with him?”
⠀⠀⠀ “Yeah, I’m going to manually check the numbers while you do so, prepare for test in.. let’s shoot for 5 minutes.” She decides. She presses a couple buttons on the rolling cart, hands dropping to her sides as it begins to follow her autonomously as she moves for the launching system at the far end of the tunnel from herself.
⠀⠀⠀ Today was the day. Twenty years of life— three of working on her thesis— all leading to today. Test day.
⠀⠀⠀ With the business’ future in her hands, her father by her side, and months of rigorous research and fine building behind her, they’d finally complete their first (of many) prototype and tests.
⠀⠀⠀ A teleporter. One of her own design, built and branded by hand with the pride of their company on the line. Their only goal today may have been to test the system, but everyone starts somewhere.
⠀⠀⠀ She checks the displays on the launching system, numbers and words flashing across the screen as she glances over them, she has to be sure that the data and statistics reported back were well within working order for a safe and secure test. It felt as if her name and years of work are riding on this and this alone.
⠀⠀⠀ The voice overhead returns it’s attention to her, “Your father is ready for test upon your return to the observation deck, he asked me to relay that the timer will be set once you ‘get your ass up here,’ and no sooner than that,”
⠀⠀⠀ “Open the line to him, will you?”
⠀⠀⠀ “Of course, ma’am. One moment.”
⠀⠀⠀ She chuckles before she hears the mic click on from the observation deck, glancing up at the window where he would see her from, “I’m just checking a last minute diagnostic, just start the clock and I’ll be there before it hits one minute. Unlike you, I can climb stairs without my knees giving out, old man.” She teases.
⠀⠀⠀ “Very funny,” her father’s voice relays back as his shaded form reaches the window, “Didn’t realize you went to college to be a comedian.” She could hear him rolling his eyes, “We’ll start the timer after you get up here.”
⠀⠀⠀ “No point in waiting, I just need to finish this, lock the door after myself, and then I’ll be up.” She exasperatedly sighs, “I wouldn’t miss the test run of this baby for the world.” She clears her throat, “Jarvis, go ahead and start the test timer for five minutes.”
⠀⠀⠀ “The timer cannot be stopped once it has been started, are you sure you’re ready, ma’am?”
⠀⠀⠀ Her father begins to interrupt, “Now, hold on—”
⠀⠀⠀ “Yes, I’m ready. Start it.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Starting countdown for five minutes.” A differently toned automatic voice rings through the PA system of the test chamber.
⠀⠀⠀ She chuckles as her father sighs rather dramatically, “You’re going to be the death of me, kid. C’mon. Hurry up and get up here.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Yeah, yeah.” She waves him off. She checks the last bit of her manual diagnostic check, nodding to herself as she shuts the screen down, the holographic display disappearing. She kicks the open grate closed over the wire she’d just repaired as she passes by, no longer having to deal with the mess under it. Well, not for now, at least. The shoddy repair job was a problem for future her.
⠀⠀⠀ “Four minutes.” The second tone rings again.
She reaches the door, hand reaching for the cool metal of the solid handle, “Jarvis, unlock the door.” She feels the tumblers turn in the solid metal before she tugs.
It doesn’t open.
⠀⠀⠀ “Jarvis, I said to unlock the door.” Her brow furrows.
“The door is unlocked.” The AI tells her. She tugs again.
It doesn’t budge.
⠀⠀⠀ “Kid, what’s going on down there?”
⠀⠀⠀ “The door’s jammed or something. Hold on.” She tells her father, glancing up at the window and seeing him lean closer to try and squint at her and the door. He disappears from the window.
⠀⠀⠀ “Three minutes.”
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m coming down— Jarvis, unlock the door.” He sounds almost out of breath as he walks, his footsteps echoing across the wide, metal lined hall through the PA system’s microphone.
⠀⠀⠀ “Sir, the door is unlocked. The magnetic locks are functional and fully released.” The AI’s voice always keeps a calmness to its tone, even as her own becomes exasperated as she pulls harder on the door.
⠀⠀⠀ “Then why the fuck isn’t it opening?” Her knuckles are white as she holds the handle tightly, she braces her foot against the steel beside the frame, putting all of her strength into pulling it as it refuses to open.
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m…. unsure.” The AI processes, “It appears the door is jammed or something is interfering with the magnetic system. I’ll attempt to fix.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Two minutes.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Jarvis, stop the timer.” Her father’s voice sounds a bit more ragged, she can barely hear his quickened footfalls through the speaker as he rushes down the hall.
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m unable to stop the timer once it has begun.” The AI’s voice keeps an irritating calmness to its tone, “The timer is set internally within the machine.”
⠀⠀⠀ Her father’s face appears on the other side of the door, a scared look to his eye as he meets her through the glass. He furrows his brow as he grabs the handle and shoves as hard as he can. He attempts to slam his shoulder into it, bouncing off and wincing.
⠀⠀⠀ “Jarvis, why isn’t the door working?” She yells up into the system, her own voice bouncing up and down the test hall— fifty yards long and made of thick, cold walls of steel. For good reason.
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m unable to tell. The magnetic locks are fully functioning and are unlocked, is there anything keeping the door shut from the inside or out?”
⠀⠀⠀ She feels around the top of the frame, dropping to her knees to run her fingertips desperately over the cold steel near the bottom. She finds nothing but a perfect seal. The metal of the frame is as cold as the chill that runs down her spine as the other automated voice rings out.
⠀⠀⠀ “One minute.”
⠀⠀⠀ She pushes herself up, her fearful eyes meeting her father’s own as he looks through the glass window at her, “Jarvis, cut the power to the test chamber.” He tells it.
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m sorry, sir, I’m unable to.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Cut it to the entire facility if you have to, damnit!”
⠀⠀⠀ “Forty-five seconds.”
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m sorry, sir, I’m unable to.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Then what can you do?!”
⠀⠀⠀ “Dad!”
⠀⠀⠀ He refocuses on his daughter, the reality of the situation finally settling in as his heart drops to his feet. She can notice the way her vision begins to get blurry, blinking the tears from her eye as she glances back at the launcher, already able to see the bastion of light beginning at its core, already charging at the next time mark.
⠀⠀⠀ “Thirty seconds.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Dad, I… don’t know what to do.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Get as close to the door as you can. As far away from the launcher as possible.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Twenty-five.”
⠀⠀⠀ This sad sort of smile crosses her face, she sighs, “You and I both know that won’t help.” A bitter chuckle as she glances away from him.
⠀⠀⠀ “Twenty.”
⠀⠀⠀ “I really should’ve listened to you, y’know.” She raises a hand, heel of her hand rubbing at her eye, despite the grease that it rubs across her cheek, “I’m sorry.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Fifteen seconds.”
⠀⠀⠀ “No, hey, please don’t cry.” Her father’s fingertips press the glass, his brows knit together, his own tears beginning to roll down his cheeks, “You know I don’t know what to do when you cry.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Ten seconds.”
⠀⠀⠀ “I know.” She huffs, pressing her own fingertips to the small window between them.
⠀⠀⠀ “Nine… Eight…”
⠀⠀⠀ She turns to glance at her experiment.
⠀⠀⠀ That which would be her own downfall.
⠀⠀⠀ For years, she’d been working on creating a high energy remote transport device with the intent to transport low risk objects by disassembling their molecules and reassembling them in alternative locations. This was her prototype launcher.
⠀⠀⠀ Concealed fifty feet under her father’s logistical tower, a literal test tube. Fifty feet long and ten feet in diameter, surrounded on all sides by steel over ten inches thick. One entrance and exit— a magnetically locked door with sixteen magnetic locks. In its entire lifetime of having been built, not a single malfunction in any of the sixteen magnetic locks. Except for today.
⠀⠀⠀ Anything and everything in this room made of organic molecular compounds would be disassembled in a matter of… five seconds.
⠀⠀⠀ Including herself.
⠀⠀⠀ “I’m sorry, dad.” She turned her attention to meet his eye, a bittersweet smile as she watches the way his face contorts with emotion. Fear, grief, remorse…
⠀⠀⠀ “Four… Three…”
⠀⠀⠀ “I love you, sweetheart.”
⠀⠀⠀ “Two…”
⠀⠀⠀ “I love you, too.”
⠀⠀⠀ “One. Commence test.”
⠀⠀⠀ The launcher lets loose of the particles of energy it had been building, releasing a bright band of light that shoots down the hall faster than the speed of light. Within a fraction of a second it began it’s refraction back down the opposite side of the chamber, giving her one last chance to glimpse the face of her father.
⠀⠀⠀ Before her entire world went black.