This had already been quite the vacation. Paige could hear Cassidy's voice laughing at her in the future if she ever tried to give them shit about always being able to find trouble wherever they went. Seriously, Paige and the others had come out to what was supposed to be the middle of nowhere, a nice quiet wilderness place to relax and get away from everything. They were supposed to unwind.

  And how had that gone? They were fighting what amounted to an entire mercenary army complete with their own artillery and air support, she'd been forced to jump into more than one helicopter while under gunfire, barely avoided being super-compressed by a Touched-Tech grenade, and she'd very nearly been killed by a speedster. In fact, she absolutely would have died if not for Sierra, who had only saved her by almost blowing herself up. It was kind of a lot.

  And now what were they doing? After all that, they were going through the portal to this Tech-Touched group’s private island somewhere in the middle of the ocean so they could finish this whole thing. Someone had made it through the portal. Someone was there on that island and had already killed people. Whoever they were, they had to be found and stopped. There were innocent civilians in that place. It wasn’t just Tech-Touched there, though that would’ve been enough on its own to want to put a stop to this. No, it was worse. There were families there, young children who had lived on that island their whole lives and didn’t know anything else.

  Yes, that was what mattered. Whoever the intruder was, they had to find the person and stop them before they could hurt anyone else. And yet, as Paige and the others ran right over the water, stepping on the invisible forcefield bridge that had appeared at a gesture from Baton so they wouldn’t have to swim, Paige found herself only able to think about one thing. Even as the hatch on that little island opened to allow their group to descend into the bunker area to reach the portal itself, she glanced toward Irelyn. Her voice was flat. “You said you didn’t want to go to any more islands.”

  “You were pretty emphatic about it, actually,” Sierra put in, making it obvious she had been thinking about the same thing too. “I’m pretty sure there were some pretty elaborate threats involved.”

  “They weren’t that elaborate,” Irelyn insisted, glancing over her shoulder as they reached the open hatch. Paige looked that way too. The rest of the Adherents’ security people were ragged and tired after having spent the past however long it was defending this portal. Now they had found out that someone had gotten through anyway and killed two of their friends, two of their team members. To say nothing of who else might die before this was over. All those people back on that island were in danger now. They were the people this security team was responsible for.

  Yeah, no wonder they looked worn out. Paige knew she and Sierra were only still going as well as they were thanks to the Biolem thing. Irelyn was able to siphon energy from people to keep herself moving quite effectively. And Haley? Well Paige’s running theory on that was that Haley was running off of sheer spite. These people were some of the only ones she actually cared about, so there was no way she was going to let a little thing like exhaustion slow her down now.

  Irelyn, after giving that brief glance that way, exhaled. “I don’t want to go to an island, especially a tropical one. I told myself I’d stay away from them for good. But this is more important. Saving those people, keeping that place safe no matter where it might be, matters more than me having a few bad memories about islands. So yeah, I’m going. And I know I can’t convince you two to stay here, but I want you to be careful. We don’t know who this person is. We don’t know anything about who made it through aside from the fact that they’ve already killed two people.”

  By that point, they had gone in through the hatch and approached the raised teleport pad itself. At a word from Baton, the transport machine powered up once more, those five antennae-like things surrounding the circular pad humming to life and projecting beams of energy that met right in the middle. Soon, a large, square glowing portal had appeared, crackling with energy.

  Except as soon as it appeared, the portal shrank by about half. It snapped and popped, the portal seeming to bend a bit unnaturally. Well, transportation portals like that were always unnatural, but still. It looked very sickly, like it was barely able to maintain itself and could utterly fail at any second. “Um,” Paige found herself muttering, “it’s not supposed to do that, right?”

  Baton cursed, waving a hand to send one of his men toward one of those machines. “It’s the other side, whoever went over there sabotaged it on that end. They’re trying to stop us from getting through there. Stabilize it!” That last bit was snapped toward his guy, who was frantically working the controls before ripping one of the side panels off to do a bit of quick jury-rigging.

  Haley stood right at the bottom of the platform, facing the crackling portal. She had started to move as though trying to go through the thing, but Irelyn caught her arm and insisted she wait. They had no idea what would happen or where they would end up if they went through it now. She might have been willing to set aside her hatred of islands for the moment to save those people, but risking being turned inside out, split apart, and sent to Spain, or even ending up back on Breakwater through some horrific one in a million chance was clearly just a bit too far.

  It seemed to take a million years, especially going off the number of curses Haley and Sierra both managed to spit out while anxiously standing there staring at the twisting, contorted portal, but finally, the man working on the machine looked over. “Four people, I can keep it steady enough for four people to go through, that’s it. And boss, we’ve got more problems. I’m picking up enemy reinforcements coming this way from the town. Looks like they’re not done quite yet.”

  Baton gave a vicious and rather creative string of curses that would have made even the filthiest of sailors blush. Then he looked at Haley, his face invisible behind that heavy armor. “You know the island. Take your people, stop whoever that is. We’ll keep things clear on this side and make sure no one else makes it through. Do whatever you need to, just deal with that… whoever it is.”

  There was no more discussion, they didn’t have time for it. Haley was already clambering up to stand on the pad, with the others right behind her. Paige knew that, in a perfect world, they’d be discussing just how dangerous this was, planning out what to do, getting some sort of map from Haley or these other people so they’d know what the layout of the island actually was. There were so many things they could do in a perfect world. But this wasn’t perfect, and the longer they stood here delaying, the bigger risk that more people over there were going to be killed.

  So, Paige was right behind the others. The four of them exchanged the briefest of glances. Haley was the only one whose expression could be seen, given Irelyn had her costume, Paige was wearing the helmet, and Sierra still had some gray ski mask that Haley had given her. They made quite the eclectic-looking group, that was for sure. And now that they had looked at one another for that single moment, making it clear at least in body language that none of them were staying behind, the quartet walked together right toward that flickering, glowing square portal.

  There was a part of Paige that was nervous about this. After all, they didn’t know how good that tech guy was at his job. They had no way of knowing if he really was able to stabilize this portal enough for going through it to be safe, or if it would stay that way long enough for them to actually make it. They didn’t know anything about this, really. Hell, they didn’t even know who or what this threat was they were going through to try to stop. They were operating on almost no information whatsoever. There were so many red flags frantically waving themselves in Paige’s face that she almost couldn’t see anything else. But none of that mattered. Those people were in trouble, and Haley was going to go try to save them. Which meant Irelyn was going. Which meant Sierra and Paige were going. And honestly, at this point, Paige was pretty sure she and Sierra would go even if it was just Haley. The other woman had endeared herself to them very quickly over these past few days. They were already a strange sort of family. More of one than any of them had had before, at least. Whatever happened, they were going to see this through.

  At least the actual transport was smooth enough. Paige had expected to feel it twisting through her, had expected a rather rough trip under the circumstances. There was even a part of her that was anxious about how the unstable portal would affect her orb-self. That was always a fear when she interacted with Touched-Tech stuff like this, especially when she couldn’t even explain what she was to the people behind them to get reassurance about how the tech actually worked.

  But no, she barely felt anything at all. There was a very momentary flicker across her body, a slight tingle that felt as though her limbs had just fallen asleep or something. Then it faded, and she wasn’t in the same room she had been in just one step earlier. The portal had done its job.

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  The room they were in now looked like--well like a hotel lobby, honestly. The slightly raised platform they were standing on was a far cry from the one they had just left. This one was covered in expensive wood paneling, and instead of having those antennae-machines surrounding it, the portal appeared to be projected from an assortment of semi-hidden dishes that were almost flush with the ceiling itself. The rest of the room was the same way. There was soft, pleasant music playing from hidden speakers, some sort of circular welcome desk was ahead of them complete with what looked like pamphlets about various activities or projects arranged next to a touchscreen monitor for checking in, and just behind that desk was a tall statue of a rocket ship with a four-foot wide globe of the Earth underneath it. The ship was heading for the stars, as evidenced by the glowing patterns set into the ceiling just above it.

  The room in that bunker had had a very temporary feel to it, or at least it had seemed like function was the only thing that mattered. But this room was obviously meant to appeal to people being brought in and make them feel like they were entering a fancy, expensive, relaxing place. No, not even just relaxing. Hopeful. Enthusiastic. The rocket statue there, aimed at the glowing stars with the Earth left behind, was meant to show anyone who came in here what they were working toward. The Adherents wanted to turn humanity into a full space-faring civilization.

  In any case, the aesthetic was completely different. The room they had just left was obviously a behind-the-scenes sort of place, meant to allow staff to move back and forth from this island to that area back in the US easily and quickly without caring about how pretty it was. It made Paige wonder just how many other places had portals that these people were using, or planning to use, for future guests. It seemed very clear that this place was being set up so that they could transport VIPs in, show off how much work they were doing, and either recruit them to help or simply get some monetary investment from them. That was probably the big part, getting donations. It wasn’t as though turning humanity into a space civilization was going to be cheap.

  No sooner had the rest of them taken in the sight of this lobby area than Haley was dashing across the room to the touchscreen monitor at the desk. On the way, she called out, “This place used to be a lot more like that one we just left. They’ve fixed it up recently. Spread out, see if you--” She stopped short, grimacing as she stared at something behind that desk. There was a slight tremble in her voice then, as her fist tightened. “God damn it, Neil. You shouldn’t’ve been--” Cutting herself off, she slammed that tightened fist down against the desk, tearing her gaze away from what was very obviously a body laying behind it. “Spread out, look for any sign of where this bastard went! I’m gonna check the logs for what doors were opened. Internal communications seem to be down, so we can’t just call up Saunders or his VPs. They’re probably locked down in the emergency bunkers they’ve got spread across this whole place.”

  The whole room was ovular in shape, with the portal they had appeared through at one end of the oval, the desk about one-third of the way across, the rocket statue exactly in the middle, and a seemingly random assortment of doors spread out along the wall of the other half of the room. Including two large glass doors right in the middle, directly opposite the portal platform, that seemed to open out into a balcony of some sort, judging by what Paige could see at a glance.

  Irelyn went that way, while Sierra went toward the right side of that part of the room. Leaving Haley working quickly at the computer to try to find out what she could, Paige sprinted to the left. She found her way to a window next to the left-most door, glancing that way just long enough to take in the scenery surrounding this welcoming building. It looked like they were in some sort of tall, circular tower. Far to the left and ten or so stories down through the window she could see a pristine beach in the distance, with beautiful blue water, several boats moored at a dock just waiting to be taken out, and what looked like a couple of fancy VIP cottages with every amenity.

  There were wooden walkways leading from the beach up through well-tended gardens that were dotted with statues similar to the rocket right here in the entryway. It also looked like there were information touchscreens next to each statue, probably allowing a person to find out more about whatever each of them was supposed to represent. The statues were of various pieces of technology both real and still being dreamed up, or various planets and moons, important people through history, and more. Everything from the Wright Brothers with their first glider to a sort of ridiculous science fiction starcruiser that probably couldn’t exist for another few hundred years. It was even more clear than it had already been that this whole area was set up to impress either potential donors or Tech-Touched whom these Adherents were trying to recruit. Or possibly lawmakers from any given country so they could get the person to nudge something the way the Adherents wanted it to go for their space goals.

  Either way, there was no one in sight. It seemed like Haley was probably correct about these people sealing themselves up in their safety bunkers, which was just fine with Paige. As long as they were locked away, there was less chance of them being used as hostages or even killed.

  After that brief glance, Paige grabbed the door in front of her and yanked it open while stepping aside just in case there really was someone waiting there. Getting no reaction, she glanced around the edge and peered in carefully. It was a short hallway leading to what looked like a couple small offices, including one with security monitors and a gun safe. The safe was open and appeared to have been thoroughly ransacked. Or, if whoever had taken the weapons was supposed to be doing so, they had definitely done it in a real hurry and thrown things around.

  There was no one in there now. Paige made sure of that with a quick walkthrough. By the time she came back out, Haley was calling out to them. “Okay, I’ve got it! I’ve got the path they took, the doors they opened and--fuck, they’re headed for the primary bunker. It’s locked down tight but I’m not gonna fucking trust that. Come on!” She was already heading for those glass doors.

  Paige and the other two joined up with her, all four of them heading right out onto the balcony overlooking the island. From here, they could see multiple other buildings, though this tower they were on was clearly the only one meant to impress guests. The others all looked fairly uniform and functional. To the right, they could see a large manufacturing warehouse, about four stories tall (so much smaller than this tower), with enormous rolling doors covering the front and sides. Those doors were open to reveal what appeared to be one of the world’s largest mechanic shops. There were dozens of vehicles in various stages of assembly scattered through the place, many with what were obviously Tech-Touched added parts, including weapons. From the tools that were lying scattered around, it was very clear that people had simply dropped what they were holding before running for the bunker. It had all obviously happened in a hurry.

  Haley started to head down the wooden walkway bridge in front of them. There were some sort of small projector things along the side of the bridge, which Paige belatedly realized were supposed to create a sort of gradually sliding field that would carry someone along so they didn’t have to walk, like the moving walkways at the airport. But they were disabled now.

  Before Haley could go more than a couple steps, Irelyn stopped her. “Let’s try to get ahead of the problem. Where are we going?” She waited until Haley pointed far beyond that mechanic shop to the right, then took Sierra by the arm and leapt that way. It only took her three quick jumps to get all the way to the roof of that shop, rebounding off a couple other bridges and the top of a rocket statue in the process.

  Haley, meanwhile, took hold of Paige, made sure she was ready, then jumped off the balcony. She used her glider, angling that way. They had crossed about half the distance by the time Irelyn left Sierra on the roof of the shop and made her way back. She jumped from one of the nearby walkways, catching Paige as Haley released her. As Paige found herself held tightly against the smaller woman, she tucked her legs just in time to avoid taking a rather rough landing against a tall statue of a man she didn’t recognize. Irelyn’s feet impacted the heavy stone just long enough to rebound off it, leaping back to land right on that autoshop roof.

  They kept jumping and gliding from there, following Haley’s directions. This primary bunker was apparently buried deep in a mountain at the center of the island. Whoever had come here ahead of them didn’t have that much of a head start, considering they had to disable various security measures and open doors and gates as they went, while Irelyn and Haley could bypass all that. Maybe, hopefully, that would mean they could get there before it was too late.

  The mountain itself was the only one on the island, and apparently the Adherents were building their main spaceship, the one that was supposed to take them away from this planet entirely, right in the center of it. The bunker was buried deep below, and was supposed to have enough supplies and oxygen to allow a hundred people to survive for ten years inside.

  Landing in a dirt lot directly in front of what looked like a mine entrance in the side of the mountain (it had actually been a mine before being converted into the way to enter the main bunker), the four girls exchanged looks, then focused on the entrance itself. There was a glowing forcefield over it, and beyond that, what appeared to be a steel vault door. According to Haley, that was only the start of the protections. There were half a dozen similar vault doors just to reach the main entrance into the bunker, with an assortment of protections and defenses making it more and more difficult and dangerous to get in the further you went. That included protections against various Touched powers. Once the occupants were locked inside, it was next to impossible to get them out.

  “Okay,” Haley started while looking around, “I think it’s safe to say we’re not gonna be stupid enough to do these fuckers’ job for them by trying to get in there ourselves. We got here first, so let’s--”

  That was as far as she managed to get before the vault door behind her audibly slid open. The forcefield had vanished. With a series of heavy thunking sounds, every vault door throughout that tunnel opened, one by one, leading the way to the actual bunker free and clear. All the defenses had been disabled, the doors were sitting wide open.

  “Uh,” Haley managed, staring that way along with the others, “okay then.

  “That’s kinda weird.”

  Joke Tags: Guys What If The Entire Plot Of The Story Took A Complete Shift Into Fallout Territory With These Four Sealed Up Into This Vault For A Sudden Apocalypse