Ragnarok

TWENTY-FIVE

Gleipnir Facility, Fenris Kystby, Norway

3 November, 1300 Hrs

Eirek Fossen was so close to his freedom, he could taste it.

He sat behind a desk in one of the offices looking at three, side-by-side, 17-inch monitors. He had divided each screen into four windows displaying video footage from major world news stations. The volume on all of them was off, but he didn’t need it to understand what was happening around the world. Portals were opening up. Shanghai. Chicago. Los Angeles. Istanbul. Kinshasa. Lima. Mumbai. The portals, and the pack of dire wolves that came from them, were devouring entire cities.

It was all too delicious.

He leaned back in the tilting office chair and one after the other, placed his lower legs diagonally atop the corner of the desk. He slipped his hands behind his head and prepared to enjoy one hell of a show. A portal had even opened up halfway up a set of skyscrapers in New York. He would have liked to see some of the footage of action on the ground-the dire wolves ripping into people-but none of the camera operators could get that close to the conflagrations for more than a second or two without being shredded themselves.

The door to the office opened, and Fossen looked up. Nathalie Schroder was Fossen’s assistant. She was young, at 25, but highly capable. She had a brilliant mind for the math involved in their undertaking, and she was equally good with electrical engineering. She wore a lab coat, and her dark hair was back in a ponytail. Her father had worked for the project before her. Fossen liked her, but she had been asking the wrong kind of questions lately.

“How are the power readings?” he asked her.

“Good,” she said, looking down at her tablet PC. “The turbines have collected a surplus and we should be ready for another test.”

“How long has it been since the last test?” Fossen interrupted her.

She tapped a few times at her tablet. “Five hours. I have the statistics now. It was at 98 % stability and generated over 12 gigawatts at one point, but I think we can go higher-”

Fossen waved his hand cutting her off. “I don’t need the details. As long as we are at 98 %, that’s all that is important.”

He let his eyes drift back to the screens with the scenes of destruction.

Schroder looked over his shoulder and cleared her throat. She spoke softly. “We still have no control over the global portals. They are definitely a byproduct of the experiment, but as you can see, they open at random intervals and geographic locations. There are far more of them than we ever expected.”

“I know. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“People are dying,” she said. “Far more than was projected.”

Fossen stood up from the chair, staring at her. Schroder lowered her eyes to the floor. “We knew this when we began, yes? Opening and maintaining the portal was always going to have side effects. One collateral portal or a hundred, it makes no difference.”

“But so many people-” she began again.

“Do not matter!” Fossen finished for her. “If after all this time you are having doubts about the project, if your faith is wavering…you can go.”

Schroder raised her eyes to him, hopefully. “You would let me leave?” Then more furtively, “ It would let me leave?”

Fossen grimaced as though pinched, but quickly forced a smile. “If your heart is not in it, Nathalie, you have no place here. You’ve already performed your part. The system is self-sustaining now. If you want to leave, go.”

She looked him in the eye, relief washing over her. “Thank you, Eirek.”

Schroder turned to make for the door.

Fossen drew a Walther pistol from his lab coat pocket and shot her twice in the back of her head. The bullets went through her at such a close range they chewed holes into the wood of the door beyond her. Her skull detonated like a popping water balloon, before her legs gave out and her body dropped to the floor.

“You are welcome. They are not people. They are sheep, waiting for the wolf.”

An intercom on the wall came to life with a clicking noise.

“What is it?” Fossen asked, disgust in his voice as if the shooting was the latest in a never-ending series of distractions and interruptions.

“Security, sir. We have intruders. The dire wolves have them cornered.” The voice said through the intercom with a thick slur, as if the man attached to it was on drugs.

“I want them alive. I’ll be right there.” Fossen got up from his chair and made for the door to the chamber.

Oh Stanislav, you should not have come back.