Chapter Fifteen
Â
 "I think we have time to talk," Red said, sitting down.
 A light snowfall had begun, the falling flakes visible through the current room's skylight. Red, Intrepid, Kate, and Strange Odd Shadow had all reconvened in a secret meeting room. Ben and Allison had left to try and craft a disinfection kit, and Cyclone was with them.
 This room was a new construction, Intrepid noted, as well as much around it. It was situated past a spiral hallway behind Leek Work's main room, and accessible behind a smashable, then rebuildable wall panel. Very discreet.
 Inside was a smooth gray table surrounded by chairs, at which everyone else sat. Intrepid looked around before sitting down. There was some sort of refrigerator on the far wall which reminded Intrepid that he hadn't eaten in a day, and he went to look through it.
 "You don't seem the type to have a lot of time for chatter." Kate noted. "Being a Transdimensional Agent must be busy."
 Red, who had explained her occupation on the way to this room, nodded. "Right. So, I have bad news."
 Intrepid grabbed a soda and returned to the table. It was the only thing in the fridge he recognized, everything else came in unidentifiable bags. He could survive on his consumables. He took a swig of the dark liquid, turning to face the sky, and nearly spat it out at hearing what Red said. "Bad news? This can't be good." he grumbled.
 "It's not." Red said. "You're stuck here."
 Except for the low hum of the generators that powered the site, silence fell in the room. Intrepid turned to Kate, who shared a glance with Cyclone, then Shadow. Then Intrepid turned to Red, and he questioned, "What?"
 "When my dad called me back here," Red explained, looking to everyone, "I heard in his voice that it was because of a situation. We've gone over situations before, including one like this. He confirmed it when I talked to him outside. Leek Works is suspending its transdimensional division."
 Intrepid, Kate, and Shadows' eyes met, and thay all turned to the transdimensional agent for an explanation. "Why?" Intrepid asked.
 Red procured her holographic projector and set it in the middle of the table, and a 3D image or blue color appeared in the air, and the room's lights automatically dimmed, and the skylight tinted. "There's a space between dimensions we call the Unverse," Red said, pointing to an empty spot in the image. On it there appeared to be a bunch of spheres, like bubbles. They all watched in interest, although Intrepid saw that Strange Odd Shadow had returned to his secret sketch.
 "The circles represent dimensions." Red stated. "For twenty years we've been experimenting with transdimensional travel, for research, exploration, and in recent years protection. We started with the ring device you saw in the storage room, which former leaders of the Nexus Force gave us after it disbanded. Last year we moved on to personal, wearable, transdimensional devices." She reached down to her belt and held up her own transdimensional maneuverability device, then threw it on the table with a thud. "But not anymore."
 Intrepid considered grabbing the thing, but instead he studied the image. Then Kate gasped. "You're damaging the Unverse."
 "Evidently." Red muttered, and pointed again. "So this is our dimension, but all these little circles around it are holes. Rips in the Unverse. They started popping up last year."
 "So the new tech and the damage coincide," Intrepid said, leaning over the table. "But the rips seem more focused around this other dimension, here." He tried to touch a second, equally sized circle to their dimension that was 'next' to it, but there was no tactile feedback against a holographic depiction of this type, so he wasn't sure if they saw what he was pointing at.
 But they got the picture, because Red told him, "That's the dimension we were just at. The one that's two years behind yours, twenty-two years behind mine."
 "My dimension." Shadow said, and he wrote something on his paper.
 "Yeah, there are more holes around it," Intrepid insisted, getting on the table and inching around to get a better look. "I bet they're causing it."
 "Correlation doesn't equal causation," Red said.
 "Exactly. It's just coincidence that your new tech is employed at the same time." Intrepid said.
 "You never had any problems with the ring, did you?" Kate asked.  "We have that in our dimension, too."
 "It was always reliable," Red answered, "just awkward, heavy, and outdated. But I get what you're saying. It is the same underlying theory powering both the ring and our wearable devices. It's classified, though."
 "Both open a seam in the Unverse, the ring within its perimeter, the wearable around its user." Intrepid muttered.
 Red wheeled on him. "How'd you know that?"
 Intrepid shrugged. "Hey, I took mine apart, and I'm entitled to, since I built these in your dimension. Didn't I?"
 "No, it was Sandy Studs."
 "I have no idea who that is." Intrepid said.
 "Nor is the name known to me!" Shadow quipped.
 Kate spoke up. "He's one of Doctor Overbuild's workers." she said. When the others turned to her, she disclosed, "One of the times I was in Nexus Tower, when Vanda Darkflame called for me... well," she continued with a wry smile, "she left her computer unlocked and I wanted to know more about the ring, so I read her classified files. Someone called Sandy Studs helped build it."
 "It's consistent with my dimension's history," Red confirmed, looking up from a tablet. "The records show Studs was with Overbuild when he gave us the ring."
 Shadow suddenly snapped his fingers. "I remember Sandy Studs!" he said.
 "What'd he do in your dimension?" Intrepid asked.
 Then Shadow frowned. "It's left me. I forget."
 "Well we know who he is, then." Intrepid said. "So when did you get the ring?" he asked Red.
 "When the war ended, and the Nexus Force disbanded." Red repeated. "The Faction Leaders wanted to maintain a secret service so they hired us-"
 "Yes, but when?" Intrepid pressed. "What year?"
 Red rolled her eyes. "2012."
 "And Kate," he continued, "when did the Faction Leaders use the ring to disinfect you and Cyclone?"
 "Not disinfect." Kate corrected. "Re-merge. And it was only used for Cyclone and Blade. It was sometime in 2012."
 Now Intrepid raised his hand, pinched his fingers, and attempted to snap them ceremoniously. But they just slipped, and the result could barely be described as an audible, so he failed. Ignoring it, Intrepid said, "This is consistent with my theory. So the ring had to exist beforehand, for it to be understood to work, for them to use it... it had to be tested before."
 "Maybe we were the test." Kate suggested.
 "A test, maybe." Intrepid said. "Did you happen to read about the ring's history?"
 "I only remember Sandy Studs." Kate sighed.
 "I remember him now!" Shadow cried. A second later he facepalmed. "But I've forgotten again."
 "I have access to the Nexus Force's files on the ring," Red announced. "Overbuild gave them to us. You're right Intrepid, tests were run as early as 2011 and into 2012."
 "Assuming our dimensions are consistent," Intrepid concluded, "then our dimension's Nexus Force ran tests in our 2011, and Shadow's dimension's Nexus Force ran tests in their 2011... and are still doing so now. And they're doing something that's destroying the Unverse."
 "It's a logical theory," Red admitted, "but it's just a theory."
 "But you've never had any problems before-"
 "I REMEMBER SANDY STUDS FOR REAL!!!" Shadow shouted, standing up on his chair. Intrepid, Red, and Kate all looked to him, waiting for him to speak. Shadow's mouth was open, he had a finger pointed into the air, and he stared straight ahead as if he faced an imaginary crowd. And he was quiet.
 Hoping he'd not forgotten again, Intrepid prodded, "Well?"
 Shadow's body seemed to crumple. He bent down and moved to resume a correct seating posture in his chair, and he stared down upon the table, his gaze as cold as its metal. He looked ready to slump over, when he spoke.
 "In my dimension," Shadow said grimly, "Sandy Studs is dead."
Â
 "I recall the day, or more accurately night, quite clearly now." Strange Odd Shadow related with the delivery of a storyteller.
 "I had just joined Assembly, and I was in Nimbus Station. I overheard the vendors, actually the Assembly ones... Meldric Steamvalve asked Bruno Underbite if he'd heard about the accident. The latter replied, 'I know, and Albert is devastated!' I was there only to buy my gear, but I nonchalantly asked them who they spoke of. Meldric saw that I was indeed an Assembly, and perhaps he considered me an insider, because after eyeing me for a moment he did tell me, 'We speak of Sandy Studs. The poor scientist was smashed in a rocket crash.' Since then I'd thought nothing else of the name until today!"
 "Shuttle accident, huh." Intrepid repeated. He slid off the table and began to pace. "I was thinking of calling your dimension the 'Slow Dimension' because it's two years behind mine..."
 "I think 'The Deadly Dimension' is more accurate." Kate finished with a simulated shiver.
 "Sometimes dimensions are different." Red contributed. She pointed her chin towards the hologram projection. "We've charted all of these dimensions and a lot of them were different, some subtley, some majorly. Some were the same at first, but became different later. The worst was the one where the Maelstrom won the war."
 "And this is the first one that is actively trying to destroy Unverse." Intrepid stated, rotating on his heel in between sentences. "What's the consequences of that anyway?"
 "There are a lot of complicated theories and none of them are pretty." Red said.
 "So what are we doing to do about it?" Kate asked.
 "There's not much we can do." Red sighed. "All our TM devices were remotely disabled by the Nexus Government. The only benefit is that Crimson and Cailan are as stuck here as we are. Ben's mom is apprehending them."