The Portal Effect

Chapter 5

When we came upon the facility, we weren't expecting the entrance to be built into the mountain. We had been dropped near the mountain, but we did not expect the mountain to be the natural holder of the base. It was well hidden.

"I was not expecting it to be hidden in the wall of a mountain." Jessie said. She walked up to the cement wall that filled in the hole. The door was a metal hunk, bent and warped like a nuke had gone off. But it seemed to be still connected to its hinges.

"What else could hide a large facility that isn't supposed to exist anymore but still was used?" James told her sarcastically. She shrugged his scolding off and continued walking. Several cracks lined the walls, and a few chunks had fallen off. It was like whatever had exploded inside did decent structural damage.

A few feet from the door was a security box. The windows had shattered, exposing what was on the inside. Before I could stop Leo, he had jumped in to look at the tech inside.

"Damn, this stuff is at least 20 years old. Not even holographic tech yet." Leo said out loud. He seemed quite entranced anyway.

"Hey Leo, the camera." I pointed to the limp object. He nodded and took it down. After a minute of prying at the battery and SD card latch, he took the card and put it into his tablet and scanned the footage. As he did so, I tried comms for a status update. No such luck.

"Anything of use?" James asked. We all gathered by the window as Leo did his thing.

"Yeah, the blast didn't shatter the glass. Something else did. The last thing the camera sees of the wall as it pans around is a black thing moving out of frame. Then the glass shatters and the footage goes dead." Leo replied. He showed us the video.

"Would that explain the warped door?" Jessie looked back at the door with wary curiosity.

"Probably. But come on. We are wasting time." Leo said impatiently. He probably was eager to see what was inside the facility. I was as well.

It took a few minutes to pull the door open. The hinges must have swollen from the few days of not being used. The creature must have opened it with enough force to send it bouncing back into the rock wall.

Just as we opened the door, our comms cackled. We all jumped in surprise. Nick let a few choice words slip out, and Leo backed into the wall for support.

"Do you guys copy?" came Cody's voice as the static calmed down.

"Yeah, we copy!" I replied quickly. The others gathered around me as we waited for Cody to say something.

"It's been twenty-four hours, we've been trying to reach you." Cody said. His voice was cutting in and out enough that the voice correction processor was struggling to keep up.

"What for?" Leo asked.

"Have you found... facili.. yet?" Cody's voice crackled through.

"Yes, we found it. It seems to have boosted our comms. I've tried to contact you a few times as we went along, but until now, they didn't work." I told him. Leo was playing with a few dials on his set to see if he could strengthen the signal.

The next time his voice came through, it was cackled and covered in static. "Do...proceed, stay.....do you...copy?"

"Cody, you are breaking up. Can you repeat?" I tried, but all we got in return was static. And underneath it, I heard something else.

"Cody, do you read?" James tried. Still static.

"Do you guys hear that?" Nick asked. I looked at him in surprise.

"Yeah. It's what had me distracted at the meeting. I heard it in the first transmission." I said as the others nodded.

"Why does it sound so familiar?" Leo asked, more to himself than to us.