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28. Black Holes

I don't know how long we've been in the castle, but as of today, there have been seven additional residents after us. It's been a few days since we confirmed that Zander is able to use magic even with the restriction of cuffs. His powers are currently limited as there is not enough of the solution in his system to fight the restriction of the cuffs, but he has been training every day, trying to see how far he can go. Scooby reported that Florencia has been recruiting more werewolves in Aquila, for the mere purpose of kidnapping sacred beings faster.

As for the NASA tech, Orion and I are trying to figure out what to do with it. Right now, we are in the library, doing some brainstorming. Orion was able to fix one of the ten years old laptop we found in the confiscation room that Scooby shoved me into before, and with Zander's magic, his energy manipulation, specifically radio waves, we are able to have internet access in the castle. It's so great that Zander can be some sort of living Wi-Fi. Of course, the connection is terrible, but it's still helpful.

Before we can figure out what to do with the NASA tech, we first need to know what it is, exactly. We know that it will help Florencia create a pocket world, her own Narnia, but how? What does it do specifically? Our top guess is some kind of mini particle accelerator, but we don't know anything for certain.

"No one knows exactly what the thing does because it's top secret. Not everyone in NASA knows about it." Orion sits in front of a laptop with his cup of tea beside it. I'm sitting next to him, wearing an oversized dark red hoodie, protecting my face from the unnaturally yet unsurprisingly coldness that the strong storm brought in today. I want to say it's the witches' fault for this crazy storm, but this one's on all of us for fucking up the planet's balanced elements.

Not too far from us, sitting on the couch, is none other than Zander, wrapped in a blanket like a burrito. Almost his entire body his covered; from the bridge of his nose all the way down to his feet, which are resting on the couch. The sight of it is equally adorable and funny that I wish I had a camera so I can look at it forever and show it to everyone I know and will ever meet. I especially love his glare and messy hair. He grunted about it being "too early to listen to us talk too much about things that does not make sense."

"We can't just mess with something without knowing what it is and how it works. What if I accidentally press something and open up a black hole?"

"I mean, we're all going to die anyway. May as well go down in a cool way." I joked. "Can you imagine the aliens trying to figure out what ended Earth? And they find out it's all because of three nerds who couldn't figure out where the on and off button is?" Orion grinned. "What if you create a black hole and it sucks out the entire planet, and some aliens were actually on their way to Earth to say hi? They end up finding nothing, after cruising through space for like ten million years?"

"What if that's what happened to other aliens?" Orion's eyes widened. "We've been trying to search for alien life but what if they got sucked into a black hole and we were too late?"

"Shit. You're right. It's all just a pattern. We look for life, find nothing, we get sucked into a black hole. Someone looks for us, they find nothing, they get sucked into a black hole. Then some other aliens look for them, finds nothing and then get sucked into a black hole?" As soon as I finished talking, my own words echoed in my head and then I understand why Zander does not want to listen to us. At Virgo, these are the kinds of conversations that Orion and I usually have while working. "Anyway." I coughed, getting back on track. "Everything has to have a record. At Virgo, everything we do has to be in reports that get turned into Vega and Virgo's archive. NASA should have something for that damn Narnia-creating machine."

Orion nodded. "You're right. But it's not like we can waltz into NASA and be like, "Hey, do you mind if we look into your super top secret project that was stolen a few years back that we know absolutely nothing about?"