When All is Null and Void

Chapter Four

She was gone for a while, and the silence surrounding Caleb was only broken by the whirring air conditioning vent in the far corner. A chill air settled on his clammy neck, rippling gooseflesh up his arms. His knees started to bounce. After twenty minutes Caleb stood to walk out. He'd lost his nerve, had it sucked away through the slip in the door. He had no intention of snooping, but when he came to the door and slid it open, Caleb found himself convicted.

Rhea James had done the wrong thing in kidnapping him, right? He didn't make it far into the lab, though, because the moment he stepped from the room, Rhea appeared again, with another woman in tow. She was the sort with broad everything. Broad shoulders, a broad forehead, and broad hips. She didn't seem in any way unkind; the woman merely took up a lot of space, and since Caleb was so short, he was instantly intimidated. They hadn't noticed him, and Caleb practically fell into the room again. He sat down, and then the two women stepped into the room.

"Did you get antsy?" Rhea asked.

Caleb flushed but didn't answer. Instead of condemning him, Rhea gestured to the other woman and said, "This is Peggy Landers. She'll be assisting me in administering the tests."

"Hi, Caleb," Peggy said, her voice much higher than her physical stature might have led Caleb to believe. "If you will follow me, we will administer a few physical tests before we get to Ms. James' portion." She turned on her flat footed heels and strode into the first room Caleb had entered. Pressing on her wrist Holo, Peggy called exercise equipment from below. In an instant, the room had transformed from a sterile hospital to a largely unused gym.

"When you say physical tests..." Caleb trailed off.

"We need to test your strength, endurance, and stamina," Peggy replied. She opened a drawer in the far corner of the room and tossed Caleb a pair of exercise clothes. "If you'll change into these, we can begin."

Caleb held them out away from his body, as if they weren't freshly cleaned. A joke about stamina—one he would never, ever make—passed through his head. Had he missed something? "Where do you want me to change?" He jerked his right thumb at the small room with the settee. "In there?"

Peggy didn't look all too concerned about where Caleb decided to shuck off his clothes, so he quickly shuffled to the room and changed into the mesh shorts and sweat-wicking shirt that conformed too tightly to his stomach. When he came back out of the room, yanking on the hem of the shirt, Peggy and Rhea were speaking in low voices to each other. He didn't hear much when he came close, because they both cut off.

"I would like for you to do a series of sprints," Peggy said, pointing to a belt inlaid on the ground.

Rhea slipped off somewhere, but Caleb was so focused on what Peggy told him to do that he missed it.

He stifled a heavy groan. He hatedrunning. It had nothing to do with the action itself, but with the pain that shot through his hip whenever he did run was unbearable. He'd been five when he fell from a tree in the park. His friend Lance had dared him to climb to the highest point to see if there were giants up there. Spoiler alert: It had been nothing but a vicious squirrel who'd jumped at him. His femur had shattered upon his impact, resulting in him needing a cast for what seemed to be forever. He never had an issue with walking or even taking stairs, but to this day he'd always started to limp when he moved any faster than a trot. Caleb gritted his teeth as the belt took him faster and faster, and he felt a curse roiling under the surface as the belt sped up.

When he started his sprints, Peggy stopped him. "What happened to your leg?" When Caleb explained the story (with a few embellishments to remove embarrassment) she simply nodded. "Easily fixable." She came back with a metal circlet that she fastened around his thigh. Again, it was the same sort of luminescent gold of the rings. He blushed as she lifted the short hem of his shorts, highly perturbed that she'd entered some sort of space highly off limits usually requiring permission to touch. When the golden circlet clasped together, he felt a tingling sensation ripple through the muscles in his thigh, straight down to the bone.

"Wha--" Caleb started.

"This will stabilize your bone for the time being and let us retrieve an accurate reading of your abilities." She stepped back, and tapped on her tablet once more. The belt rolled again, and this time Caleb didn't feel the twinge in his leg. No dull ache threatened to bring tears to his eyes, and for the first time in his life, Caleb actually understood why people might enjoy running.

Peggy put him through thirteen sets of sprints, which left him exhausted. But that wasn't the end of it; Peggy put him through a multitude of physical tasks. She forced Caleb to do stretches, made him do a handstand, a headstand, made him stand with his back straightened. She measured his arms and legs, jotting down information into her tablet. She made him do jumping jacks, and he wondered if he'd somehow become a sweating, dying slug by the time she was done.

At this point, Rhea James returned. Caleb was panting, gulping heavy breaths.

"The final test," Rhea said as she leaned against a metal table, "allows us to see whether you can even pass through the Void on your own, without the protection of another's ring."

"And what's the Void?" Caleb asked between gasps.

Rhea quirked an eyebrow. "It is the very substance that every Timewalker must pass through to move temporally or spatially."

"Ah, right, exactly," Caleb said, as if that explained anything. "And how does that happen?" He was genuinely curious, despite the unease that seemed to burst to life in his chest. What kind of name even was that? Void. Way to scare people.

"The rings allow it to happen, but if your body isn't prepared for the jump, it won't work," Peggy said simply. "The test allows us to know whether or not you are able to pass through it without being touchedby it."

Caleb shivered. "Didn't I pass through the Void to get here?" He gestured at the lab.

"You were guided here. It's different for you to pass through by your own merit than to pass through with another clinging to you."

Caleb frowned. "I don't think I understand."

"When John and Jacob brought you here, the Void couldn't touch you, because of the strength of their rings. We are seeing if, without protection, you can pass through it."

"What if someone gets stuck in the Void?" The question tumbled out of his mouth.

Rhea smiled. "The rings are what allow us to pass through the Void. No one can become stuck there, because no one actually visits it. It's not a dimension to be visited, but a doorway to be moved through. Can you become stuck in the air? No, because it isn't a place."

Caleb nodded slowly, still unsure if he really understood or not. "It won't hurt will it?"

Rhea and Peggy led Caleb back to the room with the carpet and settee. "If you'll sit there, we can begin," Rhea said.

"It's not going to hurt, is it?"

Rhea still didn't answer the question.

He sat, and the metal circlet pinched the skin on his leg. Caleb adjusted just enough so he was comfortable sitting. The sweat covering his body had only just begun to chill. He'd begun to shiver when Rhea sat by his side, with a large needle in her right hand.