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Chapter 1 - Pop

It seemed like the test was successful, right up to the moment when the chimpanzee exploded.

Terry Hartwell turned away from the chunky mess dripping down the clear plastic walls of the receiving chamber, holding his hand over his mouth as he rushed out of the laboratory into the hallway. The rest of the team managed to hold down their dinners, thankfully.

Hands crossed behind his back, expression unperturbed, Dr. Warren Jessup surveyed the crimson smears on the walls of the small enclosed chamber. "Mr. Nelson, please log the results of Test #47 as a failure," Jessup coldly stated.

"You can say that again," David Funches muttered under his breath. He received a withering glare from Jessup, and the smile immediately left the portly student's face.

"Assessment, team," Jessup turned to the group, hands going down into the pockets of his lab coat. "What went wrong here?"

The four of them – Terry still off puking his guts out into the men's room toilet – nervously glanced at each other. None of them wanted to be the first to answer, and potentially receive the lecture that would follow if they were incorrect.

"No one?" Jessup said after a long silence. "Well, it's lucky for you all that I already know." His cold grey eyes turned in the direction of the youngest member of the team. "Ms. Xing, come with me for a moment."

Jolting in surprise, Miana Xing looked at her colleagues, all of them sighing in relief that they wouldn't be the ones singled out. Steeling herself, Miana followed Jessup over to one of the many machines lining the walls of the Rutherford University laboratory.

"Ms. Xing, you were in charge of calibrating the molecular buffer matrix for this evening's tests, correct?" Jessup asked her.

"Y... yes, Dr. Jessup," Miana responded, adjusting her rectangular-framed glasses as she stared at the floor.

Jessup reached forward, tapping a wrinkled finger against a display monitor on the machine in front of them. "What does that readout indicate as the current buffer variance?" he asked, his tone coldly condescending.

Xing looked up, scanning the text on the screen. "It says... '0.122.'" she read off.

"And what is the minimum allowable variance, as established by our testing framework?"

"Dr. Jessup, I thought that 0.122 would be accepta..."

"The minimum allowable variance is what I asked for. Not excuses," Jessup interrupted. He turned his back on her, looking over at the rest of the team. "Can someone else answer the question?"

Sandra Baxter cleared her throat. "0.115, Dr. Jessup," she answered.

"Correct," Jessup said, his glare turning back to Miana. "Ms. Xing, would you like to tell me the purpose of our experiments here?"

Miana, trying to avoid the eye of the physics department head, glanced around the laboratory. On one end of the 40' long room, a free-standing metal archway as tall as a man had been constructed, hooked up to dozens of wires that extended out to the machines lining the walls. Inside of the archway, a glowing spiral of light hummed and pulsated. The strange vortex swirled slowly, its hue shifting between various shades of yellow and orange.

All the way on the other end of the room, the archway's twin had been placed, leading into the small receiving chamber where the unfortunate Subject 2318 had met its explosive demise.

"Have you forgotten, Ms. Xing?" Jessup said, yanking her out of her thoughts. In all the times he had lectured her over the past year, Miana had never once heard Jessup raise his voice. But somehow that emotionless monotone was almost worse than if he screamed in her face.