“Ready, Excubitor.”
“We’re good,” Jackin called back.
Cavalon flipped open the glass casing and hovered his finger above the button, and Adequin lifted her hand as well.
Cavalon cleared his throat. “Do we need to have one of those conversations about what ‘on three’ means?”
“Bloody void,” she cursed, then grabbed his hand and pressed it into the button.
A light below the casing flickered on, but otherwise, nothing perceivable happened. She exchanged an expectant glance with Cavalon, who shrugged.
“Rake,” Griffith’s weathered tone crackled through. “It’s doing … something, out here.”
Adequin headed back to the main room, Cavalon on her heel. Griffith, Mesa, Jackin, and Puck stood a ways in front of the long, dark glass window. The metallic panels that lined the inside of the sphere shimmered with a blue-white, almost iridescent glow.
“If this happens,” Cavalon warned, “it’s gonna be, er … bright.”
Adequin nodded, stepping up beside Griffith. “Guys, switch on your visor’s advanced light shielding.”
The others complied, but Cavalon just looked down at his suit’s nexus in confusion. “Uh,” he mumbled. “How…”
Adequin took his forearm and slid through the menus to turn his on, then did the same for her own. A gridded overlay flashed over her vision before fading away. A readout in the corner indicated the automated shielding was currently at zero percent.
“And maybe just don’t look at it,” Cavalon warned. But they all kept staring at the chamber, even Cavalon. Adequin could already tell it was going to be one of those things you just couldn’t look away from.
It began slowly, with tiny dots of concentrated light sparking throughout the chamber, like the tiny stars of a tiny universe. They hovered perfectly still, wavering in intensity as they flickered into existence. The floor rumbled lightly.
A sharp, chalky crack thundered through the chamber. Adequin’s breath caught along with a dense thud in her chest that pressed into her heart and throat and eardrums.
She looked to Cavalon beside her.
“The grav generator,” he explained. Though the comms crackled with static, his voice came through surprisingly steady and reassuring.
She gave him a short nod, then looked back at the sparkling field of minuscule stars. Dozens more, then hundreds flickered to life, the number growing exponentially by the second.
In an instant, the visor’s shielding flashed to a hundred, and Adequin’s entire display shorted out. A sonorous, hollow whoosh preceded a wave of intense heat billowing from the glass.
Sweat beaded on her skin. Griffith turned and pulled her into him, eclipsing her from the wave of heat, though she could still feel it burning through the side of her suit. Her comms crackled and her HUD flickered with static and blackness, interspersed with flashes of blinding white. She kept her eyes shut.
Moments later, the flashes ceased in favor of a steady stream of white. She opened her eyes, staring down at Griffith’s boots and the dark aerasteel floor while her vision adjusted to the new, incredibly bright light level. She drew her gaze up slowly as Griffith let go and turned along with her to stare at the wide window.
A five-meter-wide, perfect sphere of colorless light sat hovering in the center of the containment chamber. Tiny flares of white and faded magenta licked up off the edges as it churned. The window’s glass had taken on a dark film, shading the view to make the reaction visible, though the intensity of the filtered light remained almost blinding.
Adequin looked to Cavalon. He still stood beside her but had faced away, arms hovering to his sides. He looked back over his shoulder to stare at the churning ball of gas, his face awash in the bright light, his stunned blue eyes exhilarated.