AN: Special thanks to TopHat for editing this chapter! This update is the first of several as the rewrites are being hammered out right now. -Smurphy
Ever since the world has discovered the power of the atom, it has changed our understanding of the world. Every field of science has received an immense jump in knowledge, revealing many mysteries that have haunted humanity for centuries. Humanity found itself in a golden era of discovery, good or bad.
Whether the discovery of the power of the atom will destroy humanity, is unknown. But humanity with its insatiable urge for power harnessed it for war.
One can be sure what the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will say about nuclear weapons. But once the beast of the nuke was released, there was no stopping them, the whole world was scrambling for them. At least the ones who could. The world was split between West and East, it seemed like war was inevitable and this time, humanity would not survive it. It appeared that only death and destruction could be spawned from atomic energy; however, humanity managed to put aside their destructive tendencies and used this power for good.
Nuclear energy and particle accelerators are some of the greatest achievements mankind has ever created, and these accomplishments have brought a bountiful amount of information for the betterment of humanity. The methods by which scientists discovered this information all came down to decades of experiments building off of each other. The particle accelerator was one such example of decades of research and experimentation coming together to create an incredible feat of not only scientific advancement but also engineering. Over 30,000 have been built on Earth so far, most not of the size of something like the Large Hadron Collider. But one even larger than that was being built. This one collider was located in a facility in the United States of America and the State of Illinois. This facility is known as Fermilab, and this is where our story begins.
On the outside, the massive 6,800-acre plot of land seemed like a forest preserve with a couple of buildings for summer camps or park administration. Those driving by on the highway would only spare it a second glance before returning to the herd of bison that now calls this plot of land home. However, if you were to ask anyone in the suburbs surrounding the compound, they would tell you that this plot of land is one of the largest scientific laboratories in the whole United States.
Currently, a lone man was driving towards the entrance of the perimeter fence of this government facility. He had a Hispanic complexion and stood at around 5 feet 10 inches. He wore a lab coat with a blue dress shirt, and blue tie, and jeans along with running shoes. He was driving a blue SUV.
This man's name was Miguel Sanchez, the lead scientist in Project 956A, which was a revolutionary project concerning having a feasible long-term storage for anti-matter, along with a more efficient way to produce it. If successful, it would prove revolutionary.
As he got closer, one could clearly see the booth along with a gate, inside the booth, was a singular guard dressed in a clean white shirt with black pants. On the shirt was a crisp name tag that read, "Jones".
Sanchez pulled up to the booth and rolled down the windshield. "Hey Darryl, how are you?" he casually addressed the guard as he passed his identification to him.
"Going pretty good," he said while handing the ID card after a quick inspection. "How's your day Miguel?"
"Same," said Sanchez as he starting driving after the gate lifted. "Have a good day!"
As the gate lifted, he started driving the car to the facilities parking lot. He parked his car and walked out with a briefcase full of files. He made his way to the entrance, which gave way to the reception room.
Inside was a something akin to a waiting room. A desk at the front, along with a clerk pretending to do important things. There were chairs hugging the sides of the room. Sanchez walked on the carpet to the clerk, to check in. The clerk wore a clean button up blue dress shirt, and tie and a name tag which read, "Sherman".
"Hey Mister Sherman, just checking in for the day," Sanchez said slightly more formally than he addressed Jones as he handed for his ID card for Sherman to check him in.
As Sherman started tapping on his keyboard to check Sanchez in he replied. "Alright Doctor Sanchez, what are you and your boys cooking up down there?"
Sanchez chuckled, "Nothing much, just some groundbreaking science." as Sherman handed him his pass. He began walking to the door leading to the science facilities.
Sherman rolled his eyes, thinking it was just a regular day, nothing interesting happening. He returned to his work, which was just some boring admin work. He was wondering what his wife wanted for her birthday. Maybe some new handbag, she was always fawning over the new thing coming out.
Sanchez was walking down a long hallway, filled with busy scientists, technicians, and the such. He recognized quite a many of them, all colleagues, and not quite as many friends. He continued down the hallway when his colleagues said their greetings, he said his, just to be polite. But for the most part, he was lost in thought. Which lead to him bumping into someone, making the victim of the accident drop a folder of paper, scattering it.
"Sorry, uh..." his eyes quickly scanned for a nametag. "Mister Harmon? You're on the different project, something with chemicals, right?"
"Yeah, I'm that's about it." Harmon said as he rushed to pick up the paper before it all scattered everywhere.
Sanchez hurried to help him, even if he wasn't that much of a people's person, he didn't consider himself rude or impolite.
After helping him pick up the rest of the papers, all of it concerning about chemicals and such. He turned towards Harmon.
"So, big day for you today huh?" Harmon said just as Sanchez turned to him.
"Yeah, the first test is going on today." attempting to suppress a slight smile as he realized all of his works was finally bringing fruition.
He replied. "Well, we should get going now, good luck on the test!"
"Good luck!" he replied.
Corporal Phillip Connelly put on his plate carrier, took his carbine and slung it on him.
Connelly was the point man on his local county SWAT team, his team and he was going to investigate a disturbance at a local Fermilab.
"Yo man, why d'ya think we going to a freakin' Fermilab? This should be like CBRN or somethin'," questioned Officer Thomas Roberts, a black man from the hood of Chicago, who moved to the country and joined the local SWAT team.
"Don't question it Thomas, we're going to do a job, and our job is to investigate the Fermilab," said Sergeant Garrett Kransky, the team leader of the team. "Apparently something went wrong with an experiment, the facility's being evacuated. The whole county's being mobilized, something big is going on."
Thomas whistled. "Damn, what d'ya we going to be seeing, some kind of nuclear radiation shit?"
Phillip responded to this one. "Dunno man, briefly said only something went wrong, something chemical, no one's sure what's going one, reports are mixed."
"Alright, shut it you two and get in the MRAP.," said Kransky.
They both did. As soon as the rest of the team was in, the engine started and they drove silently to the lab.
When they got there, Connelly could hear the commotion going on outside, when he got out. Police cars were everywhere, surrounding the facility, leaving no spot not covered. He could see the ambulances around, with several stretchers with covered bodies. He could see several scientists being talked to by some police officers. He could already see some SWAT officers already onsite, looking to get ready to breach the facility.
"Hey, you guys! Get over here!" yelled a police captain by a truck.
The team jogged over there to talk to the captain. "Alright, here's the situation, something went wrong with a particle accelerator test, now there's a portal to another dimension."
The team gave themselves a look, this man was crazy!
The captain noticed this. "Yes, it's crazy, but sometimes the truth can be crazier than fiction. Now, your mission is to evacuate the last remaining civilians inside. From interviews with survivors, black demons that take the form of common animals have come out of the portal, these animals are highly aggressive and kill everything on sight. We also have unconfirmed reports of masked humans leaving the portal."
Kransky said. "So we're supposed to go in and find any civilians left in the lab?"
The captain nodded. "Yes."
Kransky turned to the team. "Alright, let's go in, it looks like our sister team already went in."
Connelly turned to see the SWAT officers of their sister team disappear into the facility. The team moved to the entrance and deep into the facility.
As the team moved through the facility, they found several groups of survivors. When found, they escorted the survivors up, then went back down. They managed to do this several times without incident, the team was letting its guard down, and Kransky was taking none of it.
"Be alert! We could be attacked at any moment!" scolded Kransky, an hour of no contact had given them a false sense of security. It was about to change.
Kransky held up his fist and held up his finger to his lips to signal silence.
Phillips strained his ears to hear anything, he could hear screams of terror up ahead, along with gunfire accompanied by growls.
The team went as one, all business now. The team stacked up on the door, Connelly up front, Roberts beside the door, the door was wooden, it looked like a strong leg could kick it down, and that's what Roberts did.
The door crashed open, and Roberts quickly pied the door, firing off several shots, just as soon, Phillips poked his M4A1 in and quickly sighted in several black beasts that the captain had described and shot them all.
Next, both Roberts and Phillips ran inside. Surveying the scene, there were barricaded guards at one end, with the masked men that the captain had told them about at the other, with black beasts everywhere in between.
Phillips ran the wall, meaning sticking close to the wall and moving as to not enter other team members line of fire,
He opened fire without hesitation, pumping 5.56mm lead into the masked men torsos, knocking them down like bowling pins. The tangoes looked surprised to be going down so easily, even more at the blood spurting out of their comrades, but Phillips didn't care, what mattered now was eliminating all threats.
The team flooded the room by now, having taken down what they conceived as the biggest threat, the human beings, leaving the beasts for later.
With the quick efficiency of a well-trained operator, he took down three beasts before turning his gun to realize one of them was directly on him.
The oh shit was short. Before being thrown to the ground by the wolf. The wolf's paws dug into him like a bunch of tiny sharp knives. The maw of the great beast snarling in his face. Connelly, never one to give up, freed his arm and grabbed his M9 Beretta and shoved it directly into the wolf's stomach and put a 9mm into it.
He pushed the disintegrating corpse off him. Weird, he thought but didn't think anything else of it.
He glanced up to see the room completely clear of any tangoes, the dead bodies of the terrorists, he got tired of thinking of them as masked men, and the almost disintegrated bodies of the black beasts
The group of survivors was a bunch of scientist and guards in tactical gear, most likely the onsite Emergency Response Team. The guards were dressed similar to the SWAT team, with the slight difference of uniform.
"Everyone! Form a perimeter! Pull security so I can debrief these fine gentlemen!" ordered Kransky, his words carried weight as a former Ranger, and when he said something, you did it.
Ten minutes later, they were up and moving, this time moving with men with some very important information, some of the first guys to respond to the breach, and some of the people running the collider project, though the main head of the project had gone missing and no one knew where he was.
When walking down the hall, a black demon rounded the corner, likely the vanguard of a larger force. It was put down very quickly.
Then, more demons came around the corner, the team formed a firing line, pouring down fire at the horde coming down the very thin hallway.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the horde ended. Connelly breathed heavy. Were they in the clear?
"Is that all of those bastards?" asked Roberts.
"Think so," replied Kransky. "Alright, let's get up top before we all die."
The police captain had to turn off the sensical part of his brain to command and control the situation. It was just simply all too extreme to process. A portal to another dimension? Impossible, but it was happening right in front of him.
An officer ran up to him. "Sir, Team two just returned, they have some ERT guards with them, first responders to the event, says the tangoes have made it to the control room."
The captain sent a glance to the young officer. "What's the status on the other teams?"
"Team one and three are accounted for. Four is coming back up."
"Good, form a perimeter around the facility, if we send anyone else in, we run the risk of having them trapped in there. Dismissed."
The captain rubbed his face into his hands, the situation was impossible, he hoped that the National Guard would just get over here already and take over. He was used to fighting criminals and drug dealers. Not handling what seems like a something that could blow up into an international incident.
Hopefully, he and all his officers would make it out of all of this alive and well. But he knew that would simply be all too much to ask for.
C A/N: And that's a close! Sorry for the short chapter, but this is really just an introductory chapter. If you have any complaints, criticisms, or compliments, please leave a review. Anyways, this is Tophat signing out.
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