“It’s nuclear!” Becca screamed at James as she ran up to him and pounded his broad chest with her tiny hands. “Do you know what you’ve done? It’s nuclear!”
“Jeremy!” David screamed towards where his brother had just disappeared into the blackness.
He stepped forward as if to go after Jeremy, but there was nowhere for him to go. The stairs were gone, as was his brother. Olivia buried her face into David’s chest and sobbed.
“Why is this happening?” she cried.
“What’s nuclear?” Tabitha yelled over the rumbling noise of the black hole.
“The missile?” Tony asked. The mere word struck at his center with all the ferocity and fear of an actual bomb. “It’s nuclear?”
Unaffected by Becca’s thumping fists, Tabitha’s scrambling to look at the instrument panel that just moments before launched the missile, or by this man now with Olivia — presumably her long lost husband — James continued watching with his mouth open at the space far above them where three men impossibly floated before ceasing to exist. In an instant, they were all three sucked into the massive black hole that cut through the wall. Only half of it was exposed now, like a colossal solar eclipse where this small contingent had been granted front-row seats.
“Nuclear?” James repeated as the word settled into his brain, and he directed his focus on Becca. Then, yelling to be heard over the roaring wind that swept non-stop through the room, he called, “It’s not nuclear! We didn’t do nuclear!”
“We did,” Becca yelled back and pursed her lips. Frankie slapped his hands against the sides of his head and spun around in disbelief at what he was hearing.
James turned his head away from the black hole, not towards Becca now, but at the horrid sound of metal carving a gaping wound into the concrete floor as the mammoth yellow storage container pulled across the ground directly towards them.
“Get out of the way!” James yelled.
They all started to scramble, but an instant later, the container was pulled up and over their heads, nearly knocking Tony from where he stood as it left the ground before it was tossed further upward by an unseen force. It followed after the three men who’d just disappeared into the black hole seconds before.
They could each feel the pulsing black orb tugging at their very bones, static rippling across their skin like an exposed wire, their guts being pulled toward the center. Everything in the room inched inward toward the black hole, including the seven people still left on the ground, clinging tentatively now to each other or whatever equipment was bolted to the ground.
“No!” James yelled at Becca. “That’s not correct! It’s non-nuclear! That was always the plan. We didn’t want to wipe out the populace. We just made a safeguard against…well, against something like this! It’s non-nuclear!”
“The rocket is non-nuclear,” Becca said, “but half the satellites in orbit aren’t!”
“But…” James stammered as he fruitlessly waved his free arm toward the black hole. It pulsed again as it emitted another electric crackle of feedback. His other arm was hooked onto the handle of a tall metal cabinet, which suddenly gave way an inch and then another. “But…no! That’s not what we were doing here. Non-nuclear! It was just a safeguard against magnetic anomalies. For safety, not to destroy!”
Becca groped backward, stretching out for anything to hold on to away from the forceful pounding pressure of the black hole. A wind kicked through the room, forcing tears from her eyes, which she swiped at in an exercise in futility. Another stream immediately fell down her cheeks, sideways, towards her ears and floated away, pulled backward off her face.
“That’s what you were working on,” Becca said, her eyes reddened. “But you know we had other government obligations.”
“What?” James said, calling over the gusts of steadily growing wind and the pulsing from the black hole that shook the room like a stereo subwoofer. “Well, yes, of course. But nothing weapons!”
“Of course, it was weapons!” Becca screamed at him. “You think the government would turn over the millions of dollars we needed for just a light switch?”
“Wait,” Tony interjected. “We just launched a nuclear bomb?”
“The non-nuclear protocol wouldn’t be developed for a few more years,” Becca said. “The first satellite sets off the domino effect, sending signals from one to the next. Satellites hovering from Russia to the western European border have nuclear payloads.”
“Why would you do that?” Tony demanded, his eyes bulging from behind his glasses.
“It’s 1986!” Becca screamed over the increasing roar of the black hole. “We’re back in the middle of the Cold War.”
“Strategic Defense Initiative,” Tony said, understanding washed over his face.
“Prevent Russia from wiping us out by wiping them out first and safeguarding ourselves from them,” Tabitha added.
“Avoid mutually assured destruction,” Becca said. “But even though that’s for the greater good, the board knew that if anyone outside the founders knew what we were doing, ENH would lose all of our top scientists. You included.”
“Good Lord, I was right,” James said. “I knew it was strange that the missile was there already. How did I not know you were developing a nuclear weapon?”
“There were a lot of things that were kept from you,” Becca said, shaking her head. “From most everyone.”
“It just keeps getting worse,” Frankie said from behind his wife. “This is it, then. Isn’t it? Once and for all, you’ve done us in.”
“I didn’t launch the nuclear weapon!” Becca said.
“Are you serious?” Tabitha demanded as she stomped up to Becca. “There’s a freaking black hole right behind you. It just sucked three men right into it, and you’re deflecting blame? You did that!”
“I never meant for any of this to happen!” Becca screamed at them. “Not this way, don’t you understand? It was only supposed to be me!”
As the words came from her mouth, Dr. Becca Watts was pulled off her feet. She fell upward and back into the open mouth of the black hole.
The last thing Dr. Becca Watts saw before being pulled into the black hole she created were the others being pulled up after her, including Frankie, who held out his hand toward his wife, but she was already gone.
