We made it to 5000 words! Amazing!
Here's the ending of Chapter Two:
He wasn’t sure why he was poking around the computer - it didn’t have much he found interesting. Sure, there were some games - three-dimensional chess, for instance, or some old RPG from the ‘80s that his dad had re-tooled and created as a protocol for Alice. But most of the computing power went straight to maintaining the house and monitoring all the various projects his dad was working, the majority of which were buried under dozens of security protocols and heavily encrypted.
As a matter of idle curiosity, he typed in ‘Quantum Fabricator’ into the computer.
“Access denied,” Alice said, her voice coming from the computer. “You should have known, Evan.”
“Yeah, I know,” Evan said, getting up off the computer and falling on bed. “Maybe I should take up computer programming or whatever. I’d love to poke around in his lab. Or just know what he’s talking about and follow along…”
“I count twenty-seven thousand possible tutorials on the subjects you have mentioned store in my database,” Alice intoned. “And approximately three times that number available on a general search on the Internet, as well as seventy-three hundred prospective books on the subject, which are intended as general primers for the casual reader and thus suitable for you to pursue if you wish. Shall I display these contents on the screen?”
“Later,” he said, then paused for a moment. He heard a faint, but distinctly audible, rumble fill the room. The ground shook slightly.
“Intruders detected,” Alice said. “Security systems armed. Lockdown initiated.” At that moment, his dad appeared, looking suddenly grim and very determined.
“We need to move,” he said. “Now.”
And the very short Chapter Three. This one I wasn't terribly happy with, but I will roll with for the time being because - well, there's no time for rewrites in NaNo. It needed to be a lot longer but I'm not very good with action scenes on the fly, unfortunately. The original setup was running out steam and the plot doesn't wait! Here it is:
Chapter Three
“What-move…where? What’s going on?” Evan scrambled to his feet. The window immediately shut off, a metal bar appeared.
“Mr. Seghill…you’re looking kind of pale, are you okay?”
“No. I knew they’d be coming here eventually, but…well, I thought I had a couple of years left. The lockdown and defenses won’t hold them for long. Follow me - there’s a tunnel connecting the lab and the house together.”
“But I just got here!” Evan protested.
“And I’m sorry,” his dad said. “But - well, I’m not going to let you meet these people. They’re what’s left of MagnaCorp. Derek - keep him safe. Remember your equations that we just discussed - you’ll need them. Hopefully they don’t try to go after her either.”
“What…who?!” Evan said.
“Later! Come on!” They reached the kitchen, just in time to see a dozen armored vehicles and several soldiers pour out, mixed with a tall ethereal being in dark robes, holding a crackling beam of energy. Metal slammed against the windows, shutting them off.
He’d never seen his father move so fast, hurrying out of the hallway.
“Alice! Initiate your backups at Site B! Open the tunnel entrance to the labs! Now!”
They reached the kitchen, just in time to see the floor open up and the refrigerator slowly sink into it, as the wall itself slowly eased downwards, unfolding into a set of stairs.
“You…had a secret passage this whole time?”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me. No time to explain - we have to go. Stick with me, don’t touch anything. This is not how I wanted to introduce my lab to you - but no choice. Let’s go, let’s go!”
As they descended, Evan heard pounding at the door and the distant splash of laser fire. His heart hammered in his chest, as the door closed.
“That won’t get us far,” he said. “They’re probably already at the lab. Escape is prepared and ready to go. It just needs primed…”
The hallway itself was dimly lit with evenly placed emergency lights, it was all bare-bones concrete, with metal piping attached to the walls. They hurried along, perhaps three hundred feet. Evan could hear footsteps running on the grass and, now and again, the ground rumbled suddenly, apparently from one vehicle or another.
“Download finished, Alice?” he asked, as they reached a wall that unfolded into another set of stairs, and the floor hissed open.
“Data transfer complete. Site B active.”
“Good. You know what to do next - wait until they’re clear. Get the artifact prepared, too. We can’t let them have it.”
“Derek,” he said. “When you get to Site B, you’ll have to leave. There’s a car waiting outside. Find Geleth - he operates a gas station on the outskirts of the town and he’ll have the coordinates. Tell him I sent you. And remember your equations - I think you were on the right track, you might be able to pull it off.”
“Pull what off?” A tinge of fear entered Derek’s voice. “Mr. Seghill - this is crazy!”
“Just trust me.”
“I…” he trailed off and then nodded. “Yeah. I trust you.”
They climbed the staircase, where a large open tube sat, crackling with power. In front of it stood a display case with an odd looking device on it - a curious inverted pyramid with strange markings that swirled and changed, making Evan dizzy and tired.
“Evan…” his father sighed, touching a button. “I didn’t want to force this on you. Or any of this. This is not the way I wanted to go out on.”
“Dad…what? You’re…?”
“Touch the pyramid. It should accept you as a host.”
“As a what?”
“Just do it.”
He stared at his dad for a long moment, and slowly, hesitantly touched it. Almost immediately, the pyramid vanished. The writing crawled up in his arms. He suddenly felt an enormous sense of vertigo, as though an abyss had just opened underneath his feet. Images - blueprints, schematics - filled into his head, flickering by faster than he knew what to do with.
“Well, congratulations. You’re now probably the most important thing in the universe.”
“Dad, please, what is going on?”
The lab shook. He could hear muffled voices trying to break in.
“Whatever else happens, you’re my son. You’re resourceful and smart and I know you’ll figure out how to save the world. Now - get in the teleporter. I need to send you on your way…”
“Dad - no. Don’t do this. You don’t have to-”
“I do have to,” he said. “There’s no time. No choice.” He punched several buttons. It began to glow.
“Derek - remember. Geleth. Coordinates. Evan won’t be able to do it alone - put the math from the Quantum Fabricator to work…”
Evan allowed himself to be led to the fabricator, confused and numb and terrified. His dad punched a few buttons in, the light began to glow, just as the door flew open. The strange ethereal man from earlier slowly floated in, an ugly sneer on his face.
“And now, my friends, we can pick up where we left off.”
His father pushed the button. With a crackle of light, the lab vanished. They were somewhere else.
And the first two hundred words of Ch. 4. You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how that turned out. ;)
Chapter Four
“What…?” Evan quickly got his bearings, heart racing in his chest. “Where are we?”
“Why would I know that?” Derek snapped, then paused. “Sorry. Didn’t mean for it to come out like that - but seriously. I have no idea what’s going on.”
They were standing in a dusty concrete bunker in front of an ancient-looking device - a teleporter, except an older, more primitive model than what his dad had used. The computer looked new, flashing with soft light.
“So - you have any idea what’s going on?”
“Uh -no,” Derek said. “You’re his son, I thought you might. What was that thing he had you touch?”
“I don’t know,” Evan admitted. “He didn’t tell me much either…but my head hurts.”
“They are already tracing these coordinates,” Alice announced, her voice emerging, somewhat distorted, over an old sound system. “The car is waiting out front.”
“Uh - right,” Derek said. “C’mon. They said those people will be here soon…”
“The remains of MagnaCorp or whatever,” Evan said, following him out of the room, mind filling with questions. He’d never quite dared to ask his dad about whatever it was - an interesting trivia question - now, of course, he needed to know everything.
What did he put in my head?
He attempted to focus, summoning the information - whatever it was - up. Nothing happened. He hadn’t expected it, but still felt vaguely disappointed - he had secretly been hoping for superpowers.
The bunker turned out to be located underneath an old cabin, located in the woods. Unlike the bizarre house, this looked…ordinary, an already jarring change.
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