The Sound of Wind

  **

  “Well, since you don’t need me anymore, I think I’ll head over to Gideon Enterprises to help out Dr. Arliss,” Crysta pushed away from her chair, scooping up her jacket and replacing it with the lab coat. Hugo nodded absentmindedly, hunched over the tiny circuit board on the workbench.  Crysta sighed, shaking her head and turned to leave. She made it two steps before he grabbed her wrist and she was pulled backwards into a kiss, “Need a lift?”

  Crysta giggled, shaking her head, “No no, I think I’ll be fine. The walk will be good, it’s rather nice out.”

  “It is?” Hugo blinked, glancing at the closed blinds of the lab.

  Crysta shook her head, slipped out of his grasp and headed towards the door, “Yes. Yes it is. You should try going outside sometime.”

  “Hmmm, sounds interesting. I think you’ll have to show me how to do that later.”

  Crysta laughed, “It’ll be my pleasure.” She waved and was out the door.

  Several minutes after Hugo returned to his project, the door opened again, and he turned to find Clem entering, “Hey Hugo, I need-”the rest of the sentence was cut off by dead silence. He was staring at a pile of ash, flakes of it drifting upwards in the draft. The view panned skywards and spun in a slow circle to reveal there was little more than ash nearby, but off in the distance were the broken teeth of severely crippled buildings. Beyond that, the dark, gray sky, “Hey, are you listening?”

  Hugo blinked and Clem was in front of him again, snapping his fingers. Hugo automatically reached for his phone to dial Boris’ number. There was no answer. “No!” Hugo vaulted from his seat and into the gust of wind that opened up to Moscow. As he surveyed the scene, he barely registered Clem following behind him. Boris’ mansion had been leveled, the structure reduced to a pile of blackened rubble. There was no fire, no smoke; this had happened awhile ago.

  “Is…Boris dead?” Clem asked nervously.

  Hugo couldn’t open his mouth to answer. It didn’t seem like an incredibly dire situation to him, unfortunate, but not dire, until he remembered that Boris had a contingency plan.

  Clem seemed to remember the issue at the same time, and his eyes widened, “We have to get out of here, now!”

  “Crysta!” Hugo turned to create a portal, but jerked short at Clem’s command.

  “Get us somewhere safe. Now!”

  The portal finished opening in the Gideon Enterprises' base in Antarctica, instead of the one in Seattle, and they stepped through. Hugo blinked, that’s not what he’d wanted to happen, but before he could make a second attempt for Seattle, Clem stopped him again, “Call first. If you open a portal now, you could irradiate us both.”

  Hugo nodded. No answer.

  Clem stopped him a third time from reflexively opening a portal, “Find someone here, see if they’ve lost contact with Seattle.”

  Hugo remained obedient, but on the way to the security office he tried to get a hold of CJ. It wasn’t atypical that he couldn’t reach her, so he left a message letting her know where they were.

  They made it to the security office to discover that they were still getting satellite feeds. Seattle had been one of the first locations to disappear in a flash of white light.

  His family…everyone…Crysta…he'd just kissed her a few minutes ago. She was going to see him later. Clem commanded him again, preventing him from opening the portal a fourth time. It would kill them, but for some reason he couldn’t make that sync-up with the fact that that was where she was. No. Maybe she’d been talking to Mr. Gideon and he’d saved her…except for they would have gone straight to Alaska too. Where was CJ? She had to be alright… “Clem. We-we need to go find them. They…they could be…”

  “Hugo, they’re not-”

  “No!” Hugo cried, voice breaking, “We just need suits, we can get them here, and then we can go look…right?”

  Clem sighed, glancing away from him, shaking his head slightly.