It's impossible. Simple as that. Impossible and yet, here it was, deep beneath the plain old English countryside of green grass, bush lined patchwork fields, winding roads, copses and sheep, was a technological anomaly.
Ebbe had found the very breath in her lungs practically sucked out by the shock. The vast expanse of crisp white walls, tunnelling into infinity in every perceptible direction. Her mind immediately began to calculate possibilities; nuclear bunker, government warehouse, weapons storage, underground power station, but none seemed to fit the inhuman perfection surrounding them. It was alien to her eyes. Instinctively she stretched out a pale hand and ran it across the nearest wall.
She expected it to be cold, but it was stranger than that, for it didn't really have a discernible temperature. It made no sense to her, it was just there, solid and impossibly polished, but neither cold, nor warm. Her skin felt it, but felt nothing. Perturbed, she swiftly withdrew her slender hand and turned back to see Krank grinning at her broadly.
"Magnificent ain't it?" his voice died as soon as the noise had escaped his lips,
"I don't know," came Ebbe's honest response. Yes, it was magnificent, but she didn't know what 'it' was, and until she knew that, it was a magnificent nothing. Her mind was already processing the fact that sound was dead against what appeared to be a highly reflective surface.
"This is just the fucking cloakroom love! Wait until you see the control room," Krank enthused.
Ebbe nodded, trying to keep calm, not trusting herself to continue talking until her mind her settled. Crazy thoughts were starting to wind their way through her synapses and they concerned her, primarily because whenever that happened it usually led to trouble. A crazy thought about the data from the moon landings being manipulated, a crazy thought about the stars being extinguished, about a global government conspiracy to control the online data flow. She hated the crazy thoughts, because they were usually correct.
Now, she was beginning to suspect that, just as Krank had suggested, this space, that right now appeared infinite, was only the tip of a enormous iceberg. She suspected that even Krank, who had obviously been here before, still had no clue just how labyrinthine this place was. Her mind had instantly begun to calculate and she saw no reason why this place didn't just keep on going, on and on, deep beneath the Earth, deep into the Earth. Through and through. It made no sense, of course; it was utterly insane, beyond comprehension, utter fantastical drivel. But Ebbe was never one to dismiss a theory just because it was too fantastic. The fact that we are all made of stardust that has existed for billions of years is fantastic, but it is also true. Dismiss the extraordinary at your peril, she reminded herself. Press on, seek out the truth, see what there is to see, for Anthony, for Art, for Sam. For Sam.
Krank hadn't even noticed that Ebbe had yet to follow his lead and was already fading into white nothingness. Ebbe gestured to Jake and James to stay with Art before hastily heading in the direction Krank had vanished.
In seconds she was startled to find herself bumping right into him, standing impatiently looking out into the white void. It was as if he had been obscured from view until the very last second.
"Steady there missy, no need to crowd me," he thundered with good humour, before fixing her an icy stare, "brace yourself sweetheart, you ain't seen nothing yet."
He smiled and placed his hand upon a barely defined panel. A yellow glow surrounded his hand for a split second, before the panel faded back to bland gloss white. Silently a slice of black appeared in the wall opposite ,and Krank strode in, vanishing as if he had dropped into a pit on the opposite side.
Fearlessly Ebbe followed and was surprised to find she was now standing in another perfect white room. She turned to look through the doorway she had entered and saw only black. In her mind she questioned whether the previous room even existed anymore. Dismissing such thoughts as too hard to quantify at this stage, she turned back to see Krank standing in front of an endless array of black cubes, all topped with translucent grey spheres. The more Ebbe stared at the spheres, the more she questioned whether they were spinning, or if it was a visual trick of the eye.
Krank spread out his trunk like arms grandly and gestured at the cubes with a grin.
"I know what you're thinking," he paused for effect, "what the fuck?" He let out a booming laugh, "am I right?"
Ebbe nodded. Crude as it was, that summed up her myriad thoughts rather neatly. Silently she stepped up to the third cube and sphere along the row. She peered into the grey sphere and realised the apparent spinning was actually a shimmering, barely imperceptible to the naked eye, but definitely there nevertheless. She began to raise her right arm tentatively, but changed her mind swiftly.
"Go ahead," she heard Krank say.
"What?" She replied without turning, hypnotised by the phosphorescent sphere.
"Touch it," he goaded, "don't worry," he added, somewhat unnecessarily, Ebbe thought.
Slowly she raised her right arm again, and, as if she were caressing the face of a loved one, she ran the palm of her hand across the surface of the sphere. In an instant the sphere presented an image, both there, and not, like a barely remembered dream.
"Pretty nifty huh?" Krank spoke, but his words sounded distant and hollow to Ebbe. She was transfixed on the ghostly sphere in front of her. The image was fuzzy, out of phase with her own perception, but she sensed she was being shown something she already knew. There was movement within the image. There was more than movement, there was a sense of familiarity, of a connection. She understood the image. It was showing her something she needed to see, because it had understood her, bonded with her.
She heard Krank say something else, but it melted away before it could be processed in her mind. She saw only the image now and although she could not discern it, she began to sense she was being shown Anthony and he was in trouble. He was going to die.
Deep within the image, part of the image and yet not actually within the sphere, Ebbe started to make out symbols that she knew. One seemed to grow brighter and pulsate. It was the Greek letter lambda. Without even realising she was doing so, Ebbe reached deep into the sphere and grasped the glowing letter. It felt solid, real and warm in the palm of her hand and instinctively she held it tight and pulled it towards the edge of the sphere.
From somewhere deep in the bowels of the Earth a deep bass began to throb. Seconds later Ebbe and Krank began to lift off the floor, though Ebbe remained tethered to the sphere by her clenched fist. She stared at it in a state of apparent hypnosis, seemingly unaware she was now several feet in the air.
"Pull your bloody fist out!" Krank bellowed in a panic, flailing uselessly as he continued to drift upwards towards an unseen ceiling.
Ebbe, eyes glazed, suddenly let out a scream before a loud crack, like a gun firing, emanated from the sphere, and something burst from it's surface, lodging itself firmly in the opposite wall. In the same instant Ebbe pulled her fist from the sphere and the deep throb from the depths of the Earth ceased. Krank suddenly found himself hurtling to the ground and he did he best to control the fall, successfully rolling to the side and suffering only minor bruising. Picking himself up he limped over to Ebbe, who was lying motionless opposite the now blank sphere.
