"Steady now lads," Krank commanded, watching Jake and James carefully position Art's makeshift stretcher, so his head could be slid into the same cube that had just fixed the bone in his arm. "What I think you'll need to do fellas, is keep hold of the tail end, to ensure his head is cubed," he instructed.
Ebbe had hoped to prop the stretcher between the columns that housed each black cube. But they were too far apart, and Ebbe was convinced the area she wished to heal needed to be contained within the dark space contained within. With no real tools at their disposal, a manual solution was all they could manage.
"You sure you can keep him still?" Ebbe pressed, "I don't know what would happen if he was moved." Before thinking she had no idea what would happen even if he is kept perfectly still.
"We got him," Jake replied bluntly, his steely eyes confirming to Ebbe his resolution more than the words. That was as good as it could be. DIY brain surgery. That's what this was. But Ebbe was defiant in her decision to pursue the idea. The man had had a bullet lodged in his brain for goodness sakes, and since then, he had been bumped and jostled about. His chances, even with immediate medical care, were slim to none. Now, the best anyone could truly hope for was a vegetative state. But maybe, these curious blocks of shimmering black, these cubes absent of light, maybe they could offer an otherworldly cure. Ebbe had reached in and sought out the materials required to fix Krank's arm, and the proof it had worked was right in front of her. What difference was a brain? It's just neural tissue.
Yes, but, to fix the bone in an arm, she needed bone. Extracting that from the man who had trapped them down here was one thing. To do what she was planning was to condemn another human to death. Could she truly do that? At first, the thrill of thinking she could cure the incurable had been fuel to her fire. The breathtaking complexity at work within the cubes was overpowering, overwhelming, and intoxicating. The moment she had seen Krank flex his arm, she had felt power such as she'd never known, and she wanted more.
"Ebbe? All ready girl?" Krank beamed, bringing her out of her own thoughts.
"Sorry?" she answered.
"Our man is in position. Time for the magic show," he grinned excitedly, clearly also gripped with the thrill of it all.
Ebbe sucked in a deep breath of still, tasteless air and nodded. Eta and Xi, the Greek letters, were again to be her goal. Most of the cubes had contained different letters, some had been identical pairs, such at the one she was about to insert her shaking hand, and the one Art was placed like a patient getting a CAT scan.
"Eta," she mumbled, staring into the void, her hand hovering over the surface.
"What's that love?" Krank responded uncertainly.
"A metric tensor Chum old boy," she muttered, her eyes fixated on the lifeless black cube, "it's the geometry of spacetime. It's beautiful," she added.
Krank swayed his head up and down in the approximation of a nod, lips pursed, before turning to Jake and James, and shaking to say he hadn't understood anything she'd just said.
"It's as if I can just reach in here and choose the DNA from any time and space I wish," she marvelled, eyes wide, face frozen.
"Ebbe?" Krank stepped towards her with concern, arm outstretched.
"Don't move," she shouted, waving an arm at him without turning. Krank froze on the spot, face dropping into confusion.
Ebbe ended her hesitation and plunged the tips of her fingers into the inky black. There was the letter, as before, floating, if that was the right term, within the cube. How it appeared as your hand entered the device, and why it was a Greek alphabet, Ebbe didn't really understand. Was it an alien technology? But why the human language?
No time for such musings woman! Focus on the task at hand.
With a deep inhale, Ebbe focused on Art.
A surge of electricity coursed through her veins and she found she was inside the sub-atomic particles that were Art. Lightning flashed, once, twice, three times. It didn't just flash, it sought her out, fired through her, seared her. But she became the lightning, until it died out, and it was dark. There was something foreign sitting in the black. The storm still surged far in the distance, snaps of synaptic lightning bolts firing. Bang, snap, crack. Yet, it was fading away, no longer the crack and snap. I need to extract these protons, neutrons and electrons, they aren't us, she thought, as her, as Art, as everything. They are holding the storm at bay. We need the storm to survive.
Without extracting her left hand, she slid the right into the opposite cube, her eyes looking straight ahead without seeing. The letter was grasped instinctively and the collective her, saw the basement, saw Anthony was no longer there. Two new bodies were lying opposite Shark man. None were Anthony and so she was out of the basement and into the corridor. Another body, not Anthony. She was the house. The house could not see Anthony inside it. But it could see him outside.
Ebbe was the moist early morning air. Anthony told the air to check the bushes. The air was already rustling the leaves, dancing around their stalks, and sending chills down the neck of the man staring down a sniper rifle at Anthony. The air sank into the man and knew he was preparing to shoot. He was aiming at Anthony, and Anthony was smiling and waving.
The foreign particles lodged within Art, we don't want them. We need to repair. Replace the neurons.
A finger pressed against a trigger.
Ebbe felt the ground rumble, begin to shake violently, before the white walls and floor cracked and tumbled away from her. A muzzle flashed and the smell of gunpowder and burning flesh filled her nostrils. A bullet burrowed it's way into the back of her skull and lodged itself in the parietal lobe. Her vision blurred and faded, blood oozing from the back of her skull. She tried to lift a hand a check the entry wound, but her limbs were weighed down by imperceptible bonds. A hazy blackness drifted over her, as she felt her lifeforce ebb away. It was so blank, so meaningless.
Blackness.
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