"It's a goddamned bullet!" Krank's deep guttural voice exclaimed, the bass dampened by the lack of echo.
Ebbe rubbed her head and blinked, trying to adjust to the blinding white light, unable to see where the mountainous man was.
"What is?" she mumbled, her voice sounding coarse and alien.
"Ebbe!" the voice exclaimed, followed seconds later by his beaming face leaning into view, as if he had been right beside her the whole time, somehow masked from view. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you gave us a bloody good scare. How do you feel?"
Ebbe rubbed her temples and stretched, pulling herself into a siting position. Her instant reaction was to say she felt rough and tired, because somehow that's how she thought she ought to feel. But she felt strong, rested, calm, and confident. It was as if she had a received an injection of adrenaline and endorphins, mixed with a few shots of vodka. A large hand was offered to help her off the slick white floor, but she refused it, and lifted herself off the floor with ease.
"I'm okay," she offered, preferring not to discuss the finer points of her unexpected health. "You were saying?" she asked, opting to deflect the question.
"Yes?" Krank replied blankly.
"Something about a bullet?" she pressed, curious to know what he had been looking at.
"Oh! Hell, it's over here," he gesticulated clumsily to the small black object wedged into the wall, close to where you might expect to see the ceiling in the average house. "It shot out of the bloody cube, and whacked itself into the wall. Whaddya say about that?"
Ebbe didn't say anything. It didn't make sense, but what did these days? For the bullet to have made it's way from the basement, to this room, would involve some sort of space displacement, on a scale that would surely tear the structure apart. It's akin to having a wormhole open up in your living room, simply to use as a waste bin. Yet, what had happened, had clearly happened, evidence of this was embedded in the otherwise pristine wall.
"James, Jake and Art?" Ebbe suddenly thought to ask.
"Here!" James piped up, though it was hard to discern from where, when the sound just died at source. Ebbe turned 360 degrees, only to find the trio seemingly right where she had been previously looking.
"This place," she started.
"We know," Krank replied before she could finish. "Disconcerting ain't it!" He strode over to the cubes and waved his hands over the shimmering black objects, "it's why no one ever stays down here too long, drives you crazy! Bad enough sitting up in the house above it. Something," he paused, pulling his hand away from the cubes suddenly, as if he had burned himself. "Something unnatural".
Ebbe stared at the shimmering blocks of pure black, hypnotised, her mind calculating furiously. She had seen the Greek letter lambda inside the cube she had used. That had been used to denote many concepts in science, but the one that struck her was a subatomic particle. These were particles smaller even than an atom, at a quantum level, where matter and energy behave very differently. Could it be that these objects were some sort of quantum control panel? If so, what on Earth did they control?
"What on Earth?" she repeated her thought out loud, an idea beginning to form.
"What's that love?" Krank responded.
"What on Earth? On Earth!" she repeated.
Krank shrugged, before wincing at the pain this re-ignited in his broken limb.
"Fuck!" he cursed, "forgot about that bastard."
Ebbe slowly walked up to the furthermost cube and gently waved her hand through the black mass. She took a moment to assess the sensation, before moving on to the next, repeating the same experiment.
"What's she up to?" James asked, pointing Krank to her methodical actions.
"Hey, hey, lady! Last time you did that we all ended up dancing a merry jig on the ceiling! Don't be jabbing any more pretty little hands in to those things!" Krank shouted, trying to sound angry, but actually sounding scared.
Ebbe didn't react, continuing her meticulous, short survey of each cube, one by one.
"What the hell?" Krank grumbled, as the group watched her vanish from view as she side-stepped to yet another cube. He turned to James, who shrugged, before gesturing to Art, as if saying he had been assigned to protect him, and nothing else. Krank, rolling his eyes, turned to Jake.
"Don't ask me buddy. The bitch is crazy if you ask me," he paused and twisted his face into a smiling grimace,"it's why I like her."
Krank threw his head back in despair, and was about to head in her direction, when her voice seemed to emanate from the walls.
"Come over here," Ebbe gestured to him.
"What?" came Krank's blunt response.
"Just come here man," Ebbe replied irritably, "I want to try something."
"What?" Krank queried suspiciously.
As abruptly as she'd vanished, her petite frame re-emerged from nothingness deep within the room. With an impatient wave of her hand, she gestured to Krank to head her way. With a heavy sigh he nodded back, before turning to Jake and James.
"Hold on to something fellas. You know, in case she sends us, up," he said with a comical frown, before he turned tail and reluctantly made his way deeper into the room.
"Lady," he boomed as he approached, "this better be good,"
"Oh, I think it is," Ebbe replied, "give me you arm."
Krank eyed her suspiciously.
"Please tell me you're not going to do what I think you're going to do," he grumbled, refusing to offer either arm.
"I don't think you could even comprehend what I think I'm going to do. Now, stick your arm up here you oaf," she retorted, patting the base under another identical black cube.
"What if I refuse?" Krank asked impudently.
"Arm," Ebbe replied, jabbing a finger at the white base, above which the shadowless cube hovered.
Rolling his eyes, Krank resignedly offered his right arm, pausing before shoving it directly into the cube.
"The other arm, idiot," Ebba scolded, shaking her head. "What the hell am I supposed to do with your good arm?"
"I don't know do I?" Krank grumbled, before grabbing his limp left arm, pausing before daring to lift it, "Ebbe, what are you?" She jabbed her finger at the base, causing him to break his sentence. "This better be bloody worth it," he grumbled, before grasping the broken limb and lifting it onto the based with a strained shout. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed out loud, biting his lip at the pain.
"Now stay still," Ebbe commanded.
"Really? I was thinking of doing bloody river dance love!" Krank replied sarcastically.
Ebbe didn't hear. She was focused intently on the next cube down. With the care of a surgeon, she slowly slid her left hand into the dusky cloud. Within the murk, she could see the free-floating Greek letter Eta appear, just as it had moments earlier. Focusing hard on Krank's arm in her mind, she grabbed at the letter, just as she had when the base's gravity had vanished.
Last time, it had been as if she was part of the basement, as if she was all the matter contained within that room. Now, she was inside Krank, in his blood, in his bone, his marrow. It was deeper than that, she was within the atoms that bonded together to make him. This time, there was no danger to distract her, no gun pointed, no bullet. There was flesh and bone. It wasn't that she was within him, she was him. The sensation was impossible to comprehend. Ebbe could no longer sense her own body, even the thoughts that had been her own seemed lost. What had she become Krank for? Why was she here?
She sensed damage, and she recalled seeing a broken arm. That was it. She was there to repair the snapped bone. But she didn't know if she could. Or How. A transfer of energy. A transfer. That's what she had planned. To fix something you need to replace the damaged parts.
For a second she released the phantom letter gripped within her left hand, and in the same instance, was pulled out of Krank, and was standing where she had actually been standing all along. Fighting the wave of dizziness that had floored her the first time, she immediately thrust her right hand into the adjoining cube. Another Greek letter, Xi, floated almost imperceptibly into view and once again Ebbe took hold. She needed someone who she didn't care for. All she could think of was Shark man. Immediately she found herself back in the basement. But not as part of it, this time she was within a body, as she had been with Krank. She was bound to the sub-atomic particles that made up this body, and yet she could see through his eyes. They were looking up at Anthony, poised at the top of the basement steps. She sensed that in his hand was a gun, pointed directly at Anthony.
Wasting no more time, Ebbe slid her left hand back into the first cube and grabbed Eta again. Double concentration was required. Her mind felt as if it were divided perfectly in half. She was no longer Ebbe, but Krank and Shark man. Not their thoughts, nor their motions. She was simply a sub-atomic passenger, unable to influence their actions.
All she needed to remember was the break. Even at the smallest scale, the snapped bone, the torn flesh within, was identifiable. Now the swap.
Ebbe couldn't hear if Shark man shouted, swore, or whether he remained conscious. But the micro-second she rended bone and flesh from within him and used it to re-bond the broken radius bone within Krank, she was thrown out from them both, as if she was ejected from both cubes. Stumbling backwards she tumbled to the glossy ivory floor, her head reeling.
"What have you done?" Krank exclaimed out of her sight, "Ebbe? What? How?"
His towering frame honed into view, and he offered her his left hand, his teeth showing in a wide grin.This time Ebbe opted to accept and allowed herself to be pulled up. But he didn't let go, and pulled her in for a crushing squeeze.
Finally releasing her from his bear hug, he practically dropped her back to the floor, where she landed with a surprised stumble.
"You bloody legend," he beamed, flexing his hand and swinging his arm, testing it out. "How in the bloody name of all things blessed did you do that?"
Ebbe shrugged, unable to offer anything that would even approach Krank's scientific understanding. She stared at the cubes, debating whether she should truly try what she was contemplating.
"I think," she started, having finally made her decision, "I can save Art."
