Time flew by and D-day had arrived.

  When the door to the central area of the foundry opened, an unnaturally cold air swept in; it was even colder than the drastically low temperatures they’d recently had. A new record had been set the day before when it got down to seven degrees below zero, and it looked like today they were headed toward shattering the record yet again. It was difficult to get used to perpetual coldness. All hopes that the climate would be like it was before the Wave were diminishing among this pitiable population. Winter had set in with a powerful vengeance, burying all memories of other seasons.

  A small tornado of snow was swirling at the entrance to the main area. It was suddenly displaced, blowing to either side as a tank moved into the foundry. The noise of the engine could barely be distinguished through the roar of the wind. A second tank turned the corner outside the foundry, following the path made by the first. Its back end slid slightly as it passed over a layer of ice that was partially hidden beneath the recent snowfall, and it pulled into the foundry soon after the first tank. Immediately thereafter, the door to the main area was lowered in an attempt to avoid losing any more precious heat.

  Rick arrived an hour later, laying down a path of wet footprints behind him. He wore an expression of fatigue on his face. His hair was poking out in all directions due to the mighty winds, and his dull eyes gave away that he hadn’t slept well. When his unkempt beard was added to the ensemble, Rick looked pitiful instead of authoritarian.

  He checked his watch. There were just three short hours before they’d head into action. He took off his coat and tried to warm his hands by rubbing them together for a few minutes. Rick then met with his men, all of whom he’d met the previous day when he had called together everyone involved in the expedition. The six scientists had seemed especially annoyed at having had to attend as they still had countless last-minute preparations to deal with. Rick had given them some general instructions and then had dismissed everyone except for the officers with whom he’d gone over the distribution of soldiers. Rick’s real intention had been to evaluate his future teammates since he’d be forced to collaborate with them in another world. In the little time he’d spent with them he’d had the impression that they were simply too young. But it was better not to think too much about that. There was no time to make substitutions and, remembering the sense of urgency that Nathan, Gordon, and Jack seemed to be feeling, it was clear they wouldn’t let him make any personnel changes. For better or worse, these were his officers. He’d ordered them to get everything ready according to his specifications and he’d left.

  The first thing Rick did now as he met with his team was to order them to bring him coffee. He quickly drank it down. As he felt the warmth of the beverage running down his throat, his head felt clearer. His three captains informed him that everything was in order. The men and the team were ready. Rick nodded, gave a couple more routine instructions and looked over the area as he finished warming himself up. The faces he looked into met his gaze and continued on their way. He doubted there were more than five people older than twenty-five besides himself and the scientists. He looked up to the second floor and saw an enormous window in which he could see a large number of people. That must be the observation room, as Gordon had called it, from which the entire project would be supervised—at least until the expedition crossed through the portal. It was well situated; from there the entire ground floor of the foundry could be observed.

  Next to one of the tanks, three worried-looking soldiers kept up a conversation as they checked their rifles.

  “I hope you’re right,” said one of them. “But I’m most worried about what we might find. If the Wave came from there, nothing good—”

  Another soldier cleared his throat as a warning to the one who was speaking. They were immediately silent when they saw the captain walking their way.

  Rick walked past the trio without stopping, continuing on as he pretended to be distracted. He would have liked to have heard how that sentence ended since it sounded a lot like what he himself was thinking. If the Wave caused so much destruction on Earth and came from the world to which they were headed now, it was normal that they should be harboring some serious doubts. He kept walking, attentive to the soldiers’ conversations that buzzed around him. Wherever he walked, the rumoring momentarily subsided only to resurge the moment he’d passed. Rick was able to pick up just enough fragments of the conversations to have a pretty good idea of how the men were feeling. They were afraid.

  That was no great surprise. But fear had ruined plenty of operations in the past. Anyone who couldn’t handle it had a greater chance of ending up overcome by panic, and when that happened they would lose all ability to reason, act without thinking, and put their fellow soldiers in danger. Rick considered giving a speech to “rally the troops,” but he quickly dismissed the idea. He wasn’t great with words and he truthfully would not have known what to say. They were about to cross over into another world and one of the things they were charged with finding out was why so many people had died in this world. Rick didn’t know a single soul who hadn’t lost several loved ones because of the Wave. Everyone had lost someone, everyone had had to rebuild their lives in surroundings that had drastically changed, and everyone had learned to live with pain in their day-to-day life. The outlook was not encouraging. Besides, he did not want to lie straight-faced to a bunch of kids if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

  Only the scientists seemed to be above the atmosphere of generalized fear. They were around a table, testing their precious research equipment. The tension was palpable, to be sure, but not like it was with the rest. It was more like they were about to unveil a gift and the mystery was urging them on to see what was hiding beneath the wrappings. Rick greeted them as he walked by and wondered to himself if they were really breathing the same air as everyone else.

  Thirty minutes before the start of the operation, a siren rang out and the bystanders who’d been hanging around left the observation room. Some of them gave a quick wave to the soldiers before they left. Rick gave the order to fall in. The men in the first squad who would be the first to cross the portal went to their assigned places, lining up some one hundred fifty feet from one of the strange pillars.

  “We are ready, sir,” announced the captain when Rick approached him.

  “Good. No one takes a single step until I give the order.” Rick continued walking as the other two squads got into their positions behind the first.

  He stopped in front of a symbol drawn on the floor. Remembering it from the report he’d studied so carefully over the previous two days, Rick identified it as the activation rune. They were in the main area of the ground floor of the foundry. Now functioning as a huge central hub, all the machinery had been taken away to be able to more easily study the portal. The side walls were almost completely hidden behind all kinds of metal parts—mostly rusted—that were stacked up in front of them. Several chains of different lengths hung from the ceiling. One of the corners of the central hub was packed with steel beams of every imaginable size. The floor was completely bare except for the five pillars surrounding the activation rune that made up the portal.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Five square columns, six-and-a-half feet high and eighteen inches wide, rose up from the floor circling the rune. They were a bluish black color so intense it seemed surreal. Absolutely no markings were visible on their simple design; they were completely smooth on all four sides. It looked like they were made of stone, but Rick knew that no mineral on this planet could be polished to that degree, and certainly not in that color. The five pillars were exactly the same and were in clear contrast to the rest of the factory. They were definitely not a part of this place. Rick simply could not image any earthly scenario in which these five pillars could fit in naturally.

  Gordon, Jack, and a third man that Rick did not know were coming toward him. They had come downstairs from the third floor where mission personnel not crossing the portal were stationed.

  “I hope everything turns out well, Captain Northon,” said Gordon when he was near Rick. “Remember that you have two days. After that time you have to return, regardless of the status of the research at that point.”

  “Don’t worry,” replied Rick. “I’m not planning to be there a second more than is necessary.”

  “Good luck, Captain. Bring them all back.” Jack held out his hand.

  Rick detected a hint of insecurity in their voices. He’d experienced this kind of tacit uncertainty on previous occasions—always before a high-risk, classified operation.

  “That’s my intention,” Rick assured them. “And now, let me begin my duties before you gentlemen end up hugging me in front of everyone.”

  Gordon made a face. The man Rick didn’t know put a briefcase down on the floor, opened it and took out a flat stone that resembled telio due to its silvery tone, though the stone was more pale. It was undoubtedly the item the report referred to as “the seal.” It looked light, and fit in the palm of the man’s hand. In the center of it was written a symbol that was different than the one on the floor but still bore some resemblance to it, as if they were part of a set.

  The man moved onto the activation rune, crouched down, and put the seal in the middle. Then he stood up and retreated to join the rest of the group.

  The seal sank down into the floor until it was flush with it. It fit perfectly in the hole that had opened up. The stone turned clockwise about ninety degrees, making no sound, until the lines of the symbol on the seal lined up with those on the rune. When the design was complete it began to emit a weak bluish light. Instinctively, Rick, Gordon, and Jack took a step back. The man that had placed the seal on the floor did not seem surprised. It was obvious he’d seen this before.

  A low sound reverberated through the central hub. The pillars came off the floor and slowly rose up some four inches, then remained there—suspended—with nothing visibly holding them in the air.

  Every neck strained to see what it could, every mouth opened in amazement before the spectacle of the five levitating pillars. All those present had been informed of how the portal functioned, and some had even run trials to prepare for this moment. But seeing it in person was much more impressive than reading about it on paper.

  Shortly thereafter, the pillars began to spin in place, gradually gaining speed until they appeared round; never moving out of their original location. Then they changed color. They went from bluish black to whitish gray and finished with a hue never before seen in this world. The spinning made a soft, metallic humming sound that proved somewhat hypnotic. It was, at its core, an extremely agreeable sound, like the waves of the ocean. But it didn’t last long.

  The humming came to an abrupt stop and everyone there inexplicably felt a stab of regret. Exactly in the middle of the area surrounded by the pillars there appeared a small cloud. It was blue, very dense, and moving in all directions. No sound was emanating from the portal now. Small tentacles of smoke began to break out of the cloud. They extended out from the core of it only to rapidly draw back into it and disappear. With every tentacle that came and went, the mass of the cloud grew a little more. Not much time passed before the cloud stopped growing and took on a circular shape some thirty feet in diameter. The smoke that had been forming in the cloud never stopped moving, its color shifting from blue to ash gray and gaining even more density. It now looked a bit too much like something they all feared: the Fog.

  No one knew exactly when the first banks of the motionless fog had appeared but all were sure that it was after the Wave. Since then, that damnable fog had remained fixed and nothing could affect it in the least. Not rain, nor sun, nor wind was capable of bringing about the slightest change in it. Many lives had been lost before people learned that no one could get out of that ghastly mist. Anyone who had gone into one of the banks had never come back out. Consequently, evading the Fog had become a question of survival. Children born after the Wave were taught to identify and avoid the Fog before they learned to cross the street.

  The color and texture of the Fog were identical to those of the cloud that had just formed between the pillars, but with one difference: the fog in the portal never stopped moving, whereas the Fog that had invaded various places all over the world was completely stagnant.

  A feeling of mistrust was instinctively settling into the soldiers. Their military training had included memorizing all of the fog banks in London as well as its surrounding areas in order to easily avoid them. That skill had taken on a vital importance after a military truck with twelve soldiers on board had disappeared in a fog bank that covered several blocks. It had been an unfortunate accident. The driver had lost control of the vehicle and was unable to stop before the Fog engulfed them. The fact of the matter was they never should have been driving so close to it. Since that had occurred, the mandate to stay a minimum of three hundred feet from the deadly Fog was modified to include a penalty of immediate exile. Nonetheless, right now they were going to have to cross through something that was eerily similar to the Fog they had been trained to avoid.

  It took Rick a great deal of effort to overcome the incredulity and clear his head. As he examined the misty cloud that was there before him, a light appeared in the center of it. Several strange silhouettes were outlined in the distance. The cloud’s movement made it impossible to distinguish what they were, but he surmised that that was to be their destination on the other side of the portal. He thought for a moment about walking around the pillars to verify whether or not the figures he saw within the cloud were from something there in the central hub, but he immediately dismissed the idea.

  The moment had arrived. He turned around and went over to stand next to the lieutenant of the first squad as Jack, Gordon, and the man who had placed the seal in the rune went up to the second floor to observe the operation.

  “Let the games begin,” said Rick, trying to relieve the tension that he detected in the eyes of his men. “Cross the portal and examine the terrain,” he ordered the soldiers in the first squad. “I’ll come in with the second squad. See you on the other side.”

  The lieutenant nodded and Rick stepped back.

  From the observation room, those in attendance could see the recon squad advancing. They walked with firm but slow, deliberate steps. They seemed to be trying to delay the moment, hoping that someone would abort the mission before it was too late. They moved past one of the pillars that was still spinning, suspended in midair. Some soldiers couldn’t resist glancing at it furtively, as they were so close to it. When they got up to the fog, they went into it without slowing down their pace. One by one they became a dim speck, indistinguishable to anyone not watching them from the first moment.

  The second squad crossed through the fog just after the first. The third and final squad repeated the scene without variation. The specks formed by the blurry outlines of the soldiers grew progressively smaller until they gently disappeared as if they had never existed.

  The entire expedition had gone into another world.

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