Season 3: Episode 6 – The Broken Gate

This series contains mature themes and is intended for adult listeners.

POV: Bryn Tal

> Begin Porta Cor imprint.<

The island was wailing.

A raw sound that did not stop.

My stomach churned from the smell of death, rot, and something more.

As we stepped off the ship, bodies were stacked across the far end of the island, rising like a wall.

A little boy sat on top of a woman’s body near the path.

“Mama.”

“Mama.”

We did this.

Humans rushed by him but paid him no attention.

I almost stopped. I didn’t.

Further down, a man tore into the arm of another human.

He didn’t look up.

---

Not an hour before that, I stood looking anxiously on the ship as Baliya Island loomed closer to us.

Even from here, I could see there were no ships in the harbor.

“When did they add a wall?” Dahlfia asked me, pointing to something on the horizon that looked like a wall around the back side of the island.

“I have no idea.”  I felt uneasy about the wall for some reason.

Myr had Oswalt’s notes in front of her, “It looks like the last time any of our people were on the island was two months before the battle in Teithia. That is, if Mallaidh’s records are up to date.”

“I wonder if we will be able to keep them calm and orderly if they’ve been alone all this time.” I pondered.

“I wonder how many humans are coming through and at what intervals.” Responded Jeston Bevan, the Croen Glas who had followed Oswalt into the party that night.

“Do you think you can stop it?” I asked him.

“If the controls are still accessible, and the system can still read new programming code, I should be able to do so. Yes,” he answered.

I looked behind our ship and saw a fleet of transport ships loaded with medics and supplies. We didn’t know exactly what we would face here.

Myr followed my gaze, “Did we need this much, Bryn? Do you think it will really be that bad?”

“Maybe,” I remarked, still feeling uneasy.

“I don’t recall that wall when I worked here. I cannot think of a logical reason they’d put a wall there.” Jeston looked at the wall now as we got closer.

Suddenly, Kylah said, “What is that smell?”

I smelled it then, too.

All of us were looking at the island as a wailing sound got louder and louder as we approached and the docks came into view.

When the ship docked, the wailing continued.

We stepped off the ship, then we turned and saw that the wall on the far end was not a wall at all.

I felt horror.

On one end, a couple of men were stacking more bodies.

Near the path we were on, a little boy sat on top of a woman quietly calling out, “Mama. Mama”

Other humans ran by him, paying him no heed.

Kylah tugged my attention toward a man who was eating from a human’s arm.

He didn’t pay attention to us.

The island was in chaos; this is what we bought and paid for.

My brain switched gears.

I looked back at everyone now on shore from my ship as the other ships docked.

“I want medics brought in to move the sick and wounded into clean rooms on the ships. I need creation machines set up and manned in multiple places across the island to get food and clean water to these people.”

Kylah went to direct the medics with my orders, while Myr moved to coordinate the teams with the creation machines.

Dahlfia stayed by my side while I answered questions and oversaw things.

“Let’s tend to the most severely wounded first,” I told the lead medic when she came up to me. “If they are unable to be saved, help them cross peacefully.”

Jeston came up, “People are still appearing on the dais.” He pointed over to the Porta Segreta in the distance. “I need a path cleared out to it, so I can get in there and try to stop it.”

“We need to care for the sick and wounded first.” I pushed back.

They were dying in front of me, and he was asking me to turn away.

“The sick and wounded won’t stop coming if I don’t stop that machine now.” He countered.

A couple of humans approached. I pointed them down to the first creation machine that Myr had set up, where my staff was waiting to operate it for them.

“We treat the wounded first.” I held firm. If I leave them, they will die.

He pointed to the Porta Segreta, “Just look!”

I looked up and, on the platform, ten more people appeared from different timelines on earth, none speaking the same language, and all of them without a nomen chip to interpret.

Immediately, four of them started fighting with each other, and some attempted to kill the others.

“Let’s clear a path here,” I announced, and then looked around at my staff for support. “Let’s move the wounded and dead off to the side of the path so that Jeston can get through. Not far, just enough to give him room.”

More of my staff came out and began to help people move off the path. Someone took the hand of the little boy, and he looked back at his mother as he was led off.

I started moving around now in slow, careful steps as more space cleared around me; Dahlfia followed me. “I need crews to start moving these bodies to the incinerators to make room on the island and get some of this disease out of here for the humans. We can use the incinerators on the ships until we can reach the Porta Segreta facility to use that larger one.”

I looked back at Dahlfia, “There is no one I trust more with this than you. I will leave you to manage here while I go to the Porta Segreta.”

I looked up on the platform and saw three more humans appeared. One took off running and screaming, the second dropped into a fetal position, and the third looked around, confused.

“Yes. Go.” She told me.

I followed Jeston to the entrance beneath the platform and into the facility housing all the computers that ran the Porta Segreta. The once crowded hallways we walked through were empty now.

Jeston did not hesitate in direction when we came across an intersection.

Finally, he reached a door with a keypad. He entered a combination of numbers. A red light flashed. He frowned.

He tried his numbers again. Another red light flashed. He thought for a moment and then attempted a different set of numbers. It turned green instantly, and I heard the door click.

He opened the door and stepped inside, explaining, “They locked my passcode out, but they never changed the master.”

We stepped into a room with chairs, screens, and boards covered in letters. He sat down in one of the chairs and looked up at one of the screens. He began to type things that weren’t words, at least not for me.

“I’m running through the script now. It’s running on a looping error.”

I had no idea what he meant, but I knew the place felt unnatural.

His fingers flew over the board. “It looks like someone was attempting to hack into the system.”

“What does that mean?” I pictured someone picking up an axe and slicing it into the computers. I looked around for proof.

“Someone used a code like I’m typing to get into the system without authorization. I’m not sure what their intent was. The good news is, I can stop the looping error. Give me just a few minutes.”

The sounds of his tapping on the board echoed for a few minutes while he worked.

Suddenly, a roar of voices yelling and shouting at each other erupted from outside. The sounds seemed to echo off all the equipment and artificial materials of the room.

“Jeston, are you almost done?”

“Almost there,” he said. His fingers were flying quickly but calmly across the boards.

I heard Dahlfia’s voice outside, “Get him down off of there.”

I attempted a Porta Cor transmission to Dahlfia, but it wouldn’t connect. I felt confused, as I had never had one fail before outside of the war, where everyone was talking at the same time. I needed to ask others about this.

I shifted my attention back to Jeston anxiously.

“Two more lines of code, and then…” He hit those letters, and I felt my heartbeat with each one. “Execute.”

He typed a single word, then pressed a big button, and lines and lines of strange language began to scroll across the screen, then came to a complete stop a few seconds later. “There. It’s shut down.”

The green glow that bathed the Porta Segreta when it was in operation faded away in confirmation. The equipment in the room grew quieter, and the room cooled.

He pulled up different boxes on the screen and entered more things into them.

“It feels good to be back here,” he said. “When Mallaidh relieved us from duty when we wouldn’t do what she asked, I was hesitant to leave. Programming this machine has been so much of my life.”

“You were here with the original trainers?”

“Yes. I was in charge when they left.”

His eyes moved quickly across the screens as more lines appeared.

“This machine,” he paused, almost to himself. “We barely used it for what it was capable of.”

I tilted my head. “I thought it just opened a doorway to Earth.”

“In its simplest form, yes.” He adjusted something on the screen. “But you can dial into specific times. Specific places.”

“Specific people.”

I felt that information settle.

That felt wrong. Too precise.

I squirmed with the discomfort inside my stomach.

Still, I asked, “You mean, choose who comes through?”

He didn’t look at me. “If you know what you’re looking for.”

“From any time?”

“Within range.” His fingers slowed for the first time.

I looked at the screens, then toward the island beyond the walls.

This could change everything. Or destroy it.

The island would survive. We could fix this. Couldn’t we?

We hadn’t just stopped the flow.

We had learned to control it.

> End Porta Cor imprint.<