Prologue: Divergent

Patricia, Patty to her friends, looked out over the desolate fields of ice that had been her life for the last few weeks and sighed, resigned to her task. Removed from The Project, presumably for figuring out something she shouldn't have, Patty had thought she'd be under arrest, or worse, especially considering the state of the world right now.

She knew she should consider herself lucky, but as the wind raced past her and the cold bit straight through her jacket into her bones, she knew prison might actually be preferable. The team "supporting" her, men and women, who were surprisingly mostly unfazed by the cold with the exception of old Johns. Nobody on the team knew his first name and nobody seemed to care to learn it since it was obvious why he was here.

Johns wasn't here to study or learn, or even to disappear like Patty, no Johns was here in the beautiful fields of endless cold because he was dangerous. It wasn't exactly clear how, but there was something about the way he carried himself, or how his eyes would glaze from time to time, like he was already killing his team in some far off land nobody but him could see.

Whoever had compiled his dossier had made a point of saying he'd had war experience and had been putting it to use on the local populace in whatever hole they'd arrested him. Just thinking about it made Patty spit in disgust, like she'd had something sour forced on her and she couldn't get it out.

There was nothing more Patty hated than someone who took their problems out on the world, particularly when it seemed like it was already going to hell. Despite everything, everyone at Home really pulled together to stop this war they'd been forced into. The newspapers were calling it the second great war and they'd been right about the "Great Depression" the bankers had landed the country in, so they can't be that far off.

It seemed like they had to be right, even here in Greenland, the icy hole God had thrown Satan in and forgotten about, war had come visiting. Supposedly that was the whole point of this little trek, some little upstart had found records or evidence to believe an enemy had set up a base somewhere in the massive country.

Rolling her eyes at the thought of someone sneaking past the forces, she looked at Johns and shuddered at the idea of him getting the go ahead to carve a path through some enemy nation's base.

The last thing he needed was to be rewarded for his terrible behavior with a permit to reenact his crimes legally.

The expedition head, Frederick, raised his hand in the corner of Patty's vision and shouted, barely audible above the wind, "Looks like we're here!"

Looking around, Patty was irritated to see that there was nothing around them for miles, when she suddenly noticed she could see for MILES. When had that happened, she wondered, almost aloud, though she caught herself.

Frederick tapped away rapidly at his curious little device.. How had she not noticed it before? All the air around them seemed to stop dead.

Several moments passed before she realized she'd stopped breathing as well, though resuming only filled her with some unknown sense of dread.

All around the expedition team, a bright light flashed, seemingly from nowhere, and for a split second Patty was back in the lab reading over some paperwork that'd been left unattended.

A bomb, they were building a bomb, that's all it could be.

A massive bomb, something that could very well change the course of history by simply existing, though before she could really dig into the equations and notations, security had come and taken her, kicking and screaming, from the lab and dropped her in front of the president.

One look into his eyes immediately told her this was not a man to lie to, not a man to trifle with.

This was a man who simultaneously was leading an entire country into what would easily be a new golden age in American history while simultaneously having a weapon of unprecedented destruction created to ensure that age's success.

He sat alone in his office as the security, his security, left and he said, "Ms. Patricia Billingsworth...you're a very smart woman, aren't you?"

The light flickered away and Patty realized she hadn't been lured to some insane bomb test site as Frederick said, "Sorry for the secrecy everyone, but once you see what we've discovered, I believe you'll agree that it's the most important discovery, quite possibly since fire."

Shaking her head with a raised eyebrow, Patty muttered to herself, "I'm sure it'll be a very explosive find."

Frederick cocked his head at her curiously, but elected to ignore her comment, waving everyone down a stairwell that had appeared after the light dimmed.

Johns growled something about reality breaking down and Patty almost asked him to explain...almost.

The insane ramblings of a murderous madman were hardly of any concern to her, though the way he kept looking around as he made his way to the stairwell made her do a quick check of her own.

Shaking her head clear of Johns' irrational concerns, she walked toward the stairwell, only to be met with resistance. Frederick called up from the bottom of the stairs, "You need to really push in, everyone has some difficulty with it at first, so don't feel too bad."

Squinting down the stairs she couldn't even see him...how had he known she was having trouble so fast?

Once again shaking the thoughts from her mind, she pushed, hard, into the field that resisted her.

Her skin felt as though it had lit aflame and it took ALL of her strength, but she pushed past the barrier, only to find that there wasn't a stairwell.

Gasping and sweating hard as the fire in her nerves cooled, she turned back to see she'd just entered some kind of doorway, but she got the distinct impression she was missing something important, something vital.

Past the barrier, she could clearly see the snow and ice that had framed her vision for what seemed like forever, but here in this room just past the open door to that same snow and ice, she felt like she might overheat at any moment.

Frederick laughed jovially and patted her shoulder playfully and said, "We've set this opening area up as a sort of crew quarters, your room is just down that hall. Change into something lighter, quickly. We've got important things to see here."

Looking at Frederick suspiciously, she started walking to her room and found Johns leaning in his doorway, just across the hall from her room.

He looked her dead in the eye and asked, "You think it's weird?"

To be honest, she hadn't expected any kind of coherent thought from him, though she wasn't sure why. Even looking at him now, he seemed to be much less...himself than he had been before they'd entered.

He'd lost that aura of danger that had pushed her away and much of the edge his voice seemed to drip with had been reduced to what seemed to be mere exhaustion.

Johns rolled his eyes and repeated the question, his appearance bleeding into something more normal even as she watched.

"It's weird isn't it?" he asked, noticing her looking at him so intently.

She stammered, still taken aback and growing afraid, "Wh-what's weird?"

He motioned at her with his head for her to come closer as he said, "To watch a person shift into the spot of their placeholder."

"P-placeholder?"

Johns nodded and said, "I don't know what's causing it, but one minute I was minding my shop in the city, the next I was in Greenland, waiting for this little trip to start."

Patty cocked her head, concerned, and asked, "You don't remember getting arrested?"

Johns shook his head and said, "I've never been arrested, though it's been close since the gates opened, don't worry, you'll remember eventually. Do you know why we're actually here?"

Patty shook her head and said, "Honestly, I was under the impression we'd been looking for an enemy base."

"Yeah, in World War 2, but that's not what we're doing at all, is it?"

"World War 2? The second great war, you mean," Patty said, trying to figure things out, feeling her head split as she felt her mind digging its fingers into the edges of some truth she wasn't ready to see.

Johns looked at her with a slight expression of disappointment, but continued, "Yeah, some of my friends back home are calling it a world war, just a little thing between us."

Frederick came, eyes blank in Patty's vision, and said, "Patricia, you're still in your travelling clothes, change so we can start studying and exploring."

Johns nodded in the corner of her eye and she said, "Yeah no problem Frederick, I'll get right on that."

Eyes now alight, Frederick said, "Way to go, Patricia, that's a team spirit, looks like good old Johns is rubbing off on you!"

Johns smirked and mouthed, "Good old Johns" as Frederick turned away from them.

As Johns finished mouthing that, Patty grabbed at her head and a terrible pain ripped through her skull, turning all of her thoughts into putty.

The president sat in front of her, but he looked like her old boyfriend...no...it was her boyfriend, she was in her room, nowhere near the president's office now. What was the president's office doing a hallway away from a lab in a college?

Her boyfriend was proposing to her, and the president dropped to one knee and said, "I'd be honored if you wore this go to Greenland and search for the answer to this war."

Johns jumped to her and stuck his finger down her throat, forcing her to throw up on the spot and as she purged her breakfast to the floor, the world around her focused into one place, one time again.

He rubbed her back as she slowly finished and wiped her mouth clean, finally saying, "I'm sorry Patricia, that was the only thing that was able to help me when I was...dealing."

Breathing hard, Patty asked, "Johns...when did the gates open?"

Johns smiled despite himself and said, "Less than six months ago."

She shook her head and said, "That's...that's impossible...I think I've been here for a year at least."

Spotting Frederick shuffling back and forth on the far end of the hallway, Johns said, "You'd better get changed...we can figure this all out soon."

Fifteen minutes later, Johns watched Patty come out of her room dressed lightly enough to breath, but she was clearly tense and something seemed to be eating at her.

"What's up?" Johns asked.

"These clothes," she gestured at her shirt, "these aren't time appropriate."

Frederick appeared suddenly, almost without sound, and said, "Looking good, both of you. If you'll both follow me down this hallway, our more ambitious members are already examining the artifacts."

Following their leader, Johns and Patty stayed close to each other, unsure of what to expect.

Whispering just loud enough for Johns to hear her, Patty said, "I was a scientist back home too...specialized in the gate technology."

Johns nodded and said, "Yeah...I figured you had some connection to the gates...I primarily imported stuff from different places past them."

"What does this all mean?" Patty asked quietly.

The doors at the end of the hall opened on their own and they could both hear loud explosions and feel heat radiating from within.

One of the other members of the team shouted from below them as they entered, "It's incredible, this material is reacting exactly like the notes said they would!"

Frederick laughed happily and turned to the pair as he said, "We found evidence of a material that could be manipulated in almost any way, turned into weapons or tools, energy or explosions."

Patty whispered, barely audible, "Oh, no."

"We can win the war, we can win ANY war," Frederick shouted to his team.

"We'll be heroes," someone down in the room shouted jubilantly.

Suddenly Patty remembered something she'd forgotten, something from her time in Greenland, someone talking about tracing energy patterns to the country.

"No, no, no," she whispered, louder now.

She grabbed her head and shouted, "NO DON'T TOUCH IT!"

Realization dawning on him, Johns put his hand on her shoulder and said, "It's already too late, Patricia."

The team practically danced from weapon to weapon, schematic to schematic, laughing and cheering in victory.

Victory over what, Patty wondered, her own panic subdued momentarily.

They'd been led here by the nose, tricked into their own destruction. Destruction of their way of life, of their chance to chart their own history.

Frederick walked over to them, a smug smile on his face as his irises flickered white. What color had they been to begin with? Had they even had color?

Patty's knuckles whitened as she gripped Johns' hand hard, harder than she'd ever thought she could grip.

Her thoughts turned to the Directors back home, to the Science Director's mantra, that should the need arise, the few should suffer for the cause of the many.

Looking around at the team she'd traveled with, she knew she could stop this before it began, put an end to this tragedy before the second act even began.

Johns seemed to be having the same thoughts, squeezing her hand softly when Frederick was in front of them, appearing without even moving.

Glaring at him, Patty said, "You'll never get away with this atrocity."

Frederick smiled and said, "Ah, smart enough not to refer to me by name? You must be one of my brother's stooges."

Johns squeezed her hand again and took off running, clearly expecting her to follow, to try and escape, regroup and plan.

Instead, Johns ran off in a full sprint by himself, coming up directly to a horde of American and British soldiers, all moving with purpose.

Diverting his course, Johns soon found himself in a labyrinth, no sense of direction or map to guide him.

Smiling to himself, Frederick watched Johns run himself in the circles of a maze he'd created just in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Turning back to Patty, he said, "You have potential, young woman. You have the potential to be the scientist who leads this world to peace like it would never know, to realms of technology they couldn't even begin to fantasize about."

Patty thought of her director and said, "But...but it's not their future...their technology…"

In Fredericks direct presence, she felt her willpower melting away, her loyalty, surprisingly hard won, bending away from the people who'd saved her.

He sighed and his eyes flickered from white to black and he said, "I mean it, Patricia. I think you're the best opportunity for these people to truly enter a golden age...not just one country, not two, the entire world. The change has happened already, merely interacting with it has caused the material to appear around the world, your friend was right that it was too late."

Feeling her will return to her, she asked, "Why not just force me?"

Frederick chuckled and said, "You already broke free of me attempting to force you once, I won't try again...besides, someone who wants to accomplish something will always be more successful than someone who's broken to do that same thing."

The team below her had never stopped cheering, shouting victory over some enemy as though they'd already won the war, never stopping to think that they themselves were the enemy they were losing to.

"They'll be obsessed with it. The material will find its way into every facet of their lives until eventually they are unable to even consider life without it," Frederick said.

"That'll happen whether I'm here or dead...won't it?" Patty asked, her voice thoughtful.

"Harder than any metal, more conductive than any substance, more malleable than even water, it's benefits extend even farther than you or I know...but they can master it, they can learn to make it their own," he said gently.

"What about it's downsides?" she asked.

"These people will have more than enough time to learn them and turn any cons to their power," Frederick whispered confidently.

Shutting her eyes tight, Patty thought hard and said aloud, "Everyone! Put what you've picked up down and line up along the far wall!"

Frederick's eyes narrowed and flickered as Patty continued, "This is not a party! This is a scientific expedition, and we will act accordingly! I'm going to prepare a list of known data and I want everyone to research it and take precautions. What we have here is victory over the enemy, victory over all the problems that face humanity!"

Untensing, Frederick said, "You made the right choice Patricia."

From the far wall, one of her researchers asked, "What's this called, Ms. Billingsworth?"

Frederick melted out of existence and myriad soldiers marched single file, lined up not by nation, but by the tools they possessed and Patricia said, "Aether. It's called Aether."