The control room was chaos. The red emergency lights cast everything in a bloody glow. The primary exit was a heavy automatic door. It was sealed shut. The main power was gone. Its opening mechanism was dead.
Two scientists stood at the door. Their faces were wet with sweat. They pressed their bodies against the smooth cold metal. They tried to force it open.
Their hands slipped on the surface. The door did not move. It was a solid wall of steel.
Two more scientists saw their useless effort. They ran over to help. The worker in the grey uniform joined them. He had failed his last order. Now he just wanted to escape. They added their weight to the push.
They planted their feet on the vibrating floor. They pushed with all their strength. The five of them strained against the unmoving door.
Their grunts of effort were swallowed by the overwhelming roar of the out-of-control collider. It was a sound that promised destruction. They gathered their strength. They coordinated a powerful shove. It was a last desperate attempt.
Just as they pushed a new sound ripped through the lab. It was not the machine's roar.
It was a single impossibly loud CRACK.
The sound was sharp and absolute. It was the sound of something fundamental breaking. It cut through the constant drone for a moment and then was gone.
The collision had happened. The particles had reached their destination. They had been accelerated to near the speed of light. They had impacted the stationary target particle at the machine's core. The experiment was complete.
The result was instant. An invisible silent wave of pure force erupted from the center of the collider. It moved faster than sound. It slammed into the scientists in the control room.
The five people at the door were thrown backward. It was like they had been hit by a truck. The other scientists across the room were tossed from their feet. Their bodies tumbled through the air.
They crashed into the dark consoles and the hard walls. The lab filled with the sounds of bodies hitting metal and concrete. Pained cries mixed with the roar of the machine.
Everyone was knocked to the ground. They lay dazed and broken in the red darkness.
High on the mountain peak Adam was still asleep. He was safe from the chaos below. He rested against the old tree. But the event was not contained beneath the earth. The air itself began to change. Directly in front of him the space started to shimmer.
It distorted like heat rising from a road. It was like looking through a pane of rippling water.
The distortion grew stronger. The stars behind it twisted and warped.
Then the air tore open. A dark circular void appeared from nothing. It hung silently in the air a few meters from Adam's feet. It was a perfect spinning vortex of blackness. It did not reflect any light. It consumed it.
A sudden powerful gust of wind hit Adam's face. It was not a natural breeze. It was a focused pulling force. It came from the void.
The strange sensation was cold on his skin. The rush of air was loud in his ears. His eyes snapped open.
He saw the swirling dark-colored wormhole. It was right in front of him. It hummed with a low unnatural frequency. He did not just hear the sound.
He felt it in his bones. It was a vibration that seemed to shake his very atoms. His mind could not understand what he was seeing. It was impossible.
Before he could even form a thought he felt his body become light. He was weightless.
He looked down in confusion. He was no longer sitting on the ground. He was floating. His legs were lifted from the dirt. He was being drawn toward the dark spinning circle.
A wave of vertigo washed over him. The world spun. He was being pulled into the darkness. A scream started to form in his throat. His mouth opened to cry out for help. But there was no one to help him. And he was too slow.
The wormhole's gravitational pull was absolute. It was a force beyond resistance.
It yanked him forward. He flew through the short space between him and the void. In a single fluid motion Adam was consumed. His body passed through the event horizon and was gone.
The moment he was fully inside the wormhole collapsed. It folded in on itself and vanished without a trace. The air on the mountaintop became still once more.
The unnatural hum was gone. The wind stopped. It was as if nothing had ever happened. The old tree stood alone on the peak under the quiet stars.
A few seconds passed in complete silence.
Then down below the city's power grid sputtered. A single light came on. Then another. Lights blinked on across the vast urban sprawl. They re-illuminated the night.
The city came back to life. But the restoration was not complete.
Several large patches of the city remained shrouded in darkness.
They were silent black holes in the grid of light. They were testaments to the electrical poles that had exploded. Those parts of the city would not be fixed so easily.
They would remain dark for a long time.