Editing Project Mystery Train (section)

====Zach Remembers the Past====
''(Milthra IV - Project Headquarters, 'Artifact Room' - Commander Falthgood - 1500)''

-^-It's been two months Zach,-^- the figure on his screen said. -^-I want results, not more analysis, Commander.-^-

"Admiral, if we operate it now, we will be operating half blind and..."

-^-And I don't care, do it, use the data you accumulate to further your experiments. Doenitz out.-^-

The Commander closed his eyes and sighed. He was already missing the days when he had just been a lowly scientist, this was his first project in command and it was already giving him an ulcer. He sat back as a hand wrapped itself around his neck. "Zach," the voice said, "You don't have much of a choice here."

"I know love," the Scientist said. He stood and turned, looking down at his five and a half foot wife. He bent down briefly and touch foreheads with her, then strode out of the door of his office and onto the main floor of the research facility. It was an old temple, as best as the archaeologists could determine. It wasn't the facility that had interested Doenitz, nor Zach... but the wonderful things it held. 

Standing in the middle of the room was a giant portal. As best as they could determine, it was the gateway to a stable wormhole, a wormhole that could be directed. That was the theory anyway, they hadn't been able to prove it one way or the other. They had been at it for two months, ever since the sucker had been found to be active even after nearly 40,000 years. 

Zach crossed his arms and looked at it, there were so many possibilities. There were a couple people, Zach included, who thought the technology could be evolved into a portable unit. There were even a few theoretical equations that stated it might even be possible to load the thing onto a station and make a gate large enough for a ship to transfer through. 

Assuming, of course, that this thing proved to be a gate of some sort and not an over-sized nightlight. 

"Alright, boys and girls!" he bellowed into the room. "Warm up the machinery, prep the teams, it's time to ride this Mystery Train!" His grin was infectious, even if it wasn't entirely heart-felt. He wanted to send people through that Artifact, but there were too many unknown variables, it would be decidedly dangerous for whoever went through. 

None of the probes they had sent through had done any good, the one thing they had noticed about the gate was it required some sort of biological entity to pass through. They had sent animals through, but none had ever come back... it was hard to make any lower life form walk back through a giant red gate. That meant human testing, unless they could come up with a convincing enough Android to fool the makers of technology so advanced that hardly any of the underlying theory was understood. 

Zach found that possibility... unlikely. 

Project Mystery Train was a perfect example of why he dealt with the paranoid security and blacklisting of this particular Reverse Engineering department, the technology was absolutely stunning. It's implications rocked Zach to the core. 

After several minutes, three men in full gear walked up to the gate. Zach took a seat at one of the terminals, "Activate the artifact."

That was one of the things that he insisted upon until they knew exactly what the thing did, calling it 'The Artifact'. That was the only official name it had ever had. He put on a headset and closed his eyes for a couple seconds to steady his nerves. "Team one, begin when ready." he finally said. He smiled wanly, "Send a postcard if you find Atlantis."

He didn't bother looking up; rather he watched a sensor reading of the Artifact. The team members wasted no time, and with phasers up, they all stepped through after a very short hesitation at the Event Horizon. Zach folded his hands together as data scrolled on his screen. They had immediately lost track of the members. 

Zach was about to stand up when everything around him began shaking. He grabbed the console by instinct as the temple literally rolled around him, stones fell from the ceiling and consoles began sparking. "What the hell?!" he bellowed. 

His hands flew over the console as people began yelling data out. 

"There is a subspace power surge coming from the gate!" someone with a feminine voice yelled from behind him. Zach confirmed that, there were waves of energy coming off the portal, and they were getting stronger. He thought quickly, "Hit it with tetryons, counteract the waves!" he yelled, "Before the da*n thing brings the temple down on our heads!"

It was all controlled chaos, men and women ran back and forth. Several more blocks fell from the temple, and many of the supports his men had placed groaned ominously. Zach kept a good hold of the console as the earth under him did another jump. Without any warning, the visible Event Horizon of the gate flared a malignant red, and something was spit out. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, the gate calmed and the subspace waves subsided. Well before they had finished, however, Zach was out of his seat and running to the gate. What had been spit out was a single body, from the clothing, one of the three people that had walked in not more then a couple minutes ago. 

The officer was lying on his stomach, there was much visible blood and his uniform was shredded. The weapon was still strapped across his neck, it laid to the side of him. His arms were sprawled, and his skin had a very strange hue to it. 

Zach flipped the officer over, intend on giving aid. What he saw caused his eyes to widen in horror however; he fell back and scrambled away as quickly as he could on nothing more then instinct. 

The man's face was a ruin; he looked like he had aged a hundred years, on top of the ruin it had received. Not only did he look old, but he looked like someone had taken a bat to his head. And that wasn't the worst of it. 

Worms, or wormlike creatures, began slithering out of every hole in the mans head. His eyes, his nostrils, his mouth and ears. As if that were a cue, his whole body began wiggling, as if there were hundreds of alien worms under his skin, just itching to get out. Zach continued backpedaling, getting away from the body and portal as he bellowed, "Security, decontamination measures, destroy that body!"

He finally managed to get to his feet and get away just as a Security team came up and vaporized the body. He turned and leaned against one of the walls to catch his breath, and his aplomb. He shuddered several times, the ruined face and the mental image of worms pushing the dead-mans eyelids open to crawl out filled his mind and wouldn't leave. 

"Sir, do you still want to hit the thing with tetryons?"

"Hell yes!" he said without hesitation. "There are still two other men in there, we can't risk them coming back. Shut that wench down!"

It was only a theory, but it was generally thought that overloading the gate would shut it down. Whatever hell it lead too, Zach didn't want to know, and at this point he didn't care how spitting mad Doenitz would be if it suddenly stopped working.