The young woman was staring at the floor. Simple white tiles, with a few black ones placed in a pattern every few rows to break the monotony. It didn’t work in any real capacity. She tried to count them to pass the time while she waited, but her nerves made the numbers jumble and be confused each time.

She stood up and paced for a long minute, the short heels that she was so desperately unused to, clacking loudly with each step. She’d rather be in her standard military boots, even if the noise would be deafening. It had been a long time since she had dressed so… feminine and it chaffed her.

Her head snapped back to the ticking clock hanging on the wall, condemning every second passing by. It was the only other source of activity in the stillness, aside from the buzzing murmur that seemed to permeate the building. So many people down there and all around, yet no one ever stepped in this long corridor. Just her, counting down the minutes, wondering if she got the time or place wrong somehow.

The woman took off her cap, dropped it on one of the blue plastic chairs she was sitting before, and scratched her hair. She stepped in front of a portrait trying to get a glimpse of her reflection on the glass, but the clear lighting in the building didn’t allow for any. She chose one of the dark cabinets instead. She ignored the plaques and badges of honor inside, and gazed at her visible, dark reflection instead.

A small mouth under an equally small nose. Her eyes were clear blue, and by all accounts she should be considered a beauty, if each peace was taken individually. But her features were too small and set too far apart. Her eyes were tired, and creaks were already showing despite her very young age. Her skin was damaged by exposure to elements and the harsh lifestyle she led.

She ran her strong fingers through her short hair, barely able to cover her knuckles. She never bothered with a bun or any other measure other women soldiers tried in order to retain their long hair. It didn’t look good on her, but it meant she didn’t have to worry about keeping it straight or combed either. Just short enough.

No makeup as well, aside from the lightest touch of lipstick, and even that was something she wasn’t sure she should have applied. Friends and acquaintances told her she could be beautiful if she gave herself more attention, but she never saw the point. It wasn’t being beautiful that she wanted to do. She wanted to see the world, its hidden mysteries and secrets. She refused to believe in the dullness everyone else worshipped. There must be more, and from the rumors and hints she had gotten, she was following the right path.

She sat back down, twirling her cap in her palms once more. She fiddled with the medals and her rank symbol on her chest, she even tried to inspect her sidearm, forgetting she didn’t have one. What’s taking so long, she wondered, anxiety eating at her, feeling each gnawing bite with alacrity. Am I waiting at the wrong place?

She bent her head down, entwining her fingers behind the back of her head, and waited, forcing herself to stop glancing at the clock every few seconds. The hands ticked like thunder in her ears. That was why she missed the sound of steps, if there had ever been any. She would later learn that her new sergeant was very quiet if he wanted to be.

“Miss Jacqueline? Are you awake?” a bass, masculine voice rumbled with good natured humor.

She was up on her legs in a second, stomping her foot on the floor as she gave a stiff salute to the impressive, dark man that stood in front of her. His outstanding physique was obvious, even through the dress uniform he wore. He was tall as well. She reckoned he was just a hair short of two meters of height, dwarfing her by almost one fourth of a meter.

“Sir, yes sir!” she cried out at once, instincts kicking in as soon as she saw the shining sergeant pips on his shoulder. “I’m awake, sir.”

The sergeant laughed. “Easy there, girly. You can loosen up a bit. It’s my fault, I got caught up in some crap of my own. I’m terribly sorry for making you wait. I’m Sergeant Darry.” He opened up the folder he was carrying. “So, do I call you Jacqueline or do you prefer being addressed by your surname?”

“Most people call me Jackie, sir.” She blushed a little, feeling she was being too informal too soon. “It’s shorter than either one.”

“Jackie it is then,” he announced, closing the folder and putting it under his armpit. “Come with me, Jackie. Time to tell you what you’re getting into.”

He led her down the corridor, and then another one where the doors were unmarked. Jackie paid close attention to them, scrutinizing them. All of them were thicker than normal if she judged by the space they took against the threshold. She had the suspicion that breaking through any of them would be hard without specialized gear. Like a blowtorch.

The background mumbling faded into nothing. This part of the building was taken by complete silence. She could swear she could hear her own blood travelling up and down her veins.

The sergeant opened a door seemingly at random, and they both went inside. It was a dark room, empty aside from a simple metal table and two unfolded chairs in the middle. Sergeant Darry flipped a switch next to the entrance and two bright lights came on, turning the room into a blinding white.

He closed the door, and Jackie noticed how slow it swivelled, and how large and thick the hinges were. Sergeant Darry sat on one chair, bidding Jackie to sit across from him.

“So,” he started as soon as she sat. “Impressive record from what I see so far. Not much practical experience, but you’re not at fault for that. Hard to find a war to fight in nowadays. At least if you want one where you’re at the right side.” He winked.

“Thank you, sir. I’m trying my best, sir.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve also completed all the courses that have been required for being considered for your program, sir. My instructors gave me excellent marks on all of them.”

The sergeant leafed through the folder slowly, smiling gently. “So I see, so I see. Impressive fortitude for long distances. Not too shabby with your aim either, though you don’t fare well against moving targets, do you? Ah, well done on all survival courses especially. Except for the arctic one. Do you get cold easily, Jackie?”

“I’m- I just… expressed my dislike of the conditions, sir. It was just a comment made in jest.” She had no idea that bitching out would make it into her record. She should have done as she had decided from the start, keep her mouth shut and do what she was told. She was certain now that she blew her chances.

“No worries, Jackie,” Sergeant Darry assured her, waving his hand and bringing instant relief to her that she hid. “Trust me, we’re gonna be bitching a lot when we set out. Even me. Especially me. I’m a bastard when we’re on a mission, but I do that to keep you all on your toes. That is, if you decide you want in.”

Jackie’s mind stalled for a second as the sergeant seemed to read her mind and tried to decide what this was supposed to mean. On one hand, she was exulted. Sergeant Darry insinuated that she was already accepted! She wished she was alone so she could start whooping and screaming in joy.

On the other hand, did he believe there was a chance that she would possibly throw away all her dreams and struggles?

“What do you mean, sir?” she asked, her calm demeanor nothing but the most careful front that she could put up.

The sergeant leaned back, the rickety chair groaning under the weight of his muscled body. The light of the bulbs above them was reflected almost comically on the black skin of his shaved head.

“Jackie. What do you think we’re doing here? What exactly do you believe the Janus branch is?”

Jackie put her hands on the table in front of her, and entwined her fingers together in the perfect pose of a businesswoman about to make her sale. “Sir, with all due respect, everyone already knows what Janus is doing. Suspects at least. It certainly isn’t the special forces you claim to be, not when there’s not even a hint that Janus ever undertook a single mission.”

“And what is Janus doing then?” Sergeant Darry enquired with an anticipatory smile.

“We’re dealing with aliens, aren’t we? Space civilizations. They must have been here for a long time and-”

She had to stop or the poor man would die laughing. The small room was echoing with his laughter and the sound of his fist hitting the metal table. He pushed himself and the chair backwards, and bent at his waist over his knees, gasping for breath and still laughing.

“I suppose… I got it wrong then,” Jackie shamefully admitted.

Sergeant Darry wiped his eyes with a napkin, still giggling. “Oh man, I always love this part. I’m sorry, Jackie. You will understand why I laughed. It wasn’t personal. Why do you think… heh, aliens?”

“Well, sir,” Jackie began, deciding to plunge deep and be told all the reasons why she was wrong and stupid. “There’s the fact that whatever Janus is doing is extremely secret to the public, yet almost every nation is privy to information about it that none of them share. The strange measures that are enacted every few decades, like that inoculation that everyone underwent two years ago or the quarantine measures that are drilled in every city and became routine by now. The unexpected technological leaps. And everything always points here. To Janus.”

The sergeant clapped, nodding along. “Not bad, not bad. And don’t worry, I’ve heard worse. Hey, my father thought Janus was in contact with the spirit world.”

A small snicker escaped her. “I’m, I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean no disrespect. It’s just that…”

“It’s okay, I know how it sounds. In his defense, when he joined up he used a spear as his main weapon and he had a wise man bless him before going through each time. He was a very traditional man, and the knights never managed to change his ways.”

“I’m sorry?”

The chair squeaked against the floor as the sergeant scooted back to his previous position. “Alright. Here’s how it’s going to go. I’ll tell you what Janus is. I’ll tell you what we do, and finally what we want you to do by joining. If at any point you feel it is too much, you tell me and it’s over. There is no pressure. You can choose to leave and there will be no consequences.”

Jackie wasn’t sure she believed that. There was too much mystery and secrecy around the Janus Division to do so. “And what will happen to me if I decide such? With all due respect, sir.”

The sergeant shrugged. “I don’t know. Go back to what you used to do?” He smiled, or more actually smirked. “You think you’ll vanish or something, don’t you? Don’t worry, nothing like that’s going to happen. We will tell you enough to know that you should keep your mouth shut. If we didn’t think you could keep a secret we wouldn’t even consider you. You might vanish, but that is only if you accept.”

He stood up, and took a thinner folder out of the large one he held, laying the larger one on the side of the table, and gave it to her. “Read this. It’s the basic info. I’m going to go make some preparations, and then I’ll be back to explain the rest. Would you like me to get you something to drink, Jackie?”

“[...] rendering all rifts completely undetectable. Every attempt of lockdown has been met with failure. Current protocol dictates at least two Janus Division members that have undergone transition[pg86, Pain Medication] must be present on each active site, in rotation. They are to ascertain the Gate’s status at all time, and in the event of an unaffiliated entry, they have absolute authority to initiate Purge [Det. pg113, Non-Native Entry] [...]”

Her fingers trembled, but she flipped through the pages and found the relevant entry to look at once more. There was text there, but all she noticed was the table of increasing firepower to shower the area at a one mile radius minimum. It started with an hour long artillery barrage, and only went up from there. Her finger traced the rows of cells until she reached the last one, where she pulled it back as if it was burnt.

A small whimper filled the empty room. She fumbled through the pages, reading another one at random, even though she flimsily read through most of them.

“[...] The underlying cause of the longevity effect and how it is applied has not been resolved so far. At first it was thought to be without solution since every Janus Division member that transitioned has been rendered back to normal status upon return to native environment.

“Non-native refugees and volunteers to Janus have not contributed to any valid solutions. While research is still done in depth [pg225, Immortality], the most we know, at layman terms, is that cells keep rejuvenating without apparent cause of origin or DNA modification. All these reasons, along with the fact that the human brain is incapable of handling the long term effects [pg247, Psychological Support/Medication] is why the Gate mechanisms are incapable of use for [...]”

Jackie got up and walked to the wall, her palms covering her mouth. If what she read was true then that meant there were immortals walking the Earth. Her Earth. One of many Earths. Immortals who came from another world, through a Gate that promised to make her one as well, at least for as long as she was willing to abandon her home.

She always felt that there were secrets in the world. Hidden sides that she would never see unless she looked for them. She didn’t know what astounded her the most. That she was right, that they were this big, or that they were served to her one by one in a small folder?

She sat back down, breathing fast, and ran her hands through her short brown hair. She remembered how she used to make fun of people in movies who would run away from answers. She would ridicule them, call them cowards, idiots. God, she thought, I really regret that now.

Jackie’s hand selected another page at random, not sure why she kept reading the same parts again and again. Perhaps because it was unbelievable. Perhaps she hoped—or feared—that the words would change if she kept reading them, that there was a hidden meaning behind them that had nothing to do with the surface.

“[...] unable to form a pattern without a larger sample and data. This goal is currently considered unachievable [pg24, Infinite/Finite Theory]. The abundant theories are all considered valid, but the prevalent current one is that each World is, in simple terms, a marble that rolls randomly on an infinite surface. Chance collisions and passages of individuals through the Gates help to form interconnections that, due to each differing timeline, make predictions impossible.

“The only solid law that has been established so far is that the timelines always move forward, making a Gate transition to a time before another Janus member impossible, even if the Janus members in questions are unknown to each other and separated even by great periods of time, as the common denominator of their origin or connection to Janus renders them ineligible for this paradox to occur. Time passed between transitions is also impossible to determine.

“The soonest a Janus team has returned was Team G419 in 1988. The time that passed between departure transition and return transition was 00:23:46. Their expedition lasted 32 years by their timeline.

“The largest passage of time was achieved by Team Argus in 1468 who returned in 1922 after an expedition that lasted 41 years, their timeline. It is for this very reason that Janus HQ is prepared at all times to accommodate and rehabilitate all teams, no matter their length of absence [pg325, Teams].”

The sergeant knocked before entering. It made no difference to Jackie. She couldn’t answer. She kept staring into nothing, glancing at the pages in front of her every few seconds as if they were snakes that hissed angrily at her.

The door opened and closed. Steps approached her, and a shadow came over her. A steaming hot cup of coffee was placed in front of her, and her hands automatically sought it and its friendly, known warmth. The steps retreated and went around the table. The chair creaked, and a pair of heavy boots tapped at the floor.

“Still with us, Jackie?”

Her head was heavy and fogged. It was like the times when you were between awake and asleep, in that fragile state where a loud thought could wake you up. So did the sergeant’s bass voice. It was a gentle breeze in her mind that blew the fog away.

“Gates to other worlds? Dimensions or- or- other Earths? A multiverse?” she managed, stumbling through words. Suddenly the name made sense. “Janus. The Roman god of beginnings, ends… doorways and transitions. Oh God. Oh God.” She drank from the cup, not feeling the scalding liquid.

“A good choice though, wasn’t it? I’ll admit, I’d never have expected the Templars to use a pagan one.” The sergeant blew on his own coffee, waiting for it to cool before sipping from it.

“Templars?”

“Templar Knights. I really think they should add a little bit of history in that dry thing. Are you familiar with them? I know they’re a little obscure…”

“No, I know them. I saw a documentary. An order of knights, the ones who made the first real banking system. They… They vanished in the thirteenth century, the whole order. They disappeared. No one knows why or what happen—Is this what happened to them? Did they go through one of these Gates?”

“Nope. It’s far more simple actually. They found out about the Gates…” Sergeant Darry smiled over his cup. “...And they became us. We lost the religion in the way. Hard to keep it after seeing all that stuff.”

Her palms hugged the cup even tighter. “So… Do we trade with alien- other worlds then? Or is there a war going on?”

“Nothing that good or that tragic. At least, not yet. We’re trying on both fronts though.” He put down his cup, frowning. “See, girly, we can barely travel through them. We don’t have any control over them, just point them in a direction and only a few can go through each time. You read that part, right?” The sergeant drank from his coffee. “Hot.”

It was surreal the way he treated this. As if he was talking about a country next door that you could hop in a plane and go to or discussing something he read in a website. She wondered if it was an attempt to make it easier on her to hear all this. If so, it rather made it worse. She felt like a sheltered child that was suddenly thrown to the street to live on her own.

“Then what do we do?”

“ ‘We’, huh?”

She hesitated only a moment, figuring that her body knew better, and followed its lead. She nodded.

Thick fingers tapped at the side of the cup while Sergeant Darry scrutinized her with no attempt to hide it. Her hand went for her hair again, forgetting that it hadn’t been long for years and there was no way they could stick out. His eyes zeroed on her palm, and she realized that it was shaking. She placed it back in front of her, and made it stop with a willpower she didn’t know she had.

White teeth shone through parted lips as the sergeant smiled. He stood up, and walked around the table while reaching his hand out for Jackie, like a dancer calling up his partner.

“What do you say we go somewhere else and I show you a couple more things, huh?”

Jackie walked around the equipped dummy, feeling awe. “How… How much does this cost?” she asked, trying to make sense of all that she saw.

“If you have to ask, too much to take a kit home with you,” the sergeant answered merrily, taking great joy in her reaction. “A lot. It doesn’t come cheap. It’s not just the engineering and production. Everything goes through grueling testing before we even touch it. We can’t afford malfunctions or anything breaking apart. We start up with the best because by the end of the trip we’re usually running on the dregs.”

She hesitantly touched the vest with a finger, and when she saw there would be no reprisal she examined it closer, getting a feel of its material. She was sure that the flexible chest piece wasn’t kevlar, at least not the kind she was used to. This here was a vest designed to be extremely light and thin, yet she was certain that it would have no problem stopping a bullet.

The forest camouflage patterned clothing was different as well. It was reversible with a winter pattern on the inside, and the weave was amazingly sturdy. She pulled, and when the sergeant nodded encouragingly she tried to rip it. She couldn’t.

The helmet, the breather, the electronic equipment, all of it was designed to be as light and sturdy as possible. Everything used the same batteries, thin silver bars she had never seen before, and there was even an astoundingly small solar charger for them. Even the blankets looked to have popped out of a science fiction film. Paper thin and barely weighing anything at all. It was like they expected them to go to an alien plane—

Oh. Right.

The sergeant opened one of the display cabinets next to the soldier mannequin. He removed a sword and gave it an awkward swirl around, grinning like a child. The sword was old, almost ancient really, but still serviceable. The handle was wrapped in dark leather, stained by sweat. The blade was sharpened, and there was a golden cross on the pommel.

“Now this was the weapon that the old Janus Knights used. We are using that one.” The sergeant pointed at the unusual assault rifle the mannequin held. It looked like it was carved out of a single brick of metal, with the only discernible parts being the barrel, the trigger and the folded iron sights. The magazine did not stick out of the bottom, nor did the stock at the back.

The sergeant ran his hand over the flat of the blade, petting it. He held the old sword upside down and gently kissed the handle before putting it reverently back to where it belonged.

“We have a lot better gear now, but a good weapon is always a must. It’s not all good out there, Jackie. In fact, we’re shifting our objectives a little as time goes on. This beauty is the best weapon you have ever seen so far, at least until the boys in the labs can crank out something better. Modular and able to accommodate almost every role. Click a few parts on it and you can turn it into a decent sniper rifle. Fiddle some more and you got a good enough light machine gun. Even better, it all uses the same ammo, it’s light, requires very little maintenance, and it can take all kinds of punishment.”

He took it in his arms, handling it like an old friend. He removed the barrel with a few sharp twists and had it changed in less than a minute with a longer one, all without using tools. The frame of the weapon hugged and grabbed the new barrel as of on its own. The magazine was ejected soundlessly and replaced in a second, a scope was placed on top with a simple snap, and the sergeant’s finger swept over the stock and it obligingly lengthened. The whole process took less than a minute.

“I’ve never seen one like that. Never heard of it even!”

“Damn right you haven’t. One of these costs up to half a million. They go through a thousand tests before we even get to touch them, every single one of them, and the slightest hiccup is an instant scrap. We only get the absolute best,” Sergeant Darry said proudly, running his palm down the barrel. “There’s a sidearm of course, but we mostly rely on this. You will get familiar with the rest of the gear soon. If you join.”

She finally tore her eyes away. “Why wouldn’t I want to join, sir? What would possibly change my mind? This is amazing!”

“Jackie.” Sergeant Darry’s expression was now serious and he made for a real grim figure as he stood tall, with his arms crossed over his chest. “You do remember the courses you were told to run through, right? You will be facing ten times worse out there. The protocol is that we go to three targeted destinations and one random before we return. The targets can fail, and you never know where the random jump will take you. What do you think happens if twelve of us end up in a barren, frozen wasteland, and the Gate is at the other side of the world?”

“I… We carry supplies with us, right? It was in the specs.”

“How much can you carry? We have to carry everything on our own. Weapons, ammo, tools, food, water. How long will reaching the Gate take? Would you be willing to leave someone behind while you take his food and carry on? If the lot falls on you, would you be willing to be given a swift mercy so that the rest could have your supplies? Would you be willing to eat one of your comrades? This is not a what if, Jackie. This has all happened.”

She believed him. She saw it in his expression, heard it in his voice. He wasn’t looking at her now. He was talking to the floor at the right of him, his face burning with the shame he must have been living with.

“I- We all- all agree to this though, right?”

He nodded. “We do. That’s why we need to know for sure if you can do this and are willing. Both eyes open, Jackie. Every card on the table, and only then you agree. You can say no anytime. You can say yes only when you know everything.”

“Well spoken, Darry.” A blonde man, not much taller than Jackie walked up to them, his footsteps muffled by the thick carpets laid on the floor of the opulent room. He was dressed in simple civilian clothes; a new looking pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with an old rock band stamp. His face was young, but it was drawn and haggard in some undecipherable way. She reminded Jackie of soldiers that had lived through shellshock.

Sergeant Darry saluted, and Jackie imitated him when she noticed, with barely a second’s delay. “Captain,” he sharply said, stomping his foot down to attention.

“At ease, Darry,” he nodded to the girl. “This must be Jacqueline I suppose?”

“Goes by Jackie, Captain,” Sergeant Darry responded before she had time to answer, smiling brilliantly.

“Shame. I like Jacqueline. It’s pretty.” He turned to her, and his smile was that of a grandfather on a thirty year old man. “Miss Jacqueline, I hope for your sake that you say no. But if you’re as stupid as we are and say yes, then it will be my honor to have you in my team.”

“Thank you, sir,” she answered, ignoring the dig the best she could. She doubted it was meant in a demeaning term. “I will do whatever it takes, I promise.”

The blonde man shook his head, a bang of golden hair falling over his tired eyes. “No. Never do that. That never ends well. It doesn’t. Just do your best, Miss Jacqueline. That’s all you have to do.” He took a step back and smiled gently once more.

“I’ll be out of your way now. I just wanted to get something to read, maybe write a few notes on the books before I have to talk to my shrink today. How far ahead are you on orientation, Darry?”

“Still at the beginning, Captain. She read the pamphlet and saw the toys.”

“Tell her what we are supposed to do, Darry. Can’t go much further without that. Tell her about the harvests as well. Everything. It will take some time to ingest that. Give her as much time as possible to think on it before she has to give us an answer.”

“I plan to, Captain.”

“Good. Miss Jacqueline, I hope you can take everything that comes next as well as you did everything until now. Darry, I’ll see you tomorrow for breakfast. Miny will be there as well. We can visit the memorials afterwards.” The man, one of the team captains from what she understood so far, the men who held absolute authority out there, went to pick one of the old books in the large library that took up the east wall, and sunk in a plush, old armchair to read.

“What is a shrink?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“Psychiatrist. We all have one. It’s what he calls them. Come on, Jackie. Time to go further into your education. Do you like vacation slides?”

“Not really, sir.”

“You’ll not like these either, but they are pretty interesting.”

They walked out together, leaving the sergeant’s captain in his peace, and it was only now that Jackie questioned something she should have noticed much earlier.

“Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, where is everyone?”

The sergeant had been distracted and it took him a few moments to register the question. “Hmm. Oh, that? This area is reserved only for those who have made a passage through the Gates. We need a place away from… normal people so we can get a breather. They just don’t get it, see?”

Jackie watched the sergeant fiddle with the projector in the back, feeling strangely amused and warmed by the amount of expletives murmured by the man who had so far been ineffably polite as he was defeated by a, as he called it, piece of defective arsewipe.

“Would you like some help, sir?” she asked politely. She was supposed to be watching the front wall where the photos would be projected, but that was supposed to begin fifteen minutes ago.

“No, thank you,” he said loudly, quickly speaking through his teeth. “You fucking piece of junk, make me look like an imbecile some more, why don’t you?”

“Are you sure?”

He forced a smile on his face as he tapped the machine. “I got it, Jackie. Just… making a last check.” He discreetly kicked the bottom of the podium where the projector stood.

“Alright, sir,” she answered, smiling in kind. “Just remember to plug it back in after you’re done,” she added and put on a show of not hearing him groan.

The projector finally lit up, and Sergeant Darry turned off the lights, but there was no image displayed on the plastic sheet hanging over the wall yet. The sergeant sat next to her, picking up one of the water bottles and unscrewing the cap.

“So,” the sergeant began after a long swallow that almost emptied the bottle. “What is our purpose? At first it began as simple exploration. It was the unknown, and the unknown promised a lot.”

“That was the Templar Knights who did this, right?” After a beat she realized she forgot something. “Sir,” she added at once.

“Templars, us, same deal. Go in, find stuff, explore, bring it back. Down the centuries however emerged a pattern.”

Jackie stood silent, waiting as her imagination worked overtime. The sergeant pressed a button on the small remote he was holding, and an image was waiting for her on the wall.

It was a painted drawing, like those you saw on manuscripts from the medieval ages, yet the colors were powerful and evocative. Four knights in mail were battling against unarmored and unarmed foes. Six of them stood against the knights, while more laid dead on the ground beneath them, all of them with a vicious hack or slash on their head. Shadows that proclaimed a mob or a crowd coming up from a distance rose behind the men the knights fought. Other knights were already among the dead.

Jackie leaned forward. The faces of these men… Were they screaming or shouting? Their mouths were open, teeth showing, and they had no pupils, only white. Was this an attempt to demonize the knights’ opponents, she wondered, or simply an effect of the art’s style?

“Do you know what you’re seeing, Jackie?” Sergeant Darry slouched on his chair, his arms resting against his legs.

She went with the best guess she could make. “Templar Knights fighting… in another world?”

“Technically correct.” He pointed at the six figures in front of the knights with the remote. “Ever seen a zombie movie?”

“Yeah, a few. Wait, what?”

“Next slide.” The screen flickered before she could double check.

This one was a sketch, drawn with pencil and hurried annotations spread around the page. It displayed something worm-like in the style of an autopsy, with a front view on the edge of the paper. The worm’s mouth was full of hooked teeth, all of them pointing inwards, towards the blackness of its gullet.

The words were blurry and faded, but she could read some of the text on the bottom. Rock-hard skin, impenetrable to small arms fire. Blind. Navigates by sound. One of them ate Enrique. We heard a gunshot come out of its insides five minutes later. The inner side is vulnerable, but we had no way to hurt them aside from our last few grenades. We ran. Six survivors.

“Next slide.”

“Wait—”

A colorless video this time, speckled with film grain and lacking audio. It showed a wasteland. Dark clouds gathered low in the distance, like an oncoming storm at sea. The camera panned low at the feet of the cameraman. She saw old fashioned military boots, and then she saw the rest of the men of the team, with bolt-action rifles slung over their shoulders. They wielded short shovels, digging desperately a hole deep and large enough to hold all of them.

The camera panned up again. The clouds were slowly getting bigger. No, they were coming closer. Too fast, way too fast, and they stayed too low. Jackie changed her mind. It must have been a sandstorm. The men were panicking. One of them said something and they all threw their shovels aside. The men already in the hole reached for the cameraman and yanked him in as the man tried to record the coming clouds for as long as possible.

One of them reached and pulled something over the top of the hole, closing it. It must have been a large board of wood or a sheet of metal, though Jackie hadn’t noticed it. There was nothing to see here but a few holes where the sunlight pierced through into the tomblike hole.

The video cut to black. When the picture returned, the beams of sunlight were being broken, for longer and longer, until they almost vanished entirely. One of the soldiers lit a lamp, and she could now see their worried faces, all of them looking up with expressions of dread. The absence of sound made the video immensely creepy.

Something made it through one of the holes and fell on the digged up ground. The soldiers screamed and started pushing at one another. Something small jumped up and clamped on the cheek of the man next to the cameraman. Jackie managed to get a glimpse of something insect like. The man was obviously in pain, screaming, his eyes almost white. His hand reached up, pulled the large insect, and crushed it in his fist.

There was a large gash at his cheek, where the insect had somehow eaten through almost all the way through it in a couple of seconds.

“Vore clusters. Never met these things, I really don’t want to,” Sergeant Darry commented, sounding as disgusted and revolted as Jackie felt herself. “Next one.”

This one was a very clear photo of Sergeant Darry himself. He was standing next to metallic remains that had been obviously riddled with bullets. Everything had been gathered up and repositioned to give it its original shape of…

“Is that a fucking robot?” she almost screamed, standing up.

The sergeant smiled in the gloom. “Sit back down, Jackie. Next one.”

The next slide was a grayscale photo. It was a close up of a man that seemed to bleed out of everywhere. Eyes, nose, ears, and…

She gasped. That wasn’t a man. The face was too long, the nose too high, and these weren’t bones that jutted out because of how thin he was. “Is… Is that… Is that an ali—”

“Next.”

Another sketch, one that showed some kind of mutated canine creature.

A photo of a tree with rotten fruits still hanging on the branches.

A short, blurry video of something wet and squishy, like a column of tar, crossing an empty, unlit street in the dark, its bumpy surface glistening in the poor light that managed to touch it.

A series of shots of mushrooms, zooming out with each successive one until she saw they were growing out of a mound of dead people.

Panoramic views of armies clashing. Some of them with clubs and swords, others with guns, some of them with nothing but their fists.

The slides kept coming one after the other, with no warning of change. She got glimpses of ruined buildings and ravaged countrysides. She saw craters, deep and wide, crowned on their edges by the depressing remains of the cities they once were. She saw seas blanketed by orange hued sludge. She saw naked forests of blackened, dead trees. Men and women standing around an animal that resembled an antelope as it died, covered by scabs and lesions. She saw far more that she couldn’t understand.

The furious slideshow came to a sudden stop. There was a colorful, modern photo of a mountain displayed on the plastic sheet. It stood alone, strangely further away from any other.

The sergeant turned on his chair, his broad body directed at her, and gently placed his wide palm on her shoulder. His voice was quiet and gentle as he could make it, but it echoed queer in her ears. She felt as if she was delving deeper into a cave, the light and reason slowly fading the further she stumbled from the entrance. Her vision was growing darker on the edges, and her skin felt cold. Jackie’s mind kept replaying the images, and she feared that any moment now she would hear a guttural growl coming from the dark she was probing.

It was just words before. Shapes on a white sheet of paper, sound coming out from the mouth of a man she had just met. Now it was becoming real. The weapons and the gear made sense now, but the things she saw on that innocent, rectangular piece of plastic were horrid. A gun, no matter how good, was poor defense. You couldn’t carry enough bullets for a population of monsters. You couldn’t kill a swarm by shooting it. You couldn’t intimidate a disease from staying away from you.

Something was shaking her. “—Jackie! Jackie, are you still with me, girl? Did you listen to anything I said?” The sergeant was moments away from shouting.

“I’m fine, sir,” she answered, managing not to stutter. “I’m… I’m fine. I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.” Sergeant Darry leaned back to his own chair, giving back her personal space. “Girl… Jackie, I know this is too much. Now, I want to warn you about something. What you saw here? These are rare. Most of the time we find worlds that are empty or very like ours at some point in our history. Sometimes we find exotic ones. Places of wonder and alien cultures. There are worlds out there where magic is real, and you might see that one day.”

Sergeant Darry pointed at the wall where the images had flashed. “But there is that stuff out there as well. And as pretty and wonderful everything else might be, it’s this that worries us the most.”

Jackie breathed deep, the large intake of oxygen clearing her head. “Because there are chances we might end on one of them, sir?”

“No, Jackie. It worries us because we have found most of these plagues more than once.”

The strange measures that are enacted every few decades, like that inoculation that everyone underwent two years ago or the quarantine measures that are drilled in every city and became routine by now. Suddenly everything clicked into place, making sense.

“You find out what happened out there,” Jackie said in awe, suddenly seeing the huge man in front of her differently. How many dangers unlike everything the world could imagine had he faced, to bring back warning of a threat that may never come, all to keep them safe?

“All this can go through the Gates as well,” she continued, a shiver running down her spine as the words were spoken, “and we prepare ourselves to stop them if they ever make it through!” The sergeant nodded.

Then another page of what she read came to mind. “But… why do you even need to do that? I read what happens if something comes through and isn’t… Nothing could live through these measures. You stop short of nuking the sites, and only if the order is given to cancel!”

“Did you read how we know where the Gates are?” Sergeant Darry asked.

She did, and she was vividly reminded how ludicrous it seemed even as she read it. “When you first go through one you get a headache. The direction and intensity of the pain guides you to them.” She giggled, mostly out of nervousness than anything else. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it reminds me of a game I played in grade school.”

“It would be funny if it didn’t hurt like hell,” Sergeant Darry answered. Jackie’s expression turned horrified at the insensitivity she displayed, making the sergeant laugh. “It’s fine, Jackie. We have drugs for that. Beautiful, wonderful, tasty drugs. Isn’t it strange though that this happens?”

Jackie stared down at the end of her shoes. She thought hard, deciding that she now faced a test. “It does now that you mention it, sir. Could it be that it’s a way for your own body to warn you to stay away from them?” she ventured.

“That’s one theory. Here’s another. What if the Gates talk to us?” On noticing Jackie’s vacant stare he continued, “Put aside any ideas that this happens because of a natural or biological cause. What if there’s an artificial reason?”

Jackie couldn’t follow the thought. “You mean that they might be alive, sir? Have some kind of consciousness?”

The sergeant snickered. “I wouldn’t put that thought away, but that’s not what I meant.” He tapped three times at his own temple. “What if they’re trying to connect with what is in here or they send information that we can’t understand?”

Flashes of some of the images she had seen ran before her eyes. She remembered the creature with the long head. “Information that we don’t have the capacity to understand?”

“Have you seen the new advances in prosthetics, Jackie?” the sergeant asked out of the blue. Memories of articles she read in boredom in a hundred waiting rooms awakened. “People able to move fingers—”

“With an implant in their brain…” Jackie whispered. There was a connection here. The reason Janus kept reaching out to other worlds, why they let nothing come through, this theory the sergeant shared with her…

“Sir,” she asked, the fact that Sergeant Darry waited patiently for her not escaping her. “What is the reason for the random jump?”

Sergeant Darry turned back towards the screen, still displaying that lonely mountain. He crossed his right leg over the knee of the left, his face grim. “We’ve done that for almost the last two centuries. Local timescale of course.”

“The reason… There are a lot of them. The starting one was this.” A thick, dark finger, its nail in perfect condition, pointed at the mountain on the screen, and for a moment Jackie was afraid she would burst out in crazy laughter when she realized that the huge, black man, who was probably older than she could imagine, liked to pamper himself with manicures and could easily now picture him in a spa.

“It’s a mountain, sir.”

The sergeant looked down at his remote. He took his time finding the right button. He pointed it behind him, even though he didn’t need to, and pressed the button.

The mountain stood on four massive legs, each of them made of what seemed to be mountains of their own, bent and shaped like the legs of a crab or a spider. Hair-like extensions had erupted out of the mountain, woefully small and short, but only until you realized the scale. Each of them must have been as wide as a house or more, and dozens of meters long.

The mountains behind it were there no more. Not because this one had moved too far, but because they themselves had gone. Huge holes marked their previous location. The mountains had walked, and from the gaping maw into the earth that the one in front had left, something was snaking its way out. It was impossibly long, and inexplicably thin when compared to the walking geography.

The mountain rested down again, the world shaking with every move it did. Two of its legs—they could not be legs, they were too large, too humongous—reached forward and gripped the earth, raising hills as they sunk into the ground. The mountain pulled and it moved, leaving a scar worthy of the grand canyon behind it.

The snake creature reached higher than any building ever had. It made an arc as it bent towards the mountain, impossibly graceful, and then it vomited for what seemed like hours. It fell on the ground, the shake of the camera betraying its true mass, and slithered back into the hole. More creatures like it were coming out and doing the same.

The mountain lazily reached out and dragged the snakes’ dregs to itself. Whoever held the camera fell to his knees. Jackie would have followed along if she wasn’t sitting.

The screen turned to black, leaving them in the darkness. The sergeant’s voice filled the room, steady and real like an anchor, but the words were daggers to her shaken reality. She had just seen a mountain walk. She had just seen a fucking mountain walk, and a gigantic snake, worm, or mother fucking Jormungand, fucking come out of a hole along with its whole fucking family!

“This is a small part of what we call a harvest. There are more things than what you saw. When a world dies, when it’s empty and undefended, these things and others like it come. They, for lack of a better word, eat the planet. They drink the ocean, eat everything alive, chew the dirt, inhale the atmosphere, steal its riches. When they are done there is almost nothing left.

“We don’t know if the harvesters are… We don’t know how smart they are. What we do know is that they can travel through Gates. More than that, there’s evidence that they can open them or something else opens Gates for them where there is none. They know exactly where to go. We hope for the best, and assume the worst. We make a random jump in hopes that they might lose us if they can tell if we’re travelling through the Gates, like a kid who does one extra walk round the block before running into its home. A poor measure, but the only one we have.

“So, there’s a chance that the Gates are being operated by something. We know that too many of the diseases and monstrosities we’ve met are common even when they shouldn’t be, which means they go through the Gates as well. We know that we can’t travel to worlds more advanced than we are. Yeah, we can’t. Not unless these worlds are... dying to put it in simple terms. We tried. We always end up in hellholes when we try that. It’s like something is blocking us off, and that is quite the red herring.

“But there is something else out there as well, Jackie. Look at this. We found it in a dead world.”

There was a light click, and the projector lit the room once more. It was a photo of a charcoal drawing that had faded into gray, drawn with long and hasty lines over a crumbling wall. Cloaked and featureless figures stood all together. There were many of them, almost ten of them, but they were drawn so close and over each other that it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. A faded splotch, perhaps a symbol of some kind, hovered over the head of one of them.

A message in perfect, though strangely rectangular, english letters was written beneath. They are coming. Unite with us. Break the walls, and let us run. We can’t fight them. We must escape. Soldiers won’t save us. Walls won’t save us. We must run.

“Did… Did they run?” Jackie asked. The desperation on that message. She could feel it, simply in the way it was written. It was a plead, its author pressing the writing implement so hard on the surface that she could spot almost every one of the many places where the charcoal he was writing with broke and he had to start again.

“We don’t know. But we have this one as well. Different world,” Sergeant Darry said, pressing the button once more.

Jackie turned back to the screen. She didn’t understand what she was seeing at first. Then she realized it was another video, but it was incredibly grainy and the frames would randomly jump back and forth. The cameraman was trying to take a panoramic view from the top of a building. There was shattered glass everywhere, and the camera paused for a moment when it spotted other figures across other roofs.

The member’s of the cameraman’s own team waved like children at the camera from the distance. The camera finished it’s work, and then pointed at the ground. It’s owner turned to leave, and suddenly the camera whipped back up, though Jackie would be hard pressed to say if it was done in an attempt to record or an accident while bringing the arm up for defense.

Darkness fluttered across the camera lens, and iron glimmered for a moment. The owner of the camera fell. The camera kept recording, but not at the killer’s direction. At the sergeant’s direction Jackie noticed the reflection on one of the shards of glass. It was distorted by dirt and angle. An indistinct shape like a cloaked man stood over the corpse. It moved, as if it was looking around, and then the darkness or the cloak flapped harshly in a sudden wind, and the figure vanished. One moment it was there, the next it was not. The video went back to the last frame where the figure was visible. Text written in bright green at the bottom shared a terrifying info. Designation: Cloaks. Known Occurrences: 2 / Suspected Occurrences: 4

“Twelve Janus soldiers. Nine of them died in the span of the same minute. The other three were actually on a floor below Marcus, the guy you saw get murdered. They retrieved the camera, and got what gear Marcus carried. The harvest began soon after, and they only made it because they were almost at the Gate already. The camera wasn’t working. It took two years to get as much out of it as we did.”

Jackie stood up. She didn’t know how much more she could take. “Sir, isn’t that… isn’t that a bit too much? I- I just learned what is going on, and you’re throwing all that on me—”

“Just say you don’t want to have anything to do with us, Jackie, and I’ll stop,” Sergeant Darry said, his eyes locked on the empty shard of glass where the figure was before. “If you can’t take words, then how can you stand against the reality? There’s no shame in it, Jackie. There were better applicants than you.”

She sat back down at once. She didn’t freeze her ass off to abandon the wonder she had searched for her whole life at mere words!

“So there’s a chance we might get killed by these things that spread out there. I’m not afraid. Sir.”

“These don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Spread.” The light flickered, and new dark wonder was now at the screen. “They are unique, and we think they have a purpose. Everything must have a purpose. The harvesters eat even the metals.” It was a photo, taken with an old camera, monochromatic, and grainy.

There was not enough light, only the flames that burned in the background. But you could see the shape. Talons that were literally long and thin as swords, stretching further than it would be possible on any real animal, so long that they should have snapped. A long, thick neck, bent upwards. A cloud of fire belching out of an open mouth. Scales shining in the contrast between flame and darkness. A long, catlike iris full of evil, staring straight at the camera.

A wingless dragon straddling over corpses. Designation: Dragon. Known Occurrences: 3 / Suspected Occurrences: 5

“Why do they need metals? Where does it go? Where does the bounties of whole worlds end up?”

A humanoid figure in the far distance, walking in the night. There was no light, but you couldn’t miss it. It burned orange and red as it was engulfed in savage fire, yet moved leisurely, a shadow in flames. Six more joined it. They vanished together into nothingness. Designation: Fire Men. Known Occurrences: 8 / Suspected Occurrences: 2

“Why is everything that spreads through the Gates biological if it’s somebody’s work? Why do these diseases and monsters make it through? Why don’t the Gates work every time a bird or an insect passes through then? Why are the harvesters themselves not made of metals if they were made by something out there? Where are the soldiers, the tanks, the machines?”

A note, half burned, on a material she couldn’t identify, written in characters she had never imagined. The translation was next to it. —then came the end of his gifts, and they all turned to ash and black in our grasp, fake as the white he wore. There was no true wisdom he gave, no wonders, no mystic joys. Just madness, and an inexorable hunger for more that infected us. Still he drove us to greed, whipping us with his soft, wise words into a bloody fervor. Fractured into one, three, ten, a hundred sides, all of us with the divine being on our side that talked to gods. We never realized the gods were of death. I am the last. I killed my son, for he had more than I. Now I have nothing, and the wise one leaves while mountains walk and the light grows dim. I shall copy this last testament a billion—

Designation: Man of gifts. Known Occurrences: 1 / Suspected Occurrences: 3

“Why has no world managed to recover? Why did none of them take their planet back? Well, we think we might really know the answer to that. It’s done maliciously and on purpose.”

A sketch drawn with a shaky hand. A man standing on top of a ruined building. He’s armed with a gun, and dressed in tatters. His face is hidden by a gas mask, and his right forearm is covered in armor, held by rope. His stance is perfect arrogance and power. On the bottom left, written in digitized characters, glowing green, was again a line of text. Designation: Reaper. Known Occurrences: 1 / Suspected Occurrences: 17

“We call them Enders. And our job now is to find out as much as we can about them.”

The projector was turned off, and there was darkness again for a moment, feeling uncomfortably cold and numb. The sergeant turned on the lights, and his wide smile chased away the ice over her heart.

She was back in the real world, her world. She felt safe.

“Any questions, Jackie?” he asked lightly, obviously knowing full well that she had a thousand.

“Are… Are those Enders real? I mean, are we sure, sir?”

Sergeant Darry shook his head in mock disappointment. “Well, here we go for anticlimactic. Now, girlie… We don’t know. The brains give it a twelve percent chance that they are aligned and work together, at best. It’s very possible we are going after phantoms and coincidences. The world is, after all, a much bigger place than we ever imagined. That’s the problem, that they can also be a thing we made up from the shadows. But, in case they are not… Anything else?”

“Just… Yes, sir. There’s one more. How do we guide ourselves through the Gates? How do we make sure we don’t run straight into them if they are real?”

Now the sergeant chuckled. “Jackie… You read it in the folder, didn’t you? Or did you skip that part?” He grabbed two bottles of water and passed one to her.

She took it, her hand trembling almost none at all. “That must have been a joke of course. There must be some other way. Something from another world perhaps? The magic that you mentioned or we have some technology. There has to be.”

"Why should it be?” He drank deeply, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his dress uniform. “It worked for Dorothy, didn’t it? We just don't need to click our heels.”