Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
Eric Stump wasn't sure how many days he had been here. Time in the featureless room seemed endless, making him worry more about his mental state than his physical wellbeing. He was sick of looking at the same three walls and metal gate, eating the same bland food, and using a metal toilet to relieve himself.
The familiar sound of the lock turning on the cell door caught his attention. Two musclebound men — the same two who always came — walked into his cell. This time, though, they didn't bring food. Instead, a third man in a white lab coat walked in behind them. Eric recognized him. He was Roy Valik, the brains behind WarTech. He had unkempt grey hair, a mustache, and a graying beard. Glasses made his large eyes appear even larger.
Valik walked past the two men and stopped a few feet from Eric. As Eric looked up from a spot on his cot, the man extended his right hand. An item of shimmering blue and white dangled from his grip. It looked familiar to Eric.
"Were you the one who enticed her to come to WarTech, by telling her what was happening here?" the scientist asked Eric.
Eric looked at him blankly and said nothing, not understanding what he was talking about. The man sighed.
"If you're the reason she came here, you can help yourself now," the man continued. "We are trying to learn about her. If you contacted her, you must have information about her."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
The man gripped the item between the index finger and thumb of each hand, allowing it to unfurl in his grasp. Sapphire Angel's costume. Eric recognized it instantly. It was obvious to anyone who hadn't been living in a cave since she rocketed to fame.
The man noticed his recognition. "Yes, Sapphire Angel. She came. But it didn't go how it always goes for her. We captured her and took this costume. The rest of the world thinks she's still out there, bringing criminals to justice and gaining more fame. They don't know she's our prisoner, naked in a cage. So she's not going to be saving you, if you are the reason she's here. Did you contact her?"
Eric took a moment to process this piece of information. They had captured Sapphire Angel? How was that possible? And if this man held her costume, what did that mean for her? The man must be bluffing. The costume must be a very good imitation.
"I already told the other men, I don't know anything." Eric said, his voice raspy.
"Unlike the men who questioned you earlier," Valik said, "I don't care about what else you've learned about our work, or who you told. Well, as long as it doesn't affect my research. But I do care about any information you have about Sapphire Angel."
"I don't know anything," Erik repeated and shook his head.
Valik turned and began pacing.
"I'll show you a sign of my good faith," the scientist said. "I'll reveal to you that your roommates are fine. Yes, the other men told you they were going to hurt your friends, if you didn't reveal to us what you told them. I saw your interrogation video. You were sobbing and insisting you didn't tell your friends anything. Well, guess what? Your interrogators already discovered that. They intercepted a phone call, which showed that your roomies had no idea what you were up to."
Erik wanted to sob with relief as a weight lifted from him. He had worried about Jack and Ross since that early interrogation session. He had vowed to his captors that he had revealed nothing to his roommates, but he wasn't sure whether his interrogators believed him. Eric suspected these people wouldn't risk harming his friends, since it would make his own disappearance more suspicious, but he couldn't be sure. Until now. They were okay. Relief flooded over him.
"Yes, they're fine. But I can't say the same for Sapphire Angel. The people here have plans for her. Rough plans, unlike how they've treated you. She is a superheroine, so they think she should have a high tolerance for what they dish out. It could get very bad for her. You could help her avoid that fate if you just tell us what you know. Consider that for a moment — you would be saving a world-famous superheroine."
"I swear I have no idea why she came. I've never met her. Never talked to her."
Valik set his jaw and closed his mouth in a hard line, before staring at Erik for several seconds.
"Fine," he said finally. "I'll give you time to ponder what I said. But not too much longer. Someone will be here tomorrow who is very interested in WarTech's work. If you help us advance that work, by revealing what you know about the superheroine, maybe you get out of here."
Valid turned on his heel and marched from the room, the guards behind him, and Sapphire Angel's costume in his hand. As the cell door slammed shut and the lock turned, Erik sank down into his cot. If the man spoke the truth, and they had captured the invincible Sapphire Angel, there was no hope.
One hour later, Roy Valik stood before a raised table, staring at a screen and fighting the frustration bubbling within him. Mantis had captured Sapphire Angel eleven hours earlier, and Valik felt no closer to unraveling her secrets. The Stump kid either knew nothing, or wouldn't reveal it. Worse, Valik's scientists had provided a trove of data, yet it told him nothing.
With a grumble, he drained a cup of coffee, and hit a keystroke to call up the data from Sapphire Angel's first visit to WarTech. It was time to start over and see if he had missed anything.
As he was about to push back from the table and find a refill for his coffee cup, new results came across the screen. These were from the Pentorial Sensor, a device of his own creation that measured energy emissions and currents, including those undetectable by any other known tool. Unlike Valik's other sensors, it took hours or even days for the Pentorial Sensor to process data and spit out its full results. Shortly after her visit, the sensor had told him of an unusual energy flowing through the heroine, but now, for the first time, the sensor's complete data from that visit appeared on his screen.
Valik leaned forward, and he didn't react as he studied the screen. The first few pages of data showed him what the sensor had already shown him after her first visit — a strange energy flowed within Sapphire Angel. But as he looked closer, he buzzed with excitement. According to the data, energy didn't just flow within her, but also came and went from the heroine, traveling in a previously unknown spectrum.
Valik couldn't ascertain where the energy went, or from where it came, as the readings only focused on her. The energy's unique signature was so unusual he might have missed it, if he hadn't noticed anomalies in the known spectrums. Even those anomalies were slight — like gentle ripples in a massive ocean.
But the ripples were definitely there. Valik tapped a few keys on the keyboard, to focus on this energy. The Pentorial Sensor reported its data both numerically, and in a waveform graph. The numbers were highest where the energy signal was strongest, and lowest where weakest. The waveform graph plotted those numbers on a chart, and looked like the waves of an ocean.
After studying the data for thirty minutes, Valik spotted a pattern. The numbers formed one long sequence, which repeated over and over. It was easier to see on the graph — the waves repeated every few minutes.
The shape of the graph rang a bell deep within the recesses of Valik's memories. He turned to a computer at his side, logging into a site used by scientists in various fields to share their findings. "Real" scientists mocked the site, believing its members to pedal in fantasies and nonsense. Indeed, much of the information came from disgruntled scientists after organizations rejected their work. Perhaps something here had triggered Valik's recollection.
If his recollection were better, he might have been better able to phrase his search terms. He tried several approaches over the next hour, but came up empty. As he was about to give up, or at least take a break, a result from one of his random searches caught his attention. The synopsis looked familiar. The entry was from a scientist at a corporation whose name he didn't recognize, and it summarized results from a tool which, if he read between the lines, sounded much like his Pentorial Sensor.
He clicked into the entry, and data filled the screen. Valik leaned forward and scanned past the first few paragraphs of introductory information. He dove into the raw data on the screen, which contained measurements from the unknown energy source. Those measurements didn't match his measurements, though, and his shoulders sagged.
But then he looked closer and caught his breath. These measurements didn't match his — they were the complete opposite of his measurements. Whenever Sapphire Angel’s numeric measurements peaked, the other energy source’s measurements bottomed out. And as hers dropped, the other sources’s measurements rose. And if he put the waveform graph of each source on top of each other, they mirrored one another. This couldn't be a coincidence.
Valik scrolled back to the top of the report, finding a description of the object from which the energy came. The words described a strange black rock, looking like a brick, but pure black in color. The writer called it Noctecite, a term Valik found nowhere else. Perhaps the other scientist, or his teammates, fabricated the word for an object they couldn't identity? This seemed likely, since "nocte" was the Latin word for night, and seemed an apt name for a rock of such utter blackness.
He clicked on a link amidst the description, and a moment later another page loaded, filled with images of the rock. It was shaped like a brick, just as the entry had described it. The rock was so black it was hard to make out its edges in the image on the screen.
Valik clicked back to the previous page and continued scrolling. The testing and data was extensive, and he scrolled on and on for the next two hours. A scientist had posted the entry eight months earlier, after his team abandoned the project, believing it had found an anomaly, and nothing more. The dispirited scientist had left two cryptic words at the end. "Altor Unitas????"
Valik rubbed his hands together in excitement. Those scientists hadn't had the benefit of testing Sapphire Angel. He needed to get his hands on the black rock and test it. Perhaps it would unlock Sapphire Angel's secrets. And he still awaited the results of additional Pentorial Sensor scans they had conducted on her, after her capture. But those results wouldn't be ready for a day or two, or maybe longer.
As was the case any time he sensed a breakthrough in his research, Roy Valik felt like a hunter closing in on his prey. Certainly Sapphire Angel could shed light on this. The superheroine needed to talk.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
I was wondering what Eric Stump was up to. I’ll be honest, if I were him, I probably would’ve gone insane at this point. Having to be locked up in a single enclosed room for who knows how long, with those two random men being my only source of social contact.....oh, boy. Valik’s definitely a tempting fellow, but thankfully (or not thankfully.....who knows?), Eric didn’t give in for the time being. I’m guessing the “person who’s interested in WarTech’s work” is probably Nassar.....no doubt he wants to lift this project and take Sapphire in for him and Azari to have their way with.
Moving on, that whole second section with Roy Valik at the computer was quite intriguing! If it weren’t for the Pentorial Sensor, I don’t think he would’ve gotten that far. So “Noctecite” is this strange.....material that’s the focus of Valik’s search at the moment. Its black coloration initially reminded me of onyx, obsidian, or hematite, but it sounds like it could be even darker if its own edges aren’t even discernible. And since Sapphire’s energy readings are the complete opposite of those on the external study that Valik looked up.....maybe the two entities are emitting oppositely charged energy waves, or something to that effect? The scientists on the website seemed like they only had one piece of the puzzle, while Valik has the other. The other researchers had the noctecite, but not Sapphire. Valik has Sapphire, but not the noctecite (at least not yet). If he can put them both together, we could be able to get to the bottom of this.
Don’t get me wrong, Valik’s still disgusting, but he’s making way more progress on Sapphire’s abilities than a lot of other people thus far. Imagine if him and Raven Tristan collaborated; Sapphire would be exposed in no time. xD
I’m sticking with him for now, but only for the information dump. As soon as we know everything about Sapphire’s powers---everything that can be known, anyway---then I’ll go back to rooting for his defeat.
Is there going to be an entire arc dedicated to Valik venturing out to obtain the noctecite? It’d be an interesting choice to give him the focus for a while; then again, he’s kind of already had it for the past few chapters.....him and Mantis, actually.
Poor Sapphire......wonder how she’s holding up. Conner, Ross, Jack? Anyone? Clark? Jennings? Ted? Yoo-hoo! There’s also Don Lanigan, but I’m starting to think he was just an “ally” who’s not really involved with WarTech and just helped out with setting a (failed) trap at the bar for Sapphire earlier. If he turns out to have a bigger role later on, though, that’d be a pleasant surprise.
I literally clicked to a different tab and looked up “noctecite” to see if it was actually a real thing. Not according to Google, it’s not. xD
I’m really interested to see how things proceed from here. So many thoughts have been floating around in my head as to how Sapphire gets out of this, but if we are going to focus on Valik getting the rock, it’s likely going to be a while. Maybe Mantis can pop in and keep her company or something, and just avoid looking at the monitors to keep Valik’s research secret.
Come on, Sapphire.....you can do it.....