In the early pre-dawn light, a convoy of military vehicles crawled slowly into the blast zone, their tracks cutting deeply into the fallen ash. The lead vehicle, its treads clacking, approached the edge of a deep crater and stopped. Ash drifted out of the sky like dirty snow.

　　 The passenger doors of the lead vehicle unsealed and slid upwards with a hydraulic whine. A figure stepped out of each door and stood on top of the vehicle`s caterpillar tracks. Biohazard suits made the figures shapeless and indiscernible. Both figures studied the area around them through curved face plates set into shapeless hoods.

　　The driver raised his forearm to check a reading on a wrist chrono. He tapped the display a few times, studied it for a moment, and then let his arm drop.

　　The figure at the passenger side retrieved a metal box, toggled some switches, watched a display screen, nodded to the driver, and dropped to the ground. They climbed over the broken ridge of concrete and made their way carefully down the slope.

　　 The driver raised his right hand and depressed his throat mic.

　　 "The tracker is still pointing northwest. Radiation levels are off the chart. Most likely, it`s the ash-producing the increased concentration. We have less time than we thought, Doctor." The man`s voice had an English accent.

　　The remaining convoy vehicle`s doors opened, and soldiers in matching dark green radiation suits exited and formed themselves into extended lines.

　　A gravelly voice carried over the comms channel, "Correct, Sir. It`s the ash. Emitting its own radiation not accounted for in the sensor sweeps. We have fallen in behind you and the Doctor."

　　 The driver glanced over his shoulder. Twin headlamps of each soldier swept metronome arcs through the falling ash.

　　 "How accurate is that thing, Dr?" The driver switched off his throat mic and was speaking to her over external speakers. His voice startled him. He wasn`t used to the amplification. He looked towards the Doctor, who continued northwest as if he hadn`t been heard. The fingers of their free hand was dancing as if making calculations on an abacus. Obviously deep in concentration. He let the question go unanswered and followed.

　　 "Professor." It was a woman`s voice. Young sounding.

　　"Excuse me?" He said.

　　"I`m a professor, not a doctor. Somewhere at some point in time, someone with the government has put me down as a doctor. I`m a professor, not a doctor, and I don`t even know what this thing is, Captain, so I have no concept of its accuracy. I don`t even know how it works, what it does. I had it handed to me by the government spooks along with a message. Find, retrieve, and secure whatever this box points at." The woman`s voice was barely loud enough for him to hear. "What I can do, Captain, is understand its display."

　　 He moved closer to her. He actually didn`t like how much she was concentrating on the display and how little she was on her footing. He`d be ready to grab her if she stepped wrong as much as to save her along with the mystery box she was carrying.

　　 They stepped over an even row of plastic puddles that used to be benches. He knew these stadium chairs used to be red. Japanese flag red. Now, they were the black of burnt and melted plastic. Their metal number plates lay in scattered piles like tossed-away business cards.

　　They both saw the first bodies at the same time.

　　 He heard her sharp intake of breath. She stopped walking.

　　 "I thought the strike was late last night. After everything had ended. The people were supposed to be gone." She said.

　　 "Lots of stadiums never totally empty out right after a game. Probably some family, maybe a bleacher party. Or maybe some kids partying in the stands."

　　They were standing in a collection of toppled and scorched mannequins, their melted limbs looking like burnt lengths of twisted rope.

　　"We should report this to the local authorities. Your men. Take samples&" She took an unsteady step backwards and seemed to try and sit where there was nothing to sit on.

　　 "Are you ok?" he asked, stepping to her side and steadying her. Her face shield was starting to fog up. He brought up her bio stats on his HUD. He saw some elevated readings there. Oxygen was too high. She was starting to hyperventilate.

　　He stepped closer to face her and blocked any view she had of anything else. "Ok, I need you to focus." He held her by the shoulders, but she still hadn`t met his gaze. He put his hand on the bottom of her face plate and forced it upwards. His first true glimpse of her face had him realize she was far younger than he had taken her for. The confident and intelligent tone made her sound much older than she was. She had chiselled features that a model would possess if they were finer and more delicate. White skin that would sunburn easily contrasted against black hair and brows. Beautiful dark eyes. Not the eyes of a model, the eyes of a judge.

　　"Doctor&, uh Professor. Look at me." Her eyes met his, and she blinked. Her face had that white I`m going to be sick` look, and he couldn`t let her get sick with the helmet on. "There. See. We`re all good here. It`s just us. Now, I need you to control your breathing."

　　He could see her respiration in the team HUD display start to drop. It came back down. He checked his wrist chrono. His heart went into his throat when he saw how many rads they had absorbed. Time time time.

　　"Well done. Now, I need you to focus on the scanner. That`s your job. Whatever that display is telling you. Just look at it. We don`t have much time. We`ll all be overexposed, even with our enhanced layers under these suits. Just focus on that contraption. I`ll make sure you don`t step into a hole. Let`s hustle, shall we?" He wasn`t sure if she could make out his reassuring smile.

　　 She looked back down to the scanner, shook her head as if to refocus, and her free hand walked itself through some more imaginary calculations. After a moment, she took a slight left turn onto a new bearing and marched out from him.

　　 "You`re right. Of course. I`m sorry." Her confident, down-to-business tone was back. "I don`t know what I was thinking. There is no one to report these bodies to. It is unlikely they have anyone missing them. The city is gone. The local authorities are gone&"

　　"It`s ok, Professor. My guess is this is your first scene involving bodies. Burnt bodies are the worst. Trust me, I know." He said.

　　"Yes. Understood. It was my mistake not to expect to see such&. It won`t happen again. I apologize."

　　"Quite all right. I didn`t expect to have someone here quite so young."

　　"I get that all the time, Captain. If you`re thinking I can`t handle this, you`re mistaken."

　　"We haven`t gone that far yet. My men and I can try this with someone else."

　　She stopped walking.

　　 "There is no one else, Captain."

　　 "There is more than one team."

　　 "You`re questioning my abilities, Captain. I told you I`m a Professor. I`m a physicist."

　　 "You don`t look like you`ve graduated high school."

　　 "Now you`re exaggerating just a little bit there, Captain. I think to you, I probably look like I`m still in high school. But you`re right. I haven`t graduated high school. I skipped it and started university at fourteen. I was a professor at nineteen." She checked the display and began walking.

　　After a few moments of consideration of the depth he saw in those eyes of a judge, he followed. He was good at assessing an individual`s capability. It was what he did. If he ignored the age and focused on the strength he had glimpsed in those eyes, he could go ahead with the op.

　　"Ok. Understood. We`re here as a team. I`ll handle the terrain, and you tell me what I don`t understand. Why are we out here in these extreme rads in this time limit? Why don`t we just let things blow over a bit, let this firestorm die down, and then come and get this mysterious package." He had never met a Dr. yet who didn`t like to explain things. Or a professor&,Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

　　"That was very clear in the message. Small window of opportunity`. I don`t know. We don`t know, Captain. The Spooks calculated a high probability of another event occurring. A post-event. There is a room full of the world`s brightest trying to figure all this out right now. But they sent us. Here. Now. I`m sure for good reason."

　　"Any backtrace on these messages, or this mysterious messenger? Has it been successful? Have they backtraced that box you`re using?"

　　"In my briefing, they said the message was left on the stand-alone, most top-secret secure system they possess. That`s like having a note appear in the most secure bank vault in the world without ever opening the vault. Because of that, they have to suspect and are investigating their own people now. I`ve been in South America for the last six months researching a self-perpetuating carbon-neutral mining system. Being gone so long in such a remote area disqualified me from any suspicion. I had just arrived from Ecuador this morning. They didn`t even let me leave the airport. I received a message from the department to wait, and then a courier dropped all this off at the information desk, and here I am."

　　"As for this thing, this box, they did trace some of these components it was assembled from. They discovered it was assembled in portions during shipment. One tech gets the box shipped to his home, and he`s contracted to build and attach a specific component. He receives payment and is told to ship it to another address. Ditto. Down the line. No one person was aware of the previous or next portion of assembly. They just followed their specific build and assembly instructions. The spooks are still trying to trace those instruction drops. They said they have interview teams out now."

　　"And why a select group of physicists? Why only choose them to receive this message, this package? Why not the military?"

　　"Ah. Finally, a quick answer question. Because the display this thing is generating is a fourth-dimensional shadow."

　　"A what?"

　　"There is an excellent layman`s term video available of Carl Sagan explaining this. I suggest you research it, Captain. It`s a message only a physicist could easily understand, so the government or the military would have given it to us anyways."

　　He smiled under his face plate. He was glad to see she was back to her supercilious over-confident self once again. He`d much rather have that than the hyperventilating about-to-freak-out version from a few moments ago.

　　"I`ll be sure to look up that video once we`re clear of this blast zone, Professor, but they told me you`re the only one that can read that display."

　　"That`s not true. There are many physicists that could. Less that could do it fast enough, in real-time, at the speed that these signals are coming through while holding a conversation with some Air Force guy."

　　"So, you`re doing math calculations in your head quick enough to let that thing guide you?"

　　He glanced at the rad level gauge. He shook his head and closed his eyes when he saw it. He thought of Jenney. It was just the weekend before they had stumbled into a conversation about planning for children. He wasn`t so sure now.

　　"Correct." The Doctor replied.

　　She remained bent forward and continued to walk. He grabbed her elbow, and she instinctively let him guide her over a rough spot. A few more very unsavoury-looking bodies. He was glad she hadn`t noticed. She was nearly as tall as him, but through the suit, her arm felt very thin. As smart as she was, his grip made him feel like, once again, he was bringing a kid into a blast zone.

　　She looked down at the bodies. He needed to distract her again.

　　 "Oh. And I`m not in the Air Force, by the way."

　　Her head shot up to look at him. "I`m sure they told me a Captain, Special Air Force."

　　 "Special Air Service. SAS."

　　 "And that`s different?"

　　 "The difference is comparable to how I was thinking you were a high school kid."

　　"Oh. I understand. I apologize."

　　"No need. Now, we both respect the capabilities of the person we`re working with. Let`s get moving on this. When it`s okay to do so and doesn`t distract you from your calculations, tell me more about that box. I`m curious."

　　He followed her through the rubble. The captain checked behind them. His men were still fanned out, searching and defending against the improbable.

　　"It`s like a dimensional pointer. A coordinate indicator from a place that doesn`t have to follow our dimensional rules of existence."

　　"You`ve got to dumb it down for me. Caveman it for me, will ya?"

　　"Oh. Ok, Captain, pretend that during the Paleolithic period&,"

　　"Nope. Losing me already&"

　　"It`s like a compass that has a very short life span from a place where all the maps are made differently."

　　"Ok, well done. I`ve got that. Can you tell me why they are different?"

　　"Pretend that in caveman` times, individual paintings on a cave wall, viewed as a whole, reveal they, the cavepeople, get to go on a treasure hunt. It takes a very keen few of them to put the paintings all together to get this information. The paintings tell them that they will be sent instructions on how to build a tool to use for the treasure hunt. The tool shows up one day, and it has been assembled by a series of individuals, each in turn putting one piece on as they followed their own single instructional painting. They don`t understand how, but the series of cavemen have built and constructed a wireless telegraph. One found the raw ore; another purifies the ore with fire. The next painting tells the next caveman to pound the ore into a thin wire.

　　Finally, the telegraph is transmitting. Now, there are very few cavemen that are really good at pattern recognition. These few understand the message is a pattern, but they are always too slow, too late with compiling the message. It takes them too long to figure it out, and the treasure is gone when they arrive. Fewer still are those that recognize the pattern, obey the dots and dashes, and compile the message in real-time fast enough to be guided to x-marks-the-spot."

　　"And that`s what we`re doing?"

　　She didn`t answer him. He could see she was concentrating again. The hand flicking rapidly.

　　"We`re getting closer to the target. It could be in this area."

　　"Well, with no understanding of this thing`s accuracy, we`ll do our best not to miss anything."

　　The captain checked a hard copy map taped under a cover beside the wrist chrono.

　　 "There was a large building or structure here." the captain compressed his throat jack again. "Sergeant. We`re goin` to zero in on this location. Do you recall what rooms or facilities would have been to our front? In our path. Anything specific you remember being in this area?"

　　 "The locker rooms, Sir, would have been straight ahead of you." That clipped gravelly voice once again.

　　 The thick ash drifting down around them gave a surrealistic feel.

　　 The captain had no inkling this once could have been a locker room. The only discernable change in the flat destruction around them was an unevenness in the ground. It now felt like he was walking on a cushioned bog of concrete.

　　 Some muffled metallic echoes sounded up from underneath, the sound of a giant steel drum.

　　He visualized metal walls, metal tables, metal lockers that had been melted into bands and slopes of steel and then piled over with rubble.

　　"Sarge, anything else of significance in our path ahead?"

　　There was a pause. It seemed like the sergeant had memorized the entire area, but the pause now was him double checking. They were down to the nitty gritty now.

　　He glanced over at the display on the strange device. It meant nothing to him. Through her visor, he could see her lips moving rapidly. Her face was a mask of concentration. The hand was flicking again.

　　 "Just the pool now, Sir?" The Sargent finally replied, sounding a little unsure.

　　 "Tell me, Professor. Did the spooks scan that machine in your hands for any explosive devices?"

　　 The voice from Operations came over the captain`s headset. They would have been listening during the entire movement. The voice was sterile. Detached. It reminded him of the bored monotone of his grade ten science teacher.

　　"The device was scanned, Captain. We are following your progress. Speculation here is the probability that whatever the item you are looking for has most likely survived the blast by possibly being submerged in the pool."

　　"Just being cautious of countermeasures." The captain replied. "With the tech level of this&, device`, can we even be totally sure some undetectable` countermeasure isn`t hidden in it? Or even in this area?" He looked around again, checking on the position of his men.

　　This time the response from Ops wasn`t so quick. Somebody had covered a microphone.

　　He heard the rustle as the hand came back off it. "That`s a negative, Captain."

　　The young professor still hadn`t said anything. He imagined her mind filled with a waterfall of numbers.

　　Great. Magic IED placed from the future/past possibility. He thought.

　　"Stay where you are for a moment, please, Professor."

　　He walked forward, past her, into the drifting fallout. He felt the ground begin to slope away and then slope back up again. He turned, walked back to the center of the depression and, turning right, repeated the pattern. He was counting his paces as he hoped each one wouldn`t be his last.

　　"Well, I think I have a depression here fifty meters long and twenty-five meters wide. It seems the tracker has us stopped here. My paces would be roughly the same size as a regulation-size pool. Sergeant, use Bravo Team to close up on this pool. Alpha Team, secure the perimeter. Move. Let`s see if we can find whatever it is we`re supposed to be finding. We need to be quick but cautious, men. We could find something we have never seen before, even something at our edge of comprehension, and it could be good or bad."

　　 His team was fast. They slipped out ahead, readying their weapons as they went.

　　As he waited, he couldn`t help but look at his rad meter. It was not good. Time time time.

　　"Sergeant, talk to me."

　　Then, the sergeant`s voice came across the wide net.

　　 "We`ve got something here. Bravo team has cleared a section away, and we have moisture seeping up through the rubble. I`m taking a sample of the water now." The sergeant added. "Ops, I`m transmitting the sample data."

　　The reply from Ops was almost immediate. "Allowing for current contaminates, your sample matches that of the recorded water samples from the pool maintenance logs."

　　 "All right, Sarge. Well done. Mark it and wrap it up. Everyone pull out, back to the vehicles. ASAP."

　　 "Disregard that order, Sargent." The voice from Ops was loud but still flat. "Teams remain on ground and recover the package. Continue with the operation, Captain."

　　The captain looked off into the distance at his team. One headlamp bobbed closer. Out of the darkness and drifting ash materialized the stocky form of the sergeant.

　　 He halted, then pantomimed to the captain by tapping his own Chrono, drew his thumb across his own neck, and ended with both hands taking flight.

　　The captain checked the chromo on his forearm and switched off his comms. He motioned for the professor and the sergeant to do the same.

　　Raising his voice to make sure he`d be heard by both of them, he said, "We`ll time out on rad exposure soon. We`re nearly in the lethal range now. Team Saini can spell us out and complete the extraction." The professor stared back at him. There were those severe eyes again. She shook her head no`.

　　 "No one leaves, Captain. We secure the package and fly it out to the bunker right now." She hit her throat mic. "Ops, for the record, I, Professor Adoria Seelo, civilian, have taken control of on-site operations. We`re about to finish up here. We`ll bring you the package. I`ll apologize one more time to you, Captain, but you`re not remembering or understanding the part of my story about the prize location being fluid. We grab it before it disappears, like good little cave people, at whatever the cost."