8: Carter•Labs

T H E   L A S T   T I M E  she had set foot at that place was way back before she'd started high school.

Apparently, her mother never really talked about that place as much.

The building was one of the biggest structures in the city with five storeys. There were other buildings with more storeys but this one covered a pretty big area of land and was entirely made with glass from the outside.

CARTER•LABS

Natasha still didn't get the title which was plastered at the very center of the facility. Why was there no space separating the two. As in, Carter Labs.

Oh well, must be a 'successful scientist' thing.

"Hi there, Natasha!" called Katie Patterson, who Natasha spotted through a glass separation busy working on something.

A sudden spark of white light suddenly flashed.

"What was that?"

Katie, who was wearing large plastic goggles, turned to Natasha, smiling.

" Just a little applied quantum mechanics as you can see here" - she pointed at a device with large silver metallic plates - "these elements are acting as a large base for generating great amounts of frequency which siphons negative energy that is projected out through here."

She pointed at a small metallic tube sticking out from one end of the device then went ahead to push a button on the device. Natasha watched as another sudden flash of white light shot out of the tube and a small mass of energy materialised, glowing in a light blue color and remaining suspended in the air before dying out.

"What you just saw was a portal," came Dr. Patterson.

"Like a wormhole?"

"No. Not exactly. A wormhole acts as a gateway to both space and time but a portal is more like a gateway to space and not that much connected to time itself, though it can serve almost the same purpose of the wormhole."

"Okay..." Natasha smiled, "Henry would kill to enter this place."

"What was that?"

"Oh, nothing. Just someone I know..."

Carter appeared from an elevator, donned in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and black slacks.

"Natasha!" he greeted her, adjusting his glasses which were rounded at the corners.

"Hey," Natasha responded as Carol approached him, leaving her standing next to a glass compartment containing a device that was shooting lasers onto a wall.

"I see you brought company," Carter began before nudging Carol into the main section of the facility and gave Natasha a smile.

"Yeah, she wanted to come see this place," Carol sighed, folding her arms in front of her.

"She still doesn't know, huh."

"Everytime I see her, Carter. It's-it's just too much. Honestly, how does Jenna do it?"

"The perfect time for that will come," Carter repressed.

Carol was about to ask when but resorted to another question.

"You called and sounded urgent on the phone. What is it?"

"Right," Carter moved towards a table attached to a broad white glass wall.

He wafted his hand and a high pitched whooshing sound came, followed by random images forming spontaneously on the glass wall which turned out to be a very large computer embedded on it. Carter had made advancements in designing and coming up with bleeding edge technology like the Mega Computer—one of the latest computers that was already surpassing the supercomputers.

"You remember that incident back in Australia two years ago?"

"Yeah..." Carol responded, turning from Carter to the screen.

" Well, another one was taken down in Hong Kong just early this week."

"And we still don't know who's doing this?"

"No. That's the tricky part. Whoever it is, he or she has advanced tech just like mine to take down a speedster. We're looking at a global speedster serial killer here, Carol!" Carter said grimly.

"Maybe you're overthinking the situation, " Carol shrugged.

"Look," Carter sighed, passing a hand through the air which sent a wireless signal to the computer making new images pop up on the screen. "After the Blue Streak, Katie identified traces of Speedrealm energy spread out all over the earth and turns out there was another strain of energy intertwined with the speedrealm energy."

"Another strain?"

"Yeah."

Carter pointed at the screen and another image came into view. He then held out both of his hands and spread them apart, causing the image to zoom and enlarge. It displayed two colored streaks of lightning circling the globe where one was blue and the other red.

Carter pointed to the red one.

"This is the new trace we got from the original speedrealm energy which has been reacting at unstable level unlike the normal speedrealm energy."

"So, what does this have to do with the 'speedster  killer' ?"

"I'm getting to that."

Carter went on.

"New speedsters have been showing up from all over the world, most of which are still unidentified and under the radar and it's the residual energy that came off when Nick absorbed the nuclear blast. The blast that would have flattened Atlanta was converted into a mass of these two forms of speedrealm energy and that's how new speedsters rose up from that aftermath."

Carol nodded, seeing the logic in Carter's words.

"Wait, I think I know what that unstable energy is."

"What is it?"

"It's the Darkforce. The alternate version of the Speedrealm. It has to be," Carol added, her face caught in a mysterious sense of trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

"So, these speedsters seem to have attracted this new player who is hunting them down. Hunting  you  down!"

"These speedsters. How many more did you find?"

Carter waved at the screen and two familiar images suddenly popped up.

Carol's face turned grim the moment she saw the images. The masked faces. Male and female in red and purple, respectively.

"Crimson and Violet, " she muttered.

The two speedsters who worked with her to get out of the Speedrealm back when Nick was trapped in the realm and teamed up to take down the aliens during the invasion of 2010—the Berserker Apocalypse—as it is properly remembered.

"Apparently, these two have been in New York for more than three years now," said Carter.

"The last I saw them was after the apocalypse when the Spectre called them back into the Speedrealm," Carol added in a confused tone, "what the hell is the Speedrealm upto?"

"What about the Spectre?"

"We haven't spoken since the Blue Streak's death and you even tried to project my mind into the Speedrealm..."

"...But it didn't work!" spat Carter.

Being a speedster, Carol had the power to open up a portal with her speed to create a breach into the realm but ever since the Blue Streak's passing, that power became limited.

Natasha was still touring the facility when she stopped next to a large screen displaying what looked like an extrapolated image of an outline of a person running. She noticed the pink streaks coming off of the outline and numbers were running just below the image.

Mach- 12.37

She recognized that term, 'Mach', which is used to measure the speed of sound in air and she was beginning to suddenly wonder if CarterLabs  was connected to the pink speedster when the screen went blank.

"Okay, I'd keep clear of that section if I were you," came Carter after ending his conversation with Carol.

"What?" Natasha turned.

"That's close to the radiation chambers and unless you want your body to look like Chernobyl, best you head back this way."

Natasha followed Carter out of that section.

"I heard you're building a train?" she asked.

"Oh no. I've already built one."

"You mean, we  have built one," snapped a slightly hysterical Katie Patterson, with Carol standing next to her.

"My apologies."

"Okay, why did you name this place after you when clearly, this is a two-person job which is freakishly insane considering everything you've come up with, " Natasha blurted out. "Why not Carter and Katie Labs?"

Katie was the one who responded, smiling.

"Well, Nat, you see; Mr. Engineer here might have started this place but it is I who maintained its balance and so, I saw it fit to name the place after him. You know... at least giving him credit for something."

Natasha grinned, turning to look at Carter and still not getting how these two geniuses are not a Mr. and Mrs. The chemistry was all there!

"Yeah, yeah. She's awesome."

"The train will launch quite soon actually and you'll get to see it during its first run and passengers will be allowed to ride during the launch," Katie added with her English inflected tone.

A low beeping sound emanated from somewhere in the facility. Natasha could not tell where exactly as Carol casually gave a nod to Carter.

"Oh, I have to go. It's work," she quickly said then turned to Natasha, "see you later, Nat."

"Bye."

With that, Carol left the facility.

Natasha turned to Carter who raised a hand and the sound was gone.

"So, a train, huh?"