The portal whirled down as Kade waited for the engineers to confirm their readings. Xavier was inches behind him, looking rather nervous.
Kade got an idea of what he'd been up to this whole time. While Xavier was promised job security in exchange for getting Kade to fix the wormholes, he would still lose his position if Kade was unable to deliver results.
"Well?" Xavier asked, trying to hide the shrill in his voice.
After a long drawn-out pause, the far left engineer turned. "Nothing detected."
Xavier let out a sigh, and the team started patting each other's backs as though they were the ones who fixed the code. Meanwhile, Kade chewed his lip.
"Looks like you prayed hard enough." Xavier quipped. "Now you get to take a break."
"A break?"
His guard for the day, another brawny army jock, got uncomfortably close behind him.
Xavier scratched his chin. "Yeah. Now that we know it works, we don't need you on this project anymore. We'll run a few more tests before deciding what to do with you at least."
Kade was shoved out of the viewing room and back to his apartment. His limbs buzzed with fear, knowing that he should have expected this.
They had no reason to keep him alive now. They'll probably spin a story to his mother and brother, saying he died in yet another 'freak accident'. The only comforting thought he had was knowing that Xavier was going to get the axe too. Now that they knew that he had nothing to do with containing the explosion before, they had no reason to keep an incompetent engineer on the team.
Back at the apartment, he waited to hear from his family. He tried to act nonchalant about it so that the people monitoring him didn't suspect a thing.
He blindly picked up a book, then another, and another. He started stacking them on a table, then got his phone and some smaller gadgets like a flashlight and matches.
A knock at his door drew his attention and he was greeted by Jim.
"Dumb ass," Jim said, pushing past him and standing in the small living room.
He scanned the area, with the flat-screen TV, glass coffee table, shelf of books, and marbled bar counter. "So this is where you've been hiding."
"Not by choice."
Jim was the same height as Kade, with short black hair, brown eyes, and high cheekbones like their mother. He was only three years older but took his job as an elder sibling seriously.
And by 'seriously', that meant he'd insult and tease Kade every chance he got.
"The fuck is wrong with your hair?" Jim eyed Kade's long locks. He had refused to cut it after returning to Earth. "You look like a girl."
"Better than looking like a dumbass."
"This dumbass makes a six-figure salary," Jim remarked and picked at the objects on the bar. "Unlike you. Got yourself reduced back to an unpaid intern. You should have asked for a raise. At least then you'd have gotten something out of this."
"And what would I spend the money on?" Kade asked, head tilted. "I can't even reach Amazon on my phone."
"To give it to me."
Kade rolled his eyes. They were both being monitored and thus couldn't say what they really wanted to out loud. But this was nice too. It'd been a while since the two of them had just had a conversation.
If Jim had come sooner, then the facility may have become suspicious. So these last moments together were more precious than ever.
"Are you going to be working on the project still?" Kade wondered.
"Yeah. But I put in for PTO for the next two days. We've all been working overtime so I thought it was deserved."
"Yeah. I'd agree."
"Not like you'd understand. Living it up in your fancy apartment. Getting everything you want delivered. I'm jealous."
"Hey. At least you get to go outside whenever you like."
"Outside is overrated."
"I guess it is." Kade half laughed. The air quality was so bad that it was actually advised to stay inside with an air purifier.
"Anyway, thought I'd come to see you before I left on PTO. Don't go getting blown up again while I'm gone, huh?" Jim scuffed Kade's hair.
Kade shoved him off and watched him leave. He had a sinking feeling in his gut but forced it down.
The facility wouldn't kill Kade immediately. Fixing the wormholes had come first, but they still wanted inside information about the Terrans. From what he'd overheard, they started sending more people through the portal now that they knew it was possible to survive long term on Terra. So they'll most likely ask Kade about the locals before getting rid of him once and for all.
He sat on his little sofa, wringing his hands and waiting.
The letter his brother had written had opened his eyes to a few things that made his decision much easier to make. As a researcher, Jim had wider knowledge on what the facility was working on.
Kade was an engineer and had focused on the portal project, while Jim uncovered abandoned solutions to their extinction problem. Methods of purifying water, creating renewable energy, and making cars that run on water instead of gas and oil.
The schematics were only on paper, but the facility had turned each of these ideas down because the process was too expensive to implement. Meaning they had other options for reversing the damage to the planet, but were too greedy to use them.
Suddenly Kade didn't feel so bad about turning away from earth. With the wormholes fixed, their dimensions wouldn't collapse.
He took a deep breath and watched the clock.
Jim didn't put in his PTO because he was tired. He used that as an excuse to grab their mother and escape before time was up. Sooner or later someone was going to notice that Jim had taken some very important papers and disappeared, so it was up to Kade to make sure he wasn't followed.
How? Well, by making an even bigger mess.
He barely got any sleep that night, knowing that his mom and brother would be leaving that morning. Jim knew to get as far as possible. He'd be monitored too, since they were related, but all that would be irrelevant soon.
Jim was going to risk it all and become a whistleblower. After Kade had been framed as a criminal, Jim had caught on to the true nature of the facility, and he regretted getting Kade his job. All Kade needed to do was hope that the scientists didn't pay too close attention to the code he'd modified.
Morning came, and he once more rearranged some of his items on the counter. Making it look like an odd habit he'd developed. Based on the time, Jim and their mom should be off base now.
He no longer needed to worry. So he shifted his odd little counter collection into a bag.
Kade then waited. And soon he heard that familiar hum as a light sparked inside his living room, merely two feet off the ground.
Ducking behind the bar, the lights in his apartment flickered, then turned green. A ball of energy swelled, taking up the room.
Nervously he got closer. Tightening his grip on the equipment he knew he'd need in the jungle.
Unbeknownst to Xavier, that first test had generated a second wormhole on purpose. Rather than checking to see if he could stop them, he had been testing to see if he could control where the second wormhole would open.
Once he got confirmation that it opened exactly where he wanted it to, he updated the code so that the next location was smack dab in his apartment living room.
What's more, he had set it on a timer. Since the morons were too stupid to ever turn it off completely, he was able to schedule a remote activation that not only would open the portal, but would also unleash a computer worm.
With no scientists on standby to turn it off within 10 seconds, the portal would go on meltdown again. Blowing itself up while the computer worm deleted every piece of data related to the portal.
Not only would they lose everything, but the only data left would be the research that Jim had run off with featuring more viable solutions to saving the planet. And once the news got a hold of such plans...hopefully humanity would make the right choice.
It was out of his hands now.
Kade gripped his bag of belongings as the air filled with the smell of ozone. He would never be able to return home after this...
With a heavy heart, he stepped into the ball of light and was doused in the feeling of liquid static flowing through his veins. The sensation of spinning almost made him nauseous, and when he came out on the other end, he was lying in a blast zone.
Burn marks extended in a circle around him, singing the blue-green grass. The orange sky and planetary ring hung above him, but something was different.
The purple trees around here had been ripped up by the roots, and a strong wind billowed in his ears. He watched in horror as what was a tornado faded into a vortex of swirling clouds.
Tornadoes were not normal on Terra. It must have been due to the wormholes he had been opening.
Oh god. What if he had been killing Terrans with his tests?
Terrified of the consequences, he snatched up his bag and made a run in the general direction of the Carnivore Kingdom. Praying that the weather anomalies hadn't reached any towns.
---
A/N: Big brother swoops in to save the day! And bro, this is the consequences of being cheap. Ya hire a bunch of lazy programmers and rely on one guy to do the actual work, you won't have anyone to double check if said SME decides to blow up the entire building. /JS.