Page 6 of Ash and Burn

But even as the cold water pounded against his shoulders, his dragon remained stubbornly, impossibly certain that everything was about to change.

THREE

ARVID

The taxi's engine rumbled outside the power plant, leaving Arvid staring at the maze of concrete and steel that supposedly held the key to interplanetary travel. She adjusted her blue blouse—chosen this morning for its professional appearance—and reached for her suitcase beside her on the backseat.

The driver's eyes found hers in the rearview mirror, curiosity flickering across his weathered face. Arvid braced herself for the inevitable questions about why anyone would need luggage at a power plant on Saturday morning, but he simply nodded when she handed him the fare plus a generous tip for his discretion.

"Thank you," she said, stepping onto the cracked asphalt in her black boots.

The Texas heat hit her immediately, but it felt manageable compared to the heat of uncertainty burning in her chest. Her analytical mind cataloged every detail as she stood there with her suitcase handle gripped tight. Power plants generated electricity. They contained turbines, transformers, and cooling systems. None of that explained how she was supposed to travel to another planet from here. She'd consumed enough documentaries and scientific literature to understand that interstellar travel required technology far beyond anything housed in a municipal power facility.

"I can practically see the wheels turning in your mind from here," Gerri's voice rang out cheerfully as she approached from the main entrance. "I know that analytical brain of yours is wondering how this place makes any sense."

The woman looked impossibly put-together in a light pink pantsuit that should have clashed with her white hair but somehow made her look like a force of nature wrapped in designer fabric.

"But trust me, dear, you'll understand soon enough."

Arvid doubted that profoundly, but she found herself following Gerri toward the building anyway. The security guard behind the reception desk lit up when he saw them approaching, his face breaking into a grin that suggested long familiarity.

"Morning, Ms. Wilder! Right on schedule as always."

"Good morning, Frank. How's that granddaughter of yours doing with her college applications?"

The easy warmth of their exchange shouldn't have surprised Arvid—Gerri seemed like the kind of woman who collected people the way others collected stamps—but it added another layer of surreal normalcy to an increasingly impossible situation.

They moved toward a bank of elevators, and Arvid stepped inside without asking the questions crowding her throat. Her recent experience had taught her that Gerri's answers tended to create more confusion than clarity, and her nerves were already stretched thin enough.

The elevator doors closed with a soft whisper, and Gerri pressed the button marked 'B.' Arvid expected a short descent to a basement level, maybe two floors down at most. Instead, the elevator plummeted with a stomach-dropping velocity that suggested they were traveling far deeper than any normal building should extend.

One hundred feet. Two hundred. The digital display kept climbing—or rather, descending—until it showed depths that made no architectural sense.

"Oh, don't worry, dear," Gerri said, apparently sensing the spike in Arvid's heart rate. "We need to get far enough underneath the ground for the wormhole to activate properly."

"Wormhole?" The word escaped Arvid's lips before she could stop it. She'd encountered the concept in quantum physics textbooks and fringe theoretical papers, but those were mathematical abstractions, not real-world applications. "Those are theoretical constructs. They don't actually exist."

"Honey, half the things that matter most in this universe started out as theory before someone figured out how to make them work." Gerri's smile held the patience of someone explaining basic arithmetic to a child. "Albert Einstein thought they were possible, didn't he?"

The elevator finally shuddered to a stop after what felt like a thousand-foot descent. The doors opened onto a sterile corridor that stretched toward a single door at the far end, the kind of institutional hallway that belonged in a government facility, not beneath a power plant.

Arvid gripped her suitcase tighter and followed Gerri down the corridor, her boots echoing against polished concrete. This had to be some kind of elaborate hallucination brought on by stress and sleep deprivation. Twenty-four hours ago, her biggest concern had been whether she'd remembered to eat lunch. Now she was preparing to travel to an alien planet to treat dragon shifters with a disease that might be related to her research.

"You aren't imagining things, dear," Gerri said without turning around, as if she'd plucked the thoughts directly from Arvid's mind. "This is very real, and soon enough we'll be on Nova Aurora, right in the heart of Ashvorn. So just relax and enjoy the wonder of it all."

Relax.

As if relaxation were possible when every fundamental assumption about reality had been systematically dismantled in the span of twelve hours. Arvid had built her entire adult life around facts, evidence, and reproducible results. Now she was following a woman who claimed to be a paranormal matchmaker through an underground facility that shouldn't exist, preparing to step through a theoretical physics phenomenon to meet dragon shifters on an alien world.

They reached the door, and Arvid's eyes caught on the gold nameplate mounted beside it. "G. Wilder" was etched in elegant script that somehow managed to look both professional and whimsical.

"This is just one of my many offices around the world for interplanetary travel," Gerri explained, producing a key from her purse. "I find it's best to keep these things separate from my regular matchmaking business. Fewer questions from the IRS."

The door opened to reveal the most anticlimactic office space Arvid had ever seen. A simple desk. A single chair. Nothing else. No computers, no equipment, no indication that this room served any purpose beyond bureaucratic storage.

"What is this place, really?" Arvid asked, her scientific mind demanding some kind of logical framework to hang onto.

Instead of answering, Gerri moved to the desk and opened the single drawer, withdrawing what appeared to be a metal egg. Its surface gleamed with an opalescent sheen that seemed to shift colors depending on the angle of view.