DT 2-13

In a certain extremely well concealed location

There was a small, seemingly volcanically formed island that looked completely barren from the outside, with only sharp cliffs visible. Strong waves were crashing into the island's shore ceaselessly, making approach by boat a nightmare, any attempt likely to end in loss of the vessel and possibly the life of anyone attempting it. In other words, the island looked boring and extremely uninviting.

However, if you were to be told a certain secret by a certain person, your view on that island would change drastically – instead of a barren and jagged rock barely sticking out of the sea, you would see a massive complex of buildings, with large turrets aimed at the surrounding sea and air. Those in the know would find that there was a fortress unlike any other in the world situated on that island.

The entire structure looked as if it could easily house thousands of people. Overlooking the entire complex was the office of a certain person, the one you'd want to ask if you wished to be clued in on the secrets of this place.

In that office, there was a bald man sitting behind a large solid wood table. The table was covered with all sorts of strange devices and gizmos that were blinking with various lights and making an occasional odd noise.

There was a golden name plate on his table, with black letters on it: 'Nicholas Kragen, Director of DILOGS'

On his right eye, there was an eyepatch with strange symbols and lines drawn onto it with some sort of fluorescent blue ink. He was wearing a well-tailored suit with sparse adornments. However, each of those adornments seemed to have a smaller version of glowing blue artwork in a style similar to the eyepatch.

He was currently looking at a device that had lit up with a blue radiance for the first time in half a century. Soon, odd-looking symbols appeared in the light emitted by the device.

'Hm? Looks like there's going to be another one in ten or so years. He seems to be mixed with that family as well. Troubling times indeed.'

A man in his thirties opened the door to the man's office and spoke in a somewhat hurried tone: "Commander Kragen, according to readings, there's an eighty-five percent chance of a rift opening within the next half an hour."

"Can you tell anything else from the readings? What is that rift connected to?"

"No, Sir. I've never seen anything like it. The only thing we've been able to determine that this rift is related to time somehow."

Commander Nicholas Kragen had only one word to express his thoughts and feelings on that matter: "Motherfucker!"

Rifts related to time were rare, normally opening about once a decade, but every time they did, casualties were in tens of thousands and mass Obliviations were unavoidable.

After a moment of thought, he asked: "Any chance it's related to them?"

"None, Sir. It seems to be natural."

"Where?"

"Southwest end of Central Park, New York City."

Kragen then pressed a few buttons and spoke: "Prepare team Portkeys to Central Park, New York City."

He pressed a few more buttons and said: "Teams one through six, gear up. I want containment and a safe perimeter around the Southwest half of the Central Park. Go in with full hazard gear, assess the situation, keep a connection active. Chances are it's related to a dark timeline."

###

Melinda had snuck out of her home to play in the park. There was a strange thing she had noticed: when she didn't want to be seen sneaking out by her parents, they didn't. This day, there was something strange happening. She saw men in strange uniforms appearing out of thin air right in front of her. She thought it was a strange magic trick, she had seen those on TV a few times.

One of the men shouted: "I want a barrier up in five! Go, go go! Team two, evacuate the civilians, obliviate the witnesses. Team three, power up your suits, I want a perimeter around the predicted rift site. Team five, provide backup. Team four, unpack your kits, get ready to collect samples."

The men quickly dispersed in the area. Melinda kept looking at them with curiosity. She hoped to see another magic trick.

Around her, some of the men in their strange uniforms took out pointy sticks and spoke to the grown-ups and they quickly left. A while later, there were only the people in uniforms left, and suddenly, a translucent wall rose in the distance, cutting off Melinda's way home.

Melinda wasn't worried – she was sure that the wall was needed for some other magic trick and it would disappear when they were done with everything. One thing puzzled her, however – if they were doing magic tricks, why did they send away everyone watching it? That didn't make sense to Melinda at all. Yet, she was still there. Maybe it was even better that way, a magic show only for her. She smiled at the thought. That made her feel special.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and one of the uniformed men shouted: "Breach confirmed. So far, there���s nothing coming through."

Melinda's attention was quickly grabbed by something cute and fluffy, however.

She spoke: "Mister, can I have that bunny behind you?"

The man she'd been speaking to, turned around and was about to pick the bunny up when its body extended and became a huge, sharp-toothed maw. The next moment, the uniformed man had disappeared entirely, only the man's boots giving testimony to the fact that he had existed.

"Ba- bad bunny!", Melinda chastised. A moment later, however, the giant maw that suddenly had gained quite a bit to its size, turned into the man that it had swallowed, clothes included. The man then picked up the boots from the ground, removed the feet from them, opened his face into a wide maw and swallowed the feet whole.

Melinda was scared. She was terrified. That was definitely not a bunny. All she could think about was hiding, but there wasn't anywhere to hide before the man noticed her. She didn't want to get eaten. She stood still and closed her eyes, hoping that this way, she wouldn't be seen. She really-really wanted to be back home. She promised she would be good from now on, and never go out without permission again. Suddenly, the sound of a car backfiring was heard in the area.

"Hey, Ben, are you alright?", another uniformed man stepped out and asked the first one.

The one addressed as Ben simply stared at the other one and took a few steps closer. The next instant, the one that had questioned Ben, or more precisely whatever had Ben for a snack, had already been swallowed.

A few seconds later, Ben split into another of himself and the man that had spoken to him. They walked towards two groups of people.

"Eddie, where's your partner?", a voice could be heard in the distance.

"Ben, where's Eddie? You'll get in trouble if you're not with your partner."

Half an hour later, in a certain undisclosed location.

Nicholas Kragen was still sitting behind his desk, staring menacingly at a communications device. It had been five minutes since the last message, and he was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

Suddenly, a voice came through: "*cough* Sir, it's *cough* class two, type thirteen *urgh* no survivors inside."

"Motherfucker!", Nicholas said with an undertone that promised eternal torment and suffering to whatever had come through. A moment later, he pressed a big red button at the edge of his table.

"Central Park, New York City. Barrier is still up. Exterminate with extreme prejudice."

With those words, Nicholas had sent off a very special team, one meant for situations similar to what had been reported. There were two reasons why he hadn't sent the team out with the rest: one was due to the amount of paperwork involved with deploying them, as he would need the permission of ICW as well as the permission of the Wizarding government of the country he would be sending them into. The other part was the expense – it would've still been fine if it was just magic, since Wardstones could be recharged, but instead it was an element that had yet to be found on Earth, and they just burned it up as fuel.

Attempts had been made to replace the use of the fuel with Wardstones, but the magic density inside Wardstones simply couldn't be compared – just to run one of those suits for half an hour, a Wardstone of the highest quality as large as the suit itself was needed.

There had also been attempts to reverse-engineer the suits, but those had also ended in failure – it turned out to be impossible to separate the components of the suit from each other, except for removing the power cell. Any attempts to try and analyze the composition of the parts had ended up inconclusive.

In the end, the agency had to be satisfied with the ten suits that they had found onboard the strange ship that had come through one of the first rifts a century ago.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason that Nicholas felt an oncoming migraine – there was also a need to notify the relatives of the fallen, come up with a plausible explanation and find replacements. That all meant a lot of background checks, tests and explaining to people why their vacations were cancelled.

Half a minute later, within a closed-off area in Central Park.

Another group appeared out of thin air, yet this time, it wasn't possible to tell if they were male or female, or even human for that matter. Each member of that group looked like they were wearing medieval armor that had an affair with a space suit. There was a shaded transparent visor covering their faces and thick armor plates covering the rest of their bodies, flexibility granted by a line of metal weave between each of the plates and tough-looking polymer underneath.

They were wielding strange instruments with cables leading to a canister on their back. The instruments themselves had a large nozzle and a trigger that was already under each of the people's fingers.

In the distance, there was a fiery pillar pointing at the sky. The group of armored individuals made their way in that direction. After a while, they were met with a gathering of people that turned towards them as one and started walking at a leisurely pace.

Behind them was the corpse of a man missing everything below his belt. He had a communication device in one hand and a flamethrower in another. He was lying on his back, seemingly paralyzed with his finger on the trigger.

The armored group pulled on their own triggers as well. Blue flames burst out of the nozzles of their instruments, turning the group that had been walking towards them into smoke in the blink of an eye. Next, they walked up to the translucent wall surrounding the area and seemingly out of nowhere, one of them took a large icosahedron. They placed it against the transparent wall and it remained stuck there through some unknown force. The next instant, the formerly translucent wall turned blood-red.

The five people that had been standing guard outside with their backs towards the barrier seemed to notice something and looked towards it – the barrier had been blocking them from hearing anything that had been going on inside, and since they had not received any new instructions, they had been keeping watch on the local populance so far. Yet, when they noticed the color change in the barrier, they realized that something had gone horribly wrong.

"Command, what's happening on the inside?", one of them asked.

"Need to know. Return to base.", could be heard from each of their communication devices.

The group of individuals in futuristic-looking suits of armor aimed the nozzles of their tools towards the ground and started from the edge of the now blood-red wall, only taking a step forward when there was a glowing orange puddle left of the formerly lush grass.

They slowly went through the entire area knee-deep in what could only be lava, continuously melting the remaining greenery and ground in front of them and finally, instead of a section of the central park, it looked more like the crater of an active volcano. It made no difference to them whether they swam in the stuff or floated above it, the energy expenditure of the suits remained the same – the environmental protection system activated as soon as they departed for a mission and only deactivated if the suit ran out of fuel or returned to the mounting point in the base.

The speaker on Nicholas' table woke up from its slumber and spat out in a monotone voice, devoid of any emotion: "Assignment complete. Awaiting orders."

"Locate and seal the rift. Return the sealed rift to base. After completion, return to storage."

On the next day, local newspapers reported: 'There has been some remodeling in Central Park. The city planning office has decided to open another large-scale lake with the possibility of taking a ride on swan-boats as well as sunbathing on the beach with black sands.

I have not been able to get any information about the funding of the project, but I have to admit, the new development does add to the atmosphere. I for one can't wait to take a ride to the pavilion in the middle of the lake on one of those swan boats with a special someone!'

At the same time, there was a translucent sphere with what seemed like a white jagged line inside wheeled into a room that contained multiple similar spheres. On the ceiling of the room, there was a sign 'DT 2-13'. Under each sphere, there was a golden ring with blue glowing inscriptions on it.

The person that wheeled the sphere in, connected a cable into a socket in the base and left the room. The jagged line inside the sphere widened a little, but in an instant, it returned to its thin form, as if a force was holding it in that shape.

The sound of gears moving and powerful electric engines humming could be heard as the massive, two feet thick solid steel gate started gathering momentum as it closed. Ten seconds later, the gate was shut with a deafening clang of two metals colliding. Glowing blue inscriptions lit up both on the inside and on the outside of the steel surface, a sign that the material of the gate was the least of an intruder's worries.

The worker that had delivered the sphere containing the rift from Central Park, took out a small metallic plate and pressed it against a protrusion in the wall. As they did so, similar glowing inscriptions on a gate in front of them dimmed and a moment later, the gate opened, and the person passed through it. Five seconds later, the gate had already started closing on its own.