Surely a toddler wouldn't go down into the dark on her own, though?
A faint rustle from the stillness below answered the question. Beth was definitely down there. And shouldn't be. She could get hurt.
Flipping on the light, she started down, calling, "Beth? Honey? You aren't supposed to be down here. Come to Aunt Jill. Your breakfast is ready."
Pausing on the bottom step, Jill waited for some sound to give away the girl's location, but there was nothing. Her gaze slid around the room, skating over gleaming metal surfaces and glass-fronted cupboards containing all sorts of scientific-type paraphernalia. She'd never been down here before, but it looked just like she'd imagined, like every lab she'd ever seen when she visited her brother at work.
A faint scraping sound drew her gaze to the far corner of the room and Jill peered toward the large glass chamber that took up the end of the basement. It held the molecular destabilizer Kyle had spent so much of the last five years rebuilding… And the door into the small glass room was open.
Alarm rising in her, Jill hurried toward the open door. "Beth? Enough. You aren't supposed to be down here. Your mommy and daddy will be mad," she said firmly. When she reached the door without receiving an answer, she added pleadingly, "Come out, honey. Your breakfast is ready."
The only answer was another rustle, this time from behind the machine. Breathing out a sigh, Jill approached the front of the destabilizer. It was huge, stretching from one wall to the other. There was no room to slip between the machine and the wall to peer behind it. That left crawling under the table set up below the telescope-like apparatus that the beam shot from. At least Jill thought it probably came from there. She was no scientist, but didn't see anywhere else it could come from.
She eyed the crawl space under the table, unhappy at the prospect of crawling under it but seeing no alternative. She had to get Beth back upstairs.
Cursing Kyle for carelessly leaving the door unlocked, Jill started to climb under the table, pausing when she bumped it and it shifted slightly. Noting it was on wheels and could move in and out, she straightened and wheeled the table out of the way to make more room, then crawled into the space to peer behind the machine.
"Beth," she said with relief. The child was sitting in the narrow space between the machine and the back wall. Spying Jill, she giggled and clapped her hands with glee. It was a grand game to the tot.
Jill was less entertained. She was very aware that she was now kneeling directly under the destabilizer beam, exactly where Beth's mother, Claire, had been when a crazy co-worker, determined to try the molecular destabilizer on humans, had zapped her. Claire had survived the exposure to the destabilizer, as had Kyle when he'd run into the beam to pull her out, but now the two of them were different. They could both shift their shapes, taking on the facial features and body shape of others. A cool trick to be sure, and one Jill had first thought she might like herself, but that was before she'd heard Kyle's fears. The destabilizer had done what it was meant to, made their molecules unstable and changeable, but they weren't sure how unstable and feared the possibility of the cells collapsing, leaving them to die in a puddle of human slime, or worse yet, not die, but be alive and aware as a puddle of human slime. That possibility was enough to kill any desire to be zapped.
That thought in mind, Jill started to lift her head to glance nervously toward the beam, but instead cried out as pain shot through her skull and everything went black.
Jill moaned and slowly opened her eyes. At first she didn't know where she was. She stared at the dim bulb overhead, then blinked and lowered her gaze as she felt a soft patting on her cheek.
"Beth," she whispered. The child was seated on the floor beside her, patting her cheek, a worried look on her little face.
Jill offered her a reassuring smile and then sat up, her gaze sliding around the glass chamber as she tried to sort out what had happened. She recalled coming down in search of Beth, crawling under the machine, and then lifting her head and bang, unbearable pain had hit her. Obviously she'd slammed her head into the telescope thing and knocked herself out. Brilliant. She always had been the clumsy one in the family.
When Beth made a gurgle of sound, Jill got carefully to her feet. Much to her relief, while she felt a little weak, she didn't appear to be suffering any other side effects from the encounter.
Letting her breath out slowly, she glanced down to her niece, then carefully bent and picked her up. The action made her woozy, and she stood still for a moment, hugging the child close until her head cleared again. Once she felt steadier Jill started across the basement to the stairs. She had just put her foot on the first step when she heard a car engine and the crunch of tires on gravel.