http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/frozen-spring-nebraska/

With a thud, the tall wooden door slammed into the wall stopper. A figure stood in the open frame. The senator looked up and sighed.

“The building is a few hundred years old. Please don’t smash it to pieces over whatever tabloid nonsense has you riled up today.”

“No tabloids today,” the figure said. His chief of staff stepped into the dimly lit office. “Much worse than that.” She closed the door behind her.

“Nothing can be worse than tabloids.”

“Normally I wouldn’t argue, but I’m paid to look at them,” she countered, then shook her head. “Nevermind about that. Listen to this.” She tapped the screen on her phone. A voicemail began to play.

“Elia? This is… you know who this is. We had a few odd spikes on the equipment. Normally we send an intern to check for bears or deer knocking around the sensors. But for whatever reason, I decided to check myself. Thank the lord I did. The sensors picked up 6 separate events, each within a 17-minute span just after 6pm. Direction south by southwest, so I walked over to the river. 6 breaks in the ice, all fresh. I slid out on the inflatable and measured both sides on all six. None came from above, none came from below.

“Which means they could only have come from Between. You have to tell the senator. Whatever she found over there, she has it working again. And it’s hitting harder this time. Tell the others to fire their interns. They have to check every spike personally. Auto-backup on the machines needs to be disabled. And we’ll probably need proximity defense, infra-red security cameras and, god, I have no idea what else.

“Elia, you have to tell the senator. If the secret’s not out yet, it will be soon.”

Elia’s phone beeped. Message over. The senator was already on the phone.

“Brett. This is one of those times. Cancel the rest of my day. Make whatever calls. First, get the President’s chief science advisor in here as soon as humanly possible. Thanks.” He hung up and stood with a deep exhale.

“Humanly possible was an interesting choice.”

“She is human, Elia,” the senator said.

“She was when we sent her over there,” Elia countered. “Doesn’t mean she still is.”

The senator nodded and drummed his fingers on the desk. It was cut from a tree that was felled during the construction of Hoover Dam. A massive structure designed to hold back the awesome potential energy of the Colorado River. He hadn’t appreciated the irony of that until right now. Though he supposed it hadn’t really been irony until they’d put her Between.

Elia was already hard at work, barking orders into her cell and dialing someone else on the desk phone. Everything they’d done before, everything they were about to do now was to keep the dam in place, to keep her on the other side.

“We do that a lot,” the senator said out loud, his thoughts spilling over like water over a concrete obstruction.

“What’s that sir?”

“Dams to hold back water. Great Walls to hold back hordes. Great Pyramids to hold back the oblivion of death.” The senator ran his fingers over the sturdy decades-old wood, and wondered how long a dam might last under the constant assault of water pressure. A thousand years? More?

“Sir?’ Elia asked, setting down the desk phone.

“All of the greatest things we ever built weren’t built to push us forward. They were built to hold others back.” There was a knock at the door. “Yes?”

Brett peaked his head in. “Science advisor is at the security checkpoint. He’ll be here in 3 minutes.”

“Thanks.” Brett disappeared back to the outer office.

“What’s your point, sir?”

“I don’t know if I have one,” the senator said. “Though I certainly hope our astral experts are as adept as their historical predecessors. If she gets through, I think there’s a good chance that the valley will flood, the hordes will rampage and the cold hand of death will reach for us all.”