There was something soothing about coming home after a vacation. The familiar smell of metal and oil, greeted Dan as he appeared inside his quarters on Mercury's space station. The plain, unadorned, gunmetal grey walls were more relaxing to him than the elaborate artwork peppered throughout Summers Manor could ever be.

Merrill leapt out of the pocket of his shirt, squeaking happily and burrowing into the sheets of his bed. She had taken her confinement to Dan's hotel room with ill grace and poor temper. Given that her brain was about the size of a peanut, Dan had trouble conveying to her just why it was inappropriate to bring a mouse to a formal family reunion. He expected mouse droppings in his shoes for the foreseeable future.

Dan left his room with a bounce in his step, having made it through Abigail's family function without grievously offending any of her obscenely wealthy relatives. Abby's grandmother tentatively approved of him, or was at least granting him a stay of execution, and Abby herself had smiled all the way through their return flight. He was refreshed in body and mind, and ready to continue his training.

He'd never admit it out loud, but the short break had granted him some much needed... perspective. Motivation for his continued hard work besides stubborn pride and a vague sense of moral idealism. Friendship had a way of grounding a man. It hardened his resolve more effectively than a thousand distant sob stories ever could. He could look at the ashes of Atlanta and think "Abby could've been there."

The thought was an unpleasant one. The fact that he could do nothing about it was even more so. Dan did not like being helpless. Did not tolerate it, not when there was a choice, not anymore. He'd had enough of that for a lifetime. He was no longer satisfied drifting through the world without care or purpose. The world was a dangerous place, and Dan was utterly unprepared for it at present. At worst, he would be ready in case of a disaster personally visiting him. At best, he could actively go out and help people.

So he was committed. Marcus could teach him to survive, to make a difference in the world, and if it took a few months of back-breaking mind-numbing misery to get there, then so be it.

But enough of this grim mood. Dan shook his head like a dog, and continued his path down the steel corridor leading towards the main lab. Marcus would undoubtedly still be working; he had said a week but Dan had yet to see an experiment go as planned with the old man. Physically walking to the lab and knocking on the door was a sensible precaution, as the last time Dan had teleported in unannounced had ended with Dan covered in paint.

He was so busy reminiscing that he almost ignored the oddity in front of him. The doctor's door was ajar. His motion-sensing automatic sliding door... was ajar. Off its rails.

Crooked.

The door itself was cracked along the edges, small hairline fractures that crawled along like spiderwebs. The top of the entrance was bent, the steel, or ceramic, or whatever the hell super material the doctor used bulging outward slightly into the hallway. Dan could just about see the inside of the door, and it was scorched black.

That was normal, oddly enough, and almost reassuring.

Of more concern was the complete lack of noise coming from within the lab. The station was almost spookily quiet at its deepest points, but the noise pollution always increased the closer one was to Mercury's lab. Dan could always find his way there on foot, no matter how lost he got. It was like a twisted game of Marco Polo, where instead of a single reply, the target shouted obscenities and occasionally exploded.

So, yeah, a quiet lab was cause for worry.

Dan entered the room with more than a little caution. Broken glass and bits of metal littered the ground like caltrops, forcing him to watch his footing. He scanned the room, in-between cautious steps, noting that the shelves and tables had been piled into a crude formation surrounding the center of the room. Dan couldn't even begin to guess at the purpose, so he moved steadily onwards, constantly tamping down the urge to simply teleport into the center of the room. He'd seen enough movies to recognize when a shortcut wouldn't actually be a shortcut, and he had no desire to be attacked by whatever cooky experiment the mad doctor had cooked up.

Soon, Dan made it to the inner ring of debris. The marble tables normally spread throughout the room had been turned on their sides and pressed against metal shelves. Thick wires ran through them, funneled through holes drilled into the stone and steel. Nothing was visible beyond the obstruction, but a shallow humming came from within the enclosure, the sound of whirring machinery.

Nothing alive, then. That was promising. A machine, at least, was unlikely to try and eat him.

A tinny voice pronouncing, "You will be deleted!" echoed through his imagination, and Dan shivered involuntarily. If he saw a Cyberman he was gonna space the damn thing.

It took Dan a few minutes to find a path through the barrier. After circling the odd structure, he managed to find a makeshift entrance on the completely opposite side of the room. It was as cobbled together as the rest of the doctor's technology, appearing as a wooden tabletop turned sideways and bolted onto a loose pipe. The door covered a hole in one of the steel shelves that looked almost burnt into being. The corners of the opening were peeled up and back, curling away from the door almost desperately.

Dan considered bravely running away, but at this point he was committed to the course. He pushed open the wooden door, and revealed the lab's inner sanctum. The enclosure couldn't have been larger than 100 square feet, but was packed to the brim. Overlapping girders formed a sort of cradle at the center, housing a large lens suspended from the ceiling. Wires trailed from it, running past thin beams down into a massive generator tucked away in the corner. The generator, the source of the mechanical humming, appeared to be a miniaturized version of the ones that Marcus kept stashed away in the back of this very lab. It powered some sort of esoteric effect within the convex lens. Electricity danced along the inside of the glass, occasionally dissolving into fractal lightning. Within the lights, Dan could make out... something.

Something familiar.

A vast darkness, somehow churning like the sea. Motes of light, dancing in and out of reality. They glittered against the night, forming an endless tunnel, twisting into a kaleidoscope of color and sound.

Into eyes.

Into mouths.

And teeth.

He tore his gaze away from the hole in reality. Away from the door into that Other Place. Away from the sights that he had seen twice before, that space between worlds that Marcus had called the Gap Between Worlds. He could feel it now. Lingering. Just out of sight.

But there was no sound, no mad gibbering or unblinking eyes crawling out of the walls. As long as he wasn't looking at the thing, everything seemed hunky-dory.

Well, aside from the fucking hole in reality hovering in the center of the room.

Marcus had a great deal of explaining to do.

Dan carefully kept his head to the floor, going so far as to put a hand up between himself and the lens.

"Just treat it like the sun, Danny," he muttered to himself, scanning the ground for clues.

The area directly beneath the lens was blanketed by, well, blankets. They were scattered in a disarray, rumpled and wrinkled. Tools littered the area, wrenches and screwdrivers and blowtorches, alongside other things that Dan couldn't begin to identify. It was a mess, much the same as the rest of the lab. The sight was so expected to him, that Dan's eyes managed to pass over the thickest section of sheets multiple times before registering what it was that he saw.

It was the foot that gave it away. A wrinkled, pink foot, edging out of a blanket burrito. Doctor Marcus Mercury was curled up at the center of the room, sleeping or unconscious. Curled up directly beneath the horrible portal to not-reality and basking in its eery light like a demonic tanning bed.

That couldn't possibly be healthy.

Dan inched towards the doctor, taking great care to keep a hand between his eyes and the portal. He poked at the old man's leg, keenly aware of Mercury's tendency to lash out when surprised. The doctor remained unmoving but the body was warm. Dan could make out the soft sound of breathing now that he was closer, so at least the mad scientist was still alive. Dan carefully unraveled the blanket burrito, revealing the not-at-all-frail old man within.

It was strange, seeing Marcus like this. Intellectually, Dan knew that he slept. Of course he slept. Everything sleeps. It was just that Dan couldn't recall a single instance of it ever happening. Marcus was always awake, always aware, always moving with energy that belied his age. To see him asleep, to see him... vulnerable, was a shock.

Then Marcus snorted in his sleep, rolled over, and loudly passed gas. Daniel's concern quickly turned to irritation, and he dragged the aging scientist away from the center of the room, cursing furiously.

It was time to get some answers.