Inside the gravity tornado

It was comfortable yet oddly oppressing.

Feeling weightless, an odd feeling of freedom pervaded her

A warm tingling ran through her spine, waking her up.

And the nausea. The terrible nausea.

What was it that she felt?

"Where am I...?" Eléonore opened her eyes.

She saw wild flashes of light that came and disappeared and felt lifted and brought to one place from another in circles. Seemingly far away, it seemed as if she could discern the greenery landscape. However, the vortexes severely distorted the view. It was as if she looked at the world from inside a broken mirror inside a tornado.

Immediately, she closed her eyes.

Eléonore had nearly puked; overwhelmed by the unusual sensation of weightlessness and the display that her brain couldn't make sense of, her stomach had very nearly disposed of whatever lunch was remaining in the most feared way: Puking.

Her eyes closed. The feeling substantially subsided. However, her nausea remained.

A thought came to her: "I'm alive."

This single realization brought calm to Eléonore. When moments ago she had fainted, she had thought she would die here in this turbulent anomaly. Now it appeared, she had survived.

There was hope.

"This anomaly isn't deadly, at least not directly. I appear to be 70 meters into the air, which means that any fall is likely to... Better not think about it. What can I do?"

Still, with her eyes closed, Eléonore waved her arms and her legs. She felt them moving, but nothing happened. She shouted, but her scream seemed muffled for no reason.

She felt powerless.

The situation was terrible, yet she clung to this single one thought: "I am still alive."

Realizing that she would achieve nothing with her eyes still closed, Eléonore opened her eyes.

The violent and turbulent world once again appeared.

Eléonore furrowed her eyes in an attempt to see something that she could use around her.

It proved extremely difficult; all around, some objects and shadows were revolving nonstop.

Grrr!

Eléonore screamed of pain. Although she couldn't see clearly, she felt something had grazed her left thigh. It could have been a piece of metal for all she knew. She was bleeding.

"It hurts... I have to exit as soon as possible..."

The pain brought all of Eléonore's senses alive again. Adrenaline permeated her body, and she renewed her efforts to identify what was flying around her.

"A shadow?"

It was tough to focus on anything, but Eléonore had just seen a long shadow passing by. A shadow which looked like...

A body.

"Who might it be? Is he or she alive?"

This shadow reassured Eléonore that she was not alone; only, there was seemingly no way to contact anyone or have any control over where she was going. She felt like a leaf trapped in a tornado; only it wasn't the wind that was brutalizing her but gravity itself.

Eléonore was in a gravity storm. How much time did she have until something or a fall killed her?

The picture of falling out of the sky could no longer escape her. The little thought that she could die at any moment hammered her common sense and prevented her from thinking straight.

"What can I do? What can I do ??" Panic slowly filled Eléonore. She had tried to move or grab at anything nearby, but she failed each time.

Now, she was trying to feel the 5th force. Could she somehow gain control over the local turbulences by channeling the 5th force? "It's my best hope," she realized.

She attempted to calm her mind and focus on her inner self, but it was painfully difficult. Yet, this was her only hope, so she continued to try.

After several attempts, she succeeded in putting away her terror to focus on her awareness.

Eléonore found strange calmness as she attuned to the 5th force. She realized that there seemed to be a pattern despite the turbulent anomaly. The pattern felt oddly familiar as she understood it.

She focused on it.

As she attuned herself to the sensory awareness of the 5th force, she found that she could predict what movement would come next. It was as if she was driving a car on autopilot, her hands on the wheel.

When the wheel turned left, the car would turn left.

Thanks to this awareness, the motion to which her body was uncontrollably subjected became understandable;

Seeing progress, Eléonore became more reassured by this new feeling of control.

"Can I stabilize the motion ?"

It was a very daring thought, but not impossible. Eléonore considered one of the favorite physics principles of Marie: "Third law of Newton: if something applies a force to you, then you reciprocally apply the same force. Which means... I can stabilize my motion by applying the appropriate force or weakening the force around me. This is it. All I have to do is t..."

"AHHHHHH!" Eléonore screamed one more; however, her scream was tainted with utter pain.

She had felt something penetrating her back.

Once more, Eléonore was reminded that one of the leading causes of death in tornadoes was accidental injury by foreign objects.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

"Will I die here?" Eléonore struggled to contain her feeling of despair.

She turned her head in an attempt to check what ran into her, but the object was too deep and too short to be seen by turning her head.

Nonetheless, she knew this time she had been seriously hurt. Her time was counted.

She needed medical assistance.

Quick.

Yet, Eléonore did not give up.

She knew many other volunteers like her had to be trapped inside the anomaly. If she were to die, she at least wanted to know: did her family survive this?

Eléonore courageously closed her eyes and focused on feeling the 5th force. With incredible dedication and intuition, she stabilized her motion little by little.

It wasn't easy, and yet... !

Unlike when she trained to apply vibrations to the matter, she tried to imitate the feeling that gravity gave her. She succeeded.

Eléonore channeled "a bubble of 5th force" around her in fear of once again flying out of control. This bubble behaved like a gravitational anchor point, keeping her from flying in all directions. It was pulling at her like any other pull point in the anomaly, except that it was more robust, stable, and isolated. She had finally stopped flying out of control.

Presently, Eléonore oppened her eyes.

She was levitating in the air. Vortex of light and colors still flashed, but Eléonore could see the French countryside and several cars parked far away through them.

And inside the anomaly, she could also see...

Human figures. There were at least a dozen of them. They moved quickly with no regularity at such speed that it was impossible to tell whether they lived or not.

Nonetheless, Eléonore still struggled to look if Marie might be there.

She looked and looked; it was like finding a particular bee among many other bees.

All this time, Eléonore had been bleeding, and with every minute she was losing even more strength.

After what seemed like hours but were probably minutes, Eléonore finally... spotted someone wearing the same clothes as Marie. It was impossible to confirm whether it was Marie at this range and this speed, but she had to try.

"How do I reach her?"

Almost instinctively, Eléonore channeled the energy of the 5th force in front of her. She managed to generate a local gravitational field in front of her. This gravitational field pulled her; thanks to this, she flew straight ahead until she reached the gravitational field, at which point she became anchored to this area of space.

It was awkward at first, but thanks to generating various gravity wells where she wanted to go, she "flew" to intercept the body's trajectory.

Eléonore confirmed that it was her grandma.

Eléonore gripped Marie by the arm and stabilized their motion. The older lady in her arm seemed unconscious.

"MARIE!" She shouted at her.

Eléonore observed the eyelids Marie fluctuating. Her mouth did not move, and there seemed to be no visible severe injury, part for some blood trickling from her right shoulder.

It was enough for her: Marie was alive, and they needed to escape fast.

Eléonore felt confident of escaping this cursed area in possession of her newfound powers.

She hesitated for a moment, though: what of the other people flying out of control? She knew they had to be the other members. Yet, time was against her. Eléonore felt herself weakening faster and faster.

Looking down and ahead, she realized that military vehicles seemed to arrive. The light seemed still severely disturbed around her, so it was very difficult to make sense of anything that far ahead. The farther she looked, the less clear the scenery appeared.

She chose to go toward the vehicles.

Looking down and in this direction, she carefully created gravity pulls with what remained of her energy.

She knew that she would not be able to focus for much longer.

Slowly, she "flew" dozens of meters lower and ahead.

It became apparent that she was escaping the limits of the anomaly at one point. The density of the 5th force was lowered to a point she was not able to channel enough energy to keep her and Marie levitating.

Eléonore and Marie clumsily dropped from the sky, faster and faster. Realizing the danger of falling too quickly, Eléonore mustered whatever she could to "break" their fall. It was as if they were two birds landing with one broken wing.

Their speed increased nonetheless.

Eléonore gave up stabilizing herself and focused on breaking Marie's fall.

Finally.

SLAM!

Eléonore and Marie both landed hard and rolled on the grass.

Disoriented by the impact, Eléonore felt again losing consciousness.

Men and women were closing in, and also... teenagers?

Eléonore, drained of all her energy - and blood, finally gave up her fight against the pain.

She fainted.

---

Mr. and Mrs. Durand had finally received word directly from Altin that he was alright. After two weeks! Finally, they were able to hear his voice and ease their concerns.

Of course, as his foster family, the government had informed them that Altin and his friends had volunteered for "special training" and would be unable to contact them for a while.

They had no idea what "special training" it was, but considering the 20-page nondisclosure agreement they had been forced to sign by the agent that had visited them, it was serious.

It was also infuriating. They knew nothing, and yet they still had to sign a full NDA to know what's going on barely? Mrs. Durand had barely contained her temper, and it took a lot of effort to keep calm and sign the agreement.

Keeping calm didn't prevent Mr. and Mrs. Durand from assaulting the government agent of questions. Unfortunately, to their despair, the agent answered few: anything related to Altin was now state-level confidential information.

Mrs. Durand wondered what in the damn world had happened to Altin. He was a quiet and diligent kid; did he do anything?

What of his friends?

Momentarily, Mr. Durand had just hanged up the phone with Altin.

"What else did he say?" Mrs. Durand asked.

Mr. Durand put down the phone and recalled: "He didn't tell much, he just said that after François died, he and Paul and Julien were taken in by a special unit of the government for investigation about the incident. Then, they agreed to join a new special branch of the military. Unfortunately, he told me that he could not yet speak of it. He didn't say what it was about when I asked, but he promised to visit us soon when he has time."

Mrs. Durand sighed in relief. They were accustomed to not seeing Altin often since he had been staying much as his dormitory lately, but being without news for so long had been very concerning.

The two seniors considered Altin as their grandson, or maybe their son, for it was already too late to bear one at their age. Not only that, but they had strongly emphasized the kid's past. He had been a very odd and challenging kid, but with no parental figures to guide him and moved from one school to another, who wouldn't understand?

Both Mr. and Mrs. Durand had followed the development of Altin closely. Looking at his results today, they felt immensely proud to have helped a lost soul recover from a bad start. Far were the times when Altin lived in his shell and could not even speak properly.

It was morning, and Mr. Durand had an appointment with his doctor for a routine check.

He bade farewell to his wife, put on his coat, left the house.

He didn't fail to notice that the same unusual grey van he had seen yesterday parked near his house could still be seen today. Perhaps a new neighbor? Mr. Durand didn't think too much about it.

He walked to his car and entered.