“You are facing one of Ciatris’s most diabolical creations,” the male stated. “Yes, this is a form of the Ciatron, but nothing either of you are familiar with.”
Levi and Harrison gripped their daggers as they stood in confusion, noting the familiar clothing the strangers were wearing.
“Why are you both dressed in Guardian Warrior regalia?” Levi demanded.
The black, leather-like outfits, high boots, breastplates with the Pemdai coat of arms displayed in silver, and the long black capes flowing down from where they were attached at each shoulder, confused the men. There weren’t many Guardians that they didn’t know personally.
“You have nothing to fear. We are Guardians, just as you are.”
“Nothing to fear?” Harrison said as he stalked toward them. “We just hijacked some electric creature’s body into this realm before he vanished into thin air, and we have nothing to fear?”
Levi put his hand up, stopping Harrison’s pursuit. “What exactly are you two?” He demanded while studying the male who, aside from his emerald green eyes, was almost an exact replica of himself. “Are you a shapeshifter who has taken on my image? Are you working with the Ciatron as well?”
Harrison eyed the man at the time Levi had mentioned it. “What have you done with the humans? I warn you, it would be best to change your appearance into someone other than my friend’s.”
The woman’s shimmering blue eyes bore through Levi and some strange effect served to calm him entirely. Harrison seemed to relax at the same time. It was as if a drug was administered to ease any concern their minds would have and had taken over their mental abilities.
Levi studied the familiar blue eyes before his roamed over the familiar features of her face and blond hair. Why is she so familiar? he thought to himself.
“Now that you both are in a relaxed state of mind, please allow us to introduce ourselves,” she spoke in a smooth, yet caring voice.
“My name is Alysia and this is my brother, Alexander—,” she pursed her lips before proceeding to finish, “Oxley.”
“Oxley?” Harrison choked out. “As in, you are somehow related to us, Oxley?”
Alexander looked directly at Levi, fixing his eyes solely on his. “We are from the future. My sister and I are seeking the same being as you; however, we never intended our paths to cross. They should have never crossed, in fact. Neither of you should be in this time period.”
“You both are from the future?” Levi questioned. Not really considering the rest of what the young man had said.
The two proclaiming they were from the future exchanged glances, and, with a nod, Alexander looked at both men.
“We are your descendants,” he said as he looked calculatedly at Levi. “You are dealing with a creature you cannot destroy, and we must not only stop this being, but now protect you both from it, as our future relies upon it.”
Levi and Harrison remained silent, but eyed each other discreetly.
“My brother has the ability to travel through time, and I serve as his helper. We cannot reveal too much, but we must help you.”
“Time travel does not exist!” Harrison nearly growled, while Levi stood in shock at the faces staring back at him.
“In your day and age, it does not; however, in ours, it does,” Alexander looked over at Harrison.
Harrison’s brow shot up sharply, “Do you hear that, Levi? It looks like your doppelgänger and his sister finally cracked the code on the many theories we’ve all heard about.”
“Listen, we do not have enough time to discuss any of this. You need to trust us in order for us to properly protect you from the Citrone. That being can easily destroy you both.”
Levi narrowed his eyes at the young man and woman, “Very well. If time travel does exist, prove it. Get us out of here.”
“It is too late for that. The children you are looking for are hidden in this time period. We must not waste time in finding them before—”
“Prove it!” Harrison demanded.
Alexander’s emerald eyes grew severe as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver coin. When he held it out toward Levi, Levi immediately shuffled his hands in his pockets, searching for the coin he always carried with him. To his surprise, he pulled out the coin that he believed the young man had somehow stolen from him.
“There is no possible way,” Levi stepped back, turning his palm up and gazing at the rare object his father had recently handed down to him. “There are no replicas of this coin.” He glanced at Harrison’s wide eyes and then looked back at Alexander holding the identical coin. “How did you obtain that coin?” he asked in a deadly tone.
“You,” he mirrored Levi’s lethal expression. “You gave it to me the day of my Guardian graduation ceremony.”
“I would not give this to anyone unless they were—” Levi’s inhaled deeply.
“Your son.”
—ABOUT THE AUTHOR—
S.L. Morgan is an emerging author of mystical worlds and dimensions and enjoys taking readers on journeys with fun and exciting characters.
Thank you for taking time to read!
The Guardians: Twin Paradox takes place 9 years before the Ancient Guardians Novel series. If you would like to continue The Guardians: Twin Paradox and learn more about the award-winning series, check out my website: www.slmorganuthor.com where you can download the first full-length novel for free! Happy Reading!
WHEN I FIND YOU
Norma Hinkens
Erratic gusts of a cold solar wind slash my face as I steer my way past the queue of refugees coiled around Percuto’s Migration Ministry building. Some shoot angry glares my way, and I paste on what I hope passes for an apologetic smile as I scan my wrist chip at the gate and log in at 5:07 a.m. They’ve been waiting here for days, but I have an illegally downloaded migration appointment. If they knew why, they would willingly give up their place in line for me.
“So many,” I say to the guard monitoring the scanner.
“Take the free land on the frontier planets, take your chances,” she grumbles as she waves me through to join an even longer line inside the fence.
“They wanted to farm. Not fight a war,” I say, keeping my tone neutral.
“They traded citizenship for land,” the guard replies, her tone as frosty as her expression. “Not our job to get them to the Inner Ring now.” She turns her back on me and gives a disgruntled wave to the next person in line.
During last week’s inter-planetary summit, Galactic Guerrillas bombed a government building on Kwan, the largest of the frontier planets. The Supreme Leader’s response was swift. Anarchy followed, which is why the settlers have been flooding back here to the tiny spaceport of Percuto, the gateway to the Inner Ring, Under the protection of the Galactic Migration Treaty, they have one week to secure passage on a transit ship out of here, or face deportation back to the frontier planets. My heart breaks for them, but I need to bide my time.
A cyborg with a megaphone mounted in his forehead, patrols the crowd outside the gate, barking an unrelenting sequence of instructions in PremierTalk, the official language of the Inner Ring. His foul mood is a good indication he was ordered here against his will to help coordinate the refugee crisis.
“Seeeengle file only--migration exit interviews only!” he bellows.
“What does he think we’re here for? Lava facials?” I whisper to the teenager in front of me. She frowns, flicks her long, blond hair over her shoulder and shakes her head vehemently by way of response. Maybe she thinks it’s bad juju to be seen conversing with the other applicants before her exit interview. Only a few transit ships are permitted to fly to the Inner Ring each week. And there are only so many spots on board.
I’m not supposed to be interacting with the other applicants anyway according to Sanya, the operative who trained me. “No casual conversations,” she warned me. “People remember things.”
With a shrug, I pull out my holographic tablet and concentrate on channelin
g out the crabby cyborg.
Three-and-a-half hours later, I reach the heavily-guarded entryway to the Migration Ministry building. Armed cyborgs rummage through our belongings and divest us of our outerwear before they allow us inside. Shepherded in batches of twenty, we pass through the jaws of a steel elevator. An overwhelming stench of body odor rises as we descend. Fear melding with exhaustion. My stomach churns, but Sanya’s words prevail—”Don’t attract attention.”
The elevator jerks, then shudders to a stop. The doors retract, and I recoil at the pockmarked face of the female officer who signals us out with a spastic jerk of a pudgy thumb and a strange clicking sound. The sulky blonde who shut me down earlier glances at me uncertainly. With a roll of my eyes, I step past her and follow our escort as she schleps along a windowless corridor. Jobs in the Migration Ministry are undesirable to Inner Ring citizens; short of cyborgs, she’s probably all they could muster. If she only knew how some of us are forced to make a living.
When we enter the processing waiting room, the migration officer slams down a tablet full of case files in front of the small glass window of an enclosed booth. A metal claw slides out with a loud clank and retrieves it.
“Commit every detail to memory,” Sanya said when she gave me my new identity. I did. Deception comes easy to me. Especially after everything I’ve had to do to survive.
We worked together for months on extensive language retraining. “One word, and a good linguist can nail you,” Sanya stressed many times. I have no trace of an accent now. No apparent ties to the indentured past my father sold me into after he sent my mother to a penal colony on the fringe, along with the other concubines he banished. She died there six weeks later. I should be dead too--indentured children don’t usually survive the brutality of their masters more than a few months. And most don’t escape. Turns out I’m good at a lot of things, but that’s not the real reason the Guerrillas sought me out.
I scope the stale, white-walled room bedecked with Galactic flags from every sovereign nation in the frontier. Percuton citizens are packed into tight rows on blue metal benches floating up from the floor. Their eyes bore into us as we take our seats. Every new arrival is a threat to their chance of securing passage out of here today.
I’m careful not to look directly at the cameras, scowling down on us from their vantage point above bleached out prints of Last Station Moon and the Solar Overpass. Laser resculpting has dramatically altered my appearance, aged me even, but cameras can reverse engineer such procedures if they detect an anomaly. I hastily gulp back the bile rising up my throat. The last thing I need is a medical droid doing a trace on my DNA.
Thanks to Sanya’s connections in the dark interstellarsphere, I’m registered as an employee of a reputable commercial design firm. My records indicate that I travel to the Inner Ring regularly for work. I suppress a grin. Maybe I could offer the dilapidated Migration Ministry building a makeover, kick start my new career.
“You’re all stuck here in this room for as long as it takes so don’t gripe about it,” the pockmarked migration officer barks at us from the front of the room. She leans a blubbery forearm on a podium draped with Inner Ring flag bunting, flanked on either side by a a potted Orb Snap tree and a large statue of the Supreme Leader of the Inner Ring. I shudder when I stare into the statue’s unmoving eyes. Those eyes have haunted me for years.
Another migration officer behind the glass window leans into the microphone. “Zola Gainstorm, proceed to the front of the room.” A few rows in front of me Gainstorm gets to her feet. She totters across the tile in spiked heels, her plunging neckline cataloging her assets.
A tall, elderly woman with a kink in her neck appears in the doorway clutching a tablet. She’s dressed in the ivory uniform that all officials of the Inner Ring wear. She peers down at Gainstorm with an air of disdain. The plunging neckline isn’t likely to swing the vote in this case, although there are no shortage of migration officers willing to take bribes of one kind or another. A few hundred credits secured my appointment.
The officer disappears with Gainstorm, and I steal a glance to my left. A heavyset woman at the end of my row is trying too hard to make a statement of another kind. She glitters like a patriotic ornament in her red and white striped skirt and matching headscarf with holographic Inner Ring flags that sparkle every time she moves. To my horror, she arches an aggressively waxed brow at me and crosses her forefingers in a rebel gesture.
I quickly turn my head, my pulse racing. Surely she can’t have recognized me. I suck in a breath between my teeth, willing myself to stay calm. It’s not possible. Instinctively, I pull my sleeve down over my wrist, even though Sanya’s surgical team has long since removed the tattoo marking me as a convict.
Sanya secured my early release from the reform colony. She told me the Galactic Guerrillas had been looking for me for a long time. And then she told me I had the power to end their struggle, and mine. Hatred is a powerful motivator; it bonds Sanya and I, defines what we do. But in the end, I must act alone.
I suck at the rank air and glance around our sweatbox. The intelligent-looking man on my right strokes his chin, writing in spurts on his tablet.
“Quite the novel you have going there,” I remark, breaking Sanya’s cardinal rule for the second time.
He chuckles. “I regret I am but a humble journalist in pursuit of truth.” His eyes pierce mine. “And what, may I ask, are you in pursuit of?”
I give a stilted smile. “The Inner Ring dream, of course.” My heart races and I turn away. I casually tuck a strand of transplanted chestnut hair behind my ear. The procedure hurt more than I thought it would, but I’d sacrifice anything for this mission to succeed. Dying my blond hair wouldn’t have sufficed; the Minders’ scanners could detect the anomaly if I were intercepted for any reason.
Sensing the journalist’s eyes on me, I pull out my holographic tablet and pretend to be absorbed in my work. He’ll have plenty to write about twenty-four hours from now, if our mission succeeds.
At 4:05 p.m. they call my name. I stand and walk to the end of the row, then make my way to the front of the room. I look around expecting the migration officer with the kink in her neck, but she’s nowhere to be seen. Unsure where I’m supposed to go, I pivot between the podium and the long-departed Orb Snap tree. Two gray suits appear and scan the space with implanted bio-readout lenses. Intergalactic Intelligence Officers. My stomach plummets.
“Memorize their names and faces,” Sanya told me repeatedly. Olark Ivalch and Dajar Bartan. I even know their kids’ birthdays. I watch as they begin a synchronized stride down the room and stop at the row where the heavyset woman in the sparkly holographic headscarf is seated. Silently, I release a shaky breath. They’re not here for me this time.
“Nilcha Evrork, under the terms of the Galactic Anti-Guerilla Act, you are hereby under arrest for alleged involvement in terrorist activity on the frontier planets.”
I’m forgotten, left standing in front of the statue of the Supreme Leader, his frozen gaze skewering me like he knows who the real threat is. I squeeze my fists at my sides as the Intelligence Officers place a stun-brace around the woman’s neck. There’s nothing I can do to help her that won’t mean sacrificing the mission.
In a final act of rebellion, she yanks the headscarf from her head, tosses it to the floor and stamps on it before breaking into a rousing rendition of the Galactic Guerrillas anthem. One of the suits activates the stun-brace, and the woman crumples like a discarded rag.
The pockmarked migration officer glares around the room, hands straddling her generous hips. She shuffles back behind her podium and slaps it hard. “One rotten rebel! Just takes one rotten rebel to mess up the transit,” she preaches.
The other migration applicants gawk like startled prey, no doubt wondering if they’re all under arrest. The Inner Ring headscarf glitters like a strobe light from the floor; the journalist’s sweaty face glistening under its holographic gleam. His pen tap-dances across the page,
doubtless drafting some clever headline.
When the suits drag the woman from the room, the elderly officer with the kink in her neck reappears. She looks me up and down, her black-eyed gaze grim. “Riverienne Bosneck?”
I give a deferential nod to my new identity.
“This way.” The officer turns and lopes off down a narrow corridor. I take a calming breath and follow several feet behind her, counting steps and memorizing doorways as we go by. An ingrained habit. Always prepare for the getaway. Finally, she halts outside a room and gestures for me to go inside. I hesitate when I see the neuro-hub in the center of the room. Despite all the training for this moment, it doesn’t make it any less intimidating. The reconstituted sausage I ate for breakfast churns in my stomach.
“You can take a seat and relax for a few minutes while I calibrate the machine,” the officer says, following me inside. She makes her way across to a control panel and leans over it. From behind I see her neck juts out at an odd angle and I wonder why she hasn’t had it surgically corrected in the Inner Ring. Maybe she can’t afford it. It fits with my suspicion that Migration Ministry positions are punitive rather than paid.
“Almost ready,” the officer says, glancing up. “I just need to confirm your answers to a few basic questions. Please state your name for the record.”
Mirelda Iyak. I lean back against the headrest designed to hold me in position while my brainwaves are analyzed. “Riverienne Bosneck.”
“Age and IQ?”
“Twenty-seven, 243.”
I’m actually only seventeen, too young to qualify for unaccompanied migration, but my records were easy to falsify in the dark interstellarsphere. My IQ is another matter. I can’t hide it. The neuro-hub will take an accurate reading once it links with my brain. Thankfully it will be a favorable mark on my application.
“And your current occupation?”
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