by S. S. Segran
He smiled feebly at her. “You know I don’t like it when people shorten my name, Ms. Abdul.” He glanced at the fan, wincing. “Well, that was unexpected, huh?”
“I’ll get a couple of the SONEs to take you to the infirmary.” Arianna ran off, returning a minute later with two members of the Vanguard. As they helped Kenzo up, she turned to Dr. Nate. “I am so sorry. I promise my SONEs have double-checked—triple-checked—everything. This must have been some kind of freak—”
Dr. Nate held up a hand, his bug eyes never leaving Kenzo. “This young man just saved my life,” he whispered. “Or at the very least, saved me from a ’orrible accident. Mr. Igarashi, that was . . . almost instinctual.”
Kenzo slung his arms around the SONEs as they propped him up. “It was nothing, sir.”
“Nonsense. Now go get yourself stitched up.”
“But the inspection . . .”
“I’m sure Ms. Abdul can manage on ’er own.” Dr. Nate swung up on his tiptoes to pat Kenzo’s shoulder. “Thank you, young man.”
Before the SONEs guided him away, Arianna slunk forward. “You really are such a good kid,” she whispered, dusting some dirt off Kenzo. “I’m so proud of you. Keep doing what you’re doing and soon you’ll be climbing the Sanctuary hierarchy as fast as you climbed to the top of your echelon.”
Kenzo grimaced. “Right now, I just wanna get my leg looked at.”
“Of course. Take it easy for the rest of the day. You don’t have to report in tonight.”
As the Vanguards led him away, keeping him supported between them and making small talk to draw his mind off the stinging wound, he laughed. The SONEs halted, staring at him in confusion and budding concern. He apologized but couldn’t curb his jubilation. “Sorry, this happens when I’m in pain. Can’t help it.”
Still worried, the SONEs continued onward. Kenzo bit back a smile.
They didn’t need to know the truth—that the heroic rescue of Dr. Nate was no accident.
Safely tucked away in his pocket was the miniscule device he had fashioned in his quarters. Its primary component, a circuit board that would override the fan’s speed setting, had been acquired from the workshop days ago. Prior to Dr. Nate’s arrival, he’d climbed the support framework overhead and loosened several support bolts. All that was needed then was the extra vibration from full acceleration to bring the unit crashing down.
Victor wanted me to get close to the higher-ups? He’s got it.
First, it was Roderick. Jag watched, powerless, as his friend fell backward off the rock face. Eyes wide, Roddy let out a cry that cut short when he landed on his back. He lay still as crimson edged out from under him.
Then came Marshall. Jag knew he’d saved him but his body refused to listen, forcing him to stay rooted in place as the loyal Sentry slipped on the side of the ancient fortress of Masada and plummeted to the desert floor a thousand feet below. Just before he impacted, the ground twisted and warped, and everything went dark.
Slowly, like sight returning, light faded in to illuminate an aged, beautiful woman in a hospital bed.
The air ripped out of Jag’s lungs.
He approached the bed cautiously. The woman’s eyes were closed, one hand stretching out. He made a grab for it. As their fingers touched, her eyes flew open in a panic and she struggled against her oxygen mask, mouth gaping in a scream he could not hear. He leaned over, hands grasping hers tightly, breaths ragged between stifled sobs. Her cry finally reached his ears—only it wasn’t her voice, but the alarm of the monitor beside the bed as she flatlined.
Jag roared and put his fist through the screen. The room went silent. He turned back to look at his grandmother, but everything was gone. He spun around in the darkness, disoriented. Something about the way the ground felt beneath his shoes and the gentle brush of air against his cheek told him he was in a forest.
Ahead, soft light shone down on a lone figure standing between two pine trees with its back to him. Jag narrowed his gaze. Was that a long cloak? Or a teal blouse? No, a cloak for sure. Or a white tunic? Maybe a sleeveless brown shirt?
It took him a few moments to piece together what he was seeing. The figure was glitching, displaying different people all at once. It took an additional minute to realize who they were—the Elders. They switched from one to another at increasing speeds until an ear-shattering boom slammed into Jag, shuddering his skull and bones. The figure slowly crumpled to the ground, still glitching as a river of red trailed toward him.
He backed away, but the blood moved faster the quicker he retreated until it held him like tar. Trembling, he looked back at the motionless figure. Shadows wrapped around it, dragging it into a black hole and leaving him snared in place, screaming until he was sucked into the thick scarlet pool.
Jag’s eyes flew open. Sweat trickled down his brow and his chest heaved. As he blinked the droplets away, a silhouette appeared over him, blocking the light. He blinked again, and the person sharpened into focus.
“Bad dream?” the man asked, his accented tone even.
Jag grunted, looking away. Reyor’s mentor stepped back. In his hand was a leather-bound book as thick as a fist. He hefted it, examining its weathered appearance. “In this journal, Jag, and more just like it, I have recorded all that I’ve seen that has caused me to believe humanity will never be the true heirs that this world deserves. Painstaking observations made over two millennia of the many crossroads in human history showing that, at nearly every juncture, the wrong turn was taken. Thus, humans are incorrigible.”
He placed the journal on a small white table beside him and pulled up a chair so he could sit next to Jag. Crossing one leg over the other, hands folded on his lap, he regarded the teenager. Jag matched his stare. The man seemed momentarily amused.
“In any case,” he continued, “I came to the conclusion that humanity is incapable of the evolutionary leap that leads to expanded capabilities. After all, these are the prerequisites for a good stewardship of the planet. But you, Jag.” He raised a finger, pointing it directly at him. “You’ve blasted an unignorable hole in the bastion of my purpose.”
Hope tingled in the pit of Jag’s stomach, but he stayed silent, watchful.
The man gestured vaguely, head shaking. “All this . . . This ark, as it were. Built for thirty-six thousand souls in six Sanctuaries around the world to arise from the ashes like a phoenix—like Cerraco—when the time is right. A new race worthy of Earth and each other. Years and years and years spent to get to this moment. And then, as the final breaths approach, you and your friends show up.”
“What exactly is your point?” Jag asked.
“The point is that now I cannot close this Pandora’s box.” The beginnings of a snarl curled the man’s lip. “I cannot will you away or pretend you don’t exist. I am walking down this road, steps away from changing the course of humanity forever, but I find myself stalling. You have to tell me everything, Jag. About you, your friends. How did you come to be this way? Please do not deny me this truth. Are there more like you out there, requiring only training to discover their abilities?”
Jag tilted his chin up. “That’s why you had Reyor set her dogs on us?”
“If you wish to use such crude terms, yes, that was why I demanded you be brought to me. Now that I have you here, I am still parched of the truth. I have more questions than answers. That must be remedied. I am reaching the end of my journey in this world, and I do not want to leave this existence with that on my conscience to haunt me in perpetuity.”
If Jag’s hands were free, he would have been rubbing his temples in exasperation. “I’ve already told you everything, but if repeating it means you might stop all of this, then fine, I’ll say it again. Kody, Mariah, Aari, Tegan and I have known each other practically since birth. We had no clue that we had special abilities—none, I promise—until our plane got caught in a freak storm a little over a year and a half ago. We crashed somewhere in northern Canada and the Guardians carried us to Dema-Ki where
we were healed. The Elders seemed secretive and wouldn’t answer our questions at the time, so we ran away because we thought we knew what was best. We ended up nearly getting killed by a pack of rabid wolves but some of the villagers saved us and brought us back. That’s when the Elders decided they needed to open up, and told us point-blank that we might be the fulfillment of one of their prophecies. Obviously we were skeptical, but they said they’d help us unlock our abilities, so we stayed. And we trained. Then we fought some of your people on a mountain and watched a bunch of villagers get slaughtered, so hey, thanks for that.”
The man turned his gaze downward, his face darkening ever so slightly. Then the expression was gone. “You really noticed nothing odd about yourselves growing up until you were taken to Dema-Ki?”
“I mean, the only thing that might be interesting is our closeness, maybe? We grew up together. We’re family. And being the Chosen Ones brought us even closer. We look out for one another more, and for other people, too.”
The man steepled his fingers against his chin. “Let me ask you this: Do you find your abilities to be a curse?”
“What?” Jarred by the question, Jag had to take a few moments to gather himself. “No. Not at all. Like I said, it’s made us closer. And this responsibility . . . yeah, we didn’t ask for it, but it gave us purpose. Not just individually, but as a group. How many people can say that they get to be part of something so life-changing with their best friends?”
“And that task, at its heart, is to stop Reyor and myself.”
“You came completely out of the left field, but that about sums it up, yeah.”
The man brought his steepled fingers against the tip of his nose, frowning. “One thing doesn’t make sense. Surely you wouldn’t have been trained before the jex’ahl.”
“The jex . . . what?”
“It is an evaluation that must be undergone before training that requires a person to look into a plain crystal while in a meditative state. An image will appear within, unique to the individual. Why did the Elders not put you through it?”
“Oh, you mean the crystal assessment? Yeah, we did that.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
Reluctantly, Jag relayed the wildcat’s paw print that had appeared in his crystal, as well as the wolf’s eye in Tegan’s, the five-pointed star woven from twigs in Kody’s, Aari’s half-silhouetted dragonfly, and Mariah’s crescent moon over the waves of a body of water.
The man sat wordlessly, slowly tugging at his short beard. “That still does not mean you aren’t anomalies.” He drew something out from the pocket of his trousers. “Your pendant contains the personal crystal you receive once training is complete. Why do you have the amber one?”
Jag’s eyes were fixed on his necklace as it swung like a pendulum from Mokun’s fingers. He’d been feeling so naked without it around his neck. If only he could just grab it—
“Mr. Sanchez. You would do well to answer me.”
“I have the amber one because that’s the color I saw in my meditation crystal when I got my symbol,” Jag responded irritably. “And the others have theirs for the same reason.”
“What are the colors?”
“Tegan’s is gray, Kody’s is green, Aari’s is blue, and Mariah’s is brown.”
The man stared at a point to the left of Jag. His rubbed the black cord of the necklace, the movement picking up speed, until he shot out of his seat. “Jag, why did you leave this out?”
Jag bristled. “It didn’t seem important. And I might’ve forgotten. A lot’s happened since Dema-Ki, alright? I can’t remember everything. Sometimes I still see the dead villagers on Ayen’et when I close my eyes, and the mercenary I couldn’t save when he fell out of the Osprey, so you’ll have to forgive me for the smaller things that slip my mind.”
Without another word, the man turned on his heel and headed toward the door.
“Hey!” Jag struggled against his restraints. “Hey! You got what you came for, didn’t you? How much longer are you gonna keep me prisoner?”
The man stopped and peered over his shoulder with a peculiar expression. “You know,” he murmured, taking on a faraway tenor, “they say that dreams are the consequence of the brain trying to sort itself out. Let me tell you what I’ve learned in the centuries I’ve been alive. Sometimes, dreams are simply dreams. Other times, it’s more than mere ideas and thoughts being sorted in one’s subconscious. Sometimes, they are gateways to paths yet to unfold.”
He walked out, leaving the door to quietly click shut behind him. Jag bellowed, fighting his restraints so violently that they continued to rattle for a full minute after he’d collapsed in defeat. He wrenched his head back, teeth bared, nostrils flared, and screamed a curse at the screen displaying a tranquil sky overhead.
In a lakeside facility hidden by the ancient firs of Eastern Siberia’s taiga forest, Adrian Black sat in the harshly-lit reception area. The plastic chair had grown more than uncomfortable since he’d plunked himself down an hour before. He was tempted to remove his padded winter coat and sit on it . . . except the fifty-something receptionist behind the desk was staring at him as though he was a hunk of meat and she hadn’t eaten in weeks. The last thing he wanted was to make it look like he was giving her a show.
He glanced at his watch. A quarter to four. How much longer do I have to wait?
The torrent of apprehension he’d been drowning in the whole day had waned over the past half hour, replaced instead with impatience. For the first time since being inducted into Phoenix as its CEO nearly a decade ago, he was about to meet the Boss. No more voice-modulated calls, no more holographic meetings. As far as he knew, less than a handful of people from the Inner Circle had met their superior in person, and he was about to join the ranks. He’d finally get to look upon the face of a visionary like no other.
Black happened to be in Russia closing a business deal when the Boss had called him, asking him to come out to the isolated production site in Siberia. It amused him that Phoenix continued to operate despite being so close to unleashing the third and final wave of the Arcane Ventures. But the Boss had made it clear that they needed to keep up appearances.
A phone rang and the receptionist picked up the call. She listened for a moment, then hung up. In a heavy Russian accent, she called out, “Take elevator to floor 3B, Mr. Black.”
“Thank you,” he said, getting up and striding across the room to the lift.
She watched him as he passed her, chewing the top of her pen with a sly smile. “No, thank you.”
Black squeezed his eyes shut, grateful that his coat was long enough to cover everything. When the elevator doors closed, he let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
The jitters that had ebbed returned as he pushed one of the buttons. I’m really about to meet the Boss, he thought. Face to face. But . . . why now, of all times?
The elevator jerked, then started its descent. Using the mirror on the ceiling, he fixed his short dark hair, tutting to himself for missing a few gray strands the last time he’d dyed it. Stubble had already begun to appear on his jaw but there was nothing he could do about that.
All too quickly, the lift lurched once more as it came to a stop, doors opening with a ding. Black stepped out and immediately wrinkled his nose. It was as if someone had dumped buckets of antiseptic and mopped the linoleum floor with it.
3B was completely devoid of life. The rows of various assembly lines consisting of devices Black couldn’t begin to name seemed to have been paused, as if the workers had deserted in a hurry. Most of the fluorescent lights were turned off save for a row overhead that led farther into the facility.
What, am I supposed to follow the lit path like a knock-off Dorothy? He hesitated, then did just that. The lights guided him to the center of the floor where a lofty figure in a knee-length black coat stood with its back to him. The gold hood was pulled up.
A flash of inexplicable fear slammed down Black’s throat, jamming his breath. He
started to retreat before he could make his presence known, but the figure turned to face him. “Adrian. Thank you for coming. I know this was last minute.”
The fear evaporated slowly, replaced by bitter disappointment. The Boss’s features were still concealed in the shadows of the hood, and a digital distorter deepened and coarsened the voice as usual.
Swallowing, Black inclined his head. “I’m glad to be here. Really. It . . . it’s good to finally meet you in person. I’ve always wondered what this would be like.”
“Have I met your expectations?”
Blindsided by the question, Black gave a hasty answer that sounded more like gibberish than an actual response. The Boss chuckled, low and disconcerting, and reached into the darkness of the hood to pull out a silver device: the voice distorter. Then the hood was pushed back.
Black had no control over his expression as he beheld his superior. “Boss?”
The woman before him looked no older than forty and appeared to be both amused and annoyed by his reaction. He stared into her eyes longer than was probably polite, but he needed to make sure his own eyes weren’t deceiving him. He couldn’t form full thoughts.
Purple irises. Or violet. Or mauve. Whatever. That’s not normal.
The Boss smoothed the hair at the top of her head, keeping the rest tucked into the collar of the jacket. The burgundy locks were interrupted by a shock of white, which she pushed out of her face. “It’s quite rude to stare, Adrian.”
Startled by the sultry, smoky voice that was both full and sharp, Black quickly collected himself. “My apologies. It’s just . . . after nearly a decade, I finally get to meet the person who gave me the biggest opportunity of my life. It’s a bit to take in.”
“You have been valuable to our endeavors,” the Boss said. “I know we’ve had our rough patches, but it has all led to the approaching final hour we’ve been preparing for.”
