Protogenesis: Before the Beginning

by Alysia Helming

  Sounds familiar. I can’t help but interrupt him. “Like the Catalyst?” I ask.

  Janus raises his eyebrow at Athena, who just nods at him. He crosses his arms, then continues in a less animated voice. “Yes, but the Catalyst creates an actual wormhole, either a temporary or permanent Gate, between realities. Orion’s Key and others like it can be used only to create the image of a person, like a hologram, if on the high setting, or if used on the low setting, it can be used to spy on another universe.”

  He holds up the earbud again. “This hearing device is connected to Orion’s Key and enables me to communicate regularly with Athena. I just tug on my ear, and it activates the device. She can hear everything I say and anything within about fifty feet of where I stand.”

  This explains a lot about Janus’s bizarre behavior. All those times I thought he was hearing voices and hallucinating, he was communicating with Athena here on Gaea.

  Athena smiles at me. “Sometimes Janus is really crazy, Helene. Those are the times when I want to kill him. Right, Janus?”

  He shakes his head, muttering under his breath. “Okay! That’s it. This lesson is over!” Before Athena or I can say anything more, Janus’s image vanishes.

  Athena shrugs. “I was done with him anyway.” I think she must be done talking to me as well because she starts to turn as if to leave me here. She lifts her hand to head, as if deep in thought, then turns back to me. “I heard about your little fight with Ares. Congratulations on your victory.”

  “Thank you,” I reply. For some reason, her validation of my survival, as if it were some sort of sport, seems off. For God’s sake, my life was at stake! “I was a little surprised that he didn’t know that I had been to Gaea.”

  “What did you just say?” Her face fills with worry, but her voice is laced with fire. “Please tell me that you didn’t tell him about the Cat’s-Eye Gate!”

  “No, I didn’t. I only said that I had been to Gaea. That’s all.”

  Athena sighs in relief but concern fills her voice. “Well, that’s good, but you must understand why he can’t know that you’ve been to Gaea, right? Zeus is razor sharp and will easily connect the dots that another Gate exists.”

  This can’t be all my fault! I’m not going to be made to feel guilty when no one has bothered to tell me anything until now. “He already knows. Isn’t it obvious to Zeus and his thugs on Earth that Gaean kids are disappearing from New Olympus and then showing up on Earth?”

  Athena’s eyes widen, but her face relaxes into a wide smile. “Oh my, you’re a spirited girl! Excellent analysis. There might be hope for you yet.” She winks at me.

  Was that a compliment or an insult? God, I hate her right now, but it’s as if I love to hate her. She’s so frustrating…just like someone else I know back on Earth.

  “Besides, Hal Avery told me that the reason they wanted me to come to Greece was to lead them to the Gate,” I tell her.

  “Hal Avery?” Athena’s eyes grow wide.

  When I describe him to her, she gives me a grin before explaining, “Just to clarify, Zeus’s spies on Earth, including your friend Hal Avery, aren’t ‘thugs.’ They’re Vorlage, Zeus’s royal army of protectors and spies. On Gaea, they are gold-plated cybernetic droids or automatons. What you see on Earth is what was left of the old guard from ancient times. They are humans whose genetic memories have been passed down from generation to generation, originating from a time before the Gate collapsed.”

  This explains why it was so easy to wipe them out when they attacked me earlier tonight. Athena smiles in agreement. “Well, it’s getting late. You should sleep.” She points to a large, plush bed nearby, and before I know it, she’s gone.

  I sit down on the bed and sock a pillow in angst. After all the effort that it took for me to finally come here to Scythia and meet Athena, how is it that I’ve made so little progress?! It’s clear that neither Athena nor Janus wants me to find my mother. But why not? I don’t care what they say…or don’t say. I’m not giving up my search.

  It dawns on me that I’m not tired. Today I learned one very important piece of intel. I already possess the secret to finding the location of the cypress tree…the Catalyst. Unfortunately, I’ll have to go to Earth to get it. Maybe I should look around here. Perhaps I can find some clue on Gaea that will lead me to the Lone Cypress Tree so I don’t have to go back.

  Feeling restless, I wander over to the door and crack it open. No guards. I hear a sound behind me, then a nudge under my hand. My lioness. “Sorry, Bastet. I need to look around here, and you’re sure to be noticed.”

  “No problem.” I hear her voice in my head as she nudges my hand one more time. Then she jumps up onto the bed. So much for my sleeping there. “I can move when you return!” she jokes.

  “It’s fine,” I say, laughing with her.

  Quiet as I can be, I make my way out into the empty hallway. Scattered voices fill the space around me as I wander past several closed doorways – most likely apartments. I’m about to turn the corner when I recognize the sound of Athena’s familiar velvety-smooth voice. I wonder whom she’s talking to. A brusque male voice whispers softly, but it sounds a lot like Minios. Something tells me that this is a conversation I need to hear. Hopefully, Athena can’t hear my thoughts right now, or she’ll know I’m here.

  As I move in closer, I hear both of their voices clearly. Minios whispers urgently, “It’s confirmed. Someone has activated the Catalyst. This is bad. And if you and I know this, then surely Prometheus will know. Even worse, Zeus will be alerted, which no doubt will ignite a major manhunt.”

  Athena’s voice is icy and hard, ruthless. “You’re sure? It doesn’t make sense. No one knows about the Stronghold.…Oh.” She stops.

  “What is it?” Minios asks urgently.

  “I know who it is,” she says in an irritated voice.

  “Do we need to alert Prometheus?” he asks her.

  “Absolutely not!” Athena replies adamantly. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. Everything is fine. There’s no way Zeus will find it.”

  My heart pounds. She knows that I have it! I take a deep breath and try to slow my thoughts to sharpen my memory. Now I remember! When she read my thoughts earlier, she saw my vision of the Catalyst inside my mother’s secret room – inside the glass case – but not that I have it in my possession. Good.

  I’m torn about the Catalyst. On one hand, I feel horribly guilty about fiddling with it and taking it away from the Stronghold. I’m filled with remorse as I recall the moment when the crazy iPad device was counting down to Gate construction. Now that I fully understand what that means, I’m terrified about what could have happened. A new Gate. Catastrophe. Armageddon. On the other hand, now that I know that the Catalyst is the only way to find the cypress tree, I feel compelled to keep it so I can find my mom.

  I rush back down the hall to my room. Bastet is waiting there for me, as if she already knows that I need her. “I’m being totally selfish about keeping the Catalyst, right?” I ask Bastet in my mind.

  “No! I want to find your mom too.” She glowers at me, her amber eyes blazing.

  It’s a relief to be able to talk to someone about all this craziness, even if she is a cat. I’m not alone in this journey. Like my mother, Bastet truly has my back.

  We need to get out of here, and quick. Athena will be on her way back here at any minute. Bastet explains what she knows about how to escape. Once out in the open desert, she can take me back to the Gate. “But how?” I ask.

  “You can ride on my back,” she says, “like a horse…only I’m much more fun.”

  We sneak out and make our way together down the hallway. A small boy suddenly opens his door, and as we pass him, h
e calls out in surprise, “Your lion is so…” He’s going to give us away! Somewhere around the corner, I hear footsteps approaching, then that same terse cold tone again…Athena. She’s almost here. How can we get past her?

  Suddenly, Bastet leaps past the boy, through the door, and into his apartment. Smart lioness! I follow her inside and shove the door closed behind us, just in time to avoid Athena. The boy is ecstatic to have Bastet here with him, so much so that he doesn’t want us to leave. I can tell that Bastet is disturbed by his cries behind us as we take off.

  Luckily, we make our way up the high-speed elevator and out into the open desert without incident. Unfortunately, though, we have no choice but to skirt the edges of the sandicane for us to reach the Gate anytime soon. If we don’t go now, we could be stuck here until morning, at which point we would be forced to face Athena’s harsh inquisition. That would be bad considering she can read my mind.

  Sand crystals whip past us in menacing fury as the sandstorm reaches the edge of the ruins of the old city. How are we going to get through this mayhem? There‘s no easy way to get back to the Gate.

  The only way is through the heart of the storm.

  28 – Thwarted

  Thousands of tiny grains of sand sting my face. I can barely see Bastet as I grasp onto her body. We trudge through the sand, which is now almost knee high. Just when I think it can’t get any worse, thunder rumbles, the ground shakes, and then crack! A flash of red lightning strikes a couple of yards from us. A few seconds later, splat! A green bolt hits so close that it singes some of Bastet’s fur, stopping us cold in our tracks. We huddle close, moving down to the ground to avoid the lightning, but because the sand is gusting over us, we can’t lie here long or we’ll risk being buried alive.

  Just when I’m sure that it’s all over for us, I hear Bastet’s voice inside my head. “Look…over there!” She turns her head to the left, where there’s an indentation in the side of a sand dune. It could be an entrance to a hidden cave, now visible after the harsh wind scattered the sands in the storm.

  “But we could get trapped in there!” I say to her, concerned.

  “It may be our only option,” she pleads. “We can’t find your mom if we’re dead!”

  She’s right. We have no choice.

  It takes all our strength and resolve, but we plod on, one foot in front of the next until we reach the dark, cool solitude of the cave. Once inside, we both collapse onto the ground, gasping desperately as we struggle to inhale the fresh air here. My body is numb and shaky, completely exhausted. All I want to do is lie here and rest, but as my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, I notice that there’s a light further down inside the cavern. “Bastet, do you see that?” I ask her.

  “Well, yes. There are some benefits to being a cat. I can see in the dark. Come on, I will guide you,” she says.

  I grasp her collar so I don’t lose her. Soon, the light grows brighter, and my eyes adjust enough to see that we are inside some sort of modern subway station that looks like the Metro in Greece but is much more sophisticated. Except for the echo of my shoes, an eerie silence fills the space, making it feel as if it had been abandoned long ago. “What is this place?” I ask as my voice reverberates through the tunnels ahead of us.

  Bastet seems happy to tell me what she knows. “This was once a hyperloop maglev train tunnel system, something like a subway on Earth but much faster. In the old days, at the height of Gaea’s glory, this was a magnificent city…the original Olympus. It was much larger and more advanced than any of Earth’s modern cities are now. Gaea was several thousand years ahead of Earth in terms of technology by then. Sadly, over the span of thousands of years, after climate change and the Scourge, the great city fell into the ruins that you see now.”

  This makes sense considering what Athena told me about the “gods” from Gaea.

  The tunnel ahead splits. Which way to go? The tunnel to our right has some sort of writing on the wall, like graffiti. It makes me feel as if I’m back in Athens for a moment.

  Bastet’s voice echoes through my mind. “Cyclops. We must go left.”

  A shiver runs through my spine at the mention of those monsters.

  Suddenly, a loud clanging sound farther down the tunnel forces us to halt. Bastet and I exchange a worried glance, then sprint as fast as we can down the tunnel on the left. A stairway leads up. I follow Bastet up, slow and steady, but almost pass out when we reach the top, that is, until I see what waits for us there: the crumbling ruins that surround the Gate.

  We shield our eyes as the cat’s-eye stone works its magic, and the brilliant shimmering surface that is now so familiar to me returns to its usual splendor. Sweet relief. We’re going home!

  Bastet and I race forward, leaping through the Gate’s iridescent surface. I feel my feet slam down on the basement floor even before I know I’ve made it back. The room spins for a moment, then slows to a stop. I slowly open my eyes and inhale deeply to breathe in the fresh, uncontaminated air of Earth. We made it!

  But my elation is short-lived.

  “Helene!” Janus yells so loud in my ear that it makes me jump. “You have two seconds to give me that collar. One…two…”

  I stand in shock from our near-death experience in the sandicane. It’s like jumping on an airplane in Antarctica and landing immediately in the Bahamas – surreal and unsettling.

  Janus eyes me with skepticism, eyes narrowed, taking in my image. Head to toe, Bastet and I are completely covered in sand.

  I pick Bastet up and stroke her back as her tail swings up into a graceful arc. I’m surprised that I haven’t heard anything from her since we got back. Perhaps she can’t get into my head here as she can on Gaea.

  “You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused!” Janus paces back and forth, then swings back around to me. “Prometheus is going to kill me!!”

  “I keep hearing about the amazing Prometheus. But, where is he?” I ask.

  Janus appears startled. “Ah, yes. Of course, you know. He’s been in hiding since he fled Gaea to Earth. He manages the rebellion from afar, someplace safe.”

  “That seems a bit of a cop-out, if you ask me,” I say. If anyone knows where my mom is, Prometheus probably would.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Janus says defiantly. “He’s only reason you’re still alive, so I’d be careful what you say about him!”

  This is ridiculous! It’s not right that this supposed god, Prometheus, is too chicken to show his face while the rest of us fight for our lives. The only reason I’m still alive is that I’ve fought hard for myself, not him!

  Bastet leaps out of my arms onto the floor. When she lands, her bright orange gaze locks onto Janus’s serious eyes. A few seconds pass between them in silence, and then he completely flips out. His hand trembles as he points at her. “You! I should lock you away until the end of time!” He reaches down to grab her, but Bastet shimmies out of his grasp, sidles through his legs, and sprints swiftly up the stairs. Janus runs after her and screams, “You can’t escape me!”

  A moment later, I hear the pitter-patter of her paw pads as she scurries back down the stairs with Janus close on her heels, yelling obscenities as he chases her. Her eyes are wide in terror when he reaches out to grab her again. Unfortunately, this time he’s successful. He pulls her flailing body into his arms.

  Claws fully extended, she swipes her paw across his face, drawing a trail of blood. He screams and drops her to the floor with a thud. “Okay, that’s enough!” he yells, looking at both of us. His voice softens, but only slightly. “Here’s how this is going to go. Helene, I need you to pick up that cat and hand me her collar…now!”

  “But you told me I wouldn’t get in trouble.”


  “You’re not in trouble…yet!” He taps his foot. “I don’t have all day! The collar?”

  “I’m not even sure she’ll give it to me,” I say.

  “She will. Do it now!”

  I shrug and walk over to Bastet. When I lean down, I kiss her on the nose. “Sorry, girl!” But then I whisper close into her ear, “We’ll find a way to get it back.” She licks my nose. Gingerly, I unclasp and release the collar from her neck, then step back and hand it to Janus.

  Bastet and I follow Janus as he stomps up the steps and into our apartment, the whole time carrying on like a crazy man. “I’m taking this away, hiding it a place safe from both of you!” He steps over to the picture on the wall, flips it to the side, then opens the safe with a zap of his finger and tosses the collar inside.

  Not even a moment later, he whips around to me. “Now, give me the Catalyst! I know you have it.”

  Athena! She must have told him about me immediately after my conversation with her. I knew it! But there’s no way I’m giving him the Catalyst. I need it to guide me to the cypress tree, my only lead to finding Mom. Since Janus so easily lies to me, I don’t feel a shred of guilt about lying to him now.

  “I don’t have it,” I say in my most confident voice.

  “Athena thinks you’ve been playing around with it in the Stronghold,” he says with wild eyes. “If anything happens to it, I’m going to find out. And when that happens, screw the Prophecy! You’ll be responsible for the end of life as we know it here on Earth, you hear?”

  Janus marches over to the refrigerator, grabs some glasses, and pours us some wine. Wait, what? The end of the world? I wish I could just give the Catalyst back and be done with it! But what exactly is this Prophecy? Ares mentioned it when my life was at stake. I don’t understand what it has to do with me. I drop down into a kitchen chair and take a sip of the wine. Ugh. This is not as good as the wine I had with Ever. “Tell me about the Prophecy. What’s this about, Janus?” I demand. “No one will tell me what it is. It’s about me, right? I have a right to know. My life is at stake!”