The Joining: The Saga of the Shards Book One (The Cycle of the Shards 1)

by Chris Stephenson

  “Well, if we put our backs against the wall and slide over, we should be able to do it. How much time do we have?”

  “The rally is supposed to last all period, so probably about forty-five minutes? We’ve still got a lot of time.” Before Critock could say anything, Shanna started to crawl out the window. He watched nervously as she awkwardly arranged herself around, using the window and brick side of the building to steady herself as she rose into a standing position.

  Shanna shuffled to the side slightly as Critock poked a head out, looking up at her and trying to make sure Kyle’s gaze didn’t spend too long on the fact that she was wearing a skirt and he was below her. “You okay up there?”

  “It’s...a bit cold. But I’m okay! Get out here!”

  Critock sighed, looking at the ledge and the ground below him. “Right.” He slowly put a hand down on the ledge, steadying himself as he felt more of the soft cold wind against him. Inside, he felt Kyle’s stomach drop when he realized that they were actually doing this. Critock wished he had the time to reassure him, but he was having a hard enough time figuring out how he was going to get across. He crawled up onto the small bookcases surrounding the windows, and brought a jean-clad knee out, resting it on the ledge. Bringing his body sideways, one knee and now leg outside, and one leg inside, he slowly stood up as far as he could without hitting his back on the top of the window. Taking a breath, he shifted his body and, keeping a hand on the window ridge itself, he brought his entire body except for one leg out to the ledge. Sliding around and pressing his back to the window, he brought his other leg out slowly, closing his eyes and hoping for balance.

  Once his second leg was on the ledge, and he was satisfied he wasn’t falling of his own accord, he opened his eyes. Not allowing himself or Kyle to look down, he instead turned to the right. Shanna had already moved almost to Phelps’ window, plastered against the side of the building. “Are you coming?” She yelled. Nervously, he turned back and looked out at the landscape. Outside of a few rocks and a combination football-soccer field off to the right, there was just a grass field stretching back, and a brief row of trees too small to be called a forest but large enough to be noticeable. There was no one out here to see or hear them, fortunately.

  “Yeah. What if his window is locked too?” He started moving slowly, sliding his feet as Shanna was doing, and feeling the cold air blow against him fully.

  “Break it? Don’t make me think things like that while I’m doing this!” Shanna yelled back, and Critock was suddenly reminded of her near panic attack out on the stairway. He kept his mouth shut but tried to move faster across the ledge, also trying not to notice the way that the toes of his shoes extended over the lip.

  Shanna had reached the window, and Critock had caught up with her speed but was not quite next to her yet. Before he could say anything, she bent at the knees to lower herself, keeping her back against the bricks. She slid down and reached down with one hand to the window ridge, and pulled up. He worried about her balance, but also remembered that her cheering skills, wanted or not, probably meant that she was able to hold it together more than most people would be able to.

  Critock and Shanna both let out a sigh of relief as the window started to raise, but the sigh was interrupted when the window stopped moving. Shanna started to breathe faster as she tugged upwards on the ridge harder. Nothing was happening.

  “Is it locked?” Critock sidled up next to her, and she shook her head quickly.

  “No, it’s just stuck! I can’t get it to move!”

  Critock sighed. “Ok. Follow me. You’re not going to like this.” He thought a moment. “Well, maybe you will. I don’t know.” He started sliding back to the right, and she just watched him. “C’mon! Trust me.”

  She started muttering to herself as she began to move. “Sure, trust the alien. That’s always worked out well. He certainly won’t turn into a dragon and eat me…” He ignored her as he moved a full body length over and stopped. She moved right next to him. “Okay, now what?”

  “Now don’t move.” He said this as much to Kyle as he did to Shanna, pushing him back forcefully not out of wanting to take complete control but needing to. He didn’t think about what he did next, he just acted out of pure instinct and muscle memory from cycles of training and precarious circumstances all throughout his life. Pushing back with all of the strength he could muster, keeping his right foot firmly planted on the ledge, he pushed his left side up off of the wall and swiveled around Shanna. He felt an incredible fear and rush of adrenaline as the left side of his body swung around and involuntarily pressed against Shanna fully. She screamed as he moved and settled against her, his left leg and hand planted back against the ledge and wall respectively. He thought he was doing quite well, but his concentration was broken by a sudden blast of fear from Kyle made him lose his balance slightly, and he began to pitch backwards, his eyes widening as he did so. As soon as he did so, however, he was kept from falling by a single hand from Shanna, coming down from the wall and pressing firmly on his back and forcing his body more firmly against her. The pair looked at each other deeply into their eyes. “Thanks.”

  “Any…” She gulped, wishing she could wipe the sweat from both her brow and his. “…Time.”

  “You ready?” Critock was edified that the contact between Shanna and himself had distracted Kyle from the precarious position they were in.

  “I probably could hang out here for a bit.” She smirked. He didn’t want to risk the balance to roll his eyes, so he quickly repeated the motion, again pushing off and quickly moving the orientation of his foot around. This time, his back hit the wall safely, and Kyle barely noticed what had happened. After a moment of reorienting himself, he bent at the knees downward as Shanna had done before, grabbing the ridge, and pulling upwards using all his strength both from Kyle and himself. It was still rough, but with a loud grinding creak, the window moved up with him. Taking a couple heavy breaths, he turned to Shanna who was looking at him admiringly.

  “I’d prefer to hang out in there.” Slowly moving over, he carefully bent in front of the window, and slid himself in backwards, his head and arms the last thing in. Shanna, recovering from both the fear that the window wouldn’t open and her close encounter with both Critock and Kyle, moved over, and as quick as she dared, followed him in, ready to get this over with.

  27

  Critock had a brief impulse to kiss the ground when he finally crawled inside the dark empty classroom, and he was joined quickly after by Shanna, who was currently brushing off her uniform from the dust that had accumulated on it from rubbing her back across the wall. He stuffed the thought away, pointing to the small desktop computer that sat on Phelps’ desk.

  “Let’s get that thing going.” He crossed the room to the classroom door, and after looking at the handle for a moment, clicked the lock of it. Shanna moved immediately to the computer, pressing the power button to start the bootup process. He looked at her expectantly as he moved back towards her. “It up yet?”

  “Hold on, these things take time. Please wouldn’t hurt either.” She watched the screen as Critock came around the desk to join her.

  “Please hurry this thing up. Time is something we don’t have a lot of.”

  “’This thing’ is at least two generations behind what current software is. It’s been in place for longer than I’ve been in school. Probably cause they didn’t pass the tax thing last year. We’re being held together with duct tape as it is.”

  Critock put his hands behind his head in exasperation as he walked away from the computer, pacing with frustration. “Stone knives and bearskins, I swear to Kon. This place is run by barbarians.” He walked down to a desk, and then turned around, placing his hands on the rough wood. “I mean, how do you people learn in an environment like this? ‘Passing the tax thing’? You have to beg for money to pay for the most basic of education? It thought your planet left the dark ages.”

  Shanna shook her head as the computer s
creen finally changed from black writing to a blue background, which didn’t mean it was fully booted but at least there was some progress being made. “Don’t look at me, I’m just stuck here. Who’s Kon anyway?”

  “What?”

  “Kon. Name you keep mentioning. Your sword, ‘I swear to…’, who is he? I thought you didn’t have a God?”

  Critock sighed, not wanting to waste any time. It wasn’t the conversation that he didn’t like, he actually found it easy to talk to Shanna about Marconian culture. It was more the invisible ticking clock in the background towards their annihilation. “Not exactly a God, he was one of the Five. The warrior one, defended the great shard, but ended up destroying it and creating this universe. My sword is allegedly what he used to do it.”

  “Do you believe that?” The computer beeped, and a picture appeared on the screen, along with a bar at the bottom. It was still loading everything in but the end was in sight.

  Critock shrugged. “It is a nice sword, one of a kind, and no idea how it was made. Even Marconian technology isn’t that advanced. But it is just a sword. Nothing about it really sings to me about it surviving the destruction of a universe and the creation of this one.”

  Shanna didn’t take her eyes off the screen. “Yeah, but I’d bet the Shards don’t look like anything special either.” She experimentally moved the mouse around, and was satisfied to see the cursor arrow move around the screen. “Okay, we’re in, let me get into the files.” Critock let out a breath as she stared intently, searching through a series of folders to find the one special one that she was looking for. A minute passed and Critock folded his arms impatiently.

  “Are they there?”

  “One secccond….” Clicking a non-descript folder that just was listed as ‘Q’, Shanna’s eyes widened as the screen was suddenly filled with image files, each with a name attached to it in alphabetical order. “Got it. We’re in.” She quickly clicked the first one listed, an Aaron Ackerman, and the screen suddenly changed to show the portly freshman. Critock came around the table and looked at the screen, and she clicked a plus button a couple times, zooming in on the face of the student, specifically his eyes. “This good?”

  He peered closer over her shoulder. “Perfect. And he’s not him.”

  “Then you take control. Little arrow next to his picture goes to the next one. Click clickclick. Simple.”

  Critock nodded as Shanna slid out of the teacher’s chair, allowing Critock to settle in, instantly clicking to the next student. It only took a couple of seconds for him to look exactly where he needed to, and then dismiss them as a possibility. He was elated, though his mind was singularly focused on the pictures. Finally, something was working! He clicked to the next, calling out to Shanna, who had sat down on the floor, her back against the desk. “We have enough time?”

  “Just keep clicking like you’ve never clicked before and we’ll make it. Probably.”

  Critock sighed as he stared. Time passed. As he became used to the system and the look of the students and how the eyes appeared on the screen, he managed to take the time it took to completely eliminate each student as a candidate from five seconds to less than one. The room was silent except for the sound of the clicking mouse. After about fifteen minutes of the imposing silence, in which Critock had progressed to the ‘R’s, Shanna spoke.

  “Cri-tock?”

  “Yeah?” The clicking did not cease.

  “What would happen if you didn’t leave?”

  Critock almost stopped clicking, but he regained control quickly. “What?”

  Shanna turned around, pulling herself up by the edge of the desk, being careful not to knock any of Mr. Phelps’ knick knacks out of place. “I mean what if you stayed on Earth with us?”

  “Uh…” He stopped to take a closer look at the eye of the current student. Satisfied that there was nothing there to see, he kept going. “I mean, what happens to Kyle? What do you mean exactly?”

  “Ok.” Shanna leaned over the desk. “We win. Bad guy dead, Shards destroyed, Happy ending. But you decide to stay here.”

  Critock didn’t have any idea where this was coming from. “Uh, why would I decide to do that? We won. My part of this is over. Did what you wanted to do, finished what I started. I told you what would happen if I stayed in Kyle’s body. I’m not willing to wipe him out.”

  “I didn’t mean that!” There was a brief pause as Critock continued to click. “You don’t have to stay in his body though, do you? You can jump to someone else, maybe someone that’s in a coma or something, and…”

  Critock stopped clicking and leveled a stern gaze at her. “And why would I do that? I don’t belong here, I have a home to get back to.”

  “Don’t stop.” She said, and he suddenly remembered the primary goal of the day and returned to his task. “Because we need you here. What happens after you leave and the next alien comes down wanting to invade us or cause a problem?”

  Click clickclick. “You’ve made it the entire history of your planet with only one alien contact, and that was my fault. Why are you so sure there’s going to be more?”

  Shanna came around to face him. “Because now we’re on the map. Before now nobody ever heard of Earth according to you. The only reason your buddy there is here is because of you. But now, to hear you talk about it, the entire universe is waiting to hear what happens, whether we should be destroyed or not.”

  Critock sighed. “Shanna, once Pt’ron and the Shards are gone, I highly doubt anyone’s ever going to hear of Earth ever again. It’s a small village on the way to nowhere special that accidentally got stumbled upon. Once we’re gone, nobody will ever mention it.” He glanced at Shanna, and could see that she remained unsure, and continued. “Look, once I get back up there, I’ll make sure Earth gets put into a protected status. Considering your world didn’t have any choice but to get drug into this, it’s not fair to expose you to any harm. If any ‘aliens’ approach your world, we’ll turn them around. How’s that?”

  “If you catch them.”

  Critock rolled his eyes and spun from the computer to face her. “Shanna, the universe is not the wild west. Nobody’s going to come down here looking for revenge on a species that isn’t much more advanced than the animals in a zoo. Especially since they’ll know that I was the one that did it.” He spun back around before she could answer. “Would you blame an anthill if a wasp stings you nearby?”

  She shook her head and kept looking at him with a challenging stare. “No, but I might get mad enough to accidentally step on it.”

  He glanced at the names that he was clicking through, and noticed the proximity of the end of the alphabet. “I’m starting to get a little worried here.”

  She squinted and looked at the screen. “Why?”

  “Because I think I’m almost done, but there’s no Pt’ron.”

  “Are you sure? You couldn’t have missed him, could you?”

  Critock scoffed. “I’m not stupid, Shanna, there’s no way I could have.” He clicked again, and was met with a small error that informed him what he was starting to dread. There were no more students to click through. If Pt’ron was here, he apparently wasn’t hiding amongst the children. “He wasn’t here. He isn’t here!” He stood up, feeling completely hopeless, and pounded the desk.

  “Calm down!” Shanna reached out and put a hand on Critock’s shoulder. “There has to be something we’re missing.” Critock did appreciate her saying “we” instead of “you’re”, and it helped him take a breath.

  “If you want to take a look at that, be my guest. How much time do we have left?” Critock walked back from the computer, looking out at the window.

  “Not long. Assemblies usually empty out right before the bell.” Shanna stared at the screen, trying to look for something that she would have missed. She backed out from the pictures and scanned through the list of names. “Damn.” She exclaimed after a moment.

  “No kidding damn. I’ve got some curses worked up too that wil
l break your neck if you try them.”

  “No, I mean we missed something. You’re…I mean Kyle isn’t on here.”

  “What? Let me see.” He turned around and huddled around the monitor with Shanna, their heads almost touching.

  “You see…” She pointed at the screen. “No Kyle Edison. And no Daniel, no Claire, no Brian, and a few other people that I know of. And no teachers.”

  Critock rubbed his face, the beginnings of a headache forming due to the sudden changes in mood. “Authority figures. Has Claire ever gotten in trouble with the school?”

  Shanna nodded. “Last year she got a lot of detentions and a in-school suspension for not doing homework. She got that fixed thanks to her brother, but…”

  Critock just stared at the screen. “That’s what it is then. Phelps has access to all the pictures of everyone except people that are trouble-makers. Kyle was probably part of this list too up until the other day. So who’s got the list of everyone else?”

  Shanna sighed. “Tompkins.”

  “The principal?” Critock stood straight up, and started pacing around the room. “Okay, I’ll get the sword. We need to get in there now.”

  Shanna came around the desk and intercepted his path. “You can’t do that! They’ll have to try and stop you, and then…”

  Critock was tired, tired of the delays, tired of everything that had gotten in his way to prevent him from completing his task. “Look,” He hissed at Shanna. “I’ve played it your way for long enough. Your entire planet is going to die unless I get that picture. Do you understand? Do you have any concept of that?”

  “Just give me some time, Cri-Tok!” Critock was starting to find the way she pronounced his name less endearing with every repletion and every stall.

  “We’re OUT of time!” Critock exploded at her in his own voice, which left her shaking, and it was that exact moment when Tom flew in, phasing through the glass pane on the door.