Not to be deterred from something as petty as a office secretary who he thought should have retired years ago, Daniel crept slowly to the left, and peeked in the window, careful not to expose his entire face lest he be caught and sent away, this time with a chaperone. He saw a figure being moved, the principal following with his hand on the body’s shoulder, or was he pushing? He couldn’t make out exactly who it was, but it appeared to be a boy, and he was struggling. Still being cautious, he put an ear to the window, hoping to make out something.
He could hear the boy yelling loudly, and almost didn’t need to have his ear pressed against the glass to hear anything. He couldn’t make out every word, but it was enough to get the gist across.
“HAVE TO…..ME GO.. …DEPENDS ON IT! EVERYTHING….END!” The boy was clearly worked up about something, and Daniel listened closely to make out the principal’s reply.
“Calm down, Kyle! We have to….” The group moved out of eyesight and earshot, and Daniel backed up away from the window. Kyle? What was he doing in there? He shook his head, unbelieving the changes that were happening to his friend. He was normal just a couple days ago! It was almost as if…
His thoughts were interrupted by the last warning bell. Thinking for a second, he turned down the hallway and started walking fast. He would have time to think on this shortly, for now if he didn’t hurry he was going to be late!
Critock was unceremoniously pushed into the small room the Nurse used to house patients that were overly sick, but as it was empty today it would be used as a cell. Critock turned as Principal Tompkins looked at him, and the short balding man cut him off before he could yell another entreaty.
“Kyle, please! You’re lucky we don’t have a resource officer here, otherwise you would be on your way to spend the night in jail. And I’m thinking that might be the place for you! You destroyed my office, broke a window…Do you know how much that window cost? How much taxpayer dollars you just ruined in your tantrum?”
Critock stared at the Principal, fighting the urge to grab him and choke him out. But even if he did that, he knew he’d never get out of the office. Tompkins was flanked by two larger teachers, one Critock could tell was fresh from the gymnasium. With his current strength sapped from his fight with the pirate, he didn’t know for sure if he could take all three of them, let alone be able to get out of the office and to his locker where he had placed the Sword of Kon. He tried one last time. “Please, if you just listen to me…”
Tompkins cut him off again sternly, not quite yelling but very close to it. “No more, Kyle. I gave you one chance already, and you repay me by using a poor innocent girl to break into my office and destroy everything you can get your hands on! And we have no idea where she went to! Do you understand how badly you must have scared her?”
Critock was silent, hearing the accidental truth in his words.
“It’s over, Kyle. We are calling your father to come get you. You are expelled from this school, and I will be thinking very hard as to if we press charges. As it is, you will compensate me for the destruction that you have caused!” Without warning, Tompkins spun around and marched out of the small room, still flanked by the teachers. The gym teacher grabbed the door handle on his way out, bringing it shut with some force. As soon as it shut, Critock was upon it, yelling in guttural Marconian every curse he could think of, no matter how much it was damaging the boy’s throat! He pulled as hard as his strength would allow, and when that failed, pounded his fists on the door. It was five full minutes before Critock, gasping from exertion and the lack of progress, stumbled backwards to the solitary bed in the room, sitting hard enough on the thin mattress that he could feel the lack of support from the metal underneath.
It was quiet in the room, and Critock could hear himself thinking. Truly his thoughts were his own. Even through the struggle with the pirate and his subsequent dragging into this makeshift prison, he could hear no sign of Kyle’s consciousness reasserting itself or at least calling out to him. For the first time since he had arrived on this planet, he felt as if he was completely alone with himself.
He couldn’t blame anyone else for the failure of this plan, that was solely on his shoulders. It was him who decided to put all his hopes behind Shanna using the computers, and it was him that had waited so long in Kyle’s skin that he had actually gotten comfortable, and tried finding solutions to problems that had nothing to do with him and wouldn’t even matter if he failed his mission! And now…Here he was. He had waited too long and had been far too passive for this to have worked. The original idea was best, to charge into the school after hours and deal with the aftermath as it came. He had the sword of Kon after all, it wasn’t like there was going to be anyone on this planet that could come close to resisting him!
Surprisingly, he realized the problem that had informed his decisions since almost the first hour he had arrived. He was experiencing life outside of his own self for the first time in hundreds of cycles. Being trapped in this body he could see and think about the effects his actions were making on people that ordinarily he wouldn’t give the slightest thought to. Shanna, Tom, even Kyle’s friends would have to deal with the fallout of anything he would think of, and incorporating his plans into their lives had pushed him to hold things off and wait for the proper time, a situation that he was having difficulty getting used to.
Even now that Kyle had grown silent and hadn’t attempted as far as he could tell to influence his thinking, as per the agreement, he still felt for him. The boy who had no choice but to accept his body being commandeered by an alien from another world. And through him Critock thought about the planet itself, how its billions of inhabitants would suffer through the reign of Pt’ron, or how they would all burn in the fires of his own failure.
Ordinarily Critock wouldn’t have given Earth a second thought as anything more as their chosen battleground, a location where he could wage war unbidden and unrestricted as he had done for cycles before. But its fate was his fault now, the unexpected consequences of decisions made in haste and anger a thousand cycles ago, before this planet had entered its middle ages of civilization. He balled his hands into fists.
It was too late now, of course. Trapped in this room and without help, Pt’ron would have the Shards activated before he could find a way out. His father coming to get him? Richard would never understand what was really happening. He’d be moved from this room into another prison, probably at his own home, and he’d never be able to convince anyone until it was too late for all of them. There was nothing more for Critock to do but lay back and wait for the end to begin. If there was to be anything that could be done it would have to be done by others.
As Critock lay on the bed thinking his regretful thoughts, a small noise began coming from the door that kept him from his freedom. More accurately the sound was coming from the bottom of the door, where a small sliver of light would be coming in if not for something blocking the crack, and that something was moving while grunting.
It got loud enough that Critock could hear the slight scraping and grunting, and he sat up from the bed, his curiosity piqued. He could see a faint light from where the sound was emanating from, and after a moment the source of the disturbance was revealed.
Tomkari, having completed his struggles, shook off the grime that had accumulated during his movements, then flew up to Critock excitedly.
“Do you know how long it took me to find you? C’mon, we need to find a way out of here…” The wisp started flying about the room, searching desperately for something that could be used to effect an exit, not noticing Critock shaking his head.
“Is Shanna safe?” Critock asked, interrupting Tom from his flight, who turned around.
“Yeah, she’s fine, they’re looking for her though. She’ll have to lay low for a bit but she’s waiting for us.”
“I’m not coming.”
“Yeah, but we need to get out of here quick, the Shards are going to activate soon, and…”
“Tom,
I’m not coming.” Critock laid back down on the bed, his hands behind his head, as the meaning of his words took hold of the wisp.
“What…What do you mean you’re not coming! We have to finish this! You looked at the pictures, Critock, you know which ones you haven’t seen, you…”
“I looked at hundreds of pictures today, Tom.” Critock pushed himself up, spinning his body and putting his feet flat on the floor. “They’re humans, they all look mostly alike. I have no idea which ones I saw and which ones I didn’t. It’s too late. We can’t stop the Shards from activating.”
“Ok…Ok when they activate then, Pt’ron’s not going to be able to hide himself then. He doesn’t know we’re here, we’ll just surprise him, and…”
“And what? Unless we get very very lucky he’s going to see us coming a mile away, and I don’t have the strength to keep this going any more. I’ve already screwed up enough for one lifetime.”
Tom shook his head, and approached Critock slowly. “Critock…We can’t do this without you. This is your plan, you brought us here…”
Critock pounded a fist on the bed. “And what happened then? The plan is a failure. Shanna’s had to hide, I’m locked in here, and nothing has gone right. If Pt’ron doesn’t know I’m here, he knows something’s going on with the pirate’s ship and Tompkins' office being wrecked! He may not even be at the school anymore.
“If I had done what I was supposed to do, Tom, Pt’ron wouldn’t have been alive to come here. We defied orders over and over just to find out who he was. Bakkara died, he came here, and now this entire world is going to die, and The Five knows what’s going to happen to the Empire! It’s over Tom. Let me stay in a corner like I always should have and maybe, just maybe, the universe will right itself without my interference.”
Tom slowly floated in front of Critock, who had slowly laid his head back once again on the pillows. “We were sent on a mission, Critock.”
Critock closed his eyes. “The mission’s done, we lost. Get Shanna someplace safe. as safe as you can. If the world doesn’t end today, then it’s going to be a very dangerous place to be for the next little while. I’m sorry, Tom. I’m sorry you had to get mixed in with my mistakes.” He turned and faced the wall, curling up to himself.
Tom thought about speaking again, but he knew it would likely be of no use. Critock, for whatever reason, had had enough of this. Honestly, really, who could blame him? The amount of stress and fighting that he had undertaken in the last two days was more than anyone could stand, least of all a former soldier who hadn’t done anything of this level in a thousand cycles. So instead of speaking Tom quietly floated back down, moving himself under the door in a slow squishing dragging style, and after a moment of grunting and effort, he had left Critock to his own devices.
After a minute had passed of pure silence, Critock turned onto his back, his eyes still closed. He began speaking, but the words were not for himself at all, instead they were directed towards the body that he was inhabiting, the boy who had no choice in his heroism but was a hero all the same no matter how much he resisted. How could he have expected any less of him?
“I’m sorry, Kyle. I’m sorry for coming into your life the way I did, sorry for sending Pt’ron to you. I tried. I really tried. He was my friend. Imagine if Daniel, or John…Or Shanna…Turned out to be someone that you absolutely hated. That they had worked their entire life to undermine you and destroy you. And you didn’t even realize it? That you had lost everything just because you trusted and loved them? Just imagine that…
“But that’s an excuse. The truth is, I came down here expecting everything to just work the way it always has. Nice and simple, I show up and take control, and any plan I come up with will be the right thing to do and it’ll all turn out okay, bad guy loses, we win, I leave, Universe loves me again. It’s a nice thought, huh?
“It didn’t happen, you know it didn’t. You’re a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you have to deal with all of this in your head, and something that you should never ever have experienced in your life. You should have had the rest of your life the way you wanted it, whatever it was supposed to be. And now…
“I stole that from you, Kyle, and I can’t give that back. Not now. I can’t stop him anymore, I just don’t have any fight left in me. I want you to get out of here. Go with your father. When it starts, if Pt’ron stops the missiles and you survive, get as far away from here as possible. Find Tom and Shanna, and survive. If you’re lucky, he’ll find a way off this world without killing most of the planet to do it. And then live your life, and don’t ever let anyone control you again. I’m sorry. This wasn’t your war.”
With his last, Critock let himself go. He removed any mental blocks or restrictions that was preventing Kyle from accessing any part of his mind, and let himself just drift away, relinquishing his feelings and consciousness and just going limp. He felt the light from the room fade away, and then everything else along with it.
The next thing that Kyle knew is he had control to open his own eyes again. It was a thing that he, like most people, took for granted, along with the ability to move, stretch, even breathe, but Kyle appreciated every moment as he experimentally moved his limbs around, and sat himself up on the bed, and then rose to a standing position, testing his limits as he walked around the room. He felt soreness in his side where the Pirate had knocked his body into the bookcases in Tompkins’ office, but it was healing quickly. In his head he could hear himself think loudly again instead of the muffled noise he had experienced over the last day, and he found he could also pick up memories and stray ideas from Critock as well, even though as much as he tried to search his mind, he couldn’t find the Marconian’s unique mind anywhere. Here at the end of the world, he had been left wholly alone.
He was surprised to find that he wasn’t mad at the alien. While it was true that his mind had been taken without his will, and his body along with it, he accepted Critock’s apology and knew that it wasn’t his fault. It was just one of those random things, it could have been anyone standing in his way. He wondered that if it had been Phelps instead of him would the world have been able to be saved? Would Pt’ron have been able to be stopped before any of this had happened?
Kyle suddenly felt guilty. He knew deep down that it was stupid, it was no more his fault than anyone else’s. But if he had just simply not been standing in that spot at that time…Could he have doomed the world? A sudden wave of dizziness took him over, partially from the exertion his body had been through even if he wasn’t in control of it, and also from the realization that instead of being angry at Critock he should be angry at himself. He sat hard on the bed, trying to get to grips with being back in control and everything that had happened, when suddenly there was a knock at the door, and then the doorknob turned.
Kyle’s head shot up, prepared for anyone, or at this point anything, to come through the door. His eyes quickly met his father’s, who looked at him with a concerned look.
“Kyle?” Richard crossed the room and looked down at the boy. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Tears came to Kyle’s eyes unbidden, and he tried to blink them away. “Not now, dad, okay? I just want to leave.” He stood, and started walking out of the room, needing to get as far away from this place as he possibly could while he still could.
Richard had gotten the call that his son had needed to be picked up and that there had been some kind of incident. When he had quickly arrived at the school he had spent a short amount of time with the Principal who led him to the shattered office and tried to speak to him at length about how Kyle had become problematic the last few days and had snuck in and destroyed the room for no reason. Richard had nodded, but also wasn’t willing to speak to the principal or anyone else without having heard from his son, and possibly a lawyer. He simply asked to be shown to his son and that they would be in touch later. As much as the boy had seemingly changed over the last couple days, just as the principal had said, this was so
mething far beyond what he could even be capable of! A whole window smashed? Computer destroyed? With what? How? None of this made any sense, and he wasn’t going to just hear one side of it. As he watched his son storm out of the room, he knew there was more to the story that the principal either wasn’t telling him or that he didn’t know, and he was going to find out what it was. He turned and followed Kyle out of the room, letting him work at his own pace.
The bell had rung, but Claire paid it no attention at all. Where was he? She had waited exactly where he always was this time of day, but for the first time in weeks he had missed their ‘appointment’ at lunch to get a quick make out in before the rest of the day took them away from each other. It was the final bell that signaled that class was to begin shortly and she should be in the class when she sprung into action. She knew that he typically worked in the office this time of day, and hoped to track him down there. She didn’t see him, but she did see Kyle storming out of the office door, followed shortly after by his father. She stayed back and watched as they both moved out of the doors of the school entirely. What had happened?, she wondered, but at this time, it wasn’t something that was of a pressing matter. She peeked in the window of the office, but Daniel was nowhere to be found. She folded her arms, and looked at the clock. Was that the time? She couldn’t believe she almost forgot… She suddenly moved towards the stairwell, her face filled with worry.
The class had just started, but already John’s hand was raised. It was unusual in itself to see his hand raised when there was a lesson being taught but at this point the teacher had barely opened her mouth. Sighing, not wanting to know what was going on but not wanting to ignore him either, she pointed to him.
The Joining: The Saga of the Shards Book One (The Cycle of the Shards 1) Page 37
