The Ninth: Invasion (46 page)

“So why have you brought us here, Alden?” Tyra asked.

“All in good time, my dear, all in good time.  For now, I have a few questions of my own.  I warned you we’d be having a chat when you got back, didn’t I?” Alden asked Brent.

He nodded distractedly as he took in the surroundings.  The architecture wasn’t like anything he had ever seen before but had an air of familiarity to it.  Smooth black surfaces covered everything.  He could make out tiny grooves carved into the black material that formed a flowing grid over everything.  Brent wondered what they could be used for.  The grooves lining the ceiling ruled out any material that would be affected by gravity, as it would simply fall out.  As they wandered in deeper, he spotted scientists in CI uniforms investigating strange machinery that didn’t look like any man made device he’d ever encountered.

“I’m curious,” Alden said, clearing his throat to get Brent’s attention.  “Why did you lie to the young girl?”

“What girl?” Rhea asked.

“The one I saved on the Harbinger,” Brent said.  “I didn’t want to burden her.  For a girl so young to be saddled with the knowledge she permanently disabled someone wasn’t something I wanted.”

“Interesting.  Even with the knowledge that your life would be forever altered, you still worried about the girl’s well-being.  You do realize she’ll find out the truth one day.”

“Of course, but she’ll be older by then.  Hopefully, she’ll be more prepared for that knowledge when she finds it for herself.”

“I see.  Tell me, Brent, where were you born?”

He stopped dead in his tracks at the question.

“Did I hit a nerve?” Alden asked innocently.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Kindra asked forcefully.

“Cain, what do you know?” Angela asked suddenly.  “I can tell you’re hiding something.  You’re terribly worried about it.  What’s going on?”

“Allow me to explain,” Alden said, gesturing for them all to keep moving.  “A long time ago, before I had taken control of Core Industries from my father, I stumbled across a strange bit of information.  An odd project the government was conducting in secret.”

“What does this have to do with Brent?” Tyra asked.

“Your friends have no patience,” Alden said to Cain with a sigh.  “If you’ll let me tell my story, I promise you’ll understand.  Anyway, the project was so secretive that all I could find on it was a name.  ‘Chronos.’  At first I had no idea what that word even meant.”

“Chronos.  The Greek god of time,” Brent said almost automatically.

“If only I’d had you around back then, you could have saved me a great deal of searching,” Alden said with a smile.  “However, you are perfectly correct.  Apparently someone in the government wanted to play with time.  And after the Great War had ended and everything settled down, there was a renewed interest in all sciences that didn’t relate to war.  We’d lost ten thousand years of advancement to the Great War, and the reformed government was eager to make up for lost time.”

“You mean the government found a way to control time?” Penny asked in awe.

“Not quite.  As it turns out, time isn’t as easy to alter as they thought.  All the records regarding the project were sealed or destroyed, but apparently they created a working device of some kind.  However, it didn’t work exactly how they wanted it to, so the project was largely regarded as a failure.  Now, before you ask what this has to do with Brent, let me explain why I’ve told you all that.  You see, while Chronos didn’t deliver the desired results, it did prove something.  Time wasn’t completely beyond our grasp.  A second project was started, one called ‘Lazarus.’”

“The man brought back from the dead?” Brent asked.

“Exactly right again,” Alden said with a wicked grin.  “Using what they learned from Chronos, they started dabbling with bringing back a dead person.”

“Zombies?” Doug asked.

“Nothing so melodramatic,” Alden said with an amused grin.  “You see, the goal was to remove someone from time the instant before they died and bring them to the present.  The idea sounded wonderful.  Important people who’d been killed in accidents could be saved from their fate.  Only problem was, it never worked.”

“Why not?” Cain asked, sounding as clueless as the other troopers.

“I have no idea.  They spent centuries working on the project without ever figuring out why it failed to work.  Countless experiments and attempts, the brightest minds in the Commonwealth, and all of it for nothing.”

“How do you know all this?” Rhea asked.  “I know CI is powerful, but even you can’t know everything.”

“It’s interesting you should ask that.  You see, about eighteen years ago there was a terrible accident.  The facility housing Lazarus exploded.”

“What caused it?” Ronald asked.

“The important thing is it weakened security.  A few hours after the explosion, I had full access to what was left of the data files on Lazarus.  Truly fascinating stuff; it’s a shame it never worked.”

“So what does this have to do with Brent?” Tyra asked impatiently.

“Tell me, young man, how old are you?” Alden asked with a smile.

Brent stared at Alden as his mind put the pieces into place.

“Wait a minute,” Erin said in complete confusion.  “I don’t understand.  Brent is this Lazarus person?  Does that mean he’s dead?

Alden let out a long labored sigh.

“If I’m understanding all this right,” Dante said, thinking aloud, “it means Brent might have been brought forward in time.”

“From where, or for that matter, when?” Ronald asked.

“You knew, Cain?” Angela asked turning on him.  “You aren’t at all surprised.”

Brent was shocked that he too could tell Cain wasn’t surprised.  He had to focus on him, but Brent could sense what he was feeling.  Cain wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

“Well, dad didn’t tell me the whole story, but I figured it was something like that.  You have to admit Brent is
unique
.”

“Sure, but a guy from the past?” Kindra asked, studying Brent.  “That’s a tough one to swallow.”

“Shouldn’t he have suffered from future shock or something?” Mr. Springate asked.

“Maybe he did to some extent.  Hiroko always talked about how lost he was when she first met him . . .” Dante immediately shut his mouth as he realized what he’d just said.

The entire group fell silent, even Alden.  Brent quickly searched the group and realized Hiroko and Cassandra were missing alongside Owen.  Realization hit him with a force stronger than any physical blow he’d ever received.  Brent stumbled back a few steps and grabbed onto a low pillar with his left hand before falling completely.

“What happened to the Harbinger,” he asked in a low voice.

“It was a terrible shame . . .” Alden said.

“The Shard forces destroyed the ship’s jump drive.”  Ronald put a sympathetic hand on Brent’s left shoulder.

“The Wall collapsed mid-jump,” Dante said with moist eyes.  “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Any survivors?” Brent asked, marshalling his strength for the answer he already knew.

“After the Shard fleet left,” Alden said slowly, “a recovery team was sent in.  They found only wreckage,” he said apologetically.

“Maybe they survived somehow.  The Shard could have . . .” Marie said hopefully.

“The Shard don’t take prisoners,” Brent said flatly.

“You don’t know that for sure!  They could . . .” Liz pleaded with a whimper in her voice.

“On the fifth exam while you were all fighting against the Citadel, I was fighting alongside them.”  Brent shot a dark gaze at Alden.  “The Shard don’t take
organics
prisoner.”

“What did you just say?” Alden asked, taking a step back.

“The Shards don’t see humans, or intelligent beings.  They see only
filthy organics
.  Isn’t that something Rita said?”  Brent pressed as he stood and faced Alden.  “Then again, you probably knew that, too.  Didn’t you, puppet master?”

The troopers all backed away from Brent.  Liz quickly hid behind Marie’s back, clenching her shirt tightly.  Alden tried to remain firm, but his fear was palpable.

“Answer me!” Brent demanded.

“I didn’t know about Rita.  I thought the Shard might be controlling her or manipulating her.  I never dreamed she could be one of them.”  A bead of sweat rolled down Alden’s forehead.

“You knew the Shard were alive?” Tyra shouted.

Brent took a step toward Alden and reached out for him with his right hand.  When nothing happened, he remembered he had lost that, too.  Blinding anger and sorrow swelled over him.  This man had known the dangers awaiting them, but had said nothing.  Cassandra was dead because of him.  He wanted to lash out at Alden, to strike him down for not warning them about the Shards.  His rage boiled inside as he envisioned countless ways of ending the man’s life.

A sudden calm covered him.  The emotion had filled him too quickly to be natural.  Brent shot a quick glance at Angela.  It was apparent she was focusing entirely on him.  Cain noticed his stare and stood between the two of them.  He could feel Cain’s concern for Angela.  Cain was
terrified
Brent was going to destroy her.  In the young man’s eyes he could see his reflection.  He wasn’t a Weaver or a trooper, just a monster ready to strike.

Taking a deep breath, Brent allowed himself to be swallowed completely by the calm Angela was inducing.  With the Shards running around, there was already a monster on the loose; he didn’t need to become a second.  As the calm settled in and he regained rational thoughts, he realized killing Alden wouldn’t solve anything.  Alden’s death wouldn’t bring back Cassandra and the others, nor would his arm suddenly reappear.

“Since you know all the answers, tell me.  Who am I?” Brent asked Alden in a cold voice.  “Where did I come from?”

“I don’t know.”  Alden tried to swallow against a dry throat.  “There wasn’t much information to go on in the first place, almost nothing at all about you.”

“So why the keen interest?”

“You were the only result of the project.  There was an entire commission created in secret to oversee your development.  I wanted to know what they knew.  Turns out they didn’t have any idea when or where you came from either.”

“And the assassin?”

“That wasn’t my doing,” Alden said nervously, unsure if the boy would believe him.  “Rita had standing orders that all exceptional young recruits needed to be neutralized.  She had agents stationed at most academies.”

“You knew about it though,” Brent said slowly, probing the man’s emotions.  “Why didn’t you do anything to stop the attempt on my life?”

“I was worried about what the military was turning you into.  I
had
to know what you were capable of.  How you would react.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain with words.  Let me show you instead.”

Alden’s emotions seemed genuine.  Brent nodded.  Letting out a large sigh of relief, Alden gestured to unseen spectators.  Instantly the room came to life.  A familiar green energy pulsed through the grooves in the walls and floor.  Brent recognized the patterns and the green light as the same kind used by the Shard during the fifth exam.  Large floating images came to life overhead.  Slashers overrunning settlements and other gruesome sights filled the floating containers.

“Is that happening right now?” Angela asked, watching the floating screens.

“Thankfully, no,” Alden said, watching as well.  “This moon was constructed by the Shards, and those images are from the distant past.  Core Industries stumbled across this moon centuries ago by complete accident.  Turns out that nebula out there isn’t a natural phenomenon.”

“
What
?” Tyra asked.

“Toward the end of the Great War both sides saw the writing on the wall.  They knew things were coming to a head.  Our ancestors desperately searched for anything that would give them an edge in the endgame.”

“The planet killers?” Dante asked.

“Precisely.  However, we naively assumed the Shards were ignorant of the coming end.  Turns out they were preparing for the end game as well.”

“Then this moon is . . .” Cain said looking around.

“One of the final weapons developed by our ancient foe,” Alden said with a smirk.  “The Shard called it Helios after the Greek god of the sun.  They planned to cover the entire Commonwealth with that nebula like the rising sun covers a world with light.  Once the nebula had us, we would be cut off from jump travel.  Without that, the planets of the Commonwealth would be cut off from one another.  It would only be a matter of time before starvation and barbarism destroyed the isolated worlds.  However, before they could put their plan into action we destroyed their homeworld.  So, the moon sat dormant until we finally figured out what it really was.”

“How long ago was that?” Rhea asked.

“Long enough.  Core Industries has been studying this relic for generations.  Most of what we learned was meaningless.  Statistics and countless useless facts we can’t believe the Shard bothered to collect.”