The Solar Flare (3 page)

     “I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to find you . . . if it weren’t for the way that he treats her
,” he added gravely. This is going to be so much fun he thought.

      The other three Asterions glanced at each other. “What do you mean
?” Xavier asked.

     “I don’t know if it’s
because she is human or not. He is cruel to her. I’ve observed them carefully and it seems to me that he is disappointed that she is human. After I met her, they took her from her home on Orionis. They tow her from place to place on his starship, and seem to work her very hard for her keep. She’s practically a slave. The poor thing isn’t allowed to speak to anyone, or go out un-escorted by one of the crew members. They keep her near because she’s Wesley’s match. It’s almost as if . . .  they don’t know what to do with her. She has no hope of escape, how could she, surrounded by a crew of our kind. I fear for her.”

     “James, that’s terrible!” Melanie exclaimed, addressing Xavier by his first name
, looking at him.

     “I know if my mate were still alive, I wou
ld do anything to keep her safe,” Bryant added.

     “It shouldn’t matter whether or not she is human.
If she is truly his mate then Wesley should have accepted her the way that she is!” Lucas added.

     “I just didn’t think it was fair for you not to know about her, given the circumstances, and the way she has been treated.
I’ve said what I came to say. Now that you do, I will let you get back to your business,” Bryant spoke gently, pleased with his lies, rising to leave.

     “Wait.” Xavier stood suddenly. “You are a tracker, are you not?”

     “Indeed I am,” Bryant replied, beginning to feel the sweet sensation of victory.

     “
Do you think you could lead us to her?”

     Bryant paused, pretending to think it over. “It may take some time to locate them, but I believe I could.”

     “We’ll leave as soon as you can collect your things from your hotel,” Xavier said resolutely.

     “C
ertainly.” Bryant exited the Solstice burning with excitement. The pain and emptiness Robinson is going to feel when Xavier takes Ava away from him will be nothing short of what he deserves after he let my wife die, he thought.

Chapter 3
:  The Truth

     As soon as Ava boarded the Andromeda and was safely strapped in, Ash lifted off gently
. As to what destination, Ava did not know. She had left everything behind her now. She had also probably broken numerous laws within the last half hour; there was no way she could ever go back without accepting some form of consequence.  Wesley had stayed with her during takeoff. Despite her fears, his presence seemed comforting. She had been reluctant to speak, but finally told him what had happened after they were safely in space.

     “Here Ava.” Naom
i appeared and handed Ava a glass of water and a cool damp cloth so that she could wipe her face.

     “Thank you Naomi.”

     “You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can get for you now?”

     “No thanks. I’m good,
” Ava replied quickly.

     “I’ll leav
e you two alone so you can talk,” she said gently as she walked away.

     “Don’t worry about what happened on Capri, Ava. That doctor will never touch you again. Everything’s going to be fine.” He took her hand and warmed it in his.

     “Will it?” Ava said as if she did not believe it, staring at nothing in particular.

    “I Promise.” He sounded so sure.

     “Wesley, we need to talk.” She looked directly at him. “I need to know the truth about you.”

     “I know, . . . it’s t
ime. We have a lot to discuss. Why don’t you go to our quarters and change into something warmer and meet me in the common room.”

     “All right. I’ll be a few minutes.” Ava rose to make her way up to the room she and Wesley usually shared when they traveled. She had to admit, she was a little chilled in the thin material her uniform was made out of. She felt grateful she had the good sense to leave some clothes on the ship on their last trip. It was nice to put on some of her own things, a cream colored warm sweater and black cargo like pants and boots. Once dressed
she calmly made her way to the common room. She entered and caught Wesley pacing back and forth nervously. Strange for him, she thought. He came to her as she made her way to a small couch and sat down. He sat next to her, never taking his eyes away from her.

     “Wesley, I know something happened on E.S. Number One.
I know that I had a broken leg and that it was healed without my knowledge . . .  how did that happen?” Ava asked the first question, leaving it open for any type of explanation. She wasn’t sure exactly how she should approach this sensitive subject.

     “Ava, I need to tell you about myself. All I ask is that you keep an open mind. I will need to
go much further back than that, but I will answer your question.”

     “Okay,” s
he answered calmly.

     Wesley stood up and walked a few paces opposite her and leaned back against the wall facing her. Then
, after a few moments, he began to speak.

     “I’m not exactly what you think I am. I was not born a human like you
on Earth. My body is human, but my essence and my energy is not. Let me explain. To be honest, I don’t know how I was created, or born, or what I even am. I’m not sure exactly when I became self aware, although it was eons ago. Perhaps even the beginning of time itself. All I recall was that I could think, see, hear, and move anywhere I wanted. I had no form; I guess you could compare me to what you would call a ghost, though I have never seen one. I believe that I am a combination of essence and energy. I travelled through the galaxies, observing stars, the sun, the planets, anything and everything.  The things I have seen were incredible, breathtaking, and sometimes terrible, but now are only a distant memory for me. After an unknown amount of time, I saw the big blue planet you knew as Earth. I traveled there and saw humans for the first time. It amazed me; a being that had the power to act on their desires. They could do anything they wanted.”

     He paused. Ava wasn’t sure what to make of this story, but listened as he continued. “I observed humans for a very long
time, must have been hundreds of years before I decided that I wanted to be one.”

     “You wanted to be human?”
Ava asked in an amused tone.

     “Yes. After being nothing
more than a free floating essence all of my existence I wanted to see through human eyes, touch and feel things, and to interact with people. Humans are the ultimate machine.”

    “Are you saying that you are the only one of your kind?” Ava asked with skepticism.

     “No. There were others like me, and we interacted occasionally, but it is nothing like what humans do, and my kind are few and far between.”

     “So how did you ‘become’ human?”
She asked, still not buying into his story.

     “
I didn’t know how to do it. I had seen humans being born, and I had seen them die. I figured my best chance had to be surrounding one of those circumstances.”

     “You mean you couldn’t just possess someone?”

     “No. I was an essence, and I had energy, but I could not touch a human. I tried. I had no power to do anything. There is nothing stronger than the seam between a human body and a human soul. That is something only death can break. I had grown tired of my lonely existence observing humans. At one point I didn’t want to exist anymore. So, I decided to give it some serious effort. I decided that the only way for me to become human would be to try to take the body of someone who had just died.”

     Ava shifted in her seat. The thoughts of this made her uncomfortable, even though she wasn’t sure she believed all that she was hearing. She waited for him to go on.

     “I spent a lot of time choosing who I would try to become. Then one day I unexpectedly ran across this man,” he gestured towards himself.

     “Who was he?” Ava asked.

     “You wouldn’t have liked him Ava. When he wasn’t out sleeping around, he was busy shooting up at the expense of his parent’s trust fund. He was spoiled, foolish, and weak. He seemed to me a bit of a coward. He had no personality and was downright unpleasant.”

     “Why would you choose such a person?”

     “Because, . . . I had observed his careless behavior. You could say that he was a sure thing. It would be only a matter of time before he overdosed, and when he did, I would be there waiting.”

     “What happened?”

     “One evening, he was in his vast apartment by himself and had the bad judgment to take too much. Wasn’t long before his heart stopped and he collapsed. As soon as the life in him departed, I forced myself in. Looking back, I was just lucky, I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Somehow I channeled my energy to re-start his heart and figured out how to breathe. After a few minutes I opened my new eyes and observed my surroundings.  It was the most amazing experience but I was weak. Withdrawal is a bitch, but I had to go through it. Took me about 24 hours just to figure out how to crawl.”

     “So you revived a dead body?”
Ava asked incredulously, still not quite believing it.

     “It’s not that morbid Ava
, he had been dead less than a minute. You of all people can understand this. Humans attempt to do this to each other all of the time. Only, you call it cardiopulmonary resuscitation. CPR is only done on people who are clinically dead.”

     “Yes, but if the person
recovers and wakes up, they are still the same person.”

     “That’s true.
I can only imagine how strange this must sound to you. Believe me, I don’t think anyone would have missed him, and it’s not like I killed him, he did that to himself. We don’t have the power to touch someone who is alive and well when we are in our vapor like form. Humans are unaware of our existence when we are like that. They really have no idea. Besides, I didn’t even want to try taking over a body that had been long dead.”

     “So you truly are alive. I mean you seem alive, aren’t you?”

     “Yes, I’m alive as you are, and then some. In the beginning I was feeble. After about a week I seemed to recover and I could walk. I ate everything he had stashed in his apartment, packed a bag, took all of the cash he had in his safe, and left. This was long before The Great Impact of 2079. I crossed a few continents, changed my identity and started over. After spending centuries observing humans I had learned some of the languages. It was easier than I thought. After a long while I met Andre. He told me how he had observed me after my transformation and tried if for himself, on a victim of an automobile accident.”

    “He is like you then?”

     “Yes, all of my crew are like me.”

      “What do you call yourselves?” Ava asked, unsure if she could swallow this story.

     “Naomi came up with the idea to call us ‘Asterions’ after the meaning ‘ruler of the stars’ since that’s apparently where we believe we came from.”

     “So you are all Asterions
. . .  how many of you are there in existence?”

     “That I’m not sure of.
As you could imagine we like to keep to ourselves and not attract a lot of attention. We can sense others of our kind around us. I’ve only run across maybe a dozen others besides my crew. I know that somehow Andre, Naomi, and I
knew
each other before we became human. Perhaps we are related. They feel like my family, so that’s how we treat each other. I believe that I am the oldest Asterion in existence and that I have been human longer than any other Asterion.”

     “Do humans know about you?”

     “No, not generally. It’s not something we like to announce, you know. After I met Andre, his match, Naomi, followed his steps to become human so that they could continue to be together. We all began our lives. We had many occupations from one time to another. Mostly we worked on the development of the space stations. We had knowledge of the galaxy that humans didn’t and some of us have certain abilities that regular humans don’t.”

     “What kind of abilities?”

     “When we become human we are weak, but over time our essence and energy settle into our bodies and the energy builds. I discovered that I had the ability to teleport myself from place to place.”

     “Teleport?”
Ava asked, astonished.

     “Yes, but I don’t like to do it because it drains my energy.
This is how I got you home the night you were drugged at the club. I can also do some telekinesis.”

     “You can
use your mind to move objects?” Ava replied with disbelief. “Show me, I want to see this,” she said resolutely. His story was nothing if not incredible, but she wanted proof.

      He looked at
her, sensing her need to believe and vanished in front of her. Ava’s jaw dropped and she leapt up off of the couch, looking around for him.