Alec tried hard not to scream but a gurgled cry tore from his lips. Despite his painful wrist he scuttled backwards like a crab through the grass but the cloud of sparkles moved past Logan to hover between them. Alec stopped, his heart pounding painfully in his throat.
Logan’s orb was held directly at the rip. He fairly growled his next words. “Explain, boy.”
Alec held very still and his eyes never left the rip. Thoughts scrambled over themselves inside his head. How would he explain this without telling the truth?
“Alec, are you ready to play again?” Rhozan’s voice rose and fell in a sibilant wave that forced goosebumps into life all over Alec’s skin.
Stay calm, he ordered himself. “I don’t want to play, Rhozan. Find someone else.”
“Alec, are you ready to play again?” Rhozan repeated.
“How do the Others know you?” Logan stepped closer, bringing himself perilously close to the rip. “I demand you tell me.”
Alec clamped his mouth shut and concentrated with all his might as Tyon persuasion flowed over him, forcing its way into his mind with an almost overwhelming compulsion to spill his guts. A sweat broke out on his brow. He shivered with the strain. I’m not telling you, he repeated over and over in his mind. I won’t.
Logan took another step. He was practically touching the rip. His eyes blazed and his fists curled into balls at the defiance. Alec shivered. When Logan got him he was going to be torn into little pieces. If Logan got him. One more step and Logan would be touching the rip and pulled right inside. He didn’t know the way out of the Other’s dimensional access port, whereas if he could get a hold of an orb, Alec did. He just had to make Logan so angry that he’d make a mistake, forget for a crucial second about the rip. If Logan took his orb with him into Rhozan’s domain, well so be it.
Alec swore, loudly and vehemently. He forced a saucy grin in Logan’s direction. Take that, jerk.
It might have worked if the rip hadn’t moved closer to Alec at the same time Logan took another step forward.
“You will pay for your disrespect,” Logan hissed viciously.
Suddenly two Operatives, both in identical grey coveralls, winked into existence on either side of him. They acted immediately. The man to Alec’s left reached forward and, without a word, grabbed Alec’s shoulder and pulled him away from the advancing rip with a painful tug. The second man pulled out his orb and focused it on the rip, sending a jet of blinding white light towards it.
The rip reacted immediately. It enlarged with a sickening pulse and a sound Alec had never heard before, like the hissing of a thousand insects blasting in his ears.
Alec tried to get to his feet but before he could find a purchase in the slippery grass, the teleportation process had begun. In and out, over and under, through and not through. Alec shook his head to clear the distorting sensation of travel the second his feet touched something solid. He looked around quickly hoping to bolt for safety but the grip on his arm never lessened.
High above him, a rock ceiling of carved grey stone soared as far as a football field in all directions. The familiar smell of cold rock, metal, and alien superiority pervaded his nostrils. He didn’t even need to see the huge movie screens that dotted the rock chamber walls, all playing televised real-time events the world over. He knew exactly where he was. Crap, crap, and double crap. His heart sank down to his ankles.
Quickly remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know anything about the secretive underground headquarters, Alec kept his head down and feigned a terror that wasn’t wholly manufactured. He stole several surreptitious looks around him as his captor marched him towards the main console at the center of the station.
Not much had changed, although the last time he was here the world was deteriorating significantly, with rips opening all over the place and the malevolent influence Rhozan exerted at an all-time high. There’d been riots and general mayhem and the National Guard had been deployed in many countries. The Tyon Operatives had responded with an unemotional intentness. Now, Alec could feel relative calmness in the air. It didn’t make him feel much better, though.
He didn’t see anyone he knew. While Anna had kept him sequestered during his previous stay, he had seen several of the same faces over and over when she talked to her compatriots while he was supposed to be sleeping. There had been someone named Ty who’d been a frequent visitor, as well as a few others whose names he didn’t know.
The Operative led him through a multitude of small corridors at a steady clip. The brown metal walls were only shoulder high, like the dividers that made modern office spaces into a series of cubicles. Alec could see across the entire cavern but, other than heads bobbing up and down as people moved in and out of the cubicles, there was nothing of interest.
Alec squirmed around for a moment to get a look at his captor’s face but the firm-jawed visage was unfamiliar. He looked behind him. No sign of Logan. If the Commander hadn’t travelled with them, it only meant a temporary reprieve.
The towering center console rose up ahead of him and, sure enough, his captor led him straight to it. There was a small crowd gathered in front. Four blond, uniformed women with serious expressions surrounded a wide screen and stared intently at it. All held orbs in their hands, Alec noted, and all turned as one to stare at him.
“Report,” barked an older man Alec hadn’t noticed. He stepped out from behind the others and gave Alec a long curious look. He was quite broad shouldered and stocky, which was an unusual deviation from the typical tall and thin Tyon. Moreover, he had a closely shaven goatee, which would have marked him as different even if his body type hadn’t. He glanced at Alec’s captor with sharp, assessing eyes. “What is this Potential doing inside the Base, Kellin?”
“This Potential’s readings are exceptionally strong and he was in the direct proximity of a rip,” Kellin said. “Logan wishes to begin his analysis as soon as possible.”
Alec scuffed his toe and tried to look scared and helpless. Which was depressingly easy.
The older Operative murmured, “I did not give any such order.”
Alec felt Kellin’s shrug. “No, sir. Logan sent the message to myself and Irik, directly.”
“Where is Irik?”
“At the location of the rip, Commander Kholar, sir. There is a serious anomaly with this particular rip and Logan wants a full scan and report. They are conducting it presently.”
Kholar rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He turned his attention to Alec. “What is your name, Terran?”
His tone maintained Logan’s air of authority but there wasn’t the cold, condescension Alec was used to hearing from a commander of the Tyon Collective. Thinking quickly, he said his middle name. “William.”
“Where are you from?”
“Toronto.” Alec looked about him and let a distinct tremor enter his voice along with the most subservient tone he could muster. “I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I want to go home. Please.”
“How did you get to Ireland with my second in command? Did you see the rip?”
Taking a deep breath, Alec launched into a tale as close to truth as possible. “I found this big marble in a tube station in London. I got short of cash and tried to use an ATM. You know, a cash machine. But it wouldn’t take my card. I got really angry and suddenly the machine just spat out all this money. It took me a while to figure out that when I held the marble, machines would give me money. It was the coolest thing. Then this big guy shows up, demands the marble back and, before I could give it to him, grabs me. I must have blacked out or something coz the next thing I knew we were in some field and this big guy is yelling at me and there’s a cloud of dust coming at us.”
Alec didn’t need to fake the shiver. “I was totally freaked. Then this guy shows up,” he nodded in Kellin’s direction, “and the next thing I know I’m here. I wanna go home.” He looked from one Tyon to another, pasting the pleading look on his face that had worked so often with his mother.
“I am Commander Kohlar. The man you met in London is Logan. He is my second in command and in charge of this particular mission. You will obey him, as you will me, in the future.”
Alec whimpered. “Please, I don’t know who you are and I don’t belong here.”
“You are a Potential,” Kohlar continued. “One of the very few humans on this planet with the special ability to protect themselves from the influence of the Others, an enemy that invades worlds such as yours. You must learn to protect yourself from the Others’ attack. If you are strong enough, you may protect your planet from destruction. It is a noble cause. You must accept this and train for it.” Kohlar seemed to finish his speech. He turned to Kellin and gave a curt nod. “Since the boy is already here, we will begin the training process. Who is the Guardian of Potentials here?”
“Dean, sir. I’ll have him prepared to begin his training.” Kellin didn’t wait for any further instructions. Grabbing Alec’s arm in an unbreakable grip, he tugged him out of central command before Alec could think of an argument to stay. Kellin led him through the maze of divider walls until they arrived at a long line of metal bunk beds placed up against the rock-hewn wall of the cavern. There were small metal cupboards between each bunk and a large metal room protruding out from the wall that Alec remembered was a bathroom. A familiar young man was sitting at a table reading something. He looked up as Alec and Kellin approached.
Dean was around Darius’s age but slightly taller and wider across the shoulders. His eyes were a pale, almost colourless blue, but had none of Logan’s coldness. The last time Alec had seen him, he was trying to kill Riley, Darius, and himself. There was none of the hatred in his expression as Dean half rose from his seat and waved his computer screen into nothingness.
“Your first Potential. Logan found him and ordered him here. Kohlar wants him trained,” Kellin said as a way of introduction. “He calls himself William.”
Dean reached forward to shake hands. He had an almost crushing grip and his hand had multiple calluses. Alec tried not to shake the blood back into his fingers once Dean let go, grateful it hadn’t been his aching wrist Dean shook.
“I thought the retrieval phase hadn’t started yet?” Dean said.
“Are you questioning Logan’s decision?”
Dean gave a slight grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course not. What the Commander wants is fine with me.”
Kellin seemed to accept this statement at face value and let go of Alec’s shoulder. Without another word he turned and left. There was a long pause. Alec kept his mouth shut and waited for Dean’s next move.
“Well, let’s get you kitted out,” Dean said with a definite shade of warmth in his voice and a hint of a smile on his face. “As you can see, you’re the first of the Terran trainees so you get the choice of bunks.” Dean got up and crossed to a small locker behind Alec, opened the lid and pulled out a grey one-piece coverall. Alec couldn’t help the grimace. “There’ll be lots of things here you find different from home. The faster you give up the memories of your previous life the faster you’ll assimilate to our ways. In the long run, it’ll be easier.”
“How do you know?” Alec asked. He took the offered coverall and held it at arm’s length. “I didn’t ask for this. I just want to go home.”
“I’m afraid that it isn’t an option. Potentials never return to their previous lives after their training. They always continue with the Collective after completion, even if their world is rendered resistant.”
“Resistant to what?” Alec tried to ask the questions he was sure he’d ask if this was the first time he’d been here.
“The Others. Pan-dimensional beings with a thirst for domination.” Dean began rummaging in another locker, this time for shoes. He pulled out several pairs, eyed them critically before dropping them back. “Those of us in the Tyon Collective, which by the way now includes you, have an important mission. We disseminate the resistance gene to humanoid populations throughout this galaxy, which reduces the chance of the Others decimating a world. It’s important work.” Dean looked up and froze.
Alec didn’t need to turn around.
“Place this boy in confinement immediately,” Logan barked from only a step behind. “I must interrogate him.”