The bushes behind them came alive again with noises. A loud growl erupted, followed by a terrifying hiss that echoed through the trees. There was a commotion in the fallen leaves, and then an orange alley cat jumped out from behind the shrubs and ran in front of the two of them.
“James, it’s you!” the cat said.
“Tenzing!” James cried out as he picked up the tabby and held him in his arms. “I’m so glad to see you! We didn’t know what happened to you. What are you doing all the way out here?”
“I’ve been trying to find you,” Tenzing replied and settled down into James’s arms. “I’ve just been chased by an amorous badger for the last half of a mile. Is he still behind me?”
James looked around the bushes. “I think he’s gone.”
“Thank goodness.”
“How did you know I was out here?” James asked as he stroked Tenzing’s side.
“I came to Fort Bragg with Lumen and Alexander. He’d changed himself to look like Asmodeus. All three of us were going to get inside the dome, but when the time came, I was left on the outside.”
“What happened to the real Asmodeus?”
“I chanted the Heart Sutra at him and sent him all the way back to hell,” Tenzing said with a grin on his alley-cat lips. “Asmodeus didn’t like that one bit!”
“How did you get away from Holcomb and his men?” James asked. “I thought they were going to sell Lumen to the Brazilians.”
“They probably would have, but Asmodeus was already there trying to take Lumen and Alexander back to Paragon when I found them,” Tenzing said and then suddenly realized that someone else was nearby in the shadows and turned to see who it was. “Prince Tutata Taara? My goodness! What are you doing here?”
“You two know each other?” James asked.
“Not officially, no, but I’d know him anywhere. Look at that golden hair. He’s the only person in the world with that Saesq’ec Imperial color.”
“I thought you never left your monastery,” James said.
“I oversaw the genealogy of his extended Saesq’ec family. That was one of my duties at Tengboche. I’ve been documenting his clan for years. It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”
Falling Star stood staring at the meowing alley cat not understanding one bit of the conversation.
James realized what was happening. “I know it sounds weird, but Tenzing isn’t this cat. He’s a Buddhist monk from the Tengboche Monastery in Nepal. He’s just inside the cat’s body for now. Tenzing says he knows who you are, and he’s been documenting your family for years.”
“Really? My clan does come from that part of the Himalayas, on the Nepalese border.”
“Let me try something,” Tenzing said and then closed his eyes and concentrated. A red flame began flickering in the air in front of him. In a flash of light, a large red stone, a hjärta stein, appeared and fell to the earth. Tenzing leaped from James’s arms and pushed the brilliant stone with his paw over to Falling Star.
“He wants you to pick it up,” James said.
Falling Star lifted the gem and examined it in James’s light. It glowed bright ruby red, then disappeared from his hand with a blinding flash. It made Falling Star feel a little bit dizzy.
“Now can you understand me?” Tenzing asked.
“Weird!” Falling Star said with great surprise. “I can. What was that stone? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s a Heart’s Stone, and it was presented to me by a powerful bodhisattva. Now that you have beheld it, you shall be able to communicate with all sentient beings.”
“Really?”
“Yes. That’s why I can do it too,” James added. “Tārā gave us this power to help in our fight against Paragon. Now you can talk to the bats if you want to.”
“This is amazing,” Falling Star said. “First my healing powers start expanding and now I can talk to the animals.”
“Just like Dr. Dolittle,” James replied.
“Does she work at Fort Bragg?” Falling Star asked.
“He’s a character in a story,” James said. “It’s both a book and a film.”
“Tell me the story,” Falling Star said. “I like a good story.”
“Well, it’s a very lengthy one, and you might not like some of it. It was written a long time ago when people thought about things differently,” James confessed. “Plus, I don’t have the book with me.”
“Oh, okay, never mind,” Falling Star said. “I’ll meet Dr. Dolittle another time.”
“Is that fire over there yours?” Tenzing interrupted and began pacing back and forth. “Because I’m very cold right now.”
“Let’s get back to the fire,” James said. “Then we can plan how we’re going to break into Fort Bragg and get Keira and Lumen out of there.”
7.
“BUT WHY?” Keira asked loudly. “Why did you abandon me?”
“I had no choice,” her mother replied as she removed a pair of sensors from her daughter’s temples.
“I don’t believe you!”
“I thought I explained it all to you in the letter I left in the twin-sun box UBE gave you.”
“I can’t believe you and UBE couldn’t think of another way. There must have been something else you could have done. You didn’t need to put me up for adoption.”
“It was all I could think to do at the time, Keira. I was much younger then, but I did know the way the world worked, the way the US Army and the Paragon Academy would have come after me.” Karen smiled sadly and tucked her red hair behind her ears. “But at least we’re together now. My beautiful baby girl has come home.”
“This isn’t our home!” Keira yelled as she indicated the sterile laboratory they were sitting in beneath Fort Bragg.
“You know what I mean. We’re together again despite the odds.”
“I hate you!” Keira shouted. “I really hate you!”
KEIRA WOKE up from the nightmare with a shudder. Her heart raced with all the negative emotions. Her forehead was sweaty. Dr. Albion promised that Keira would meet her biological mother the next morning for the first time. Keira looked over at Lumen, who was still asleep in the Army cot to her right. Lumen heard Keira stirring and woke up.
“What is it?”
“I had a crazy dream about meeting my mother,” Keira said. “It was more of a nightmare. I was yelling at her and telling her I hated her.”
“Do you hate her?” Lumen asked and yawned.
Keira thought for a few moments. “I feel all sorts of things about her: love, anger, sadness, even fear. It’s all mixed up.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like,” Lumen said, getting up and going over to sit next to Keira. “It will be all right, though. I’ll be there with you, remember?”
“I know,” Keira said and sighed. “And the weirdest thing is I’m really excited about meeting her.”
“Did Albion say when you would meet Alexander?”
“No.”
“Why won’t they let you all be reunited at the same time?” Lumen asked and rearranged her nightshirt. “It seems like that would be best.”
“I think Dr. Albion is toying with us. She wants to show she’s in charge.”
Lumen stretched up and yawned again. She wrapped her arm around Keira. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go back to sleep.”
“Could you stay here with me?” Keira asked.
“Of course. You know I can’t pass up snuggle time with you.”
“Just until I fall back to sleep.”
“For however long it takes.”
“WAKE UP, you two,” Dr. Albion said as she entered the girls’ dormitory and found Keira and Lumen asleep in the same bunk. “You’ll have about thirty minutes this morning with Karen, but we have to meet her right away. Get up!”
The girls sluggishly got out of bed. Keira stepped into the bathroom, disrobed, and put on her white “test-subject” jumpsuit and rubber shoes.
“I’m ready,” Keira said.
“I’m coming too,” Lumen said and zipped up the front of her own jumpsuit.
“Well, come on, then,” Dr. Albion said. “I haven’t got all day.”
Keira and Lumen followed the doctor into the hallway and down to the right. She pushed open the double doors that led out to the Delta Sector. They crossed the quad as the morning sun scintillated through the plasma dome overhead and threw snaky rainbows across the black tarmac. A pair of MPs saluted Dr. Albion and walked past the group. She nodded to them and kept going. The three approached a two-story white building with numerous satellite dishes on top, a medical lab neither Keira nor Lumen had been inside before. One hundred feet before the entrance, something in Dr. Albion’s lab coat pocket blared its alert. She pulled out a small tablet and stopped in her tracks, a look of pure terror on her face. A button on the tablet blinked bright red. She shook her head and looked again at the screen.
“No, no, this can’t be happening.” Dr. Albion typed something into the tablet and shook her head again. “This is worse than I imagined!” Finally, she pushed the red button on the tablet and let out a deep sigh of frustration. An alarm sounded across the base.
Keira and Lumen stared at each other, puzzled.
“What is it?” Lumen asked.
Dr. Albion said nothing but took two steps back and looked directly up. A sliver of darkness had started to cover a small part of the sun. The bright rainbows flickering through the plasma dome began to dim a little bit. Frightened soldiers appeared from buildings across the base, also looking up at the sun and one another, and speaking into their walkie-talkies.
“An eclipse?” Keira asked.
“This is not an eclipse,” Dr. Albion said quickly. “It’s what I’ve feared was going to happen for quite some time now. I warned General Hesslop at the Pentagon, but he wouldn’t listen. This could quite possibly mean the end of this planet.”
“But what’s happening?” Lumen asked, fear filling her voice.
Dr. Albion again said nothing and quickly walked away into the lab, leaving the two girls on the tarmac all alone.
DR. ALBION dialed General Hesslop’s private number. It rang three times.
“Elizabeth, what can I do for you?” he asked. “Those kids of yours acting up again?”
“No, General, nothing like that. It’s Nibiru.”
“Yes, I was just briefed on it a moment ago.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you sooner.”
“Water under the bridge,” Dr. Albion said as she leaned back in her reclining chair. “I have good news. Project Darkfeather is now complete, the brother and sister are here at Fort Bragg.”
“Excellent. And the transportation?”
“Almost done. We have to get James back, but I’m sure he’s on his way here now to rescue the girls.”
“Very good. Keep me posted. Offer them anything to get them to work with us. I’ll back you up on it all, if necessary.”
“I could use Asmodeus’s help with this.”
“No can do. He’s needed elsewhere,” the general said. “You’ll have to charm them yourself.”
“That’s going to be difficult.”
“Use their feelings against them. You already control the ones they care about.”
“Very well. I’ll contact you with updates.”
“You do that.”
“WHAT’S GOING on?” Lumen turned to see Keira, who was intently watching a redheaded woman—who looked to be in her midthirties—in the middle of a crowd of soldiers and med techs, all looking upward at the strange solar event. The redhead stared back at Keira.
It must be her. That’s my mother. Keira walked swiftly to the stranger, who, to her surprise, threw open her arms, said nothing, and stood waiting. Keira fell into her embrace.
“Keira, my darling Keira. At last, you’ve come back to me,” Karen said.
Keira could barely speak as she tried to hold back the tears. “I… I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.”
“It’s all right,” her mother whispered in her ear. “I’ve been waiting too. UBE promised we’d be together again.”
Lumen approached. Karen held Keira and rocked her gently. Keira saw Lumen coming toward them and stood back from her mother.
“Lumen, I want you to meet my mother, Karen Darkfeather.”
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Lumen said and stuck out her hand to shake.
Karen took Lumen’s hand and looked right into her eye. “I know you can hear me. I’m planning our escape. Dr. Albion will be back in a minute. I need to know you understand me.”
Lumen nodded.
“I’ll contact you later and fill you in on the details. Tell Keira everything.”
“It’s nice to meet you too. Any friend of Keira’s is a friend of mine,” Karen said and let go of Lumen’s hand.
Right on cue, Dr. Albion returned from the lab and strolled over to them. “Well, I see the family reunion has already happened. I hope this will mean that you’ll be more cooperative with us, Keira.”
“As long as I can work with my mother.”
“Of course, and now more than ever we’re going to have to put away our past quarrels and work together.”
“But you haven’t told us what’s going on,” Lumen said. “What’s that shadow across the sun?”
“The Nibiru object is on a collision course with Earth,” Dr. Albion said without any feeling. “Originally it was believed that a variable star, V838, Monocerotis, might be on a collision course with Earth. But Paragon disproved it. Are you familiar with the concept of nemesis in astronomy?”
“No.”
“It has been hypothesized that there is an object in a parallel orbit with Earth, but it is directly behind the sun, orbiting at a distance of about 1.5 light-years away, somewhere beyond the Oort cloud. Its orbit changes every 26 million years and initiates a cycle of mass extinction and cataclysmic change on Earth. That object is called Nibiru,” Dr. Albion said and pointed up at the partially eclipsed sun. “And it is right above us. In its current trajectory, it will take twenty-one days for the eclipse to be total as the object approaches. Then we will be in complete darkness, night and day, until the collision.”
“And then what?” Keira asked.
“The end of the world.”
Keira and Lumen felt their panic mirrored back at them in waves from the MPs, lab techs, and scientists who were all gathering in the quad, whispering to each other and staring up at the unexpected event. Keira took her mother’s hand and held it.
Dr. Albion stepped away from them into the gathering crowd. “Back to work,” she snapped. “All of you! We have this under control! We’ll contact you soon with further information.” The crowd slowly disbursed.
“But how do we figure into this?” Lumen asked.
“Oh, Lumen, always asking the right questions. Well, my dear, you may have wondered why we went to all the trouble to create you in the first place. This was one of the scenarios we hoped wouldn’t happen in our lifetimes, but it has. We have been building a space vehicle for you to intercept the Nibiru object and destroy it. Only you and your friends, with your combined powers, can stop this cataclysmic event from unfolding, specifically Keira and Alexander. We need to destroy the object completely so it doesn’t break apart and come hurtling at the planet.”
“After all the terrible things you’ve done to us, you’re expecting us to help you?” Keira asked. “Why can’t someone else do it? Maybe some other country?”
“Because no other country has assets like you.”
“What about Brazil?” Keira pressed. “Holcomb said he wanted to sell me to them if he caught me.”
“Ah, well, Mr. Holcomb won’t be doing much of anything anymore, I’m afraid,” Dr. Albion said and grinned fiendishly. “And believe me, we recovered everyone he ever kidnapped from us.”
Keira looked at Lumen and her mother.
“Don’t y
ou want to save all the people who live on this planet?” Dr. Albion asked with a concerned look on her face. “That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. I hope it’s not too late to get James back to the base, so we can train him and have him ready to launch into space with the rest of you.”
“You must be insane,” Lumen hissed.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but you must believe me. You are our only chance at stopping this event. I personally guarantee your freedom for the rest of your lives if you help us.”
“I want that in writing,” Lumen said.
“You’ll have it,” Dr. Albion said.
“As if we’d believe anything you ever wrote or said,” Keira added.
Dr. Albion looked at Keira and then Lumen and then smiled to herself. “Karen you should return to the lab. You’ll see Keira again soon.”
“Yes, Dr. Albion.”
“No, wait,” Keira said as she held tight to her mother’s hand as she turned away. “I want to spend more time with her now. If you want us to work together, you have to let us do what we want.”
“It’s okay, Keira, I really do need to be getting back to my work,” Karen said and smiled faintly. “I’ll see you again, soon.”
“Tonight?”
“We’ll see.” Karen gave her daughter a hug and then walked back into the white building.
“Why don’t you two go back to your dorm and wait for me. I have some business to attend to, end of the world and all that. I’ll come get you and then show you the subterranean part of the base where we’re working on Project Intercept.”
“That’s the space program, right?” Keira asked.
Dr. Albion stared at Keira suspiciously. “Yes. We’ve designed a ship that you control with your powers.”
“Okay, we’ll wait for you.”
Lumen nodded and said nothing. She and Keira turned around and walked slowly back to their dorm. When they were out of earshot of Dr. Albion, Lumen told Keira about her mother’s secret message.
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