by Trent Falls
John and Julie eventually caught up to Lyle and Alex. Julie remained a step back, still unsure about Alex who, until moments ago, had also been human like her and her uncle. She couldn’t believe she could be deceived for so long.
“You got here fast.” John observed to Alex in a flat tone, all the while looking ahead towards Agrev and Shin, whom they were walking towards.
“I know a few rabbit holes in the fabric of the universe, John.” Alex smirked.
The group stopped within a few feet in front of Councilor Agrev, Hedges, and Captain Shin. Euler and Zao approached them in a jogging sprint from the right.
“Amazing!” Agrev breathed, staring at Alex and Lyle and their glowing silvery eyes. “You’re….”
“We are the collective that you would refer to as the Norn.” Lyle Ramirez spoke, exuding some level of authority in his voice.
“Lieutenant Lyle Ramirez.” Euler addressed the Norn by his true name. “You’ve been missing for almost nineteen years. It doesn’t look like you aged a day!”
“What I was and what I’ve become are still relative yet I am not the same being as the man born as Lyle Ramirez.” The Norn stared directly at Euler in his response.
“Are you saying you’re not Lyle Ramirez?” Agrev asked. “That you’re some alien who’s assumed his form?”
“No, I am Ramirez.” Lyle explained. “I am only more… evolved.”
“You should know that violence on this planet will not be tolerated.” Alex spoke to Agrev with the same tone of authority in his voice as Lyle. “Please ask your men to lower their weapons. Any act of violence will be met with serious consequences.”
“We don’t take well to threats, Mister Scoffield.” Shin noted sternly.
“It was not a threat, Captain. It was a demand.” Alex replied. “This planet is our home and, as such, you are guests. Know that the Norn have existed hundreds of thousands of years prior to even the dawn of humanity. Our level of technology would allow us to neutralize your forces in seconds.”
Shin raised an eyebrow at the claim. Obviously it was another veiled threat. All the same he considered that what Alex was saying was true. It was truly humbling to think that the Norn could render a Xen carrier and all the forces on it useless. He silently wondered if it was a bluff. Shin knew his ship was already on combat alert. They would be able to handle any threat as it presented itself. Shin wanted to contact his ship and warn them but he knew he had to wait and determine if there was any real threat and how such a threat might present itself.
“Our representative on this world wishes to speak with you.” Lyle stated to Agrev, turning to look at Shin and Euler. “Through Alex we’ve been monitoring the events leading up to your arrival here. While we’ve done all we can to dissuade you from arriving at this planet it seems that human curiosity overridden all of our efforts.”
“You’re not qualified to speak for your people?” Agrev asked Lyle.
“I am a human cohort of the Norn. I am one of them but I am not in charge of this outpost.” Lyle answered. “We are charged with escorting you to the watchtower. There you will meet our… leader.”
“I would have to insist that our men accompany us.” Agrev said, looking out to the special ops soldiers around them with his eyes.
“You are free to bring anyone you wish along, but only you and a select few from your party will be allowed entry into the watchtower.” Lyle explained.
Agrev gave some thought to the request. As the representative of the Xen people, he didn’t like being placed in such a position with apparently zero bargaining power.
“And if we refuse?” Agrev asked.
Euler was compelled to step forward. “No, we can’t! We….”
“That’s enough, Earthling!” Shin growled at him.
“No! We’ve come all this way to….” Euler continued to protest.
“Enough!” Zao glared at Euler.
“You are certainly free to decline our invitation.” Alex answered aloud. “We will not present this opportunity again. Your species has been persistent in trying to locate us and we wish a dialogue. If you decline, however, we will redouble our efforts to obscure our society from yours. You will leave this planet with no recollection of what happened. You will go about your lives with no knowledge of what happened here and you will never find this planet again.”
“You sound confident in this.” Zao observed.
“Alex has lived among your people undetected for decades, Lieutenant Zao.” Lyle’s glowing eyes fixed on the Xen officer. “You don’t think there aren’t others like him among the Terran or Xen?”
Shin turned his eyes up towards Lyle at the remark. He immediately became concerned for his ship. If what they were saying was true, he wondered if there were any Norn that might have infiltrated his vessel. The idea was chilling.
“All we wish is to talk peacefully. We mean you absolutely no harm.” Lyle added in a calm tone of voice.
Agrev looked at Lyle and Alex. His eyes then turned towards John and Julie, then towards Euler. They all seemed ready to go
“Alright.” Agrev noted in a tone of finality. “Lead the way.” Agrev grinned, gesturing towards the jungle with an outstretched arm.
Lyle stared at Agrev for a second before turning his eyes to look about the group. His head then turned towards Alex, who was standing at his side. They seemed to exchange some level of information between them silently,
“Very well. Please follow us.”
Lyle Ramirez led the group away. He turned his back on them easy enough, confident that none in Agrev’s party were capable of hurting him. Lyle walked away as though he were simply walking away from any beach. Alex followed with John and Julie not far behind. Agrev tried to stop John by placing a hand on his right shoulder. John pulled his shoulder away sharply, somewhat incensed by being grabbed by Agrev. John was getting tired of the bureaucrat and the Xen in general. With Alex there he felt a bit more confident.
The Norn were at once awe inspiring and terrifying. Even the elite Xen soldiers around them were transfixed somewhat by the sight of them.
“Don’t be an asshole!” John grumbled to Agrev.
“Sergeant.” Agrev addressed John in an odd reserved, yet respectful, manner. “We don’t know what they are. What they’re capable of.”
John started at Agrev for a brief moment. The aged high councilor stared back, almost blankly. He was one of the elite among the Xen. The fifty year old Xen was one of his planet’s leaders. For a few moments he and John looked at each other. They were two ordinary men humbled by giants.
“This is what you came here for, isn’t it?” John asked in a calm sincere manner. “It can’t do any harm to talk to them.”
Agrev said nothing in reply. He simply nodded twice silently and then walked after John to fall into the procession. Shin’s cold eyes followed John and Agrev until falling in line to follow them himself. Zao was next with Hedges and the special ops troops following.
Hedges pulled a compact .32 caliber pistol out of his jacket. He slid back the slide of the pistol gently, making sure there was a round chambered in the small gun. Having confirmed the weapon to be loaded, he slid the compact pistol back into the holster beneath his jacket while continuing on to walk among the soldiers.
The jungle ahead was somewhat humid but not hot. Water vapor was somewhat trapped in certain pockets by the thick green trees and surrounding vegetation. The sounds of the water breaking on the shore grew fainter the further they walked into the jungle. The rainforest itself was primeval. It seemed untouched by any sort of human life. It was nature left to its own devices. A large fallen tree to their right was covered in wild moss. A lizard sitting on the fallen tree ate a fly buzzing through the air. With the sudden sound of the approaching humans the lizard became startled and scurried off, its claws scratching into the rough parts of the log as it fled.
“Where are we going?” Julie spoke softly next to her uncle.
John said nothing fo
r a moment. “We’ll know when we get there, I guess.”
“Did you say you were here before?” Julie asked, eyeing the lush green trees around her.
A cool ocean breeze passed through the jungle as the procession moved on.
“I honestly can’t remember, Jules.” John took a deep breath. He squinted in frustration. In his mind’s eye he could almost place some of the things around him. It was almost like déjà vu only far more frustrating as he could get a real sense that he had been there before.
He remembered them before he could see them. It was a pillar of slate grey rock obscured partially by a group of broad leaved trees.
The rock appeared to move.
John staggered in step at the sight of the moving rock. It vanished from sight as soon as he had seen it. He looked at Julie, then ahead towards Alex. None of them, including Agrev and Shin whom were nearby, noticed the moving rock.
In a blink it was gone.
“What is it?” Julie asked her uncle quickly, noticing his ashen expression of fear.
She had never seen him so afraid, even on Isis when he had rescued her and where people were actively trying to kill him.
John’s blue eyes searched out into the jungle, looking desperately for any signs of the movement. He saw nothing but swaying trees.
“It’s nothing.” John replied gravely. He turned his head, his mind apparently switching back to a trained sense of calm. “It’s nothing.” He repeated with more confidence. “Let’s keep moving.”
Lyle and Alex led the Xen and their human prisoners further into an open hillside. The jungle gave way to a long rise in the land covered with tall wild green grass. There was a row of jagged rocks peeking up over the grass on the right. The sound of gently crashing waves could be heard faintly from behind the rocks, suggesting they were again close to the shoreline.
Ahead was a row of tall dark grey mountain peaks rising up and reaching out into the distance; reaching in a curve that extended towards their left into the horizon. The distant spires of the serrated dark grey ridge were obscured by the haze of distance. The lush green rainforest reached up the sides of the dark peaks as far as the eye could see.
A group of orange birds were spooked by the approaching group of humans. They jumped up from the edge of the tall grass and flew off towards the distant peaks.
The image seemed to replay like a snapshot in John’s mind. He knew the dirt beneath him would be black before he looked down to confirm the memory. He had been there before. He looked out towards the chain of mountains knowing what they were. They formed the edge of a volcano crater that formed the island. The hill covered in the tall grass ahead of them was where the side of the volcano crater had eroded billions of years earlier to wash out into the ocean. John remembered someone, some geologist, describing it to him as such.
“So… where are the rest of your people?” Agrev ventured to ask Lyle.
Lyle Ramirez and Alex Scoffield stared back at the group blankly and didn’t answer.
The ground suddenly shook with the force of an earthquake; a large earthquake. John grabbed Julie as she was caught off guard and nearly fell over. She screamed as loudly as any terrified young girl would. The rest of the humans, the Xen special forces included, were also visibly terrified. The earthquake was powerful. A great many more birds flew out from trees and shrubs to flee.
Alex and Lyle remained perfectly still.
One of the Xen soldiers was spooked enough to raise his weapon at Lyle.
“You’re responsible for this! Stop it!” the Xen special forces soldier yelled at Lyle, keeping his assault rifle aimed at his head.
Lyle turned his head casually towards the soldier. His eyes flashed over in a silver white light again. Through some unknown means Lyle exerted some invisible power on the soldier taking aim at him.
The ground continued to rumble.
The soldier that had aimed his assault rifle at Lyle remained frozen. Clearly from his actions he was trying to pull the trigger of his weapon. He grunted loudly as he fought the unseen force. Then, like something snapping, a major invisible force exploded in front of the soldier. The special ops soldier flew backwards. His assault rifle flew out of his hand into the overgrowth a few yards away.
“Violence will not be tolerated here.” Lyle spoke to the group over the still rumbling earthquake. “As we had mentioned we merely wish to talk.”
The Xen and the Terrans alike both looked up at the distant peaks in sheer awe. They realized that the source of the quake was the nearest spire of the volcanic mountain chain growing skyward. The nearest peak was growing taller, splitting in geometric horizontal fissures to expose staggered square gaps in the solid rock face. It grew skyward into a sharp knife shape, seemingly cutting into the clouds above.
“Da Bien!!!!” Captain Shin cried out at the sight of the growing black tower.
Like everyone in the group, Scott Euler stared at the growing tower in awe. While the sight of it was terrifying there was another side of him that viewed it with childlike amazement. This was the work of an advanced extraterrestrial species! This was what he had been searching for since the end of the war. He felt both validated and excited by what they might learn from the Norn.
“The Watchtower.” Alex spoke out to the humans.
The earthquake had subsided yet was still powerful, surging at times in smaller intense waves but settling for the most part. Julie walked over slowly to her uncle and grabbed his hand.
“It’s okay Jules.” He reassured her.
The mountain finally stopped growing. It had extended upward to nearly twice its original height. The height was increased by a number of small gaps in the rock face. It almost appeared like the spire of a cathedral or a dark grey minaret of jagged rock.
The rumbling in the ground subsided, eventually becoming unnoticeable.
“We will speak with the representative of your civilization,” Lyle spoke aloud towards Agrev and Shin, “but your soldiers must remain here.”
“Out of the question.” Agrev replied sternly. “We require them to assure our safety. We have no idea….”
“Your soldiers will remain here or you will turn around without audience.” Lyle’s voice boomed sternly, echoing in their minds.
Agrev and Zao took a step back, apparently in fear and surprise at the sound of Lyle’s voice in their heads. If Shin was afraid he hid it well.
“Shin and Zao will come with me then. And my assistant Hedges.” Agrev noted to Lyle.
“That’s acceptable.” Lyle replied, his voice at a normal tone without psychic overtones.
“He’ll want to speak to you too.” Alex remarked, looking at John as he walked up beside him.
John looked back at Alex, realizing he was talking to him. “Me?!? Why me? And who’s ‘he’?”
“You’ll understand soon enough.” Alex explained. “Julie should come too.”
“The girl?” Shin asked, somewhat incensed. “Why? She’s a civilian. She’s not in a position of leadership. She’s a teenager! She’ll tell the entire universe of your existence.”
“She’ll tell the universe exactly what we wish her to say.” Alex stared hard at Shin. “She’s also a lot more trustworthy than any of you. You are all warriors. The Norn are, honestly, more like her.”
“Your men will remain here.” Lyle added. “Any attempt by them to approach the tower and they will be wiped out. Every one of them! NO violence on this planet will be tolerated. We know your starships are in space and your reconnaissance craft are in our atmosphere, but please understand this is our world. As guests we expect you to behave accordingly.”
All remained silent for a few moments. Agrev finally spoke for the group, turning to look at Lyle. “Yes, of course.”
Lyle, for his part, looked back over the group of humans. Shin and Zao stepped forward. Agrev and Hedges walked up past them and maneuvered to the front of the group. John and Julie both were slower to approach the group on their right flank.
“Very well. Please follow me.” Lyle noted, turning around to lead the group away.
Agrev and Hedges were first to push through the tall grass after Lyle. Alex followed with Shin and Zao beside him. Julie and John again brought up the rear. John remained hesitant. He remembered the black dirt. He remembered the tall grass. They were ghosts of memories he couldn’t place.
Chapter 25
It was a short walk to the entry to the tower. The tall grass gave way to more volcanic sand. The entryway ahead was a giant arch set into the rock. It was partially like a cave, only with some semblance of architecture. As they approached the group could see thin metallic wires of some kind were set into the rock. They were almost a kind of geometric art of their own; somewhat like circuitry. The inside of the cave looked cold, especially as they got closer to make out detail. Glowing amber orbs set into the side walls of the cave lit the interior fairly well.
Julie hesitated a step at the entry of the cave. The others continued on inside without pause, as though they were entering a church or a movie theater.
“Come on.” John pulled on her hand. “It’ll all be okay.”
“How do you know?” Julie asked in quick response.
“I just do.” John assured her.
Julie walked with her uncle into the cave. The entry was actually the bottom of a circular ramp. The glowing amber orbs continued to follow the spiraling ramp up its entire length. The length was incredible itself. Julie and John quickly caught up to the rest of the group. They walked for what seemed like an eternity. It was similar to climbing the stairs to a large skyscraper, only they were on one continuous ramp. By the end of the climb many in the party could feel the muscles in their calves burning.
The ramp ended into a wide opening. The ground and ceiling were of the same grayish black rock. It wasn’t perfectly smooth, with slight rises and depressions here and there. The back of the chamber was open to the daytime sky. The bright light burned into the room, almost blinding white until their eyes could adjust.