Chapter Seven
Ten years later:
Shortly after the Kail’s arrival on Siren, several simultaneous executions of key government officials were carried out by the insurgency. The attacks were revealed to have been premeditated for years and took place across Siren, Tyrran and Bouldon.
Even ten years later, when Morn Kail was entering his ninth year of being Prime Minister Callos’ acting Secretary of Resources, the true motives and identities of the insurgency leaders remained unknown.
At that time, while Syll was wrestling with a bitter and rebellious teenage Drellic, Morn was working tirelessly alongside Callos, while under the constant threat of assassination.
Following the murder of Gallon Vez, the Kails took full advantage of the Prime Minister’s hospitality, having never seen or heard from Tila Hevett again. Morn was virtually a ghost to his family for the first year; working around the clock to ensure he would be fast-tracked to becoming Vez’s successor.
It was an effort not made in vain. Given limited options and an increasing terrorist threat, Callos had little choice but to appoint Morn to his desired position. Being a Secretary of Resources to a Prime Minister was not as prestigious a title as being the chief advisor to an Empress, but it gave Morn an opportunity to put his unique powers of observation to good use for his people.
It seemed that fate had wanted him to take on the role, since it put him in a position to make a ghastly discovery about the direction mankind as a whole, was taking. According to his preliminary findings in a particular survey program he had been organizing, the human race was on a clear path to extinction. And no one out of a three domain population of nearly fifty billion people, seemed to have any idea.
While waiting to be seen by Callos, Morn sat patiently in the cathedral-like foyer of Siren City’s Great Hall, and caught a brief glimpse of something he had never seen before.
As he sat on a hard wooden bench, with his back against a cold marble wall, a bright green flicker came into his view. He was alone in the foyer and didn’t have enough time to point out the phenomenon to anyone else. But for just a few seconds, he saw a strange insect, resembling a firefly with an enchanting green glow, quickly glide across the room, just inches above the floor.
The insect then vanished from the building, as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Morn to question whether or not he had seen it at all. But in the split second it passed by his quivering knees, wobbling nervously against his bench, his mind drifted away from the subject matter he was there to bring before the Prime Minister.
It seemed as though the brief encounter with the unknown creature had triggered an unfamiliar memory. For the millisecond the green glow darted in front of his eyes, Morn was transported to a cold setting, where he envisioned himself standing naked in a pasture, dripping with goo and feeling utterly confused and alone.
And just before the vision vanished, Morn had a second vision, of looking up into a cloudy, starry sky from the cold pasture, and seeing what resembled a giant pulsating hand, literally composed of the fabric of dark space.
The extremities of the structure, resembling long and wrinkled black fingers, reached out for him, as he felt his face tightening over his skull, driving him to the point of hyperventilation.
Then, in what only took a millisecond in the real world, Morn returned to reality, left with the unsettling feeling that he had been given an important message that he was unable to decipher.
One of Callos’ female aids then entered the room and approached him. The woman noticed Morn’s sweaty brow and trembling arms and legs.
“Are you alright, Master Kail?” she asked, with great concern.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Morn rasped with a slight cough.
Morn then looked down at the messy clutter of papers, peeking out from the manila portfolio beside him. He quickly reorganized them and tucked them back inside, before returning to his feet with a stagger, and following the aid to the elevator shaft at the opposite end of the foyer.
By the time he reached the Prime Minister’s office, he had almost completely forgotten about his experience with the insect and the nightmarish visions that followed. It was as if the further away the insect traveled, the less tangible the memory felt.
The Drellic Saga: Books One, Two and Three Page 61