The Plan: Part 1 Read online

  Her hands shook slightly as she extracted what remained from the vial. He could tell she was nervous.

  In the minutes that passed, Griesen watched the Looking Glass like a hawk, trying to find clues. Someone was clearly trying to get to her before he did. What was it about her?

  His thoughts crossed back into the last meeting with Ana. Only someone with top level clearance could have switched the vials and have access to energy like Ana did. He remembered how Ana had effortlessly transported them from one hallway to another and back.

  “What is so special about you, Halva?” he said quietly as Gretchen pulled out a glass droplet and suctioned the remaining drop of liquid into a glass vial.

  A moment passed and Halva was suddenly leaned over her desk, heaving.

  "Damn," he cursed, a wave of alarm rising over him. She was reacting.

  "Gretchen!" his voice getting louder. "We don’t have much time… what was in there?"

  She glanced over towards what he was looking at and froze.

  “Oh shoot.”

  “She has no health problems of any sort. Can you fix this?!” Griesen asked in a low voice. It wouldn’t be any help to unnerve Gretchen even more.

  In the warm months, Halva cycled to work almost daily. She was underweight given her height and didn’t smoke or drink. Her vitals were healthy. He had seen her readings since birth. She was too young, too healthy...

  Gretchen looked over again. "I got it!" she yelled. She madly scribbled some notes on a piece of paper, springing out of her seat.

  "Just give me a moment," she mumbled, as she ripped open the satchel compartment containing her herbs and energy anemones. A bright rainbow stream of lights bounced around the room from the anemones that were orbiting in their cases.

  Griesen began sweating, as he saw Halva collapse over her desk and then crumple into a ball behind her desk.

  He had to get someone to notice.

  Edith. She’d help. He glanced at another screen and typed in Edith’s name. The monitor pulled her up immediately.

  EDITH STOLES.

  She appeared in real-time, talking on the phone in her own office down the hallway.

  He had to cut the conversation short. He quickly reached into his bag and found the worn, heavy duty pair of gloves he always kept inside. He snapped them on and pressed a button on the keyboard.

  A blue grid appeared.

  “I need just another moment,” he heard Gretchen say to him again.

  They didn’t have much time. He nodded. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  He saw her open her mouth to protest, but then he reached towards the grid and disappeared into the Fourth dimension.

  He could feel Edith right beside him, but she couldn’t feel him or hear him. The fourth dimension ran parallel to the time and events on Gaia. The advantage of this dimension was that it gave the Acruvae the ability to manipulate events a bit better, particularly when he could slow time down by fragments of a second.

  The allowable events were small, not major incidences that used significant doses of energy that could adjust a Lifeline. But many times, Griesen found minor events were enough. And as a graduate, he could come in and out without entry limits.

  He ran over and pulled out the landline, disconnecting her phone.

  “Hello? Hello?” Edith looked puzzled at being cut-off in mid conversation.

  He looked quickly around Edith’s office. He needed something of Halva’s. Her jacket. It had been cold outside earlier. He snapped his fingers and Halva’s jacket appeared on the chair on the opposite side of Edith’s desk.

  Edith saw it, and moved towards it, looking puzzled. “Did she leave it in here?” she asked aloud.

  Good. Take it to her, Griesen thought. And she did.

  Edith walked down the hallway and turned to Halva’s office. Then she spotted her, running towards Halva’s chair.

  Get help. Get help now.

  Edith picked up the phone. She was calling 911.

  Good. He’d done what he could do.

  He put his gloved hands together in the V position, signalling his exit. He re-emerged in the Dispensary Unit, snapping off his gloves, and saw Gretchen bent over her notebook, scribbling.

  She couldn’t die. Not now. Could she could die before he even began his work with her?

  He ran over to Gretchen, where she was busy filling a new glass vial with substances that were dripping slowly from a silver-plated tray. The flame underneath the tray was burning at full tilt.

  One of her hands ran down her scribbled notes as she murmured to herself, glancing between the vials at her disposal.

  "Gretchen!" he hissed at her.

  She waved a hand at him. "Almost there. Antidotes takes time. Nobody seems to get that,” she mumbled. He saw that she was working as fast as she could, as she hurriedly placed the vial onto the glass sensor that would allow it to be heated. He noticed her hands were still shaking.

  He looked at her apologetically, knowing that her nerves were probably completely shot by now. She hated working under pressure, even though she had the talent. He’d have to make it up to her somehow.

  “The ingredients need to gel together at an exact temperature beforeIcangiveittoher,” she said, the stress slurring her words together.

  She nursed the blue flame that engulfed the glass for a moment, preventing it from burning.

  A minute later, it was done, an aromatic licorice filling the air around them.

  Gretchen quickly removed the glass as Griesen noticed an ambulance crew entering Halva's office. Halva's face turned blue; one of the aides began giving her CPR.

  He eyed the glass as Gretchen loaded in the contents on the plate and it was poured in again. It was agony for him, watching it pass in slow-motion.

  "It will only take a minute for this one to work," she said quickly as they both watched the glass anxiously. “It’ll work as fast as the other one should have.”

  Almost a minute later, something in Halva's face did change. She sucked in a huge gasp of air. She opened her eyes. The paramedics stopped what they were doing; and they continued to sit with her. Checking her pulse, one paramedic spoke to the other, and then to Edith.

  Griesen’s own terror subsided a little more when Halva opened her eyes.

  "She’s good now.”

  He breathed out a long sigh. “What was in that liquid, Gretchen?"

  He glanced at her, as she wiped off a bead of sweat which trickled down to her temple. She closed her eyes for a moment. "There was an alteration. And no, it wasn’t me. I was so careful. I’m always careful. All my molecules completely bonded together when I finished the construction of it.” She said it and sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

  "Somebody did this, Griesen. It wasn’t me!”

  She was hugely upset and he could feel it. She took her work very seriously, and if word ever got out it would destroy her, he knew.

  “I know,” he said soothingly as he went over and gave her a brief hug. She was still shaking like a leaf.

  “You saved her,” Griesen said quietly. “You did good. I have nothing else to say other than thank you.”

  But he felt as shaken as she looked, as she nodded and began slowly packing up all the vials and herbs that had gotten strewn about the work table.

  His mind began working in overdrive as he stared into the Looking Glass. Halva was fine. She was awake and sitting up, speaking to the paramedic. Somebody had taken the time to completely deconstruct her work, atom by atom. They had tweaked the solution by one ingredient – enough to throw off the solution; enough that it manifested into a poison instead of an antidote.

  Who would do this? He felt invaded. Betrayed. He suddenly thought of Damus. Could there be anyone possibly connected to him? He was the one who had stood up to face Ana’s wrath that day in the Council chambers. He couldn’t do this anymore alone, he realized. The drop alone had nearly been sabotaged. At the very least, he couldn’t keep it to himself.

 
; "There's something I need to tell you," he said to her quietly.

  He glanced up towards the doors.

  "But we should go first.” He didn’t want to be here anymore. His skin felt uncomfortably sticky and he felt as frazzled as Gretchen looked.

  Gretchen nodded. Through the Looking Glass, they saw Halva speaking once again, sitting upright on the couch. One of the two paramedics were speaking to her. She seemed fine. One hand went up to her neck as she gestured with her other hand. She looked puzzled. Given her quiet constitution, she was likely embarrassed at all the sudden attention, Griesen thought. But she was fine, for now. The most important thing.

  “She’ll be fine for awhile,” Gretchen said. “If there was another attempt on her it would be incredibly suspect.”

  He nodded. She was right. This incident would already be recorded in her Lifeline.

  As they hiked back downhill towards their shuttles; he swore Gretchen to secrecy and told her about the Werlock’s death. He told her everything.

  "Crikey," she said softly. "This wasn't an accident." She looked at him, and he felt her distress pass into him. “You need to watch your back,” she said softly.

  “I know,” he said. “If this goes as high up as I think it does, this won’t be the last attempt.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “There is a bright side though. Ana - she gave me an extra unit of energy. For all the trouble.”

  “Well, congratulations,” she responded. She wasn’t smiling. “Just make sure you stay alive long enough to use it.”

  CHAPTER 7

  I have to get down there, he realized after they went their separate ways. Back at home, he was pacing in circles. He was nervous; jumpy. This situation – what if someone tried to kill Halva again? It became clear to him then that it was Halva that someone wanted out of the picture. If it had been him, they could have killed him and not the Werlock. He wasn’t their main target. She was.

  He couldn’t let her die. If she died, it could be friels before he was reassigned. And to be held in a holding pattern for that long meant being in between a rock and a hard place… and not finding answers. He couldn’t stay landlocked up here. This was his chance. He felt it in his bones. He had to get down there to find the answers about his parents. And if Halva’s case didn’t work out in this lifetime… No. He didn’t want to think about it. He wouldn’t let this go.

  He walked over to his fireplace mantle and settled down into a chair. He pulled out the Energy orb from his pocket, feeling again that it was slightly hot to touch as he picked it up by its clasp and chain. It glowed, and as he held it up to the fireplace, he saw deep red and yellow flames emanating from the globe itself.

  He breathed in deeply as he connected to the orb which warmed in his hand. He was pulling energy from it as it fed into him, revitalizing him.

  Should I go? He held the question in his mind for another moment. He found it meditative to ask the question while holding his orb. It was a part of him now, as it would be over the course of the next hundred Human years as a Seeker. His next answer was immediate and from his gut: Yes.

  He wouldn’t wait, then. He couldn’t afford to. A restlessness pervaded him, as the shadows of the stranger crossed his mind once again. He had to stay a step ahead. He made a mental checklist in his head as he walked around, quickly grabbing his knapsack and filling it with the items he needed for his Earth-stay. A spare tunic and some extra rations. His transmitter. At the corner of his eye, he saw the small framed 2x2” photo he kept of his parents.

  It was a photo of the three of them. An unexpected wave of emotion hit him as he gazed at his mother, then his father. He hadn’t looked at the photo in awhile. People always remarked that he had his father’s nose and his mother’s eyes. They all had brown hair. He remembered such a happy childhood. That was what hurt the most. That he’d loved them so much. That wide, gap-toothed grin he wore until he had woken up one day and somebody from Institute Security Central had told him his parents weren’t coming back from their mission.

  Why?

  The mission had failed.

  Had they been on the same one?

  Apparently so. No details had been provided. He had begged. Waited countless hours and days at security central until he was sat down by a patient, bespectacled man with a beard that nearly reached the ground and an ISC badge.

  As you know, their security clearance was amongst the highest. In all likelihood the details will never be released.

  He learned very quickly as a child that the Institute was notoriously tight-lipped. Now, he knew it even more so as a graduate. That was the last time he had heard from anyone about them. The Institute had held a ceremonial wake for his parents, and provided him with a Guardian briefly until he’d proven that he hadn’t needed one. He was already old enough.

  Old enough to find the answers on his own.

  He lifted the frame off the sidetable, pressing the corner of it. The photo slipped out, and he tucked it carefully into a small front pocket of his bag.

  How long will I be down there? The thought crossed his mind as the door slid shut behind him. Long enough to find some answers.

  Outside, he ran his hands slowly over three long claw-like protrusions marring the right side of his shuttle. It had been lasers from the weapons that had seared his shuttle during the final twelve-hour examination. He had passed the course with only two points docked for the exterior shuttle damage. A near perfect score his parents would have been proud of.

  The module had been an extra credit course, one that wasn’t required. But he had always wanted to, partially because his father always told him –

  To never forget to defend himself. Even when the Institute had decided to soon discontinue down their military and defense modules for training graduates, he’d grabbed the chance.

  Upon landing, he had refused to fix the marks which had charred the metal to the point of distortion.

  “No,” he insisted to Master Thames. “I don’t want them to fix anything.”

  Master Thames eyed him, and then his shuttle, which upon settling on the landing pad, was choking up a blackened storm of smoke and dust. “This is in deliberate violation of Institute policy.”

  But Griesen didn’t want to erase the marks. “I’ll tidy it up,” he said. “It’ll look much better. But the marks stay.”

  Finally, Master Thames had relented. It was a small but important victory for Griesen. He wished his parents had been around to see him pass. They would have been proud, too…

  As he stepped on board, another sudden memory passed - of him and Gretchen celebrating, dancing around on board with the citrus-flavored imitation Gnider cider she had created to celebrate both of them passing their pilot exams. The cider had been excellent. It was even headier than the real thing, and they both experienced extremely lucid dreaming that night. That was when he realized she was an excellent chemist in the making.

  I can’t tell her I’m leaving. The thought made him miserable, but he refused to place her in any further unwarranted danger. She was his only family left, the only person he trusted. He knew she would keep the secret about the Werlock. He didn’t want to burden her with anything else. She had to be kept safe, from whomever was trying to sabotage him…

  Griesen checked the dashboard indicators on his screen. Everything looked fine.

  “Ingrid,” he said, summoning the shuttle’s artificial intelligence. "Make preparations for travel down to Earth. Locate me close to my subject’s living quarters.” He paused for a moment, thinking. “But first - take me to Zeehra."

  Zeehra was the one-stop dream shop for all the Acruvae technology any graduate could ever want or need. He had created countless lists over the years of what he’d longed to buy but couldn’t yet afford over the course of his studies…and finally, things were different.

  "Yes, sir." Ingrid responded immediately with a slight lilt in her tone.

  The route to the closest Zeehra was already saved as a shortcut by him a f
riel before he had graduated. All shuttles were allowed three shortcuts for energy-saving travel purposes. His three were to Gretchen’s home, his own, and to Zeehra.