The Plan: Part 1 Read online

  And suddenly, he saw a metal gate open up in front of him. Sunlight suddenly streamed into his vision. He saw the long stretch of trees in front of him, which signalled the beginning of the entryway. He was getting closer. The trees held themselves with regally long limbs shooting skywards, two rows facing across from one another, stretching above a wide manicured dirt road. They went on for miles, stationary soldiers extending a silent welcome to their visitors.

  There would be checkpoints, he knew. This was the first time he had been formally requested to meet Ithes, and his skin pricked slightly with nervousness. They must have known he was going to Gaia. Were they monitoring him that closely? The thought disturbed him.

  Ithes’ residence was heavily fortressed; shielded with numerous layers of protective barriers, including force fields, shuttle scanners and magnetic field analyses. The scans were to protect the Energy Source from contamination. Every twenty-five kilometres, there was a checkpoint in which any visitor would have to be scanned, and if necessary, sanitized before moving forward.

  Visitors who did not meet the requirements at any layer in the screening process were automatically ejected by the numerous guards who stood at the helm of the gates.

  Ithes spared no time for any Acruvae who did not meet his clinical standards.

  The shuttle slowed down, arriving at the first checkpoint. The guard in front stepped forward, out of his station.

  "Name, please," the guard said. He was a sandy-haired man wearing a metal grey suit. The armor was also built to protect against energetic contamination from visitors. Ithes had built his fortress to include his people, not missing a single detail in his puzzle.

  "Griesen.”

  "What is your business here?"

  "I have an appointment with Ithes," he said. He held his breath in slight trepidation. “In advance of my arrival on Gaia.”

  Another moment passed.

  "Step outside the shuttle," the guard said tersely.

  Griesen was confused. "Sorry?"

  "Step outside. Now!" The guard's tone had raised a few decibels.

  He felt his stomach churn slightly. But he got up, arriving at the cockpit door. It opened with a slight hiss.

  "Stand there." The guard pointed at a spot, just two feet in front of Griesen.

  Griesen obeyed, walking to stand where he had pointed.

  "Don't move. Hold still."

  Griesen felt a tingle all of the sudden. A beam of red light suddenly washed over him. It was spraying him with something. The tingle suddenly became hot, as it ran over his body like a hot lava. Before his brain could register the pain or say anything, it stopped.

  Then he began to shake uncontrollably.

  "You've been cleansed. Injected with an anti-viral potion," the guard said. "Continue on."

  He realized he was turning numb. Griesen felt as if his body had been charred, then doused with ice cold water. He could hardly move as he was shoved back into the shuttle, curling up into a fetal position on the shuttle floor.

  "Onwards," he instructed the shuttle with a wobbly voice. Help. I need help, he thought frantically.

  He felt his breath become shallow, and his heart began palpitating. He was having a reaction to whatever had been given to him. It was too late now - the shuttle was continuing onward.

  His satchel - then he remembered. He struggled his way forward, still shaking uncontrollably. He managed to open the one side where he had purchased a few emergency anti-virals from Oates. They had been just in case… little had he expected something like this would happen. So soon.

  The liquid was encased in a two-part thermodolite package. He snapped it open and let the two separated liquids mix together in the cupped palm of his hands. He felt the heat of the anti-viral suddenly overtake his body.

  "Praggt," he mumbled to himself, his body beginning to feel the freeze of the air around him. He hoped it would at least counteract some of the poison.

  It seemed to take forever to arrive at the second checkpoint. As the shuttle slowed to a stop, another guard stepped forward. Griesen heard a rap on the door.

  He couldn’t speak. His throat was blocked.

  Open the door. Who’s there? Show yourself.

  He remained frozen in the fetal position as the guard’s voice repeated his request to open the door. Finally, the request stopped and with a large bang, the door opened. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the guard's face – this time a woman's - looking at him.

  CHAPTER 8

  Griesen awoke. Where was he? He started, struggling to sit upright.

  "Easy, now.” A deep voice emerged from the room.

  He was on a cot. The air felt cool around him – much, much cooler than he had been in the shuttle…

  "What - happened..." he choked out. He started on a coughing fit; he was cold.

  The voice lent itself to a body that stepped forward.

  "You're fine. You're safe here." The voice was soothing, full of reassurance.

  Griesen coughed fiercely for a few minutes before his body quieted, returning to a state of equilibrium. He lay still, then, exhausted from all the effort. There was nothing he could do - whether he was captive or whatnot, he was immobile. His eyelids felt immensely heavy.

  He felt the presence emerge beside him.

  Just take it easy, the voice telepathed.

  Griesen forced his eyes open. Ithes. He found himself staring right at the man in the flesh, with a short, neatly trimmed white beard against the tanned brown skin, whose eyes were riveted on him.

  Ithes' eyes were green, with speckles of grey in them. Somehow Griesen felt that his eyes had been staring at him for awhile. And he didn’t like it.

  Ithes. He recalled the photo that he had emblazoned in his memory, from his studies - it hardly did justice to the man whose energy he felt palpitating in full force beside him.

  Yet Griesen couldn't hold his eyes open for long - his exhaustion lay like an anvil on his chest, pushing him underwater again.

  "Sir," he said weakly. "I don't know what happened - I was coming through to see you and -"

  Ithes interrupted him. "I know. We were well aware something had happened to you. The second guard alerted us immediately.”

  Another voice came through in the room. "The antiviral you took saved yourself in the nick of time.”

  This time, he recognized the voice - it was Ana's.

  Ana! She was here. He felt an immense wave of relief wash over him. And yet…

  She emerged on the left side of him. As she sat down, he felt her cooler energy surround him.

  She had a worried look in her eyes that he couldn't miss, although she tried to banish it with a faint smile directed towards him.

  She took his hand in both of hers. He felt the force of her energy envelop him as the familiar glow of blue light washed over his hands from hers. She was trying to heal him, as much as she could… under normal circumstances, the healing would have taken place in moments. However, the extent of whatever was injected into him had lent itself to damage…

  "You should be feeling better soon,” she said in a masked, efficient tone.

  What are you hiding?

  Was she simply trying to make him feel more optimistic than what he felt? He couldn’t make it out, his telepathy skills weakened by his current condition.

  “You were placed in the healing machine as soon as we rushed you in,” Ana said.

  So he had been poisoned.

  "Who - did this to me?" he asked weakly. "Someone is trying to kill me." He was bewildered and disoriented. “And Halva. My case. They attempted on her while I was trying to send down the initial healing agent.”

  Ana was in a dark green dress, her hair half unpinned. Behind her, the sharp light from the floor to ceiling windows caught her hair, lighting the dark red waves into moving fragments of burnt orange. The rising tide of war… those words suddenly came his mind. It was a disturbing image, and he sucked in a breath.

  Ana's mo
uth twisted downwards at his last words.

  “You didn’t tell me this.” Her words were accusingly directed at Ithes.

  Ithes threw up his hands, looking defensive. “We were in the middle of another situation. I directed him here because I was alerted to it when it happened. You know now.”

  A difficult silence filled the room.

  "Tell me," Griesen rasped out. "Do you know who did this? Whoever did it almost managed to killed me."

  “We are searching for the Guard who did this,” Ithes said tersely. “I ordered a full lockdown of Romaen as soon as the second Guard reported the situation. All travellers coming in and out have been monitored, their identities verified.”

  “Anything?” Griesen asked in a barely audible voice.

  Ithes’ pupils went dark at his question. “Nothing yet,” he said, with his jaw tense. “The little vermin went into hiding. He is here, somewhere. But rest assured, he will be found. If he had accomplices, they will be dealt with.”

  Ana let out a sigh. "This was our worst fear, Griesen," she said to him quietly. "I can only ask you now to be extra vigilant. Now…more than ever.” She raised her eyes back to Ithes, who sat in silence.

  The small hairs on the back of his head raised. Not good enough.

  "You must know more," he responded in a harsh tone. He coughed with the effort. "Tell me everything! I’ve barely started my mission and to go through all this - "

  "Yes." Ithes' voice, gruff and loud, came through. "I agree. You should know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  "No." Ana interrupted him. "Let's debrief him in the morning. Let him rest right now. We will tell him what he needs to know - we will have to equip him more than we thought we would."

  She nodded towards him. She looked worried, her face strained. “Let the healing machine continue its work on you. It has extracted nearly half of the poison from your body.”

  “What kind of poison was it?” he rasped out.

  “Famithyoxin. It was a lethal dose, Griesen.” Ana looked as if she was going to cry as she uttered the words.

  The implications of her last sentence shook him. First they had attempted to poison Halva. And now, they had attempted it on him as well. They were equally at risk. “I remember his face,” he said to them. With every ounce of energy he had, he telepathed it to them, remembering clearly the face and the sandy-coloured hair.

  “Chances are the face was a constructed one,” Ithes said. “However, we will run it through our system. See what we can find.”

  His frustration with them was mounting. After a murder and now an attempt on him - he felt like a sitting duck. Wait - unless the killer was somehow linked to the Council and Damus? Was that the reason why the investigation was stalled?

  A dull ache travelled through his head and into his body. Who has the vendetta? Maybe he was asking the wrong question. The bigger question wasn’t who… but why?

  He remembered Damus’ words - something about running out of resources. That it was going to be a waste of time.

  "For now, Griesen," Ana said gently, interrupting his thoughts. "Rest. We have all of tomorrow."

  What if the killer found him by then? What could he do otherwise, though? His body was still weak. He hardly felt any stronger yet. He didn’t respond to her as he closed his eyes. He heard the capsule machine above him light back up, and he felt the warmth of the light beams begin scanning his body once again. The machine would continue to pull the poison from his body. He had to let it do its work. He had to heal first.

  CHAPTER 9

  NEXT DAY

  “Not many Acruvae can say that their initial screening went like yours," Ana said, as she poured a cup of steaming tea in front of him.

  He slowly sat upright in his cot, in a room that was stark white. The room was cavernous, and smelled of the ignateor herb - a natural remedy used to detoxify the Acruvae body. The acridity of it reminded him of when he was young and had accidentally eaten something poisonous from the garden. His mother had fed him twice his body weight of the herb in order to cure him.

  They had moved him while he had been unconscious. His healing abilities had been rapidly delayed. Normally a typical injury would have taken him minutes to heal. It had already been a day and he still felt weak. But finally, stronger than yesterday.

  He blinked. His motor skills were still somewhat delayed. He moved his eyes, his head – oh, how his neck ached! - over to Ana, who was doing the talking. He also saw Ithes in the room.

  The cup of tea wafted with the scent of lavender bush. It lay steaming in front of him in a large white saucer. He inhaled, welcoming its scent over the herb. A wave of relief washed over him as he gingerly wrapped his hands around the cup. Everything hurt. At least he could move again, he thought.

  Ana looked at him again, her eyes revealing nothing. She was shielding her emotions from him – never a good sign. She had only very rarely done so in the past. "We pulled you right through the gates as soon as the second guard discovered you. If she had not done that, you would have been permanently paralyzed. That and the antiviral you took saved you." Her eyes hardened at those words. “Smart boy.”

  He felt his heart freeze momentarily at her words, as he forced a sip of the tea.

  “Have you found him yet?” he asked.

  Ithes spoke. "No," he said. “The Guard would have escaped by now. We checked the identification of every living body in Romaen but nobody came close to the profile you provided.”

  Griesen blinked. His motor skills were coming back, now. Slowly.

  Ana waved her hand in the air, and a screen appeared in front of Griesen's bed. It was replaying yesterday's scene with the guard at the first gate. But the recording was positioned facing the shuttle, not the other way around. The profile of the guard came up only at the end, when he was shoving Griesen back into the shuttle.

  Ithes mumbled something under his breath.

  "It must have been those bastards," he said a little louder. Ana simply shook her head.

  "The First Guard," she said to Ithes quietly.

  The First Guard? What was that?

  She then looked at Griesen.

  "It’s never gone this far before," she said slowly. She turned to Ithes again. "We could send someone down with him," she said.

  It irritated Griesen; that she was talking over him. Twice, she had done it. He tried to bat the annoyance away, but it remained; but the two authorities were too engrossed in their own thoughts to notice him.

  Ithes was looking at Griesen thoughtfully. A long silence ensued. "No," he said. "It would arouse too much suspicion. He needs to go as originally planned.”

  "What do you mean - arouse too much suspicion?" Griesen demanded. He gripped his cup. "What exactly is happening?”

  Ana frowned for a moment. "Griesen - we didn't want to do this unless we had to. But given everything, you need to be made aware of…a certain element."

  Griesen caught the look that passed between the both of them. There was silence, and then Ithes spoke.

  “The First Guard - as we've identified them as - is a resistance movement,” Ithes said. “Over the course of the past few decades, our students began experiencing mission failures that were, at first, just odd mistakes that seemed to be reoccurring. We began monitoring the missions more closely and came to the conclusion there was in fact sabotage at play. Who would do this? I was beside myself when these missions started to fail."

  Ana got up, her mouth set in a straight line, as she walked towards the window. She stared outside into the bright sunlight.

  Griesen watched her as Ithes spoke. It dawned on him that She had known, all this time. Sabotage. They both knew these missions put their lives in danger.

  Ithes continued speaking. "Myself along with a close few others, began monitoring the missions, hoping to catch a glimpse of something - anything - that could reveal what was happening to our graduates. At first, most of the ones who failed were quite inexperienced - they were going on
their initial short-haul missions, and… didn't come back."

  They died. Ithes didn't need to spell that out. Griesen felt a chill at the back of his neck at those words. Then it hit him - maybe the same thing had happened to his parents?

  "How could that be." Griesen thought quickly. "The parameters around the Lifelines and the descent are very precisely calibrated.”

  "Exactly." Ithes nodded. "I went through every training manual, every instructor who taught each of those students, to find out where the lapses of information or error might have occurred. We improved our training, and our rigor around all our processes. It was for all of us.”

  "We eventually ruled out the possibility of student error after all the training improvements and due diligence we placed around you, the students, and the institute. There had to be something else at play - and lo and behold. We discovered our first mole," Ithes said.

  "When was this?" Griesen asked quietly, trying to contain his anger. He felt betrayed, and didn’t know who he was angrier at - Ana, or Ithes or the collective Institute.

  "About a millenia ago - we had a very talented Acruvae - much like yourself, who was preparing for her mission. It was her third descent. She was quite excited about it. Anastasia was her rname."

  Ithes continued on. "She was a bright, likeable woman with a remarkable aptitude for seeing the future - her predictive capabilities almost mirrored the Looking Glass' capabilities."

  Griesen noticed Ana smiling sadly as he continued on with the story.

  "This trip was particularly important as she was closing in on her subject's gap - it was going to be a spectacular bridging experience.”

  Ithes paused for a moment, as if remembering. “We were all excited, as the Institute was about to make a significant leap forward with her mission."

  "Anastasia prepared for her trip as per standard procedure. Nothing was amiss at this point. She checked all the controls, had worked through extensive details and settled on all the final schematics. She was to be sent down as her subject’s councillor that her subject had started to see, to work through a number of issues that she was in fact breaking good ground into. It was going to be a good mission. All the signs of success were there.”