“Now what?” Asked Forge.
They were in mid-jump, sitting around the conference table, staring at the thermos that supposedly contained their friend.
“This is so weird,” said Ishtar.
“You’re tellin’ me,” said Revol. His voice was distorted, as if he were in an echo chamber that changed his pitch each time his voice bounced off a wall. The ring of lights circling the middle of the thermos blinked green with each syllable.
Forge chuckled. “I missed ya, bro.”
“Same. Hey, speaking of weird, how’s Sol?”
Forge looked around the table. They were still in their battle gear, but they’d taken off their skullforts. All of them were wearing various looks of disbelief.
“Sol’s good,” said Ish, a half-smile on her face. A laugh escaped. “Sorry, Reev. This is just not how I expected we would find you.”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to find me at all, so there. Seriously, though. How’s Sol? Did you bring him back? Is he here? I need updates.”
Cat spoke up before anyone else could. “He’s back at Albion. The Quorum grilled him pretty hard, but enough of them were on his side to keep him from being detained.”
“Right on. I haven’t heard Cap say anything. Is he back at Albion?”
“Cat’s captain now,” Forge piped in.
“Pffft…”
“No, for real.” Forge held in a chuckle. “Sol got the ball rolling on some big changes.”
Cat held up his hand, cutting Forge short.
“Well, that’s great.”
“I think it best we let you rest for now,” Cat said, giving everyone a cautioning look.
“Uhm, okay. I mean, I can’t really do that, but I can hush if you want.”
“What do you mean you can’t do that?” asked Cat, clearly annoyed.
“So, like, when I had a body, I would get tired, and then I’d sleep, or just get super lazy. Now, since I don’t have a body…”
Cat rubbed Ahis temples. “Okay. I get it, Reev. Why don’t you answer a few of our questions?”
“You hate me. Forge complains a lot. Euk is Cap’s real favorite. Speck’s easily the most capable member of the team. Ish would totally jump my bones if Ru and I broke up...”
“Revol,” Cat’s voice was beginning to rise.
“And if I had any.”
“Seargent!”
The room went dead quiet, though Ish and Euk were smirking.
“I think you need to rest, Cat.”
“Hey, Reev,” said Euk, stepping in, “we’ve been through a lot since the fight with the Archeus. And Cat’s been in the thick of it.”
Reev replied with silence.
Cat answered back with silence.
“We’re curious, man,” Forge said. “We thought you guys were taken, and when Sol reassured us that only the Archeus could do that, we felt a little relieved, but we still didn’t know what happened to you. And we’ve been worried sick this whole time. So, we’d like to hear anything you can tell us about what you’ve been through.”
Reev’s reply came after an anxious moment.
“Nothing good.”
Everyone exchanged a sad look.
“Nobody’s mentioned Ru. Is she still out there?”
“Yeah,” said Euk. “We got lucky with you. Hopefully we’ll find her just as quickly.”
“Yeah.”
“Were you too not together?” asked Aster.
“I think we might have been at some point. It’s hard to say. It felt like it at times, but I think I was mostly alone. I honestly can’t describe what it’s been like. I can’t even describe what I see right now. It’s glowing stuff, and dark stuff, and wet stuff, and dry stuff. I dunno. It’s weird.”
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“You cried for help earlier,” said Euk. “When I came out to get you. Do you remember that?”
“Kinda. I mostly remember feeling like I was being attacked, and that I was starting to see things like I’m used to. But that all stopped, and I blacked out, then woke up here.”
“What do you mean?” Forge asked, leaning forward. “You saw things like you were used to?” Work with me, Reev, he thought. Give me some kind of framework.
“You know how in movies, when people have visions or are in altered states, they see their families, or people they don’t know, or they’re on a mountain or they’re floating or, you know, it’s all familiar images, just out of context?”
“Okay,” said Forge. He didn’t realize when he was doing it, but he had leaned so far forward his chin was almost on his crossed forearms. Reached out and spun the thermos around, recalling the components Sol directed him to use. At the time it made no sense, so he hoped Revol could tell him something that brought it all together. Or, at least enough to get him on the scent.
“Well,” Reev continued, “I didn’t get any of that. I went through a phase where I saw things that made absolutely no sense to me, and I felt feelings that I didn’t understand. Then I started seeing the same thing all the time, which is the whole binary pattern I just described. I tried for a long time, or at least it felt like a long time, to remember all the visions I had so I could articulate the emotions that came with them.”
“Tell me about that,” Forge said.
“Well, I saw one thing I can’t explain, and I felt like a kid again. I was so excited about everything I saw, and curious as hell about it all. Then I saw a bunch of things I can’t explain, and I felt the way kids do when they see their parents. Then I was terrified, and depressed, and then I didn’t know how to feel. Part of me felt like giving up and ending it all, and the other part felt angry, and wanted to end the source of pain. Then I felt I was in two places at once, looking from both places at the other. Then it was four places, then six, then eight, and that kept going on until I felt sick. Then I saw a crowd of... whatever it was, and I felt like I was being pulled away from them, then thrown against a wall. Then I saw things that at the time looked completely strange, but I’m starting to think I was actually looking at our space then.”
Forge picked up the thermos and turned it upside down.
“Whoa!”
“You felt that?” Forge asked.
“I felt something. What did you do?”
“He turned you upside down,” said Aster. “Or right side up, maybe?”
“Shake him,” said Cat.
“Actually,” Forge said. He shook the thermos.
“Don’t do that.”
“How did it feel?” Forge asked.
“You know how non-radiants act when they drink too much? I think I know why now.”
“This is good,” Forge said. “I’m gonna let you sit still for a while now, Reev, but I’ll test it out again later. Okay?”
“Give me a heads up, will ya?”
“Sure thing, bud.”
“So Sol made this thing, right? Did he say how Ru and I are both gonna fit? Are there compartments?”
“It’s a tachyon field that’s holding you in place,” Forge explained. “So the thermos isn’t a hollow storage container. It's all components. Emitters and whatnot. I know you hate jargon.”
“Sure do. I was just asking cos... I mean, I love Ru and all, but we need our space.”
“Reev,” said Cat, “after all this, can you say something meaningful, please?”
Reev was quiet for a moment. “It’s just, the whole Anunnaki thing. It freaks me out.”
“Sol wouldn’t do that to you,” said Aster.
“Okay.”
There was some lighthearted conversation, then Cat called Forge to the engineering bay.
“Do you think he can hear us?” Cat asked, almost in a whisper. Forge had to strain to hear him over the hum of the drive core.
“No,” Forge replied. “The thermos is acting like a body, keeping him in one place and feeding sensory input to him.”
“So, we could shut his hearing or his speech off?”
Forge couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Cat!”
Cat put up a hand to calm him. “I’m just gathering information.”
“Well, yeah. We can turn functions off and on. Sol didn’t explain everything to me, but it’s not hard to tell what does what, now that I’ve had a chance to interact with Reev.”
Cat nodded, He tended to put on a strangely blank face when he was worried. He wore that face now.
“What’s eatin’ at you, boss?”
“Everything, Forge. Everything. Sol has told us next to nothing about the time he’s been away. Whenever anyone, even Sensus, questions him about his absence he’s vague or completely evasive. And yet he has plenty to say about what we should all be doing here and now.”
Forge folded his arms and tilted his head to one side. “Well, that adds up to me.”
“Really?”
“Sure. He doesn’t have time to sit down and explain the last thirteen years to everyone who asks him to. But, with the Tangents breaching the Verge again, it’s important that we all get our asses in gear. And Sol’s always been a ‘take charge’ kind of guy.”
Cat seemed to calm down a little. He let out a quiet sigh. “That’s true. Before Sensus gave me command, I felt like I was given all the information. Now I realize how much he’d been holding back, and I’m worried that we might be kept too much in the dark.”
Forge put a hand on his new captain’s shoulder. New captain, old friend. “Cat, you only have one decision to make. Cap told us we’d need to trust each other. You just gotta decide whether or not you’re gonna follow his advice.”
Cat mulled over Forge’s words for a moment, then smiled.
“Thanks, Forge.”
“Anytime, Captain.”
They both went back to the bunks, and before Cat turned to go to his private cabin, they heard Reev calling from the conference room.
“You all alone in here, lil guy?” Forge said.
“Unless Aster fell asleep while I was running through the list of jokes I wrote while I was waiting for you. But I don’t hear her snoring so... Hey, Cat, I just wanted to say congratulations. It’s a long time coming.”
Forge looked at Cat expectantly.
“Thanks, Reev. It’s good to have you back.”