Chapter Sixty-five
Self-consistency
After obtaining a borrowed military uniform, Shin traveled by shuttle in a few minutes to the point where the Corvus-21 had splashed down, and had finally reunited with the rest of the team.
He was truly relieved to know that both Lizbeth and Carissia, along with the rescued, were okay, even though none of the latter had woken up yet, besides the man named Jack Piersons. Shin had been surprised, that man was the one he had brought out last at the suggestion of Leteo Waters.
He had finally heard what had happened after he had separated from the Corvus-21 and how Carissia had glided through the air to finally land the ship on the shore.
Shin decided to cut to the chase quickly, skipping the personal details. That had nothing to do with what happened beyond the link to the plane and the memories of a time that no longer existed. What mattered was the world that existed at that moment and nothing else. Now he understood the familiarity of the case and why the plane was familiar to him. But that belonged to his own past and had no relation to what had happened. Even if he explained it they would not understand it, beyond Mai and Lizbeth, although Shin did not know how much of their memories had been recovered. It was even possible that none of it existed for them.
"I have something to tell..." he had said to begin with, after Mai and Lizbeth had come out to meet him. The group that included Natsuki, Ryuuji and Carissia gathered separately to hear his side of the story that took him ten minutes to explain.
The group couldn't quite understand what he told them. But basically Shin told them that the wall of the sphere that had appeared with the plane had killed him, while the boy he had tried to save had crossed it without any problems. Shin's body had been regenerating all those years under the lake and he had awakened at the same time that his version in Kazakhstan had awakened under Lake Kolsay. He could not explain the whole how, only a good part of why the events had happened in that order from his point of view.
He did not omit the details of his awakening or the armor, but he did not know exactly how that core had extracted parts of his particles in 1908. He had a theory about it, but it would be better to discuss it with Oxy when they could find her. He avoided saying anything about his flight skill. That was better to bring it out when he was in control of it and avoid having to explain further. He limited himself to say that someone had extracted him from a place and left him in a place with a short flight device. It was a lie but certainly a half-lie because, although he already sensed who the woman who had saved him was, he had not seen her face and her cryptic words did not help to make everything clear.
Thanks to the files shared by Dark Events between agencies, the others were able to verify that indeed an old man had been rescued days ago from the lake and taken to Pyrene, from where the latest files said that he had disappeared. An old man that little by little had been regaining his youth until he became the Shin that now stood before them.
Shin quickly recounted what had happened to him, although it was not very enlightening. His first impressions were somewhat off. He thought that because those airplane seats and the backpack had appeared in 111, he had also appeared in that year. But it was not quite so. Indeed the temporal distortion that had enveloped the plane had connected three different times. 2012 of the Ancient Era, 125 of the Singularity Era and finally the year 110, not 111 as Shin had thought.
A quick analysis of the seats and that backpack they had taken from the museum revealed that there were indeed traces of bacteria and other elements that had been deposited on the objects at least a year before they were found by the fishermen.
Neither Mai, Lizbeth, Natsuki or Ryuuji could fully understand what Shin was telling them about his strange journey and being all those years underwater while his body regenerated. But the important part of it was the clue of Benu Bender.
The team with nothing more to do there but conjecture decided to return to base camp to meet up with the others and tell them the news and proceed to move on to the next phase.
The team met with Philip, Zi and Jim Stuart at the SID tent to discuss the matter. The group had been joined by Thomas Granger and Jade, part of the GSN.
Shin once again explained everything quickly. It was the best he could do. If what Leteo Waters had said was true, and the same with Jack Piersons, it meant that something was happening to the east that was slipping through their fingers and had to do with the disappearance of Oxy and Lee Reubens.
Shin decided to do it as quickly as possible and expose what he was thinking. Benu Bender had been transported to 110 and so had he. Now he had the definitive proof. The face of that orphan found in the lake belonged to the boy from flight B313-MG that had crashed on Tuesday afternoon.
Benu Bender had suffered a memory loss. That could be due to something that had already been observed in other temporal anomalies, where the minds of those affected individuals suffered memory loss. The memory of a biological being only went in one direction, always into the future. But what happened when subjected to a temporal anomaly that went in the opposite direction to thermodynamics? How were memories preserved in the opposite direction?
The laws of physics were invariant to temporal inversion, that would not even have been discussed in another time, but taking into account the Dark Events it was something to take into consideration. The laws of physics were already distorted. In the case that some conscious element could go into the past the psychological arrow of time seemed to be affected and that was what had happened to that child?
An orphan who had lived in a religious orphanage, only to become a professor when he grew up.
Shin stood before a projection table and was manipulating the surface. He had placed the projection of Benu Bender's face next to that of Lee Reubens. It was the same person. But the astonishment was greater, when he subjected Lee Reubens' adult face to the projected aging software. Everyone waited in silence as they watched the young professor's face become more mature until wrinkles began to appear. Shin had refrained from explaining the latter, because he had no proof when he had thought of it. Now with the software there was no longer any doubt. The scars aside, the resemblance was more than obvious.
"I can't believe it," Philip said.
"The professor is the scientist...," Natsuki followed him.
"How is that possible?"
"It wouldn't be unusual for two people to look alike, but three at this level is something different," agreed Jim Stuart.
"That's because it's always been the same person," Shin pointed out, pursing his lips.
"Right. The riddle of Professor Reubens' past is solved then. The reason his parents never showed up is because his parents died in the plane crash to begin with," Granger said, crossing his arms.
"At least his mother. Hebe Bender."
"What about his father? Couldn't it be a case that Leteo Waters was the father and that's the reason for the resemblance?" Lizbeth asked.
Shin wrinkled his lips again and twisted his head. "I don't think so, you didn't see what I saw on the plane. Leteo Waters completely disappeared when that boy looked at him."
"So your theory is that Benu Bender, Lee Reubens and Leteo Waters are the same person?" Jade asked, who had been quiet. The rabbit fey had her ears drooped almost shyly from asking.
Shin nodded. "I know it's hard to prove but at least Benu Bender is Lee Reubens for sure. The problem is how to check about Leteo Waters? There's not much of a biography. There is little data on his parents and if it weren't for some of his theories he would almost have gone completely unnoticed by the academic world. He would have been just another scientist working secretly for the government of the Empire and nothing more."
"Jack Piersons also said that we knew Leteo as Lee," Mai pointed out and snorted.
"How is this Jack Piersons guy related to all this?" Zi asked.
Shin replied. "That's something I have no idea... there's something that doesn't add up for me. Waters said I'd need him but he didn't tell me why."
"There's something wrong with this Jack Piersons guy," Lizbeth said. "Look at historical records. It's almost the exact face of a rocket scientist who died in 1952."
"I guess that's not the weirdest thing," Ryuuji said and waved a finger at the table sending his own searches through the Neurowire. "Look at this."
More articles were projected holographically. They were digitized newspaper accounts of how in 1959 a foreigner had been captured in Tokyo and whose face was that of Jack Piersons in a poor quality photograph of the time. But he appeared with a different identity: Jack Allen Zegrus. "I think this guy faked his death in 1952 and reappeared in 1959, but what caught my attention is a detail in the story," Ryuuji explained.
One word was underlined. Some narrowed their eyes.
A fake passport from Taured.
Mai didn't remember too much about Jack Piersons, other than in a few halting recollections, but that word had never appeared in her memories. Because Taured was a country that had only existed since year 10 of the Singularity Era to begin with. How was it possible that Jack Piersons had appeared in 1959 of the previous era saying he was from a country that did not exist, when he knew he would be arrested at the airport for it?
"Who the hell is this guy?" Granger asked, leaning forward and examining the articles. There were more urban legends that had been popping up with the internet boom of the 2000s. Many of those legends claimed that the story could be of a time traveler from the future. Others claimed that it was simply a case of diplomatic espionage.
Whatever the case, the truth was that Jack Allen Zegrus had disappeared from the face of the earth after that. There was nothing to keep track of him, at least online. There was no data on him. There were no appointments, obituaries, absolutely nothing that the Neurowires of everyone present had not detected. There was only the detail that an old Jack Piersons had appeared on that plane and that he must be the mysterious traveler who was traveling with a false identity accompanying Leteo Waters.
Which could only mean that Jack Piersons had been on clandestine duty serving the Empire. Leteo Waters had taken a trip from Diego Garcia the same day and along with someone else and two escorts had taken the flight in Turkey bound for Geneva.
If that was so. What was happening to Piersons body? Mai was thinking internally but the same thing must be going through everyone's mind. Because he really didn't appear to be as old as the data indicated. Scientist Jack Piersons was born in 1914 and died in 1952. But if it was the same person, that would indicate that by the year 2012 he would be 98 years old.
It was not possible.
But Jack Piersons had been an occultist. Did his slow aging have anything to do with it? Few true magicians and alchemists of the twentieth century had achieved that and there was no data to indicate that Piersons was one of them.
"Who is this Janus guy? The one Jack Piersons mentioned," Jim's question brought everyone out of their musings.
"Oxy had mentioned a guy named DiMautus," sighed Mai, who had spent the last few moments moving her hands as if she were turning invisible pages.
"She mentioned him to me when we had been working on the scan. I wasn't there when you guys had the meeting. What's up with that?"
"Well, the algorithm is analyzing the data. Oxy remembered Di Mautus, but the pseudonym was DiMatus, whose real identity is DiMati. Besides writing books he is not well known. But he is known for something else. It turns out that he was one of the first scientists to develop prediction programs for the market."
"What's so weird about that?"
Mai waved her hand and sent what she had been putting in order in the last few seconds to the central holographic projector. The program displayed immediately and everyone was puzzled.
"Janus is an algorithm?"
"An algorithm that went into obsolescence in the mid 2000s of the Ancient Era. But read on."
They all looked at bits and pieces of information that came from data mining. There were databases of all kinds, but in particular what Mai had gathered was about some sort of urban legend on the Deep Web. Many white hat hackers had proclaimed that various security programs on government-linked websites in various countries had vulnerabilities and that some had been accessed by a program reminiscent of a certain ancient algorithm.
There was other information that came from comments in forums, that spoke of artificial intelligences that lived hidden in the Internet, and that one of them was precisely a program called Janus.
That could well be true. After all, the first Aeon to awaken many had hidden themselves when they had acquired consciousness, and it was not until later that humanity realized that the time had come to share the world with a new species.
That was not all, though. Stories involving Janus appeared in various places. Sometimes linking him to purchases through phantom companies, other times almost unrelated clues to certain murders and disappearances. Such legends were common. Conspiracy fanatics would run such stories even to this day, claiming that the Aeon were replacing human consciousness or using the Neurowire to create a more docile society.
Be that as it may, it was quite a coincidence that Janus appeared on several sides and that its creator had a connection to Leteo Waters, with whom he had written a book in the past that talked about time and time crystals several years before they existed.
"Is it possible? An artificial intelligence is behind all this? What does it have to do with what this guy Piersons and Waters said?"
"Waters didn't tell me anything about stopping anything... he just told me that Oxy and Lee Reubens are in Meyrin,"Shin said.
"Piersons said about Meyrin too, on the accelerator," Mai pointed out.
"And the plane? How does it fit into this?" asked Natsuki. "What caused the distortion to begin with? Was there really something on board? Or just a Dark Event, or did it have something to do with what was stolen from the Vatican?"
Carissia finally leaned across the table and opened her eyes and sent the flight data to the holographic projection. "At the time the distortion occurred, there were two signals in addition to ours. We weren't the only ones there."
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Lizbeth nodded. "Yes you told me that. But who?"
"There was a payload from the Maldives," Mai recalled, " Leteo Waters was coming from Diego Garcia with bodyguard. I'm pretty sure whatever it was had something to do with that. Then there's the detail of the tactical droids the search team found. That type of model is the same one that attacked Pyrene's base."
"A jinn in the machine..." mused Shin.
"What?"
"I'm remembering what happened on the plane. Leteo Waters disappeared when that Benu kid looked at him. The reason I think the three of them are the same person is precisely because I think Benu watched his old version. Two objects sharing the same space and time, and of course his adult version Lee Reubens, but he wasn't there. So that's three versions. The one with the higher entropy collapses when observed by his younger version."
"What does that have to do with djinns?"
"I don't mean feys. It reminds me of the principle of autoconsistency. It is possible that an object, a djinn can move into the past, but only to complete what will happen in the future. Predestination. A jinn in the machine. Like the jinn of mythology, they disappear without a trace once they complete their objective."
Many looked at each other quizzically. But it made sense. Everything that had happened with the plane was just as it should have happened. The event was not linear, but a good deal of the data fit. It didn't take more than a few milliseconds for everyone's Neurowire to put a piece of the data together and see that indeed, while many clues were missing, the plane was something that had happened as it should have.
1959A.E.October 12th.
Jack allen Zegrus appears in Japan (urban legend) same face as Jack Piersons a rocket scientist who died in 1952.
2012A.E. March 20th.
Flight B313-MG disapear. Benu bender, Leteo Waters and Jack Piersons are on board. A possible mystery cargo from Diego Garcia.
2099A.E. May 12th.
A team of cleaners is exterminated at Lake Lemac, Lugrin. The first rumors of paranormal events at the site appear.
110S.A.March 20th.
-Benu Bender appears in Lake Lemac, later that boy will become Professor Lee Reubens.
-A backpack and airplane seats are found by fishermen a year later.
-Meantime Shin is regenerating under the lake.
Events of 125S.A.
March 15th.Thursday
-Shin and Mai working in Kolsay.
-Canton du Valais, Monthey, Switzerland. Old Shin appears rescued by some college students.
March 16th. Friday
-Canton du Valais, Monthey General Hospital, Switzerland. Old Shin Transported to 3rd Station of Pyrene-F. Grenoble, Isère. France.
March 17th. Saturday.
-The Sil Moore case occurs where Michael Levin and Rumenia Ruzicka appear and steal the body. Both criminals then disappear. Possible connection? No results yet.
March 19th. Monday
-Vatican robbery by Michael Levin and Rumenia Ruzicka who previously were following professor Lee Reubens. Both disappear with an object stolen from the tunnels. A possible object from a legend that spoke of a machine capable of looking back in time, called Chronovisor.
-Lee Reubens is taken into custody.
-Lago della Merla, Torino. Italy. Michael Levin and Rumenia Ruzicka captured by Pyrene agents. Stolen Vatican object recovered.
March 20th. Tuesday.
-3rd Station of Pyrene-F. Grenoble, Isère. France. Attack to Pyrene, meanwhile old Shin was underground. Michael Levin and Rumenia Ruzicka are released, Vatican object is stolen again.
-Nevermore Base No. 2 in French Territory. Mai and Shin arrives to the French base and reunites with the SID team.
-Flight B313-MG crash over Lugrin Lemac Lake.
March 21st, Wednesday.
-SID Team joins investigation on Flight B313-MG.
-Van invites Professor Lee Reubens to join the investigation and he joins the investigation assisting Oxy.
-Van is knocked unconscious.
March 22.Thursday.
-Lemac Lake, Noville. Switzerland. Shin and Lizbeth traveled east to investigate a piece that appeared in Veyteux in the year 111. (the seats and backpack from the plane)
-Oxy and Lee Reubens disapear.
-Old Shin is rescued by someone and left behind? Error.
-Flight B313-MG appears from the 2012 and then disapear with Shin and the Kid transported to 110. At the same time new Shin wake up in Saint Laurent-du-Pont.
In the Neurowire of all the same result appeared, when analyzing only the aircraft data.
"A Bootstrap paradox," Carissia said.
"An event destined to occur," Shin said and his eyes had locked on Carissia. Perhaps it was his imagination. But perhaps that waking voice sounded similar to that of the redhead. But he had never heard Carissia cry as that voice had done. Maybe I'm overthinking this, he said to himself, letting the thought slip away.
"Who rescued you? And what does that have to do with it?" Philip asked in dismay. Did that not seem to make sense or was it just something that had happened disconnected from the plane?
Shin thought about it. He couldn't tell about his past. "I have no idea," he simply said, shrugging and shaking his head.
"Guys?" Jade said, raising her hand timidly, and they all looked at her. "Maybe it's coincidence but the accelerator in Meyrin. There are three."
"Yeah, I know," nodded Mai.
"I'm doing searches only for private information, but the entire underground territory was purchased years ago by a private entity of anonymous capital called Gianicolo."
Shin frowned. "Are you kidding me?"
"What's wrong?" Natsuki asked.
"Gianicolo, or Janiculum, is the name given in ancient times to places where the two-faced god Janus was worshipped."
Granger looked at Jade. "Send that to me." For a few seconds they were both silent as they shared the data. "Hmmm…"
"What is it now?" Lizbeth asked.
"Gianicolo has connections with other private companies and one of them made a rather large cash payout a couple of weeks ago."
"What kind of payout?"
"Purchase of fallen soldiers of fortune, material and offworld tactical droids for private company security."
Everyone turned to look at Mai.
"That doesn't smell right. The tactical droids are the same type we found, right?"
"No information. Only a few invoices and most of the data is sparse due to confidentiality agreements," Jade said.
"What company were the mercenaries hired from?"
"BlackThunder and Dolphin Corps. Both owned by Peter Vazziri," Granger replied, tilting his head slightly.
Mai nodded. "I know him, is a relative of Thomas Vazziri, the UK supervisor of the SID." she said and sighed. She had to make a decision to proceed and she didn't like what she was thinking at all. "Let me think for a minute."
That said, Mai focused on her Neurowire and the holographic projection table as she unfolded a map.
***
Half an hour earlier.
In another part of the camp, a certain small dog had just finished his breakfast.
With the commotion that had been caused by the communications malfunctions, and the strange news coming in about what had happened east of the lake, security had been increased and many were on alert for any situation that might arise.
Thanks to that the pug had gotten a double breakfast that had been momentarily abandoned by a couple soldiers. He had eaten enough and had nothing to do. Even though the rain was dripping down his crystal clear fur, he didn't feel like being in the rain. That almost absolutely black sky gave him a rather annoying feeling. It reminded him of when they put a veil that hid the light when he had been inside the mirror.
Merging with his surroundings, he made his way to the place where he had spent the night. One of the special tactical transport vehicles that had been brought in by the FRT. The vehicle was almost the size of a truck, although the trailer was rather more bulky than the part that served as the cab.
He climbed up the ladder and climbed inside while shaking the remaining drops from his body. He walked around and looked around once more. The space was comfortable and had all sorts of things in it, even if he couldn't tell what half of them were for.
The transport vehicle was equipped for special multifunctional deployment. In the back it had emergency equipment, weapons, first aid kits and even tools that the dog didn't know what they were for.
He yawned and walked towards a semi-hidden area that had several industrial crates with weapons. It was the same place where he had slept during the night. Someone had forgotten a pile of towels and it had become a more than comfortable bed for him.
He had no plans for anything that day. After all he was just a simple dog still discovering the new world around him.
He fell asleep in a few seconds.
And he dreamed. He dreamed memories of days past.
He dreamed of Sil Moore, her dances. Her strange way of living. And of her head falling from her neck. He also dreamed of a thin looking man with a hat. That man was standing in front of the window of the antique store.
With an almost skeletal finger he had pierced the glass as if it did not exist. Then with that same finger he had touched the surface of the mirror, where the pug had lived prisoner for so many hundreds of years.
"You're playing your part in this too...," the man had said.
The dog woke up startled and looked around.
He could only hear the sound of raindrops pattering on the roof of the truck and the voices of soldiers in the distance.
Everything was still the same.
He lowered his head and tried to sleep on, but the memory of that strange man could not get out of his head.
***
The entire team had been in the last few minutes taking note of everything discovered through the Neurowires.
Shin meanwhile had sat in a chair and watched Mai work. He knew he shouldn't disturb her at that time.
That was the reason she had been the Director of Operations for so many years. It wasn't a gift or anything like that. It was obvious that Mai's expertise in it was due to years of experience, both on and off battlefields of all kinds.
Experience helping detectives in the 21st century. Experience helping the police. Experience helping others and trying to do her best.
To be a SID agent required experience. But to run operations it took more than that.
If one wanted to make decisions that would lead to the best outcome, there was nothing better than quickly getting used to what being part of the SID entailed.
But there was also nothing worse than getting used to something like that quickly. The cases of the last month had been complicated, but not of a bloody nature like a couple that had turned up in previous months.
In that sense Mai was a perfect balance. She knew how gruesome some cases could be. She could make cold decisions at times, but she also didn't let go of what she could feel and use her instincts.
Lizbeth and Carissia were both on either side at the moment and Shin was trying to figure out exactly what Mai was thinking.
It was obvious that they should go to that place. But what they would meet there was another matter.
Mai had unfolded a hologram showing Switzerland and France. There was the lake where they were. To the west was Meyrin.
Shin saw a huge circumference on the French side, though just touching Meyrin's side. There were some labels showing the gigantic superaccelerator over 100 kilometers in circumference. Mai was focused on various points on the circumference. She had been studying various types of data that jumped out every second and she and Carissia were discussing something over the Neurowire. Although they were not speaking they were exchanging glances and pointing to different points on the map and the atmospheric projection included.
She looked at a point on Meyrin in a strange way. With her hands she enlarged that area and saw another circumference of smaller size.
What?... Shin narrowed his eyes and looked at Mai. Maybe he was feeling tired again but he had thought he saw something behind her. It was only for a few seconds but it reminded him of what a broken glass would look like, but in a three-dimensional space. He rubbed his one good eye. It didn't appear again.
https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dhmqre9-ba8097ea-17cd-44f3-b70c-5ebeb8446f6d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1920,h_1358,q_75,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_65_by_hasegawakein_dhmqre9-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTM1OCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGhtcXJlOS1iYTgwOTdlYS0xN2NkLTQ0ZjMtYjcwYy01ZWJlYjg0NDZmNmQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.0sfwZvpRuy608RKxAz5lGv117QkUa_EiUnSxxOVnFVY [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42dd80f9-5ac6-42d5-8ccc-bcea020b6152/dhmqre9-ba8097ea-17cd-44f3-b70c-5ebeb8446f6d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1920,h_1358,q_75,strp/nevermore_enygma_vol_5_chapter_65_by_hasegawakein_dhmqre9-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTM1OCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZGQ4MGY5LTVhYzYtNDJkNS04Y2NjLWJjZWEwMjBiNjE1MlwvZGhtcXJlOS1iYTgwOTdlYS0xN2NkLTQ0ZjMtYjcwYy01ZWJlYjg0NDZmNmQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.0sfwZvpRuy608RKxAz5lGv117QkUa_EiUnSxxOVnFVY]
I need a vacation, maybe, he said to himself. And he scratched his back, at the level where he had that mark.
"Okay, here's what we'll do," Mai said to herself and then looked at Granger. "Thomas, we're going to need a little help."
Granger approached the table and looked at the hologram. "What are you planning, ma'am?"
"How quickly can you deploy a recon team?"
"If you wish, right now. What do you need?"
"Drones first."
"How many?"
"About six."
"What kind...?"
"Hummingbirds."
"Anything else?"
Mai looked at the rest of the team. "I'm going to need everyone to get ready. And I'm going to need quick coordination with the other SID bases in French territory."
"What exactly do you have in mind?" Zi asked.
"I need visuals of the location, but satellites can't penetrate the thick cloud cover. But, from the data of the past few days, I see that there have been gradual increases in the energy levels used at various points in the territory, where that giant particle accelerator from the Ancient Era was located."
"Has there been any alert from the power plants that something was going on?" asked Natsuki.
"No. Whatever is going on, is underground. The satellites have only detected electromagnetic signal in the last few days, but oddly enough it's around the perimeter. There have also been temperature and humidity changes that were not present until a few weeks ago."
"All over the place?" asked Ryuuji.
"No, that's the weird thing. It's in various parts over the places where the circumference of that accelerator is but, oddly enough, at the four main checkpoints it had nothing is happening. It's as if something is blocking the signal from being detected from the atmosphere. It could be deliberate, not drawing attention to the main points."
"There may be some kind of disruptor or jammer a few meters above the ground to block signals that can be detected from the Orbital Belt or satellites," suggested Jim Stuart. "For example the ones we use when there is an operation where we need to jam signals we have these clouds of nanobots."
Mai nodded. "Let's hope we're wrong. But we'd better get ready."
In just a few minutes Mai had reviewed the information and collated data from other Pyrene research and file sharing. That could be worse than she had imagined.
Mai remembered the talk they had had the day before in secret. Oxy had been part of an experiment involving a linear particle accelerator in Tokyo that had ended in disaster. That experiment was related to time.
A plane that had disappeared in 2012 had reached them in the present. An object that could look into the past stolen from the Vatican and to recover it they had spared no resources and attacked a station in Pyrene. The ship that had attacked Pyrene had a cloaking system that had dissipated the damage of one of the agents with fire abilities. Carissia had also seen a ship with a cloaking system under the plane.
The droids. Janus. Oxy. Lee Reubens. Benu Bender. Leteo Waters. Jack Piersons. A particle accelerator and time travel.
What she feared was that the plane might well be an experiment. A test for something bigger.
If Shin was right and Lee Reubens was Leteo Waters. How was him in the past? Couldn't they be walking into a trap too?
Mai looked at the data again. It didn't change her responsibilities as Director of Operations. There had been victims. Whatever it was, they had to stop whatever was going on and rescue Oxy and Lee Reubens. As long as they were really there. They had no proof other than the testimony of someone who had died on board and another who was unconscious at the time to answer any questions.
There was something else that was bothering her. Maybe she was overthinking it.
Oxy didn't usually go out on missions too much. It was the Council that had requested that she go too.
The Council through Lizbeth had sent Azusa to Mai. Why not a special emissary? Were they avoiding her?
Who had infected Van with the hypnite? Mai remembered that when she asked Van why she had brought Lee Reubens to the scene she collapsed. Did someone want her to bring Lee there? And that woman from the Council, Jen Anderson, how did she fit into the puzzle?
A vehicle was missing. Had she been an unwitting accomplice as well? If so, then that would answer the question of how Oxy and Lee Reubens could have been abducted.
They were all like pieces in a chess game. Maybe even herself. Who were the players? Just Janus? Why?
Why was the induction ceremony for new agents to be held in France in the first place, when it used to be in Spain? It would not be the first time that the Council was behind something. The ceremony could well be just part of the public relations, but so much had happened in such a short period of time that everything was whirling around in her head like a vortex.
Either way. They had their objective and the chance to finally solve the gigantic puzzle with all the pieces.
Tell me Azusa, you don't know anything about this, do you?
No, was the simple answer in the form of an image that appeared in Mai's mind.
Mai sighed and looked at the whole team and set a firm tone. "For lack of further information this Dark Event is categorized as Code Red: Dark Event Class 6: Das Unheimliche. As of this moment the Mesnie Hellequin protocol is activated"
After those words everyone's face became serious.
It had been months since a Wild Hunt had been activated. The last one had been in Turkey and an entire city had had to be evacuated to deal with the threat.