{Earth | One Week Ago}

“Are you sure about this?”

Chief of Weapons Engineering, Lynn Renee, nervously watched the Progeny, Kyle Roberts—codename, Story Taker—on a monitor after delivering an explanation of the Faraday cage to him over the intercom.

Smith, her human coworker at Iona’s Arsenal, gripped the pendant on his chain and muttered, “If that’s Kyle, I’ll eat my left shoe. He hasn’t glanced once at our mysterious warrior princess over here, and it’s been cold this whole trip. If you catch my drift?”

Unintentionally, Dr. Pablo Suarez, Lynn’s husband, and Andrew Holt, another Progeny known as Conscience, cast a glance at Silence, who only had eyes for the monitor.

Obviously ignoring the younger males’ attentions, the ancient Icarean female muttered, “How much longer, I wonder?”

The observation room looked like any other Iona location. Gray slate floors, white walls, and black ceiling. Perimeter lights lined the floor and walls. The room included a cozy sleep corner and a kitchenette for long stays.

Lynn’s black locs twirled around her face when she looked over her shoulder at Andrew. The brown-haired teal-eyed twenty-year-old took the mic. “We know that’s not Kyle. Is he dead?”

Kyle’s true green eyes hidden by the curly brown mop that flopped in his face glared at the door as if willing it to open. “No. He’s in here with me.” His voice sounded so foreign and restrained.

Over the last few weeks, none of Story Taker’s mannerisms matched his mostly irritating personality. Always stoned, he cracked zingers and inappropriately timed jokes, leaning on the pervy side. But Kyle was never downright disrespectful to the rest of the Shadow—the name assigned to the good guys by their long-fallen leader. Xelan, the best Icarus to ever Icari, named them after a gathering of jaguars.

Recently, “Kyle” or whoever inhabited him, plotted against them and worked with T.a.o., one of the First Wave Progeny of eight thousand years ago, to sabotage their relationship with the Tritans. Silence and Andrew recognized it first, eventually recruiting the rest of the Shadow into this conspiracy.

It wasn’t easy. First, Lynn and X, an alien from Lukemore, faked a bombing in a Luk silo compromised by Imminent. That’s right. They never detonated a single explosion. Instead, they evacuated the hundreds of workers living in it before Kyle and T.a.o. set off the extra explosives they planted to ensure evidence of their involvement was buried beneath the rubble. Several of the Luk survivors testified to seeing the two together with Abresson, a top-brass Tritan in league with Imminent.

Stolen story; please report.

While the Shadow evacuated the silo, Andrew and Smith ran into an unexpected ally on the planet, Pil. Imminent started this volley of terrorist attacks by bombing The Brethren headquarters—Earth’s Icarean and human governing body—and the quantum communicator the Dwarves of Pil engineered to restore communication on Earth. They destroyed the former. The Brethren worked around the clock to excavate the latter from its sunken tomb in Nevada beside the Hoover Dam. They determined the blast below the building did nothing to disrupt the technology within. The communicator project was completely salvageable.

Imminent housed one of its headquarters on Pil in the same plaza as the quantum engineers who temporarily resided on Earth for the global communicator. It made sense for someone to await Andrew and Smith there. Their new ally arranged to meet them on Earth, aided by Tumu, their Tritan contact with ever ambiguous allegiances.

Lynn turned and glanced at Devis behind her. She felt weird harboring a First Wave Progeny—Kyle’s ancestor—in the Arsenal. For truly, why would the Shadow trust anyone at this point? Everyone held a proverbial knife to their throats. But like Kyle, Devis could access and transfer memories. He shared his experience at Celindria’s hands. Every negative interaction between them and all the love he still carried for her riddled with his disappointment and heartache. He wanted to save her soul.

The Chief Weapons Engineer looked back to the monitors to find Celindria, the Imminent member possessing Kyle, beating and breaking his bones. Maybe someone should inform Devis his cause was a lost one.

The older Progeny gestured at the monitors with haunted green eyes. “We’ll have to restrain her. He’s experiencing that pain. Not her.”

Pablo, Chief Medical Officer of the Iona Medical Ecology, stared in fascination. “This changes so much of my understanding of the nacre interface.”

Lynn understood her husband’s objective interest. He spent the most time with all things nacre-health related. As someone who constructed weapons targeting or defending nacres, Lynn also found this recent development exhilarating. But time and place. She looked at Andrew, who nodded. “I’ll send in—”

“I’ll go,” Silence volunteered. Speaking of interesting developments.

With Silence’s chin held high and those gray eyes filled with so much resolve, Lynn approved with a wave to the door. The warrior went inside, and everyone gathered around the monitors with bated breath. The amnesiac impressed the hell out of them.

Even Devis commented, “I’ve never seen anyone so self-contained and sure.”

Well, that was until Celindria called Silence “Mother of my people” and sent her to the floor, unconscious. Andrew leapt to the door. “We have to get her out of there.”

“Wait!” Smith with his easy brown eyes and styled brown hair looked sharp and alert. He pointed to the monitors. “We can’t.”

Kyle’s face sneered into the camera, smug and proud. The opposite of his usual humbled, redemption-seeking demeanor. Glaring at them, Celindria in possession of Story Taker arranged Silence more comfortably on the nacre-glass floor with something akin to reverence in his eyes.

Devis shook his head, distressed judging by the tension in his shoulders and the heavy frown on his face. “We can’t risk anyone else in this room to her.”

Lynn understood his meaning. She lifted the comms device with a gentle touch from Andrew. Wishing she had a reassuring smile to spare, she glanced over at Pablo. Her support. Her love. The tattoo of their vows over her nacre proof of their unified stance in these situations.

At all costs but each other.

At his nod, Lynn gripped her chain as she spoke into the device, “Send in Twenty-One.”

Time for plan B.