Chapter 32
They weren’t happy. Kane could tell that without going into their minds.
Leila paced the area in front of the cave, tension radiating out from her body. Brandon was seated on a rock, but every muscle was rigid, his mouth turned down in a frown. Leila had clearly shared what had happened at the meeting. They believed he was betraying their sacred trust.
Except he no longer believed it was sacred.
“Tell me what you think we should do,” he asked.
“We should complete the mission. There is no other option.”
“We don’t even know what the mission is. All we have is a date and a bomb. Are you really suggesting that we go and blow something up and potentially destroy most of the world’s population?”
“We don’t know that will happen.”
“And we don’t know it won’t. For Christ’s sake, I’m not abandoning the mission. I’m just saying we need to know more about it.”
Leila stopped in front of him, hands on her hips. Her blue eyes flashed. “Just tell me something. If you’d never met these ‘others’, would you be having doubts now? Or would you know the way forward?”
The question stopped him short. The answer was, he didn’t know.
He tried to think objectively—he owed Leila that much.
If he’d never met Jake and Kaitlin and the others, would he have blindly carried out the mission?
If they had gotten into the time machine and found the bomb, would he have used it?
“We might never have gotten into the machine if it wasn’t for the others.”
“It would have shown us the way.”
God, she was stubborn. “It’s not a fucking sentient being. It’s not a god. You might worship it like it is one, but you must know that it’s just a machine. A fucking fucked-up, broken machine, at that—not the fucking Messiah.”
Her eyes widened. Yeah, sacrilege. Not.
“And to answer your question,” he continued, “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Because I did meet them.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and turned away, her shoulders stiff. Kane looked at Brandon. “What do you want to do?”
He shook his head. “It was all so simple before. We knew we would do whatever had to be done.”
“You do both now realize that this isn’t some sacred quest. The ‘mission’ was just a job a group of people were paid to do.
A job that somehow got screwed up and everything went wrong.
Our ancestors ended up here by mistake, ten thousand years ago.
Most of what they knew was lost in time, except for the mission that followed through the generations.
But we don’t know whether they were good or bad.
Whether they came back to destroy or to save.
And we have a moral duty to do what is right.
That means finding out what’s going on and not just blindly blowing some stuff up. ”
He didn’t think he had convinced them. They’d had similar conversations before.
He loved them both, they’d been his whole family—Leila had been the closest thing to a mother he’d had after his own had left.
But they were both too blindly set in their ways.
Neither of them had ever left this place.
He’d suggested they go, see something of the world.
Now that they had friends who could share the burden of guarding the machine, they could have a little freedom.
But neither of them would hear of it. They had their duty.
Plus, they didn’t entirely trust the newcomers.
He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He wanted to get back to Kaitlin. Where was she?
He reached out with his mind, but at that moment gunshots sounded somewhere on the perimeter. He went still.
Beside him, Leila unslung the weapon from her shoulder and moved to stand at the side of the cave entrance. Brandon was on his feet and reaching for his own rifle. Kane was unarmed—he hadn’t even thought of carrying here.
Where was Kaitlin? “Kaitlin?”
“I’m okay. I’m heading back to the house.”
“I’ll meet you on the way.”
And then he was running. Leila called from behind him, but he didn’t pause. He had to get to Kaitlin. He met Jake just outside the house.
“We’re under attack,” Jake said, tossing him a rifle. “Rose just called in. Looks like four of them, but we can’t get a reading.”
Kane stood, staring out at the surrounding jungle, searching for signs of movement. Where was she?
“Kaitlin?” Jake asked.
“She’s on her way back.” He reached out to her but at that moment, a blinding pain seared through his mind, and he crashed to his knees. Beside him, Jake clutched his head.
The pain drilled into his brain, burning away his ability to think. His vision was going dark at the edges.
He made out a form heading toward them, but his sight was fading fast. Then something was placed on his head, and the pain vanished as though it had never been. He was on his back staring at the sky above him, his mind blessedly empty.
“Are you all right?” Christa asked. He realized she was talking to Jake.
“I am now,” Jake said. “Christ, that hurt. Thank you.”
“I saw you go down, and I didn’t know what was happening. I thought...I didn’t know what to think. But I could see you were both in pain and I thought the reflector devices might help.”
“You did good.”
Kane rolled onto his knees and then pushed himself to his feet.
Christa was crouched beside Jake, the colonel standing just behind her.
Presumably whatever had attacked them had only affected the telepaths.
He checked himself over. He didn’t seem to be damaged in any way.
Reaching up, he touched the reflector device, settling it on his head.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t reach out to Kaitlin with it on.
And he couldn’t without it, either. He was fucked.
But maybe the source of the pain had gone. He slowly lifted it from his head and then slammed it back on when the drill started up again. He gazed around but saw no sign of either Kaitlin or the intruders.
“Shit. I have to go find Kaitlin.”
“Here,” Christa said. “Take her this.” She handed him a reflector device, and he shoved it in his pocket.
Jake nodded. “Okay. Bring her back here. We’ll go and make sure everyone has the reflector devices.”
“Leila and Brandon are up at the cave.”
“I’ll go there,” the colonel said.
Then Kane was off and running.