3. Chapter 3
Camille
My eyes sprung open as a siren blared in our room.
Jerrod was no longer in the bed next to me, sending me into a slight fit of panic.
I jumped out of bed and realized I was still in the odd water-like, silk ceremonial dress.
Since I had no idea what the siren meant, I quickly changed into the clothes that had been left on the bedside table and ran out of the room.
No one was in the living area so I ran out of the building.
I saw Jerrod running toward me with Jade in tow.
“What the hell is going on?” I yelled, trying to be heard over the siren blaring around us.
“We aren’t sure, but we need to get to Akio,” Jerrod hollered back as he grabbed my hand and dragged me along.
“We should head back to where we came in,” Jade shouted.
We all sprinted as quickly as our legs could carry us, toward the entrance that we had first come in through.
Back before we realized Arion was not a barren wasteland, but a vast underground city, hiding the last of the original civilization from the Gilarian.
We had been the first, in a millenia, to find what had been hidden here.
Kresh and Veshkru came into view in front of us, propelling in our direction at a rapid speed. Something was clearly wrong.
“You must come quickly,” Kresh yelled. “Follow us!”
Not another word was said as we followed behind, racing into the dark passageway.
By the time we got to a lone door, I was out of breath and heaving.
I made myself a mental note that I really needed to train more to increase my stamina.
I wouldn’t be able to be of much use to anyone if I couldn’t even run down a corridor without getting winded.
Akio greeted us at the door with a grim face. The alarms were no longer sounding around us, but the silent sirens continued to flash.
“You must come,” Akio stated.
Everyone in the large room was bustling around. The panic was evident on all of their faces. A man off to the side had dropped a large box, the contents spilled all over the floor, and began shuffling to round them all up while another man ran down to help him.
“What exactly is happening?” Jerrod questioned, noting the frantic state of the room.
“Laine, could you please pull up the feed again?” Akio requested.
A young woman sat at a control panel, pecking away at the keys.
The amount of keys in front of her instantly made me anxious.
I was dumbfounded with both the quantity and the inhuman speed she was moving.
The large screen above was blinking quickly through different channels and broadcasts.
They were flickering on and off so fast that I couldn’t even comprehend what I was seeing.
The rest of the rooms inhabitants continued running back and forth, though I was starting to wonder if any of them were actually accomplishing anything, or if they were just so panicked that they didn't know how to handle the moment.
“Almost there, Sir,” Laine declared with quiet confidence, her fingers brushing gracefully across the buttons.
We all stared at the screen attentively, completely unaware of what we were going to see. It didn't seem like the current state of panic matched the scenario, at least not from what we already knew.
“Are these camera feeds from the surface?” Jade asked in confusion, the panic around us suddenly creating an unfavorable foreboding.
Laine kept pecking away, but said, “They are.”
We all looked at each other with wide eyes.
I couldn't understand why they were showing us broadcasts of the surface. It was completely bare up there and void of all life, completely uninhabitable. I held my breath as the final feed pulled up and it wasn’t just dust and dirt.
It wasn’t just a bare surface where the wind kicked up sand clouds anymore.
There was a being… standing nonchalantly with their back faced toward the camera.
Their hair was black as the night, tied up on top of their head and flowing down past their waist.
“Who the hell is that?” I gaped in a whispered confusion. “How did they… even get there?”
“We don’t exactly know,” Laine admitted.
“I was sifting through visuals… like I always do. When I went past this camera, and I had to let my brain process that it wasn’t blank.
I have been doing this job for so many years and we have quite literally, never had this happen.
Not even once, has there been something on the feed, until you all showed up here.
And now we have a second. I couldn't even believe my eyes at first.”
The being on the large display was dressed expensively, or at least if I were going by Earth standards of expensive clothing.
They had on, what looked like, black business slacks and a soft white button down shirt.
They were wearing ebony loafers. I snorted to myself at the ridiculousness of what I was witnessing.
There was an extremely wealthy looking business man, standing casually on the surface of a desolate planet… that no one knew about.
I sucked in an audible gasp when the man finally turned around.
He looked like a beautiful version of what I imagined Satan might have looked like.
Like a fallen angel, too beautiful for human eyes to behold him.
His skin was a deep crimson. He had the most beautifully feminine face I had ever seen on a man in my entire existence.
His eyes were alluring, but like depthless onyx pools—ones you could fall into forever and never come out of again.
He looked around the area like he knew something was amiss…
like he knew that he wasn’t alone there on the surface.
“Does anyone know who he is?” Veshkru petitioned.
“He’s like a beautiful Lucifer,” I said dreamily, gawking at the screen, completely mesmerized.
It was like I couldn’t look away from him. I couldn’t stop staring at him, even though my mind was begging me to. I was fully entranced by him in every way.
Everyone in the room turned their head toward me, eyes wide in panic.
The man’s depthless eyes looked straight into the camera and captured mine like he was gazing into my very soul.
There was no way he could see me, no way for him to be looking at me specifically. Not in the way that he seemed to be.
“Turn off the feed, Laine!” Kresh screamed in a horror-struck panic .
Before I even conceptualize what was happening, I was fist fighting my way through everyone to get to the control panel.
I threw Laine out of my way, with a strength I didn't even realize I had, trying to get to the keys. I didn’t even know how to use the contraption in front of me, yet, here I was challenging everyone to get to it.
“Fucking hell,” Jerrod growled as he gripped my arms to restrain me. “He’s controlling her through the camera. Shut it off!”
Everyone was scrambling around, trying to get the feed turned back off.
Kresh and Jerrod were wrestling me on the ground as I struggled against them, still trying to get back to control the feed in front of me.
My arms were flailing around trying to incapacitate anyone in my way.
My elbow connected swiftly with Kresh's face and he rolled back on the ground clutching his nose.
Jerrod continued to try to wrap his arms around my own to restrain me.
Laine jumped back into her seat and a moment later the feed went black.
Just like that I was in control of myself again and stopped fighting against Jerrod. Kresh still groaned in pain on the ground next to me. I stilled as I regained my composure. Jerrod let out a sigh in relief.
“What just happened?” I screamed.
“He’s a sentience disruptor,” Jerrod snarled. “Fuck! We need to find out who he is. That ability is going to complicate things. He could tap into our minds and we wouldn't even know it's happening.”
“I’m on it!” Laine declared.
“If we have anything on him, Laine will find it. She is our expert software engineer,” Akio praised.
“How did he know someone was here?” I screeched.
I cringed at the violation. He was in my mind. I could still feel the aftershock of the tendrils of his essence, softly caressing mine into submission as he controlled my consciousness!
“Calm down, Camille! He didn’t know someone was here.
He was probably just sending out feelers to see if someone had been here—if they might let him in to their mind.
He must’ve hoped someone would let him in on a whim.
No one knows about this place,” Jerrod said, gripping my face in his hands. “It’s okay, I’m here.”
“He had control of my body,” I shivered.
“I know. But… everything is okay now,” he said as he stroked my face.
“Let’s hope there is some data in our current archive,” Laine interrupted.
“He looked so young. And clearly not from my world or any of yours,” I noted as I considered his dark scarlet skin and pointed fae-like ears.
“I’ve never seen anyone with any of those features before,” Jerrod admitted hesitantly.
“I’m going to assume that isn’t good news,” I murmured in frustration.
“No, it’s not,” Veshkru confessed. “If he isn’t from any of our home lands, then that begs the question—”
Kresh finished his sentence, hand still on his nose, making his response more nasally sounding, “where is he from?”
I shivered as I considered that. We didn’t know anything about this guy. We didn’t know if he had any other abilities. We didn’t know why he had come to Arion. Then it dawned on me… and I felt so stupid for not putting it together sooner.
“He’s Gilarian,” I gasped.
They all looked over at me with wide eyes as it clicked for all of them, too. With just two simple words, our entire lives changed yet again.
And with those two miniscule words, Amelia was no longer the only one.