Chapter 22
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T his place looked different. Steele studied the world on this side of the fourth gate, then turned to her, their hands still tightly clasped together.
“Is this the same as last time?” she asked cautiously.
“I was wondering that,” he shared. “It does appear to be in some ways the same…”
“So, then we’re looping,” she muttered, turning to him.
Grim, he wondered the same thing. “If it’s exactly the same, that’s possible, but if there’s even one thing different, then we’re not.”
They both studied their surroundings, their feet planted like they were afraid to take a step.
Cyan snorted. “I’m not seeing anything different. I want to, quite desperately in fact, but I’m not seeing anything different.”
He didn’t say anything to that. “Do you see another gate? Because if this is where we were last night, there should be a gate right where we had been.”
Her breath let out in a whoosh . “Right, that’s true. There would be, wouldn’t there?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “So, let’s just stay calm, and see if we have another gate.”
As they walked slowly toward where the gate should be, she muttered, “I don’t see a gate.” And then she sighed. “That should be a good thing, right?”
“It should be in the sense that we’ve moved forward somewhere and don’t seem to be in a loop,” he noted. “And I’ll take any kind of progress at the moment.”
“I hear you,” she muttered, as she looked around. “But if this is exactly the same—”
“It’s not,” he said, pointing to one side, “because look.”
She stared around the place, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. “I don’t understand what I am looking at.”
“That wasn’t there before,” he stated. “If you look at the gate, to the right are flowers. Those are different.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she cried out. “They are different. So, what is this, another gate?”
“That’s possible. Let’s not overthink this and just get through it.
They have to stop at one point. If the Beacon is creating an endless loop, then we’ll know soon enough.
If Terk was under attack, they would shut down everything, and the Beacon malfunction could possibly have just been a result of that. ”
“So, what then? We’re stuck in this simulation, while they try to figure out what’s happening on their end?”
“Yet,” he noted, “I would suspect that whatever is happening on their end will be a symptom or somehow connected to whatever is happening in here. It just doesn’t make any sense that the Beacon itself would be shutting us down, unless it’s connected to something happening on Terk’s side.”
She turned to him and suggested, “Let’s go through the gate. I’m really hoping it’s not just another series of gates.”
“Then we have to decide whether we’ll continue going forward, blindly opening more and more gates,” he suggested, “or we’ll—”
“I’m not going back,” she declared. “We already know going back won’t get us anywhere. We need to end this.”
He sighed. “Fine, let’s go.” And together they opened the fifth gate and stepped through.
As she came through, all the energy in the entire area just went black. She stiffened and gripped his hand hard.
He hung on and pulled her closer. Steele whispered, “This feels like an energy outage.”
She leaned over, pressing her body against him. “Are you saying the portal’s out of energy? Or are you saying we’re out of energy?”
“I don’t know, but let’s keep going.”
“Where to?”
“No idea, but no matter how many gates they keep throwing at us, we’ll keep opening them and moving forward.”
“If you want to be stubborn, then we’ll have to do it with a different energy,” she stated, “because whatever this is, it’s changing because of our energy.”
He froze as awareness dawned. “Of course.”
“We’ve been going through the gates with not so much fear,” she explained, “but with questions and distrust. We’re not going through it with trust and acceptance.”
“Yeah, which is a little harder to let go of, given the prior attacks,” he noted.
“Yes, it is,” she murmured, “but you and I both know that energy can be a powerful tool. So, if you want to calm something this massive, you need to calm yourself and accept the outcomes.”
“You’re right. Fine, so give me a minute.
” He dove into his own energy, checking to make sure that he could remove as much doubt, as much fear, and as many questions as possible to reassure the Beacon that they were coming from a position of love and protection.
When he opened his eyes, she was smiling at him.
She nodded. “That’s much better.”
Together they opened the next gate and walked through.
On the other side was a bright meadow and, off in the distance, a castle.
She stared at it in awe because the whole place was almost magical, too damn pretty to be true.
Somehow though, it felt more real than anything else.
“So, it’s really all about the energy,” she muttered.
“It’s about only letting in the right energy,” he clarified. “It just took us a few gates to figure that out.”
She snorted. “Quite a few gates if we’re honest.”
“We don’t have to be that honest,” he quipped, with a smile.
She chuckled. “Looks like maybe we made it though.”
“Maybe,” he repeated, “in which case we should find the car and drive on up.”
And that’s what they did. They followed their tracks back physically to where both vehicles were and then drove up slowly toward the castle. As they got out and parked, she hopped out and faced him. “This isn’t exactly what we thought we were getting into.”
“No,” he agreed, “but it does feel like exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.” Together, hand in hand, they walked up to the front door. And, when they knocked, it opened automatically. They stepped inside.
Terk came around the corner and stopped, his eyebrows shooting up.
Steele smiled. “That Beacon of yours is a bit of a bitch.”
Terk’s face lit up, and he nodded, a huge grin on his face. “Right about now, it’s even bigger than that.” He turned to Cyan and smiled. “You took your sweet time getting here.”
She winced. “Not on purpose, but we had more than a little bit of trouble getting in here.… We suspect that your system, your Beacon, has been compromised.” Steele studied Terk, even as Cyan added, “Maybe more than compromised.”