As the panic settled in, as the world continued to tighten and spin around me, I begged myself not to envision what was happening to Jayken right now. For the first time I truly understood Alexa's curse; she had shared glimpses with me, in training, through our powers, I had seen her vision of Jayken being tortured. But it had appeared so unreal, so ridiculously inhumane that I'd never considered that the vision could be anything other than a result of her anxiety about him. Right now I realised it truly was prophetic, that everything had been leading to this and we had failed him.
It was incredibly telling that while I had been worried about Sophie when she was captured by Weraynians I had never felt sure that she was in real danger, yet I knew with certainty that Jayken was. Maybe it was the vision, but more than that it was the months of living with him on a space station surrounded by Halapatovians and Paladanians who regarded him with unease and coldness. We'd spent so long playing the game with them, making sure Jayken was always accounted for, always included in things or left with someone, so I didn't doubt for a second the malice behind their detaining of Jayken whilst the entire rest of the team was distracted and half of us injured. They felt like they could act without backlash, that they were safe from repercussions, from an angry me using my powers to tear apart their base as we went after him.
But they'd been foolish then, putting us all together, this volatile team, giving us the chance to bond with their Weraynian prisoner, because even with all our current deficits I knew that none of us would rest until we had rescued him. It felt impossible but we had to try.
Okay Abigail stop spiraling and let your brain work. What first? What first? Step one, immovable, we had to get Alexa. We couldn't let her continue to exist as the only detainee in a base full of enemies, while Jayken suffered. Okay but how Abigail? The teleport watch? The Alliance? You know they've got defenses against those, so what? WHAT?
I realised the others were looking to me, ostensibly for direction. I had, of course, just made a big point about needing to be cautious, about the potential consequences for defection, naively postponing the decision to act; now we could postpone it no longer.
"Okay, here's what we're going to do - we're going to head back to the ship and let Trista decide if she can help us. We're going to find out what Alliance resources we have at our disposal. We're going to do our best to find the Protector. We are going to rescue Alexa and Jayken. And our dear leaders are going to regret everything they have done."
Rojjel held out his hand expectantly. "Let me communicate with Alexa, she can update my information on the Halapatovian rebel groups." I nodded and passed him my communicator. He gestured ahead of us, "I can do it while we walk."
I herded everyone ahead of me, using the breaths of distance between us to continue to formulate, to consider options, as we strode purposefully towards the hangar.
Trista was chatting to Alliance workers in the hangar, with a casual ease that stuck out as laughable to me in our situation. Not that she knew anything was wrong yet. She caught sight of us and her eyes only registered the slightest sliver of alarm; very impressive. She hailed us, then turned back to her fellows and quickly exchanged farewell pleasantries, before hurrying to meet us.
"What's the hurry?" She asked levelly, falling in step with me.
"We can explain in a minute," She nodded solemnly and opened the hatch of the ship for us. I grabbed onto her arm as we stepped in. "Trista, we've asked so much of you. I know you want to protect your family, but right now I don't know what we'll be able to do without your help."
The hatch slammed closed behind us and the lights of the ship began to dimly glow.
"Abigail, love, what's wrong?" she asked, looking me over with concern. "Here I was hoping with Sophie back and poor Beth's improved condition you'd all be having a good day for once. But there's more bad news?"
"It's Jayken." I said simply and her brow creased. "Alexa got ahold of us and told us that they've taken advantage of our absence to haul him off somewhere, we have no idea where, but we have to go find him. She's had... visions. Of him being tortured. I thought it was just anxiety but the more I've witnessed the more I know that the leaders won't hesitate to hurt him. We have to stop them - and get Alexa too. I couldn't live with myself if-" I forced myself not to finish the thought.
There was a lot going on behind Trista's eyes. She placed a hand on my shoulder. "Of course we have to do something. Jayken's a good lad. You're right though, I hate to think the trouble my family could get into if Headquarters finds out I'm abetting you lot." I stared at her, feeling like I could see her mind flicker. "But I'll do what I can. Let's get out of here and we can figure out our next move." I nodded gratefully as she moved into the cockpit and brought the ship to life. My gaze lingered on the gel matrix controls, which glimmered as we exited the hangar and dropped into space again.
Rojjel moved next to me and handed back my device. "Alexa has sent some things over."
An encrypted message had appeared on the communicator, with a link to the information Alexa had been compiling on the activist groups on Halapatov.
Don't worry about me; just focus on saving Jayken.
I fixated grimly on those words as I paced up and down the back of the ship. Easier said than done, Lex... We have no idea where Jayken is, let alone how to get him out of there. In some ways infiltrating and retrieving Alexa from HQ seemed an easier task, at least we knew what we'd be dealing with there. It all felt so hopeless.
I felt so bad for Mickey, he'd barely gotten a moment's reprieve with us having reunited with Sophie, and here we had another problem to solve, and relying on the Alliance for backup. It was all too much. At least with Sophie back she was able to take on the task of liaising with Peg, who was one of the Alliance Intelligence agents and had been keeping a close eye on HQ ever since the Alliance took on a neutral stance.
While she noted down Peg's surveillance on HQ, ships that had entered and left and their trajectories, the rest of us sat up front with Trista and discussed our options over projected hologrammatic files.
"Alexa's right. It wouldn't be any help going back to headquarters now," Trista posited. "Once we've landed in that hangar, not much chance of getting back out. You're better off meeting up with this activist group on Halapatov, and working together with them. Maybe seeing if you can rustle up the Protector to help you."
"How do we get there without raising alarms?" I pondered anxiously. "With this ship it won't be easy."
"You've got the teleport watch." Trista noted, and I cupped it with my hand instinctively, my ward. "I can get you close enough to that side of Halapatov on our way back to HQ, and I'll tell the leaders that you gave me the slip. It'll be true enough anyhow. And I can get to Alexa, protect her best I can."
I regarded Trista with an immense gratitude. I hoped she could understand the depth of it, for the lengths she was willing to go for us.
"Thank you Trista." I said simply, capturing no depth at all. "I guess there's no point trying to make more intricate plans then, until we have the full picture from the Halapatovian side."
"From Peg's surveillance, it seems to make the most sense that Jayken was taken somewhere on Halapatov anyway." Sophie supplied and I decided that settled it.
"Alright then," I stood up. "Trista's plan it is. Now, is everyone else coming with us?" I swept my eyes across our small, ever dwindling team.
"I definitely am." Mickey said, clenching his graspers tight. "I'm sure we can convince Anise to help us."
"There's no way I'm going back to HQ." Rojjel said darkly. He was so fond of Jayken, who wasn't? "I think you'll need my help decoding some of our work, as well. I want to see what the other side is working with."
Sophie didn't even bother to answer, face set, eyes intense, ready for action. After a moment she noticed it wasn't just me looking at her, but the whole team was eyeing her expectantly, and she sheepishly supplied, "Well, yeah, of course I'm going."
And so it went. The team that Staarus leadership had gathered to carry out their purposes, for whatever reasons, officially making our first move against them, for better or worse. Hard to believe they didn't expect this response from us, this rebellion. Maybe they decided it was worth the risk. Maybe they thought we would be easier to control. Maybe they weren't as organised and powerful as they seemed, and they were making things up as they went along, just like us - but that was being too kind to them wasn't it. The insidiousness of their actions against us, about only taking Jayken when the rest of us were preoccupied, distracted, was enough to enrage me. It was a feeling I didn't think I would ever be free of, that would follow me and sink its claws into me even once the war was over and a distant memory.
That feeling washed over me again and again as we all operated on autopilot, following the plan. Trista flew towards the base, angling as close to Halapatov as she could. The others gathered around me, depended on me. I translated the information from Alexa into teleport coordinates, and everything disappeared as we rocketed through the ether towards a bustling Halapatovian city, stumbling in front of an ordinary apartment building.
I'd been to Halapatov before, but never like this. There were far more ships visible in the atmosphere than ever before, and a tension in the air. There was a faded poster on the gate near us for HPAN - the Halapatovian Pecayen Advocacy Network which Alexa had pointed us to. It was a completely informal organisation, operating predominantly online and connecting and educating people in small hubs across the Staarus system. It had existed prior to the Weraynian war (though I'd had had little to no awareness of it) but had rapidly expanded as people started to learn more about everything going on with Werayne, and question it. This group was the one organising the protests, assembling at Halapatovian councils and demanding change, and also helping coordinate mutual aid, for Aandriggians especially. It was all very grassroots, and I admired it greatly. And it was ultimately all run out of a tiny apartment, and here we were.
We must have stood out, suddenly appearing on this Halapatovian street with two aliens in tow. Doing our best not to be too conspicuous, we bundled into the foyer and used Alexa's notes to find the right apartment. I was buzzing with nerves as we waited for the door to open, and eventually opened it did to a tired looking Halapatovian man.
I knew Alexa had contacted them previously, but was unsure to what extent. "Hi, we're sorry to intrude, sir, but we-"
"I know who you are," he said, not unkindly, then opened the door wider. "Come on in."
Introductions were made. His name was Rintoul and he introduced us to his housemate and work partner Satah, an Aandriggian. He was the one Alexa had been exchanging information with, using HPAN's encoded network. Hot drinks were poured, and we sat sipping and nibbling on food offered to us as we discussed the situation. Thankfully, they felt the same sense of urgency as us with regards to rescuing Jayken and retrieving Alexa from Staarus Headquarters.
Sophie shared Peg's surveillance notes with Rintoul, who paled a bit and hung his head.
"It looks like things are exactly as we feared." He said, "There's a heavily fortified prison for Weraynians on the equator, and Jayken is inside it. Very little news gets in and out. The Halapatovian government is tight lipped about it. What we know isn't good. Any surviving Weraynians from the Scares have been transferred there, and we get the impression there's mental suppression techniques being used on any prisoner in there. Or at least an exacerbation of the damage already done by the force field satellites."
Though we'd suspected this nefarious aspect of the force field and perhaps even our own work for a while, the candidness with which he said this surprised me.
"Have you gotten any concrete information on that?" I asked, genuinely curious, and then immediately felt like an idiot.
"Of course." Satah said gruffly. "It's been common knowledge for years that even Weraynians without genetic alteration or enhancement have something wrong with their minds. It's plain to see. The Protector, Anise, has done some particular investigating into this for us."
"We've been doing whatever we can to investigate the technology used around Werayne, and learning more every day. I'm sure you'd have some inside information as well," Rintoul added. "Given the nature of your 'mission'."
"We've managed to compile a lot of data," Rojjel leaned forward. "I've got rough schematics for everything we've worked on, including the ones for the space stations and satellites around Werayne - that used to be part of the force field."
Rintoul nodded thoughtfully. "We've got some of them too. Hopefully we will be able to do something with it all one day soon. For now, let's assess what we can do for Jayken. Honestly, I feel quite confident with our chances in rescuing him. Our people who've been keeping an eye on the prison have assessed that most of its security and guards have been deployed elsewhere for the war, and there's only a core team including researchers there. Most of the prisoners have been rendered docile so they are far more worried about the wider Weraynian threat than anyone getting out of the prison. Whatever technology they've got in there they clearly don't want to move off-world, so they've likely taken Jayken there for this rather than because they think it's necessarily more secure than elsewhere. The Staarus forces have consistently underestimated our resistance group, however, and we have considerable assets on our side; a wealth of information, stealth wave technology we've developed with help from contacts on Werayne, the Protector and her powers, of course, and now your teleport device. Anise has noted for us that it's harder for teleportation to be blocked on the planet than in space, there's lots of interference apparently, and we've figured out that Staarus forces are able to track the Protector but not block her - the way they can your teleportation device."
All this information turned over in my head, pieces of a puzzle trying to connect. Sophie pursed her lips quizzically, eyeing the watch on my arm. Rojjel tapped his fingertips slowly together.
"We want to do what we can for Alexa as well," Satah said with a concern I appreciated. "There's clearly something particular they want with Jayken, but they've gone to such an effort with him that I'm worried if we manage to rescue him she'll be taken somewhere more secure, hoping to draw him out again."
I felt my stomach clench. "Unfortunately I think you're right. Getting them both feels impossible though."
"Hardly!" Rintoul pressed with a gleam in his eye. "Here's what I'm thinking; we continue surveilling Staarus Headquarters, and ask Anise to be ready. Abigail and Sophie, we stage a siege of the prison which is doomed to fail, but use one of our stealth wave devices to get Rojjel in without notice." He turned to regard the other Halapatovian. "I'm quite familiar with your anarchist work, Rojjel, I get the sense you'll be more than capable of figuring out their internal systems between our schematics and an inside look. Once we've gotten word from you we can signal the Protector and she can grab Alexa in an instant and go straight for Jayken. If we combine all our resources I believe we can save them."
Rojjel stroked his chin, thinking it over. The whole idea span in my mind, and I was too anxious to broach my biggest concern here - what did they even want with Jayken? Why had they hauled him off to this secret facility? Alexa had visions of him being tortured; what if that was happening right now? What if we went to all this effort and we ended up being too late for him? We had no choice of course, we had to do whatever we could, and we were incredibly fortunate to have powerful people and technology to assist us. I glanced over at Sophie, who was visibly jittering, and Mickey beside her frowning deeply.
"Is there anything I can do?" He asked, "I feel I'll be more of an obstacle than help in this infiltration mission. I want to do whatever I can, to help."
Rintoul clapped a hand on Mickey's large blue shoulder. "We've in contact with some aid centres that I'm sure could use a hand while we sort this out. There's people being relocated from Aandrigo all the time, thanks to our campaigning, but in all kinds of conditions. There's always more to be done."
"Of course," Mickey said, "Wherever you need me."
"What's our first step then?" I asked, though I was anxious to know the answer. The journey ahead of us felt like a dark pit ready for us to fall in and be swallowed up.
"We've got a Paladanian ally who's been keeping an eye on the prison from an outpost nearby." Rintoul said. "You might know each other actually, I know I heard something about that same Weraynian scare you girls were involved in. We can send you there while we liaise with the Protector about the rest of the plan; and it'll be a good opportunity to test our stealth device with your teleport. And before too long, I suppose we'll be going in for Jayken, and finding out what they want him for so desperately."
With this risky endeavour laid out now (with minimal planning, all things considered) we set to preparations. Rintoul and Rojjel took measurements, compared charts, let Sophie poke at the few stealth wave devices they had stored in a safe to determine which would work best for our mission. We packed some dry rations and cleaned ourselves up. I rubbed the back of my neck with water and stared at myself in the mirror of the washroom, pushing down one thought after another. We bid Mickey farewell in the early light as he accompanied Satah in a vehicle overflowing with various goods, disappearing to some encampment.
I found myself wondering who the mysterious Paladanian ally would be as we worked on calibrating the teleport watch, keying Rojjel's new stealth wave accessory into it. That had taken me by surprise, though it was welcome news. Long before Sophie had arrived and our involvement in the war, multiple Paladanian leaders had travelled to either Halapatov or HQ. My town's council had lost at least Criken, Ray and Reeina to the war efforts early on. I knew Criken had been working at Headquarters and liaised with Mickey and Beth on Alliance matters, but otherwise we hadn't had much involvement. The others I hadn't met at all in our endeavours. I'd had a vague anxiety about it as my anti-Weraynian views had been steadily challenged and extinguished to be replaced with our now staunch pro-Weraynian stance. All the leaders were Paladanians I respected greatly and thought to be reasonable and kind and good. It was probably better not to be confronted with them and have to dissect their individual culpabilities in the atrocities I was growing endlessly aware of. To think that at least one figure in my previous life had walked at all a similar path to me and reached this same cause was a comfort. I could have prodded for more information to give me a greater sense of who to expect, but I'd find out soon enough in any case. I gripped tight to Sophie's hand on instinct, and then extended my other hand to Rojjel. Between Sophie's robotic arm, the teleport watch and the stealth wave device, we were a team of cyborgs.
"The Protector should arrive soon, we'll do our part, and I wish you all the best of luck with yours." Rintoul bade us farewell solemnly.
I nodded and we traversed continents and oceans through darkness, materialising at dusk on an outpost on the side of a mountain overlooking a monstrosity, and greeted by a familiar face.
Reeina...
Of course it was her, my mentor, a Paladanian with the power to see things from afar, who'd helped me hone my own powers and been privy to many of my concerned ramblings and considerations about the Weraynian war over the years. This shouldn't have been surprising, but I felt the relief washing over me.
"Reeina!" Sophie exclaimed fondly, and Reeina smiled. "This is Rojjel," she waved her hands at him in introduction and then remembered that he was functionally invisible at the moment. He adjusted a dial on the stealth wave and came back into focus, nodding politely. "Haha, that was so cool. Anyway. So we're all on the Weraynian side now..."
"So it would seem." Reeina mused and extended her hands. I stumbled forward and grasped them. She met my gaze with her sharp eyes, so unlike the usual swirling Paladanian irises, and I felt afraid. "Abigail, so much has changed since the last time we met, and there has been much hardship to get here; I wish I could give you good news, but what comes next will be dark, no matter the outcome. I hope you are prepared to confront it."
"You know what they're doing to Jayken?" I asked hoarsely. "You can see what their plan is?"
She shook her head. "You know I only get glimpses. He's still alive, but I don't recognise the equipment they've used on him. Come, sit with me." We followed her into a small camouflaged shelter, with some surveillance equipment and rudimentary maps sketched out. "I haven't been here long; I first got involved here some weeks ago, and have been trying to facilitate discussion in the government that oversees this facility, alongside other things. When we heard about your friend, they sent me here to keep a closer eye on things. I've seen and learnt what I can. There are some positives; the prison currently hosts the least amount of guards I've ever seen, and though they know you've teleported somewhere in the vicinity, they don't appear to know anything about Rojjel or the stealth wave. So we have the advantage, right now. And Rintoul and Satah's plan with the Protector should work. We are lucky to have such formidable forces at our disposal."
I clutched the teleport watch, and my eyes wandered over the maps. "Do you know which specific cell he's in?"
"I can make an educated guess," Reeina replied, "However we want you to go to the main control room, try to get what data you can, it should cause enough of a disturbance for the Protector to get in and for Rojjel to complete his part." She pulled a small piece of technology from her setup and handed it to him. "Whatever information you can get will be valuable, but the priority is Jayken."
"What even happens once we have him?" I asked, doom encroaching on my mind again. "Is there any hope for us to end this war?"
"The tide is changing, Abigail." Reeina said firmly. "We're seeing it everyday, and the more journalism and evidence we have, the more people we can convince to speak out, and I believe it won't be long before we are seeing a new world. Perhaps not an idyllic one, but different, at the very least."
It felt like there was so much to discuss, and simultaneously nothing. We sat in silence for a bit, waiting for the chance to make our move. I squinted angrily at the lights in the monstrous facility below us, our intended target. Somewhere in there Jayken was screaming. I wondered how much Reeina could truly see. Like Alexa's, sometimes her power didn't seem like much of a gift.
At the same time, both Sophie and Reeina's communicators alerted. Sophie fumbled, pulling her head off of my shoulder. Rojjel watched intently. Reeina quickly parsed the messages, and then turned to us.
"The Protector is in position with Alexa. It's time to go."
Sophie squeezed my hand as she stood. Rojjel flexed his fingers. I slowly rose, mentally preparing myself for what might lay ahead. I looked Reeina in the eyes again, and thought of what she said earlier. Was I prepared to confront... what?
Calibrations done, weak links in the facility identified, last minute reaffirmations of the plan attended, we clasped hands again and made the excruciating journey to the heart of a Weraynian prison.
Intense pain, and a haze of lights as my eyes adjusted. Sophie came to her senses slower than you'd expect from somebody so attuned to teleport travel. We'd done it, we'd breached their defences and were in what I assumed was the control room. Rojjel quickly loosened his grip on my hand and slunk off, as was the plan. We were surrounded by monitors and holographic projections, a mess of information output. Sophie and I adopted tense stances; we did have weapons but obviously weren't super keen on having to use them. Though we knew there weren't many guards there would be plenty of a fight to be had if that's what they wanted to do with us.
I was on high alert, taking in everything at once, and then a door hissed open and I spun around to greet, of all things, another familiar face from my home town. For Staarus' sake, what were the chances of that?
"Abigail and Sophie, I almost don't want to believe it." Ray said and a chill flooded my system. This couldn't be happening. Ray had helped us in the aftermath of the Weraynian Scare. I'd always thought he was... more empathetic, less brutally logical perhaps, than some of our other leadership. I hadn't expected him or Reeina or anybody to have defected like we did, but I certainly hadn't expected to find him here, in the bowels of a Weraynian torture chamber.
Because that was what it was, I realised as the feed from the various monitors filtered through my mind. Surveillance of cell after cell of Weraynians who looked - well - braindead, like empty shells who'd sustained extreme psychological damage. With monitoring data and reports being projected beside the images of these broken bodies, still breathing, still being kept alive for... some reason. My eyes darted from monitor to monitor, desperately searching for Jayken. Maybe my perception was protecting me, not recognising him in these Weraynians that were beyond help. I had to hope that he was still alive and well; surely he couldn't be altered unrecognisably this quickly.
"Looking for your friend?" Ray spat with a venom that made me recoil. Sophie grabbed my arm as Ray strode toward the monitor closest to us and delicately pressed buttons. The feed switched to show Jayken unconscious, strapped to some sort of machine, electrodes attached, shadowy figures surrounding him. I let out a breath - compared to the other Weraynians he was in peak condition. It was more than I could have hoped for; though obviously there was still the question of what they were doing to him. I wondered if we could make Ray divulge anything, since he appeared decidedly emotional right now. "Don't be so alarmed," he said as if simply making conversation, "I asked the guards to let me talk to you alone, I figured I might be able to talk some sense into you both."
"Ray, what are you doing here?" I poured all my feelings of betrayal into my voice. It wasn't hard; he stood before me looking nothing short of evil, radiating hatred and vitriol. We'd obviously walked very different paths, but I couldn't imagine how a decent Paladanian could bear witness to this place without a healthy response of horror and disgust. Then again, I guess thinking of Weraynians as creatures that didn't deserve understanding or compassion was how our system got into this war in the first place.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Ray paced, darting sharp glances our way. "I am doing my part to help end the war. Here in this facility we have all the worst criminals of Weraynian history, and the chance to learn about them, discern how to best defeat them. Whatever I can do to solve this problem, to fight against them - that is what I'm doing." He approached us menacingly and gazed levelly at me. I stood my ground and glared at him. His voice lowered, "Now the important question is, what are you girls doing? Throwing away all loyalty to the Staarus system to try to save a Weraynian? After everything you witnessed on Flauraan? A single Weraynian slaughtered humans and Paladanians alike and almost incited this war five years early. Or do you not remember your old foe?" He gestured at one of the screens and I felt like screaming. My mind had betrayed me. I hadn't recognised among the defeated figures the slumped body of the first Weraynian I'd ever encountered; the one who'd fought Sophie, captured us both, made us watch while he murdered people in front of us, tried to turn our peoples against each other. I felt like I was free-falling, reliving again the smoke and the adrenaline and the fear, but then I pushed it all aside and snapped back at Ray.
"I've learnt a lot more about Werayne since then, and I'm intelligent enough to know that the actions of one person doesn't necessitate painting every person like them with the same brush. You might think Paladanians are immune to propoganda but we're not, in fact we've been perpetuating it. This whole war is built on fear and prejudice, and unspeakable violence has happened because of it."
"The actions of one person are exactly why we need to do whatever we can to eliminate the Weraynian threat," Ray continued, conveniently ignoring everything else I'd said. "This war has been one event after another like the Weraynian Scare. Imagine if we could stop that from ever happening ever again."
It's not that simple, I thought, but opted to try another angle. "So you've been scanning Jayken's brain then? Looking for an answer? For some sort of switch you can press to make the Weraynians docile?"
"Don't be absurd," Ray scoffed, "It would be very convenient if the random event that brought him to Halapatov was able to nullify Weraynian impulses, but unfortunately the engineering they've done to themselves runs deeper than that. It's helpful to see how his brain works, of course, how it reacts to different stimulus, but truthfully he's a common garden Weraynian." I stared past him while he talked at the screen which held Jayken, forcing my brain into overdrive to analyse the data. Brain scans? Code that looked disturbingly familiar? I was just wondering what Rojjel was up to when the lights snapped off. Every screen shut down and I grabbed onto Sophie in the darkness for a moment before alarms started blaring and all the machines slowly came back to life, bathing the room in a dim red glow.
Ray grinned. "I was curious what your plan was," He fiddled with the Jayken monitor again, and recovering the feed we caught glimpses of a room filling with lightning. The Protector and Alexa had arrived! They set to assessing the machine Jayken was attached to, trying to figure out how to extricate him. Ray turned back to us. His expression made me uneasy. "Oh well, we never could have warded him against your powerful ally. We'd considered expediting the process so that he would be beyond rescue, but I advocated for him - if you want this Weraynian boy so bad who are we to withhold him from you?" I stared at him, stony faced, trying to unravel his twisted logic. "Not that rescuing him will make much of a difference anyhow. Before long your work and ours will be put into action, and the Weraynians will be beaten once and for all."
Everything connected to form the horrifying truth as I stood staring at the blinking screens, and I could do nothing but lift my stunned, disgusted gaze to face Ray's cool expression.
"No," I uttered in shock, and Sophie glanced at me in confusion, but I had no words to explain, to ease her into understanding. I needed to oppose this, to let Ray know how awful and wrong this all was.
"Abigail, I know you believe your stance to be noble and righteous, but you are too far out of your depth." He stated in a clearly calculated manner. "You can't possibly understand what has taken decades to formulate."
I had admired this man, this leader. Yet here he stood before me, an instigator of this vile scheme, and I was starting to wonder if I could trust anything anymore. His words inflamed the anger I already felt.
"Don't worry, I understand perfectly." I said icily. "You've been feeding the Weraynian's brains for years and now you're trying to use that to kill them, to commit genocide! You're trying to stop a war by killing every last one of your opponents, rather than trying for reconciliation. There are millions of innocent people on Werayne! You even knew that they've messed up their own biology in an attempt to be better, stronger people, to stand up to oppression and instead of helping them, reaching out to them? Trying for any form of peace? You are merely trying to remove them instead of the actual problem. Jayken represents the fact that the Weraynians can be changed, can be saved from your horrible acts against them, and what did you do? You experimented on him to see if your own sick murder plan would still work. How. dare. you."
"Abi, what are you talking about?" Sophie asked me, a wary tone to her voice.
I gestured around us emphatically. "These brain scans! And all the equipment we've been helping install in the space stations we've been capturing. It all makes sense. They're trying to use the stations as beacons, to transmit and amplify a signal that will affect the Weraynian's brains and cause brain death. The force field posts have been emitting signals for years to attune their brains to it. That's what it's all for! They've been hiding the true reason the war started, and now they're trying to end it in one neat little parcel of genocide."
Ray shook his head, a grotesque look on his face. "You children have had front row seats to all the horrors the Weraynians have unleashed, and you are defending them! Life is not always as black and white as you naively believe. Sometimes what is right is what is of benefit for everybody and the loss of an evil race of tyrants will be no loss at all. Your hatred should be directed at them, not to those who are trying to fix the state of the system and bring an end to this war."
My peripheral vision sparked and I noted that the Protector and Lexie had freed Jayken. My hand closed around the weapon at my side. Trying to move faster than Ray's brain, I brought the gun up and shot him in the neck, the most exposed part, with the force of my powers behind it. Dull surprise appeared on his face before he fell, stunned.
"Okay, move!" I barked and Rojjel appeared and yanked a disk drive from the machines before us and we ran. Sophie grabbed my hand and we pulled each other along. The adrenaline coursing through my body was kin to my rage. What were we going to do now?