Chapter 85
Djinns in the Case
Saturday, March 24. 125 S.A.
Nevermore Base No. 2 in French Territory
Pic de Grèzes, Languedoc-Roussillon. France.
Mai escaped from her noisy roommates and got out from the medical wing alone.
Noki was under observation and still cooling down with ice slimes all over her body, because she had abused her battle skills a bit. Although she could walk, Camila had kidnapped her and made her stay in bed to rest her muscles at least for a few more hours.
Ryuuji was with Natsuki, who still couldn''t see due to the amount of light and had her eyes covered.
The examinations had only shown that what was happening to her eyes was probably because her photoreceptors were too sensitive now that her whole body was visible, but they couldn''t explain why her body was now visible. The only thing they knew for sure was that Natsuki''s body had started to become visible at the very moment the battle of Lugrin had begun. And since what happened to Natsuki when she was still a student was part of a Dark Event, there was a possibility that it was a side effect of what happened after at the lake.
In the last few hours Mai had been under strict observation by the doctors and Camila in the medical wing of the base. Although she was as firm as ever, both Shin and Lizbeth saw her looking a bit taciturn and sad, but that was to be expected due to what had happened with Azusa.
She was trying to show her Operations Director''s face in that situation. She was calm, but she had also had a strong argument with the Council envoy, someone she had known well for a long time before the Council even existed. An alchemist by the name of Travis, whom Shin also knew.
It was already eight o''clock in the evening when she had been released from the exam. And now she was walking through the hangar where there was little movement at that hour. On the mechanical platform her car looked as good as new and further away Carissia''s mecha had been completed.
Mai was dressed only in a hospital gown and slippers. Her completely silver hair now stood out against her tanned skin, even though her skin pattern had faded.
The tan color of her skin had never been maintained after using the bow for so long. That was something that had worried everyone, but it was not dangerous and it was possible that it was just a momentary exposure to radiation from the bow being summoned from a different dimension. Having her body''s regeneration enhanced, it was nothing bad and simply counted as being exposed to the sun and getting an instant tan.
The earring, now without Azusa''s consciousness, twitched in her right ear as usual.
Mai sighed and walked up the stairs to the third floor of the base and reached a door and entered.
It was a huge room a little messy, full of papers and transparent boards full of data and equations. A central table, where several holograms were projected, occupied a large part of the room.
In that room were standing Lizbeth, Shin, Oxy, and seated at the table Philip, Zi, Rein, Mii, Travis and Aleister, accompanied by Lam floating in the room naked.
“Hey...” Shin said, who stopped what he was doing on one of the boards. “What happened?”
“I wanted to come here. I don''t want to be in bed,” Mai replied, as she looked at the board. On it Shin seemed to have drawn a diagram of all the events that had occurred in the case. Anyone who had seen it without understanding the context would have sworn that Shin had pulled a few screws loose to make such a cross-reference.
“You need to rest,” Lizbeth scolded her. “You''re still feeling pretty shaky.”
“I''m fine now, the tests revealed nothing.” Mai''s gaze fell on Lam who was currently hovering over the hologram table. “You are not allowed to go completely naked in the facility.”
“I told her,” Mii let out, arms folded.
“Lam, please,” Aleister requested.
“Tsk,” Lam clicked her tongue and materialized a silk red dress over her body.
Mai approached Oxy, who was typing something on a holographic keyboard. “How are you?”
Oxy''s eyes were red from crying since Thursday, but she had done her best to adjust to the situation. “I''m fine,” she nodded weakly and looked at Mai. “I''m leaving in a couple of hours with Thor to Scotland. I''ve already asked for a few days off from the university.”
“Are you sure? If anything happens they''ll let us know.” Mai ran a hand through her hair.
“I know,” Oxy smiled weakly. “But I want to be there.”
“Take as long as you want.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Mai looked at the others. “So, anything new?”
“Well we were doing a final review and checking data again,” Travis replied.
“I didn''t ask you.”
“Mai, you can be mad all you want but you can''t deny the facts. We wouldn''t be alive…”
“I know.”
Rein changed the subject to cool the atmosphere. Mai was really angry with the Council. “The rescued arrived on the island an hour and a half ago. The medical division will take over the care.”
Mai leaned on the table. “And the only one awake?”
“Jack Piersons will also be under observation. His rejuvenation process, if we can call it that way, has come to a complete halt.”
Mai glanced sideways at Travis and he gave her a sealed-lip gesture. “Anything else?”
Oxy sighed and drew a circle on the table and then projected it over the holograms. “There''s our case…”
For a few seconds no one spoke.
“All this to keep the world here...” let out Mai.
“Apparently,” Zi sighed.
“A snake biting its tail,” Mii agreed.
“Cases today?” Mai asked.
Everyone looked at each other.
Rein was the one who answered. “Only 57 confirmed, including the Orbital Belt. We will receive data from the other planets and moons in a few hours.”
Mai looked at the charts. “Is it too early to make any predictions?”
Rein nodded. “We may have another 101 on our hands. But we''ll have to wait at least five more days. If the pattern repeats itself we''ll have a new record low.”
Mai nodded and sighed. “What''s the possibility that this drop in numbers has something to do with what happened at the lake?”
Mii straightened up in her chair and leaned across the table as she looked at the data on one of the holograms. “The drop in cases reported and detected by passive and offensive systems began at the time that anomaly number 365 of Type 6 was destroyed.”
“So, yes. It''s possible,” Rein added.
“We should wait,” Mai nodded and then looked at Lizbeth. “What did the owner of the Bloodworth Company want so urgently by the way?”
Lizbeth frowned. “Ask Tony. They talked about something, but I don''t know what it would be.”
“I probably know something about it...” said Travis, raising a hand sheepishly. “I''ll explain it to you later, it''s a little complicated but it has to do with the attack on Pyrene and the girl Shin fought.”
Shin looked at Travis suspiciously. That pink-haired woman had been searched everywhere on Geneva but had vanished completely. Shin had almost thought there was a possibility that she was under the rubble, but her body had not been found. He had rarely had such a good opponent in a fight, but it wasn''t as if he wanted to meet her again anyway.
Mai sighed wearily as she watched the circle float. “There is no beginning and no end.”
Shin walked over and rolled the holographic circle. “There is a beginning. But when you look at it as a whole it really looks like the whole thing is a circle. It has a beginning and an end and we are outside but being a circle there are improbabilities.”
Mai frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“We haven''t told you yet,” Rein said.
“Tell me what?”
Shin moved one of his hands over the hologram and pulled up a picture. It was of a squadron called Blackbird-C. “The beginning and the end is relative and depends on who you ask. But in this case let''s choose an observer of another kind.”
Aleister nodded and pointed his staff at the photo. “This is the squad that first encountered the fractus that caused this whole case to go into motion. The squad Franco Bicini was in.”
Mai looked at Shin. The Bicini last name had been giving them a headache since Kolsay.
Aleister continued. “In year 5 of the New Age I met him at Kolsay Lake. This is the beginning from the stone''s point of view.”
“Yes, you already told me,” Mai nodded grumpily. She had been angry when she had found out that Aleister had something to do with it, but apparently according to the Deep-Dive he had been subjected to at the base he had no responsibility whatsoever for what happened to the plane.
“But now let''s look at it from another point of view,” Aleister continued.
Mai took the picture of Benu Bender floating in the cloud of holograms on the table. “I don''t know why this kid looks familiar to me from somewhere.”
“That''s the point I was getting at,” Shin said. “What we discovered.”
“What did you find out?”
“It''s a little strange,” Philip said, wrinkling his nose.
“The what?” Mai asked.
“I told you, it didn''t happen that way,” Shin interrupted looking towards Philip, sighing tiredly.
“What are you talking about?”
Mii replied. “Benu Bender was born through assisted fertilization. We missed the issue of his mother''s constant traveling. They were always traveling together, but without the father. That''s why we wanted to corroborate the information. It cost a bit, but we asked for the historical records from one of the centers that does old population data mining.”
Rein nodded. “Benu bender was born in the year 2000 of the Ancient Era. He always lived with his mother, until they both boarded that plane for Geneva in 2012.”
Shin drew the hologram with the plane and unfolded it. “This plane traveled from 2012 to 125, but when I tried to rescue him we both ended up in the year 110.”
“Yes, I know, I saw it,” nodded Mai.
Shin also nodded and continued. “Well, Benu Bender was found in the lake, with no memories and taken by an orphanage and reborn as Lee Reubens.”
Oxy continued. “Lee Reubens becomes a teacher, until a few days ago he was targeted by those two criminals who escaped us in the attack on Pyrene Station. Later, Lee Reubens is kidnapped along with me and taken to the accelerator.” Oxy frowned and looked at Travis.
“I had no idea about that part. I''m sorry,” Travis said.
“They used my data for the Pening traps. But the fact is, anyone with a high enough physics degree could have done the calculations. Are you going to deny that you didn''t know about-”
“I repeat. I apologize, but I was not informed of that. And now with what we know it is highly possible that Janus only wanted you as bait to make sure the boy was involved.”
Mai clicked her tongue. “Did you have to say it?”
Travis grimaced softly and sighed, but turned to Oxy. “From what Thor told, he seemed to be interested in you. I know it''s sad, but unfortunately that''s been part of this mess.”
Oxy sighed in annoyance and wiped a tear from her left eye before it spilled over her cheek.
Shin continued. “The important part is that Professor Lee Reubens was sent as a time traveler to the year 1977. The first of May.”
Mai furrowed her brow and thought. The very day I was born. What a coincidence.
“According to the information extracted from Jack Piersons, and that guy has brains like scrambled eggs, that''s when Leteo Waters was born. A scientist working for the Kingdom and who would contribute several ideas for the future. For example with the ideas of the holographic portal, teleportation technology, neurowire.”
“Yes, I know that too.”
Shin looked at the others and then at Mai. “You know that Leteo is his own father?”
Mai raised an eyebrow. “What?...”
“Yeah... is what we found. And according to Jack Pierson he found out about it on the plane too. Leteo Waters donated his sperm to the clinic that years later Hebe Bender would use to conceive her son Benu.”
Mai''s eyes widened in disbelief and she looked at everyone. “What are the odds of that happening?”
Shin shrugged. “They''re not zero... but I think it explains what I saw on the plane. There have been cases, from what I read, of people being found their double but nothing has happened. What happened on the plane was that the older Leteo Waters basically disappeared when he was observed by his younger version, when he was Benu. His younger version then lost the memories of it in 110, became Lee Reubens and a professor. And then, a few days ago, he lost the memories of this time when he was sent back in time to 1977 to become Leteo Waters, so his older version did not remember seeing himself in the past. And later he donated his sperm to the clinic that would later give birth to himself as Benu Bender.”Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Mai puffed out her cheeks and let the air out as she assimilated that information. It was enough to give anyone a headache.
“Let''s hope he really did donate the sperm, the other possibility is that he had sex with his own mother without knowing it,” Philip let out.
“No need to explain that,” Mii replied.
“And Jack Piersons?” Mai asked.
Aleister interjected. “Jack Piersons has stated that he died in 1952, but his consciousness was sent back in time to the year 110 as well. His body was regenerating that time with Janus, where basically Janus manipulated his mind the whole time.”
“He''s an unwitting accomplice,” Mai let out and looked at Aleister angrily. “And you had something to do with it.”
“What I did was send that shard of rock in the mail at the exact moment he would die with the visions I received. That little piece of rock was the one that projected his consciousness into the future and allowed him to survive. Even though Janus told him it was a copy of the original.”
“And whose fault was that last one?”
“I didn''t know everything. I just knew I had to tell Janus at that point. On the other hand, what do you think would have happened if this wasn''t followed to the letter, at least with the visions we had? Would you be happier if the world had ended?”
Mai sighed upset. “I''m not saying that, and you know it. I don''t like being kept in the dark when there were so many lives at stake.”
Rein folded her arms and explained. “Considering that about Mr. Piersons, according to the memory extraction, he basically regenerated his body from scratch, he should be considered a minor of fifteen at the time he was sent to 1959, even though the regeneration of his body seems to count as the optimal point of maturity in his late thirties.”
“You mean to tell me that a teenager''s mind was sent in an old man''s body to the past?” Mii asked and Rein made a confused face and shrugged. “We have seen stranger things, Mimi...”
“What do you have to say about that? You''re the alchemist.” Mai asked, turning to Travis.
“Honestly, we had no idea about that. Much of what we are learning about this is from you guys and what Janus revealed to Queen Bee at the Panopticon. Janus provided little data to us and Jack Pierson''s data was not among them. If you ask me from an alchemical point of view, basically Jack Piersons is like finding a philosopher''s stone. There are no known cases of modern homunculus temporis. Homunculus temporis is like a spontaneus chimera, in the sense that it is something that happens by accident, not by design. It occurs by accumulation of anomalies, but nothing else.”
“And Janus? Any news of him?”
“Nothing yet,” Rein said.
Mai looked at the holograms. The main person responsible for much of what had happened had not shown up. While almost all the data they now knew about Janus came from Osmia, there were still a lot of questions.
“There''s something bothering me about all this. Have you noticed?” Mai asked, concentrating on everyone''s stares
Looks turned to Shin almost immediately.
“What have I done now?”
“One time traveler is his own father,” Mai said.
“Another traveler is an anomaly so rare that there are no current documented cases,” Mii said.
“Another is an animal whose physiognomy changed from being locked inside a type of magical OOPArt for too long,” Philip followed, pointing to a picture of the pug in the holograms.
Oxy pursed her lips bitterly, looking at a picture of Jim Stuart. “Another traveled in a synthetic body, which ended up altering his memories.”
“Another traveler sent a code from the future to awaken his consciousness in the past,” Aleister added, and pointed with his cane to an image from the files Osmia had provided. The avatar used by Janus.
“And you...” finished Lizbeth looking at Shin. “You are a fey, but a Keelian. There are only a few like you, and another one of that type is sitting in front of you right now.”
At those words Shin looked up at Mii and she averted her gaze. Lizbeth saw that gesture and thought she saw a blush on Mii''s pale skin illuminated by the holograms.
“Exactly,” Mai nodded,” Everyone who time-traveled in some way has something that makes them different. None can be said to be one hundred percent normal.”
“No one is normal in this room... except you,” Zi said to Philip and he just whispered to her to shut up.
Shin looked at those present who had turned their attention back to him. “I didn''t do it on purpose.”
Mai nodded. “I know. But look what happened to the people on the plane. The rescued ones. They''ve all fallen into comas and their bodies have wounds that we''re still not sure how we''re going to heal.” Mai leaned on the table and looked at all the holograms. “What if the only way to time travel is to have some peculiarity in the body or mind that makes the invididual different?”
“Stuart also traveled twice?” Aleister asked and Oxy frowned. “I mean-”
“Everyone involved time traveled more than twice, with the exception of the survivors, Shin... and Jim Stuart, probably...” Oxy let out.
Almost everyone, except Oxy, had turned to look at Shin with strange expressions on their faces once again.
“Don''t look at me like that. I only traveled once and that was more than enough,” Shin said.
“You said you had deja vu when you got to the lake, right?” pointed out Philip.
“Yes, but that doesn''t mean anything. It''s just that what happened was because the time I woke up in Kolsay was the same time I was being pulled out of the lake by those guys.”
“Are you telling me that your consciousness, in two different places, was linked at the same time? Without the need for a machine, magic or anything like that?” Aleister asked.
Shin simply nodded. “Yes. The moment I awoke in the Swiss part of the lake was the same time I awoke in Kolsay. Though the answer probably lies in the particles in my armor.”
“I see,” Aleister said with a nervous smile and thought. What kind of monster are you exactly? But that question was being asked by several people at the time even though no one said so.
Zi put her hand to her chin thoughtfully. “The reason why your version of in the Lake went almost ignored might be because there couldn''t be two versions of you? Your version with Mai in Kolsay was being watched all the time, otherwise there would be a chance that your version with Mai would have collapsed so that the Swiss Lake version would have grown stronger?”
“...Please don''t say such horrible things.”
“It''s just a theory. After all the particles in your armor are unique and at that time your version with Mai was much stronger than the old version of you, which then became younger while your version with us was getting weaker,” Zi said, nodding to herself.
Like a particle experiment in macroscopic version, this guy... thought Aleister, looking at him with suspicious eyes.
Philip continued with the doubt he had. “I mean the feeling you had at the crash site. Are you sure you''ve been there once?”
“I''ve been in a lot of accidents. Just that,” Shin said. That was half true, but he would have to find a way to explain to Mai and Lizbeth about his adventure in that erased time and the other secrets he had. He now had a more complete picture with those memories recovered, but the memories of the Other Side were still fragmented, as were those of Mai and Lizbeth. And the three of them were too afraid to risk talking about it considering that rule that feys didn''t remember anything from their time on the Other Side.
Maybe we should reconsider putting a leash on him, in case he doesn''t escape, Lizbeth thought.
“And the riddle of the stones? Would that mean there were two stones?” Carissia asked, startling Lizbeth. The redhead had emerged from the darkness in the room as if she had suddenly materialized out of thin air.
“Where were you? Rather, when did you enter?” Zi asked.
“You guys were so into it that I didn''t want to interrupt. I was talking to Miss Osmia.”
Rein took the floor. “As far as the stones are concerned... only one. Right, Aleister?”
“What do you mean, only one?” asked Travis.
“It''s very simple, it''s not two stones it''s just one,” Aleister replied.
“How do you know that?”
“The flaw is in believing that the stone they''ve used in the crapton-smasher is different, it''s the same one.”
“Crapton?” Shin asked, but he was ignored.
“If that''s correct, it would mean that someone took it out to send it back in time,” Philip agreed.
“Am I missing something?” Travis asked.
“It''s not twin stones. It''s just one with the ability to time travel.” Aleister sighed. “As I explained before, in year five Lam and I were with Bicini at the time the stone was placed in that tree.”
“That makes you responsible for that thing being in the lake...” Shin said.
“No. The stone had to be there in my visions. It has nothing to do with what you and Mai fought over there.”
“No one who received such visions ever thought to contradict them?” Carissia asked.
“I think we can be glad that no one contradicted them.” Aleister replied and then looked at Shin. “Didn''t you have visions, too?”
Shin recalled. Rather than visions of the future, they had been voices and memories of his past. While the others had gotten visions of the future. Everything about him was related to recovering or recalling memories of another time. He had recovered memories of his time with Azusa, he had seen memories of his life in Russia with his first family. All past, with one exception. He looked toward Carissia. Had he really thought he heard her voice, or had it been an illusion?
“Why there, precisely, in Kolsay?” Mai asked to Aleister.
Aleister shrugged. “I don''t know. I just saw myself putting it there in my visions. If that didn''t happen, another catastrophe would occur and the world would have been destroyed. Basically the visions of what I was supposed to do came with what would happen if it didn''t happen. The visions are like an outline. Or rather a tree with branches, but ones that hang down with warnings.”
Shin thought about it and turned to Mai, “Remember the pictures we saw of that massacre that happened at the lake?”
Mai looked at him and nodded. “What if the animals or that creature were protecting the stone?”
“It''s a little silly, I know, but I don''t know why I felt like it could be. Remember how those deer attacked us? What if the reason the stone had to be there was for protection? A place with few people. And the few who tried anything were slaughtered.”
“I don''t think that''s the truth, for one simple reason,” Mai mused.
Shin thought about it but nodded and turned to Aleister. “It''s true. When we went to the place where you and Bicini left the stone. There was nothing there. The notches in the tree could have been days or even hours maybe. But it wasn''t there.”
“Which means someone was there before we arrived,” Mai continued.
“But we saw no footprints of any kind,” Shin pointed out.
“What about the radiation Kohi and Nikolai discovered?” Zi asked.
“Anomalous black hole radiation...” blurted Lizbeth. “Yeah. That''s really weird.”
“Which brings us to the other question,” Rein said, standing up from her chair and fiddling with the holograms. She enlarged a few which she showed to the group. “This is the model of the hollow where the stone was extracted from the tree on Kolsay. And this is the model of the cavity where the stone was, extracted from that machine found in the wreckage of the plane. This other one is the model of the cavity in the machine found by the search teams that went down to the accelerator”. Finally she manipulated one more hologram, this time of what looked like an old two-dimensional page. “When we uploaded the data to our database it showed the matches instantly. In descriptions and measurement.”
On that page you could see very fine calligraphy in English and over the text were drawn two pieces of rock.
Rein continued her explanation by pointing to the page. “These are texts from the first group that investigated the Dark Events in a scientific manner. The Fog Society. The group of scientists and adventurers of the nineteenth century. Our grandparents you might say.”
“That''s...” began Shin looking at the page.
“From the measurements and description it''s the Rocks of Memories, as they called it. Two objects that they had for a long time, until by the orders of the one who had given them to them, they were taken to Japan.”
They all looked at each other.
“Japan…”
Aleister nodded. “There''s one of the riddles I could never solve. When Bicini and I left that stone in Kolsay it was one, it was whole. But the one that gave me my visions when I met Nobuyama in Hokkaido two centuries before was two. It was the same stone but it was split in two.”
Rein nodded. “There''s the clue Mr. Fu gave us. Those stones disappeared at the end of the nineteenth century, one night in the middle of a fight.”
Shin looked up. In the cloud of holograms was a delicate-looking Asian man wearing a fine hanfu. That was Fu Xiang. Now that he knew that, Shin wished to talk to Fu. He had met him in the past and he was an immortal alchemist who had some health problems, hence the irony of how his name read. Fu, The Unlucky One. Although that didn''t stop him from getting into trouble in the past.
Aleister nodded. “Somehow those two rocks found their way to Satou Nobuyama.”
Shin continued. “In the same way those rocks absorbed part of my particles in 1908 and returned them to me now.”
“Satou Nobuyama left the stones in the Yanagida family, which later one would be taken by Carl Scott and Jack Piersons and the other part would end up in the hands of people from the Vatican.”
Lizbeth followed the thread. “The Vatican part continued to travel in a linear path in time, until it was stolen by the two thieves few days ago, and then used to lure the other part in 2012 along with the plane. Where they came back together again, before being destroyed in the collider.”
They were silent for a few seconds.
“That brings us to the previous problem, something even I don''t know the answer to,” Aleister said.
“Who took the stone in Kolsay and how did they send it back in time to the nineteenth century?” Lizbeth asked.
“We only know that the stone was taken to Japan by someone named William, who was accompanied by his daughter,” explained Rein.
Shin looked up and stared at her.
“What?” asked Rein, surprised at the look on her father''s face.
Shin sighed. “No, nothing.”
Because of Fu Xian now Shin knew that what Rein had just told him was related to Svetlana''s mother. That man had been William and the girl must have been Alice. Feodor had more than once told a similar story of how he had met Alice, who would later become his wife and Svetlana''s mother. Apparently there were cross ties that even those involved did not know about. That was another story, though. He would have to make time later to contact Fu and talk to him.
Mai then manipulated one of the holograms. “Of course we have this problem too.” It was a hologram with Gehirn''s face. Oxy looked down, sadly. “We always thought that the accuracy with which ZAIEN had predicted the fractus attacks after the Tokyo explosion was due to the prediction systems and algorithms.”
A hush fell over the room. That was the revelation Thor had brought from Germany.
“The truth behind the fact that so many fractus attacks had been repelled by the early prediction systems was not due to mathematical precision. That had been revealed by someone to Gehirn,” Shin said.
“Jim Stuart,” Zi let out in a whisper. “Rather, Zuriqth.”
Oxy turned away from the table and headed for the door. “Sorry. I''m going to go get ready to leave with Thor.”
They all heard how her voice sounded shaken, but they didn''t say anything. Oxy left the room.
“Poor girl,” Aleister said.
“The war was won thanks to Jim Stuart too, according to what we now know,” Lizbeth said.
Mai nodded. “The fractus defeated in the Kurils by the Nue dog. Then the core of that fractus was destroyed during the Tokyo explosion. At the same time in the Tokyo explosion the Russian fractus that had the ability to destroy by infecting computer networks and electrical systems was also destroyed. Jim Stuart-Zuriqth took care of it. This caused its core to split into 48 parts when it was destroyed. The 48 parts that were stolen from the Russian Academy of Sciences months ago and used in the accelerator by Janus to extract the tokions from the fragments of the other rock.”
Mii continued. “And prior to his death Jim Stuart left the data to Gehirn for future battles. At the same time he was one of those who caused the explosion in Tokyo.”
“We can''t be sure of that. He didn''t say anything about it in the video.”
“But according to Gehirn it is highly possible that the time travel would have modified his memories and made him forget others. So it would not be strange that he would have caused that destruction without knowing it.”
“Which brings us to the problem now.”
“What happened to Jim Stuart''s body?” interrupted Lizbeth.
“All the personnel in the UK are looking for him, just like with Janus who disappeared in Edinburgh.” Mai said.
“Couldn''t Janus have kidnapped Jim Stuart''s body?” interrupted Travis.
“To what end?”
“Everyone saw him going alone. He just disappeared,” Rein pointed out. “On the other hand, why right in that place?”
“Speaking of Gehirn. Do you think what he proposed might be right?” Aleister asked Shin.
“The possibility is not zero but I am not sure. Whether consciousness can actually be tethered to the body over time in the feys is another matter. Of all the people who traveled Jim Stuart seems to be the most normal of all. Who knows what kind of visions he got that he couldn''t tell us about because of the explosion.”
“Maybe he saw something so bad that he decided that was the best thing that could happen?” Lizbeth risked.
“Or maybe his consciousness really did return to the body and that would explain why his body disappeared. He ran away,” Mii said.
Mai let out a sigh. She didn''t like the idea. but until Stuart''s body turned up nothing was out of the question. And they had another corpse in that case too, one that was already skeletonized. “What about the skeleton in the tunnel?”
“It''s confirmed. It''s him. As corroborated by Osmia''s data,” Rein reported.
“That puts an end to an enigma of more than two centuries.”
“We were contacted by the RIA. They are asking for the body. They want to give him a full honors burial.”
Mai looked at one of the pictures in the hologram cloud.
It was a picture of an elderly human male. It was a notice of disappearance in Italian and English. “They didn''t pay attention to him and tried to shut him up when he tried to do the right thing.”
“So many years went by and he just became another number in the disappearance statistics,” Lizbeth said.
Mai put the photo in front of her and then opened another hologram. It was of a skeleton wearing a tattered suit. It was the body found in the Vatican tunnels.
“This has all been a distraction,” Mai said.
No one said anything and everyone''s gaze shifted to the center of the hologram. There floated the sphere against which the battle had taken place. The eye.
“What was that thing?” Philip asked.
Carissia looked at it with a somber expression. “According to Osmia, this is the main reason why everything had to happen the way it did. The main objective. We were all pieces to make it manifest. Janus seems to think that what was behind all those endings for out civilization was that thing. And the only way out was this, to reveal what was behind it.”
“Basically, he thinks this is the creator of the universe or something?” Philip asked.
“But what is that?” Zi asked.
Rein had put on a serious face. “Janus simply called it in his simulations: The God Who Sleeps and who must not be awakened. Oddly enough, it is a term that has appeared before in certain ancient books.”
Mii shuddered at that. That thing gave her dread even though she couldn''t explain why. Shin on the other hand couldn''t shake off the strange sensation he felt in his eye when he looked at that sphere.
Mai nodded. “Azusa also referred to something similar had happened to her species before arriving on this planet.”
“The elusive Yithians,” Travis blurted out. “The possibility that they were the ones who built the machine parts and left them behind through time is very high.”
“You''re basically saying Azusa is to blame for this?”
“It''s just a theory. There are a lot of things we don''t know. I''m not blaming her.”
“So. Then what was that?” Philip asked.
“But if what Azusa said is correct it raises something I don''t like very much,” Zi said.
Shin nodded. “Whatever that thing was, it''s not something that''s attached to our planet but may be some intrinsic feature of the universe.”
Aleister stood up from his chair. “I saw many things in my visions but they were so quick I don''t remember seeing that. Maybe Janus was the only one who saw it. It had to happen this way not just to save the world.”
“But, to reveal that?” Lizbeth asked.
“In this event many of us willingly and unwillingly were part of making this thing manifest. The people of the past, the people of now, what happened in the accelerator and the battle over the lake,” explained Aleister with his gaze lost in the holograms.
“Whatever it was, Azusa assured that it would not happen again. At least not there, on the lake.” affirmed Mai.
“Or maybe she means the planet?” Aleister asked.
“Whatever it is. I hope we never see it again. I don''t want to know what else could have come out of that thing,” Rein said.
Mai was silent. She was still uneasy about Azusa''s last words.
Which boy was she referring to before she died? And what did it have to do with that arrow that had destroyed the sphere?