His knees buckled as his feet hit the ground. Earhart was there, throwing a blanket over his shoulders and putting an arm around him to steady him. Ahana was on his other side. Also assisting.
“What happened?” Earhart asked as Dane slowly straightened and got his feet under him.
“1 saw them,” Dane said. “The Ones Before. They have a plan that they’ve been working toward for a very long time, using several timelines.”
“Who are they?” Ahana asked.
Surprisingly Dane laughed. “It’s been there in front of us all the time.” He pointed to the other tank where Rachel still floated. “Dolphins. From the Shadow’s timeline. The first timeline.”
“What?” Earhart echoed the confusion they all felt on bearing this.
“let’s go to the conference room,” Dane suggested. “And we need to link with Foreman so he can hear this. Because we’ve got things to do.”
It took fifteen minutes to set up a satellite link with Foreman who was still on board the FLIP. Gathered round the conference room table were Dane, Earhart, Ahana and Commander Talbot. Foreman had suggested doing two Commander Talbot. Foreman had suggested doing two more links to the Pentagon’s War Room and the White House, but Dane had vetoed the idea, saying that they could accomplish what was needed and bringing in others would only slow everything down.
“Slow what down?” Foreman demanded, once everyone was ready. His voice echoed out of the small speaker set on the table and Dane was glad the CIA man was over a thousand miles away. He could not deny that Foreman hated the Shadow, but he had also found him to be duplicitous, unable to shake decades of operating in the covert world in his battle against a threat no one had taken seriously.
“All right,” Dane said. “Let me tell you what I saw as best I can. First, the Shadow. As we feared, it is a human timeline, not aliens or some strange malevolent force. You might call them Earth Timeline I. The oldest — well. Not the oldest, but the first if that makes sense, given that the portals can cut across time.
“Also, as we suspected, it’s a timeline that is severely damaged. They raid other timelines for raw materials, power. And people for spare parts-as we saw in the Valkyrie cave in the Space Between.” Dane pressed a hand against his head, trying to sort it all out in his own mind so he could tell them. While he had been imparted with a great deal of information in one fell swoop, his brain could process it only bit by bit, trying to put together the big picture of a very complex puzzle that they had been fighting.
“In Timeline I, Atlantis never got destroyed. That’s why the first thing they — the Shadow — did when they were able to use portals was destroy all the other Atlantis’s in every timeline they attacked. They destroyed ours. Because they believed — believe — only a timeline as technically advanced as theirs can mount a threat to them.”
Dan tapped the side of his head. ‘’Those of us with the Sight, who can hear the voices, we are descendants of survivors from Atlantis. Because all Atlanteans had this ability. They were able, the original Atlanteans, to develop equally in both the physical and mental fields. They learned to harness the power of the mind, which led them to harness the power of the planet itself. Which also brought them to disaster.”
Dane paused and was greeted with silence. Earhart, Talbot and Ahana were just staring at him, waiting for him to continue. Even Foreman was silent.
“They tapped into the core of the planet itself for power. But they did it before they were ready to harness it one hundred percent. They made mistakes. They damaged their ecosystem terribly. So badly that they need to constantly replenish their water, air, and other basic elements.”
The first question finally came. Foreman’s voice came out of the speaker. “Why don’t they just go to another timeline? Ask for help?”
“Because, initially, there were no other timelines,” Dane said. “Only a handful of humans survived this disaster in Timeline I. They had access to tremendous power and had a much deeper understanding of physics than we do. Someone. One of their best scientists. Realized the possibility of parallel worlds.” Dane shrugged. “Remember. I got all this from the Ones Before. Even they don’t completely understand what the Shadow did. Which came first — the chicken or the egg? In trying to access parallel earths, did the Shadow in essence give birth to the other timelines? Or were the timelines there already and they · were able to reach across to them? The Ones Before don’t think the Shadow even knows what happened when they pushed the power they had into the Space Between and beyond.
“But they were able to reach other timelines via the portals and connecting gates. Timelines that, if left alone, might not make the mistakes the Shadow bad made. Despite their advances, the Shadow were human. They were scared. Afraid that they would be denied what they needed. Afraid of a timeline more powerful than theirs. So they acted like scared humans.
“They attacked first. And they’ve been doing it ever since.”
“The Ones Before?” Earhart asked.
Dane smiled. He looked at Talbot. ‘’This program. The Atlanteans of Timeline I did it too. One man. One true · human. Maybe it was you. Another you. They went beyond the International Space Station. They established a base on the moon. They sent dolphins there. For instant communication back to Earth via what you do here.
“When the disaster struck — apparently, something similar to what they almost did here when they tried to tap · the core of our planet via the Nazca Plain. They unleashed too much power, power they couldn’t control.” Dane closed his eyes for a few seconds. “South America was gone. Which then spread to the Ring of Fire. The entire Pacific Rim was gone. All coastal areas were hit with massive tsunamis. Then the Mid-Atlantic Ridge gave way. Iceland, Greenland, gone. The climate changed.” He opened his eyes. “They totally screwed their planet up. But they had an unbelievable amount of power. And with it, they developed the ability to travel to other timelines.
“But the moon was cut off. The dolphins did it. With the help of the few humans there. They closed themselves off, totally against what the Shadow began to do. And · they’ve tried to help the other timelines.”
“The Ones Before are dolphins?” Foreman didn’t sound as if he believed it.
“Yes,” Dane said. “They send the messages to other timelines through small portals, ones too small for the Shadow to use. And on a mental wavelength that the Shadow can’t intercept or block. And the messages go to other dolphins in those timelines who resend them to humans. Humans like me, the descendants of the original Atlanteans.”
“So in a way,’ Earhart said, “you really are fighting yourself.”
“Yes.”
Foreman’s voice cut into the short silence that followed this. “Okay: So how do we go to Timeline I and defeat them?”
“We don’t,” Dane said. ‘That’s for others. We have to help them get there.”
“Who?” Foreman demanded. “What others?”
“There’s a force in another timeline. A dying timeline that the Shadow has cut off from all the portals and abandoned. They fought the Shadow and lost. But they learned a lot fighting them. They’ve got a unit that can fight the Valkyries.”
“But if they don’t have portals — ” Ahana left the rest of the statement unsaid.
“That’s where we come in,” Dane said. “And others.” He held up a single finger. “First. The Ones Before don’t know exactly where on Timeline I Earth the Shadow is holed up. They think there are only a few thousand of them left. So — ”