“Fine. Put Dinkle in the back, leave this guy tied in the guards’ room. We’ll call for someone to get him later,” I said, knowing I had no one to call.
“We’ll bring them,” Terrance said. He and Leslie grabbed them by the arms, hauling them both to their feet.
We loaded the hybrids into the transport; I glanced back at Leslie as they entered the prison again. They came back out just as we had everyone set, Mary in the pilot’s seat and Magnus and I squished beside her. From the grim look on Terrance’s face, I wasn’t about to ask how it went. I really didn’t want to know.
With the sun behind the clouds, and a small ship full of potent-smelling hybrids, we lifted off the snow-crusted ground on our way back to Egypt and the Pyramids of Giza.
In a cramped hour, we reached our destination, my back aching from being squished into my seat. When the doors opened, we saw them: ships lowering into our atmosphere. They were bulky, reminding me of the oil rigs used to dig in the ocean.
Magnus stated the obvious. “That can’t be good.”
“We need to hurry,” Mary whispered.
I hoped Kareem was still alive when we got back.
Kareem slowly opened his eyes, blinking away his sleep. He looked surprised to see us, but it quickly gave way to a coughing fit. An attendant held a cloth to his mouth for him, and it came away with flecks of blood on it.
“You did it?” he asked once his breathing was back under control.
“We did,” Mary answered.
“How are our friends doing now?”
I wasn’t sure how he would react to the story, so I elected to keep it as simple as possible. “They’ve been through a lot. Only twelve came back with us.”
He nodded from his lying position, his head propped up on a soft-looking pillow. “We will care for them now. Thank you for helping. Everyone deserves a chance at freedom and happiness. The sins of our past can never be wiped clean, but we can try to learn from them and better ourselves.”
The comment struck home, and I thought of the bodies I’d left in my wake as we’d struggled to survive over the past couple of years. “It’s time, Kareem. It’s time to tell me how to access the hidden worlds with the Shandra.”
“A bargain is a bargain. But it’s for your eyes only. Do you understand?” He looked from me to Magnus, and then to Mary, lingering on her for a moment longer.
Mary and Magnus began to leave the room, but Kareem shook his head. “Stay. It is us who are leaving.”
Kareem’s attendant helped him sit up, and he bent over, rummaging through the small nightstand beside his bed. He pulled out a small device and smiled at me. His teeth were yellow, with small dots of blood on them. I almost pulled back, away from him, but he grabbed my arm with unexpected strength and pressed a button on the device.
A tingling energy pulsed from my toes upwards, and soon my whole body was vibrating. Mary was standing, looking at us with horror. I saw her mouth move, but no sound made it to my ears. The room around me faded, but Kareem was still there, gripping my skin, his hand hot as sauna rock against my arm. His smile was terrifying, but it told me he was enjoying his little game.
When our surroundings came back to focus, we weren’t in his room any longer.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, still feeling the energy coursing over me, even though he’d let go of my forearm. Looking around, I recognized the portal on this planet we’d just come through with the hybrids earlier that day. “How did you do that?”
“The answer to both those questions is the same.” Kareem’s knees gave way, and I caught the tall man, finding that he weighed less than I would have guessed. Standing up, I could see how rail-thin he was; his white cloak billowed around him like an oversized sail on a small boat. “This is another one of my inventions. I’m willing to give it to you to complete your mission. I have a feeling you’ll need every bit of advantage you can get.” He handed it to me. “It isn’t magic. You just have to set the coordinates of your target location in. Ideally, you program it in when you’re first at the spot.”
“You got us here by being in this exact spot before, then saving the location?” I asked, looking at the light device. It seemed obvious it was made by the same people as the smaller Shield device I’d used against the Bhlat. The look and feel was the same. He spent a few minutes going over the simple process with me, and when he was sure I understood, he moved on. I was holding him up by then; his sick body didn’t have the energy to stand on its own.
“Kareem, how long do you have?” I asked.
“It won’t be long now.”
I half-walked, half-carried him to the portal room. He made me stop at the entrance and said a string of Deltran words: likely a prayer of his people. He regarded the room with a reverence that I hadn’t, and it made me think of the portals differently. So far, they’d been a tool to help me survive, but they’d been put in place thousands of years ago by an ancient god-like race. We were standing in something older than anything we could imagine, with the power to transport us from planet to planet. The longer I thought about it, the more in awe I was of the whole scenario.
Kareem coughed a few times. “Never take it for granted.”
“What?”
“Any of it. We’re specks in the universe. We all think we’re so much more, the centers of our own worlds. We fight each other. Even my people orchestrated the deaths of races to their own benefit. There’s something different about you. Bring them together. Make them see the universe has more to offer than killing. When I look at you, I see the aura of a Theos.”
My heart hammered in my chest, beads of sweat forming on my brow. What was this man talking about? “I’m just an accountant from New York who got lucky a few times. I’ll leave all of that to the professionals. I just want to help us survive.”
“Don’t you see? It’s saying things like that, that makes you special. You didn’t say ‘you’ just want to survive. You want to help your people. Therein lies the difference between you and ninety-nine percent of intelligent life. Your instincts put them first, and you second.”
I didn’t know if he was right, or if by allowing myself a chance to survive, others had been saved. “I’m no god.”
“That’s right, because they eventually died and were forgotten. You’re something new.” With that, he entered the portal room unassisted, taking hesitant steps.
I walked behind him, hands ready to catch him if needed. The closer he got to the table above the large gemstone in the middle of the room, the brighter the icons and hieroglyphs glowed on the walls.
“Come. See the missing worlds,” Kareem said, his voice strong once again. He tapped on the screen, accessing files no one else would have known were there. He showed me the unique string of symbols I’d need to open it again, and we spent half an hour going over it, until he was sure I’d memorized them. “You cannot write or save them anywhere but in your mind, do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Do you understand?” He stood straight, towering over me, his face grim.
I stepped back from the threat and answered him properly. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“This information isn’t even known by modern Gatekeepers,” he said, quietly locking eyes with me.
Gatekeepers. I mouthed the word, my lips sticking together as everything suddenly went dry.
The table screen showed the icons I was familiar with, but Kareem directed me to scroll to the left now. I did, and red icons appeared, each with their own unique symbol.