Christopher looked off into the distance as silence settled between them. “The Saviors you remember are different than the ones I know. They may have started with the goal to save everyone, but in the end, they became nothing but oppressors.”
“How did they manage that?”
Tate knew not everything Christopher said could be trusted. His interpretation of history was twisted, viewed through the lens of what had happened to him rather than objective reasoning. In addition, the source of his knowledge and its motivations couldn’t be trusted. The entity who’d given him this knowledge probably had done him irreparable harm. But, that didn’t mean there wasn’t some thread of truth. Intent mattered but so did actions.
Either way, keeping him talking was Tate’s best hope for learning something.
“Don’t you find it strange that there are so many sleepers in the remains of your ship?” Christopher asked with a knowing look on his face. “Why would the Creators use your own stronghold to imprison their experiments?”
Tate flinched.
“No answer, huh. It’s not just that either. If you take a look at where the awakened sleepers appear, you’ll find its always in a Savior stronghold. Never a Creator’s.”
“You can’t know that for sure. No one can.”
Not even Tate. The records from that time period were long gone. No one could say with any certainty what belonged to the Creators or the Saviors.
Christopher’s smile was brief and didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re stretching. You don’t want to admit that your former companions didn’t liberate the survivors because they wanted to help people. No, they saw an opportunity and took it. They left those who might benefit them. The Kairi, to conquer the oceans. The Silva, to help defend against the predators of this planet. Lastly, the humans, who had no ability to challenge their rule.”
Tate reached up to scratch her jaw. “That’s an interesting theory you have there, but there are a few flaws.”
Christopher’s eyes narrowed.
“First, Aurelia fell to the Ijiri toward the latter half of the war.” Tate’s memories told her as much, even if the details surrounding that knowledge were a little fuzzy. “Second, if what you claim was true, Jax and the rest could have destroyed the sleepers. It would have been easy once they were placed in sleep. They would have been defenseless.”
Tate acknowledged Christopher had a point. It was obvious Jax, Kenneth, Trace, and Suze had started to change at some point, unnoticed by her. They might very well be the very thing Christopher accused them of being. But they hadn’t started out that way.
“This is beginning to seem like a waste of time,” Dewdrop said.
Christopher sent Dewdrop a cool look. “They did something at the Rift, didn’t they?”
“How do you know that?” Ryu asked in a silky voice that exuded danger.
Christopher ignored him in favor of watching Tate. “Rifts are funny little existences. An opening in time and space allowing all sorts of things to spill out. However, at their core, they’re pure power.”
“Why is that important?” Tate asked.
“You took two potent weapons from him—the behemoth and the Apportens Mortis.”
The knowing look in Christopher’s eyes at the last one made Tate go still. He couldn’t know. There was no way.
“How can he make the Rift a weapon?”
Christopher’s lips curved. “Something tells me you already know the answer to that.”
“He wants to wake the remaining Creators.”
The very thing she most feared was coming to pass. Sooner than she wanted.
Christopher made a hmm sound. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. The Ijiri were true monsters that the Saviors could never compare to. If allowed to walk this world again, they will bring an age filled with nothing but death and destruction. They will water the ground of this planet with blood and what they raise will be so terrible and horrible that those remaining will beg for death rather than live on.”
The resulting silence felt loud as they all stared at the madman who prophesied the end of the world.
“I can’t understand you,” Dewdrop said with a frown. “You make the Saviors out to be villains but then say they’re the reason we’re alive.”
Christopher shrugged. “They were villains. To the Ijiri, they were the greatest villains of all.”
Dewdrop looked up at the ceiling. “Why am I trying to reason with a crazy person?”
