Still, it didn’t seem fair that they got a pass while he was chained to a conference table.
They get to skip meetings, but no matter how insane I act, Marek never lets me skip out on one.
Marek helped his very pregnant wife to settle into her chair, then looked at the faces gathered around the table. “Where’s Zelup?” he asked Dawn.
The little scientist chirped at the falcon, who perked up attentively. “Go fetch Daddy,” she told it, and the robotic bird swooped upward, flying out of the room and down the hall.
“Juston?” Marek asked.
“He’s been detained but will be returning to Vartik in due time.”
Jazmine turned to Cal with a skeptical expression. “He’s been gone for almost a week. That’s quite a long time to fetch supplies from Boren’s Belt, isn’t it? The asteroids are less than a day from here.”
Cal shrugged. “He could use the time alone.”
Mayra tapped Jazmine on the arm. “It’s better than having him in the palace where his chances of seeing Sleep are fairly high.”
“I’m more worried about Nightmare seeing him,” Nojan muttered. Things hadn’t gone well between the former Seeker and their younger brother. Juston had been crushing on Sleep hard before the demon kidnapped her, and suffice it to say, things had been a little tense around the palace lately.
Zelup entered with the falcon on his shoulder nipping affectionately at his earlobe. He took a seat next to his wife, and with that, the gang was assembled. Marek and Jazmine, Nojan and Mayra, Zelup and Dawn. Himself, his younger brother Pennzinn, and Kara, their only sister and a powerful empath. Only Juston and Lyk were missing, Juston on a mission, and Lyk having exiled himself from Vartik years ago. Cal was the sole person who knew where Lyk was, and he wasn’t inclined to inform him of the goings-on on Vartik. Not yet, at least.
“Now that we’re all here,” Marek began, his eyes sweeping those assembled, “we can discuss our next move. We’ve managed to bring two Guardians to our side, but there are still five more we need to locate and… convince… to join us.”
When Marek saidconvince, he actually meant awaken. Millennia ago, the Seekers had managed to blank their memories and scatter the Guardians to the wind in noncorporeal form. These spirits had eventually found bodies to inhabit, but it generally took some sort of shock to awaken them to their powers. Mayra had needed a sexual awakening, and Sleep had required a physical one.
“Do we have any leads?” Pennzinn was new to the roundtable. A civil engineer, he preferred to spend his time planning and maintaining Vartik’s bustling cities.
“We do,” Nojan said, sitting beside his wife and sliding an arm around her. “Mayra has had another vision, and it’s a doozy.”
“No offense,” Dawn said, “but the last vision wasn’t exactly accurate. It only led Juston and Sleep into the trap set by the Seekers.”
“I beg to differ,” Mayra replied sweetly. “My vision stated that Sleep would recover something that we needed for our quest to succeed. She brought back Nightmare, and I’m sure having one of the Seekers on our side will prove invaluable.”
“What’s the vision about?” Cal interjected, seeing in Dawn’s face that she was gearing up for one of her penetrating arguments. Generally, her probing breakdown of events helped to perfect their strategy, but he didn’t have time to rehash their last adventure. His date was waiting and she wouldn’t wait long.
“The next Guardian. I know where she is.”
All eyes were on the oracle as she continued. “In my vision, I saw a warren of shadowy hallways. Decaying plaster walls. Figures in white. And the Guardian, I saw her. Well, sort of.” Mayra’s eyes widened, and Kara, sitting next to her, patted her hand to lend her strength.
“The Guardian was a blur. I couldn’t see her, she moved so fast. The rest of the world seemed almost frozen while she buzzed around like a streak of light.” It was clear that the vision had shaken the young oracle. “The place she was, it wasn’t nice. It was like a living ruin, deteriorating before my eyes. I’m… I’m not sure what it means, but I think that maybe time is of the essence. It feels like something’s counting down.”
Cal refused to acknowledge the chill her words sent up his spine. “You said you knew where she was.”
Mayra nodded. “I do. I saw a sign. It said, ‘Caution is advised when interacting with patients. Approach at your own risk.’ It was signed ‘Red Planet Sanitarium Staff.’”
“Red Planet?” Pennzinn asked.
“Another name for the planet closest to Territh in the Sol System,” Nojan explained. “A planet of red dust and the remains of early Territhian colonization efforts. Most have long since moved on to greener pastures.”
“But not Red Planet Sanitarium,” Zelup pointed out. “They’re still kicking around among the skeletons of the human’s first real steps out into the solar system. Ancient domes that are little more than relics now and haphazard and dilapidated structures scattered around the regions where they’d managed to pump water up from underground.”
As the leader of Vartik’s military forces, Zelup was well versed in the planetary conditions of hundreds of worlds. His wife might be able to relax him enough to use curse words, but she couldn’t banish the general from him if she wanted to.
“Let me guess,” Cal interrupted, still attempting to wrap things up sometime this century. “Someone’s headed to Mars?”
All eyes turned to him and he swallowed. He didn’t have time to hare off to the Sol System, not in the middle of his current project. “Any volunteers?” he asked, hoping to turn the heat off himself.
“We’ve all had a turn at adventure,” Marek growled. “Seems like it’s your time to shine.”
