When Jonas died, he’d named Kane his successor. And that was the end of his freedom. Jonas’s last request to him had been to eliminate the Kindred. Back then, they had been attempting to search out their origins, and it was only a matter of time before they came across their connection to the Guardians and what they were hiding in the Mountains of the Moon. Any exposure would endanger the mission. And that couldn’t be allowed.
Kane had done his best.
But he’d made mistakes and some decisions that Jonas would not have agreed with—such as joining forces with the Kindred. But now the year of the mission was upon them.
What would it bring?
Who the fuck knew?
The problem was,no oneknew what the mission actually entailed—the details had been lost in time—only that it would somehow save mankind. His people had lived with that belief for thousands of years, their faith keeping them going. They’d always believed that everything would become clear when the time was right. Growing up, Kane had never doubted it. Even when he’d gone out into the world, he’d still maintained his fundamental beliefs.
He was aware that his new “friends” thought him an idiot for his blind belief. But really, it was no different from the faith that sustained most people. The main difference was that he had proof.
“Everything quiet?” he asked Leila.
She nodded. She wasn’t one to speak much. What would become of her after the mission? Presuming there was an “after”. She’d spent her whole life in this place. But they had friendsnow. People who would help her adjust; that was what friends did.
He’d never had friends before. It was a learning process, and he’d proved to be a slow learner where friendship was concerned.
He pressed his palm to the panel—another new security measure—and the steel door slid open. Stepping into the cave beyond, he paused for a moment, as he always did, something close to religious awe holding his feet in place.
He’d come here so many times, but it still had the same effect.
The cavern was huge with a dark sandy floor and filled with pale sunlight from a hole in the arched ceiling above his head. In the center of the space was the machine. Smooth, silver, broad at the base and tapering to a point at the top, like a rocket. It was far too big to have come through either the door he’d entered by or the hole in the roof. So how had it gotten here?
He took that as proof.
It had materialized from another time and place and had sat here for thousands of years. Seemingly lifeless. Way beyond the technology available in the world today.
What had gone wrong?
Something he was sure, to bring this thing to such a remote area. What had his ancestors thought when they opened the door and saw not the world they were expecting, but a wild, lawless jungle that would make them fight for every second of their existence?
Had they tried to get home?
The favorite theory, right now, was that the mission had always existed, but someone had tried to stop it, right at the start, when the original people had been sent back in time. They’d sabotaged the machine, so it crashed ten thousand years too early.
So maybe it was broken and their whole existence was just some cosmic joke.
Except they knew now that something was to happen this year. A cataclysm so huge it would wipe out 95 percent of the population. Was he supposed to stop that?
Or was he the catalyst that would make it happen?
For the first time in his life, doubts plagued him.
But at least the waiting was nearly over.
Two years ago, the machine had shown its first signs of life. Kaitlin had touched it and what they believed to be a countdown had appeared. He could see it now, reducing slowly, but seemingly randomly, and they had never been able to work out exactly when the countdown ended.
At the thought of Kaitlin, his stomach twisted. From the first moment he’d set eyes on her, he’d been drawn to her. Back then, she’d been little more than a child. A grieving child, who’d just lost the person closest to her. And he’d been overwhelmed by the need to help.
He’d revealed himself to her in that moment, promised his assistance, but only if she and the rest of her people escaped their government controllers. He’d offered too little. He could have offered more and maybe saved her brother. But likely it had already been too late.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t offered.
Instead, he had followed his promise to a dying man and set out to destroy her people. Kaitlin had ended up imprisoned for six months, and others had died.
He’d let her down. But he’d been torn in two ways: between his loyalties to Jonas and everything he had been brought up to believe, and his attraction to a stranger who he knew nothing about, but who had the potential to destroy everything he believed in.
