might get a “not here” but I might get a “here.” So I do.
HERE.
A red line snakes through the worm, then a green one. I study them. Assuming red means danger or stop and green is go, I see the solution. It will still be very difficult and time consuming, but it’s now doable. The tightness around my chest eases a fraction and I move on to my next task, checking on the escape tunnel to DES.
It’s still there. Except there’s a misdirect worm on it, which means all our messages are being sent to Jarren. I’m beginning to hate when I’m right. Because it usually means we’re screwed.
My parents, Radcliff, and I are all sitting around Niall’s room eating Niall’s favorite dinner—roast beef and mashed potatoes covered in gravy. The hope is that he’ll smell the delicious food his father cooked and wake up. I steal glances at him. Come on, Niall, yummy food. Better than that IV solution you’ve been on for the last thirty-eight hours. Dr. Edwards said he needed to wake within the first seventy-two hours after the attack.
I fill them in on what I discovered that afternoon. Because of Yulin’s spin, we have another six hours of sunlight, which should be enough time for me.
“At this point, we’d rather you keep the lights on even if that means alerting Jarren,” Radcliff says to me.
“Even if I don’t tip him off, eventually he’s going to find out we survived.”
“We know and we’re making plans for Jarren.” Radcliff’s grin could be described as almost criminal. “And we’re going to need your help.”
I glance at Niall.
“Don’t worry,” Mom says. “I’ll stay with him when you can’t be here.”
“Thanks. What are your plans?”
“They’re based on a number of assumptions and things I learned from your file, Li-Li,” Dad says.
“It’s not mine. That’s twenty-eight years of Lan’s research.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What did you learn?” I ask.
Dad reads from his portable. “She confirmed that the Warriors are protectors against a dangerous predator. I’m assuming they’re the HoLFs even though Lan refers to them as demons. The Warrior planets were chosen carefully. Besides being habitable by humans, the planets are also located at an entanglement point in the Galaxy.”
“Entangled like when you connect to the Q-net?”
“Not quite. It’s called quantum entanglement. Basically you have two particles that are entangled—if one particle jumps, then the other jumps at the same time—they’re in the same quantum state. These entangled particles can then be moved far apart and if you manipulate one, say make it turn blue, then the other will turn blue as well. Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance.’ It’s one of the reasons we can communicate to other planets without our messages being affected by the time dilation.”
Wow.
“Lan also says it could be translated as a crossing point as well,” Dad adds.
“Crossing as in a portal to another planet or into another dimension?” I ask. Lan also speculated the demons came from an alternate universe.
“It’s not clear.”
“Maybe the aliens figured out how to entangle the Warrior planets with each other.”
“Unfortunately, the translations don’t go into that much detail.”
I recall Pit 21 and feeling the presence of shadow-blobs, but then the green lights from the Warriors pulsed as if pushing back the HoLFs. “Maybe in order to cross to another Warrior planet you have to go through some alternate dimension. But that dimension has HoLFs so they built the Warriors to protect against the HoLFs when crossing.”
“We’ve no idea if there are portals, Ara,” Mom says.
“Then where did the HoLFs come from?” No answer. So I forge ahead. “If you assume that there are portals, everything else makes sense.”
“She has a point,” Radcliff says.
An unexpected ally. Nice.
“The file also mentioned the factory for the Warrior hearts,” Dad says. “According to the symbols, only a few planets have these factories and that a person ‘must claim the heart of a Warrior’ in order to cross over.”
“That’s more proof of my theory,” I say.
Mom scowls at me, but asks Dad, “Did she say which planets?”
“Yulin, of course, Xi’an, Dongguan, Kaiping, Suzhou, and three planets we haven’t reached yet. Eight total.” Dad gives us a wry smile. The alien builders have a thing for the number eight.
“Jarren was on Planet Suzhou for ten years,” Radcliff says thoughtfully. “He had access to Lan’s notes prior to when she cracked the code; he may have discovered the hidden factory before she did.”
I gasp as a memory hits me. It was something Jarren said when he caught me.
“Don’t