I won’t tell you of a future that you haven’t chosen yet and alter your decisions either.”
“Why me?” the little boy asked, unafraid of the very mature conversation.
“Because you become one of the most honorable and genuinely honest people I’ve ever met, and one of the very few that I will ever trust,” Cin spoke honestly, giving the young man the respect he deserved.
Dar nodded in understanding and looked out at the sea creatures still playing in the water. “Mama says only the strongest Mascadorians can become dragon warriors, like my Daddy. He died in the Formassian Wars, defending Mascador from the Consortium. I want to be that strong and brave.”
“You already are, Dar,” Cin promised. “Now, you just have to grow into that fierce determination and courage already inside of you.”
Cin and the little boy sat in the sand and watched the sea dragons until it started to get dark. Dar turned to Cin and smiled sadly.
“I’m not going to see you again for a few years, am I?” Dar was clearly unhappy about it.
Cin chuckled but couldn’t stand the sadness he felt in the boy’s energy. “I will return soon. I promise. Until then, all you have to do to talk to me is type this in any comm or computer, then follow it with whatever you want to say.”
Cin traced the symbols on the boy’s palm, each lighting up the boy’s skin until Dar was holding up his hand and staring at the glowing characters.
“How will it get to you?” Dar asked in wonder when the symbols began to fade.
“The first symbols are like an alarm that tells me I have a message. Then I can read what you said and respond to you,” Cin promised.
“Dar? Where are you?” a frightened woman called from the dunes above them.
“I have to go!” Dar stood and looked down at Cin before hugging him tightly. “Thank you, my friend. I will talk to you soon.”
Before Cin could respond, the small boy was gone.
Chapter Seven
The setting sun appeared like a blood-red smear in the sky when Cindrac returned from the past, and the planet Mascador. Between the sky and the thread of expectation in the planet's energy, Cin knew that something was going to go wrong tonight.
Turning on the propaganda news, Cin was sickened to see that everyone in Cheyenne Mountain was dead. The soldiers, scientists, all the way down to the cleaning slaves, and the elites were blaming it on him.
Warnings were displayed on the chyron that anyone seeing Cindrac must immediately report him to the authorities. Anyone not complying would be considered an enemy of the people and given a traitor’s death.
Cin snorted when he heard the last part. The elite’s idea of a traitor’s death was nothing more than a horrific display of how sadistic the bastards were. Nothing was off-limits to them, and they made sure to make each gory, hellish death a worldwide televised spectacle.
It was all a game to the elite who told themselves that the terror and suffering they were causing humanity benefited some demonic deity they worshipped. In truth, the elite were psychotic monsters who reveled in the brain damage caused by their millennia of inbreeding.
Cindrac refused to let their threats determine his next course of action and held his hands out beside him, testing the energy around him. No longer needing the elite databases of alien technology now that he’d gained access to LAW’s systems, Cin wouldn’t give the elites the satisfaction of exposing himself again and risking more deaths.
Gathering the strands of energy from the air around him, Cindrac sent out a wave of power meant only to reach the nearest computerized technology. It took mere seconds before the codes within the energy shut down anything on the planet that wasn’t essential for human survival.
As the code traveled from computers to anything using technology of any kind, the power, water, sewage, and food systems were left unchanged and even strengthened. The elite’s private communication systems were permanently destroyed, as well as all backup systems.
The bunkers where the elites would go to hide were sealed, and all life support systems were shut down. No more would Cin allow the evil bastards to avoid the chaos and destruction they wrought.
Next, all kill switches in the slaves were permanently disabled, subliminal programming was eradicated, and the drugs pumped into the food and water supplies of the slaves was stopped. Cin believed it was time the people were able to think clearly again.
Although Cin would