We also left devices in the Fold. Probes. One of these devices must have sensed your psychic potential and activated you. It knew that in you lay the ability to wield our last weapon against the Ra’haam, and it brought that potential to the fore. Now you must train so you are prepared to use it. You must end the cycle.
All of a sudden, surrounded by perfect beauty, I feel incredibly tiny on a very big planet. The golden sky seems endless, and the crystal towers seem to reach all the way up to it.
“You mean your whole plan hinged on me going somewhere near that probe so it could sense me and activate me? What if I hadn’t been selected for the Octavia mission? What if I’d never gone anywhere near that part of space? How did you know I would? Can you see the future? If so, I have Questions.”
The Eshvaren shakes its head. You are special, Aurora, but not unique. We left many probes, suitable for many species, all searching the Fold for potentials.
“But there’s no other Triggers around,” I point out. “Or … are there?”
You are alone in here, it replies. But I am not alive. Only a collection of memories. A recording, if you will. There may have been other Triggers before you. Others who were activated, who came here to train. I do not know. The Echo will reset after you leave this place, and I will forget your passing. But you would not be here, and the Ra’haam would not still exist, if another Trigger had been successful. And if you fail, others will come after you. This task cannot go unfinished.
It’s a pretty grim prospect. “You’re not much for pep talks, are you?” I say, trying to make myself sound surer than I feel.
The Eshvaren tilts its head slightly to one side. Please define pep.
“You’re not very encouraging. You’re scaring me, is what I’m saying.”
Fear is an appropriate response, it replies serenely. Your training will be arduous. Your testing, dangerous. If you fail, it will cost you your life.
“Um,” I say. “My life?”
This responsibility is yours, it replies. Like us, you must sacrifice all.
As if its words cast a shadow, a chill goes through me. All of a sudden, despite the beauty of this place, I want nothing more than to be back on the Zero.
“Listen, I’ve been gone for hours,” I say. “My crew will be worrying—they might try something stupid. I should tell them I’m okay.”
Time moves differently in the Echo. For those outside, only moments have passed. And in this task, your crew is secondary.
“Well, they’re not secondary to me,” I reply, and finally I have a real hint of steel in my voice. “Tell me how to wake up.”
We will wake you and send you back if you wish. But when you arise, you must prepare yourself to return here. Take one full cycle of your own time, do what you must, and then touch the probe once more. We will speak again, as we have done now.
It nods.
Then your training will begin.
I open my mouth to reply, but before I can get a word out, I’m suddenly blinking awake. The endless golden sky above is replaced by the ceiling of the Zero’s docking bay and the faces of my squad.
They’re crowded around me, concern in their eyes. Finian is holding Magellan, and I can see the screen is dark, lifeless. Touching the probe must have—
“Be’shmai, are you well?” Kal asks urgently, cradling my head in his hands.
Zila’s running her uniglass over me, presumably conducting some kind of med-scan. “That was unwise, Aurora.”
“Seriously, Stowaway,” says Fin. “You can’t just go around touching every weird probe we find, you know? Who knows where it’s been.”
“She’s been somewhere,” says Scarlett softly, looking at me intently.
“Have I ever,” I reply.
“… Be’shmai?” Kal asks.
I look into his eyes, see the fear in my own.
“I’ve just met the Eshvaren.”
19
TYLER
I wake up with the taste of blood in my mouth.
The walls, the floors, the smudge I wipe off my lips, all of them are different shades of gray, which tells me we’re still Folding. I’m lying on a bio-cot, staring up at the ceiling, feeling an engine’s low thrum in my aching chest. From the tone, I can immediately tell I’m aboard a Terran carrier. A Mark VII-b, I think, with the new epsilon fusion intakes and 9-Series inertial dampeners.