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“As is typical for a first training assignment, you will be sent to your world of origin,” said Axo.
Thaylu sat in the glass office once again, receiving his orders. “I’m going to Earth?” he asked with surprise.
“Yes. You will be teamed with Zharaa. She will brief you on the mission before you leave.”
“Sounds good,” said Thaylu. “I’m just glad I won’t have to travel through that wormhole to get there.”
“Indeed,” said Axo, “the Uxay is a far more efficient and far preferable mode of transportation. Now, go and speak with your partner. And good luck.”
Thaylu nodded and left. He met with Zharaa and she gave him the basic outline of their assignment.
“We are to return to Earth to subvert the Program. We are to destroy it from the inside out, to enable the Anxeliss to topple the Establishment and annex the Solar System.”
Thaylu laughed out loud. “Ha! I always loved your sense of humor, honey. Now, seriously, what are we going to do on Earth? Or,” he said with a grin, “what on Earth are we going to do?”
“Your sense of humor is lacking,” Zharaa said coolly. “And mine is nonexistent.” Her eyes took on a blackness that made the hair on the back of Thaylu’s neck stand on end. “You will take me to the Program’s administrative head. We’ll start there, and work our way down the chain of command, eliminating every agent until the planet is left defenseless. Then an Anxeliss fleet will enter the system unhindered and begin the extermination and enslavement process.”
Thaylu could see in her blank expression that she was dead serious. His blood ran cold and his mouth dried up. “You’re not Olivia.”
“I told you, my name is Zharaa.”
He felt sick to his stomach. His face twisted with anger, and he yelled, “And my name is Ben!”
He then focused his thoughts and used the Uxay, in a process that had become second nature through his recent training, to transport himself away. He sent himself past dozens of galaxies, back to Earth. He’d never used it to travel that far in his training, but to the Uxay, all distances were exactly the same: zero.
At the same time as initiating the transport, he also used the Uxay to create a mental shroud, protecting himself from the thought-reading ability of the Anxeliss, essentially breaking all mental links with the people he’d spent the last few weeks growing to trust.
Ben immediately found himself at the front door to Program Headquarters, a base in the desert just outside of Sydney, Australia. He was unsure why he’d not appeared inside, but proceeded anyway. He entered his key code, rushed inside and headed directly for the Administrator’s office, located one hundred stories underground. He had to warn the Program of the impending threat and coordinate a defense response as quickly as possible.
There were no security guards to impede his progress through the facility, because the walls were equipped with biogenic sensors that recognized his DNA. As he approached each door along the way, the sensors confirmed his identity and automatically opened the doors as he neared them. Within a few minutes he was at the Administrator’s office. He burst through the door.
“Administrator Field,” he said breathlessly, “we must initiate a Program-wide alert immediately.”
“Agent Delta Nineteen?” said Field, a look of confusion on his face. “Ben – you’re alive?”
“Yes – I only went dark a few weeks ago. You’d presumed me dead already?”
“No, Ben. You’ve been gone for three years. We thought you were lost. There was a funeral.”
“Three years? What year is it?”
“It’s 2092. You haven’t been seen since 2089.”
“What are you talking about?” said Ben. “I left for Lunatropolis about four months ago, in June of 2092. I followed a lead that led me to Borneo, and I checked in from there three months ago. Then I was in Nepal, and that’s when I was taken to Anxeliss.”
“Ben, you were lost three years ago on a mission in Lunatropolis. We sent two teams to the moon looking for you. We never found your body. No one has seen you since that day in 2089 when you took the assignment. Your last check-in was April 16th, 2089. And what is Anxeliss?”
Ben plopped down into a chair near Field’s desk. “This doesn’t make any sense.” He pondered for a moment, piecing things together. “Sir, the Anxeliss are the people who abducted me on the Lunar mission. It appears that they’ve held me for the last three years, filling my head with false memories. But I have escaped them. And they are on their way here right now to try to destroy the Establishment and take over the whole Solar System.”
“Normally you’d undergo an extensive debriefing,” said Field. “But under the circumstances, it seems there is some urgency that requires your debriefing be put off. I want you in a consultation position for this, Ben. I’ll form a team, and I want you to create a protocol to deal with the threat. I’ll initiate an alert immediately.”
“Consultation? I should be heading this thing up,” said Ben.
“Not when you’ve been missing for three years, Ben. You know how this works. You should be in a small room with a counselor and a couch, but we need you active right now. However, you can’t take lead, not after three years in captivity, especially considering the mental reconditioning you claim they’ve been doing to you. Now get moving.”
Ben stood and headed out. He found his way to his old office. The door opened for him as it had in the past, reading his DNA. The lights came on, and he smelled the musty, stale smell of three years of disuse.
Strange, if they’d filed me as dead, I’d think they’d have deactivated me by now – wiped my DNA from the system registry, and emptied this office.
His things were exactly where he’d left them all that time before. On his desk, a small holograph of Olivia sat beside his terminal screen. He turned on the hardware and entered his password, then used the neuro-retinal control to bring up several scenario processing algorithms. While he frantically worked to devise countermeasures to the expected Anxeliss incursion, Field’s face appeared in a new screen to the left of his virtual workspace.
“Ben, I’ve received only four responses to the alert so far. Those four are going to have to be the team.”
“Understood. What’s their ETA?”
“They can all be here in under thirty minutes. All except one, who is on the moon. She’ll be here in about an hour.”
“Alright, thanks. Send them here to my office.”
“Got it. I’m initiating Protocol Seven. I’ll be at Establishment H-Q in Washington to provide personal protection to the System President. Contact me there in one hour with an update.”
Ben returned to running his scenarios. He let the hardware compute some probabilities based on the data he’d supplied, and decided on a priority action plan.