Duplicitous: The Leordian Chronicles Page 11

  "Until we meet again, Vel," he grasped my hand and gave it a light squeeze before turning to walk down the hall to check in with Ethan.

  It was funny to see him suddenly act so formal, knowing I would see him at dinner, and then again to drop Lucas off into his custody tonight. But, what some might view as odd, I found to be quite refreshing and charming. I walked to the cell where Lucas was being kept. There was a new guard at the door, and I signaled to him to allow me passage. As the door opened, I saw Lucas stand up through the window, and I proceeded to walk into the room.

  "Hello, Lucas," I tried to inflict a casual calm in an effort to sound approachable.

  "Hello, Vel," He seemed to be reciprocating my calmness. "I've considered your offer, and you're right," he admitted, walking to me, still sure to stop a good distance away. "I don't know if my father is still alive, but if he is, his usefulness will eventually run out. If there’s any way to find and save him before that happens, I would like to try," he bowed his head as a sign of submission.

  "I'd like that too," I agreed, walking to the door. "Some of the people here in the UTF are friends of mine from my world while others have become my friends since arriving here," I said, smiling, thinking about Aaron's quirky request.

  "Like Captain Jolly from earlier, right?" Lucas asked, sarcastically. "That guy had the nerve to come in after you left and threaten to kill me if I so much as thought about laying a hand on you. Maybe he missed the broken nose, but trust that I'm more wary of you than you are of me," he chuckled.

  I smiled, though not because of Lucas's comment, rather, because of Aaron's threat. I quickly wiped away my smile and moved into the doorway. "As I was saying, Lucas, they have given me free reign with you. What do you need to be able to locate their base of operations?" I asked.

  Lucas frowned in disappointment, realizing I wasn't going to give in to his attempt to bash Aaron. "Honestly, a miracle," Lucas said, following behind me as I walked to the hall. "I'm not my dad; I only know the basic physics behind how his theories work. I went to college for computer programming, and the only reason my father taught me how to recalibrate the light waves used in his portal technology, was so that if something happened to him, I would be able to teach someone else who had more of a working knowledge of the science involved. Even if we were to go to his lab at Portronic, all I would be able to do is recalibrate the waves. Astiel has him doing that anyway so he can use the transporters that they already have."

  "Did you help him make those?" I asked.

  "I helped him create the basic framework for the device, hoping that it would be compatible with the technology he designed to make a portal receiver small enough to fit in someone's pocket," he stopped walking and had a look like he had just come to some sort of realization. "Yes, there may be a way to find them," he said, after a few moments. "Do you still have the receiver I used to port us to the cliff side?" He asked, renewing the look he had in his eyes the day I met him, only a bit more swollen of course.

  "I don't," I sighed in frustration. “Ethan, the commander here, may know where they're keeping it," I turned and started heading toward the command center, with a renewed hope in my pace. When we reached what appeared to be a dead end at the end of the hall, I placed my hand on the wall as I had seen Ethan do, and the edges of the wall lit up and slid upward to the ceiling.

  "It seems you have access, Vel," Lucas said as if he were expecting my attempt to end in failure.

  We walked into the command center and stopped at the railing, which was centered above the floor, where numerous agents were working. Though I had been in this room previously, I was still amazed by the number of large monitors laid out across the wall in front of us.

  "Vel!" I heard Leaha's voice ring from my right. I looked to see both Ethan and Leaha sitting near the small monitor I had watched with Leaha during the fight with Frede. "I literally just finished putting your prints into the system, as you can see, you now have access to move freely about the building."

  "Talk about good timing," Ethan said, turning to face us as well. Ethan gave Lucas a quick glare, as men often do when seemingly opposed to each other, and Lucas returned the glare. "Lucas Wright," Ethan arose from his chair to stand next to Leaha. "I'm sorry if security is a bit tight for now. I'm sure as a bit of a celebrity, you can understand why precautions are necessary to ensure our men's safety.”

  "If you know anything about me, then you know it's not your men you need to worry about," Lucas said with a smirk, looking to Leaha.

  Ethan stepped between Lucas and Leaha, bringing Lucas's attention back to himself. "Believe what you want about yourself, Mr. Wright, but if you harass any of the female agents here, I'll sick Velareedra here on you. I am sure that we both know how that'll turn out," Ethan said, gently patting the side of Lucas's face three times. Though he didn't let it show, I knew those strikes had to be painful with a broken nose, and undoubtedly expressed Ethan's point effectively.

  "What my husband is trying to say, Lucas is that we would appreciate you not acting like Mr. Wrong while you're here," Leaha joked, chuckling to herself.

  "Affirmative, team bring on the pain," Lucas said, unsuccessfully attempting to come back with a witty remark of his own.

  "Ethan," I interjected to spare any further animosity. "Lucas believes that with access to the device he used to teleport us to the cliff side, he may be able to create something called software to reverse its pathway memory, and hopefully find Astiel's location," I explained to Ethan, hoping he would grant us permission to use the device.

  Ethan walked back down to where Leaha sat and faced us. "Unfortunately, we didn't recover the device. That was one of the factors that led us to put Mr. Wright in a cell in the first place," Ethan said, skeptically. "He clearly had access to the device when he whisked you away, but when we arrived at the location you ported to, it was nowhere to be found. We considered the fact that he may have been left behind as a plant, to infiltrate our organization for Astiel. Fortunately, we were able to scan him prior to his regaining consciousness, and he has no bugs on, or in, his person."

  "Wait," Lucas spoke out. "What do you mean when you found us? You were the one who knocked me unconscious with a knee to my face," Lucas said, subconsciously covering his nose.

  I turned to Lucas to explain, but Leaha cut me off before I could get a word in. "Astiel showed up shortly after you lost consciousness, Lucas," Leaha said, standing beside Ethan, leaning on his shoulder. "While he and Vel were engaged in conversation, another person, known to us as The Dragon, ported in behind Vel. Astiel acknowledged her presence, but as you can imagine, Vel assumed Astiel was attempting to distract her, and she was struck by The Dragon and left unconscious as well," Leaha explained, picking up a remote and pointing it at one of the large monitors in the front of the room.

  The screen flashed on, alternating between pictures of the cliff side Lucas had ported us to. There were enormous patches of land missing from the landscape, and an odd pool of black liquid floating in the air. As the pictures flowed across the screen, the missing patches of land were shown hovering above the ground with six circles of flame orbiting the mass.

  "What is that?" I asked, having never seen anything like it.

  "I'm honestly not sure, we have never encountered anything like it before. I'd assume it's probably the after-effects of one of The Dragons Forbidden spells," Leaha guessed.

  She pushed another button on the remote, and the images became a video that one of the agents captured while surveying the area. The agent filming the spectacle walked directly underneath the black liquid to document how it appeared from below, only to capture the liquid shake violently and fall in a circle around him. Fortunately, the agent quickly rushed outside of the circle, keenly understanding the risk of not doing so. Soon after, the flame around the floating land mass dropped onto the liquid, igniting it into a pillar of flames, reaching as high as the camera could capture, creating an impenetrable wall of flame. Seconds later, the floating
mass dropped out of the sky, crashing down into the wall of flames, knocking the agent to the ground as well. The flames dispersed, leaving only a massive amount of debris that would have crushed the agent, had he not had had the foresight to move. After some colorful language, the agent panned the camera, revealing ten or more of these configurations in the area.

  "As you can imagine, we've quarantined the area until we can figure out how to destroy the anomalies without anyone getting hurt," Ethan said, turning to face the monitor behind him.

  Using the remote, Leaha turned the monitor off. "To say that you're both lucky to be alive if even Astiel had his hands full is an understatement as you've now seen," Leaha grimaced, placing the remote on the table behind her, and began running her hands down Ethan's back to comfort herself.

  I didn't envy the UTF's burden of hiding the existence of my people from an entire world. I couldn't even imagine it.

  "Long story short, we never recovered any such device," Ethan said, turning back to face us. "The lab where Mahnon is kept houses our tracking systems, and you're welcome to use them to see if you can find anything that may lead us to them."

  Though I didn't fully understand how any of the UTF's technology worked, I was sure Lucas could make use of the information they had. I felt silly not truly understanding how Astiel could cover his tracks so effectively, so I had asked Ethan while we were in the car, on our way to get pizza. Ethan had explained that they hadn't found Astiel's base because it was likely in a government office. When Professor Wright first discovered how to implement his portal technology, there was fear within the government that the technology could be used by terrorists to strike at government agencies. As a complement to the receivers, most frequently used for transport, Professor wright also invented a device which would effectively cut off the ability to access a telepad within a government building, other than from inside the building with special permissions. This meant that agents in the field had to utilize a scrambler to generate specific codes in order to gain access to the telepad, and activate satellite imaging which would send the images to whoever was supporting the team from the building. The scramblers were issued to specific individuals within each organization and required voice, retinal, and print identification to be activated. The process was a bit of a hassle, according to Ethan, but there had been no instances of intrusion into government buildings using a telepad. Even if the scrambler were somehow to be lost to an enemy faction, the device was programmed to destroy itself if tampered with or, if any of the three safeguards weren't present. Furthermore, Professor Wright had developed a second layer of defense which utilized the same light waves used for porting, to create a barrier around select buildings that changed frequency over six-hundred times per second to prevent any unauthorized teleportation to any location other than the telepad within the building. To be honest, none of those facts made any sense to me, but they were clearly facts that Lucas already understood.

  Lucas walked to the door we had entered from. "How do we get there?" Lucas asked.

  "From here, you have to go thirty feet and take a sharp left, followed by a right twenty feet after that, and you'll find the lab on the left," Ethan explained.

  Lucas grabbed my hand, and he walked with me out of the room after Ethan finished speaking. As we walked, his hand in mine, I remembered how safe I felt with Lucas the day I arrived and realized how much I wished that feeling hadn’t been destroyed by his betrayal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Felix Rivera

  As we walked through the halls, Lucas spoke aloud to himself concerning many things that I didn't understand, and I assumed they were probably related to the task at hand. When we arrived at the lab, Lucas stopped, and his eyes grew wide as he looked into the room, seeing Mahnon for the first time. Lucas dropped my hand and walked through the door excitedly.

  "What is this thing?" He asked, walking over to one of the researchers in the room.

  "Who are you?" The man asked, clearly concerned with our intrusion.

  I saw an older man walk out from behind Mahnon, looking to see what the fuss was about. "That, Patrick, is Mr. Lucas Wright," the man said, with a grin.

  Lucas looked to the man, smiling himself, as the man walked over and shook his hand. "Felix, what the heck are you doing here? I thought you retired?"

  "Well, that's what they asked me to tell your father," Felix said with a grin. "I was approached by an agent from the UTF when the organization was founded and offered a position to create this beauty behind us," Felix said, pointing to Mahnon.

  "I should have known something was awry when you retired so suddenly," Lucas shook his head with a chuckle. "My dad always said that Felix Rivera would work until he died, with a wrench in one hand and a keyboard in the other."

  "How is your dad?" Felix asked, waving his hand to dismiss the man Lucas originally approached.

  "Well, if you're here, then you obviously know about our visitors," Lucas said, lowering his head slightly. "The leader of the casters, a man named Astiel, had my dad followed, and eventually captured him," the sadness at reliving that memory was painful to witness. Lucas shook off of his sorrow and raised his head with a smile. "You know, that silly old goat refused to use the telepad's that he created, favoring his '67 Mustang to modern means of transportation," Lucas was beaming at the thought of his father’s stubbornness.

  Felix was clearly troubled by the news, but for Lucas's sake, tried to hide his concern. "That's the professor for ya!" He said, smiling a forced smile.

  I walked beside Lucas to introduce myself, but Lucas was quick to do so on my behalf. "This is Velareedra Renaud, Queen of Leordia, the land that the casters originated from."

  "My, my," Felix said, smiling at me before he looked back to Lucas. "A queen, and a beauty to boot! You never cease to impress me with your tastes in women, Lucas." Felix smirked as he shook my hand.

  "Well, you know me, Felix. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it," Lucas chuckled, nudging me with his elbow and winking at me. I was briefly tempted to jab him in the face, but I remembered that Lucas liked to keep up appearances, and so I decided that I'd address his distasteful words later.

  Felix released my hand, lowering his glasses to the tip of his and looking into my eyes. "I have been told about your abilities, Velareedra. In fact, we were excited to give Mahnon here a test run when you first arrived. I was informed that the reserves we had built, over the three years that Mahnon has been active, were less than impressive, is that correct?" He asked, seeking an honest answer.

  I didn't want to diminish the work he had done, nor did I wish to minimize the success of such a feat, but I could see in his eyes that he wanted an honest review of the Ether they had collected. "It's truly amazing that you were able to discover a way to tap into the Leylines of this world, but no, the amount of Ether that I absorbed was no more than that which a child in my world could generate, even without training," I felt a little bad as I watched his face fall a bit.

  "Damn, I was hoping that it was a misunderstanding on Ethan's part," Felix's eyes shot to the side, indicating he had entered his own thoughts. "So, in your opinion, even if we had the Dregs active now, they would be no match for our enemies using the Ether Mahnon can produce in its current state?" He asked.

  "No, unfortunately not. Even an average adult civilian could generate more than ten times the Ether that Mahnon took three years to accrue, and someone trained as a warrior could generate exponentially more than that. Your Dregs would be no match for Astiel's army," I said, cautioning him.

  While Felix and I were speaking, Lucas walked over to Mahnon, and then to the dregs. "Felix, I'm impressed, old friend," Lucas ran his hands over the Dregs head. "The design of this equipment and Mahnon is exceptional, my father would be impressed too. I am here to try and find the enemy's camp, but once we gather some Intel on them, I'd love to work with you on boosting Mahnon's output," Lucas said excitedly, having been reunited with someone whom he clearly considered a friend.
>
  I knew how he felt. The moment I saw Leaha, then my captains, was a moment which brought me unexplainable relief.

  "That would be wonderful," Felix said, showing Lucas to the console where portal pathways were tracked.

  "This is an amazing piece of technology as well, no doubt it's your design," Lucas said to Felix.

  "It was a joint effort between me and the men and women here, every bit of it was a team effort. Without them, none of this would have been possible," Felix was proud to acknowledge the other researchers present, who seemed starstruck by Lucas's presence.

  "A labor of love of this magnitude takes an impressive team; you all should be very proud," Lucas said openly for the rest of Felix's team to hear.

  "Well, I'll leave you to it then. If I can be of help, don't hesitate to ask," Felix said, smiling as he returned to his work with Mahnon.

  Lucas looked back to me, smiling. "Vel, with this, we may actually be able to find them. It'll take time, but if they actively use portals to travel, we may be able to pinpoint a location within a few months!" Lucas claimed, excitedly.

  I was hoping for a resolution sooner than months, but finding them even months from now was better than not finding them at all. I heard the door to the lab slide open, and I turned to see that Seles and Grimaldi had entered the room.

  "Vel!" Seles said, sounding much more comfortable in saying my name. "Leaha told us that we could find you here. There's been another portal opened from our world. We have to go and try to reach them before Astiel's soldiers do!" She said with great urgency.

  "I see it here," Lucas said, staring at the monitor before him. "It's just outside of Moscow, in a little town named, Mytishchi. You're going to need to port there, it's on a different continent."

  As I stood wondering what I would do with Lucas while I was gone, I heard Leaha's voice ring from the intercom. "Don't worry about Lucas, Vel. I'm going to remotely lock down the lab once you're out. I'm sure he'd rather work with Dr. Rivera than going to a potential battlefield anyway. I've received satellite imaging, and it appears a group of ten or eleven casters have all come through simultaneously. Mostly adults, but there is a child with them, so they're undoubtedly citizens of Leordia City," she said, clearly urging us to get to the portal room quickly. "Ethan is on his way to meet you to initiate transport."