Page 62 of The Inheritance
Assuming that we made it out alive and jumped the Cold Chaos hurdle, the DDC would want the full account of what happened. I had two choices. First, I could demonstrate my newfound powers and come clean. Second, I could hide.
The first option meant … the end of my life as I knew it. Possibly in more ways than one. I had encountered sentient, sapient lifeforms. I communicated with them, I traded with them, and I witnessed irrefutable evidence of other civilizations. Not just one vague amorphous enemy, but an entire constellation of different sophont species. Not beasts, not monsters. Thinking, feeling beings.
And some of them, like the spider herders, were not overtly hostile. They would defend themselves if we gave them no choice, but that brief flash of knowledge from my gem assured me that they just wanted to be left alone.
The spider herders didn’t seem surprised to see me. Looking back at their calm reactions, they had to have seen humans before, and they instantly knew I was sadrin. I didn’t understand what sadrin was, but they did, and they treated me with respect.
The breaches had been active for nearly a decade. Thousands of gates, maybe a hundred thousand gate divers worldwide. Someone had to have seen what I’d seen, and yet there was no mention of non-hostile sophonts anywhere in the DDC archives.
Which meant that somewhere, very high up, a decision was made to keep their existence suppressed.
It made sense. When I was in college, I read a science fiction novel about space marines fighting against insectoid aliens. Bugs. Big horrific bugs. The space marines slaughtered them by thousands and never felt bad about it, because in real life we designated bugs as something that could be killed without guilt. We had exterminators and pesticides, and we never questioned the ethics of it.
Reducing your enemy to the level of a bug or a mindless monster eliminated the guilt of taking their life. When faced with war, humans always dehumanized their opponents. You only had to look at the WWII era cartoons to see it.
Right now, the breaches were filled with monsters. The gate divers fought them, and the rest of us supported them and thanked them for their service. We unified to repel the invasion, and we did not question the morality of that fight. It was okay to hate the enemy, because it was a mindless horde of bioweapons who sought to wipe us from existence.
If I came out and told everyone that I encountered sapient beings, had a chat with some of them, and met a human who spoke to me and put something into my head that was actively changing who I was, I would explode that social construct.
The united front would fracture. Some people would immediately argue for scouring the breach in an effort to bargain and communicate; some people would panic; others would attempt to defect. The major religions would have to undergo yet another series of contortions to try to explain away the multitude of civilizations just like they had to twist themselves into a pretzel a decade ago to explain the gates to their worshippers. Humanity would stew in its own instability and navel gazing, and we couldn’t afford to do that. We had to continue to destroy the anchors, or we would be overrun.
If I opened that door, the government, my employers, would disappear me before I was able to make a difference. They probably wouldn’t kill me right away. First, they would confine me. I would be interrogated, studied, and analyzed, and either quietly disposed of or made into a weapon. I was ridiculously easy to control. As long as the DDC held Tia and Noah hostage, I would do whatever they wanted. The lives of my children would be hanging in the balance.
No, hiding was my only option. I wasn’t ready to become a martyr.
When we walked out of that gate, I had to convince everyone that I was still Adaline Moore, an assessor and non-combatant, who wandered out of the breach by pure luck. Except that I probably looked different, I carried a magic sword, my dog was twenty-five percent larger than when we went in, and I would’ve survived in the breach for at least a week with no supplies, weapons, or combat Talents to protect me. Now that was truly unheard of.
Piece of cake. Right.
I had no idea how to pull that off. And worrying about it was premature. I had plenty of time to think of some kind of plan.
After five minutes of walking, we stopped before a hole in the wall. It was about ten feet across and roughly semicircular, as if cut in the rock. It reminded me of the small cave where Bear and I took shelter to fight off the mauve flowers. The hole looked empty and dark, except for one thing. A complex dial the size of a dessert plate hung in mid-air in the exact center of the opening.
I flexed. The entire entrance fluoresced with bright electric yellow. No touching. A barrier, invisible to my normal vision. Only the dial was free of the glow. It had to be the source of the barrier.
I stared at the dial. Five concentric circles carved out of bone and inlaid with a metal the color of rose gold. Each of the circles was marked with eight smaller round indentations, spaced at even intervals. The top indentation was dark, the second going clockwise was mostly dark with a pale rose gold crescent on the right side, the third was half gold, half dark… Phases of the moon.
Five circles, five moons, eight phases each.
Thousands of combinations.
Something stirred in my mind. A vision flooded me. I saw a hand with slender fingers and brindled skin reach for an identical dial and manipulate the circles with its red claws, selecting the phases. A panorama of a night sky unfolded above me with five moons of different colors in different phases. A holy cosmic combination, part of a twisted faith and a lynchpin of a sacred ritual known only to the initiated.
The vision faded. I had the key now, but not the explanation. Who left the dial barrier here, what was behind it, and most importantly, should I open it?
Was there something dangerous locked in that hole? It could contain treasure, valuable knowledge, or some kind of eldritch horror that would disintegrate us.
I could just keep walking.
I searched my mind for anything else, any other knowledge relating to the barrier or its originator. I found nothing.
This was so frustrating. I knew there was more there, hidden in that glowing gem that somehow lived inside of me, but I just couldn't access it. It showed me glimpses and only when it wanted to.
I stared at the dial. I had to know. If I walked away now, the barrier would eat at me until I doubled back and opened it. It would be a waste of time and effort. And if I walked away, there was no telling if I would ever get the chance to return.
I reached for the dial and turned the top circle. The first moon in waxing gibbous, the second in waning crescent, the third full, the fourth in its third quarter, and the last a dark new moon. The five moon irregular pentagon.
The circles of the dial slid, spinning on their own. The opening flashed with green, and the dial clattered to the ground. The way was open.
