Page 3 of When Monsters Fight
If there was a fracture leading to Gehenna, then monsters could come through it.
“Nothing has come through yet,” Sarq says. “This place repels monsters, remember?”
It did that right now, but… “What if that changes if we go through this convergence? What if us accessing the doorway changes the wards on this place or drops them completely? Our people would be in danger.”
“Then we move them,” Gabriel said.
“Move them? To where?”
“Thereisnowhere else,” Tumiel said. “This is our last truly safe zone.”
“It may beyourlast,” Gabriel said. “But it isn’t mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I know of a safe place. A place filled with humans. The last stand. The resistance.”
“Resistance?”Sarq stared at Gabriel in confusion. “As in…a human resistance?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “A human resistance.”
“No, that can’t be,” Tumiel said. “We would have found them by now.”
Gabriel gave him a wry smile. “Not without their precise location and access codes to their settlement.”
“They have a settlement?” Bee asked, her eyes wide.
Gabriel nodded. “Rue, I told you I had information about the Dominion’s plan on this.” He held up the small metal object. “It’s called a?—”
“Flash drive,” Bastian said. “But we’d need a computer to read it.”
“And you’ll have one at base zero.”
“There is no base zero,” Sarq said, but he didn’t sound so sure.
“Not that the Dominion are aware of, no,” Gabriel replied. “I made sure to keep it a secret when I organized the base setup decades ago.”
“Youwere responsible for that?” Tumiel asked.
“Yes. I oversaw it all. Even back then, I suspected what the Dominion were planning. I understood that to have a chance at survival, humanity would need to be protected, not only from the monsters, but from the celestials themselves. I created a sector zero and provided the humans who lived there with the technology to maintain contact with me and the specific instructions to remain hidden. Over the past two decades, I’ve checked in with them regularly using longwave radio, but the past month, the Dominion security has been higher than usual, and so I’ve shut down communication to them. They were warned that I might have to do that, and if I don’t contact them for more than eight weeks, then they should assume that I’ve been compromised and move their base.”
“There are more humans out there?” Mira looked stunned.
“Yes. Yes, there are.”
Puzzle pieces clicked into place. “The escape route out of the Golden City and the weapons…Those were for this resistance, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
Gabriel was a fucking genius.
“But we won’t need any of that if we can get the relics to Lucifer,” Erelim said.
“We still need to know what the Dominion are planning, though,” Bastian added. “Right now, all you have is speculation. We need to see what’s on that drive.”
“And you’ll find out.” Gabriel held the drive out to Bastian.
Bastian frowned. “No…I…I need to stay with Rue.”
