Chapter Nine
January 1st 2028
A few hours after his encounter with Drellic, Callum sent Richard, Sophia and Max, to man their stations in the cockpit and proceed with the mission, as if everything were normal. He then demanded that Simone have a private discussion with him in the lifeboat compartment.
Drellic had yet to leave the medical station, since his violent outburst, which gave Callum an opportunity to bring Simone down to the bottom compartment of the ship to get some answers. They stared at one another for a few minutes before a single word was uttered.
Oddly enough, Simone was the one to break the silence. She felt herself outgrowing her own selfish reasons for remaining silent about the situation and decided to own up to her mistakes.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she began. “I’m sorry for this and I’m sorry for leaving you. There’s just so much you don’t understand.”
“Just make it make sense,” Callum replied.
Simone paused, as a tear streamed down her face.
“Sometimes the only way to make things right, is to surrender to all the wrong that you’ve done,” she said. “The first thing I should tell you is that we didn’t meet by accident. I was assigned to you.”
“Assigned to me? What are you talking about?” Callum asked.
“When we met, I told you that I was just a CIA intern, but I was already an active field agent,” she said. “I lied about my age. I was almost thirty, when we met.
About a year before I was sent to you, I was called to Antarctica. A group of penguin biologists ended up making the most important scientific discovery in the history of mankind. A man fell through a patch of thin ice into a chasm and was killed. A few of his companions went in to retrieve his body and found something buried in the ice.”
“What was it? Does it have something to do with him?” Callum asked, as he pointed up in Drellic’s direction. “Because if it doesn’t I’m really not interested.”
“Just shut up and listen,” Simone snapped. “Buried beneath the ice, was a recording device of some kind. It was made of an unknown metal alloy and covered in strange markings that resembled hieroglyphics, but couldn’t be identified by any historian.”
“So what was it? Alien?” Callum asked.
“That’s what we thought at first,” Simone said. “It was taken to a series of labs and studied for almost six years. No one could crack it. During that time, I was assigned to investigate you.”
“Why me?” asked Callum.
“You were becoming an ideal candidate to fly a series of missions around the world, to search for more of this technology,” she answered. “There was a theory that given the age of the device, there might be others scattered across the globe or even elsewhere in the solar system. We needed the perfect pilot that we could trust to lead the missions.”
“Why couldn’t you have just told me that?” Callum asked.
“We wanted to know more about what we were dealing with before making anything official,” Simone replied. “Six years passed before they stumbled across a way to turn it on and interpret the data. In that time, I wasn’t trying to fall in love. It just happened.”
“That’s right,” Callum angrily replied. “Love has a tendency to do that.”
“I can only imagine how much you hate me for what I did to you, but baby, I have to tell you. You won’t believe what happened next,” Simone said.
“Try me,” said Callum.
“When they turned that thing on, they saw images of a beautiful world with massive cities and endless oceans. The technology and architecture was astounding. It was an extremely advanced culture,” Simone began.
“So that thing was alien?” Callum asked.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t. There were humans living in those cities, Callum. The people who invented that recorder were human. But advanced carbon dating, suggested that the machine was older than this planet is supposed to be. Much older.”
“So where did it come from?” Callum asked. “How were human beings living there, before this planet was even here?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Simone said. “It didn’t come from anywhere. The images on the recorder were of Earth a long time ago. We took mineral samples from the chasm in Antarctica and found more traces of the same unknown metal alloy and other elements that predate this world.
In fact, the universe is supposed to be roughly thirteen billion years old, but the samples we took from our own backyard proved to be even older than that!”
Callum’s skepticism was growing, but he could see the sincerity in Simone’s eyes and decided to keep an open mind. “How old?” he asked.
“Fifteen billion years, give or take a few hundred thousand,” Simone boasted. “But that’s crazy,” Callum said. “How can that thing be older than the universe?”
“All it means, is that the world around us is much older than we thought,” Simone replied. “Something happened a long time ago that changed everything, the shape of existence.”
“Like what? What’s your theory?” Callum asked.
“Maybe he can tell us,” Simone said, pointing in Drellic’s direction.
“What does he have to do with this?” Callum asked.
“When we first heard the transmissions from Charon, we recognized the language, immediately. It was the language spoken throughout the world in the original human society. That man sitting upstairs, was also on the recordings. He was a leader of some kind called, Drellic. He lived in a city called Siren. Siren was also the name of the planet,” Simone quickly replied.
Callum thought back to Drellic’s words in the medical station. “That’s what he said,” Callum whispered, as he thought aloud. “He said, you will take me to Siren. But that’s crazy. How could he still be alive?”
“Something happened to him,” Simone answered. “At one point, Siren was invaded by another species. At least it appeared to be an invasion. The people were afraid. Drellic found something on board one of their ships that gave him incredible strength and speed. It also gave him life ever-lasting. The records spanned a century, and he was still alive and well; appearing to be in his late twenties.”
This is a dangerous man, Callum. I know you have no reason to believe anything I’m saying, but I need you to trust me and not do anything to piss him off.”
“This is the most far-fetched thing I’ve ever heard,” Callum said, as he started to laugh softly to himself. “How did he get to Charon? How could he still be alive after all this time? None of this makes any sense.” “Right now, we have to focus on getting home,” said Simone. “Once we get back, you’ll have all the proof you’ll need.”
“That sounds great in theory, but what are we going to do about him when we land? We can’t even communicate with home. We have no idea what this guy’s going to do in the next five months, it’s going to take us to get back.” Callum ranted.
“We just have to stay the course,” Simone replied. “I’ve spent the last eight years searching for more of the old world, we never knew. We now have a living physical specimen from the original human society. We cannot let this go to waste.”
“That’s all that’s ever mattered to you isn’t it?” Callum asked. “Your job and your science.”
Simone’s eyes grew cold. “Don’t pretend to know me,” she snarled. “After everything I’ve seen, I don’t even know myself anymore.”
Meanwhile in the medical station, Drellic was day dreaming of being reunited with his people. In his mind, only one thousand years had passed since his incarceration and he was expecting to return to something that resembled his memories of Siren.
He had no idea as to the condition of the planet or the presence of the Architects, but he could vividly recall the beginning of the planetary bombardment, just before he was taken prisoner.
His very last memory before waking up on Charon was of finding himself trapped in a large pocket of pulsating, scaly skin,
aboard an Architect ship.
He had been cornered by his enemies and blinded by a hot white light. The burning sensation was almost immediately followed by bitter cold. It was the beginning of the freezing process that later resulted in the forming of the ice world, he would call home for fifteen billion years.
In all his time battling the Architects, he never once caught a glimpse of one. He only ever knew their incredible technology. Other than their ships and weapons, they were phantoms to him. Which made them all the more terrifying.
Although he feared that his world had been completely destroyed, the crew of Hades gave him hope. Physically, they weren’t an ideal representation of humanity, but they were still human enough. He theorized that in the aftermath of the attack, the following generations of his people were born into a contaminated world, which would account for their physical appearance, but not for their primitive sounding language and odd mannerisms.
His questions consumed him. He longed for the truth, to the point of spending the last millennium living in a self-induced fantasy world; but the fantasy was finally coming to an end.
Reality was cornering him, just as his ancient enemies had. It was proving to be the most brutal form of torture.
Meanwhile, Callum and Simone were continuing their conversation in the lifeboat compartment.
“So you’re telling me that when we get home, this Drellic is going to be expecting a hero’s welcome?” Callum asked.
Despite his skepticism, Callum didn’t see the harm in humoring the ideas that Simone was putting into his head. They were proving to be more believable than anything she had told him before, given their history.
“He has no idea what he’s in for,” Simone answered. “The world he knew has been dead and gone for billions of years. He’ll arrive on Earth. He’ll see us for who we are and what we are. He’ll walk out into the sunlight and see the face of a people he won’t recognize, and he’ll have no idea why.”
“What do you think he’ll do?” Callum asked, after a long exhale.
“That’s why we have to fix the com system and warn them,” Simone whispered, with a worried expression. “If we don’t figure out a way to contain him, he’s going to kill a lot of people. You have no idea what he’s capable of. That thing inside of him that’s kept him alive all this time could potentially wipe out our entire race.”
Callum’s bitterness and contempt for Simone was becoming too powerful to withhold.
“And you let him on this ship?” he began. “You knew he was out there, just waiting for us to pick him up. You knew the whole time! You killed us!”
Simone was beginning to cry. “Maybe,” she sobbed. “I just wanted to show the world something amazing and put my name on it. They said the risk would be minimal. When we found him, he seemed so weak. I thought...”
“I don’t care what you thought,” Callum yelled over her. “But I’ll tell you one thing. You got us into this and you’re getting us out of it. One way or another.”
A few minutes later, they left the lifeboat compartment and made their way back towards the cockpit. Upon entering the sleep chamber, they noticed droplets of blood floating throughout the area.
They followed the trail of blood to one of the sleeping bags. It was zipped up to the top, but there was clearly someone inside. Simone gasped, as Callum slowly unzipped the sleeping bag, to find Max. His throat had been slit. He was dead.