The Return of the Lifebringer (Children of the Sun Book 3)

Kara braced herself as the car landed, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. All that was here was sand and cacti. And it was cold, very cold. Kara shivered as Alor led her by her seemingly locked handcuffs outside.

So far he’d gotten into character well enough, which was great, but it also meant Kara couldn’t ask if he knew where he was going. He seemed to know, but maybe he was just acting well. Kara had no idea how good of an actor he was because they’d never gone undercover together before.

After a moment, Kara noticed the silhouette of a person watching them, and she had to assume this was a member of this organization, willing or not. But it still didn’t explain why they were here. To complete her image as a prisoner, Kara glared at the back of Alor’s head with all the fury she could muster but stayed silent. She didn’t need to call attention to herself right now.

“Name?” the man asked when they approached him. The fact that he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans in this weather was kind of amusing, but Kara kept glaring. That was what she would have done if this situation was out of her control.

“Kara Lira,” answered Alor. Kara blinked a bit. She’d thought he’d been asking for Alor’s name, but now she realized that had been a foolish thought.

“The Luxarx agent,” the man said, nodding as he stared at his tablet. The faint light coming from it illuminated the man’s face, but Kara couldn’t recognize him, so she studied the tablet itself. It was as thin as a sheet of paper. Not exactly conventional. How did it not break? “Bring her to room 242, then report back here.”

Then he touched the tablet and behind him, the loud sound of metal grinding on metal was heard as the sand quickly poured away, revealing a dark metal door that had slid from the ground up. Kara stared at it with wide eyes for a moment. Then she scoffed at herself. The Umbra have similar hideouts, and theirs were even invisible. This shouldn’t faze her at all at this point.

Feeling Alor tug at the handcuffs, she glared again and followed him, stepping towards the slowly opening door. It was kind of painstaking, and on top of that, some kind of animalistic instinct kept telling her to run, to get away as far as she could. As if, deep down, she knew she wasn’t coming back out again. At least not the way she was now.

Taking a deep breath, she waited for Alor to go inside, and she did the same, closing her eyes. When she opened them a second later, she was momentarily blinded by the lights inside the…what even was this? A compound? A base?

As they walked down a short flight of stairs, Kara looked around. It simply looked like a large tunnel with many, many doors on each side of it. The dark gray walls didn’t exactly make the place seem more pleasant either.

“He said 242, right?” Alor asked when the door behind them slid closed, leaving them in silence. Actually, no, not complete silence—there was a quiet humming, somewhere beneath them. That was not worrying at all.

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter, Alor. We need to find a command center, a computer—anything I can get some information from.”

He looked at her blankly.

“Yes, I know you don’t know where to find that,” Kara added, and looked around. The tunnel wasn’t that long, not long enough for two hundred doors, anyway, so there had to be an elevator. Quickly checking for cameras and not finding any, Kara walked away from Alor and checked a couple of the doors. She didn’t know what was in them, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. No sound came from them, but there were no gaps between the door and its frame, so it was entirely possible they were soundproof.

That thought was honestly even more worrying.

She jogged from door to door, looking for any differences between them, but there didn’t seem to be even one. It was all just featureless, silver doors with numbers on them. And there was fifty of them.

“Um, if you’re looking for an elevator, I think it’s this one,” Alor said, pointing at the door behind him. Kara sighed.

And then she froze.

One of the doors in front of her started to open.

She had to hide. She couldn’t just be seen here on her own. But where to go?

As the door swung fully open, Kara decided the risk was worth it and tried to open the door right next to her. Finding out it wasn’t locked, she quickly opened it and rushed inside, closing the door as quickly and quietly as possible.

Breathing out a sigh, she turned around. To her absolute luck no one else was in the room. It was dim and small, but despite that, it was very clear what the room’s purpose was.

The large, tanklike device in the middle of it was clearly used for Eternal transformations. Unfortunately, Kara didn’t have the time, and also perhaps the intelligence, to figure out how it worked, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about right now, anyway.

How many of these rooms were there? And why? Hardly anyone was here, it seemed, so why was there at least more than two hundred of them? Or perhaps the first ‘two’ in two hundred and forty-two was the level number. But even then it was a bit too many. Did the transformation just take a long time?

Kara shook her head. She really wished she had some answers to all of these questions. Hopefully she would find out soon enough.

She flinched when she heard the door open and breathed out when she saw it was Alor.

“I think we need to leave as soon as….” Kara frowned at him as he trailed off, staring at the device.

“Are you remembering something?” she asked, and he nodded, walking closer to her.

“I….I don’t think I like this…device,” he said, grimacing. “But I don’t know why.”

Kara sighed, all her hope for answers from Alor disappearing. This was getting them nowhere.

“Come on, we need to find out what is going on here,” she said, walking towards the door.

“I think we should leave. I feel like we should,” said Alor, following Kara outside the room. The tunnel was quiet again. “The woman I talked to…. I think she got suspicious of me.”

Kara blinked at him. “What? What did she say?”

“She just asked what I was doing here,” Alor replied, scratching the back of his neck. Kara rubbed her eyes. “I tried to talk my way out of it….”

“It’s fine, Alor, let’s just move before anyone else gets suspicious.”

Alor was clearly trying not to argue with her as he dutifully followed her. Walking around the entire tunnel again, Kara finally found the elevator, and they both got in. Assuming that what she was looking for would either be at the very top or bottom of the facility, she looked at the floor buttons. The numbers next to them were in the Eternal language, but she didn’t need to be able to read them, she just needed to see where they were and which one was the last one.

Since they hadn’t gone down much when they had first arrived, it was safe to assume they were on the top floor, so Kara pressed the last button, hoping that the elevator wouldn’t make too much noise.

Thankfully it seemed to be nearly silent. However it turned out to also be very fast, so they got through all ten floors in a matter of seconds. Without any of the physical side effects that should have followed.

Eternal technology was as odd as it was fascinating.

Since there was nowhere to hide except maybe behind Alor, and that didn’t sound very effective, Kara ran into the room as soon as the door opened, quickly looking for a dark corner or a crate to hide behind.

That turned out to be quite easy because the room was quite dark once the elevator door closed. Not enough to not see where Kara was going, but enough to blend in in her dark clothes. There wasn’t much to hide behind, but this would be enough. The humming was much louder here as well, which helped mask any noise she could have made at least a little.

Alor was right behind her, cautiously leaning on the wall and looking around. He could probably see much better in the dark now. Before she could ask what he could see, a quiet voice broke the silence.

“Yes, sir, everything is going well. By my calculations, we should be ready to attack Irithara in a few days,” a woman said, making Kara frown in the direction of her voice. Kara crept along the wall, trying to spot where the voice was coming from. There were a couple of crates along the way, containing gods knew what, but Kara didn’t have time to check.

“Good,” a deep, male voice replied in a strangely passive, disinterested way. “If you have the time, try to make sure the temporary programming sticks with some of the more resistant individuals.”

Kara looked over at Alor at that. He didn’t look back, only glared at a stack of crates in their way. Kara realized that was the barrier keeping them from seeing the woman. As silently as possible, she took a couple of steps forward until she reached the box wall and peered through a gap between two of them.

“Yes, of course, sir, I’ll do my best,” the woman responded. Kara couldn’t really see her, the large monitor she was looking into made sure of that, so instead she looked at man. She recognized him after a second or two—Ramien Garen. What was he—

Oh, of course, this had to be an Eternal possessing him.

Enor, her mind added, but Kara pushed that thought away. This was no proof—it could just be anyone masquerading as Enor, right?

And then the monitor went black, making the entire room almost too dark to make out anything.

And then the woman spoke again. But this time it was to them. “I’ve already sent a message to everyone in the area to come here. I don’t know what you were trying to achieve, but it was foolish.”

Kara looked back at Alor, who raised his knife. Kara did the same and lunged into the darkness when she saw the outline of the woman move. Clearly not expecting this, the woman cried out as Kara tried to stab her in the chest, however she managed to jump back at just the last moment, resulting in only a scratch on her arm.

Before the woman could reach for her own weapon—a sword hanging from her belt—Alor attacked her as well, driving her all the way to the opposite wall.

Without a weapon to defend herself, the fight was very short, ending with Alor delivering the killing blow. Kara knew that they had lost, though. However many Eternals there were around here, it would be too much to fight off.

And she wouldn’t have the time to look through the computer the woman had been using either. All she could do was send a message about the imminent attack on Irithara.

Looking at Alor again, she could tell he was thinking the same thing—but maybe it wouldn’t all be for naught. She doubted her ex-coworkers still had their phones, but over the years of working for the government, she’d made quite a few connections—connections which could get the message to the Empire.

She took out her phone, glaring at it the entire five seconds it took to switch on. She checked her signal. It was faint, but still there. Good enough. She quickly typed out a message, short and concise, adding her name to the end of it. She had nothing better to offer as proof that this wasn’t a hoax.

Hearing the quiet sounds of the elevator, she quickly went through her contacts, just choosing everyone and sending the message to all of them. If some of them were being controlled or had been turned into Eternals, she had no idea, but she would have to take that risk—there was no time to go through it all.

A few seconds later, her phone informed her that the messages had been sent, which was the moment the elevator door opened. Not wasting any time, Kara dropped her phone onto the concrete ground and stomped on it for good measure.

Raising her dagger, she scowled at her soon-to-be attackers. Three of them.

She was either going to die now, or she would be transformed and brainwashed. She wasn’t sure which was worse. But whichever the case, she wasn’t just going to surrender.

With an enraged cry, she ran towards them.