Well, this sounds more like what we’ve been waiting for. My heart is beating fast and hard as she presses a palm to the biometric scanner.
This is it. This is it. Please let this be it.
“Ambassadors.” Dr. Veragelen looks at each of us in turn. “I give you what I am certain is the answer to all of your questions. And your prayers.”
Then she throws open the doors to the laboratory with a flourish.
My mouth drops open.
Hot steaming drokaray droppings.
Chapter 5
Kali
For a moment, nobody moves. Or says a word.
I stand in the hallway, staring through the wide-open doors with my mouth agape as I try to figure out exactly what I’m looking at. The room beyond is huge—even bigger than the docking bay. It must take up the entire height of the center of the ship. And filling most of the space is a black sphere hovering without any visible means of support about three feet above the floor.
I swallow hard.
For her part, Dr. Veragelen looks like the bamiling that ate the varmak. Then again, she more than deserves the self-satisfaction. When else has an entire group of politicians actually been struck speechless?
“Can we go in?” Rain asks, and there’s an eagerness in her voice that’s unmistakable. She’s the closest delegate to me, separated by Arik, who makes sure no one gets too near, but that doesn’t stop her from peering around him, looking more like an excitable young girl than the High Priestess of the Sisterhood.
It makes me like her more than I expected to—and probably more than I should.
“Of course. Of course,” Dr. Veragelen says as she strides through the open door. “After all, this is what I invited you all here to see.”
I don’t miss her subtle emphasis on the word “this” or the fulminating glare she shoots in my direction when she thinks I’m not looking.
Rain bounces forward, but her escort touches her arm before she can take more than one step. She glances up at him questioningly, and he nods subtly toward me. As soon as he does, she gasps in horror, ducks her head again, and mutters something under her breath.
I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter—that I don’t care who goes in first. But my mother lives for pomp and circumstance, and as long as I’m here, representing her, I need to as well—or I’ll never be allowed off-planet again.
And there are a whole lot of places I want to see. And maybe, just maybe, if Dr. Veragelen can do what she thinks she can, I’ll finally have time to do them.
But this second gaffe—or is it the third?—of Rain’s does beg the question: Why would Serati send an ambassador with absolutely no formal training in royal protocols to an important event like this? It makes no sense for any planet to do that, let alone one whose code of law is so elaborate and extensive it makes the Empress look like an anarchist. I try to remember what I’ve heard about the high priestess. Not much—the Sisterhood are a secretive lot—but I do know that high priestesses don’t usually take an active role in politics.
Still, their mistake isn’t her fault, so I give Rain an encouraging nod as I walk into the room, then fix my attention on the black sphere. What is it? A memory niggles at my brain—I know I’ve seen something similar before. But in a dream.
When I was thirteen, I started having strange dreams. Dreams of the dying sun and of artifacts I somehow knew had never been made by humans. Of flying through space when I’d never been on a spaceship. I told my father, and he told me to keep the dreams to myself. I’m not sure why; maybe he thought my mom wouldn’t like it. She can be a little strange about me on my good days—the last thing she needed was a reminder that I’m less than perfect.
My father was assassinated two years later—the worst day of my life—and I’ve still never told anyone else about the dreams.
The sphere is about the height of a three-story building, and not opaque, as I first thought, but vaguely translucent, though I can’t see inside. There’s a motif right in the center facing me—it looks like a star surrounded by a circle. I’ve dreamed of that image before as well, and a shiver of something ripples through me.
The laboratory is filled with technicians in form-fitting black lab suits, all moving purposefully around the sphere. Guards are stationed at regular points at the periphery of the room, and they all have laser pistols and electric batons—is the doctor expecting trouble?
Scaffolding has been set up beside the sphere. Technicians swarm over it, taking readings from various points of the surface. Others are moving around it with equipment and HUDs. More techs bearing the insignia of the Corporation work at consoles around the room.
It’s the most intense laboratory I’ve ever been inside, and I can’t help wondering what exactly it is Dr. Veragelen thinks she has here. Or, more important—what she thinks it does.
Is that why all the guards are so heavily armed? Because she thinks it’s valuable enough to be dangerous?
A combination of fear and excitement skates along my spine, has my breath catching in my throat. Is this it? Is this sphere, or whatever it is, what we’ve been looking for all along?
Lara must be thinking the same thing, because she leans close to my ear and whispers, “What do you think it is?”
“I have no clue.” But that’s not entirely true. It’s an alien artifact. A big one.
This is freaking amazing. And suddenly, my fingers itch with an almost overwhelming urge to move closer. To touch it.
“Well, it’s clearly very impressive,” Ambassador Kellarp says, smiling to show her red-stained teeth. “But what is it?”
“It’s a heptosphere,” the man accompanying the high priestess answers in a voice devoid of emotion. “It’s from the Ancients.”
I’ve never heard the term heptosphere before, but hearing him confirm what I already suspected about the Ancients has me turning to study him. And I’m not the only one. For the first time since we got to the Caelestis, Dr. Veragelen looks almost…pleased.
“It is, indeed.” She beams at the man like he’s her star pupil. “And you are?”
“I’m Merrick, ma’am. Of the Sisterhood of the Light. Secondary delegate from Serati.”
I cast him a quick glance. Up to now, I’ve avoided looking at him too closely, scared I’ll end up staring. Because with his tall, lean body, tan skin, and platinum hair, he reminds me so much of my father that it makes my heart ache. My father was the best person I’ve ever known, and I still miss him every single day.
I push the memories to the back of my mind and drag myself into the present. “Where did you find it?” I ask.