I HELD THE LIGHT AGAINST THE DARK, AND I WATCHED THE DARK SWALLOW IT WHOLE.
In your time, I, and all those that fought alongside me will be lauded as the heroes of humanity. Because we gave you the greatest gift anyone could, we gave you the hope that one day, humanity would win against its true enemies.
As well know by now, hope does not keep our children safe or put food on the table. And that where you come in, future me. You need to do what we couldn't and win against the Rohiren once and for all.
For you to do that, you need to know the story of what happened, before we were heroes.
Let me backtrack here a bit. Hi there, in case you haven't figured it out yet, you're me. A thousand years from now, give or take. I have seen echoes and glimpses of you for a long time. I don't know your name or what you look like but I love you already. How could I not?
Before you wonder, you're not a clone. Although the seers tell me that will be somewhat possible in your time. No, I am talking about old-school reincarnation.
You see, I began the war, I stood against the dark and I nearly lost to it so I could give you a chance to win. I ran, so you could fly.
Age has finally caught up to me and all my friends are gone now, it is time to go into my final rest. But before I do that, I have one final gift for you; the story of how we did it. The blueprint so to speak, in more ways than one.
So, buckle up future me. You may think you know this story but trust me, you don't.
OCTOBER ELEVEN, 2121
The date was October 11, the year was 2121, just one year after the war between two alien races spilled onto our planet and killed almost all of us. The small resistance had one last mission to complete, it was a last-ditch effort we weren't even sure would work. The plan was simple, send someone into the future to tell our descendants where the Weapon was. What was the weapon? You might ask. On that day, all I knew was the Seer had seen something a few weeks earlier. Apparently, there was some wonder weapon out there that would help us vanquish the Rohineh. Can you sense my eye roll?
I called bullshit. For the past year, we had been up to our eyeballs in Ardent and Rohiren carnage. Where was this miraculous weapon when my friends were dying and turning into soul-eating monsters? Where was the weapon when the Rohiren showed us their true colors and tried to enslave all of us? Yeah, no. But I was just one soldier among thousands, I just went where I was told and did my best to survive till another day.
Sean, the poster child of resistance perfection, was slated to go on the mission. It was only supposed to be a year forward, I wasn't even meant to do anything other than show them my father's lab and get the hell out. But fate had a way of sending you down the path you least expected, as you should know by the time you read this journal. You cannot run from fate. Trust me, I tried.
"Pay attention, I will not repeat myself." The commander's voice came on in my ear and I ducked behind a large piece of granite, remnants of the invasion's damage
My arms shook, causing the rifle in them to vibrate against my chin. Nobody ever mentions how heavy guns are, you know? It's all fine and dandy when you're in a training session and can drop it periodically. We had been out here fighting these Rohineh machines for more than 12 hours, I could barely feel my palms. I let go the gun and rubbed my palms on my thigh.
"Somehow, they knew we were coming," the commander continued as my heart beat wildly inside my chest and sweat seeped everywhere. I almost couldn't hear him with my hyperventilation so I closed my eyes and forced my breathing to slow down.
The sound of the battle raged all around me and I flinched as a bomb detonated nearby sending debris flying into my hiding spot.
"Luckily we had planned for that contingency. It will not save the whole mission just the most important part. Your team leaders will be reaching you with new orders. Yes, it will be vastly different from the one you were briefed on before this entire thing began. As your commander, I am ordering you to do exactly as they say." I frowned, what the hell was he talking about? Weren't we going to my father's cryogenic lab anymore? What could be more important than that?
"If we don't succeed here today, the future is lost. If you are not willing to sacrifice yourself for this mission, there is no shame. Stay where you are, when it's safe we will send retrievers to come get you. Take your comms off and hunker down." That was definitely not an option for me and my hands subconsciously tightened their hold on the gun.
"If you are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice then pay attention to what your team lead is about to say. Parish out." The comms beeped for a second. My hiding spot was covered on all sides except the side I came in from, it was right by a nondescript building in the facility complex that housed the only cryogenics lab left in this part of the world.
"Team Jin here, who's still on?" Merah; my team's captain asked.
"Singh!" The man's voice yelled through comms and we could all hear the rapid shots fired wherever he was.
"Lincoln."
"Zeta."
"Ilya," I finally said after a pause where no one else spoke. I had been waiting for others to go before me. From the silence, I took it that Shuri and Ezra were either dead or had chosen to leave the mission. Seeing the absolute carnage and the number of Spyders that seemed to have come out of nowhere, I couldn't blame them. Dear future me, war is messy and it asks more of you than you are willing to give. But you give it because you are fighting for your home and the people you care about.
"God damn it Lily!" Lincoln groaned and I rolled my eye, ducking deeper into the crevice as the spindly, metallic legs of a spyder hurried past me with deep twangs as it bored through the concrete.
A small hole in my spot let in a burst of sunlight that was warming up my leg where it touched.
"Why'd you take so long to answer?" Zeta sighed.
"That's enough. Ilyana where are you?" Merah asked.
"I am in the north quadrant, after team Zen and I took down the security system we were sidling back to join the rear troops. I was told to head this way and signal the location of the lab."
"So the security systems are down? Good, at least something is going well. Okay, this is what we're going to do, Lincoln, Zeta, Singh, retreat to the south quadrant, team Io needs some help. Ilyana, stay where you are. I will be right there."
I frowned, "Wait, aren't you supposed to be protecting Sean? He's the one making the jump right?"
"There has been a change of plans. I know questioning authority is your thing but please Lily, I am begging you, just stay where you are." I heard something, I couldn't really understand, in her voice so I said nothing and the comm unit beeped again as it went off. I sighed and laid back against the stone slab behind me.
The grass tickled my skin and I waited for her, hunkered on the ground. The sharp smell of burning and smoking asphalt assaulted my nose even through the face shield.
I could feel the sweat beneath my skin slipping down to where sweat wasn't supposed to go and I shuddered. I was so going to soak all night when this entire debacle was done. A bit later, I heard the thunk thunk thunk steps of a coming spyder.
My heart began to pound again and I held my weapon tight. It took a team of well-trained moon blessed to take down a single spyder. I was average in the ability spectrum and my ability to communicate with animals couldn't really help here since they were neither an animal nor alive in any true sense of the word.
I waited for it to move past me like the other one but it stopped and I heard the whirring sound it made when it turned its bulbous head. For a moment I heard nothing and then the larger boulder above me was ripped away by force leaving me exposed, trembling, and covered in dust. Some of which got in my eyes and made me tear up.
I had only shot at them from afar knowing I was no match for them this close, I raised my shaking arms and aimed the gun, its own weapon was pointed down at me, the nozzle bigger than my whole face. I could barely see clearly enough to sight the red line on its head that was a vulnerable spot. I was usually a good shot, one of the best even. When you weren't strong enough to use your power offensively you learned to hone other parts of yourself. But all my training didn't change the fact that right now I was tired to my bones and an infallible machine was pointing a gun as big as my body at me.
This was not the first time I would face death like this, you probably already knew the feeling. My entire existence narrowed down into that wide ass nozzle, I knew all it would take was one thought from its head and my entire face would be blown away.
Obviously, it didn't, since you are reading this book now. I flinched when it batted my weapon away but before I could do anything else, like the scramble for it, the large piece of granite it had flung away suddenly flew into one of its three legs. This sent it careening towards me as it couldn't find balance without all its feet. A severe mistake in their design if you ask me. But it was a mistake we exploited all the time so...
I closed my eyes with my arms raised, waiting for hundreds of pounds of the hard metallic robot to smash me to smithereens. I felt a sudden woosh and vertigo before I looked up to see Sean Irving's hair flapping into my face as he flew with me in his arms.
My stomach revolted at the height we were but before I could do anything like throw up on the man carrying me, he landed.
I practically fell out of his arms since my jelly legs couldn't carry me, still dealing with the fact that I should have been dead. After dry heaving, I looked around to see where we were.
He had dropped me on the second floor of the cryogenics building.
"Are you okay?" he asked with a soft pat on my back, there was no way I was going to look at him with my teary face and mouth still tasting weird even though I hadn't actually thrown up. The moon mark on his forehead glowed slightly since he had just finished using his gift. A simple pair of wings in a circle denoted with easy lines, a mark shared by all January's like him. I gave him a shaky thumbs up then he flew back down for Merah, who was taking on the Sentinel.
She raised her arms at the huge granite slab and for a second i didn't know what she was doing. Then I realized she was practically vibrating the stone apart to reveal the thick metal rods inside. Once she took control of them they didn't even look metal anymore, they moved into whatever form she wanted and she used them to repeatedly attack and stab the sentinel. My eyes widened slightly, Decembers with mind-based abilities rarely let loose in the camp, I knew she was powerful. I'd just never seen it in person.
The spyder deflected them valiantly until Sean landed on top of it, holding two waving arms apart and then Merah sent the rods into the red slot, and she got one inside it.
You see, the Spyders were made in a kind of design that made it hard to pry apart, so the best way to do it was to force something rigid in it.
From my vantage I could now see much father, there was a collapsed building directly opposite this one that blocked us from the other parts of the complex where the battle was raging on. I could see through some open spots, which was how I saw the fast approaching ardent.
I hear that in your time they probably aren't as much of an issue as they are for us, so you may not know what they look like. They used to be human, you probably know that much. But when the moon gifts came and changed us they couldn't withstand that weight of it. So they buckled, died, and became warped.
Blood-thirsty creatures that hungered for one thing and one thing alone; the power in our veins. Any time a salient like Sean, or better still, a principal like Merah, used her gift in their vicinity they smelled it and came looking for a meal.
Being erect humanoids was where the resemblance between them and humans ended. For one their skin was a dark grayish purple, darkening to black the hungrier they were.
This one was more purple, it had probably just had a meal. I refused to think which one of my teammates it was. The skin was pulled super tight to their muscles and bones so they were extremely slender. They were bald and their mouths were filled with strange glowing teeth that could easily suck our powers out.
Once they took all your power you would automatically begin the change to be like them. A fate worse than death because unlike the undead we had grown up seeing in the media, the ardent were very aware of what they were doing, they just couldn't control or stop themselves.
Sometimes we could see the agony in their eyes.
Each ardent had a flame burning on their back, a flame that signified what moon gift they would have gotten and what moon gift they had to feed on to sustain themselves.
Fun fact, this is what helped us understand just how many abilities there were out there, I couldn't tell what color of fire was burning on this one's back but it had sensed either Merah's power or Sean's.
I quickly pulled out the hand blaster strapped to my thigh, harmless against the spyder armor but the laser was more than enough to pierce Ardent skin.
I lay down flat and aimed, I didn't have the most offensive ability but I was a very good shot and wicked with a blade. I kept my hand steady and aimed, it was running very fast. In that scattered way they ran, it was quite funny if it wasn't running to suck your soul out of you.
I pulled the trigger and a second later I watched it go down.
Merah had succeeded in putting all the rods into the sentinel. With a short tense second of focus, something moved inside the spyders hull, and then with a wrench, it was just scattered pieces on the ground.
Now the inner core was revealed, she carried the last remaining rod and stabbed it through the soft organic ball. Destroying its brain. Sometimes it required a team of well-trained moon blessed to take a spyder down, but one well-trained primary, principal, or salient could do the job.
I saw movement in my periphery and turned to see dozens of Ardent coming our way. Shit.
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