116: the list, part one.

Captain Drekkor stepped on to the expansive bridge of the PF Guardian from his adjoining radio room.  in the viewscreen, he saw the massive arc of Klin, set in relief against its sun.  they were crossing into the dayside portion of their orbit, and more than half of the planet was lit.  he took his eyes off the screen and gazed at the banks of computers and the men that operated them with a distracted sense of pleasure.  a native of Klin, he had been born into a naval family.  that he would become the captain of StarEx’s flagship, though, should be credited entirely to him, and himself alone.  each of his crewmen had been born into a naval family as well, after all, and see how far they’d gotten!  still, that they were on the Guardian at all should give them pride enough.

he withdrew his communications remote from the breast pocket of his snugly fitting black uniform.  only moments before, he had checked for new messages in his radio room, but he was about to begin maneuvers, and he had developed the habit years ago of making one last check-of-the-mail, as it were, his final order of business before beginning drills.  the remote linked directly to his computer, and was itself only a small monitor of what the powerful unit in his office, that was itself connected to the massively complex central computer of the PF Guardian. he pressed a small button on the side of the device, and the blue-tinted screen lit up with a quiet chirp.

“ah, a new message!” Drekkor said to himself.  it always gave him pleasure to receive communications from the planet — a little slice of home way up here in outer space, he thought.  his bit of delight evaporated immediately, however, once he saw the name of the message’s sender.  he scanned the message anxiously, but relaxed as he reached the end.  just a few nuts and bolts, he thought happily, walking towards his captain’s chair at the center of the bridge.  he replaced the communications remote in his breast pocket and sat down contentedly.  as he was about to begin issuing orders, he heard a timid male voice from behind him.

“Captain Drekkor?” it said quietly.

Drekkor turned to he the newest member of his staff looking at him over a bank of computers.  the man looked scared; well, that would probably do.  a little fear was never a bad thing on someone’s first voyage into space.  “Ensign Paltiv,” he said with a smile.  “what is it, son?”

“um, new contact sir.  it’s one of ours, but it’s not scheduled to be in this sector, sir.”

“do you have it’s course?”

“yes, sir.  it’s, um, it’s coming from the surface, looks like it’s preparing to open a ribbon, sir.”

“you needn’t end every sentence with ‘sir,’ Paltiv.”

“yes…sir.”  Paltiv was flustered.

“have you completed the ship’s identification?”

“yes, sir.  it’s a new model, not on our records yet.  but it does have an ID code — shows up as the PF Miyoto.”

Dekkor raised one eyebrow and smiled.

another, more senior member of the crew joined the conversation.  “shall we adjust course, sir?”  it was Leutenant Golkin, the pilot.  his baritone voice had a slight edge to it.

“no, Golkin, take no action.” Drekkor said.  “as it happens, i have specific instructions from Sentuel himself–” he tapped the remote in his breast pocket “–to allow the ship to leave orbit unmolested.  prepare Maneuver Package fifty-three, Golkin.  time to shake the rust off.”

“yes, sir!”

**

In the days of Sentuel, StarEx reached its peak of economic, political and military power. The humanitarian outcry of the previous set of generations had subsided, and the broad-scale resource wars of the generations before that were all but forgotten.  The galaxy had settled into a quiet state of indifference, a few petty territory squabbles and local insurrections aside.  A tacit agreement had been reached between the citizens of all worlds, an agreement that in exchange for a stable, relatively low-cost flow of dry we would bury one small part of our collective conscience, stash it away in a little hollow place easily masked by freedom of movement and daily reassurance.  After all, what were the lives of a few billion miners when the galaxy’s trillions stood to benefit?

Although Sentuel — a man given only one name in any credible records — was not the president of StarEx, a position that was held by one Wirren Blaand, he was the company’s de facto leader.  With the strength of the Patriarchy at its all-time low, and that of the Interstellar Business Organization, known as the Giants, at its all-time high — and with Sentuel perfectly poised to influence them both — Blaand became little more than a figurehead who took orders from his General of Security, a man who was by all accounts as ruthless as he was brilliant, as daring as he was mysterious.

StarEx employed a massive star fleet in those days, the sheer size and power of which deterred any rogue world who had their eyes on Klin’s nearly endless supply of dry.  The fleet, known ironically as the Patriarchal Fleet, became solidified after the last great resource war (which ended in the late 22,500’s), and was comprised mainly of…

from the Tome of Beginnings, by Ellian Wood

**

Cillian paced furiously.  he paused, breathed heavily as everyone watched him.  he reached for an empty glass bottle on the table, clenched it viciously, shattered it authoritatively on the wooden floor.  “FUCK!” he raged, repeating the word as he dropped to his knees and pounded the floor where he had just smashed the vacant bottle of sunset.  “god fuck it!” he degenerated into a sobbing pulp as the other looked on awkwardly.

Cillian’s father eyed him reproachfully from his arm chair.  he lifted a tall glass of sunset to his lips, drank, set the glass on the end table forcefully.  “goddam it, kid,” he spat.  “yer actin’ like a baby.”

Issac gaped at Cillian’s father for a second, then realized that he was staring and turned his eyes away.  Sorensen remained propped against the room’s far wall, unaffected.

Cillian turned his head upward toward his father.  saliva dripped from his lower lip, an emission of his agony.  his bloodshot eyes focused on the old man powerfully.  “don’t you understand what this means?” he groaned.  “the plant is gone.  destroyed.  the men left inside are all dead.  all dead.”  Cillian repeated the words acerbically.

“ultimately, it’s about credits,” Sorensen cut in, making no eye contact.  “they know they can’t push the miners too far past the breaking point — they need us to mine dry.  shipments of refined dry are much more valuable than ore; everybody knows that.  they can’t just announce one day that we can’t refine anymore — there would be riots, violence.  but if they have a good reason to shut down the refineries–”

“but why now?” Issac interrupted.  “if they wanted to blow up a dry plant, why wait?”

Cillian stood up, squinted at Issac, pondering.  “you’re saying it was designed.”

“well of course it was,” Issac said, answering his own question.  “isn’t that obvious to you?  we got a little closer to them than they were comfortable with, and they struck back.”

“i don’t…”

“by sun, Cillian!” Issac exclaimed, unaware that he had begun to use Klinian idioms.  “it was your idea in the first place.  yeah, let’s use our guns, let’s steal a ship!  well, they caught us, and now Gorshen plant is a pile of rubble.  but i still don’t get why they would wait until we started to mobilize to knock the miners down a few pegs.”

“only roll weighted dice,” Cillian’s father said, lighting a cigarette.  all eyes turned to him.

“what?” Cillian asked.

his father shrugged, took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaled, scratched his stubbled chin.  he said, “credits, credits, credits.  there are what, a few billion miners on Klin?”  the old man’s voice rattled through his lips as he spoke.  “ain’t nothin’ compared to the trillions of buyers they got.  they could pay you a thousand credits a day and wouldn’t even notice a blip on their quarterly reports.  but they don’t, and i’ll tell ya why.  ‘cause that’s hard labor, jack.  i did it for fifty-three years, and StarEx even gave me a goddam pension!  i got enough credits so ain’t gonna complain about it.  they keep ya dumb, they keep ya poor, and it’s just percentage points, my friends.  points off the fucking margin.  points on top of the profit.  so, they roll weighted dice.  sure it’s a gamble: some miner jack might get in his head he deserves a few more credits than he gets paid.  but you can just whack ‘im; here at Gorshen, we got a few hotheads, you, you, and you,” he said, pointing in turn to Cillian, Sorensen and Issac, “done got all wound up about rights and whatever else, and they whacked the whole goddam plant.  if you’re surprised, you’re a goddam idiot and there ain’t nothin’ i can do fer ya.”

a pause came over the room.  in the silence, Cillian let out a breath of a laugh that sounded very much like a shrug.

“what?” Issac asked.

“well,” Cillian said with an eye roll.  “i got an idea.”

**

once again, Kantor Sefrin found himself dwarfed in a chamber that loomed large with intimidation.  there were few things that Sefrin found daunting; very few, indeed.  this room was one of them.  he avoided making eye contact with the man sitting behind the large desk which reflected the room’s dim light in pale swaths. he could feel, though, the man’s eyes boring into him.  a long moment had passed since Sefrin had been ushered into the room, and neither man had spoken.  protocol was, of course, to wait for one’s superior to begin dialogue, but as more seconds ticked by, Sefrin became increasingly uncertain.

uncertainty was the precise emotion Sentuel was attempting to elicit.  at last, the StarEx security general spoke.  “the destruction of Gorshen plant is complete?”

“yes, sir,” Sefrin said, still staring at the floor.

Sentuel breathed deeply, pondered for another moment.  then, “it is unfortunate that Tocts is dead.  that was a glaring oversight on your part.”

“yes, sir.  i know, and i apologize–”

“don’t waste my time with apologies,” Sentuel interrupted, only a hint of malice in his voice.  “as it is, we know enough.  we would have killed him soon, in any case.  we will monitor them closely.  as it is, they represent only a very minor threat.  we will wait for them to coalesce, to form a larger and more potent organism.  then we will exterminate them.”

“yes, sir,” Sefrin said, a grin twisting at the corner of his mouth.

**

the groundcar rolled to a stop outside of an establishment that looked like it could have been in Gorshen, except that it was somehow imperceptibly more worn down, and that it was in Billshen.

“what’s in Billshen?” Issac had asked.

“Ash’s town,” Cillian had answered.

and now they were here.  Ash had made the trip to Gorshen when he wanted something; Cillian and Issac were completing the trip to Billshen, and they needed something.

the ground was the same burnt-tan shade that colored Gorshen’s dusty streets; the same inexorable angle of eleven-thirty sunlight killed any plant life that was not almost always in shadow.  Cillian kicked his door open, stepped out of the groundcar, lit a cigarette.  Issac followed.

“this is his place?” Issac asked, lighting his own stick of tobacco.

“yeah.” Cillian said, exhaling a stream of blue smoke that faded into grey, then white as it dissipated in the dayside air.

Issac considered him for a moment, glanced at the door.  like most dayside buildings, the door itself, and a small antechamber, were the only above-ground bits of the structure; Ash’s establishment was almost entirely below ground.  “so why are we smoking again?” Issac asked, a smile, itself flirting with a grimace, playing at his lips.

Cillian shrugged nonchalantly.  “figured i could use one before this meeting, huh?”

“you’ve had five in the last hour.  your cigarettes gave off more smoke than your half-working groundcar on the way here.  surely you can’t be craving.”

“fine.  you don’t wanna smoke?” Cillian held up his cigarette defiantly, tossed it to the ground with forced casualness.  “let’s go in, shall we?”

Issac smiled, flicked his cigarette onto the street.  “after you, pal.”

*

“you ain’t got anything to drink?” Cillian complained.

“unlike the Gorshen workers, we here at Billshen do not work drunk.”

Cillian looked about the room.  “we ain’t workin’!”

Ash sighed, pursed his lips, gestured to a cabinet in the corner of the room.  Cillian sprung up, clapped Ash on the knee and sauntered to the cabinet, flung it open, and withdrew a mostly-full bottle of sunset.  “atta boy,” he said.

like most private rooms on dayside, at least the ones that Issac had seen, there were cushions sitting on the floor against the walls on which the occupants sat.  Issac was still adjusting to sitting on the floor, but it was slowly becoming more natural to him.

“by the way,” Cillian said, his eyes narrowing, “you might want to watch the cracks about Gorshen workers.  we lost a lot of ‘em yesterday.”  Ash exhaled, sat back, but did not speak.

“have you heard from Joyn?” Issac asked, changing the subject.

“no,” Ash said plainly.

“so you don’t know if he made it out of orbit?”

“no.  he will return in perhaps a week, and we will know then.”

“well, things are going great so far,” Issac said.  “we’ve got a ship, but it might have been shot down in the atmosphere; Tocts was captured and is probably dead; and Gorshen exploded, and quite possibly not on accident.”

“almost certainly not on accident,” Ash said coolly.

“what makes ya say that?” Cillian asked.

Ash shrugged.  “it is fairly obvious with just a bit of simple analysis.  first, it would be quite a surprising coincidence if the home plant of a band of rebels who had just invaded the Ring exploded just days after they had done so.  not impossible, i’ll grant, but given how many plants there are on dayside, and how rare reactor malfunctions are, it would be, in fact, much more than surprising.  second, StarEx has the obvious goal of disrupting or eliminating the rebellion.  if they destroy the plant, one of two things will happen: either the rebels will become discouraged and give up, or they will attempt to rally with other heretofore disparate sects of the rebellion.  they are actually better served by the second result.  since they obviously know who you are, they should be able to track your moves relatively easily.  they already know who i am as well, presumably, and haven’t killed me yet, so i’m not overly worried about any immediate ramifications — at the same time, i wouldn’t be too surprised if i were killed tomorrow.  in either case, though, as they track your moves, you will reveal to them the full composition of the rebellion, presumably allowing them to eliminate a larger constituency of the rebellion at large.  third, killing you outright would have likely turned you into martyrs, especially since you have an outworlder with you.  think of it: a savior from foreign shores, murdered for helping miners.  riots in the streets.  fourth, they were waiting for us in the hangar.  they know, and to think otherwise would be pure idiocy.”

silence filled the room for a moment.  Cillian looked unmoved, but stared intently into his glass of sunset, from which he took a long pull.  Issac sat back, exhaled, bewildered, yet gratified that his suspicious were sadly correct.  Ash waited patiently, glancing back and forth between the two.

“well, shit,” Issac said finally.

“you see things differently?” Ash asked.

“no.  you — your arguments make sense.  your logic is sound.  in fact, you’ve only confirmed the theory i already had.  i’m just not sure we could be any more fucked.”

“boy, you hit that one on the head,” Cillian muttered through his raised glass.  he drank, set the glass on the floor with a clank.  “if we give up, they win.  if we go find our buddies, they win.  and, if they ever feel like they’re losing, they can just kill us, somehow, and they’ll win, anyway.  we’re like rats in a goddam maze.  and they’re just sittin’ back tryin’ to decide when’s best to give us the poison.  and when they do, they win.”  he turned to Issac.  “do you see a pattern developing?”

“yeah,” Issac said disgustedly. “and it’s not us winning.  shit.”  he rose to his feet, began to pace.

“i understand that you’re upset,” Ash began calmly, “about all the men that were lost in the explosion.  and i’m not trying to diminish that.  but–”

“‘upset’ ain’t the right fuckin’ word, Ash.  ‘upset’ don’t get us halfway there.  i’m ‘upset’ when i run out of smokes in the middle of a shift.  i’m ‘upset’ when my bar don’t turn a profit ‘cause the miners are too broke to drink.  so i’d really love to hear how you were gonna finish that sentence.”

“what i was going to say,” Ash continued, unruffled, “is that we still have options.”

“other than giving up, being killed, or ending the rebellion, you mean,” Issac said sarcastically.

“yes, that’s exactly what i mean.”

Cillian said, “well, please, if you would, lay out for us some of these ‘options’ you speak of.”

“first, hand me that bottle.”

Cillian breathed a scoffing laugh, rolled his eyes, tightened the cap onto the bottle and tossed it to Ash, who caught the bottle neatly, untwisted the cap, pulled straight form the bottle.  Cillian raised an eyebrow, waited.  Issac stopped pacing.  Ash took another drink, exhaled loudly, recapped the bottle and set it on the floor.  he looked first at Issac, then at Cillian, a quiet fire in his eyes, a spark.  his lips tightened.  he said, “we beat them at their own game.”

“meaning?” Cillian prompted.

“meaning: we do exactly what they expect us to do, but not how they expect us to do it.  what other choices do we have?  i’m certainly not in favor of surrendering, and i doubt that you are, either.  i certainly don’t want to be killed, nor do i want to have the rebellion put to an end.  so, as i see it, this is our only course of action.  after all, the last thing we want is for the loss of Tocts or any of the men at Goshen to be in vain.”

“and how exactly do you suggest we do that?” Cillian asked.

Ash hesitated, then said, “you’ve heard of Lambrix, no doubt.”

Cillian sat back, ran his hand through his amber hair, looked at the ceiling.  “oh, boy.”

“what the hell is Lambrix?” Issac asked.

“you don’t wanna know,” Cillian said.

**

Sorensen sat at the table, hands folded, alone for a moment.  he focused on the inhalation and expiration of breaths, checked his emotions.  an imbroglio of thoughts rattled off of each other in his mind: the future of the rebellion was there, of course, but it was dwarfed by the thought of the number of men, of friends that he had lost at Gorshen plant.  he knew that the movement would ultimately take precedence in the long term, but the men, the men.

he thought also of the survivors: it was a new world, or at least his small portion of the world was new.  unless StarEx ordered and funded an immediate rebuilding of the plant, which he doubted, his men would now be selling unrefined dry to the most powerful corporation in the galaxy.  he wasn’t sure how they would refine it themselves, but for all he knew, they might have a thousand unused refineries sitting vacant in the ring, waiting to be populated with the sons and daughters of StarEx employees.  it didn’t matter, in any case: the point was that the few credits that found their way into Gorshen were going to become more and more scarce.  despair would fill the void that poverty created.

but before these thoughts could be addressed, he had the problem of a woman before him.  a woman who was with child, and who expected her husband to come home with Sorensen, a woman who had loaned her beloved to the rebellion on faith of safe keeping.  a woman who’s trust had been broken.

Furlia Tocts returned from the kitchen with a small cup of tea.  as per the usual custom, it was only half full, though there was almost certainly a dozen more servings steeping on the stovetop.  she sat the tea in front of Sorensen, bending in the laborious and deliberate way that only pregnant women do.  the cup rattled slightly on the table as she released it: her hands were unsteady.  Sorensen forced a smile and indicated for her to sit.

the miner looked into his cup for a long moment, clenched and unclenched his teeth repeatedly.  to stall further, he took a sip of tea.  it was very hot, and he smacked his lips inadvertently and loudly.  “very good,” he said, still not making eye contact.

Furlia slid a chair out from the table, sat heavily into it.

“well?” she said.

Sorensen could see through his peripheral vision that she was looking directly at him.  he hesitated, then, swallowing hard, met her gaze.  “we lost him,” he said, his voice trembling.

“i know,” she said.  “y’ were all back a few days ago, an’ i hadn’t heard nor seen ‘im.  i was waitin’ fer one o’ ya ta come gimmie the news.”

a torrent of emotion ripped through Sorensen.  it was mostly guilt with a strong mixer of regret.  there was sadness, as well, and there was pity.  he choked back a rush of tears with a sudden gasp, clenched his fist in front of his mouth.

“can ya tell me wha’ happened?” she asked, a stubborn fortitude in her voice.

“we were captured,” Sorensen said, looking away.  he spoke in sputters demarcated by painful breaths.  “we were, all of us, captured.  i…i don’t know how he did it, but C’moy managed to get one of their detonators — he held himself hostage, so that we might escape.  he…he traded his life for ours.”  Sorensen began crying in earnest, something he had not done for many, many years.  not since he had lost Taynor.  “we escaped…we escaped because of him.  but they took…they took him.  they took him.” he let himself weep for a moment.  he did not see Furlia stare at him stoically.  he calmed, continued, “he had a hidden blade in his shoe — standard issue for miners, you probably know that.  i know that you knew C’moy better than we did, but if i knew him at all, i’m almost positive i know what he did.  instead of giving us up–”

“he killed ‘imself,” Furlia cut in abruptly.

Sorensen raised his eyes to her.  his vision was clouded with tears, but he could see rigidity in her face, and it shocked him.  “yes,” he rasped.  “yes.”

“well,” she said, standing suddenly, “then i don’ have anything else ta say to ya, mister Sorensen.  ya best be gettin’ out of here, i think.”

Sorensen dipped his head as he stood.  he hesitated, then turned away, headed for the door wordlessly.  as he approached it, he heard Furlia’s voice behind him.  it coldness gave Sorensen shivers.  “i quit lovin’ him anyway.  weren’t no good fer me no more.  i’ll raise this baby myself, ‘f i gotta.  never expected otherwise.  the hell with ‘im.”

“i’m…i’m terribly sorry Fur–”

“keep yer ‘sorries,’” she snapped, “an’ get the hell outta here.”

wordlessly, Sorensen obeyed.

as he returned to his groundcar, he attempted to focus on what could be done, rather than what had been lost.  communication, he thought.  we have to reach the others. a name that ran through his head frequently — indeed, a name that had never left his head — presented itself insistently.

Taynor.

**

they had spent four hours in their current groundcar, and two more in the groundcar before that.  this was all after one hour spent hopping between groundcars that had picked them up and dropped them off at several locations between Billshen and, well, wherever it was that they were going.

“if they haven’t planted tracking devices in any of us, which, i must admit, is a possibility, but if they haven’t, we’ve lost them by now,” Ash had said a hundred miles back.  Issac was trying his damndest to be reassured by the miner’s words.  once again, Issac was along for the ride, as it were, and once again, needed to know more.

“so we’re going to find this Lambrix,” he said.  “do either of you have any interest in telling me what it is?”

“it’s not a ‘what,’ it’s a ‘who.’” Cillian said.

“fine,” Issac said, exasperated.  “mind telling me who this Lambrix is?”

“he’s a myth,” Cillian said.  “and if Ash can prove to me that he’s real, i’ll be more than a little impressed.”

“alright, so if he’s a myth, then where are you taking us, Ash?”

“to Lambrix,” Ash responded simply, focusing his attention on the piloting of the groundcar.

“perfect,” Issac murmured, sitting back in his seat.  he wondered what Leah would think of him, in this situation.  was he being strong, surviving what he had survived, and continuing to stay by the men who had saved him and the miners who were continually exploited, to the benefit of most galactic citizens?  or was he being weak, failing to come back to his fiancée?  Leah, he thought.  his fingers bent slightly as he imagined twisting her long, dark and curling strands of hair through his fingers.  he loved touching her hair: there was the physical closeness of it, to be sure; there was her scent, left on his fingers even after they had parted; there was her palm on his ribs when he caught a snarl; there was the bend in her neck as he pulled her closer.  there was the feeling of her lips on his neck as playful hair-pulling turned into something more.  there was a whispered gasp as he entered her.  there was his hand on her breast as they fell asleep, tangled.

such thoughts swept Issac through the final hour of travel, and after a long, confusing and circuitous day of travel, Ash’s groundcar slowed to a halt.  Issac got out immediately, patted his trousers for his cigarettes, found them, lit one.  he squinted at his surroundings: they had traveled significantly closer to the day apex, and the sun was brighter and hotter than he had felt since they had journeyed to the wreck of the Lathan Devers. Cillian climbed out of the groundcar, and also lit a cigarette.  they waited for a moment, then simultaneously realized that Ash was not making any effort to exit the groundcar.

“well?” Cillian called.

Ash gestured to a door that, like most dayside doors, lead blow ground.  he remained firmly seated.

“you seem to know this Lambrix guy pretty well,” Cillian called.

Ash shrugged through the window the groundcar, and once again gestured to the door.

Cillian looked at Issac.  “well, i don’t know what this fucker’s up to.  Lambrix is prolly gonna kick us out, anyway.  shit, i don’t care how many turns we took: we’re prolly bein’ watched right now, and StarEx is just waiting to blow us and this bastard off the face of Klin, huh?”

“when you put it like that, how can we not go in?” Issac said with sardonic humor.

Cillian walked towards the door, and Issac followed.  Cillian flicked his cigarette to the tan dirt in front of the entrance, and Issac did the same.  Cillian turned to the young Dulvernian.  “hey,” he said awkwardly.  “i, uh, hope, you know.  i hope this goes okay.”

Issac smiled.  “me too.”

“eh, whatever,” Cillian grunted, and began tapping on the door.  he had gotten through only two knocks, however, when the door slid open.  Cillian looked at Issac, a quizzical and concerned look in his eyes.  nevertheless, the entered the now-open door and tromped down the descending staircase.  Issac followed closely behind, glad to be out of the burning sunlight of deep dayside.

they reached the bottom of the staircase and found themselves in a small, dimly lit room.  a young woman, perhaps twenty years of age, sat behind a wretched desk in a corner of the room.  she was beautiful: her hair was strawberry blond, but the lowest layer was dyed jet black.  she had a hooped nose ring through her right nostril, but it was subtle, and pleasing to both Cillian and Issac.  she had a tattoo on her left collar bone: script of some sort, though neither Cillian or Issac could make it out.

she smiled at them, but did not speak.

Cillian bristled immediately.  “we’re here to see Lambrix,” he said authoritatively.  “and listen, sister, we’ve gone way, way out of our way to make sure that nobody followed us here.  so if this guy, Lambrix, is really around, if he’s really here, then you better let us in right now, ‘cuase I can’t even tell you — you can’t even know how much we’ve lost.  i mean, if he ain’t here, just tell us, sister.  but don’t fuckin’ bullshit me right now.”  Cillian paused, breathing heavily.  a moment of silence passed, and the girl smiled sadly at him.

“i am truly sorry for your loss, Cillian.”

Cillian stepped back involuntarily, his eyes snapped open.  Issac turned to gauge his reaction, and was taken aback by it.

not knowing what to do, Cillian stammered, “well you better…you better let us…”

the girl’s eyes flickered. “he’s been waiting for you,” she said.