Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) (11 page)

As Rafian VCA and Camille YAN became a couple, the two of them were inseparable. Rafian loved everything about his beloved Camille, and she made it her duty to make sure he was happy at all times. Despite Rafian’s plans to move his love into the penthouse he had purchased, the couple decided against it due to the close proximity to Vani and Kim. Camille wanted nothing to do with the two women and their negative energy, so she talked Rafian into selling his home and purchasing a modest place with her away from his old life. The place they chose was in a tiny civilian area deep in the tail end of the
Helysian
, where vacancies were plentiful due to the commander’s insistence that the ship remain a strictly military vessel.

It was now a year since they had sworn love to each other and about six months since they decided to push ahead with a move instead of the constant visits they made to each other’s apartments. Careerwise, things were great. Rafian’s resume had grown, and he began receiving invitations to the starfighter spy network in Virulia. Camille was given the post that the legendary Helga ATE had held as commander of air to ground assaults (CAGA), and she too was being wooed to become a spy.

The invitations were a tremendous honor for the couple, but even though they were the best in their respective Special Forces divisions, they didn’t think they would ever be recruited. Nobody on the ship knew people who became spies, and when they had encountered spies in the past, it was always such a brief and hurried introduction that it was difficult to form a real opinion of them.

Rafian had fought alongside one before, and the man had moved and fought like something beyond human. Rafian had always wondered whether spies were outfitted with cybernetics or were made to be on a vine of some sort. To fight like that man would be a dream come true for him. However, with the mystery of the Virulian spy network and the many rumors about their order, he hesitated in accepting the invitation for fear of the worst.

“You know if we do this, it will not be the same between us, right?” Rafian said to Camille on one of their many evenings together. The pair could normally be found embracing and talking on the wing of Rafian’s
Alpha X Pterodactyl
whenever they were both on leave and not running missions for the base. These moments were rare, private, and precious for them, as they barely got to see each other during the week.

“Being spies would take us off of the front lines, Raf,” Camille replied, her golden hair gleaming under the lights of the dock, making her seem strangely elfish. Her hair had been cut when she became CAGA, and she styled it into a tiny Mohawk, which made her very cute to Rafian.

“Don’t look at it, Raf. You know I
thypin
’ hate it!” she declared as he looked over her hair with a smile on his face.

He knew to stop because of the cuss word—Camille was not one to curse frequently, and when she did, it indicated she needed a full stop.

“I don’t care what you think about it, babe. I like it, and I think it makes you look badass.” He said this knowing that unlike her pilots who shut down when Cammy started cussing, he had nothing to fear from the Golden Chameleon.

Scoffing at him while rolling her eyes, Camille wouldn’t admit that she appreciated his words, but she punched him in the arm to remind him to stay on topic. “
Thype
the hair, VCA. When are we going to decide on these invitations? You know that this is an honor that people aren’t allowed to turn down.”

She was right of course, because they knew this invitation to the network was more of a summons. When you stuck out as a candidate and they had room for recruitment, they would summon you—and it was never a question. If you dishonored them with a refusal, you would disappear without a trace.

“I get it, Cammy. And being a Virulian spy is the stuff of dreams, so I think we need to accept immediately. The only thing that concerns me is the process. The spies I have met are like gods, but from what I know, to get there, they have to give up a part of their souls. Come on, you’ve seen how they are.”

Camille sat up and then got to her feet to stand next to him. She walked over to one of the thrusters and began playing with its length—her mind working rapidly as she went over the decision and what it could mean to them.

“I know this isn’t very soldiery of me, Rafian…but I just don’t want to lose you. I can deal with death, but spies are rumored to be void of all empathy. I fear that we will cease to be what we are right now…forever.”

“Cammy, look, we are both strong people who have been through a lot of
shtill
to get where we are today. What exactly can they do to me to force me to stop loving you or giving a damn about those lizard bastards who killed my parents?”

It was a question that he should never have challenged the fates to answer. When the pair sent back word of acceptance to Virulia, two agents in 3B suits immediately came to visit them at the apartment. The odd thing about the arrival of the spies was that they didn’t come from a ship, seeing that none had docked on
Helysian
for weeks, and they had never seen them onboard.

The man was a big guy, but he moved like a cat—all quiet and dangerous. The woman was slight, but her eyes indicated she was very much a predator. The man stepped forward and introduced himself as Michyl, a midlevel agent in the organization, and the woman was Ree, a recruit who had just gotten her clearance and held the rank of “person,” which seemed an odd rank to have. The introductions were brief but turned awkward when Camille asked about grabbing a packing cube to shrink and carry her things. Michyl stopped her short, shook his head, and produced a device that resembled a very tiny silver capsule.

“A spy owns nothing” was all the couple heard before the light consumed them, and they were unconscious.

When he awoke, Rafian found himself standing in front of a graying old man in a stark white room with padded floors and walls. The room was large, and the ceilings seemed taller than the Vestalian standard. He also noticed that the gravity level was lower than it should be for humans, and it made him wonder if his eyes and mind were deceiving him.

“Am I dead?” Rafian asked, halfway joking due to the irony of the bright, white room and the old man—also dressed in white—who looked at him as if he could read him.

“Do you know how you got here, boy?” the old man asked suddenly, his voice as deep as an earthquake with confidence as sharp as a knife.

“First of all, you will not address me as boy; I am Captain Rafian VCA of the
Helysian
, a proven officer for the honor of Vestalia.”

This brought a smile to the old man’s face, and he shook his head with amusement. “You see this?” he asked, indicating nothing in particular. “This right here never gets old to me, and I have been doing this for an extremely long time…boy. You recruits come in, you spout out all of the honors that weaker men and women have afforded you, and you expect to get respect.” As soon as he said “respect,” he made a fist, and Rafian felt a crushing pain in his chest that caused him to cry out. He then noticed that he was in the air, floating as the old man’s magic hurled him across the room into one of the padded walls. It hurt like hell, and it took him a moment to regain his composure.

The old man seemed annoyed. “Let’s get to it, shall we? That move that I hit you with just now is a skill that I picked up from the third planet of Jenua when I jumped in as a defender of the Skale Republic as they faced genocide by the Jash Alliance.”

“Sir! I do not know what any of that is, and I am VERY well studied on our galaxy’s history.” Rafian managed to speak as he climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth. “I will say that I aim to learn whatever sorcery you hurt me with, if only to return the favor to both you and those Geralos lizards who desecrated my home planet with terror and savagery.”

The old man got up from his seat. His flowing white robes sparkled with silver gems and was awesomely accented by black-and-red trimming. Despite the torture and pain he had felt in his chest, Rafian thought that the man looked beyond impressive, as a true master should. He thought about the meeting he had had with the spies and wondered if he was now in the spy recruitment center. Was he undergoing a test, or was this a warrior’s hell where he would spend eternity with a beautiful but cruel old man?

“The Geralos lizards are the least of your concern, young Rafian.”

The elder said his name this time with a respectful tone and seemed to admire Rafian’s bravado, despite the blood and the obvious pain that the young man was feeling.

“So you aim to torture and possibly kill me, then?” Rafian asked, misunderstanding the intent of his words.

“How boring a thought, boy! The Geralos are a plague in THIS galaxy—Anstractor, as it were—but there are many galaxies and many planes of existence that need our help.”

“Wait…planes of existence? Is this some sort of religion I signed up for? I thought that the spies were a military organization.” Rafian became visibly angry, fearing that he was being indoctrinated into a religion and the worship of some ideology that would yield little results and keep him from assisting in the complete annihilation of the Geralos.

“As usual, the disbelief,” the old man said passively. “The countries I mentioned, the war, the skill I demonstrated are all from another plane, you see. We jumpers—or as you call us, spies—have the means to jump to the various galaxies and on rare occasions jump to other planes of existence.”

Rafian stared at the old man intently, waiting for him to burst out laughing at the joke, but what he read in his face was that he spoke the truth. It made him feel like a tiny, irrelevant gnat on the surface of a world too big to appreciate his existence.

“For all your rank and respect, Captain, you are a mere toy soldier in a very real war to protect humanity. I guess you realize now why your titles, your accolades, and your petty revenge do nothing to impress me?”

Rafian ignored the slight to ask, “What’s on the other side?”

“Fantastical things, my boy, fantastical things. Things that I cannot begin to explain to you. But the catch with jumping planes is that we cannot control it. We can only stay for a time or come back at will using warp crystals, but we cannot open a new fissure on our own. The openings to other planes are controlled by a higher power; we take advantage whenever the opportunity is presented to us.”

“So, what is a fissure, and when and where do they open?”

“About a hundred years ago, during the first conflict, there was a Meluvian scientist by the name of Genda who found a large crystal on a dead planet near the third meridian. The crystal was a curious thing, as it produced a tiny ripple within its vicinity. And when Genda tried to touch it, he noticed that his hand would go through it. Genda took the crystal to a secret base on Vestalia, and he and a number of other important people would go through that first tear and make contact with the people of the planet on that other plane.”

The old man went back to his chair and sat down, rubbing his bald scalp as he continued his tale of the warp crystal phenomenon.

“That other plane had a world that was ancient, but the people could do miraculous, magical things. Their technology was very different from ours. While the professor could take things into the fissure with him, he noticed that it would only allow small things to be taken out. Carrying a tiny bit of the crystal itself inside the fissure allowed him to warp back to this side just by exposing it to the right amount of light. Don’t ask me to explain much of how this all works.

“That was our first contact with one of the other planes before extreme experimentation and study allowed us to learn of its miraculous properties, giving us faster-than-light travel, spirit jumping, and so much more. To say it in words that you will understand: with the crystals we can jump to galaxies, resurrect ourselves through cloning, and explore other planets throughout the known universe.”

The education on the warp crystals blew Rafian’s mind, and as he listened and thought about it, he understood why the jumpers seemed so cold, distant, and elitist. Knowledge of things so life-changing that they were unable to explain to the standard galaxy would make the common soldier appear as a mere golem to the powers that be and largely insignificant to the bigger picture.

The jumpers had learned how to expand their survivability through cloning and had learned to manipulate powers that were beyond human thought. The biggest eye-opener to Rafian, ever the martial student, was that knowledge gained through missions within a fissure was forever grafted into one’s DNA. Jumpers were not limited to the tiny brain capacity that a standard human being was—that part he didn’t want the details on, as it was all too much to process already. Rafian wondered how Camille was taking all of this and whether there was a white-haired old woman in her padded room running down the crazy powers that she was about to be given.

The tutelage went on for hours, and then he was escorted from the room to a facility that housed a number of men and women who looked wide-eyed and stunned (just as he was) from the “education,” as they called it. The room was all white and had tall walls, as if it were built to house giants or starships. There were tall, cathedral-styled windows that depicted jumpers in various poses, and Rafian could not shake how religious the whole place felt. Light spilled into these windows, illuminating the hall in an ethereal way, and each space between windows was a circular column that had a patchwork of digital lights that danced upon its surface.