Chapter 24: Squadron Leader

I dismissed the final pop-up from my heads up display and finally took stock of where I was.

A man in a suit sat in front of me, clearly the same elf-like species that Lara had been with glowing green eyes and pointed ears. For a moment I was worried that this was the girl's father and he'd come to kill me right away for allowing his daughter to jump over the edge, but I felt as if BB would have said something if we were in that sort of a situation. He also didn't look particularly grief-stricken, just silently angry.

On either side of me sat Akash and Yr'Arl. The two who had been there to collect me at the Guard complex's entry gate. Neither of them had made a move to be aggressive toward me, but if the subtle twitches of Akash's vines were anything to go by, the last Eldrani was feeling on edge.

"Jacob Lyre, Human," The green-eyed man began. "I want you to explain in detail what you were doing in the manna zone with Lara, and how it came to be that she went over the edge."

So I explained.

I explained what I had been doing in the mega building to begin with, how I had just wanted to explore the Guard world because I had never experienced anything like it before. I explained how I got lost down the alleyways and stumbled across an underground fighting ring. How I saw Lara there already, battling against the Invader that had clearly been smuggled onto the world.

The man steepled his fingers and rested his chin on the tips.

"Lara was a much-loved member of the Guard," he said. "But she had always been a bit of a wild card, something I had tried to make her father see time and time again, but I never quite seemed to get the point across. While every instinct in my body is telling me not to trust you, for some reason I do."

Akash shifted at that, as if he couldn't believe the words that were coming out of the man's mouth.

"Squadron Leader Belana, you can't be serious!" He complained, his voice crackling and crunching like brown leaves underfoot during autumn.

"As the last of the Eldrani I can understand your protests, Akash," Belana said, "But you have to understand my position here. If there is a smuggling ring operating on this world, able to get Null Space Invaders of all things past every barrier we have against their kind, with the intent to just use them as fodder in a fighting ring… it needs to be investigated properly, or the whole thing will crumble down around us."

Akash didn't say anything to that, but his vines had curled up into a rough approximation of a fist. He was mad. Really mad.

"So… what's going to happen to me?" I asked.

"The three of you will not be taking part in the Battle Royale tomorrow, instead you will be joining my Squadron on a provisional basis," He rattled off, all trace of sympathy wiped from his face. "You three are all going to be investigating this so-called underground fighting ring, it will be a top priority."

"I refuse to work alongside a human," Akash seethed, "especially this insolent murderer."

"Murderer?" I shot back, "Didn't you listen to what I said at all?"

"What you said matters little, it is your nature."

There were a few moments of deadly still silence after Akash's outburst.

"I don't know what happened on your world, Akash," I said slowly. "I don't know how you came to be on this planet as a Guard Initiate, only that it was something truly horrible. But you have to understand, I am more than my species. I never even grew up among those humans, I was part of a… separate colony. One devoted to peace."

It was a lie, yes, but there was an element of truth in it. I had grown up with a separate group of humans on a very different world, it was just a universal gap instead of light-years.

"I understand nothing," Akash replied before standing and storming from the room.

Squadron Leader Belana sighed, "I am impressed that you do not rise to his baiting any more than you do."

"If I did, I'd show that I was no better than any of the humans that destroyed his world, and I want to be better than that."

"Well said," Belana agreed. "I will send a few senior members of my squadron to meet you at the gates tomorrow morning, the investigation will begin then. You are both dismissed."

Yr'Arl and I rose, and left the room together.

"I have chosen to place my faith in you, Jacob Lyre," Yr'Arl said as the door swung shut behind us.

It was a statement that I hadn't been expecting at all, and I was unable to keep the hot flush that rose to my cheeks down.

"Your faith?" I asked, "Is that just the way your species says you're looking forward to being friends?"

The cat-alien hummed in a way that sounded almost like a purr.

"Friendship is close to what I mean, but also not," He explained as we came to the elevator that would take us back up to the dorm floor. "I have chosen to put my faith in you, and so I shall follow you where you go and help you to attain the goals that you wish to attain."

We stepped into the elevator, and I didn't really know what to say. As we came to a stop at our floor the only thing I could think of saying was, "Why me?"

He made that pondering purr again and tapped a clawed finger on his chin.

"You are a human with incredible manna, which is unusual. You say that you come from a commune of peaceful humans, such a place has never been rumoured to exist before. You helped Lara defeat a Null Space Invader only shortly after proving your inexperience to me in a spar," The alien listed. "Suffice it to say, Jacob Lyre, you are an anomaly among the humans, and so I want to craft you into our weapon against them."

That was blunt and to the point, but I was beginning to learn that seemed to be the sort of person Yr'Arl was.

"In that case, Yr'Arl, I would be more than happy to call you a friend," I said, and stretched out my hand for him to shake.

Only for the alien to look at it in confusion.

And then slap it, like a sideways high five.

Yr'Arl turned on his heel and had already walked off, leaving me staring at my hand like some kind of idiot.

<Well, you are some kind of idiot, so there's nothing new there,> BB chimed in.

Well, at least BB was back to being his old cocky self, I had almost begun to miss the AI's cheap wit and humour deriding anything I do or say.

<Well, not quite everything you do or say, but it's not my fault if you're some kind of idiot most of the time!>

I shook my head and walked into my dorm room, within two sentences I was already wishing for the relative silence of my own head to come back.

<Oh come on, you don't mean that, especially not with what I've got to tell you.>

I sat down on my bed, I didn't think I could take any more bombshells today. Not after being immediately drafted into a squadron, not after losing someone who was fast becoming a friend. What else could there possibly be?

<Well, I wasn't just silent during that meeting for no reason you know,> BB said, <I had been going over our memories of the fight with the Null Space Invader, and I think I found something. Something impossible.>

I lay down, from his excitement I could already tell where he was going with this line of thought.

<Lara, I don't think she's dead!>

How could she not be dead. I saw her launch herself off of the broken bridge, straight down into the roiling maelstrom of the ocean below. The second she touched the water she would have been washed away and ripped apart by the tidal forces. There was no way that anyone could survive that, no matter how powerful they were.

<Unless she never jumped off the bridge in the first place. Not if it was a manna construct, animated to look just like her.>

It didn't make any sense as far as theories went. Even if it had been a manna construct, wouldn't the Null Space Invader just have absorbed the manna it was made from? Wasn't that the whole point of their species?

I wasn't going to get my hopes up, even if BB already had. I was just going to go to bed. I wasn't going to listen to the AI's ramblings about how even Null Space Invaders take time to devour the manna that gets sent their way. How she had been building up power for enough time to have surpassed its limits.

I didn't want to have those hopes crushed.

And yet, despite my protests, my hopes rose anyway.

If she was alive, we would find her.