Chapter Two

George slept only a short time before the questions burning in the back of his mind woke him up. He turned the lamp back on and picked up the dish he had put on the table beside him. He stared at the leaf, examining the color and the veins, remembering the last time that he had seen something like this. It had surprised him then, but he hadn't said anything about it. There was too much else going on for him to mention the type of leaf that was chosen to be in a bracelet. While it had been intriguing to him then, it had seemed inconsequential and he hadn't wanted to distract anyone or take up any of the time and energy that they needed to be devoting to what was really happening in order to explore his scientific curiosity.

Now it seemed that it could possibly mean so much more. There was no way he could have known it then, but now that he was seeing the leaf in his hand, things seemed to be gradually piecing together, though there were still huge gaps that would need to be filled. For now, he would start with the leaf.

Climbing out of the bed, he dressed and walked out of the room. He intended to go back to the infirmary to examine the man further, though he didn't know for sure what he was hoping he would find or what it might tell him. On his way, however, he heard a voice in one of the smaller rooms. His steps slowed, and he listened again, trying to discern from which room the voice was coming. It was a woman's voice, the tone low and soft as she seemed to be trying to quiet someone. It sounded familiar and he knew that it was Ivy. He followed the sound until it brought him into the lounge and he hesitated, watching her as she paced a short path back and forth in front of a window. The shields were down, preventing her from being able to look out, but he could only imagine that she was envisioning what was beyond.

"Ivy?" he finally said.

She turned and looked at him. George's eyes lowered to the bundle in his arms and he smiled. He would never have imagined Ivy as a mother. His young assistant was vibrant and energetic, driven and focused, but all that energy and drive went into her work. She had never seemed interested in anything beyond a life that was devoted fully to science and any time she discussed what her future may hold for her, it was only her hopes of having her own laboratory or making the discoveries that would change the world. Never had she mentioned she might one day like to find someone to settle down with or to have a child. She had never expressed any interest in having a life that would bring her thoughts or energies even the smallest distance from the problems and questions that plagued her, but that she truly believed she would be able to solve with discoveries and connections they constantly sought. It was like the world, life, all of existence was a puzzle and she was forever looking for the pieces that were going to bring it together. That was her contribution. That was what she was going to give to the world.

Now that had changed. Though the passion for science was still obvious in her, when she went to Uoria she made what was likely the most valuable and meaningful of all the discoveries she had ever made. And that was herself. She found out who she really was when she got onto the planet and had to make the decision of whether she would combine forces with George and the rest of the women in the Denynso compound to help the men release those later discovered to be the Nyx 23 crew. She learned even more when she agreed to travel across the planet and then found Maxim. In Maxim, she uncovered realities about herself and about the life she had never known and that she would never have found if she had stayed in the laboratories on Earth. Now she cradled their child in her arms, a child who was more precious and more impactful than they could have ever imagined. This child, who had been given such a meaningful and beautiful name by her grandfather, was a brand-new species, a brand-new race, the ruler of a planet that had been given up as ravaged and worthless but could now be cleansed and redeemed from its brutal past.

"She was having trouble sleeping," Ivy explained.

She looked so natural holding Dove in her arms, gazing down into her tiny face. Her daughter was less than a day old and had already made so much of a difference. She had already changed everything.

"Is she alright now?" George asked, stepping further into the room.

Ivy nodded.

"She's fine."

"Maybe she's just eager to see her planet," George said with a smile.

Ivy looked as though she was trying to smile as well, but there was worry in her eyes that even her tremendous joy and pride couldn't cover.

"Do you really think that she is going to be safe?" she asked.

"I really do. I think her birth is a turning point. This planet doesn't represent what it used to."

"That's the thing. Everyone is saying Penthos belongs to her now and that she is the ruler of it. But Ryan is still absolutely in control. The planet is crawling with his hybrids. We don't even know how many are here. And you know that he's watching. Somehow, he knows everything that's happening. He has slaughtered countless people and has made absolutely no hesitation in stating it is his intention to take over the galaxy first and the entirety of the Universe next. He has no problem destroying entire species and obliterating what is in his way. The birth of one little baby girl isn't going to change that, even if it did happen on a previously unclaimed planet."

"But that's it, Ivy. It was previously unclaimed. It belonged to no one and to nothing. Do you think it was an accident that Ryan chose to come back to this planet to continue the efforts that his ancestors began? Penthos was taken over long ago to be used for the prison colony by the Valdicians. We know that. But they never claimed it for themselves. They never said that it belonged to them. Then when it was supposedly liberated by the military, Earth didn't claim it, either. Then Ryan chose to return here to work on his experiments and train them for battle. This ground is to be used for war, but it belonged to no one. Until now."

"I don't understand."

"The Universe is bigger and more complex than any of us can imagine. We looked at it in such a closed, miniscule way when we were on Earth in that laboratory. We thought that we knew about the planets and even the rims of wild space. But we were so incredibly wrong. We've learned there is so much more. Think about Jem. Think about how he disappeared and then came back. He traveled. He went somewhere that we don't know. That means that there's far more that is yet to be understood. Thinking about someone who is trying to drag all of that under his own control is unfathomable. So, we break things down. We think of each of the species. We think of the threats he has made to Uoria. But we still planned for war somewhere technically neutral. Though he had his grips on it first and was able to establish troops on it, it is still not his. It doesn't belong to him. But it does belong to her. We are fighting for the safety and preservation of all existence and we aren't fighting on unclaimed ground anymore. Ryan and every one of his hybrids is an invader They are on ground that belongs to Dove and to the future that she is going to make."

"He'll want her," Ivy said.

"Of course, he will," George told her. "But he can't have her. We will defend her just as we are defending Maxim and Kyven. He can't have them, and he can't destroy them. We'll take him down first."

"How? We're so fractured. We're so spread out. There so many still on Uoria and even more on Earth. We don't know what they're doing or why. How are we possibly going to come together to fix this?"

"Because we maybe already have."

Ivy's expression became confused and she shook her head slightly.

"What do you mean?"

"I found something on the body that Rilex and Severine brought up from the tunnels. It looked so familiar and then it struck me. I'm not completely sure what it means, but it's enough to tell me that we are closer than we thought."

"What was it?"

George withdrew the dish from his pocket and offered it to Ivy. She balanced the baby in one arm and took the dish, bringing it closer so that she could look at it in the light that she had kept dim as to not disturb her sleeping child.

"Do you recognize it?" George asked.

Ivy narrowed her eyes and seemed to lean a little closer.

"I'm not sure," she said. "I feel like it looks familiar, but I can't put my finger on it."

"Can you come to the infirmary with me?"

Ivy nodded and handed the dish with the leaf back to George.

"Let me bring her back into the pod with Maxim so she can sleep. I'll meet you there."

George nodded. and they went separate directions down the hallway. He headed back toward the infirmary where the body was still spread out across the table. He placed the dish on another of the tables and walked back to the body, turning the vibrant overhead light on and pulling it down closer to the body so that he could focus his attention on each small section of the bones. The tips of his fingers were running along the bones, feeling each detail and his mind chronicling feelings of past injuries that might have affected the man.

"Anything interesting?"

George looked over his shoulder and saw Ivy coming into the infirmary. She had changed out of the nightgown she had been wearing and her thick blond hair was coiled up on the top of her head much as she would often wear it in the lab on Earth. She looked like she was trying to put herself back in her element, to bring herself back into the role that was so familiar to her, almost as if she needed to completely separate herself from the changes that had come over her since she arrived on Uoria so she could focus again, so she could step back into being his assistant.

"This man went through a lot," George said. "He didn't have an easy life."

"There are injuries?"

"More than I can count. They are layered on top of each other so much that it seems he found himself in pretty brutal circumstances over the course of many years. He must have seen some horrible things."

"But why? Was he a soldier?"

"The clothing he's wearing doesn't look a uniform. At least, what's left of it doesn't look like it was a uniform. Besides, there don't appear to be any of the types of injuries that are consistent with warfare, except very specific circumstances of hand-to-hand combat. This looks more like injuries from accidents like falls. And torture."

"Torture?" Ivy asked, her voice low.

George nodded.

"It looks like he went through incredible violence."

"Is that why he ended up down in the tunnels? He was killed and thrown down there?"

"I don't think so. According to Rilex and Severine, he wasn't just lying there. He didn't look like he had been thrown or anything. He was on his stomach clutching a book. That doesn't seem like something a person would be doing if they had been killed and tossed down into tunnels to be forgotten."

"Then why was he down there?"

"I'm still not sure. I haven't been able to find a specific cause of death. But I found that leaf clinging to him and it reminded me of something."

"What?"

"Do you remember when we were first researching the Denynso and we read that account about the war that they were involved in thousands of years ago?"

"The war that they were called in to be a part of just a few years after the clan had divided?"

"Yes."

"I thought we discredited that happening because it was only that one account and it contradicted itself. The timing of when it supposedly happened changes in the middle of the account and it mentions a planet that was never found."

"But what if it doesn't actually contradict itself?"

"But it doesn't make sense. There are two different timelines and it says that the planet exists inside a constellation."

"If there's one thing that we've learned since leaving Earth for Uoria it is that things aren't always what they seem. There are two timelines in the account, but what if both of them are accurate? You heard Rilex and Jem talking about how he was able to survive his disappearance because he ended traveling through a portal and into a different stream. What if that's what happened during that war? It happened in two different times and on two different planets because it actually happened in two different streams?"

"What does that have to do with a leaf that you found on the body?"

"Think about the papers that were with the account. One of them had sketches of the plants from the planet where the war originated. One looked exactly like that leaf."

"You think that this body is a person from a planet that was supposed to have been destroyed in a war?" Ivy asked, sounding incredulous.

George shook his head.

"Not destroyed. Abandoned. Evacuated. Remember? It said that before the main fighting of the war that the inhabitants of the planet were gathered up and removed. An entire species was taken from the planet and put on another one to keep it protected during the war and after. There is no record of where that other planet was or whatever might have happened to the people who were put there. But there also isn't any indication that after the war the original planet didn't just continue on, empty."

"Penthos?" Ivy asked.

"No. Not Penthos. Nothing so close."

"Do you think that you know where that planet might be?"

"I don't, but I think that we might know a few people who could. The first time that I talked to Jem I noticed that he was wearing a bracelet. He said that Angela made it for him as a Christmas gift when they were still in the stream where he went after disappearing from Uoria, before he connected with Rilex and came back here. He said that she made it out of grasses and leaves from that planet." George walked over to the table and picked up the dish. "Some of those leaves looked exactly like this."

Ivy's eyes snapped up to George and widened.

"I think that we need to talk to Jem."

George nodded.

"And Rilex."