Chapter One

“Aubrey.”

It sounded almost as though Ellora were tasting the name on her lips, trying it out and letting it float through her thoughts to evaluate it. Ivy nodded, looking at the name again. She wished that it meant something to her, that it would spark something in her mind and help her to better understand what might be happening.

“It doesn’t sound familiar,” she finally admitted. “I don’t know anyone named Aubrey.”

“You said that this file is from a long time ago, though. You wouldn’t know her.”

“That’s true. But it doesn’t sound familiar at all. I can’t think of anyone in any of the programs or records who was significant with the name Aubrey. None of the buildings of the University were named after her. She wasn’t on any of the crews for the important missions.”

“Like Nyx 23.”

Ivy nodded.

“All of the significant space missions are extensively recorded. They are taught in schools, especially to people who are going into the same types of fields as the discoveries that were made on those missions. We read crew lists and learn about the achievements of each of those people. I don’t remember anyone in any of the missions that would have occurred during her time with this name.”

“Then why did someone save it?” Ellora asked. “Why was it preserved and hidden in the wall of my husband’s war room?”

She was getting angry, Ivy could hear it in the older woman’s voice, but she could also hear another emotion, a hint of something that was even more difficult for Ivy to accept. There was sadness and doubt in her voice, strain that stemmed from all of the questions and emptiness that had existed within her for so many years. Ivy wanted to do anything that she could to reassure her, to comfort her and help her to feel confident that there was nothing more to the presence of this strange piece of glass in the wall than another piece of the war, another element of the complex, tangled web that they were clawing through.

“There’s a reason, Ellora,” Ivy said. “There is, and we’re going to find it. I can’t tell you right now what it means or why it’s here, but I can assure you that we will eventually understand. This is all part of something that Aegeus knew, something that he had figured out and was trying to resolve to protect Uoria and all of the Universe. We have to just trust him. I know that that’s hard. Harder than I can even imagine, I would guess, but it’s all that we can do right now. We have to trust him and strive to follow his lead in any way that we can to help him finish what he started so long ago.”

Some of the darkness seemed to dissipate from Ellora’s eyes and she nodded, looking back at the page.

“What else can you tell me about this woman from this page?” she asked.

Ivy let out a breath, hoping to focus herself. Her mind was starting to feel cloudy and she couldn’t understand why. It was as if a fog was settling in, muting everything that was going through it and making it difficult for her to process through anything. Shaking her head slightly, she lifted the piece of glass closer to her face so that she could carefully look at every word that was on it.

“I’m not completely familiar with all of the abbreviations and codes that are used in these files. There are some that look like ones that are still used, but there are some that I don’t understand. These,” she said, pointing to a few of the notations on the page, “are her vital signs. Her height. Her weight. Her blood pressure. There isn’t anything remarkable about them. She’s not a very big person, but not tiny either. Her blood pressure is a little bit elevated, but nothing that I would say is alarming. There’s a note here that says that her signs are consistent with previous visits.”

“So, she went to the doctor before,” Ellora said.

Ivy nodded.

“With a note like that, I would think that that means that her previous visits were relatively close to this one.”

“Why would she visit the doctor so frequently, especially if there isn’t anything seriously wrong with her?”

Ivy shook her head.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make much sense. There are no notes about any type of chronic condition that she had or any tests that she might have undergone that would justify her going back to the doctor to get results or anything.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that there is absolutely nothing on this piece of glass that gives any indication that this woman is important in any way.”

Ivy let out a long sigh.

“I wish that there was something more that I could tell you. I just don’t see any reason at all why this particular woman would be important or why Aegeus would think it was important to hang on to a page from her patient file.”

“I don’t even understand how he would get it. This is from Earth. It came from well after the first waves of humans were stopped from visiting the Denynso and a few years after the Nyx 23 crew disappeared. There wouldn’t be any way for it to get here other than one of the human women who came here carrying it with them.”

“No,” Ellora said. “That can’t be.”

“Why?”

“The human women who came here only went to the Denynso compound. All of you traveled with the Denynso when they left to cross the planet. You are the first human I’ve ever encountered, and you didn’t know anything about the war room. That section of the wall hasn’t been disturbed in some time. That has been here since Aegeus was still here, which means that somehow he was able to get something from Earth.”

Ivy felt like there were links missing in the chain of events and their understanding of all that was happening. It was as if they kept learning more, but with everything that they learned, they realized countless other elements that they didn’t understand. It just all seemed like so much, like too much, to make sense. She looked at Ellora pointedly, wanting the older woman to see her eyes and recognize the sincerity and seriousness there.

“Are you absolutely certain that there is nothing else that you know about any of this that might make sense?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ellora told her. “Everything that I know, you know.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ivy, I’m sure,” Ellora said firmly. “I know that before I was holding things back from you thinking that that was the right thing to do and that I was protecting you, but I’m not doing that anymore. I know that you deserve to know everything that’s going on, and your connection with Maxim means that you are a very important part of this. You have to trust me that I have now told you everything that I know and that I’m not going to hold anything else from you.”

“I just don’t understand how you could be married to Aegeus, spend every day with him, and yet somehow miss so much. How could you not know about a war room that was built right in your own home and that he was filling it with weapons? How could you not know that he had the connections with the other species that he had, and that he was working with them to create such a complex plan? How did he not say something to you, anything, that might tell you that he was up to something and that you would go through everything that you did?”

As soon as the deluge of words came out of her mouth, Ivy wished that she had held them back, that she had thought them through not in terms of her own thoughts and what she wanted to know, but how they would impact Ellora. She hadn’t meant to hurt her. She knew that this was already an extremely difficult situation for Maxim’s mother and the last thing that Ivy wanted to do was make it any more challenging for her.

“I wish that there was something that I had known. I wish that I had noticed something or that I had figured something out. If I had, maybe I could have stopped him from doing whatever it is that he did that took him away from me. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost my husband for so many years. And even if I hadn’t been able to think of a way that I could have stopped him, even if he had insisted that this was the only way, that there was nothing else that would protect the Universe, at least I would have been able to prepare myself for what was coming. I could have prepared myself for the time that I was going to have to be alone and I would have been able to know in my heart that my husband was still alive. But I didn’t. You are just coming into this now. You have only known that the Mikana existed for…what...months? As much as you think that you know about the Order, you know nothing. You have barely glimpsed the surface of something that goes so far, so deep, only a lifetime of exposure to it can really give you the understanding that we have.”

Ivy felt stung and her body tensed as if it was now trying to block Ellora out, to stop her words from reaching her.

“Are you saying that because I wasn’t born here I’m not worth anything? That I can’t do anything or that I shouldn’t be a part of any of this?”

“No,” Ellora said. “That’s not what I mean. Of course, you are worth something, and no matter what anyone thinks, you are an inextricable part of this. All of it. But that doesn’t mean that you really understand all of it or that it will ever mean to you what it means to all of us. And it doesn’t mean that you can look at me with judgment because you think that I should have somehow known what was going on. The Order controls the movements of those in it more than you could imagine. What Aegeus was doing was unimaginably dangerous. He lived in secrecy, even from us, and what little he did tell us was more than the Order would have allowed him to. I only knew what he wanted me to know, and that was by intention. I trusted my husband. I honored and respected him. I knew that his role in the Order was something that was bestowed upon him, not something that he chose, and that I couldn’t force myself into a world in which I didn’t belong. I never would have pried into anything that he didn’t invite me into because I was always aware that it would not only risk his life, but my life and the lives of our children.

So no, I didn’t know what he was going through. I didn’t know what he knew or what he was planning. I didn’t know about the war room or the weapons that he was storing there. He never said anything to me about what he was facing or what was ahead of all of us. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t paying attention or that there was something wrong with our marriage. It means that we trusted each other to a degree far beyond the tenuous grasp of needing to know every breath that the other took when we knew that it was for the greater good. I might wish that it wasn’t that way, but deep in my heart, I know that I did what I was supposed to do, what I needed to do.”

Ivy felt like her chest was crushing. It wasn’t just that she had hurt Ellora. Now she felt as though she were questioning the strength and validity of not just the other woman’s marriage to Aegeus, but also her relationship with Maxim.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Ellora looked away without answering and they sat in silence for a few moments before she turned back to Ivy.

“If Aegeus hid this it means that he not only knew that it had some sort of significance, but also that it could be detrimental if it fell into the wrong hands. There has to be something in this information that we aren’t seeing. There is something here that he knew had to do with all of this. Something in here, something about her or about the medical center, something was so important that he not only felt like he needed to save this page from the file, but also that he needed to wrap it up and hide it in his war room so that no one could access it. That means that there was someone who was looking for it. Who?”

“I don’t know,” Ivy said. Suddenly something that Ellora said seemed to sink further into her mind. “This page,” she said, pointing at it. “That’s what you said. This page.”

“Yes,” Ellora said, her voice holding a hint of confusion.

“Where’s the rest of the file? This page was broken out of the file. It’s not meant to be separated from the rest, that’s why the edge is sharp like it is. These pages are meant to remain within the file so that the entire thing can be kept together and reviewed. This page was snapped from the file.”

“There’s no way to remove the pages that are in the file if someone needs just that one piece of information?” Ellora asked.

“I don’t think so, and even if there was, whoever took this page from Aubrey’s file didn’t do that. They broke it out. They must have been in a rush and needed to get it out and get it hidden as fast as possible.”

“I think that we need to see if there is anything else that might be hidden in the war room. If Aegeus was guarding this, then he might be guarding something else.”

Ivy nodded. Her mind was still swirling, the words seeming to slow as they came toward her, but she was struggling to stay connected, to stay engaged with the conversation and hear everything that Ellora was saying to her. She didn’t feel right. There was something happening with her, but she didn’t know what it was and in that moment, she couldn’t let it stop her from focusing on what she had found and what she and Ellora were starting to unravel. She agreed with Ellora. They needed to go back to the war room and find out if there was anything else that Aegeus had kept so closely guarded before he disappeared.