Jem felt strange walking through the jungle again. At once it felt welcomingly familiar and oddly distant, as if when he left it, he took away all memory of himself. He could feel George and Zsilvia staring at him, watching him expectantly as if they thought that just being back here would instantly give him some sort of insight. The truth was that he knew nothing more now than he had when they left the museum. Cassiopeia looked the same that it had when he and Angela left in the morning of Christmas, wanting to return to Uoria and to his kind. Knowing that there had been someone else here before him didn't change the way that he saw it, but there was a slight hint of suspicion in the back of his mind, as if he was waiting for something to happen with every step that he took.

They walked in silence, each looking around themselves independently, lost in their own thoughts. Their journey stretched on deep into the night and when they woke in the morning, they continued on again. Jem struggled with the time that was passing, making him feel as though they had abandoned the group on Penthos. Rilex did his best to reassure him, to tell him that they would return as soon as they could, but that they had to take as much time as they needed to understand the body that lay in the tunnels. If they could understand the piece that he represented, they would be closer to solving the puzzle in front of them. They were just one part of this. One element of something so much larger, and it was their responsibility to ensure that they fulfilled this responsibility to the best of their abilities. If they failed, it could cause everyone else to fail in their wake.

On the third day, Jem could see that Angela was starting to lose hope. She looked exhausted and frustrated, her eyes always sparkling with a fine sheen of tears. Finally, he heard a sound in the distance. He stopped and looked at the rest of the group. They seemed to have noticed it as well, each stopped in their tracks and looking around them curiously. There was a hint of fear in George's eyes and he had his hand rested on the weapon at his hip. The sound got louder, and Jem realized that it was footsteps breaking through the undergrowth of the jungle.

"Hello?" Rilex suddenly shouted out. "Who's there?"

The footsteps stopped and then started again an instant later, coming toward them more quickly.

"Hello?" a voice returned.

"Who's there?" Rilex demanded.

Jem saw movement in the trees ahead and then saw Mhavrych and an Eteri woman emerge.

"Rilex!" Mhavrych gasped.

"Mhavrych? What are you doing here?"

They got closer to one another and Jem noticed a star stone around the woman's neck.

"The body that was found in the tunnels," Rilex said. "It had leaves on it from Cassiopeia."

"Leaves?"

"Yes. That man was here, but he had been on Penthos for at least 100 years. We came here to see if we could figure out why he was here. What are you doing here?"

They listened as Mhavrych hastily explained what was happening with him and Kendra, and their search for the final stone.

"What brought you here?"

"Valdin must have had a suspicion that something was going to happen to his stone. He took a second one after the war and brought it with him. We traced it and we think that he buried it here years later."

"He couldn't have. He didn't have access to Cassiopeia any longer."

"That was the intention, but he must have found a way. There was nothing left here, and he knew that the stone would be safe. It would be up to him what streams were destroyed, and he chose for this one to remain because it was holding the stone."

"Where was it buried?"

"It should be close around here," Mhavrych said. "This should be near the remnants of the old village. We believe that he buried it in the old well."

They started further into the jungle and Kendra suddenly reached out and grabbed onto Mhavrych's arm.

"We can't waste any time, Mhavrych. We need to keep going," she said. "This stone shouldn't be here. You said that it is too dangerous until all the pieces are together. This stone needs to be protected."

"What does she mean?"

"The stone that she has is a critical piece of sealing the temple wall. We needed to get back to Uoria, but we couldn't find the direct route from where we found the stone."

"Where did you find it?"

He felt Kendra tighten her grip on his hand.

"Don't say it," she said. "You never know who might be listening. Remember what you heard on Uoria. The rocks have a way of talking to you. You never did find out what that meant, but don't let that distract you from the words. The rocks have a way of talking to you. Maybe they have a way of listening, too. If they were listening, if they were to find out what we had done…"

Kendra's voice faded and Mhavrych nodded.

"She's right," he said. "It's not that we don't trust you, but we have to be cautious. The truth is that the farther we travel and the more that we do, the more risk that we create. I've sensed that there are people following us, but they have always been one step behind. If they were to hear something, they might be able to find us. Or worse, they could go a step ahead and be waiting for us. That's too dangerous. Before we do anything else, we need to make sure that the stone is properly protected."

"How?" George asked. "How do you protect it?"

Mhavrych tightened his hand around Kendra's not wanting to let her go. He knew what this meant. He was going to have to be without her again. It was something that he had long known that he was eventually going to have to do, but he had managed to keep it hidden away in the back of his mind where he didn't have to think about it, and where he could pretend that it didn't exist. That was what kept him going. That was what made it possible for him to continue on with the work that he was doing. If he thought about the fact that he was going to have to let Kendra go and leave her behind, even for a short time, he might not have kept going. He might not have been able to keep fulfilling the steps that he needed to take because he knew that each of those steps would mean that he was getting just a little closer each time to her not being there with him.

In order for it to happen, however, he had to trust that he would find her again. He had to trust that by doing what he knew that he needed to do to protect the fragile Universe and make it strong again he would be putting Kendra and the love that he had found with her in danger.

Giving a sigh of resolve, Mhavrych looked squarely at Rilex. He wanted this man, the only one who could truly understand what he knew, what he felt, and what he needed to do, to see the expression in his eyes and to know the seriousness and intensity with which he spoke.

"Rilex, I am trusting you to find the stone. Bring it to me in the Nyx 23 settlement the day that they were released. You will find a way to get there. George, you return to Penthos with the others. You can't be near the settlement because you will still be interacting with it from the Denynso compound."

"What are you going to do?" Rilex asked.

"I'm going to protect the stone. But first, I need an arrow."

********

"Are you sure you're comfortable?" Mhavrych asked.

"I'm alright," Kendra said. "Hurry."

Mhavrych reached into the bag at his hip and withdrew the arrow that he had tucked there. They had taken it from a battlefield, knowing what it contained.

"I hate to do this to you," he said.

"I will be fine," she said. "Come back for me. I will see you when we are together again."

Mhavrych leaned down and touched a kiss to her lips, taking a moment to breathe in her scent. He gave her a moment to settle into place, resting the stone on her chest. Her eyes closed, and he pulled the blanket up over her. It wouldn't be long, he had to tell himself. She wouldn't be here long. Taking the arrow tightly in his hand, he pulled it back and thrust it into her wrist. Her body arched, and he wanted to release her, knowing that she was in pain, but he couldn't. He had to hold her in place until all the toxin went into her. This arrow had been dipped into the poison of the Covra, enough that it would temporarily paralyze the one who it had entered. The longer that he held it in her, however, the more effect it could have. Finally, her body relaxed, and he knew that she had been locked. She was as much a prisoner as the rest of those in the settlement.

He stood, preparing to leave, but a thought occurred to him. He looked down at her and then reached for her arm. Taking the tip of the arrow, he lightly scratched the number 13 into her skin, rubbing the scratch with the juice of a berry that he had in his bag until it looked like ink. He rested her hand back to her chest and left, knowing it wouldn't be long until it was time to return for her. He just needed the final stone.

********

"When Etan told you where he came from, what did he tell you?" Aubrey asked.

"I've told you," Frederick said. "He told me that he moved through the portal when researching the HM-1313 excavation site."

"I remember reading about that," she said. "It never made any sense."

"What do you mean?" Frederick asked.

"The team was still in the middle of the excavation. It was supposed to go on for several more weeks and they were planning on doing more digs in other areas of the desert. At the beginning of the excavation the company leading the team talked about all the amazing discoveries that they believed they were going to make in the desert. They bragged about how it would change how everyone saw history and civilization."

"And it did," Jonah said. "You said that finding that piece of the wall verified things that they believed about different civilizations and changed timelines of History."

Aubrey nodded. There was something bothering her. Pieces of the story about the excavation had never made sense to her, but it had never been something that she put a tremendous amount of thought into until now.

"But they stopped,” Aubrey said.

"What do you mean they stopped?" Jonah asked.

"They had all those plans for more of an excavation. They were supposed to dig further and explore more. But they stopped in the middle of the excavation. Conveniently right when those five people suddenly left to do research in other places. The only explanation that was ever given was that those people were specifically chosen to participate in other programs and research opportunities, and that they left the original excavation directly so that they would waste no time on their further research."

"If they were going to stop the excavation, wouldn't it make sense that researchers who had the opportunity to participate in other digs would go ahead and go to the next location?" Ilya asked.

"The question is why they stopped the excavation at all. They were discovering all these amazing things. They were doing exactly what they said that they were going to do. Then suddenly it all stopped, and these people just left. Many of their friends and family members said that it didn't make any sense that they would just leave without saying goodbye. Remember Phaedra and how hard it was for her when Jacob left. She knew that it didn't make sense."

"What was the company that was running that excavation?" Frederick asked.

"That's another thing," Aubrey said." It was an independent research company. They mined the University to find the best in archaeology and history studies and brought them in to participate in the excavation. Whenever they were in the media, though, they were just called The Company."

"That's it?" Frederick said.

Aubrey nodded.

"What other mysterious organization do we know about that was out in the open, but no one really knew what they were doing?"

Aubrey turned and looked at Jonah, whose eyes had widened.

"It was me, Jonah," she said. "All along, it was me."

"What do you mean?" Frederick asked.

"Someone has to give Etan the information from the Valdicians about their plans for Nyx 23. He got it from someone -- someone who would be able to access it without being noticed. It was me."

"Why do you think that?"

"In three weeks, Nyx 23 will leave on their clandestine mission, never to return. There will be a pilot onboard who knows that the mission is meant to bring the ship to Uoria and who is determined to prevent the plan from following through the way it is intended. He will have with him papers taken from a Valdician official detailing the plans and giving a blueprint for the captivity of the crew. Two weeks before that he will get those papers when he goes for his appointment to be medically cleared for the mission."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'll be there. I already was. Jonah and I found my patient file in the preserved medical ward. I will be there for three days in a row -- the same three days that the crew will go in for their tests."

"Where will you get the papers?" Frederick asked.

Aubrey drew in a breath.

"I've heard that the Orion factory is always looking for women to work the machinery."