Salient Secret 2

42

Palmer

"What do you mean they took her?!" Rowan and Skye just returned, and as you can see, he is not taking the news well.

"Which parts confusing you?" I condescendingly ask. 

"No no no, you don't understand, if Vada does what they want her to do then it's over for all of us," Skye anxiously says. 

"What is she talking about?" Kai asks Rowan. 

"One of our friends, he knows a lot about Salutis and Electus," he starts. "Cynthia is the founder of Electus, maker of the seven pillars therefore the soul creator of imperium, Aurelia sacrificed herself to save humanity-"

"Why? What could be so bad?" I ask. 

"Aurelia helped Cynthia create a version of imperium that will make you immortal," he explains. "When Aurelia died, she made sure Idris buried her and the serum somewhere Cynthia will never get it."

"But Idris is on Cynthia's side," I say. 

"No he isn't. In Cynthia's desperate attempt to recreate the immortality serum, she ended up becoming the wrong kind of immortal. She can transfer and duplicate her consciousness into other people, those people die and she takes over, the body she's in can live forever but it's not indestructible. It just means that the body won't age or deteriorate but it can die by the same things any other human can. She took over the seven because they sided with Aurelia," he continues. 

"So what happened to her original body?" Kai asks. 

"She had to abandon her body in order to activate her powers she probably still has it, she'll need it for the joining ritual," Rowan answers. 

"What about Tasia? She's Taniths cousin, not a pillar," I say. 

"Tasia was never Taniths cousin, it was just Cynthia's way of blending in," he explains. 

"Why hasn't Cynthia done this already? Why now?" Kai questions. 

"Only Cynthia can answer that," he responds."My guess is, she was looking for something that she couldn't find until now."

"Or she was waiting for someone," I suggest."Maybe Av- Vada."

"No, Dane was like Vada, so was Dane's father," Skye explains and I hold back the urge to ask her how she knows about Dane's family. 

"Please tell me you guys found her," I say to Tanith, Cassian and Enzo who just appeared, returning from their search in all the realms. 

"We asked around in every realm, no one has seen them," Enzo hopelessly responds. 

"Where's Rik and Mel?" Cassian asks after looking around the room and not seeing his friends. 

"They haven't returned from their space expedition and they went phone silent," I reply. 

"I'm going to find them and make sure they're not in any trouble," Cassian says and then starts walking out of the room. 

"I'll come with you, if I stay here any longer my head is going to explode," Kai says and all of us share the same taken aback look. 

"Ummm, sure," Cassian says and teleports away with Kai. 

"What did we miss?" Enzo asks and Rowan starts explaining everything to them. 

*****

Kai

"I'd be lying if I said you volunteering to come with me wasn't a surprise," Cassian says while we walk towards RKA headquarters, aka the Russian equivalent of NASA, their inhibitors said they were here, so here we are. 

"I needed to do something other than sit in that house driving myself mad with all the scenarios that kept replaying in my head of what could be happening to her," I respond.

He stops, turns around and puts his hand on my shoulder, "She'll be okay."

"Let's just find Imelda and Rik," I say not wanting to be comforted right now. 

Thanks to this cool suit Cassian made for me, we can easily look for Rik and Imelda by walking through walls. The only battle is staying hidden. 

"They should be in this room," he says pointing to a room marked '48'. We walk through the wall and see Imelda hovering over Rik and crying. 

"What happened?" Cassian asks while rushing towards the two. 

"We walked into this room and a Idris appeared and stabbed Rik, the only person who can heal him isn't around and he has lost a lot of blood so..." she says while sobbing as if I'm not the back up healer. I shift into Vada and bend down to heal him, I feel my energy entering him, it's working. A minute later he opens his eyes and Imelda wraps her arms around him. 

"I completely forgot about your powers," Imelda says looking up at me and smiling. "Thank you."

"Why did Idris do that?" I ask. 

"More importantly, did you find anything?" Cassian asks. 

"Yes and no," Rik replies. 

"We think it's the reason why Idris stabbed him," Imelda says. "Come with me."

We follow her to another room above us, when we walk inside, there's a glass room inside the room. 

"I don't understand," Cassian says on behalf of both of us. 

"Just watch," she says and then presses a button among many and a black hole starts forming in the glass room. 

"How does a black hole help us?" Cassian asks. 

"It's not just a black hole," Rik says walking into the glass room and then stepping into it. 

"Rik!" Cassian shouts and Imelda follows him. 

"Come on you guys," she says right before stepping into it. 

Cassian and I hesitantly follow in, I'm silently praying that this isn't a one way trip. When I feel my feet touching the ground I feel the warm sun hitting my face, the grass is glowing, the sky is clear and blue, the birds are chirping, there are flowers everywhere but no bees, that's strange. 

"Where are we?" I ask while looking around. 

Imelda replies with a glee filled smile on her face, "We're in Electus."