Chapter 1: Secrets

I need another story, something to get off my chest
My life gets kinda boring, need something that I can confess
'Til all my sleeves are stained red from all the truth that I've said
Come by it honestly I swear

"We've already discussed this issue. The answer is still no." Malachi's steely eyes raked over the motley group of humans, angels, and apes that stood before the Council of Elders. Pete Burke and Alan Virdon exchanged glances, and Burke could tell from the set of Virdon's jaw that he was not going to accept defeat easily. The journey to the site where Kirtland Air Force Base existed in their time was the next logical step in their quest for a way to return home. The faster-than-light engine in their ship, which had carried them a thousand years into Earth's future, had been developed and tested at Kirtland. With the site so close, just twenty or thirty miles southeast through the ruins of the former city of Albuquerque. Virdon wasn't going to be dissuaded.

Before any of them could object, a large, bald man sitting down the table from Malachi cleared his throat. The deep voice that rumbled out of his broad chest carried through the room despite his quiet tone. "Circumstances have changed, Malachi. I think we need to reopen the discussion."

"Fine, Darius," Mal growled, leaning forward on the table so he could see the other man more clearly. "Consider it reopened. What circumstances have changed, exactly? The city ruins they have to go through are still dangerous. Kirtland still could have high levels of radiation from the weapons it housed before the war. What has changed?"

"The Rephaim, for one thing," Darius replied, waving at the gorilla and the chimpanzee who stood with the other petitioners. "Galen says that Misha has agreed to provide guides who know the city ruins well and are experienced in dealing with the dangers there."

Burke couldn't help but wonder how much the secret of the Rephaim may have influenced Malachi's earlier rejection of their request to go to Kirtland. Or whether there were more secrets in the city that Mal didn't want them to discover. He still had difficulty trusting Mal entirely, despite Zeke's reassurances that Mal only had the best intentions.

Zeke spoke up. "And Alan is helping Gabe to build devices to monitor radiation levels. They'll know if it's dangerous without being exposed."

Malachi's eyes narrowed and he leaned his chin into his steepled fingers, regarding the assembled group with a cool gaze for a few moments. "And who else would you propose to take on this fool's errand, Ezekiel?" he finally asked.

Zeke's tawny wings fluttered, the feathers rippling with the movement, as the only outward sign of the way he bristled under his parent's sharp rebuke. "Strictly voluntary. But I was hoping for a builder and tech expert. Jed has already volunteered as a healer, as well as Alan, Pete, Galen, and Misha. And myself."

"Malachi, I've talked with Alan about what it is they hope to find at Kirtland." Darius pushed back his chair and rose, then turned and walked around the table to stand with Zeke and his companions. "I think the expedition has merit beyond what they seek." He paced back and forth in front of the angled bench, to look at every Council member as he continued. "I think that our reluctance to go beyond the boundaries of our own city has blinded us to what is going on in the outside world. Our fear of danger has crippled us, turned us into isolationists with our heads literally buried in the sand. Ignoring the dangers out there isn't going to make them go away… or prevent them from showing up on our doorstep, as recent events have show us.

"If we think that Kirtland still houses materials that could be used as weapons, then I propose that we go and uncover it, before we find ourselves the target of those weapons. We've cowered down here for too long now. It's time we stopped being afraid."

A murmur rippled through the Council chamber.

"Reasonable caution is not fear, Darius," Mal interjected.

"And I agree with you, Malachi, that caution is reasonable. But what caution requires of us is to make careful plans, to provide for as many contingencies as we can. And if we put the support of the Council behind this mission, give them full access to all the resources of the city, then reasonable caution will have been well served." Darius' next words were pitched more quietly, directed at Mal. "I understand your concerns, Malachi. But you are not the only one with something to lose here." He inclined his head slightly toward Jed. "And our children are looking toward the future, not living in the past. Isn't that what we want for them? For us all?"

Mal opened his mouth as if he was about to object to Darius' implication that he was motivated only by concern for his son, then thought better of it. All too recently, he'd come close to losing Zeke. His son's left wing still drooped almost imperceptibly as the joint that was damaged by Urko's bullet continued healing. The wound in his right shoulder, the one that almost killed him, was fully healed. The more delicate structures of the wing would take longer. His lips pressed into a thin line as Mal nodded acknowledgement Darius' point.

"All right." He stood, his gray wings sweeping behind him, and spoke louder to the rest of the audience. "I want to see a detailed plan for this expedition—resources, manpower, contingencies. Once that's been presented to the Council, we can make a well-reasoned decision on its merits. And Ezekiel, include a security detail of four in your plans. You aren't going into possibly hostile territory unarmed. Levi?" He looked past the group to the grizzled man in the back of the chamber who stood at his call. "You'll pick four of your best, but let them know it's a voluntary mission. They can decline—if they know what's good for them."

"Thank you, Malachi," Virdon said.

Malachi shook his head. "We haven't said yes…yet. But you've got a chance to convince us."


Burke raked a hand through his hair, reveling in the feel of its spiky shortness. After a year of pushing longer and longer bangs out of his eyes, the habit was still ingrained. Along with Virdon and Galen, he had spent more than a year of living on the run, surrounded by a society that made medieval Europe look enlightened. A society dominated by apes while humans were just another form of chattel.

The accident that had almost killed him, when the three of them had fallen into an underground station for a high-speed magnetic train, had also led them to Alba. Just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city was an underground wonderland of advanced technology, populated with humans and genetically engineered angels. Virdon saw Alba as a chance to find a way to travel back to Earth's past, to find a way home. Burke saw Alba as a place he could call home.

He put down the pad with the supply list he'd been reviewing and went to the servitor to fetch some coffee. As he raised the mug to his lips, he inhaled deeply. Even after weeks of having any food or drink at his fingertips—well, almost anything—he still appreciated all the things he'd missed over the last year. Coffee. Steak. Hell, meat of any kind. Now if he could just figure out how to convince the device to materialize a bottle of decent Jack Daniels.

Returning to the table while sipping the coffee, he picked up the pad and settled back onto the soft couch. He looked over the list again, wracking his brain to think of any situations they might encounter in the base that would require additional gear. Between the two of them, he'd spent more time at Kirtland. But his familiarity with the layout of the base was a thousand years out of date. He and Virdon were to meet with Levi later in the day to comb through the city's historical records, hoping they could piece together a more complete schematic of where they were headed.

He dropped the pad on the table with a sigh and rubbed his eyes. Maybe Malachi was right; maybe this whole trip was a bad idea. Never mind that it'd been his idea in the first place. In his initial excitement, all he could think about was that Kirtland represented a chance, albeit an astronomically slim one, of finding a way for Virdon to return to his family. He'd never shared Virdon's pipe dream of returning to 1980. From the moment they'd woken in that abandoned bomb shelter after the crash, he'd known that this planet was home from now on.

But whenever Virdon talked about his family, his wife Sally and young son Chris, Burke heard the ache, the desperate need in his friend's voice. For Virdon's sake, he vowed he would try to find a way back.

He gave a quick shake of his head to clear it. Imagining worse case scenarios for this mission was enough to make anyone pessimistic. They were making progress, after all. The flight recorder disk that Virdon had carried around with him all this time finally yielded the data they needed to understand how they'd been thrown a thousand years into Earth's future. More importantly, they also knew how—theoretically, at least—to reverse their journey through time. But theory and practice were two very different animals.

The door chiming pulled him out of his reverie. "Open," he called.

"Pete!" Zeke crossed the room in a few strides and flopped onto the couch next to Burke. Burke held his mug up to keep from spilling coffee on himself as Zeke's wing jostled his arm "Hey, I have something I want to show you. You busy?" The smile he beamed at Burke was practically blinding in its enthusiasm. And infectious.

Burke felt the corners of his mouth tugging upward. "Not particularly. What's up?" He set the mug on the table.

"Oh no, no spoiling the surprise." Zeke stood and held out a hand. "C'mon. You look like you could use some fun."

Eyeing the angel suspiciously, Burke grasped Zeke's hand and let himself be pulled upright. "Lead on."

They left Burke's quarters and headed for the central shaft that connected all the levels of the underground city. The shaft was capped by a giant dome of impenetrable transparent aluminum. At the bottom of the chasm, deep in the earth, were the city's power plant and matter recycler.

Burke almost stepped out onto the platform jutting into the open air, used by angels for take-off and landing as they flew up and down the spacious chasm. Then he remembered that Zeke wasn't going to be flying anywhere for a while yet and turned toward the lift instead. The first time Burke had flow with the angel, Zeke had carried him as he flew to the garden immediately under the dome at the apex of the city. The sensation of flying had been amazing, but Zeke's wing was still weak. He saw Zeke's smile falter and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

The lift arrived and they stepped into the cylinder. Also made mostly of transparent aluminum, the lift provided a panoramic view of the central shaft as it traversed the outer wall. Zeke pressed a button near the top of the bank, and they began to ascend.

"We going up to the dome?" Burke asked, trying to sound casual.

"Not quite. One level below it. You'll see."

Leaning his head against the cool surface, Burke watched the activity in the space around them; angels flying up and down, occasionally carrying packages or even humans. The sight still tripped a tickle deep in his gut.

The lift slid to a smooth stop, and the corridor it opened onto was plain and unrevealing. Zeke led him through the unfamiliar hallways, deeper into the outer ring of the level. When Zeke finally stopped in front of a door and thumbed the control panel, Burke was sure they must be at the very edge of the city. His eyes narrowed as he tried to imagine what could be so interesting this far from the heart of the complex.

When the door opened, the man who greeted them wore a smile that matched Zeke's. "You're finally here! What took you so long?" the younger man blurted out.

"I had meetings, Josh. I got away as soon as I could. Some of us have responsibilities, you know." Zeke chided Josh, then pushed a hand into the center of his chest to move him out of the doorway. Josh's short brown hair was a shade lighter than Zeke's, and he had a slightly smaller build than the angel. But the resemblance was enough to know they were related. Joshua was Zeke's younger brother—technically half-brother—child of Zeke's human parent Levi, and Tirzah, Levi's human mate.

The main feature of the workshop they entered was a large holographic imaging table, where Josh drafted plans for new structures in the city. A few physical models sat on shelves, along with some rolls of thin paper covered in sketches and doodles.

"Well, you didn't tell him, did you?" Josh asked Zeke, then turned to Burke before his brother could answer. "Tell me he didn't tell you."

Burke laughed at Josh's rapid fire questioning. "Tell me what, Josh? He's locked down like Fort Knox. Very mysterious. But if someone doesn't tell me soon what I'm doing here…."

"Okay, okay." Josh held up his hands placatingly. "It'll be worth it, I promise." He turned toward a doorway on the opposite side of the workshop. "This way."

With a last look of mock aggravation, Burke followed Josh through the door. On the other side, the room opened up into an enormous warehouse-like space. A couple of prototype buildings intended to house the Rephaim in the desert surrounding the city dotted the open floor, but Josh led them past the buildings. As they came from behind the last one, Josh turned around and spread his arms.

"Well, what do you think?"

The craft in front of them looked like a cross between a tank and a sled. The heavily armored body was a squat rectangular box, with a slanted nose in the front and a window of what Burke guessed was more transparent aluminum. Instead of wheels or treads, though, it rested on a series of thick, disk-shaped plates. That it was meant to be a vehicle of some sort, Burke was sure. But how it was supposed to move was beyond him.

"It's…ah… great." He tried to sound enthusiastic, but he rubbed his chin as he tried to puzzle out what he was looking at. "But, uh, what is it?"

"What is it?" Josh repeated, incredulous. He bounded over to the craft and slapped a hand against its side; the dull thud had a metallic sound to it. "It's what's going to get us to Kirtland. It's a hover craft."

"Us?" Burked looked back at Zeke with a raised eyebrow.

Zeke shrugged. "Josh has volunteered to come along as our builder."

"Hover craft, huh?" Burke stepped closer, until he could run a hand over the metal skin. "What's a hover craft doing in an underground city, Josh?"

"I convinced the Council a while ago to let me build it. In case we needed to go outside the city. I don't think Mal believed it would ever be used for that, but he was willing to let me have my pet project to keep me busy and out of trouble. I've still got a few finishing touches to put on it, and the fuel cells aren't powered up yet, but if we get the expedition approved by the Council, it's the perfect way to get there.

"The armor plating is thick enough to absorb fire from any weapons we have here in the city. The magnetic plates use the planet's magnetic field to repel against, so it will run equally well over any terrain. All the moving parts are enclosed, so it'll be unaffected by sand. It could even work underwater. It has seats for twenty, although some of that could be taken up by cargo, too."

He continued to walk backward around the vehicle, drawing the others with him. "The main power source is solar, but it's got a battery reserve."

"Weapons?" Burke asked.

"None yet, but we can put whatever we want on it. Within reason." Josh looked between Burke and Zeke anxiously. Burke pursed his lips in thought. "Well? What do you think?"

Burke's pensive expression broke into an impish grin. "When can we take it for a test drive?"


Virdon studied electronics schematics with Gabriel. Although he had a twentieth century degree in electrical engineering, his knowledge was ten centuries out of date. He had a lot of catching up to do.

But it felt great to be working again on something important, something that could help lead to a way home. Ever since they'd crash landed, it felt like his life had been nothing but physical labor and prison breaks. Not exactly what he'd envisioned when he'd signed up to be an astronaut for NASA.

He and Gabriel were tasked with designing a portable, personal radiation detector. If—no, when they went to Kirtland, every member of the expedition was going to have to wear one. The level of residual radiation in the city ruins as well as in the base was one of the big concerns that Malachi and the Elders could use to deny their request. The threat was greater once they got inside the base, which had been used to store and test weapons-grade nuclear material right about the time the world had gone to hell.

"This shouldn't be a complicated design," Gabe was saying. "We just need to put it into a sensor small enough to be worn, where? On the wrist?"

"On the body core would be better than the extremities." Virdon shook his head in amazement. "In my time, the smallest we could get a Geiger counter was something the size of a car battery." At the blank look on Gabe's face, Virdon delineated the dimensions with his hands. "About this big. And heavy. Not exactly easy to carry around." He pursed his lips. "We also need it to keep track of total exposure, if that's possible. Low levels of radiation can be tolerated for a short time, but we need to know when that passes a safety threshold."

"I'd think we'd also want something that could differentiate gamma and x-rays from alpha and beta particles, don't you?"

Virdon's eyes grew wider. "Detectors in our day couldn't do that. How do you solve the problem of the low interaction efficiency of the gamma rays with the halogen tube?"

Gabe chuckled. "No tube, Alan. You need to stop thinking in twentieth-century terms."

"Well, that's why you're in charge of this project," Virdon admitted. "I'm just along for the ride, hoping to learn something."

"How many do we need?" Gabe begin calling up plans on his electronic pad, adjusting the design to meet all their requirements.

"Well, with the security Malachi wants us to take, we are already talking a dozen people. Better make twenty, just in case." He shook his head. This expedition was taking on an entire life of its own.

"But first, a prototype, just to make sure it works."

Virdon nodded. He knew he was pushing, anxious to get this show on the road. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his jangled nerves. He'd spent three years preparing for the NASA mission that had brought him here. Waiting a couple of weeks before they could leave for Albuquerque shouldn't be that bad.

Except it was. When he was getting ready to leave Earth, they'd had a definite plan. The mission to Alpha Centauri was supposed to take six months. They were supposed to be home in time for Christmas. He and Sally were going to take a holiday cruise. He was going to coach Chris's baseball team the following spring.

All those plans were dashed when he woke up in that ancient bomb shelter. Or were they?

That was the funny thing about time travel. Even though he and Burke had spent the last year and more traveling through this crazy, upside-down world, they could actually arrive home on schedule. Or before they left. Or a decade after. But somehow, sometime, he would get back to his family. That belief was the only thing that kept him putting one foot in front of the other some days.