Alisa was bored, all she could do at the moment was sitting around. Her telepath training had ended a month ago and now it looked like no one knew what to do with her. The meeting yesterday was the only thing that disrupted the boredom for a while. It had felt good to meet someone who was not a Minbari. She liked them, but sometimes they were really getting on her nerves with all their rituals for almost everything.
Vir Cotto seemed like an interesting person and Alisa wished that she would have been able to talk to him for a while longer before Davenn had pulled her away. She had hoped to get some news from Babylon 5. She missed the station and would give everything for a chance to see Lt. Commander Ivanova and Ms. Winters again. They had constantly argued about her, but to Alisa they felt like two older sisters.
She stood up from her chair, ready to get something to eat as she heard two Minbari outside thinking about something called "Shadows". They were projecting a image of ships even darker than the blackness of space and Alisa could feel their fear. She forgot any thought about food immediately and went outside. She walked to her favourite garden, where she had met Commander Sinclair, who had been sent to Minbar as Ambassador, for the first time in two years. Alisa had been glad to see him again, it had felt good to know that she was not the only human here.
Since then they had tried to stay in contact as much as they could, sometimes he asked her to meet him for dinner, but he always seemed distracted and left as soon as they had finished. Several times she had seen him talking to Minbari and Humans wearing strange brown cloaks. When she was near they stopped, as if they had been talking about something they did not want her to know.
She did not know what it was, but she intended to find out and so she had waited. Today it seemed as if she was getting closer to the secret. After she had walked around for a while she heard another group of Minbari, wearing the same brown cloaks Alisa had seen before, thinking about these "Shadows", whatever they were. When they left, she followed them at a distance, so they would not notice her.
They had almost gotten to the other side of the city when they finally stopped. Alisa ducked behind a wall, so that they would not see her. The group went inside a buidling and Alisa came out from her hiding place. She almost screamed when someone touched her shoulder, the only thing that stopped her was the shadow of the familiar Centauri hair crest, which told her that it had to be Vir that was standing behind her. She turned around and whispered: "What are you doing here?"
He looked nervous as if he expected someone to hear him as he answered: "I think I want the same as you do. I heard the Minbari talking about an army being formed to fight the Shadows and I want to help in every way I can." Her face must have told him everything, because he started to tell her everything he knew about them.
They had sent a representative to Babylon 5 a while ago, who started to influence Vir´s friend, Ambassador Londo Mollari, to a point where Vir did not even recognize him anymore. His once best friend had become a stranger to him at the moment he boarded a Centauri war cruiser and watched the Narn homeworld being bombed with mass drivers, forcing them to offer unconditional surrender, which ended the war between the Narn and the Centauri that had started after the Shadows had attacked the biggest Narn civilian colony and the Centauri had shown up afterwards. That had led the Narn to believe that the Centauri had attacked and they declared war on the agressors. Thousands of Narn had died during the attack and the survivors were now slaves of the Centauri again, like they had been not so long ago during the last occupation that lasted for about a hundred years and only ended ten years ago.
When she heard that, Alisa felt hatred for the Shadows boiling inside her. At this moment she swore to herself that she would do everything she could to stop those monsters and she knew that Vir would do the same. They were the ones who had hurt him by forcing him to stand by helplessly while his best friend was walking down a path of destruction.