Chapter 35: Moving Message.

After a few minutes of silent walking, Jen decided to ask a question. Just as Alex had waited for the right moment to bring the return to the Time Force back on the table, she had been waiting for the right moment to bring up another subject. This particular subject had been waiting for years.

"Alex?" she began.

Alex looked at her, smiling slightly.

"I've been meaning to ask you something."

"Ask away," he encouraged.

"It's a bit of a touchy thing," she said.

"Hey, I think this is the best moment to deal with any touchy subject," he said.

Jen nodded, she already knew that, but how to bring it up? "After we broke up," she began; he looked at her again, an eyebrow raised. "Fine, after I broke up with you, you, uhm, turned a bit cold on me," she began, lowering her gaze.

"I know," he said sweetly, to encourage her to keep going.

"When I gave you the ring back, I kind of hoped we could still be friends, perhaps after a while, after you had had time to sulk. I hoped we might even go back to dating again, you know? Not be engaged, but being boyfriend and girlfriend again."

"You never told me any of this before," he said, taking her hand in his as they walked.

"I never really had the chance, Alex. You became all cold and mean, and I knew that I had hurt you, but I didn't think I deserved that. I still don't think I deserved that."

"Jen, I—"

"I don't want an apology," she interrupted. "It's useless now, we are married, we have children, we are happy. It's just I suffered a lot during that time, and I have to admit I still have a bit of a hard feeling in me, but it's due to lack of information. I never understood why you treated me like that, and I won't be able to completely let it go until I know." She looked into his eyes, and saw there that he didn't know himself.

"I don't know, Jennifer. When you gave me the ring back, I accepted your decision; I understood that you loved someone else. I wasn't happy about it, I didn't support it, but I understood. In that very second I understood that what we had was gone, that you were no longer my Jennifer, and I was no longer your Alex. I understood we had changed, and I understood it was nobody's fault."

"Then why did you treat me like that? Why did you use Brynn to hurt me?" she urged.

"I didn't use Brynn to hurt you. I approached her because we suspected she was working for the mutants. She had hooked up with some Time Force scientists and high ranking officers and had dumped them for apparently no reason. I was ordered to approach her and date her, and therefore sell bogus files to the mutants, along with some good, working ones, in order not to let them know we knew about Brynn," Alex explained.

"You never told me that," she said.

"You never asked."

"You slept with her; you never slept with me."

"It wasn't because I didn't want to, because, believe me, I did. But I respected you more than I respected her, and I thought that since I was single, and I had to date her for my mission, I might as well enjoy it to some point." He shrugged as if it didn't matter, but he knew it mattered. He knew Jen had always wondered why he had never taken her to bed until they were married

"It's very brave of you to admit that so bluntly," she said. He was going to answer but she interrupted. "But don't change the subject. Why were you so mean to me, if you understood?"

"I told you the truth when I said I don't know. This guy, who used to be my friend, told me that the best way to get you back is by giving you the cold shoulder. It was obviously stupid advice to follow, but I did, and I never knew why. This guy later tells me he is sorry he caused me all this trouble, but that he was just doing my mom a favor, which made sense, because Mom kept telling me to do exactly the same thing this guy told me to do, and I kept doing what she said, and I found myself feeling angry and spiteful at you and I don't understand how that happened. When that truck crashed against you, it was as if I had woken up from a nightmare, as if nothing of the hatred or spite I had been feeling had ever been there, there was only love and concern for you in my heart. I'm sorry, it was a very slow change, I didn't notice it until it was too late, and I sometimes feel I couldn't help myself."

Clarification entered Jen's mind as Alex spoke those last words. She smiled at him lovingly and kissed his cheek. "Do you remember fighting against Wes when we stopped your mother in that farm?"

"I remember the pain," he said bitterly. "But I don't remember starting the fight." He then looked at her with a weird look on his face. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Everything," she said. "I don't know how this didn't occur to me sooner. Your mother hated me, and she wanted to keep you away from me. To do that all she had to do was activate the mind control she had over you. She sent your friend to suggest this behavior to create the predisposition, to create the possibility of you acting like that, so you wouldn't feel weird acting like that all of the sudden and out of nowhere."

"So, are you saying it was Mom?"

"It makes sense, but of course you'd have to ask her to be sure," she said. They both stopped walking and looked up; there was a doorway in front of them. On the other side, there was a dimly lit room. "Looks like we're here."

"Where?" he said, turning on his flashlight and looking around.

"I don't know," Jen admitted.

It wasn't properly a room, they had to admit it. It was more like a big cave; the brotherhood seemed to have run out of marble, because neither the walls nor the floor were covered in it, it was all dirt and rock.

They looked around and noticed it had three ways out. The three gateways had no markings or distinction as far as they could see; they were exactly like each other.

In the middle of the cave, dimly illuminating the room, was a statue of a merman lying on his back over a beautifully carved cylinder, made of marble. So the brotherhood hadn't run out of it, they had just used it wisely. The carvings on the cylinder were nothing but waves, so it wasn't hard for them to figure out who the statue represented: Nereus, the old man of the sea.

They walked once around the figure and Alex found the instructions in a small letter.

"Nereus refused always to give Heracles a straight answer, and he kept mutating trying to avoid the hero. Before time runs out, you must defeat Nereus, and find the answer hidden by his moving message. Choose your way correctly for there is no going back," Alex read out loud.

As he finished reading the letter, the doorway through which they had entered was closed by a heavy iron gate. "Before time runs out," Jen said, looking apprehensively at the gate. "What do you think they mean by that?"

"I have no idea," Alex said; there had been another part of the message that had flashed a red flag at him, but he couldn't pinpoint it. "I'm more concerned about Nereus' moving message. I can't see it anywhere, the statue is solid; it has no moving parts."

"You're right," Jen said after examining the statue with her own flashlight. But there was something that called for her attention: the light. The light the statue was emanating had grown slightly stronger. As she passed in front of the cylinder, near Nereus' fins, she noticed there was a hole at the base of the cylinder, big enough for her to press her face against it and look inside, and that was exactly what she did. "Alex!" she called. "Come and look! It's a kaleidoscope!"

Alex approached her and looked into the cylinder. At the other end, beautiful bits of different colors shone and moved, illuminated from behind and making the most beautiful patterns Alex had ever seen. The colors and shapes changed as the pieces turned around slowly. It only took Alex a minute to realize the light behind the pieces was getting brighter by the second.

"That's what they mean when they say before time runs out," he told Jen, who had been walking around the statue trying to find more clues. "The light keeps getting brighter. Soon we won't be able to look at the moving pieces anymore."

"Let me have a look," she asked. He moved aside and she looked into the cylinder, trying to see something that pointed in the right direction, but the images formed at the end of the kaleidoscope were too intricate and changed too fast to allow her to find a signal.

The light got brighter and it started to hurt Jen's eyes, but she kept trying until she felt Alex's hand on her shoulder. "Leave it, Jen, you are damaging your eyes; it can't be that simple."

"Simple?" she asked, tearing her eyes away from the mesmerizing images to look at him as if he were crazy. As far as she could see there was nothing simple about those images and their hidden meaning.

"Well, not simple, but obvious. It's too obvious to be right," he assured.

"But the instructions are clear," Jen insisted. "The answer is hidden in the moving parts, which means the images at the end of the kaleidoscope."

Finally Alex recognized what had flashed the red flag. He moved towards the side of the statue and read the message with instructions again. "That's it," he said, checking the message. "That's it, Jen," he repeated, moving towards the back of the cylinder and examining it carefully.

"What's it?" Jen asked, as she followed him, feeling lost.

"The information is not hidden in the moving message, it's hidden BY the moving message," he said in a tone that said it was clear as day as far as he was concerned.

"What?" Jen repeated, having problems catching up.

"Jennifer, think," Alex said. "When they say moving message they refer to the pieces in the back of the kaleidoscope, the ones that move and create the beautiful images." He kept checking the back of the cylinder with his eyes narrowed, as the light kept getting brighter. "So if the message is hidden by the moving parts it means it's not in the images displayed, it's in the moving parts, literally." He finally found what he was looking for: a way to remove the back of the cylinder. He started to do so, but this time it was Jen's turn to stop him.

"Cover your eyes," she reminded him. "Once you remove that lid, the light will hit you face first!"

"Good point," he said. He retrieved his sunglasses and put them on. Jen imitated him.

Alex opened the lid and a very bright light illuminated the whole space. The piece that held the lamp was very hot to the touch and Alex took his shirt off to protect his hands as he pulled it out. Once the lamp was out, they found a pile of medium sized colored pieces. Jen reached in and tried to grab them, but they were hot as well. With a quick glance at her husband, she removed her own shirt and used it to pick the pieces up.

They brought the colored pieces to one side of the now brightly lit room and placed them on the floor. As they sat down and began to check the pieces, it became obvious Alex was right, the pieces were letters. The couple counted them and observed them trying to figure out how to form a message.

After a few minutes they knew they had twenty three letters of four different colors. A closer accounting revealed they had seven red letters, three blue ones, five green ones and eight yellow ones.

"Okay, we have four 'H's" Jen began. "T's, E's and R's: we have three of each, two G's and one A, O, U, M, K, I, N and S." She laid them down on the floor in front of them as she said so.

"Look, the blue letters," Alex said, picking them up excitedly, "a T, an H and an E. Obviously they make the word 'the'."

"That's true," Jen agreed with a smile, growing excited herself. "Do you think we should call Tao and Buda for help with this?" Jen asked.

"Nah, we've got it," Alex said happily. "Each color is a word, which means we have a four word sentence here."

"The green letters form the word 'three'," Jen said perkily, picking them up and forming the word on the floor.

"And the yellow ones form the word 'markings'" Alex said, smiling at the simplicity of the puzzle once the first obstacle had been overcome. "And the last word, the red one, is 'through'," he finalized.

"'Through the three markings,'" Jen read, after arranging the words in her head without effort. They looked at each other, satisfied with their speed at solving the puzzle, but the joy left them as Jen asked the looming question: "Which three markings?"

"I have no idea," Alex admitted. "I think we should have a look at our possible exits," he suggested and they both walked towards the doorways that led out of the room, feeling somewhat confident that they could find the three markings with the bright light that came from the lamp. But just as they approached the first doorway and began examining it, the lamp went off and left them in a total and absolute darkness.

"Well, that's inconvenient," Alex said in the dark, standing perfectly still.

By his side he could hear his wife say: "Yeah, I'd say so."

To Be Continued…