Epilogue
Dr. Anita Sloom felt restless energy in the air before her office door ever opened. Her 5:30 appointment had arrived. She exhaled deeply to end her meditation and made her slow way to the waiting room. A young Inkling woman sat with her bulbs clutched in her fingers. Her indigo mantle churned.
"Goji Fayuda?"
"Um… yes." Goji stood and smoothed her blouse.
"Greetings. I'm always blessed to meet friends of Ruby's. She speaks so highly of you."
Goji smiled faintly. "I'm afraid the real me will be disappointing after what she might've said."
"Not at all, my dear." Anita gently shook her hand. "Come along. Let's get to know each other." She led Goji down the short hall to the session room. Goji politely slowed her steps to match Nudibranch pace. Anita reached out with her inner sense to feel the girl's emotions. Thick, crackling clouds of fear and shame veiled a battered, sad core. She hid it well. Ruby said it took a great deal of coaxing to get her here. "Tell me, Goji: what would be your perfect place to find peace? A seashore or a forest, maybe? A quiet library?"
"Oh. I never gave it much thought. I do like to read, but libraries mean school to me."
"Mm. True, true." She showed Goji into the session room, dim and richly carpeted with two chairs and a daybed nestled together in the center. "We'll try this, and you tell me if you want a change." With the turn of a dial she activated the twin screen concealed in the interior walls. They turned the room into a cozy study. Books nested on shelves of dark wood, and open windows looked out into a bamboo grove. Birdsong and fresh breeze filled the air. The lights brightened to the pale gold of morning. Anita hummed as wonder broke through the Goji's distress.
"It's beautiful. I saw a system like this once in a hospital."
"We need peace for clarity and honesty, and when we're uneasy on the inside, it's doubly important to have peace on the outside. Please, sit, or lie down if you prefer."
Goji sat stiffly. Her grasping fingers found her bulbs. "I'm not sure what to say. I've never done this before."
"Quite all right. Let go of any preconceptions of counsellors and therapy. You aren't broken, and I'm not a tinkering technician out to fix you. Understanding oneself is often life's most challenging puzzle. My role is to guide you on your journey toward understanding." As she settled in the chair opposite Goji the girl's phone chirped. "Oh, and it is important that our journey be free of distractions."
"I'm sorry. Forgot all about it." She looked up from the screen and turned off the device. "It was just my – my girlfriend saying good luck." Her aura flickered with a tenuous light – hope peering through the fear-clouds.
"Aha. Supportive partners are invaluable on journeys into ourselves. They can't carry us, but they can inspire us to press on when the path is rocky. And the path will be rocky," Anita warned. "There will be pain. I can sense it in you now." She tapped her rhinophores. "But you are a nurse, yes? Just as an infection must be drawn out for a wound to heal, we must draw your hidden pain into the light for you to release it and move forward."
Goji nodded. "I thought about what to talk about first, but… I'm not sure."
"If you can't see the beginning, let's retrace your path one step at a time until we find it. Take a deep breath. Imagine all your tension flowing out with that breath… Perfect. Once more. Now… Tell me what brought you to my door."
"This sucks," Callie complained. "Seriously, it couldn't wait for tomorrow?"
"Mom said it's an emergency."
"If it's not an attack, it's not an emergency the cops can't handle."
Marie was no happier to be summoned to Agency headquarters after midnight. She got the call from her mother as she was brushing her teeth before bed. They were to report to HQ immediately, sparing no time for uniforms or other procedures. Callie took that literally out of spite. She followed Marie into the captain's office in her pajamas. Gramps was there with Nagisa and two engineers Callie and Marie didn't know by name.
"Lock the door, wouldja?" Gramps' words were clipped. "We got a situation that ain't for nobody else's ears, understand? Nobody."
"Yessir," Marie said. "What's going on?"
"Engineering finally decrypted the data crystal the Octoling found," Nagisa said.
Marie felt suddenly queasy. With all that transpired since meeting Serashura she'd forgotten all about the artifact.
"To be clear, we've unlocked only a small portion of the crystal's contents," said one of the engineers. "The encryption is unlike anything we've dealt with before, and it was no wonder after seeing just a fraction of the data. It holds military intelligence from the days of the Drowning War. Have a look at this map."
He clicked a button on his remote, and the screen behind Gramps' desk showed half the planet as a black expanse sliced into topographical layers. Gold lines called out the continental borders as they looked ten thousand years ago, startlingly larger than today. Marie recognized the islands and mainland of what would become the Inkling Turf Alliance, with Yanmensk to the north and the uppermost atolls of the Octarian Empire to the south. To the east, an ocean away, the coast of Caladar. Six red crosshairs blinked over the filigree of the map. Three lay inland of Caladar, farther into the blazing deserts than any Inkling would dare to settle. One was distant in the northeast inside the arctic circle, and the fifth lay on the same longitude in the ocean to the southeast. The last sat halfway between the continents near a cluster of islands long swallowed by rising seas.
"According to files linked to this map, these markers indicate military installations," the engineer explained. "They were built in the last years of the Drowning War to hold weapons of last resort. We don't know how long the Octarians had this crystal. It's unlikely they decrypted it before we did, but they would've had time to copy it."
"We have to assume they'll gain access to this data," Nagisa said.
"Even if they found one of these sites, would anything work after all this time?" Callie asked.
"Reverse engineering would be possible," said the second scientist. "And the materials rumored to have been used in certain Predecessor weapons could still be volatile in some form."
"Those Octos get their claws on firepower the likes o' what the ancients had, they could hold the whole ruddy world for ransom," Gramps said. "Or scuttle us all if they're careless."
Callie frowned. "No one's ever found evidence weapons like that existed. Climate change killed the Predecessors. The Drowning War was just a consequence."
"There's some truth behind every legend," Nagisa said. "We've never had a reason or the means to pursue that truth until now. The risk of ignoring it is too great."
"What are our orders?" Marie asked grimly.
"We need an expert to plan and run expeditions under the guise of harmless science," Nagisa said. "Contact Dr. Kulon Konyo at Inkopolis University and schedule a meeting here no later than this week."
"Konyo? The archaeologist?"
"The same. He's one of the world's authorities on Predecessor languages and technology."
"We'll get him here," Marie promised.
"Report as soon as you get through to him," Gramps said. "We'll be waitin'."
"And say nothing of what you learned here," said Nagisa. "We'll judge his interest and trustworthiness in person first. Dismissed."
Once they were back outside in Marie's car, Callie turned to her and drawled, "Still thinking about turning in that resignation?"
"Suddenly feels like a bad time."
"You know Engineering will keep decoding that crystal. We're gonna have to chase every ghost and dead end they dig up."
"It might amount to nothing," Marie said. "Or we could stop a war. I can't walk away from that."
Callie laughed mirthlessly. "Serashura has no idea what her little trinket set off."
"Maybe when it's all said and done, I'll tell her."