Chronicles of a Better World

by Adnesle

Post-Point of No Return, season four finale also known as the beginning of Earth: Final Conflict downfall toward complete mediocrity. Huge AU. I propose you another end, or at least another beginning.

CHRONICLES OF A BETTER WORLD

I - The Last Betrayal

Zo'or felt the wave of heat on his cheeks, a lot of time before he had hoped that the saving energy would wash over his pain-filled body. The ground had started to quaken and then, after this, shortly after, there had been the heat. His hands had covered his face. And now there was a sound, like a moaning, but it only seemed to come from too far away to be reached. He ordered his body to snap his eyes open, though the first thing he realized was that he was the only one who screamed; the moaning, the strange noise that rang through his head was escaping from his own lips.

But there was another voice, another voice that reached his numb ears and that did not belong to him. And his eyes could not find this voice. His eyes could find nothing around but nothingness, emptiness and void. And black, he realized with a feelings shared between pure terror and a state of shock.

He was almost not realizing that he was fighting crazylike before he thought he could recognize that voice. "Calm down Zo'or! Calm down!" Arms around his chest, it was against these arms that he was fighting so furiously. But they could only tighten around his chest, they were made of iron, they almost stopped the air from filling his aching chest. He breathed in a sharp, short rythmic, very painful, and the air was hurting his throat. Then suddenly, the voice calmed, and the arms of iron tightened so much around him that they prevented him from moving completly. "Zo'or," called out this voice, calmly, as if asking, as if demanding if he yet knew who he was. In only response, he ceased to move and to his great reflief the arms released their pressure on his chest. "Zo'or, open your eyes and look at me." An order, not harsh, but strongly said enough for force him to obey it. But... open his eyes? His eyes were open... Then there was this hand on his cheek and always this
strong arm around his shoulders and back. Then slowly, he opened his eyes, realizing that he had only thought to open them, that his instinct had prefered to keep them closed tightly.

And when he saw to whom belonged that voice, this voice that had awakened him, his instinct of survival spoke again and he jerked back, everything else but stay close to this man, but the arms kept him in the same position. He once more thought to fight away, to fight from this iron grip, but Zo'or also knew that agent Sandoval would be much stronger than he, who was injured and immensely weak. He could only hope that his former implant and protector had for only wishes to kill him pitifully. Though, that more his capacity of thinking came back to him, more he knew that Sandoval would not have taken the time of awakening him if it were only to achieve him. Then why?...

Zo'or listened for a moment to his own hoarse breathing. He was so tired, too tired, too tired to think, too tired to keep his eyes open, too tired to live. Then, the regeneration chamber had not had the time to serve its purpose? Their energy had not been transformed in that `something beyond' that had always been promised to them. He briefly closed his eyes to allow his heavy eyelids to rest. His hands touched his implant's face, like if assuring that he was very well who he pretended to be, brushing the man's cheeks and skin. Then he turned the head away and difficultly parted his eyes open; the pain was still great. He had sensed that Da'an was not dead, he had not felt his passing, although that in the mist and inner turmoils of the Commonality, he could easily have missed it. he slowly turned and caught glimpse of the four poles of an interdimentional portal and beside him, Da'an's body, lying on the ground, unconscious, in the same state that he assumed to be his,
seriously burned. And a Human also burned, the tone of his skin now parting between blood red and black when it wa sonly ashes, his clothes had already vanished, but this cocoon of charred flesh seemed to breathe and a medical team was working around these two, probably the others had already been taken care of.

"Where-..." Even before its pronoucing was achieved, his question met its answer.

"The New York Embassy, via ID portal. Ma'el had thought that the energy flow would trigger the volcano's eruption. And an ID portal, another, was hidden beneath the rocks to bring you back in time."

Zo'or did not understand. This man hated him, despised him, for what he had done to him and to his people. The Taelon was certain that this man wished to gain only one thing: power. And that his wishes had been granted by the Jaridians. Then why?...

But he came to comprehend very quickly, hearing the heavy noise of soldiers entering in the room. Jaridian soldiers. And suddenly, agent Sandoval's arms disapeared and he fell back on the floor, in the position where he had doubtlessly been found in before being awakened by his implant. Terror had grown within his tortured self. And fatigue had as well, to an overhelming point in fact, and his eyes refused to open.

He would have recognized this voice anywhere. This voice was the one of a Jaridian, that screamed orders through the room. He wished with all his remaining strenght, rise, and run away, go as far as he could and being killed by a skrill balst in his back, but not this!... Being prisonner of the Jaridians, meant torture...

The agent Sandoval was standing in front of him and looking down his nose at him. He could not see it, but he knew it, he felt it, he felt that despising, disdainful glance that rested on his frail, shaking shoulders. Then his implant's casual voice covered the confused noise of the Jaridians' whispers to his ears, as the Taelon miserably attempted to move his wounded body. "You stayed unconscious during a long time Zo'or, many hours were taken before we finally managed to find out where had this hidden portal brought you, you and the others. But these few hours were enough for the Humanity to decide of an alliance of peace, for the time being, with the Jaridians, helped by the informations coming from your personal file, given to them by I."

Zo'or felt each words a little heavier on his shoulder. No, he had been betrayed. He knew that Sandoval had no loyalty towar dhim, he knew that his CVI's motivational imperative no longer was functionning, he knew that the man hated him. But, this, that he had been given to these enemies that would murder them until the last of the Taelons had died, this he would have never believed. He considered, and knew that he had to consider, Sandoval like someone cruel, an enemy that he held in esteem, an enemy that had turn to turn been defeated and that had won, but also, an enemy with some sense of honor, some sense of honor, enough honor anyway to at least obey a last order, that last order he had tried to give him earlier, and when he had been responded with the truth of his implant's thoughts. Bitter truth.

"Then, kill me now," he said in a weak voice, the only he could managed to get out of his lips. A demande, almost a plea, he had lowered himself enough to the point of pleading for his death, pleading to this man to end this tortured existence that had been his.

"No, there are too much people that wish for you to stay alive for allowing you to rest in death Zo'or," said the former protector in a voice that was not cold, but simply, so strong. Though not sufficient enough to hide the emotions that he was troubled by.

The Synod Leader had to decide, to push his fallen pride further down by doing what he had never done in the past, a prayer... "I beg of you. I only ask for-..."

"No!" replied Sandoval before allowing him to complete his sentense, dryly. Then with a few more hesitations that Zo'or knew the man would have liked to be seen, "I'm sorry..."

There were a few minutes of silence during which the only thing that he could see from behind his closed eyelids or hear of were the almost silent pacing of a good number of jaridian soldiers travelling through the room, through his audience chamber, in his Embassy. His worry grew, but so did something that rarely he had felt in the past: sorrow. He had been betrayed, a betrayal that he would have prefered not to have to expect and now... and now everything was finished was it not? Well finished, the Taelons would soon be dead and buried, no more than a whisper in a few minds that could stand to remember... a story that the mothers would tell their children to scare them.

Then suddenly, a new myriad of feelings surrounded him, the noise of a skrill first, the soft hissing then the colder, more sudden noise of the release of the energy blast, that he hoped, more than he had ever hoped, was targetted toward him - perhaps had Sandoval had a last shake of conscienceness, pity of the soul, a last hesitation... But no, at the same time that he heard the skrill's noise, a foot was sent with great strenght against his sides and he could only gasp for air and curl on himself, seeing to prevent himself from several other impacts that might follow. But the energy blast had already reached its goal to prevent this from happening. The Jaridian, that had visibly been caught by a murderous rage directed toward him, had collapsed on the ground, very close to him and made him jerk back as he felt the other's presence at his side. Then he was dragged on his feet and Sandoval's voice, used to command, yelled through the room, his features icy and his hands
gripped together behind his back: "No harm will be done to any Taelons. If I am reported so, then the responsible shall be brought to me and he will suffer form the punishment he was willing to submit to his victim. Is that clear?" Some positive whispers filled the room.

It was this moment that later, upon reflecting, Zo'or could identify as his realization that his fate was cealed. Though, his mind was empty from anything else than desire of survival now, and he knew that he would have time to think to this by himself. Oh yes, very much time...

II - The War

Renée Palmer was pacing through the small waiting room in front of Hubble Urick's office, he had had her waiting for over two hours now. He had showed more than many strange behavior in the last few days. Since the mothership had crashed, had been crashed on Earth by these famous nuclear warheads he had launched in the sky. She could easily remember it, she was with Street, and there had been this immense ball of light in the sky, then this rain of stars that seemed to appear, burn up and then fall until touching the horizon, filling the whole night with shining little lights. But the taelon ship had not exploded entirely, only, the layers, the level that were closer to the point were the nuclear warheads had impacted. What had survived the explosion, more than the half of the vessel, had crashed days ago in the middle of the North of the Pacific Ocean.

But now, the worse was done wasn't it? She had waited for this moment since so long... The Taelons defeat, their last failure to themselves, and the final liberation of Humanity, this freedom they had so many times in the past asked for. Liam was alive, barely but he was. He was there and he would ever be there. He was not endangered by his injuries anymore. Sandoval had been betrayed by the Jaridians, as he had himself betrayed the Taelons and and helped their downfall from grace, and was now to be judged in front of the International Community for crimes against humanity, for his betrayal of his own kind.

So, what was wrong? What was wrong was that the Taelons were dying. And the Jaridians as well. Hubble's great final piece of work had destroyed what was left of the Taelons' civilization. As they were almost all dead already. On the six Taelons that had entered the regeneration chamber, only Da'an and Zo'or had survived but all Jaridians had been killed by the eruption. Then... the Jaridians tried to live in peace their last hour on Earth, where they had Embassies like the Taelons did, where they could live their last hour together. As the Taelons were years before, there were only some thousand of them left, all barren, that would soon die, very soon, in sufferances that Humans could not imagine as a very few of them had said.

The few consciences that had survived within Da'an, very few, had brought the Taelon very close to insanity as it was said. And on demand, a warning, from the Jaridians, the american government had ordered that both Da'an and Zo'or were to be brought in a secret facility with strong security measures, for be completly sure that they would never see the sun light again. They would be judged as well, very soon. Yes soon thwy would keep company to Sandoval in front of the court... But this was if Zo'or did not strangle Sandoval before...

Socially and politically, all had collapsed, all their systems. The Earth was plunged deep into chaos, the leaders of all countries were fighting for bring back peace on their territories, but it would not work. The coup, the bomb attack and assassination attempt were each days growind more numerous. Yes, as Hubble had said, the Taelons had been gone during a month and they had done just fine, but even there, thy knew that the Taelons would come back. But now, they were gone, for good, without any hope of return, forever... And this was their fault, entirely and completly theirs. The Humanity, this small primitive people had been thrown in that intergalactic war... No. No, they had thrown themselves in that war that opposed two kinds and with the luck of the beginner, they had won.

She had always thought that she would clame after this Human that would have the guts of destroying them, to send back all of their great technology in their face... She had thought she would be happy when it would happen!... On the contrary, it was the opposite. She had seen Da'an - before he was brought to this facility from which no one would ever see him escape - because she could not gain access to Liam, that was taken care of like a laboratory rat, now that his heritage had been discovered and exposed to the public, the scientists loved him, they took good care of him, as they had themselves said in an interview. And... and she had not had the courage of staying in Da'an's chamber more than five minutes. He was strapped to a table. The arms, the waist and the legs tied so tightly that he could not move them of an inch. The burns marked his skin everywhere, all square inches of his physical envelop that was less mad eof energy was in ashes and his face was streaked by
tears. He suffered immensely, but the human doctors could do nothing for him. First, they anyway did not possess the technology to heal a Taelon, and second, he was crazy and... and so far he had killed of gravely injured every Humans that had come too close to him. Then, they had let him suffer and had simply silenced his screams and cries, by regularly forcing him toward unconscienceness.

She felt, yes Renée Palmer felt shame, yes much shame, when she had seen this, when she had seen what they had done to this extraterrestrial species. But also, pride, pride at the sight of what they were able to do, at the sight of what the poor primitive non-evolved Humans could do when they wished to. Their instinct had took control of them once more, kill or be killed wasn't it? she said to herself every time these dark reflexions came to her mind, to convince herself that the only thing they had done was to save their life from the Taelons' attack.

And so many people thought like she did through the world, so many people, that now the Embassies had been destroyed, burned by the multitude, the few scientific installations once linked to the Taelons that had survived the massacre had been vandalized, virus had been thrown out in nature out from their safety vials, humans scientists that were only protecting their lives and cherishing these last treasure of technology were publically lynched... They had returned in the Middle Ages. On one side it saddened her, to see how Humans could show and prove themselves to be so... barbaric, but once again this feelings of pride filled her, when she saw what they could accomlish as miracles with this barbarity, with this ferocity, this will of life, this willpower to survive, that at the last moments had been lacked among the Taelons.

Calm would come back, it would take months, if not years but the Taelons would finish by disapear of sight, but never they would vanish from their memories and this she knew... Everybody knew this. Mankind had commited its first galactic genocide. The genocide, the achieving, the murder of a whole species stranger, alien, that came from across the stars... Their first one. And most likely, not their last, because the interddimentional technology had not fallen in foolish hands, the hands of Humans that wished to expend, to explore the galaxy, that wanted to see the horizons that the Taelons had walled away from them. Her weak smile left her fine lips. Like the Taelons, they would meet primitive, less eovlved spcies, like the Taelons, they would try to submit them to their will, like the Taelons they would get more technology, more weapons for master even more primitive spcies that could serve them, like the Taelons had done the whole time...

She could only hope that others than she would see this trap set by destiny and then do everything possible to be done to avoid it and step aside carefully.

The doors of the office of Mr. Urick opened. She knew it was her turn, that she could go in. And once she had entered and had politely refused tea and a chair, the words would not left her throat. What had she come here to say?

Mais he looked like he wished to speak in first anyway. He was turning his back at her, in fact, he had been turning his back at her ver since she had come in, he was facing the window, glancinc outside. From where she was, she could not see his face. "They have found the fragments of the mothership, that had crashe din the North Pacific. They're gonna achieve them."

"What?" She had a bad feelings creeping over her cheek, this tickling in her toes was never a good sign.

"They have found the chamber where all the remaining Taelons are in stasis. They are going to kill them, one by one." The words entered, were udnerstand by her mind, but she did not realized quite immeidatey their true meaning. "One by one, before Zo'or's eyes. They have invited you," he pointed a small crad on the table. "And I as well. But I fear that I won't be able to assist." These were his last words ever. She had only had time to catch a glimpse of the true truth, of mumbling some words of astonishment that Hubble Urick had fallen on the ground already, dead, a little red hole on his left temple.

Renée Palmer had accepted gladly their victory, she had managed to accept the genocide, she had barely managed to accept that one. But this, the International Community deciding to eliminate all the taelons in stasis, defenseless beings, innocent beings, beings that could have a soul... by safety measure, was it written on the car, we shall proceed in less than three months to the total destruction of this race of invadors and mankind freedom will finally be complete. Destruction, a sinister smile crept over her lips, they were talking of the Taelons like if they were a virus, a dangeorud virus that needed to be... destroyed as soon as possible, before pity could come back to the hearts.

A small part of herself wanted to fight still, wanted to fight against this so terrible lack of justice, against this murder... But as so many others, it was time for her to stop the fight. It was time for her to stop fighting, because she had fought enough, because, like so many others, she had lost so much, too much. She would have prefered to see Da'an a last time and apologize to him, of being so weak, of acting so cowardly for escape this hell, but she would not have been able to do it anyway. She would have wanted to apologize for everything that Humanity had done to them. But time was running, her time was running out. She took the gun from the already white and icy fingers of Urick and placed it in her mouth. Renée Palmer pressed the trigger with all her strenght, before she would even be too coward for this.

This double suicide was never to be related with the fact that both of the victims had had terrible remorse, that they had had more than just second thoughts about their past actions. No the government hid it carefully and it was to never come completly to the public's knowledge.

III - New life

Juliette Street was preparing to leave. She picked up all her things, her clothes, but Augur had suggested her to bring simply nothing, or just what was absolutly necessary, because they were leaving without any hope of ever returning. It was hers to choose, he had told her. Did she prefer to go, to leave truly, leaving all behind, or bringin with her a little bit of what would become her ancient life? She had prefered to keep a little of this ancient life that she left only with regrets.

It was the end, all was finished and they had failed. They had miserably failed. Ha'gel and Ma'el's plan had pitifully failed and now all was collapsing a little everywhere. And Augur and Juliette had seen too much already for allow their eyes to catch glimpse of very much more. They needed to change. Juliette had herself so changed as well. Augur looked at her, looked at this being that still was showing the exterior appearance of an teenager that was still a little too young and seriousless to become a woman, he looked at her and what did he see? He saw in Juliette Street a tortured being, since too long. Since she had gained access to this famous ninth dimension that wouls solve the mystery of Ma'el and his plans for humanity - in one words, their destiny - she had changed since this. She had changed very much. In fact, since what was between the death, the disapearance, the social deleting of Liam and the collapse of the human society and of the taelon and jaridian race,
since this, the change had appeared more often.

A day, he had approached her gently and had asked her to explain, to confide to him what was wrong with her, what was going wrong in her head, then she had turned toward his very slowly, and had thrown his way a glance where her eyes had for one second taken an unknown color somewhere between blue and white, and she had simply told him that she had understand too much things than she should have. Many things that nor the Humans, nor the Taelons, nor the Jaridians, nor the Kimeras, were ready and prepared to hear and comprehend. And that every of these things were going in her head, were swirling in her head. And that it started to hurt her very much.

Since this moment, she had become very dark, speaking only rarely. Both of them had become very dark. Augurcould remember so well what it was when he had accepted to fight at the Resistance's side, this was almost four years ago, he could remember how things were different, he remembered how he was different. He thought only to his own money, at first everything in this was a game for him. He had not realized at that moment that, perhaps for someone it was a game, perhaps for someone higher than the highest, it was a game, someone that could permit himself to play with destiny, no the Augur of that time could not imagine that in every games there were winners and there were defeated. And he had not realized what was at stake here, that terrible stake that was played off. Survival for the winners and woe to the vanquished. No, he had not realized this.

But now everything took its real extent, its real scale, its real meaning. It was not only the humanity's freedom that was at stake there, it was so much higher than that, so much more than that. But this, this truly goal to reach was still too far for him to see. He thought that only Street, Liam, and the ones up there that watched them all, knew that goal that was to be reached. But yet, he was not totally certain if he wanted to reach that goal, especially after he had seen how Street had become. Mysterious and far, yes far, so far, almost unreachable, it was not rare that she walled herself in her own world during hours if not days and medically speaking, she responded to no exterior stimulis during these periods. The mind had left the chair shell that was the body.

And it just happened more and more often. And this was why they left that Earth, that scorched Earth, that shattered Earth. In fact, it was another Exodus. Humanity's exodus had begun again. The interdimensional corridors discovered by the Taelons and departing from the few portals that had been left after the social raid on every taelon installations opened on distant, far planets, in other galaxies. Far, far away from Earth were war was raging. It was not rare that persons, often the ones who had taken a part in that terrible conflict, the ones who were there from the beginning, the ancient ones, the ones who really knew something about what could have been, the ones who could not stand to see the Taelons being transformed into martyrs, these persons, they left. Most of them anyway. Some had the streght to stay, other had not. They left their little calm existence on Earth, and without regrets, or almost, they departed, without a single hope of ever returning, toward far
worlds, desert most of the time. The exile, the forced exodus of humanity, toward newly familiar countries. Who were they? Ex-volunteers, ex-protectors, that had known their Companion, and the Taelons very closely, and that could not stand to stay on Earth anymore. The implant technology's had been destroyed with everything else, and now, the doctors were simply able to release them from their motivational imperative willing, but nothing else. They could not, they would not, be considered human again, by their peers, by their parents, their families, their friends, their wife and husbands... Then if Humans could not be Humans anymore, they had left.

It made him think of something, in a book that he had read many times when he was young. The Lord of the Rings, and this book at the end, the depart of Gandalf, Frodo and the elves always broke his heart. It was to this that it made him think today. Now, that it was on the edge of being finished, after a long lasting dark dance, that ended on a dark note, all of them who had been taken voluntarily, or not, in that conflict departed, because it was too much for them to stand the rest. They had already seen too much, they had already changed, their moral maturity was achieved and they had to leave, to let the Humans finish this by themselves.

Augur shook his head as he saw Juliette put her favorite clothes, the most... gentle, he mentally noticed, amused, in a bag that she picked up with her hand as she was done. She brought with her some clothes, some disks, containing parts of her favorite books, or songs that she loved, but also, many pictures, both on disks and on paper, what was rarely seen today. Pictures of herself, of the few bits of childhood that she had had, of Liam, of Renée, of Lili that Liam had given her when she had asked who was that Captain Marquette that Augur turned the head away each time someone said her name, pictures taken from what their hidden cameras had taken on the mothership, where Da'an was often seen, sometimes Zo'or and Sandoval, sometimes, it was only the blue, purple walls, the taelon pilots and their languid gestures in their energy bubbles... All souvenirs of her ancient life, of the friends, of the ennemies, that she would leave behind. Of the life she abandonned like this,
of the existence she quitted; to the eyes of anyone else than Augur it would have seemed that she left this existence without the least second thought, but these remorses, he saw them in her eyes, in every of her moves. Yes, her heart and her mind lurched, were painfully shaken by this. And it hurt him as well.

But, when he had second thoughts about leavinf, he recalled what had happened two days earlier. They were fixing the tv screen, or well, he fixed the screen while she, as often she did, fixed simply nothingness, plunged deeply in a kind of transe that never Augur had tried to stop. And the news of Renée's death, Renée from whom they had got no news of since they had come back from... there, passed at the news of 11 pm. He stayed there, fixing the screen, now turned off, tears streaking their way down his cheeks. Already Liam had vanished, perhaps he was dead, for good, and now Renée. They did not want them all to go like this, of the ancients, of the ones who were there since the beginning, who was left? Boone had departed the first. Lili was dead or busy trying to save her butt from the Jaridians to come back to Earth. Da'an had gone insane. Zo'or was... somewhere beneath at least three layers of rock and metal bars. Sandoval was being judged. The Doctors, Park and Belman,
them were already gone since long, she had always had more good sense than many others, they had been of the first to leave for good. And the two Doors were dead. There were only Augur and Juliette left now.

Then, she had raised from her seat, had looked at him, and had simply said, with this wise voice that had changed so much and that was no longer the one of the Juliette he had known: "It was easy to foresee. They will all be deleted with time. We must leave soon." For exodus, he had understand. They would leave then. But Augur had asked her for time, time to adpat the idea, and once he had adapted, time for leave with good souvenirs of everything. And they had started, slowly but surely, to remember. The remembered the old, good times.

Augur would leave everything here, his vouvenirs was all he had been left with anyway, and he prefered to keep only souvenirs than material objects that would make him cry each time he looked at them. But he had ben somewhat relieved when he had seen that Street brought pictures with them. He had put on his most simple clothes, and noe he was waiting for Juliette Street, looking at her picking up all the items she put in her bag and then walking toward the portal.

They needed to stay together, to stay together if they did not want to go insane as well. Augur leaned down and kissed her forehead, showing her all the big brother's type affection he felt for her. She smiled weakly to him, this smile that he knew of being the one of the old Street, the young woman with slightly offhand behavior, that never stopped to tease Liam, sexually speaking, and that was on the edge of bcoming the best hacker on the market. This Street, she was still somewhere. Though very deeply burried under the other, she was there, anyway that was all what mattered wasn't it? They had another life to begin.

Augur entered their destination in, a far planet, almost out of reach, in another solar system, with similar temperature and conditions, allowing to human beings to live there, where so many Humans had left for. It was an ancient taelon colony and there was everything the Humans could need to survive. It was not a perfect world, it was not heaven, but it was the only place they had to go now. Just before jumping between the four poles, he programmed it for keep in memory, to easy access to everyone who knew at least how turn on a tv, their destination and ordered his computer to autorize the access to nobody, but to one old friend, that perhaps would one day join them then. Liam. Liam's special DNA was to be the only one kept in the scan up there in the church. Then if Liam Kincaid were still alive he would come.

Augur and Juliette Street, the ones that had once take their part into that conflict were carried away by the interdimensional light and transported toward this unknown place, while Augur's lair was preparing to wait very long for this old friend to come back.

IV - The Execution

Ronald Sandoval, only days before still the Agent Sandoval, had been, in all the history of humanity one of the very first to be released after being charged with crime against humanity. To the greatest despair of the many persons that had attentively followed the whole thing and were dying to see him in jail to the remaining of his days.

These last weeks had been particularly difficult. Very difficult. Morally and psychologically especially. It is not everyday that you realize YOU are the people that everybody on Earth hates and fears. He, Ronald Sandoval, was representative of all the fears of humanity, all of the bad guys in the old science-fiction movies in the eighties, the soulless man that ally with the very very bad alien invadors. Well, he was this man. He had to live under the protection of some very important people now, in secret installations.

It was there he had been brought to, right after his acquittal. There had been troubles around when the news had been given to the medias, everybody wanted to see him dead, an example, a proof... But it had been a trial set especially for this only one occasion, without jury, since the same important people had thought, meaningfully, that people chosen to be part of the jury would not have been unprejudiced toward him. There had been five judges, one for the America, one for Eurasia, one for Africa, one for Oceania and finally one ancient representative of the Taelon, a volunteer that he had recalled to be someone that had served under him. And he suspected that the ex-volunteer was the only one that had convinced the judges' opinions in his favors. There had to be an old implant in the judges, because normal Humans could not know, could not even think about what kind of influence and power the CVI could old on someone.

Later, after the trial, he had been brought in this secret facility, now occupied more or less officially by the new forces of soldiers of this so-said International Community. It had made him grin at that time, he remembered; even the soldiers feared him, he walked through a corridor, surrounded by many armed men, and all conversations stopped, all the eyes were glued to the floor, nobody even dared to look at him. But after all, he was a traitor, wasn't he? He had sold himself and the sake of his species for power and vengeance. Though he had finally allowed the Earth to get rid of the Taelons... But that, nobody cared about of course...

He was living there since a little more than three months now, three months after... their Fall, as everybody whispered; it was not yet the official term for it, for this first victory of humanity against an alien race, but it should soon become doubtlessly.

But his own people was not the only thing he had to fear from, he also had on his back many Jaridians representative that sought revenge. He had simply asked for more power than it would have been convenient to give him. And the Jaridians had as soon screamed betrayal. The news had made its way on Earth at lightspeed, that, not too happy to betray his own people, he would betray the Jaridians too, simply to get himself at the top. But he had NOT done that, it was obvious, anybody who would have looked at that fact more than twice would have understand, but what were the Jaridians giving them as information was just what they wanted to give them and then... There HAD BEEN a war, a war that nobody on Earth had ever wanted and the collapsing governments needed someone to put all the blame on, someone whom the ravenous reporters could destroy the life of. And he was the most evident choice there, the most perfect one, fitting for this rôle. He had already betrayed most of his
allies so to everyone nothing would prevent him from doing it again, and again, and again...

Mankind thought it lived in peace now, now that the Taelons were gone, and it was all the contrary. The new `International Community' whose goal was to, or so that was what they said, maintain the peace in the world, and it detained a power surpassing the one of any government on Earth. The Humans were simply not realizing that from a yoke, they had just passed to another one. Sandoval HAD worked with the Jaridians, he knew their method, their way of acting well enough, almost like the ones of the Taelons, since he had worked in close, very close, collaboration with their version of the secret services, and it was a certainty... There HAD to be some Jaridians leader behind that `International Community'. It was certain. Not that he considered Humans to not be able to think by themselves and then to allow this new commity to be born, but it was too direct, it was not enough political to be completly Human. A `Community' that almost every members had worked into very close
contact with the Taelons' services while they were on Earth could not possibly decide, like this, without any explanation, just to satisfy the public opinion, to murder all of the remaining Taelons, and in their sleep. It would be the end of their existence as a species, and it was NOT what he had wanted for them to get through. He had wanted to prove them that the Humans were not only these primitive beings that the only use could be for their lives to be wasted in the Taelons' wars. Exterminate all of the Taelons was not the solution, far from it.

Now, so much things had changed. Yeah, so much things. He was almost back to his `old self' the man he was before being caught by the Taelons and implanted. He cried often now, his severed face was wet with tears. And his heart that many said was made of stone started to beat again, for one single instant. He had learned of the existence of his son, this famous son that had saved his life about two years ago. He had not only learned of the existence of his offrspring, but of his name too, or none the less of his identity. Liam Kincaid was his son. Or, the man that had pretended to be Liam Kincaid was his son, genetically. Though the term man was not very appropriated, neither in the sence of a human being, nor in the sense of male and adult. He was still just a child, but a hybrid, a alien hybrid, the son of Ha'gel, not his own. Ha'gel had taken his form like he could have taken anybody else's form... He was only a part of his DNA, not a true father.

That, he had realized in a somewhat violent manned. He knew that Liam would have prefered to say it to him himself, but a soldier from another facility had simply knocked at his door and with the icy, false respect that was the attitude of everybody who would come by to see him, he had told him that the being known of the name of Major Liam Neville Kincaid, ex-protector of Da'an, at another time his colleague, was kimera, the son of an alien named Ha'gel and that his, Ronald Sandoval's, DNA was in the DNA strand too. How sweet. How delicate. He had never known where he was, infact, he doubted seriously that the poor man was still alive. This... man had done everything, everything, he had given his life, his soul, his conscienceness, his mind, his friends... to save them, the Taelons, the Jaridians and the Humans, to make them join in a brand new species that would again be the beginning of the life, a brand new life. And now, all that these stupid people too highly-placed
for him to put a name on them had thought to do was to lock his son up in a secret facility and to test on him endlessly, test his capacities, push him until he would break down, interrogate him to ask him about what he knew... What was not an easy thing when you had inside of your head the results of millions of years of knowledge, obtained after pain and miseries by millions of people... He had to live through hell now. And Sandoval would save him, he would do this act... But he could not. It would be suicide and he knew it. Because he knew his life was not that worthy to the eyes of the people that had brought him in thre.

All of this was quite vague in his mind. After all, he no longer was the man he used to be. Not since they had removed his CVI from his brain anyway. Only days ago, he had been said that he was wanted at the laboratory, and it was only some corners ago from the little chamber his universe had been restrained to. He had gone there, without a work, not knowing too much why he had been asked there. But he would soon understand, a little too late to risk escaping though, that the presence of a Cyber-Virus in his head was making him a man very dangerous, too dangerous to be allowed some freedom, freedom being a very realtive term. Then, what do you do with a man that you cannot kill because you can still use him but that is dangerous as an implant? The answer was obvious. He had just not asked to good question. You put out of the equation the fact that this man is an implant; and then nothing would be like before. He would again be Ronald Sandoval, not the FBI special agent,
neither Zo'or's protector and attaché, nor the representative of the taelon Synod on Earth... But only and in all his simplicity, Ronald Sandoval, once human being, now something... between... almost a hybrid... Not Human, not alien. Just... terribly worse.

Hybrid could be a name to give himself because they had not yet removed his CVI in its entirety, what would have been impossible and suicide anyway since the implant had made in the brain and to the nervous system permanent damages, if not just changes that he could not stay alive without very much long. NO, the scientists, after having, or so he doubted, read attentively through the Taelons' archives, or what was left and available for their eyes to see, had worked on removing every programs in his CVI, though that there was not much programs left to pull out of the implant, his mind, his strong will, had already crushed the motivational imperative. After this, theyr had just... removed it from his head, pieces after pieces, with the help of the anti-virus developated by Belman years ago - oh gosh it seemed centuries ago! They had left there only the most primary components, only things, that, and this the scientist had checked many and many times over, would not change
anything to his mental capacities. He would be a normal huamn being again. But things being what they are and people being always the same, the doctors had decided to let him a alst gift: his skrill, that they had had the moral decency of not ripping away from him, though they made sure it was no longer `functionnal'. This and a part of his implant's perfect recalling memory.

He had spent over 24 hours in coma after this. And now, he had been ordered to rest, because it was not a change you could get used to in one day. In fact, when he had awakened he was sure he was insane. He had opened his eyes, was strapped to a metallic table tightly and had absolutly no idea of how the hell he had come here, then he had had the reflex to use his implant to remember, and the pain that had resulted had made him scream and fall back into this dark, restless slumber; using the implant, though the doctors had left some functionnal parts of it, was highly not suggested, it would be as painful and sensible to use unless his body would get used to the change. Living again as a normal man had been so tough. He would never have thought so, never thought that there were so much differences between the two worlds. He had had to learn everything again, before his reflexes were quick, he almost did not have time to think to it, that already his CVI had taken the lead,
all thoughts were so ordered, so deeply and completly logical, now everything seemed to him too slow, he lived through his life, like a movie into slow motion, so slow that you wonder when your feet is going to his the ground at your next step, the colors seemed pale, grey, ugly, shaded. In fact everything seemed grey, grey and frozen, lifeless... Life seemed to him of such a meaningless agony.

Fortunately, they had left him his skrill. Only by its presence, its comforting presence in his mind... the only thought of his own mind totally mingled with the one of this primitive creature was of a calm and of a peace he, before, would have believed was to be found nowhere. The CVI not being there anymore to interfere, it was a direct, constant and complete contact between their two minds. And after all, it was all that could tie him back to this ephemeral and passed life that had been Agent Sandoval's. The animal, if it could be called like this, had showed him all of this sadness, this compassion, this comfort that never the CVI had allowed it to express. He was discovering a true conscienceness in his skrill, almost a personnality, that he had never seen before. He knew that now, it would be the only one to accept him unconditionally, despite every actions he might commit in the future. He prefered its constant company to the one of the Humans, without hesitating.

And now, only at this moment after three months that he had spent away from them, he was wondering what was happening to Zo'or and Da'an. He had access to the public news of course, but it had been a long time since he did not believe in those anymore, not after his world of implant told him how easy it was to make the people say and believe what one single person wanted them to say and to believe. He hoped they would be there, at... at the execution.

Sandoval had been told by his `doctors' that he was unable to attend, but he had just ignored their advide and had managed to prove them that he was physically able to go there. And today, he was there, on the west coast of the North Pacific ocean, in Russia, where most of the fragments of the mothership had finally been dragged by the waters; the remanings had been found in South American. But most of the fragments had just been engulfed under five kilometers of water and the Internation Community had communicated that it was not worthy the money that would be needed to drag them to the surface.

For the very first time, his own species disgusted him, not only a simple despise, but a disgust, pure and hard disgust. They were ready to terminate every remaining members of the taelon race that could have survived and they dared make of this execution a reception, an event!... Every of the most important people of Earth had come, in their most beautiful clothes... He wandered and heard here and there laughs and conversation like if nothing was going on. Like if they were not going to commit the worst genocide of the history of Humanity.

They would proceed to the execution from the inside of the fragment of ship itself, but many of the... visitors were going to stay here, protected from the ocean's coldness, even if some of them, considering themselves to be brave had asked to assist to the... event from the inside of the bubble of bioslurry itself. This demand had been agreed to of course and security guards had been posted all in the inside, just in case, some of the Taelons were not so asleep as they appeared to be. It was disgusting, decadent... They were going to destroy what was left of a proud people and, not only doing of the event an... attraction, but they let the people touch to everything, wander in every corridors, mimick the Taelons' attitudes, ridiculize everything their civilization had been built on...

Sandoval was wandering through the crowd, not caring about being recognized, thinking that it would certainly scare most of the ones who had seen him and put a name on his banned face and that it was just for their one good. He had even obtained to be allowed to come here alone, without bodyguards, a rare permission, but after being the protector of two Taelons during seven years, he considered himself to be able to defend himself like the big boy he was. It was like this, through his wanderings, that he saw him. He just caught a so brief glimpse of this energy form that two men held, each having one hand tightly grasped around his arms, in the shadows of the corridor. A corridor in which he very litterally threw himself into. If there was Taelon left alive, he would never let pass the occasion to see him, to talk to him, to tell himself that there was one of them left, that at least one of them HAD survived the massacre. But it was only afterward that he reflected that
possibly, this Taelons had been brought here to die, or worse... to assist to his fellows passing.

The corridor led him to a chamber. He hated to not remember exactly the path of these corridors. He had almost gotten lost, only minutes ago. He missed his CVI, something he never thought he would do. Technically it was still there, or at least the perfect memory was still there, but it was still a lot to painful to use. He hid just in time in an alcove not to be seen by the security guards watching the door of the chamber. His old habits were coming back, good...

After some seconds of hide and seek he finally managed, after having punched out the two guards that were blocking his way, to enter in the room where they had brought that Taelon, to assist to his own kind's death.

Thrre things hit his eyes at the same time. The two first were the two guards that had brought the Taelon in here, not the same ones that he had sent to sleep in the entrace, but other ones, the implant was still visibly under the ear even if it well seemed de-activated. Old volunteers that turned their heads toward him very faslty, with these jerky motions that he knew were his and that were the gestures of all the ex-implants. The third one was the Taelon knelt one the smooth purple floor, his hands crossed over his chest, his head bowed down, he seemed lost in the course of his own universe and he did not react at all, as if only a blow of wind had entered the room.

The older volunteer stepped toward him, "Agent Sandoval, I must ask you to leave right now. You have no right to be here."

Then the Taelon spoke up. Sandoval recognized that voice, but refused to believe what his mind was telling him. This dry, though melodious, voice that he had known to be colder than ice itself, a voice used to comand, was now softer than he had ever imagined it could get, this voice was asking, requesting, no longer ordering. "You may allow him in," the Taelon said in a voice so weak that was most likely coming from a ghost's throat. "And please I must ask you to leave us alone for a few minutes."

The old volunteers knew of his will, they knew that despite the appearances opposing to his wishes was not worthy to try. It was a fallen king that had at least the right to be considered with respect, if only this. They left, silenced, their eyes fixing the ground.

Sandoval laid his eyes on the one that not so long ago - it seemed to him to be centuries ago, though only three months had flowed by since the fall of the taelon empire - had been his master, both his best friend and his worst enemy. And that now was nothing but another being like so much other beings in the universe, that had no longer something exceptional, that no longer was in command. Zo'or, this proud being if there was one, had been brought to this. To watch as all the remaining of his people would die.

Even in his most cruel hops of revenge, of vengeance, he had never wished for something like this to happen. Yes, in moments of exteme rage he had sworn he would see all of them dead - and very especially HIM. But later he admitted reluctantly to himself that they shared more than both could think they did and then, his intentions of destruction did not change, but softened. He knew that only one of them would survive the conflict, and he had done everything for this one to be him. He had given him to the Jaridians, but had told them specifically that in no case, harm was to come to him, weakness and order that he had kept himself from showing Zo'or, the most concerned one. But these orders had had to be swept away as soon as he had been accused of betrayal. In fact, maybe it was the very primary reason of his fall.

Between him and Zo'or, there had been... something, something had linked them together. Not friendship, nor trust, not liking... But they often could understand each other, they could almost hear what each other thought, without the need of words. It was why so much things had passed between them, why Sandoval had once carried out his task with such an effectiveness... and why he had become Zo'or's worst enemy, because he knew him far too well...

This voice, this same voice, so weak, that he refused to believe to who it belong to, got him out of his thoughts, "Why have you come here and today Agent Sandoval? But why do I ask. I know already that this is what you always wanted to see. Then I suggest you to watch attentively and to be witness of my own and my kind's decay into death."

The man stepped closer, more startled by the softeness of the words than by their surprisingly non-disguised meaning. He stopped suddenly, seeing that Zo'or was... not reacting. The Taelon's wrists were tightly tied to each other by strange cuff of iron, of this same color that had been made the few Jaridian probes he had encountered. They stopped him from doing any other movement than moving his fingers, and even then... ever so slowly. But he could not prevent himself from jerking back slightly; the noise his clothes brushing against each other made Zo'or lift his head toward him. And he looked at him with these... empty eyes. That had once been of the most piercing and beautiful blue Sandoval had ever seen. The Taelon HAD heard his reaction and allowed this familiar smirk to slide over his lips. "The Jaridians," he gave the only explanation possible. "Before your... government placed me under this guard for being interrogated more... properly, they... questionned me...
themselves. And with their own methods. Blindness seems to be one of their... favorite technique..." With the last sentence, something very alike a sob seemed to escape Zo'or's throat, his fingers were trembling.

He could find nothing else to say. "I knew nothing about-..."

"Really? I AM amazed to hear this from your mouth, I believed you were the only one to have ordered this treatment to be applied to me," came the bitter reply. Apparently, if Zo'or had had to play the submissed to be spared of his keepers punishment, his personality had remained the same. At least one thing that had not been shattered away by this war. It felt curiously familiar, good, to find that the ex-Synod Leader was still the same.

Once he could look away from the blinded orbs and overhelmed his original shock, he spoke, his words mirroring his thoughts. "It is true... that I never had any liking for you, but I would never have ordered them to torture you. I am not a monster." Perhaps he had been one, during a certain time, but he no longer was one. The loss of his CVI had changed many more than only bringing back to normal his mental capacities. He felt extraordinary... sorry and horrified by what he saw... like he had not been since long.

Zo'or did not reply anything, the anger that had been a shade over his face slowly fading away. He seemed to let himself being once more absorbed by his train of thoughts, so that Sandoval advanced toward him and lightly touched his fingertips to the Taelon's shoulder. The energy being shivered under the contact, but did not try to push him away, though how could he? The ex-implant had somehow always known that Zo'or did not hate him. Both of them were part of an already forgotten part and some comfort, even physically transmitted, seemed not to repulse the usually cold alien. "Why have you come Agent Sandoval?" he repeated his first question.

"Only Sandoval... please. They've removed my CVI anyway. I'm just like any normal man today, just Ronald Sandoval," he replied almost like he used to years ago, with this cold and seemingly unhearthed voice, but today, perhaps somewhat more... familiar.

Zo'or simply turned his sightless eyes in his direction. "I would have believed that the Jaridians would have prefered to keep you implanted, you could have been of a greater use to them in this state," he whispered, as if speaking for himself, or thinking aloud.

The man strangly started to feel his old instincts of protector come back from the deep inside. He allowed himself one of these brief joyless smile that so many had feared only months ago. "The Jaridians sold me to Humanity Zo'or. The betrayer betrayed. I was released and am a prisonner now. I was allowed to come here. But I am watched," he explained, fastly, in his most neutral voice, not wishing yet to show to his old Taelon master how had the recent events troubled him.

It was strange, now... now he did see Zo'or in a totally different way. Now that his implant was not there any longer to shade his eyes with this aura of power. He seemed weaker. Ronald could see the flaws, the weaknesses, the tear into the tightly and strongly made shell. But, he thought, from a being that was tortured since months, what should I have been expecting else than this?

Noticing that the Taelon was still awaiting for his answer to the original question, he advanced one. "If I've come today, it's only... because I missed it. It has only been three months, and yet, it seems... to be part of another life, of another universe... I'd have given much to see one of your kind again, to... tell myself that there was one of the Taelons still living... and standing."

A weak smirk. "If then you have come seeking for a pardon, I shall not ever give you one. You have destroyed my people. I will never forget this, nor will I forgive it."

Sandoval lowered his head and briefly closed his eyes, before kneeling on hte floor at the side of his fallen enemy. "I will not ask you for forgiveness... For I know that you won't ever give it to me. Not that I don't have remorses. The loss of my CVI made me realize many things. But I knew at this time that I had to survive, by every meants and every ways, Zo'or and that you would have killed me, would have I given you the occasion to do it. It was the Taelons of I. The choice was evident, it would have been for you as well, had you been in my place."

"And it is not that I cannot comprehend the meaning of your action. I have been left many time to think as well. And you are right, had the opportunity been given to me, I would have hesitated, but I would have killed you at the very end." No words were spoken during a time, then... "It seemed a lifetime to me as well, faraway is the time when I could rest in peace and be sure to be alive on the next morning. It seemed an eternity... An eternity of coldness..."

"Yes... I would too like to be able to sleep, trusting that I would do in peace and dreamlessly. But we've made our choices Zo'or. The past if the past and cannot be changed. Only the future depends upon us now."

Both stopped talking and Sandoval bowed his head down, where, through a bay of virtual glass, he could make out in the darkness the vague shape of the few Taelons that would now know the end of their days. People, the... public... filled the room. The Jaridians arrived in the room and were saluted and welcomed by a roaming of applause. One of them walked solonemly toward the generator of energy that maintained this section of the mothership independant and had allowed it to survive the crash.

And a civilization knew its end, under the sightless eyes of the probably only one survivor. When the first Taelon that was transformed into energy bubbles with nothing but a faint, vaguely sighing sound, the crowd applaused. At the second one, only some dared fight against the heavy silence that by itself had fallen onto the room. At the third one, Zo'or collapsed further on himself, curling in a tight ball, his eyes tightly closed, as he sensed the few tendrils that the Commonality had left waver. Sandoval could do nothing but let him isolate in his pain. He knew that Zo'or hated to be seen weak, even less being touched, or helped. And it went on, the few firsts were killed one after one, and after, they were killing them row after row... and soon the room was filled with mists of energy bubbles that created a somewhat surreal mood.

When everything was finished, when the crowd was starting to leave, discussing strongly and with much laughs, Zo'or stayed on the ground, motionless. He would not force his own journey to the next plane. Sandoval knew it, he was way too proud for this, not yet at least, not as long as his pride was intact, but torture could break the strongest ones, all what was needed was time. After a certain time, they would discover the sensible point and would employ it as much times as necessary, until Zo'or would be broken under the pressure.

The Human had been expecting it for long seconds now, after seeing the Taelon slowly curl more and more on himself, his fists clenched tightly together even despite of the cuffs. Zo'or threw his head and screamed something in Eunoia. Very loudly. Hoping that they would hear him. Was it a prayer? A curse? An insult? Or a mix of every of these? Sandoval was not too sure... He watched as Zo'or slowly bowed his head back, until his forehead touched the ground, seemingly... crying.

It was only a whisper. But even without the help of his CVI, he heard it quite well in the deeply silenced room. It had had to be a lot harder for Zo'or to say than it had been surprising for him to hear. "Sandoval... Hold me... In your arms... Please..."

He hesitated one instant, the instant that Sandoval the ancient implant that sought revenge took to come back to the surface, making him recall how had Zo'or made him suffer by pure pleasure. And the Sandoval risen from the dead only told himself that if Zo'or had ever had a debt to pay, was it toward him or toward anyone else, for having been as he had been, for having tried to save his people before everything, even before his own sake... if he ever had a debt to pay for this, then the debt was paid. Completly.

He leaned down and slowly surrounded the Taelon's limp form with his arms, hugging him gently to his chest. Zo'or just `wore' his natural facade, his normal energy like self and Sandoval's arms almost passed through his body, revealing him how much effect on the once powerful alien had the torture he had been submitted to taken. And in his dead eyes, in the empty blue orbs, on his whole features, there was this look, half way between fear, shame and pain. A look that never he would have thought he would one day come to see.

The Human, though that during this very moments, he kind of wished that he would no more be Human, ashamed, the Human gathered the form of his former superior in his arms more tightly, closing his eyes, feeling the need of the Taelon for physically given comfort. Oh my god, he silently thought, not sure if it was a curse or a prayer. If even Zo'or had changed that immensely... What would happen to them now? He had never liked Zo'or, that was true. The Taelon was probably one of the main responsible, if not THE responsible for all actions he had commited during the last few years but... but now... as he felt the weak energy form shaken with sobs in his arms... He just felt sorry. He could not exactly explain why, nor could he justify himself, but... but he was sure that somehow things could have not been this way.

Sandoval had already in the past held an unconscious, an injured, a dying Zo'or in his arms, had already seen him furious, cold, calm, sarcastic, cruel, very rarely contempted... But nothing could be compared to what he was living through right now. It was just... not fair!

And it was at this moment that a thought came to his mind, as he saw Zo'or in his arms, trying to keep himself from crying in rage and in pain, the thought came that... that Zo'or was one of the most courageous and the most proude being he had ever met. He had thought that the Taelon was a coward when he had asked him to kill him, up there, on the mothership. And he had refused. But it was not cowardice, it was somewhat... simply deserved. Zo'or had asked this of him just because he knew how so well what the Jaridians would do to him.

And now... now they were for each other everything they had left in this world.

V - A Last Hope

A young man, lying in a bed, not his bed, but yet, not the floor. The white sheets stuck to every visible fragment of flesh on his body, adhering there because of the fine layer of cold sweat. His body had the frail shape of those who had gotten too thin. His hair was brown; he wore no clothes under the sheets; his members were spasmodically agitated, souvenir of the long and intense intterogations that, officially, had never been practiced on human beings; his face was the one of a young man that had suffered too much for the lenght of his life, new lines were digging into his face; his lips, before bearing this charming smile, now curved only in a difficult smirk...

He never really slept since how much times already? One month? Maybe two. Oh... on a physiological side, he DID sleep, but he awakened more tired than when he had slid his whole body aching with fatigue under the old blankets.

Li'am opened his eyes in one single move, not hesitating, not shuting his eyelids after, unnaturally, like if he had been awakened since a long while. And for a moment, he stopped every motions. A habit he had, since the time passed in the lab. Nothing made the slightest movement during the few seconds he took to circle the large room with his widened eyes, did not even daring to breathe. After the operations, it alwayshurt when he breathed. He spent a long time watching every possible details into the room, making sure it was not an imediate threat, a too long time for it to be completly sane. Only after this, he permitted to himself and to his body, to relax. He often forgot that he no longer was what he once had been.

His eyes closed. They were dried, had not cried since a long time. He knew himself quite well, he rose to his feet even before feeling the newly familiar tightness catching his throat. The young man vomitted everything he had eaten in the past day. As always when he awakened from this nightmare. He came back to sit on the edge of the bed's frame a good five minutes later; the sheets were drenched with sweat as much as they would have been drenched with water when washed.

From his skin came this so human smell, of sweat, of tiredness, of pain... The nightmare, always the same damned nightmare.

The hybrid let his head fall back until the back on it touched the liaison of bones between his neck and shoulders and when he opened his eyes again, he could see the ceiling. Remember his dream. Yes, he had not to fear this dream, he had not to be scared from facing his souvenirs... Da'an himself had told him this, to never fear what was trapped inside him. That was centuries ago. This only thought made this ball of pain and tears grow in his throat, but he pushed it back into his stomach.

His dream, this nightmare, that made him vomit in disgust, in terro, in pain every mornings... The needle, of course.

The scientists had told him that one year had passed since... since what many named the Fall of the taelon empire and that others called the liberation of humanity... Names were not lacked. He had listened of a unattentive ear, more troubled by what he had already seen by what they told him.

It had been white. White, eveyrwhere. A white room. A universe of white. Veyrthing was so white. So white that he had thought he was going insane all over it, or blind, or both, so white that he had thought he would lose his soul into the blocking of this whiteness. He would have killed to feel something, pain, pleasure, a stroke, a gentle brush against his skin - did he still have a skin at that time? - even a hit, hear words, see something else than this white. And then there was the needle. The needle that brought the pain. The pain that brought the screams, the screams that brought the loneliness, the loneliness that brought the fear, the fear that brought the terror, the terror that brought to something he could not name, because he feared he would fall back into it, was he to even refer to it!

The did not want to lose him. How could they have accepted to lost the very first alien hybrid that had survived after being born naturally, by a human mother, so to speak, the Miracle itself. When even the Taelons had not been able to make them survive. They wanted to know everything of him. Then, they did not want to lose him. Then, they had created the needle, this needle, seemingly made to implant CVIs, but that penetrated in the core of his brain, piercing this little hole in the middle of his forehead, he would forever keep the scar of...

It went to the center of his brain. Explored his memories. They wanted to see how he was made, from the inside. They wanted to see how could his body be a perfect mix of energy and matter. They had entered into his mind, lived through his life again...

They had stolen his mind. They had dissected him alive, from the inside. To a certain point, he had felt the conscienceness residing inside of the physical corpse just... disconnecting. They had wondered if he were dead. But everytimes, they had been able to make him come back, to make him come back to the prison when he had managed to be delivered... They made him come back... with the needle.

This was his nightmare. He was strapped to a metal table, moulded for the form of his own body, he could not move, could not have even if his muscles had sitll obeyed the commands of his mind. The scientists had found a way to part his mind from his body, to explore the knowledge inside of the mind and to open his body on all its side. And there was this first, most terrible moment at the beginning when he no longer heard, nor felt his heart beating in the center of his chest. And the needle started shaking, folded on itself, in a spiral, then started moving toward him. He could not move, could not scream when the thing forced its way into his brain and like a vampire pumped every of his memories out.

...

...

Ahhh !

...

He staggered away from his bed, managed to ran his way down to the bathroom and vomitted again. Only saliva this time, his stomach had been emptied already. The dream was always the same, only with some differences... sometimes.

Li'am felt empty, he was not sure anymore to be the owner of his own body. But, he remembered so much, too much, too well what had happened before the Fall. He remembered... Lili, his mother Siobhan, Da'an, Renée, Augur, Street, Sandoval, Zo'or... Them, them and everyone else too... He missed it so much, this time of innocence. The time when he still believed, trusted into this thing called mankind. In fact, he should be proud of Humanity. They had freed themselves, had opened their eyes and theirs minds, had stopped the growing influence of beings they did not even understand. Unconsciously, how so much unconscisouly, the Humans had become even worse than everything they had fought against, or fought for. Maybe was it only for a time. Maybe some of them would realize that what they were doing held simply no sense.

The scientists that had helped him, or at least that HAD tried, after they had finished to experience on him, had told him everything he had asked for. About the Jaridians that were slowly dying without their alter egos. About the Great Execution that had been done about 9 months before now. About Da'an's insanity. About Zo'or's... condition. And About Sandoval. But he could learn nothing more than what had been public. They refused to let him leave. Or, they had not let him leave immediatly after they had been done with their experiments. Only when he had begun to say what he knew they wanted to hear from his mouth. After... He had learned through news papers dating from many months ago about Renée and Urick's suicide... But he had almost smiled reading many papers about the voluntary leaving of a good part of what was left of humanity. Almost one billion of travellers, or so it was said. They had used the old system of interdimensional portal to spread their presence
acroos the galaxy. Then, maybe it was not as bad as it appeared to be. If some had fled, then some had realized that their actions were wrong. Then some had learned humility.

Only two little weeks that he had come back to Washington. That he had found Sandoval waiting wordlessly for him at his appartment. He had touched, taken with a light hand emptied from every strenght these objects that had been his one day. One day... long ago.

And his father had explained him a lot.

They had mutually explained. They needed it. But what was to say? Not much in fact. Both had their version of the story, both had had their motivations, both had explained. And now both had their infortunes.

Now, still living following the terms of a unsigned, undealed treaty of peace, they lived into the lair that had opened to Liam's DNA. Like relics from the past, they spent their days to heal their mutual wounds, to tell each others what had never been told before. And they mostly spent their days waiting. Waiting for things to change.

They would change, with time. Humanity was not stupid. It is why it they had been so cruel. They would wait for numerous years is needed. And if they did not change... If things did not change by themselves?... Then they would raise their head toward the stars and would let them carry away the two last left, far away. They would get lost into stars. Maybe there was still hope, after the stars?

Thinking to the stars, the only ones that would forever be there, the only ones that would never change, the onles ones that would never betray him, the only immortals that would always be there to look back at him... Thinking to those, he raised, put on with these stiff gestures a shirt and pants that had known better days than these. And he returned to the surface.

Li'am did not return often to the surface. The old church was still standing, but in ruins. All paintings had faded, all the place he had come in, once, had been destroyed, this peace he had sought to find in this place was here no longer. But still, the church was standing. His gestures were more mecanical than really living, he slowly made his way toward the roof, not wishing to sore his atrophied muscles more than they already were. He finally managed to make his way through the stairs. The stairs were not real stairs, they were a path of fragments, fallen from the ceiling, that with their different size were forming grades, steps, like stairs.

He came out. The ceiling itself had since long vanished, only the roof made of old oiled tile was still more or less fighting against the more and more powerful storms. What remained of the last floor were only beams of woods since long rotten, somewhat dangerous, and eaten away by the many days of acid rain. The web it formed was strewed with fragments fallen from the roof.

No lights. Not any lights in the city of Washington. No. They had left here the ruins, did not even bothering to try to repair, wanting to make them an exhibit of what had almost been, as examples... And they had built again, farther... farther in the North. Some ten or twenty miles away from the original location. They had kept the name Washington DC. And still the city formed the artificial aura of yellow-orange-ish light in the cloudless dark sky over the line of the horizon. But in THIS place, there were no more lights, no more living soul either. But him and his father.

Then he could see them. The stars. Hundreds. Thousands maybe. Some seemed simply placed to far away from each others, others seemed to close, as if someone had thrown a whole bag of stars here and had just forgotten one here and there. The stars were his only friends now. They were everywhere... for long, so long... And even them, sometimes... they could go through time and light... His only friends.

"Good evening," he said aloud, maybe to himself, maybe to these that he was so happy to see free of every bounds again, after a whole year spent under the too bright white lights of the labs and two weeks spent prisonner at Augur's, in the underground.

It was just after having slowly understood that the stars could not reply to his message that he realized the response he had received could not belong to someone else than... Ronald Sandoval. He could not, even for himself, in his mind, say purely andsimply, his... dad. It was ever harder to think to him being this. After everything he had done to him. After everything... After everything. Period.

The two men stayed side by side, their head raised toward the dark ceiling pierced with thousands of little silvered holes. They had learned after some days... to communicate... to support each other, and to stand each other's presence; this and other things. Sandoval was the first to break the silence. His voice was changed, sounded... rasped. Liam had not asked him why it had become this way, he had simply noticed that it was no longer this slightly hispanic voice. Li'am had kept for himself the awful secrets of his short time in the labs; the only thought brought the now familiar chill of pain down his back. And Sandoval had as well kept his secrets for himself. Both knew that they had, each on their sides, each by their ways, suffered much. Maybe just too much for their mind to stand it. "I've talked to Zo'or you know?" And another of the things that once he would have found funny: they still adressed each other by their titles, even if they had them no longer, Li'am was
still Major and Sandoval was still Agent; and if not, when their talk became more private, they still kept adressing each other by their names, even not by their first names. Still with everything that had happened.

The young man - a name he could be qualified with if one saw to his chronological age only, because otherwise his face showed a man in his early fourthies and his eyes showed a lot more than that... much more - lowered the eyes. They had never really told each other everything that had happened, all would come in time. Time. After all, time was all they had left, so why not waste it. And if Sandoval had waited until this moment, it was then that his... meeting with Zo'or had had to be somewhat... perturbating. "When?" Little talks were the best. Hiding anything, not disapear behind politeness in which you never really did believe.

"Nine months ago."

"At the execution that is?" A brief nod was his sole answer. Even more human Sandoval had never liked to show much of himself and especially of what he felt anyway. "I suppose that, of all of US who survived, HE would have to be the most... punished, should I say?" Li'am oftener and oftener said only `us' instead of describing all the ones he meant by this, all the ones that had known the Taelons, enough to know that they did not own to be done this, and enough to know that this ultimate end was... wrong.

"The Jaridians... interrogated him before he was taken to a human court and judged for his crimes. Finally found guilty and put in jail... somewhere. He's been done horrible things."

"Horrible things that even you wouldn't have done to him that is?" he said, his voice filtering between his dry lips, the ghost of a faint smirk flashing on his features.

Another nod, reluctant this time, as if difficult to admit. Pity was the one thing Sandoval did not admit that easily. "Horrible things yes... This was all he... managed to tell me."

Zo'or was a proud being, even in pain he was, even in fear he was, not surprising that he would not have told Sandoval much more than this. "And how did he take... it?" Your betrayal of him, your betrayal of the Taelons and the ultimate victory of the Humanity against them, was the unspoken thought, even if he could swear that the other man knew so perfectly what was being spoken about.

"Don't know. I couldn't stay by his side long enough to know this..."

They stayed in a heavy silence long after this. Li'am had guessed that a little more of this only something described had had to happen between Sandoval and Zo'or had that moment. But they had for rule to not ask if the other had chosen not to talk about it. They absorbed themselves into the stars. During all their talking they had not turned their eyes away from them even once.

What awakened him was the confusion of the indistinct squawkings of the birds. He raised his head, found himself covered with an old, dusty blanket he recalled seeing earlier, lower in the church's levels. It took him a moment to realize that he had not dreamed at all this night. Not at all. Nothing. He let his back rest against the rotten piece of wood, house of the insects, that he had been leaning on during his sleep. It was good to sleep with his mind calm again. He had forgotten how good one could feel, truly wakening from a peaceful sleep in the morning.

Sandoval had doubtlessly seen him fall asleep and had more or less seated him on the ground, then covered with the blanket. He had of these sudden fervour of a fatherly love sometimes... Li'am did not like when he did this. It made him feel vaguely... ill-at-ease. Like if a simple, complete, pure trust could not and would never exist anymore. Not in this world. And especially not between them.

With his half-opened eyes he sought around him to find the place where were the squealing baby birds and saw the nest, some meters below him, through a wuite large crack in the floor... it was snuggled between two beams half collapsing onto each other. The female had just come back, her mouth seemingly heavy with insects, what fully meant these desperate cries from her offspring.

Seeing all of these baby birds, hearing all of these squawling... almost like a moaning... Li'am suddenly saw something. Some flashes, past memories... Da'an, hodling tightly, almost possessively in his arms a blueish tube in which something seemed to be moving, a unreadable but definitely powerful, gripping feeling flotaed on the Taelon's usually calm features, attempting to explain something to someone he did not see... Then a huge room... Big... Long... Like a corridor. And here, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of little cryogenic tubes in which kicked and moved... things... small things with a humanoid form, with arms and legs that seemed to fight for freedom. And in theairfloated this moaning... this common moaning... coming from all of their mouths at the same time. Everywhere.

The whole result was doubtlessly the combination of the hallucination, because he had been confused with the squawling of the birds... that were so much like... He moaned himself.

"The children..." was his moan, when the little voice in his ear finally revealed him what was the answer he was searching for.

The children, the children of the Taelons, not strong enough to survive, but strong enough to be putin stasis as soon as they were born. They were placed in tubes, cryogenic tubes, that contained energy that would feed them until... until life was given to them again, by a meant that the Taelon had yet to find. Their children... The last hope of the taelon race. Even more than all the bodies palced in stasis... Not eliminated anyway.

Had THEY found them? If they had not pushed the news yet, it surely was because they had not found them. The hope was little, but it was the only one they could rely on. And even the smallest was better than nothing.

It had been a long time that Li'am had not ran. Well, he did run, he felt like he was flying over the stairs. He had to tell this to Sandoval. Tell him that their children where the last hope of the Taelons for survival!...

VI - The children

Sandoval watched with something mixing wonder and astonishment the rows and rows and rows and rows of bottle, cryogenic-tubes, keeping the children alive, by the barest, feeding them constantly with energetic fluid, in this death stasis from which they would never exit. It held them, by the tiniest linkage, to this plane; they were merely out of this frontiere that separated life and death and would never know something else than this state of halfwakening, heavy and latent slumber. The rope was falling behind him, forming a web of its vaguely plastic-like material; and water was falling from everywhere: droplets ran along the walls, formed pools of water on the ground, and since so long that the salt in the water had marked the smooth floor with its whiteness. But fifty meters below the ocean level, something like this should be expected. The pressure was just bearable. Maybe it would be just too much for Li'am. And for him as well, he thought, just as this dull feeling,
not even pain, just a feeling to message that something was wrong with the body of its receiver, as this feeling came from his inner ear.

The climbing metallic buckle fell with the expected high-pitched sound on the so familiar though only more unrealistic smoothness of the purpleish material. Li'am's bare feet made this soft noise comparable to flesh against flesh, when they touched the wet floor, this noise that gave a troubling feeling of coolness, like the coolness you fell when touching with your flesh the floor of the bathroom. Both of them were only wearing a tight suit, of some thin, also platic-like material, since they were in the warm waters of the south pacific ocean. The spread pieces of the mothership that had crashed all over Earth had followed the waters ways and had travelled through most of the pacific ocean, even perhaps into some others? Who could know, since practically nobody was realistically searching for them? Most members of the human species were now in the after-war shock, a war that had almost not been, almost. Most Humans were now hesitating to know the truth, they did not want to
know what they had destroyed. Sandoval took off the mask that, and he knew it, made him look like on of these giant insects in old sci-fi movies.

As soon as he inhaled, his lungs perceived the unpleasant difference. The air was heavier, and the oxygne level probably lower than what was good for normal human beings. This part of the ship had at its beginning been built to survive alone and by itself in case of necessity. And it had been a case of necessity. The chamber containing all these embryos frozen in time had then been able to recycle the oxygen and had as well stopped water from filling the inside totally; the only problem was that now the energy level was dangerously low and even some embryos seemed darker than the others, probably the weakest ones that could not survive the brutal change of rhythm in their energy nourishment. Sandoval imagined that, when in need and for the one who knew exactly one which red button press, this part of the mothership could really become a small vessel in itself. Because the Taelons had taken great care of these children, the very last hope of the survival of their race.

Li'am came closer from behind him and looked around the room, as Sandoval had previsouly done, and perhaps reflecting the same also. The ex-implant turned, hearing the other man's short breath. If one could make out something through these eyes darkened by too much blood and war, one would have seen worry, the worry of a father for a son. How long had it been? One year and a half? That Li'am, practically delirious, had rushed down the stairs in the refuge below St-Micheal church, yelling, breathless that he knew how. After many hours, his son finally had said him exactly how he had found what. And then many months it had taken to find the children and the stasis chamber. It had not been so difficult, only long. But now, so much things were done under cover... The Jaridians were almost all extinguished, the governments all over Earth were corrupted, destroyed, submished to the least coup... And it was not like if Sandoval was not skilled in working under cover. The old
Companion Protector glanced briefly at the young man and saw how much he exactly had changed; he no longer was the Li'am he had known. But so much, so much things had changed; so why had he expected this would have stayed the same?

He had discovered his son. A son that he had sided, hated, tortured during years. And it was mostly why things had never been really normal, as they should have been, as they could have been, between them, if still something could be considered normal in this destroyed world. He loved him like a father loves his son. But knew that for Li'am he was not much more than a complete stranger.

A short sigh left his lips. And he covered himself with reproachs as soon as the air was out: both of them had to keep the oxygen at least until the organic material had again gained enough energy to produce some more.

His companion stepped at his side. The same words were hesitants on their lips and written all over their face: My God! And definitely not like a prayer - true though that the term had lost most of its religious meaning with the centuries - but more like the expression of a feeling between wonder and horror. All these small forms, embryos, some not much bigger than four inches long from their little head to their little toes, desperatly struggling since hundreds, if not thousands of years, waiting for loving arms to welcome them, cradle them at their lap... What they most likely would never ever know.

Casting a look at Li'am, making sure he was not aware of it, Sandoval could not help noticing that the apparently young man had lost weight again. avait encore maigri, nota Sandoval d'un oeil inquiet, s'assurant auparavant qu'il l'observait sans être vu. During the months that the search for this had longed, they had barely seen each other. Each was gone on his side, each had his specific team, to cover a greater area. When Li'am had spoken some desire to get out, to be free, to decide by himself as he had done during the three years while Sandoval ignored he was working with his son, to leave his father for a short time, the asian man had thought wiser not to display in front of him the worry he felt growing inside - he knew that it would appear heartless to all the others that were not aware of the weird realtionship they had, but he also knew that it would again remind his son that he was his father and he did not like to be reminded of this.

Li'am's ribs looked like they just wanted to pierce the skin and come to the air; it was very visible even through the material of their suit. Himself, as ex-implant, had lived through this many times during the past few months; he had learned that controlling the increasing hunger of a skrill without a CVI was not as easy as it appeared and could become quite dangerous. But never to this point. The cheeks of the younger man were hollow, it was clear that he had not eaten as often as he should have had: Li'am tended to forget this kind of things (since they had discovered this... hope, it had been Li'am's reason to live and he often tended to forget that he DID have a material body in a material world and that he had to take care of it). He still had, and would keep such during a long time doubtlessly, the features of a slender, tall man that after having been submitted to a shocking treatment had become... a living skeleton. It sometimes seemed that his own flesh had become
for Li'am an embarassment. This only thought brought back, though non-CVIed still very vivid, memories of the young man's wounds, that he had spent hours healing, giving him medecine, painkillers, preferably when he was unconscious so that he would not... have to witness this... caring. The long nights spent at his son's bedside, watching him in his delirium, awakening him in the softest manner when the dreams became far too violent. This period had lasted long for both of them, too long. But long enough for that they both lost the little faith they kept in something that some dared name again human mercy.

The taelon... experience - because even though less than two years had been spent since they had been destroyed by humanity (they had destroyed themselves in their will to achieve perfection, the Humans had merely made sure that none would ever talk about Taelons without talking in the past) the scientists already named it a phenomenon, to be classed with all the other slaughters marking every step of humanity's history, even if, for the few people that had been plunged deep into it, that had known the very basis of it, the Taelons had never been a phenomenon to be described with this distant, uninterested tone in books -had left humanity extremely suspiscious toward extraterrestrial races. The Jaridians, or at least the ones who had suffered to be kept alike, had never obtained a popularity exceeding more than 50 or 60 percent. The Humans had sworn that never they would be caught at this game again. They had learned to be suspiscious through the hardest way, the second time
they would be the teachers. Such were slogan yelled through the streets by extremist groups, ancient and survivors of the few resistance cells which now were fully tolerated by the authorities. And, even if the price to pay was to commit a second genocide, even more voluntary than the first one, the Humans would fight against the enemies that would come from the sky.

Li'am had believed in them, as Sandoval had, what had brought him to fight against the Taelons, to risk his life for them, to sell his soul so that they might be saved, knowing so well that one person would need to be damned if these thousands of innocents below could be saved from this alien apocalysm. Yes, he had believed in them, before being rejected, before he learned that all he had given to save them, all he had given of himself, had been given for nothing, before he was despised for what he had done, when he was the only one who could now be responsaible of all of this. They would probably have accused, condemned and executed him if Zo'or had not thought wise to bring him back.

At this very moment, maybe he would have prefered Zo'or to end his suffering, in any ways, only to give him rest, in hell or in heaven, little mattered, just to give him the rest he longed for. But to the contrary, the Taelon had saved him, hoping that Sandoval would be thankful enough to ally himself with him, completly, trustfully. But no. Sandoval had only hated him more for this pity toward an inferior being that Zo'or thought he could use, and move on the board like the piece of a game. But nor Zo'or, nor his people had deserved that. Humanity had known many wars, against itself, against extremist part of itself that had separated the planet in two distincts parts. And? Had they exterminated the members of these people because their leaders had committed mistakes of judgement? Yes, these mistakes had costed thousands of lives. But no, they had not killed ALL of them simply because of what they belonged to. But now, as it was another race, an alien race, that had
attacked humanity, was it so really different? These were the kinds of thoughts that prevented him from getting the least second of sleep. He had caused the death of thousands of human beings. Once, he told himself that it was to protect his under cover work amongst the Taelons, that he had to do as if he always were the most loyal of their servants. But now, he really did wonder. If he had not become a monster, after siding some during years. He wondered also how important were the few actions he had taken against the Taelons, his part of responsability in this genocide in the name of humanity's salvation. A humanity to which its members had denied him any belonging. Many of those questions had answers that he prefed not to know. He prefered to start all over again, not to forget, no, only if he could make of what he had left of existence, something... good. Like this, he thought, looking at the embryos.

Yes, now he saw things differently - as human memory always judge the past events with eyes of today, and probably would have acted differently. Things were so much different. So different. The world was different. But Li'am of a touch on his forearm reminded him that they had to concentrate on a work which they had prepared days and nights since six months.

Li'am walked to stand in the center of the room. The taelon material protecting the embryos were weak, they would disapear and let the water fill this place within some weeks. They had not much time left. The young man let his oxygen reserve slid onto the ground and undid the buckle that held the rope which maintained the contact with the surface: it did not left them prisonner here but was simply hanging in the air. The younger man followed one of the wall while Sandoval walked to the other one, searching for the console. The lack of oxygen was growing in importance. Li'am felt a headache hammer behind his eyes, he had to inhale more and more air to fulfill the need of his blood for oxygen, which forced him to take longer and longer breaths, while balancing it between suffocation and hyper-ventilation. Sandoval had the same problem, his silouhette was moving with slower gestures, his vision also was becoming blurry. But as ex-Companion protectors, it was nothing that they
had never known, even if their bodies were not so adapted to it anymore.

Sandoval's asian features froze. Suddenly. He had found it. He turned on his heels and gestures to Li'am to come closer. A pannel, frozen in the wall energy matrix, but clearly visible for one who knew what he was looking at.

All commands were there, it did not take much time before their fingers found back the virtual keys some inches above the surface of the wall. The re-established to normal the oxygen level ans both sighed as they felt the room filled with air.

The gestures were familiar again. Sandoval could still recall the everydays' scene, when time seemed frozen upon the mothership, frozen into this coldness, led by Zo'or, coldest of all, the pilots locked up in these bubbles, the drones, deaf to everything else then the task they had been assigned to carry out. The walls were shaken, and a fall of shimmering water fell from the ceiling, when their fingers brushed against the commands that would give back to this vessel a self-power.

The tubes that contained the small children seemed to glow with a new hope. Li'am turned to him, his eyes warmed by this blueish color, very non-human, that reminded his father of who exactly he shared parentage of this child with. Li'am smiled then. The first true smile he had had since Sandoval had found him back.

VII - The day of grey

As grey, this day truly was. The sky was grey and this greyness was mirrored on the smallest thing, the sun being a spot of brightness hidden behind this cloud wall of grey and white, like a sheet of withe silk had been spread all over Earth to surround it in its soft and greyness. It was dark then. The dark grey cracks in the pale grey walls were melting into each others, until a window appeared in the almost marble-like patern to trouble the uniqueness of this imperfection. A window that was covered with thick grey metallic bars, dividing it in smaller squares.

The place he was held into was grey. All the building was grey, even during bright and sunny days, when the Earth now freed from the Taelons' dictature awakened and offered itself to its star's rays. The face of the other prisonners that he had seen only once, when he had arrived here, were always grey, like ashes. Everything here was made of grey plastic. Because some prisonners might think to slice the veins under the skin of their wrists, although some prisonners were not given the opportunity to have veins to slice. And all was shaded by the grey of their keepers' clothes, as were the very clothes that they were to dress with and the used and grey metallic chains that the human prisonners were to wear at hands and feets.

The only remaining Taelon was a vivid land of light, of brightness, in this greyish universe. His hands were simply held by a material that had been conceived to... cancel every energy discharge, preventing him from using the tiny shakaravas lodged beneath his skin.

Da'an had during a long time been a quite hellish prisonner. It was no more than a sole year since he had recovered his sanity. The voices screaming after him in his head had little by little shut, and still some of them were now speaking quietly inside him, when he was too tired to oppose any resistance to the contole of his own mind by another. But now he was at least calmer. He had asked, demanded to know if other Taelons were alive, more to re-assure himself about humanity's doing than to really know what he doubted already. The interrogated gardian had glanced with a cold respect at him and answered that he was the only survivor. The ex-Companion had smiled of this coldly enigmatic smile that put many people vaguely ill-at-ease. The commonality of course had at least twenty members that were still alive and with which Da'an communicated, rarely, but he did; not all of them had managed to escape, many were restrained on Earth, still. But most had been freed and taken
away by protectors or members of their staff that had lived too much at their side to accept this. But he had been assured enough about humanity. The Humans had forgotten... had refused to remember the Taelons.

For him, it was all that he needed to know. The Humans had seemingly reacted at this time with the violence that the Taelons had expected at the moment of their very arrival. This people deserved more than this, they deserved more; and should not have been implicated in this meaningless because too long war.

To Da'an, every day was in all points the same at the one of yesterday. Treated not with the respect he had grown used to receive from Humans, but nor with the total lack of compassion that he had expected when he had known of his jailing, he had ended by not wanting to understand anymore. He had fought enough, he had lost enough, he had lost too much, he had lost everything, even his soul, trying to fight both for his people and for those that were now keeping him a prisonner. His people would finally die, as to be expected of all living things. Da'an prefered not to know what had caused their decay, nor to know whose fault was it... he no longer felt the need to put on it a name, or to give it a meaning. Not much things were deserved or meant in life.

He almost missed to spend his grey days to listen to the meaningless babbling of the voices in his head. At least, it gave him the feeling not to be alone in this world, it gave him the feeling that he was not alone in his insanity, not completely alone in this heavy solitude. The tiny window crossed by the thick steel bars that rendered the view beyond in a displeasant square patern was now too high for him, and out of reach, since his legs could not longer allow him to stand. Because his keepers, and the orders were doubtlessly coming from someone placed much higher, gave him the bare necessary to survive, in energy. Not enough to allow him to dissolve his own pathways, not enough to allow him to move through the room, not enough so he could not move his hands that remained crossed at his lap, not enough so that he might talk, but barely enough so that he could order his own thoughts.

This grey day would be the last one, the last one of this too long to last serial of grey days... They came for him when the darkness almost more blue than the too familiar grey of the grey buildings fell. He suddenly felt immensely sad that he could not see the stars from his small cell, through his tiny barred window. He asked nothing as they gave him a energy supplement that would allow him to walk; and he followed, walked slowly one step before his keepers, on this pace that had once called for respect and for everyone that saw it to lower his eyes and bow his head. But Da'an was no longer the one he had been. As he was walking toward his own end. He knew it. Somebody somewhere on this planet had decided that his life was too much to afford now. And it was strange and somewhat frightening to notice how cold was he, facing this, cold, uninterested by his own fate... uncaring. Nothing remained of the shaking fear that had caught him seconds before Boone brought him back
from the void, following his capture... But it was understandable that at this moment, Da'an had been ordered by the Synod to unlink himself from everything he had every touched, to brink the so many links he had still with this world. The Taelons did not really die. They became too wise, they accumulated too much knowledfe, they started to understand too much, and then they started to separate slowly from this plane, to fade away; it was why their passing was rarely really noticed, since their mind had already joined the next plane, that the body was all that was left. And not much in itself.

And now. And now, yes definitively, Da'an felt this terrible lack of interest toward the possiblity of a future life... this need of liberation, thie need of freedom from this prison that his body had become. And for the first time now, Da'an reflected that perhaps his essence - Da'an's own, as an inidividual - had been melted into all the others inhabitant of the inside of his mind, and that everything that made him be himself in the inside, was gone, truly and definitely. He felt very briefly struck by a mild wave of disapointment at this idea, at the idea that he could have spent his days in a most interesting manners thinking about this: about the fact that if really had Da'an's essence left his mind - and he could have thought to idenitify the difference between the two - then how could he any longer associate this body with himself? And how could his very mind THINK in such a fashion? And with all of this could have come the questionof one proper identity of an
individual that was lost among a commonality's standards...

But somewhere, someone else would one day think about this as well and it would then occupy someone else's thoughts. Sad, though. It would have briefly brithened his days. But his freedom was far more important to receive, he had waited long enough to be freed from this plane and would not delay this anymore.

He was brought in a small room, closed, locked inside... It apparently had been chosen that his execution would not be public, as the government, or whoelse was behind this, as he one day HAD been popular amongst people of America. This could bring some minds back to awakening. But too late to remedy to this doubtlessly. The guards left... In the ceiling, was glowing a ball of energy, pure and white, but negative. The waves it sent in Da'an's pathways were extremely painful and well as destroying all of his cells one after one. It did not take long to Da'an before he let go of his human facade and solid form. His last thought was one shared between hope and relief: the hope to find something definitively better on the other side of this passage and the reflief to finally be allowed to leave this life. This last sparkle of life was merely witnessed by the keepers, which eyed the scene with a typically military coldness.

When pain turned into agony, Da'an spread his arms open and smiled to death as his legs dissolved under him. It was to be told then that the only remaining Taelon on Earth had welcomed death with open arms.

Epilogue

Cassandre Berthiaume brushed her hands through the few locks of thick red hair that had fallen from the ponytail that fell to the middle of her back ; she felt nothing of the rather familiar contact as her hands was protected by rubber gloves. She used to work in a swiss facility were non-admitted experimental taelon techniques gave a chance to people suffiring of some genetic and mental sickness, and now she was there. Since eight years that the Taelons had been destroyed and she could remember as if it had happened just a moment ago the few events that had been previous to her arrival here. She was working closely with Sa'ruu, a Le'hoy, at this time; when the news of the Jaridians' arrival and that the Taelons that were alive on the mothership had gathered into six of them to travel through their own evolution had been known, they had exchanged a long stare; then mysteriously, as he did everything, Sa'ruu had told her that it would be best if she could gather the few items
that she possessed, that she had to get ready to leave. She has trusted the worry in these words only when she had seen the fear in his blue eyes. Between them had been, not a friendship, but as between two persons who work side to side everydays, that had in common the same passion, some sort of a scientific trust and respect had grown. She had no family left in this world and seeing the news, seeing what was the population doing, seeing how had it turned out, she had understand that the worst, and she did not know what was this worst yet, had happened. Sa'ruu had then requested their presence, hers and all her team's, to the interdimensional portal of the station. He had said them that every people that wished to be free would have to leave Earth for a time and that those who prefered to stay to witness as the chaos would unleash were free to do so. Many of her colleagues had turned and walked away. The Taelon, Cassandre, and four of her colleagues had stepped into the
portal and had landed here, on Jie'ra, a taelon colony, many light years away from Earth.

At first, she missed her home. And it had been troubling, but she had not for habits to grow attached, not to things, nor to people, nor to places, and she had left very little behind. She missed the green of Earth, because here the tones of the vegetals were all in the same reddish-grey patern.

After their arrival here, it had been from Sa'ruu and many of his fellows (those who had been saved by their protectors, those who had been sent back to Earth by their own kind at the most crucial moment) a series of revelations about the so famous how and why. Many of them had asked, during the eight years that had passed, to return to Earth, the few remaining Taelons had not objected. But here lived a community. A few families had been formes, a few children had been born. All the Humans who lived in the station for the moment and wished to go back to their mother planet, only for a time or not, could. In fact, they were very few the ones who had established their home here permanently, but return to Earth would mean to comtemplate the post-Apocalypse vision that was all what the civil war had left behind.

Things had not changed so much. The scientists continued to scientify everything that could possibly be analyzed, touched, felt, seen, smelt etc. The Taelons were always speaking in this somewhat superior, amused, tired voice - though many of them were dying, or dead, and the survivors lived only days after days absorbing any tiny bit of compatible energy, from a plant, from bio-slurry, or even directly from a human energy matrix. They more or less survived and did well, seeking for news of Earth and of what had become of the reminder of their species there, from the Humans that came back.

But four years after her own landing here, two years after the death of the last of the Taelons on Earth, had came through portal, two Humans and one Taelon. And not any Humans. Liam Kincaid, this strangly... alien man if there was one - she had learned the truth about his real parentage mere months ago - the Taelon Zo'or, the world-wide known Synod Leader and his ex-protector and implant, Ronald Sandoval. Zo'or's physiology was quite deteriorated when this M. Sandoval had come to her and asked her to... repair the damages that had been done, at least physically. Energy weapons wounds and permanent damage done to most of his primary pathways - he would be sightless for the remaining of his days - were the most important to mention, but she suspected that he had been done much worse... All of this while not speaking of the psychological trauma from the torture, but she had grown more and more assured that this would be easily healed with all the treatments that Sa'ruu himself
mastered and ordered regularly. Since four years that she had been `asked' to heal him. And yet he had not come out of this coma called by the Taelons the sa'amhad. Maybe was it better like this, so he did at least not physically and selfconsciously suffer from the treatments: though his body DID respond, his mind stayed unaccessible to all probes, which had also permitted Sa'ruu to calm his dreams and ensure that he would not panick when he would awake. His mind was, as explained by the Le'hoys that had tested the blockage of his inside over and over, as if folded back on itself, refusing for every thoughts to get out, but, though not responsive, accepting of the mental probes sent by others. And from his treatment with... crystalized jaridian direct energy, he had enough energy to survive through many centuries still: his keepers did not want to see him die at the most un-wanted moment, certainly.

The two men that had landed with the Taelon had told her that he was like this when they had found and freed him, maybe was he like this since months of years. She had sighed and had only started to work, scientifically, methodically, slowly, as she would have done with any other of her patients, working her way to the solution and healing slowly but with the sure achievment of her goals in view. With the help and training with Le'hoys, she had known how would he react as the taelon mind-healers would enter his mind, seeking for its key, they had basically told her how to heal him and had let her proceed with it. And today she was finally ready to re-assure the agent Sandoval who was the most worried ones of the two men over who wasa after all the very Companion he had protected when implanted, although she did suspect that something was wrong with this man, he seemed so... dark and she had often caught herself wondering how had he become like this.

And yet, despite all of what she had guessed out, many things were still mysterious about these two men coming from a freshly collapsed Earth. They had asked to speak to every Taelon alone, face to face. And all of those who she had seen after this discussion had appeared quite troubled, or at very least, troubled as much as she could notice it into these alien beings' faces. Then, packages, coming from Earth, which filling had been revealed to no Human had materialized in the poral. And now the two ex-protectors spent all of their days and probably nights locked into this subleveled laboratory that they had fed with energy again for the occasion. They almost never left this place in fact. And all this darkness, all this blood, this kind of wisdom that had been formed by mistakes after mistakes and pains after pains in their life, that one could see in their eyes, had prevented anyone to ask question about what were they doing down there, or even more so to question their
very actions.

Mlle Berthiaume felt in her back the presence many seconds before catching a glimpse of his lean form mirrored into her computer screen. He approached, stopped right beside her, his almond-shaped eyes were filled with anticipation had his asian features were showing this very calm waiting facade. She took the time to undo and then re-do her ponytail, taking care this time include into it all of her hair locks before acknowledging his presence. "Bonjour M. Sandoval," she said in this cooly scientific voice that was hers.

It was almost in a same kind of voice that he responded, looking only more lost in thought, his hands jerking as he moved them at his sides, souvenirs from his CVI, "Good morning to you Mlle Berthiaume. But you insisted to show me some new developments about his condition." He always went straight to the point, as if he felt that time was not to be wasted. The sarcastically scientific part of herself knew how to appreciate this, but her more human social part was quite worried about this man's psychological conditions. But he had refused every kind of help and company before and would certainly continue to build around himself his wall of loneliness.

She paced around the main console from where had grown the virtual glass column on which she was working, where appeared now on her command lined datas. "Indeed." She touched the appropriate keys in the programmed sequence of twenty-seven symbols. And a part of the wall behind the agent Sandoval was erased, vanished, or rather melted into the bio-slurry to let the place to a shield of virtual glass, leaving to Sandoval's eyes to watch what he had never thought he would see again: Zo'or, lying on his back, in his natural energy form, thousands and thousands of tiny energy tendrils connecting his torso with an artificial matrix of energy bulging the ceiling of the room. Despite his human features did not mould his energy paterns, he would have recognized him anywhere and in any occasions, even without CVI, as some things were too burning into one's memories to be so easily forgotten. "You had asked me to warn you as soon as a change would occur? Et bien, it HAS occured, his
positive energy pulse with greater rhythm and the heat produced by his energy pathways is getting back to its normal level."

Sandoval stepped forward until he could place three of his left hand's fingertips against the virtual glass panel, finding its coolness spread out in his hand, wrist and forearm, stopping near his shoulder. "He'll awake soon?"

"In a moment, in fact. It's a matter of mintues," she added.

The ex-implant nodded his understanding and walked to the other end of the room, keeping his eyes on the translucent panel, as if he feared that the Taelon would suddenly awake only to disappear. Leaning over the conle, he keyed the familiar symbols that opened a link with the communication web and touched Li'am's identification datas. Then asked the young woman to leave, kindly telling her that he would call her out if anything seemed to go wrong.

His son came in mere minutes later. In his arms, a small object, rolled in a blanket; an object who projected blueish glimmers on Li'am's face, what rendered him even more taelon looking that he already was. The young man tilted his head up and stared at him with those eyes that had gone from this pleasant neutral green-grey color to this sparkling, unnatural blue with the years passing and the things changing. "He's awake?" he asked, craddling with slow motions of his lower arms the small thing against his chest, causing it to whisper quietly.

Sandoval could only nod: to see Li'am with the surviving taelon children were always one of the weirdest experiments; the hybrid had been the first to suggest the possibility of the crystalized human energy, the first to experiment this possibility of himself, as his genetic linkage could only add to the few chances they had for it to work and now he witnessed every birth, or well, the most waited moment of the four to twelve weeks long `pregnancy' when the four inches long embryo broke through its surrounding, a coccon-like material made of cloned human flesh from the energy donor and the pure energy flooding through it; it was in his arms that in first was held the taelon baby, it was him who created this very first mental link with the newborn... Ron had surprised him once, looking out through the virtual glass shield into the oxygen-less environment where the embryos spent most of the `pregnancy', his fingers twitching at his side, his blue eyes filled with tears...
Seemingly, more he stayed away from Earth and more alien he became. But it looked like it only did some good to him, as he physically appeared in better health that before.

The ex-implant massaged his forearm still sensible from yesterday's energy extraction. A motion quick enough to be remarked caught their attention from the other side of the virtual glass. Both of them needee only to exchange one look, and Sandoval walked through the barrier first, with this slow pace that Li'am knew enough of hiding a growing hesitation.

The Taelon was slowly coming back; the two men supposed that he was not completly awakened yet as he did not appear to be shocked or panicked in anyway. His now brightless eyes opened and the orbs tilted in all possbile directions, then, his features struck by either or both rememberance of understanding, the eyelids dropped back, hiding the sightless pupils. His whole body seemed to release all of its tension, his hands fell back at his side. The little of the unnerved moment he would have had to pass through was past now.

It was only then that he perceived a presence... very vague, human. A presence that yes, he had never known as this, but also a presence he was very familiar with, that he had often sensed at his side or behind his back. He saw this man again, the mental image he had kept carefully away from the Jaridians' investigating in his mind. Perfectly dressed, his face calm but severe, his feature showing a certain determination that Zo'or had both feared and admired, a maturity which the young Taelon could always rely on, this voice that he had heard so often... "Sandoval," he barely audibly said, the syllables almost not linked to and with each other. It was only a gathering of sound, as if Zo'or had forgotten how to talk.

Sandoval remained silent during many minutes after this, but he knew that the Taelon could feel his presence without the need for him to identify himself verbally. But the silence was becoming too heavy and could not hold it anymore. He moved closer to the table, slowly, hesitantly, thinking to what he could afford to say and what he could never ever allow himself to do. Seeing that Zo'or was searching to move by himself, his movements restrained by his incapacity to see, he extended his arm and helped the ex-Synod Leader up. The alien's fingers groped around himself, in the air, searching for something physical to grasp and to rely his weight on; his fingers were as tight as iron on Sandoval's offered arm, as Zo'or was completely trusting his balance on this newly extended support. He was behaving exactly like the blind being he now was, seeing things with his hands. "You've been in sa'amhad for a very long time Zo'or. Just don't do anything risky right now." The Taelon
closed his eyes when he hears his voice, the fingers of his right hands continuously groping around to touch the table's edges on which he was now in a half-seating position. "I assume that you've many questions, but we've many answers also. I'm gonna tell you everything you want to know but first..."

The energy field interruption was hears and Li'am's quiet pace followed closely. Zo'or tensed, forcing his eyes to remain closed.

The young man hesitated one mere second but held out the giggling infant in the blanket to his father. Sandoval lowered toward the little ball of light freshly out of its protective energy cocoon a gaze that was almost tender, if one could forget to see there so much remorse, so much lost, so much regrets and so much tears that had never wet his cheeks. Finally, he approached Zo'or and carefully placed the fragile taelon infant in the crook of his arms.

Zo'or felt it, of course he did, he could not do anything but to feel the small mind of the ever smaller infant in his arms, to feel the faint psychic tendrils, akwardly extended into his direction by this tiny things he held between his arms. His fingers stroked the baby's chest, limbs, brushed against his forehead... The taelon still kept him close to his chest, his lips half-parted, his closed eyes only showing more of the delightened look that crossed his features. He held it in his arms, but could have as well been holding him in his hands; he was so tiny, and felt so fragile. And in contact with a member of his species, the baby whispered more intently, gripped tightly into his small fists Zo'or's fingers that kept brushing against his pathways. Zo'or raised it toward his face and let it snuggle close into the crook of his neck, a smile on his lipf, a smile that was too tears-filled to be completly honest, but that was still.

A long time would be spent until Zo'or would release this child. And an even longer moment before he asked to know...

With many thousands of children that would be soon brought back to life, thanks to this synthetized human energy producted by Li'am, Sandoval and other Humans who had offered to join them in this project, they needed someone that could help them to teach them how Taelons should be taught, they needed someone who might be able to teach them their language, that could teach them the legends of their people... Some who could teach them what they had done and why. Because there were still many things to say and even many more answers to know.