Pheonix Feathers – Chapter 13
"How can she just talk to me," Tobias wondered, "How can they stand there and look at me when everything they are, everything they do screams to me or memories of her…?" He wanted to move, wanted to say something, to scream back at them, especially… especially at Jake. Truth be told, he had sort of a crush on Jake. Not anymore, of course, but how could you not fall a little bit in love with a tall, gorgeous boy who heroically lifts you out of a toilet? Alright, the toilet park killed a little of the romanticism, but still. But of course he'd nearly forgotten about all that when he had met Rachel. Even the first time he saw her, he knew that he would love her. And it wasn't her looks, no, though he she beautiful. He sensed a wildness in her, something so different, and yet akin to what was buried inside him, beneath the shell he'd built around himself, to ward off the pain. Beneath his soul itself. He had fought against it at first, when the mind of the hawk had forced him to recognize the fighter, the killer inside of him, but inevitably he had to accept it, even to embrace it. Rachel was like that, the same, though it took nearly nothing to bring it out of her. Her wildness was in her very step, her voice, her eyes. She was wilderness embodied; she was the bear, the bald eagle in flight. And, oh god, she was beautiful. And Jake… Jake, a boy he had admired, followed, loved like a brother… he had killed her. Tobias knew it wasn't really his fault, of course. He knew that. And besides… he had already resolved his feelings about her... or at least he thought he had. But now, he had heard Cassie's voice, and he felt the eyes of his friends on him, and all he could see was her face, and all he could hear was her voice, and all he could feel was loss, and pain, and, oh god, he missed her. He kept his eyes tightly shut.
General Tony Lawson of the U.S Army, special Alien Studies and Control division, sat in his office, his legs up on his desk, smoking a cigar. It had been a good day. Normally, he wouldn't be smoking in his office, or even putting his legs up on his desk; he was a bit of a clean freak in that respect, but it was already so messy that he figured it wouldn't make much of a difference. Still, he looked with distaste at the muddy footprints covering the dark blue carpet. The cleaning crew would be working late tonight. It had undoubtedly been worth it, of course. He took a long drag on his cigar, blowing the smoke up toward the ceiling. He grinned. After this, there was no way he'd even be in this office for much longer. He was going to be on to bigger and better things. This discovery was more important than the development of the beam-gun, more important than the morph-energy detector, more important than any technology the Andalites had made possible. He had recovered the Time Matrix. It was lucky he had, too, there was no telling what those bumbling construction workers would have done if they had known how to use it. Oh course, he thought regretfully, his division did not know exactly how to use it, either. There were only vague references to it in the records that the Andalites had shared with them, the Andalites themselves knew very little about it. But his division would concentrate its efforts on this project; it was the most important thing they had ever done. With the power held in this devise… they could control the universe. Not that they had any such ambitions, at least he didn't. But… the world had been growing steadily less trusting of the Andalites. Sure, they had helped them develop immensely useful technology, sure, they brought billion of dollars of revenue to the United States through tourism every year, but there as no questioning the fact that, regardless, the Andalites were infinitely more powerful than the humans, still. The secret of the Quantum Virus, or Programmable Virus, as the humans called it, still belonged to the Andalites. Andalite space technology was still more advanced than that of the humans, although admittedly not by all that much. Humans were capable of Z-Space travel, and their ships orbited their own planet, as well as their moon continually. They were making voyages farther and farther every year. But this… this would change everything. With the Time Matrix, humans were capable of anything.
"Sir?" A lackey stepped into this office, fidgeting nervously.
"What?" Tony asked, annoyed at being interrupted in his celebrating.
"Sir… the Time Matrix has vanished."