“Sheppard!” Hung’s big head appeared in the frame. “You did it! Way to go!”
“You don’t know how glad I am to see your faces!” I chuckled. “Big bad Brizuela won’t let me talk for long, so give me the quick rundown on the most important news!”
Ed started:
“Big Po joined the clan!”
“Hiros the ninja joined us!” Hung interrupted him. “He’s such a nerd, Alex!”
“And a weirdo!”
“There’s more to Hiros than meets the eye,” Hairo interjected.
“Woah, the clan account just got a fifty million deposit!” Ed said, his eyes widening. “Where from?”
“From my new princess girlfriend,” I answered, chuckling.
“My kraken is about to take me to the nagas!” Hung suddenly remembered. “It’s been a damn long road, I’ll tell you when you get back!”
“Irita got rank two trading, and Patrick got together with Stephanie!”
“He knows already,” Hung said, elbowing Ed away. “Oh, yeah! Your demons came back! Flay and Nega found who they were looking for! Some dude who sold his soul to demons!”
“Behemoth covered Kharinza with a Veil of Distortion! Nobody can find us now!”
“The temple! The temple!” both shouted at once. “It’s built!”
“Venus is ready!” I smiled, remembering my friends’ coded message sent through Kerry.
“Ready is right,” Hung laughed. “But we didn’t have time to consecrate it, the shield fell!”
“And there’s bad news, Alex…” Ed said, frowning. “All the legates escaped from their traps and disappeared. I checked personally. Looks like they were waiting for the end of the Games…”
“In other words, get back here as soon as you can,” Hung said. “We need to talk about Malik…”
Stunned by the avalanche of news, I didn’t notice right away that the line cut off.
“Someone intercepted the signal,” Willy explained.
For ten minutes, I silently thought over what I’d heard. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer, as Uncle Nick used to say. Now that I’d solved one problem, I already had a queue of others, and I hadn’t even landed yet!
After racking my brains a while, I decided that this wasn’t the time. Right now, I needed to just tune out and enjoy my win at the Games, then concentrate on my studies; the citizenship tests were right around the corner! And talk to my parents, too, still at the lunar resort.
I called them to make sure they were alright. Dad had been glued to the holovisor, cheering me on.
“What’s going on with you and Destiny, son?” he asked, chuckling, but mom pushed him aside.
“Alex…” she started hesitatingly, then blurted out: “You’re going to have a brother or sister!”
The news blocked out everything else and finally finished me off. The one-child-per-family rule could be gotten around in two ways: with money, or with an age difference. After the citizenship tests, I would no longer be dependent on my parents, which would let them have a second child, born just at the right time…
Above the Atlantic Ocean, Hairo put the flyer in autopilot and climbed back to join us. We started talking and tucked in to some fast food the security officers had grabbed on the way.
“How are things with Renato Loyola?” Willy asked. “We saw you saying goodbye. Are you guys buddies now?”
“I remember that he’s from the Excos.”
“That’s not what he means,” Hairo interjected. “Renato is a good guy, he’ll work with you. All the same, be careful. Colonel considers him unruly and too independent, but values him. That’s why he listens to him. If you can make friends with Excommunicado, then our Cartel problem will be a thing of the past.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I answered. “How are things at home?”
“Not perfect, but nothing you need to know urgently,” Willy answered. “I met Malik and took him to Cali Bottom…”
“Why?”
“Because he has clan secrets!” Hairo barked. “We’ve cut him off from Dis for now. He’s in isolation. Alongside Trixie.”
“Best place for him!” I said, scowling.
“Don’t jump to conclusions…” Willy said, shaking his head and jabbing at his comm. “Listen…”
The cabin suddenly filled with sound from the speakers. Rustling, footsteps, the ring of crockery, voices. It sounded like a recording made in a restaurant.
“What’s this?”
“The night before the day I took Malik to the Games. He met with Melissa Schafer. Listen.”
Tissa spoke clearly:
“What do the boys think? About your plans, I mean. What are Alex’s plans? I mean, apart from all the ‘citizenship’ stuff he has going on…”
“The hell with Alex and his secrets. Let’s discuss our strategy for the Games!”
A rustle, then a barely audible whisper from Melissa:
“If Alex isn’t there, then let’s just stick together. Like in the good old days.”
“And if he shows up?”
“Then… Listen carefully, this is very important. Something happened after our meeting in the morning.”
“When I took you to big Dis?” Malik answered. “To the Blencatra Foothills?”
“Yeah. Exhaustion killed me, but I didn’t resurrect in the Tristad graveyard…” Tissa’s voice got even quieter, and Willy turned the volume up to maximum. “…in the Mire!”
“In the Mire?” Malik echoed her. “Some kind of bug?”
“I thought so too, at first. But then I saw him…”
“The Sleeper…” Malik whispered.
“Yeah, it was Behemoth. He said that he’d chosen me out of the other priests, because only I could change… uh… long story short, the Sleeper saw all the possible timelines of the future, and in every one of them, Scyth loses the Demonic Games.”
“What about us?”
“We lose along with him…” the girl sighed.
“Bullshit. Are you sure you weren’t just imagining it?”
I was in agreement with Malik about that. Why would Behemoth meet with Tissa? As soon as I thought that, the girl answered:
“Behemoth told me you wouldn’t believe me. So he asked me to say this to you:
