Spirit Unbreakable

“What are we doing here, Shanahan?” Sira asked. She was staring out into a sea of people as they all crawled across the lobby floor beneath them. She was taking a seat at a table on a balcony overlooking the main terminal of the Kansai International Airport. She handed Shanahan a steaming cup of tea and set her own cup down. They had been here for the last couple of hours and still Shanahan seemed lost in thought. He had not even hinted at what they were doing here despite her persistent attempts. The obvious was that he thought that Riumi was on his way here.

Shanahan finally looked from the lobby below to where Sira was sitting. She was just about to take a sip from her tea and instead stopped with the cup inches from her face. “I did a little inquiring about the Guardians here in Japan and it seems that there was a Guardian examination here four days ago. The examiners flew in from across the globe. They like to have a representative from each Guardian outpost present in the city for the examination.”

“I’m going to guess that the reason we are sitting in the airport has something to do with that,” Sira took a sip of her tea and paused, her brow creasing with thought, “Does that mean that they are planning to leave today?”

“They usually stay at least a week in the exam city, but I found out that the airport was alerted yesterday that their plans had changed and that all the Guardian delegates were leaving today. I think Riumi is going to be among them.”

“How exactly are we supposed to find him amongst all the other Guardians? They don’t have to give their names when they travel. They just have to have their Guardian tattoo scanned for authenticity and even that doesn’t identify which Guardian, just that they are a Guardian. Only other Guardians are privileged with the complete details embedded in each tattoo.”

“Which is why we are up here,” Shanahan said staring at the lobby.

“Back to the old fashioned tactics of surveillance, eh?” Sira said. She was smiling.

“Hope you have a good bearing on what he and his ward look like,” Shanahan replied.

“You got a better look at him than I did Shanahan, I think I am going to head into the lobby. Keep me appraised on the radio,” she said tapping her ear. It looked to everyone that could see as if she was merely scratching her ear, but in fact she was activating an embedded chip that was placed in her ear. All UNG field agents had them. Once activated, settings could be changed by vocal recognition and they also acted as a tracking device. Sira had had misgivings at the beginning about having the earwig placed. Her instructor had been forceful about it saying that only those who planned on defying the UNG would have misgivings about such a helpful device. In the end she had conceded, as had every field agent before her. To deny it would only make her look like a traitor. Shanahan tapped his ear as well.

“Oh nine four recognition code,” Shanahan said and waved Sira away. She repeated the code and walked away, tea in hand. When she reached the lobby floor she leaned against a pillar her back to the security check close to a magazine stand. Shanahan was her eyes right now; her purpose was to pursue the target. She grabbed a magazine from a nearby stand and gave a small curse when she realized that it was all in Japanese, “Doesn’t this island know that we are all supposed to be speaking the same language?” She put the magazine back and grabbed another. It was a manga that had both katakana and common writing in it. She glanced through the pages as she waited. She could not understand the fascination with the Japanese and comic books. Their whole culture seemed to stem from them. She was more interested in steamy romance novels where you could let your imagination build the perfect man and you could place yourself in the role of heroine. She had kept that little piece of information to herself. She didn’t want her colleagues to think she had a soft romantic side.

“Here they come,” Shanahan said. She looked up at him as he shifted his seat for a better look. The table they had been sitting at was mostly hidden by a column and she could barely see Shanahan. He had picked a good position.

“See him yet?” Sira asked. She only got silence on his end, “Shanahan, what is the status?”

“We have a bit of a problem,” he replied.

“What kind of problem?” Sira asked. She casually turned to face the direction of the main lobby to assess the problem and sighed. “We are dealing with a smart kid.”

Riumi pushed his platinum hair out of the way and let the airport attendant scan his Guardian tattoo. The scan tingled his skin slightly and it sent a shiver down his spine. She looked at her screen and waved him on. He took Mikomi’s hand and led her into the airport lobby. From the security check, they had to take a tram to the main terminal. Riumi looked around at the Guardians that were filtering through the security check with their wards and felt a little unnerved. All he saw was a sea of platinum blond Guardians all holding the hands of a child. It was like staring into a fun house mirror. Mikomi clutched his hand tighter and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

“You think this is going to work?” Mikomi asked quietly over the cacophony and commotion that filled the lobby with so many Guardians in the same place. The rest of the travellers were feeling uncomfortable and giving them long stares, even more so that most of the Guardians around looked nearly identical. Riumi had tried to tell Damian that he would wear a black wig, but Damian had thought that it would be more effective if all the decoys had the same hair and that his distinct platinum blond hair would be distracting if there were multiple people wearing it. If it was absent, Damian determined they would be looking more intently at faces. Riumi wasn’t sure if the hair colour would be a good distraction, but he didn’t really care to second guess Damian, especially when he had gone to so much trouble setting this all up for him. He cast a casual glance around the terminal and pulled Mikomi toward the tram. He hoped this worked. He didn’t want the UNG to follow him to France. If he found something there about his past, he didn’t want to lead them to that same discovery, especially Shanahan, he knew too much already. Probably more than I do. Too bad he can’t be trusted. What he tried to do to Mikomi, I will never forgive him for that. The tram stopped in front of him and the doors hissed open. Riumi pulled Mikomi into the thick of the Guardians and watched as the doors hissed close. With a sudden jerk they were on their way to the terminal.

Sira watched all the Guardians filter into the airport lobby, hair a sea of platinum blond and couldn’t help but smile. He sure wasn’t a modest boy. Instead of trying to blend in with the rest of the Guardians by changing his hair colour, he had instead convinced them all to share his colour. “Doesn’t seem to be hiding does he? More like making all the Guardians stand out like him. As if they didn’t already. What are we doing, Shanahan? Do you think you can still pick him out?” Sira mouthed.

She heard a clipped reply that she was sure she wasn’t supposed to hear and a long sigh, “I can try, but I think we have a better chance of locating the girl. That is your department, Sira, you and Yul are the ones that got a look at her.” She hadn’t needed Shanahan to tell her that. She was already scanning the crowd for the little girl, Mikomi. In the sea of people, she was afraid that she was going to fail in her mission. Her wandering gaze soon spotted an interesting hair accessory. It was a comb in one of the child’s hair that had the most peculiar looking dragon on it; in fact it was a symbol of the Levanith.

“I found her, they are just about to board the tram,” Sira said. She was already moving amongst the crowd pushing with all her might to get to the tram before the doors closed. She saw them board the last car and she skipped past it and into the middle car, sliding in just as the doors closed, forcing herself among the crowd.

“I’m stuck to them like glue, Shanahan. Meet me over there when you can.”

“I’m acquiring an alternate route there, I’ll see you on the other side,” she heard Shanahan say.

Sira moved to the back of the car and looked through the glass window trying to gain a better view of Riumi. She could no longer see Mikomi. The little girl was buried under all the people, too short to be able to see, but she saw Riumi clearly. His steel gray eyes were gazing at Mikomi. He spoke a few words and looked up directly into Sira’s eyes. His gaze was like ice and she felt frozen in that look. She inhaled slightly a thought passing through her mind about how much she never wanted to fight with a person who could give her such an icy gaze.

“Shanahan, I’ve been compromised. He sees me,” Sira replied.

“It doesn’t matter, just keep him in sight. The only place for him to run is to the airplane. Keep me apprised of where he is headed and I’ll see if I can cut him off.”

“Roger that,” Sira replied. She didn’t take her eyes off of Riumi, even though his cold stare made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt the tram come to a stop and realized that she had to look away from Riumi to get out of her car. She quickly dropped her gaze and tried to push her way to the front of the car. The press of people was impassable and so she started yelling for them to move aside. “UNG business, move aside,” she yelled cursing herself for being so small. She felt a sudden ease in front of her and burst through the doors. She saw the retreating form of Riumi up ahead holding onto Mikomi’s hand. Her Levanith comb was bobbing back and forth and Sira kept her eyes fixed on that in the sea of platinum blond. She took off in a run, trying to weave a path through the people around her. She was finding the path difficult as the Guardians around her realized what she was and tried to hinder her progress without actually getting involved. It was enough for her to let out a little scream of anger. That seemed to ease the game a little and she ran forward trying to find the Levanith comb. She spotted them not far away just turning a corner.

“They are heading to terminals D through F,” she yelled as she rounded the corner. She felt her shins hit something hard as she came around the corner and her feet were out from under her. She felt flat on her face, smashing her forward into the floor, flashes of light replaced her vision interspersed with darkness. She groaned and rolled over. She saw a flash of steel at her throat as her vision cleared and she let her gaze travel up the blade to the face beyond. She held her breath, her body rigid. The pain was gone with a rush of adrenaline. I’m going to die.

“This is a warning,” Riumi said, his voice hard and threatening, “continue to follow us and I will kill you.” She believed every word he said. She watched as he eased the katana away from her throat and sheathed it in the saya that was at his back. Riumi turned and walked away grabbing Mikomi’s hand in his. When they had disappeared Sira remembered to breath and with it the pain in her head and shins returned.

“I lost them Shanahan,” she whispered breathlessly, “I thought he was going to kill me.” She was trying not to sound terrified, but it had been her first encounter with such a presence, and being presented with her own death was a lot more frightening than she thought it would be. I should seriously reconsider this field agent thing, she thought. She rolled her eyes as she got up from the ground and held her head. She pulled her hand away to see it covered in sticky blood and grinned. That was a rush.

Shanahan found Sira sitting on a bench in section D a few minutes later. A medical officer had found her and was tending to the wound on her head. He sat down on a bench in front of her and she glanced up with a sigh.

“Sorry I let him get away. I didn’t even see where he was headed. At least I narrowed it down to these three terminals.” She winced as the medical officer cleaned out her cut.

“It’s fine, Sira. I’m sorry I put your life in danger like that. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“Sorry? That was the most exhilarating thing I have felt since I went skydiving last year. I’m just disappointed I didn’t get what we needed.”

Shanahan looked as Sira who was beaming and laughed. “You really like this field agent stuff, don’t you?”

Sira gestured for the medical officer to leave her alone now and leaned closer to Shanahan. “This is what I trained for. I’m just a little rusty because they had me cooped up in that stuffy office in the LD for so long.”

“Well don’t worry about not completing your assignment. On the way over here I had a brilliant idea.” Shanahan had a Flimsy in his hand and he was scanning through cargo manifests.

“This brilliant idea has something to do with cargo?” Sira asked as she joined him on his bench.

“That kid had quite a unique form of transportation. Do you think he may have taken it with him?”

Sira grinned, wincing when it tightened the newly patched gash on her forehead. “No maybe about that, I’m sure he would have taken it with him. That’s just brilliant, Shanahan.”

Shanahan looked through the cargo manifest and spotted what he was looking for, transportation of a Hayabusa motorbike, final destination, Paris, France. Shanahan went as rigid as the Flimsy in his hands and looked at Sira. “I know exactly where he is going. We have to somehow get there before he does.” Shanahan got up from the chair and headed down the terminal in the direction of the UNG’s private planes.

“Why? Where is he headed?” Sira asked jumping to her feet and following Shanahan trying to keep up with his rapid pace.

“He’s going to Clamecy, a small town in France near the Morvan Mountains, and I’m sure Yul and Hader are just as close on his trail as we are.”

“How do you know this, Shanahan?”

“Because two years ago I went to Clamecy with some Guardians to investigate one of the only leads we have ever had to the whereabouts of the Levanith. It was that event that made me pursue transfer into the Levanith Division.”

“What event? What happened two years ago?” Sira asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way there, Sira. It’s a long story.”

“Do you remember the story I told you about when I first came to the LD division?” Shanahan asked. They were airborne now and biding their time until they landed in France.

“About your field work in France? I do. Is there more to that story?” Sira asked. She was glad that Shanahan was ready to talk. Even though she had taken some pain medication, her shins throbbed intensely where Riumi had took her to the floor with the back of his blade. Purple bruises made a line horizontally across her shins and made her eyes water when touched. The pain it caused was on par with the splitting headache she now had from hitting the hard airport concourse floor.

“A lot more actually. At the time, I was working in France following a splinter cell terrorist group that had been reported in the area. I was mainly a technical advisor, but with combat experience. They were reportedly trying to construct weapons using high energy lasers and so their labs required a lot of energy. They had constructed their own energy fusion and so could not be monitored through regular city energy channels. I had just helped build a new satellite that was sensitive to energy output, as this terrorist cell’s tactics were becoming more popular among the insurgents and religious zealots. I had been monitoring different areas of high energy sources and checking them with the various cities’ energy use logs.

“It was a rather tedious job really. I did notice, however, a very alarming amount of energy being used in the outlying country surrounding a small town called Clamecy. I didn’t think too much of it for the first couple of days as there were intermittent storms in the area. I determined that the high energy readings were just a result of the lightning. The reason I assumed it was lightning was because lightning itself puts out the highest energy levels known to man on earth and the source that I was encountering was mimicking those levels. When the storms left the area and the energy readings were the same, I figured that the splinter cell that we were following was located there. I was actually quite terrified with what operation they had built up in the Morvan Mountains as I had never seen readings like that in a human operation before. I alerted the Guardians that I was working with at the time and we arranged a raid. My superior put me in charge of the operation and me and the Guardians went to the location.

“When we reached the outskirts of the Morvan Mountains, we noticed that the area that the readings were coming from were estates owned by some of the more prominent families in the area. We went to the Dorsalin estate first in order to round up those insurgents that we could and found the place completely abandoned. What was so surprising is that it looked like they had left in a hurry, for the entire house was still furnished, only an overnight bag and all the electronic equipment was missing from the house. When we went to the neighbouring estate, owned by the Ravvons, we found the same eerie absence of inhabitants. At the Ravvons, what struck me the most was that their perfectly arranged library had many books missing.

“After we had secured the two estates, the Guardians followed me to the source of the energy reading. We found a very unstable cave which I noted had had recent heavy foot traffic. A pale blue light was emanating from the back of the cave and I followed it to its source. What I found was something I have never in my life seen the likes of before. There was a pool of water that was glowing and I watched as someone jumped into that pool of light and they vanished before my very eyes. There were two other people left on the ledge. I shouted at them to stay where they were, but the moment they heard my voice they didn’t even hesitate to step off the ledge. The pulse wave I sent after them hit the wall on the other side of the room and the pale blue light vanished, leaving only a pool of water behind. We searched the entirety of the cave for the three people, but they were gone. There wasn’t a trace of them.

“The next day my superiors sent a science team in to exam the equipment. They let me accompany them to make sure there was no residual radiation as energy signatures were my specialty. The floodlights that had been set up in the cavern made me able to see more clearly the contents of the room. Where the pool of light had been, I saw a large metallic ring half buried in rubble and submerged in a pool of water. There was a platform to one side of it that I figured had held it upright previously, but a few cave-ins had knocked it to the ground. It didn’t take me long to figure out that what I was staring at was a Einstein-Rosen Bridge for interstellar travel.” Shanahan paused for a moment to let the weight of his words hit Sira. It didn’t take long.

“You’re serious? You actually found a device that allows travel through the galaxy without use of a ship, like an interstellar bridge?”

“An intact device that allows you to travel through space without use of a ship. The reason that the blue light had vanished was not because the device was broken, but because it had completely drained its power source. The scientists were so enthralled by this amazing discovery that they were completely oblivious to a very narrow crack in the wall near the back of the cavern.

“The Einstein-Rosen bridge instantly reignited the fable the storyteller had told me back in Ireland and there was only one more piece of evidence that I needed to confirm that the fable he had told me so long ago was in fact completely true. I squeezed into the side chamber and found a complete sterile lab. There was a back entrance to the room that I ascertained led through the mountain to the opposite side. I saw an empty cryogenic chamber in the room and was slightly disappointed. I kind of hoped that I would be the one to find the princess and her betrothed. I was even more baffled by the fact that there were not two cryogenic chambers, just one. The room was littered with rubble and when I made my way to the cryogenic chamber I realized that it had been severely damaged. As there was no body, I could only gather that its inhabitant had made it safely out of there.

“I didn’t know exactly what to believe. There was only one chamber and not two, so the story that I had heard was either not completely true, something had happened to the other chamber, or this was a completely coincidental find.

“As I was sure that Earth had not had a lot of alien encounters, zero that we were actually aware, the last option was completely implausible to me. I didn’t exactly know what I should do. I knew more information about this place than most in the other room could even guess at, but I didn’t know if I should share it or just play dumb.

“I wasn’t given much choice, since when I went back into the chamber housing the Einstein-Rosen bridge, Hader had appeared and was rounding up my team and the scientists that were inspecting the area. I don’t know how he got wind of the operation so fast, but knowing what I do now about the LD division, I can guess. All I know was that he told us that what was in that cavern was beyond all our clearance and that we were being ordered to leave the area immediately and forget everything we had seen on penalty of treason for any mention of the place.

“It took me two years to gain enough prowess to gain clearance and access to the LD Division.” Shanahan finished his story and poured himself a stiff drink. He was sipping at it when Sira finally spoke.

“And Riumi is heading to this place? After two years it must be heavily fortified.”

“Actually, I would say that there wouldn’t be a soul there.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the two years since they found the Einstein-Rosen bridge, they had it moved to the LD division.”

Sira sat up in her seat suddenly, “You mean the entire 6 months that I have been working at the LD division there has been a device there that can let us travel to other planets? I really need to get my clearance level upped.”

“Well, at the moment it is kind of useless, unless you have exact coordinates to your destination. The scientists have all tried to explain to me the wonderfully complex mathematics and physics behind it and I understand nothing of what they said. It seems that the aliens that made the program that ran it also erased the navigation coordinates and they also didn’t make inputting them all that easy. They left them a long string of numbers. They do have a model of what they have mapped of the Milky Way galaxy in their program, but everything is listed in their language. It also has a firewall on that part of the device the likes of which the best computer hacker on earth has never seen and so they can’t access the coordinate information from it. Our references here on Earth don’t relate to the model they have because we don’t know where their planet is located on this model. Not to mention they have explored a lot more of the galaxy than we have. Astronomically more. The understanding we have of our galaxy in the last two years was all ascertained from what we learned from that machine. Not to mention that we have been working at trying to backwards engineer most of the technology that was in that room.”

“How on Earth are they keeping all of that a secret?” Sira interjected.

“Mostly because they can slip in all the universal model things under other aliases, mostly saying that an old space telescope saw such and such. The technological side is mostly a disaster. All the technology they left for us over here has a tamper fail safe. Start taking it apart and it is rendered useless. They were definitely cautious when they left their technology on our side.”

Sira looked retrospective for a moment and frowned, “I think I figured out one of the reasons that they want Riumi so badly.”

“I can think of more than one,” Shanahan replied, “First, he could give correct coordinates to at least his home planet. Second, he might know how to unlock the firewall on the galaxy model. Third, he would be invaluable in helping them understand the technology and maybe even get past the fail safes. And fourth, the one I know is most important to Hader; he could tell them how to invade his planet. Hader really wants all the military strategy that Riumi can give him. After seeing the insane advancement that the Levanith hold over our people, most of which predates modern civilization and our own technological advancement by hundreds of years, he is terrified of what they could do to Earth.”

“I’m terrified of what they could do to Earth, Shanahan, and that is just from hearing the rest of your story. What if Riumi does turn out to be the bad guy? Do you really want to help someone that could potentially be the person that could lead to the destruction of Earth?”

“Sira, if it was true that the Levanith wanted to destroy Earth, don’t you think they would have done that when they first encountered us over a thousand years ago?”

“A thousand years ago? They had technology like this a thousand years ago?”

“They carbon dated some of the material used as twelve hundred years old. Around 1400 A.D. is when most of the things in that cave were constructed. That means that when China was constructing the Forbidden City, Joan of Arc was fighting in the hundred years war and America had yet to be discovered by the ‘civilized’ world, the Levanith were taking part in interstellar travel and a degree of physics and science we can’t even comprehend now, twelve hundred years later. Yet, they came here in secret, didn’t interfere with what they saw and we never heard of them again publicly even to this day. I truly believe that if they had wanted us destroyed, or wanted Earth in any fashion, they would not have let us become so technologically advanced. Why take the chance that we would become as strong as they are when they could have taken us apart when we didn’t even know there was another side to our planet.”

Sira sank in her chair relieved, “How come Hader doesn’t see the simple logic in that?”

“Well for one thing, he has never let me tell my views on the Levanith, and another is that Hader is pigheaded and stubborn. His only goal in life is to neutralize all threats to the peace and security of Earth. He doesn’t see motives, or intentions, he just sees things that are beyond his understanding, things that he can’t control. The only way for him to control that is either to find someone that knows how to use the technology that he can control, or to destroy it all. I’m just glad he is at least trying to find that person to control or Riumi would most likely be in a body bag or on some table somewhere being lobotomized and dissected.”

“You really care a lot about what happens to this boy, don’t you?”

Shanahan threw back the rest of his drink and looked directly into Sira’s eyes, “I’m scared that if I don’t care about him, no one else on this planet will.”