What the system detected

Chapter 11 — What the System Detected

Year 2113. Zekra.

Zarpon's laboratory smelled the same as always.

Of metal. Of wires. Of something indefinable that Arlo had brought with him from Cromática years ago and that, over time, had permeated any space where he worked—with the persistence of something that didn't ask permission to stay.

Taka sat on the central table.

On top of three components Arlo had been organizing for two hours.

Arlo didn't move him.

He looked at the screen.

The anomaly was still there. It hadn't changed since the system detected it three hours ago. If anything, it had stabilized—the yellow signatures dispersing from the point of origin with the regularity of something that wasn't random but directed. As if thousands of identical energy sources had received a simultaneous instruction and were executing it, each from its own position.

Arlo had spent those three hours verifying the system wasn't failing.

It wasn't failing.

He activated the communicator.

---

They arrived in twenty minutes.

Sira first. With the expression of someone who had received a signal that explained nothing and had therefore imagined everything during the journey. Her eyes went straight to the screen before Arlo said a single word.

Zarpon second. With his usual calm step and yellow eyes scanning the laboratory with the particular attention of someone who enters a space and in two seconds knows exactly what has changed since the last time he was there.

Marek last.

He entered without saying anything.

Positioned himself behind the others with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the screen with an expression Sira read in less than a second and didn't say aloud because it wasn't the time.

Arlo pointed at the screen.

"I detected this this morning," he said. "At 6:42." He indicated the point of origin on the map of the parallel Earth. "Here. An unpopulated region. No visible structures. No previously recorded activity."

Sira approached the screen.

Her eyes scanned the data with their usual speed.

"What frequency?" she said.

"Yellow," Arlo said. "The same as Marek's. But it's not Marek."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've had Marek's signature cataloged with precision for years," Arlo said. "This is different. More irregular. Less dense in some points and more concentrated in others. As if the same base frequency had been replicated but without the consistency that time and practice give."

Zarpon watched the screen without speaking.

"How many signatures?" Sira said.

Arlo took a second.

"Thousands," he said.

The laboratory fell silent.

Not the silence of people with nothing to say. The silence of people who had just received something that needed a moment to fully land before it made sense to speak.

Sira looked at the screen.

Processed.

"He used the Kratar," she said finally. Not as a question.

"Yes, presumably," Arlo said. "I think. Well. Assuming he used the Kratar—which I personally think he did—the Kratar was already depleted. Because it had only recently been recovering."

"Yes. The signatures are irregular. That's consistent with a process executed with an artifact that wasn't at full capacity." He paused. "The original Zars, according to what Marek told us, had uniform energy consistency. These don't. Some are stronger. Others barely register."

"Imperfect," Zarpon said.

"Imperfect," Arlo confirmed. "But existing."

Zarpon processed that with the particular attention of someone calculating not only what it meant now but what it meant for what came after.

"How many exactly?" he said.

Arlo looked at the screen.

"The system registers eight thousand seven hundred active signatures," he said. "With a margin of error of three percent, given that some are moving and the system loses them momentarily between updates."

Sira closed her eyes for a second.

Then opened them.

"Moving where?" she said.

"In small groups," Arlo said. "Dispersing from the point of origin in different directions. No visible concentration pattern yet." A pause. "As if they're waiting for instructions."

"They are waiting for them," Zarpon said.

The other three looked at him.

"Kronnor doesn't move pieces without knowing where they're going," he continued. "If they're dispersing, it's because he wants them to disperse. To be invisible. So no one notices the scale of what he built until it's too late to matter."

Silence.

Sira looked at Marek.

Marek looked at the screen.

He hadn't said anything since entering. His eyes followed the yellow signatures moving on the map with an attention that wasn't the attention of someone processing information. It was the attention of someone looking at something that confirmed what he had already decided before arriving.

"Marek," Sira said.

He looked at her.

"What are you thinking?"

A pause.

"That we have to go back to Earth," he said.

"To do what exactly?" Sira said. Not with opposition. With the precision of someone who needed the answer to be concrete before she could evaluate whether it was correct.

"To see the real scale," Marek said. "We can't act from here. We need to know how many there are. Where they are. What Kronnor is planning."

"And when we know," Sira said, "what do we do?"

Marek didn't answer immediately.

Sira looked at him for a moment.

She read what lay behind the silence with the same speed she read everything.

"Marek," she said in a lower voice. "What are you going to do when you find him?"

The laboratory went still.

Taka moved on the table. Walked over two components. Sat on the edge, looking at Marek with his usual particular indifference.

Marek looked at the cat for a second.

Then he looked at Sira.

"What I have to do," he said.

"That's not an answer," Sira said.

"It's the only one I have right now."

Sira looked at him for a moment longer.

With eyes that processed everything too quickly, and this time processed something that wasn't data but the expression of a person she had known since she was ten years old—who now had something different beneath that hadn't been there before.

She turned to Zarpon.

"Do you think this is the right time?" she said.

Zarpon looked at her.

Then he looked at Marek.

They held each other's gaze for a second that carried all the weight of their conversation in the valley behind it.

"No," Zarpon said.

Marek frowned.

"Zarpon—"

"It's not the right time," Zarpon repeated with his usual calm, "because you're not ready." A pause. "But we can't wait for you to be ready if Kronnor is already moving pieces."

Silence.

"Then," Arlo said from his chair with his usual directness, "we go. But we go together. And when we find Kronnor, no one acts alone."

Marek looked at him.

"Arlo—"

"It's non-negotiable," Arlo said. Without harshness. With the quiet firmness of someone who had made a decision and had no intention of revisiting it. "Alone, we're four people with different skills. Together, we're what defeated Garpon at ten years old and survived Germon at sixteen." He paused. "I'm not going to let that change now."

The laboratory fell silent.

Sira looked at Marek.

Zarpon looked at Marek.

Arlo looked at the screen, but with the attention of someone waiting for a specific answer before returning to work.

Marek looked at the map.

The thousands of yellow signatures moving in small groups across the surface of the parallel Earth. Dispersing. Waiting for instructions from someone who had spent twenty years in a cell thinking exactly about this moment.

He thought of Joe.

Of wrinkled hands on the Kratar.

Of "it's beautiful" said quietly with the expression of someone seeing something for the first time and finding exactly the right word without trying.

"Agreed," he said.

Zarpon nodded.

Once.

With the weight of someone who wasn't satisfied but recognized that this was the best that could be obtained at this moment.

"We leave at dawn tomorrow," he said. "Tonight, rest. Both of you—" he looked at Marek "—really rest."

Marek nodded.

Sira gathered her things.

Arlo turned off two of the three monitors in the laboratory and left the third on, with the detection system active in case the anomaly changed during the night.

Taka jumped off the table.

Walked toward the door with his usual silent authority.

Arlo followed him.

Marek was the last to leave.

He stopped at the laboratory threshold.

He looked at the screen Arlo had left on.

The yellow signatures. Thousands of them. Moving slowly across a planet Joe had never left. That he had known only from the farm and the orchard and the porch with a view of the green horizon.

He reached into his pocket.

His fingers found something that had been there since the day of the funeral. That had passed from one pocket to another without anyone seeing it because he hadn't wanted anyone to see it.

A wooden button.

Simple. Old. The kind that falls off a work shirt after years of use and that no one usually picks up because it's just a button.

Marek had picked it up from the orchard floor while repairing the stable wall.

He looked at it for a moment.

With the same expression as always. Calm on the surface. With everything that wasn't calm living beneath, not needing to show itself to be real.

He closed it in his fist.

And left.

END OF CHAPTER 11