The Director looked up from the datapad and stared directly at Xaleyp. The vision? What did that have to do with anything? It didn’t even matter anymore. The person it was about was dead. Mian was dead.

He felt hot tears coming to his eyes. His hands went numb on the arms of the chair, and he couldn’t feel his toes. A horrible churning formed in his stomach.

“Please, Xaleyp.” The man’s words were soft, despite the piercing of his eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. It is imperative that you tell me about that vision.”

He didn’t know where to start, so he started at the beginning. With the Hyperions coming to the house in the mountains, with him, his mom, his dad’s friend, and his own best friend being taken. His awakening on Vertyn and the first time he saw the blurred shapes, then when it came more into focus and he heard the voice, then describing how the voice followed him through the seven years at the training facility.

The whole time he spoke, the Director nodded along, smiling slightly in places. He made notes on the datapad, the gentle scribbling of the stylus the only noise when Xaleyp paused for breaths. Finally, he was done, and the man looked expectantly at him, as if he wanted to hear more.

“And?” the Director asked.

“And what?”

“Did you ever discover who the vision was talking about?”

“I… I think so. But it doesn’t matter anyway. She’s dead.”

“Dead?” The Director looked somewhat perturbed by the words. “How do you mean?”

“Tober told me she was gone.” Xaleyp resisted the urge to cry and took deep breaths, looking away from the Director and his snakelike eyes. “When he spoke to me in the prison.”

“Curious.” He jotted down a note, then folded his hands. “My next question for you is what you know about Ciovyr.”

“Not a lot.” Xaleyp shook his head. “Seth told me—”

“Seth?” the man interrupted. He looked down at the datapad, skimming his finger down the lines of text until he came to the one he as searching for. “Seth Drake, correct? Emperor of Hyperia?”

“Yeah, whatever you want to call him. He told me Ciovyr is a god, and some bullshit about how I’m the only one that can stop it.”

Only three questions had been asked so far, and Xaleyp was already wanting to get out of there. What was so important about the vision? Why did it matter if he knew who it was about? Why did it matter if he knew who Ciovyr was? It made no difference in the grand scheme of things. Mian was dead, he didn’t have the sword, neither of those mattered anymore.

“You don’t believe that then?” the Director asked. He rose an eyebrow. “You don’t believe Ciovyr is a god?”

“Not really, no.”

“Why is that?” He wrote another note on the datapad. Xaleyp shrugged and looked at his own hand tapping on the table, or the floor, or the wall. Anywhere but at the man staring at him. “Come on, Xaleyp. I told you that the only thing we care about is your honesty with me. I don’t care what happened to influence your belief. I only want the answers to my questions.”

“You want an answer?” Xaleyp stood, knocking the chair backwards, and slammed his fists into the table. His voice rose with every word until he was red in the face and almost screaming, irritated further by the smug look on the Director’s face. “I don’t believe it’s a god. Why? I grew up learning that gods were benevolent beings, that they were forces of good. Arcadia is responsible for Lina’s death. They are responsible for Mian’s death. If a god is willing to work with someone that kills people for the sake of killing, then that’s no god. That’s a menace. And if I could, I would put it down in a heartbeat.”

It felt good to get that off his chest, to say what he had been feeling for days, weeks even. It was as if a heavy weight was no longer on his chest trying to suffocate him.

“Well, then I have good news for you.” The Director perked up slightly. He shifted in his chair to get more comfortable. “But it’s good to remember that the galaxy isn’t divided between good and evil. There are many nuances and gray areas, and even more deities that are evil than the good ones you're so familiar with. Just one more question for you, then I’ll let you ask any questions you have, and I’ll finish our interview here with the good news. Tell me about the second vision you had.”

“What second vision?” Xaleyp set the chair upright and sat back down. His breathing was ragged but slowly returning to normal. “I only had the one on Vertyn.”

“No, I believe you should have had a second one. If my calculations are correct, it would’ve been after Arcadia captured you. About Eratu.”

Xaleyp blinked. How had the man known about that dream? The one back on Vertyn, he understood. After all, he had told Lina about it, and someone could have overheard. Who, he didn’t know, but it was possible. This one he told no one. He had no one to even tell anymore.

“What about it? All I saw was a forest.”

“Yes, but it is what was within the forest that is interesting.” The Director pressed a few buttons on the datapad. A holographic image of the stone circle appeared above the surface. He expanded the image to show the middle stone with the crack. “It is said that the Sword of Razeph was forged on the planet. This circle forms the remnants of that process. Have you discovered what the sword does yet?”

“Defeats Ciovyr.”

“Wrong.” His voice was harsh and quick to refute him. “It doesn’t defeat them. It controls them.”

“Them?” How could a sword control anybody? It was an inanimate object. It couldn’t think and breath and act on its own. Then Xaleyp remembered: it was able to control him. the way the voices got inside his head, the madness it drove Max to in Seth’s office. Could that be its power after all?

“Ciovyr is depicted as a giant, metal maw with jagged teeth. It was believed by ancient humans that this was a singular being.” The Director brought up an image to show Xaleyp. It was a large circular body. Teeth-like objects went around the outside in dozens of rows, like some eldritch monster. At the center was a sort of contraption that might have been a door of some kind. “It is my organization’s belief that Ciovyr is not a single being, and this depiction was just one of its vessels. We believe they are an alien race from another galaxy. They created the sword for reasons we can only guess at. What we do know is that the sword is able to control and stop them from destroying our civilization as we know it.”

“An alien race from another galaxy? How can that be possible?” Xaleyp felt his throat go even drier, constricting again, and before he knew it, the words blurted from his mouth. “The sword was able to control me back in Seth’s office. Am I an alien?”

“Oh, no.” The Director smiled and shook his head. “You simply have a mutation in your DNA that is rather rare. You’re no more alien than I am. Now, tell me. Did you discover where Eratu is?”

“Where it is?” Xaleyp stared, dumbfounded. After telling him how he was apparently chasing after an alien race, that’s all he wanted to know? “How am I supposed to know where a planet is?”

“Your vision should have told you that.”

“What? You mean, you lost a planet and I was supposed to find it?”

“Are you meaning to tell me you don’t know where it is?”

“I have no damn clue where it is.” Xaleyp felt the heat rising in his face again. How was he supposed to know where a planet was when he didn’t even want to be on it in the first place? “I was on the surface, and no one exactly set out a red carpet to a map of it or anything.”

“Were there any defining characteristics?” The man seemed untroubled by Xaleyp’s outburst, continuing as if this were just another conversation he had over an afternoon tea. “Did you see any constellations or anything in the sky that could be used to locate it? Anything at all about what you saw would be extremely helpful.”

“There were two stars in the sky.” Xaleyp wracked his brain to remember any detail about what he saw. Funny how when he tried to remember something, the further from his hands it shrunk away. “And a gas giant. The only other thing I remember seeing is the forest.”

Something in his head told Xaleyp that he shouldn’t mention the girl he saw. There was something about her. It just felt like he should keep that part to himself. The Director eyed him curiously for a moment before nodding.

“Very well. I suppose that will have to be enough.” He turned off the datapad and leaning back in his chair. “Well, I’m nothing if not a man of my word, so go ahead and ask me any question. I’ll answer it, unless I have a good reason not to.”

There were so many questions questions whirling around in his head. How could he pick one to ask first?

“Who are you?” Xaleyp asked the first thing that came to mind. “Who are you really, Director?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Not yet, anyway. At the very least least, not until we get to Siatia. Next?”

Xaleyp was afraid that was going to be the answer he received. The question was awfully direct, though so were the questions that he was asked.

“Why did you come for me? Why me? Why not someone else?”

“Because you are one of the only ones we know of that can use the sword. Your DNA just has that slight difference to be able to control it. Siatia has interests that align with helping you realize your potential.”

“So what? I’m some chosen one?” Xaleyp scoffed and folded his arms. “I’m nobody. I’m nothing special. I can’t be a chosen one.”

“Not exactly, no. You’re not a chosen one, but you are definitely special. Perhaps more than you realize. You’re not our savior or anything, so don’t let that thought go to your head. We can get by without you, thank you very much. It’ll just be so much easier to be able to control that sword, especially since we went through all the trouble of finding you. Next question?”

“What does Ciovyr want with us? Why is it — er, they returning now?”

“We don’t know. Seth told you about how Ciovyr can control our robots, and that’s why Hyperia has been reverting back to a human military. What their end goal is, we don’t know. Next? That can’t be all you want to know.”

“How did you know I had those visions?” It was this question Xaleyp wanted the answer to most of all but felt most uncomfortable about asking. “How do you know so much about me?”

“I’ll answer the second one first.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, staring directly into Xaleyp’s eyes. “It is my organization’s job to know everything they can about persons of interest. Seth, Tober, you. We have operatives around the galaxy, gathering information and relaying it back to us.”

“But how did you know so much about me? I’ve never seen one of your operatives close enough to me to get that much information.”

“Think a little bit.” The Director tapped his forehead gently. “You’re smarter than that, or so I’ve been told. Has there been anyone you’ve been around more than others, maybe someone you trust with your life?”

Xaleyp’s heart pounded in his ears as he tried to think. Seth? He was around him more than anyone else he could think of. But an emperor working for some organization? It seemed degrading. He spent seven years with Lina, but how would a ten year old even start working for an organization like this to begin with? Then someone else crossed his mind. Someone he trusted with his life…

“Mian?” The name was hardly audible. An almost imperceptible nod came from the Director. “She was spying on me?”

“She played her role well. She is one of our best agents, especially for being so young.” He leaned back in the chair and examined his fingernails. “To be absolutely fair, it does help when you have a good motivator.”

Xaleyp didn’t know what to think. He trusted her. He believed her, trained with her, even cared for her. Was it all a lie, a ruse, a game she was playing? Was any of it even real? Then again, did it matter now that she was dead? Something in him said yes, that the fact she toyed with his feelings like that was betrayal, plain and simple.

“Now, how we knew you had those visions.” The man’s voice sounded like it was coming from kilometers away. Xaleyp’s head was still spinning from the discovery of the deception. “The answer is simple: We put them in your brain. When your blood was drawn at Vertyn, we hijacked one of the robots to implant the memory there. We wanted to be sure that, when the time came, you would trust whoever we assigned to follow you, which ended up being Miss Wemlyr, implicitly. As for the second vision, we simply sent a string of malware into your CAM to play the dream sequence the next time you fell asleep. It just so happened that was the time when Arcadia captured you.

“Now, unless you have any other questions, I think it’s time for that good news I promised you.” The Director cleared his throat and sat up straight. “Two bits, to be honest. The first is that, if you are willing, we want you to join our fight against Ciovyr. My organization has decided enough is enough, and the Siatian government has authorized the use of force.”

“Do I have a choice?” Xaleyp felt drained. As if all the happiness had left him permanently.

“There’s always a choice, Xaleyp. We wouldn’t want you to do anything you don’t want to. Like I said, we can get by without you. It’s just much easier and simpler with you.”

“I want revenge,” Xaleyp whispered. “I want to avenge Lina’s death.”

“Can I consider that as you as joining our cause then?” the man asked. Xaleyp nodded. “Very well, I’ll get the paperwork started as soon as possible. Now, we can continue to the second bit of good news.”

He stood and walked to the door. It hissed open as he reached it, and he stuck his head out.

“Agent, we’re ready for you. Will you come in, please?”

There was a brief pause where only shuffling footsteps could be heard. After several seconds, a girl dressed in a black jumpsuit came into view.

“Mian.” Xaleyp’s heart leapt into his throat. His fingers turned white as he gripped the arms of the chair. “You’re alive.”