The Promethead

"No, no!"

He tapped out all the commands he knew, but the power fields graphs still read dead. All that remained active was the alarm pulse.

Traejan blinked hard, then called up the system records. He couldn't have just imagined it all. The records didn't disappoint. The mirror port had been activated. It had been running at maximum power for over ten minutes. Traejan had been up for twenty hours, mastering the mersion game, but he was more awake than he had been in weeks.

"Have to tell Kyso," he muttered, "have to tell him now!" Where the streck was he? Traejan ran through the cold, empty corridors of the old resort, calling the old man's name. He wasn't in his workshop, kitchen, dome or sleeping quarters. Where was he?

The sound of music – the tangy smell – drew him to the darkened observation lounge, smoke of nostalgia hanging in the air over the Kyso's slumped body. Traejan shook his head at the man's stained ratty robe, lank white hair messily flowing over face and shoulders. The Trakka blared from some hidden speakers. He couldn't turn it off, or even see where the music controls were. Turned to his last companion, he shook the man's shoulder, slapped his slack brown cheeks.

"Kyso!" he shouted.

The old man shuddered, raised his head, squinting in Traejan's direction – dark, unfocused eyes staring from a nest of wrinkles. "What is it boy?" he asked in a scratchy, lethargic voice, hand over mouth and beard, wiping.

"I was just in the–" Traejan started, stopped, gestured inadequately, frantically, then forced the words out. "The alarm has gone off!"

Kyso stared at him, blinked. "Alarm? What alarm?"

Traejan took him by the shoulders, shook him violently. "The End'echea Mirror Port alarm!" He stared into the man's now startled eyes. "It read a tenth-mag trilium displacement."

Kyso's eyes widened. He shook off Traejan's grip, looked up at him.

"Are you sure?" he asked, brow furrowed in thought, focus, looked back up. "Tenth-magnitude? Not since…"

He grabbed the man's left hand, pulled him to his feet. Kyso took a moment to steady himself, shaking his head as he fumbled over his robe's tie. Traejan was already moving to the door, turned to wave urgently.

"Come on, Come on!"

For once Kyso managed some spring in his step – once fully awake, actually kept up with him – all the way back to the tech room. Traejan kicked away some of the equipment, shoved stacks aside so the both of them could look over the data he'd recorded.

"There it is," he announced proudly, pulling up the recorded field pulses. "Verified and confirmed!"

Kyso fussed over the controls, peering at the data with suspicion, mumbling incoherent tech babble all the way. After a long silence, he nodded, turned back to Traejan.

"You're right," he said, a rare sober smile on his lips. The old man turned back to the display, poked the cracked screen. "That is a definite power surge. I remember those spikes."

He backed a couple steps away from the screen, rubbed his moustache and beard with a thick-fingered hand.

"But what could cause that now?" he wondered.

"What else could it be?!" Traejan challenged. "Not bots or flyers. It's well above the ice line. No scavenger knows how to open up the Mirror Maze. Consortia, it has to be!"

"Now?" Kyso questioned. He'd already started falling back into his listless dreamer fugue.

"They're due, don't you think?" Traejan countered, a bitter taste in his mouth. "It's just been – what – two hundred and fifty years?!"

All he received was a skeptical look.

"We could find out what happened," he continued excitedly. "What's kept them so dammed long!"

Kyso raised a gnarled finger; gave him a stern, refocused look.

"Don't get ahead of yourself with the assumption this is Legionary," he asserted, pointed back at the screen. "All that is – is a blip. It could be any number of things. We need… need to consider our actions. We have very little left we can afford to lose boy."

He wished Kyso would stop calling him that. He had been married; he was a man.

"We have to go," Traejan insisted. "We have to at least take a closer look."

The old man turned back to him, narrowed his gaze, nodded.

"Of course, of course," he agreed, then added in a dour tone, "But don't hold your hopes high. It's probably nothing like what you're dreaming of."