Aorx Fort,
Planet Plato.
Location: Unknown, but dangerously near the Vortex Frontier.
"Neesha." the inhumane voice spoke.
"Yes?"
"The time is now. Go fetch him."
"Now? We still have much time left. Besides, Prometheus isn't an easy place to infiltrate. Even with my strength, do you think I can get things done easily?"
However, the voice spoke with slight anger.
"What do you imply then?"
"My apologies."
Then the voice spoke,
"The ship will be returning the caravan back to the Academy in less than a day, twenty hours approximately. Their final destination is not Prometheus. The anomaly surfaced up at the Academy."
Hearing this, Neesha was surprised, though she didn't show it much.
Well, it was not that she expected the invisible speaker of the inhumane voice to see her facial reaction.
"Why then did they have to drive back to Prometheus?" Neesha asked, seemingly confused.
According to her calculations which was normally thoughtful for even a genius scientist like her, it made no sense if the Aurora Veil ship took off from the Academy planet and went over the light-years distance back to Prometheus to prepare for the anomaly that surfaced on the same Academy planet they took off from. They could have just gone directly from there, and it was not that the Aurora Veil travelled without Unbounds on board, basically for safety. What then might have prompted the ship to drive back to Prometheus? Did they know that someone else was after something they had in their custody? That cannot be possible.
No one knows that anyone existed outside of New Facility. Or no one believed. They believed that no living thing could exist closer to the Vortex Frontier.
However, the inhumane voice answered her.
"The anomaly that surfaced at the Academy was a rare appearance that has never occured before."
Neesha, confused by this, asked,
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, you surprise me, Neesha. You should know this. You have the map. Few hours ago, there was a sudden and strange swirl without a change in weather in the air somewhere far away from the Academy fort. The swirl took place at a mountain range near the Metallic Sea at exactly 1700."
"1700? Was that a coincidence?"
"From a normal person's point of view, it should have been seen as a coincidence. However, I am fully sure that this is not a coincidence."
"Huh? Why did you say so?" Neesha asked, more intrigued.
"For now, I cannot exactly point out the mystery of this situation, but I know what I mean."
The voice paused for a moment, before continuing.
"What I predict is impending doom. The immediate days of New Facility will soon be filled with more darkness, darker than the darker days that went by. There will be an uprising of greater evil forces that will threaten the remaining few hundreds of New Facility to extinction once more, and the powerful Unbounds and forces of New Facility will once more converge together to mount a counterattack of equal magnitude, or manage to gather such force."
Neesha .. wasn't expect the voice to say anything close to that.
"Should we just remain on our seat and watch the world crumble before our eyes?"
"Neesha, it is none of our business. You know more than that. We have been on our own for hundreds of years. We watched everything turn upside down. The vortexes came. The world crumbles. A new era was birthed. The New Facility was formed. Then came the Unbounds and the neural technology and other advanced forms of technology across New Facility. Of all these years, now is not the time to interfere. We have seen the darkest of days. We will do same. Your father must have told you almost half of this history, haven't he?"
Though all what the voice said just now were totally strange to her, she was most intrigued and surprised by one of them.
"You knew my father?"
She had been raised by her lovely father in this hell of a crumbling planet near a hostile rift of vortexes. Ever since he passed away, the voice had long since been with her, living with her. She became the leader of this great establishment made by her father on the tragic day he died, assuming his role. In this fort however, only Neesha could hear this voice. She still didn't know where it came from.
Each time she asked, it simply told her, "Wait a little longer." She got angry at the reply at first but later on, she admitted that she'd wait. She had always greatly anticipated the day she would meet the true speaker of this voice. She was born to know this world as lonely and boring, but the voice had always kept her company right from her childhood, playing most parts of the role her father failed to handle, and impacting her with all sorts of strange knowledge, thus forging her into a powerful being of so many mysterious knowledge of the universe. Her training method into becoming someone this powerful were nothing any human had done before. She was the first and only human to be trained in the special manner of using ancient martial arts. As a result, she had become an extremely physically strong human of unbelievable strength that goes beyond the normal human capacity. Even Unbounds should be wary of her if encountered.
However, the particular history the voice was telling was never mentioned to her, not even by her father when he was alive. He only told her some restrained informations about the existence of thousands of more humans like her in a galaxy known as the Galaxy of Cornelius. Even the little she knew of were told as tales whenever her and her father played together. It was later on, that she believed these tales to be true, confirming from the voice.
"Your father was my friend."
Neesha, now feeling sober, wanted to ask more questions, but the voice stopped her.
"You need not to. There's a lot to do right now." "Go over to Prometheus right now and bring me the young cadet before he gets back. I will be out of reach if he gets back into the Academy."
"You still haven't told me why you need hi–"
"–I will not be sending any Warden to accompany you. You are strong enough to complete this mission. Neesha, show me what you've got, and prove to your father how strong you have been, for him. For his fort."
Neesha, now stuck with words and perplexed, simply answered in a rushed tone, "Y-yes."
However as she turned to go, she asked,
"I need to tell the second human here, my deputy."
But the voice replied as if afraid of the person being spoken of. "Oh, that creepy bitch."
"You know I have to inform him if I'm leaving. The Wardens can oversee the middle and lower base of the fort."
"Go ahead. You're the leader anyway."
But Neesha said jokingly, "Hmph, you talk like you don't order me around on occasions."
"Haha, Neesha, you're still too young to understand so many things, even with the vast array of knowledge you possess. What will a girl at sixteen do?"
"Hmph, I can travel the whole world and obliterate planets." She muffled with pride as she walked out of the secluded chamber and stepped into a vertical drop shaft mechanism which levitated with moderate speed to the upper floor of the fort.
Even as the leader of this fort, there obviously were so many restrictions still placed on her due to her young age.