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Then a door slams open in the far corner. My head snaps around to it. Two men enter, frantic, talking quickly and loudly. All at once a herd of animals rush in behind the men. Fifteen, give or take, continually changing shape. Some flying, some ru
"Go! Go! Up and in, up and in," he yells.
The animals go, all of them changing their shapes in order to do so. Then the last animal enters and one of the men pulls himself in. The other two begin throwing bags and boxes up to him. It takes them a good ten minutes to get everything on board. Then all three scatter around the rocket, preparing it. The men are sweating, moving frantically until everything is ready. Just before the three of them climb inside the rocket, someone runs up with a bundle that looks like a swaddled child, though I can't see well enough to tell. They take whatever it is and go inside. Then the door snaps shut behind them and is sealed. Minutes pass. The bombs must be just outside the walls now. And then from nowhere an explosion occurs inside the building and I see the begi
My eyes snap open. I am back home, in Ohio, lying in bed. The room is dark, but I can sense that I am not alone. A figure moves, a shadow thrown across the bed. I tense myself to it, ready to snap my lights on, ready to hurl it against the wall.
"You were talking," Henri says. "In your sleep just now, you were talking."
I turn on my lights. He is standing beside the bed, wearing pajamas pants and a white T-shirt. His hair is tousled; his eyes are red with sleep.
"What was I saying?"
"You said 'Up and in, up and in.' What was happening?"
"I was just on Lorien."
"In a dream?"
"I don't think so. I was there, just like before."
"What did you see?"
I scoot up the bed so my back rests against the wall.
"The animals," I say.
"What animals?"
"In the spaceship I saw take off. The old one, at the museum. In the rocket that left after ours. I watched animals being loaded into it. Not many. Fifteen, maybe. With three other Loric. I don't think they were Garde. And something else. A bundle. It looked like a baby, but I couldn't tell."
"Why don't you think they were Garde?"
"They loaded the rocket with supplies, fifty or so boxes and duffel bags. They didn't use telekinesis."
"Into the rocket inside the museum?"
"I think it was the museum. I was inside a large, domed building with nothing inside of it but a rocket. I can only assume it was the museum."
Henri nods. "If they worked at the museum then they would have been Cepan."
"Loading animals," I say. "Animals that could change their shape."
"Chim?ra," Henri says.
"What?"
"Chim?ra. Animals on Lorien that could change their shape. They were called Chim?ra."
"Is that what Hadley was?" I ask, remembering back to the vision I had a few weeks ago, the vision of playing in the yard of my elders' home when I was lifted in the air by the man wearing a silver and blue suit.
Henri smiles. "You remember Hadley?"
I nod. "I've seen him the way that I've seen everything else."
"You're having the visions even when we're not training?"
"Sometimes."
"How often?"
"Henri, who cares about the visions? Why were they loading animals into a rocket? What was a baby doing with them, or was it even a baby? Where did they go? What purpose could they possibly have had?"
Henri thinks about it a moment. He shifts the weight of his body to his right leg. "Probably the same purpose we had. Think about it, John. How else could animals repopulate Lorien? They too would have to go to some sort of sanctuary. Everything was wiped out. Not just the people, but also the animals, and all plant life. Maybe the bundle was just another animal. A fragile one, or maybe a young one."
"Well, where would they go? What other sanctuary exists besides Earth?"
"I think they went to one of the space stations. A rocket with Loric fuel would have been able to make it that far. Maybe they thought the invasion would be short-lived, and they thought they could wait it out. I mean, they would have been able to live on the space station for as long as their supplies lasted."
"There are space stations close to Lorien?"
"Yes, two of them. Well, there were two of them. I know for sure the larger of the two was destroyed at the same time as the invasion. We lost contact with it less than two minutes after the first bomb fell."
"Why didn't you mention that before, when I first told you about the rocket?"
"I had assumed that it was empty, that it went up in the air as a decoy. And I think that if one space station was destroyed, then the other was as well. Their trip, unfortunately, was probably done in vain, whatever their goal was."
"But what if they came back when their supplies ran out? Do you think they could survive on Lorien?" I ask in desperation. I already know the answer, already know what Henri will say, but I ask anyway in order to hold on to some sort of hope that we aren't alone in all this. That maybe, somewhere far away, there are others like us, waiting, monitoring the planet so that they, too, might one day return and we won't be alone when we go back.
"No. There is no water there now. You saw that for yourself. Nothing but a barren wasteland. And nothing can survive without water."
I sigh and scoot back down into the bed. I drop my head onto the pillow. What's the point in arguing? Henri is right and I know it. I saw it for myself. If the globes that he pulled from the Chest are to be trusted, then Lorien is nothing more than wasteland, a dump. The planet still lives but on the surface there is nothing. No water. No plants. No life. Nothing but dirt and rocks and the rubble of the civilization that once existed.
"Did you see anything else?" Henri asks.
"I saw us on the day we left. All of us at the airship right before we took off."
"It was a sad day."
I nod. Henri crosses his arms and gazes out the window, lost in thought. I take a deep breath. "Where was your family during it all?" I ask.
My lights have been off for a good two or three minutes, but I can see the whites of Henri's eyes staring back at me.
"Not with me, not on that day," he says.
We are both silent for a time and then Henri shifts his weight.
"Well, I better get back to bed," he says, bringing an end to the conversation. "Get some sleep."
After he leaves I lie there thinking of the animals, of the rocket, of Henri's family and how I'm sure he never got the chance to say good-bye to them. I know I won't be able to go back to sleep. I never can when the images visit me, when I feel Henri's sadness. It must be a thought constantly on his mind, as it would be for anyone who left under the same circumstances, leaving the only home you've ever known, all the while knowing you will never see the people you love again.
I grab my cell phone and text Sarah. I always text her when I can't sleep, or she texts me if it's the other way around. Then we'll talk for as long as it takes to become tired. She calls me twenty seconds after I hit the send button.
"Hey, you," I answer.
"You can't sleep?"
"No."
"What's the matter?" she asks. She yawns on the other end of the line.
"Was just missing you is all. Been lying in bed staring at the ceiling for like an hour now."
"You're silly. You saw me like six hours ago."
"I wish you were still here," I say. She moans. I can hear her smile through the darkness. I roll to my side and hold the phone between my ear and the pillow.