The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(33)

I hesitate and observe the man, sizing him up, and I say, “Zane confided in me. I was the only person who could derail Travis—they needed me.”

“Zane needed you? That is ridiculous. You really are crazy. A demigod needs a kid—that’s rich. I suppose you think you could beat Odion too.” The guard laughs, and footsteps interrupt our encounter. I scurry to a corner of my cell with my tablet in hand. The view box closes, and I hear an argument outside.

“Were you just talking with a prisoner? If I ever catch you talking to a prisoner again rookie, you are going to be one! Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. He has quite an interesting story.”

“He’s a prisoner. The only interesting part is the fact that he’s still alive. Don’t let me catch you talking to him again. I mean it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The veteran guard opens the view box and stares at me. I look down, avoiding the possibility of accidentally antagonizing him. He says, “Get back to it, prisoner. I know you are just dying to talk to yourself.”

I know to follow orders immediately. I turn the tablet on and get back to it:

“There was a strange feeling, after playing back all the events aboard Zane’s ship. Everything made sense. I understood the concept of Dietons. In the most simple terms, they were the microscopic minions of Zane and all who were endowed with rolesks. However, they were much more.”

The overwhelming feeling of anxiety from my encounter in the deep space of the multiverse was gone, and merely replaced with the pressing fear of what my grandparents might do to me when I arrived at home.

My hand was annoyingly itchy, and in an eardrum piercing fashion, a voice returned to me:

‘We have implanted you with a communicator. It is a device we will use to stay in touch with you,’ the voice said.

‘Zane?’ I asked.

‘Theodore, don’t speak, you only need to think. We have implanted a nanocom into the Brochas area of your brain that controls speech. We have done this to facilitate our communication. This is Nezatron. I am the robotic being you saw aboard the spaceship Uriel. Since I was constructed from the digital lives that arose from Sephera, I am a Sepheran. I will be the only one monitoring this channel, for the time being. A secondary implant was placed within the palm of your hand. It is called IPU, Inner Processing Unit. It is your own personal computing system. If you need to command forth an important fact, it can be displayed on a hologram from the center of your palm. Think of it like a search engine on your own Internet, but ten times more advanced. I will be the provider of this information. I am precise. Anything, try it out if you don’t believe me,’ he said, taking a moment from talking to observe my reaction.


I sharply drew in my breath as I peered at the palm of my hand. In the middle, there was faint, glowing circle—intense in the center, then gradually fading as it radiated out. It was as if a flashlight was pressed against the backside of my hand, shining through my blood vessels to my palm. I turned my hand over; the back of my hand appeared as it always had.

Excited, I decided to test Nezatron’s proposition. Closing my eyes, in my mind, I conjured forth the thought of a Dieton.

I opened my eyes and gasped.

A tiny hologram flickered just above the palm of my hand. Rotating slowly to exhibit as much visual information as possible, it was a thorough blueprint of a Dieton drawn to a visible scale. Over my nanocom, an audio description of the Dieton played inside my head. I freaked out, and sat on my hand quickly to hide the hologram, hoping that it wasn’t really a solid three-dimensional object that would poke against my butt.

‘Don’t worry about others seeing this hologram. The hologram is encoded to your optic nerve and there are only a handful of humans on Earth that share a similar sight with you. The chance of you encountering one of these humans isn’t a likely outcome. On our end, we will be monitoring your vitals, as well as your location. You will need to think about me to initiate a conversation. Understand, I am not here waiting for you to contact me. I have orders of my own to follow. We altered your mind in the chamber. You are now a supreme enhanced version of yourself. You will need to be careful, because people will notice that you have advanced intellectually—’ he said, and I interrupted.

‘I will be smarter?’ I ask, realizing that I spoke aloud.

‘Did you say something?’ the cabby asked.

‘No, nothing,’ I said.

Nezatron resumed his dialogue. ‘You need to be more careful. Keep your thoughts within you when communicating with us. Your mission is to find four human children of Earth, to follow you to the Uriel to be trained. You and your friends will be transported at the hour of five, Earth time on the final day of your month. That gives you twenty-three days to find and enlist four willing individuals. To end the transmission, simply think it and the window for communication will close. The Dietons are in your favor, Theodore. Know that we are fighting from every angle to protect you. Trust us.’ I could tell he paused. He was waiting for my reaction. I visualized turning off my voice, and the transmission ended.

The biggest concern of mine was if a leaf could have knocked Travis off the cliff, then why didn’t Zane command one to magically appear to deliver that blow of fate? Why didn’t Zane, in all his power and wisdom knock him down and crush him, as Travis himself said he would do to me?

I didn’t know how I, a young and immature teenager was going to reel in four innocent people to follow me into the depths of space to train, and to fight? For a cause that I barely even understood.