Fools of us All - Chapter 28

“I have no idea what to do now,” I muttered in the darkness, “or where we’re going.” We had been walking for what felt like hours in the dim light of the tunnel. Caz had been leading us down path after path, taking seemingly random turns until I was thoroughly lost. Truthfully, I was lost after the first turn, but that situation did not improve as we continued.

Caz had said nothing to me the entire time we were walking. As we walked, she had stopped frequently, peering up, staring at the ceiling, speaking to herself under her breath. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she seemed very adamant about something.

Suddenly she stopped and looked back at me. “Did you say something?” she asked.

I nodded, a futile gesture in the darkness. “I was wondering what the plan was,” I replied. “Plus, I’m lost, my feet hurt, I’m hungry, and I want a break.” I cringed inwardly at how whiny that had sounded.

“Okay,” she said and sat down where she was, leaning against the wall.

Slightly taken aback, I stood for a moment longer before joining her on the slightly damp floor. We sat without speaking for five minutes, her leaning back, her head tilted to face the ceiling; me leaning forward to play with the laces on my shoes. I had meant to ask her about the plan, but another thought struck me and almost asked itself. “Have you found alien life yet?”

I could almost hear her blinking with surprise. Slowly her face swung to look at me. “Me personally?” She sounded confused.

“No. I mean in general. Back in the present…I mean past…your past, that is…my present…” I rubbed my face, the lack of sleep obviously catching up to me. I tried again. “In my day, people theorised about the possibility of alien life, but no one had ever been able to prove anything. Has that changed?”

“Ah.” Her eyes drifted back to the ceiling. “Well, nothing official. They’ve started mining other planets, specifically the moons of Jupiter, and the asteroid belt, but no aliens have been reported. There’s talk, of course, about government conspiracies and cover ups, but that’s nothing new.” She shrugged. “I guess things haven’t changed. Although, I like to think that my dad saw something amazing out there before he died.” I couldn’t help but hear the sadness in her voice.

Wanting to distract her from the sadness I knew lived just beneath her surface, I started to regale her with stories of my youth, of times with my friends doing things that were, frankly, stupid. I often wonder how me and my friends stayed alive through high school. She laughed at my antics, making me repeat a few things that she found somewhat less than completely believable.

After the stories ran out, and the tears had been wiped from our eyes, I leaned my head against the wall, doing my best to ignore what was going to end up in my hair. “Seriously though, what’s the plan here? Are we just going to wander underground for the rest of our lives? Because I like the sun and want to see it again before I die.”

“There is a plan,” she replied. I sensed a bit of hesitation, but I didn’t interrupt. “It involves the prophecy that brought you here.”

“Damn,” I said. I hated that thing.

“I know. I never told you what Dun said to me before you killed him. There was more to the prophecy than he had told me. There was more than one prophecy. I don’t know what the truth is anymore.” She turned to face me. “I’m tired of only knowing what other people have told me. It’s time to learn for myself. We’re going to break into the religious archives and read the prophecy for ourselves.”

“The religious archives? Like, a church?”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Kind of. But imagine the best guarded place in your world. Now imagine that it is guarded twice as well. Now imagine that instead of guarding gold or money, it is instead guarding ancient religious artefacts and writings.”

I swallowed hard. “I knew there was a catch.”