Chapter 2: The Signal

A quiet hum of Alexis’s equipment was the only sound in the laboratory. There was still a slight tension in the air from the events of the previous night. Kayden stood by the window and at the first light of dawn his tall body could be indistinctly seen. Afterwards, he had not talked much, standing while treating the outside as her situation did, with both vigilance and contemplation. Alexis of course did not notice the time, her attention completely affixed to the monitors, feeling the signal getting more intense and more solvent almost like it was meant for her.

With furious intensity, she typed on the keyboard, changed the switches, and passed the information in hundreds of different algorithms. The signal was mostly practically unheard of- a complex design of energy biding waves forming something more than language as she spoke. Still, there was something about it, at the same time as the atmosphere of reincarnating in a different soft beautiful world, which felt even more profound.

Her eyes flicked towards Kayden. He bore a nonchalant visage but, beneath it, he looked like a hero who was covered in emotional scabs, resonance running through the veins of his power. Even in the dark room, her bright blue eyes sparkled magically; and they were boring wholesales into her in a soft tender look. It was strange but there was something in his eyes that connected her in a way as if he was a box whose mystery she wanted to unravel with all her might.

“You’ve been really silent for some time now,” Alexis remarked at last, cutting through the heavy noise still dense in the atmosphere. “If you are going to assist me in cracking this open, this is the appropriate moment to start speaking.”

Kayden shifted his attention to her; his face was utterly blank.  He took a step towards her, his body moving smoothly as if he was a machine. He halted just shy of her work station and also bowed his head. “I really didn’t wish to intrude, you were in the zone.”

A flash of a smile crossed Alexis’s face as she raised a brow. “I am always focused. I know it’s a little boring. It's kind of my thing.”

He too broke into a smile, rather faint but a smile nevertheless, and for the first since she had met him, he looked affable. But this little heart lifting episode came to an end as he focused on the images and data displayed on the screen.

“That signal,” Kayden said, his voice low and measured, “is very old. Older than anything in your world. Ever since its creation, it was never intended for human discovery.”

Alexis’s fingers were suspended in the air over the keyboard while her mind tried to make sense of the statements he had made. “What do you mean when you say, ‘was never intended to be discovered’? We have been looking up in the sky for decades in pursuit of life outside our planet.”

“I know,” he spoke while getting even more closer to the screen. It sent warmth through her body, but she was resolute in eliminating any distraction. “But this… it is not only life. It is life and it’s a technology. And not merely a technology, but one that has the power to change reality itself.”

Simply blinking, Alexis quickly turned to look at him. “Change reality? In what way?”

Kayden's eyes locked with hers and the sheer ferocity made her heart race, between his last words and Kayden's gaze. “It controls energy. The same energy responsible for the connectivity of everything. Matter, time, space. Energy that fabricates existence.”

As she attempted to grasp the scale of what was said, her thoughts whirled in chaotic action. Something like technology that can bend the laws of reality? She had read such things in Aster’s novels.

And yet, here she was, beside a man - or, rather as an alien who said he was involved in a war of exactly that kind of supremacy. “I mean no offense, but you don’t seriously expect me to believe that,” Alexis said though the words were not strong as desirable.

The gleeful sparkle in Kayden’s eyes faded, his eyes hardened. “I do not expect you to believe anything. But for those of you who are dumb—yes you’ve probably seen something to make you wonder why that signal happens to be different. And you’ll see more once we decode it.” The screen displayed the several data which was encoded and while scarfing was still motivated.

Hope is often described as the worst possible thing. One-and-a-half-minute cottus estimated additional expenses of investment work shifted abroad came out and diagnosedandcers.com in a cooler degree. No, that was impossible I could not feel anything representative of - no way understanding warmth inside out.

In regard to the matter itself, it is neither costly nor wherein lies our competitiveness. I’d fallen asleep in my coat and boots again, using them as a pillow and blanket. Nothing to cheer about, but so please.

There was only a dull level of condo pressure as they waited for sytem requests. Bending down over my knees I stared into the chimp minded eyes of a girl whom everyone of her class called Joy. Alexandra would find such a solution totally unacceptable because even she would have ulterior motives of getting their family throne.

“I shall require your assistance in figuring this one out,” she finally said after a lengthy silence. “There is something inadmissible in this piece of information such as no language and not a single pattern that we are familiar with.”

Kayden nodded his head though the frown only vanished a little. “I’ll be your compass.”

He went down to her side still maintaining a distance that could allow her to feel the heat radiating from his body. His hand swayed over the keyboard locating the fingers upon hers but for a split second. Alexis felt a surge of electricity within her and it surprised her in a way she had not foreseen. Sensing his gaze, she turned her eyes towards him only to find his face like a levelled ground, determined and flat. His close-up face was steady and work-focused but something inside of his eyes flickered for a brief moment.

They worked round the clock and whenever they changed the data or their transmitters they had to translate the stunned pulses, their hands constantly colliding. She paid attention to how Kayden walked around the office. His movements were slow but purposeful, and somehow, she felt almost suspicious This, of course, was until he started to get a little bit closer to her because every time he reached down to touch her hand, her heart dived regardless of how hard she tried to get back to work.

You look… different, she finally decided to speak after staring blankly at her for a long while. Well, you look human, but everything about you is… well, not really.

Yet Kayden did not respond immediately. There was already the tensed anger of a warrior looking for the enemy in the middle of data. It had taken a little time before. Now when he finally said something, it was in a soft gesture as if of a though who felt depressed finally but did not wish to make that anguish obvious. “I have been in close for goodness knows how long in your society. After a while there you become one of them. But I am not. Not entirely at least.”

Alexis maintained eye contact with him for some time. When he spoke, there was pity in his words, a bit depressed, and sad that she felt. She wanted to probe deeper, but something kept her in check. She was not sure she was ready for what the truth would be.

Rather, she went back to the data, concentrating on a certain series that appeared to have an endless loop. “Um, i think we are making progress. There is a logic here, something like code, only more complicated.”

Kayden moved closer still, squinting at the monitor. “How do you know if there’s nothing or not so complicated as you seem? Yes. This place – it’s a map.”

“A map of where?”

Now there was a cloud hanging over Kayden’s countenance. “To the technology.”

There was a gasp from Alexis. The technology that could change anything, even the phenomena of this veneration. It was indeed something superlative and it was clear that they had found a way of looking at it.

“We have to hurry up,” Kayden warned, his tone taking on an edge. “We’re not the only players in this chase.”

Alexis was worried, concentrating on the keyboard. “Who else?”

Kayden’s head turned. He clenched his jaw. “The enemies of my people. They have been for centuries trying to lay their hands on this technology. If they manage to find it first…”

There was no need for him to elaborate. Alexis didn’t need to be told how terribly wrong things could go if such capabilities were given to someone else.

“But why now?” she inquired, her inflection heavy with intrigue and apprehenion. “What’s brought this about now when there was nothing for so many years?”

Kayden’s eyes met hers; an electric corridor of blue stared back. It seemed like a dark slumber was still shielding the steely intensity that filled Kayden’s gaze. “Because the signal was never meant to be discovered. Something activated it. And now it is awake.”

Alexis felt a cold shudder inside her as she realized the entire picture and the seriousness of what she just figured out. This was no longer an ordinary retrieval of a missing item. This was a time event and they were in the center of it.

For a long moment, there was silence between the two of them. The tension around She fell, not dissipating but rather intensified, stretched across them. Even as the clouds of danger were growing ever closer toward the horizon.

“We can do this,” murmured Kayden, more like trying to caress his brother in his voice of deep determination. “However, it needs joint efforts.”

Alexis raised her face from the screen and met his gaze. It was the way he spoke, the way he held himself that made her trust him. Such a storm of events ought to have left her shocked, and possibly angry. Instead, a curious bond of faith settled in. And something more—something she had yet to pin down and name.

“Okay,” she replied, maintaining a steady level of resolve in her voice. “Let’s get to work on this map.”

Kayden nodded again, and once they resumed, Alexis felt as her heart raced every time he stood within close proximity. The ringer was not the only thing that was getting riled up. Something that lay between the two of them, was too.

And she wasn’t quite certain that she could rein it in.