“Hey, Emily. What are you doing back here?” Emily looked up to the door of the room and saw Clara standing there watching her. Emily had forgotten to lock the door again behind herself.

  “Investigating what happened,” Emily said shortly.

  “Did you find anything?” Clara asked, “I’m so sorry about what happened. I can’t believe that someone would do something like that. Your recent family recovering well?”

  Emily relaxed slightly and nodded, “They’re doing okay. As well as they can be considering… Well, they’re doing much better now. What are you doing here?”

  “Someone recognized you,” Clara said easily as her eyes flickered to the datapad sitting next to Emily, still plugged into the wall, “I wanted to come see if you needed any help. And beat Sanje to you. He’s been acting strange for a while now. More irritable than he normally is when he gets triggered by something.”

  “Oh?” Emily asked, “Is he coming too?”

  Clara shrugged, “No idea. But he might. You’ve always been the best at this tech stuff. Our resident genius. Did the investigation team miss anything important?”

  “A few things,” Emily admitted after a few seconds of scrutinizing Clara, “I’m about to go to the Enforcer database. See what I can find there.”

  “You need any help? I am on the Immortal Council. I can pull rank if Sanje tries anything.”

  Emily frowned, “We both know that he can’t pull rank on me. What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean you and the people in command know that. But the rank and file won’t know what to do necessarily. It would be a hassle if he confronted you with a group of people who will follow his orders without questioning why.”

  Emily hesitated before nodding. It would be nice to talk to Clara a bit, it had been centuries before they’d caught up with one another…

  — — —

  Emily kept looking through the files in the database, all the messages going in and out of the Palace. There were several secret or hidden connections. But they were revealed as more mundane things after some digging. Embarrassing to reveal to the larger world, but not anything malicious.

  But after hunting around she’d found another connection that was far better hidden than any of the others. She furrowed her brow and started digging deeper and tried to decrypt the messages and uncover any more that had been hidden even better than the few she’d already uncovered.

  “You find something?” Clara asked as she perked up from where she sat across the room. She’d helped shoo everyone else out of the room and sent Sanje off after he arrived. Seems that he’d come but hadn’t realized that it was Emily who was the mysterious person just yet.

  Emily had to resist the urge to run out there and throttle Sanje when she heard his voice just out of the door. But she had ignored it and just continued with her work instead. She couldn’t rush.

  She misclicked one of the buttons as the ground suddenly shook slightly around them. Emily looked around and frowned along with Clara before they both shrugged it off.

  “Yeah. Some secret messages,” Emily said, “Hidden better than the others. I’m about to decrypt them. We’ll see who’s really behind it. I’m sure that this must be it.”

  Clara stood and looked over Emily’s shoulder as her equipment suddenly beeped and the series of messages resolved from incoherent messages into small notes.

  The both of them quickly read the messages through. Sets of orders, discussing plans, every step along the way. All of it between Sanje and the unknown Immortal outside. All of the outside Immortal’s communications seemed to be subservient, requesting clarification or providing ‘advice’ while Sanje’s messages were authoritative and clear in instructing the unknown person what to do.

  The messages had been exchanged with each other for hundreds of years, and the plan had been ongoing for at least this long. The Immortals part of the attacking group had been hired for the job over two hundred years ago in preparation.

  There were parts that Emily was missing that weren’t in the messages. She was sure that they must have taken place with the in person conversations. The frequency of messages picked up dramatically in the last few years as they discussed Malketh and his involvement. From what they said he wasn’t completely aware of what was going on, but knew that he was working for Sanje to undermine Emily. Maybe he learned the truth at the last moment, which changed his mind, Emily mused as she considered the information.

  In a sudden burst of suspicion, Emily ran another check on all the messages for any alterations. But after a few silent minutes of the scan, it came back clean. These were the original messages.

  Emily looked through the other messages and hunted through who was connected to Sanje and took his orders. The list kept growing and growing the longer she read. Her eyes widened as it seemed that nearly every message and order from Sanje named another person who was part of the plan.

  Nearly a quarter of the people in power in the Immortal Council were seemingly under his thumb in some way or another. And even more regular Immortals that owed him favors but weren’t fully looped in.

  Emily felt sick as the list kept growing and Clara frowned over her shoulder as she read as well.

  Finally they were done and the full list was compiled and nice and ordered.

  It was staggering. Emily felt a little small as she looked through it. All of these people had wanted to hurt her? Hurt her family? She had thought that it was only a few bad actors, but this was so much more. This was a full blown conspiracy, something more than just Sanje rambling. But why? Why had they done it? No matter what Emily read she couldn’t find out the reason. It must have been part of the in person conversations between Sanje and his lackey outside of the Palace.

  There were more than a few names in the investigations team of the incident that had worked to cover up evidence and change the documents so that Malketh would be blamed for everything after his sudden disappearance.

  “Well, shit,” Clara said after a moment, “How the hell are we going to deal with this?”

  The ground rumbled again, harder this time and Clara stumbled slightly.

  “And what is that?” Clara asked in annoyance, “I hope one of those idiots outside aren’t playing around with explosives again. We told them they have to go to the firing range and can’t do it so close to the Palace…”

  Emily kept staring at the list for a moment, not processing Clara’s words. This wasn’t even the full list. This was only the people that Sanje had actively mentioned in his messages. She was sure that there were so many more that he hadn’t needed to call favors from yet. People that would have helped him with this but hadn’t had an opportunity to. Emily felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Clara staring at her.

  “Hey, it’s alright. We’ll figure this out together,” Clara said, “What should we do next?”

  Emily thought for a moment as she composed herself. What to do? Well, she knew what she wanted to do. She thought about it for a few moments and made sure she wasn’t rushing things. But she had the evidence and the names of who was involved. Why shouldn’t she confront Sanje and force him to confess to everything?

  He couldn’t argue against the evidence Emily had with her. And Clara would be there supporting her, so Emily would not only have her own authority but also the Immortal council through Clara backing her.

  Emily stood up, her mind made up.

  “We’re going to confront Sanje right now,” Emily said firmly, “Before he can figure out what’s going on. We’ll get the rest of the truth from him.”

  Clara nodded and the two of them walked out of the door.

  “I know where he’s probably gone after I shooed him off earlier,” Clara said, “This way.”

  — — —

  They walked into a side room where Sanje and a few of his followers were sitting inside on some couches. Sanje was loudly complaining and bad mouthing Clara as everyone else around him nodded and sucked up to him. He stopped mid sentence as he saw Clara and the hooded Emily walk in.

  “Clara!” he said, seeming to have worked himself up in their absence, “Who do you think you are giving unilateral orders like that? You should have contacted me before just letting a complete stranger access to our secure files like that!”

  “Well,” Clara said with a slight smirk, “She’s not exactly a complete stranger, is she?”

  Taking her cue, Emily threw back the deep hood and revealed her face to the room. Sanje froze and the rest of his five or six followers gasped and started whispering to each other.

  “You!” Sanje grit out, “What are you doing here? What do you have to do with this?”

  “I’m here to investigate what happened at the museum,” Emily said while glaring at him, “Guess what I found?”

  Sanje frowned and opened his mouth to respond, but Clara cut him off.

  “Don’t even bother,” Clara said, “We know that you’ve been creating a faction to undermine Emily. Pulling on favors, recruiting people. We know everything that you’ve done.”

  Sanje looked confused for a moment before looking defiant and ignored Emily to focus on Clara.

  “So what?” he said, “Why the hell does she deserve so much respect while the rest of us from Earth get treated like dirt by everyone? So what if she built a few machines and spent some time helping people? We’ve done all of that and more over the last few thousand years. So what if we started a few hundred years later? But no matter what we do they always go back and still love her for no goddamn reason! All the mortals, even the Immortals. They’re all fanatics, all for someone so needy and pathetic. Still coming back and being friends with you Clara like a needy dog despite all the shit that you’ve done. She deserves to be taken down a peg. She doesn’t deserve to be some paragon of goodness and virtue like it seems I hear from every damn person I meet these days!”

  Emily clenched her fist at Sanje’s insults.

  “Fuck you too, Sanje!” Clara said despite only seemingly slightly annoyed, “You’re just jealous of her. You’re perfectly happy to let your followers to go around kissing your ass all the time because you’re from Earth. You think donating some large amount of money to charities is even close to all the work that Emily does? You’re the pathetic one. Why did you do it, Sanje? Why go this far?”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Do?” Sanje said, seeming confused, “I hardly did anything at all. Really no idea why you of all people are getting so pissy about it Clara.”

  Emily’s clenched fists were shaking as she glared at Sanje. Nothing?! He thought that what he did was nothing? That Clara would just dismiss it as nothing? How dare he!

  The ground rumbled hard and everyone was thrown from her feet. The tension was briefly broken as everyone looked around in confusion.

  “What is that?” Sanje asked, “What kind of bombs are they setting off out there? Don’t they know the bomb range is far away for a reason? I’ll go deal with them.”

  “You don’t get to leave,” Emily growled out, “You do this, kill my family and practically forget about it and just walk away!”

  Sanje looked at her in complete confusion now and paused as he went to walk out the door.

  “What?” he said in shock, “I wasn’t behind that. What are you talking about it?”

  “Don’t LIE TO ME!” Emily shouted and took a datapad from her backpack with a copy of the incriminating messages on them.

  “I have messages of you on here!” Emily said as she threw the datapad onto the table between them, “Giving the orders, planning it all! You bastard, how dare you?! Who else was involved? Who was the person who went out into Gaia and helped do your dirty work?”

  Sanje ignored the datapad and scoffed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Clearly whatever is on there is fake. Like I’d even bother. You’ll just forget about them and raise some new mortals in a few decades. It’d be pointless to even try something like that. Now, I must go before one of those buffoons starts damaging one of the buildings…”

  Emily was completely enraged and felt a vein pulsing in her forehead as Sanje completely dismissed the accusations and went to brush past her. Emily saw Clara smiling next to her, only for the expression to disappear into a frown when she saw that Emily was looking at her.

  “Give him the beating that he deserves, Emily,” Clara said quickly, “He’s lying. You saw the evidence yourself. He’s just trying to run away.”

  “What?” Sanje said, “That’s ridicul—”

  Emily grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back so he tripped and flopped on top of one of his followers who had been sitting on the couch and observing the confrontation.

  She took a step towards him as he rolled off and hit the floor and started scrambling to his feet.

  The ground shook violently around them.

  “The hell are they doing out there?!” Sanje shouted as he struggled to stumbled to his feet as the rest of them tried to not fall as well, dismissing their accusations as he refocused on the rumblings that continued, “Are they trying to destroy the place?”

  “Who else was involved!” Emily shouted as she drunkenly stumbled into Sanje and grabbed him by the collar, “Who else was in on it! Who was your source on the outside?”

  “Get off of me!” Sanje shouted and struggled to break free from her white knuckled grip on him, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  The rumbling and shaking grew ever more intense until it was all Emily’s balance to keep her feet as she and Sanje leaned into each other and circled as they spoke. Emilly kept shouting at Sanje and he sneered at her and kept trying to break free from her grip as everyone else in the room looked around from the floor fearfully.

  “TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW!” Emily screamed one last time into Sanje’s face just as the room lurched and began to tilt and the floor cracked.

  The walls cracked and the roof collapsed as they were sent into a sudden freefall for a few seconds and floated into the air briefly.

  There was only a moment for everyone to be surprised before with a massive crash gravity reasserted itself and they all slammed hard into the floor that was shattered into a thousand pieces. The roof came next and caved in a second later in a massive screech of bending and twisting metal.

  They were all buried in rubble as Emily lost her grip on Sanje and everything went dark.

  — — —

  Clara woke with a gasp only to find herself surrounded by rubble. She squirmed and shifted in the small gap she found herself under. There was a large chunk of a concrete slab sloped above her head. Her right leg and left foot had been completely pulverized where the chunk of rubble had slammed into it. Just over her head another large chunk of stone sat holding up the triangular piece of stone above from crushing her.

  Clara’s legs and foot had already healed and were wedged deeply inside in their little cocoons of stone. She took a few seconds to whine and start crying from the pain as she wiggled her foot and leg painfully from their gaps. Hurting herself enough that she was able to curl up into a ball with all of her limbs intact. She lay there panting for a few minutes with her right pant leg gone all the way up to the thigh and both shoes gone from her regeneration.

  What was that? This wasn’t part of the plan. Surely Peter would have told her if he was planning something like this? After all those years of answering her messages as Sanje as preparation for this moment. Name dropping people within his faction as a code for the other people she was really asking favors from. Writing her messages so it sounded like Sanje was the one giving the orders…

  Emily had been right where Clara and Peter had wanted her. And Sanje had obliviously played his part perfectly too. The idiot had completely brushed past Clara’s accusations without even justifying himself and made himself look even guiltier in the process.

  Clara groaned as she started twisting around and searching for a gap in her prison of rubble. What should she do? Wait for help? Try to dig herself out?

  If Peter was behind this then she’d give him an earful. How dare he do something like this without warning her!

  There was shifting in the rubble all around her, and Clara let out a sigh of relief. Ah, she should just wait. There were Immortals all around the Palace. She was sure that some of them would be willing to push through the pain to dig themselves back to the surface. Even poor puppy dog Emily was pretty strong in that regard. She’d probably be after Clara and dig her out in no time.

  It really was such a shame about Emily. It made Clara feel so guilty sometimes how easy it was to manipulate her. How even after everything Clara did, Emily still trusted her with the smallest prompting or apology. It was sort of like mistreating an innocent little puppy.

  Clara shook her head. Emily would get over her little mortals in a few years. She’d be angry for a little bit, do some irrational things to stir the pot on Gaia, then calm down again and be fine. Clara could make it up to her later after Peter’s plan was finished.

  Maybe get her an apology gift or take her out for a fun vacation with Clara without telling her why…

  Yes, that should make up for it.

  The rubble shifted near Clara’s shoulder and she looked up. She opened her mouth, but froze when she saw what was opening a hole in the rubble. It was an ant bigger than her fist as it chewed through a small gap and formed a tunnel of sorts.

  All the scrabbling and motion around her suddenly took on a new more sinister meaning. She flinched away from the ant that exited its tunnel with a long line of others streaming in the small space after it.

  Clara started crushing them as they came too close to her, but more and more holes formed around her until she was absolutely coated in the creatures. She flailed and thrashed as they coated her whole body. Not hurting her yet, but just gently pinching her skin where they latched onto her jaws and dragging her into the tunnel that was growing larger beneath her feet. A sloped tunnel leading deep into the depths of the planet.

  Clara tried to grab the walls of the small tunnel and pull her self back upwards as she was dragged by the ant swarm that seemed never ending no matter how many of them she crushed as she flailed.

  She let out one long scream before another group of ants the size of small dogs climbed from the depths and latched onto her legs and started dragging her down. She couldn’t resist their pull and before she knew it she was being dragged unwillingly through a series of tunnels.

  Everything was black and in the dark until she was thrown into a large pit of some kind.

  At the bottom was a carpet of regular sized ants that immediately started biting and trying to consume her as she struggled to escape.

  She tried to climb out of the pit, but whenever she did one of the larger creatures would shove her so she would fall back inside.

  What was this, what was happening…

  What were these monstrosities?

  Clara couldn’t escape. She could only serve as a food source for these terrible creatures.

  — — —

  The Queens all froze at once as more and more information entered their minds. More targets had been identified. Immortals involved with the attack on the museum. There were many. And there could be more. But what if some were missed? What if some concealed what they had done?

  It was their directive to save the mortals. It was their directive to eliminate the targets. The other Immortals were neither. The ants had no instincts of what to do with them. They kept tunneling upwards and hollowing out the space beneath the originator and nest of Immortals. What should be done with Immortals who were not targets?

  The trap worked and the entire building of the Immortal Palace collapsed inwards and down into the deep pit that the colony had hollowed out beneath it over the last few weeks in preparation. Now they had thinned the roof enough that it would finally break and sent the whole building and the Immortals inside crashing down, Originator included.

  The colony worked to take away Sanje and the others that the Originator knew must be involved and targets. But there were many others left trapped under the rubble. Immortals who might be involved, but the Originator wasn’t sure for a fact.

  The Queens considered the dilemma. Its instincts did not tell them what they should do in this case. Eventually, they chose practicality. All of those Immortals would provide the food for the ant colony to have more food and expand faster. To let them better be able to find the Immortal not in the Palace who also had been behind it.

  The colony would have to capture all the Immortals possible on the planet. Maybe then the Originator would be able to determine which ones were innocent and which ones guilty once they were all together. When the Queens had more time to absorb their knowledge and the Originator able to know that everyone that could be guilty were captured.

  The colony shifted Sanje and the others who were guilty towards its deepest feeding chambers. They must be protected at all costs, to make sure that they were not taken from the colony at any point.

  The colony must find a way to kill these ones. The others were simply food. A loss to production if they escaped, but not anything more than that. But these… These were the ones that must die. And the colony would never let them go until they succeeded in their mission.

  — — —

  Emily heard scuffling and movement all around her and a few muted screams. But after a few minutes everything was quiet, with only the sound of shifting rubble around her.

  It was painful, but Emily managed to carve out an opening in the rubble around her to what felt like a naturally carved tunnel of some kind. Escaping from the confined space hurt, but pounding her fist on the point seemed to do the trick and let her squeeze through into the larger space.

  Everything was dark and Emily stumbled through the oddly smooth tunnel made of damp soil and rocks dripping.

  She didn’t hear any movement around her as she stumbled around blindly through the tunnels for a while. Whenever she went deeper there was the faintest sound of movement and the occasional crash of a tunnel caving in. She would turn around after reaching the end and finding the ends of those tunnels leading deeper sealed with dirt.

  Eventually there was a glimmer of light and Emily jogged towards it through the dark. She went forward and poked her head through the foot wide hole. She stuck her arms through and climbed out through the small gap through the damp soil.

  She climbed out of the ground and collapsed outside. She looked around in confusion to find herself in a forest. This was a few miles from the Palace. There was a wet thump beneath her. Emily looked behind her and saw the ground sagging inwards in a straight line from the tunnel that she’d been traveling along. Something had collapsed it behind her.

  She walked over to where she knew the Palace should have been. But she couldn’t see it all, except for the helicopters and other flashing lights showing that there was anything there at all.

  She reached the edge of the hole and looked down. The Palace was completely wrecked and not even recognizable as anything other than a few bits of metal and stone sticking out from a massive pile of dirt covering it.

  “Genemother? Genemother, are you alright? What happened?” One of the mortals nearby called out as he finally spotted her. He was wearing a military uniform and waved the other soldiers back as he approached her.

  “I’m fine,” she said as she stared back into the hole. She wasn’t sure how to feel now. Right after the emotional reveal of Sanje and the other’s betrayal, there was this random attack.

  She turned to the person who had brought her a blanket. She took it silently and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Emily said, “What did the others say?”

  “Others, ma’am?” the man said nervously, “They’ve all disappeared. Vanished. We’re not detecting any human presence living or otherwise in the rubble. Just a few bits of blood and severed limbs. But no sign of the Immortals themselves.”

  “Oh,” Emily said, “Did you check the tunnels? Maybe they all wandered off somehow?”

  “Tunnels? What tunnels?”

  “There’s tunnels here. Go for miles. I ended up in the forest way over there,” Emily said and gestured over towards where she had emerged, “Maybe they went there?”

  “We… haven’t found any tunnels yet, Genemother. But it’s only been a few hours, we’ll look closer to determine what happened. Do you need anything?”

  Emily let out a sigh and shook her head. This was just a short pause. The mortals would find everyone in the tunnel network below the ground. And then Emily could continue her interrogation of Sanje where it had left off.

  “I’m going to go home,” she said, “Keep up the good work. Let me know if you need my help with anything.”

  “Of course, Genemother. We’ll get you our fastest helicopter right away,” the man said with a quick nod, “We appreciate your help even in our darkest and lightest times, Genemother. I’m sorry for your loss. The hearts of us mortals bleed for you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

  The man nodded hesitantly at her lackluster response before quickly retreating and organizing her transport back to her mortal family.