Ascending the Veil Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I will take Marcus. It is time for him to go down anyway.”
    Carefully, I hand Marcus off to her and she carries him away with Jake close beside her. Jake turns back toward us and nods. “We will be back in a bit to get caught up.”
    I cross my arms over my chest feeling on display as everyone watches me cautiously; like I may implode any minute. Sebastian puts his hands in his pockets, looks at Balthazar, then pulls out a chair from a nearby table. “We should sit.”
    Everyone grabs a chair and Sebastian dives in, “Since the intersection two days ago, the local guardians have taken control of all the Sondian safe houses in a thirty mile radius, including the one where Sam and Corinna were hulled up. The Kyoto team took us in and helped us gather intel from the safe houses. Email messages exchanged between Sam and Michael on Sam’s computer were acquired. Apparently, Michael Sanderson was going to return to the safe house after Sam traversed in the wormhole to ‘clean’ the house and watch over Corinna.”
    I feel the guilt of killin g Michael biting at me again. “If I had kept him alive, we could have used him to find Ezra, Nate, and Sam.”
    Balthazar replies, “Jesca, we did not find his body.”
    I feel a chill course through my body. “What?”
    Balthazar looks at Sebastian wearily, then back at me. “After you and Nate left. Sebastian took the baby and I ran to the top of the cliff, but he was gone. No sign of him at all.”
    Damn it! I should have waited to see if the wound was fatal. I was so focused on going in after the baby and Miriam, to try and save them. Could he have healed himself? No, he has to be dead somewhere in the forest.
    Balthazar continues speaking as I think about places he could be hiding. “Some of the cells nearest to the forest have banded together and started a search and rescue, but they have turned up no living thing. Even if we did find him, he wouldn’t have talked. The data we have collected from the safe houses has given us more than he ever would have. It has revealed that the black hole in our galaxy and the black hole in the Andromeda galaxy merged days prior to the intersection creating a super massive black hole. Devices similar to the ones I used when traversing between Earth and Sonde were found at Sam’s safe house. We are hoping we can utilize these devices to access Ezra and Nate.”
    My heart skips a beat with the glimmer of hope Sebastian reveals. “So we can go get them if these devices work?”
    Sebastian nods. Relief flows through me for the first time since waking from the sedation. Their sacrifice to protect us won’t be in vain. We can go get them and bring them home. Sebastian reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, reassuringly. “Jesca, Nate and Ezra made a choice to protect all of us. They made it through the black hole and are safe until we get to them.”
    A cloud of doubt passes over my hope, remembering my vision with Ezra and Nate and how Ezra seemed on edge, defensive of where they were.
    “They are safe until they are discovered.”
    Sebastian drops my hand and is all ears. I look around, everyone else is too. Xander and I take turns telling Sebastian and the team everything that happened during our dreams with Nate and Ezra. Sebastian looks at Xander first. “So, they both appeared to be fine, like themselves?”
    Xander nods. “Yes, they seemed to be fine. Ezra seemed worried about the beings there. He said that they were being careful though.”
    Sebastian nods and scratches the back of his head. Balthazar looks at me now. “You said that Ezra told you the world they are in is almost identical to ours.”
    I nod in an attempt to stay with the conversation, but I am still preoccupied with Michael Sanderson’s whereabouts. Could Michael have snuck in behind us while we were struggling in front of the vortex and traversed before Sam, Nate, and Ezra? No, someone would have seen him. Ezra would have told me he sensed him there