The Last Days of Lorien Read Online Free PDF Page B

less an eleven-year-old kid. But at least the fire had been something . Once it was over, everything was just back to normal. And by now, I’d had enough normal to last me the rest of my life.
    The nights at LDA weren’t much different from the days. At least I had Rapp to keep me company. Yeah, he took himself way too seriously, but at least he was someone to talk to. And he wasn’t quite as lame as I’d thought he was at first. He had no idea who Devektra was, but ever since I’d told him my story about meeting her, he’d wanted to hear all about it. Not just about Devektra, but about the Chimæra, and about how I’d managed to sneak in, and had I really been a regular there?
    Plus, he let me copy his homework, which was nice because even though it was mostly easy, there was a lot of it.
    Maybe if I’d thought there was a point to doing it myself, I would have been more interested. Back at home, I’d taught myself to tinker with machinery and electronics as a means to an end. It was a way to get out of class, to get into places like the Chimæra. To be whoever I wanted to be. It was a way to trick the system.
    Here, it was the system. And it was a system I didn’t have faith in.
    According to legend—or history , depending on who you listened to—the original Nine Elders had brought forth the Great Loric Age aeons ago when they’d discovered the Phoenix Stones. It was this ancient event that had supposedly awakened the Legacies of the Garde and called the shape-changing Chimæra out of hiding, making Lorien a place of prosperity and peace that was unprecedented throughout the known universe.
    From that time on, Lorien’s ecosystem flourished. Where food and resources had once been scarce, there was now more than enough for everyone. What the planet itself didn’t offer up in excess could easily be provided by the strange, amazing, and endlessly varied powers of the Garde. On other planets, this was the stuff people fought tooth and nail over. Not here. Here on Lorien, we could just live.
    But the Elders had also set forth a prophecy: that one day, when we were least prepared for it, a threat would come to test us—and destroy us. We wouldn’t know when that threat was coming, but it would come, and when it did, we would have to be ready for it.
    That was why the LDA existed. That’s why I was learning to create and maintain ever more elaborate systems of defense against an enemy that I was pretty sure was mostly fantasy. Just in case tomorrow was the day we all woke up and found ourselves under attack.
    Back home, everyone knew the deal, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it. The discovery of the Phoenix Stones was just a story, something that had happened so long ago it barely seemed real. And the ancient Elders’ prophecy—well, even if it did come true someday, it sure didn’t seem like it was going to happen anytime soon. While most good Loric paid lip service to the good work that people were doing at places like the LDA, ensuring that Lorien “stayed safe for generations to come,” even the most Loric among them didn’t seem to take any of it too seriously.
    Things were perfect, after all. Why worry about what might happen someday?
    Here at the academy, it was a totally different story. Everyone walked around acting like the prophecy was about five minutes away from coming to pass—like we were going to be under attack at any minute. When I’d told Rapp I didn’t really think it much mattered whether the grid, the vast defense system that scanned Capital City’s airways for potential intruders, was perfectly maintained at all times, it was like I’d insulted him personally.
    “Some of us actually care about what we do here,” he said. He spoke slowly and carefully as he said it, but his voice was shaking. I could tell I’d really gotten to him. “While everyone else on Lorien is living in their little utopia, congratulating themselves for how perfect the place is, it’s people