Nessah’s figure disappeared, and the Elders sat in a stunned stupor, still reeling from the revelation. The silence was agonizing as each Elder came to terms with what they’d been shown. Seconds turned into minutes as time crawled to a slow, the void of activity growing with each passing moment.

  Kaius came back to himself and looked around the room. His emotions were a wreck and his gut churned. Everything he’d ever worked for was a lie. That the a’vaare existed by the whims of those monstrosities shook him to his very core. He’d thought himself ready but hadn’t been.

  None of them were.

  How could any of them have fathomed the real truth behind the facility? To think, a simple recon mission gone wrong had resulted in them discovering their true origin. Questions he didn’t want the answers to roared in the back of his mind, waiting to be unleashed. He quashed them through an act of sheer will and focused on the present.

  The others were similarly shocked, he noted. “We have much to discuss,” Kaius said, breaking the spell. Each Elder came back to themselves and woodenly turned to meet his gaze. Inwardly, he grimaced at the sight. “Should we believe what our General has shown us? Can we believe it?” he asked.

  Nobody spoke for a long moment as they grappled with their stance on the matter. Indecision was written plain as day on everyone’s face. Finally, Orryn spoke up. “I don’t want to,” she said in a low, hollow voice. “I don’t want to, but I know, deep in my bones, that what we learned here today is true. It’s the final piece of the puzzle we were missing. Everything makes sense now.”

  “I knew we couldn’t trust that damn android!” Cirrus spat. Nessah had been kind enough to fill them in on what had prompted Irric to request the blackout discussion with their prisoner. “It kept this from us on purpose.”

  “Would we have believed her had she told us the truth?” Maraz asked. Already they had a bitter pill to swallow. They were lucky that it came from one of their own. He knew not how the others would have reacted had that come from Ava.

  “Who cares!” Cirrus spat. “We just had its review to determine its sentience. We’re just after interrogating our soldier whether it’s a danger or not. All that matters is that it kept what is arguably the most vital piece of information to our entire operation to itself for who knows how long!”

  “So you’re saying she should have confessed?” Orryn asked. “She had no reason to. She’s of gru’ul make. For all she knows, we would have blamed her for it and used her as a scapegoat to justify killing her. She’s afraid of death. There’s no way she would willingly walk into the executioner’s maw.”

  “It’s a gru’ul weapon wrapped in the skin of an a’vaare, that’s what it is,” Cirrus said hotly. “How any of you see it for anything but what it truly is baffles me. It lied to us!”

  “We never technically asked her about the Mandate when we questioned her,” Orryn pointed out.

  “You asked it two questions!” Cirrus exploded. “I don’t know how, but you decided to boil your decision down to two measly questions to determine its sentience. It deceived us. We know this for a fact. I told you we couldn’t trust the thing, but you didn’t believe me.”

  “She still confessed to our soldier,” Maraz pointed out. “We would never know if she hadn’t divulged anything about the Mandate.”

  Cirrus waved him off. “We would have learned what it is regardless. Each new discovery we make brings us one step closer to that inevitable truth. All the confession did was speed things up a bit.”

  “We can barely access their systems!” Maraz said. “Who knows how long it would have taken us to accurately piece together what the Mandate is? Our discoveries from the Highest’s terminal have all been random. Ava sped things up considerably. We even have a confession from the gru’ul that what she told our soldier is true. They don’t know about the other’s existence. There’s no way they could have shared the information and deceived us.”

  “You would believe the words of a single alien for something so important?” Cirrus gawked. “All we have is one conversation to go off of. That’s it. It’s not like we can interrogate other gru’ul — we killed them all.” She paused for a moment. “Or they offed themselves,” she amended. “Regardless of how they died, we only have the one gru’ul to base ourselves off of. That’s hardly a decent sample size.”

  “I think we’re all still internalizing what we’ve learned here today,” Kaius interrupted before the argument grew too heated. They had more important things to discuss than to squabble over Ava. The final decision about her was his and he would tolerate no further attempts to subvert his opinion.

  A fist slammed on the desk, startling everybody. “Internalizing?” Elder Darros roared. He was a decrepit old man — the oldest Elder on the Tribunal by far. He tenaciously clung to life and refused to give up his spot to another, influencing their society’s progression for well over a hundred years. Only Kaius had sat on the Tribunal longer than him, being the Arbiter. Though younger, the man had assumed his station at an earlier age than Darros. “It’s clear that those bastards think us nothing more than toys for their own desires.”

  Everybody stared at the raging Elder.

  “They think themselves better than us,” Darros continued. “As though our existence is lesser than theirs. It doesn’t matter what our origins truly are. We now know how they regard the a’vaare. The mutated bodies we found at the facility were merely the first sign.”

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  “You believe the gru’ul’s words, then, Elder Darros?” Kaius questioned.

  “Look at what they’ve done in the name of science!” Darros said. “We are not playthings, made to be used up and tossed aside by another. That conversation between our soldier and the gru’ul merely showcases how they truly think of us.”

  “And what might that be?” The question Kaius asked hung in the air.

  “That we are expendable,” Darros fumed. “What will happen once we’ve served our nebulous purpose? We will be destroyed. We need to fight back and show them we are free.”

  “If we fight the gru’ul, they’ll wipe us out of existence,” Cirrus said, horrified by the prospect. “You’ve seen the wonders of their technology. We’re too far behind them to even be a threat. It would be child’s play for them to kill us all.”

  “Cirrus is right,” Orryn interjected. “A war with the gru’ul would be tantamount to suicide. A bloody, horrible death awaits us if we choose that path.” Cirrus looked over at her fellow Elder in surprise. She hadn’t expected Orryn to side with her.

  “This isn’t about petty political squabbles,” Darros said. “This is about the survival of our species. This is about giving us a future.”

  “This would be denying us a future at all!” Maraz interjected. “The others are right — all that awaits us is annihilation. I’ve studied some of their technology. It’s too much for us to go against.” The thought of standing up to the wonders the gru’ul had created terrified Maraz. There were so many things they still didn’t know about what they were truly capable of. They rarely left their home cluster and interacted with the a’vaare.

  Or did they?

  The thought of being observed and studied without ever knowing chilled Maraz to the bone. How would they detect gru’ul presence? For all they knew, they were being watched right that moment.

  “To do nothing is to roll over and accept our deaths,” Darros continued. “They created those gods awful chemicals to control us. Imagine what would happen if they used them on the populace at large!” A collective shudder ran through everyone at the thought. “We’ve only seen one instance of both the purple and orange chemicals being used and it was the most harrowing thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing.”

  The two other Elders nodded their heads in agreement, even though they had visibly paled at the reminder.

  “We stopped them from synthesizing more of it,” Orryn said.

  “Did we truly?” Darros said pointedly. “We know of this facility. What if there are others out there? What are they studying and doing to our populace? Can you say for certain that the gru’ul society can’t replicate the chemicals found at this facility?”

  Orryn hesitated, knowing full well she couldn’t refute the possibility. Maraz spoke up instead. “We know they refined it here. Given that they corrupted all of their systems, there’s a high chance that information on those chemicals never left the facility. They only perfected the orange chemical after they captured our soldier.”

  “They had plenty of time to disseminate any information on those chemicals to other gru’ul.” Darros shook his head. “We will never know for certain if they’re out there, waiting to be used on us. Or being refined into something somehow worse than what we’ve seen.”

  “What will we do once the gru’ul fight back?” Orryn asked. “We’re not able to defend ourselves against them and we represent the largest military force among the factions.”

  “They don’t know that we know about the Mandate yet,” Darros replied. “This gives us time to prepare in secret. We should do everything we can — dedicate every resource available — to ensuring our species’ continued survival. Because if we don’t,” he paused,” we will be annihilated.”

  “If we go to war, we die,” Cirrus said.

  “If we don’t go to war, something far worse than death awaits us,” Darros refuted.

  The Elders devolved into a discussion that lasted for hours, each side stating their opinion. By the end of it, there were two camps that had formed. Cirrus, Orryn and Maraz were against any form of confrontation. Darros and the remaining two Elders called for war and to march to the beat of its drums.

  “Enough,” Kaius called out, unable to take the arguing any longer. “It’s time we decide. Do we accept the gru’ul’s words about the Mandate and believe it to be telling the truth? Those who do, vote now.” Four orbs appeared in the air, with only Cirrus and another Elder against. Kaius gave extra time and eventually announced the results. “The Tribunal hereby formally accepts the gru’ul’s claims about the Mandate,” he said gravely. “We hereby recognize that everything we’ve ever known is a lie, for there is enough evidence to convince us it speaks the truth. We are, and have only ever been, nothing more than an experiment.”

  The air was solemn as the declaration was made.

  “Now, we will vote once more as to what our response will be,” Kaius said. “Time is of the essence and we’re out of it. Will we go to war? Those who believe we should, vote now. Choose carefully, for this will affect us all. I will give you an appropriate amount of time to vote.”

  Minutes stretched on as each Elder ruminated over what they thought the best response would be. Darros made his choice first, an orb appearing above his head. His vote was cast and for a long while, it remained the only one until a second orb joined his.

  Another Elder had voted in favour.

  Followed by another.

  Three orbs now hung in the balance. Cirrus, Maraz and Orryn remained the only ones who had yet to cast their vote. More time passed until Kaius was forced to recognize that the vote would not change. “Have we all made our final decision?” he asked. “I will allow each Elder to voice their consent this one time, for it is an exceptional circumstance.”

  One by one, each Elder present gave the affirmative that they had made up their minds. When the last one spoke, Kaius looked around the room one final time and met each person’s eyes, seeing that they had spoken the truth. All votes were cast but one.

  “We have a tie,” Kaius said. “Our Tribunal is unable to decide whether we will go to war or not. It falls to me, the Arbiter, to make the final decision that will alter the course of history. I ask for a moment of silence so that I may come to the right one.”

  The Arbiter’s request was granted. Not a single person spoke amid the tense silence as they awaited the final judgement that would affect them all. Kaius closed his eyes, going deep in thought and weighing each argument he’d heard that day. Time passed as the Elders sat on the edge of their seats, breath hitched, nerves frayed.

  The moment broke when somebody dared to speak up.

  “How. Dare. They,” Darros enunciated, each word fueled by rage, the emotion tangible. They were savage and demanded a price in blood, punctuating the silence the other Elders had given the Arbiter to come to a final decision free from interference.

  Kaius opened his eyes, his expression hard and his mind made up. A cold fury rose up inside him as he spoke the words that would seal their fate forever.

  “The Genesis War has begun.”