LOCATION: INCURSION #0032-SAHARA
AREA: THE SAHARA DESERT, ALGERIA
DATE: OCTOBER 12, 2034 | TIME: 11:06 AM
The portal in the Sahara remained open, but it had been two days since anyone or anything had come through.
For an entire year, Brick had been pushing Grim and Li, the two co-leaders of the Peacekeeper Force, to let him go through and search for Trevor.
But they denied his request each time.
“Trevor is strong,” Grim said. “You said it yourself. You have to give him the time to do his job.”
“But he’s been gone for over three years now,” Brick said, sighing. He wasn’t restless so much as he was concerned.
“Plus, how would we ever know if Trevor didn’t just die on the first day he crossed over?”
“First of all,” Li said, “time may move differently over there. It may have been an entire decade or only a month to him. We don’t know. Second, remember the Krollans have intercepted a report that the Empire has a promising new student learning portal technology. It’s likely that’s Trevor. We have to give him more time. You showing up and poking around could blow his cover.”
Brick renewed his request almost weekly, but was always shut down.
He wanted to just rush the gate anyway, but he knew their reasoning was solid enough.
Brick rolled the two marbles in his hand that contained the essences of Nina Vosper and Sienna Black.
He felt a vibration from Nina.
“I know. I’m trying to stay calm…”
On October 12th, two days since the last buffalo had stampeded through the portal, Samir saw it shimmer to life again.
“On your feet!” he shouted.
The soldiers rushed to the hill and stood at the ready.
Suddenly hundreds of pale men, women, and children, all wearing the same clothes Rin had worn so long ago, came rushing through.
They made it a few dozen feet, then collapsed in the sand.
“What the fuck?” Brick asked.
But the people just kept coming. They were tripping over each other now, falling on top of the unconscious bodies, faceplanting in the hot mid-day sand.
“Move the bodies!” Samir shouted. “Make room!”
All people on site at the Sahara incursion helped in the effort.
In the end, well over 2,000 people had come through.
The last one was a woman who, just before passing out whispered: “Rin Shale.”
Then, the portal closed behind her with a snap and a blast of wind.
“Did she say Rin Shale?” Brick asked.
Samir nodded. “That’s what I heard.”
“I’ll contact Grim. We need to get her here.”
Brick sent a secure message to Grim.
---
Over 2,000 people just came through from the other side. They are unconscious and appear to be refugees, but we need Rin here ASAP. Ideally before they wake up, so she can identify them.
---
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Grim responded ten minutes later.
---
Roger that.
Drexler and Rin are headed your way on the next plane. I’ll send the schedule when I get it. Any word from Trevor?
---
Brick punched a table, causing it to crack on the corner.
No, Trevor was not among them.
Two thousand fucking people and he wasn’t here.
Worse yet, everyone was passed out and Brick couldn’t even ask them any questions.
“Where the fuck are you, little brother?” he asked. And for several minutes, nobody answered.
But then a sonic boom rippled over the sand from a quarter mile away.
“I’ll go check it,” Brick shouted, already moving. Samir nodded and sent two more soldiers with him.
Brick ran toward the sound, hoping it wasn’t a new incursion portal. They usually started with hundreds of beasts rushing through all at once.
As he drew closer, he saw two figures dressed in black, lying face down in the sand.
Brick rushed to the bodies and turned them over one by one.
An attractive woman with jet-black hair.
He reached toward the second one, when the man stirred in the sand. Brick went on guard, but then Trevor lifted his face out of the sand and began coughing.
“It’s you!” Brick said, and helped his friend up.
Trevor coughed for several minutes, but as soon as he was done, Brick pulled him into a hug.
Trevor laughed. Brick filled him in while they headed back toward the tent.
One of the soldiers wanted to carry Tin, but Trevor insisted on carrying her himself.
They crested a hill, and the controlled chaos of the camp came into view.
Hundreds upon hundreds of men, women, and children, all dressed in the same black clothes, were lined up, on their backs in the sand. More were being carried over as they approached.
“Holy shit,” Trevor said, grinning. “It fucking worked.”
It took another twelve hours for Rin and Erik Drexler to arrive, and all of the refugees were still unconscious.
When the Jeep pulled up to the camp, she noticed Trevor first.
“Trevor,” she said. “I’m so glad to see—”
She stopped speaking for a moment.
“Is that Tin?”
Trevor smiled. He had been holding her hand as she slept on one of the medical beds.
“It is,” he said. “We’ve grown quite close. She is the one who saved all of these people.”
That was when Rin turned around and actually took in the whole scene in front of her.
She raised her hands to her mouth and tears began streaming down her cheeks.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, still sobbing. “You must have rescued the entire Lower District. How is that even possible?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Trevor said. He was leaning back into a chair right next to Tin’s bed. He yawned. “But first, I need a bit of rest. That last portal took a lot out of me.”
It took a week to transport all of the refugees safely to places where they could receive individual care. They were each given medical exams. Then they just required darkened rooms and time until they acclimated to their new environment.
Once they woke, they were provided with Vitalyx and later Rejuvenex. All had some form of lung disease of varying severity from inhaling oil-laden air for all of their lives, but Vitalyx cleared it up in 24 hours.
A few of them, sadly, never woke up after passing through the portal. In the end, including Tin, there were 2,298 new refugees.
Most wished to live together, so a neighborhood was built outside of Seattle.
The weather there was less of a shock to their system, and transportation was close if they wished to travel.
They named the town Nocturnus, in honor of the only home they had known.
But these people, who had lived their entire lives oppressed, thrived on their new planet. Many married people from Earth, but every year on October 12th, the growing population originally from Nocturnus would gather in Seattle to celebrate their freedom.
The first toast was always the same:
“To Trevor Gant and Tin Shale! The saviors of Nocturnus!”
The irony wasn’t lost on them. Trevor and Tin had destroyed the planet itself. But they saved the most important part: the people who deserved to live.
For that, their names were honored for generations to follow.
Two weeks after their return, Trevor and Tin traveled to San Francisco to meet with the Core Council.
The Council looped in the world leaders on the briefing.
Trevor told his story, of course. But he had also brought back a veritable treasure trove of information and intelligence.
It would take years for him, in Magister Kallus’s persona, to share his deep knowledge of the inner workings of the Obsidian Empire.
He also spent equal time working with teams of technicians, manufacturers, scientists, and Mages on developing portal technology that was uniquely human.
Once Trevor was back on Earth and free of Varris and Kallus’s constant influence, it didn’t take him long to realize that the way the Empire did it was sloppy and cared little for the life of the operators.
Trevor knew humanity could do better.
By 2038, the first Earth-produced, human-designed working portal was operated for the first time.
They started small, porting from San Francisco to Beijing.
Then, they opened a gate on the dark side of the moon.
That one was tricky. It had collapsed right after the first Mage went through.
He remained calm, however, and before his spacesuit even ran low on oxygen, he had opened another and returned, landing right in the lab where he had originated.
They calibrated and iterated the tech over and over, until they felt certain they had it right.
In 2040, they made a jump to Mars and later that year to Pluto.
Six scientists and mages were lost during the testing and development, but humanity pushed forward, intrepid as always.
By the mid-2040s, with portal technology firmly in their grasp, Earth decided it was time to take the fight to the Obsidian Empire.
That was when everything changed.
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