We were blindfolded. Textbook assery for trying to keep your secret base a secret. Now I know why they did it in movies. It worked well when I wasn’t stumbling my way through the dark. These guys must be humans since you could hide your base with runes or manipulate reality with Ether. I wondered about their guns. They were rune-made. Were they stolen technology then? Or was there a runemaster with these people? Maybe I could barter my way out by helping them with runes. I was a master at them and Datha wasn’t too far behind me. Niran wasn’t so bad either. He lacked the basics that I was teaching him at night now. He was a slower learner than Myra was.

  We’d be able to use them on Earth as long as we didn’t call attention to ourselves. We would be the only superhumans unless there were others hidden like us from different realms. I never thought about it, who did? There might be others like us from different realms stuck on Earth for whatever reason. At least I hoped so. There was Nero’s alternate self at least. Did that mean that everyone had alternate forms in every realm? If so, did I exist in two realms as I was or was there another me on Earth somewhere? Same with Myra. Did she have an alternate self on Sapherine? We were shown to an open space where the wind blew from vents.

  We were most likely underground then and what was that stench? It smelled like sewers down here! Not the best place for a base, in the sewers, nice. My shoes slushed against water and I imagined nasty black water. It was better without my vision sometimes. I heard the echoes of many men and women though so we were close to wherever we were going. It was bound to be cozy. I hoped Myra could hold out a few days at least. It had been a week and a half since Myra had been captured. A week and a half of being at the mercy of those megalomaniacs’s mercies. Was the oracle right? Was I not going to be able to rescue her?

  I would see her again, she said. I would run into rebellion. Was this it? I couldn’t get Myra’s dead body out of my head. She lay lifeless in my arms. That wasn’t going to happen! I saw through different time streams. I could change the future. I wasn’t limited like oracles were and I would change that future. Myra wouldn’t die and we would go back to Earth. We didn’t belong here. I was a hybrid prince. My destiny here was slavery so was Datha’s unless they used her as an Oracle and Myra’s was death. She had defied the council one too many times and if not death then slavery as well. Myra was a twenty-first-century girl who was brought up with twenty-first-century thinking. Slavery would kill her. So no. It was Earth for us. We were stopped in a nosy center where there was movement everywhere and finally, our blindfolds were removed.

  I peered around the room. It was a metal lobby with a desk piled high with files. There were a few chairs but I didn’t sit down. Neither did the others. Datha glared at the man who was sitting behind the desk as if she knew him.

  “Jason?” she asked.

  Correction: she did know him and so did I. He had been one of the slaves at our palace when our father ruled. What was he doing in the sewers?

  “Datha? Is that you? My girl you haven’t changed in over ten years!” he said smiling.

  “What are you doing down here? Hiding like rats,?” Datha asked.

  “It’s not so simple my dear. Your mother. Oppolomei bless her soul, gave me instructions if she should ever run and I have fulfilled every last one, including becoming head of this organization,” he said.

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  “What is this place,” I asked and he turned wise gray eyes towards me. He was a human that was often thought to be a wind Kin for his eyes as such he took care of Datha and me when we were younger. Those eyes had a way of penetrating through me.

  “This is the only rebellion that stands between the council and the full corruption of Sapherine,” he stated proudly. I looked at the threadbare room and back at him. I could hear men and women not too far off working on stuff. It was a small operation from what I could hear.

  “How many people do you have so far?” I asked.

  “In this base a hundred. We have other bases but this is the main one,” he said.

  “And in total?” I asked.

  “At least a thousand in hiding, maybe more. On duty, we have five hundred good men and women. Mostly escaped slaves in hiding,” he said.

  I nodded and gazed at my group. We needed to head out as soon as possible.

  “We need a friend of ours that was picked up by your group, an Ether kin. We’re heading to the castle to rescue a friend,” I said.

  “Why would my men want your friend?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Datha answered. “They saw him fight and pull off a strange move. They wanted him for that but we have no idea why,” she said.

  Jason stood running a hand through his trimmed salt and pepper hair. “I do. Come along. We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said walking out of the door. We followed him and walked down a narrow metal tunnel that had been swept and carpeted in black. There was one long painting of the Great War on the metal wall. We passed by several entrances to other hallways where the noise level was loudest and straight to the last entrance. I immediately hated the room. It was lined with cages. Nero was a captive so were we but we weren’t in cages yet. We approached and Nero gazed at us. His eyes were back to their usual brown color and he was his aloof self.

  “You were captured too,” he said.

  “Only to follow you,” I muttered, surprising him.

  Jason turned to our captor. “Mikale, why did you pick up six kin?” he asked.

  Mikale huffed and leaned his weapon on the wall. I wondered if Jason would let me study it.

  “This guy can clone himself and bring down a hundred brigade soldiers at once,” he said pointing at Nero. “I figured with our journey into Ice Temple, we could harness his ability somehow like we did for the guns,” he said, shrugging.

  “And the rest?”

  “Hey! They wanted to follow him! I gave them a choice and they chose to come besides two are free hybrids. I figured they could use a home.” He glanced at Datha and I frowned. Was this guy sweet on my sister?

  “Very well. Put them all in the cage,” said Jason smirking.

  “Jason?” Datha said, confused. I wasn’t. The man was the boss here. He couldn’t show weakness. We were captives like Nero ergo the cage. We weren’t being betrayed or played and as I was pushed into a cage with Nero and the others, I started going over my plan to construct a rune array. Collars much like the hybrids wore but stronger were placed around our necks. Nero already had one on him. That left runes. Niran had the ink sealed on him and they hadn’t taken it away. Jason either didn’t remember my ability with Runes or he forgot with age. Mikale kept an eye on us but he could be distracted. I glanced at my sister. There were ways to distract him. For now, I had to derive an array that would free us all. I sat down to think. This would take some time.