Chapter 10
Revelation
The next day, Marta went back to the Uptown library to meet Professor Hakim, an old Middle Eastern man who kept using terminology that Marta didn’t understand and making bizarre puns on the word “time.” Marta, who had managed to infer that Hakim was some sort of supernatural and thought that she was as well, just smiled and nodded, and Hakim never bothered to ask her if she was really the same as he was. He took her into a back room of his office at the U of M, where he had a strange garden full of stones and sand arranged in strange patterns. In the garden, he seemed to walk a little bit taller and be more at ease. With his cane, he began tapping on the stones in sequence, and Marta felt strange energies gathering around the both of them. Suddenly, everything became blindingly bright and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she and Hakim were standing in the middle of a vast desert. Pointing to the horizon, Hakim indicated a small encampment and said, “Welcome to the time of the Hebedites.”
Marta and Hakim approached the camp, where the leaders of the Hebedites greeted Hakim like an old friend. He told the tribe that Marta was “an apprentice” who’d come to learn more about them, and they welcomed her. Marta asked Hakim where the guardians were, and he pointed out a number of them just walking around the camp and going about their business, looking no different than any other Hebedite. Then Hakim introduced her to one guardian, named Toramon, whom he seemed to know better than any of the others and then left, saying he had to go to Rome to take care of some business. Toramon, however, proved to be more than willing to answer Marta’s questions about his people, and she learned a lot from talking to him and observing the culture. Marta learned that protecting the Hebedites against external threats was only part of what the guardians did. They also aided the Hebedites in their day-to-day lives, helping to solve their more routine and personal problems, keeping the society at peace and in good working order, and in general using their skills to work alongside the rest of the people. She was even allowed to see Toramon’s battle form up close—a large, fish-like creature that reminded her vaguely, and disturbingly, of the one she’d seen in her dream.
But Marta made her most important discovery in the evening, when a group of Hebedite warriors returned from tracking and killing wild animals for their food and the tribe decided to celebrate. As they sang and danced around the campfire, she noticed something fascinating about the warriors. All the other Hebedites, including the guardians, wore long robes that hid almost everything but their eyes, but the warrior wore garments that revealed their faces and arms. On the exposed parts of their bodies, Marta saw tattoos—tattoos that looked exactly like hunter code (and one new symbol that she instinctively knew meant “guardian”). When she asked about the tattoos, she was told that they represented helpful skills that the guardians had taught the Hebedite warriors—skills that closely resembled hunter edges. Almost all of the Hebedites knew at least a few such skills. Finally, the connection was clear: hunters were the descendents of the Hebedites, at least in a spiritual sense, and the guardians were meant to work with them to keep the world safe.
Marta was still pondering this discovery when Hakim returned later that night. He asked her if the trip had been helpful, and she said, “More helpful than you know.” He told her he was glad, but that if she really wanted to see something interesting all she had to do was wait for a few more hours. Confused, Marta took notes on everything she’d seen and then went to bed, only to be woken up by shouting in the camp. Marta and Hakim stepped out of their tent to see the guardians rushing out into the desert, shouting that they were going to fight an invading group of skinchangers. Hakim said, “That’s what I meant,” and took Marta out to a nearby sand dune, where through a pair of binoculars she watched the guardians fight and win a battle against some large wolf-like creatures. None of their battle forms were immediately familiar to Marta except for the fish, but some of the others had vague similarities with the lobster, the lion, and the bird that she’d already seen. She also noted that eight of the guardians, the ones who were fighting in the thick of the battle, had green crystals, while the other four, who stood toward the back and fought with long-range magic attacks, had blue crystals. When the battle was over, Hakim asked Marta if there was anything else she needed to see, and she replied that she’d seen enough. With that, he took her back to her own time, and she thanked him profusely.
Meanwhile, back in modern-day Minneapolis, only about twenty minutes had passed between Marta leaving for the library and returning with several notebooks full of notes, conjectures, sketches, and information on the Hebedites, the guardians, and the origin of hunters. Arie, Melba, and Will were astonished when Marta marched into the apartment, dropped the notebooks on the table, and calmly stated her findings: The Hebedites had been hunters. Cameron, and perhaps the others, were guardians who had become corrupt and were trying to sway Chet and Saria to their side. And, most importantly, Chet and Saria were the reincarnations of the Virgo and Scorpio guardians and were (perhaps subconsciously) trying to gather hunters to recreate the scattered tribe. The others were more than a little skeptical at first, but ultimately decided to believe her because of the depth of her notes (and the fact that a beetle crawled out from between the pages of her notebook which Arie, of all people, identified as being found only in the Middle East).
The group knew they had to do something about the information they’d obtained, and they were pretty sure that “something” meant finding a way to take down or convert the corrupt guardians. However, they realized there was no way they could do it alone, so they began tentatively planning to find more hunters to join their cause. Melba began wearing the Defender symbol on a necklace, hoping someone would notice it, and Arie and Will began keeping their eyes open for other symbols whenever they went out. In this way, at a club they ran into a woman named Shirley who had the Judge symbol tattooed on her arm. She claimed to be the leader of a group of six hunters, and said she might be willing to work with others in the future. Arie and Will got her number and planned to call her if things ever got heated.
Knowing everything they did, the group was understandably reluctant to attend the meeting they’d arranged with Heather and Wendy (especially after receiving a few more fake phone calls from people claiming to be Chet or Saria). However, they were too curious not to go, so they simply resolved to be on their guard. But when they went to the restaurant where they’d arranged the meeting, Wendy and Heather weren’t there. Instead, there was a guy who called himself Todd and claimed to be a “friend” of Wendy, Heather, Chet, and Saria. Suspicious, the group resolved to get rid of him without telling him anything. However, he began talking to Marta and apparently used some sort of supernatural power on her, because she soon found herself telling him (against her will) everything that had happened recently relating to Chet and Saria. Seemingly satisfied, Todd got up and left shortly thereafter, leaving the group confused as to what had just happened.
A few minutes later, Wendy and Heather showed up. At this point, Melba noticed something strange: she recognized the woman who called herself Heather as a regular customer at the convenience store where she’d once worked, but there she’d gone by the name Jana. She asked them about Todd and they told her that they didn’t particularly like or trust him. They asked about Chet and Saria’s whereabouts, and the group replied quite honestly that they didn’t know. Then the group asked Wendy and Heather how they knew Chet and Saria. They claimed that they’d met Chet and Saria a number of years ago while all of them had been training at a government facility somewhere in the Midwest. They had been members of a small and somewhat secretive branch of the military that had focused on anti-terrorist tactics. There had been nine of them: Chet, Saria, Cameron, Wendy, Heather, Todd, Talc, Sarn, and Blak. During the conversation, Arie started wondering what zodiac signs Wendy and Heather fit if they were guardians, so he leaned in toward Wendy (with whom he’d been flirting earlier) and said, “So what’s your sign, baby?” She looked him in the eye, and suddenly he began to feel strangely dizzy and nauseous. She smiled sweetly and said, “I’m an Aries.” Shortly thereafter, Wendy and Heather excused themselves, and the incredibly confused group took the sick Arie home.
The group had no idea what to do next, so it was a very good thing that in the evening, Chet and Saria returned after nearly two weeks of being absent. Marta started talking to them as soon as they got settled in, asking them where they’d been (on vacation in Montana, they claimed) and what they knew about Talc and the others (they were old friends from the military). She showed them the picture of the giant lobster-scorpion, and they claimed not to know anything about it or any of the other information the hunters had gathered over the past two weeks. Finally, Marta came right out and said it: “You two are not hunters. I know because I went back in time.” Then she explained everything she knew—and, oddly enough, Chet and Saria were just as surprised by it as the hunters had been.
That was how the group learned that Chet and Saria really had no idea what they were. They had been born and grown up in a secret compound underneath the Target store in Bemidji, Minnesota. There had been nine people in their group: Chet, Saria, Cameron, Wendy, Jana, Cedric, Talc, Sarn, and Blak. Throughout their childhood they had been taught by an ever-changing group of scientists who had apparently been in some way responsible for their births and who taught them how to use their guardian powers. When they knew how to use them, the scientists began sending them all around the world to go on search-and-destroy missions against “terrorists” who sometimes displayed strange supernatural powers of their own. But several years ago, Chet and Saria had become dissatisfied with their life in the compound. Chet had unpleasant rivalries going with Cameron and Talc, though he really had nothing against either of them, and the scientists discouraged his growing romantic relationship with Saria. So they decided to break out, which they accomplished without too much trouble or any bloodshed. Chet and Saria had been living in the apartment building ever since. Apparently, the other guardians had broken out as well at some time, but they’d never had contact with any of them or had their past come back to them before.
The group was understandably confused and shaken up by this revelation, but they knew immediately that they couldn’t let it affect the way in which they perceived Chet and Saria. After all, they’d saved the group’s lives and helped them clear their names; it was only fair that they’d continue to stand by them (not to mention that, if the legends of the Hebedites were to be believed, it was the way things were supposed to be). So the group agreed to help Chet and Saria learn more about their past and keep the potentially corrupt guardians from harming them in any way. And everyone knew that the first step toward accomplishing this goal was to learn more—to go to Bemidji, infiltrate the compound, and learn everything that they could.