Vertigo: Aurora Rising Book Two by G. S. Jennsen Read Free Book Online Page B

university in Florida.”
You did not.
“I beg your pardon?”
Marcus Aguirre is a manufactured identity provided to you by Olivia Montegreu in 2269. Your entire life history before the day you arrived at the University of Miami in 2271 is a lie.
That bitch ! Did she suppose his newfound if modest fame meant she could gain something by holding his past over him? He had thought it beneath her.
Olivia Montegreu did not betray your secret.
“Oh, you can see what I’m thinking as well?”
No. It was merely a logical deduction.
A chill radiated from the base of his neck as he began to realize whatever this conversation was, it was of tremendous significance. He belatedly activated a privacy shield in the office to ensure the remainder of the interaction remained confidential. “Very well. You owe me an answer—to whom am I speaking?”
We are other than you.
“Alien, you mean?” Aliens had not yet been encountered, which didn’t make it any less possible they existed. The other options were, what? Ghosts? Gods? Angels or demons? He believed in none of these things.
It is a sufficient designation.
Jesús Christo, this ‘alien’ was obtuse. “And how do you know these details about me?”
We know many things.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Perhaps not. We are…observers of humanity.
“I see. What is it you ‘observe’ about us?”
Everything.
He paused to consider the assertion. The being could be lying, or generalizing to exaggeration. If it were not, the implications were troublesome to say the least. Such a capability seemed incomprehensible, and for all intents and purposes godlike…then he recalled Sir Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Didn’t mean it was magic.
“What do you want of me?”
For now, nothing. You are a uniquely talented individual: highly intelligent compared to others of your species, manipulative, deceptive, charismatic, driven, ruthless but not sadistic. You have much potential.
He had nothing to say to that, so he simply waited.
Continue on your path. Focus your ambitions, and you will achieve greatness. If we can provide assistance at certain junctures, we will do so if a manner is available to us. We will call upon you from time to time, as our needs require.
Now he understood. They had resources beyond him—of course they did—but limited ability to act themselves, for whatever reason. They needed someone in a position of power to do their bidding. If he refused them, they were capable of using their other resources to destroy everything he had painstakingly built—his career, his reputation, his growing wealth, his idyllic and only mostly for appearances marriage—and it would be a trivial matter for them to do so.
Unless they weren’t so powerful as their arrogance insinuated…but that wasn’t a risk he dared take. Not yet.
He realized he was thinking of his conversation partner in the plural, because it was how it referred to itself. “Do you have a name?”
No.
“Is there more than one of you? Are you a hive mind? A collective intelligence? You refer to yourself in the plural.”
So I do. No. Consider me a…spokesperson.
He supposed it was the most straightforward answer he would be able to wrangle. “And what should I call you, individually?”
If you require an honorific, you may refer to me as Hyperion.
The titan of Greek mythology…the alien didn’t lack for hubris. “Do you require anything of me?”
We—I—merely wished to introduce myself. And, as was said, convey my congratulations.
Then the voice was gone. It was many hours before he left the office that night, hours spent pondering this new complication in his already exceedingly complicated life.
     
    It was six years before he heard from the alien again. He had been embroiled in a tight race for Southeastern District Attorney against the son of the Alliance Commerce Minister and struggling to overcome his opponent’s superior name