RETURN OF THE SHADOW

After all of them left, Daniel also stood up and went to a corner of the room. He took a black object shaped like a spire and one foot long and stuck half of it in the ground at an inconspicuous point in the wall. A slight buzzing sound came out as the spire started to move on its own and entered the ground. It was clearly a specific kind of key. As it went down a small crevice opened up at the corner of the room enough for one person to walk sideways through it.

"Follow me," said Daniel and led them through the crevice. At the other end was a small room about 12 feet wide in both directions and only 8 feet high. There was a small table with chairs and a vending machine in the room. Daniel sat at one of them and signalled the three to do the same.

"Whatever I tell you doesn't leave the room. None of the current members of the table are allowed in this room. Only a select few who managed to persist and were willing to guide the next generation are allowed here. By bringing you here, you should understand that I am about to tell you things that usually only the current head, Walter is qualified to know. You are the three that I am sure will be the ones guiding the next generation in my place, if you live long enough. I expect you to remember this and act accordingly and not disclose any of it to your peers, loved ones, even on threat of death. Doing so, would only put you all in more of harm's way," threatened Daniel.

"We understand Daniel. None of it will leave this room under any circ.u.mstances. We realize the severity of the situation and were expecting something like this," said Arthur and the other two nodded in agreement.

"Well, where do I begin?" asked Daniel looking at the wall as he thought about how he would explain to them. A minute later, he had gathered his thoughts and decided to explain it from the start.

"The table of Ouroboros had been maintaining peace behind the scenes for a long time. Over time, we have come to know of many secrets of this world. A number of them were things that the world wasn't ready to know. The same goes with a number of our personnel too. That is the reason we compartmentalize a lot of this stuff," said Daniel.

"We also have a few rare allies. This is something most of us don't know," said Daniel.

"Aren't the Price family our allies?" asked Vargrave. "Almost everyone our age is aware of the fact, especially after we married some their members."

"The Price family, eh?" asked Daniel smiling like he was looking at a naive kid. "They are a sub-ordinate family to us. Walter knows it and everyone qualified to enter this room does. Our behavior outside is just to fool prying eyes," explained Daniel.

"Evelyn and Harvey Price are aware of this too. They also just play along," said Daniel looking at Winston who had a shocked expression on his face. "They are yet to be strong enough on their own to match us. If they reach such a stage technologically, we will consider them as allies. They are the most powerful subordinates that we have and there is no doubt at that."

"There are three things which we need for us to consider someone as an ally. One, they need to have strengths and capabilities to match our own. Two, we need to have a common goal or a common enemy and third is that they should maintain a low profile and the world shouldn't be aware of their actual capabilities," said Daniel counting them on his hand.

"If we ever ally with anyone not satisfying these three conditions, we are as an organization in mortal danger or have fallen down from our current standing in the world," said Daniel. "Now the ally I currently wish to talk about was mainly due to a common danger that we were extremely worried about."

"Is it the knights? They are the only unknown variable that we could think of. You have known of them beforehand?" asked Arthur. He was unable to believe that they would keep such an organization which was responsible for the deaths and severe injuries of few of his friends.

"No," said Daniel derisively. "The knights are a new menace, though I don't disagree with your point. There is little to no information about them. That is what makes this meeting so important," said Daniel. "The enemy we were aware of are the apes. As a completely different sentient species with a civilized society, we have always expected them to compete with us sooner or later."

"You are aware of the apes' existence from before?" asked Winston. This was something that surprised all three of them. None of them ever expected that something that had been threatening the entire human race had been known to Daniel and his peers all along.

"It had been known to us for quite a long time," said Daniel scratching his head. It was topic that was very hard to explain especially because most humans found it hard to believe, even after the first fights that happened in the latter half of the 26th century. So, even though they had known of it for a few centuries, it wasn't most sensible to tell other as the world would refuse to believe of a new species that was developed technologically and intellectually on par with the humans.

"It is kind of hard to convince most humans of it, but we had to have precautions," said Daniel. "Think it from that perspective. We had to handle the information and prepare for a fight in a society which wasn't prepared to accept the danger they were in and would rather beat us up as they would think that we were wasting essential resources."

"This was at an ancient time when humans were trying to get out of their original home planet and spread to the galaxies. Think about the effects of one simply suggested to prepare for war at this time," suggested Daniel as he leaned back on his chair with his hands folded. There was no need for the three of them to do that. The read enough history to understand it. The need and advantages of terraforming was something that every human was taught during their childhood. The entire table went silent in contemplation.

"You could have still had us better prepared," said Vargrave breaking their silence.

"A lot of people could have been saved," added Winston.

"We did as much as possible. At that time, no one was ready to believe, so we kept it hidden. We could have let it out all in the open after the first few fights, but that would also raise questions. What was our source? How do we know? What are we going to do then?" asked Daniel in response to Winston's remark.

"We would have been made use of by the others. The other forces wouldn't let go of us simply because we helped. They would have accusations that we withheld important information and falsely pinned crimes against humanity on us. We would have been made a common enemy and probably wouldn't have survived the situation," said Winston.

"Yes," said Daniel. "You finally understand our situation. Even the unification took 20 years. Most forces would just use the opportunity to squash us, just because they could. We did everything because we have a sense of self-preservation and also help the growth and survival of humankind. So, we couldn't come out with all our information in the open," said Daniel.

Though it was all the truth, most of them had grown up hating the aliens for their attacks and their destruction of human planets. It was hard for them to accept that they could have provided more help but didn't. Daniel remembered that Walter had the same sombre expression on his face when he was first informed of this.

"It is not like we completely withhold information from the others. We use our position to leak out information whenever possible. For example, I heard that one of our own stopped an invasion on one of the border citadels successfully. The wreckage did have one red ape and a bit of salvageable information. At the most, one could guess that there would be a mutant among the apes, the red ape from that situation, but now all higher authorities already believe that there is a hierarchy among them. That thought didn't come out so quickly on its own. We had a hand in that," said Daniel.

"You know the hierarchy of the apes?" asked Arthur.

"Black, Red are soldiers and elites, then come the royals Purple and golden kings. The Purple ones are about the same size as the red apes but a lot stronger with a tail that is as strong as python and thus making it very hard to defeat. The golden ones are variants among royals. Don't really have anything on them except for their color and purple ones, immediately consider them kings from birth," said Daniel. "Rumour is a few of the purple and golden ones can actually understand us and are extremely fast learners."

"How do you know all this?" asked Winston.

"There were a number of encounters with them before we expanded ourselves on other planets from earth. There were always myths and lore of their species. Some revered them as gods and others, monsters and we found evidence of it too. Probably, would have showed the evidence to the world if not for the occurrence of few things," said Daniel.

"Few people realized that the apes never considered staying at earth. The ones that found themselves on earth were estranged kings and their court fleeing from their own civilization. Though our planet was habitable, it was not the best environment for them and they left not due to any losses, but because earth was an inferior place to live and was too far away from their original home," explained Daniel.

"These few people were on good terms with the aliens and also learned the use of their technology. These were the godspeed dynasity. They were a part of the table of Ouroboros. We weren't the only family that were members of the table," said Daniel.

"The godspeed dynasity were our allies?" asked Winston extremely surprised. Most of the coalition were extremely prejudiced against the godspeed dynasity and the knights. If it were known to any that the Blyths were old allies of them, the effects of it weren't something he dared to think about.

"Yes. If not, do you honestly think that we would have let the twins that Walter brought to live and get married into our own family? It was clear that they were both Godspeed family members," said Daniel. "Walter learned the same after he became the head and that is one of the reasons, he trained your grandson," continued Daniel looking at Winston.

"They sent expeditions to the far reaches and found a place to survive. They gathered more information and managed to get it back to us. The apes aren't the only aliens in the world according to them. They were in constant conflict with other races. In the end, their leader decided that they leave and make good use of their knowledge to grow at the edge of the apes' civilization. A large congregation left with them and we were also offered the chance. But we denied it. Some of us decided it is best to liaison to the rest of humanity by staying back. Our ancestor could be considered selfless people to let go of that chance or maybe just cowards. I will never know," said Daniel.

"About half the members of the original table went to support their efforts. They setup up civilization there and made an army that could stop invasion into their areas. As they did it all in the outskirts, the apes left it alone assuming they were some small race of barbarians trying to fight in the outer edges of their civilization which allowed them to flourish. They soon became a warden of the outskirts and even apes were helpless if they stepped into their area," said Daniel.

"Apart from them similar efforts were made by other dynasties to block the other races from reaching us in a similar fashion to the Godspeeds. They came back to us and gave us our knowledge periodically. This knowledge was used to help speed up our technological growth. At that time, there were still others who were part of the table, the Vickers, Rognizens and so. They were all lost to the quarrels and fights among us. We luckily survived to this day. We had our contacts with the godspeed family a century ago, but then something happened. We don't know how this happened or why. The same is the situation with our other allies," said Daniel.

"This brings us back to the situation at hand. Our foremost suspect of this lack of contact from the others are the knights of the Old Republic. There were the only ones which we suspected to be aware of the actual situation. Now, we have another, Jack Godspeed."