Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 78

ALL MY RELATIVES had started to hum. I was about to ask what was up when a flicker of light appeared on the wall.

Then a scene formed.

It was a mom and dad and a little boy in a powder blue rowboat. Hey, wait! That wasn’t just any little boy. That was me!

My relatives were projecting some kind of memory home movies on the wall for me! How crazy was that? And how cool.

For the next hour, I rested my chin in my palms and watched memory after memory in total awe! My mom and dad in what looked like navy officers’ uniforms, getting married. Taking me home from the hospital, playing with me in a swimming pool, playing with me at the beach. I smiled as I spotted myself petting Chordata’s trunk.

After a while, the scene on the wall changed to me as a small child playing with four friends.

Suddenly it felt like the top of my head blew off! I tapped my grandmother’s hand as I realized who this was. Joe, Willy, Dana, Emma, and me in a sandbox!

My buds! My dudes! No way! We were good friends even as little kids?

“Wait a second! That’s Joe, Willy, Emma, and Dana. My friends,” I said excitedly.

“Yes, they were your friends from preschool. My, how you used to get on,” my grandmother said. “You formed a friendship bond, called a drang, that is rarely seen among our people. Very powerful, Daniel. Very special.”

“But where are they now? I have to see them immediately.”

She touched my face.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “They were together at the Academy when it was bombed on FirstStrike. Their bodies were never recovered. They’re presumed dead, Daniel.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I felt the strength suddenly leave my body. My head hit the tabletop as a bolt of despair shot into my brain stem. It felt like I was being torn in two.

With all the destruction that I had seen, the ruin of an entire world, it wasn’t until this moment that I was truly overcome. I hadn’t felt such sadness since I was three.

Dana, Joe, Emma, and Willy-my best friends had all been murdered by Ergent Seth and his villains.

I don’t know exactly who I was when I finally lifted my head and dried my eyes. Just that I wasn’t the same person I had been minutes before.

“Seth,” I whispered. “I’m coming for you. I swear I am. I promise you, Dana, Joe, Emma, Willy, my dear dead friends! My drang.”