Mesa nodded. “As in, dreams of the future or past. Visions, some called them. Some even claimed to have seen them when awake.”
A silence fell over them as they stared at Mesa, and Cavalon’s heart thudded loud in his ears. Mesa seemed unaware of the bomb she’d just dropped. Well, aware, but not nearly as shocked by the implication as she should have been. She’d likely already come to that conclusion, processed it, and filed her reaction away as a useless emotion.
“It makes sense,” Mesa said, tone light. “Correct?”
They stared silently back at her, and Cavalon’s mind reeled. She’d skipped over large swaths in the path of logic that’d led her there, but, to Cavalon’s intense displeasure, he’d started to understand.
Rake managed to speak first. “Mesa, you think this structure is that same technology? A dark-energy generator?”
Mesa’s eyes lit up. “Yes. You do understand.” She smiled and nodded. “But on a far grander scale. Clearly it would take a great deal more power to create the amount of dark energy needed to overcome the gravitational imbalance of the universe—”
Griffith let out a sharp scoff. “Okay, what the fuck are we talking about here?”
Rake stared down at the floor for a beat before looking back up. “Can you walk us through this a little more, Mes?”
“Of course. Let me start at the beginning.” Mesa cleared her throat and laid her hands together. “After its creation, the universe expanded. This was due to an abundance of dark energy. It pushed the confines of space outward, at an ever-accelerating rate. However, after a time—many billions of years—the amount of dark energy present began to underperform the gravity created by the mass of the universe. The expansion slowed and eventually ceased. Now, the theory had been that it would eventually begin to collapse. But, it never did. It held still, achieving a balance, a stasis. But what if that was not a natural equilibrium?”
In the midst of the resulting long, heavy silence, Cavalon found himself nodding. He finally fully understood it. And he didn’t like it one bit.
“Without us, you will perish…” It took Cavalon a moment to register that Rake had spoken, under her breath, barely audible.
“Rake…” Griffith said, tone heavy.
“I think Mesa’s right,” Rake intoned, her expression flat, gaze distant.
“Uh, back up. What’d you say?” Cavalon looked between the two Titans. Griffith stared at Rake, who stared at the floor.
“That’s what they told you, right?” Griffith asked. “The breeder?”
Rake nodded. Cavalon’s mind reeled. He was way out of the loop on this one, but too shocked to form a proper response.
“A breeder spoke to you?” Mesa asked, tone inquisitive.
“You think they knew,” Griffith said. “About these stations.”
“Then we killed them all off.” Rake gave a rueful shake of her head. “And now the stations are falling apart.”
“Except we didn’t kill them,” Griffith said. “Not all of them.”
Cavalon gaped. “Wait, we didn’t?”
Rake leveled a flat look at him. “You saw the Viator on the video yourself.”
“Right, but, you said…” Cavalon let out a short sigh. He had no idea what they were talking about, but he knew it didn’t matter. The gist was: There were Viators left, and one had said some shit to Rake, and that somehow translated into her believing this ludicrous hypothesis of Mesa’s.
But the trouble was, Cavalon found himself believing it too. As much as he wanted to find a way to refute her, it actually made a lot of sense. The science was unsettlingly solid. Why gravity got so dense and strange at the Divide. Why comms and other systems started to break down, even when millions of kilometers away. And the time ripples. If these stations had sat around for thousands of years pumping out tremendous amounts of dark energy, it would wreak havoc on the natural order of things.