The meeting at Weyland headquarters had started as routine business.
Then 006 leaned forward with a very specific question.
"Does the Templar Order have a spacecraft?"
How would I know that? Bella nearly said so—and then something in the back of her mind surfaced, a quiet instinct that felt less like intuition and more like an honest signal. Answer truthfully.
When she spoke, the confidence in her voice surprised even her.
"They may have resources and capital that dwarf most nations. But in terms of esoteric knowledge—classified information about the true nature of this world—I guarantee they're behind me."
She sat with the statement for a moment after saying it. It was arrogant. It was also accurate. A room full of industrialists and career politicians, however powerful, did not understand what moved beneath the surface of history. She did.
"I don't think the Templars have a spacecraft," she said. "And barring some extraordinary development, they won't have one in the next hundred years."
006 nodded slowly. "Then what about us?"
Bella blinked. "Mr. Eric, we're a private company. What's the point? That kind of project belongs to nation-states. Governments. Not —"
"That kind of thinking is exactly the problem." 006's tone shifted—not impatient, but deliberately earnest. "Think about what holds an organization like ours together. Money? Benefits? Those keep people in their seats. They don't make anyone proud to be here. There has to be something larger. Something that makes our people feel that choosing Weyland was the right call—that what they're doing means something. I can't think of anything more meaningful than a spacecraft."
Bella's brow creased. That angle hadn't occurred to her.
She turned it over quietly. Corporate culture, then.
Weyland had grown faster than she'd fully processed. The Texas research complex had completed its first phase of construction. Over a hundred scientists were on the payroll—and when you counted their assistants, graduate researchers, and support staff, the total team exceeded a thousand. They'd come from across the world, drawn by competitive offers and the work itself, and it was their collective intelligence that had been driving Weyland's projects forward simultaneously on multiple fronts.
Fast progress meant high costs. The revenue from the past six months had been almost entirely consumed by projects that burned money like living things. But the work had results: with the Apple of Eden as a guiding research instrument, and Dr. Jackal anchoring the most technically demanding breakthroughs, Weyland's capabilities in medicine, neuroscience, and engineering dynamics now rivaled several national research institutions.
Building that had not been easy. Sustaining it at scale was harder.
The company needed more than shared salaries. It needed a story.
Bella weighed it for a long time without speaking. When she finally reached a conclusion, it wasn't a full commitment—but it was a start.
"You make a fair point," she said. "We can launch a preliminary initiative. The goal is to reverse-engineer a spacecraft—to build our own version of something that already exists."
006 paused. "Reverse-engineer one."
"Correct."
"You have an alien spacecraft. An actual alien spacecraft."
"Of course not." She smiled slightly. "But I know where to find one."
"Where?"
"During the medieval period, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table sank an alien vessel to the bottom of the Atlantic."
A beat of silence.
"Then how," 006 said carefully, "do we find it?"
"We'll find it through their descendants, of course."
Brandwood High School—Los Angeles
For a Los Angeles school, Brandwood had a reputation: rich kids and top students.
Trent DeMarco was firmly in the former category. He was the starting quarterback on the varsity squad, built like someone had assembled him from catalog parts, with a face that photographed well and the casual confidence of someone who had never been told no and hadn't missed it. He was, by the school's informal consensus, one of its defining personalities.
He'd floated the idea of transferring out a few weeks back. Then, just as inexplicably, he'd walked back through the front doors like nothing had happened.
The truth was simpler. He'd been planning to get on a ship and serve his time. But she had sent him new orders. She was the woman whose name he wouldn't even say to himself. The reward this time was a full year's leave.
One year. No deployments. No missions. An entire year of breathing room—and all he had to do was deliver one awkward teenager.
Trent had been running the angles in his head for two days straight, to the point that his girlfriend had started making pointed comments about it.
"Hey." Mikaela Banes materialized beside his locker, arms crossed, expression caught somewhere between irritated and performatively casual. "We cruising later or what?"
School gossip had been particularly vicious this week. The current rumor—that Trent had developed some kind of fixation on Sam Witwicky, a scrawny underclassman with the social profile of a science project—had spread fast enough to reach Mikaela before Trent had the chance to course-correct.
She was furious. Not the quiet, dignified kind—the loud, seething kind she was barely keeping a lid on.
I can not look at you right now. You can ignore me, fine. But you can't ignore me for him. This chest, these curves—none of that does anything for you?! What are you even doing following some scrawny kid around all day?!
The unspoken monologue blazed behind her eyes. Trent ignored it.
The Flying Dutchman had given him things money couldn't buy—a body that healed faster than it broke, reflexes sharper than any training could produce, and a stubborn refusal to die that had saved his life more than once. Without the service obligation attached, it would have been a perfect arrangement. As it stood, he was on a leash. A comfortable leash, but a leash.
He could live with that. He just needed this year off.
"Can't," he said, already scanning the hallway. "Later."
Mikaela's jaw tightened. She said something else. He didn't catch it.
Then Sam Witwicky walked out of a classroom door.
Oh God. The school quarterback is coming for me.
Sam had heard the rumors too. He didn't understand all of them, but he understood the gist—and the gist was terrifying. This guy had been bullying him for as long as he could remember. Back then, Sam hadn't been scared. Now? He was very, very scared.
He turned and ran.
Trent, who was counting on handing Sam over to collect his year of leave, broke into a jog. As a varsity quarterback, speed and technique were not things he lacked. Sam made it less than twenty meters before a hand closed around his arm and stopped him cold.
His skin went cold.
"Hey, Sam."
The smile was friendly. Suspiciously, aggressively friendly.
"Hey. Hey—hey." Sam tried to answer, but all that came out was that.
"Haven't eaten yet, right? Come on, I'm buying."
The crowd of onlookers at the edges of the hallway stared. Sam stared back at them. No one moved to help.
Trent walked him out.
Over burgers and fries—Trent paid without looking at the menu—the actual pitch finally arrived.
"There's a company. They're rolling out new VR tech. Next-level stuff, way beyond anything you've played." Trent leaned back, easy and relaxed. "They're recruiting volunteer testers. One session. Walk in, run through the test, walk out. They're paying five thousand dollars per participant."
Five thousand dollars.
Sam Witwicky did the mental math almost immediately.
He'd been putting money away since he was fourteen, every birthday and holiday and odd job funneled toward a single goal: a car for his eighteenth birthday. After years of grinding, he'd scraped together just over a thousand dollars.
Five thousand would clear that goal and leave him with change to spare.
Trent watched the calculation happen behind Sam's eyes and said nothing. He didn't need to.