Clue

Nicole stopped thinking about the Avians and returned her focus to the conversation with Esther.

"About John, how he look like?" Nicole asked, "I have a few survivors of the incident on Earth and I heard them speaking his name. I think they were his classmates or something of that kind. If you give me a photo of him, I could ease the mind of my new cadets showing to them that could more survivors."

"Well...here it is." Esther lifted her arm and pressed her wrinkled finger on in the PIPS's holographic screen.

Nicole did the same as soon as she felt her PIPS vibrate. She clicked on the archive that Esther sent and opened it.

Soon enough an image of a normal-looking young man with black hair and black eyes appeared on the screen before Nicole.

"So this is John Connor..." She examined the young man and found nothing interesting about him. She was about to close the image when something clicked on the back of her mind and some memories resurfaced.

"John Connor...Connor?" John's surname wasn't that unique among Humans, and so Nicole didn't think too much about it before, but after seeing his face, Nicole suddenly remembered of someone she met way back in the past, almost two decades ago.

"What? Do you know him?" Esther saw Nicole entering in deep thought after looking at John's face, so Esther thought that Nicole knew him.

"No, not him. But I think...I think met someone related to him, possibly from the same family? No, they are very much alike, I suppose I met with his father before..."

"His father?" Esther was surprised. She had looked into John's past and there was not a single mention of his parents, in the files only mentioned the fact he was an orphan brought from a forgotten planet neighboring the Frontier.

"Yes, I remember him." Nicole said, "If I'm not wrong his name was Matthew Connor. He was a Protector."

"Really, how come? When I searched about his past, there was not a single mention about his parents. If his father was really a Protector, even he was killed in the field, there would have been mention of him in John's birth certificate. I even searched for relatives, but found none."

"They might only have the same surname, after all, Connor is a relatively common surname around the Frontier. But having the same surname and looking almost identical, I really think they are father and son."

"But...are you sure this Matthew Connor you spoke off was a Protector? If so, it might be easy to find out about him."

"Yes, I'm sure about this." Nicole said with conviction, "It was when the Space Marines of the UEG's army was doing a joint drill with the Terrene Protectorate's recently graduated Protectors. I guess you remember that event, after all, it was your idea to make in the first place."

"Yes, I remember. It was the first time met you, as well."

"Matthew caught my attention because although he was far from the top rankings in the competition, I felt that he wasn't showing all his talents. I observed him from far and I concluded that he was indeed hiding his talent and not showing the full extent of his abilities and potential."

The drill and competition with the Space Marines and Protectors was something organized personally by Esther.

She saw the Terrene Protectorate and UEG's relations souring up, and thought of something to bring both parties together.

Although it wasn't anything serious and just a casual competition, neither sides wanted to lose face. As a result, both UEG and Terrene Protectorate sent their best among best young soldiers.

So, it wasn't strange that some of the younglings took the chance to shine and show their talents to rise among their ranks.

For those hot-blooded young men and women, it was difficult to not act rash and go all out to be the best.

If what Nicole said was true, Matthew was indeed a strange young men among his peers.

"I'll investigate this more deeply." Esther stated after some thought, [I have some spare time until Unity Day, I might as well take a look at this.]

After some more small talk, both women said goodbye to one another and Esther left the room in her hoverchair.

"Mrs. President." Nicole's secretary entered in the room, "It's time for the meeting."

"I'll be at the briefing room in a moment." Said Nicole as she closed her eyes inclined in her chair.

...

As she was leaving the building in an aircraft, Esther jumped into the SkyNet and went directly towards the Terrene Protectorate website.

Despite the Terrene Protectorate's fall, some of the servers were still online, of course they won't be for too long, as most of the information was stored in a very secretive place that only few knew where it was, and these few were already dead.

Login in, Esther went around all the files that had the mention of the words Matthew and Connor, but all she found were completely unrelated people that looked nothing similar to John.

If what Nicole said was true, than Matthew was a Protector and it should be some files about him in the website, but there was none. That could mean Nicole remembered wrong, or someone deleted everything about the person, and this someone was in the Protectorate's upper echlon.

Esther almost gave up, when she suddenly remembered where Nicole met up with Matthew.

"The joint drill..." Esther immediately searched for the documents about that event. If it was indeed someone that deleted information about Matthew, he would never have thought of deleting public available documents of that event.

She found those documents and started to read the names of the people that were present.

And just as she thought, she found someone named Matthew Connor.

Clicking on the name, some basic information about him appeared in the screen along with a photo of the person.

"They are a splitting image of one another..." Esther commented the moment she saw Matthew's photo.

It was a 24 years old black-haired adult with obsidian dark eyes. He was normal-looking, nothing about him stood out. Compared with his peers in the casual drill, he was average at beast, but if he was hiding his abilities and managed to fool everyone in the place, he would have reached the top if he decided to take it seriously.

Looking at him, Esther entered in deep thought, [Why there's no information about him? Where's him right now? Is he dead? Why did he abandoned John in a dangerous planet near the Frontier?]

[Wait...I have seen this man before...] Esther suddenly realized something, [Wasn't this the man that was supposed to become the Grand Protector and not me? What's going on here?]

So many questions popped up in Esther's mind as she was brought to a building where she could enter in the Teleporter and get to her spaceship.