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C&C(muchly appreciated) to
sovereign_1701@hotmail.com
Website at
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/Hypetia/index.html
And now, on with the show :}
CH 2
Revalations
Aleshia walked along the shoulder of the
road, gravel crunching beneath her shoes. Her thoughts tumbled
after each other in an ever tightening spiral like a dog chasing
its own tail. She hadn't yet told her mother about the armour.
It looked like she might never get the chance to, now. Tears
filled her eyes and she wiped them angrily away. Her mother
might not be missing, might just, just... At this stage her
imagination broke down; there was no reason for her mother not
to contact her or show up at home for twenty-four hours.
Especially not with Kevin missing.
Seven days. One week ago today,
Kevin hadn't come home from school. She and her mother had been
frantic, hoping against hope that he'd turn up. The police
search hadn't turned up anything and they'd both fallen into a
shocked stupor lately, the agony of not knowing what had
befallen Kevin pressing down on their lives. When her mother
hadn't shown up last night, she'd become worried, when the
morning had reavealed a distinct lack of Helen, she had nearly
panicked; it felt as if she was trapped in a horror movie,
slowly losing her mind. She'd phoned the sheriff, breaking down
into tears over the phone, and he'd promised to arrange a search
party if her mother didn't show up by the following evening.
Aleshia wasn't happy with it, but didn't know what else to do,
so she carried on as usual, going to school, hoping against hope
that her mother would be there when she got home.
So now she was on her way home,
having deliberately missed the bus and stayed after school as
for as long as she could think up an excuse to avoid going home
to what she dreaded would be a house empty of not only her
brother, but her mother as well.
Late afternoon sunlight streamed
past her shoulders, throwing her shadow out in front of her. The
sound of an engine approaching intruded into her musings. It
turned out to be a minibus, which pulled up alongside her and
stopped. She looked disinterestedly over at the man in the
driver's seat and so was taken by surprise by the cloth that was
shoved into her face and, more specifically, over her mouth and
nose. She struggled, scrabbling frantically at the arms
encircling her, but the element of surprise was with her captors
and she soon succumbed to the chloroform.
* * *
The blackness swirled at the edges of
her awareness, falling back to leave in it's wake a throbbing
head. Rising and falling voices drifted over to her, but she was
too legarthic to care.
A breathy groan escaped her as she
rose the rest of the way from oblivion to consciousness. It was,
thankfully, not loud enough to carry to the people talking
nearby as she mulled muzzily over the fact that she was
apparently face down on a concrete, very cold, floor. Memory of
her capture came flooding back to her. She held back a gasp,
then continued to lie quiescent, hoping to hear something
relevant to her situation.
The first voice was timid, almost
frightened, as it said, "...rother is coming along nicely,
though. He's almost ready to leave the incubation tank, all he
needs is to finish the stabilization stage and have his
mindcontrol developed. Then we'll have space for her."
A lower, threatening voice
replied, "For which you can be grateful, sloppiness is not
tolerated around here and if you'd read that memo this could all
have been avoided - we do not make a practice of providing a
hotel for pre-Zoanoids." No bonuses for guessing who was in
charge here.
The first voice came again, more
nervous now. "Yes, well, we'll have tank 13G ready for her by
tomorrow morning, we won't have to keep her here much longer.
Rather fitting, don't you think, that they should both be
brought over to Chronos in the same tank?" The first voice
laughed nervously, dying away into strained silence. The first
voice cleared his throat nervously and muttered about needing to
be elsewhere before leaving rather hastily. As she lay still,
she could feel the stare of the second person boring into her
back. That sixth sense built up over generations upon
generations of being stalked by big dangerous things in the dark
of night screamed at her to turn and face the predator behind
her. The skin on her very vulnerable back crawled and she was
hard pressed not to turn around and face the threat.
Finally, a second pair of
footsteps retreated. She heard a door close and was finally
alone in what she quickly determined to be a cell. The
windowless space was small and dusty with iron bars on the
fourth side. There was another cell oposite hers, a single light
out between the cells, and a wooden door to the left, but other
than that her new surroundings were bare.
Rother?
After a few moments the mention of 'fitting,' Kevin, and
'rother' clicked together in a rather nasty and complete whole.
Well, maybe not complete, she still wasn't sure what was going
on, but she was certain that these people had her brother. Her
eyes narrowed. That meant they probably had Mom as well.
She had to get out, had to do
something... But what? What could she do? Methodically and
without much hope, she began looking for an escape. No windows,
no keys hanging convieniently on hooks outside the cell, no way
to get the cell door open. She leaned despondantly against the
bars. She was helpless. Something awful was happening to her
family and all she couldn't help them or even herself. There was
nothing she could do.
Anger boiled up in her. No, she
couldn't just rot here while they did God knew what to Mom and
Kevin, she wouldn't. Back and forth she strode in front of the
bars. Swearing, she threw her fist into a wall. Of course the
wall simply stood there, impassive to her temper. Pain throbbed
in her hand now as well as her head. "Aaaaaarrrgh!" Up went both
her arms, fullly meant to pound into the offending wall. She had
to get *out* of here!
The world distorted around her and
out of nowhere and everywhere there was the strangest sensation
she'd ever felt, like she was falling in every direction at
once. It ended almost before it started, but the momentary
disorientation had her off balance and she went down with a
thump. She'd had the wierdest feeling that the suit itself had
almost caught her balance for her, but that notion was quickly
dismissed.
Alleshia sat on the floor, not a little
shocked at this new development. This was certainly one of the
last things she'd been expecting. Absently she noticed that her
headache was fading, as was the pain in her hand. She could
probably remove the armour again, but right then she didn't
really care enough to try. All she was interested in was getting
out of there. What she wouldn't give for a key, or even a good
sledgehammer, or any kind of weapon at all, really. Right on the
heels of that thought information popped into her head, crowding
through her perception all at once.
head laser - low power, mainly
defensive
sonics - shatter weapons,
mid-power
high frequency vibration blades -
slash/cut weapon, versatile, retractable
chestlaser - high power,
offensive, destrucive *use with caution*
gravity canon - offe-
Her head seemed filled to the
bursting point. Frantically a mental scream of protest rose in
her.
The information overload ceased
abruptly, leaving her a little off balance. She would have been
breathing hard, if not for the armour, which adjusted to her
needs and met them.
Covering her loss of poise, even
though there was nobody to hide it from, she examined the small
blades on her elbows. And stopped. The information on the blades
hung fresh in her memory and, with a feeling of facination, she
willed the vibration blade to extend, which it did smoothly. She
studied this new development, seeing that the edges were
indistict, somehow. They're
vibrating, it dawned on her.
So,
she thought with more optimism than she'd felt all week,
let's see how sharp this puppy is.
She twisted her arm so that the
elbow faced forward and inserted the blade between the cell door
frame and the bars, pressing it down on the lock. Astonished,
she watched as the metal parted before her humming blade like,
like, well, the phrase 'a hot knife through butter' sprang to
mind.
Silently she tried the
outer,wooden door, finding it unlocked. Aleshia stopped dead,
door not quite open, suddenly realizing that there might be a
guard outside. But no, the sensors on her helmet detected no
movement beyond the door. An exploritory hand softly probed one
of the the silver orbs on her head, which moved almost
reflexively out of the way. Quite calmly she considered freaking
out. But if she did that there would be nobody to rescue her
family. She moved cautiously out of the room into a bleak grey
hallway with walls that went up and up until they almost
disappeared into darkness. For lack of a better option, she
arbitrarily picked a direction and started walking.
After she'd been going for a while
her sensors picked up movement close by, around the corner, in
fact. In a panic, for the corridor behind her stretched long and
devoid of hiding places, she tried the only thing she could
think of. She launched herself into the air, as with her
defensive move against her brother, this was almost instinctive.
That wasn't the strangest part though. When she felt herself
reaching the apex of her jump, a good fifteen feet above the
ground, she just... stayed there. In fact, she rose till she
reached the girders of the ceiling, where she gently floated.
She'd finally figured out that the armour was responding to her,
like - as Kevin had said - a computer. So she shakily asked of
nothing in particular 'l-levitation
- how?'. Her mind filled with
details about the gravity orb, only a fraction of which she
could make any sense, but she did get that the metal orb at her
waist, smaller than the control medal, was responsible for it.
She was pulled from her daze as the technician, or at least so
his white overcoat indicated him to be, walked beneath her,
intent on a clipboard. Having no better idea, she decided to
follow him.
As she drifted behind him, she
thought, and came to the conclusion that it was probably night,
based on the fact that the building, for all it's gigantic size,
seemed almost deserted. Finally the technician and his floating
shadow reached a pair of large doors that opened as the white
coated man passed a card through a slot.
Hmm, whatever they're doing, it's
certainly very high tech for a kidnapper, so what's going on?
She descended to hover right above the closed doors, and after a
few minutes her patience was rewarded. The doors slid open and
the technician exited. As he walked away she dropped down behind
him, ducked backwards into the doorway, narrowly missing the
closing doors, and spun around as she rose up again. Only to
bang her head against the low ceiling. Clamping down on a yelp
of surprise more than pain, she found herself abruptly on the
floor. Her embarrasment was forgotten, however, as she took in
her surroundings. Rows upon rows of large, circular tanks filled
the dark, low ceilinged room. The low ceiling seemed to serve a
practical purpose, as bundles of tubes and wiring led from down
into the tanks. Dim green lights lit up the interior of the
tanks, revealing their occupants in all their monstrous glory.
For each tank held a montrosity in various stages ranging from
half human to mishappen, animalistic shapes, all curled up in a
fetal position. Tearing her eyes away, she noticed a display
panel in the base of each tank coming to about her waist. Her
stomach gave a sickening lurch as she saw a label attached to
each panel, each held a number and a letter.
13G... Kevin!!
She sped along the rows, coming to
number thirteen, she spun and raced down the isle until she
reached tank 13G.
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