Looking back at the computer display—the one that displayed the basic information on his Zoanoid model—Kenji almost started fidgeting. The waiting had always been kind of hard for him, but he liked to think that he’d learned at least some patience. Dr. Balkus had been showing him how to refine the design of his Alvix Zoanoid, but then he’d left, and Kenji didn’t know why, though he was doing well on his own.

The computer was making a strange humming sound, but when he’d tried to ask one of the technicians about the noise, no one else had seemed to hear it. So Kenji had tried to ignore it as best he could, but it was still bothersome. Looking up as the sense of another Zoalord nearby washed over him, Kenji saw that Fried’rich van Purg’stall was walking towards him.

"Oh, hi Fried’rich!" Kenji called happily.

"Hello, little one," Fried’rich said, smiling. "Hamilcal told me that you were attempting to design a Zoanoid of your own?"

"Yeah." Kenji nodded happily. "I’m going to surprise dad with it. Do you think he’ll like it?"

"I am certain that Lord Imakarum will be very satisfied with your design, little one. What are you going to call your Zoanoid?"

"Alvix."

"Alvix," Fried’rich repeated, sounding like he was thinking about something. "That is an interesting designation. Did you think of it on your own?"

"Yeah, I thought of it all by myself," Kenji said, looking very happy with himself.

"Well done then, little one." Putting his hand on Kenji’s shoulder, Fried’rich looked at the Zoanoid design displayed on the screen. "It seems to be a very sound design that you have created."

"You really think so?" Kenji asked eagerly.

"Yes, child. I think it could even be a counterpart to Gregole and Ramochis in the Japanese Sector."

"Wow," Kenji said with a smile. "You really think that my design could become that widely used?"

Fried’rich smiled as he nodded. "It is a rather basic design, even as Ramochis and Gregole are, so it stands to reason that this Alvix of yours will have a comparable processing success rate."

Looking back at his Zoanoid design, Kenji felt Fried’rich pat him on the shoulder, but before the other Zoalord could leave, Kenji turned to him.

"Do you think you could maybe stay with me, Fried’rich? I know you probably have a lot of other things to do, but do you think you could take a little time off? I don’t want to be alone," Kenji admitted.

Fried’rich considered the child sitting before him, for that was what Lord Imakarum’s son truly was: a child. In spite of the fact that Imakarum’s son appeared to be the same age as his father, it was at moments like this that Fried’rich could truly appreciate what Ingriam Mirabilis was going through. Placing his hand on Ingriam’s left shoulder, Fried’rich mentally pulled one of the many unoccupied chairs over to them.

From the way he smiled, the child seemed to be content with that.

XxXxXxX

Grumbling as he stalked down the hallway and occasionally swearing violently at the few Standard Zoanoids that didn’t get out of his way fast enough, Zektor made his way back to his room. He was pissed, primarily at old man Balkus for not personally telling him about the side effects that his little ‘procedure’ had, although he did have a fair amount of ill feeling for Sharru, since she had evidently been told to tell him that in the first goddamn place.

Smacking a particularly slow-moving Standard Zoanoid upside the head with the crutch gripped in his right hand, Zektor kept moving after he’d managed to regain his equilibrium. When he finally made it back to his room, Zektor threw the door open and stalked inside, slamming it shut behind him. He stalked over to his bed, threw himself down on it, and roughly flung away his crutches.

Great. Just great. Of all the stupid non-choices I could have been stuck with, this has to be the worst of them. Either I just let it all go and let that bastard Zoanoid-eater get away with turning all of my friends into his own personal buffet, or I… In the end though, Zektor couldn’t even bring himself to finish the thought. As he was, Zektor was one of the most powerful – and therefore respected – Hyper Zoanoids in the entire Chronos organization.

The problem was that Neo-Zektor, which was what old man Balkus was going to name him once he’d gone through reprocessing, was going to be a Lost Unit, and everyone knew that Lost Units were the worst, most unreliable kinds of Zoanoid that existed. Aptom was a Lost Unit, and even a Standard Zoanoid could see just how untrustworthy that rat-bastard was. So that was the thing: Zektor could stay as he was, a Hyper Zoanoid, and just forget about what that… that thing had done to his friends, or he could go through the procedure and end up just like him.

Sure, it would be the ultimate form of irony to see Aptom getting his ass kicked by another Lost Unit, and getting reprocessed was really his best – if not his only – chance of getting his revenge on Aptom. Still, there were principles to think about here: Lost Units, while some of them were at least marginally useful, were mostly a bunch of stupid, one-off freaks. Slumping back down on his bed, Zektor wondered just what one of the other guys would do in this situation.

If he’d been the one to be absorbed instead of Elegen, would that have made any difference? Would Elegen have been willing to go through with a procedure that, while it would give him the sheer, overwhelming power that would be needed to get his revenge, would also end up turning him into something not that far removed from the thing he wanted revenge against? Zektor shuddered briefly as he remembered something else that Dr. Balkus had told him.

It’d been an offhand comment, as if the doctor had been too preoccupied with something else that he’d been preparing for to spare more than a few minutes’ thought for what Zektor was going through. That hadn’t felt so good. The fact that Sharru had been there with him, lending him her support had made him feel a bit better about what he was going to do, but that still didn’t change the fact that he would die if he went through with the procedure.

The risk of dying in combat was one that Zektor faced every time he went out on a mission, but it was something entirely different when it was your own biology that was going to do you in. Then it wasn’t a matter of luck or skill or who wanted to survive more; it was waiting until your cells couldn’t handle any more stress and just stopped working. Turning to lay on his right side, facing away from the door, Zektor continued to think about the choice that he’d been given.

XxXxXxX

For a minute, the kid had looked as if he’d been about to wake up, so Galma had injected him with another dose of sodium pentathol. The kid had settled back down quickly after that, leaving Galma and his fellow Galma to push the gurney into the waiting transport plane. For a minute, the lead Galma wondered just what was going to be done with the kid, but all Lord Caerleon had said was that he was important to Chronos, and Galma knew that he wouldn’t be getting any other answers.

Still, it was kind of interesting to think about why this kid was being taken to the ultra top-secret Dead Sea Plant. Then, deciding that he wasn’t going to spend any more time thinking about a question that he was probably never going to get an answer to, Galma pushed the kid’s gurney into the plane. There were techs who could take care of the kid in there, and Galma was more than ready to write him completely out of his life.

XxXxXxX

Once the doors to the hold had closed, the Ramochis who had been pulling the gurney with the red-haired kid on it moved behind and started pushing. The kid wasn’t going anywhere, what with all the tranquilizers he’d been given when he’d been inside Chronos Briton, and the extra dose that one of the Galma had given him had clinched it in Ramochis’ mind. Of course, that didn’t mean that he was going to remove the restraints.

The red-haired kid had been switched over to a different bed sometime during his mock-examination in Chronos Briton. Or, at least that was what Ramochis had been told by one of the Galma as they had shoved the bed into the plane. Ramochis hadn’t really cared to know just where the restraints had been put on, just so long as they worked, which, since the kid was so heavily sedated, they had a very good chance of doing.

Pushing him into a medical isolation tent, Ramochis locked the bed he was on into the heavy restraints that had been bolted into the wall and floor—the restraints would keep it from sliding around in the plane if they happened to hit any turbulence. Zipping the tent shut behind him as he stepped out, Ramochis turned on one of the gas tanks; he could see the gas flowing out of the vents set into the walls.

The kid would be out for the entire trip to the Dead Sea Plant, so there wasn’t any real need to stand there and watch over him like some kind of glorified babysitter. Happy with the prospect of getting to take some time off—at least until he and the others made it to the Dead Sea Plant—Ramochis headed into the front area of the plane, just behind the cabin.

There was a sort of rudimentary eating area there, nothing more than a table and a pair of chairs bolted to the wall and floor with a few supply cabinets to get food out of, but it was enough for Ramochis to have at least one or two meals. Maybe not the best of meals, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. Opening the nearest cabinet, he found an ample supply of protein bars, beef jerky, and bottled water. Picking up six packs of jerky and three bottles of water, he settled himself at the table and ate. Once he was finished with his meal, Ramochis sat back in the chair and just sort of dozed.

It was a rare opportunity for a Standard Zoanoid like him to have the opportunity to just sit and not think about anything, to just let his mind wander on a boring detail where other people did almost all of the work, and he was just backup muscle if something went wrong. Ramochis remembered, with no small amount of humor, that he’d almost literally had to beat off three Razell, two Gregole, and a fellow Ramochis to get this assignment.

Folding his arms, Ramochis lay his head on them, satisfied with the fact that the red-haired mystery kid wasn’t going to go anywhere.