“I will be the bait,” he said, from the com link, and ran out of the smoke.

Yeah, that kind of irrational behavior was what I was afraid of. It was too late to stop him. I got back on my feet and gritted my teeth. Rick had just ruined my perfectly good plan. Dalla was going to kill me if anything happened to her brother, and in this case, probably something will.

“Wait, Rick, come back,” I yelled, although I doubted he heard me at all.

Rick had left one of his backup guns lying on the ground. I found it using my sonar scanners. It wasn’t a revolver; however, I took it nonetheless. I deployed a small drone from my armor and sent it flying into the air, while I stood motionlessly, hidden inside the smoke. With the small drone in the air, I could see clearly what was happening outside.

Rick was standing outside the smoke’s range, with his hands up. “I give up, so please don’t attack me.”

What was that buffoon doing? He dropped down to his knees as a sign of surrendering, but nothing happened after—which was a surprise. Then the wind picked up and sped right by him, in a jiffy, without knocking him down as before. Everything went silent again. I stealthy tiptoed towards him without leaving the cover of the fog and halted, once he was a few feet from me. I wanted to get close enough to see what was really happening. There was some mysterious secret to the boy’s speed and I was determined to uncover it. Again, the wind sprouted, but stopped in front of Rick as a small figure emerged. My legs tightened as I felt anxiety and anticipation build up inside me. I watched the little boy kick Rick’s back from behind onto the ground. He stood on top of him, with his right leg resting on top of his back, like a conqueror. That arrogant little fool was really starting to get on my nerves. I really wanted to blast him with a dozen bullets, but my morals kept getting in the way. Glancing down, at his feet, I noticed something bolted to his soles. The heels of his shoes had titanium bladed mini wheels with small boost thrusters. It explained why he was so fast and hard to track. Now everything was starting to make sense.

“I told you people not to move, but you don’t listen,” he kicked Rick on the back again. “What are you doing on our planet, and what do you want?”

Before I could assault him, I paused midway—his words had struck my interest. Well, for me, but not for Rick, who looked like he was in pain. If I attacked now, I would spook the boy and he would escape, or worse, kill us. Instead, I decided to wait it out and learn more of what this boy knew.

“Rick, keep him talking,” I whispered to him from through our com link.

“Well, that’s easy for you to say,” he commented. “It’s not like you are on the ground being trampled on by a little boy, whose foot feels like it weighs 10 tons?”

“You volunteered, so deal with it.”

Rick didn’t reply back although he did have a point. His life was in danger and I was taking a large gamble by not helping him now. I felt my conscience scream at me to help him, but my body didn’t respond. The intel the boy possessed was way too valuable to risk a confrontation at the moment. Even if I attacked, there was a possibility it wouldn’t end well for Rick and I.

“If you tell me something, I will tell you something,” Rick said, chuckling on the ground.

The little boy kicked him again and rattled, “you are in no position to make demands.”

The boy was not spilling any secrets at all. What could I do? The smoke was clearing and he still wasn’t talking. Rick kept him busy some more, by asking him random questions, only to get hard kicks in the back. For a minute, I almost revealed myself; however, I moved back and stayed still—biding my time. There were two rules in warfare: never get caught and never get killed. Apparently, I had already broken the first rule and I was close to breaking the second one. Wait, I knew someone who could help us out of this pinch. There was only one person or alien who knew how to handle this type of situation. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure if my com link signal was strong enough to reach all the way there.

“Hey, Ali, can you hear me?” I said, increasing the frequency on my com link, to reach a wide range.

There was static on my com link for a while as if something was jamming the signal.

“Yeah, I hear ya, what’s the problem?” he replied in a rude voice.

You would think that I did something terrible to him, judging by the tone of his voice, but I really didn’t know what. Maybe, some people were just born that way—just cranky and hating anything.

“We ran into a gray boy and I have to say he is really strong and fast. Something about all of this is just not adding up at all,” I commented in a low voice. “Care to clue us in on something. Anything at this point will do; I am tired of being kept in the dark.”

I could still see Rick in pain as the little boy had his leg on his back. It didn’t even make sense at all, in my opinion. Just how strong was he? Or was Rick faking it?

“Den, listen carefully,” he said in a serious voice. “That boy is not a monster, he is a human. But one who’s DNA has been mutated since he was probably born here. He is most likely a member of the kingdom or a member of the resistance; it's complicated, but just get Rick and Dalla and flee immediately, because he is probably not alone.”

Figures, I knew we were in trouble, but I just didn’t think it would be this bad and so complicated. His words of warning seemed to leave me even more confused than before. Who was the resistance? Were they enemies or friends? Oh well, I put the matter aside and focused completely.

“How do we flee? The boy is just too fast and strong.”

I couldn’t believe I was saying that—then again, it explained how half my crew had been taken so easily. I mean, if the boy was this strong, then it was most likely a full grown man was twice as powerful on this planet. How could we possibly beat that?

“Any time now, Den,” Rick grunted out loudly and impatiently.

Quickly, I took aim with the gun I had found and pointed it directly at the boy’s head. It was probably not going to kill him, but knock him down for a couple of seconds.

“Don’t do anything reckless like shooting the boy,” the old man said and the com link cut off.

How did he know that? I tried reconnecting the link several times, but the link didn’t come back on, and to make things worse, the smoke was almost gone. It was just a matter of time before he looked back and spotted me too. I tilted my back down and I switched the rest of my power supply to my offense and camouflage system. As slowly and as quietly as possible, I crept my way towards him, avoiding any sudden noise. He was so agitated by Rick that he never noticed me coming. Once I got a few inches behind him, I turned on my stunners and touched a portion of his neck at full voltage. The boy fell on the ground, moving uncontrollably for a few seconds, which came as a surprise to me.

“What did you do that for?” Rick yelled from the ground while trying to get up. “He was just a kid and look at the condition you put him in.”

I was expecting a thank you from him and not harsh words, although he had a point; I didn’t think this through, at all. It seemed electricity had a much more powerful effect on the residents on this planet than we thought. This was the third time electricity had worked marvelously. First, it was against the small terror beasts, and now against this boy, who was by far stronger than us. All I could hypothesize was that electricity somehow interfered more strongly with their nervous system than it did with normal humans.

“You are welcome, Rick,” I said sarcastically, and kneeled down on the ground to examine the boy. He was still alive as I saw the frequency of his pulse beating strongly. It was rather impressive in a way. I stood up and began to walk away from him hastily. “We gotta go now, Rick, he isn’t alone.”

Rick nodded and picked up his gear quickly. He turned on his camouflage system and followed behind me. Suddenly, my drone picked up movements all around us. They were not as loud or as big as terror beasts, based on what I could hear.

“Rick, stop,” I warned him, using my com link and we both stopped moving.

I held my gun tighter than before, looking in the direction in front of me, while Rick scanned the opposite direction.

“What do you suppose is making that noise?” Rick whispered to me with fear in his voice. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know or find out because I knew it had to be trouble. I started to hear voices suddenly as they got closer and closer. Seconds later, we saw what looked like people coming towards us.

“Where is he?” a female voice spoke out loudly, “I told him not to go out there alone.”

My eyes gazed at her. She had bright, black hair and distinct pale light brown eyes, and her skin was as gray as the boy’s—her full figure matched perfectly with her tall height

“I think, I’m in love,” Rick sighed out loudly which freaked me out for a second. “Whoever she is, I hope she likes earth boys.”

“Shut up, Rick,” I shook my head.

If anyone was close, they could have heard it and found us in mere seconds. A group of strange alien warriors rushed past us and examined the crash site closely. For some reason, they dared not get close to our ship, which I found weird. It felt like they knew it was there, but dared not to go anywhere near it. I looked around, closely watching them. There were a handful of them, at least two dozen.

“I found him,” one of the voices screamed, coming from where we had left the little boy. “He is in bad shape, but he will live.”

The girl with the long black hair ran swiftly and kneeled by the little boy, who was unconscious on the ground. Her hands slipped past his face with an utter feel of concern and worry. She raised him halfway and held him tightly in her arms. I think they were related somehow, maybe brother and sister.

“I did that to him,” I thought to myself, and then I started feeling bad.

I wish I hadn’t, but it was either him or us, and I chose to save us.

“Whoever did this will pay,” she hissed and punched the ground so strongly her fist sunk into the ground.

I imagined that being my face and suddenly felt strong chills creeping up my spine. Was this fear I was sensing? Definitely it was; however, it felt so strange, and yet so strong, that it shook my entire being. Ever since arriving on this planet, I had been feeling rather uncomfortable and downright nervous. I mean, this planet was crawling with terror beasts and powerful alien enemies: I couldn’t phantom it.

“I wouldn’t mind being pounded in the face by her fist,” Rick sighed again. “Oh crap, I didn’t know the com link was on so forget what I said bahahaha.”

Yeah right, it had been disturbing to hear him say that and it was going to take a miracle to get that thought out of my mind. Either way, it looked like he was going to get his wish after all. The alien girl was furious and it looked like she was about to burst into rage.

“Forget about that, Rick, we need to move now,” I whispered as I looked one last time at her and the boy, turning away to search for another way out of this mess.

From what I could tell, we were surrounded and all our paths were blocked by these gray people. It was also strange how they didn’t even need a gravity armor suit to move about or oxygen tanks, and yet the old man said they were human.

“Wait, look at those footprints,” the girl said, looking on the ground, “they are still fresh, we can’t be too far behind them.”

Darn, I had not taken that into consideration. Behind us, we had left a large trail of footsteps which were easy to follow. This wasn’t good at all. If they followed those tracks they would find us fast and we weren’t that far ahead.

“Let’s go now through there,” I said to Rick, once I found a safe passage through the trees.

There wasn't many aliens patrolling in that area. Our best option was to run and flee from the ship as fast as we could. Dalla was safe as long as she stayed in the ship. We would come back for her, eventually, once they were gone.

“Where to, Den?” Rick said, sounding impatient and agitated.

Rick was right to sound irritated because I felt the same way, considering the odds against us. We were badly outnumbered. Quietly as possible, we moved swiftly in the grassy terrain, barely avoiding contact with our new enemies.

“Guys, where are you?” Dalla spoke as her armor beacon came on our sensors.

Crap, she had woken up too soon. I stopped in my tracks and looked back—my heart began to beat really fast. Dalla was surrounded by a horde of alien warriors and she had no idea of this. Even if we went back for her, there was no way we could fight off those powerful enemies and triumph. Her best chance was to sit still and wait them out to leave. Our ship was still in camouflage mode; however, it wasn’t going to last for hours, since we were running on backup power.

“Dalla, stay where you are, you are surrounded by a battalion of alien enemies.” I said harshly, alerting her of how serious I was. “We might be in over our heads on this one. Rick and I are going to try and distract them for a bit, to buy you enough time to diagnose and fix the ship, if possible.”

“What did you guys do to our ship?” she responded quickly in anger. “It looks terrible.”

“Nothing much,” I replied, laughing nervously. “Remember, we crashed the ship when our power supply ran out, and well, the rest is history.”

“Shhh do you guys hear that?” the girl with the gray skin spoke, almost a few yards away from us.

I was surprised, almost jolting out of my skin. I saw the alien girl pacing towards us, following the trail of our footsteps. Her eyes glued to the ground like white on rice. There were a few alien warriors following behind her, with weapons unknown to me.

“Geez, she doesn’t know when to quit, does she?” I said speaking to myself.

“Well, what do you expect?” Rick responded, but in a quick whisper. “You fried that little guy like soft chicken.”

True, I hated it when he was right, especially when it came to situations like these. Rick’s com link suddenly went high static, in a loud screech, and suddenly all attention turned towards our direction. I saw their faces turn, looking directly in our exact position. The alien girl tilted her head up and began to move slowly towards us.

“Turn it off, Rick,” I yelled, but it was too late as our new enemies were running towards us.

In a jiffy of a second, I dodged one of the gray men who almost nabbed me. However, I wasn’t fast enough to evade the other warrior who suddenly pinned me from behind, and tossed me on the ground. His grip and power was incredible.

“I have faced people with your type of armor before so that won’t work on me,” he said, standing on top of me with one of his legs pinning me. “I don’t need to see you to know where you are.”

Now I suddenly knew how Rick felt, when that little boy had his leg on his chest. It felt like a truck was crashing me to the ground and I didn’t like the feeling. Unexpectedly, the man fell on the ground and I heard a voice say, “Run, Den.”

It was Rick and he had been the one who had tackled the man, who had me pinned. I quickly got up on my feet and began to run in the direction Rick was running as fast as I could. Jolting hard, I dared not look back at our enemies who most likely were on our tail. Our camouflage system no longer fooled them as before.

“I can fix it, but it will take some time,” Dalla spoke to us from the com link.

“Hurry, Dalla, time is definitely one thing we don’t have,” Rick said, panting really hard.

“Well, try fixing a nuclear fission engine by yourself and see how quickly you can do it,” Dalla growled at Rick rudely.

Darn, this wasn’t the time for a sibling argument, but apparently they didn’t care. I took a risk and glanced back for a second. The aliens were a good bit behind us and losing ground. We ran even further through the terrain, rushing through trees, in a zigzag pattern, to confuse them. Our random movements were not enough to truly lose them, although it would buy Dalla the time she needed to fix our ship.

“Man, she doesn’t give up,” Rick glanced back.

“Are you serious?” I spotted the alien girl slightly behind us and gaining on us.

Her speed and tracking abilities were beyond comprehension. She was on our trail like a hound dog and there was only one way to lose her.

“We have to split up,” I said, looking at the alternative choices we had.

We could either stop and fight her, but considering how potentially strong she was, that was not the most rational choice. She moved swiftly with such remarkable agility, one could not help but admire her. Our best choice was to keep running and lose her by splitting into two opposite directions.

“Okay, Den,” Rick agreed with me, changing direction quickly.

I shifted my body and dashed through in the east direction. The alien girl gained speed and followed behind me, easily moving through the trees. I definitely couldn’t lose her if I kept running on the ground. Flying was my only option in this dilemma. Well, there was slightly one kink in that plan. The propulsion system was offline, more than half the power had been redirected into the camouflage system mode. I had no defense weapons and to make things worse, my armor had suffered slight external damage from my previous encounter. I felt her breath directly behind me and getting closer—her arms extended out like she was trying to grab me. I looked back and saw her face, her eyes dimmed with fierce fire, and an intense desire for vengeance. Knowing what awaited me, I ran even faster and gained a few yards from her grasp.

From the corner of my ears, I heard a terrible roar of a terror beast and found myself in their territory. She still didn’t quit chasing after me, despite hearing the growling echoes of these terrifying creatures. Wait a minute, that roar sounded so familiar, like I had heard it from before. It reminded me of the terror beasts we had encountered before, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? Had they been tracking us the whole time? I felt my stomach turn at the thought.

Before I knew it, I was on the ground barely able to move my body. It felt like my armor had shut down completely without my consent.

“I will make you pay for what you did to my brother,” a feminine voice hissed in harsh tone.

I could sense the incredible danger I was in and yet there was nothing I could truly do. She was strong just as I had projected. She had me pinned down completely, using some martial art technique I was not familiar with. My shoulders were completely locked out, and any sudden movement could dislocate them, not good. I sighed slowly as I thought my way out of this dire situation.

“Listen,” I began, with fear in my voice, “I’m sorry about what I did to your brother, I wasn’t meaning to kill him or anything. Let’s get out of here first and you can do whatever you want to me later. Terror beasts are everywhere and we need to run, right now.”

She didn’t respond to my reasoning; I felt her grip tighten though. Her body movements gave her feelings away. The moment I mention her brother, I felt her breathing slow to a halt. She definitely cared for him a lot. Something moved, hidden behind the trees—it lingered and growled softly as if stalking its prey.

“Wait here for a while,” she ordered and jumped away from me so gracefully she was like a ballerina.

I sensed the impending danger and ignored her command. Quickly, I deployed two drones from my suit for surveillance of the area, in order to estimate the number of terror beasts in the area. I was surprised by the sheer number alone which ranged above 20 or so. We were definitely done for and there was no escaping unharmed, or better yet, in one piece. As soon as my drones were far above the sky, out of range from any terror beasts, I began to try to reboot my suit; however, most of my power had been drained out. It was going to take a while to redirect the remaining power to my weapon system. I felt the camouflage fade out as I became visible again. In a glimpse of a second, I caught sight of the girl with the gray skin, running and ducking in the forest above me. She wasn’t that hard to spot considering everything around us was blue and so were the terror beasts, which in my opinion, was quite annoying. The girl took out a weapon, which emitted electricity, and began to fight her way into the horde of the terror beasts. It seemed my intuition was right; electricity did harm the beasts greatly. My eyes tracked the alien girl’s movements, from left to right, and then up with great difficulty—she was just so fast.

One thing was for sure, she was quite fearless and bold. One by one, the terror beasts dropped on the ground, like feathers, but more appeared, joining the ranks with every passing minute. I tensed my body as I thought through about my next move. I realized I had to help her if we were to survive this situation. Plus, that was the only chance I had to show that I wasn’t a bad person. Before I realized it, two more terror beasts fell next to me, stunned out cold completely as if dead. I jumped away, surprised, but amazed. Just who was this girl? Two things were certain for sure, she was no slouch and using electricity on the terror beasts was one way to knock them down. But why had no one on earth figured this out yet? But what if they did and were somehow withholding this information from the rest of the public? No, something about this situation felt out of place. I assumed the terror beasts on this planet were weaker than the ones ravaging earth. Yep, that made more sense to me.

“Darn this,” I yelled at myself, knowing how helpless I was.

I couldn’t figure out this puzzling mechanical mystery and stood there silently. The frustration kept building up as I knew that any second from now could be my last. The ground shook hard from the sheer mass of the creatures. In that moment, I had a baffling realization. This wasn’t a coincidence, was it? I just couldn’t put my finger on it yet, but this situation felt so out of the ordinary, and yet so familiar.

“Follow me,” the girl appeared in front of me without warning.

She nicked my armor hard, pushing me a little back at the same time. Strangely, my suit came back online and all my systems became operational again. Had she done something to it when I wasn’t looking? Possibly, when she pinned me to the ground. Could explain why it took so long to reboot the power and weapon systems back. I looked hard around while following behind her.

“Where to now?” I asked, carefully observing a terror beast that had set its sight on me, out of everything else.

Oh no! I knew this beast; it was one of the big terror beasts that I had seen after I fried the small terror beasts in our previous encounters. I had a feeling this might happen, although I thought I was just paranoid. The creature growled, stealthily moving in close.

“Just follow me,” she hissed and began to run fast towards east.

I watched her move for a second, before looking back at my stalking enemy. There was no way I could keep up with the alien girl, let alone outrun the beast. Quickly, I turned on my flight system and took off for the skies, using my new propulsion system. The rocket thrusters roared out, blitzing me up into the sky faster than I had ever done, previous to now. I was glad to have got rid of the wings because they were complicated. They were fun to begin with, but the feeling got old quickly. Just as I thought I was finally safe, I sensed something. I looked down quickly, barely ducking out of range from the terror beast I was running away from. It had jumped into the trees and used them as leverage to gain a momentum leap towards me. Thankfully, I noticed it in time to evade safely. The creature descended down, landing on a tree forcibly. It turned its large head and looked back at me, with a snarling look. This creature was incapable of emotion and yet it wanted revenge against me for what I had done. Knowing this, I shot a few proton bullets at it with Rick’s gun, to slow it down for a while; however, it just stood there and took all the hits like they were nothing.

“Show off,” I chuckled and flew out of range, planning to get away from both the terror beasts and the girl from before.

If she was also bent on revenge, it was most likely she was tracking me from the ground. But if I was to move out of range, in the sky, she wouldn’t find me for a while. Well, that was if I was lucky enough to stay out of sight. The sky was so clear, and so blue, it almost made me throw up. Honestly, I was getting tired of seeing this blue color all around this planet. You would think they might, I mean just maybe, find something else on this planet with a different color. It was indeed strange and yet fascinating to say the least. How could one planet be composed of only one color? So many variables seemed out of place. I looked down and everything seemed tiny from this distance. With each second, I moved further and further from Rick and Dalla. The com link signal was static for some unknown reason, as it appeared to be some kind of interference from an outside source. I could still hear terror beasts roaring beneath me, but it wasn’t as loud as before. Abruptly, I felt a slight disturbing vibration within my armor. I was losing power with each minute of flight. Probably, due to my overuse of the electrical weapon system.

“Rick, can you hear me?”

There was no answer and I was barely picking up any signals. I stopped halfway, in the air, hovering effortlessly to conserve power. My mind reassured me that I was out of harm’s way for now—it was time to go back and rejoin the others. We had lost enough time already as it was. Quickly, I recalibrated myself and coordinated my tracking system back to the cargo ship. I was fifty-six miles away from them, east from the ship’s position. It was going to be tricky getting back, considering there might be a trap waiting for me. I seriously hated this planet with a passion.

“Oh well,” I sighed out, placing my hand against my visor.

I decided to take the gamble and go back, but just close enough to survey the area. Time was critical, every passing second could decide my fate. I turned around and flew back rapidly to our ship—my heart thumping greatly with agonizing expectation. Once I got close enough to where the ship was, I landed on one of the high trees and tried to blend in. Rather a difficult ordeal, since I stood out from everything else blue. There was a rustle in the wind, followed by a really long silence, as if everything went dead around me. I looked everywhere and caught sight of nothing in plain sight and not even a trace of heat to pick up from my scanners. I knelt down, on one of the trees’ branches, and tried my com link one more time, but it was still nothing but static. To be safe, I waited ten more minutes, quietly, hidden safely on the branches of the tree. Nothing moved or echoed at all. After one more minute, I slowly climbed down and moved through the trees, making my way towards the ship. From what I could see, Rick was still missing alongside with the ship. Was this the right location? The crash site was right in front of me, but everyone was gone. I walked around, resetting my bearings again, and stumbled upon a small, little cube box on the ground. It was the size of a small stone and yet so well built. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it looked important—possibly, a component from the ship. I bent down and slowly picked it up anyway, placing it in my empty pocket for safe keeping. Suddenly, I realized that the sky was turning dark and gloomy. What was happening now? The sky thundered out as precipitation built heavily up above me.

It felt like rain was about to fall except it was impossible for this planet to have rain, wasn't it? Nah, it was definitely impracticable, and maybe I was just imagining things. My scanners beeped out loudly, projecting my exact location. Now what?

I knew where I was and the exact location of the ship; I was not misreading my bearings. Something must have happened while I was away. I knelt on one knee and scanned the ground thoroughly. There were no signs of struggles and no residues of proton burst particles. So what did it mean? Had Dalla escaped or been captured? Scanners picked up heat trails, showing me that the ship had moved a few miles away from my location. I quickly twisted my body and began to run towards it, hoping to find Dalla and Rick. I ran for a couple of miles, but I didn’t find them—the trail went cold, all of a sudden. All I felt was empty air all around me. I looked up and realized that the ship had taken off for the skies. So to make things clearer, I was all alone on this freaky planet, surrounded by terror beasts and strong gray aliens, who considered me their enemy. Crap! What else could go wrong? With the com link nothing but static, and my power supply draining out, I had to think of something fast, otherwise, I was stuck here. I stopped in my tracks, zoning deeply into my thoughts. Logically, I had to rely on the power of my intellect.

“What would I do if I was Rick or Dalla?”

If I was them, I would continue the mission. That sounded like something they would do. I had the coordinates implanted into my armor and they knew that, meaning they were expecting me to follow and catch up with them somehow. According to Ali, the kingdom was east, about 500 miles from me. Possibly, Rick and Dalla were on their way there. It seemed like the most coherent answer, so I decided to head east for that kingdom. It was a long hard walk through the treacherous forest of the planet. At each turn, I kept looking cautiously in every direction for any enemy activities. I only had a few rounds of ammunition in Rick’s gun, and four each, in my emergency revolvers, which I could only use in desperate times. Although, this did count as a desperate situation. I felt my hands tremble down to grab them. My mind drove them away, allowing me to think clearly again. I couldn’t waste them on little situations like these. I paused briefly to take a break; the long travel was starting to take its toll on my weary body.

Without a hover ship, it was going to take me days to catch up, judging by the speed I was moving. The blue woods were silent all around me as if it was all empty. Any ordinary man would relax and take a nap, but I knew better than anyone else what lay on this planet. I felt the silence as a signal for oblivion. I stood back after half an hour and continued, little by little, in the east direction. Every step bringing me closer to the truth, whether good or bad. I liked being alone, but this was truly ridiculous. Just beyond a hill, I came across the end of the forest. Below, a terrain missing trees and completely engulfed high by very tall blue grass. I sighed out loud, holding my knees; I had no idea how long I had walked for, but it was really getting a bit shady blue in the sky. Then suddenly it began to rain. This was not something I had anticipated. I looked at the falling drops of water in the sky as if seeing it for the first time.

“Oh come on, not this of all things.”

It was definitely strange to think it could rain on this planet, theoretically; nevertheless, I had seen weirder things like people with gray skin and ravaging blue monsters. The rain poured down heavily and quickly as if someone was pouring a bucket of water on the entire planet. This was great because it meant the terror beasts wouldn’t come looking for me for while, I mean, just until the rain stopped falling anyway. Before I knew it, my body was lying flat on the ground against the rain. Slowly, but surely I felt a sudden warmth in my gut as I began to drift away into sleep. “Don’t sleep,” I warned myself as I got drowsier and fell asleep.

 

“Hey, Den, come here,” Joe said, standing next to a bench.

He was sitting by himself, reading a magazine.

“Wait, a minute!”

Was this a dream? It felt like a dream, although I could be hallucinating. There was only one way to test it out and see if I was dreaming or not. I jumped as I high as I could while closing my eyes. As soon as I opened them, I noticed that I was floating in the sky, gazing down on the world. This was the best thing ever and I couldn’t wait to see what else I could do in this dream. I mean, it’s not every day one could manipulate and control his own dreams.

“Yikes,” I screamed, noticing Joe floating next to me, looking at me with disappointed eyes.

“What’s your problem, Joe?”

He smacked his forehead like I had asked a stupid question and said, “you still don’t know what this is all about, do you?”

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that, I’m sure I would be a rich man. “No, so tell me,” I demanded, looking back at him without flinching.

I wanted him to know that I wasn’t backing down, no matter what, until he told me why he was here. He chuckled and began to float down in an irritating and annoying manner.

“Darn it! This is my dream, you have to answer me because I rule this place,” I growled and appeared next to him on the bench.

I flicked my finger and the bench he was sitting on disappeared; however, he didn’t fall. It was as if he was sitting on an invisible bench.

“See that, I can do anything in here,” I boasted, folding my hands in a dominant manner, with my eyes closed.

“If you are the boss of this place, then where is Rose?” Joe said without changing the tone of his voice—not even one bit.

He hit me where it hurt the most. That question was worse than a stab to the heart with a sharp knife, figuratively speaking of course. Now I remembered why I really hated Joe. He was one of my good friends, but at times, I hated how he asked direct questions.

“She was your fiancée and you were supposed to get married, but you don’t even know where she is now, do you?”

I wondered if I could punch him in this dream or would it go right through him. “Well, it’s complicated and I’m sure she is safe somewhere on earth.”

Joe suddenly stopped reading his holographic magazine and looked at me without blinking. “Just how much do you know about Rose?”

He stood up and walked in the opposite direction, without looking at me. What did he mean by that? His mind games would not work on me.

“You arrogant jerk, get back here—I’m not done with you,” I hissed, running after his faint shadow.

Without warning, he vanished like nothing and all that was left was me, a cloudy sky, and a bench. Just what did he want to say to me? Couldn’t I make him reappear before me again? It was worth a shot since I had so many questions for him, and he had all the answers I needed.

“Joe, appear,” I said, dazzling my hands but nothing happened. I tried more chants but nothing happened again. “Oh well, I guess there is nothing I can do.”

I sat on the bench, thinking. He was right though, I actually didn't know a whole lot about Rose. I mean, I knew her favorite color was green, no I mean pink, or wait she mentioned blue.

 

Suddenly, everything just vanished as I woke up. Another strange dream indeed! They seemed to be getting weirder and weirder each night. At least the rain had ceased falling. There was a strong wind blowing down against me, going west. The only thing that kept it from blowing me away was the rock behind me. My scanners were picking up something like a tropical cyclone passing through; it wasn’t exactly passing through, but dazing back and forth without a clear direction. This planet defied most laws of physics, and if I wasn’t in danger, I would be fascinated to study it more closely.

“So this is where you are?” a familiar cold voice said, speaking to me.

I knew this voice and I hoped it wasn’t who I thought it was. A dark figure came out of the tall blue grass, holding something that looked like a tracker. I was sure I had lost her hours ago. Her persistence was admirable.

“You sure took your time,” I snickered nervously, attempting to sound confident. It was the girl from before and she was alone from what I could see.

“It was traffic, but I’m here now,” she said, drawing out her magnificent spear that shot electricity. One burst of that spear had enough power to bring down a terror beast—and should I get hit with that, it was going to be trouble. It looked hopeless for me, so I gave up quickly and decided to surrender.

“Are you going to fight me or come peacefully?” she asked, firmly gripping the spear tightly, while staring at me with a frightening look. Her eyes radiated flawlessly with intense craze.

As tempting as it was to try and escape my way out of this situation, I did absolutely nothing, but just sit there and chuckle. “Fine, you got me.”

Odds were less favorable if I kept going east by myself, because I could either get lost or killed. Best bet was to stay with her and learn more about this horrible planet. Granted the right opportunity presented itself, I would sneak away and flee back.

“Get on your feet, now,” she commanded me, folding her hands out of distaste. “Follow me and don’t try anything funny!”

Alright, I rose up and began to follow her, heading north, in an unknown location. My drones had not scanned that area, so I had no idea where we were going at all and whether it was safe.

“Where are we going?” I asked her, walking a few feet behind her.

She took a small glance at me and faintly smiled: “you’ll find out soon enough.”

7

Hours passed by us so fast, I felt them in my legs as we walked through vast blue forestry. I was worn out to say the least. Despite having fought a hard battle against the terror beasts, the alien girl’s speed and stamina didn’t seem affected at all—she showed no signs of fatigue. I, on the other hand, could say I was at my limits and wanted to stop.

“How far is this place you are taking me?” I asked, as I stopped walking and sat down to take a breather. “You can kill me if you want, but I need to take a break, right now.” My knees and feet ached terribly. She stopped in her tracks and stared at me, full of resent like I had killed someone. Oh yeah, that’s right, I had almost fried her brother to crisp. I completely got where she was coming from, and I would have probably reacted in the same manner. Question was why was she keeping me alive? What kind of maniacal scheme did she have in mind for me, once I got to their territory?

“Are you sure you want to do that?” she snickered in a comment to scare me. “This territory is filled with those creatures and I don’t think you want to stay here too long.”

That being so, I didn’t care even for a bit—as I was, practically, exhausted physically and mentally. “Just give me five minutes, okay?” I said, closing my eyes like I was getting ready to sleep.

She jumped into the air and landed on the ground, with her right foot on my chest, in barely a second. It wasn’t long after before I realized what had happened and the fact that I couldn’t move. “You are lucky that my sister, our leader, wants to see you, otherwise, I would have torn you to shreds.”

For some reason, I believed her—I meant the part about tearing me to shreds. But who was she talking about? I wasn’t special or anything; however, to have their leader want to see me was something out of the ordinary. Normally when a leader wanted to see you, it usually meant they wanted something from you and the bargaining chip was usually your life. But what could she need from me?

Since I was already trapped, I decided to take a gamble and asked, “What does your leader want from me?”

I could only hope I didn’t say anything to offend her, otherwise, I wasn’t going to like the results. Her eyes gave no answers away. She was almost lacking in emotion.

“Good question,” she said and jumped back away, releasing me from her grasp. “We’ll just have to find out and then you can atone for your crime.”

“As I seem to recall, it was your brother who attacked us in the first place,” I whispered, blinking slowly.

“He was just a kid,” she growled at me, “it’s not like he was going to kill you or anything.”

True enough, he had warned us not to move before he attacked. But I had acted on impulse as I thought he was a threat. Thinking back, I probably shouldn’t have. Well, there were a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done, like eating that dried up cake back at the main ship. That could explain why my stomach hurt so much like this. I looked up, towards the sky, which had turned an almost blue grayish color, in wonder and full of thoughts. Just what was I doing here of all places? I should have stayed on earth to look for Rose, instead of running around playing hero with a bunch of psychopaths. It was definitely times like these I wish life were simple and boring.

“Okay, that’s enough rest, get up,” she said and launched me back to my feet roughly, with her left hand.

Such strength, I couldn’t help, but think highly of her craze and intensity. I truly wished I had that kind of drive. As soon as I was up back on my feet, thanks to her helping hand, I brushed blue dust off my feet and took a long deep breath.

“Alright then,” I mumbled, walking slowly in front of her, travelling to an unknown part of the planet.

This didn’t feel right, it felt like she was leading me into a trap. It sure smelled like a trap, felt like one too, well that was what my gut was telling me. However, it was too late to try and escape, considering how far we had walked. I could have tried to fight her off, but with the battle experience in her favor, winning was out of the option. Besides, I was curious to know where her base was and if there was some connection between her and the people who took my crew. I had enough firing power in my armor left to take out as many of them as I could, but if I failed then it would be the end of it. Things definitely looked bad at the moment. All I could do, for now, was play along and follow behind her as the captured prisoner of war. Suddenly, my feet sank and I fell into what looked like water. I tilted my head down too late to react. Realizing I had sunk into a pot hole of clear liquid, I struggled hard to get out with no sense of direction. Zoning into my own thoughts had led me into this dire situation, exposing me to the harsh elements of this planet. Fortunately, I could still breathe, since my oxygen tanks were still on.

I stopped moving and allowed myself enough time to think briefly. My heart was beating out of my chest, it was painful. I didn’t think my heart could handle all this stress. I tried looking in the direction of my bubbles, planning to follow them to the surface. Surprisingly, they all bubbled around me in a mini circle, which spooked me for a little bit. This sort of thing usually intensified my interest in the labs, as I knew all the properties of water or any other liquid of that sort. However, it was safe to say, I had never seen anything like it before, speaking in general of course. What was I thinking? I was trapped and all I could think about was science? My heart began to race again; I felt a sudden sage of adrenaline rushing through me. Suddenly, a hand reached out and grabbed me with such a force it dented my armor. I was pulled out of the water and onto the land, so fast, I barely noticed it happened. As I panted heavily, I looked around, embracing my freedom from oblivion and trying to look at the hero, who had saved me. Oh, I wasn’t exactly free yet. It was the girl who had rescued me. She was looking at me with a sinister smile, with her arms folded.

“Were you expecting someone else?” she snickered in a comment and picked up her weapon, which had struck the water.

Truth is, I really did expect someone else to be my rescuer. But then again, I wasn’t complaining either.

“Admit it, you are growing fond of me,” I said, standing up as water fell from my armor. “You just couldn’t let me go, could you?”

She stopped in her tracks and looked at me with such piercing eyes, “believe what you want, thank my sister. If she didn’t give me the order to spare your life, I would have left you inside there to rot.”

Oh, at least she was honest—I liked that. Although, her words pierced me deeply like a spear, but that was to be expected. I staggered back to my feet out of pure exhaustion. Fortunately, my armor seemed to be working slightly below decent. I had at least two or three hours worth, before the power battery pack ran out.

“Don’t fall behind or next time I won’t be here to help you,” she spoke as she walked ahead of me.

Normally, it was a standard thing to thank the person who saved your life. Yet, I was not going to thank her at all. My pride wouldn’t allow such a thing. I took one look back to see where I had fallen, and I was surprised by my discovery. The pot hole had just vanished. It was still there, I was sure of it. I put the matter aside and hurried along to catch up with the girl.

“Do you ever get tired of this blue color?”

She didn’t reply, and because of that, I didn’t bother making an effort to ask her again. I could tell that she hated my guts and I was really pushing my luck by annoying her. Without warning, she stopped and looked straight ahead. I immediately stopped and looked in the same direction. Just what was she looking at? All I could see were trees in front of us. The whole forest was blue, just like everything else on this stupid planet. Something about this particular place seemed out of the ordinary to her, of course. My scanner system was going haywire from some electromagnetic interference.

“We are here,” she said and pushed me down with such force I fell on my face.

“Hey, what was that for?” I screamed still lying on the ground.

At the same time, she ducked on the ground as I saw something that looked like a laser sweep by us in a flash. Everything a meter above was cut in half—trees fell below, making a cracking, hard noise. “What had I gotten myself into?”

The ground beneath our feet began to shift and change so suddenly, knocking me further off balance. Some big guns, I mean, really big guns appeared out of the ground and were pointed directly at us.

“Just my luck,” I sighed and quickly got up, moving out of the way. “Would you mind telling your friends to stand down?”

This was ridiculous, I mean—I was an enemy, but this was a bit extreme. The big guns began charging up what looked like proton rays, harnessing the power of an unknown natural element. The amount of energy they were emitting was absolutely incredible; it would take ten generators to produce this much energy.

“It’s a test, so try not to get killed.”

“What, are you serious?”

It seemed I had fallen into the hands of paranoid psychopaths. I usually didn’t do too well under pressure, most of the time, I crumbled. To show them I meant no harm, I didn’t move out of the way. It was a risky move, but the most logical. Abruptly, the big gun on the left fired down, nearly taking my head off. I quickly moved, sensing the impending danger, and dashed forward for cover. The longer I stayed here, the more likely I would die. All the trees had been cut off, meaning there wasn’t anywhere to hide.

“This can’t be real.”

For once, I wished to solve my problems with no issues or having to resort to violence. The anger inside me swelled up and I took out Rick’s gun and fired proton bullets at the big guns. The blasts had no effect on their metallic hulls. I couldn’t even see a dent on them. It was futile effort on my part. Realizing this, I stopped firing bullets to conserve the rounds and just kept running for my life. The other gun opened fire, barely missing both my legs. Had I not jumped into the air at the time, I would have been missing two limbs.

“What kind of test was this?”

It felt like they were trying to end my existence. There had to be a way out of this mess, but unfortunately, I hadn’t thought of it. I looked up and saw about 8 small cameras, hidden within the debris. These aliens were watching me and analyzing my armor. What did they want from me? Unexpectedly, the two big guns began firing at the same time, directly at me. Everything became ablaze in red fire and smoke, the air around me filled up with cloudy haze from the unknown powder, as the surrounding area became a hot zone. I ducked away, crawling between wooden stumps as I tried to get away. There was no escape for me this time. Just before I could jolt again, the big guns stopped firing and began to sink into the ground quickly.

“Well, this is new, but I’ll take it,” I whispered to myself and gripped my gun even tightly.

Was it over now? I panted heavily, lifting up to my feet. This experience was by far one of the worst things to happen to me, I thought.

“If I were you, I would begin running, now,” the girl yelled at the top of her lungs, from a branch of a really tall tree.

I looked up and saw her hidden tightly, a bit far away from my position. I had no idea how she got up there. At this point, nothing surprised me anymore. Something bad was about to happen. But what did she mean by start running? I pondered at the thought for a minute and looked straight down. The ground was shifting again, without warning, and this time, small terror beasts appeared. They didn’t exactly look like baby terror beasts in that they were a bit bigger and were armed with blades and guns on their abdomens. My heart faltered out of sheer terror; this was the last thing I expected to see.

“Seriously! When will this nightmare end?”

Times like this were the ones I wish I was in my lab coat, using my mini electron centrifuge, trying to isolate electron particles. Those days were boring, but at least I still had my head intact and I was happy. I looked at the new monsters before me and slightly backed away. There was something out of the ordinary about these creatures. Aside from having blades on their abdomen, they moved distinctively different from normal terror beasts. Without realizing it, I was struck from behind, causing me to stagger on my feet. Everything was blurry and obscure for a second. Once I got hold of myself, I firmly gripped my gun and switched my flight system on. I soared sorely out of range, distancing myself, far up, regaining a better coverage of the situation.

“I know already!”

My suit blinked frequently, warning me about the low power I had remaining. I landed far away from the creatures, on high ground, in order to conserve my remaining power. The ground beneath my feet was really unstable—all I felt was a slow tremor that shook everything silently. More armed terror beasts came out of the ground, launching a massive assault on me. I was certain now; I wasn’t dealing with normal terror beasts at all. The way they moved and executed their attacks was more consistent and coordinated. It was definitely not what normal terror beasts did. This sort of flabbergasted me. Instinctively, I turned on my flight thrusters and took off for the skies. I had less than five minutes of flight, so this had to be perfect execution. My body shivered at the thought of losing power and falling victim to these beasts.

Quickly, I retaliated and fired proton bullets at the terror beasts, planning to destroy them while I still had the chance. I was playing right into their hands. This was what the enemy wanted. To study all my tactics, moves, and weapons, in order to duplicate and use them against us. I still had my revolvers, but I wasn’t going to let the enemy see them and possibly seize them, before I could truly use them. I had to find another way to destroy these creatures without using my last resort. I felt my movements become sluggish as the suit vibrated at small intervals. It was likely my fate rested within the next few minutes of play. I stopped shooting my gun for a minute and thought carefully of a plan. As I was thinking, I noticed that they were still some trees still standing at a distance.

“If only I can make it that far.”

Speedily, I hovered my way towards them, conserving as much of my power as possible. One of the thrusters gave out a distinct noise informing me of the impending danger. There was a loud and alarming noise coming from it.

“Please make it.”

By some fortunate chance, I made it there and landed roughly on the nearest tree closest to me. The first phase of the plan had worked perfectly, but now came the hard part. I began firing my weapon at the terror beasts in order to get their attention. They fell for my snare and dashed towards me quickly, completely gullible to my scheme. What I didn’t expect was them firing weapons at me from their mouth like that giant lizard did. I ducked and hid against the bark of the tree—while carefully keeping my attention towards them. Were they all robots as well? That would explain the movements and their weapons. That being the case, I was still in over my head. The tree vibrated as if something had hit it. I looked down and saw one of the terror beasts climbing up. More followed suit as they shacked the tree in great numbers. Fortunately, this tree was a strong one, but I doubted it would hold out against that much combined weight. It was just a matter of time before they were all up here. Second phase of the plan might have worked too well. This was absolutely the worst test anyone could ever give me. Were they expecting me to fail? But what would happen if I passed? Nothing about any of this made any sense. How would I know if I passed or failed? Oh well, I gambled all my cards onto the floor and set up Rick’s gun to self distract with a remote detonator. The last phase of the plan involved blowing up the tree and making it fall onto the creatures. It wasn’t exactly what I would call perfect, but it was better than nothing. Only problem with it was too many flaws. Despite all those kinks, my strategy had worked. The armored terror beasts were halfway up and climbing the tree quickly. I had a few more seconds to carry out the last phase. Looking around, I spotted cracks and quickly placed the gun on the biggest one I could fit the gun through. Out of nowhere, one of the monsters attacked me and lunged onto my throat plate, lashing to rip it apart. Its grip was hard and tight, I could barely shake it off. Dangerously, I took a gamble and used a burst charge in my suit to electrically stun it. Doing this, I saw the remaining power take a massive plunge down, towards critical low levels.

“Darn it,” I whispered out frustrated.

My attempt to kill the creature with electricity had failed. The armored terror beast let go off me and fell below to the ground hard. It was only stunned for a few seconds before getting up to climb the tree again. Just what were these annoying creatures? I locked my knees with all my senses at high alert. The creatures were coming in really fast and would attack without mercy. This was definitely not in the pay description for this job. To think I had spent all that time studying in school, just to be eaten or ripped apart by monsters? What a joke. I definitely needed to have a talk with my guidance councilor again after this was all over.

“Wait, what am I saying?” I slapped myself back to reality, in time to dodge what looked like a blade that had been spat out at me. “Great! Now they can spit blades, too?”

It seemed things kept getting worse with each minute, and I was right smack in the middle of this huge storm. Quickly, I rotated my body, vertically, and jumped swiftly out of range in time, nearly avoiding two terror beasts that were coming from below. I had no way to predict their movements. It felt like they had been trained by someone. Perfect, they were nearly all centered on the tree. This was the moment I was waiting for. I took out the detonation trigger and held it tightly with my right hand—there was no margin for error. I waited for a few more seconds to allow myself to get out of the blast radius. Suddenly, one of the creatures readied itself to jump towards me, which was totally unexpected. I pulled the trigger too carelessly and exploded the gun before the creature could attack. There was a big blast centered on the tree hoarding the creatures. All I could see were bright red flames and a burning sensation as if my body was on fire. I landed hard onto the ground, groaning in agonizing pain. My whole body felt like it was engulfed in an inferno. It seemed I had not escaped the blast barely unharmed. But it was finally over. I trembled onto my back as I observed the surrounding, by rotating my head. There was debris, far and wide, and everything was synched and burning in red fire—nothing could have survived that, or at least I hoped. I struggled to get up, but my body wouldn’t let me. I had sustained damage beyond a few drugs and good night’s sleep. Definitely not good, taking into account, where I was, at the moment. All I could do was rotate my head, back and forth, and even that took a lot of effort. Thinking back, it was probably not a good idea to blow the tree so close to myself. Oh well, it had already happened and there was no going back.

“That’s enough,” a voice roared from somewhere, and echoed throughout the sky.

I looked up and saw a small armed terror beast near me, with it jaws aimed at my thigh, just frozen there. A chill of fear ran down my spine at the thought of what could have happened, if that voice had not spoke out. Although this feeling of fear seemed logical, pending my current dilemma.

“Take him and clear this mess already,” the voice commanded.

It was a feminine voice and sounded so powerful. You could tell a lot by the way someone speaks, and in this voice—I felt a lot power. Maybe, I was just delusional, but there was something about this voice that seemed familiar, like it belonged to someone I once knew. No, it couldn’t be, could it? Nah, I was just imagining it and I needed to stop. The last thing I needed to do was reminisce about the past in a situation like this. I heard footsteps; however, couldn’t pinpoint where they were coming from.

“This guy looks heavy,” an alien man appeared from nowhere and spoke. “It won’t be easy to carry him without removing his armor.”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I yelled out from the ground as loud as I could. “Nobody is removing my armor, not today or any other night.”

I had no set of clothes, except for boxers, so it was bad if they took off my armor. Probably my shy nature talking for me.

“Use your head, Maury,” another alien approached, walking confidently towards us. “His body is not used to our gravity; if he takes off the armor, he will most likely be crashed under the weight of our gravity.”

“Yeah, what he said,” I said, supporting the other guy. That excuse seemed more probable, compared to telling them that I had no clothes under this armor. Besides, this armor was stuck on me, but there was no point telling them that. The less the enemy knew, the better it was for me. Could not afford to compromise our mission any further, even if it was to save my own skin.

“Use my gravity lift,” the man handed the guy called Maury a strange device and left, shortly after. This day was turning out a lot better than I expected. I mean, I had not bit the dust yet which was good. My future seemed uncertain at this point. What were they going to do to me next? Barely breathing, I was at their mercy. My stomach tightened at the thought of them torturing me to my demise for information.

“I really can’t believe you did that though,” Maury commented, readjusting the strange device in his hands. “Not a whole lot of fools out there still willing to pull out dangerous stunts like that. You must have nerves of steel or something.”

He tinkered with it for a moment and pointed it down at me. Something happened as I could feel a flash of rays lift me off the ground. It felt like I was weightless, like a heavy burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Hated to admit it, but that was an amazing work of technology.

“But you know what?” he walked in front of me, and at the same time, pulling me behind him. “I am very impressed with your generation. You have taken technological advancement to the next level. It seems, earth went through a lot of changes since we left, centuries ago.”

He knew our language quite well. In fact, every alien I met seemed fluent in it. That being said, his physical appearance was not that of an earthling. I mean his skin, mainly, of course. There were no gray men on earth, and trust me, I knew. Every earthling was a mixture of different races that all blended together a few centuries back when the world government formed a one earth country. It was just illogical for there to be gray people, but then again— accounting what I had been through, I could be wrong. Since he was willing to talk, I saw my opportunity to get some answers.

“When was that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He glanced back me and chuckled, “a few centuries ago; back then, things were different. From what I can see from you, there has been new development.”

“Yeah, well, if you can call terror beasts wreaking havoc on earth a development, then yes, there is definitely major change,” I sarcastically replied back.

“What is a terror beast?” he paused and looked backed at me, with a serious look on his face.

It suddenly dawned on me. How could I not have realized this? On earth, we called them terror beasts, but on this planet, they called them something else, possibly.

“Well, you see,” I tried to find better words to explain it to him. “Those creatures in the forest, on this planet, are actually finding their way to earth.”

Not subtle; however, he got the message. I definitely could have said it in better words, but this wasn’t a public speaking contest after all.

“What! Impossible” he growled, with shock filled eyes, like he had heard something terrible.

Oh wait, I had told him something terrible so this reaction was to be expected to say the least. But why did he care? What was earth’s future to him? Maurice stood still for a couple of seconds with his head down. There was a sense of anger brewing inside of him—I felt it like a cold piercing dagger.

“So it has already started,” he whispered, with sweat dropping down his head; it looked like he was basking in the oven.

His once vibrant movements had now been replaced with irrational frantic gestures that spooked me out a little. Something about what I had said had left him feeling irrational. I was curious as to know what it was. Asking him questions right now seemed like a really terrible idea.

“This is bad, I have to warn the others,” he said and started to walk quickly, while dragging me behind on the gravity lift.

So did this mean he didn’t know about what was happening on earth? But what could it all mean? His facial expression had changed when I told him about the beasts coming to earth, but what I couldn’t tell was why. More importantly, were these people my enemy or friends? We went right past the debris and rubble, going to an unknown location. Maurice suddenly stopped by a latch door, leading directly underground. He walked directly by it and typed in an access code. The door let out a loud noise before sliding open. Maurice pulled me inside as he walked through it. It was so dark, I could barely see anything. My com link lenses had also drained out of power, which meant my sight was really bad. I felt a slight ting of discomfort build inside me—getting dragged inside an enemy base was not something I was particularly fond of. I knew I had to find some way to escape. By now, Dalla and Rick had acquired the engine equipment and were possibly on their way back. That was if they had not run into unexpected trouble. We finally came to this grand, big door, far to the right, at the end of the tunnel. It was red, blue, and very bright like it was reflecting an invincible sun. As I lay there, floating in the air, I pondered to myself, wondering what was on the other side of the metal door. Was it more enemies or terror beasts? Maybe, it was a clinic or the kitchen. Well, to be honest, I hoped it was both. The mind blowing sensation of starvation and pain was just too much to overcome. I desperately longed to have some fresh food going down my throat alongside pain easing therapy capsules.

“Ow! Ow!”

I had involuntarily pulled a muscle on my neck, which made the chronic pain more aggravating. For a second, it felt like my entire body went numb. The more I tried to fight it off, the more excruciating it got.

“I will leave you in here, the nurse will take care of you,” Maurice said, leaving the gravity lift lying on the floor.

He paced his way out of sight, hurrying up the corridor. My mind was in agonizing pain, but I could still tell what was going on. Just what nurse was he talking about? Everything was quiet all around me. I was lying in front of the big door and I started freaking out of my mind. Trapped in enemy territory, I didn’t know what to expect or what was going to come at me from any direction. Suddenly, the big door opened up slowly, with a screeching noise. I wanted to close my ears to stop the screeching from aggravating my pain, but I couldn’t. Once it opened all the way, a reverting darkness loomed all around me. There was a chilling frightening sensation coming from the room. Someone or something was stalking me, hidden within the dark. I suddenly caught sound of footsteps approaching from the room. My heart paced a little bit as I was spooked. I tilted my head up to see who or what approached me. Shockingly, I saw no one. Although, I knew someone was there. The footsteps got louder and louder, drawing closer. My conscious screamed out towards me to flee. Whatever approached me was probably not friendly.

“This is a surprise, indeed,” a cold voice spoke, and suddenly, a woman appeared out of the dark.

She had a gray tone to her skin just like the others, but scars on her arms, like a giant needle had been used to saw back her arms. Her persona was entirely chilling and weird. She carried herself like a lady, walking with confidence in her steps. However, something about her eyes though was out of character.

“It’s not every day I see a rare specimen like you,” she commented, lingering closer to observe me. She came so close to me, that I could clearly see the glimmer in her purple-like eyes as clear as daylight. Her breath smelt of lavender cinnamon and chocolate. Yep, she was just too close for personal comfort.

“On second thought, I am feeling better now,” I panicked and tried to move away. I don’t think I wanted her to treat my wounds.

“What’s the matter?” she poked me on an exposed part of my chest armor.

I screamed out in pain, making a loud noise that echoed throughout the entire complex. My whole body reacted to the pain through impulsive shivers.

“Are you sure?” she asked again, with a faint smile of her lips, looking at me with such curious, sinister eyes.

Now, I was really positive I didn’t want her operating on me at all. I didn’t like pain. She took control of the gravity lift Maurice had left on the ground and pulled me into the dark room. Crap, was this really happening? It felt like one of those scary scenes from horror movies where you expected something bad to happen and it usually did. The door closed behind us without being touched, completely startling me. Giant bright lights came on and illuminated directly into my eyes, making me almost blind.

“I am anxious to dissect you and see how the human race has evolved over time,” she spoke from somewhere in the room, like a phantom.

What! Did she say dissect? Perhaps my ears were deceiving me. I was hoping I had misheard her—because that was scary.

“Come again, please? I didn’t hear what you just said.”

I heard a few more footsteps and suddenly she appeared, next to my right foot. Eyes sparkling like fluorescent stars and a smile as frightening like that of a terror beast. But to be precise, she was pretty when she smiled like that. There were a few scapulas hidden beneath her lab shirt and something that looked like a mini x-ray scanner tucked between them.

“I said, I want to dissect you and see how the human race has evolved over time.”

Yeah, I definitely heard her right the first time, but it was just hard to process the information. Just what had I gotten myself into? I looked her straight in the face and realized how serious and twisted she was. There was no sense of deliberation or remorse in her eyes. This lady was too dangerous and I had to escape her immediately. One tiny problem, there was no way to escape at the moment. My only option was to try and convince her otherwise.

“Ha! Very funny indeed,” I laughed, trying to make a joke out of the situation. Only thing was that she wasn’t laughing at all.

“That wasn’t a joke.”

“Well, our bodies haven’t changed from what you already know; we still have our organs and limbs in the same place as you guys. There is no need for you to dissect me, honest.”

The thought of her dissecting me was not exactly how I intended my life to end. I liked my body with all my organs intact, thank you very much. She stood there, motionless, watching me for a couple of seconds without muttering a word. Suddenly, a fiery smile emerged on her face. She was brewing something terrible inside her psychopathic mind.

“Nah, there is something about you that is different from everyone else around here, and I am curious to know what it is.”

She walked away and picked up what looked like a proton drill. The machine made a loud screeching noise that almost destroyed my eardrums. She came back towards me with the drill and looked straight into my eyes, with a large grin. Yeah, she definitely was seriously trying to dissect me, judging by her facial expression. You definitely didn’t need to be a genius to figure that out. I watched her place the machine on my armor. She began drilling off the first shell cover on it. My heart pounced out painfully as fear rushed through me. This was not part of the agreement—the alien girl, from before, said her leader wanted to speak with me, she never mentioned dissection to me. I could have remembered something like that if she had. Well, this definitely was not the right way to start a conversation with someone, in my opinion.

Suddenly she stopped. “This armor is much harder than I thought. I might need something bigger and stronger to remove it.”

Phew, I was safe for a few more seconds. There was a giant puddle of sweat on my forehead. It was falling into my eyes and making them sting terribly. The situation was becoming troublesome and I needed to come up with a plan to get out of here. My life was hanging on a whim that looked like it could fall at any second from now, only making things a little rough.

“Relax, this will only hurt a little and then it will be over,” she came back, holding what looked like a metal disrupter.

Was she joking? How could I possibly relax when someone was about to cut my chest open? If anything, I was far from relaxed. On no, I was slightly sure I just wet my boxers out of fear. Darn, it was my only pair so I really hoped it was just a lot of sweat or something. I closed my eyes as I felt her bring the machine closer towards my chest. My mind shattered from all the thoughts surging through it at that time period. Suddenly, the big door opened again, before she could begin her attempt again. Someone walked in slowly and stopped halfway.

“Stop teasing him, Ariya,” the person spoke and came into the light.

She was a vibrant angel and she reminded me of someone. It was right at the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t remember who. Well, I was safe for the moment and that was all that mattered. I rolled my head back to get a better glimpse of her. She was rather beautiful for an alien. Up close, I realized it was her voice that had stopped the terror beast from killing me. I thought I recognized her voice from somewhere else, but now, I wasn’t sure anymore. Wait a minute; the more I looked at her, the more I realized who she reminded me of. The model girl from that Aliases hologram magazine issue #67—well, excluding the gray skin. This brought back some teen memories. I used to be a fan of those magazines when I was in my teenage years—those were indeed the wonder years.

“Control yourself, Den,” I thought to myself and took a breath, trying to imagine Rose.

How strange, every memory of her seemed to come up blank, for some unknown reason. What was going on in my head? Perhaps not seeing her in four years was causing a memory lapse inside my brain. Or, conceivably, it had something to do with this new attractive stranger in front of me.

“So you are the boy my sister brought home, you caused quite a commotion,” she said gently; it sounded almost rude, and yet, soothing.

“Darn, I am not a boy, I am a man,” I growled at her.

I was very sensitive when it came to that. I don’t know why, but ever since I turned 21, I wanted people to refer to me as a man, instead of boy. I think it was linked to the way my parents treated me. I wanted freedom and respect from them more than anything else, since I had come of age. The last thing I wanted was them interfering with my life dreams any more than they had. It was definitely something along those lines. The new stranger paced closer to me and looked directly into my eyes. She was standing a few inches away from the cold crazy nurse without saying anything.

“It seemed this one has got quite the temper on him,” the nurse, with metal disrupter, interrupted and turned on the machine.

“Stop teasing him, Ariya, I have some questions I need him to answer,” the woman commanded, banging her fist on the table.

The whole room shook for a minute. It felt like everything was going to break at once. The cold nurse did not back away at all—she looked excited more than fearful.

“Oh come on, Kristin,” she replied, moving even closer. “Don’t be like that.”

The tension in the room was rising really fast. I could tell that there was some bad history between them. But what did that mean for me? All this commotion and excitement was really starting to rub me the wrong way. My heart could not take any more of this abuse.

“You never let me have any more fun with the patients,” the crazy nurse spoke in a whiny voice.

“Well, if you stopped trying to kill them all the time, then I would,” Kristin replied back, folding her arms.

“I was just playing around,” Ariya spoke and tapped my helmet a few times, “look at him: he is having a blast.”

Define blast? Honestly, I had no idea what she was talking about. Her sense of humor was really messed up.

“This one is special and I can’t let you do what you want with him,” Kristin looked at her angrily. “He has some vital information and I need him alive.”

As soon as she was done speaking, Ariya walked up to me and said, “this is your lucky day.”

She tapped my helmet again and left the room, in a slow and confident manor. Finally, I was alone with their leader and a few questions popped into my mind. However, a feeling of danger crept in. My life depended on the questions and answers I could provide her, which was not really a lot. I was under orders not to say anything to the enemy, and right now, she qualified as a major threat to me. Could I risk my life and stay quiet the whole time? She took something from her pockets and placed it out in the open. It looked like a syringe with an unknown chemical inside it. I felt uncomfortable as she brought it close to me and injected it into the exposed part on my arm. The needle pierced deeply into my veins, sending a jolting sensation throughout my body. My body vibrated and felt really weird.

“I want you to tell me everything you know,” she said, staring at me with those mesmerizing eyes.

I was caught in the gaze of her enchanting eyes before I knew it. How could I possibly say no to her now? Oh wait! What was I thinking all of a sudden? Something was wrong with me. Before I knew it, I opened my mouth and told her everything, from my own history all the way to the secret mission. I just couldn’t stop myself from blurting out everything I knew, even the most embarrassing things about myself.

“Okay, this is awkward,” she said, with a facial expression filled with surprise and shock. “I really just wanted to know why you were here, but you gave me a mouth full and it only took you ten minutes. It seems the dosage I gave you was too much.”

“You injected me with some sort of truth serum, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I am sorry,” she replied and shifted her body to the left. “It was the only way to know if you were a friend or foe.”

“So, am I a friend or a foe?” I asked her.

“You are our ally for now,” she responded, gazing straight into my eyes. “We share the same goals and enemies.”

“Okay, now that you know about me, tell me something about yourself.” I asked her, blushing without any signs of doubt in my voice. It was the truth serum making me divulge everything I was thinking out loud. The chemical was impairing my judgment and higher cognitive function.

“I’m starting to see why Rose left you,” she commented, shaking her head at me.

Okay, that was a low blow and I had no idea what she meant by that at all. Bringing Rose into this conversation was definitely something I didn’t see coming.

“I will tell you one thing,” her facial expression changed all of a sudden without warning. “Earth is in grave danger and we need to act now.”

What was she trying to tell me? Her words were like a hologram puzzle with missing pieces. As far as I could tell, every living organism on earth was in jeopardy of extinction. The terror beasts attacked everything without prejudice. When they attacked, usually nothing survived that fatal encounter.

“What are you trying to say?” I responded rudely, my eyes widening with fear. “You are hiding something from me, aren’t you?”

“You don’t understand,” she cut me off completely, in a cold tone. “A lot of things are going on and it’s complicated. The truth is more frightening than you think.”

Was she trying to scare me? Well, it was working because my heart was racing so much—it felt like it was going to explode. I really think I was going to die of a heart attack one of these days, I could feel it. But, still, whatever she meant was definitely serious. If this was true, then we were in for a big wake up call. This planet was definitely linked to the terror beast invasion on earth. But how were they getting to our planet? I looked at her indirectly; she had the final piece I needed to finish this puzzling mystery.

“What do you know?”

I no longer felt any fear in asking her any question relating to my mission.

“The truth is stranger than fiction. You wouldn’t believe me, even if I explained it to you, so get better and find out for yourself,” she replied and typed in something on the table monitor.

“Are you serious? Why are you people hiding information from me?” I rattled and fell silent from pain. The ache in my body was agonizing. The more angry and emotional I got, the less bearable it was.

“This room is composed of healing light,” she changed the subject on me. “You will get the answers you seek in time. In the mean time, remain calm and try not to move as much for the next six hours, while your body heals.”

I didn’t reply since I didn’t have the strength to talk anymore. I lowered my breathing to remain calm and at ease. I watched her move slightly away from me, like she was about to leave. Strangely, I felt better for some reason. The light soothing into my pores was healing me slowly.

“By the way, you failed our test,” she walked towards the door, unhurriedly. I could hear her every footstep.

“How did I fail?”

“Just know that it’s a good thing,” she glanced back one last time and left. “If you had passed, we would have killed you in that instant.”

Oh, it appeared the test was rigged from the start, and a good thing I didn’t use my emergency revolvers to deal with the matter. Man, I hated this planet more and more with every passing second. I couldn’t wait to get off this miserable rock. As I lay there trying to sleep, I thought about Ali and everyone else. He was probably worried sick. Knowing him, he saw this scenario playing out and had a backup plan. By now, Dalla and Rick had made it back with the equipment. Most likely, the ship had already left this planet.

Nah, they wouldn’t do that to us now, would they? Everything seemed to have gotten out of hand so fast, like a speeding train with no brakes. This had gone beyond a simple recon mission into something far much larger than just an upscale invasion. Slowly, but surely, I began losing consciousness as I drifted into a deep sleep. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep—far away from the clutches of the cruel reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

“Wake up,” a rude voice yelled so loud it almost blew off my cochlea.

This person certainly could use a tooth brush with a lot of paste. No, better make it two toothbrushes. I could smell the stench of what smelled like alcohol, and it was strong enough to make my nostrils burn. I opened my eyes, halfheartedly, and got stung by a bright light. I shielded my eyes quickly and rolled out of bed. My body no longer felt painful and all the exhaustion I had felt before was gone. Something felt out of place. No way! My armor had somehow been removed from my body. I was wearing what looked like silk pajamas. Who could have done this? They had even changed my boxers without my approval, the nerve of some people! How could they invade my privacy like that? Still, it felt great to be able to touch my own flesh and bone.

“Come with me, Wet Pants,” the man waved me towards him as he proceeded to exit the room.

What did he mean by “wet pants”? Oh crap, I really had wet myself. It was likely that everyone in this underground base knew about this secret. Just my luck, I was already the laughing stock of the enemy base on the first day. I felt embarrassed and a bit humiliated. However, I didn’t let it get to me. My mission came first before anything else. The man made an abrupt cough, informing me that I was taking too long. He looked at me impatiently, while tapping his fingers closer to the hatch door. I got the message and followed behind him quickly. The hatch door closed behind me automatically while blinking slowly. We walked through the underground corridors and past a few sideways floors. Bizarrely, the corridors were empty of enemies—it was just too silent. Something about this place gave me the chills. I felt weird being here without any armor or weapons.

“Where is my armor?” I asked as I caught up to pace with the alien man who woke me up.

He looked so drunk like he had jumped into a lake of alcohol. He proceeded to burp out loudly; the stench reverting from his breath repulsed me back greatly. I paced a few feet back, but still following behind him.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he snickered in a rude remark, glaring at me in the eye for a second.

The narrow corridor ended as we began to move across a thick metal plated hall, heading to another unknown section. Honesty, I was impressed with the architecture; the whole fortress was deep underground and very big. The amount of work and dedication that went into building this base was astounding. Surprisingly, the gravity was not affecting me in any way. The level of technological advancement on this planet was also impressive. Suddenly, my nose caught scent of a nice smell. It was coming from somewhere ahead of us, as it leaked from a vented door. It smelled like something good was cooking and I couldn’t wait to eat because I was starving. I picked up pace and went in front, trudging towards that room as I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Not yet,” the drunk man pulled me back, by grabbing a hold of my arm. “There is someone who wants to see you first.”

I really hoped it was important. Usually nothing came between me and my food, when I was hungry. But what was it with these people and trying to see me at the worst possible time? The smell was too strong as I could almost taste it on my lips. My taste buds and my stomach were mad at me as I stopped going towards that smell and followed the drunken man. I bore the hunger and took my mind off it. It was almost classical watching the drunk alien walk in front of me, with his booze in one hand. I don’t know how, but he was still able to keep walking without falling. That much alcohol was enough to kill some people; however, he just owned it, like he had done this a thousand times over. He stopped instantaneously in front of a thick hatched door.

“After you, Wet Pants,” he commented and opened the hatched door loudly.

I paused briefly in my steps; I had no idea what was inside that room. For all I knew, it could be a trap. There was also a possibility it was a party in my honor or sort. After all, Kristin had mentioned that I wasn’t her enemy. Oh well, as long as they didn’t call me wet pants. I really hated that name, the more I heard him say it. I stepped in, cautiously, and noticed that there were a few people sitting in high chairs, on what looked like a square table. The interior of the room was emerald green, covered with framed pictures of great battles. If my guess was right, it was their main conference room, based on how well the place was secured and built. I glared around and noticed all of their eyes turn towards me.

“Please sit down,” one of them said, in a nice, warm voice.

There was a faint smile on his face combined with an expression of kindness. How could I possibly say no? I sat down and politely looked around the room to see who these people were. One of them was the woman I met before, Kristin, sitting in the seat directly opposite of mine. There were projectile-like files on the desk being displayed on a highly advance com screen. I caught a glimpse of her eyes and noticed an unbound will, the type of passion only portrayed by a true leader and great warrior.

“Like I said before,” Kristin got up and walked across the room in a calm pace. “Now, I am going to show you what I meant by those words.”

What was she talking about? I thought to myself for a second and remembered what we had talked about before, in that dark room. It took me a second, but it was now clear what she meant and all I could do was listen.

“The earth is going to be annihilated.”

“No, Kristin, you mustn’t,” one of the men spoke out, trying to silence her. “We really don’t know anything about this boy, and for all we know, he could be a spy.”

Darn! There was that word again I hated so much. My anger swirled inside from at the mention of the word boy.

“I am not a boy, I am a man,” I screamed out at him and jumped out of my chair.

I probably shouldn’t have done that; nevertheless, it was necessary that they give me a bit of respect. I think it was the side effects of the truth serum still bearing down on me. The whole room fell silent as I could feel their eyes on me; their faces were plastered with surprise and fascination.

“See, like I said before,” the alien man rattled, pointing at me in a rude way. “This boy or man is an idiot. No one in their right mind lashes out at his enemy right in their base.”

He said boy again, I was a bit furious, but at the same time, he had also mentioned man which calmed me a bit. However, I wasn’t an idiot. It was true—I lashed out, but it was just to mark my territory, and get some respect.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kristin said and walked up to me without any hesitation.

She patted me on the shoulders and said, “this boy is all we got, there isn’t any other earthling we can find at the moment, so deal with it.”

Did she just call me boy? Oh well! How could I possibly stay mad at her? I was kind of insulted, and also honored at the thought of being part of something this big. The destruction of earth was something I had to prevent at all cost. If I could become a hero, then Rose would have no choice, but to come back falling into my arms. That was if I find her, of course. I giggled and smiled to myself at the thought of it, and imagined my life afterwards.

“Are you sure we can trust this idiot?” another man commented in a very intimidating voice. “I mean, look at him, he is laughing to himself and giggling at nothing like a rabid dog.”

I resented that remark from him. That being said, he was right—to others, I did look like a fool.

“So as I was saying,” Kristin continued and walked directly to the com screen. “Your planet is in danger of being completely destroyed. The terror beasts coming to your planet were not some sort of natural disaster that befell your planet; rather, it was a staged event, an invasion decades in the making.”

What! How could this be? I had imagined something like this to be the case, but I truly hoped I was wrong. I placed my hand on my face, unable to contemplate the new information I was receiving. The truth was definitely stranger than fiction. Part of me didn’t want to believe anything she was saying to me. I looked into her eyes and saw no signs of deception in them; it seemed everything she was telling me was probably true. I wanted to question her words of choice; however, I chose not to at the last minute. I wasn’t going to interrupt, since it appeared she was about to explain everything to me.

“There is a dark conspiracy that correlates the events happening on this planet to your planet, earth. Unless something is done, both this planet and earth are doomed for annihilation. We are part of the Resistance, sworn to free this planet from the hands of a maniac, who is responsible for all this.”

Great! Just great, whenever disaster struck, there was always a power hungry maniac grabbing onto power. Questions remaining was why earth? What did the maniac have to gain by invading or destroying earth?

“Why does he want to destroy earth?” I asked, a bit confused.

“Okay, as you didn’t know, the kingdom on this planet used to be called Ras. A great nation that fell into misfortune and was assumed destroyed centuries ago. Because of the advanced technology of our country, we were able to warp teleport the whole kingdom off earth and onto this planet. That was almost centuries ago, when we arrived here. We suffered terribly at the hands of the ruthless beasts inhabiting this planet; however, we overcame and found peace for almost 200 years. That all changed when one of the scientists went insane from tragedy and sadness, and took over the planet. Majority of the people on this planet fell under his control, and are in some kind of mind control hypnosis.”

“Okay, stop,” I cut her completely, pausing to process the information. “That was a little bit too much information for one day, I really need a drink.”

“Are you sure you are old enough to drink, wet pants?” an older gentleman said and the whole room burst out laughing.

I blushed for a second and chuckled, trying not to show that I was furious at the moment. His joke didn’t sound funny at all, but I said nothing. This was not the time to make friends or enemies. It seemed my natural sense for curiosity had led me to the truth. Sad to say: I couldn’t handle it. This was way out of my pay rate. I scanned thoroughly across the room and noticed something interesting.

“I have been curious about one thing,” I stared her in the eye, while adjusting my posture a little bit. “How come all of the inhabitants of this plant have gray melanin? It strikes as odd, since you said you used to be earthlings.”

Kristin smirked lightly, “the planet’s sun is different from the one on earth—and over the centuries, our bodies adapted to the new harsh environment, which mutated and rewrote our DNA. Most of our organs shifted and evolved in order to meet the demands required for survival on this planet.”

“Oh ok.”

Amazing! This was natural selection at its best. I wouldn’t believe it unless I was seeing it right with my own eyes. I thought about all the limitless possibilities of research I could conduct on this planet. I was curious to see how different these former earthlings were from us, the current earthlings. For some unknown reason, they aged slower or were practically immortal. I looked around, carefully, and speculated my findings to be arguable. Just what was their secret to prolonged life? So many questions cramped up in my brain, as that was all I could think of.

“How are the terror beasts; I mean, creatures getting to our planet so easily,” I asked her, finally starting to get serious. “There has to be a way to stop them, right?”

“The dimensional gate we used to get here is the same gate the maniac is using, to get the creatures back to earth,” Kristin spoke with her hands folded. “It’s possible to stop the creatures from coming to earth, but I can’t guarantee it to work.”

Now it all made sense to me. This explained why we never detected or saw the creatures appear until it was too late. No one could have guessed it was all due to a dimensional gate warp. We never assumed that to be a successful possibility. A decade ago, several scientists attempted to travel through dimensions and failed miserably. Their attempt caused a catastrophic disaster, which almost obliterated half a city. The laws that controlled dimensional travels were extremely risky and dangerous—one error in calculations could have dire consequences in nature and on the planetary axis. Due to that, the planetary government banned all research linked to this type of technology. The fact that this planet had that kind of technology was an extremely uncomfortable thought. In order to stop something like that, we needed extra man power, and a lot of firing power. Assuming there was a battalion of alien soldiers and horde of terror beasts between us and the gate. There was no other way; the gate had to be destroyed.

“How many times has this gate been used?” I sighed out of sheer anxiety.

“More than a dozen times, to be precise. As you can see, there are severe penalties to using this kind of technology. Our planet stopped rotating after the forth dimensional warp, which is why it is always day on this side of the planet.”

“I don’t want to point out the elephant in the room, but doesn’t this child remind you of someone we once knew?” one of the men, on my left, spoke out, completely changing the subject.

He looked at me with eyes full of utter fascination. I felt their eyes piercing deeply towards me like they were checking me out. I was uneasy as I shifted my body away from the center table. I heard them seconds later murmur in an inside language I couldn’t understand. It seemed, they had taken a sudden interest in me.

“Yes, he does,” Kristin replied and patted my back lightly. “This is why this plan of ours will work. He will never see it coming.”

“Brilliant, Kristin, you are definitely your father’s daughter,” another man commented and they all agreed with him.

I saw an opportunity and I seized it. Apparently, I held some sort of value to them. My life was no longer in danger—they were not my enemy, nevertheless, my allies. Meaning I could use them too and vice versa. If I was to destroy the gate, I had to get them to help me. But why did they come only to me? There was another motive to their agenda with me.

“You came to me personally and I want to know why.”

There was an awkward silence for a few minutes, as they chatted amongst themselves on what to say next. All I could hear were grunting noises and a few nods as they came to an agreement. My body shivered at the thought of this situation going badly. I was pushing my luck by asking them questions rudely. At this point, I had to be careful about what to say next.

“Coincidentally, you are the only earthling we were able to peacefully contact. Our plan is to talk to your superiors and form an alliance. The only way to get rid of the terror beast problem on your planet is for you to work with us.”

It was a tempting offer, but I felt like there was something more they were not telling me, something very important. I folded my arms for a minute and closed my eyes to think to myself on my next move. It was true, they had another use for me besides being the liaison. Their plan most likely involved me doing something vital and life-threatening. If I survived this, I was going to ask for a raise from the government. I opened my eyes again and noticed their heads turned towards the central hologram monitor.

“We don’t have all day, you know?” another impatient older man in room yelled at me, and banged the table with his fist.

I don’t know what his problem was; it really was not his choice to force me to join them. Carefully, I pondered to myself, rationalizing what my remaining options were. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any left at the moment. Every choice I could make all boiled up to the same thing. Realizing that, I looked up and took a risky gamble.

“What happens if I say no?” I spoke, tucking my arms. I needed to know how desperately they needed my help.

“Are you sure you want to say no?” Kristin said and looked me in the eye without blinking.

I gulped and thought to myself for a second. My words of choice didn’t seem to fool her at all. She knew what I was up to and wasn’t going to fall into my lure.

“Fine, but I want you to give me back my armor and weapons,” I said and got up to leave. “I will cooperate with you, just this one time.”

As I left, I didn’t look back. The door opened and closed behind me, automatically. The hallway was completely vacant and silent; everything seemed unfamiliar to me. I had no idea which direction I had come from. Great, I left trying to act cool, and now I was outside, not knowing where to go. Darn! If I went back inside, they would think I was an idiot. “Oh well!”

I decided to walk and figure out the place on my own. Eventually, I would stumble upon someone who would guide me back. I could smell an aroma in the air of food. It seemed I was going back in the right direction, towards the kitchen. My stomach rumbled with each step I took. I walked for a few minutes without seeing a single trace of alien people in the floor tunnels. It was strange and quite odd. Much was to be said about my new allies, they weren’t much on trust; however, they were very powerful. A few questions still remained on my mind and I couldn’t figure them out. What kind of alliance did they want to forge with my superiors? Why did they choose me? Was this a trap? As far as I was concerned, the mission was over. It was time to buckle up and prepare for a great storm. Stopping another terror beast invasion and destroying the dimensional warp gate was the most important thing to me. Suddenly, I smelled the sweet aroma of food again, and I dashed towards it without hesitation. I skidded past the corner and threw myself at the metal hatch between me and the food. My mind had turned completely blank as food was all I could think of. I opened the hatch door without knocking and went inside. There was a bright glare of light, as I found myself at the center of a big room full of alien people. They stopped eating and turned all of their attention towards me completely. It felt like I was some stranger from another planet. Oh wait, I was a stranger from another planet to these guys, so this reaction was to be expected. Everyone went silent, without a warning. This much attention was too much for me. I was a bit shy, so I looked down and made my way to the source of all the food. Whoa! Even on this planet, I was surprised to see that they also had service drones that prepared food.

“What would you like to eat?” the drone asked and showed me a list of everything on the menu. As expected, there wasn’t anything I was accustomed to on earth, which sort of upset me. However, I was hungry and I needed to eat something. I scanned through the menu and didn’t find anything exactly appetizing. The sensation I felt from their alien eyes was rather maddening. Quickly, I ordered randomly and waited while my food was being prepared. I heard them start to whisper silently amongst themselves about me. It was so uncomfortable and yet annoying that I just wanted to lash out and tell them to stop it. The robot made a beeping noise, alerting that my food was ready. I picked up the food and walked towards the vacant table, at the left corner. As I sat down to eat, I could still hear them talk and laugh at my expense.

“How unusual it is to find a true earthling, in here,” a voice said and I noticed a man sitting beside me. “What are you doing here, so far from home?”

I chewed my food hard. “Good question. If I knew, you would be the first to know.”

The food was a bit unusual, to say the least, and almost tasted like vomit mixed with sugar. It left an after crunch feeling in my mouth that made my taste buds all wobbly.

“Ah! Havoc beast vomit is a good choice, it is a delicacy in this part of the planet,” he said and ate his food.

Wait, I stopped chewing and looked at him. He looked serious and rather captivated with me. Did he say havoc beast vomit? No wonder it tasted terrible. I felt like throwing up at the moment.

“What is this?” I spat out the food completely. “Is this some sort of joke?”

He looked at me strange and laughed, “Oh, so you didn’t know? What you are eating was taken from the vomit of havoc beasts. It’s quite good, just takes a lot of getting used to, that’s all. By the way, I wouldn’t vomit if I was you; on this planet, we consider that to be rude.”

Really, I wouldn’t have guessed that at all from first glance. There was so much about this planet I really hated. I felt like throwing up, although, I held it in and puked a lit bit in my mouth. It was so hard to act natural with all the eyes in the room, staring directly at me, with no breaks in between.

“Do you always give your guests this much attention?” I chuckled, feeling annoyed by the unwanted stares.

The alien stranger, next to me, sighed and took out a device that looked like sync locker machine, “no, just to those we have never seen before, especially earthlings. It’s been a while since I last saw earth. I would like to ask you how things have been, but there is no time. Kristin already told you what is happening right now, so I will cut right to the chase. We are going to the kingdom of Ras soon—go grab your gear and be ready to move out.”

“Wait, what!”

Was he for real? He quickly stood up and left in a hurry, leaving me clueless at to what we were exactly doing. I slowly rinsed my mouth with what appeared to be water and sighed completely. And so it begins. My future was going to be determined within the next few hours. Honestly, not exactly how I expected things to play out. I wanted to learn the truth, but not like this. I was no longer sure if I still wanted my questions answered. What am I thinking? Time was of the essence. Courageously, I closed my eyes and ate the remaining terror beast vomit, in order to restore my energy. It was a terrible choice, but necessary, nonetheless. I got up and jolted out of the compartment without the slightest moment of delay. I stopped again, completely confused—I had no idea where I was. The floors all looked the same; this underground fortress was almost similar to a labyrinth. Left or right! Which way? I didn’t want to get lost, but time was not on my side—and I had to go retrieve my armor.

“Come with me,” someone whispered, grabbing a hold of my hand and leading me somewhere.

It was a child, and by the looks of it, the boy I had stunned half dead. His grip was strong and heavy like he wanted to crush my hand. I just hoped he held no grudges against me. But where was he taking me?

“Where are we going?” I stopped moving.

“Look,” he replied quickly, looking back at me with such knife-like eyes; it was like he could see right through me. “My sister told me to take you to your armor. I personally don’t like you and think it’s a bad idea to work with you, but I will listen to my sister, for now. Screw up and I will personally take you out.”

Good to know, I guess making mistakes was also out of the option. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. What was my role in this new operation? The boy led me to this room where their entire armory was. My eyes wondered in every direction, filled with utter fascination. Such remarkable technology was way beyond belief. I had never set my eyes on such well, crafted weapons before. No wonder the world saw Ras as a threat. High level weapons like these were classified as contraband, and anyone seen with this stuff, would probably be jailed. Well, that was on earth, of course. On this planet, those rules didn’t apply. I shifted away from the boy and slid far more into the armory for a better view. I looked left and right, absolutely excited beyond belief. Carelessly, I took one gun and examined it up close—it was light and smooth and ran on some sort of external energy source. I unclipped the cartridge to examine the bullets carefully. Unexpectedly, they were made of an unknown fiber metal. The residue inside the bullets was almost a clear crystalloid liquid. What could it be? A tinge in my neck told me to put it back. I listened to that feeling and placed the gun by the metal table. These weapons were too valuable, and too dangerous to be messed around with. In the wrong hands, a whole city, perhaps, even an entire country could be destroyed within mere weeks. I couldn’t let that happen. If opportunity presented itself, I was going to destroy this whole base. My new allies didn’t seem to be trustworthy. They had another exterior motive behind their words of alliance.

“Get what you need and get out,” the boy commanded and leaned against the door, watching me.

“Someone is a little bit grouchy today,” I said, joking around lightly. “What’s the matter? Didn’t get enough sleep? Did someone take your whittle toy?”

The expression in his eyes changed, I could tell he was getting angry with me and I needed to stop. Before things could get out of hand, his sister walked into the compartment and said nothing. There was a gauche silence for a couple of minutes as none of us had any friendly words to say to one another. Oh well, I just couldn’t keep my big mouth quiet for that long.

“I see your brother is doing really well. Who knew we would meet again so soon?”

“It’s no thanks to you,” she replied and picked out a few things from the armory before leaving. Wow, the tension was already building up. I really felt like we were not going to get along at all.

“You have less than two hours, Earthling,” she whispered before the door shut off.

What did she mean by two hours? Was she talking about the mission? That was barely enough time to prepare mentally and physically. I was already unaware of what my objective was, and why I was even helping them. My mind had not yet wrapped around the idea of what was happening before me.

“So, are you also going, too?” my gaze turned towards the little boy, who was still watching me, leaning on the wall.

“Don’t be stupid,” he replied rudely and closed his eyes. He tilted his head against the wall and folded his arms perfectly. “Everyone is going and we will be watching your every move to make sure you don’t betray us.”

Again, good to know! At least someone was going to be watching my back, although not in the same way I would like. I guess one can’t have everything in life. I placed my arms up and let out a brief yawn. It was possible I had a good nights sleep; none of my muscles ached at all. I had no idea what time or day it was, but one thing was certain: time was not my friend. Quickly, I picked up my armor, which seemed to have been repaired and remodeled again, and began putting it on. It took me about fifty minutes to suit up and pick up suitable weapons from the armory. The whole time, the boy kept a close eye on me, like I was a thief, hoping I would screw up and do something stupid. His glaring eyes sort of freaked me out and felt rather uncomforting. They were the eyes of an avenger, eyes of someone bent on revenge. He looked like he wanted payback on someone. Oh yeah, me. After what I did to him, to save Rick, I wouldn’t blame him. Speaking of Rick, I wondered where he was, and whether he had managed to regroup with his sister. By now, they were back at the main ship, and were probably sipping drinks with Ali or fighting each other. Man, I wished I was with them right now. Being amongst these aliens/Rasians was rather aggravating and downright frightening. I just hoped Rick and the others wouldn’t consider leaving without me. The thought of being stuck of this planet with these guys was utterly unbearable. I hated to think about it; however, the odds of it happening were far greater than I would like. I put the matter aside to concentrate on the most important task at hand—stopping another dimensional warp!

I rebooted my armor’s control to my personal preference and recalibrated the power to maximum output. It felt different and much smoother. These guys had done superb work on it. What great allies! They even added some more modifications to it and I couldn’t wait to test them out. Perhaps, later, I would bake them a hot cake or something. Well, that was if I survived long enough. I don’t know how they managed to take it off me before, but I wasn’t complaining. The nuclear core that once fueled the suit had been replaced and substituted with another unknown source of power. It was strange and yet exhilarating. I practiced my movements in the armor, testing out all of my new abilities and internal time limits. The boy stopped me and signaled me that it was time to leave. We walked through the long, narrow floors for what seemed like half an hour. Suddenly, an alarm came on; and it was so loud, the walls were trampling. I raised my arms and closed my ears to drown out the sound. Something strange was about to happen. Was this the final signal for their mission? It appeared that way, because many people began to storm through the halls, running in one direction. They were geared up with pseudo battle armor and weapons like they were going to war. What had I gotten myself into this time? I had a hunch this wasn’t going to end well for me.

“The first phase of the mission will begin now,” a voice spoke from a loud speaker—from somewhere I couldn’t tell. “Commence with the first phase of Operation Uprise.”

Crap, I still didn’t even know what the assignment or my role was. Just what was I supposed to do or go? Oh well, it didn’t matter to be exact. My agenda for joining them was not exactly to destroy the dimensional gate. The real objective was to find my captured crew and escape this horrible planet. I had no intention of getting caught in an alien civil war—no sense in getting myself killed over someone else’s fight. What am I saying? There was chaos inside my heart as I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do. I mean, if I helped them, I could stop the terror beasts' invasion on earth and save a lot of people. But what if they were making this up? Darn! I really wished I knew what to do, or someone tell me the right choice.

“Let’s go, Wet Pants,” a familiar voice said; it was the girl who captured me in the forest. “My sister has given us a special mission and it is very important we leave now.”

“What is the mission?” I turned my head towards her, whilst readjusting my lens.

“You don’t need to know yet,” she replied and bolted after the others.

Bummer! At least I gave it a shot. It seems, these guys weren’t going to tell me anything any time soon. I sighed and followed behind, in the same direction. A whole legion of men and women alien warriors rushed left towards a hatch exit. I didn’t follow as I went right, with the girl. What she said bothered me more than anything. I was getting anxious and worried at the same time. Everything she said felt like a load of rubbish and there was something fishy about all of this. I could bet a nickel these guys were playing with me. A secret mission, yeah right! Soon, I began to see the outside again; it was a gentle blue and brown color, filled with debris and ash. I could smell the ash and the strong scent of melting metal coming from every direction. For a bunch of rebels trying to keep a low profile, they sure hadn’t done a lot to conceal this mess.

“Come with me,” the girl dashed towards the small carrier ship and jumped in.

I boarded the ship and it took off quickly, a few seconds after. Things were starting to play out slightly out of my control. I had no idea where I was going, only a matter of time before I found myself in a bottle of hot lava. Hope not! Hope not! Think positive!

“Listen carefully,” she began, showing me a com link map of the kingdom through a visor. “We are the ace line of attack, the entire squadron in here is going to infiltrate the kingdom and take down their defenses from the inside.”

Wait what? That sounded like the most stupid plan I had ever heard—and that’s coming from someone who had experience with making stupid decisions. Were they trying to throw their lives away? From what I could tell, this kingdom was way too advanced and it would take an entire army to take them down. No! I could say it was impossible, even with an army of skilled soldiers: definitely suicide. Just what were these fools thinking? Putting their lives in danger so carelessly and then having the nerve to bring me into this mess.

“No way, if you think I’m crazy enough to walk into a trap, then forget it,” I said and folded my arms, closing my eyes.

I felt the smell of metal, directly on my nostrils, and opened my eyes, in time to see a barrel of guns pointed on my face by everyone on the ship. There was a serious expression on all their faces. They were not playing around. Apparently, I had no choice and mutiny was not tolerated.

“Okay, that is convincing enough,” I gulped, putting my hands up.

Just how did I keep getting myself into these situations? The ship shook violently like it was hitting some major turbulence and knocked me off my seat. I slowly got up and shook my head, while stretching my aching back. A small beeping noise erupted constantly through the screen. We were hitting some major turbulence as the air currency worked against us. Something like this only occurred if there was a severe weather storm, hurricane or tornado. But it was impossible on this planet, unless we were not traveling above ground. So, this was their plan? Infiltrating the kingdom from below, using a special assault mobile ship—it was brilliant and yet flawed. An attack from below was something an opponent always considered, when building their fortress. Meaning we were speeding directly into a trap.

“We are getting close to the first checkpoint,” one of them said and I quickly hopped in back into my seat, strapping in hard.

For some reason, the ship was not slowing down; instead, it was speeding up and going even faster than before.

“Why are we not stopping?” I asked, holding on tightly to my seat.

This was starting to get dangerous. I honestly thought being a space biologist would keep me away from assignments like these; but, apparently, I was mistaken. Life was just unpredictable and funny like that. The ship shook violently, causing my heartbeat to sky rocket. Calm down! Calm down! The last thing I wanted was another panic attack.

“You might want to hold on even tighter,” an alien woman I had never talked to said, clutching her gun firmly.

I honestly did not see the reason for her to smile; however, I kept my comments to myself. The less people I angered, the better it was for me in the long run.

“Entering the first grid line, it might get a little bit bumpy but it’s all good.”

The intensity kept rising with each second. One small mishap and that would be the end of us. The ship’s controls went haywire from some sort of electromagnetic pulse interference. Undoubtedly, the enemy’s first line of defense against underground threats. So I was right, it appeared as if we were trying to break through a pulse shield generator: a rather brave and stupid attempt on our part. During the last Great War, countries used these devices to fortify their defenses to ensure nothing would get in or get out. Anything inside the shield was destroyed and reduced to ash within a matter of seconds, which I could say was not good for us.

“I don’t suppose you have a plan to get us out of this mess?” I asked, barely able to hold onto my stomach contents. All this vibrations and sudden loss of control rotations were giving my stomach a really bad ache.

“This is the plan,” the girl commented, forcing a smile at me. “Just sit tight for a few seconds and try not to die.”

Well! I could try, but it was going to be tough to recover from this, especially on my heart. “Speed it up to 100000 meks,” the girl said, talking to one of the pilots. “We should be able to escape this shield with minimum damage.”

Minimum damage, really? Was she out of her mind? Getting our organs rearranged or being disintegrated into small molecules was definitely not minimal damage. Strangely, it started getting a little bit hot and misty inside. Crap, the ship was falling apart terribly. This was not happening, was it? No! No! No! Not exactly how I pictured my life ending. Times like these make me wish I had listened to my father. Being a doctor would have saved me from going through this entire ordeal. What am I thinking? I caught up with reality and thrust my head around quickly. It was a matter of seconds before this entire ship was blown up, along with us in it. I am positive these guys had a plan or something to get us out of this dilemma. And I just hoped they would initiate it immediately before my heart gave out.

“More torque on the thrusters,” she commanded on the top of her voice, without any sign of panic in her voice.

From my point of view, this wasn’t their first time doing something this drastic and lived to tell about it. They knew what they were doing, and had probably prepared for this situation several times over. I looked around and felt a calm breeze, coming from all of them except from me. I was panicking and wanting to get out of this ship and back to earth. This whole scene was not in the job description that I had signed up for. I knew that for a fact; I had read over the contract a thousand times over. Pretty sure, I had not missed out on something this life changing. I felt the ship’s velocity increase, drastically, without delay—this was bad. The ship wasn’t in the best shape to pick up more speed. A drastic combination of increased velocity, plus uncontrolled steering motion was very dangerous. These fools were out of their minds. Oh no! My stomach whirled badly. I couldn’t hold it in anymore as I puked inside my helmet everything I had eaten before. Gross! Gross! Gross! My helmet visor was dirty with puke stains and I could barely see anything in front of me.

“Now that’s just gross, Wet Pants,” I heard a voice say, but didn’t know who said it.

I quickly took it off and wiped some of the puke from my face, in order to see what was going on. By far, this was the grossest thing to happen to me. I would die before I ever told anyone about this. I heard a loud bang and suddenly the ship spun out of control a few times and stopped completely. Every control system came to a dead silence. I listened to the silent echo as I groaned out in pain. Definitely not how I imagined my day playing out. I felt no movements from the others. Were they still alive? The whole thing happened so fast that I didn’t know what had occurred, and whether we had succeeded through or not. Well, I was still alive, so that meant I had survived. Some miracle! It was only a matter of time before my good fortune ran out. I felt disoriented and sick to my stomach like I had eaten something terrible. I wanted to vomit, but apparently, I had already puked out everything, a few seconds ago, making me feel more miserable.

“Is everyone okay?” I heard a voice ask; it belonged to one of the pilots.

“My leg is hurt, but I will live,” another man replied and suddenly it was quiet.

There was a loud noise as something was breaking through the hull of ship. It sounded like some sort of metal disrupting drill. There was a musty smoke simmering in through the ventilation system. It was too dark to see where it was coming from. If I had to guess, I would say it was coming from the synched metal hulls on the external part of the ship.

“Is Cathy okay?” another voice echoed.

No one answered. I heard a loud racket as if something was being moved out of the way. My breathing was starting to become shallow and hoarse. I coughed for a minute and placed my hand in front of my nose and mouth. Staying still in here was becoming dangerous. Every ounce of the thick noxious air was oozing through and threatening to suffocate me to death. To make it even direr, it was getting hot and uncomfortable really fast. I had to get out of here. Quickly, I put on my helmet and swallowed a large amount of clean air, mixed with a scent of puke.

“I’m still alive,” I heard a feminine voice speak and I quickly realized who it was.

I really didn’t know whether I should be happy that she was alive or disappointed. Maybe a bit of both! Harshly, I pulled myself out of the broken seat and crawled towards the clutches of freedom. I saw a beacon of outside light and followed it out to freedom. Once I was out, I stood up and sighed out heavily. How did I keep getting myself into these situations? My doctor had warned me to stay out of harm’s way to prevent my panic attacks. Sadly to say: trouble seemed to find me first. In front of me, the other guys stood with their gear in check and their eyes scanning around us. We appeared to be in some sort of tunnel, a few feet away from this giant force field gate. Now one thing stood between us and the kingdom. It was a great, two piece sort of gate that emitted unknown energy, at every five second intervals. Way too dangerous to touch, let alone penetrate through it. We were stuck with no way in or out. I looked at my allies and still felt a calming sensation amongst them, like they were still in control. One of them looked towards me and smiled confidently, moving a few steps ahead. These guys were definitely not amateurs. On second thought, perhaps, surviving through the force field generator was no mere fluke or spirit of luck.

“The fortifications and the platinum welding we did on this ship really paid off,” a guy, barely my age, spoke, observing the melted hull of the ship. He placed his right hand on the ship and quickly retracted it back, once he felt how hot it was. Idiot!

So that was it. Heavy modifications on the ship had definitely saved us from certain death. Whatever they were fighting for had to be worth the struggle and sacrifice. I felt out of place, because I lacked their resolve and confidence. This was just not my area of expertise. I was a scientist and not a soldier. If it wasn’t for the terror beast invasion, I would have never touched a gun ever. But this was reality and it was cruel. I held my gun tightly and concentrated on the task at hand.

“Initiating phase two,” the girl, or Cathy as they called her, said and everyone began to move. “You all know what to do.”

Everyone except me rechecked their gear and quickly moved forward without fear. They marched in a uniform pace and stopped, inches from the gate, looking up. I felt a tingling feeling in my stomach, telling me that this was a bad idea. My high cognitive ability had never let me down before, but this time, I had no choice. There was no way to flee—only one way forward.

“Can you hack the door, Jan?” Cathy turned towards a scruffy guy, who looked out of place.

He wore mini metallic pads on his elbows and knees. Unnoticed to everyone, I detected a slight shiver of fear from his body. His eyes, however, looked determined and ready to prove something to himself, and to everyone. I glanced at him for a couple of seconds and looked away slowly. Compared to the others, he looked like he was not a warrior, more like a scouter or technical support.

I stepped forward and tilted my head for a closer look. The access pad, near the gate, needed some sort of password or key to be opened. It was a trick pad, one wrong code and the alarm would sound off. Meaning there was a trap probably set to go off once that happened. These guys were way over their heads on this one. Obviously, the enemy was very smart and well aware of their plans. I had to get out of here—no sense in me risking my life on a suicide mission like this. Someone stepped gently next to me, on one knee, near the pad. It was Jan. He pulled out and attached some sort of cord from his helmet and began doing something weird. Symbols and numbers were displayed on his screen like a gigon code.

“Maybe, but it will take time,” Jan said as he tried to access the door’s control.

Slowly, I moved back and went to examine my gear. I had to do something to keep my mind busy. Everything looked great for all I could see, and I had enough weapons to bring down a whole block of buildings.

“There, I got it,” Jan said, with excitement in his voice.

The gate vibrated and slowly opened up. It was an amazing spectacle to behold; the level of ingenuity that went into its creation was extraordinary. We quickly stepped back to get out of the way.

“We are still on time,” Cathy said, checking her timer. She quickly grabbed her equipment and went ahead through the door. “The second phase of the mission is complete, but now comes the hard part.”

What did she mean by that? In my opinion, this was the hard part. Or at least, I was hoping this was the difficult part. I felt a jolt of hesitation pull me back a little. How much more difficult did they expect this to get? Note to self again: ask for a raise. This had to be considered over time. I mean, I was doing more than what I was paid for. As evidence, my com lenses recorded everything while reading and deciphering codes belonging to the enemy. I had an important secondary task of getting this information to the government. For all I know, this information would prove useful against the terror beasts still on earth. I stopped moving and remained motionless for a bit. While everyone was occupied, I retried my com signal to send the new intel to Ali and the others. But it kept saying, “Static jam interference. No signal!”

An incredible powerful device, probably, an electronic transmitter was near and causing this noise. I had no way to contact Rick or Dalla. If I didn’t make it, I had to find some way to pass on this new knowledge. Doubt the new allies would do me that favor. For all I knew, they were probably going to backstab me once they were done with me. On the other hand, I could be wrong. Allying with these aliens played to my advantage, since I was pretty much alone without crewmates to back me up. Plus, their knowledge and manpower was more than I could hope for against the terror beasts, and the maniac controlling them. A loud thump woke me up to reality. We had finally made it into the alien fortress (kingdom of Ras). This was possibly where the rest of my crew was being held. The fortress was as big as a country, and would take at least three weeks to look through it. It was a hustle, but I was a desperate man. At the moment, I couldn’t leave just yet. I needed these guys to lead me away from the booby traps, possibly, scattered across this underground passage. I planned on staying with them for a while—well, until I found some way to escape safely. I was determined to find my crew and leave this miserable rock.

The ledges on the wall echoed to our steps. It was dark and gloomy, showing no signs of life. It was nerve wrecking. I tilted my head in every direction, constantly listening for anything out of the ordinary. Everything was going according to plan, but it was just a matter of time before something went wrong. I mean, I wasn’t hoping something would go wrong, although I had to consider the possibility of something going out of line.

“Switch to infrared, everyone, we are going in dark,” Cathy said as she led us through the corridor. “We can’t let anyone see us; otherwise, all our efforts will be for nothing.”

Just what was this mission we were supposed to do? I knew absolutely nothing except for the fact that I had almost died again. We all switched our flash lights off and walked stealth fully in the dark. No one spoke, it was all hand signals till we reached our objective. I noticed something very peculiar and began to worry. Strangely as it seemed, this place was not guarded, not even one spy drone was mounted on the wall. It felt like the enemy wanted us to come to them. Or possibly, they didn’t expect anyone to make it through their shield in one piece. I could only hope Cathy knew where she was going; otherwise, we were walking directly into our own doom. “Stop, everyone!” Cathy whispered and raised her hand, to signal us not to move.

Something was coming towards us; it looked like a robot or some sort of monster with bladed wings. Was it a terror beast? Nah! It looked way too big to be a terror beast and also its eyes were glowing way too bright in a yellow color. Could it see us? It looked like it was coming directly straight towards us. I got a little nervous and gripped my gun firmly. I don’t know when I had taken it from its strap, but all I knew was, it was in my hand and loaded. The safety was off and any sudden movement could result in a discharge of a bullet. I still couldn’t make out who or what it was exactly. However, one thing was clear, it was not here to make friends. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks, with their weapons pointed directly at it. One sudden movement and this monster would detect and destroy us. The creature moved away, it didn’t seem to pick us up at all. Was it just luck?

No, I noticed Cathy holding some sort of device at the monster. It was possible this machine was disrupting this monster’s vision, in some sort of way, making it unable to see us. I watched the beast move away and disappear in another corridor, leaving us to continue our mission.

“This is just too much,” I sighed to myself.

I put away my gun and begun to follow after Cathy and the others. The corridors forked away into different direction. Cathy held a map, allowing us to navigate our way through the treacherous tunnels. We all stopped as we came into contact with another door. It was a little bit smaller than the gate and, of course, requiring an access card or key. Jan walked towards it and did the same thing he did with the gate to get it open. It took a few minutes to open the door and access the controls of the building.

“Okay, everyone, you know what to do, right?” Jan asked, and everyone else nodded, except for me.

“Just what are we doing?” I asked, confused and curious as to what was the mission plan.

Cathy looked at me and said, “Just try not to get yourself killed.”

She patted my shoulder lightly, with a faint smile and went through the door first.

“Easy enough, if I wasn’t on this planet, that is,” I responded sarcastically.

Suddenly, the whole crew split up and went into different directions, leaving me behind with Jan and Cathy. I had no idea what to do, so I decided to follow Jan and Cathy.

“We are here,” Jan explained, pointing at the com unit grid. “If we go here, we should be able to see the main shield generator control room.”

So that was their plan? If my guess was right, they were trying to shut down the kingdom’s defense power system and disable the outside shields. Great plan, except they really didn’t plan it right. Something as important as that was probably heavily guarded—no way could a mere handful of soldiers pull this off.

“You know your plan is suicide” I commented, making a remark to get their attention. They both looked at me with eyes full of resent, causing me to feel a bit uneasy.

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Cathy hissed, and stood up, with her fist clenched. “Do you have anything worth fighting for?”

Of course! Perhaps, I shouldn’t have used those exact words. They sure took everything seriously. Jan picked up his equipment quickly, “it’s time to leave, I don’t think the others outside can keep on attacking. They will run out of ammo soon, so we need to get these shields down now.”

“Lead the way,” I said, giving him a hand sign to proceed in front of me, since he knew the way. Jan began to run at a constant pace. We followed behind him, holding our guns in our hands. The tunnel ended directly beneath a series of metal stairs. We climbed them, going up until we reached a shaft. Jan signaled us to follow him through the tight shaft to the other side. He was leading us through a series of random passages—it felt like he was just side winding it. I think we were lost.

“Relax, guys, this is a shortcut. If we follow this map, we should get somewhere soon.”

“Somewhere! Are you serious?” I rattled in anger. “Do you even know where you are going?”

“Stop,” he growled and we all halted.

Below us, a squadron of guard soldiers, in super armor showed up, marching in a straight line. They were carrying weapons and it looked like they were going directly to war. Wait! These guys looked exactly like the people I had seen on the video com link; the soldiers who took my crew away and disappeared. I was definitely in the right location. My crew was here. As soon as the guards left, we began to move again, following Jan’s map.

“There it is,” he pointed at a unique compartment, spaced apart from the other rooms.

It was very small, hardly about three quarters of a room, in size, and heavily guarded by three dozen soldiers.

“There is no way to get in there,” I said to Cathy, holding her shoulder to stop her from proceeding.

“Are you always this negative and doubtful? It’s no wonder Rose left you.”

Hurtful! Okay, that was really what I would call a low blow, in my opinion. How did she know about Rose? Just how many people knew? Never mind! I don’t think I wanted to know, it would probably mess with my mind.

“Just keep yourself hidden for now, and try not to fall behind,” she said and began to crawl her way out of the tunnel. “Switch your system to sonar vision and use a disruptor to cover your movements from the enemy’s tracking system. They probably have traps mounted everywhere”

I did as I was told and checked my equipment, one last time, running a diagnostic check in case we came under attack. Silently, we moved to a more secluded position, allowing ourselves a full view of the entire surrounding compartments. Due to the enhancements in my helmet, I could hear everything the enemy was saying. Thank you technology!

“How many forces does the enemy have?” a superior looking soldier spoke, looking at a very big visual screen. “Deploy all our troops and surround them, make sure none of them survive.”

“As you command,” all of the soldiers replied at the same time, like they all possessed the same brain.

It freaked me out a bit, but it explained what Kristin said about them being under some kind of hypnosis. Their movements were not wasted as they moved like one entity. There were no arguments and constant bickering most armies had. It made me wonder for a bit if having people under hypnosis was the only way to stop people from fighting. No! What am I saying? Was I really considering that as an option? I mean, it was after all taking away people’s individual right to freedom and choice. I placed my hand on my helmet and closed my eyes, to clear my thoughts completely. In order to succeed, I had to keep my mind focused and rational. I looked around and observed all the soldiers within the vicinity. Every little movement they made gave me a clue as to how to launch our assault. The soldiers were stationed at every corner and exit in pairs. Direct confrontation would play badly for us, meaning we had to catch them off guard and launch a guerrilla attack.

“Let’s move in closer,” Jan whispered, while slowly creeping closer to the control room.

We crawled our way out of sight and stopped once we were within a few yards away. It was getting intense; my heart was racing. One wrong mistake and we would be found out. I glanced at the others for comfort, but found none. They were occupied and focused on the task at hand, they barely saw the worry on my face. The guards patrolled around us without realizing what was happening. Strangely, it was like they were not trying to find us. Was this possibly a trap? It sure looked like they were leading me into the hands of the enemy. I felt an odd feeling in my stomach and realized what I had to do. When Jan and Cathy were not looking, I took out an EMP generator and stuck it on the wall of tunnel shift—a few inches behind me.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I said, reassuring myself.

I looked back at the generator, and realized I had secured my way out of this mess, in case things went quickly south on me. Jan stopped briefly, and began cutting one of the satellite link grids. He extended his arms out, typing codes into a small grid screen at the end of the shaft. Silently, the mounted machine let out a blipping flash of red light, which then turned green after five seconds. Images and videos began to pop up on his pad. It seemed like whatever they were seeing was being displayed directly to his hack pad, allowing him to see what the enemy was seeing.

“It will take time to manually cut the system off without being noticed,” Jan whispered to us, as he kept trying to redirect the power out of the building. “This might be harder than we thought, but try to buy me as much time as possible.”

“Den, can you hear me?” a voice suddenly spoke through my com link.

Crap! I was not expecting that. I was startled as so was Jan and Cathy. A loud siren came online as the whole place began to go under lockdown. I heard footsteps closing on our position, fast and loud. We had been compromised. Of all the fortune in the world! I clenched my fist hard out of frustration and sighed down heavily.

“What did you do?” Cathy shook me against the wall in anger.

Just my luck, my com link would come online when I really didn’t want it. It sounded like Rick or Dalla—meaning they were really close by, within a fifty mile radius. But what were they doing here?

“There is an intruder,” all the soldiers’ voices rattled through the walls.

“Find them and destroy them,” a single loud voice commanded the other soldiers.

“I will deal with you later, but right now, we have to fight,” Cathy said and burst out of the thin shaft wall.

She rattled towards them, firing her power burst gun. Her movements were fast and agile, I barely caught sight of her. I moved in closer and studied the surrounding to find a better defensive position. Outnumbered and outgunned, going on the offensive was suicide. Jan barely looked back; he kept trying to hack into the power system relentlessly. On the other hand, Cathy was going fully berserk. She knocked soldiers left and right, moving out of range when things got too hot. I wanted to go and help her; however, I chose not to. Our mission depended on Jan, so protecting his life was my top priority at the moment.

“Hurry, Jan,” I said and turned on the weapon system in my suit.

Two surveillance drones deployed out of my suit and began to attack from above. Unfortunately, they didn’t last a few minutes as they were easily taken out by one of the soldiers. I quickly lifted up and begun shooting at the guards from the air, with a Rasian Javelin super blaster. Magnificent, the weapon was light and powerful; it shot out a barrage of target lock guarded rockets, but regrettably, they all missed.

“Crappy piece of technology!”

The guards easily avoided my heat guided rockets with ease and pursued after me. Thankfully, they lacked the flight ability to come after me in the air. I watched them and studied the pattern and rhythm of their movements. Amazing, it was like they were one single entity—moving in the same style and attacking perfectly, in a synchronized manner.

“Hold still, will you?” I yelled out of frustration.

It was a rather bothersome trick to say the least. I would never have believed this if someone had told me. Ali was right: the truth was stranger than fiction. Mindless puppets, baby terror beasts, dimensional warp gates, alien resistant soldiers, etc. The list goes on. It felt like I was reading some fictional hologram. Everything on this planet made me question my own perception of reality. Without warning, a blast knocked me out of the air and I crash landed onto the metal gritted floor hard. It was painful and unexpected. Again, they took out one of my flight thrusters, forcing me into ground confrontation.

“What are we going to do?” I yelled to Cathy, retreating back to cover Jan from harm. “Can’t you call the others for backup?”

“No,” she replied quickly, “you screwed up, and I can’t let you jeopardize us any longer.”

“So, what do you want us to do?” I yelled back at her as I ducked past a blast of blue metallic bullets.

“Just hold out until Jan is done,” Cathy yelled to me and retracted her body back for another attack at the soldiers. “Get ready, here they come.”

Something was odd. The enemy had changed stance and were attacking in brief and short intervals, in pairs. Somehow, they were telepathically communicating and coordinating their attacks, giving us no room to breathe at all. I took out some armor disruptors from my bag and threw them at one of them. His armor short circuited after a few seconds and he fell on the ground, barely able to move. The rest of them were able to evade the disruptors easily and attack me inexorably.

“This is irritating,” I commented, roughly, and descended towards the floor.

I wasn’t getting anywhere by attacking in the air. The moment my feet touched the ground, I removed a metal disruptor short sword and stood between Jan and the soldiers. Odds were really bad, my best chance of winning lay in attacking randomly without strategy. Considering their brains were linked, this plan would work. Man, of all the places to be stuck in the universe, it just had to be an alien, infested planet, didn’t it?

I tensed my body and rotated my head horizontally at each of my opponents. They looked fierce and rather intimidating; none of them moved a muscle or even blinked. Eyes dark and powerful like black daggers, I freaked out a little. Not scared, but freaked. I heard a rough noise and turned my head towards the sound. One of the soldiers had jolted first without warning, coming at me with a baton like stuff. It emitted strange electric energy, glowing blue in color. He swung sideways in a wild manner, aiming for my head, and by some fortunate chance, he narrowly missed me—rotating his arm to attack again. This time, I got closer and reduced the impact of his attack by gripping his arm tightly. Without giving him any chance to get free, I struck first with my dagger and cut a piece off his chest armor. The others watched silently, observing my attack pattern. What were they waiting for? Honestly, I wasn’t complaining, it was easier for me this way. Out of the blue, two more came towards me, forcing me to move back a few steps. Warning signs started to pop up on my helmet screen, showing me the damage stats. The armor was still holding strong; however, it wouldn’t last, not against a powerful enemy as this. A strange explosion erupted, creating confusion amongst the alien soldiers. Each of them reacted the same way, distracting them away from me. Yes, I used this to my advantage to distance myself from them and rest for a bit, before they attacked again. Apparently, they reacted badly to high explosive attacks. Or so I thought: worth the risk. I dug into my weapons satchel and found small dud grenades, about six of them. I needed more than this. They weren’t enough, but I had to make them work to my advantage somehow.

“Try not to kill them,” Cathy said, seeing the dud grenades in my hand.

“So, now you tell me?” I growled at her; it was easier said than done.

They were trying to kill me with everything they had. It was not going to be easy to keep them back. “Why shouldn’t I kill them?” I asked as I backed away. Their attention had reverted back to me.

“Because they are still my people, they are just under hypnosis,” she said and punched one of the soldiers so hard, he smashed head first in a wall.

Really now! So, I couldn’t kill them, but she could?

“I’m almost done,” Jan yelled at us and gave us a hand signal, “I should be able to shut it down from here.”

“Great, just hurry.” Cathy said.
He still wasn’t done, meaning I had to buy him some more time. Rather hard since these guys were no easy picnic. I couldn’t help this feeling in my heart, this feeling of fear and doubt that kept latching onto me. Could we really survive this? To be specific, could I survive this? Cathy looked like she could handle her own, even against this many.

“Cathy, I want you to take Jan and get out of here,” I said trembling in fear.

Darn! I had no idea why I said that but I had. “I have a plan and I will be right behind you.” Crap! I had no plan, and for some unknown reason, I was just blurting out things I really didn’t mean at all. Stupid me as usual, doing things beyond my pay scale.

“What are you planning to do?” Cathy asked, looking at me with such curious eyes.

This was my chance to really act brave and impress her enough to forget what I had done in the past. For some reason, I just wanted her to change her opinion about me, and maybe not backstab me in the end.

“That’s crazy, just keep firing and we will get out of this together,” she said and fired a few more rounds at the soldiers.

“No, we can’t,” I said in a frustrated voice that did not sound like me. “Remember when you asked me if I had anything worth fighting for? Well, now, I have. I want you to take Jan and leave this place immediately.”

Great! I was trembling in my boots, barely able to hold back my fear; however, I had to act tough for them and for the sake of the mission. Cathy halted her attack as she looked at me in wonder. She probably knew I was up to something and she wanted to figure it out.

“I’m done,” Jan said, rising up quickly.

Before he could come to us, a stray bullet caught him in the leg. He wimped in pain, as he fell to the ground. There was a slight fume odor oozing out of his injured leg.

“No, Jan,” Cathy screamed and dashed towards him.

It was bad, nevertheless he would survive, provided he got immediate medical attention. The mindless soldiers stopped moving, watching us constantly. I took a few steps back and moved towards Cathy and Jan—my eyes glued towards our enemy. Definitely, couldn’t afford to take it easy, not around these guys. Still, it was good they were not attacking; it gave us time to think of a better escape strategy. Suddenly, they all leaped in to attack us at the same time. I twisted my body and rotated on my axis, kicking one of the guys with everything I had. He fell to the ground and twitched for a couple of seconds. That move didn’t stop the others from coming after me. I looked back and saw Cathy try to lift Jan up to his feet. She wasn’t even paying attention to her surroundings, meaning it was all up to me to defend them. I turned around again and saw two alien drone soldiers rush towards me. One swung from the bottom, while the other from above, coming from opposite directions. Realizing the danger, I swerved back and threw a few dud and real grenades onto their path. Completely single minded, they probably wouldn’t see my trap. Nothing happened; the grenades did not explode at all. Crap, not exactly what I intended to happen. I watched the two soldiers stop in their path, for a minute, before they launched their second attack. It was amazing how well they executed every move. Nothing was left to chance, and it felt like they had practiced these maneuvers for years on end. I ran out of their way and moved far, to the other side of the building.

“I said go,” I yelled to Cathy, while leading the horde of soldiers away from them.

She nodded and helped Jan up to flee. Before one of the soldiers could go towards them, I threw a few smoke canisters in their direction and blocked him from seeing which way they went. The plan worked smoothly. Cathy and Jan managed to escape without anyone chasing after them. Now all their attention was reverted towards me.

Great! Now what? I had apparently left that important piece out of my strategy. I was completely trapped and surrounded by over 20 soldiers—not good at all.

“You have no place to go,” they all spoke at the same time.

True! There was no path left for me to escape out of this mess. This was probably my last stand alive. Surrendering was not an option in the matter, since there was more at stake than my life. I firmly gripped all my weapons and tensed my body hard. If this was my last stand, I was going to make them work for it. Plus, the others needed more time to escape and destroy the gate. However, right now, I needed some questions answered.

“Where is the people you took from the large earth ship?” I asked.

“You will see them soon enough after you surrender, you have no place to go,” one of them said.

He was a big man and had many symbols on his armor, like he was the general or higher. For some reason, he didn’t seem hypnotized like the others. I clenched tight on my gun and coiled my back, in retaliation. Surrendering was not an option. But he had confirmed what I needed to know. They were alive after all; my crew was here and I was going to find them.

“Rick, they are here,” I said through my com link, which was now operational.

I paused for a minute and took slow deep breaths to conserve some of my energy. I had probably burned off most of the glycogen in my system, meaning it was a matter of time before my body began to move sluggishly.

“Don’t worry, Den,” Rick spoke back to me and I could now see his face through the com link. “We will find them.”

I smiled as an idea came to my head. It was risky, but one that I could possibly execute.

“Rick, I have a plan. You need to listen carefully,” I whispered my plan to him as my enemy looked closely at me without moving a muscle. “Please hurry, there isn’t enough time left.”

He listened and went along with my plan, despite the doubt and fear in his voice. All that was left was to buy myself some time until Rick got to this location, using the ship.

“Attack him now,” the general guy growled and all 20 soldiers moved, accordingly, with precision.

Quickly, I switched the remaining power in my suit manually to my shield and created a force field around myself, to defend myself from attack. An EMP explosion rattled the ground as I pulled the trigger, quickly shutting down everything that ran on electricity. Oh crap! The soldiers’ systems did not go offline. Their armor was adapted to some other sort of power supply—like mine was. Great! My other plan had failed to work and now the enemy was going to attack relentlessly without mercy. Although, that little destruction had bought me enough time to make a hasty retreat, that was if I could.

“Duck now,” Rick yelled from the com link.

After hearing his voice, I ran towards the nearest solid block I could find and covered my head.

“What are you doing?” they all said and laughed at me, infuriating me deeply.

Stupid fools, I looked up and saw the biggest explosion I had ever seen before. It rattled everything, scorching the entire block into chaos and confusion. The blast was far much grander than what I expected. Perhaps, he had thrown too much of those destructive pellets which resulted in this explosion. I was hurled back and forth in the blaze of fire and my shields did nothing much to protect me from harm. Before I knew it, my head hit the wall so hard, I quickly lost consciousness and blanked out into darkness.

9

 

 

“What is it that you fight for?” a voice awakened me from my slumber. “What is it that you seek?”

Oh great! Were we playing trivia now? I opened my eyes slowly into the darkness, and saw a small pond in front of me. It glowed with radiant, clear vivid water. Just what I needed, another weird and strange dream. I walked up to it and took a sip full of water. Funny thing was I couldn’t quench the thirst that still lurked within me, no matter how much I drank. What was this strong feeling of emptiness? I had never felt it before until now. It was like I was missing something very important; I just couldn’t remember what it was.

“Tell me, what it is that you seek?” the voice asked again from the darkness, a strange chill of fear crept up my spine. “Why do you seek it, when you already have it?”

Seriously! Was this some sort of a bad joke? I mean, if I already had what I was looking for, then was there a point in looking for it? Well, it didn’t matter, I had to get out of this place and join the others. It was so dark I couldn’t see a thing. No shade of light was present. This total darkness was maddening; I couldn’t find my way in it. All I could do was stay in one place, to not get lost.

“Get me out of this thing,” I said out loud to whoever was doing this to me. “This joke is no longer funny, as you can see, I’m not laughing.”

There was a deep, long silence, followed by a chilly blowing wind. I could feel totally nothing. So this was what true isolation felt like? It felt like crap. If I lost everything, this was what I had to look forward to.

“I can’t get you out of here,” someone responded to me after a while, “this place is within your heart and only you can get yourself out of here.”

Not this again, I was really getting tired of answers and questions that couldn’t be proved logically through science. How could this possibly be my heart? One cannot enter his own heart physically or mentally. If I told anyone about this, I would be locked in a mental asylum for at least a decade. I was trapped by the enemy, somewhere large and dark. That made more sense to me, but the only way to get out of this nightmare was to play along. I stood alone in the dark, thinking of everything I had done in the past and present. Yep, it was a whole lot of baggage dragging on my shoulders. Maybe, some time alone in the dark was what I really needed to get my act together. What am I saying? This didn’t make sense at all.

“Stop joking, how do I get out of this place?” I screamed out of frustration. “I have somewhere to be and there are people who need me.”

“Only you can get yourself out of this,” it said and faded out of my hearing.

Great! I was expected to believe I was trapped inside my own heart. Rather not what I ever thought possible in my lifetime. This was seriously ruining my already messed up day. It was bad enough I stuck my neck into an alien civil war, but now this? The mere idea of solving this problem made my stomach turn. I shook my head, “No, I will get out of here and get back to the others.”

Fatality was not acceptable, not at this point. I still had to find Rose, wherever she was—there was something I needed to ask her. It was important and I was going to wait to ask it when I found her. Yes, I refused to let it end like this, not without a fight. That being said, I was still stuck here with no sense of direction. The only way out was to play along with the silly charade of a game. “Okay, pretend this is your heart. You are inside your own heart.”

With those thoughts in my mind, I took a deep breath and went into the depths of my heart. Okay, maybe, this was my heart, just saying I had to keep an open mind. And this darkness was the product of all my thoughts and actions to this day and age. If that was the case, all I had to do was forgive myself and clear my heart. Simple enough!

“No, what was I saying?” I screamed at myself out loud. “Could I be really buying into this crap?”

Calm down, it was all an illusion, a game of minds and all I had to do was think smarter. I don’t know how much time passed, but it seemed like eternity, as I gathered myself and cleared my mind of all my negative thoughts. The more I tried to put logic into the situation, the harder it was to figure the puzzle out: “So, no logic!”

I felt something change suddenly. It was working; there was faint light around me. It was coming from above. I looked around and saw nothing around me—no walls, no ceiling, no latches, or tunnels. I’m sure this was all just a bad dream I would forget about later, but for now, I had to play along. Note to self: don’t tell anyone about this.

Now what! A tunnel formed in front of me, horizontally, leading somewhere. I think this was my way out. Finally, I was going to leave this wretched place behind. Quickly, I ran towards it with all my might, forgetting all my restraints and doubt. The thought of it being another enemy trap skipped my mind. All I wanted was to get out and rejoin my allies. Before I could pass through it, I saw a door that said, “Rose” on it, halfway through the strange tunnel, glued on the left side.

I stopped in my tracks and looked at it. Definitely caught by surprise, I wasn’t expecting it. What kind of a sick joke was this? Apparently, the enemy liked to watch me humiliating myself. But what if I was wrong? What if this was all real? What if this was the answer I was looking for? What am I thinking? All this was confusing. Although, that did nothing to stop me from pondering what was beyond that door. Perhaps, the answers I wanted, answers hidden within my subconscious self. Maybe I already knew what happened to her and my heart just didn’t want to accept it. A part of me wanted to open the door and know the truth, but the other part didn’t. What if the truth was something that was going to pain me? Could I live with the shock? But what if she is alive and waiting for me somewhere?

Darn! I couldn’t come up with a decision I could accept. There was no right choice.

“Den, are you still alive?” I heard a voice, coming from somewhere in the light.

It was Rick’s voice from what I could tell, and he seemed really worried. Before I even knew it, one of my hands was holding the door about to open it. No, I stopped myself and pulled away, clouded in thoughts. What if this was the only chance I would ever get to know the truth? I really wanted to see Rose again, but I decided now was not the time to look for her. Whatever the case may be, I was going to find her one day soon, just not now. I ran towards the light, after taking two more glances at the door. It took everything I had to run away from that door. Every fiber in my body revolted against me, except for my heart. It told me I was doing the right thing. But was I really? Unexpectedly, I was up again, back in reality or what seemed real. I was covered in debris and dirt up to my shoulders. There were screams everywhere as there was total chaos and what appeared to be the sound of gun fire. “Please tell me this is another bad dream?”

What had I awoken up to? This was a disaster; there was fire everywhere and destruction raining down upon the entire alien kingdom. What had I done? Had I caused this too, by joining with the resistance? How many people would die because of my actions? I had no idea this was going to happen. The level of this devastation and violence was of epic proportions. No, I had not agreed to this. This was the last thing I wanted on my newly cleansed soul. Main priority- stop the invasion/war.

I pulled myself out free and struggled back to my feet. The battery that powered my suit had been replaced with a static generator, which took too long to recharge after use. Very bad for this type of situation, but at least—it wasn’t going to explode. Wait, I was finally free of those Pesky Rasian resistance soldiers and their enemies. I could finally go my own way and find my missing crew.

“Den, are you still alive?” Dalla asked from the com link.

“Yeah, somehow, I made it in one piece,” I responded as I sat down, taking a break.

My legs and arms felt numb, like I had been sat on by a giant terror beast. I felt so tired and hungry, it was gruesome, easy to lie down and sleep. That last explosion had taken everything I had—so fighting at this state was futile. Another loud ominous explosion erupted, the ground trembling violently beneath my weary feet. Things were getting intense with each passing second. Seriously, I was way in over my head. Probably best to make a hasty retreat and wait out the battle.

“No, you can’t,” that tiny voice in my conscience spoke. “You have come too far to run away now.”

Crap, that was true. A part of me believed there was something I could still do to end this war, once and for all. It was a chance I had to take; too much was at stake here. If the resistance lost, then earth was next. I couldn’t let that happen, not while I was still alive.

“You really went overboard on this one,” I said, speaking to Rick through the com link. “I would have been blown to ashes, if I hadn’t seen it coming.”

“Oh, shut up,” Rick growled back, without hesitation in his voice. “It was your plan, so don’t blame me if it didn’t go the way you intended.”

True, if there was anyone to blame it was me; I just never imagined it would work this well.

“Can you guys pick me up from there?” I asked, trying to figure out their location. If our com link line was working this well, then it meant they were close by and within range.

“Sorry, Den,” Dalla responded back. It was clear that it was a hopeless situation. “You are too far underground and the building is collapsing under, making it hard to descend down there. You have to come to us, somehow.”

Great! Could things get any worse? I thought of earth and everything being destroyed if what Kristin said was true. How could I possibly stand by and let that happen? Something had to be done to stop that from happening. I picked up my weapons and began to move slowly amongst the rubble, seeking to find my way out. It looked like the entire infrastructure had become unstable because it was shaking randomly as I walked by. Without warning, the roof began to crack all around me like something was crawling above ground. This was not my day, was it? I began to run as fast as I could, ignoring the cruel pain, hoping to find a way up and escape. So far, it looked like all the exits had been sealed off by the explosion, which only made things worse for me. Before the left side of the roof completely collapsed, I jumped onto a broken rail and held on with one arm, while the other clutched onto the weapons bag. One of the guns fell out along with a few grenades, as I struggled to hang on. The more I struggled to climb up, the more the rail bent towards the ground.

Darn! I stopped moving to think carefully. What could I do? Any sudden movements and I would take a nasty fall. It looked like this was it for real. Maybe, I was going to get fortunate again and somehow survive this mess. The building shook again unruly and one of the blocks broke off, descending down towards my location. It was smashing everything in its path as it fell uncontrollably to the bottom section.

“Just not my day, is it?” I screamed and began to climb up the rail.

The weapons bag fell to the ground and I ignored it completely. This was a fight for survival. What good would a bag of weapons do for me if I was dead? With fate on my side, I managed to grab onto something solid before the rail gave out and fell down to the bottomless ground. It appeared bottomless, but I doubted it so much. It was just a few thousand feet deep below, at the most.

“Oh what am I saying?” I shook my head, awakening myself back to reality.

There was a rogue building block that was going to crash me within a matter of seconds. I believed that was more important now than anything. As l looked around to see anything I could use to escape, I noticed something—just a bit above me. It was a small tunnel, the size of a drainage pipe. Could I make a break for it and reach it in time? Oh well, there was no other option at this point for me to consider. I began climbing without hesitation, trying to make it up the tunnel before the block fell on top of me. It was a very difficult task, considering I was injured and really out of time.

“Den, can you hear us?” Rick said through the com link.

“Now is not the time, Rick,” I replied rudely, out of patience.

Even one second was precious to me, as I was at a point between life and death again. I don’t know how many more of these encounters I could take. Hopefully, this would be one of the last ones for me. Just as I touched the edge of the tunnel, I pushed myself up with all my might and reached in for the tunnel. Phew! I thought it was over and I had escaped, but I was wrong. Somehow my right foot was scraped narrowly as the large object swooshed past me. It ached terribly like all the mast cells in my body were releasing histamine at the same time, producing inflammation. I wanted to cry, but it was not very manly-like to cry because of a bruised leg. I heard a loud thump as the block smashed on the ground, followed by an earsplitting rumbling, which kept vibrating for a few more seconds.

“Well, when you make time, I want to tell you something,” Rick hissed at me, in a loud pitched voice. “The outer roof is about to collapse anytime now, and the whole building is going to fall.”

“Thanks, Rick, for the great news,” I rattled back at him.

More good news to celebrate, I really didn’t mean that, but I just wanted to scream out for a second and get all this fury out. My leg was hurt and I was in no condition to keep moving, let alone fight. All I needed was at least an hour of rest. But even that came as a difficult choice at the moment, considering where I was. I was responsible for causing all this destruction—so I owed it to myself to try and fix this mess. Unexpectedly, a beeping sound echoed from my heat sensing system. I noticed one of the scanners had picked up some heat signals, radiating from a few yards ahead of me. This was promising; they looked human enough from what the scanners emitted. Ignoring my pain, I crept towards it slowly through the small tunnel. I had no idea what I was thinking, but I felt hopeful. My search was finally coming to an end, or at least I thought. The tunnel ended close to an open shaft that led down. I stopped and looked down carefully. It was too quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. No guards stationed around, thankfully. I waltzed down undetected and searched persistently through the compartments. Someone coughed loudly, definitely a good sign. The cough came from the compartment on the west side of the floor. I walked quickly to it and stopped. A large hunk of metal was blocking the door, making it hard to open from the inside. Prying it away, I opened the hatch seal and walked in quietly. There was some sort of magnetic beam rendering the armor useless. I immediately felt it the moment I entered the room; however, the effects were not as bad, since I was not on the other side, with the other prisoners.

“Who are you?” one of the men asked, and I recognized him immediately. “Are you here to finish us off? Just get it over and done with already, instead of locking us up in here.”

It was Corporal Stain, the leading officer in my squad, and one of the experts in Metaphysics. Great! It looked like I had finally found everyone and they were all okay, for the most part.

“It’s me, Den,” I said and took off my helmet for them to see my face. “Surprised, aren’t you, that I’m still alive?”

“No way,” the captain commented and his eyes widened, “Peter told us you went rogue and almost killed one of your colleagues. He said he had no choice, but to blast you to ashes.” Typical! That was so like Peter to say something like that. Under different circumstances, I would have died instantly, but I survived.

“In your faces, everybody,” the lieutenant laughed at them, pointing his fingers at everyone. “I bet on the rookie, and guess what, he survived. Now you owe me money and I intend to collect it soon or none of us are going home.”

“Oh, shut up, Jack,” the captain sighed, completely annoyed.

So typical, I would have been mad, at first, if this was before that unusual dream. Now, just seeing them all in one piece, meant the world to me. My eyes shifted involuntary and suddenly I was staring at Janet, awkwardly. She looked surprised and her eyes almost seemed to glow with a magnificent radiance. Something I hadn’t felt over the years crept in. Did I still have any feelings for her? The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was just my imagination. I had left the past behind me, but still, I felt a bit of relief seeing her alive. “Look away, don’t let her charm affect you.”

I moved around and scanned the locks sealing them in. Wait! There was someone missing from the group, but I just couldn’t pinpoint who. It was the man who I despised the most, the man who had almost killed me. Where was that arrogant buffoon?

“Where is Peter?” I asked them as I got closer to the holding cell. A feeling of rage and anger swelled inside of me, but I didn’t let my emotions take over.

“Let’s just say he is no longer one of us,” the captain said and looked down with a look of betrayal.

What did he mean? Was Peter dead or something? So much for my sweet revenge.

“Peter went over to the enemy’s side,” Corporal Stain said, with a voice so low it sounded almost remorseful. “He gave the enemy all our intel and data we gathered from the past few centuries. In other words, he gave us up for invasion.”

“The enemy knows about our plans and intends to act hastily,” the captain intervened, standing up. “But don’t worry, I sent an SOS signal to earth. Hopefully, reinforcements will come soon.”

No, I clenched my fist tightly shocked. I knew Peter was a conniving two time, dirty weasel, but not a traitor. He wouldn’t do something this terrible, would he? What did he have to gain by switching over to the other side? There had to be an explanation and the only way to get answers was to find him first. First things first!