He neared Crix and started to circle him. His head tilted as he observed the subtle blue radiance from his skin. Then, he snapped his head over toward Kerriah and gave a sideways smirk and stared intently at her; his eyes filled bright with blue.
Crix rolled his eyes while shaking his head. “Whatever you have on your mind, get it out now,” Crix said, feeling uncomfortable with the way he was feasting his eyes on her. He snapped his head back around to Crix again, his eyes now glowing slightly red.
“My apologies, you’re correct. That was quite rude of me, particularly since we lack a formal introduction. I am Merik of the ancient order of house Spancer, and my voiceless assistant there, whom you’ve already met, is Guttel. This is our development laboratory, and its singular purpose is designing a perfect harmony between organic and mechanized technology. Now please, if you will, enlighten us as to who you are,” Merik requested, his eyes pulsing slightly between blue and red.
“Isn’t it obvious from our attire? I mean, can’t you just look up the prison manifest?” Kerriah snapped back sharply, appalled by the view of the captives in the surrounding cubes. Merik noticed her discontent over them and slowly turned back, acknowledging the containers.
“Ahhh . . . you have an issue with my subject containment area. It’s to be expected since most will not appreciate the cost associated with our work here; however, I can assure you it is truly for the greater good of all who trace their lineage to the Oro System.” He placed his right hand on his hip and took a relaxed posture. “Why, of course, this seclusion has turned me into a terrible host. My instrumentation indicates that you’re both famished, and yet, I have rudely accosted you for coherent replies. Let me offer you a bit of rest, and we can discuss all this over dinner. I will have my culinary servant put together something special for the occasion.”
A strangely petite Marck servant led them to a small room that contained several black reclining seats and tapestries that lined the walls, which depicted images of black-winged beasts with protruding fangs. A dark circle in the background overshadowed the beasts. The room was toasty warm, and the ambient lighting cast a soft glow from the rim of the floor and ceiling. They both sat back exhausted, even though they knew they were in danger in this strange place. Yet, it was difficult not to take ease in the room.
“We can’t get too comfortable here,” Kerriah whispered. “This Merik character is crazy. Gossip has it that he was once the greatest biogenetic engineer in the Oro System but was expelled from his noble house for supposed horrific experiments on live subjects. When his patriarchs discovered his work, they were so disgusted they banished him from their lands and stripped him of his titles. His was the only remaining noble house of the ancient world. He disappeared shortly after, and no one has heard from him since.”
“At least until now.” Crix shook his head then grabbed a tall fluted glass and took a sip of what the servant had poured for him. The taste was sweet, followed by warm. He instantly felt mellow and at ease.
“He’s been down here all this time working for the Marcks and worse . . . Zearic.” Kerriah looked over and noticed Crix was asleep, strange he could fall asleep after what she had just revealed to him. “Crix . . . Crix . . . wake up,” she whispered in as loud of a whisper as one could before it became a low shout. Crix did not react. Just then, there was a step at the door, and a tall, dark figure zapped her. She crumpled to the floor.
***
She awakened in a long, formal dining hall. Fiery thermal lamps pulsed gently above a shiny black table, which filled the length of the room. Banners with images of winged creatures adorned the walls. Nearby were several biomechanically engineered beings that were setting fine cuisines down in front of them, along with goblets that they filled with spirits. At one end of the table sat Merik. From his mechanized arm jutted a thin metal rod that curled downward and swirled the burgundy tinted drink in front of him. With fully prepared plates placed in front of them, Crix and Kerriah sat at the other side of the table from Merik.
“It’s a pleasure to finally have you join us. I was worried we would have to commence our meal without you.” Merik’s voice carried a conceited drawl. He stabbed a small piece of meat from his plate with a tiny blade from his left arm. With an unpleasant look on his face, he withdrew, scowling, and then snapped his fingers, gesturing at his plate.
A nearby servant that looked like nothing more than a tall, narrow cylinder with dark organic flesh corkscrewed around it, moved in, and extended a coiled limb, which shot a torch-like flame over the meat, sizzling it to perfection. A small, dark head with two black eyes peeked from atop the cylinder to inspect it and then moved back away. These bizarre and almost grisly servants made Merik’s guests uneasy, and it was apparent that he relished in it.
“Go ahead and enjoy. If anything is less than perfection, please speak up, and it will be corrected,” Merik chimed as he resumed his meal. Crix was reluctant to partake but was weary from hunger and decided that whatever harm tampered food could present was worth the risk of restoring his strength, and he began to take in his fill. The food was the best he had ever tasted, and he tried a bit of everything.
Kerriah watched Crix eat and slowly picked at her plate. Merik grinned and pushed his chair back slightly to observe his guests.
“Very tasty, is it not?” he asked but received no reply. “Now, you can start to understand what the basis of my work here is. To be clear, I take the strengths of one’s talents and immaculate them in their profession. Medics, scientists, engineers, laborers, soldiers, and even chefs are all enhanced to the pinnacle of their capabilities.”
“They appear to be more like tortured slaves for the elite to me,” Kerriah lashed out as she slammed her utensils down. Merik’s eyes turned to a bright red glow as his smile morphed into a flitching scowl.
“I find it impossible to believe that someone of your creation would fail to comprehend the manner of this work.” Kerriah looked confused by his statement and stood.
“What?” she pointedly remarked before Crix interrupted.
“I’ve some bad news for your little plan to create this perverse world of yours. There are many out there that will fight you, and I’ll stand by my upbringing that good will always prevail over the wicked such as you.”
Merik’s brow crinkled around his metal eye inserts. “Why would you stand against me? Do you wish to see your kind consumed? I’m working on perfecting our species so we can develop beyond that of our enemies.”
Kerriah laughed. “What, the Thraxons? Please spare me that rhetoric. The Marcks are the threat I see, and you’re obviously their crony, sick and twisted.”
“Little girl, you’re so naive. The Thraxons are stronger than ever, yet you think they have been defeated. You are gravely mistaken. They are, in fact, evolving at this very moment. If we are to survive, we must evolve as well.” Merik finished his plate and then grasped a nearby flexible pipe that hung from a bulb-shaped canister by his chair. Appearing relaxed, he took several puffs from it, while a light pulsed and mist fed out with each successive inhale. “Care for a little after dinner radiance?” Offering the pipe to his guests. Crix shoved his plate away, toppling his goblet.
“Hardly! We certainly have no interest in your stimulants. We want to know where our friends are. Where have you taken Krath and Creedith?”
“Yes, you are an interesting one I’ll have to admit, and I look forward to finding out what gives you that magnificent blue luster. I can also clearly see the emotional fixation you have with your companion here.” Merik gained a long grin as he looked slowly over at Kerriah. “Such a pity you appear to know so little of one another, else I might imagine that emotional childishness would be quickly extinguished.” Merik settled back in his chair and rubbed his chin with regal smugness.
“I once had a foolish love during my youth and lordship over at house Spancer.” Kerriah rolled her eyes. Lordship? Yeah, right. Merik left her response with only a brief pause before continuing. �
��It was the young and beaming Lady Coraye Britte. Ahhh . . . a beauty she certainly was with her blazing red hair and face as smooth and flawless as purest cream.” His story already annoyed Kerriah. However, always interested in people’s backstories, Crix calmed down slightly to listen.
“I was not necessarily the most handsome, but being a Spancer certainly helped to win over this lady from Yorly. I met her at a Cruxx dueling soiree thrown by the great Himilan Buric.” Kerriah let loose an extra loud exhale in protest of the drab tale.
“We’re really not interested in whatever former love life you may have had before you were kicked from your inheritance for being a mental case.”
Merik’s eyes glowed a fiery red and his cold lips pursed together tightly. “How dare you insult your host?” he snapped, furious over the interruption of the story he had not told since his stint began on Dispor years ago. A tale that still represented the failing bits of his humanity. His ego flamed up, telling him that there must now be a reckoning of their insolence.
“You lout! I shall see you pieced out like an obsolete grunt for your blatant show of disrespect.” Merik raised his mechanical arm and pointed it at Kerriah. A thin rod slid out from the end and flickered. Her eyes glossed over as if caught in a trance.
Crix kicked his chair back. Pulses and cracking filled the air around him, while a blue glow shot out and became a blinding glare. For Crix, the last vestige of his patience with Merik had been depleted, and he was ready to reveal the power of the orb to his host. He would not allow anything to harm Kerriah, nothing. Merik took notice of the imminent threat and backed off Kerriah. She snapped back instantly from the trance.
“Crix, no! You mustn’t,” Kerriah shouted but quickly realized that if they had any charade to this point, it was now over. There was a brief look of rare shock on Merik’s face just before a hollowed snarl moved in behind him. A tall, well-armored Marck stormed in, unexpected to even Merik. The once-controlled scene was instant chaos.
“Sintor!” Merik shouted as he turned to see his unwelcomed guest. Sintor was radically modified from the last time they saw him on level four. His arms, legs, and body were now bulkier and more refined. It became evident to both Kerriah and Crix that Eetak Five and Six had been parted out to make Sintor’s armored shell impervious.
Sintor grabbed Merik up by his arm like a child’s toy doll. “You fool! He has the orb, the one the Knactor Legion has been scouring the system for! You idiot! We must kill him now!” Sintor tossed Merik across the room as he broke for Crix like a lion that had zeroed in on its prey.
Crix braced his arms together, creating a shield, just before Sintor unleashed a crushing blow with both arms slamming into his torso. Crix slid across the room and smashed up against the wall. Shaken briefly, he slowly raised his head, and his eyes appeared to spark blue with fierce determination. He sprung forward, taking to the air and wrapping himself around Sintor’s head. He pulled Sintor off balance and sent the raging Marck commander staggering back. Sintor twisted and reached backward in a flailing effort to pull Crix off. Crix plunged his thumbs into Sintor’s eyes and sent an orb power surge through Sintor’s circuitry. Like a zip foil screaming to the brink, Sintor overloaded and collapsed to the ground. Kerriah and Crix looked around but found that Merik was no longer in the room and must have slipped out during the scuffle with Sintor.
“Great, we let that slimy jerk get away,” Crix said as he swung around, noticing Kerriah had dashed out of the doorway. She chased Merik down a narrow hall that led to a control room.
Kerriah spotted Merik. His robotic arm was plugged into a nearby panel. “Back away!” she ordered.
He let out a sinister chuckle. “I’m afraid you do not have the upper hand here.”
At that moment, the clanking of Marck footsteps rang out from the hallway as Merik’s personal guards surrounded Kerriah with weapons drawn. Two Marcks restrained her arms behind her back and pushed her head down. Merik slowly approached her with a thin rod protruding from his arm. A tiny ball at the end started to enter Kerriah’s ear.
“Now I’m going to find out what you . . .” Merik paused as the echoes of Marcks in the hall firing their weapons and blue flashes strobed back and forth. The two Marcks holding Kerriah fell to the ground as two blue beams flashed from their faces. Behind her stood Crix with the look of a seasoned warrior blazing from his eyes.
Kerriah gave a warm smile to Crix and then turned sharply back toward Merik. Crix handed her a confiscated rifle, which she swiftly pointed at Merik’s head.
“Now you’re going tell us where our friends are, or we are going to start de-Marckanizing you the hard way.” Her tone gave no indication that reasoning was an option.
“Even if I give you your friends, what will you do then . . . hmmm? It’s not as if you’re getting off Dispor. No one ever leaves here, not even me.” Merik slowly backed up to the control panel.
Kerriah placed her rifle muzzle at the back of his head. “If you touch anything aside from what will free our friends, it will be the last thing you ever touch.” Merik slid his hand away and walked over to a panel on the other side of the room.
“Fine, as you wish.” He placed his thumb into a lit indentation, triggering a metal panel that slid away in front of them to reveal a window. The now-open window provided a clear view of the cubes that contained the captive life forms they had observed earlier.
“I imagine the Hybor that I received yesterday is one of them you’re looking for. He was a feisty one for sure, much like the two of you, but a tad bit more on the temperamental side. Which was his undoing as well.” He plugged his arm into the panel again, and the cubes vibrated and shuddered. The movement was so faint that it was almost hard to detect. The cubes started to spin, and several flew by their view in a flash as if standing near high-speed zipfoils blurring through the skyway pipes of Soorak. The chain of cubes instantly stopped. One of the cubes hovered in front of them; a hunkered Hybor with rage in his expression stood frozen in time.
“Krath!” Crix cried out with excitement, yet anxiety was in his voice with his concern over the state his friend. Krath appeared to be yelling hostilely in his expression but was motionless like all the others. The cube moved to a platform close by and dropped down, landing squarely on the surface below. A large drill bit spun down from high above, cutting into the cube’s top. Blinding light poured into the cube. As the light dissipated, a familiar voice barked out in anger.
“Tya crummy Marck turncoat—what the—” Krath’s appearance went from looking like he was about to smack something to befuddled.
“Guttel, please remove the subject from the diffusion platform and take him to holding silo nine,” Merik called out over the console. Guttel hovered out and shot a single proton charged manacle around the neck of Krath and started to tow him off the platform.
Krath fought and struggled, but the proton charge proved too strong to fight. Guttel drug him over to a circular opening in the floor and pulled him over the top of it; the proton shackle released, and Krath tumbled into a cone-shaped holding cell that was lined with alloy walls that were so smooth that one could see their perfect reflection. Krath took several futile leaps, grasping at the sides, before accepting that escape was improbable without assistance.
“Now that was a really dumb move. Get him out of there right now!” Kerriah commanded, putting the nose of her rifle firmly against Merik’s temple. Merik stiffened his stance and relaxed his arms.
“Fear not, youthful one, I am merely taking necessary measures to protect all of us. Please understand that your brutish friend has no presence of mind over what has transpired here. Had he gone into one of his barbaric rages, I might be unable to retrieve your Andor comrade. It is just a precaution.” He cautiously raised his arms again in a gesture to resume his efforts. “Now, if I may, I will awaken the equine.” Kerriah nodded and lowered her rifle.
“Okay, quickly.”
Cubes zipped by the display rapidly once again, and after sev
eral moments, they stopped with a cube in front of their window. Inside was a hefty and ragged Andor. His mane was dark with silver swirled in, and his skin was a glossy brown, rippled in muscles. The scars of war and torture layered across his body. His profound eyes reflected a labored soul and a wildness that was still evident, much like a caged predator.
CHAPTER 22
S o that’s Creedith,” Crix said to himself, having heard so many tales of his heroics but never seeing an actual picture of him since images of oneself was forbade by Andor culture.
“Yes, I do remember this one,” Merik replied to Crix. “He was a handful for us to restrain at that time. Interestingly, he is the reason for the added turrets in the Marck storage area, not that those prevented your entrance, but prior to those, there was merely a crude grid to hold back the possible stray scab. Who would have ever guessed that an inmate would rip it from the rock from which it was embedded? He was strong indeed and is—err—was going to be a masterful specimen for my weaponizing developments.
“Pity, he could have been an unstoppable Marck hybrid soldier and was the only of his species I have ever had in my possession. Alas, there were political delays in his processing, though.” Merik gave a long, mechanical sigh. “He wasn’t supposed to be here actually. Something regarding his knowledge had Zearic’s interest, but I wasn’t about to give my prized specimen back freely. He was going to have to come down here to get him . . . and never did. My mistake was that I never finished my efforts; I did, however, start them.”
The cube pivoted to the right exposing scales of black plating on the left side of the Andor’s face, and it could now be seen that his left arm was synthetic black and slightly larger than the right. “Yes, he is better than before. He is integrated with the advanced alloy Bracix, which has virtually indestructible properties and is as lightweight as a piece of cloth. It will absorb energy blasts and allow that energy to be refocused to any intended targets. He is a beauty, indeed.”
Age of the Marcks Page 25
