by Lucas Flint
“Get it directly from my head?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“You will see soon enough, once I take you out of here,” said the Pokacu. “All you need to know is that the information gathering process will be quick … though not painless.”
Chapter Ten
The Pokacu—who called himself Graleex—poured a weird red liquid onto the blue glue to disintegrate it and allow me to stand. Although my legs were free, the blue glue still kept my arms firmly against my sides, meaning that I couldn't punch him or do anything that might help me escape Graleex's grasp. Not that I really wanted to, because even though I didn't want to be here, I was more interested in learning about who Graleex was and how he even got here than escaping. Besides, I figured we were a lot safer down here in his ship than on the surface where Robert and Vision could find us, because Graleex seemed like he was going to stick to his word and keep me and Mom alive for now.
Graleex forced me to march out of the pod by gunpoint. Since I didn't have any powers and was unable to fight back, I had to march forward. When we left the pod, Graleex closed the door behind us and locked it, but I got one last look at Mom—who looked worried and horrified, like she thought Graleex was going to eat me or something—before Graleex forced me to get moving. I hoped Mom had seen my reassuring smile, because I didn't want her to be worried and alone in that pod while I was with Graleex.
The interior of Graleex's ship kind of reminded me of the Spinner, except it wasn't as clean or as new. It smelled kind of like seawater, too, which made me feel a little sick, but Graleex didn't let me stop. He just shoved me down a narrow hallway that had strange glass panels that looked like aquariums full of pink water, but the aquariums looked empty, which made me wonder what they were for. It was also really humid in here for some reason, which made me sweat underneath my suit.
We stopped in front of a door that had a glowing, holographic keypad next to it. The keypad showed twenty different characters that looked like no Earth language I had ever seen before, but which I assumed was the written form of the Pokacu language. Graleex had a hard time putting in the password that would open the door, however, because the holographic keypad kept blinking in and out of existence, which made me wonder if it was damaged.
But Graleex succeeded soon enough and then forced me into the next room, almost bumping my head against the frame. I would have told him to be more gentle, but Graleex didn't really seem to believe in treating prisoners nicely, so I said nothing about it.
Instead, I focused on the room we had entered. It looked kind of like a laboratory … sort of. There was a metal table in the middle, complete with shackles meant to hold me down to its surface, but when I looked at the ceiling, I saw what looked like dozens if not hundreds of folded artificial limbs. They were all so packed together that it was practically impossible to make out any individual limbs, but I could tell that some of the limbs had tools like drills or hammers, while others were normal hands (or normal Pokacu hands, anyway). I wondered what they were for, but Graleex forced me over to the table, so I looked down to avoid tripping over my own feet.
As for the rest of the room, the walls were covered in monitors and strange buttons that looked almost organic. A weird-looking metal suit stood in one corner, which looked like it was designed for a Pokacu body and even had a helmet with a clear windshield. The monitors built into the walls displayed a bunch of strange markings that looked like the keys on the holographic keypad from before, but I couldn't read any of the words, although I did see a few displays of the ocean outside, such as a shark that swam by one of the cameras.
Before I could see much else, however, Graleex pushed me onto the metal table abruptly. As soon as I fell on it, Graleex poured some of that same strange red liquid from before, which instantly dissolved the blue glue around my arms. I coughed as the blue glue turned into a gas, but before I could get up, the metal straps immediately clamped down hard on my wrists and ankles. I tried to break them, but they were too thick for me to even budge.
Meanwhile, Graleex walked over to a corner of the room, where a floating table with what looked like a laptop computer, plus several vials of liquids I didn't recognize, stood. He pushed the table until it was right next to me and then started tapping on individual keys on the laptop, which I realized were also holographic just like the keypad outside. And, like the keypad outside, the keys disappeared every now and then, which didn't seem to be helping Graleex's temper all that much.
“Is there something wrong with your computer?” I said. “The keys keep going out.”
Graleex didn't even look at me, but he said, “Much of my technology is old and damaged. I have had to repair much of it myself, but I am a soldier and not a repman. I mean repairman. And without any contact with the Mother World, I cannot call for a real repairman or for the parts I need to make the necessary repairs to my ship myself. Have had to improvise.”
“So you've been underwater for years?” I said. “How long have you been down here and how come no one ever found you? I mean, back on the surface, I was always told that there were no more Pokacu on Earth.”
At first, I didn't think Graleex was going to answer my questions, because the information I was asking for was relevant to his own survival and could probably be used against him. I wasn't planning to harm him or anything, of course, because I really was curious about him, but Graleex had no way of knowing that.
Then Graleex said, without taking his eyes off the screen of his computer, “I have been underwater for fifteen of your human years and approximately five of our Pokacu years. I fled underneath the waves of one of your world's oceans after the last battle between my people and yours, which resulted in the invasion force I was a part of being utterly destroyed and every soldier, scientist, and pilot in my fleet being slaughtered. I fled because I knew I could not beat you superheroes on my own.”
“Why didn't you return to your, er, Mother World, then?” I said. “Couldn't you have done that instead of fleeing under the sea?”
Graleex shook his head. “My ship was too damaged during the invasion to make it into space. Had I tried to flee, my ship likely would have been torn apart by the vacuum of space and I would have died. Besides, my ship didn't have enough fuel to make it out of the atmosphere, especially after the engines were damaged, so I could only make it beneath the waves, which is one of the few places on this world where you humans have yet to reach.”
“So you've been underwater for fifteen years?” I said. “How did you survive without food and water? Can Pokacu eat and drink the same things humans can?”
“No,” said Graleex, shaking his head. “I first ate most of the emergency provisions on this ship, but when I ran out of that, I had to use my ship's hibernation systems to go under for six months at a time. I only awoke once every six months in order to capture fish and bring in water from the outside, which, through my ship's technology, I am able to turn into food suitable for a Pokacu like myself.” Then he shuddered. “Barely suitable, that is.”
“And you haven't been able to contact your Mother World at all during this time?” I said.
“Not at all,” said Graleex. “The ship's communication sisters—I mean systems—were damaged heavily during the final battle of the invasion. And because I have never been anywhere near the surface of the ocean since the day I have went under, I have been too far out of range to send out a distress signal to the Mother World for help or back up.”
Then Graleex suddenly looked at me, but his expression was as alien and inscrutable as ever. “But if this goes well, then I should hopefully be able to return to the Mother World. That escape pod you and the female came in is in rather good condition. I expect to be able to use it to return home after I make a few slight modifications to it.”
“Do you think the Mother World even cares about the invasion, though?” I said. “It failed, after all, and it looks like your leaders haven't sent any other ships to resume the invasion, since we haven't seen any P
okacu on Earth in fifteen years.”
Suddenly, Graleex grabbed my neck with his hand and slammed my head against the metal table. The blow dazed me briefly and hurt a lot because of how hard the metal was, but I didn't feel anything break or bleed, at least.
Blinking hard, I looked at Graleex's face. He looked angrier than I had ever seen him before, like he was about to tear my head off my neck.
“How dare you insinuate that the Mother World does not care about me,” said Graleex. His grip on my neck tightened, which made it hard to breathe. “The Mother World never gave an order to retreat from Earth. That means that the invasion is still on, even if I must do it by myself. It is part of the Grand Code.”
“The Grand what?” I said, but my words were kind of strangled due to Graleex's grip on my neck.
“It doesn't concern you,” said Graleex. His grip on my neck loosened. “All you need to know is that I will soon be off this vile world and will be able to return to the Mother World. I shall be rewarded greatly for my loyalty, no doubt, perhaps even made a general of the new invasion force that the Mother World will inevitably send to finish the job.”
Graleex sounded like he was rambling now and didn't seem to be looking at me anymore. He seemed caught up in his own imagination, like he was thinking about how he would look as the general of the new invasion force. That kind of creeped me out, but given that I was currently unable to save myself, I just had to hope that he wouldn't forget his strength and snap my neck or worse.
Graleex removed his hand from my neck and turned back to his computer, saying, “But first, I need to get your knowledge of the surface. The reason the initial invasion failed, after all, was because we didn't know about the superheroes. Your people, however, knew about us, thanks to that flarggaa, N'ckn'ax.”
“You mean Nicknacks?” I said.
Graleex looked at me again, this time in surprise. “You know of that traitor?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He's one of the leaders of the Neohero Alliance, actually. But what do you mean he's a traitor? He's not a Pokacu.”
“And he is a liar, too, I see,” said Graleex. “Regardless, if he had not come ahead of time and warned you humans about our invasion, we likely would have succeeded in conquering your world. That is but one example of how knowledge can turn the tide of battle and decide a war.”
“What do you mean that Nicknacks is a liar?” I said. “What's he lying about?”
“I don't need to tell you that,” said Graleex. “I am done talking with you. Instead, I am going to focus on extracting your knowledge from your head so that when I return to the Mother World, it will be with the knowledge necessary to make the next phase of the invasion a success.”
Graleex tapped a few keys. A second later, the artificial limbs folded on the ceiling above began to unfold and move around. I struggled against my clamps again, but as before, they were impossible to break.
So all I could do was watch apprehensively as one of the arms lowered down from the ceiling. It looked kind of like a plunger, oddly enough, except it was made out of metal and probably wasn't used to unclog Graleex's toilet. It hovered toward me until it rested on my head, at which point it tightened enough to make me gasp in pain. It felt like my head was being crushed between two metal clamps, but I was unable to get it off my head.
“What is this thing?” I said, looking at Graleex, who didn't seemed nearly as concerned about the thing around my head as I was. “What does it do?”
“It is the memory copier,” said Graleex, who was now looking at his computer again. “It will copy all of your memories and drown them—I mean download them—into my ship's memory banks. I have not used this particular machine in some time, but it should work.”
“Will it kill me?” I said.
“Unlikely,” said Graleex, “though your memories will likely end up a jumbled mess. I have only used this machine on one human before and it caused him to forget his very identity. I have no idea what happened to him after that, since we let him go after took his memories away, but it doesn't matter.”
Actually, it did matter, because I was starting to rethink the deal I had made with Graleex. I had thought that giving Graleex the information he wanted would be a wise thing to do, but if that meant forgetting who I was, I suddenly wasn't so sure that I wanted to do that.
“Hey, man, why don't you just let me go?” I said. “I mean, I don't really want to do this anymore. I know I agreed to give you the information you wanted, but you didn't say that there would be a possibility that I might forget who I am in the process.”
“Do I look like I care if you have gotten cold toes, as you humans might put it?” said Graleex. “I don't care what you are afraid of happening to your memory. All that matters is getting your knowledge, the knowledge that will help the Mother World succeed in conquering this poor excuse for a planet.”
Graleex tapped one final key and, all of a sudden, I felt the memory copier tighten even more around my head. Then I felt a sucking force coming from the copier, which I realized was the machine starting to take away my memories.
“But do not worry, human,” said Graleex, looking at me with a smirk on his face. “The process will be quick … although I cannot guarantee that it will be entirely painless.”
Chapter Eleven
It felt like Graleex had stuck a vacuum on my head. Yet I didn't actually feel my hair being pulled back. It was like my brains were slowly being sucked out of my skull and was painful, so painful that I actually screamed, which didn't seem to bother Graleex, who was merely watching my agony as if it was an interesting science experiment or something.
I didn't know if Mom could hear me or if the walls of the lab were too thick for my screams to escape through. It didn't matter even if Mom could hear me, because there was nothing she could do to save me. I just screamed and screamed, wanting the pain to end, but it didn't seem like it was ever going to end. It felt like it was just going to keep going on forever and ever and there was nothing I could do about it.
And my memory … it was getting weaker and unclearer. I could still remember the events of the past day pretty well, but everything before that was starting to seem mushy and unclear, like all my memories were colliding into each other. I didn't know if this was just because I was in so much pain or if it was the side effect of the memory copier that Graleex had mentioned; regardless, it made me think I was going to lose all my memories, including the memories of my parents, which made me scream even louder.
Just as the pain was becoming overwhelming, I saw one of the artificial limbs in the ceiling lower toward us. It looked like a hammer of some kind, big and thick enough to smash my skull to pieces. I was unable to think about what Graleex planned to use that hammer for, but I doubted it was going to be very nice.
Oddly, the hammer was lowering down behind Graleex. The alien didn't seem to notice it. He was still watching me, though he occasionally glanced at the screen of his computer, which I couldn't see. Maybe the computer was showing the progress of the memory copier or something or maybe Graleex was checking his Facebook news feed.
“Almost done …” Graleex said as the hammer lowered behind him. I could barely hear him over my own screams, but I noticed that the hammer was pulling back. “Just a few more minutes and I should have everything I need.”
Just as Graleex said that, the hammer suddenly flew toward the back of his head. He must have heard it coming, however, because he turned around just in time to see it hurtling toward his face.
But Graleex wasn't fast enough to dodge or block it. The hammer smashed into his ugly, blue alien face hard enough to knock him down. He stumbled into his computer, knocking it off the table, which went spinning away from where I was held down. Graleex hit the floor with a clunk and he did not get up again.
As soon as Graleex was down, the sucking force from the memory copier suddenly vanished. The copier's grip on my head loosened, allowing me to pull my head out of the machine. My head still felt s
quished and it ached like crazy, but I no longer felt like my head was about to explode, at least.
“Ow …” I said, shaking my head. “What was that? What happened?”
“Bolt, are you all right?” came Valerie's voice in my ear. “Did the memory copier hurt you?”
“Val?” I said. “Is that you? I almost forgot about you. Did you stop the copier?”
“Yes,” said Valerie. “I took control of the artificial limbs in the ship's ceiling and used that hammer to knock Graleex out. Because Graleex was in control of the memory copier, it shut off as soon as he was knocked out.”
“Wait, you can control Pokacu technology?” I said in surprise. “Since when could you do that?”
“Since your father made me compatible with the Pokacu tech he managed to salvage from the wreckage of the Pokacu spaceships after the invasion,” said Valerie. “But it was not easy. It was why I didn't just take direct control of the memory copier itself and instead indirectly shut it off by attacking Graleex.”
“That's great, Val,” I said. “Do you think you can free me, as well?”
“I think so,” said Valerie. “Give me a second.”
A second later, my clamps sprung up and I sat up, rubbing my wrists as I looked over the table at Graleex lying on the floor. Graleex lay so still that he looked dead, but I doubted that that hammer had been enough to kill him.
Still, I was in no mood to wait for him to wake up, so I jumped off the table and was about to make my way out of the room before I stopped and remembered that Mom had been captured by the blue glue the last time I saw her, which I doubted I would be able to break apart with sheer physical strength alone.
So I bent over and grabbed the vial full of the red liquid that could disintegrate the blue glue from Graleex's belt and then ran out the room with the cold liquid in my hands. I also grabbed a weird-looking gun that was holstered at Graleex's side, because I needed a weapon and this looked like it could be useful, even though I didn't know anything about how it worked.
