The Rising Sun: Episode 4

by J Hawk

  “What do you plan on doing, sir?” asked Voreno. “Whatever it is, it seems we’re running out of time. The longer we wait … the more disastrous the string of events seems to turn.”

  Haxor couldn’t help but agree. And I fear this may be just the beginning. “The Naxim has already been placed on a high alert. Our crews across the spectrum have already been taken to a heighten vigilance and seriousness. And whatever we’re now facing, we’re probably going to have to brace ourselves for it. Because nothing at all can be said for certain until we get a track on the mystics responsible for this.”

  Minutes later, as the meeting disbanded, Haxor found himself lingering in the office, staring out of the large window in front of it in silence. He knew that whatever happened, they were all just puppets to a greater force at play. A force that had been playing with them all for too long now. Sighing, Haxor slowly turned and walked out of the conference room, hardly able to hear himself think.

  __________

  The time has come.

  Zardin strode across the cave to where a small black heap lay on the floor. Arriving before it, he sent a swift kick to the centre of the heap. Derigor gave a muffled squeak, gagged and with his hands and feet clasped in irons. Zardin bent down over the Naxim official and plucked the gag from his mouth. Derigor gave a long contained gasp, and let his gaze slowly rise over Zardin.

  “What do you want with me?” Derigor breathed.

  “Just a little favour.” replied Zardin.

  Derigor held his eyes for a long moment, and a rush of defiance arose from the depths of his eyes.

  “Favour … to you?” he asked softly. “I’d rather die.”

  “You undoubtedly will.” said Zardin. “I’m here to make sure of it.” He patted the Naxim official gently by the back. “In the meantime, we thank you for your assistance … in helping us with something we’ve long been after.”

  He heaved Derigor’s body up and slung it over his shoulder.

  “What – what’re you doing?” the man squealed, thrashing helplessly over his shoulder.

 

  “It’s time for a little trip,” Zardin said, while Derigor struggled over his shoulder “Oh, and believe me, we’re gonna have some fun.”

  He turned and boomed down the dark chamber of the cave, “Men, suit up, and get the ship ready. The time’s here.”

  Derigor felt his heart pound within him as he lay in the small enclosed space, bound and helpless. The mystics had left him here, at the back of the ship, and had then taken off with him in it. He had no idea where they were going, and why.

  The stream of events that led to where he now was left him utterly perplexed. He couldn’t digest anything of it. Whatever had happened across the past few bewildering hours.

  But through the panic and dread choking him from within, there was a heavy sense of confusion. What did his captors want with him? And for what were they keeping him alive? None of it seemed to make sense.

  Getting a hold over himself, Derigor tried calming himself. He drew in rhythmic, slow breaths, letting his tension drain slowly. After almost a whole minute of deep breathing, a sense of composure found him.

  He was a man with a stern resolve and he refused to lose control now. Whatever be the odds. Derigor embraced the possibility that he might not live through this. But his concerns, as of now, were not for his own self…

  Somewhere far away, Martha and Garen would be stricken with panic, undoubtedly having heard that he had gone missing for a few hours. He felt a lump grow in his throat as the faces of his two loved ones flashed past him … He only hoped that they had the strength to move past this. But nesting in a deeper layer of his mind, more terrible than his concern for his two loved ones was a far, far graver concern – concern for the world he had worked to protect all these years. The evidence suggested that these men, the ones holding him captive, were moving down a path of mayhem like no other.

  Their worst fear had now come to life, and Derigor was witnessing it before his very eyes: the Xeni were back. Derigor couldn’t imagine being a part of whatever twisted plan they held in store. As he had honestly admitted, he would rather die than help them with whatever they were going towards.

  The rumble of the ship’s engine was mild, and a slight shuddering sensation came from the cold metal ground he lay against. He craned his neck slightly, and saw a bunch of cloaked men seated around the circular hull of the ship. Zardin stood upfront beside the pilot, watching through the window ahead as the ship soared through a massive sea of black.

  Derigor let his head rest on the ship’s floor, submitting to the train of events: he accepted whatever had come, and whatever was waiting to come … A sense of peace crept over him as he did, and before he knew it, he was asleep…

  He might have had a series of hundred or so, different dreams, all of them borrowing from all faces of the life that he knew. He glimpsed Martha and Garen, his wife and son. He saw Naxim officers that he had worked with all his life. He saw childhood images flash past him, broken strings of imageries that carried little logic. He saw friends he had known from long back, buried deep in his subconsciousness, long forgotten.

  And the dreams slowly turned unsettling…

  He heard devious voices whisper through the darkness. Some of them made sense, others didn’t … He saw strange disorienting patterns run through his mind, forming and dissolving in a rapid blur. He heard gunshots, Sparkler shots … and the orange light of a mystic’s blade as he ignited it.

  And then, they became too unsettling…

  There was chaos, destruction, and bloodshed. Explosions, mayhem. And suddenly the streets were thronged screaming people who ran with their arms flailed madly. And at the very end of it all, he heard a laughter. A laughter that seemed to shake the world, like the sound of a thousand hyenas shrieking as one…

  “Rise and shine.” came a familiar voice, piercing through veil separating reality and the dream world. His insides squealing at the sound of that voice, Derigor jolted awake. He sprang upright to find Zardin standing over him, the same unpleasant smile on his face.

  Feeling the grogginess of sleep drain in an instant, he tried to pull himself up, only to find his body in the same bound state they had left him in. “Where … am I?”

  They were no longer in the ship. They were in the middle of a wide open space. Derigor craned his neck slightly, trying to get sight of his surroundings. And as he saw where they were, his mouth dropped open in alarm. They had reached whatever unknown destination they had been travelling towards. And the place couldn’t have given him worse creeps…

  He was lying on a solid brown ground, inside of what looked like the interior of a large mountain. The ship they had arrived in lay parked across the large chamber. A minute hole could be seen at the top of the mountain, evidently through which they had entered here.

  But it wasn’t the place, but what lay inside of it that made shivers race up Derigor’s spine.

  Cluttered all over the solid earthen floor, covering the vast sprawl of land, were coffins.

  They were in some sort of a tomb carved inside of a mountain. In any other situation, wandering into such a place wouldn’t have affected him much. But now, as he lay bound here, he felt a sense of prickling wrongness. As his eyes flew over the coffins spread over the ground, his nerves tingled uneasily. There were two coffins by either side of him. And if Derigor’s ears didn’t deceive him … He almost thought he heard something, something faint, emit from inside of the two of them…

  What the hell’s going on?!

  “What is this place?” he shrieked, his eyes darting between the two coffins on either side.

  The cloaked men stood about in the spaces between the coffins ahead of him. Their hoods were drawn and they stood still, all of them looking at their leader crouching in front of Derigor.

  “What do you want with me?” demanded Derigor. Ignoring him, Zardin slowly straightened up and pulled out his z-com from his robe po
cket. He pressed a few buttons, and a large holographic screen enlarged over the device. Derigor got a glimpse of the screen, and saw something that looked like a report in it. Zardin stared into the strange report like screen for a few silent seconds. Then, his head swinging about to face Derigor, he slowly walked up to where he lay on the ground, and set the z-com to the floor right in front of him.

  Derigor continued to stare at the eyeless, ghastly fiend for a moment, before looking down at the screen placed in front of him.

  His eyes were frozen over the holo screen for a long second. And then something seemed to churn at the base of his stomach, as he realised what he was staring at. What this screen now held.

  “It can’t be.” he whispered, still staring at the screen. “This is file D.” He wrenched his eyes from the screen and looked up at Zardin. “How did you get hold of it?”

  Zardin stood in silence for a long moment, his blank eyesockets locked over Derigor.

  “You should know.” he said finally, his lips curving in a smile. “File D was a file that was classified above top secret. It was so secret that not even the entire high council is allowed to know of it. The knowledge of the file, along with its responsibility, is secretly kept by only one member in the high council at any time. That particular member guards the file with utmost secrecy. And after his time, he hands it over to his successor in the high council … he passes on to his successor in the council the responsibility to guard the file, and the format required to de code the file, which has been kept encrypted.”

  He gave a short pause, and his unpleasant smile curved longer. “And you, Derigor, are the one now bearing the responsibility of guarding the file. But being a little over protective and precautious, you decided that the file deserved a far better protection. And so, you contacted your dear friend, the president of Dragor, and entrusted him with the responsibility of keeping this. You thought he would do a better job of safekeeping it than you could.” Zardin nodded. “He did … until I came into the picture, of course.”

  Derigor stared at the screen, feeling his mind halt entirely in shock at this latest twist. File D…

  This was the single most important and heavily guarded item the entire organisation owned. None of the members of the high council who had guarded the file before him were aware of what the secrecy behind the file was for. And neither did they know what its contents were: the file had been encrypted. Though the code was known to them, the people guarding the file were forbidden from de coding it and reading it themselves. Such was the level of secrecy surrounding it…

  Zardin strode forward, drawing his sword from behind. Derigor gasped in shock, but the mystic struck at his handcuffs, shattering them.

  Derigor rubbed his wrists where he’d been cuffed all along, and then looked up at Zardin. He was smiling.

  “Now, you know what to do.” He gestured to the screen before Derigor. “The file is encrypted. And the only one at present who knows the format of de coding it, is you.”

  Derigor himself was surprised at the sudden rush of boldness within him. “I won’t.”

  Zardin showed no reaction, but merely tilted his head in an innocent, childlike manner. “Won’t you?”

  “Do everything you like with me,” snarled Derigor, his tone filled with contempt. “but you can’t make me de code the file.”

  Zardin continued to gaze at him, his head tilted, for a quiet second. The rest of the cloaked men were standing about the place, observing the happening in silence.

  And then Zardin smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong. We can make you de code the file.” He made a gesture to two of the men behind Derigor. The two of them nodded and stormed forward.

  So be it, then. Derigor stood up, turning to face the two cloaked figures. “Do all you like with me, and see if I crack!”

  But the men walked right past him without touching him. They sank to their knees before the two coffins on either side. As Derigor watched, perplexed, they tore off the lids of the coffins, revealing a mummified body each within them. The two men reached in and tore off the mummy wrapping covering both faces. And trapped alive and bound within the coffins, staring out of them with terror soaked eyes, were Martha and Garen.

  3

  Every muscle in Derigor’s body had seized in horror.

  His breathing fallen to a stall, he gaped from one coffin to the other. He now knew why he had heard something from both those coffins.

  “No…” he started towards the coffin where his bound son Garen lay, but the two Xeni reached for him and grabbed him.

  “Let them go!” he growled at Zardin, as he wrestled to free himself from the two men.

  Zardin slowly turned, the nasty smile on his face now alive with malice, and walked forward. Derigor stopped struggling and stood still as the monster stepped right in front of him.

  “Don’t.” he pleaded softly. “Let them go.”

  Zardin seemed to spare a moment to consider his words, then nodded. “Don’t worry. I will.” He took a step sideways, closer to where Martha lay bound inside the coffin. “But where I let them go … is upto you.”

 

  “No! Please –”

  “The file.” Zardin’s tone went solid with seriousness. “De code it. We’ve long wanted to see what it says… and I think you have as well.”

  Derigor felt the world spin around him. This can’t be happening. His eyes flickered between both the coffins.

  Zardin waited, watching him keenly. Then, he raised his sword, and ignited it.

  The horror rose within Derigor as he looked at the shining orange blade.

  Zardin brought the sword hanging over the coffin by the right … over Martha, who began to scream wildly.

  “Please, don’t!” squealed Derigor, resuming his struggle against the two cloaked figures holding him back.

  Zardin continued to stand there with the glowing blade hovering over Gartha’s coffin. Her terrified screams seemed to run like a blade through Derigor, who was helplessly wrestling against the two men.

  “The pain is not in dying.” Zardin swung his arm around, now letting the tip of his ignited sword dangle dangerously over Garen’s coffin. “The pain is in living … I will make it so. I’ll kill them, and let you live.”

  “Ok! Ok! I’ll do it!” screamed Derigor, holding his arm outstretched towards Zardin. “Now please … please let them go.”

  Zardin looked at him for a moment with those blank sockets, the light from his sword flickering over his sinister features. And then he doused the sword and slid it back into its sheath.

  The two men holding Derigor stopped restraining him and stepped aside.

  “Good choice.” said Zardin, and he gestured to the z-com on the ground with the holo screen hanging over it.

 

  Derigor clutched his sobbing wife and son by either side. Zardin was standing before him with the z-com in his hand, the same holo screen frozen in the air over it. He was silently reading the file. File D.

  Derigor had finished de coding it a minute or two back, after which the men had freed Martha and Garen.

  The rest of the cloaked men stood just as still as ever around the place, all their attention focussed on their leader. Zardin peered into the holo screen with his eyeless sockets for an entire minute. Then, slowly lowering the device, he smiled at Derigor from over the screen.

  “Thank you, good man.” he said.

  Derigor held Martha and Garen tighter, while they shook with sobs. “Please … don’t kill us.”

  Zardin threw his head back and let out a roar of laughter that left unpleasant echoes within the large cave.

  “Kill you?” he scoffed. “That wouldn’t be half as cruel as letting you live to watch what comes next. You’ve done us a great favour. Now … watch.”

  His blank eyesockets darted from Martha to Garen.

  “Cherish your loved ones,” he said sweetly. “For you never know when they might be gone…”


  And with that, he turned and strode down the large place. The rest of the cloaked figures followed after him. And without another look at the family sitting in a shivering huddle in the middle of the tomb, the Xeni swept from the place. They boarded the ship that awaited at the far edge of the large chamber. Seconds later, the ship’s engine revved to life, and it jumped off the ground, soaring off through the minute hole at the peak of the mountain they now lay amidst.

  __________

  Inside of the ship, utter silence pervaded. Zardin stood in the middle of the hull, with the other Xeni standing about him. Through the screen ahead, the vast blue of the sky was washed off by the pitch black of space: The ship had escaped the planet’s atmosphere.

  Zardin’s thoughts were still revolving around the file he had just read, which now lay locked inside the z-com in his pocket. The file had been meant to give them a lead towards the goal they were now after: the information stored in file D was meant to aid them in their search for the creeper.