“Well, our mission is to get you out of here,” Nate said.
“Thought as much,” Claire said. “But we want to stay here.”
“Speak for yourself,” Simon snapped.
Claire shot him an angry look. She seemed to be about to shoot back at him, but then she took a grip on herself.
“Look,” I said. “The organization wants to learn more about Mor too. So they’ll probably let you stay here so you can learn more about him. What you’ll learn about him will greatly benefit the interests of the organization.”
“And that’s the problem,” Claire said. “We don’t want to have anything to do with the organization anymore. I don’t know if you already realized it or not, but the leaders of the organization are not very kind people. All they care about is profit. They won’t stop at anything to get as much as possible from Mor. He possesses great knowledge of life creation and evolution, and they’ll surely want to learn about it. And that’s a big problem. His life goal, as you already know, is to revive his race. He’s not interested in anything else. But the organization will surely not be interested in his goal. They will take him by force to their main space station where they’ll force him to work for them. And if he refuses, they’ll be torturing him. Like I said, they won’t stop at anything to get what they want.”
I suddenly realized something.
“So you didn’t actually lose contact with the organization,” I said. “You must’ve deactivated your comm unit or something.”
“You are right,” the woman replied. “We just turned it off.”
“You didn’t just turn it off,” Simon said angrily. “You smashed it to pieces and then had Mor dissolve it in one of his acid pods.”
“I take it unlike your boss, you ain’t all that keen on staying on this freaking planet,” Vlad said to Simon with a smirk on his face.
Simon shook his head as he said, “Of course, I’m not. These two people are downright crazy. They want to spend all their lives on this planet with this Mor character, hoping to learn a little more about evolution.”
Vlad shook his head as he said, “You are right, man. This is crazy.”
“Look, we are scientists to the core and—” Claire said.
“Yeah yeah,” Vlad said, interrupting her. “We already heard that.”
“What exactly do you suggest?” Tamerlan asked, looking at the woman.
“We always knew that the organization would sooner or later send someone to search for us at the planet,” Claire said. “So Brandon and I talked this over and came up with an idea. You could tell your bosses that you didn’t find anything of interest on his planet except for some aggressive creatures and our dead bodies.”
“They’ll want proof that you are dead,” Tamerlan said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Claire said with a smile. “Mor can easily create something that will look like and even smell like our dead bodies. We already talked this over with Mor and he confirmed that it’s a very easy task for him to create organic objects that will look exactly like our corpses.”
“And what about me?” Simon said in a girlish, high-pitched voice. “There’s no way I’m gonna stay with you two crazies on this planet.”
“Well, you might as well be the only survivor,” Claire said. “We are not going to hold you on this planet by force. I only ask you not to tell them about what we found out here.”
“They are surely gonna ask a lot of questions,” Simon replied. “If I tell them we found nothing here, they’ll send in another team of scientists. They will surely discover Mor. And I can’t let it happen. No way.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?” Claire asked coldly.
“Are you stupid or what?” Simon said. “The organization will pay a lot of money to whoever it is who discovered the alien. And since it was us who first found Mor, it’s us who should receive the reward.”
“I don’t care about money,” Claire said.
“Well, I do,” Simon said. “And I don’t let the opportunity to earn lots of money get away from me.”
“Look,” I said to Claire, “your plan wasn’t going to work anyway. As soon as you told us about it, it failed.”
“Yeah,” Vlad chimed in. “You are gonna leave this plane whether you like it or not. lady.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Claire asked, looking at me.
“There’s something like a microcomputer in our bodies,” I explained. “An AI known as Echo sees and hears everything that we see and hear. So he knows everything that we know, and he already sent this information to his superiors. They know that the three of you are alive and well. And they want you back. They know about Mor as well and want to take him away from this planet. They already dispatched a rescue team. It should arrive here in three normal days.”
“Goddammit,” Brandon muttered under his breath.
Simon’s reaction was altogether different. He breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Finally. I can’t wait to get the heck out of this freaking place.”
He even stood up and crossed the room so he was on our squad’s side of the room. He stood next to Vlad and said, “Thank you guys for coming here for us. Well, I should’ve said ‘for me’ seeing as these two stubborn people ain’t keen on leaving this planet.”
The Russian totally ignored him. He watched Claire and Brandon intently as if expecting them to cause some trouble.
“I ain’t going nowhere from here,” Brandon said.
“It’s not for you to decide,” Vlad said.
“I’m staying here,” Brandon said stubbornly.
Claire was silent now, a grim expression on her face. Her brow furrowed, she seemed to be deep in thought as if trying to find a way to solve the predicament they found themselves in.
Only there was nothing she could do. The rescue team would arrive in a few days, and she could do nothing to prevent it from happening. I felt bad for her and Brandon, but again, I could do nothing to help them.
There was some noise from outside. Simon craned his neck to look out one of the windows.
“Great,” he muttered unhappily. “He came back.”
Glancing out a window, I saw Mor standing outside the house. The creature was too big to get inside.
Claire and Brandon stood up and began walking to the way out.
“Where the heck do you think you are going?” Vlad barked at them.
Both simply ignored him and stepped out of the mobile base.
“Let’s go after them,” Vlad said as he jumped to his feet. “We should keep an eye on them in case they decide to make something stupid.”
And he all but ran to the door. The rest of us left the house too.
Once outside, we saw Claire and Brandon standing next to the alien. The woman was talking to Mor, telling him what she had just heard from us.
“It’s okay, Claire,” came the voice from the alien when the woman finished. “When they arrive, I will reason with them. They are rational people after all just like you or me.”
“No,” Claire said, shaking her head vigorously. “They are nothing like us. They are bad people. Very bad. You can’t reason with them.”
“Please, do not worry,” Mor said. “It is going to be okay.”
“No,” the woman almost cried out. “It’s not gonna be okay. You don’t know them. Not all people are like Brandon or me. There are lots of bad people. The ones that will soon arrive are bad. Very bad.”
“I will reason with them,” Mor repeated himself. “I am sure we will be able to strike a deal. They are rational people after all. I ask them to give me some time to finish my job here. Once I find a way to revive my race, I will help your people.”
“It might take many years for you to find the solution to your problem,” Claire said. “Those people won’t be willing to wait that long. Believe me, they don’t care about what you’re trying to achieve here. If you don’t go with them right away, they’ll take
you by force and force you to work for them.”
“If they try to make me drop my work and leave this planet, my home, I will not be resisting them, of course,” Mor replied. “I will let them take me away from my home. But I will not be helping them.”
“If you don’t help them, if you don’t do what they want you to, they’ll do very bad things to you,” Claire said and went silent for a moment. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. After a second, she continued, “They’ll be torturing you if you don’t comply with their orders.”
“I do not believe that rational people are able to intentionally hurt other rational people,” Mor said.
“Believe me, they are capable of anything,” Claire replied. “They will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.”
The alien was silent for a moment.
“I can take the pain,” Mor finally said and began to turn around.
“Hey, where the hell you are going?” Vlad shouted after him.
“I think you know where,” came the reply from the alien. “To my lab. I have to continue to work.”
And he began to walk away. Claire and Brandon immediately followed him.
“Let’s go after them,” Vlad said. “We should keep an eye on them. They might decide to escape from us.”
Only neither Mor nor Claire and Brandon looked like they were going to flee. However, we were well aware that the Russian was capable of anything. We should always keep him in our sight, so we followed him. Simon clearly was not keen on returning back to the cave. But he also was not keen on being left behind alone, so he followed us.
The rest of the day all of us spent in the cave. Vlad watched Claire and Brandon to make sure they did not escape, though there was nowhere they could flee even if they wanted to. The rest of our squad— Nate, Tamerlan, and I—mostly watched Vlad to make sure he did not do anything stupid. We all knew very well how short his fuse was.
Mor was doing something, though I had no idea what. He was wandering around various parts of the cave and checking some of the cocoons—evolution or creations pods as Claire had told us there were called.
As to Claire and Brandon, they followed Mor everywhere he went, monitoring every action of his and sometimes asking some questions to him. Unlike them, Simon was not interested in what was going on in the cave. He tagged along simply because he was not all that keen on being out alone in the strange woods.
A few hours later, we got back to the mobile base, leaving Mor alone in the cave. The mobile base was designed to accommodate five scientists and several guards, so there was plenty of space for all of us inside. We hardly ever talk. Claire and Brandon exchanged some small talk every now and then, ignoring the rest of us. They clearly did not like us. I did not blame them for that. They had a very good reason for hating our squad.
At some point, I left the house for a breath of fresh air.
Technically, it was night, but nothing had changed outside. The strange trees still emitted weird bluish light.
A minute later, I heard the door open behind me. I expected to see Nate or Tamerlan, yet when I looked around, I was surprised to see Claire step out of the door and walk toward me.
She stopped a meter from me and looked back over her shoulder at the mobile base. Nobody else came out of the house. The woman looked back at me, her eyes intense.
“I need to tell you something,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I was thinking about what you told me recently,” the woman said. “You said that there’s a microcomputer in your body that allows your superiors to see and hear everything you see and hear. ”
“Yeah,” I said, not really sure why she wanted to return to that conversation. “That’s right.”
The woman looked me intently in the eyes for a second, then she nodded and said, “Okay, I want to let your boss know that we are not going to cause any trouble. When the rescue ship arrives, we’re gonna do everything we are told. We don’t want anybody to get hurt, that’s all.”
I nodded. The woman was silent, watching me. Then she asked, “Did they hear it?”
“Did you get that, Echo?” I asked.
Instantly, a message popped up before my eyes. It read, “Yes, warrior, I heard every single word she said. The scientists’ cooperation will be greatly appreciated.”
I relayed what Echo just told me to the woman.
Claire nodded and turned away. She looked up at the sky. We were silent for a moment. Then Claire said, “I kinda like it here, you know. It’s quiet here.”
“Yeah,” I said and added with a small smile, “It’s quiet when we aren’t being attacked by those overgrown bugs.”
“Well, now that we have the repellent, they don’t cause us any trouble anymore,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a shame we’re going to have to leave this place,” Claire said with genuine sadness in her voice. “I really want to learn more about Mor.”
“Maybe they will let you continue to work with Mor and study him,” I said.
“Maybe,” the woman said. She did not add anything else. She did not even look at me.
We were silent for a minute.
“They’ll never let Mor continue his work,” Claire said so quietly I almost did not catch that.
We fell silent again. I could clearly tell there was something on her mind. Something was going on in her head, and I wondered what it was.
Claire suddenly turned to face me.
“Do you smoke?” she asked.
“No,” I replied.
“I do,” she said. “Do you mind if I have a smoke?”
“Not at all,” I said.
The woman reached under her jacket and produced a strange-looking object. It kind of looked like a tobacco pipe. Only it was organic and it was clearly alive. I instantly realized it was another of Mor’s inventions, though I had no idea what its purpose was.
One thing was for sure though—whatever it was it was not your regular tobacco pipe.
Eyeing me intently, Claire put one end of the object to her lips and inhaled. When she exhaled, a barely visible stream of smoke drifted out of her mouth. It was greenish in color and looked kind of unpleasant. I instinctively held my breath so as not to breathe it.
What the heck is she smoking, I thought.
Then a thought occurred to me. What if this thing was dangerous? What if the smoke was poisonous or something? While the woman had no reason to hurt me, there was clearly something on her mind.
However, if I was in any kind of danger, my Passive Ability should have warned me about it. The voice was silent though, which probably meant that I was not in danger.
Then another thought occurred to me. We were dealing with an intelligent alien here. Humans had never encountered such a creature before. When the scientists had been working on the nanotrites that were now coursing through my veins, they had no idea that I would be dealing with such a creature and his inventions. So if the thing that Claire was apparently smoking was dangerous, the nanotrites in my body—and therefore my Passive Ability—would not recognize it as a threat.
It scared the heck out of me, and I even took a step backward. I could no longer hold my breath, however, so I let some air flow into my lungs. At this exact moment, the woman blew a stream of greenish smoke right in my face, and I unintentionally inhaled it.
I instantly heard some voice talking in my head. Only it was not the mysterious voice of my Passive Ability. Instead, it was Claire’s voice.
Don’t be afraid, please. It’s not gonna hurt you.
I opened my mouth to say something when the woman exhaled another stream of smoke in my direction, and I heard her voice talking in my head again.
Please, be quiet. Don’t say anything at all.
I closed my mouth.
I was starting to put two and two together. She takes a sniff at the thing. She blows greenish smoke. I inhale it and can hear her talk
in my head, though she does not actually make any sounds at all.
What the heck, I thought.
Meanwhile, Claire took another drag on the thing and let out a stream of smoke toward me. Immediately, I heard her voice in my head again.
I’m sure you’re wondering what is going on right now. Let me explain it to you.
I was already starting to understand what was happening. That thing she was smoking made her something like a telepath. When I inhaled the smoke she blew out, I could hear her thoughts in my head. I had no idea how it worked, but I did not even try to understand it.
Claire continued to use the object, and her thoughts popped up in my head one after another.
As you already may have realized, this thing was invented by Mor. Remember when I told you that he’d told us a lot about himself and his race, but I was going to give you the short version? So this invention is something that I didn’t tell you about. See, unlike us, humans, the people of his race didn’t actually communicate with one another with sounds. Instead, they used smells.
I was going to ask what she meant but held my tongue, having remembered her telling me to be silent.
I won’t go into all the details. The short version is that people of his race emitted puffs of various smells to communicate with each other. Their way of communication was as complicated as humans’ . There was a smell to indicate each letter in their language.
I was not sure if it was such a comfortable way of talking, but I did not say anything.
When we met Mor on this planet, he invented this thing so we could talk to him. This invention converts smells into thoughts. I don’t think I need to tell you how it works, because you already know it. I thought something in my head as I take a puff on that thing, and when you inhale the smoke, you can kind of hear my voice in your head.
I gave her a small nod.
However, a little later, Mor realized it would be much more convenient for us, humans, to speak with him if he made sounds like humans do. So he invented that voice translator, which is always attached to his neck. After that, we no longer needed this puffing thing.
I was looking at Claire, waiting for her to continue.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 39
