by T. J. Quinn
“It is. But fortunately, there is a way out of this,” Drox replied, moving from the pool, through the small stream.
“Why haven’t you used it then?” she asked, suddenly sure that way had somehow, something to do with her.
“Our planet has been uninhabited ever since our people perished. We were starting to think no one would ever come here until we sensed the presence of intelligent life forms on it,” Drox continued explaining, as he slowly slid up the stream.
“We knew it was only a matter of time until someone decided to come explore the ruins and find us,” Darex replied this time, making her look at him and miss the fact Drox was getting way too close to her.
“How can we help you?” she asked, turning to look at Drox, and realizing he was standing just a few feet away from her.
“You see, for us to regain our bodies back and abandon this fountain, we need exactly that, a body,” Drox explained, in a ruthless tone that sent chills of terror down her spine.
“What do you mean, a body?” she asked, taking a few steps back, praying he wouldn’t be able to reach her.
“Your body, more exactly, and the bodies of some of your friends,” he confirmed her fears, and before she was able to take another step, his liquid form stretched all the way until where she was standing.
She wasn’t even able to move a muscle. Somehow, Drox paralyzed her, and before she could do a thing, he was pushing himself down her throat.
Chapter Twenty
The minute Jarcor lost contact with Sabrina, he knew something was wrong.
“Sabrina! Talk to me, you stubborn woman!” he yelled through the communication device, but there was no answer other than static.
“What happened?” Jayport asked when he heard Jarcor yelling.
“I lost communication with Sabrina,” he explained, dropping his tools and picking a few weapons before he started to run towards the pyramid.
Jayport, Jetfra, and Drakmor immediately followed him, and only a few seconds later they were standing in front of the closed door to the pyramid.
It only took Jarcor a few seconds to find the indention that opened the door, and he was about to get in when he realized it would be a bad idea for them all to enter.
“We can’t all go in. whatever happened to Sabrina could happen to us, and we wouldn’t have means to warn the others,” he said, eager to get in.
“I’ll go with you,” Jayport offered.
Jarcor nodded and turned to his men. “Stay here and if we don’t come out in an hour, call for back up and destroy this place until you find us,”
The men nodded, and Jarcor and Jayport disappeared into the pyramid. Thanks to their night vision, they didn’t need flashlights, and they were able to move fast through the pyramid.
It took them a bit more to find the indention on the second door, and like Sabrina, they didn’t expect the sudden fall.
“Damn. This must be what happened to Sabrina,” the worry in Jayport’s tone didn’t bode anything good, and Jarcor tried not to think in what they would find at the end of that damn fall.
At some point, they started to float, and Jarcor realized they had reached the end. Pushing his feet to the floor, he instructed Jayport to do the same.
“That was close,” Jayport muttered. “Where’s Sabrina?”
Jarcor let out a bitter laugh. “Did you really expected her to be here? Not Sabrina.” He looked around and proceeded his way until he was forced to choose which way to go.
“I’ll go left, and you go right. Whoever finds her, tells the other one,” Jayport suggested.
“Our private channel doesn’t work inside these walls,” Jarcor warned him. He had tried to communicate with Jetfra and Drakmor, with no success.
“Well, just shout. I’ll hear you.”
Jarcor nodded and started running down the hallway, trying to hear anything, but there was an unnatural silence in the whole damn place.
The hallway he was following ended abruptly in a stone wall, and he was about to go back the other way when he heard a slight rumble coming from the other side of the wall.
Scanning it, he found an indention and used it to open the door.
For a moment, Jarcor was so surprised by his surroundings he didn’t see Sabrina’s body lying on the ground. Letting out a loud shout, he rushed to her side, praying to the universe he wasn’t too late.
Life without her would be an endless void.
Luckily, she was still alive. Her pulse was weak, and she was unconscious, but she was still alive, and that was all that mattered. Jarcor pulled her into his arms and wiped the blue drops out of her face.
Jayport arrived a few seconds later.
“Is she alright?” he asked, kneeling at her side too.
“I have no idea. I can’t feel any broken bones and other than the fact she’s wet, I can’t figure what’s wrong with her,” Jarcor explained, desperate.
“Perhaps the water is toxic,” Jayport suggested, looking at the shining blue water.
“Yes, that’s my guess too, though it doesn’t seem to affect me.”
“We need to find a way out of this place,” Jayport said, looking around.
“There isn’t one, so make one. Blast us out of here,” Jarcor asked, caring very little about preserving the damn ruins. “Just make it as far away from the water as possible. If it’s toxic, we don’t want it spreading through the continent.”
Jayport nodded and went to the other side of the room where he used one of his weapons to drill a hole in the stone wall. He wished he could can the damn place first, but he knew it wouldn’t scan.
It took him several minutes to finally reach the exterior and the minute he did, he called Jetfra and Drakmor immediately. They arrived the minute Jarcor was coming out of the tunnel Jayport had carved on the rock.
“Call home and ask them to send a flying pod as fast as possible. We need to take her to the hospital as soon as possible,” Jarcor barked the orders as he carried Sabrina back to the camping site.
Once there, he had Jayport prepare a shower for them, eager to take every trace of the blue water off of her body. But even after that, she didn’t give him any sign she was getting any better.
Desperate, Jarcor took her to bed and dried her naked body, looking for any wound he had missed on his first exam, but he wasn’t able to find anything.
He covered her with a sheet worried about the expression of pain written on her face. He needed to get her to the doctor as soon as possible and thinking of the hours it would take him to take her there, was driving him insane.
“Rafaroy is sending a vessel,” Jayport announced, entering the tent. “He said they will be here in less than an hour and he’s bringing the doctor and all the medical equipment they can so they can start treating her the minute they get here,” he added.
“Thank you, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“She’ll be fine. She’s stronger than she looks and the nanocybots inside her must be doing their job.”
Jarcor nodded his eyes on Sabrina. They had confirmed their nanocybots were able to survive and reproduce inside their women, but they still didn’t know how that affected them, beyond the fact they were able to bear their children.
All of a sudden, she started moving as if struggling and when Jarcor touched her, she was burning with fever.
Jumping out of the chair he turned to look at Jayport. “I’ll get her in the shower. Let me know when the vessel arrives.”
His man nodded and immediately left the tent. Jarcor got Sabrina’s hot body under the cool water of the shower and stood there with her until he was sure the temperature had lowered enough.
He took her back to the bed and watched her struggle against some invisible demon, wishing he could to do more.
A few minutes later, he heard the hum of a flying pod landing in the clearing they had made. He immediately carried her out, and in just a few minutes he was at the medical bay inside the vessel.
The doctor decide
d to check her there before they headed back to the city.
Jarcor was so worried he couldn’t think straight. All he knew was that he couldn’t lose her, not when he had just found her. He wouldn’t be able to live without her again. He just couldn’t even fathom the possibility. Life couldn’t be that cruel to him.
The doctor on the ship immediately scanned Sabrina’s body.
He had a deep frown when he turned to look at Jarcor. “Did you know she was pregnant?”
The shock almost threw Jarcor to his knees. He should have known. They hadn’t done anything to prevent pregnancy, and he knew no birth control medicine would work against the will of the nanocybots, and they already knew she could get pregnant by him. They had Luciana.
But for some reason, the thought had never crossed his mind.
“No, I had no idea,” he assured the doctor, rubbing his face, trying to keep his despair to himself. “What’s wrong with her?”
The doctor’s frown became even more profound. “I have no idea. The scan doesn’t show anything other than she’s in great pain. Even the baby is suffering, but I can’t see what’s causing the pain. I’ll take some blood tests looking for poison, but her symptoms don’t speak of poisoning.”
“She was covered in a blue substance we found underneath the pyramid,” Jarcor informed the doctor.
“Did you get a sample?”
“No, I wasn’t thinking, all I wanted was to take her out of there as soon as possible,” he admitted.
“Can someone get some of it?”
“Yes, of course.” He used his private channel with Jayport and asked his friend to get the sample.
“Make sure they don’t touch it, just in case.”
He repeated the instruction to his friend and caressed his woman’s forehead.
“There has to be an answer, a cure,” he mumbled, closing his eyes for a moment, pushing back the tears striving to come out.
“Don’t lose faith,” the doctor told him, but he clearly wasn’t that certain they would find any a way to reverse the effects of whatever this was. They had never seen anything like it.
Jayport returned with the blue substance on a vial, and the doctor immediately put it on the scan. The results weren’t conclusive, but at least, they knew for sure it wasn’t poisonous.
“Let’s head back to the city. The Taucets might know something about this,” the doctor suggested.
Jarcor nodded, and the vessel left immediately, abandoning the camping site. They would return once they had answers.
But no one knew what was going on with Sabrina. Her fever was always high, and no matter what they did it seemed impossible to lower it.
For the first couple of days, he kept Luciana away from the hospital, but when it seemed all was lost, and Sabrina was getting weaker and weaker, he decided it was time to let the little girl see her mother.
Telling her what was going on was the hardest thing Jarcor had ever done in his life.
“Papa, I didn’t know you were back. Where is mamma?” she asked, throwing herself into his arms.
Jarcor hugged hard, gathering all his strength to tell his daughter her mother was dying.
“We came back a couple of days ago.”
Luciana stepped back and looked at him with a deep frown. “Why haven’t you come home?”
“Your mother,” he cleared his throat. “Your mother had an accident at the ruins, and she has been very ill ever since.”
She looked at him with so much disbelief and anger, Jarcor immediately regretted not having told her since the first moment.
“Why did you keep this from me? I’m not a baby. I have the right to see my mother,” she cried out.
“I know, I made a mistake. I was just waiting for her to get better before I told you but,” he explained, stopping before he finished the sentence as if saying out loud would seal his love’s fate.
“She’s not getting better,” Luciana concluded.
He shook his head.
“Take me to the hospital,” she demanded, striding out of the house.
He practically flew to the hospital and once there, he took her straight to Sabrina’s room.
“There’s something else I haven’t told you,” he said before he opened the door.
She looked at him impatiently. “What is it?”
“Your mother is expecting a baby,” he muttered the words, unsure he should be sharing this with his daughter, but refusing to keep more secrets with her.
“A baby?” she was excited, and Jarcor was sure she forgot for a moment her mother was very ill.
Chapter Twenty-One
She opened the door and entered the room. A doctor was there, assessing Sabrina’s progress, though there hadn’t been any ever since they took her out of the pyramid.
Luciana jumped on the bed and hugged her mother. “Mamma, it’s me, Luciana,” she whispered in her ear. “You have to get better, how can you even think of harming my baby brother?”
The pain written on Sabrina’s face became even more noticeable, and Luciana realized it.
“She can hear us,” she said, caressing her mother’s face.
“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” Jarcor replied, not wanting to create false expectations on his little girl.
“I know she can,” she insisted. Suddenly, she turned to look at her father. “Bretdon told me there’s a private channel between every cyborg in the universe. I tried to access to his, but I couldn’t. Nevertheless, sometimes I had the feeling I was able to talk to you.”
“Yes, you have. I hadn’t mentioned it because I thought you were doing it unconsciously,” he confirmed it.
She nodded and turned to look at her mother again. At some point, she pulled the sheet off of her mother’s body and rested both her hands on her slightly curved belly.
“Hey, little brother, mamma needs your help. She can’t fight this, whatever it is, all by herself. She needs your help. So, why don’t you send out your own army to take care of this?” she said, using her inner channel, the one a cyborg knew was only for the family members.
He doubted it would work, but he decided to cooperate with her. Standing behind her, he covered her hands with his and sent out his own message to his unborn child.
“Hey, little fellow. We need your help if we want to save mom and bring you out to play with your big sister.”
Luciana looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I know you can do this, little brother. Just send out your nanocybots to help mamma fight this. I’ll give you all the energy you need.”
She closed her eyes, and a few seconds later, Jarcor felt a warm sensation coming from his daughter’s hands, and when he looked down, he was able to see as Sabrina’s skin turned red by the heat coming out of Luciana’s hands.
Though he had no idea what was happening, he closed his eyes and focused on sending all the energy he could to his unborn child. By then, he was more than ready to try anything, and since they hadn’t been able to fight this from the outside, perhaps they could fight it from the inside.
The redness on Sabrina’s skin quickly spread through her whole body and unexpectedly, she started convulsing.
Startled, Jarcor was about to take his hands off of Luciana’s, but the girl must have sensed his intentions because she yelled at him. “Don’t do it, papa. We need you.”
Jarcor could see the doctor next to him, wringing his hands nervously, unsure of what to do, but he had more important things in mind as to pay attention to the other man.
Sabrina’s convulsions became more and more violent, and when he was about to ask Luciana to stop, afraid they were hurting her even more, she raised her head and started vomiting the blue substance from the stream, back at the pyramid.
The substance fell to the floor and puddled next to the bed.
She threw up for a few seconds, her eyes wide open and when she was finally done, she collapsed in bed.
The substance on the floor gained a humanoid form and turned to look at
Sabrina. “This is impossible,” the creature yelled, while it rapidly evaporated until there was nothing left.
Happier than ever, Luciana threw herself at her mother’s arms. “I knew it would work, I knew it,” she mumbled through the tears.
Sabrina hugged her back, her eyes locked on Jarcor’s, as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Thank you, baby, thank you.”
The minute the creature entered her body, Sabrina knew she was in deep trouble. She needed to fight it and not allow it to take over her body, but she wasn’t even sure how she could do that.
One minute she was standing, the other she was lying on the ground with that hideous creature inside her, trying to take over her mind.
A tickling sensation spread throughout her body, and she felt she wasn’t fighting alone, she just wasn’t sure if that would be enough to stop Drox from taking over her body.
She heard when Jarcor arrived, and she wished she could open her eyes and ask him for help, but she was paralyzed, unable to move on her own will.
Her consciousness went on and off during the hours that followed, in her struggle to keep Drox from getting control over her mind and body, so she lost track of time. All she knew was that Jarcor was with her all the time, begging her to come back to him. And she wanted to so much.
At some point, she was feeling so exhausted, she was truly considering to give up and let go. Her body was strained, and her mind didn’t seem able to think straight. All she wanted was to just let go.
Jarcor’s constant talk and the way he begged her to stay with him was the only thing keeping her there, but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up. It was too painful, too tiring.
Suddenly, she heard Luciana’s voice.
“Mamma, it’s me, Luciana,” she whispered in her ear. “You have to get better, how can you even think of harming my baby brother?”
Sabrina let out a silent cry, as pain crushed her heart. A baby? She was expecting a new baby? She couldn’t let that bastard defeat her, she just couldn’t.
“She can hear us,” Luciana told whoever was with her in the room, caressing her face.
