by Sybil Nelson
"Oh no you don't!” I yelled, leaping up and shooting a stream of fire toward him.
He screamed in pain as his metal body started turning red from the flame.
I felt bad for hurting him, but what else was I supposed to do? I couldn't let him get to Tai and Josh.
After a few seconds of my fire power, Marco ran away, quickly disappearing with his super speed. An instant later, Marco’s left fist connected with my right eye. I hadn’t even seen him coming!
I did a back flip out of the way trying to buy some time before I would actually have to fight him back. I stole a glance at Tai who had made her way to the computer to try to figure out how to undo whatever had been done to Marco.
"How's it going over there, Tai?”
"I'm doing the best I can.”
"I don't know how long I can hold him off, Tai. He's -" I didn't get to finish my thought as Marco landed a right hook to the side of my face. My mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood. Deciding I was sick of getting beat up, I reared back and landed a punch to his gut. “OW!” I cried out in pain. I think I almost broke my hand!
I threw a blast of fire at him with my good hand to give myself a chance to get away. I hid behind a table and tried to think. What was I going to do? I couldn’t fight him. Not unless I wanted to break every bone in my body. My only chance was fire. And I had to do it fast. I had to keep him away from Tai so she’d have time to work and figure things out. I focused my hearing and heard his metal footsteps just to my left.
Leaping out from my hiding place, I started blasting him with my fire power. His screams of pain almost made me stop immediately. I really didn't want to hurt him but I had no choice. He fell to one knee still crying out in agony. I thought I had done enough so I stopped shooting. A second later, however, he disappeared. Now it was my turn to spin around in confused circles. Where did he go? Well, that stupid question was painfully answered as soon as I felt his metal fingers around my neck.
I gasped as I tried to scratch, hit, and kick my way free. Nothing worked. He was squeezing the life out of me. I started blasting his face with fire, but I had so little oxygen in my lungs I didn’t have the energy. The stream was weak and started to fade.
The only thing that kept me going was thinking of Kyle and how much I wanted to see him again one day. That is what gave me the burst of energy to shoot streams of fire into both of Marco’s ears. He released my neck and clutched the sides of his head.
I ran away and hid again while gasping for air and rubbing my sore neck.
"Uh, Priss. We've got company,” Tai said as I turned around and around trying to find where Marco had gone.
"What do you mean?"
"According to this monitor, Ian is coming this way. And I don't think he likes us very much anymore."
“What’s your point? He never liked us!” I yelled as I frantically searched for Marco.
"Uh, my point is he looks about as deadly as Marco right now. And he's leading the others right to us!"
Tai must have meant Katya, Ian, Peter, and Ryan. Their chips were probably activated as well.
Just then I noticed a streak of silver running in circles around the room. He must have been trying to cool himself off before attacking me again.
And then there was the added problem of Katya, Ian, Peter, and Ryan. There was no way I could fight them alone. I actually contemplated letting some of the tied up guards go so they could help me. But who's to say they wouldn't just run away leaving me all alone again? How was I gonna get out of this?
"Tai, you gotta figure out how to turn that thing off. It's our only chance."
"Don't you think I'm working on that?"
The silver streak passed me again. I shot out a flame, but missed him.
"I'm in the system. I'm just not sure I know how to shut it down,” Tai said.
I shot another flame and heard a screech of pain. Got him.
"Wait a minute,” I said as a thought popped into my head. “Witherall! He put in a kill switch. Type in the word 'Lenora'." In my excitement over remembering the kill switch thing, I turned around and looked at Tai. Big mistake. I felt a kick to the back of my head that sent me face first into more glass.
"It's not working,” Tai said frantically. "There's some sort of biometric key."
"What does that mean?” I asked, rolling over narrowly missing Marco's next attack. I jumped up to start running again when I tripped over a chair and fell to the floor. Marco was barreling down on me getting ready for a kill when, suddenly, he fell backwards. How did that happen? I looked over and saw that Josh had come to long enough to literally pull the rug out from underneath Marco.
"It means only someone with Dr. Witherall's DNA can start the sequence,” Josh breathed.
I jumped up and burned Marco again with all the strength I could muster. Once Marco was securely melted to the floor, I jumped over him and went to where Tai was working frantically at the computer terminal.
"What do I do? What do I press?” I asked.
"What do you mean? Didn't you hear Josh? Only someone with Dr. Witherall's DNA can -"
"I'll explain later," I said, cutting her off. "Just tell me what to press."
"Put your left hand here and keep it there while you type Lenora."
"Door,” Josh said his voice still a whisper.
I looked over at the main door just in time to see Ian walk through it. Not wanting to see his nakedness I turned around and reached for Josh's gun.
"Here,” I said, stuffing it into Tai's chest. "Aim for the door and don't stop shooting till I tell you."
Tai took the gun in her shaky hands and aimed for the door. Tears streaking down her face, she fired at Ian who was unlocking the door to let the others in.
I placed my left hand on the scanner looking thing. I felt a prick at the bottom of my thumb. Then a box appeared on the computer screen. I assumed that's where I needed to type the password. So I did.
L-E-N-O-R-A
The loud buzzing stopped. The pain slowly eased out of my brain. Naked Ian grabbed his head and fell to the floor. He blinked rapidly as if someone had just shone a bright light in his face.
It worked. It was over. Except, I still heard bullets bouncing off of the ceiling. I looked over and saw Tai still shooting. Wow, that girl had horrible aim. I think I needed to put her through some sort of sidekick boot camp.
"You can stop shooting now, Tai. It's over." I pried the gun out of her hands. She dropped to her knees crying. I wrapped an arm around her and hugged her. “Good work, Tai. Good work.”
Chapter 27: This Sinks
We scooped Marco off of the floor with a make shift spatula and a few strategically placed flames from my fingers. It probably hurt like heck. Pieces of his metal body stayed firmly attached to the floor. He was sure to have open sores when he reverted back to human form.
"I'm so sorry, Priscilla," he said through clenched teeth as he sat on a lab table. "I saw myself hitting you and I couldn't stop. I never meant to hurt you." He gently touched my bruised face.
"Ditto,” I said, rubbing the now misshapen metal on his arms.
"Don't worry; I'll revert back to my normal form in a few moments."
“Aren’t you going to be bruised?”
He nodded. “Badly.”
“I’m sorry.”
He put a slightly melted finger to my lips. “You did what you had to do.”
"I hate to interrupt this little love fest," a now fully clothed Ian said as he massaged his temples, "but we still need to figure out a way to get out of here."
"We are 300 feet below the surface. Colonel Selliwood and three of the Specimens took the last escape pod,” Katya said, kneeling next to my brother. Tai crossed her arms and glared at Katya stroking Josh’s hair.
"I missed you so much," Josh said as he pulled her into a hug. A few seconds later he passed out again.
I noticed both Katya and Peter were still a little hazy. Peter was leaning against his twin for support a
nd Katya kept shaking her head every couple of seconds as if to clear her thoughts. I bet their heads were still swimming from having their chips activated, then neutralized by the collar then over powered again by the transmitter.
Hmm. Swimming. I glanced through a portal window into the Arctic water. Would we have to swim our way out of here? I looked around the room. Will, Josh, and my mom were completely incapacitated and wouldn't be able to swim. Peter and Katya weren't that much better. Even though Ryan and Ian were in pretty good shape right now, they'd probably still freeze to death. And Marco, well if Marco went into the water in his metal state, he'd just sink.
Will Smith was slowly coming around. He was tossing and turning in the spot where I laid him a few minutes ago. I wondered how long it would be until he could help with this mission. My mother was still out cold. It would probably take her a few hours to recover from the surgery Dr. Witherall had performed.
"Dr. Witherall told me that the base was attached to the ocean floor by two tethers,” I said to Tai, the only other person not passed out or recovering from brainwashing. “He said if the tethers were broken, the base would float to the top. He didn't have a chance to tell me how to break them though."
Tai looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "So Dr. Witherall gave you the code to deactivate the transmitter and he told you how to escape? Why was he being so nice to you? And why did the biometric scanner accept your DNA?"
I took a deep breath and said, "Because Dr. Witherall is my grandfather."
Ryan, Peter, Ian, Katya, Tai, and Marco just stared at me with eyes wide.
"No way. That can't be true," Ryan said.
"It's true. He donated his genes to create my mother."
"Are we related to him as well,” Peter asked. I didn't realize how much I missed his little Norwegian accent until he spoke for the first time.
"No, just my mother. The rest of the specimens had different parents."
Marco let out an audible sigh of relief. He was probably thinking the same thing I was about him possibly being my uncle. Gross.
"That explains why your DNA worked. But who or what is Lenora?” Tai asked.
I shrugged. "No clue."
***
Tai brought up a picture of the base from below on the computer. I got a good look at the tethers locking the base in place. She couldn't find any mechanism for releasing them.
I sighed and pushed away from the computer. "Well, since we can't figure out how to break the tethers from inside, I guess I'm going in." I started opening cabinets looking for an oxygen tank.
"What?” Marco said, leaping from the table and grabbing my arm. "You can’t do that, you'll freeze to death."
"Of all of us, I'm probably the only one guaranteed to not freeze. I’m a human fireball, remember?” I lit a flame with my right hand for emphasis.
He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it again when he realized he couldn't dispute that. "Well, I'm coming with you,” he said finally.
"That's pointless Marco. You're an extremely dense metal right now. If you were to go into the water, you'd just sink to the bottom."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He knew I was right. He knew I had to do this alone.
I found an oxygen tank packed away in a closet to the left of the main entrance of the room. I didn't want to take any chances of running out of air and not being able to complete this mission. I memorized the location and consistency of the tethers from the images Tai brought up on the computer. They were made of layers of wires surrounded by a metal casing. They shouldn't be too hard for me to break. I just needed to make sure I broke both of them within a short amount of time. If I broke one and not the other, one side of the base would start rising while the other would be held down.
As I jumped in, the freezing water hit me like millions of tiny little knives. With a little concentration, I made my body pulse with heat and regulated my body temperature.
A huge fat walrus swam past me. It was pretty ugly yet kind of beautiful at the same time. If I didn't have a life or death mission to complete, I might have taken the time to admire the beautiful plant and animal life underwater. But as it was, I swam with determination through the dark water past sea creatures big and small toward my target.
I reached the metal chain that hooked into the bottom of the base after only about fifteen seconds. I gave it a good hard yank, but couldn't pull it free. It was stronger than I thought. I focused my energy and tugged at it again. This time it came free. The left side of the base started slowly floating up. The other tether was about two football field lengths away. I needed to swim over there and loosen that chain before the entire base became vertical.
I started my swim when I noticed the walrus again. I tried to swim past it, but it got right in front of me. When I tried to go around it, it pushed me. Did I just get pushed by a walrus? Why was a walrus trying to pick a fight with me?
I pushed it back and tried to swim above it when it jabbed me in the stomach with its huge blubbery tail. Then it stabbed me in the shoulder with its tusk. The pain was almost as insane as the idea of a walrus kicking my butt. I took a look in its eyes. I recognized that stupid vacant stare. This was no walrus. It was Specimen Zero.
He must have borrowed some DNA from the walrus I had seen earlier. I wondered if Xi had come to and put him up to this. Xi would have jumped in herself in order to fight me, but she probably didn't want to ruin her hair.
My tank had plenty of air, so I wasn't worried about losing oxygen and dying. And I was pretty sure that once I was able to focus, I could defeat a walrus, but in watching one side of the base float up I was afraid that soon everyone inside would be sliding over to one side. I needed to act quickly.
I don't know how much time passed as I exchanged jabs with this massive sea creature, but slowly, I was starting to panic. The base was nearly straight up and down. I had to think of something to get away from this animal once and for all.
Just then I saw Marco awkwardly dive into the water near the other tether. He started dropping...rapidly. On his way down, he grabbed onto the chain. His weight actually made the base start sinking again. He gave it a tug and pulled it free. The base instantly started floating upward. Marco on the other hand was sinking and fast. He was too heavy to swim. What was he thinking?
I had to get away from Zero and save Marco. I took a deep breath and then snatched off my oxygen tank. I jammed it into Zero's mouth. I released the valve and sent the Zero walrus sailing away.
I turned and saw Marco still sinking. I tried to send him a telepathic message. It didn't work. Why didn't I have telepathy? Read my mind, Marco. Read my mind and know that I'm coming for you.
I dove toward him. "Marco!” I tried to scream. I don't know what I was thinking. Who screams in the water? I had stupidly managed to squeeze out the last bit of oxygen in my lungs. Well, I kind of do know what I was thinking. Marco was sinking and there was no way for me to get to him especially without an oxygen tank. But I was going to try. There was no way I would let him die. I dove toward him. The water was dark, but I could still see a solid metal shape in the distance.
My starving lungs were begging for air. I didn't know how long I had been without my oxygen tank. It was getting harder and harder to swim. I felt weak. My arms and legs were moving as hard and fast as I could push them but it felt like I wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't see Marco's silver form anymore. All I saw was darkness.
I finally gave in to my lung's desire and tried to breathe. My chest burned as it filled with ice cold water. Everything went black.
Chapter 28: Alive
"Marco!” I yelled, gasping for air. Where was the water? Why wasn't I cold? I looked around. I wasn't in the Arctic Ocean any more.
"We're in a United States Military hospital on a base in Norway,” my mother said, leaping from a recliner and coming to stand next to me.
"Where's Marco?" My throat was dry. My tongue felt like leather. I tried to sit up, but my m
other laid me back down.
"Just relax, sweetie. You've been unconscious for a long time."
"How long?"
"Three days."
She answered that question easy enough, why wouldn't she answer my other one. Maybe I didn't really want to know the answer.
"Where's Marco?” I asked again louder and more forcefully.
My mother took a deep breath. "I'm so sorry, sweetie."
I turned over in the bed. I didn't want to be alive without Marco. Why didn't I die too?
