“Show injury scan results.”
He peered into the glass box, wondering who Carlos was talking about.
“Subject Taylor shows regular body functions. Psychological damage is severe.”
Taylor.
She lay in the glass box as though it were her coffin. Q let a faint smile slip through. After all those years of trying to be Rapunzel and Cinderella, she’d finally ended up as snow white.
But Snow White had been put in a coffin when she’d died. Taylor didn't seem dead to him. She just seemed exhausted. Her face looked thinner and paler, and her body lay completely still. Almost lifeless in a way.
“You asked me what happened to her,” Carlos walked over to him, his voice sharp and cold. “Now you know.”
“Is her condition fatal?”
“Nothing of the sort. She’s been put into an induced coma for the time being. We can actually wake her up anytime we want.”
“An induced coma? What’s wrong with her?” He wasn’t exactly an aspiring physician but he was aware that induced comas were usually induced to combat serious conditions.
“That’s a good question,” Carlos went silent for a few seconds. “But I don't think words will be able to answer it for you.”
“Ummm...Okay?”
“Now that you’re feeling ok, we’ll spend the rest of the day here. We need to get her back to normal as soon as we can.”
“That would be easier if you just told me what happened to her.”
“Incoming call,” the speakers said.
“Identify,” Carlos said.
“Identification has been encrypted. Would you like to run decryption algorithms?”
“No it’s fine. I’m guessing I can't take the call here?”
“It is highly advised you do not, sir.”
“Very well then, secure the girl,” he said and walked back to the elevator.
The glass box’s top closed shut.
“Affirmative.”
Carlos turned to Q, “I’ll be back in a bit.” And with that the elevator doors closed.
Q turned to face Taylor, who lay exactly as she had five minutes ago. Not that surprising.
He looked around the place for the first time, taking in every little detail. It was a much smaller cavern than the one on top, a rough circle about twenty yards in diameter. The walls were cracked and jagged, with no sign of tech anywhere at all.
The only objects in the room were the metal table, the glass box, and the odd machine that was fixed to the ceiling, right above the table. The machine was solid rectangular box about as large as a 40 inch flat-screen television set, but was almost a foot thick. It was completely gray with lines of neon blue that crisscrossed the sides, ending in small circles of the same color.
He had noticed the female voice had come from the box.
Speaking of the voice, he figured it was obviously the same one that he heard at the gates, and it seemed to be linked to the computer. So was it some sort of Artificial Intelligence system or something? He began to feel bored sitting alone in all the quietness.
“Hey,” he said out loud.
“All attempts at contact are to be negated.”
“Aww c’mon. I’ll die from boredom.”
“Negative. The human brain cannot die from boredom. It is simply rendered inactive. A study stated that-”
“I get it. I get it.”
The silence grew again. Soon this silence would make his mind mushy and then even his thoughts would turn silent. Then he’d finally be able to see if one could die of boredom.
He didn't know whether the fates had listened to him - he didn't believe in them - or not, but things started to get really interesting right then.
The box’s blue lines flooded with red, and a loud alarm blared out.
“Warning: Induced coma unstable.”
“Get Carlos to come down!” Q yelled.
He heard loud banging coming from next to him. Taylor had woken up, and was desperately banging on the wall of the glass box. She hadn't been claustrophobic ever in her life, but then again, she’d never been locked up in a capsule like this either.
“Get the box open.”
“I need a command from Carlos to-”
“DO IT.”
“Breaching capsule.”
The capsule’s lid jumped up into the air and fell a few feet away from the walls. Taylor sat up, her eyes bloodshot and her breathing heavy.
Q steadied her shivering shoulders, “Everything is okay,” he said.
She slapped his hand off of her and jumped out the capsule, using the table as some sort of barrier between him and her.
“Taylor, what’s wrong?” he asked, careful not to make any sudden movements and scare her.
“You’re the boy from that forest.”
“Hahaha,” he laughed sarcastically. “Very funny.”
She looked straight at him, her expression cold and fearful, “I don’t know who you are!”
***
Waking up is a tiring ordeal as is. Imagine waking up to the sound of loud alarms, and finding that you’re trapped inside a glass box.
That’s pretty much how Taylor felt the moment she opened up her eyes. Her head ached, and she couldn't remember how she’d ended up in there, but that was the least of her concerns.
Luckily for her the capsule opened up after she banged on it a few times, and she jumped out without wasting a second. She didn't want to be in that glass coffin any longer. The alarms shut down, saving her ears from their dreadful screams.
A boy stood in front of her. He looked rather striking with his dark hair and cold, silver-grey eyes. Frankly, he looked like one of those fictional characters from the girly paranormal-romance books, which was probably not a look that he was going for.
What really irritated her was how the boy kept acting as though he knew her. He did know her name though, and she had no clue how, but this ‘what’s wrong with you act’ was really tempting her to beat him up.
She was trying to plot a way out of this when the cave wall opened up and a young man walked out, his face a little worried. Unlike with the kid who was pestering her, she knew who this guy was.
Carlos.
“What happened?” he asked the boy.
“I don't know. The voice said Taylor had gone unstable.”
“The voice?”
“You know, the woman who keeps speaking?”
“Oh, you mean Jel”
“You named her?”
“She’s an AI that’s part of every electronic thing connected to the mansion. Of course I named her.”
“Now what’s wrong with her?” he pointed to Taylor.
“Me?” Taylor asked. ”Carlos, who is this little kid?”
“Little? I’m just a year younger than you!”
“Interesting, you remember me but not my brother,” Carlos said.
“Wait, so this kid is your little brother?”
“Yes, Q is my brother.”
“Hold on for a sec.” Q said.
Taylor puffed her cheeks up. This kid seemed to really like interrupting the conversation.
He turned to Carlos and then back to her. “How exactly do you two know each other?”
“I’ve known him ever since I was little,” Taylor said.
“Yes, I get that but he’d been locked up in here for the last five years. Even I haven’t seen him that often. You shouldn’t even be able to recognize him.”
“What do you mean locked up? I meet him all the time”
Carlos sighed, rubbing his forehead in disappointment, “He didn’t necessarily have to know that Taylor.”
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn't know anything about it.”
“By it you mean-”
“Yes!”
Taylor kept quiet, influenced by the ‘please shut up’ vibe she was getting from Carlos.
“What’s this thing I know nothing about?” Q asked.
“You’ll find out very soon,” Carlos
said.
“Kid, can you close your ears for a second?” Taylor asked. “I need to ask Carlos something and I don't want him to yell at me for ‘revealing’ precious information.”
“You’re acting weird,” Q said and turned to Carlos. “The dark blob had her bound up with its tentacles, and her eyes looked really dark and unfocused.”
What dark blob? she thought. Great. Now the guy is coming up with lies to make me sound crazy.
“That explains a lot,” Carlos scratched his chin.
WHAT? she thought.
“The Phalatopian seems to have directly overwritten her memories of you then.” he continued.
“Are you seriously considering what the kid just said?”
“She’s forgotten you completely because the Phalatopian made her,” he said. “In fact she might have forgotten parts of herself. It’s normal for her personality to change.”
Taylor was utterly confused, “I forgot? What in the world are you guys talking about?”
“You probably don't realize it, do you?”
“Either give it to me straight or don't say anything at all. Don’t answer my question with another question.”
“You’ve lost your memories.”
Taylor blinked, “Of course not. My mind is perfectly all right.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it is.”
“Wait,” Q interrupted them, for probably the third time in the last five minutes. “What if we somehow trigger her memory?”
“Too dangerous.”
“You know, I really didn't lose my memories,” she said again, hoping someone would listen to her.
“You’re going to have to trust us on this one,” Carlos said.
“Speaking of trust,” she began. “I’m not buying this whole ‘This kid is my brother’ act.”
“I’m not a kid!” Q said.
Number of interruptions was now up to four. Carlos closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He turned towards her, “Just how much do you remember?”
“Well,” she said. “The last thing I recall is meeting some crazy, masked guy.”
He kept quiet for a few seconds before finally answering, “We’ll have to try scanning you one more time.”
“But-”
“Won’t hurt you at all,” he said.
She reluctantly stepped back into the glass box.
“It won’t seal you in this time,” he assured her, but that didn't make her feel any better. He turned up towards the box on the ceiling, “Jel, begin brainwave scans.”
“Initializing sensors,” she said, and a small plane of light shone on Taylor’s face. She closed her eyes, shielding them from the bright light.
“Scanning in process…”
Throughout the scan, all she did was wait for the words to come out of the scanner.
“Scan complete.”
She jumped out of the box in a sort of triumph and walked away as far as she could, which was incidentally right next to the elevator.
“Show me the processed data,” Carlos said.
“Analyzing data….Opening hologram suite.”
A bright hologram appeared in front of him. Taylor couldn't see it clearly from where she stood, but she could make out the faint outlines of a brain scan, certain regions encoded with unique colors that represented her level of brain activity.
Carlos sighed, and closed down the image.
Uh oh, Taylor thought. That couldn't be good. She popped the question with a little hesitation, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid your condition is a little worse than I’d thought,” he said. “We’re going to have to get some help from our other friends.”
***
“Kid,” Q muttered as the three of them walked up to the elevator.
“Transporting,” Jel said once they’d entered and the elevator moved back up.
“Seriously. A kid,” he whispered again.
He despised being called a kid. Especially if Taylor was the one who was calling him that. She’d always treated him as someone she had to protect, which he’d eventually become used to, but calling him kid was just too irritating.
She did lose her memory though, and Carlos did tell him that would make her act strangely, but that statement alone did not prepare him to face this sort of situation.
She was a completely different person, and no, he wasn't saying that just because she called him a kid. Taylor was usually the two sided kind that acted like a princess one minute, and then acted like an assassin the next. She was the royal assassin in a way. And right now she was the annoying ‘Let’s bully the little kid’ older sister that he never had. Or wanted.
Carlos interrupted his thoughts with his regular ‘here’s the plan’ ordeal. “I’ll set up a few things once we’re at the cavern. I need you to keep an eye on Taylor while I’m gone.”
“I’m not a murderer you know,” she said from behind them.
“We don't know that yet,” Carlos said with a dead straight face.
He wasn't kidding.
But that statement made Q feel all jittery inside. “You want me to take care of a potential murderer?”
“Well, when you put it that way-”
Taylor gripped Q’s shoulder, “If you guys keep talking like that, I really will murder the two of you.”
The elevator platform rose back through the opening on the top, and Q faced the familiar sight of a computer embedded into the wall.
“Shall I begin the teleportation sequence sir?”
“Not right now,” Carlos said and started to type on the computer’s wide keyboard, his fingers flying over the keys.
Q sat down with his back to on one of the larger rocks, “So I guess we just sit here and wait,” he told Taylor.
“Yeah, I guess,” she sighed and sat down on the other side of the rock.
Q knew Carlos had only been joking when he’d talked about the possibility of her being a murderer, but it still gave him the chills to even think about what would happen if she turned into one.
He sat there in silence, watching Carlos type on the keyboard, run up to his study for a bit, and then come back to type again. This continued for about an hour or so until he finally stretched out his hand, and sighed with relief.
“Admittance is now confirmed. Beginning teleportation security sequence. Initiating complete lockdown of mansion.”
The entire cave rumbled. Q didn't know what was going on up top, but it seemed to be something big. It lasted for a few seconds before turning completely still again.
“Lockdown complete. All entrances and exits have been locked down. Security protocols are at master level.”
“Perfect,” Carlos grinned, an expression that Q couldn't recall seeing. Ever.
He turned to the two of them, “All right guys, we’re ready to go.”
“Stabilizing cave infrastructure. Activating radiation absorbers.”
“Radiation?” Q asked. Just what kind of haphazard experiment had Carlos gotten them into?
“Radiation absorbers at full capacity.”
“There’ll be a lot of radiation when the machines open it up, so the absorbers will keep our surroundings safe.”
“Open what up?”
“Activate portal,” he said.
“Generation initiated.”
For a second, nothing happened, and Q was left wondering if this was all a joke.
And then it started.
A small speck of light appeared in front of Carlos and expanded fast, turning into a large circle in less than an instant.
“That’s what I wanted to open up,” Carlos smiled at Q.
Q was completely taken aback by what he saw, “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see once we get to the other side.”
His brother grabbed his hand as well as Taylor’s, and ran into the portal, dragging them along with him.
That couldn't be good.
***
1-5
Q was having his fi
rst inter-portal travel experience.
And he wasn't having fun.
First, he felt like he was being stretched apart, then he felt like an elephant sat on him, and now after everything seemed to have come back to normal, he still had a difficult time taming his stomach.
The sights were amazing though.
Bright roads of unimaginable colors lay side by side, forming a sort of ‘rainbow road’, and small flashes of light zoomed past him like snow on a highway. It took him a while to realize that they were actually stars that were appearing that way simply because of the speed he was travelling.
His excitement was completely overwhelmed by the number of questions that he wanted to ask, something that Carlos would probably not be looking forward to. Interportal travel should have been super-fast, but by the time Q stepped out on the other side, he felt like an entire century had passed while he’d travelled.
“How was the ride?” Carlos asked.
He opened his mouth to answer and then fell flat on the ground. He tried to get up but kept stumbling every time. His strength had completely left his body, probably one of the side effects to inter-portal travel. Taylor and Carlos seemed fine though.
“You’ll get used to it,” she helped him up, her voice sounding more condescending than helpful. He leaned on her, his legs unable to bear his entire body weight.
“The portal warps time and space,” Carlos said. “So you’ll feel like you’re completely drained when you’ve exited it. That’s mainly because of the time warp that you go through. I’m sure you felt like you’d spent a really long time in the portal?”
Q nodded.
“That’s because we really did spend that long in there. Our biological components would have experienced a much lesser time, but our mind would feel like it spent all eternity in that spot.”
“Isn't that dangerous then?”
“Not really. Once you learn to shut your mind down, you’ll get used to interportal travel.”
“I don't think I’ll ever want to take a portal again,” Q said.
“You’ll need one to get home,” Taylor said, with a ‘don’t be such an idiot’ tone.
“So what do you think of the place?” Carlos asked.
He’d been so focused on his body that he hadn't taken in the sights around him, and when he finally did take it in, he was in complete awe. Skyscrapers of silver stood on the late afternoon horizon. They all seemed quite bland and refined at the same time, as though the simplicity of the design was what made them beautiful.
The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5 Page 5
