Tobias brought a small glass panel in front of Taylor. It turned it on, and a live feed appeared on the screen. Q rode on the griffin, a man in a white coat sitting right behind him. Though the screen was right next to them it took them a second to notice the feed.
“What’s that?” the man asked.
Taylor realized that this wasn't just a live feed, it was a communication line as well. She could actually talk to Q now. She opened her mouth but only silence came out. Her mind was far too unstable for her to even talk to Q.
“Taylor!” Q yelled out.
“Yes, Wielder of Light,” Albion faced Q.
“What are you doing to her!” he lashed out, his face red with anger.
“I will need you to move away from the tower. Otherwise I will be forced to use the F.E.A.R serum on her,” he smiled.
“F.E.A.R?!” the man beside Q exclaimed. “You can't use that, her mind will go insane!”
“Yes,” Albion said coolly. “So unless you do as I say, you’re going to cause the Dark Knight’s demise.”
Q glared at the screen.
“The game is over, Wielder of Light,” the White Knight King said.
But Q’s anger only seemed to grow. In an instant he hit the screen with a bolt of lightning and cut it off immediately.
“What’s going on?” Albion asked nervously. “Get it back online.”
Tobias desperately worked on the controls of the glass panel and brought up the feed again. The image became clearer. The griffin flew through the air with the man in the white coat riding on it, but that was it, there wasn't anyone else in the picture.
“Where is the boy?” Albion growled.
“I don't know, sire,” Tobias fidgeted. I’ll try checking the cameras we have around the tower.” He flipped through a bunch of different feeds but not a single one showed any sign of Q.
“The boy must have gone inside the tower even after our warning,” Albion seemed furious. “He does not value the girl’s life like we thought.”
Taylor’s heart skipped a beat. She felt like a knife had pierced right through her. Had Q just left her to die? Tears formed in her eyes. Her heart filled with grief. She couldn't accept that Q had abandoned her. She couldn't accept that the boy she had taken care of for so long had left her alone when she needed him the most.
“The nerve of these upstart children,” Albion muttered. He turned towards Taylor with a look of pure evil, “I might as well try this serum out,” he grinned and scraped the sharp needle on her skin.
Taylor thrashed about, desperately trying to get away from the guards, but Albion held her to the table and pierced the needle into her neck. She screamed wildly as pain tore into her. Tears rushed down her horrified face as she waited for the serum to be injected into her.
A huge explosion hit the room hard, knocking everyone to the floor. The walls shattered, the floor cracked and the lights went off, causing a dim blue emergency light to turn on and light up the room. A cloud of smoke circled around the air like a miniature tornado, and a dark silhouette lay within. It threw its hands up into the air, and the smoke cleared away.
“YOU WILL LEAVE HER ALONE.”
***
Q stared at a damaged, white drone flying towards the tower. That thing had just broadcasted to him the worst video he had ever seen. He still couldn't believe what he had just been told. His heart ached to see Taylor’s terrified face, to see her in one of her worst moments. No one could hurt Taylor like that. No one.
Burke had told Q the severity of the situation. If Taylor were injected with F.E.A.R she would be lost forever. Her consciousness would be locked away deep inside her mind, facing a simulation of her worst fears. Her body on the other hand would become a robot that would listen to Albion’s command and do as he willed.
“You must go, Q,” Jade said. “We do not have any time. Create a portal and leave. I and Burke will take care of everything else.”
Q didn't hesitate for a second. All he could think about was saving Taylor from the clutches of Albion. He closed his eyes and held his hands out. A circle of gentle wind expanded from him and a purple portal emerged.
“I’ll be back. Don't worry,” Q said. He jumped off Jade and into the portal. He was going to go save Taylor. And no one was going to stop him.
***
Burke watched as the purple portal closed with a bright white flash.
He turned to Jade, “So now we have to do everything?” he asked.
“I believe not,” the griffin said. “You will have to do everything. I will have to get the missiles to follow me and attack the tower.”
“Maybe we should get reinforcements,” Burke said.
“We do not have the time. The white knights know we’re here. We must secure the Lambda Driver and destroy the tower as soon as possible.”
“Wait. I don't even know where the Lambda Driver is!” Burke said. “He never told us.”
“Floor 146.”
Burke looked at him quizzically.
“Good thing I read his mind huh?” Jade said cheerfully.
“Yeah,” Burke couldn't help laughing.
Jade didn't waste another second and headed to the top of the tower. “I’ll let you down on the topmost floor,” he said.
“That won't be necessary,” he said and jumped off. “Ethosien!” he yelled out.
A white battle armor emerged around him. The suit’s fingers were long and sharp, like they could slice through anything. His dark purple visor contrasted well with armor’s white color. A booster, as large as his arm, was fixed to the back of his suit, and acted as his propulsion system. This suit was deadly and sinister, even if he said so himself.
He activated the booster and pushed himself to the wall. His mind was completely focused. He needed to stop at the exact right moment else he would head into the wrong floor.
And because he needed to focus immensely, Burke’s mind did the opposite and realized he hadn't told Q about his suit. But that was only because this one wasn’t a completely functional one. Burke knew the risk he was taking with activating this new suit. He hadn't completed its startup tests yet, so he took a leap of faith in believing he could come out of this unscathed.
The 146th floor approached him at a steady pace. He let his fingers sink into the walls to help him slow down. Just as he was about to reach the floor, he pushed himself away from the walls and activated the booster, surging through the air and crashing into the 146th floor.
He shook off the blow, “Boy, that could have gone better,” he said and looked around. The lighting in the room was pretty dim and there seemed to be no one around. He had expected an alarm to sound as soon as he broke in but no, that wasn't the case here. Instead, he heard the sound of metal scraping metal coming from all around him. He looked around. The whole floor was being closed off. Metal shutters extended all around the walls and blocked them off.
“You will have a limited amount of time before I direct the missiles to the tower,” Jade said. This telepathy thing was really convenient for long distance conversations.
“Gotcha,” Burke said and turned around. He needed to find out where the Lambda Driver was. He followed the curved corridor, trying to find some sort of clue as to where the treasured item was, but the more ground he covered, the less confident he was about the Lambda Driver being on this floor. Maybe the Driver wasn't even on this floor. Maybe it wasn't even in this building.
Could Q have gotten it wrong? he wondered. Burke shook his head. He was just overthinking. It didn’t hurt to have a second go at scanning the area though.
“Activate heat scan,” he said.
A purple dialog box glowed on the corner of his visor, “Beginning scan,” it said. A few seconds later, an image formed. Splashes of red, orange and pink painted an overall green canvas.
“Run gamma radiation filters,” he said. The image changed again. This time a small dot of bright blue shone bright and strong.
Found you, he thought.
> He locked onto the location and ran as fast as he could. It was in the room at the end of the corridor. Now that Burke had almost found the Lambda Driver he started to work on an escape plan. First thing he did was scan the whole tower. He would be able to use the heat signature to figure out the positions of White Knights all throughout the tower. The scanner beeped to signal a successful scan and his visor displayed the image.
Burke let out a small yelp. His heart was thumping loudly. His mind was already making a connection from the data. The whole building was empty. Not a single living thing was inside it.
He thought it very odd, but the problem with scanning large places was there was a large chance for errors. Maybe there were people on the lower floors than his scanner hadn’t picked up properly. He didn’t worry about it too much and focused on getting back his stolen invention. He ran to the end of the corridor and threw the door open.
The Lambda Driver stood there, a box, about the size of a crate, made out of sleek black metal. Well, it was supposed to be black.
This one wasn’t. It was glowing a bright red, and that could only mean one thing. The Lambda Driver was overloading. It had been fed with too much energy.
A dialog box popped up on his visor. “Warning.” it said. The heat levels were too high for him to survive here for too long. But that wasn’t the biggest threat.
“This is not good,” he muttered.
The Lambda Driver was going to explode. The explosion would take along the tower, and everything in the vicinity
Burke included.
***
5-1
Chris’ eyes shot open and she felt like she had just awakened from a dream. She sat up and looked around her.
Darkness extended as far as the eye could see.
It covered her.
It consumed her.
And then she realized, she wasn't even awake.
The darkness around her was different; more mysterious and mystical than anything she had seen. She felt drawn into the depths of this unknown entity, her mind persuading her to give into it, and so she let the black void suck her in. The scenery transformed, changing from the cold dark void into some sort of a large room.
She was surrounded by gray metal walls with metallic blue highlights infused on them. The air was silent and still, like the place was void of all life.
“Welcome to the arena,” a robotic voice blared, its voice echoing off the walls. “Please brace yourself for battle, we hope you have fun.”
The ceiling gave way and hundreds of humanoid shapes fell to the floor, crashing into the hard surface with a loud bang. Chris looked a little closer, trying to figure out what these things really were.
Androids.
Ten foot tall robots, their metal bodies gray and blue, just like the room, their eyes radiating an intense light. All of them straightened up and moved around, forming a circle around Chris. She didn't need to be a genius to know that these things were hostile.
“Initiating attack sequence,” they all said in monotone and their heads rotated 360 degrees, their eyes turning from a bright white to a dangerous shade of red. Chris realized she needed to find a way out of this place as soon as possible.
“Ethosien,” she said, and her green armor emerged around her.
The robots started their attack as soon as she had transformed, their red eyes shooting huge laser beams straight at her, and scorching the face of her suit.
She tried to feign and dodge, but there were just too many against her. The beams heated her suit up, burning her skin from outside. Fear grasped at her, dragging her within and freezing her up. She ran around blindly, trying to ram into the robots as much as possible, but all she succeeded in doing was collapsing to the floor in terrible pain. Her body didn't ache, it burned, like a house on fire, terrible and terrifying.
She closed her eyes and yelled out, letting out all her emotions in one go. She didn't know how long that one scream lasted but when she finally stopped, the whole room was silent. The robots stared at her, their bodies frozen in odd positions. She tried to seize the opportunity and run, but she had frozen too. Her body was hard and rigid, like it was coated in cement, but her mind was still working. She lay there, frozen like a statue, waiting to see what would happen.
And then it all stopped.
The room unfroze and the attack continued from where it left off, the robots unleashing their laser beams onto her leaf green suit. She tried to dodge the attacks from all around her, her mind preoccupied with figuring out what had just happened. Something weird was clearly going on, and she wanted to find out what.
A beam of light shot at her face. There was no time for her to duck, no time to dodge, no time to block. It was going to blast right through her.
And then the unthinkable happened.
The beam stopped. It literally stopped in midair, making it look like some sort of stick of light that has been magically created. Chris’ eyes darted around the room, and then, she saw it.
A series of images folded out in front of her, each one layering itself over the other like a combination of slowly fading photos. The robots around her now had dull after images along with them. But she realized these were not afterimages, rather these were images of the future, of the movements these robots were going to take, and not the movements that had been taken.
She analyzed the scenery around her, scanning every robot’s path and trajectory. She couldn't move around though, so she could only work with the things that were in her field of vision.
A few seconds later, the image pulsated with a dull white light and the room unfroze again. Now that she had ample time to react, she put all her effort into throwing herself to the side, and dodging the laser beam.
She knelt on the ground and pulled out her crossbow, letting an arrow fly with perfect accuracy, the pointed tip sinking into the metal body of an Android. She folded her crossbow in half, turning it into a temporary short spear, and gutted one of the other droids, her body staying clear of most of the laser beams that were coming at her.
Whatever this new power was, it was helping her take out these Androids quick and easy. She shifted into the frozen world countless number of times, analyzing the movements of the Androids all around her, and when she returned to reality, she had enough information to pick out all the movements of every single one. She could deal proper damage to them while blocking their attacks at the same time. Once she got the hang of this new power of hers, she shot at them with a storm of arrows, hitting them with her destructive force.
It took about ten minutes to wrap up the entire batch of Androids. The metal shards scattered around the room were the only remains of their robotic bodies. The floor beneath her tremored, shaking and convulsing more vigorously with every second.
And then it just disappeared, like the blurry mist that disappears in the warm morning light.
She fell through the now non-existent floor, leaving the gray metal room and heading into the black void in front of her, her mind willingly entering its familiar depths once more.
***
Chris sat up, her mind confused about what had just happened to her.
She put her hands to the dark walls, trying to figure out whether this was reality or just another dream. She sighed when she felt the smooth surface under her fingers, the mere presence of that wall giving her a sense of relief.
Her mind jumped over to her battle with the Androids. Just what kind of power had she used? Was it even hers? But then again, that was just a dream, which probably meant that power was just something she had imagined.
The cell wall opened up, and bright flashes of light shot into her eyes. She winced in pain and shielded her eyes from the intense light. Being in the darkness for so long had made her eyes excessively sensitive to even the dullest of light.
A man stood in the doorway, his dark silhouette standing firm in the bright light. She squinted hard, noticing that he had walked up to her. “Come along,” he grabbed her by the arm
and dragged her out of the cell. Everyone stood outside of their cells, all of them as normal as before.
Kai looked straight at their captors, as serious as ever. Lisara yawned drowsily in a ‘what’s going on?’ fashion. Chris figured that the playful side of her had found the quietness of the cell quite comfortable enough to catch her forty winks. Everyone else just seemed tired and sleepy, which was probably from the constant worry.
“We’ll take you to the Commander now,” a cadet told them. Twenty armed cadets surrounded them in an escort.
“I thought the Commander would come see us,” Kai murmured.
A cadet grunted, “The Commander will not come to see filthy beings like you.”
Kai caught the man by his chest, “You better watch your-”
Chris heard the high pitched noise of a laser beam being fired from a blaster. And then it happened. Again.
Everything around her froze, her very body, Kai, the cadets. But her mind was still active. She let go of any questions that her mind had and focused on the scene around her.
Luckily for her, she was right in front of both Kai as well as the cadet who had fired his blaster so she had a perfect view of everything. She looked at all the images appearing in her vision, and in an instant, she knew the exact path the laser would take.
She tried to move her body along, wondering how she was supposed to deactivate this power of hers. She strained her legs, and the scene around her pulsated with a dull light.
That was the answer.
She pushed her body harder, trying to get out of her frozen state, and the scenery around pulsated with a brighter white light. And then everything unfroze.
She wasted no time in pulling out a blaster from a cadet next to her and threw it in Kai’s direction, trying to put it right between him and the incoming laser beam. The intense beam of particles hit the blaster, energizing it to the point of breakage, and caused it to explode with a small bang. The cadets stood stunned and so did everyone else, all their eyes on Chris, making her feel nervous and awkward.
AcQuest: A Space Opera Military Technothriller (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 3) Page 24
