by Logan Jacobs
Fallon’s sentence was cut short as a massive, blue-gray fist crashed into her.
Then she flew across the room and slammed into the wall. She then fell to the ground in a heap and didn’t move.
I spun and came face to face with Rolo. The left side of his face and neck were all lumpy, like bad mashed potatoes, but were still in once piece. His left eye was half closed and completely clouded over but he was still very much alive.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted and went into a red filled rage. The Krav Maga mod that flowed through my veins could barely keep up with barrage of blows I threw into the hulking beast.
I attacked with everything I had; elbows, knees, fists, and feet. Until I drove the monster back toward the open space in the wall where the window had been.
With a feral scream I launched myself into the air and drove my balled fist into the underside of Rolo-Venom’s deformed chin. His head snapped back and he teetered on the edge of the window.
“Die you--” the words died in my throat as Rolo-Venom’s fist wrapped around my neck and began to squeeze. I struggled to break his grip but it was ironclad.
“No,” the creature growled. It sounded like a bucket of rusty nails being rubbed together. “You. Die.”
Rolo opened his mouth and his razor teeth dripped with drool. He was going to bite me. In adrenaline fueled time-warping slow motion I watched as his head began to descend toward my right shoulder.
My mind raced.
Was this going to be it?
Was I going to let Fallon and Baba be next?
Was I going to let Grizz die for a murder he did not commit?
Was I going to leave my alliance mates alone, to fend for themselves?
Was I going to break Artemis’ heart?
No.
No, I was fucking not.
I reached my hand into my pocket, pulled out the folding knife, and snapped open the deadly scorpion-spider venom covered blade.
The problem was that I didn’t have enough leverage or the correct angle to stab him.
Rolo’s face was mere inches from my shoulder and his mouth was opened wide like a shark. I only had one choice, so I drove the knife into my shoulder just as Rolo-Venom bit down.
The dual pain was unlike any I’d ever felt.
The scorpion-spider venom burned my nerves as if they were coated in acid and then the needles of Rolo’s mouth followed after with a pressure that was almost unbearable. My blood flowed like a river after a levee broke. It spurted into Rolo-Venom’s mouth. Drops dripped down his throat and into his belly.
He released his bite and licked his lips with a long blue tongue as if I were some kind of tasty treat.
“Delicious--” He started to growl and then his face screwed up in a mask of agony.
He’d swallowed my scorpion-venom tainted blood and it was now eating him from the inside out. No amount of nano-armor was going to save him now.
Rolo-Venom stumbled, and we fell out the window.
My left arm shot out and managed to grab onto the window frame. My regen mod was having to work overtime to keep my grip all while trying to nullify the effects of the scorpion-venom I’d infected myself with.
Rolo-Venom’s hand clung for dear life on my foot and it was all I could do to hold on as wind whipped at my sweat soaked hair. I watched as his body convulsed and shook and he began to turn back into just plain Rolo Toe-Massi.
The scorpion-venom must have short circuited the nano-armor because soon he was just a man hanging onto my foot for dear life. The left side of his neck and face looked like chop-meat and oozed blood.
Rolo-Venom looked up at me with sad eyes as his fingers slowly slipped off my boot.
“Tell Trillium I love her!” Rolo yelled over the rush of the wind.
Then he slipped away and fell eighty stories to his death.
I tried to pull myself up but my muscles writhed and shook from the pain of the venom and strain. My fingers began to slip, and I was pretty sure I was going to join Rolo in a second or two. At least Fallon and Baba were safe.
Just as my fingers lost their purchase a fur covered hand grabbed my wrist.
I looked up into Fallon’s blood stained face and smiled through the pain that wracked my body. She heaved and pulled me back up through the window.
“I… thought you were a goner,” I groaned.
“Don’t you know cats have nine lives, Havak,” she said and leaned down to kiss me gently on my lips.
It felt nice and warm.
Then everything went black.
Chapter Seventeen
I came to flat on my back as I floated in a serene lake of pale blue that stretched out all around me for as far as I could see. I sat bolt upright to discover the water was only a few inches deep and for some reason, I wasn’t wet at all. I was also dressed in old blue jeans and a faded, vintage, Star Wars shirt that had been the only thing other than my last name that my father had given me.
When I looked at my reflection in the water I saw my twelve year old self staring back at me. It was a face that would be dotted with pimples a year later, and a face I wouldn’t grow to like until I was in my mid-twenties.
I smiled at myself. A gap toothed me smiled back. I had been a late bloomer and lost my last baby tooth in the middle of sixth grade.
“Hi, Marc,” a female voice that I hadn’t heard in over a decade said from beside me.
I turned and saw a hospital bed in the water a few feet away. Medical machines beeped and chimed. In the bed was my mother as she had been the first time she was diagnosed with cancer when I was twelve years old.
“Hey, mom,” twelve year old me said as I walked over to her. “Are you sick?”
“Yeah, baby,” she said and smiled the sad smile of a parent who knows they are about to lie to their child. “But I’ll be better soon.”
“Okay, mom,” I said and hugged her.
No sooner had my arms gotten around her than she faded away.
“Hey, kiddo,” a strong, but kind male voice said from behind me.
I turned and saw my Great Uncle Joe standing in front of me. He was tall, like he was when I was twelve, and gave me a big hug. He smelled of car grease and Old Spice. I breathed in deep of the scent I hadn’t smelled in over fifteen years. It was a smell I didn’t realize I’d missed as much as I had.
“Hey, Joe,” I said into his chest. “Where’d mom go?”
“Ah, kiddo,” he said and looked down on me with old, tired, kind eyes. “She’ll be back soon. Don’t you worry.”
“Okay,” I said and hugged him again. The scent faded and I found myself hugging nothing but air.
“See baby,” my mother said from my left. She stood in the water just a few feet away and looked as she did when I graduated high school. Below me, my teenage self looked up from the reflection. My mom was thinner than when I started my senior year. Her cancer had gone into remission after sixth grade. “I’m so proud of you. But I have some news I need to tell you.”
I found out her cancer came back on the day I graduated high school.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you out that time, kiddo,” my Great Uncle Joe said from my other side.
“It’s okay, Joe,” I said as I put on a brave, adult face. He’d died the year before.
“No, it’s not, kiddo,” he said through a resigned smile. “I should have been there. But I’m very proud of you.”
“Thanks, Joe,” I said through my own resigned smile. “I miss you. Every day.”
“I miss you too,” Joe replied. I started to walk over to him, but he shook his head. “Not yet, kiddo.”
“Yeah, baby, not yet,” my mom said as she appeared behind him.
She looked as she did the day she died. Her skin yellow because her liver had stopped working. She’d managed to keep her hair through the last of the chemo, and it was curled and styled nicely. She had a small smile on her face which is how she looked when I walked into the hospital room two hours after she pa
ssed away.
I was twenty-two years old and had been on a truck run when she finally went to the hospital after being sick for a few weeks. She had been in full liver failure and there had been nothing they could do to keep her alive. I thought I’d have time to make it, but she slipped into the void in the middle of the night. I desperately wished that the yellow, smiling, lifeless image of her laid out on a cold hospital bed with a faded hospital gown draped across her too thin frame wasn’t the last memory I had of her.
But it was, and there was nothing I could do to change it.
“What do you mean?” I asked them as I tried to walk toward them again. But it was like the water had turned to fresh concrete and I could barely slog through it.
“It’s not your time, baby,” my mom said, and I watched as she slowly morphed into the mom I remembered from being a little boy when we would go to movies together.
“Yeah, kiddo, not yet,” my Uncle Joe echoed. He now looked the same as he did in my earliest memories when he would let me help him change the oil in his car.
“But, I miss you guys,” I said and continued to try and walk toward them. “So much.”
“We know, baby,” my mom said as tears fell down her cheeks.
“But you have people that need you right now,” Joe said. “So, you need to fight.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
A window opened up in front of me and I could see Artemis, PoLarr, Aurora, Tempest, Nova, Fallon, Baba-Tadao, and even Chazz standing over my body encased in an amniotic recovery tube in some futuristic hospital room. They all looked so worried.
“They need you,” Joe said.
“Don’t you leave me, Havak,” a familiar voice boomed around me. In the window to the world I saw Grizz as his hologram hovered above my bed. The rest had all left and it was now night time. Grizz was the only one in the room. He placed a holographic hand next to my forehead. “I have experienced the loss of loved ones enough for one man. If you go, I do not think I could bear it. So you fight, you weak human. You fight and come back to us. Come back to me, son.”
“He needs you,” Joe said.
“Yes, he does, Havak,” another familiar voice said as Darry Dar’Tor appeared beside my great uncle. He looked young, and fresh, and happy. “Don’t leave my friend all alone, or I’ll have to kick your ass.”
I stopped struggling to move forward.
“Okay,” I said and smiled at them.
They all smiled back and then shimmered away like a mirage.
The water around me began to rise quickly, but I didn’t panic. Soon it was over my head and I was in darkness. But there was a light above me, and I began to swim up toward it.
I kicked harder and faster, with all my might.
Then I opened my eyes and I was in a hospital bed with various tubes and wires connected to by body. Complex and highly advanced medical monitors beeped and hummed all around me.
A shape came into view and then soft, cherry flavored lips pressed into mine in a kiss that was like the breath of an angel.
My vision cleared, and I looked up into Artemis’ face as she leaned over me.
“Glad you’re back,” she said softly and then kissed me again. “I knew you would return.”
“A promise is a promise,” I croaked out. My voice was scratchy and very dry.
Artemis smiled down at me as a few huge tears fell onto my face. Then she went to the door of the room and opened it.
“He’s alive and awake!” She shouted very loudly out into the hallway.
A second later my entire team rushed into the room. As did Chazz, Fallon and Baba-Tadao whose right arm was in a sling. Hell, Captain Har’Gitay even brought up the rear.
“And you were there, and you were there, and your were there,” I said as I looked at all my friends, no, my family as they crowded around my bed.
“Did he suffer brain damage?” Har’Gitay asked, very confused.
“No, Captain,” Grizz explained. He had a huge smile on his face and I could tell he was trying not to let his voice crack. “I believe that is a line from a movie. The Wizard of Oz.”
“Oz doesn’t have wizards,” Har’Gitay scoffed. “It is a planet populated by living feces.”
“You will have to come over for movie night sometime,” Nova explained to the Captain. “It is the only way you will start to understand the workings of Marc’s very strange human brain.”
“If you say so,” Har’Gitay shrugged.
“Glad you’re back, big guy,” Chazz bubbled and began to rub my feet. It was a little odd and kinda creepy but I let him do it anyway because, honestly, it felt good. “I have been holding a nonstop vigil over all seven of your fan networks. Everyone is going to be so happy.”
“Ah, not quite everyone,” Fallon purred as she leaned against the wall of the room. She had a small bandage over the cut on her head. “Vou is going to be downright disappointed.”
“Um, she’s not in jail?” I asked as I leaned up and grabbed a small bottle of water that was on the tray next to my bed. I drained it in two big gulps.
“No,” Har’Gitay sighed. “She is not.”
“But neither is Grizz, so that’s a win,” Artemis chimed in. She was definitely trying to make it a glass half full kind of situation.
“Okay, somebody better start explaining,” I said as I laid back down in my pillows. “First, how long have I been out?”
“Four days,” Tempest responded from the chair she’d plopped herself down in. “Lazy.”
“The scorpion-spider venom really did a number on you,” Artemis explained. “Had you not had your regen mod, I don’t know if you would have made it.”
“Ah, spider schmider, I’m harder to kill than that,” I joked with more confidence than I felt.
“It was a very brave thing that you did, Marc,” Baba-Tadao said from his position at the door. “How did you know it would work against that monster?”
“I didn’t,” I said and tried to shrug but it hurt my shoulder too much. I looked over and there was a big bandage wrapped completely around most of my right shoulder and part of my neck. “But it was all I could come up with at the moment. Nothing else seemed to be working. Okay, so how the fuck is Vou not in jail?”
“She blamed it all on Toe-Massi,” Har’Gitay explained. “She spun a tearful yarn about how he had once been a close friend from her homeworld and that she had tried to employ him for years but his affection for her had grown to unhealthy levels. Then she said that you showed up just in time to help protect her.”
“And you bought that?” I scoffed.
“Hell no,” Har’Gitay chuffed. “What do you think I am? New?”
“We had no choice but to back up what she said, Marc,” Fallon chimed in. “It was either that or risk all of us going to war before we had prepared.”
“My superiors were very happy at having one, solitary person to blame for all of it,” Har’Gitay continued. “Toe-Massi took the rap for Darry murder as well, with Vou’s help, because he’s dead. The whole thing got wrapped up into a nice, little, convenient bow and everything is back to normal.”
“Everything is not back to normal, sugars,” Aurora said. She was angry. “So much of this reeks. How can we just let it stand?”
“We don’t have any choice, Aurora,” PoLarr answered. “I once had a commanding officer who nearly got us all killed several times. But she was well connected and protected. The more we complained, the worse it looked for us, so we just all had to suck it up.”
“What happened?” Aurora asked.
“As luck would have it,” PoLarr replied with an evil grin. “She ended up walking into an enemy ambush all alone with no back up.”
“Look, guys,” I started to say. “I appreciate your anger, but PoLarr and Har’Gitay are right. We need to be very careful with this. There is a lot more going on than we know about. If we don’t watch our step, we could be the ones walking into an ambush with no back up.”
Everyone sort of let that sink in for a while. Then a very attractive female doctor burst into the room like hell on wheels. She was on the shorter side with soft, ample curves, and bright green hair pulled up into a sexy ponytail. She held a holo-pad in front of her and walked right over to one of the machines. Her form fitting doctor coat was unbuttoned and her breasts ended up inches from my face.
“All of you, out!” She commanded. “What the hell are you doing in here? Huh? He managed to survive scorpion-spider venom and massive tissue trauma to his neck and shoulder and needs rest. You can all come back in the morning during visiting hours.”
“Aw, but doctor, I’m only halfway through with my foot rub,” Chazz complained.
“Out!” The doctor commanded forcefully. Everyone grumbled but started to leave. All my alliance mates managed to squeeze in for a quick kiss on the cheek which made my face burn red under the baleful glare of the doctor.
Grizz lingered for a moment after everyone else had left. He leaned down close so that the doctor couldn’t hear.
“You are one of the bravest, and stupidest men I have ever known, Marc Havak,” Grizz whispered. “I am glad you are back among the living. Thank you for helping solve my friend’s murder. I am glad I did not lose two of you.”
“Thanks, Grizz,” I said back. “Couldn’t leave you all alone. The ladies would drive you nuts.”
“Get well, Havak,” Grizz said as he stood and began to walk out. “You are still weak and woefully underpowered so we need to double our training efforts when you are fully functional again. The Crucible has no mercy.”
“Glad you do, Grizz,” I said to myself as he disappeared out the door.
“You have good friends,” the doctor commented as she pressed a few buttons on one of the machines. “You are lucky.”
“Don’t I know it,” I slurred up at her as some type of sedative began to take effect.
“Don’t you forget it,” the doctor said as she leaned down close to my ear. “Remember them if you ever feel the need to dig any deeper than you already have, or we’ll fucking kill you.”
“Uh, whaaaa….” I murmured as the world spun and I sank into sleep once more.