by Jedi Reach
“I’m going to ask the question that’s probably on everyone’s mind,” Stone lit a cigarette and took a long pull. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” Xenia shrugged. “What I do know is that my people arrested and deported him away a long time ago because he and his loyalists dabbled in virol, the destroyer of worlds. A bio-engineered virus that grew out of control and razed entire civilizations.”
Nervousness flushed into the room.
“Does he want to destroy our world?” Bakker questioned.
“I may be extraterrestrial, but I am not all-knowing. I do not know what Adron plans to do. All I know is that he must be contained.” Xenia said.
“You said he came from your people, why aren’t your people helping us?” Bakker snarled.
“They are. A specialist by the name of Lars was sent to take care of Adron. He will be assisting the effort, though not directly.” Xenia replied.
“What does that mean?” Bakker pushed.
“I am the only person Lars will be in contact with. The Federation has issued a decree not to contact earth governments or initiatives, including Nova.” Xenia felt a sense of disappointment saying that, especially the bit about Nova.
“Of course, space politics.” Bakker scoffed.
Xenia clenched her fists.
“My federation does not engage in politics and power struggles like you do here on earth.” she said.
“Good, then you should go back to them and take your space friends with you.” Bakker growled.
“Bakker, enough.” Stone ordered.
“She knew this whole time! Who knows what else she could be hiding? She could be working with them!” Bakker pleaded with his superior.
“I said that’s enough!” Stone raised his voice.
The whole room hushed. It was rare to hear Stone get loud. Bakker backed down and held his mouth.
“It may be true Xenia might be hiding something, but don’t we all have secrets?” Stone took a hit on his nicotine stick, thinking about the irony of Men in Black talking about secrets. “The bottom line is she is here working with us. Not Adron. I’ll tell you who is working with Adron. Lea.”
Scott reacted to the name. He toiled through his terminal and fetched the footage from Jace’s suit, showing the last moment the two Scions shared before he was teleported away.
“It’s true. She assisted Adron in the fight and allowed him to escape.” Jace said, looking at the screen.
“So, what do we do?” Aiden asked the room.
Stone looked at Jace.
“We retrieve Lea and stop Adron. Our mission isn’t over because of one setback.” Jace took command.
“How do we retrieve Lea if she’s helping Adron?” Scott quizzed.
“She’ll have to be detained.” Jace responded.
“And Adron?” Stone asked.
Jace looked at Xenia.
‘It’s fine.’ she telepathically said to him.
“If Adron won’t return to his prison peacefully, then he will be destroyed.” Jace said and looked at Stone.
‘That’s the answer they want to hear.’ Xenia added.
“Come on people, we’re just getting started. We have work to do,” Jace continued. “Scott, I want you and your team on the ball. Figure out what this infection really is, how can we combat it? How can we make safety measures against it? Is a cure possible?”
“On it.” Scott nodded.
“Rest of you, on the clock. I want everything deciphered from the mission samples, feeds, and details. We need to know where Adron is going and what he is doing. What are those hell hounds? What clues and traces did he leave behind? Let’s move it, we have work to do!” Jace’s presence flooded the room with motivation. The staff moved from a mindset of defeat to a mindset that maybe, just maybe, we can do this.
Jace, Xenia and Aiden communicated with Scott and his scientists about the possible development of technology by reverse engineering the virol while many of the staff left to do their specific tasks. Stone continued smoking, observing from the distance while Bakker came to his side in private.
“What if Lea refuses to come back?” Bakker asked his superior.
“Then she’ll be eliminated.” Stone flatly said.
“What about Xenia?” Bakker looked in the direction of the alien.
“What about her?” Stone questioned.
“What if she switches sides?”
Stone took a good look at Xenia and pulled on his cigarette. “Then we eliminate her too.”
CHAPTER 13
The personnel at Plancks were quick to their cleanup duties, devoted and secretive. Dozens of men in hazmat suits and bio-masks worked tirelessly to rid all traces of the virol contaminant while special forces kept guard in and outside the base. Conversation was sparse and few in between the work. No one wanted to say it might be an infection from another planet. The very thought of it was unnerving.
Outside the base, some hundred meters in the air, an invisible spaceship patiently waited. Inside the ship, silence emanated as Lars double-checked his robot suit and its weaponry, including the helmet that was unattached. A holographic screen appeared in front of him showing the alien detailed blueprints of Plancks internal structure. Lars slid his fingers across his wrist computer and downloaded the data to his computer.
He grabbed his helmet and fastened it to his face. The heads-up display lit up inside the mask, displaying the alien’s health vitals, his current arsenal, and to the bottom left, a radar of the area and energy signatures, including that of the earth humans down below.
“What do you think they’re going to do with it?” a sentry at the outskirts of the forest leading to Plancks asked another.
“I dunno, get rich? Turn it into weapons?” the other sentry replied.
“Hey man, is it true aliens really… you know.”
“No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?”
“You know, abduct you and uh, probe you?”
“Dude, seriously? How do you even know its aliens? You sound like that guy.”
“Hey man, we have no idea what that stuff is. It could be aliens, just saying.”
“Yeah well—”
Two marbles fell on the ground in front of the soldiers and flashed two times with blinding white light. Both men dropped to the floor unconscious, almost immediately snoring as they sailed into dreamland. A shadow jumped from the trees and landed on the ground completely untouched.
“We neither abduct nor do we probe,” Lars said as the marbles flew into his wrist gauntlet. “Might want to question your governments for that one.”
The alien slid his fingers across his wrist computer and an invisible camouflage cloaked him. He peered at Plancks in the nearby distance, mentally noting the armed forces patrolling the area. Lars slid his fingers on his wrist computer again. A holstered sheath on his thigh opened and the alien grabbed a plasma pistol from it. The heads-up display in his helmet acknowledged the weapon and Lars tinkered more with the holographic controls, he altered the weapon’s firing mode from lethal to non-lethal.
Unbeknownst to the cleanup forces while they performed their duties, Lars lurked in the shadows, quiet, cautious and patient as he moved deeper inside the base. The hunter sent two camouflaged drones the size of a finger each to map the base for all traces of virol containment. Much to his surprise, the contamination was far worse than expected.
“Fools.” Lars whispered to himself as he read the data.
The ignorance of the cleanup forces had led to the virus leaking, and to make matters worse, several workers were already infected despite the relatively impressive technology they possessed for detection. Lars decided to alter his plan. He couldn’t risk detection, but he had a job to do. The hunter waited for the right time to execute his plan.
When a guard was alone taking a stroll around the corner, a trap was waiting that knocked him out cold. If there were multiple people in a spot, patrolling or talking, Lars dropped shock
nets from above that instantly pacified every man touched by the nets. The hunter sometimes used his marbles that fell into rooms like unexpected candy, alerting the guards for half a second before they dropped to the ground unconscious.
The alien continued trapping and subduing everyone in his way, occasionally pouring a blue liquid from a vial that seeped beneath the hazmat suits and into the flesh of the unconscious. The substance acted as a liquid killer to the virol inside the bodies of the unaware. Lars continued doing this all the way until he was in the showdown room where he last confronted Adron. There were a few men in hazmat suits, but most had left or were on their way out with samples of the virus.
“The big boys called it in. Once they move the specimens to HQ, we’re in business. We just gotta’ clean up the last of this trash.” Lars overheard two of them talking.
“Sounds like vacation time to me. Let’s get the hell out of here as soon as we can then.” the other replied.
‘Once they move the specimens to HQ, we’re in business.’ The sound recording of the man’s voice played in Lars’ helmet.
‘The specimens.’
The recording narrowed its selection.
A lightbulb went off in Lars’ head. He swapped the vision modes on his heads-up display, double-checking every corner for anything missed.
“Perhaps they already left?” the AI in Lars’ mask suggested to him.
“That’s a good point.” Lars replied.
The alien swapped to external cameras stationed atop his beamship. The cameras, which acted like small drones, detached from the ship and raced across the sky in different directions, mapping a greater 360 view of the region.
“There it is.” Lars spotted three cargo trucks driving down the narrow backroads. The alien zoomed inside the trucks and discovered captured, sedated viromorphs. He took note of the personnel on board the trucks. There were at least nine of them, three of the crew being drivers while the others, protectors.
Lars switched his heads-up display back to the vision in front of them. He had no more time to lose, he needed to get the job done within a matter of minutes. The alien readied his traps for the remaining personnel. One of the hazmat suit men was on his way out of the room to collect more supplies when a hand grabbed him from the shadows, pulled him aside, and knocked him out cold.
The remaining man was curious what happened to his coworker, so he went to investigate. Lars appeared behind him and opened fire with his plasma pistol, sending the man across the room. The shot appeared brutal, but it was not lethal. Lars had managed to incapacitate all personnel in the building without one casualty.
He grabbed two whirling discs from his belt and tossed them into the air like frisbees. The discs shot blue rays of light and acted with artificial life. The objects raced throughout the building, cleaning up any remaining virol substances and evidence of any alien encounter.
During the wait for the discs to do their work, Lars deactivated his camouflage so his suit had a moment to recharge. Unexpected eyes gazed from the shadows, amazed by what they were seeing. It was a lone patrol who luckily made it past the alien’s detection. The eerie quiet made Lars uneasy. An intuitive feeling followed by his helmet’s detection made Lars spin his head toward the direction of the earthling spying on him.
“Oh shit!” the patrol blurted once the eyes on the alien’s helmet made contact before Lars reactivated his camouflage and slipped into the shadows. The patrol bolted like a maniac. He was terrified. He had no clue if it was a demon or a ghost. The man just ran. Suddenly a punch connected to his gut, stopping him immediately in his tracks and jerking his whole body forward. The guard abruptly passed out. Lars deactivated his camouflage and tossed the soldier aside.
He scanned the soldier’s body, revealing the soldier was among the infected. Lars poured the blue liquid on the man and ran another check on any possible loners he forgot. There was nothing, at least nothing his systems detected. The two discs came back to Lars like a boomerang and the alien caught each one of them skillfully before holstering them to his belt.
“Daisha.” Lars called to his ship.
The invisible beamship moved across the sky to Lars’ location overhead within a second and beamed the alien onboard. Lars briskly walked to the command console on his ship, telepathically pushing the thought for Daisha to follow the cargo trucks from earlier. The beamship took less than ten seconds to locate and race towards the trucks. Lars didn’t feel a thing on board as he was used to breaking of spacetime, but to the outsider, the ship was darting across the sky beyond lightspeed.
Once Daisha matched the speed of the trucks, Lars lowered the ship and beamed himself beneath it. The alien dropped from the sky and landed directly on top of the first truck, smashing and caving the hood in. The driver stomped his breaks out of panic and the other trucks followed suit. Guards jumped out of the back entrances of the trucks and readied their firearms.
“What the—” the first driver blurted before being grabbed by the shoulder and lifted in the air as if he were weightless by the alien atop the truck’s roof. Lars fired his shoulder cannon at one of the other trucks and it exploded. The alien was methodical. He was not out to kill anyone, rather, provoke fear that would cause the soldiers to panic and back off.
The soldiers themselves had no idea what they were dealing with, and from the power of the plasma shot Lars fired, they knew they weren’t dealing with anything from earth. That terrified them even more. Nevertheless, Lars knew it wouldn’t be much longer before they would charge in like Galahad. The alien scouted for the signatures of the beasts he came for. He found two of them, but one was missing. One of the soldiers found the courage to approach Lars and opened fire on him. The driver slipped out of the alien’s grip and Lars leapt to another truck, cloaking midair as he did.
“You alright?!” the courageous soldier asked the driver. The driver hysterically nodded. More soldiers came to reinforce them. A low, guttural growl followed them, and by the time the soldiers turned to confront it, a viromorph leapt on the laggard. The soldiers opened fire at the alien dog and the creature quickly retreated.
A few of the men rushed to help the injured laggard, only to receive plasma shots to the chest that knocked them out cold. Lars reappeared on top one of the trucks and activated his whip. He whirled his whip at the remaining soldiers and sliced their guns in two then fired his plasma pistol at them. Thunder cracked, and rain started pouring. An eerie silence emanated behind the rain as Lars went through his vision modes, observing the pacified soldiers and scouting for the viromorphs.
The sounds of hisses got the hunter’s attention. He spun around to find three of the beasts, ready to lunge. Lars thought of the fact that the free one had broken the other two out of their cells. It was clever for a killing machine and the alien couldn’t deny that.
The three beasts leapt at him simultaneously. The hunter fired his shoulder cannon at the one to his right, bursting the beast into ashes while the other two lunged at him. Lars tossed one aside and wrestled with the other one in hand to hand combat. The alien unleashed serrated energy blades from his wrist gauntlet, sliced the beast off him and it too turned to ash.
The remaining creature snarled; its fangs ready to sink into flesh. Lars got to his feet and awaited the beast’s next move. The viromorph charged at him. Lars sidestepped the attack and fired three plasma shots from his pistol that incapacitated the creature. He wanted this one alive. The alien called to his ship and beamed the creature on board.
He heard the writhing of the injured soldier and went to him. The soldier was in so much pain that he couldn’t focus on the alien in front of him, he had already accepted his fate. Lars observed the soldier through alternate vision modes to determine the stage of his infection. He grabbed the last remaining droplets of his blue liquid and poured the substance on the man. The soldier immediately felt his pain leaving.
“Thank you.” he said.
Lars reached for his plasma pistol and fired, and
the soldier was knocked unconscious. The alien looked around and scanned the area for any more traces of virol.
Nothing could be detected.
“Daisha.” Lars called to his beamship.
The ship lowered overhead, and a beam of light shot out from beneath it, covering Lars in its light. The light dissipated seconds later, and the alien and his ship, were gone.
**************
Bakker raced through multiple corridors inside an underground installation until he came face to face with a special access door. He waved his hand over the access terminal. The door slid opened and Bakker walked in. Sweat dripped down his brow as he cleared his throat. Stone, surrounded by men in black bodyguards, all turned away from the holographic map in front of them to face Bakker.
“We have a problem.” Bakker said to his superior.
Stone shot a cold gaze at Bakker while he exhaled smoke.
**************
Daisha roamed over the Swiss alps on autopilot while inside, Lars concentrated on his work. There were several holographic screens floating inside the beamship, some acting as camera feeds for places Lars wanted to keep an eye on while others acted like Wikipedia pages, listing information on various subjects he studied in conjunction to his duties on earth.
“Scan complete.” the AI, which was really Daisha, said aloud. One of the holographic screens changed its interface into a display of biochemistry and periodic elements. Lars observed the hologram and scratched his chin. He peered to his right where the viromorph he captured laid in stasis inside a chamber filled with yellow liquid.
“You found any traces outside the known regions?” Lars asked.
“Yes,” Daisha responded. The camera feeds changed into multiple angles over Site X. “Should we move to intercept?”
Lars studied the feeds. His sister came to mind.
CHAPTER 14
Jace, Xenia and Aiden marched through Site X’s corridors headed for the test facility with scientists and guards behind them. Scott greeted the trio as they arrived and escorted the crew into individual, private booths. Inside the booths contained hazmat suits. The crew stripped naked and got into the suits.