It must’ve been my imagination, she thought.
“That was anything but your imagination” Ruby told her.
She couldn’t see Ruby anywhere nearby.
“I’m out here.”
Elizabeth looked closer and saw Ruby in space, gliding gracefully. Elizabeth remembered Taylor telling her something about griffins being able to fly in space.
“What was that?” she asked. She also realized that she was communicating purely through thought, which was the first time she had done so without Taylor.
“It was a black hole,” she said.
“So that means…...”
“We’re coming closer to the centre of the universe.”
Elizabeth kept quiet. Every second brought them closer and closer to Apocalypse and they still had no idea what it was they were supposed to do.
All their powers combined weren’t going to be enough to stop a rampaging black hole.
Suddenly the ship tilted to the left. Elizabeth flew straight to the wall and hit it hard.
“Ouch!” she said. She didn’t know what was going on, but it couldn’t be any good.
She picked herself up and ran to the pit. Taylor and Chris were alongside Kai.
“You’re finally here,” Taylor said, her face full of seriousness.
“What’s wrong?”
“That is,” Chris said, pointing ahead of them.
Elizabeth couldn’t see it at first but she was able to see the outline. It seemed to be a dark cloud, a dark cloud shaped like a man. It seemed like a nebula.
“It isn’t a nebula.” Ruby walked into the pit. Elizabeth wondered how Ruby had got there in the first place.
Probably teleportation, she thought.
“That is Oragon, the dark matter being, the only dark matter being in the universe,” Ruby said.
Though the name didn’t exactly strike fear into Taylor’s heart, she felt that she should be afraid of it.
As if on cue, Oragon retracted his fist and punched into the ship. His hand punched right through the ship, destroying everything. The passenger area was completely destroyed. When he retracted it, the emergency seals, sealed off the hole completely.
That didn’t seem to make Oragon very happy. He clenched his palm into a fist again, but this time he went straight for the pit. Elizabeth stared at the giant fist advancing towards them, she couldn’t move. Her legs weren’t obeying her.
Taylor ran towards her, Kai got up from his chair hurriedly, Chris was telling Kai something. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion for Elizabeth.
Then suddenly a blast came out of nowhere. Everyone got thrown to the floor. Elizabeth struggled to get up. When she finally did, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She rubbed them once or twice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.
Taylor had got up as well. “It can’t be,” she said.
In between them and the fist stood a warrior. His white suit shone brightly in the darkness of space.
He held onto the fist. Oragon threw more force into his fist but the boy had a kind of force field that kept pushing it away.
“You’ve just messed with the wrong guy,” he said.
“Wait…..how can we hear him in here?” Kai realized that he could hear the boy speaking.
“That’s because that’s Q!!” Taylor exclaimed.
Elizabeth stood staring at Q. There was no mistake. That suit looked exactly like Q’s. She’d even seen the same form used in battle.
The fist disintegrated. Two red eyes shot open from the dark cloud.
“Who does thou think thou art?”
“Umm… first of all, what’s with the Shakespearean?, second of all, I’m kind of a god you know.”
He raised his hand. He started chanting an incantation.
“Aroust,” he said at the end, and brought his right hand down.
At the exact moment, a huge meteor hit the cloud smack between the eyes.
“Boy that must've hurt,” Q said, wincing at the gruesome sight.
Taylor thought that was all. Q even started coming back to the ship. He just walked in space. But they hadn’t seen the last of Oragon yet. He slowly reformed.
Just as he started to creep up on Q, Q raised his hand. Another meteor hit him, and then came a barrage of meteors all striking one after another, until nothing was left of Oragon.
Taylor knew something as powerful as the Oragon could never be completely destroyed but he could said to be ‘out of commission’ for a while.
The door opened and Q got in. As soon as the air-lock opened up, he was greeted by all his friends.
“You had us so worried!” Elizabeth scolded him playfully.
“Silly guy,” Taylor smiled.
“Dude!” Kai slapped Q on the back.
Everyone started making a fuss over Q.
Before anyone could make a decision, Q had already left.
“How do you think he’s still alive?” Elizabeth asked them.
Kai looked as clueless as everyone else, but he had a theory.
“Maybe the Pandora Cannon was slightly modified?”
“No, that isn’t possible,” Chris said. “It can only disintegrate him, not transport him. Antimatter can’t do anything other than destroy.”
They kept chattering about the possibilities until Q came out.
Taylor faced him “You’ve just got to tell us how you’re still alive.”
“I had a hunch you’d be curious,” he said, his smile cheering everyone up.
“Okay then, I’ll tell you everything that happened from the time I got hit by the Pandora.”
They all listened intently.
“I saw the blob of purple coming at me. I knew if I got out of the way, I would be able to save myself, but then I remembered you two were there behind me.”
Kai and Chris both looked at him with a sense of admiration.
“The Pandora Cannon hit me. The pain was unbearable. It was like I was being eaten alive by ants. Every ounce of my body felt like it was on fire. The pain was too much for me to handle and I fainted.”
Elizabeth shivered as though she had imagined the feeling.
Q went on “When I came to, I had no idea where I was. It looked like I was floating in the middle of space. I couldn’t see any stars or planets around. I could only see the emptiness of space. I can tell you it wasn’t the easiest situation to be in. I started to feel a bit of trauma after a few minutes. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to survive. I was kind of surprised that I could survive in space without a space suit.”
Ruby wondered how a zyxian could survive in space without a suit. Then she realized that Q didn't have to be zyxian.
“I started to try all sorts of things to move around in space. After about forty tries I found a way to use my life energy to move about. I couldn’t see even a single speck of light.”
Chris looked at Q suspiciously. She’d never heard of using life energy to move about.
“I somehow didn't need food or water. I kept travelling till I finally found a small clump of an asteroid. I took refuge there. It was just the right size to let me sleep full length. I stayed there for a while till I got bored of it. I’d been practicing my powers every day, so I tried to imagine the picture of the Orion and tried to transport myself. Looks like I got there just in time, huh?”
Everyone, other than Taylor, looked at Q in awe.
“How is it that the Pandora Cannon did not destroy you?” Kai said.
“I have no idea!” Q said excitedly.
He looked at Taylor. Her blond hair covered her face.
“Taylor, what’s wrong?” Q asked.
“Just how long were you there?” Her voice was metallic like a robot’s.
Q stuttered a bit. “I…I wouldn’t know now, would I?”
“Liar!” Taylor said and walked away from them.
“Ten years,” he mumbled.
“Ten years!?” Kai yelped. He was still smiling. There was no doubt that it was a joke.
“Dude, you are one funny guy,” he said.
He waited for Q to smile and confirm that it was a joke. When he saw that it wasn’t going to happen, he realized that Q really was telling the truth.
He couldn’t have, Kai thought.
“You were in the Noverse, weren’t you?” Taylor asked. She was determined to get all the secrets out of him. She was frustrated that he didn’t trust them enough to tell them everything, without hiding things.
“Just stop it, will you?!” he yelled.
They tried to console him but it didn't seem to be working.
“Just leave me alone!” he said and ran to the bunk.
“Maybe I pushed it a little too much,” she said to herself.
“A little? Do you even know how much trauma he went through?!” Elizabeth asked her.
“But just how is it possible? He still looks the same,” Chris enquired.
“He went to Noverse. A universe said to be made of nothing. No light. No atoms. Nothing. It’s just an empty dimension. I don't even think the asteroid part of his story was real. As for his aging, I think he had so much power that it was able to keep his body fixed in time. Only his mind felt time passing by,” Taylor explained.
“Did you have to do this? Do you have to pry the secrets out of him? What’s your problem?” Elizabeth asked her. She hadn’t liked Taylor’s action of intimidating Q.
Taylor sat quietly. Even she didn’t know why she had done what she had done. It was too much. She knew it as well, but she couldn’t help asking him.
“I’m going to apologize,” she said and walked to the back of the ship.
No sooner had Taylor left than Kai felt a sudden feeling of nausea.
Apocalypse, he thought. “He’s bending space and time.”
The others seemed to be feeling it as well. They were closing in on the enemy; whether it was good or bad, only time would tell.
Final Destination
Taylor walked over to the bunk. Q lay there in his bed, covering his head with a blanket. She went over and sat next to him, like she used to do when they were little.
She stroked his head. He was acting like a child for the first time since……that day. She did not want that memory to haunt her again. She locked it up in her brain and threw away the key.
“I’m sorry,” she told him.
There wasn’t any response. She waited for a minute but still nothing. She reluctantly removed the bed sheet from his head.
His eyes were all puffed out from the crying. She didn’t blame him. A guy who had lived for ten years all alone had the right to let out his repressed emotions. She still couldn’t believe though, that he’d spent life like that for ten years.
It just wasn’t possible. She’d let him cry how much ever he wanted. Ten years of pain can’t be forgotten just like that.
“I…I’m sorry as well,” he said, which startled Taylor. She wasn’t expecting to hear an apology from Q.
“I shouldn’t have acted like a kid either,” he said.
He asked them about what they’d been doing all this while. Taylor told him about pretty much everything that had happened.
When she finished, “I missed you guys,” Q said.
Taylor just smiled. She hugged him tightly. Instantly all her childhood memories came flooding to her. Her school days, the park and even the cooking (Don’t ask).
Suddenly Q pulled away and doubled up. He felt nausea. He knew that Apocalypse could cause things like this, but he didn’t realize the feeling would be this powerful. Alarms started going off.
“What’s going on?” Q asked Taylor.
“Apocalypse,” she said. “We’re close.”
Prelude
Kai was in a big fix. He had to fight the nausea as well as steer clear of the gravitational pull of all the black holes that were heading the same way as they were.
Earlier, the black holes were quite small and harmless, but the closer the Orion got to the centre, the larger they had seemed to become.
Kai couldn’t even begin to imagine what Apocalypse would look like.
He might be too powerful for them, but Q wasn’t exactly the type that would let Apocalypse walk right over him.
Chris was more concerned about what the Orion would do if it got caught inside Apocalypse’s gravitational field. That would be disastrous for them. Considering that the super black hole would be so huge they’d look like an ant and it’d look like the Earth.
Oh yeah, they were supposed to defeat it as well. Not an easy task, even if your name is Q.
The only thing that got Q through this period was the thought of taking a vacation. Sunshine and fun was all he ever needed.
“Okay then. Let’s do this! My vacation is waiting for me,” he said cheerfully. The only cheerful guy ever to face a black hole that threatened to destroy the universe!
A big smile appeared on Q’s face. He was wondering where to go for his vacation.
How about the centre of the universe?
Hand of Gandalf
Q looked out of the window. They had reached.
They were at the centre of the universe. He found it unnerving to be looking at all the black holes that were moving alongside the Orion.
“You sure it’s safe?” he asked Kai.
“Trust me. I have an anti-gravity shield on,” he explained.
“What’s this antigravity shield?” Q asked him.
“It’s exactly what it’s called. It cancels all gravitational pulls from the black holes.”
“So what’s our plan?” Taylor came up to them.
Q tensed up a bit. His palms felt ice cold.
Taylor noticed it “What’s wrong, Q?”
“It’s the plan,” he managed to say.
“What about the plan?” Kai intervened. This had kindled his interests as well. The last thing Q needed.
“Well,” he said, his voice so soft that they had to strain to hear him. “We’re gonna have to let Apocalypse suck us in.”
Kai started laughing. “Something’s wrong with my ears, I just heard you say we’d have to let Apocalypse suck us in.”
Then he looked at Taylor, still laughing uncontrollably. He stopped laughing when he saw Q chuckling nervously.
He realized that his ears had made no mistake.
“You can’t be serious,” he pleaded.
Q slowly walked to a window.
“I had a lot of thinking to do.”
“Warning! I smell a story brewing,” Kai mumbled.
“When I realized that we didn’t have a way to defeat Apocalypse, I knew that I had to find a way. So I spent my....um... free time, exploring things.”
He turned towards them.
“After a few years, I found it. I knew what we had to do.”
Now he started drawing on a board he had found. He wrote a lot of complex equations.
“What’s this?” Kai asked.
Taylor’s eyes studied the equation that Q had written.
Taylor exclaimed.
“You see it?” Q said.
Kai had his face a hair’s breadth away from the board. “See what? I don’t see anything.”
Taylor’s face was partially amazed and confused. “The black hole. It’s just a shell,” she said.
“If we let it absorb us, then I’m sure that we won’t disintegrate. Instead we’d find a world inside it,” he said.
“The black hole covering is like a whirlpool. Or a tornado. Or even a hurricane. Violent on the outside but deadly calm on the inside.
Alarms went off again. It seemed like there was an emergency. Q hoped that it wasn’t anything serious.
Kai looked at the Orion’s status display and then turned towards Q. His face was pale.
His voice trembled as he spoke. “We’ve lost the anti-gravity shield.”
Q stood still in deep thought while Kai ran around the ship trying to get the shield back on. Without the shield they were prey to every single one of the black holes!
“I�
��ve got it!” Q said.
“So what have you got?” Taylor asked Q.
“The main problem with the anti-gravity shield gone is that other black holes would start pulling us. That would seem like it’d take us away from Apocalypse, but it doesn’t. If any black hole sucks us up, then when it gets sucked up by Apocalypse, we get in there as well.”
“Are you sure?” said a voice.
Kai didn’t even need to turn to find out who it was. The emotionless voice could only be Chris’s. He turned to her.
“How long have you been eavesdropping?” he asked her.
“I haven’t been eavesdropping. I just came by to tell you guys that the anti-gravity shield has been fixed, but the alarm still hasn’t gone off.”
“Who fixed it?” Q asked.
“That’d be me.” Elizabeth stepped into the pit, a spanner in her hand.
“You use a spanner to fix an anti-gravity shield?” Kai asked in disbelief.
“Heck no, I just needed something to play with while I worked.”
Q felt it was weird to use a spanner as a toy. He felt it was even weirder to play around while fixing something as complicated as the anti-gravity shield but when he took a closer look, he realized that they were all weird.
Teenagers don’t go around writing down Nobel Prize-winning equations, or fighting Zyxians, and they never ever get bedtime enforced by an intergalactic organization. (A higher power called ‘mom’ is responsible for that job)
“Then I guess we’re okay,” Kai said.
But then why don’t I feel that way?, Kai thought.
“How much further to Apocalypse?” Taylor asked him.
“Actually…”
“…We’re here,” Q interrupted him.
“Not even a single black hole sucked us up!” Kai said proudly. He attributed the achievement to his great piloting skills. The others didn't take notice though.
They were too busy staring at a black blob of energy. They couldn’t look at it properly since it was difficult to view a black object in a black background.
The golden waves of energy that rippled out of the blob were the only things that they could see.
Q explained his plan to Chris and Elizabeth. They caught on quickly, making Kai wonder if he was the group’s ‘idiot’....
ConQuest (The Quest Saga) Page 22