Blazegate

Chapter 4

He drags me into a small room, lined with tinted windows, black around the edges with smoke. There was a long table, stretching around the length of the round room. In the middle was a large glass tube, with a luminescent green liquid in it, bubbling up, some fluid spilling over the glass. The large tables were filled with test-tubes, microscopes, slides, papers, and tools. The man leaves me alone, to look around, and I walk past the tube, finding a man, working at a microscope, dissecting a space rock. "Sir?" I ask.

He looks up, and his face has steampunk-style science goggles on it, and his hair is a color that matches his smile; crazy. It is a bright blue with streaks of lime-green running through it. He stands up, a few inches shorter than me, green eyes sparkling with curiosity. His eyes trail to the wound on my arm. "You know you'll be dead within the hour if you don't get it stitched up." He states, pulling a pencil out from behind his ear, pressing it to his ringed bottom lip.

"Uh—" I stutter out, before he plops back on his office chair, and pushes hisself across the room, grabbing something, and wheeling back to me. He stands up, and pushes me down into the chair, pressing the button to my arm cuff, taking it off. He opens his hand, revealing a needle and stitching supplies. He shoves the needle into my arm, before I can say anything, and stitches up the bullet wound, pulling the excess material off with his teeth. "JESUS CHRIST!" I yell at him.

"Oh, shut up. From what I've heard about you, you've endured worse conditions." He scoffs, walking to a chemistry burner, picking up a few chemicals, and dumping them into a pot. He lets them bubble for a few seconds, and dumps the mixture into a test tube, and hands it to me. "Drink it. It'll heighten your blood's plasma, and save you from an excruciating fever."

I slowly drink it, the liquid burning my throat. "That'll put hair on your chest." I mumble.

He digs something out of his pocket, and pulls out a lighter, and pushes me out of the office chair, sitting in front of the microscope again. He pulls his goggles down, and lights the space rock, it making a mini-explosion, and leaving a piece of uranium. He leans back up, pulling up his goggles, leaving black rings around his eyes. They were oddly wide, as if,he had just discovered something.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Leave." He blurts. "Leave."

"What?" I ask.

"Go back to wherever the hell you came from." He says angrily. "I have to tell my crew something, and I can't have you around here."

"What the hell?!" I yell.

"Look! I just need you to leave. My work is done with you, and I have very important matters to attend to." He growls, scooping the ashes and uranium into a container, and fixes his bleach-white lab coat, storming out of the lab, leaving me alone.

After I leave, I spot a gang around a tall man with a daikatana and revolver. I approach the man to aid him, but before my eyes, he knocks out all of them. His sword is sheathed, but he's hitting the men with it. "Pfft. Anarchy," he grumbles. As I approach, he draws the blade towards me. "Oh. Captain Brandon. I heard of you from my friend. She's... Busy," says the man. "Call me Res. I'll take you to my literal hole in the ground."

Once we arrive at his headquarters, I get a better look at him. He has a Van-Dyke beard, flannel-titanium compound armor, an assualt rifle on his back, and the daikatana and revolver mentioned earlier. He has dark brown hair, and he is semi-muscular. "Seriously, that hair isn't wotking for you," he tells me. "One sec." He leaves and brings back a small tonic bottle. "You want a human hair color? No? Okay," He sets the bottle down. "Highly volatile atmospheres reduce my hair to a silver color. I keep one of these on me for every job. So, tell me about yourself, and I'll tell you about me," he says.