"I can't believe my eyes," Markus said in utter disbelief as he gaped at the sight before him. The planet was caving inwards, like a soft ball being tied down in the middle.
"What are we looking at here?" Lily asked, putting a strand of hair away from her face while she momentarily looked to behold Markus' stunned countenance.
"I mean I don't even know how it's possible." He turned to look at her. "It's mitosis. That planet is reproducing itself."
Representation of Mitosis at the cellular level
"But don't only bacteria do that?"
"Yeah. That's the very thing. I've never seen it happen in the macro scale before, let alone at this! I mean this is also macro... but you know what I mean."
"Yeah," Lily nodded and looked back at it.
"Have we made contact with Jayden yet?" Sanduo asked.
"You'll be the first to know sir. The pod is in position."
"Why did you not land it?" Lily asked, clearly offended.
Markus' face turned gloomy. "Contamination protocol."
"Then Jayden is clearly 'contaminated' by your standards," Lily said mockingly.
"We can manage it for one person per pod."
"Is it really that deadly down there?" Sharlotte couldn't hold back.
"Trust me, I've seen the results. The things there will become a part of you without you even knowing. And when it notices you are a foreign body... it will purge you and move on to find something better. This planet runs solely by means of symbiosis. There are no one-sided deals."
Both of the girls turned away.
________
Jayden should have intercepted the pod. But he wasn't high enough. His jump ended, and he fell back towards the ground. Ultimately it would lead him to fall to the core of the planet, and he could not afford to have a death so horrific.
Think! Think!
He was sliding down. The surface moved with him. He caught a tree and held on to it as creatures dove in naturally, like they were used to it.
"Markus! Markus! My attempt failed. It was too high up. I couldn't make it."
"Dammit. Oh man. I don't know what to do. If I don't do anything you die. If I bring the pod to you, there's no way any of us would survive!"
A sense of dread washed down over Jayden. Leaving him was the logical choice. But how could he sanction his own death? How could he when he practically cheated death and came back?
He said nothing. He felt tears trickling down his face, but there was no sound coming out from his throat. He let go of the branch and fell down, his eyes closed. He didn't want to feel anything.
Something fell hard on his helmet. A tiny crack formed. He could smell something, and then he was out. Chloroform. As if in answer to his call.
Everything around him turned black and he drifted into it like a man swimming down the deepest ocean.
__________
Juvo was falling down as well. He never believed that he had committed sins. It was the world that was sinful. He had always been the victim. He did not deserve this end. He deserved something greater. He deserved to be with the creators. He was made for a higher purpose.
He wished he still had that power flowing through him. He could really have made the world a better place. He could have shown all the possibilities. He could have shunned the impossibilities by turning what wasn't to the opposite.
If he was going to die like this, it wasn't just a loss of a single life.
It was the loss of opportunities of a zillion more.
And just when he was starting to feel the intensity of the pull of the planet's core, he vanished.
He was now somewhere beyond time, beyond space and even beyond- the multiverse.