"What is this!"
Five of the most renowned university lecturers on the Vrul homeworld stood before the council, light filtering from seven faces of the eight faced glass octagon that constituted the Vrul council tower. The city was arrayed below them in full 360 view. Their star was beginning to sink behind the horizon, casting the walls and tower into long shadows.
The five professors looked down at the piece of paper being brandished towards them. It was a schematic of some sort, and the engineering professor took it with some interest and examined the diagram quickly before passing it on, "Quite fascinating." He was saying
"What do you mean fascinating." One of the council demanded
The medical professor took a look, their antennae waving in sight interest, "Mechanics is not my expertise, but medical is." There was a pause as they looked over the piece of paper for a long moment, "This looks like the schematics for-"
"For a more efficient incubation system." The engineer was growing excited, "This is quite revolutionary. Well not even that it is quite simple, but the temperature regulation and convection heating would stabilize heat inside the chambers allowing for the perfect environment for offspring. If this works like I think it will, than..... than we may reduce the number of Gammas and deltas in the population. We would have a higher likelihood of producing Alphas this is...."
"It is impossible." One of the councilman said
The engineer frowned, "No it isn't, we've made ships before, ones that can travel on the interstellar level, this would be ea-"
"No, it is impossible."
The engineer looked on in confusion.
"This is propaganda, and I want to know where you got it?"
"Got what."
The group of them turned to look at Director Vall who stood at the far end of the room looking out the window, "Found all over YOUR campus."
Her antennae vibrated softly, "Not just my campus."
The group of them walked over to the window to see what she was looking at, and as they did the council gasped.
Pamphlets.... Pamphlets everywhere. Pamphlets with small moving images on them in some cases so that whoever picked them up didn't even have to read if they couldn't. Thousands upon thousands of them fluttering through the air on wind currents and dispersing over the city, using the city's own vents to create the widest dispersal range.
"CALL THE GUARDS." Someone ordered
Director Vall leaned her head against the window softly watching as a gently floating paper fell into the hands of a passing beta, who held it up and looked on in interest .
"its too late for that." She whispered as the room burst into life around her
***
The problem with the structure of Vrul society, is just how effectively ideas trickle down from the top. It was originally designed like that to keep the council in control, but over the past week that effect had been working against them. Someone was feeding propaganda to educated alphas, who, in turn, were directly responsible for the betas, who were often the handlers from the gammas and deltas . Betas gammas and deltas have no imagination and so the propaganda would be unlikely to work on them. You have to be able to understand the implications of propaganda for it to work, but as of right now only betas and alphas were being targeted. Unfortunately for the council, their only line to the greater masses was through the alphas, and the alphas were easily able to understand what they were seeing.
They could have prevented this.
They could have exposed the alphas to the propaganda at a young age and then used the reprogramming techniques to convince them that it was all just lies and why it wouldn't work. But the Vrul Alphas had never seen this information before. In fact, many of them had offered up solutions similar to the problems being depicted on the pamphlets.
They were smart enough to know that the solutions would work, and they were even smarter in their understanding that the council would know. From there they were able to extrapolate the truth.
The council had intentionally halted Vrul scientific progress for their own ends.
And now those alphas were revolting, and with them they were bringing the other echelons along.
There was nothing the council could do.
They had effectively been removed from the top of their pyramid, and their channel for disseminating information had been cut.
The council was now trapped in their tower, guarded only by genetically modified Kappas who kept the crowd as bay.
From their glass tower they could see vrul floating into the sky in an attempt to get to them, intercepted on odd occasions by the Kappa guards.
Below them, the streets roiled with protesting figures heled back by a measly amount of guards. Some of the non-Kappa guards had become turncoats and revolted, joining the crowd and blending in to the great whirling mass of brown grey bodies, resembling roiling sand in a windstorm so many stories below.
This was the end.
No matter what happened life as they knew it was over.
This wasn't the sort of thing that one just squashed. They should have seen it coming. Resentment and academic frustration had been growing in the alphas for a long time. Dr. Krill was not the only one who had noticed the council's unwillingness to support scientific discovery, he was only the most audacious and the most vocal, and early pioneer of the revolution movement.
The other alphas had come along slowly, overcoming their reprogramming by slowly letting the facts fall into place after thousands of their own projects had been denied.
There was the microbiologist who had discovered a rout to immunize them against the V virus, and had their project shut down. There were at least seven or eight genius ideas for incubation facilities that had been discarded without question. Long incinerated where many new and interesting ideas for expanding the city, destroying the V zombies, and returning to life before the wall had existed.
One after another they were all shut down and the scientists who suggested it were reprimanded and demoted.
Those Vrul that had been trapped in space when the GA began to break down were harder to control. Their distance from the Vrul homeworld and their access to information outside of the tightly controlled Vrul network gave them a bigger picture. They were doing their own experiments, medical and otherwise and broadcasting their findings through secure radiation channels which were being intercepted by other alphas on the ground.
Information was now flowing freely over the Vrul homeworld.
And the people were angry.
Below them, a group of alpha demolition specialists were planting charges in the ground.
If done right the tower would collapse into the dead cities below and be swallowed by the ground, Killing the council and everyone inside.
It was barbaric.
Almost human in nature.
And the council knew exactly who to blame.
They turned their attention to the last kappa standing in the doorway. His outer skin was so dark it was almost black and when he shifted a blue sheen seemed to pass over his skin.
"You have failed us countless times before, Do not fail us again."
The Kappa bowed but said nothing, turning on his heel and walking out the door.
The council was left to watch as the foundation of their rule was slowly destabilized.
***
Krill sat with the grubs in his atrium under the city. They had repurposed one of the large rooms in the underground caverns as the location of their rebel rebellion. It had taken a few weeks to get things going, as rebellions required momentum, but with the more alphas they were able to convince, they saw an exponential increase in the population who participated in the protests.
It was not an easy task, truth be told. A lot of the alphas had been heavily reprogrammed to reject any ideas that they deemed unsafe, but even they could not deny the existence of Lachesis Clotho and Atropos, lain and incubated on an alien ship using only the tools that were on hand, and still they ended up as alphas.
For the longest time the council had claimed that Vrul children could not possible be bred anywhere but on the vrul homeworld. They also said that to use any other technological methods would result I the eggs dying off. They also said that even if those eggs were to hatch they would surely be deltas.
Lie after lie after lie was being exposed.
Years and years they had spent building up their empire of glass built on a foundation of steel. The first few years of their power had been the strong years, where they wove falsehood with truth and truth with lies, but after a while there was no need to speak the truth at all. What was the point in doing things in half measures if everyone is going to believe whatever you say regardless of how ridiculous it is?
But it was backfiring on them now, the more lies that they exposed the more the alphas could not deny the logic of what they were seeing.
Even then their anti- brainwashing might not have worked. Deprogramming takes years, psychology and a lot of patience to do properly, but the mitigating factor in all of this?
Spite.
The Vrul council had turned down a lot of suggestions and projects. Most of these Vrul had been slighted by the council and their lifelong work thrown into the wind without so much as an explanation. If there was one thing that Vrul alphas have, it is academic arrogance and pride. With their discarded science came founded anger, and it was by leaning on this anger that they were able to rally the support of the alphas.
Some didn't even take that much convincing. Occasionally, alphas sought them out with pamphlets in hand , glee and anger on their faces as they crowed about being proven right.
It was true.
Overhead, in the streets above Krill could hear the clamoring of the crowd and the shouting of the kappa's surrounding the tower. The Grubs sat with him, excited to be part of the revolution but a little put out that their parents had taken over much of the plan. It was the grubs plan after all, the one they had planned to execute by themselves, but it was Definitely Krill and riss who were implementing it, and under no circumstances were the grubs to become involved.
That little part was laughable.
Of course the grubs were going to get involved.
Krill stood and readied himself. here was his most important role in this whole thing.
Being the face of the revolution.
The alphas had known about his plight for some time. He was the poster child for what could happen to your career if the Vrul council didn't like your new and radical ideas. Krill had been banned and ostracized from his own planet approaching a decade. He had never fit in, not because the other Vrul weren't like him, but because the programing didn't take, and he had started showing signs of their true nature before anyone else.
He was what the Vrul could be out from under the thumb of their oppressors
"Time to go." He said to the Grubs, and they got up to follow him out of the room as the sounds of the crowd rose to a crescendo overhead. There was no chanting like one might hear from human protests. Most Vrul didn't have the sense of rhythm for that, but the anger was still there, the anger and the frustration.
Krill planned on leading the charge.
It wasn't exactly required, but he hoped that it would spur the Vrul forward. Riss was already there, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his words, and convincing the last few key people to join their cause.
It was now or never.
They were just about to turn the corner when Etium came running up the hall.
He was panting and his ears were plastered to the back of his head. He didn't give them time to say anything but grabbed Krill by the shoulder and pushed him back down the tunnel "kappas! More than two dozen of them coming for you. They're in the tunnels. You have to run!" he turned and shoved Krill forward before going back to face the opening to the hallway.
"Etium!" Krill reached out a hand.
"No, I'll hold them off, but you have to get out of here."
Krill would like to have argued, but in their panic the grubs grabbed him and forced him forward down and unknown hallway and into the dark. It didn't take long before they could hear shouts and weapons going off behind them. Etium was outnumbered at least twenty to one, and there was really only one way that that was going to End.
Krill looked over his shoulder but the Grubs kept rushing him forward in a panic.
If they were anyone else krill would have stayed behind to helps his friends, but the grubs were on the line and he needed to get them out of here before they were caught in the crossfire.
Their path had taken them down unknown hallways, deeper and deeper into the darkness. Krill wasn't sure where they were going, and he was worried they were going to be lost. The shouting above them faded, as did the fighting at their back, and they were left with nothing but the distant rushing of an underground river. They came around a corner and pushed through the door at the end of the hallway, stopping dead in their tracks when the room opened before them.
Clotho almost fell over and Lachesis gripped Atropos's arm as they stared.
The room was massive, at least ten stories tall with multiple balconies with thousands upon thousands of strange objects glowing with the soft blue light of twenty vacant tanks at the center of the room. It took krill's four cortical hemispheres only moments to determine what he was seeing, and when he did he was almost floored. Strange liquid bubble in the tanks as his mind pulled the pieces together.
All of those strange objects, discarded , at the corners of the room.
Inventions
The more he looked the more he understood.
He stepped forward to one of the tanks hand outstretched to place his palm against the cool surface.
He recognized some of these controls.
These were hybrid grow tanks, just like the ones they had seen on noctopolis....
JUST like the ones Eris had been grown in.
He stepped back his mind reeling,
The Vrul council...... it was them. Everything here I the room that Krill could see was stolen technology confiscated from under the noses of the scientists that worked for them. It was confiscated and brought here where that new technology was used to create the Kappas. The Kappas weren't a new invention, the council had been using the breeding techniques described in thousands of defunct Alpha experiments to create their own breed of super assassin, but when the adaptids came around and the use of adaptid DNA became understood....
Was it possible?
Was it possible that the Vrul council were the ones to have created the hybrid grow tanks, the ones that experimented on and received profit from breeding different hybrids to sell at freak shows, all in an effort to create stronger kappas? Were they the reason Eris had been grown, and then forced to adulthood at an accelerated pace?
All for their own efforts to subdue their own people.
Was it wild conjecture?
Maybe.
But was it possible?
More than likely.
It was Clotho's scream that alerted him to the impending danger, but her scream had come to late. Soemthing hit him in the back, hard, and he tumbled to the ground skidding past the tanks and rolling onto his back just in time to see the kappa racing towards him from the dark its hand raised, something sharp glittering in its hand.
Krill rolled to the side just as the object came down where his face had been. It stabbed into solid metal like it was butter, and pulled out without so much as a dent. Krill scrambled backwards and the Kappa came after him. The Grubs went to move forward but krill shouted for them to stay away.
Krill grabbed for a discarded piece of pipe which had rolled under one of the inventions, bringing it up just in time to stop the knife as it came down again.
Krill had never been a fighter.
Not really.
But after so many years spending time with drev and humans, he had been forced to pick up a few things.
He managed to make it to his feet, using the pipe to fend off his attacker.
Krill dared not to inflate his helium sack, knowing that if it was puncture he would be a goner.
Best to stay here on the ground.
The knif swung at him again and he ducked low, charging forward and ramming into the chest of the Kappa sending both of them to the ground swinging and punching. The knife clattered to the ground and the Kappa gasped for air. Krill tried to punch him in the face, but Vrul hands aren't made for punching. He thought he heard soemthing snap.
He was hit with a rush of dizziness and no adrenaline to push him onward.
Only his body telling him to stop .
The kappa threw him off and he went skidding across the floor.
It wiped at its face, eyes dull and lacking any sort of concern for its own safety. This wasn't just a normal Kappa, this was a hybrid kappa, probably crossed with a Drev or a human or some other invulnerable species. Its skin was unusually hard after all, and it didn't seem to feel the pain that it should.
It lunged for Krill and he kicked out at it with his lower legs.
They ended up on the ground again.
Krill was the one with his back to the ground this time, and hands scrabbled for his throat.
He saw the knife out of the corner of his eye and reached for it even as hands clasped around his neck.
He was being choked to death.
There was screaming all around hi.
He wasn't dying fast enough.
The Kappa slammed him into the ground. Krill's fingers were so close they were almost touching. The kappa snarled and let go of his neck. He grabbed krill by one Antenna and the side of his jaw likely intending to break his neck.
Krill screamed fingers curling around the knife,
He stabbed the Kappa just as he began to twist.
It screamed as the knife was buried in its chest. Its arm gave a jerk in the panic and the pain.
Krill heard a snap and then was overcome with incredible pain.
He hit the ground hard as the Kappa staggered back.
And in his hand, he held Krill's right antennae, snapped off at the base.
Krill watched as his vision went black. Well.... This was it.... he was going to die.
He wasn't a human or a Drev, he couldn't' survive after trauma like that. As a surgeon he was sur of it.
He could only hope that the void didn't get ahold of his anima before he could return to Revelation.