Nero
“This is the end of your road. If you’re going to beg… now’s the time to do it.”
Nero keeps his head down. We’ll see what you say when my friends rescue me.
The guard opens the security door. “Suit yourself,” he says and pushes Nero through.
The room is large and full of buzzing electrical equipment with a doorway to the right side. At the back the electrical equipment reaches a pinnacle and occupies the space from floor to ceiling. It wraps around a metal chair and has a large metal cap hanging from above, connected to bundles of wires. Three scientists turn to them and five light-infantry soldiers snap their weapons up.
“Declare yourself,” one of the soldiers yells.
“Private Shane and Private Marcus, escorting the human prisoner for probing by orders of Dr. Grantov,” one of the guards stammers looking at the weapons trained on them.
Dr. Grantov walks forward. He is wearing a white uniform and is cradling a small clear container with a metal object in the center. “Yes finally. Bring him here. We have work to do.”
The guards push Nero forward. “Is the prisoner really so dangerous? What’s the purpose of all the muscle?”
Dr. Grantov strokes the clear container. “They’re escorting an important item I hope he’ll have some information on. Strap him into the chair. We’ll begin immediately.”
Nero gawks at the soldiers staring at him with their weapons in hand. He shifts his perspective and sees a slight blue glow about their bodies crisscrossed by gentle pulsing red lines. How are they going to get past these guys? His heart starts to accelerate and he is shoved to move forward.
Two assistants come up and lead Nero towards the metallic chair with the cap hanging from the electronics overhead. Nero resists their pull as he imagines the capping device scrambling his brains. Where are they?
The door to the room opens and everyone stops to look. Nero shifts his perspective and sees the green glow of Iona with the darker green lines of the invisibility talisman woven over her body, framed in the doorway. Korbin and Thea slam into her and they tumble through the doorway with a yelp.
“Hostiles. Take cover!”
The soldiers fan out and duck behind various tables and equipment.
“Throw it!” He hears Ryder yell.
Iona throws a soda can sized blue glowing object at him, which bounces on the ground and rolls to his feet. Its brightness increases.
Uh oh. With hardly a thought, he kicks the object at the closest group of soldiers preparing to fire at his friends.
The glowing object slides under the feet of one of the soldiers who looks down at it. “’Nade!”
The object erupts into a pincushion of electrical bolts of energy. They pierce the surroundings, sometimes being deflected and other times curling about, larger bolts of electricity leap from metal with many small ones.
Nero is caught by the expanding front and his whole body goes ridged. His vision darkens and his head begins to feel light. His body is finally released and he sinks to one knee.
Nero’s guards and the scientists instantly fall to the ground unconscious along with the soldier standing directly over the explosion. The two soldiers on either side of the explosion fall to their knees, and one that was farther away staggers backwards and tumbles into Nero.
The children run forward and use their lepisents to zap the soldiers struggling back to their feet. The soldier that tripped over Nero untangles himself and pulls up his weapon. Korbin shoots him with Aether, which makes the soldier’s suit glow but does nothing to slow him down. Korbin dives out of the way as the weapon cracks sharply, scattering pieces of the lab equipment everywhere.
“Together!” Ryder yells.
Ryder, Iona, and Thea zap the soldier and Korbin joins in as soon as he rolls back to his feet. The soldier shakes violently from the Aether and his suit continues to brighten. With his perspective shifted, Nero sees the red lines surrounding his body intensely glow as though they were little steams of lava and then, as if a light bulb had just burnt out, they flash and disappear. The soldier crumples to the ground.
“That was messy,” Ryder says. “At least there aren’t any alarms yet.”
Korbin walks over and helps Nero up. “So far that’s an improvement over your rescue mission.” Korbin pulls up a guard’s hand and uses his fingerprint to unlock Nero’s cuffs.
Ryder points to the last soldier they knocked out. “Yeah but did you see Nero take out this one? Nice job.”
“I meant to do that,” Nero says and rubs his side. “Thanks for coming.”
“You’re family.” Korbin smacks Nero on the back. “Of course we’d come.”
“That was a lot tougher than I thought,” Iona says. “Do you know why there were actual soldiers?”
Nero looks around and sees the Doctor lying on the ground. The clear box is just a finger width from his hand. Nero picks it up and looks at the metal piece inside. “Hey Thea!”
Thea jumps with surprise and Nero walks over with a smile reaching form ear to ear.
“My necklace!” Thea gives Nero a hug. “I can’t believe we found it.”
“Nice find Nero,” Ryder says. “You’ll be Thea’s hero forever now.”
Thea, Korbin, and Iona start to wrestle with the clear box in an attempt to crack her necklace free and Ryder begins to hand Nero clothes and gear from his satchel.
Ryder then hands him one of the invisibility bracelets. “And here’s an invisibility bracelet for the way out if we need.”
Nero takes the bracelet. “But I can’t use Aether to make his work.”
Ryder pulls out a spare doorman from his pocket. “Grebson said you could use this somehow?”
Nero shifts his perspective and sees the bright pulsing glow of the doorman. Can I really use this like the stick in the park? He reaches out to it with his essence and with a little coaxing he feels Aether flow into him. “Yeah cool,” he says smiling. “I can definitely use this.”
“Moltrik Aether works really well against the Erohsians but since we don’t have a lepisent for you, you can use this if you need.” Ryder hands him a dart gun of the same design as the one he used in Blue Horin Bay. “Grebson made it.”
Oh great, I’m horrible with this thing. “Thanks,” he says with less enthusiasm.
“Of course.” Ryder turns away while Nero begins to change and touches his small earpiece. “Hey Sosimo, we have Nero and are getting ready to leave. What should we do with the guards? There were a lot more than we expected.” Ryder looks around and notices a series of cells in the side room. “We could lock them in the prison cells. ― Okay, we’ll do that and remove their helmets. ― We’ll be careful.” Ryder takes his finger off his earpiece and walks to the other children just as they break open the box. “Help me put the Erohsians in a cell over there.”
“What for?” Korbin asks. “Can’t we just leave?”
“Our exit is down many floors so we’ll want to sneak as far as we can before the alarms go off,” Iona says. “They won’t be sleeping for much longer.”
Ryder nods. “Exactly.”
The children walk into the cell room made of steel, with electronic panels on each door.
“Hey look.” Iona runs up to a cell. “There’s a person in here.”
Lying on the bed with an I.V. drip and health monitor equipment is a male, covered by a blanket. Other than the heart monitor continually beeping, he appears to be dead.
“He looks human,” Korbin says. “What are they doing to him?”
“I wonder if they’re drugging him,” Iona says.
Thea grabs two bars of the cell and sticks her face as close as possible. “He looks sick.” She then turns to Ryder. “We should free him.”
Ryder looks at the eye scanner security mechanism on the door, similar to the device the guards used.
“Korbin, help me pull the smart looking Erohsian over here. Let’s try scanning his eyeball,” Ryder says.
Ryder and Korbin drag the Erohsian over to the door and hold his eye open to the scanner. A prompt for a security code comes up.
“Dang. That’s not going to work.” Ryder looks around and shakes his head. “I’m not sure what to do. Let’s finish moving the Erohsians into the other cell and then I’ll ask Sosimo. Iona will you start to remove their helmets or any other communication devices they might have?”
Iona nods and the children get to work moving the Erohsians quickly. When Ryder goes for the fifth soldier on the other side of the room farthest away from the Moltrik explosion he stops and turns towards the others. “Hey. Who knocked this one out?” None of the children take ownership.
“Could the grenade have got him?” Korbin asks.
Nero looks at the Aether and notices the pulsing lines of red are still present around the soldier’s slightly glowing body. “He doesn’t look like he got zapped like the others.”
Iona shrugs. “I don’t think we should waste time arguing about results.”
“Good point.” Ryder grabs the soldier’s arm and pulls him into the cell with the others.
They lock the cell and Ryder touches his earpiece again. “We’re all done, but we ran into a little situation. It looks like there’s a human in one of the cells. Should we try to free him? ― No he’s not awake. It looks like he’s being drugged or something. ― We tried to use the main guy’s eye, but it asked for a code as well. ― No we haven’t used any of the doormen yet. ― Okay we’ll leave shortly.”
“What did he say?” Thea asks.
“Sosimo says that it’s our call. His friends who are helping us would probably appreciate it, but we need to hurry, our ticket out of here won’t be around all night. They’re setting up at the 40th floor now.”
Thea jumps up. “I say we save him. No one should be left here.” Her shoulders drop and she looks to the others. “It’s sad.”
“We can spare one doorman,” Iona says. “Can’t we?”
Ryder nods. “It should be okay.”
“Then let’s do this. Put on your glasses.” Korbin pulls out his doorman, locks onto the cell door, and blasts it with a jet of Aether.
The heat causes the security panel to curl up, hiss, and pop almost instantly. Liquid metal drips down the bars until he can pull the door open. Korbin flips the doorman over, and uses the cold end and instantly the heat on the children’s faces vanishes.
“That was awesome,” Nero says. “Did Sosimo teach you that?”
Korbin spins the doorman around in his hand, “he did,” and slides it in his pocket.
The children step into the cell to inspect the man. His face is speckled with black and on the far side his eye is consumed completely by black. His chest moves ever so slightly as he breathes.
“What did they do to him?” Thea asks.
“I saw this guy in the industrial district!” Nero says.
Korbin turns to him with his eyebrows raised. “Oh yeah? Was he at your birthday party as well?”
“Not now Korb. We need to get him up,” Ryder says. “Pull that thing out of his arm.”
Iona pulls off a piece of tape holding the I.V. down and removes it from his arm, a drop of blood almost too dark to be real beads at the spot.
Thea shakes the man’s chest and smacks his face. “Wake up. We need to go.” After a moment of prodding, he remains unconscious. “What are we going to do?”
“Great. This is just what we need,” Ryder says. “I guess we can try to carry him out.”
Iona shakes her head. “That seems like a big risk. We could all end up in here if we try. We won’t be able to sneak or move as quickly as we need to.”
A piercing alarm suddenly hammers at the children.
Korbin throws up his hands. “Dang it, why does this always happen?”
“What are we going to do?” Thea asks, her voice becoming shrill.
“We need to go,” Ryder says. “We don’t have a choice.”
“So we just leave him?” Thea asks.
“We have to. We tried.” Ryder moves his hand up to his earpiece. “Sosimo, an alarm just went off. We have to leave the other person, he’s not waking up. ― Okay we’ll hurry.” Ryder turns to the others. “It sounds like the alarm isn’t because of us so it’ll actually provide a little cover but we need to get the heck out of here and fast.” Ryder dashes out of the cell and freezes. “Oh no.”
A thick metal security door has slid tightly over the exit. The children run up to it.
“This is a big door,” Korbin says.
“Thank you captain obvious,” Iona says.
Korbin glares at her.
Ryder inspects the multiple locking mechanisms. “This is going to be really hard.”
“We’ll have to work together,” Iona says.
Ryder points to the four corners of the door. “I think there is a bolt in each one of these locations. A lot thicker than what we practiced on.”
“We only have four doormen left, that means Nero won’t be able to use Aether,” Iona says. “He won’t be able to use the invisibility talismans if he needs.”
Great. This far to get left behind again. Nero looks down.
“If we don’t get out, it doesn’t matter.” Ryder turns to Nero. “We won’t leave you, okay?”
Suddenly Ryder’s eyes grow wide and he looks past the other children. He raises his arm with the lepisent but before he can use it, a flash of Aether pulses through them. Nero feels fogginess creep into his mind but he shakes his head and it clears. All of the other children’s eyes have glazed over and they are as still as statues. Nero turns around to see a slim figure of a woman covered in a tight dark suit, a mask, and goggles with golden lenses.
Nero lifts up his doorman but the woman snatches it out of his hand with amazing celerity.
Nero glances around in desperation as the woman stares at him. What am I going to do?
The woman shakes her head in a slow disapproving manner and Nero shrinks down. She then casually hands the doorman back to him and indicates for him to move to the far side, where she leads the mindless children one by one. Once there, she takes Ryder’s earpiece out and puts it in his pocket and then she puts each of the children’s fingers in their ears where they remain. She indicates to Nero to do the same, which he does immediately. He shifts his perspective and sees a green haze clinging to all of the dazed children’s heads.
The woman, who has walked back to the door, has the dim white Aether of the surroundings, which is hard for him to see. She holds up her hand and red Aether spills from her suit. A massive fire ball slams into the barrier, making the metal flex for just a moment before it wraps around the fireball and smashes into the wall on the other side of the exit, leaving the air crackling with Aether. The red Aether of her body quickly fades back to white. The sprinkler system kicks in and the cold water makes short work of the small fires, causing the red hot metal to hiss in protest. Nero’s clothes are soaked through and he feels a chill run down his spine.
The woman turns back to Nero and waves goodbye with her fingers.
Nero half-heartedly waves back. “Uhhhh. Bye.”
She then shimmers out of view. Nero instantly tries to sense her Aether but sees nothing.
Ryder and the rest of the children blink the glaze out of their eyes. “What the heck just happened?”
“This crazy person in black stunned you all or something and then just blew the door apart,” Nero says waving his arms.
“And then she just disappeared?” Korbin asks.
Nero nods.
“Was he using an invisibility bracelet like us?” Iona asks.
“I think it was a woman and no, it was something else. I couldn’t sense any Aether.”
“What did she do to us?” Thea asks. “That felt somehow familiar.”
“It was some sort of Icor Aether. I’m not sure,” Nero says.
“Well this is all great but let’s get the heck out of here,” Ryder moves forward. “We can worry about it later. I say we skip the invisibility and just run like crazy.”
Korbin nods. “Good plan.”
Ryder leads the way through the puddles of water and back towards the exit. He dips his head into the hallway and jumps back into the room. “Dang it, we have more company.”
Iona pushes through the children. “I have an idea! Get your lepisents ready!” She pokes her head out and turns the cold end of the doorman on the water as three Erohsian security guards are running down the hall.
The water coating the walls and floor quickly turns to ice and the guards let out a yelp as they lose their feet. They slide down the hallway desperately clawing at the ice to slow down.
Iona jumps back in and pulls up her arm with the lepisent. “Now!”
The children zap the guards as they slide past the door, turning them into inert lumps that continue to slide for another ten meters.
Korbin smiles. “That was fun.”
Ryder laughs. “Yeah it was. Good thinking Iona. Now let’s go before we see anyone else.”
Ryder and the rest cautiously walk across the ice and start running as soon as it clears. Nero draws from the Aether of his doorman to keep up. They plow through the door to the stairwell and run straight into a group of Erohsians with weapons rapidly descending. Ryder tries to pull up his lepisent but before he can use it, the group of Erohsians continue past. The children bump into him and come to a stop at the door.
“Whoa,” Korbin says.
Ryder throws his finger to his lips. “Shhhhh.”
Nero shifts his perspective and sees a vibrant green chaotic flow of Aether about them as they continue down the stairs. That’s strange. “Something isn’t right. They don’t seem like normal Erohsians.”
“I’m not going to complain if they ignore us,” Ryder says. “I’m not sure what’s going on anymore.”
“Did they see you?” Iona asks.
Ryder nods. “Definitely, but they didn’t even flinch. Let’s just follow them, I guess. We can give them a little space.”
After a moment, the children begin their decent.
“How many floors do we have to go?” Nero asks from the back of the group. The repetitive motion of the stairwell makes his head spin.
Iona glances back while still hopping down the steps. “We got you on the 75th and we need to get to the 40th, so you do the math.”
Nero stumbles down several stairs. Oh great.
After ten more flights, echoes of fighting from below vibrate up the stairwell. They freeze.
“It sounds really close,” Thea whispers. “How are we going to get by?”
“Errrr.” Ryder taps the hand railing. “The stairwell is our only option and we need to keep moving. I don’t know what to do.”
Iona peeks down the center of the stairwell. “We might be able to sneak by.”
Ryder nods. “Okay, I’ll go down a little and see where the fighting is coming from and wave you all by if it’s clear.” Ryder tiptoes down another floor and sees a door propped open by a body of an Erohsian soldier, the sound of multiple weapons firing echoes into the stairwell. “Okay let’s just make a run for it, the fighting is in the hallway.”
“What’s going on?” Thea asks.
Ryder shakes his head. “The Erohsians are fighting each other… but who cares? Let’s just get keep moving. Go first and I’ll follow behind.”
Thea runs by first, followed by Iona, Korbin, and Nero, while Ryder takes up the rear when they all pass.
“Hey stop!” An Erohsian soldier yells from below.
Nero instantly freezes and Thea screams. Ryder jumps past Nero and scampers down to Thea.
“What happened?” Ryder asks.
Nero forces his legs to move and finds everyone standing in front of four Erohsian soldiers posed like statues. Nero shifts his perspective and notices a green shimmer over their heads; they have the faintest blue Aether visible throughout the rest of their body. He looks at Thea and the normal green Aether about her head is almost completely gone but after a moment it pushes the other colors back down past her neck.
Thea looks at Ryder and back at the dazed Erohsians. “They were coming from below and scared me.”
“But what happened to them?”
“I just closed my eyes and screamed. When I opened my eyes they were frozen.”
“She used some sort of Aether,” Iona says. “I saw it happen.”
“I think that’s the same thing the stealth woman did,” Nero says. “It looks like what happened to you guys.”
“But how?” Korbin asks. “She doesn’t have a lepisent and we didn’t learn that.”
A trampling of feet from above floods the stairwell. “Run!” Ryder pushes Thea and Iona forward before he starts to follow with Korbin and Nero going last. They jump down groups of steps at a time, barely keeping their feet. The floors fly by but no matter how fast they go the Erohsians always seem to be behind them. Occasionally Nero passes an exit to the stairwell just as it opens and more Erohsians join in the pursuit.
Many floors pass by and the children’s Aether reserves begin to wear thin, slowing their progress.
“This is it!” Ryder yells.
Thea slams through the door at the 40th floor followed closely by the others. Nero catches a glimpse of Erohsians coming from below and sprints through the door but just as he crosses the threshold he feels a sharp stinging in his shoulder. The whole right side of his body goes numb and he stumbles forward, hitting the ground and tumbling. He struggles to his feet and tries to keep running, but his body won’t respond. Korbin turns and begins to come back but blasts from the Erohsian weapons zip over his head and he is forced to continue to run with the others. Rough hands seize Nero while other Erohsians run down the hall after his friends.
Nero’s mind begins to clear and panic takes over as he sees Korbin disappear around the corner.
“We got one Ma’am,” one of the Erohsians holding him says. “We’re still chasing the others but they have nowhere to go on this floor. We’ll cover all exits.”
No. I can’t get captured again. A tingling sensation runs up his spine and over his scalp. I don’t want my brain to be put through a blender!
Erohsians continue to flow past him and he is pulled to the side.
“Nice try kid, but you’re ours now.”
The tingling covers his entire body and turns to sharp pinpricks. His face burns; darkness narrows his vision; sounds grow far away like his ears are stuffed with cotton; and a deep anger infests his mind. Nero begins to tremble. I don’t want to go back. I won’t! He grabs the Erohsian’s arm and twists it around so they face each other. “No I’m not!”
The terror in the soldier’s eyes is clearly visible behind his visor. He desperately shoves a stunner in Nero’s side. There is a sharp bite and the stunner explodes in the Erohsian’s hand. Nero continues to twist, forcing the man to his knees.
Violet speckles Nero’s vision and he passes out.