Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2690694" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 296: Family ReunionIt was no longer a good idea to sit there in the open of the huge hangar. Despite the sudden fear and panic that was attempting to grip her, Shadow was able to recognize this fact. She also understood just how important that was. But Jyren was shaking and not wanting to move. He was freezing up just like she felt the need to...but all those years of training weren’t something that was going to go to waste that quickly.    As best as she could, Shadow got them both back onto their feet. It was difficult, of course, and it was beginning to seem that humans were just about incapable of any kind of strenuous movement. Lifting Jyren up shouldn’t have been the difficulty it was...he wasn’t even very big! Grumbling to herself, she pushed him back to make him stand on his own feet and looked him in the eye, “Come on, Jyren. We can’t just sit here.”    “But it...I...” he trailed off, his eyes darting past her a moment but then shooting right back.    Shadow managed a nod, “I understand,” she didn’t, “But we can’t turn back now. And you...you have dealt with one of them before.”    Even the word ‘them’ sent a shiver down her spine and brought up horrible memories that were again quickly buried. But Jyren shook his head, “Its not the same.”    “What do you mean?” she was only asking that to get him moving again, and even glanced back towards the door they’d been heading for in the first place.  The needed to keep moving. There was more here...more here than that thing. But it was so hard to reach past the thick, heavy presence that quite obviously knew she and Jyren were there...but beyond it, was something else.    “Its not you,” Jyren’s voice snapped her back to the moment, and she couldn’t help but sigh. The worst part was that she couldn’t argue that point. If it had been anyone else in the galaxy, she could argue it...but somehow it made sense to her. That was, of course, beyond her...just that she knew he was telling the truth.    “Then we’ll just have to work things out the hard way,” Shadow said simply, though she wasn’t even sure of it, herself. But that ended the short conversation, whether Jyren liked it or not, and Shadow took his arm to lead him to the door.     When they reached the stark-white door, Shadow let go of Jyren’s arm to hit the single switch that would open the door. With a hiss, the door slid to the side and revealed a jagged looking, not-so-well carved corridor that was literally lined with ice itself. Very carefully, Shadow led the way in, glancing both directions before noting a cave in was blocking the way to the right. So her eyes and body went left, with Jyren right next to her. Silently, the two of them carefully moved down the corridor, walking past doors here and there but simply continuing forward instead of checking them all.    But then, after two turns and countless doorways, Shadow stopped. It took Jyren a moment to notice the door to their left, as it looked like the ice on the wall had simply engulfed the thing. Very carefully, Shadow reached out and poked the ice. Her face wrenched itself into an odd form as she held back a shriek at the cold...despite the fact that she had a glove on, but a few pieces of the ice slid off and hit the cold ‘floor’ of the corridor. It was then that Jyren was given a very flat look, and he quickly understood, doing his best to clear the thin ice off of the door.    When it was clear, they found another simple switch, but before Shadow pressed it, Jyren asked quietly, “You’re sure about this?”    “No,” and then she pressed the switch. A hiss, a slight creak, and the door slid open to reveal a large, half-ruined room. Immediately, though, both of them caught sight of the contents of the room. What was once likely a large storage room was now lined with rows and rows of...bacta tanks. Or at least, they looked like bacta tanks. But the liquid inside didn’t have that slight reddish colour that bacta did..but that wasn’t the reason both Shadow and Jyren identified them as something else.     Inside each of the tanks was a large, black mass of flesh that nearly filled the entire thing up. And all of them would have been completely unidentifiable if not for the eyes. The bright red-orange eyes...all white open and staring blankly forward. But there was something in those eyes. Something absolutely horrible that made it painful to even look at. The eyes that Shadow had only ever seen in Jyren’s memories...and eyes that he saw every time he closed his own.    And there were hundreds of them.    “Jyren...” Shadow gasped, not stepping into the room and suddenly having a hard time breathing, “Those are...”    “Yeah,” he nodded slowly, the same breathlessness to his voice as her’s had.    “And they’re in...”    “...yeah,” this time his voice was more a whisper, just as her’s had been. One of them was enough...but...but this was almost an army! Clones!! An evil creation now tainted and marred by a horrible process of copying life! What that would do to the already unstable and viciously violent minds of the creatures was horrifying to think about...an Alraxian clone gone mad was bad enough, Nine was proof of that. But these?! And so many! So many...    “We can kill them now, can’t we?” Shadow asked. In the same moment, she had reached over and grabbed Jyren’s hand, trying to steady herself...and had quickly noticed he was shaking again.    Jyren pried his eyes off of the horrible sight in the room ahead of them to look at Shadow, “I wouldn’t know how to...”    Biting her lip, Shadow turned to look back up at him, “There have to be plugs to pull or...or something!”    He had started to answer, but stopped himself. That was too simple. There was no way it could work...not that Shadow didn’t know that, of course. She just had to do something. Standing here staring at it all was getting worse by the moment as she realized just how helpless they were...they couldn’t even walk into the damned room! How could they do anything at all if they couldn’t even get into the room?!    Something. An idea suddenly jumped into Jyren’s mind, and his free hand quickly reached for the blaster pistol at his side. In another second, it was up and his arm was extended, aiming the weapon at one of the nearest tanks. It took another long moment for him to get control of himself and stop his hand from shaking so that he could hold the blaster pistol straight...then, slowly, he started to squeeze the trigger.    “I do not believe that will have the effect you are hoping for,” the voice forced Jyren’s finger off of the trigger so quickly that he couldn’t tell whether he’d even done it or not. It had come from farther into the room, though they couldn’t see its source. But neither Jyren nor Shadow needed to see Jen Zaarin Voort to know what her voice sounded like.</blockquote>

Verification